Kanye Last Song Standing results

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzo9_tZBQLE

Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haa8WGrjwlA

Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8X2tcNutGk

Kanye Last Song Standing

The plan is to do a Last Song Standing episode, in the spirit of the Dissect podcast, with Lucas in which we nominate Kanye songs from various albums, put them in a March Madness-style bracket, and find the last song standing. Here's my documentation of my nomination process.

4/4/26: College Dropout

We Don't Care (5)

All Falls Down

Spaceship

Jesus Walks (2)

Never Let Me Down

Get Em High

The New Workout Plan (4)

Slow Jamz

Breathe In Breathe Out

School Spirit

Two Words

Through the Wire (1)

Family Business (3)

Last Call (6)

If I had to pick today, I'd kill New Workout Plan and Last Call. The former is surprisingly fun, the latter was an old favorite of mine, but neither shines brightly enough. Family Business is a personal one for me, so it's tempting to kill. We Don't Care was never a highlight for me personally, but it stands taller than something personal like Family Business. I'd have to sort through the influence of Jesus Walks and try to map the quality. I never liked Through the Wire when I was growing up, but now I feel like it's so iconic that he's rapping through the wire; "they can't stop me from rapping" is such a Kanye thing.

4/5/26: Late Registration

Heard Em Say (3)

Touch the Sky

Gold Digger (2)

Drive Slow

My Way Home

Crack Music

Roses

Bring Me Down

Addiction

Diamonds from Sierra Leone (Remix)

We Major (1)

Hey Mama

Celebration

Gone

Diamonds from Sierra Leone

Late

4/6/26: Graduation

Good Morning

Champion

Stronger

I Wonder (1)

Good Life (4)

Can't Tell Me Nothing

Barry Bonds

Drunk and Hot Girls

Flashing Lights (2)

Everything I Am (3)

The Glory

Homecoming

Big Brother

Good Night

4/6/26: 808s

Paranoid (2)

Street Lights (1)

4/6/26: MBDTF

Dark Fantasy

Gorgeous (4)

POWER

All of the Lights (5)

Monster (3)

So Appalled

Devil in a New Dress (2)

Runaway (1)

Hell of a Life

Blame Game

Lost in the World

4/7/26: Yeezus

On Sight

Black Skinhead (1)

I Am a God

New Slaves (3)

Hold My Liquor (4)

I'm In It

Blood on the Leaves

Guilt Trip

Send It Up

Bound 2 (2)

4/8/26: TLOP

Ultralight Beam (2)

Father Stretch My Hands Pt 1 (5)

Pt 2

Famous

Feedback

Low Lights

Highlights

Freestyle 4

I Love Kanye

Waves

FML

Real Friends (6)

Wolves

Frank's Track

Silver Surfer

30 Hours (4)

No More Parties in LA (1)

Facts

Fade

St Pablo (3)

Also: Violent Crimes

Albums:

1. TLOP
2. LR
3. MBDTF
4. Graduation
5. College Dropout
6. Yeezus
7. 808s

Okay so TLOP has way more crap than LR. But it also has many more glorious moments. LR is more consistently strong; it's classic all the way through. TLOP is so fragmented. But LR doesn't deliver so many amazing moments. LR only offered a few songs for this project; TLOP offered 10. So it's a question of sane classic status vs bipolar glory. LR is more subtle and measured like the sermon on the mount, TLOP is just basking like the resurrection.

So my wild card options are:

• Heard Em Say
• Everything I Am
• 30 Hours
• St Pablo

Opera, Verdi

I prefer the tone of Fleming to Callas, Bostridge to Pavarotti. The former are more so pure trumpets, less human, all voice. The latter are the legends, and I adore their legacies, but there's too much gut in the voice. Maybe it's just a shift in the world's taste over time, or maybe it's my taste vs the world's. Not that the former are neglected... they just aren't deified.

In fact, someone like Fleming even has too much gut in the voice, to be a quintessential soprano. Add a spoonful of Enya and she'd be perfect.

