https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28 By Chloe Haber (1031516) en-us 2023-10-06 08:03:45 UTC 2023-10-08 12:53:23 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet.net/icons/png/1f333.png 1031516_1_2 https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2735225258 For me, my music is a very personal experience where I explore my emotions and memories. I like to try and create music that is both very personal to me and also relatable to each listener in their own way. ]]> 2023-10-06 08:04:56 UTC https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2735225258 1031516_1_2 https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2735241038 I personally believe that Bridgers may be the most influential artist to my own music. Her meaningful and metaphorical lyrical style is something that I try to incorporate into my own sound. She is often described as crafting her music with "a violent precision" to create "frank and anxious folk songs" (Petrusich, 2020), a sentiment I strongly agree with and hope to embody in my own sound. Bridgers writes her songs about many of the messy, complex experiences of life such as loss (Funeral), abuse (Motion Sickness), family (Kyoto) and even the end of the world (I Know The End).
I saw Bridgers perform live at St. Jerome's Laneway Festival in early 2023, further solidifying her impact on my musical person.]]> 2023-10-06 08:18:27 UTC https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2735241038 1031516_1_2 https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2735274338 While Glass Animals' music had a massive positive impact on my emotional well-being, it is safe to say they have had a similar impact on my musical expression. Often described as featuring "considered lyrics, high-viscosity electronic harmonies and...ever-present synthesizer" (Lai, 2020), Glass Animals create a vibrant and dreamy tone to their songs that I often find myself attempting to replicate in my own unique way. To me, their songs are like fragments of memories, small snapshots of their experiences or the stories of others. I also find myself inspired by their experimentation of instrumentation; frontman Dave Bayley will often use unorthodox methods or equipment in order to create the rich synthesizers featured across their discography. 
I saw Glass Animals on their Dreamland Tour in 2022 and it's safe to say that Bayley's passion and love for music is something that will endlessly influence me.]]> 2023-10-06 08:48:20 UTC https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2735274338 1031516_1_2 https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2735294164 Mitski's songwriting talent and unique vocal expression are unlike anything I've heard before. As is made clear in performances such as her Audiotree Live set, she strives to capture something raw and messy in her vocals, directly opposing the perfectionist values of the modern music industry. She is often described as writing "achingly intense songs about personal yearnings" and "emotional chaos" (Talbot, 2019) a sentiment I hope to embody in my own writing and performances. Mitski's music is highly personal to herself however is so focused on emotion it becomes uniquely relatable to each individual who consumes it, even describing herself (2022) as "the black hole where people can dump all their shit...the place where anybody can put all of their feelings."]]> 2023-10-06 09:05:46 UTC https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2735294164 1031516_1_2 https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2735309092 In an interview with Forbes, frontman Dave Bayley (2021) discusses the impact The Beach Boys had as a child growing up; "There's a kind of quality to his vocal lines, vocal melodies, that kind of nursery rhyme like melodies to them. And I think that's what drew me in. And the sounds, as a kid those sounds are really playful." Such "playful sounds" Bayley did his best to recreate in his own work through similar technologies used by The Beach Boys as he describes in an interview with Billboard; "I bought a lot of instruments that The Beatles and The Beach Boys might have used, and resampled them." This nod to his childhood contributes to the tasteful nostalgia of Glass Animals' later works such as their 2020 album Dreamland, a biographical project dedicated to Bayley's childhood memories.
One technical aspect of both artists' work we can compare is found in the Beach Boys' 1966 album Pet Sounds. Several atonal sound effects are peppered across the album such as the sounds of car horns found at the end of You Still Believe In Me or the train at the end of Caroline, No (Harrison, 2016). Similar to this, Dreamland utilizes ambiance and sound effects through the sampling of several of Bayley's childhood home movies in filler tracks such as ((home movie: rockets)) and ((home movie: shoes on)). The use of these real-world sound effects from a technical perspective has an interesting effect as it further develops the audience's perception of the imagery set up by the lyrics of the songs and strengthens the scene envisioned by the artists.

]]> 2023-10-06 09:18:21 UTC https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2735309092 1031516_1_2 https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2736390814 In an interview with MTV News Bridgers (2020) states "The song Punisher...is about Elliot Smith. We would have lived less than a mile away from each other if he were alive. And now I know tons of his friends and have worked in studios he's worked in and he just would've been around in such a heavy way. And I know his whole discography; I've read every book about him." 
