As you may be able to telll this is no the regularly scheduled College Case Study…there is a good reason for this. Currently MyUniSpot is going through a change of power. It will be changing over to a different host in addition to going through some changes with its looks. The site should be up and running again with constant post in the next couple of weeks. I apologize to the fans that we have developed. We will be back soon. 
Konibaasu
AC/DC: “Anything Goes” I swear, the next critic that complains about every AC/DC song sounding the same should get a clip in the teeth. Formulaic or not, you just can’t argue with the combination of sandpaper-like vocals, bluesy power chords, animated lead guitar, thudding eighth notes on the bass and metronomic, no-frills, no-fills drumming that just makes you just want to bang your head and rock out. It’s genius, and it’s worked since 1974. And yeah, yeah, I know these guys are hurtling toward retirement age. Who cares? They still rock! Spot On!
Asher Roth: “I Love College” Gotta love that “I’m nice right now” spoken intro. I also somehow think that the drunken stutter immediately afterward is real. If that’s the case, well, perfect! The funky instrumentation is superb - especially the wah-wahed lead guitar fills - and I must give Asher props for doing his own thing and not trying to jump on any particular bandwagon. The somewhat literary tone to these accessible lyrics show that Mr. Roth has a knack for observation and storytelling on par with Ray Davies and skillfully captures the mood of a campus bash vividly enough to remind me of the stories my brother told me about his days at Vassar. Spot On!
Read the rest of this entry »
James Conrad
You either love her or hate her. You may have seen her cuteness on the Mickey Mouse Club. At the young and naïve age of 16, she became not only a pop star, but also a sex symbol. She was one of the lucky girls to date Justin Timberlake. And, her life slowly went downhill after meeting a guy who changed her life for the worse. She is the famous Britney Spears!!!
The interesting thing that I have noticed is about 95% of the guys I know hate her, and about half of the girls either love her or hate her. I asked a few people what they think about Britney and here are some of the quotes (the first two are from guys and the last two are from girls). Some are really harsh! Read the rest of this entry »
Written by:Misty
Carrie Underwood: “I Told You So” This is a representative specimen of pop country, with bland, safe, sterile production that no well-played strings or steel guitar can redeem. Making matters worse, Carrie Underwood’s piercing vocals - particularly grating on the chorus - push the schmaltz on this Randy Travis song all the way to eleven. Sure, she may be talented, but I think she ought to hand the mike to somebody who… I dunno… DOESN’T let people tell her what to sing and how to sing it. Moral of the story - just because they win on American Idol, it doesn’t mean their musical output will be listenable. In regard to this song - the sonic equivalent of tapioca pudding - I rest my case. Not on!
Ashley Tisdale: “It’s Alright, It’s O.K.” Two minutes into this shrill, whiny song, while craving ibuprofen, I reflected upon how much the music business has become an industry, and in this day and age, I do not use that word lightly. Indeed, one of its major factories has been Mauschwitz… oops, I mean, the Walt Disney Company, a fertile breeding ground for homogenized bubblegum pop stars and their cookie-cutter pop songs. To Ashley’s credit, this song is a bit on the empowering side. I just hope that in time, she takes stock of her career and decides to make music with a little bit more grit and doesn’t pander to psychologically damaged suburban mallrats. Not on! Read the rest of this entry »
Written by:James Conrad
Rise Against: “Hero Of War” Of all the songs I have reviewed, this is probably the most poignant and haunting and captures the spirit of the times all too well. The exceptionally straight-forward lyrics, rife with unsettling imagery capture the horrors of war as effectively as Margaret Bourke-White’s photos from World War II and Korea, and Zach Blair’s interpretation of them, set to excellent acoustic guitar will put a chill up and down anyone’s spine, particularly since we are still not quite out of the shadow of the Bush Administration’s atrocities in the Middle East. Spot on!
Oasis: “Falling Down” It’s been over a decade since these guys were first massively popular and it’s reassuring to know that after ten years, my patented low boredom threshold still works. Everybody harshed on them for ripping off the Beatles, especially George and Ringo, and this hunk of recycled, generic, forgettable, made-to-order psychedelia that borrows heavily from “Tomorrow Never Knows” shows that nothing has changed. It even comes with a pretentious Alexander Pope reference at no extra charge. Here’s your rock stars, folks. Fetch. Not on! Read the rest of this entry »
James Conrad
The Offspring:”Half-Truism” I’ll be damned. The Offspring are actually back to making good music. This one, due to be released as a single on May 12, starts with a menacing arpeggio, dives straight into a galloping tempo with precise punk drumming and smoothly slows it down for the chorus. I was definitely skeptical, but it looks like I’m going to have to forgive these guys for releasing “Pretty Fly For A White Guy” after all. Spot on!
Fall Out Boy: “She’s My Winona” Too long, too many “oh-oh-oh-ohs,” the music is too annoying and the lyrics are too damned cryptic and inaccessible, enough to make me consider this song to be the very sound of overrated and pretentious. I don’t know what this song is meant to be about, and I don’t care, either. Face it, Pete Wentz. Kurt Cobain was a better poet than you can ever $%&*ing hope to be. Not on!
Depeche Mode: “Wrong” This is the sound of the celebrated new wave band returning to its roots with wisdom and expertise. This magnificent dark track, full of inventive synthesizers and bitter self-examination, sounds just as strong as many of their earlier songs. It is indeed pleasing to know that Depeche Mode is still going strong after nearly thirty years of making music. Spot on!
James Conrad
Eminem: “We Made You” Good old Marshall Mathers. We know we can always count on him for his incisive, sardonic and hilarious observations on popular culture. Sure, he may have done this before, so they say, but as long as there are buffoonish media figures, Eminem will be happy to cut them down to size and look good doing it. Not only is it amazing that his rapid-fire rhymes contrast so well with the swinging music, but you gotta love how yet again nothing is sacred to him. The targets this time include Kim Kardashian, Lindsay Lohan, Portia de Rossi, and most well-deserved of all in my humble opinion, Sarah Palin. Keep up the good work, Eminem! We need more iconoclasts like you! Spot on!
Ciara featuring Justin Timberlake: “Love Sex Magic” Ciara is a talented singer, but it’s a rotten shame that she feels compelled to compose and perform ordinary, cookie-cutter, dime-a-dozen, plastic pop songs such as this one, with its monotonous rhythm. In fact, I can feel it in my bones that in the next few years, this song is going to be used in a commercial for some trendy rotgut alcoholic beverage marketed specifically toward idiotic twenty-somethings who don’t know how to drink properly. Hell, that’s all it’s good for. But whatever. It’s nice of her to keep Justin Timberlake from having to spend the rest of his life working at McDonald’s. Anyway… Not on! music reviews
Written by:James Conrad
What has hip-hop become? We’re in an age where the roots of hip-hop have been lost and forgotten. We’re in an age where Youtube rules hip-hop because everyone is trying to learn a new dance.
Soulja Boy is to blame for that, but he does deserve respect. Soulja Boy is 19 and made his own beats from his dad’s computer and recorded his own songs. He came up by himself and has left his footprint in hip-hop. There are songs that irritate me more than the overplayed dance songs. Songs about making ridiculous amounts of money drive me crazy. America is in the middle of one of the worst recessions ever. No one is making unimaginable amounts of money like those rappers; we’re all unimaginably broke. We can’t make it rain in the strip clubs like they do or pop bottles all night long. Read the rest of this entry »
Roger Rabbit