I listened to Verdi's Requiem and substantially preferred it to Rigoletto and Don Carlo. It serves a different purpose of course, but being a long dramatic work of Verdi I didn't think it'd stand so tall beside the others. It's better in every way: the lyrical lines, the irae, it all hits harder and with less cheese. It compels me to Otello, Traviata, etc. I know this man writes music!

Tonight is La Boheme at the Teatro in Rome

Opera singers, Turandot

Turandot, Christmas week 2025, 4/4/87 performance on Met website with Domingo

Callas and Pavarotti, for all their renown, are almost too human. Callas sounds like a middle-aged lady. It was probably just the sound of the time -- perhaps they didn't know how to get that stuff out of the sound back then, so as far as they knew, she was angelic. Now, she's a full-throated dame. I heard Lise Davidsen do "Vissi d'arte" and Renee Fleming do "Signore, acolsta", both of which I intuitively enjoyed better than Callas' versions. For instance, Fleming's final couple of notes are pure tone, no throat, no gut, no speech. Callas is always grounded in her gut. I don't know how to describe these things, nor do I have much experience in what I'm talking about, but perhaps it just boils down to Callas being old-fashioned. I love her persona though.

As for Pavarotti... I haven't seen him in Turandot, but I doubt I'd like him as much as I liked Domingo. Domingo was the heroic tenor, in shape and size and style. Pavarotti can't play a warrior hero at his stature. Good Duke of Mantua though! at least as far as he was a regal glutton. Stature aside, I'm not sure I even like his voice (ostensibly the best ever) as much as Domingo's. They say Pavarotti is effortless, but that's what I'd say about Domingo's Calaf. Not only did he hit every note, the sound sprung out of him like a golden fountain. Pavarotti, like Callas, has too much guttural humanity in his sound. I mean maybe that's someone's taste, but I like voice as pure instrument. I like how Domingo just unleashed the sound. I like how gentle Davidsen was.

Turandot was the best opera I've seen lately, or ever. Grander and bolder than Tosca, more musical than Don Carlo, more beautiful than Carmen or Figaro, Turandot was the best synthesis of drama and melody I've seen. The sets were intense, the arias included two of my all-time favorites, the setting was epic-historical, and the musical themes stood out so much better than in that other epic-historical Don Carlo. Despite the 1987 date, Turandot was fresh and intense. Domingo was the right kind of tenor. Even without "Nessun dorma", the music soars. It's funny, I never would have expected a Chinese setting for "Nessun dorma". But I like how Puccini leans on the eastern pentatonic in Turandot's motif as well as "Signore, acolsta".

1. Turandot
2. Tosca
3. Carmen?
4. Don Carlo
5. Rigoletto

Opera

Carmen 2025 at 2 Roots and on vinyl

Tosca Dec 2025, performance 11/23/24, conductor Nézet-Séguin, Met website

The Magic Flute at Luther

The Merry Widow at Luther

Der Rosenkavalier at the Met, probably weekend of 4/8-9 2023

The Marriage of Figaro 2025 at 2 Roots

Don Carlo Dec 21-24 2025, conductor Nézet-Séguin, Met website, performance 12/11/10

Rigoletto Dec 2025, 1981 with Pavarotti, Met website

I'm thinking more seriously about opera for the first time. 

Pavarotti missing that note in Rigoletto at the Met is like Ned Stark dying -- everything ever after feels high-stakes, you know no one is safe.

