Team Edward or Team Jacob?: New Moon Trumps Twilight in Pure Sex Appeal December 2, 2009
Posted by style in : Style , add a commentEvan Benton, Staff Writer
Last Friday, in the wee hours of the morning, hundreds of thousands of people around the country attended the midnight showing of New Moon, the adaptation of the second book in the wildly popular Twilight series, pulling in a record single day box-office record of almost $73 million in only 4,024 theaters.
Filmgoers were mostly made up of women of the teen, tween and questionably older variety, but also included men, made up of dutiful boyfriends, gay men and those humble few of the “just there for the experience” variety. I was part of the latter. (Promise.)
The Twilight series is now a bona fide saga, like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars before it. This was obvious at first glance around the theater.
Preteen girls proudly holding up “Team Edward” and “Team Jacob” signs, black-cloaked vampiresses with muted-yellow contact lenses and fangs, catty soccer moms arguing over whose seat is whose while their children stand wide-eyed and confused – this is what happens with saga sequels.
True fans know no courtesy, show no shame, and hold nothing back. The crowded cinema seethed with tension and hummed with anticipation. Some passed the time until midnight by wondering aloud about the rumored off-screen romances among the film’s young stars. Others dutifully highlighted lines in their worn, dog-eared copies of Stephanie Meyer’s novel.
When the film began, with the unveiling of a bright moon in the dark night sky, Twilight fans and their curious acquaintances fell silent.
Bella and Edward, still in high school in northern Washington state, are in love. The slight hiccup in this romance is the fact that Edward is a vampire, part of a “family” of seven called the Cullens.
Edward goes day-to-day suppressing the constant instinctual want to suck her blood because of his love for her, but just can’t take it anymore, breaking her heart as he leaves her to cope with months of crippling depression and night terrors. In his absence, she rekindles her friendship with Jacob, a younger boy who’s had a crush on her from day one.
Conveniently, Jacob has also become ridiculously ripped since the last film, and spends most of the film with his shirt off, to the delight of the theater’s mostly female membership. But like her relationship with Edward, as soon as Bella begins to fall for Jacob, he pushes her away.
But he had his reasons. Edward was a bloodthirsty vampire; Jacob’s a werewolf with anger problems. This makes for a pretty extraordinary love triangle when Edward comes back into the picture.
Especially given the knowledge, if you’ve watched Underworld, that werewolves and vampires have hated each other for millennia.
Showing love through the film lens is a tough thing to do. New Moon’s predecessor tried in nauseating fashion, dedicating half of its time to long dialogue-free bouts of Edward and Bella staring at each other for hours.
With that out of the way, New Moon can be full of the drama that comes from break-ups, new flames and raging teen hormones, with the always-popular gothic/horror backdrop as a setting.
The star of the movie is undoubtedly young Jacob, played by 17-year-old Taylor Lautner, who causes the film to sway to the churnings of his own testosterone.
Lautner reputedly was told that his role as Jacob was in jeopardy if he couldn’t meet the physical conditions that the novel dictates, but Lautner responded by gaining nearly 30 pounds of muscle and stealing the show from just about everyone, and it shows, especially with a rigorously waxed chest.
Surprised sighs and uncomfortably sexual moans would gush from the audience whenever he was on screen, especially in the first topless scene, when he takes his entire shirt off to wipe the blood from Bella’s brow. Yes, that actually happened.
Lautner said to critics that his one hope is that New Moon makes him into a genuine actor and not just a body. To him I say good luck with that. I congratulate anyone whose body is sculpted better than a Greek model, who can make women worldwide wheeze with primal lust – but you can’t escape something like that. I would just accept it if I were him.
New Moon was a fun, angst-driven movie that was many, many times more appealing than its predecessor. New characters, werewolf and vampire, and new and interesting plotlines reveal themselves throughout the movie’s length, and director Chris Weitz combines the drama of the book with attractive faces and surprisingly exciting action. It ends with the knowledge that the next film will hold much more drama: The Cullens honoring Bella’s request to make her a vampire, an unavoidable war in the Pacific Northwest between vampires and werewolves, and Edward’s want to do the one thing every good vampire teen should do before consummating his love – get married.
Having not read a single page of the “Twilight” series and judging this as a film and only a film, I can honestly say, maybe with a tinge of embarrassment, that I’ll most likely be there for the release of the next adaptation, Eclipse, slated to sink its teeth into audiences June 2010. That was not an easy thing to admit.