Smith has directly influenced Bridgers' musicality through his prolific use of "secondary dominants" (aka. V of V) throughout songs such as Miss Misery, Say Yes, and Angeles. Secondary dominants are often used as short modulations where a chord in a progression may be from a different key to the rest of the piece, before resolving (Wentk, 2014). Not only does this technique create a more satisfying resolution to the musical tension, but it also helps to create the somber, almost confrontational tone that Smith and Bridgers' music have in common.  Bridgers, whether intentional or not, has been influenced by Smith's utilization of this technique in songs such as Kyoto, ICU and Savior Complex.]]> 2023-10-07 10:44:53 UTC https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2736390814 1031516_1_2 https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2736391932 Bridgers (2022) also cites Mitchell as one of her leading inspirations for her folk-inspired tone, stating that she has "always been attracted to music like that...folk music with something to say." In her 2018 interview with Records In My Life, Bridgers named Mitchell's 1971 album "Blue" as one of the most influential albums that inspired her to begin songwriting.
Through my own personal exploration of Mitchell and Bridgers' work, it is easy to draw comparisons between the two and connect the ways in which Mitchell's soft, guitar-led folk sound had influence on Bridgers' modern folk works. Both women open themselves up with near-confrontational honesty and tender vulnerability to their audiences that give both artists the sold sense of authenticity they both aspire for. 
Before she began her career as a musician and songwriter, Mitchell pursued poetry, evident in the literary quality of her songwriting (Whitesell, 2008). While Bridgers bears no known connection to poetry, I believe that the poetic nature of Mitchell's work has had a significant influence on the vulnerable, metaphor-laden nature of Bridgers' own writing. Some of Mitchell's most prominent motifs (Whitesell, 2008) can be seen to filter through into Bridgers' pieces such as journeys and quests (Mitchell - Cactus Tree / Bridgers - Graceland Too), characters and strangers (Mitchell - That Song About The Midway / Bridgers - Punisher) nature (Mitchell - For the Roses / Bridgers - Chinese Satellite) and even flight, or more specifically birds (Mitchell - The Dawntreader / Bridgers - Smoke Signals). 

]]> 2023-10-07 10:47:36 UTC https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2736391932 1031516_1_2 https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2736471761 Bridgers has recounted on several occasions the inspiration she draws from Mills' sound and how she is often inspired to try and recreate it in her own unique way. In an interview with Billboard, Bridgers (2020) states “I love the way that his records sound and I am constantly trying to recreate that in my own music.” Furthermore, in an interview with Hero Magazine, she names Mills' first record Break Mirrors as a highly influential project on her first album Stranger in the Alps, expressing " I love the sound...I wanted my record to sound like that."
Through an analytical listening of both albums (Break Mirrors and Stranger in the Alps), I can see how Bridgers' incorporated Mills' personal style into her own work. Both artists use a balanced blend of clean acoustic sounds and dreamy ambient synths that meld together to create the folk-rock mix that is common to each musician. You can even notice almost an imitation of Mills unique, vibrant vocal tone in some of the more upbeat of Bridgers' pieces. Both albums share several sonic techniques and features like vocal layering/chorus. slide guitars and slow-paced drum beats layered with assorted percussive elements.
Mills has a residency at Sound City where Bridgers recorded her second album Punisher, leading to several collaborations between the two on songs like Halloween, Saviour Complex and I Know the End (Zellner, 2020).]]> 2023-10-07 13:28:01 UTC https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2736471761 1031516_1_2 https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2736477214 Joni Mitchell performed her first headline show in 20 years in June of 2023, colloquially titled "Joni Jam." The performance featured a wide range of celebrities and friends of Mitchell's including Blake Mills who accompanied Mitchell on guitar to perform her song "Amelia." (Fragassi, 2023)]]> 2023-10-07 13:37:28 UTC https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2736477214 1031516_1_2 https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2736492449 In an interview with The New Yorker, Mitski details how she found refuge in movies at a young age to help her deal with the isolation she felt as a child. Specifically, she names director Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli. Describing a scene from Miyazaki's 2001 film "Spirited Away," Mitski (2019) states “It’s so resolute, the way she’s looking out the window...it’s the face of someone who’s made a decision.” 
