~music Weekly Music Share Thread #2 - Guilty Pleasures

No need to feel guilty on this one. I'm considerably older than you, and I loved Owl City.

He's fully integrated into the music industry now, so it's easy to begrudge him his success, but at the time Adam Young started making music he was a one-man show. He did everything on his own, making and releasing tracks simply because he wanted to. He garnered a small following and then was able to leverage that into a full, quite successful music career. I bought his first EP (Of June) and his first album (Maybe I'm Dreaming) off of CDBaby, and I'm pretty sure (though my memory might be failing me) they were just regular burned discs with no artwork and a hand-printed cover. Now he's writing music for feature films. That speaks to how far he's come from his humble beginnings.

At the time I first heard his songs, I remember digging the electronic arrangements he made. I was big into chiptune music, and his weren't quite there, but they were sort of "chiptune adjacent."

Furthermore, there was a relatability in Young's craft. He didn't try to hide his autotune. His lyrics were clumsy yet earnest. His arrangements were fully synthetic, with not a single real instrument to be found. It very much sounded like the kind of thing that a kid would make in his basement while toying around with recording software (which is, well, exactly what he did).

His arrangements have a kinetic, meandering quality that contrasts with his sharp, singular vocal delivery, giving him a very distinctive sound. He also has a knack for singable melodies, and nearly every one of his early tracks comes across as a deliberate attempt to write an earworm. It also probably didn't hurt that he was somewhat evocative of The Postal Service, who made it big with a similar sound that had then gone largely unemulated in the years since Give Up was released.

Someone clearly noticed all of the potential he was bringing to the table and signed him, resulting in Ocean Eyes, which took the most radio-friendly stuff from his early work and added in "Fireflies"--a near-perfect lead single. It is quintessential Owl City: a lush yet unapologetically synthetic arrangement, charmingly awkward lyrics, a delightful melody, an eminently singable chorus. It, like most of his other tracks, is an unabashed feel-good song.

This is actually a skill of his that I think is undersold. You know, "happiness writes white", "True Art Is Angsty", and all that. It's hard to create something celebratory or uplifting and not have it come across as trivial or trite. Rather than fight this, he leans directly into it. His songs are for the most part undeniably, forcefully hopeful. They're syrupy sweet. It can read as naive, sure, but when so much of the other music out there is serious and depressing, his tracks have a place as a great palate cleanser. After all, how many other bright, uplifting musical acts can you name? He found a mostly unoccupied niche and made it his domain.

That said, my singular criticism of Owl City is exactly the same as what I'm praising him for. While he definitely played to his strengths initially, he stayed there for too long and didn't develop much past that. Ocean Eyes on its own runs the risk of sounding too "samey" from track to track, and when you add in a second and third album that are almost identical, his formula gets very, very stale.

He basically locked himself in a corner creatively. Because he stuck to saccharine songs almost exclusively, he's not really able to step into anything with real emotional depth. His second album features a song called "Hospital Flowers" which attempts to go serious, and it is a deeply uncomfortable misstep. He's at his best when he's bright and optimistic, but he fails to go beyond that, and that one note can only sustain listeners for so long.

Regardless, when he's right, he's right. I unironically enjoy several of his tracks for the simple nature that they are, in the words of him and Carly, "always a good time."

They're all right. If any of those tracks came up on radio, I wouldn't change the station. In fact, I kinda liked “Cave In”.

I assume you are already familiar with this piece of musical greatness/cancer?

Also, since we're on the topic of music intended for children, I've listened to “Banana Phone” way more often than any sensible adult should.