RC@5: SUGAREGG by Bully

Record Club covered this album five years ago. I gave it another listen this week. Here are some thoughts.

SUGAREGG

Bully

Week 82: August 23-29, 2020

In the five years since we listened to this (great) album, Bully has released her SUGAREGG follow-up, 2023's Lucky for You. The reception that that album received really drives home the point that music criticism is subjective and arbitrary. I loved Lucky for You, just as I love SUGAREGG. To my ears, Lucky for You was a "more of the same great stuff" release. To everyone else, it was labeled as a level-up. I'll mark Lucky for You as better than SUGAREGG by an extremely small margin, which made me confused as to why Lucky for You seemed to be the one to finally stick.

I'm not complaining. I'm really happy for Bully, a.k.a. Alicia Bognanno. She's definitely hit that sweet spot of "reliable indie rock act" without any of the "too ubiquitous so as to be annoying" distraction. Bully's always been good, and who the fuck am I to eschew humility to say that I was there the whole fucking time, ya know? Who cares? I don't care. I care about the music. It's good shit.

But isn't it interesting that this album here, the one we covered in RC, is also very good, in my opinion, but apparently didn't have any sticking power? Examine the three reviews. For Nate, it was "not really for me" (Lucky for You would bring him around). For Sunny, it was "probably not for me in some alternate universe, except that in this universe we have Record Club," which is well and good, but probably not indicative of any staying power for this album in Sunny's rotation. And then for me, high praises, but note that it's one of my shortest reviews ever. Not much to say, I suppose. Talk about subjective!

I've been thinking about Nate's Qs from last week regarding why certain albums are chosen for RC, and I am still thinking about it as I relitigate Bully's SUGAREGG. Was this a good RC pick? Probably not. It's real good but it's hard to write about because it's not good in interesting or unique ways. It's just a solid product, and maybe without another hook, it's forgotten as a Record Club album, even though the quality is undeniably there. But at the same time, I need to choose albums like this every once in a while. Can't all be novelty bullshit failures. Sometimes, we gotta explore something that doesn't really need all that much exploring.