What appealed to Mitski about Studio Ghibli's films in particular was the way in which the magic of the worlds they built was never fully explained but rather left to audiences to draw personal conclusions from (Talbot, 2019). 
Much the same can be said of Mitski's lyrics and themes which often feature a combination of personal experiences and snapshots of the lives of others; much like Miyazaki's films, she puts the magic of her music out into the world without too much detail.
One specific way in which I believe Mitski's music draws upon Hayao Miyazaki's films is the references and allusions to Romanticism and the concept of "the sublime" that are heavily utilized within Miyazaki's stories (Walsh, 2019). Both Miyazaki and Mitski's work features prominent use of nature and magic as motifs that are often metaphorically linked to the theme of love, such as the nature imagery found in her 2014 tracks First Love/Late Spring and Francis Forever. 
Many fans, including myself, have speculated that some of Mitski's lyrics make reference to Miyazaki's films. Her 2018 track Nobody where she sings "Venus, planet of love was destroyed by global warming" may allude to Studio Ghibli's 1984 post-apocalyptic film "Nausicaa, Valley of the Wind", a film about human life on a planet that has become toxic to live in. ]]> 2023-10-07 14:03:27 UTC https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2736492449 1031516_1_2 https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2736495533 Both Phoebe Bridgers and Mitski are signed to the label Dead Oceans founded by Phil Waldorf and Chris Swanson.]]> 2023-10-07 14:08:34 UTC https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2736495533 1031516_1_2 https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2736767770 It is clear that Bjork's carefree, experimentalist music has impacted Mitski's work when examining the production and instrumentation found in Mitski's discography and even in her live performance. Mitski can be heard paying tribute to Bjork's unmistakable vocal tone with her elastic melodies in songs like Liquid Smooth, Nobody and I Want You. In live versions of Class of 2013, Mitski wails into the distorted chords of the guitar, raw and unashamed at the messiness of her emotions. She screams, guttural and unflattering when she plays her song Drunk Walk Home, a cathartic release of the song's buildup. These unfiltered, open expression of Mitski's inner emotion can be connected back to Bjork who uses many similar techniques in songs such as Storm, where Bjork's organic vocals are superimposed over a vast synthetic landscape (Rodriguez, 2009).
In her interview with The New Yorker, Mitski (2019) went on to state that Bjork was one of the artists whose unconventional artistic presentation was highly inspirational to her own artistry. “You can do what you want—it doesn’t have to be this pop formula, and you don’t have to have this voice or look this way," Mitski states, a value that she clearly lives by. In her interview with The Skinny, Mitski (2016) states that “Her [Bjork] music does such a vivid job of portraying very vast inner landscapes." While I agree with this statement, I also personally believe that one could say the same thing about Mitski's work. Much like Bjork, Mitski is well known for breaking the mold of conventional pop or folk music and expressing her music however she wants to, using raw vocal expression and unconventional harmonic progressions and sounds. In this way, Bjork has not only impacted Mitski sonically but also had an influence on her ethos when it comes to creating music. 

]]> 2023-10-08 01:15:40 UTC https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2736767770 1031516_1_2 https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2736769066 Margaret Talbot, a journalist for The New Yorker, recalled speaking with Bridgers after she had played a show with Mitski in 2016. Talbot recalls Bridgers admiration for Mitski and the “weirdness of the creative choices that Mitski seems to make so confidently,” going on to describe how the audience at Mitski's performance were "rapt with attention." Bridgers goes on to express how "Mitski was playing solo, and the music was like this ethereal music from another dimension.” 
From this recount, we can clearly discern the way in which Bridgers admires Mitski's quiet confidence and is influenced by her artistic values.]]> 2023-10-08 01:20:49 UTC https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2736769066 1031516_1_2 https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2736921952 In an interview with The A.V Club, Mitski (2016) names Reznikoff as one of the driving forces influencing her lyric and poetry writing stating "In my writing, I try to…create a striking image in people’s brains. I think Reznikoff just does it so well." What both Mitski and Reznikoff share in common with their writing is how they are short yet highly emotional. Mitski goes on to describe how Reznikoff has taught her that "you have a very, very short span time where you not only have people’s attention...so it becomes so vital to be very precise and make sure people get the image right away." This concept of short, evocative lyricism is evident in Mitski's work, particularly found in the choruses of songs such as Nobody, I Want You, and Cop Car.
