2015’s era of bright, side- swept hair and Tumblr edginess is embodied in one famous figure: Halsey. Rising to extreme stardom with the release of her fantastical debut album, BADLANDS, she became a voice that many angsty teenagers clung to. Her music created an alternate reality, BADLANDS existing as a fake universe for teenage fans to get lost in. Her distinctive, almost warbling vocals have garnered both praise and criticism, especially since she has become more “mainstream.” In 2017, her album hopeless fountain youth channeled more of the radio-hit sound that she had avoided earlier in her career. Many fans started to lose interest, mostly since hopeless fountain youth was an album that attempted to maintain that “alternate universe” aura but didn’t have that unique sound that many attributed to Halsey. With her 2020 release, Manic, Halsey has ditched the mystical, imaginative concepts for a much more raw and grounded album. The songs sound hardly like anything you could find on her early releases. The album is chock full of ballads and deep-cuts, the majority of songs devoid of the heavily electronified instrumentals that reigned on BADLANDS. In a sense, the album is a maturation of the singer’s first album which she wrote when she was 19. Now 25, Halsey has had more than half a decade of experience in the spotlight and the music industry in general, all of which is evident on Manic. While the subject matter and the actual sound of each individual song shows a lot of growth, the album as a whole doesn’t quite hit the mark. Unfortunately, the album falls short through its lack of unity. Songs like “Without You”, (a single obviously written for radio play) and “I HATE EVERYBODY” just seem so remarkably out of place among the songs that actually tell a story. The presence of these uber-pop, very shallow songs automatically discredits so much of what was really well-done on the record. These types of tracks would have worked on the singer’s earlier work, as the entire feel of those albums benefited from some bouncy, easy-listening songs. Manic’s purpose, from Halsey’s own words, is meant to be a personal record, channeling the real person behind Halsey: Ashley Frangipane. While her attempts to do this are clear, the execution isn’t exactly successful. There are snippets of passion and intentful songwriting. Highlights like “Finally// beautiful stranger” and “929” show a side of her that the world hasn’t seen before — significantly more introspective than her older work, these tracks sound like Halsey’s personal confessions. Since her 2015 album, she has been in two high-profile relationships, one with rapper G-Eazy and another with Yungblud. Many of the slower songs show the real side of these relationships as well as their endings. It’s the first time Halsey seems to have dealt with these topics with a great sense of maturity. An album like this, while flawed and a bit all over the place, bodes well for Halsey’s future career. Across her discography, her intellectual growth is evident to anyone listening. Manic may not be Halsey’s apex, but it certainly shows a big step in the right direction. The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com Arts Monday, January 27, 2020 — 5A Halsey’s deep cuts are a letdown on new release CAPITOL RECORDS GIGI CIULLA Daily Arts Writer The year is 2020 and Eminem is still hell-bent on retroactively tainting his musical legacy with garbage records. The last couple years have seen tasteless lyrics tinged in homophobia and sexism, immature lash- outs against detractors and unrelenting negativity directed at other rappers and celebrities. On his newest record, surprise released on Jan. 17, the legendary best-selling rapper is once again victimizing himself line after unnecessarily edgy line. And predictably so. Music To be Murdered By is far more tolerable than his offensively unlistenable 2017 record Revival. Most of the instrumentation is a lot more palatable. “You Gon’ Learn” is the highlight with its jittery percussion and wavering, pitched background vocals. “Lock It Up” sounds kind of like a 14-year-old’s first trap beat cooked up on a pirated copy of FL Studio, and it’s almost endearing. Royce Da 5’9” is featured on three tracks, which means three guaranteed breaths of fresh air in which I don’t have to listen to Eminem whining. When it comes down to it though, most of the usual modern era Marshall Mathers missteps are in full effect. I did a little chuckle and sigh when I saw Ed Sheeran and Skylar Grey on the tracklist — oh, Eminem, will you ever learn? — But I could not stop laughing through album opener “Premonition - Intro.” If someone asked me what would be the absolute worst way to open a hypothetical Eminem surprise album, I would have replied with, “An intro track where he complains about his ratings and attacks his critics.” Lo and