Dorm Room Feasts: Tips and Secrets to Having an Away-from-Home Thanksgiving December 2, 2009
Posted by style in : Style , add a commentKatie Miller, Staff Writer
Thanksgiving is a day for spending quality time with loved ones and of course, eating an inordinate amount of comfort food.
Between yams, turkey and stuffing, many take great pride in how many servings they can push down or who can get the drum sticks.
For those who are looking for a less-fattening Thanksgiving, you should try avoiding foods high in carbohydrates, fats and sugars.
Instead of going for the sugary and dense pecan pie, try pumpkin instead.
Not only does it have less calories and fat, but its sweet taste and smooth texture fulfill your sweet tooth without filling out your belt line.
For many college students, however, going home for Thanksgiving can be more of a hindrance than a benefit. Such a short weekend home doesn’t always outweigh the cost of an expensive ticket or a long car ride.
Sadly, this may mean sacrificing your mom’s famous stuffing or your uncle’s delectable pumpkin pie.
Luckily, the joys of Thanksgiving goodies don’t have to be forsaken.
For those of you stuck at Liberty or the Student Apartments or in areas off campus, there are many cheap and easy alternatives to the traditional Thanksgiving extravaganza. Safeway provides an “Exclusive 2-Hour Turkey Recipe,” including an explanation video of how to make a once-complicated dish into something easy, but still delicious.
Although families can’t always come to us, Thanksgiving does not have to be a solo affair. Planning a pot-luck with apartment friends could be both fun and tasty.
While many love Thanksgiving meals but don’t like to cook or can’t prepare complex foods, recreating the essence of Thanksgiving day is possible without the complication of extreme cooking.
A harvest salad full of green apples, cranberries, walnuts and blue cheese with cranberry vinaigrette is both healthy and packed with the tangy cranberry and apple flavor – true Thanksgiving favorites.
Also, doctoring up a pre-made box of mashed potatoes with garlic powder or parsley can make even the simplest of dishes creative and delicious.
So, those of you stuck in dorms or apartments miles away from family, don’t fret, Thanksgiving can come to you. It’s just a matter of the company you keep and how creative you make your cooking.
Dead In the Water: The Rise and Fall of M. Night Shyamalan’s Directing Career December 2, 2009
Posted by style in : Style , add a commentEvan Benton, Staff Writer
In the waning summer of 1999, The Sixth Sense was released in the United States and soon took the world by storm. There were just too many perfect combinations: the new catchphrase, the decade’s third-best twist (The Silence of the Lambs and The Usual Suspects as #1 and #2, respectively), and the pale little boy with just the right amount of cute and dread factors – all coming together to create the best horror film in years, and also a pop culture phenomenon.
Nearly $300 million domestic gross and six Academy Award nominations followed. Even now, a decade later, we’re still talking about The Sixth Sense.
The film was the writing and directorial brainchild of a man named Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan, better known as M. Night Shyamalan. A graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 1992, Shyamalan achieved worldwide recognition in 1999 with The Sixth Sense.
After The Sixth Sense, Shyamalan was in talks with everyone, reputedly being tagged to direct the first adaptation of the Harry Potter series to co-directing the next Indiana Jones sequel with Steven Spielberg.
He made Unbreakable in 2001, a solid script that resulted in solid critics’ reviews, and followed it with the extraterrestrial Signs in the summer of 2002 starring Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix, one of the highest-grossing movies of the year.
And then in 2004 he made The Village. What’s bizarre, really, is that The Village is a movie that was supposed to be good. It features a multi-talented ensemble cast, brilliantly made period costume and set design, and a whopper of an ending.
But it tanked. Just like nowadays when people still comment on how great The Sixth Sense was, the same people groan when they hear The Village mentioned.
I never understood where this hate came from. Seeing it in theaters, I was surprised by the number of boos and the negative catcalling. Hell, it wasn’t the greatest movie, but I’d seen (and, believe me, have seen) many, many worse.
In 2006, Shyamalan made Lady in the Water, based on a bedtime story he used to tell his children about what happened in their pool at nights.
Slated to be the filmmaker’s magnum opus, Lady in the Water, in rough summary, involves a pool handyman that finds out that a sea nymph is responsible for the recent drain clogging.
The nymph wants to go back to her world, and isn’t alone. She’s followed through the pool by horrible wolves made of moss called scrunts, evil simian tarturics and a giant eagle called an eatlon.
