Feeling Groupie

After teasing it on my podcast, "Groupie and Harmony", a couple weeks ago, I finally have released part one of my Confusing Popular Bands Series.  While the vast majority of artists who found commercial success make sense in either a historical setting or music sense, there are some where it is surprising they were popular either at that time or in general; this post focuses some of these artists.  In this series I will discuss around 30 artists who are popular but I am confused by their popularity.  This is not to say that I do not enjoy them or wish they weren't popular (on the contrary, I love several artists who are included in this series).  I typically shied away from the cases where I was surprised that a group that wasn't as well-regarded became popular, since those are usually not surprising given the catchiness of their music or the time period it is being released (think an artist like Nickelback or The Chainsmokers; in a historical setting, their populari...

Two months after I debuted the Fictional Festival series, I have finally released the second post in the Fictional Festival series!  For more information about the series in general, please see my introduction post about this series. This festival is similar to Warped Tour in structure (a lot of acts on several different stages) and style (i.e., pop punk/emo/metalcore), but I am focusing more on metalcore stylistically.   That said, I still am including other styles of music (pop punk, emo, ska punk, hip hop/rap, death metal, etc.) to entice more fans and in case metalcore does not have a sustainable enough following to organize a festival around the genre.   The scheduling of the festival is different than how Warped Tour did it; while Warped Tour typically had each act performing for around 30 minutes, I instead set it up as a traditional festival where bigger artists got longer sets; the 3 biggest acts will get 1-2 hour sets, the 4th biggest act will get a 1 hour set...

Last week, I released an episode on my podcast, "Groupie and Harmony" that discussed the albums I considered to be the 10 best albums in depth (I also discussed 5 honorable mentions, 3 of which were ineligible for my list and 2 of which just missed the mark).  Here, I will list all the 2020 albums I graded 5 stars, the albums that just missed, the albums I considered the worst, and breaking down the albums into genres and other groupings. The albums that are considered here are original studio albums released in 2020.  Examples of albums excluded include albums not released in 2020, live albums, extended plays, compilation albums, and re-recordings of previously released albums.  Three examples that I graded as 5 stars that are excluded are Fine Line  by Harry Styles (released in late 2019 and I accidentally left it off my 2019 list thinking it was released in early 2020), The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny Demo  by Mr. Bungle (a re-recording of a previously r...