The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Friday, September 13, 2019 — 5

For as long as music streaming 
services have existed, I have resisted 
the call to join them. I’ve argued 
with friends, family and in this 
column that streaming music is bad 
for artists, bad for the consumer and 
bad for listening. In many a long car 
ride I’ve ranted against what I call 
“media socialism”: the idea that no 
individual should purchase songs or 
movies and instead should subscribe 
to an ever growing number of media 
streaming services. The whole thing 
has always made me uncomfortable 
and left me imagining a 1984-esque 
dystopian future in which there 
are only a few conglomerates with 
sole control over the distribution 
of all media. It would be as if there 
were no copies of books outside of 
libraries, and all of the libraries 
were privatized. That future could 
still come to pass and still scares 
me. But after two back to back road 
trips with friends in which Spotify 
was used almost constantly to recall 
practically any song one could 
think of, I began to feel, at long last, 
the allure of the music streaming 
service.
The truth is that sticking to my 
archaic ritual of manually dragging 
songs from my iTunes library to my 
iPhone like it was 2006 has become 
less and less feasible as time has gone 
on. This summer Apple announced 
that they were planning to phase 
out iTunes entirely and while this 
news shocked me at first, when I 
looked around and realized I was 
literally the only person I knew who 
still used the application, it began to 
make a bit more sense.
Faced with the death of iTunes 
and the increasing feeling that I was 
depriving myself of quality listening 
time by having to look up songs on 
YouTube and listen to ear-splitting 
YouTube ads while biking around 
campus, I began to think that joining 
Spotify might not be the worst 

decision I’d ever make. Why had 
I fought against it all these years? 
Was it really because I hated “media 
socialism?” I’d had a Netflix account 
all these years, hadn’t I? It’s not like 
I was buying every song I listened 
to, I was ripping them from CDs or 
YouTube videos. I was nothing more 
than a stubborn hypocrite, too lazy 
to switch from my old ways and 
too stubborn to admit I was wrong 
once I’d committed to the “media 

socialism” bit. I stuck it out with 
my archaic ways out of nothing less 
than ignorance. All these years I’d 
deprived myself of the ability to 
listen to whatever music I wanted, 
whenever I wanted. And at a student 
price of $4.99 a month with Hulu 
included? I must have been truly 
insane to not sign up the day I 
decided to come to Michigan.

So I did it. I got Spotify. I’m one 
of you now. I’ve given in to media 
socialism and allowed myself to 
become just another person in the 
crowd. And within just a few short 
weeks I’ve found myself wondering 
how I ever lived without it. To think 
that I was once concerned with 
storage space on my iPhone and 
whether or not new updates to iTunes 
would mess up my sync settings. I 
mean, Spotify has practically every 
song ever. It’s actually insane. It’s 
amazing what the human brain 
can compartmentalize and twist 
to suit its own purposes. For years 
whenever I heard of Spotify my first 
thought was just “oh, I don’t use 
that,” and I never once considered 
why I didn’t use it, what I was 
missing or if I was making a big 
mistake. But I’ve changed. I’ve fully 
converted to the church of Spotify, 
and never again will I irritate my 
cousins, friends or club members by 
insisting that physical media is the 
only true path.
And yet there is still something. 
A vague discomfort that I barely 
acknowledge, save in that liminal 
space between waking and sleeping. 
Perhaps my intuitions were correct, 
perhaps Spotify is in fact the work 
of the corporate devil, designed 
to entice and entrap. Or perhaps 
I’ve simply spent so long decrying 
it that I’m experiencing cognitive 
dissonance now that I’ve joined. I 
listened to Spotify the entire time 
I wrote this article. They say that 
absolute power corrupts absolutely. 
They also say that human beings 
struggle to choose when faced with 
a multitude of choices. In this new 
media landscape, where any song, 
film, or television episode ever made 
is accessible to us at every minute 
and every moment of every day, 
do we still appreciate art the way 
we once did? In gaining access to 
everything, have we lost something 
along the way? I wonder about this, 
and so many other things, and then 
I go ahead and add a few more songs 
to my queue.

Ian Harris: It took years, but
I have been seduced by Spotify

ROY / EMPIRE

ENTERTAINMENT COLUMN

Roy Blair wants his new EP Graffiti 
in the hands of Timothée Chalamet. 
Quite literally, there is no better 
project 
for 
Chalamet’s 
personal 
narrative. Blair’s second track on the 
EP, “Franzia,” fuses synth-pop with 
an electronic dance beat that creates 
an aura that I would call the “Study 
Abroad in France” space. Graffiti 
launches listeners into the auditory 
equivalent of taking transcendental 
humanities classes while Timothee 
Chalamet invites you to fall in love 
with 
the 
French 
electro-dance 
clubbing scene. Blair is a young 
heartthrob (despite his claims about 
having a punchable face) and with 
Graffiti he has shed his sprightly skin, 
evolving into a detailed-focused artist 
who wants to make music and then 
disappear. The Chalamet bells are 
RINGING. 
Lime green is Blair’s choice for his 
newest hair color and for Graffiti’s 
cover art; the electricity of lime 
perfectly matches Blair’s emergence 
into a fusion of synth-pop electronic 

