Looking at my amazing music career, I can only say that it didn’t really work out. Not that I am rock star material, but I actually think some of my music is pretty good. However, the rest of the world don’t agree and Spotify happily rates my popularity as being 0 out of 100. I can’t really take that as anything else than a sign of my music not really having hit the main stream.

An obvious career move of a failed rock star is of course to become a bitter music critic, and I’ll follow that tradition by checking if all music similar to mine sucks by relation.

Why am I fit to be a music critic one may wonder. As I see it, being a failure within my genre makes me exceptionally fit to critique similar music, after all I do have a natural talent for things that don’t work. Therefore I’ll be listening closer to artists that Spotify judges similar to me as those must be within my area of failure expertise. 

During a couple of days I somehow qualified for being matched to other artists on Spotify. This matching has since disappeared but I managed to catch it. You can head over to https://artistexplorer.spotify.com to explore the artist similar to another artist interactively or be lazy as me and look directly into the Spotify application on your computer or phone. Below is the list of artists that Spotify judged as being most similar to me.

Being an investigative music critic (what a cool title!) has never been this easy. Exploring further down the list of similar artist yields fascinating names like ”Brink of disaster”, ”The Jerkoffs” (Yes, I will listen to their stuff only because they have that name), and ”Hospital the Musical” (I tried to instruct Siri to play me their music next time I’m in a hospital and after thinking long and hard she refused, so I guess that’s that.).

I immediately want to know what a Beer corpse actually is (is it the can? Or is the actual beer dead? Was it alive at some point?) or if Jenny really is kind and other deep thoughts. I will try to answer these and other questions but I’ll do it mostly from the Spotify application as all information needed should be there and I really don’t want to put too much time into this (as you know that true talent is enough to succeed and work should basically not be required).

I have built a small playlist of the songs mentioned in the article (yes, it contains my stuff as well). And if you don’t have Spotify you can probably find all this stuff somehow on youtube or apple music or any other service, just I won’t collect it for you. Use Google, or Bing if you are more ”alternative”.

Terre Neuve 

The artist that turns up first in the list of similar artists to me is Terre Neuve, and I have to say I am immediately offended! Not due to the explicit lyrics though. There are none. Neither am I offended by the music, as there is none of that either!

Terre Neuve has one album on Spotify and it’s called Hope Eternal Springs (Loopable Audio for Ambiance, Meditation, Insomnia, and Restless Children)!

I am offended by Spotify claiming my music is most similar to a recording of water in a stream somewhere. Thanks. Listening to this basically just makes me want to pee, so I’ll just skip this artist in my review round (hey, I’m not going to sit and listen though 15 tracks with different variations of water running, I just won’t!).

I’ll look at the photo on the album though. It’s a nice one. Good depth. A bit soft on the colors, so the photo gets a 3/5 score from me. The album I’ll just continue to ignore and hope that Terre Neuve finds a good audience that likes his album as I’m sure he does a great job of recording water. I won’t add any if these sounds to the playlist, but here is the hit Small Bubble Fast Stream for you to enjoy anyway.

Oh, just one more thing to be offended about. This is what’s most like my music according to Spotify. However I don’t turn up in his list of similar artists at all, but both David Guetta and Daft Punk do…

Enough of this. After a visit to the loo I go on to listen to the next artis.

Cab Driver

Now we’re talking! Cab Driver currently has one track on Spotify: Gasoline. Like my music it has less than 1000 listens, but unlike many of my songs this rocks! The song starts of with a cool guitar riff, followed by more guitars and powerful drums and bass that follow along the basic structure of the song. But man, that lead guitarist can play! 

I have no idea what the singer is trying to say most of the time (and for some reason he reminds me of D.A.D lead singer Jesper Binzer), but that doesn’t really matter as I doubt the song is trying to convey any solution of major world problems, and if he is I really don’t know what I should do with that information anyway. He has energy and he performs well. Google the lyrics if you need them. I don’t. 

