Music Features
Before Its Time: How EDM Transformed Ellie Goulding's Folk-Pop
The British pop star's career might've looked entirely different if it weren't for the DJs like Bassnectar and Calvin Harris.
04.16.2020
In 2010, a singer-songwriter by the name of Ellie Goulding went from a relative unknown to the newly crowned ruler of the British music charts.
Raised in a village of fewer than 1,000 people, Goulding went on to study at University of Kent, where she was spotted by her future manager. After building a presence on MySpace and linking up with various producers, the budding star inked a record deal with Polydor, who released her first EP, An Introduction to Ellie Goulding, in 2009. The Guardian called her a "pop sensation" before the EP had even hit stores.
<p>Goulding's early work was emblematic of U.K.'s biggest trends in music. At the time, Florence + the Machine's grandiose baroque pop was getting major radio play, juxtaposed with the electro beats of recording artists like Example and Tinie Tempah. Goulding toed the line between the two worlds, updating her acoustic coffeehouse roots with synths and layered production. With her debut record, <em>Lights</em>, released a decade ago, Goulding proved she wasn't just the result of empty record label hype. Historically rockist <em>Pitchfork </em>gave the record a 6.8 out of 10, a seemingly middling number that translates to a major achievement in the pop sphere. She was the real deal, and the United States wasn't ready.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-632"></div>
<!-- End Ezoic - undersecond12 - under_second_paragraph --></p><p></p><center><script async="" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>
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</script></center><p></p><p>While Goulding's brand of pop was England's next big thing, the U.S. was welcoming the age—albeit a relatively brief one—of dubstep. Though the eardrum-rattling EDM subgenre coincidentally originated in London, North American producers like Skrillex, Datsik, Excision, and Bassnectar brought the boom across the pond in the early 2010s. When Bassnectar gave a whack at reworking Goulding's song "Lights," he played a major role in broadening her reach, too.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-634"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent11 - mid_content --></p><p>Bassnectar—the Bay Area EDM pioneer born Lorin Ashton—uploaded his remix of "Lights" to YouTube in February 2011. True dubstep was a bit aberrant for mainstream radio, but thanks to Internet virality and simple word-of-mouth, it came to define the early 2010s and sneak its way into the pop charts; Skrillex would go on to make <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nntGTK2Fhb0" target="_blank">a Top 10 hit with Justin Bieber</a>, while the bass drops of Taylor Swift's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNoKguSdy4Y" target="_blank">"I Knew You Were Trouble"</a> are undeniably indebted to dubstep. Goulding's original version of "Lights" eventually reached the U.S. charts two years after its initial release. But for hundreds of thousands of online music purveyors, the Bassnectar remix was the first time they heard her voice.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-635"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent2 - long_content --></p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube">
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="53a10658c44c5c8fb6f9277d0adadaad"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/D6zGLm9wr24?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Ellie Goulding - Lights (Bassnectar Remix)</small>
<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6zGLm9wr24" target="_blank">www.youtube.com</a>
</small>
</p><p><br></p><p>Though Goulding's debut album blended synthpop with folksy roots, a great deal of her commercial success came by way of DJs: Her collaborations with Calvin Harris, Diplo, Kygo, Major Lazer have all landed on the Hot 100 (Skrillex and Zedd have also enlisted her for vocals). She lent songs to a number of top movie soundtracks, too, including <em>The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, About Time, Divergent,</em> and—most unavoidable of all—<em>50 Shades of Gray, </em>whose "Love Me Like You Do" remains Goulding's biggest U.S. hit since "Lights." Her career thus far has been defined mostly by guest vocals on EDM bangers and movie songs, rather than her own down-to-earth pop foundations.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-636"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent22 - long_content --></p><p></p><center><script async="" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script><!-- Popdust Mobile Banner 320x100 --><ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:inline-block;width:320px;height:100px" data-ad-client="ca-pub-4301469008561137" data-ad-slot="6952751205"></ins><script>
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</script></center><p></p><p><strong>Though the sounds of <em>Lights </em>might've been forgotten in the U.S., its influence is still prominent. </strong>The meteoric rise of Maggie Rogers—with Pharrell's endorsement aside—came with a reverence for her ability to bring a '70s singer-songwriter sincerity to Swift-sized splendor. King Princess, the young phenom cosigned by Harry Styles, similarly mixes synthy schmaltz with a bluesy, homegrown feel.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-637"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent3 - longer_content --></p><p>This isn't to say that Goulding isn't a massive pop star, but had her ascent occurred in other circumstances, our perception of her as an artist would feel more authentic. But now, so closely affiliated with clubby, house hits and soundtrack songs, Goulding's fresh approach to pop has fallen into the shadows—but its influence on mainstream music is still prevalent, however distorted. Anyway, stream <em>Lights.</em></p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-638"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent33 - longer_content --></p><p class="media-headline">
<strong>Lights</strong></p><iframe src="https://embed.spotify.com/?uri=spotify:album:3duZhvcaoqdNveQYXf9dMV" id="91176" frameborder="0" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="630d0dc34ed22e02efcbf008f2b2fd96" expand="1" height="480" width="100%"></iframe>
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Culture Feature
Dear White People: AAVE Is an Actual Dialect, Not Your "Stan Culture"
Using a Black dialect isn't a meme—it's cultural appropriation.
