[SoftD] - Har Mar Superstar - 'Youth Without Love'

Composed (and produced) by Julian Casablancas, "Youth Without Love" is a classic, catchy pop hit, but without all the moody emo shit you maybe used to from The Strokes. By handing over this lost single to Sean Tillman, otherwise known as Har Mar Superstar (and no association with Father John Misty's Josh Tillman), this tune's arc turns away from corny, and heads straight to summer mix. The kind you can't help but listen to on repeat while basking (or baking?) in the sun looking for some love of your own.

Plus, his dancing is entertaining as hell.  Check out the rest of the album, it is fantastic, and features the likes of Karen O.

I Slay, All Day.

In case you haven't heard, Beyonce has dropped her new single "Formation" and it kills. Slays. Blows your mind. Takes Queen Bey to the next level of ambassador for our generation. Fuck the Millennials; this woman goes hard.    

Last night, Beyonce brought the heat to the Super Bowl 50 halftime show, laying waste to side act Coldplay (who clearly did not get the memo to dress in theme colors - gold and black, bitches).  

Even Bruno Mars, who in his own right is a fun performer and great dancer, held no candle to the Queen. Between Beyonce's dramatic, baller entrance and the MJ-inspired dance off, I could hardly feel sorry for bland Chris Martin - he was witnessing true, unmatched talent happening. An inspiration to all of us hoping to put our mark on this world; even if it means saddling up to boring-ass white dudes to make it happen. 

Everyone was worried - yes, lord, worried - about how these two (ahem, three) super stars would join forces to make a halftime show to be remembered. Well, as the New Yorker pointed out, "Would [Beyonce] provide a necessary disruption at the Super Bowl, or would she temper her message for America’s sake? Beyoncé, of course, was able to do both."

The masses have spoken, and already we have a "Bruno Mars and Beyonce ONLY" version of the half time show for you to see just how she made it happen.

    

She jumped right in, spiting lines from her new tune - no filter necessary. Bey commanded her ladies right into a male-dominated scene and turned it on its head. She's got hot sauce in her bag, like swag, guys! We can't even try to keep up. Outside the power she invoked during her performance, the song and video require even more attention from us. She blends riot gear vibes and Gucci sundries, dirty provocative lyrics, and casual yet dominant declarations such as "I just might be a black Bill Gates in the making." Through the sound, look, and lyrics, Beyonce manages to claim her star-power, her blackness, her femininity, and her Southernness all in one massive swoop. She can't say it enough, so neither will I, it slays. 

We need her and her message like we need someone with some damn sense to follow Barack Obama into office and continue to change the way we run this damn country. With people like Beyonce, who come to slay, who can dare to speak for us all while still speaking for themselves, we can only hope to keep trying to make things better. Look out for the haters too, they don't like to admit that we're the ones who really run the world (girls). Keep it up, Bey.       

RIP David Bowie

Oh, You Pretty Things - we've lost one of rock's biggest icons, David Bowie. He died at age 69, two days after his birthday and the release of his 25th studio album, Blackstar, after an 18-month struggle with cancer.

Much like his ever-changing personas, he was a force of nature too hard to nail down. For me, each part of Bowie helped shape my current taste in music, film, theater, even fashion. As I already loved musicals, seeing Labyrinth was no stretch for me, however the sexual awaking that happened was a total surprise. Seeing his name flash on the screen during each viewing of The Breakfast Club made my teenage life so much more manageable. The meaning of an icon is having no shame in the life you lead.

Once while visiting San Francisco, I picked up a used copy of a biography called Bowie: Loving the Alien by Christopher Sanford on a whim. I already loved reading music biographies, but this one was different. Being published in 1998 it was a little outdated, but learning the history of Bowie's childhood and rise to rock god fame was more than enough to propel my fandom to a whole new level. After learning that nearly everyone in his family had schizophrenia, I came to believe that Bowie probably had a touch of it too; but he was able to successfully channel it into creating new and exciting characters to explore throughout his career. It's just a theory, but he never minded speculation.

