Nur Ein XIV Round Zero "Message Received"

[vowlvom]

Looks like Taylor Swift is taking part in Nur Ein this year...

[Niveous]

Hey kids! Spelling is fun!

The Nur Ein challenge is now (unofficially): Use spelling better than Taylor Swift.

It's a low bar.

[vowlvom]

Agreed. I like a lot of Taylor Swift songs but this one is pretty terrible.

Bonus challenge: "Don't get anyone from Panic At The Disco to guest on your song".

[Niveous]

It's terrible but it's brilliant in its terribleness.

- There's no tough topics. It's an easy love song. Very palatable to the masses.
- It has a feature like a lot of current pop music. The feature is very likable to many and coming off the biggest hit of their career.
- The bridge is goofy kid fluff which will appeal to a young audience and earn a very quick Kidz Bop cover.
- She toned down her recent rap influences for saccharine sweet pop that will play well on AAA stations as well as top 40 stations. (Aka the Justin Timberlake "Can't Stop The Feeling" approach)

Basically she has a piece of mindless manufactured pop that can slip into playlists for years to come without making waves and make her a ton of revenue. It's almost machiavellian.

[BoffoYux]

Achievement Unlocked: My girlfriend threatened to kick me out of bed if I played the song one more time, because the chorus is now an earworm in her head. And not in a good way.

You'll understand on Monday. Let's just say no one will ever mispell the word 'Zamboni' ever again.

[vowlvom]

Amazing how many spelling songs you notice when you start looking out for it. This is another good one that I just happened to hear on the radio.

[lichenthroat]

I had a lot of trouble coming with a lyrical subject for this one, but I eventually got a song put together. I'm guessing I'm the only one who wrote about Bleak House.

[Manhattan Glutton]

Well, I've got a hot mess of a song here, I missed Game of Thrones, and it seems like the competition is going to be intense. Welcome to Nur Ein! Maybe I need more than Friday vacation days for this.

[Niveous]

The songs are up:

https://nurein.songlander.com/titles/D0 ... 8F68F282F2

There are exactly 25 songs in the round so there will be no eliminations!

[Lucky Spoon]

After years of saying "oh shoot I missed the first round" I finally got in... It still took some extra convincing from MG.

Good luck all.

[BoffoYux]

A reminder for newbies - Drop your lyrics in the 'Ye Old Lyric Archive' for people to follow along.

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11450

We have 18 of the 25 songs up there now. It's always a welcome way to follow along or add extra info about your tune, and the judges and podcasters also sometimes use the information in their deliberations. Promise.

promise.png (150.07 KiB) Viewed 2983 times

[Chumpy]

I went through the trouble to organize all the songs from round zero into a zip file for people who like to listen to mp3s in a music player like iTunes or WinAmp or something. Because I'm anal, I went through all the songs and massaged all the ID3 metadata so the songs will appear to the application importing them as all belonging to a 'various artists' compilation. This means when you import them they won't create a big ugly mess in your music player application. I also added lyrics to the metadata where they were available.

I thought I'd share in the unlikely event that that my obsessive compulsive metadata frobbing will be of use to anyone who actually still maintains an on-disk mp3 collection and cares about how it's organized.

• Download Nur_Ein_XIV_Round_Zero.zip from twojerksonevote.com
• Alternate download from AWS S3

[BoffoYux]

I went through the trouble to organize all the songs from round zero into a zip file for people who like to listen to mp3s in a music player like iTunes or WinAmp or something. Because I'm anal, I went through all the songs and massaged all the ID3 metadata so the songs will appear to the application importing them as all belonging to a 'various artists' compilation. This means when you import them they won't create a big ugly mess in your music player application. I also added lyrics to the metadata where they were available.

Thanks. I grabbed all the files, and left them on my work computer, and was about to do the downloads again. Having the ID's is a great thing!

[iVeg]

Is there a link for THIS week's listening party? I see one for next week's... FOUND IT.
https://youtu.be/BTOroibGV3I

[Cybronica]

This is a really strong round... given the number of songs, I might not get around to doing a full set of reviews but I do want to give a shout out onlichen throat- the effort you put into the vocal track shows huge improvement! It really does sound great; the rhythms and melody were much more clear than in the past. I saw in the listening party you were worried about having a boring melody- I didn’t think so! It’s a great track (and I was able to more appreciate your poetic lyric style, too!). Congrats!

[vowlvom]

In case it'll save anyone some time or encourage anyone to write reviews that might not have otherwise, here's a review template for copyin' and pastin'.
I'll be back with some thoughts in a day or two but massively enjoying listening to this excellent bunch of songs so far!