The song gets a bit monotone after a while, but its straight through good rock performed by excellent musicians and it makes perfect sense that they have only 5 listeners per month. After all, I like this so it must be bound for failure. 

 I’d include a picture of the band here if there was any on Spotify, but there isn’t. If you’re curious you can google that as well.

Beer Corpse 

Below is the page I get for Beer Corpse on Spotify.

I hope you like it. At least in Sweden it looks like this and there is not a single song available. I guess they are available somewhere else, like in another country or something, but I have to say that this music critique thing isn’t going amazingly well.  Being a failed rock star is one thing, but a failed music critic? C’mon Spotify, at least put people that have published music as similar artists! Or is the similar artist concept based on something else than music? Profile pic? 

Anyway, to answer my deep thought about what a Beer Corpse actually is, I can now tell you it’s an empty profile page on Spotify with a shout out to help make this artist popular by listening to their music! Somehow however 11 people have managed even if there is nothing to listen to. Impressive.

Yes, I know this is in Swedish, that is what my Spotify prefers and as I speak Swedish I don’t really mind, but this is ridiculous in Swedish or any other language. Why is an artist that has no songs at all referred to as similar artist? And why are you requesting me to listen to music where there is none? 

I’ll help you out Spotify, as I happen to be pretty good at this computer stuff.. Now, add something like this in the player code. 

if(artist.has_no_music_that_can_be_played_in_this_country_or_is_just_sampling_of_water())
{
   Find_another_artist_that_actually_has_some_music_and_show_that_instead();
}

You’re welcome!

Cheryl Foster

Cheryl Foster has a hat and likes the beach. That is as much as I can understand from the photo of her album Ain’t about me. The music is boring too, except the single No superman that is both boring and somehow disturbingly performed (the bass really gets to me.. is it a little bit out of sync somehow?)  so that one will most definitely be a hit. 

I actually listened through almost all the songs, something I really hadn’t planned to do but it was so uninspiring that I died a little bit inside and in my sudden apathy just let it play on. At least the songs after No superman were well performed and she seems to be a rather good singer. So the beach-hats off for that.

As I don’t like this all that much, Cheryl is destined for success and I expect her to be visible on the charts soon. 

Luckily I’m not getting paid for this as I really can’t come up with much more to say here.. Not even anything evil. 

Piuma 

I’m confused again. 

Not that me being confused is very rare, but publishing the same record twice, with the same recordings of songs on Spotify is beyond me. But Piuma know better and published their album, creatively named Piuma in 2015 and then again as a vinyl playback in 2016. WHY? The only difference is that the vinyl recording has worse sound quality as far as I can hear.

Piuma seem to be cool though, and as I’m kinda cool too I listened to the version of the album that has been recorded and digitally mastered (my assumption), pressed onto analog vinyl, played back and recorded with digital equipment, digitally compressed and streamed to my computer. Somehow I assume this process should recreate the experience of listening to vinyl, something I haven’t done since I last listened to the Smurfs Icelandic christmas album (I couldn’t find that one on Spotify, but here is a recording in the same spirit). I bet it is those feelings and memories Piuma want people to recall with their vinyl version, so the rest of this review will be in the spirit of that old album, as probably is the wish of the artist. 

Smurfing the songs on the album in shuffle mode is a bit smurfy I must say as the pieces are obviously ment to be smurfed in order. Especially smurfing from Universoul to As Far as Eye Can See may cause you to smurf a bit.

The songs are quite smurfy and the band smurfs them well. Universoul and No hesitation are too long but Born is smurfy. They’ve obviously smurfed Led Zeppelsmurf for inspiration. Well smurfed!

Piuma are definitely running the risk of being utter failures as I actually smurf them and they are the first artist I smurfed where I chose to press the follow button. I am now one of their smurfs.

JennyAnyKind

Ok, lets get two things clear.

1. JennyAnyKind sounds like a guy
2. This is the first artist in the list that actually has any song with more than 1000 listens! 