If I had to rank the three operas I've watched on the Met's website, it'd be 1) Tosca, 2) Don Carlo, 3) Rigoletto. Rigoletto was a tragedy, yet felt like a comedy that was told it had to be a tragedy. The most familiar melody, "La donna e mobile", is one of the cheeriest ever; the title character is a jester; the romance feels like Much Ado. I remember being surprised when death first came into the picture, surprised in a discordant way. Maybe that's the purpose -- I do think there was some intentional irony to some of the Duke's cheer -- but it felt more like Verdi just didn't know operas could have happy endings. I'm probably wrong there, but I just can't stop picturing Pavarotti's broad face under a thick tuft of hair grinning among his mistresses. It's too light, yet turns dark in an unsatisfying way, via the uninspiring character of Rigoletto. Don Carlo had the religious and historical backdrop, which I like, and the visuals were stunning; yet little of the music struck me. ChatGPT told me Don Carlo was the obvious next Italian opera for me to watch, and I can see why in terms of the grand setting, but the music was not fulfilling. The arias weren't very melodic, it was just three and a half hours of severity. I may like the grandeur of the setting, ChatGPT, but I need melodious grandeur in the music too. Tosca, despite ChatGPT's comment on Puccini's simple intimacy of scene, delivered a gravitas that behemoth Don Carlo couldn't, via pulling the modern heartstrings. Puccini seems to be modern enough that his melodies can strike gold, yet classical enough that he respects form. "Vissi d'arte" and "Nessun Dorma", for example, play in chords like I ii IV, like modern popular music. Thus modernism in classical music has a different meaning than the avant garde, it also suggests melody that can move me.

I don't expect Mozart will be my operatic hero: he seems to be too sanitized. Two deep in Verdi, I can't place him up there either. I liked Carmen, but I know it's not the peak for me. If I am to adore opera, I'm putting some chips on Puccini and Wagner. "Nessun Dorma" is one of my favorite songs ever, I guess, and Wagner seems to embody the epic/philosophical/serious art of opera as much as anyone, though I haven't heard much of his. Hopefully it's fairly melodic. It probably isn't.

If I wasn't about to go to Italy, I might abandon Italian opera for now and turn to Wagner or something. But I think Puccini possesses some treasures yet for me.

Mozart's latter symphonies

I listened to the final six symphonies on vinyl, excluding bastard 37 (so it was 35-41, Haffner-Jupiter), at least twice apiece.

The first few got better and better, but the lot may have peaked at "Prague". This is extremely subjective though. My taste in classical music barely correlates with critical reception. For example, the only theme I recognized from pop culture across all six was the beginning of 40, a theme which I distinctly disliked. Bach is an even better example of my taste's volatility, as I might love one prelude of the WTC and scorn its neighbor fugue, or vice versa. The worst offender is this style of minor mode that I really don't like: the beginning of Mozart's 40 embodies it, while somehow Bach's "Den Tod niemand zwingen kunnt" evades it on the way to becoming one of my favorite classical themes. It's so finicky. Most angry minor music offends my taste, while I don't mind softly sad minor. "Den Tod niemand zwingen kunnt" has a ferocity, but it's ultimately a sacred sadness.

"Prague" stood out for its challenging chords that are ultimately rooted in the major, not the chipper major, but the serious major. "Haffner" was the chipper major, and thus that transition through the first three from chipper to serious. The next three weren't a coherent arc to me. Maybe I'd get more if I listened to them again, and listened more intently (I wasn't super attentive for any of these), but I feel like my instincts toward Mozart symphonies are pretty clear now, so I don't feel the need to develop them further.

I'd like to develop my general Mozart instincts further though: the Requiem, Don Giovanni, and all the many miscellany. However, I'm going to call out that Bach clearly surges well ahead of Mozart in my esteem, and Bach worked in almost every category, so there's a lifetime of Bach that may deserve my attention more than most of Mozart. I even wonder if Beethoven and others will pass Mozart, considering Mozart feels a little too sanitized. Too many big bright bounces between the I and the V (or the i and the V), too many cheesy sing-songy melodies, too many modulation cliches. Of course Bach contains an almost unlimited amount of these things, but he passes by them instantly, while Mozart hinges on them. Bach throws in a cheesy theme, but the next moment he's somewhere else entirely; Mozart makes it the whole motif. Bach is constantly, chaotically churning, like the sun; Mozart is incessantly bright, like the sunshine.

I don't mind these symphonies for some easy listening, some light class on a situation. But they don't get me going.

