RC@5: BUBBA by Kaytranada

Record Club covered this album exactly five years ago. I gave it another listen this week. Here are some thoughts, some from me, but mostly from Sunny.

BUBBA

Kaytranada

Week 51: January 19-25, 2020

A few key points about BUBBA, typed approximately six hours before deadline, because I listened to the album a couple times this week but writing up this RC@5 thing completely slipped my mind.

— This is an RC album that I had deleted at some point, and had to redownload this week. That's happened a few times already. Eventually it's going to stop happening. I like the idea of having access to all the Record Club albums at all times (besides the Christmas albums, I would never).

— Apparently the album's title is in all caps? I didn't know this five years ago. I don't think I care enough to go back and change anything.

— I had also long forgotten that Pharrell featured on this thing. So that means that, even if that's not his voice on the last song on Britney Spears' Blackout, he's still a member of the Three Record Club Albums Club (this, Janelle, Pusha). I forget who else is in the club. Maren Morris I think? MAGA asshole Lil Wayne? Is Lucius? I forget. It's late, I'm tired.

— Another classic example of me returning to an album to find that it's not as bad as I remember, due to the simple fact that I have grown and expanded my horizons significantly and so of course there's enough room on my palate for some electronic pop music. I'm still not in love with this album, but maybe there's still time for it to grow yet.

— Last, certainly not least: BUBBA was the first album that Sunny ever reviewed on this album. He's written a review every week in the last five years, officially.

And here are some reflections from Sunny on five years with RC:

Where does the time go??

Music listening has changed substantially for me. I was pretty deep in my playlists and algorithmic grooves for the 2010s. I understood music discovery was something I wanted more of, but didn't have a great route for it. A few friends who would recommend albums time to time, and the radio with all its failings. So RC and PoYB generally has been an expansion of musical consciousness in a big way.

Sometimes that's listening to my favorite music, sometimes that's listening to the furthest thing from my corner, all of which has been engrossing. Being able to talk to most people about some kind of music is a boon, and knowing more about music than the average joe is a small joy.

I don't regularly go back and re-read my old RC reviews—not thinking of them as archival quality makes it that much easier to get them done in the first place. But sometimes I'll link back to one because of a new review or song challenge post or whatever—some percent of the time I think I was way off and have changed views on the album, some percent I haven't changed at all, some percent I barely remember the album and the review got me back up to speed, and some percent whatever gimmick I did that week still rings (or falls flat). What the relative percentage of these are is beyond the scope of this email.

Beyond the reason above, that RC is a forcing function to discover new and interesting music, I guess I still do this because a) it's writing practice, and when taken without a lot of weight is nice to have. I think like anyone I have room to grow in my writing but the practice has been a big help in increasing my confidence and general aptitude in turning a blank piece of a paper into something. And because b) PoYB is one of my "little places," or "little communities," a word that I have love/hate feelings about, wherein I get some kind of interaction with other extant people I also know outside the context of the blog. For my own mental health, I don't use social media or really even look at the news much anymore, so if I want to kill time on the computer, PoYB is also an excellent outlet. It's nice to have friends, in short.

I remember relistening to BUBBA like a year after again, and liking it, but liking it less than when I first heard it. There was now so much more to compare it against. But it was still a fun dance album. Strangely, I remember the spooky eyes of the album art. In general, I probably listen to an album most in that first year after it hits RC, with albums I like more being more in the rotation and some never getting play again. Maybe one or two albums a year will have songs hit a regular recurring playlist or just be a new "comfort album" to throw on, which are rarer and rarer to find, and thus even more precious.

Thanks, Sunny!