Each song, each album, each performance is tied to a great memory for me. "Oh, You Pretty Things" always makes me think of driving with Carrie Sue singing at the top of our lungs. When I sneak onto the rooftop of my office building, I pass a store called "Sound & Vision" and instantly hear that great guitar riff. No Broadways 80's Dance Night or karaoke night could ever end without "Let's Dance" or "Rebel, Rebel" coming on. And who can forget how "Fame" busted back on the scene when it was remixed for Pretty Woman. Yep. That happened, and its really weird. It's also in Copycat. But anyway...  

Let's put his music aside shortly and discuss his other passions. Art and literature. The man loved to read. So - as Queen Bitch, let me request that we be a couple of Kooks, and salute The Man Who Sold the World by digging into his Must Read Books. May we all continue Loving the Alien through his music and favorite works of literature.

David Bowie's Top 100 Must Read Books:

The Age of American Unreason, Susan Jacoby, 2008

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz, 2007

The Coast of Utopia (trilogy), Tom Stoppard, 2007

Teenage: The Creation of Youth 1875-1945, Jon Savage, 2007

Fingersmith, Sarah Waters, 2002

The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Christopher Hitchens, 2001

Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, Lawrence Weschler, 1997

A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1890-1924, Orlando Figes, 1997

The Insult, Rupert Thomson, 1996

Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon, 1995

The Bird Artist, Howard Norman, 1994

Kafka Was The Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir, Anatole Broyard, 1993

Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post-Historical Perspective, Arthur C. Danto, 1992

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, Camille Paglia, 1990

David Bomberg, Richard Cork, 1988

Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom, Peter Guralnick, 1986

The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin, 1986

Hawksmoor, Peter Ackroyd, 1985

Nowhere To Run: The Story of Soul Music, Gerri Hirshey, 1984

Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter, 1984

Money, Martin Amis, 1984

White Noise, Don DeLillo, 1984

Flaubert’s Parrot, Julian Barnes, 1984

The Life and Times of Little Richard, Charles White, 1984

A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn, 1980

A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole, 1980

Interviews with Francis Bacon, David Sylvester, 1980

Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler, 1980

Earthly Powers, Anthony Burgess, 1980

Raw (a ‘graphix magazine’) 1980-91

Viz (magazine) 1979 –

The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels, 1979

Metropolitan Life, Fran Lebowitz, 1978

In Between the Sheets, Ian McEwan, 1978

Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, ed. Malcolm Cowley, 1977

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes, 1976

Tales of Beatnik Glory, Ed Saunders, 1975

Mystery Train, Greil Marcus, 1975

Selected Poems, Frank O’Hara, 1974

Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s, Otto Friedrich, 1972

In Bluebeard’s Castle: Some Notes Towards the Re-definition of Culture, George Steiner, 1971

Octobriana and the Russian Underground, Peter Sadecky, 1971

The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll, Charlie Gillete, 1970

The Quest For Christa T, Christa Wolf, 1968

Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock, Nik Cohn, 1968

The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov, 1967

Journey into the Whirlwind, Eugenia Ginzburg, 1967

Last Exit to Brooklyn, Hubert Selby Jr., 1966

In Cold Blood, Truman Capote, 1965

City of Night, John Rechy, 1965

Herzog, Saul Bellow, 1964

Puckoon, Spike Milligan, 1963

The American Way of Death, Jessica Mitford, 1963

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea, Yukio Mishima, 1963

The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin, 1963

A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess, 1962

Inside the Whale and Other Essays, George Orwell, 1962

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark, 1961

Private Eye (magazine) 1961 –

On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious, Douglas Harding, 1961

Silence: Lectures and Writing, John Cage, 1961

Strange People, Frank Edwards, 1961

The Divided Self, R. D. Laing, 1960

All The Emperor’s Horses, David Kidd, 1960

Billy Liar, Keith Waterhouse, 1959

The Leopard, Giuseppe Di Lampedusa, 1958

On The Road, Jack Kerouac, 1957

The Hidden Persuaders, Vance Packard, 1957

Room at the Top, John Braine, 1957

A Grave for a Dolphin, Alberto Denti di Pirajno, 1956

The Outsider, Colin Wilson, 1956

Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, 1955

Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell, 1949

The Street, Ann Petry, 1946

Black Boy, Richard Wright, 1945