behold. Wasting features on mediocre tracks is a violation of the hip- hop honor code, and Eminem is in flagrant transgression of the law. How does he sleep at night after putting hip-hop legends like Black Thought and Q-Tip on a beat as ear-grating as “Yah Yah”? I’m disappointed that Busta Rhymes’s iconic ’96 single “Woo Hah!! Got You All In Check” will now forever be associated with the awfully executed vocal sample on “Yah Yah.” But that’s not his worst offense on the tracklist. Eminem’s greatest crime was somehow convincing millions of people that the speedy- quick-rappity-rap bullshit from the last minute of “Godzilla” is remotely enjoyable. How it has 50 million listens on Spotify is beyond me — syllables per second will never be a meaningful metric in assessing the quality of a song. It’s a shame because the beat has contagious concert energy and the late Juice WRLD’s hook is heat. It would be playlistable as hell if Vince Staples was rapping over it instead. Corny writing is a plague that puts the album on its deathbed. I don’t know where the idea came from that good writing is equivalent to squeezing multiple meanings into a shitty metaphor. Hip hop would be a pitiful sport if double entendres won trophies. I think when Eminem says “I’m coming after you like the letter V,” he wants my mind to be blown when I realize he could be referring to the order of the letters “U” and “V” in the alphabet or the titular character from “V For Vendetta.” To me, that’s the rap game equivalent of sending your Tinder match a poem where the first letter of each line spells out “SEND NUDES.” This “multiple interpretations” writing style is stale throughout the entire album, save for one creative application on the track “Darkness.” The point- of-view imperceptibly shifts between Eminem’s own inner hysteria before a concert, and the perspective of Las Vegas massacre shooter Stephen Paddock. The crestfallen piano melody is a perfectly moody backdrop that lets Eminem’s narrative take the spotlight, and the hook is Eminem’s best in years. Even the “Hello darkness, my old friend” sample — lifted from Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” — makes for a pretty smooth motif, despite the line being memed to death thanks to Arrested Development. The track is the closest thing to a success Eminem has on the whole record, but it’s not quite there. It’s just too unsettling and off-kilter. The long-winded parallel between a nervous Eminem and a mass murderer of very recent memory leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and the audio clips of a mass shooting are discomforting even in the context of the song. The music video may end with a call to action for gun control, but the rest of the song doesn’t add up to that message. Music To Be Murdered By doubles down on Eminem’s decade-long commitment to making bad music. His childish insistence that he’s “murdering” people with his “killer” lyrics is down-right pathetic. In a cringe-inducing Instagram post, Eminem writes to his critics, “These bars are only meant for the sharpest knives in the drawer … For the rest of you, please listen more closely next time.” Apparently if you don’t like Eminem’s new music, then this album was a big fat roast, and if you couldn’t tell that you just got #destroyed, then you’re too dumb and you just didn’t get it. His obsession with getting positive critical response to his music is at odds with his persistent wailing that his critics are unwoke and unintelligent. Don’t even get me started on Ebro’s embarrassing tweet comparing Eminem’s supposed lack of respect to being Black. Please just kill me already, because Music To Be Murdered By doesn’t live up to its title. A (shitty) surprise from Eminem: His new album ALBUM REVIEW ALBUM REVIEW DYLAN YONO Daily Arts Writer WIKIMEDIA COMMONS “The Gimmicks” is set against the backdrop of the Armenian genocide; it follows the journey of two inseparable friends — brothers, really — who embark on two wildly different paths. One brother, the reclusive and, frankly, one- dimensional Ruben, is obsessed with righting the wrongs of the Turkish denial of the genocide, and joins the guerilla-terrorist organization The Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA). The other brother, the massive, unibrowed and personable Avo, leaves for America to try to help Ruben before he recognizes his toxicity, deciding then to pursue a short professional wrestling career to try to get back to his teenage sweetheart, Mina, in Armenia. However, the central plot revolves around what happens between the years that Avo leaves for America in the late ‘70s and the 1989 search that Avo’s former wrestling manager, Terry Krill, embarks on a journey to find Avo after losing contact with him in 1980. It soon becomes apparent that no one has heard anything of Avo’s whereabouts for years, and the