It's The Start Of The Year
The calendar says we are more than a week into 2020 but in terms of pop culture (and especially music), it feels like the first day of the year has just arrived. This early January dead zone is familiar but there are signs of a thaw, particularly in the form of Selena Gomez's first album in nearly five years. As good as it is (details below), that's a thin reed to grasp onto but considering how it's been a month since there have been any new albums of note, it's enough.
This also means this is a perfect time for a bit of housekeeping. This month, I'll be launching a paid tier of this newsletter. Free posts will appear on a regular basis but certain posts will be available only for paid subscribers. I believe the rate is fair: $5 a month or $60 for the year. Given the current media climate and the rise of paid newsletters, I am under no illusion that money may be tight for my audiences and I will understand if readers don't opt to sign up as a paying subscriber. That said, I truly appreciate any contribution you may make, since I really enjoy writing this newsletter and believe it's just starting to hit its stride. Sign up today, if you'd like.
The second bit of housekeeping is personal. By the end of the month, my wife should have given birth to our first child. This event may result in a slight hiatus of posts, even though I have been working on a backlog of pieces to run over the next few weeks (including a piece on Elton John and a series looking back at the music of the early 2000s, which I may title 2020 Vision because I sometimes can't resist puns and stupid jokes). So, if the newsletters slow for a bit, I'm not going away, I'm just tending to my family.
New Albums, 1-10-2020:
Selena Gomez—Rare
Not yet thirty, Selena Gomez has been a constant cultural presence for over a decade, making the transition from child to adult star not just with ease but elegance. Chalk some of that frictionless maturation to Gomez's essential airiness. Unlike Ariana Grande, the pop singer who is turning out to be her only true peer in style and experience, there's never a sense that Gomez is laboring, either at her performance or her production. Rare—her first album in nearly a half-decade—works so well because it glides with the same unhurried grace as Gomez. Underneath its satiny veneer, Rare does dabble in a few different sounds and styles, but it's united by its relaxed pace and subdued shimmer. The lightness doesn't simply match Gomez's vocal skills—nobody involved is under the illusion that she can belt like Grande, so they don't put her in that setting—but highlights her personality, which is accentuated by the cooly lush productions and melodies that never push but have hooks all the same. It's more than a very good pop album: it's an album where Selena Gomez's signature is inescapable.
Ronnie Dunn—RE-DUNN
An awkward reunion with Kix Brooks now in the books, Ronnie Dunn decides to unleash RE-DUNN, a solo album where he wanders through his past. The title suggests that he's re-doing his old tunes but, no, that's what Brooks & Dunn's 2019 album Reboot was. This is a covers album where he revisits some of his favorite tunes—a whopping TWENTY FOUR of them, to be exact. It's fine, I suppose. Country classics ("Amarillo By Morning," "That's How I Got To Memphis") are muscled out by '70s country-rock and soft rock, a sound that undeniably was formative to Dunn but he now sounds a bit too sharp and mannered (and the production is considerably too crisp) to make this feel like the warm balm it was intended to be.
Notable Digital Debuts From The Past Few Weeks:
Josie & The Pussycats: Music From The Motion Picture [2001, Playtone/Sony Music]
Willie Nelson—My Own Peculiar Way [1969, RCA Victor]
Duke Ellington—Three Suites [1990, Columbia]
Sanford And Son [1972, RCA Victor]
Slow Start To 2020
Felt like the Selena Gomez record started off strong (I'm currently obsessed with the title track) but really didn't hold together all the way to the end.