Code: Select all

[b]Abominominous[/b] - 

[b]Agony Sauce[/b] - 

[b]Berkeley Social Scene[/b] - 

[b]Boffo Yux Dudes[/b] - 

[b]Faster Jackalope[/b] - 

[b]Fisher and Diaz[/b] - 

[b]Frankie Big Face[/b] - 

[b]Grumpy Mike[/b] - 

[b]Inflatable Vegetables[/b] - 

[b]Lichen Throat[/b] - 

[b]Lucky Spoon[/b] - 

[b]Mandibles[/b] - 

[b]Max Bombast[/b] - 

[b]Merisan[/b] - 

[b]Mike Lamb[/b] - 

[b]Mousehole[/b] - 

[b]Nick Soma[/b] - 

[b]Paco del Stinko[/b] - 

[b]Pigfarmer Jr.[/b] - 

[b]Rachael Layne[/b] - 

[b]Rain Watt[/b] - 

[b]The Sunday Colors[/b] - 

[b]Third Cat[/b] - 

[b]Ujn Hunter + Friends[/b] - 

[b]Vowl Sounds[/b] - 

[Chumpy]

Instead of writing reviews for the songs this round, Ryan and I thought we'd record some random mouth sounds and share them with you.

There are a few ways you can experience this auditory delight:

• Download or point your browser directly at the mp3
• Alternate download from AWS S3
• Point your podcast software at the feed
• View the podcast on iTunes

Send your siwoti rage mail to: feedback@twojerksonevote.com.

Let's face it, subjecting yourself to a full 90 minutes of our uninformed blather is not anyone's idea of a good time. Use the table below to skip ahead to the good parts.

• 00:00:00 - Intro song
• 00:01:02 - Beginning-of-podcast blathering
• 00:07:35 - Abominominous
• 00:10:11 - Agony Sauce
• 00:12:49 - Berkeley Social Scene
• 00:15:32 - Boffo Yux Dudes
• 00:18:09 - Faster Jackalope
• 00:22:00 - Fisher and Diaz
• 00:25:24 - Frankie Big Face
• 00:27:48 - Grumpy Mike
• 00:30:23 - Inflatable Vegetables
• 00:32:26 - Lichen Throat
• 00:36:02 - Lucky Spoon
• 00:38:47 - Mandibles
• 00:42:32 - Max Bombast
• 00:46:39 - Merisan
• 00:48:53 - Mike Lamb
• 00:50:59 - Mousehole
• 00:54:04 - Nick Soma
• 00:57:16 - Paco del Stinko
• 00:59:16 - Pigfarmer Jr.
• 01:01:40 - Rachael Layne
• 01:04:04 - Rain Watt
• 01:08:50 - The Sunday Colors
• 01:12:24 - Third Cat
• 01:14:44 - Ujn Hunter + Friends
• 01:17:45 - Vowl Sounds
• 01:20:30 - End-of-podcast blathering

Nur Ein!

[thirdcatmusic]

hey two jerks; I agree, not my best work, glad this is round zero and I don't have to worry about being eliminated. on the guitar solo at the end it's in the two least common modes (first lydian and then locrian for the very end), thought that tied in nicely with the "crazy" theme,,, that was actually the only part of my song I liked as I hated my voice more than usual this time around but yeah, a bit dissonant, definitely not gonna be for everyone.

skipped ahead to my bit for this quick response but will listen to the whole thing later.

[Pop Machine]

Instead of writing reviews for the songs this round, Ryan and I thought we'd record some random mouth sounds and share them with you.

[*]00:15:32 - Boffo Yux Dudes

Nur Ein!

So, pretty spot-on with your review, I'd say, we appreciate the feedback. Slightly delighted that you thought the break was the strongest part of the song, slightly disappointed you thought the vocals were weak. (I've been a bit stymied there for the last few contests, since I usually get some kudos for my live vox but have trouble translating that to the home studio stuff. Probably need better quality control or just a different set of lungs.) Slightly amused you thought it was an earworm...in a bad way. (Heh, heh, heh...)

I'm using somewhat new software which chides me for going over 0dB in my final output, but that seems to make the volume pretty low comparatively, so I need to either ignore that or tweak the output accordingly, I think. Anyway, my point is you gave HELPFUL feedback, so thanks muchly.

[Lunkhead]

I don't think I'm going to have time to write full reviews. Just wanted to say, very strong crop of songs overall. My favorites were Abom, Agony Sauce, Faster Jackalope, Frankie Big Face, Grumpy Mike, Rachael Layne, Rain Watt, and Vowl Sounds.

EDIT: IMHO though clumsy incorporation of the challenge undermined my enjoyment of a lot of the songs, as did over reliance on too prominent use of the title.

[iVeg]

Chumpy and Ryan: Love the intro song! Thanks for the transparency rant. We'll see if it helps
I'll see if I can get to at least 1990 next round

[Manhattan Glutton]

What is this, podcast fight?! Thanks for the kind words. Ben and I are getting our podcast recorded tonight- should drop soon after!