08.03.2020
As Black Lives Matter protests have rightfully taken the world by storm over the past couple of months, we're long overdue for thorough evaluations of just how often aspects of Black heritage have been co-opted by white audiences.
It should be obvious that much of fashion and music as we know it today was invented by Black people. We (hopefully) all know by now that we can no longer accept Blackface and use of the n-word by non-Black people as the norm—and Internet users have tried "canceling" offenders in the public eye, with varying degrees of success.
<p>It shouldn't require much explanation to understand that explicitly racist jokes are bad, but there line between "acceptable" and "offensive" can be a little more muddled in some other instances—like in the case of non-Black people using AAVE, or African American Vernacular English.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-632"></div>
<!-- End Ezoic - undersecond12 - under_second_paragraph --></p><p><a href="https://www.languagejones.com/blog-1/2014/6/8/what-is-aave" target="_blank">AAVE is a specific dialect</a>, like British English, and it's used by Black Americans and some Black Canadians (hi, Drake!). It comes with its own set of rigid grammar and pronunciation rules, despite decades of white people condemning it as being a "ghetto" way of speaking. However, as memes, hip-hop, and shows like <em>RuPaul's Drag Race </em>have spread AAVE outside of its typical Black communities, non-Black Internet users—such as Brittany Tomlinson, better known as the <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/daniellaemanuel/woman-trying-kombucha-meme" target="_blank">Kombucha Girl</a>—have demeaned AAVE to a simple source of the slang du jour.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-633"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent1 - mid_content --></p><p>In a TikTok video that's recently resurfaced on Twitter, Tomlinson seems to be addressing her previous use of AAVE, defending it as just a byproduct of "Internet culture."</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-634"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent11 - mid_content --></p><p></p><center><script async="" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>
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</script></center><p></p><p>"I feel like it's a very fine line between genuinely calling out a creator who's using AAVE or 'the blaccent,' like, putting it on for comedic purposes, versus quoting something," Tomlinson explained. "The Nicki Minaj thing— 'big boobs? Chile, anyways...'—that's a meme, obviously. So when someone's quoting that, or when someone says 'periodt,' 'sis'—it's very much Internet culture. Like, stan Twitter. Stan culture has its own language… Collectively as a generation, if you're on the Internet, this is kind of how we all speak." Tomlinson has since <a href="https://twitter.com/brittany_broski/status/1289341598115889153?s=21" target="_blank">apologized on Twitter </a>and removed the videos.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-635"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent2 - long_content --></p><div id="49ca2" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d2d2aef010af7c5d32765942f3b32e0a"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1289286200285569024" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">y’all really let this yt woman sit up and here and boldly tell black people AAVE is “stan culture” i’m sick https://t.co/QjD4mixEr0</div> — flo millicent stan account (@flo millicent stan account)<a href="https://twitter.com/slitmyclitt/statuses/1289286200285569024">1596224758.0</a></blockquote></div><p>It's true that many words rooted in AAVE have become so common that many people who use them have become desensitized to their racial connotations; <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/black-slang-white-people-ruined_n_55ccda07e4b064d5910ac8b3" target="_blank">slang terms like "lit," "bae," and "throw shade" can all be traced back to AAVE</a>. Words like "sis," "periodt," "deadass," and "chile" are more recent arrivals in the general cultural consciousness, but as the responses to Tomlinson's video indicate, they've already been used by Black people for ages.<br></p><p>There's a lot of issues with Tomlinson's statement, and perhaps the most obvious is her assumption that "we all speak" in this culturally appropriative manner. Plenty of white people know that using AAVE is culturally appropriative, and for Tomlinson to diffuse the blame onto an entire generation just comes off as an attempt to dodge responsibility for her own covertly racist actions. And even if Tomlinson genuinely does think "we all speak" that way, that just further proves the troubling degree to which AAVE has been co-opted.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-636"> </div>