novel’s focus is to fill in the intervening years of Avo’s life, slowly unraveling the truth of what happened, why he left and where he is now. Using this framework, McCormick crafts alluring characters, paints a heart- wrenchingly vivid portrait of the scars that history can leave and questions the different ways we can express our national identities. The passages dealing with these elements and ideas exemplify “The Gimmicks” at its most powerful. McCormick deftly establishes Avo as a sympathetic character, and by placing him at the center of an unresolved history, McCormick gives the reader the fearful anticipation and curiosity that Krill and others searching for Avo feel. The book gradually unravels the enigma surrounding a character that the reader becomes emotionally invested in, and adds excitement to the prospect of the tendrils of time frames stretching to meet each other, and thus fill in the missing history. The truth seems painfully just out of reach, which endears the reader to the characters all the more so. In contrast to Avo, Ruben and his juxtaposition against his brother sow unease in the reader, as the truth unravels and the reader can be no more than a passive spectator to the self-destructive vortex of Ruben’s personality and radicalism. He reminds the reader of a family member who is always just out of reach, slowly drifting away and hopelessly sabotaging the lives of those in close proximity. All you can do is watch and shake your head. To this capacity, Ruben is an effective plot device. But while the book bills Ruben as a main character in its blurb, Ruben ends up being relegated to the sidelines as a sinister and abstract force that the reader might end up loathing. As effectively as McCormick uses Ruben as a source of conflict and disruption, what results is an unlikeable caricature. Later in the novel, when McCormick attempts to provide insight into Ruben’s state of mind, it is too late: His role as a toxic influence was solidified early on, and whatever kinship Avo ever felt toward Ruben becomes more elusive and confusing to the reader. In spite of Ruben, though, McCormick is still able to deliver a somber and poignant character- focused narrative. However, he mismanages the plot resolutions, and the unfulfilling conclusions bogged this novel down. The resolution to Avo’s story arc in particular undercut the entire narrative that led up to it, mostly because there was an absence of a resolution. The reader is presented the fundamental facts and narrative of what happened in those missing years, but McCormick doesn’t explore what these truths actually mean, and, more importantly, why the reader should even care. Ultimately the novel ended where it began, with all of the damage, harm and conflict that was revealed over the course of the novel never being addressed, or redressed, for that matter. The journey to reaching the truth is rendered cheap, and becomes a trivial exercise in curiosity; especially telling are the conclusions reached by those trying to find Avo. For an entire book’s worth of earnest searching and uprooting of characters, the truth doesn’t end up having any significant impact, and one begins to wonder why such an effort was made to skirt around the solution to begin with, aside for the sake of narrative power. The plot ends up feeling unfinished, and the lack of satisfying closure renders the 400 pages of buildup moot. Terry Krill, whom the reader is supposed to project themselves onto as an outside party looking for answers, ends up in the same place as the reader, but somehow with even less of a resolution. While this can be an effective strategy to accentuate a story’s poignancy and bittersweetness, Krill seems content without the resolution that he spent a long and emotionally draining investigative process trying to find; this does not sit well with the reader. With such a powerful buildup, “The Gimmicks” conclusion was incredibly confusing on an emotional level. This distress I felt raised interesting questions, though. Should a book that meditates on the Armenian Genocide, extremism, obsession and history-denial have a fulfilling or satisfying ending? More importantly, isn’t the frustration and futility of the novel’s resolution emblematic of how we can do nothing to undo the atrocities of the past, aside from continuing forward? I will continue to wrestle with those questions, and as I do, though I am ultimately dissatisfied with the novel, I continue to ponder the relationships we have with history, and if “The Gimmicks” can provide insight into the nature of those relationships. Novel set amid Armenian genocide cheapens itself TATE LEFRENIER For the Daily Maniac Halsey Capitol Records ALBUM REVIEW ALBUM REVIEW Music to be Murdered By Eminem Shady/Aftermath/ Interscope Records BOOK REVIEW The Gimmicks Chris McCormick Harper Jan. 7, 2020