u/Ghost-Quartet

Now that it's Halloween season it's time to bring ban an annual-ish tradition of mine, which is attempting to mine the world of existing music for new Halloween songs.

As I do every year, I must pay homage to mother of all things Ava Max who inspired this topic with the release of A Sweet But Psycho Halloween, her seminal low-effort compilation EP that is just a bunch of her hits + "Take You To Hell" which is stupid because she actually DOES have the material for a very good Halloween EP.

• Take You To Hell

• Sweet But Psycho

• Belladonna

• Freaking Me Out - Bingo Players Remix

• Ghost - Merk & Kremont Remix

• Blood, Sweat & Tears

• Dancing's Done

But I'm sure Ava's not the only one with the juice to put something like this together. Can you mine the discography of your favorite artist and cobble together a Halloween themed EP?

What makes you choose those particular songs- the lyrics? The sound? Dig deep!

I think that the thing about "generic" is that it's something that really only emerges at a distance, because the closer you get to something, the more you can pick up on the little details and textures that make it unique. Someone who's unfamiliar with an artist might write them off based off of their hits, but a dedicated fan who is familiar with that artist's discography could have a completely different opinion.

For example, I think Ava Max got a lot of criticism for her music lacking a specific perspective/identity, especially since a lot of her biggest hits sampled/interpolated already famous songs.

But if you listen to her music closely, she actually has a rather unexpected dark streak to her (lots of songs about darkness and killing, and multiple about ghosts) and she's really into DRAMA in a way a lot of her peers aren't. In the music video for "Torn" she casts herself as a superhero and a lot of her songs seem to come from that kind of perspective, portraying life as a high-octane fight that she's battling through.

So with this in mind, let's discuss:

1. Pick an artist you are a fan of who is criticized for being "generic" or "mom pop" or whatever you want to call it, and try to highlight aspects of their artistry that defies this stereotype.

2. Are there unusual themes that they gravitate towards? Musical quirks to their discography/filmography?

3. Pull some songs/videos that help to prove this point to other people.

So I watched American Horror Story: Coven as it was airing (back when I was still a teen) and towards the end of the season, there were some scenes with a random blonde witch- she had never been mentioned before but it was clear from the way these scenes were framed that the audience was supposed to know who she was, and that her appearance on the show was somehow special.

The season finale even started with an extended scene of her spinning around and singing a song I had never heard, and I was just like, why are they making such a big deal about that woman?

"That woman" was Stevie Nicks, who as it turns out is a little bit famous.

This is a situation I actually find myself running into often where I'll encounter some sort of cultural monolith in the wild but have no context for it until I look it up and realize that wait, actually everyone else knew about this but me.

There's no shame in it though because everyone has to learn about stuff somehow, even if it's a bit later than everyone else and in a bit of a stranger way.

Has anyone else ever had a similar experience and discovered something objectively really famous in an unconventional way? No judgement, share your stories below.

So I finally got around to checking out some of Hoàng Thùy Linh's earlier music and I was like uuuuhhhh... what in the Rihannabees is this? Not that her early stuff is bad, but I came into it knowing her as the VPop queen who makes mature electropop blended with traditional Vietnamese sounds, so it was jarring to see her dancing in a warehouse to 2010s EDM.

Every artist is on a journey in their career and sometimes their journey takes them FAR from where they started, to the point where listening to their early work can feel like listening to a completely different person. This isn't necessarily a good thing or a bad thing, but it can be an interesting thing, so let's discuss.

• Who are some artists whose sound/image at the start of their career is completely different from what they'd do later?

• Was it a gradual transition, or a sudden shift?

• Do they stand by their older work? Or are they ashamed of it and try to hide it?

• Which "version" of them do you like more? Was the change a good thing?