OK Computer

I'm starting to wonder if Radiohead is not my favorite band. Today I listened to some OKNOTOK and KID A MNESIA and most of it didn't hit. I mean it hit like, cool, but not like, I enjoy this. It's so hard to say what music I actually enjoy nowadays. Certainly some jazz and classical, and otherwise the randomest of songs. I think I can honestly say I enjoyed "Uncle John's Band." But none of this Radiohead is hitting, and Kendrick feels more like a memory of adoration than adoration. My taste is up to some shenanigans I don't understand.

I'll definitely still say Radiohead is my favorite band. Hopefully In Rainbows hits so that statement doesn't feel so empty. But the fact remains, a lot of their music, especially pre-2007 and especially especially pre-2000, isn't my style. It's probably the best punky grungy music has to offer, but it's still punky and grungy. Then even some of the refined stuff is too oblique. Some of my favorite songs of theirs are their most straightforward (still oblique).

"Let Down" is clearly my #1 jam off OK Computer.

The Bends

I've heard this is where everything picks up, as distinct from immature Pablo Honey, but the two actually resembled one another pretty closely to me. They say "Street Spirit" is the defining moment in the acceleration (or descent) toward OK Computer... I've never particularly attached to that song. It just isn't quite my style. It's aggro sad, while I prefer melancholy sad. I prefer "Bulletproof" for sad. I prefer maj7s for sad, or at least min7s, not hard minor. "Street Spirit" is hard minor so I never connected, though it's reputed to be the album's clear highlight, like "Blind Willie McTell" foreshadowing Dylan's resurgence. That's another hard minor song I never took a shine to.

So the supposed highlights of The Bends are "Street Spirit" and probably "Fake Plastic Trees". I surely dig the latter, though this duality demonstrates how the album bounces between hard minor and hard major, it's a little too polar. "Nice Dream" is soooo gentle (besides its aggressive bridge!). Still too much grunge left over from Pablo Honey (which will haunt us through OK Computer and even to a small degree later on), and the non-grungey moments aren't typically profound.

My highlights haven't changed since I last listened through this album many years ago: "Fake Plastic Trees" and "Bulletproof". Two of the softest songs, maybe the two softest. Clearly grunge isn't my cup of tea. Nor punk -- some of this album almost sounded like Green Day from the 90s.

It seems obvious this is a progression from Pablo Honey, but not a very ambitious one. They're still a punky angsty band with a lot of talent and too much unbridled anger that they don't know how to harness other than in guitar distortion. Their emotions too easily fall into distortion, one of the cheaper ways to create musical sensation.

I can't say I love this album. Even OK Computer is hit-and-miss for me. I'm all about late-stage Radiohead... though not too late. Mid-stage: 2000-2007

Pablo Honey

Seeds of perfect songwriting and technical innovation blended with cringe grunge. Some likable songs, some talent, some ear scrapeage. I don't feel the need to remember any of these, other than "Creep" of course, which I'll remember more for its impact than its quality.

Sable, Fable

First impressions, hearing it 2 days before release while running through a park in Eau Claire:

The new tracks redeemed some of the EP. The only bright spot of the EP was uber-folksy "Speyside", while Fable delivered some pretty cool beats. I'm glad of it. I like his sense for tight beats, also his sense for soul, which appears here. I liked a few of the songs. I don't think he's really a great band anymore. He's kind of a one-album-wonder, a wunderkind who evidently lost his precision after losing his 20s. But I'm glad Fable redeemed Sable.

Blowin Your Mind and Moondance

They're like Dylan's pop flops, but sandwiched by greatness 1-2 years on either side, instead of Dylan's decades. Dylan's DC scales up and down over decades, while Van's AC was ripping those 5 years. How could the muse come and go like that? Well, maybe it didn't. Maybe it stayed, and he collected his easy tracks, and saved up his hard ones. I can't blame him for churning out these easy, decent songs. "Sorry bro, you can't release your perennially-bread-winning Brown Eyed Girl for everyone, you can only bleed into the vinyl for maybe no one." No. He can cash his albums which are not bad. And I can ignore them ever after.

Despite Brown Eyed Girl, Moondance was easily the better album for me. Blowin Your Mind was such basic blues. I'd see it live... no cover at a local bar... he shredding his cords, his band shredding their chords... the devil in his voice could rally any unsuspecting venue... but the record is not so fun.