The movie sucked. I came out of the theater laughing, not able to believe the same director made a movie 10 years ago that made me afraid of my own shadow. Critics agreed, and word of mouth made the movie lose millions at the box office.
In 2008, Shyamalan’s latest film, The Happening, came out in theaters, the only one of Shyamalan’s movies I didn’t rush out to see. That’s how much Lady in the Water affected me.
Starring actor/rapper/ comedian/professional bodybuilder Mark Wahlberg, The Happening detailed Wahlberg’s struggles to survive with his estranged wife in a world where foliage has decided to get back at humanity by releasing toxins that make them suicidal.
Shyamalan’s script made for some truly suicidal dialogue of its own, with the most horrendously wooden acting since Hayden Christensen in, well, mostly everything.
Shyamalan later admitted that he was pleased with the film, as he wanted to “make an excellent B movie.”
Well, congrats.
I believe in directorial redemption, but the disappointment of Lady in the Water still reverberates within me to this day.
Thankfully, I wasn’t really expecting anything from The Happening, Shyamalan’s first R-rated feature, but it still managed to irritate me. In the back of my mind I kept thinking: whatever happened to the man that wrote and directed The Sixth Sense?
Previous anonymous suggestions that Shyamalan plagiarized a large amount of his earlier work make me wonder now.
After watching Lady in the Water a critic wrote “if Shyamalan is going to use his kids as a focus group for future projects, maybe he should start making movies for Nickelodeon already and stop wasting our time.”
Ironically, Shyamalan’s next movie, coming out in 2010, brings the popular Nickelodeon television series Avatar: The Last Airbender to the big screen. It’s called The Last Airbender.
Who’s excited?
‘If You’re Coming to Look for Rockstars, You’re in the Wrong Place’: Matt Fazzi Talks About Being the New Guy, and What It’s Like Touring with Big Name Bands December 2, 2009
Posted by Sonya Hudson in : Style , 3 commentsEmily Sharrer, Editor-in-Chief
When you’re the guitarist and backing vocalist for a successful band that’s had three gold records, there’s not much to complain about. At least that’s Taking Back Sunday member Matt Fazzi’s take on life. When Broadside sat down to talk with the newest member of the band after the group’s visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the guitarist had three main messages: First, he feels like the luckiest S.O.B. in the world, second, Taking Back Sunday is better than ever and third, you definitely need to check out the band’s newest album, New Again.
So what’s it like being the new guy?
I understand that to a lot of people still have either never seen the band play before or are seeing the band for the first time with me in it so I kind of approach every show and everyday like trying to be on top of everything so that people will come to watch us and won’t be stuck thinking about it. You know what I mean? ‘Cause I can tell at some shows that people are sizing me up…I just try to bring my A game every day and hope that fans that have already seen the band will be stoked on it and fans that haven’t seen the band will be stoked on it too.
How does New Again measure up to Taking Back Sunday’s past albums?
A big difference this time around was everyone kind of wiped the slate clean and I think Taking Back Sunday for a while had sort of gotten into a place where they were operating within the confines of what I think they thought that people think Taking Back Sunday should sound like…so for this record we kind of tried to throw all that out the window and just say, ‘ya know what? We need to push the band forward in some way and we have to try some stuff that the band’s never done and see what happens.’ I don’t think that New Again is a huge departure from Louder Now, but I do think that it’s a very logical progression…There’s a song called ‘Carpathia’ on the record that’s pretty indicative of where we want to go it’s got three part harmonies, it’s got interesting chords and chord turns and the arrangement is also interesting so I think that song is sort of a pretty good reflection of where we are as a band right now.
What’s it like touring with Anberlin and All American Rejects?
Super cool…we were familiar with some of [Anberlin’s] music and stuff but we just really hit it off with them. They’re amazing people their entire crew everyone is really down to Earth and they’re great musicians. They’re a tight band, the singing is perfect every night. I have a tremendous amount of respect for them as musicians and as people…they’re stand up gentleman for sure.
As far as the Rejects are concerned, the same thing. I was really impressed when I met them at how down to Earth they are and how normal and nice and funny…and it’s really hard to find with a band that’s had their kind of success and there’s definitely been experiences I’ve had with other bands that have had equal or greater success that are just complete jerks and they’re rockstars and they don’t want to be around anyone and they’re all aloof and whatever.
Any crazy tour moments?