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</script></center><p></p><p><strong>Furthermore, it's incredibly reductive to call AAVE a part of "stan culture." It's an actual dialect. </strong>There's a lengthy list of specific pronunciation and syntax guidelines to follow in AAVE—learning it as someone who learned English as a typical white American would require some tedious brain rewiring. There are even anonymous Twitter accounts dedicated to broadcasting embarrassingly misused AAVE by non-Black people (a quick tip: "chile" means "child," not "chill"), proving it's a language with complex structures and not just a batch of fun slang words to use as you please.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-637"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent3 - longer_content --></p><p>Since <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/blackenglishhistory/what-is-black-english/a-note-about-stigma" target="_blank">AAVE has often been considered "incorrect," "lazy," and "poor grammar"</a> since its beginnings during Civil War-era of slavery, many <a href="https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2019/12/17/culture-code-switching/" target="_blank">Black people feel the need to code-switch</a>—or change their way of speaking—in hopes of being better respected by White peers. It's pretty disturbing, then, to see AAVE become a "trend" among white people trying to be funny in 2020—especially when <a href="https://www.statista.com/chart/21857/people-killed-in-police-shootings-in-the-us/" target="_blank">Black people are still disproportionately murdered</a>, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/economy/2018/10/10/faces-poverty-social-racial-factors/37977173/" target="_blank">impoverished</a>, <a href="https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/un-report-on-racial-disparities/" target="_blank">incarcerated</a>, and <a href="https://www.popdust.com/megan-thee-stallion-shooting-reaction-2646844030.html" target="_self">made a mockery of online</a>. </p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-638"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent33 - longer_content --></p><p>Sure, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziM8LHGzFlk" target="_blank">that one video of Nicki Minaj</a> that Tomlinson referenced is pretty funny—probably because of her sheer confusion. But why is a behavior that's inherently Black, like speaking AAVE, considered humorous among stan culture? Whether intended or not, a white person using AAVE is likely doing so to be considered funny or cool among their peers online—I can't imagine them using phrases like "periodt" or "it really do be like that" with their parents or teachers.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-639"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent4 - longest_content --></p><p>Long story short, AAVE was only considered "ghetto" until white people appropriated it; that should be a dead giveaway that white people shouldn't use it at all.</p><h2></h2>
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MUSIC
The Harry Styles-Jenny Lewis-King Princess-Koffee Tour Proves Genre Is Nonexistent
Good luck getting tickets, though.
11.13.2019
If there's one thing that could be said of our modern era, it's that nothing exists in isolation.
One could even say that nothing goes in just one direction anymore—instead, things are moving in multiple directions, operating in loops, often meeting at crossroads. For a long time, at least in the music industry, things appeared to be stratified, separated by genre, linear visions, and arbitrary categories. Rock artists toured with rock artists; indie stars opened for indie stars. Patrician music lovers looked down on pop-lovers, and pop-lovers bullied indieheads. Success could be purchased with a record deal and marked by a position on a top chart. Gender was divided between a man and a woman. Feminism was disconnected from race and class.
Times are changing. Pop, like fashion, has become fluid and multidimensional. Elton John can collaborate with Young Thug. Lady Gaga can ricochet from electronica to folk and back. Harry Styles has become a bisexual icon and a truly great songwriter, capable of drawing from multiple genres to create nuanced and political pop music.
And now he's going on tour with Jenny Lewis, Koffee, and King Princess. They'll all be opening for him on different stops on his 2020 "Love on Tour" tour, which will begin in April.
A little background: Jenny Lewis is an iconic songwriter who fronted the band Rilo Kiley before creating a body of intensely powerful solo work. Koffee is a singer-songwriter, rapper, and musician from Jamaica who's generated a huge amount of buzz in a short time by putting a fresh and experimental spin on reggae. King Princess is a dream pop star who may or may not be capitalizing on queer aesthetics but still embodies an inspiringly out and proud image.
Harry Styles will be touring with King Princess, Jenny Lewis & Koffee and i think THATS FCKING POWERFUL https://t.co/9qGeQmGTFq— Crissa ◟̽◞̽ is not seeing louis (@Crissa ◟̽◞̽ is not seeing louis)1573655430.0
Styles' choice of openers is brilliant because it brings together so many different devoted and passionate fan-bases. Queer fans will relish the chance to dance along to King Princess, while indie traditionalists and older millennials will come for Jenny Lewis, and Gen-Z fans of cutting-edge music will show up for Koffee. All these musicians are bound together by one common thread: Their music is really, really good. And isn't that what matters in the end?
Rilo Kiley - A Better Son/Daughter www.youtube.com
King Princess - 1950 www.youtube.com
Koffee - Toast (Official Video) www.youtube.com
Unfortunately, the existing tickets sold out with stunning speed and cost an exorbitant amount of money, sadly prohibiting many of Styles' fans from enjoying the experience. (Many of them feel scammed). If Styles were to truly embrace the ethos of his commitment to breaking down all genres and boundaries, he'd make his concerts free, but alas, one can only dream... Until then, let us keep listening to our descriptively titled crossover Spotify playlists (shoutout to "Creamy" and "Pollen"), saying "okay" to Boomers who insist that there are only two genders, checking Co-Star for evidence of discernible meaning, and praying for the day when everything and everyone will truly be free.
Harry Styles - Sign of the Times (Video) www.youtube.com
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