Top vocal performances

Astral Weeks

Bob. I love his Rolling Thunder voice. Also Desire, New Morning, 1963-65

Sia, esp the piano album

That girl in Bridge Over Troubled Water w Collier

Bloody Motherfucking Asshole

Love SZA as a singer

Natasha and Shania

Not top:

Nahko: I love his voice but not always what he does with it

Bon Iver

So much Bob

GNX

What a great album. It bumps, just like "Not Like Us"; I'm guessing that's Mustard I'm detecting, though Kendrick has found a new flow for those types of beats as well. Yet, as on every album, he balances great beats with a couple of long-toothed introspective tracks. It'd be sad if he didn't.

It's getting so hard to rank his albums. I'm still putting TPAB on top. I think that's a combination of nostalgia and superiority. But GKMC, DAMN, MMBS, and GNX are all mingling. GKMC gets the earliness bias. But GNX is honestly one of the best collections of beats I think he's done. It's not his most profound album but the vibes are so strong. He's just cruising. While other rappers are struggling to mold their legacy out of clay, he's just dumping cement all over his. I can't imagine there's anyone more productive in greatness in the history of hip hop. Everyone else either flashed quickly or fell asleep for a while. Kendrick never slept. He had a kid and came out as strong as ever. He continues to innovate, not to the artistic heights of TPAB, but by showing us what's possible in a great and hard-working MC.

Can Kendrick's catalog summarize the entire value of rap? What's missing? He has politics, introspection, city love, violence, wordplay, musicality, great beats, humor, jazz, soul... I guess he doesn't really have rock, but I don't care much about rock rap. Who has something he doesn't have? He's not the funniest rapper, but some of his stuff is pretty funny. Ye did more for rap fusion, but Kendrick is insanely versatile. Does he serve and represent his community as well as someone like Pac or Jay-Z? I'm not sure. I'm so far from those communities. I only see the music itself. Musically, how is Kendrick not the GOAT?

GNX is a straightforward classic.

Sometimes I wish musicians leaned on nostalgia like movies. Every franchise movie is excessively nostalgic. But I would die for Bob Dylan, Kendrick, Bon Iver, anyone to do callbacks to their old stuff. Maybe it's a real artist's nature to press forward.

J. Cole

To me, now that I've heard some early mixtapes and every solo studio album once, J. Cole is elite and indistinct. Masterful, passionate, consistent beyond compare, yet somehow blending into the background. Obviously this connects to the fact that I literally didn't notice him for so many years. Was that my fault, his, or pure circumstance? Maybe it's on him that he didn't force universal awareness a la Taylor Swift, but that's hardly a bar he needs to meet. Barring that, it's not his fault I didn't catch on to him, as I never tried a single song. I think there's some pure circumstance here; had I been surrounded by Cole advocates in high school, I might have zealously adopted. Bon Iver is an insightful case: he never forced universal awareness, and I don't blame him for it; he also isn't a top-tier artist, yet I love him, because I was around him (literally) in high school and carried him all these years. It's an extreme example -- the bias actually runs too strong -- but Cole is extreme in the other direction -- unusually low favor-bias.

I'm not hearing him at my most sympathetic time. I'm not sure where I'm at with rap these days. Within a standard deviation, rap may have the highest floor of any genre for me, yet the ceiling out to a couple of standard deviations is low. In other words, most rap is decent to me, little is standout. Cole himself is standout, for quality and consistency, but the music doesn't spark much for me.