Reznikoff's work was often described as being deeply ingrained in personal tradition and history while simultaneously utilizing the depersonalization of experimentalism and modernism to explore the meaning of experience (Davidson, 2011). The same can be said of Mitski's lyricism which often makes reference to her experiences as a Japanese-American (Strawberry Blond, First Love/Late Spring, Your Best American Girl) while at the same time creating an emotional sphere disconnected from the physical world.]]> 2023-10-08 09:24:02 UTC https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2736921952 1031516_1_2 https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2736957749 One thing in particular that inspires Bayley's writing process is meeting and listening to the stories of fans and strangers. This is seen in particular in the band's 2016 album How To Be A Human Being which is a collection of songs featuring a variety of characters based on the stories told to them on the road. In an interview with Dujour, Bayley discusses how he began collecting the stories prior to developing the album; "I started recording these stories secretly before I thought it could be an album concept because I thought they were really interesting. I had all these stories on my phone...I sat down and looked back at all the stories and realized I should do something with them."
Each song on the 11-track album features a different character that can also be found on the album's cover. One of the characters I find most fascinating is the story of Mama's Gun (Track 5 on How To Be A Human Being) which as Bayley (2016) recalls in an interview with Pilerats is about a taxi driver who overdosed on crystal meth and blacked out for an entire month before "reawakening" in a strip club. "She has no memory of this time and she strongly thinks that she’s done something absolutely awful...she feels all of this guilt but she’ll never know if something actually happened or not," Bayley recounts. The song has a sample from The Carpenters' 1970 track Mr Guder which links back to the song's themes of mental health (Karen Carpenter died at the young age of 32 due to complications with mental health and anorexia).]]> 2023-10-08 10:41:07 UTC https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2736957749 1031516_1_2 https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2736988033 Another artist that Bayley has cited as a major influence on his artistry is the legendary producer Dr Dre. Bayley (2020) recalls a childhood friend in an interview with The AU Review where he recounts "We discovered a lot of stuff together listening to like Dr. Dre. And that’s definitely where the sonic palette came from." 
Andre Romelle Young, known by his stage name Dr Dre, is well known for his production talent of mixing classic hip-hop and rap with funk samples (Burges, 2014) and his production talent, particularly in the art of sampling is what Bayley draws upon when he himself is in the studio. In an interview with Atwood Magazine, Bayley (2018) discusses some of the more abstract samples he created while working on his 2016 album How To Be A Human Being. For the second track, Bayley says "The main synth sound in “Youth,” that’s an owl I recorded on a voice recorder, and sampled out over a keyboard." 
The band has also used a number of samples from other tracks, such as "Mahlalela" by Letta Mbulu (1970) in their heavily hip-hop-inspired 2019 track Tokyo Drifting which featured prominent American rapper Denzel Curry. Another example of their sampling work is their 2020 track Hot Sugar which features a sample of Little Ann's 2009 track Deep Shadows. Given the apparent prominence of Dre's influence on Bayley growing up, one can make the conclusion that his unique and creative sample use had an impact on the way in which Bayley chooses and incorporates his samples. Furthermore, Bayley has stated before that he used many of the same samplers that prolific producers including Dr Dre have used when working on the band's 2020 album Dreamland (Ginsberg, 2020).

]]> 2023-10-08 11:53:09 UTC https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2736988033 1031516_1_2 https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2736991996 On her website, Bjork has discussed her love for Joni Mitchell and the ways in which she has taken great inspiration from the folk singer. "It is hard to even begin to talk about what Joni Mitchell means to me...In a music-world ruled by males she continues to be the only one...who created an all-female universe with intuition, wisdom, intelligence, craftsmanship, and courage."
Further on, she discusses features of Mitchell sonic craftsmanship that have influenced her own. "Her chord progression is very chromatic and grows like a plant, unpredictable and growing in all different directions (as you all know, she tuned her guitar strings very differently than others)...and there is no space to even go into her lyrics here, which are heavyweight literature, especially in the context of popular music."]]> 2023-10-08 12:02:55 UTC https://padlet.com/1031516_1_2/hncm13qxyccuco28/wish/2736991996