This is of course a huge milestone for me as a critic to critique such mainstream music. This band has 70 listeners per month to compare with Piuma with the previous record of 19.. 

Anyway.. Looking more at the band it seems they forgot Jenny.. 

..or they’re all kinds of Jennys?  I don’t know and I can’t really answer if any is kind. 

I just come to think about the movie Forrest Gump. There is a Jenny there. She seems kind but she dies. 

The music is cool and laid back. They don’t seem all that bothered about having misplaced Jenny and just keep on rocking in a smooth way. The band is obviously inspired by pre-70s rock/blues and let it shine through and they may have heard a Bob Dylan song or two that inspired them. And they actually seem serious.

Just look at the cover of their album Peas and Collars. There is some work behind that and I like it.

No-Jenny-of-Any-Kind are quite likely to be successful based on the notion of what I fall for is a failure as while I have to say I like the music, I won’t be listening actively to it again. It just doesn’t touch any nerve  (not even the pee nerve like Terre Neuve did).

Djane

I want Djane to be GI-Jane. I just do. 

Anyway. This is another super popular artist with 95 monthly listeners (just below Justin Bieber) and songs that have been played thousands of times. 

GI-Jane is using a language I don’t understand at all, but hey, music is universal isn’t it? The intro in Hino Funkerio  leads me to think about the music in The Secret Of Monkey Island (it’s a game if you’re a non-nerd) but quickly changes into a bad karaoke version (with some creative changes) of Vanillas Takapenlin tytöt performed when the party is almost over by the people who have had the most fun but didn’t pass out. The voices don’t go together at all and seem a bit off.. But I wouldn’t know. Perhaps it’s supposed to be like this. Obviously thousands of people have checked it out at least.

Their other song Sem Vergonha is better but still nothing I’d like for anything else than background music in a latin restaurant. It would fit quite well for that so I’ll add it to the playlist just in case you’re going out for dinner tonight. 

I have by now given up all thoughts of Spotify having figured out any relation between me and the artists they claim are similar. I think it’s just a sort of random function that selects some other failed artists and mixes them together. 

Me

Ok. I don’t really care what you think here, but the most similar artist to me, must be me. It’s like so similar that it’s exactly the same. Not even Terre Neuves water album is that similar to my music. Also, now when I’ve written this piece, Spotify has decided that I don’t have any similar artists anymore. They’re all gone. I can only interpret that as Spotifys algorithms have concluded that I’m unique at least in this very moment.

The music is very environmentally friendly in a way as many of the words used are recycled from other songs. Phrases like ”Out of my league” and  ”I don’t know” are commonplace.  If English is not your favourite language it’s fine. These songs are all the same so you can just think an unhappy and hopeless thought and you’re in the right mood and should be able to enjoy  it (if you are the kind who enjoys feeling miserable that is). 

Some of the songs are in tune, some are not. Some are a bit pop-rockish, some are not. Musically the red thread is quite unclear, but lyrically the misery is there in most songs. The singing could have been performed by someone who is good at singing or had any charisma, but to make it a little bit more difficult to like the music, it is performed by me. 

There are a few pop with EDM-flavour experiments in Surreal and No one knows, there is an attempt at writing a country sounding song in Ragged Dog and then there are other master pieces like Ghost, From the bottle, Supernatural temptation and Just a dream among others. These are easily some of the best songs ever written (if you exclude all that are better that is).

The production is uneven and it’s obvious that it’s done by someone who really doesn’t know what he is doing. A cool thing you can do is for example trying to listen to No Man in a rather new Citroen C4 with standard stereo and raise the volume to close to maximum. The base drum will sound like a plastic toy of some sort and annoy the hell out of you. So the songs definitely have character, even if for some the character is more like Darth Vader than Luke if you know what I mean. 

Wrap up

This concludes my investigative and deep diving study of my failing music and it’s relatives. I hope it has given you some insights. Writing it helped me find Piuma as well as writing one more article to clog up the internet with, so I guess it’s all good.

Now go listen to some music! It’s good for you and it’s good for the artists.