I hate that question because whenever I get asked it all of a sudden my mind goes blank. It’s usual really mellow I think that actually you would be incredibly bored. If you’re coming to look for rockstars you’re in the wrong place — with this tour anyway. Everyone is super mellow and there’s not a whole lot of that stuff at all.
Do you guys have a problem with keeping your heads on straight with the tour?
Not really. I mean it just depends on the kind of person you are and I think luckily within our band we are not those kinds of people…I mean it’s easy to be normal when you cross paths with so many people who act like they’re way better than everyone. It’s the kind of thing when you see it you’re just like ‘ah, fuck that, why am I gonna act like that?’
We are amazingly fortunate to be able to do what we do for a living and play music everyday. And I mean there’s just no reason to complain or be a jerk or not talk to fans or anything like that it’s just those people allow us to live the way that we live and allow us to play music everyday and that’s like the biggest thing in the world.
What kind of fan reaction have you had?
It’s all been positive. Basically since I joined the band all the fans have been super positive toward me…the people that give the record a chance like it. That’s the funny thing, I think people are so hung up on the old lineups and stuff that they can’t listen to music for music ‘cause really New Again isn’t like Kid A to OK Computer or something like this huge departure, it’s just a logical step for the band.
It’s cool to see musicians who have their head on straight.
Today’s a really special day, too because we just came back from Walter Reed…it’s just like, I couldn’t complain about a single thing in my life because these dudes have it way harder than I do. If they can have a smile on their face and be positive after losing both their legs or an eye or seeing their friends die I couldn’t even imagine trying to conjure up some sort of complaint about anything.
Co-Headlining Tour Rocks the Patriot Center: Program Board Hosts The All-American Rejects, Taking Back Sunday December 2, 2009
Posted by Sonya Hudson in : Style , add a commentEmily Sharrer, Editor-in-Chief
Doing his best impressions of Freddie Mercury and Chuck Berry, The All American Rejects frontman Tyson Ritter and his on-stage antics were surely the most noteworthy part of last Monday’s concert at the Patriot Center. Outfitted in only tight white pants and glitter, the teen-heartthrob went on a seemingly drug-induced rampage throughout the band’s set, jumping around the stage, doing the duck walk and breaking up the band’s set of hits with long monologues that contained more cuss words than a George Carlin stand-up routine. Somehow, the band still managed to get through all their hits — but not without Ritter going to sit in the stands to sing “Mona Lisa” halfway through the set, where masses of teen fans descended on the singer, in what seemed like a poor attempt for Ritter to prove he was still as famous as his overplayed radio hits once were.
Anberlin, who opened the entire show, was perfection. Lead singer Stephen Christian’s vocals sounded exactly as they were recorded on the band’s albums. On stage, the entire band was dynamic, really getting into their set and psyching the crowd up for the two headlining bands.
Co-headliners Taking Back Sunday gave a 100-minute set that seemed far too short to encompass the band’s many hits, but they played a good mix of songs off of all four of their albums. While the setlist was on-point, the same can’t be said for frontman Adam Lazzara who awkwardly ambled around the stage doing microphone-swinging tricks. Guitarists Matt Fazzi, Eddie Reyes and bassist Matt Rubano made up for the singer’s less-than-impressive stage presence however, head banging their way into the audience’s hearts and commanding the stage from the speakers lined up directly in front of the pit.
Overall the concert, put on by Program Board, was worth the mere $10 ticket price and gave Mason students a good way to spend an otherwise standard Monday night.
Fake Family Countdown: Babies, Superheroes and Little Miss Sunshine: The Top 10 Movie Families of All Time December 2, 2009
Posted by style in : Style , add a commentRoss Bonaime, Staff Writer
As the holiday season begins, many will be spending time with their friends and families this Thanksgiving. With families gathering together this week, here are the top 10 movies about families.
10. The Bicycle Thief
This classic Italian film centers around a poor family and the father who finally gets a job, which requires him to ride around on a bike.
After selling the family’s bed sheets to purchase the bicycle, the bike gets stolen the day it was purchased, leaving him and his son to try and find the criminal.
This beautiful story shows their relationship as the father tries to teach his son about right and wrong while also trying to keep his family afloat.
9. Juno
Sometimes, new families start a little earlier than planned. That’s what happens to the MacGuff family when their teenage daughter Juno becomes pregnant.