My taste in rap has changed a little too. I used to love sad rap -- humble, conscious, sentimental. Cole's introspection and Ville love would have hit me just right in middle and high school, maybe even college. Now I'd rather hear a wicked beat from him, polyrhythm, creativity in the theory rather than authenticity in the purpose. I probably still like soft rap, but Cole's early albums are a bygone style, still good but no longer inventive. I guess I need invention, and Cole is disadvantaged by my hearing him so many years too late. He has such a hill to climb to sound inventive so many years later. His later albums sound more inventive, although even those aren't standing out to me like the best rap used to. Will any rap? I still pay a lot of attention to Kendrick, but is he really standing out to me or do I just care because it's Kendrick? Again, I'm not drifting away from rap -- it's such a high floor -- but maybe even the best of it will have a hard time striking me going forward. I don't think I've been amazed by any rap since Kendrick in college, nor distinctly pleased by much since Coloring Book and Flower Boy shortly thereafter (I'm excluding Kendrick there since at this point he's just my guy and I'm generally pleased anytime he does something).

In summary, Cole is so impressive, yet strikes me as unoriginal, partly because I'm too late for him, partly because rap has such a hard time amazing me now, and perhaps partly because he's just a quintessential rapper in good and bad ways. Good because his product is just so solid and captures the spirit of hip hop. Bad because his blending of everyone else's qualities causes him to blend in. Maybe that last bit wasn't true at the time of each album's drop, but it feels true now, in this retrospective.

SABLE,

That was tough. I hope none of this ends up on any LP. Speyside was the one I'd heard, I thought it fine, and it's the highlight. Otherwise there's some poor writing: lackluster lines of lyric and melodies that miss the mark.

Speyside, though forgettable, was encouraging in its For Emma stylings. I hope we see more of that, and I hope he relearns how to write songs. Since For Emma, he's had at least one good song on every outing, and Big Red Machine was really encouraging despite its stylistic departure. SABLE, is discouraging in that it's the style I wanted but so clearly inferior to how he used to do it.

J. Cole

The Warm Up and Friday Night Lights

The hunger is there. The wordplay is there. It's just the originality in 2024 that's not there. I missed the J Cole bus. I would have liked this stuff when it was released, though even then I think I was getting past it. Kanye, with perhaps inferior wordsmithing, was surpassing Cole in most other ways at this time. Kanye was actually going too far, but at least he was testing the boundaries. Cole sounds solid and safe. It's hard not to like these mixtapes; it's also hard to love them, 14 years, many innovations, and one Kendrick forward. It needs nostalgia. Actually, it's still really good stuff, lyrically, but the sounds are basic at this point. I could see it representing some kind of golden age though, that I missed. I mean I caught some other rappers then, but I missed Cole, potentially superior or more quintessential if not more lasting. Kanye, Drake, and Eminem stuck around.

Cole World

This is great stuff. His rhymes are advanced, his beats strong. It's sentimental and cerebral like I always liked. It just doesn't hit me. I'm too late for it. Maybe it was never groundbreaking? It's kind of sad, because he's doing such a good job, and he's so driven, and I'm so sober. All-around solid rap, good for him, doesn't make an impact rn.

The consistency is astounding. Every song is good! How does he come up with so many crisp lines?

Recent music

So far I'm going:

1. Hit me hard and soft
2. Tortured poets department
3. Cowboy carter

All feature good production, good singing, and bad writing. At least Billie is a little more subdued, if immature. She's much younger. The other two are overtly immature at an advanced age.

And I'm going:

1. Kendrick
2. Nobody
3. Some other people
4. Drake

Update: as I finished Hit Me Hard and Soft more of that immaturity came out. I always thought she needed more help with lyrics and melody. The vocals, production, and mood are strong, it's just missing good old-fashioned tune writing. Still, it's Billie or Taylor; Beyonce's album brings up the rear.

Cowboy Carter

I'm through "Alligator Tears" so far. Like Taylor, she's a pop star. That means despite her ballyhooed genre-bending she's basic. That means I can tell exactly what she's doing. I don't like understanding an artist so well, unless the art is piercingly perfect. When Beyonce raps, it sounds like a non-rapper trying to rap. When she tries country it sounds like she's trying country. I say the same of Taylor attempting anything but pop or country-pop. I can see too much of the artist in the art. I said years ago art needs an air of effortlessness. Sylvia Plath was my negative example then. Beyonce is more negative. Her efforts are painfully overt. They don't sound authentic. The first track was the worst so far. I hated it. It sounded so high-effort low-intelligence.