rap. The lime green visualizes a 
phoenix mentality, a new flair for crazy 
syncopation and impressive synths. 
Graffiti follows Blair’s debut coming-
of-age album: Cat Heaven, which Blair 
released when he was 20 (he is now 
22) in an ode to his cat, Gary, who 
passed. Cat Heaven was a DIY project 
known for its nostalgic happiness 
and 
appealing, 
melodious 
raps, 
which allowed Blair to score a spot 
as Kevin Abstract’s opener. Graffiti 
launches Blair out of the fresh-faced 
cat mourning phase and into elevated 
lyricism with more tricky, embedded 
meaning. These lyrics flourish with 
the support of producers Slaters and 
Sasha Daze, who effectively drag 
Blair out of his bedroom rap and into 
Pharrell-inspired production. 
Graffiti fires up interest in its 
impeccable 
production, 
but 
falls 
in its lack of cohesiveness, which 
is to be expected in a 3 track EP 
preceding a full sophomore album (to 
be released in 2020). The production 
flows seamlessly among the tracks, 
but their themes seem to ping-pong 
with personal identity quarrels and 
ills of relationships. That being said, 

the atmosphere created is gripping 
in every sense — it seems to move 
effortlessly between clubs, liquid 
and solitary confinement. The track 
“I Don’t Know About Him” uses off-
beat rhythmic stresses to unsettle 
the listener, creating a dull feeling of 
standing in line, waiting for something 
a tad too long. The track closes with 
the glory of what seems to be an angel 
playing the piano underwater. The 
dance scene track “Franzia” is the sort 
of song that bounces back and forth 
from your right headphone to your 
left headphone with a high pitched 
autotune that resembles the mocking 
SpongeBob meme where EVerYtHinG 
SoUNdS LiKe tHiS, a voice-cracking 
that embodies vulnerability in every 
sense.

Stay awake for Roy Blair’s
electro-rap fusion ‘Graffiti’

FILM NOTEBOOK

SAMANTHA CANTIE
Daily Arts Writer

The main purpose of “After the 
Wedding” is to be a showcase for 
its three principal actors, veterans 
Billy 
Crudup 
(“Where’d 
You 
Go 
Bernadette”), Julianne Moore (“Bel 
Canto”) 
and 
Michelle 
Williams 
(“Venom”). Williams plays Isabelle, 
an 
American 
ex-pat 
running 
an 
orphanage in India who travels to 
New York seeking funding from 
the wealthy entrepreneur Theresa, 
played by Moore. Isabelle is invited 
to Theresa’s daughter’s wedding, and 
a flurry of secrets and family drama 
unfold 
in 
the 
ensuing 
weekend. 
Theresa’s 
husband 
(played 
by 
Crudup) turns out to be an old flame 
of Isabelle’s. At the wedding, Isabelle 
discovers that the young woman 
getting married is in fact her and 
Oscar’s daughter, who she believed 
she had given up for adoption over 20 
years ago.

The premise is intriguing, and 
the actors all have enormous talent 
and impressive resumes. The film 
has all the hallmarks of a prestige 
drama, the kind that crackles with 
tension 
and 
brilliantly 
rendered 

screaming matches. And yet, despite 
the juiciness of the conceit and the 
caliber of the actors anchoring the 
piece, absolutely nothing in this film 
captures the attention or imagination 
of the audience.
“After the Wedding” takes its 
time — or rather, it takes too much 
time. It stretches languorously like 
a cat, puttering around aimlessly 
from toothless scene to toothless 
scene. It’s a film about uber-wealthy 
people who have sprawling estates 
just outside Manhattan and work in 
glass offices on the 40th floors of 
skyscrapers. There’s a minor tension 
between Isabelle’s discomfort with 
the grandeur of Theresa and Oscar’s 
life and the casualness with which 
they spend money on hotel suites 
and wedding meals. But ultimately, 
the film relaxes into the opulence. 
I’d estimate a third of the runtime is 
spent with the camera slowly roaming 
the halls of its sets, lingering on 
the gorgeous kitchens and massive 
sofas with all the subtlety and 
emotional resonance of a Pottery 
Barn commercial. The remaining two 
thirds of the film are spent watching 
people we are given no reason to care 
about tearfully clutching shawls to 
their chest and arguing their way 
through their complicated situation 
with dialogue that’s as clunky and 
sparsely written as the characters 
themselves.
The problem at the heart of the 
film isn’t that the story is fragile 
(though it is), or that the characters 
are thin and poorly rendered (though 
they are). The problem is that “After 
the Wedding” is bad in the worst 
possible way a piece of media can be 
bad: it’s bland and inoffensive. It’s 
milquetoast, airy, completely free of 
any identity, substance or personality. 
It was a deeply unpleasant viewing 
experience, but not the kind of 
unpleasant that’s at all interesting 
to unpack or provides any kind of 
insight into what makes films tick. 
It simply fails at creating stakes, 
tension or compelling characters. The 
result is a movie that clocks in at just 
under two hours but feels like it lasts 
anywhere between seven and nine. 
But who knows? “After the Wedding” 
could very well find a new audience 
out of theaters — perhaps it simply 
can’t fill the dramatic demands of a 
big screen. Maybe it will find a new 
life being watched by half-asleep 
passengers on planes, or filling a mid-
afternoon time slot on TV, playing in 
the background while people clean 
their houses. Maybe that’s where it 

‘After the Wedding’ is
absolutely middling

ASIF BECHER
Daily Arts Writer

IAN HARRIS
Daily Entertainment Columnist

So I did it. I 
got Spotify. I’m 
one of you now. 
I’ve given in 
completely to 
media socialism 
and allowed 
myself to become 
just another 
person in the 
crowd

Graffiti

Roy Blair

ROY / EMPIRE

SONY PICTURES CLASSIC

After the Wedding

Michigan Theater

Sony Pictures Classic

The problem is 
that “After the 
Wedding” is 
bad in the worst 
possible way a 
piece of media can 
be bad: it’s bland 
and inoffensive. 
It’s milquetoast, 
airy, completely 
free of any identity, 
substance or 
personality

FILM REVIEW

YOUTUBE

