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REVIEW: Hayden's "Shit Happens"AKAHI, I'M BACK, I GUESS Alright, it's been a long time since I've been around, but I'm back and with some major pent up feelings regarding all the new releases, so this should be fun. I decided to start back with Hayden Merjos' newest album "Shit Happens." No, I'm not going to do the little asterisk for the "i," because assuming that I'm protecting young eyes or the people that would be offended by the word SHIT by using the asterisk is naivety at it's highest regard. Nobody is walking by this album cover and thinking, "Well, I don't know what that word is, but it's not a curse word, so I think I'll buy this." The Dead Kennedys had no problem putting "Fuck" on the cover of Too Drunk to Fuck. They let other people take care of the obscenity because they, honestly, didn't give a shit. Don't get me wrong, I am in no way comparing Hayden to the Dead Kennedys in terms of music. I just found it pretty ironic that Hayden has this whole "I don't give a fuck" attitude, and then censors his own album cover.
I'll be honest, I have a problem with this guy's attitude to begin with. He's an asshole that's been riding on his family's fame for a long time now. Like, "Ohhh! You threw a chair during an awards show! How punk rock! How edgy!" And then right before the Chaos Awards, he tweets, "I can't not promise I won't throw a chair," which, if he were paying attention to the double negative, means that he's promising he won't throw a chair. What a genius writer and lyricist. But, don't worry guys, he definitely threw a chair that night. Towards somebody. For disagreeing with the announcement that Hayden and Katie Merjos won Best Couple. These things were witnessed, and apparently nobody wants to talk about - maybe for fear of having a chair thrown at them. Rum - of Rum & Coke - was the woman that was hit by the chair, and she literally laid on the ground for about five minutes, and nobody helped her. Of course, I was there and didn't help her either, but Best Group was about to be announced, and I had bet with Carmen Grant that Weekend would win even though they've released, like, two songs for this entire year, while other groups like Rum & Coke - who wouldn't have been able to accept their award anyway, since one half of the group was laying on the floor - have put in a shit ton of work so far and didn't win anything in terms of musical recognition. These girls have released so much that I'm starting to get extremely tired of them. So much that I can't turn on my radio without hearing one of their songs within ten minutes. So much that I wonder if they ever do anything else with their time.
Hm, that was a tangent I didn't mean to go on. I guess I really do have a lot of pent up feelings towards these artists. MAN, IT'S GOOD TO BE BACK.
Anyway, I guess I should get to reviewing the damn album, huh? Shit Happens wasn't a bad album. In fact, I'll even use the word "good" for it. I try not to let my personal feelings get in the way of how I feel about a artist's music, and here's proof that I've been working very hard on just that. From just a "judging a book by it's cover" first look at the album, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't intrigued. The cover art was great, and a real step away from the normal cover art of a solo artist, which is normally either a high-gloss, airbrushed photo of the artist with their head turned to the side so you can only see half of their face, or a high-gloss, airbrushed photo of the artist staring intently at the camera with come-hither eyes. Also, the album had some great track titles, which I feel like most artists have been lacking on lately. I realize that it's easy to just name a song after a word that you say a lot in the chorus, but Hayden - for the most part - stepped outside of that and gave a few of his tracks interesting titles like "Guiltiest Man," "She Just Looked Better to Me, But You're Alright," and - of course - "LSD," which I was wary about until I read that Hayden has confessed to never actually trying LSD, and purely wrote the song on hearsay. Which still made me a bit wary, but honestly, the song could be worse. It's no Lucy in the Sky, but it's also not shit, so there you go.
I'm just going to go ahead and jump right into my favorites and least favorites of the album, because honestly - there's a lot of good songs, and then there's a lot of mediocre songs that I thought about skipping over immediately. That's not saying that they're bad, that's just saying that they were boring. The album unfortunately started off with the worst songs on the entire album, called "Dancing Shoes." It high-energy, but not in a fun way. It's high-energy in an annoying way. I was pretty done with it before it even reached the halfway mark. This "high school pep rally" rock is not Hayden's strong suit at all, and made me feel like all the maturity that he had shown through his singles like "Piece of Mind," "Take Your Place," and "How to Get On By" just went down the drain.
I'm a pretty big folk and folk rock fan, so there were several songs on the album that I did like. "Is There More?" and "Guiltiest Man" won back a lot of points that Hayden had originally lost with his horrible beginning. "Is There More?" was especially enjoyable and was high-energy in the good way. If I were in charge of the album, I would have put "Is There More?" first, and then completely destroyed any evidence that "Dancing Shoes" ever existed. "Guiltiest Man" is another top contender for my favorite song on the album. So far, I've felt that some of Hayden's best work has been his collaborations with other artists, and this uncredited one with Bianca Moretti is especially good. It's different from other songs on the album, but not so much that I feel like it's completely out of place. It's sounds like the type of song you would hear in a modern western film, and the maturity and the emotion of the song blew me away. This should be the type of music that Hayden pursues more of in the coming years of his career.
My favorite song on the album, however, would definitely have to be the third single that Hayden released, "Take Your Place," with Allison Cooper.
By the way, can we talk about Allison Cooper for a second?
First of all, when I first heard about her, I thought that people were talking about Alice Cooper and not Allison Cooper, so that was confusing. And then I looked her up and saw that she is just as freaky looking as Alice Cooper, so that was an honest mistake. Remember when celebrities seemed like perfect human beings that never had any problems, and we all wanted to be like them so we could get away from our normal struggles and lives? When did it start becoming cool for celebrities to be fucked up psychos? They used to hide their addictions and psychiatric problems from the world so they could continue to look like royalty compared to the norm. But now we have people like Allison Cooper, Radio Vine and others whose entire basis of their appeal is that they're crazy as fuck, and look like they're going to have a mental breakdown or stab somebody every ten minutes. I don't get the appeal. And yes, yes, I realize that they're just people too, and everybody has problems, but I can assure you that people with the same problems as them do not publicly display them in the ways that they do. There's a line between being overwhelmed with your issues, and just being histrionic, and I don't think I need to tell anybody which side of that line somebody like Allison Cooper finds herself. But she's a great singer, and much like how the people of the 60s ignored Judy Garland's rampant alcoholism, I suppose we'll ignore Allison Cooper's insanity for the sake of good music.
Back to the album...
"Take Your Place" is easily my favorite song on the entire album. It tells this tragic story of two people in love about to meet their end, which seemed so perfect for Allison Cooper. So perfect that when I heard Hayden had originally considered Jennifer Armstrong or Yasmine Kiambang for the collaboration, I couldn't understand why. Anyway, I'm glad that he ultimately decided on Allison for it, because both of their voices are perfect throughout the track. They have this sweet, almost delicate and breakable sound to their voice, while the brass section seems to be overwhelming them, adding to the feeling that the death that is inevitably coming for them is so much stronger than they'll ever be. That's my interpretation anyhow. And it's a pretty great one, if I say so myself.
I know I've been pretty nice to Hayden throughout this review - and maybe I've lost some of my mean spark over the few months that I was AWOL - but I mean it when I say that this isn't a bad album. Sure, some of the songs are boring and will probably be the songs you zone out to when you're listening to them in your car, but there are some real winner, too. I would honestly say that only one of the songs was a bad song, and I think I've made it pretty clear which one I thought that was.
Overall, I'd say it's a strong:
My advice to Hayden? Continue with the more mature sound that you've developed since your first album, and stick with it. Don't start to fall back on this Kidz Bop sound you suddenly threw at your listeners out of the blue. You're better than that, Hayden. I believe in you, kinda.Edited by user 16 June 2014 07:44:25(UTC)
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