Obviously her physical talents remain. She's a real singer. But the songwriting is rough.

I don't think her country inauthenticity is racial. After all, I said the same things when Hootie went country. (lol)

Almost done now... I almost hate the album. I wonder who wrote the songs. Beyonce must not be a great songwriter, otherwise she would have written these and they'd be good. If she didn't write them, then why couldn't she get better songwriters? She has entirely the fame and finances. She must not have great taste in songwriters.

Well, if the album is no joy to me, I hope at least it injects some soul and dimensionality in the world of country.

Recent music

Jon Batiste: Spotify's This is Jon Batiste reminds me of a much less interesting Jacob Collier: both are talented and diversely spongey, both understand the science of the song, but neither has anything to say, resulting in generic AI-adjacent compositions. I envied Batiste, before I listened to his music; I want to be the only melodica-wielding jazz/pop pianist; then I watched Soul and grimaced at "you got soul and everybody knows cause it's alright." Plenty of classics sport the dumbest lyrics, but these are especially dumb, and the sounds on the track don't compensate. It isn't the only Batiste song I distinctly dislike, which I think says a lot, given my nonchalance toward the universe of generic music. Of course I'm harsher since I'm simultaneously expecting more from Batiste and, in a corner of my heart, hoping he'll fail. I don't dislike all of his music. "Moon River" was nice in that he added a beat per measure, to lock a lockier groove, and played it simply. I feel I could have played it that well, and that's okay; I don't mind how he played it. Elsewhere I was impressed by some of his instrumental soloing. And his compositions aren't generally bad; they just lack soul, as mine probably would, at this time in my life. I'd be writing just to write, because I can, and for practice.

Oscar Peterson: Night Train was too perfect. "Hymn to Freedom" was mechanical.

Miles Davis: I almost hate Birth of the Cool

Lennie Tristano: Intuition is too chaotic

Phoebe Bridgers: Bo Burnham can do better. Maybe she has a stellar personality -- her voice is great -- but the best song on Spotify's compilation is Bo's. I don't dislike any songs I heard, they just didn't stand out, and Bo stands out.

Steve Reich: I have slight interest in talking as music, or 20 minutes of clapping as music, but some of Reich's works were delightful (the trains, the Cave, Electric Counterpoint, Six Marimbas, and more), particularly when the context is right.

Tortured Poets Department: she keeps writing decent pop songs, but it's hardly inspiring anymore. I have never been an active Swift listener, yet I can identify several cliches she herself created and dated.

Cory Wong: hearing a bunch of Spotify's This Is, it just sounds like good production over mediocre songwriting. I'll have to try the album with Bluebird.

Vulfpeck: I'm disappointed, knowing a couple of highlights and now hearing that they're highlights, but it's certainly far from the last band I'd join.

Recent music

Slow Train Coming, Saved, Shot of Love (Bob Dylan): It was a tough few years, yet capped by a decent album in Shot of Love. I like a good half of that album.

Bach's Cello Suites (Yo-Yo Ma): In a world hooked on hooks, I can see why people nevertheless know Yo-Yo Ma and the cello suites. Was anything sophisticated ever so sunny? It's a balm.

Birds in the Trap, Astroworld, Utopia (Travis Scott): I like the sound, but as far as I can tell there's nothing unique about it. I'm pretty easy to please as far as hip hop, though hard to impress. I can enjoy most hip hop as a soundtrack to any slice of life, but usually I listen to music with more focus, and Travis Scott doesn't satisfy such scrutiny. His sound could elevate many an activity though.

Bach's Goldberg Variations (Glenn Gould): This is perfect for me. What a blend of logic and feeling, purely distilled onto the piano.

Bach's Brandenburg Concertos (directed by Benjamin Britten): as a primarily solo performer throughout my life, I can empathize much better with Glenn Gould's and Yo-Yo Ma's solo performances above. I have less appreciation for good orchestration and good orchestras. It sounded more like cheesy baroque to me. But it's a consummate confrontation of the period that I should revisit.