Ellen Page, as the title character plays the naiveté of a 16-year-old perfectly, but it is her father and step-mother, played by J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney, respectively, that really show this film’s heart and a parent’s ability to support their children through anything.
8. The Incredibles
The Parr family in Pixar’s action film shows that even with super powers, families take work. Together, the family/superhero team tries to take down super villain Syndrome.
Yet while trying to do that, they find that each member of their family is an integral part of who they are as a group.
7. Magnolia
Paul Thomas Anderson’s twisting and perplexing story of people living in L.A. in a 24-hour period, not only connects them by a freak occurrence near the film’s end, but all of the characters are examples of the negative effects family can have on you. The poor parental figures have a way of leaving their mark, especially with Tom Cruise’s Frank T.J. Mackey character, in one of his best roles in a great career.
6. Little Miss Sunshine
It may take a beauty pageant, a bus that won’t run, an attempted suicide, a family member realizing that he is color-blind, a father being unsuccessful and a heroin-addicted grandfather to die, all in the span of a two days, for the Hoover family to come together. But by the time they dance on stage to “Super Freak,” you know that they are a family that has truly learned to love each other.
5. The Royal Tenenbaums
This wonderfully exquisite tale of an estranged father trying to reconnect his family before his death creates director Wes Anderson’s greatest film. This twisted and eccentric family becoming less self-serving and more of a larger group shows how a diverse group of oddballs can become a great family.
4. Father of the Bride (1950)
Spencer Tracy plays the concerned father, Stanley T. Banks, in this bittersweet love story about a father and daughter. Banks must deal with the change of his daughter becoming a bride, and the bills that come along with it.
Even though Banks is forced to work through all the pains that come along with planning a wedding, he realizes that in the end it was all worth it just to make his daughter happy.
3. Raising Arizona
In this Coen brothers comedy classic, Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter are a married couple who can’t have children and take the next logical step to start their family – steal a baby.
The dedication that Cage and Hunter show to this child that they have kidnapped and their great desire for a little one is as heartwarming as it is unusual.
2. Boogie Nights
Sure this movie is about a prospective porn star, played by Mark Wahlberg, trying to rise in the ranks of the business, but strip away the layers of this film and you’ll find a story about a man just trying to create his own family.
Boogie Nights, also directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, shows that even if your family sucks, you can always make a new one.
1. The Godfather
The Corleone family is arguably the most famous film family of all time, and rightfully so.
This iconic tale of a mafia family undergoing great change has some of the greatest film performances of all time, specifically for Marlon Brando and a breakthrough role for Al Pacino. But it is the determination of a family on the brink of falling apart that keeps fans and critics calling this the greatest film of all time.
Something about the Corleone family has resonated with audiences for almost four decades. There’s just something about them that they can’t refuse.
In Bed with Billy: The Trauma and the Ecstasy December 2, 2009
Posted by Sonya Hudson in : Style , add a commentBilly Curtis, Sex Columnist
A great woman once said, “The hardest thing in this world is to live in it.”
Though that woman may be Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the point still stands – life is hard. It seems that as time continues to pass so rapidly in this world, the odds of some disaster occurring to you will rise.
As we grow into adults, we lose our sense of innocence and usually get exposed to many of life’s traumatic events. It’s up to us to decide how we take these disasters and whether they will bend or break us.
While in my disaster fiction class a couple of weeks back, we were discussing the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, on survivors of catastrophic events, like being involved in a war or surviving a natural disaster and not being able to cope with the events you experienced.
In laymen’s terms, PTSD involves symptoms that interfere with trust, emotional closeness, communication, responsible assertiveness and effective problem solving. Ironically, these problems are also possible reasons why most relationships end just as tragically as the world could end in 2012.
This got me thinking – if this were true, then could the inability to cope with life or a partner’s dilemmas through PTSD be the reason why most relationships end?
I started to think about my past relationships and went through my mental calendar trying to remember if I had gone through anything traumatic with my past boyfriends around the time we broke up. Then I began to realize that, most of the time, there may not have been a traumatic event that happened, but there certainly was something that I couldn’t come to terms with in that situation. This may have caused some inner turmoil, essentially leading to me picking fights for no reason and eventually losing the person I once loved.
You can judge me here, or you can realize that you might have done the same thing. Look at your previous relationships. Was there something about a person you were dating with which you could never really come to terms? Did you end up pushing that person away because you didn’t know how to deal with your emotions?
These are just some small examples of what PTSD can feel like to the people who have to deal with it every day. Take this into consideration the next time your world is falling apart because you think you’ll never be happier with anyone else. Trust me, you will be happy in time.
Every relationship you will hold will have its ups and its downs, its traumas and its ecstasy. When I refer to ecstasy, I mean that one singularly sublime moment, trapped in time and locked in the depths of you memory until the day you leave this earth – like something as simple as the way he grabs your chin to kiss you so delicately. Memories like these are the ones that would help someone get over their traumatic experience.
After dealing with every traumatic relationship, we all have our moments of wondering what the real point is, whether it’s worth it to keep trying and, of course, we have the stage of questioning every little thing to find out what went wrong.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gathered with friends over a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and listened to them cry and complain about how they never want to date another man again.
But they do and end up being happier than they were before. The only way to get over the post-traumatic stress of a lost love is to deal with it. Question it. Cry about it to friends.
Simply put, love is a battlefield: A long line of tumultuous battles with enemies who were once allies, and controversies that could have been resolved through communication and not the lack thereof.
Why do we deal with relationships? Because nothing in the world makes us feel more alive. As sad as it is to say – as well as tacky – love really does make this shitty world go round.
Surviving the dropped bombs, maneuvering around the mortars and coping with the problems life brings are the only ways to survive. After all, you can’t see what’s coming if you’re hiding, locked away in your comfort-zone closet.
Deal with the problems that manage to surround your life, because if you don’t, the only person you are going to hurt in the end is yourself. Not all relationships end with some stereotypical happy ending. It’s the broken bonds that hold the most truth and that will teach you what you need to know about yourself and, more importantly, what you are looking for in your own Mr. Right.
Don’t become the victim of a post-traumatic existence; take your failure as a lesson learned and move on to the something that you’re really looking for.
John Mayer Hits the Mark With New Release: Singer-Songwriter Braves New Sound with Latest Album Battle Studies December 2, 2009
Posted by style in : Style , add a commentRamy Zabarah, Broadside Correspondent
In an era of pop where indie is the new punk and auto-tune has snuck itself into most radio singles, few artists are able to stick to their musical roots while maintaining a fair balance between quality and catchiness.
While it may not meet the blues-rock quota of his previous studio album Continuum, multi-platinum selling guitarist John Mayer has hit another home run with Battle Studies, his newest album.
Stepping away from the catchy riffs, virtuoso guitar solos and melodic blues-rock was a dangerous move for Mayer, but he pulls it off well.
From the introductory track “Heartbreak Warfare” to the folksy single “Who Says” to the soft bluesy conclusion of the album, “Friends, Lovers or Nothing,” Mayer appears to have applied more of his folk roots into writing this album.
The overbearing theme for Battle Studies seems to be heartbreak. The album serves as a guidebook in that field, as portrayed in the opening song, “Heartbreak Warfare.”
“I don’t care if we don’t sleep at all tonight/ Let’s just fix this whole thing now/ I swear to God we’re gonna get it right/ If you lay your weapon down.”
Those who know Mayer as “King Douche” or any of his other unfortunate nicknames would probably be better off not listening to Battle Studies at all.
For years, Mayer has been criticized for his attitude, silly sense of humor, and his personality off the stage and out of the studio.
But when it really comes down to it, he’s a musician, and a damn good one too.
Sure he has a slightly breathy voice, and his lyrics are often on the cheesy side, but he shines where most pop artists today can’t.
He delivers catchy melodies while maintaining a strong bluesy theme while still providing listeners with the quality music they seek.
Battle Studies is the perfect example of this balance.
He opens the album with an anthemic heartbreak pop song.
He then moves on to a ballad that’s perfect to sleep to and a nice country-themed song titled “Half of My Heart” featuring Taylor Swift’s soft background vocals and harmonies.
“Perfectly Lonely” and “Friends, Lovers or Nothing” are reminiscent of his previous studio album Continuum more than any other track on the album. They have that heavy blues influence.
Then, of course, there’s “Crossroads,” a cover made famous by one of his idols, Eric Clapton.
This is by far the bluesiest song on the album. The vocal harmonies are nearly as impressive as the guitar solo halfway through.
Think what you may. Criticize his silly sense of humor, and ridicule his “melty” face, but John Mayer is a musical genius, and though Continuum could very well be his masterpiece, Battle Studies is a close second.
It delivers the catchy songs the radio stations are looking for while providing his fans with the quality they look for in his music.