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Music Video Mania #16: "You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch" by Lindsey Stirling [Guest/Features #3]
▲ 65 r/SabrinaCarpenterFans

Music Video Mania #16: "You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch" by Lindsey Stirling [Guest/Features #3]

Is it Christmas already? Nope, but time is fake, so (not even for the last time in this project), we're looking at one of Sabrina's holiday songs. "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" was originally composed Theodor Geisel and Albert Hague for the animated 1966 classic How The Grinch Stole Christmas based on the book by Dr. Seuss (known by some as gasp Theodor Geisel), and was originally performed by Thurl Ravenscroft.

Lindsey Stirling is a violinist who is known for doing both original music and covers in a wide variety of genres—classical and film soundtracks, as well as pop and rock and EDM and everything—alongside her choreographed dancing while playing. She competed on America's Got Talent as a "hip-hop violinist," and a few years later she received a lot of acclaim for her cover of Radioactive by Imagine Dragons, which she performed with the a capella group Pentatonix. Stirling's holiday album Warmer in the Winter came out in October 2017, and featured a handful of guest vocalists, including Miss Carpenter on this here song. A year later, the deluxe edition of the album came out, and a month after that, this music video was released.

Come back next week for more Music Video Mania, and stay tuned for when we rank all of the music videos Guest/Feature videos at the end of this month. Polls are still open for all the cycles we've discussed already:

u/tsabin_naberrie — 5 days ago
▲ 27 r/ZaraLarssonFans+1 crossposts

Music Video Mania #15: "WOW (Remix)" by Zara Larsson [Guest/Features #2] PLUS a quick look at Sabrina's Netflix movie "Work It"!

On the MVM of our dear Sabrina's birthday, the lore is gonna run deep, as we look at her collaboration with Zara Larsson. Like Sabrina, Zara has been on the scene for over a decade, and has only recently been properly taking the world by storm, with her 2025 album Midnight Sun (and recent remix edition) as well as her appearance on the remix of PinkPantheress's "Stateside". (There's a lot more that can be said on Zara's recent surgence, but that's for another day.)

This story starts in April 2019, when Zara released her song "WOW." The song officially became a single in August 26, 2020, with a music video on October 22 of that year. "WOW" was the third single of Zara's third album Poster Girl, which came out in May 2021.

However, that's not all that was brewing!

On August 7, 2020—a few weeks before the song officially became a single—Netflix released the movie Work It, starring a former Disney starlet named Sabrina Carpenter, who plays a high school girl named Quinn who tries to start a dance team at school, despite not being all that great at it herself (this movie also gave us her single "Let Me Move You"). Quinn gets help from a talented dancer named Jake (played by Jordan Fisher), with whom—in a shock to absolutely nobody—she develops some chemistry. In a pivotal scene of the movie, Jake gives Quinn an impromptu lesson on how to follow and freestyle in dance, and he selects a rather romantic song for them to dance to: you guessed it, "WOW" by Zara Larsson. You can watch the scene here.

A month or so later, Zara released a remix of the song, featuring a new verse by our very own Sabrina Carpenter! Sabrina had connected with Zara to work on it because she loved the song as a result of incorporating it into the movie (which Sabrina had executive produced as well). At one point, a performance with the two of them aired on the Kelly Clarkson show, but very little survives from that clip. And finally in early October of 2020—still a couple weeks before the regular video released—a music video for the Sabrina remix came out! Like the song itself, this remix uses the original's video while interpolating new footage of Sabrina during her verse.

Discussion questions:

  • If you watched both versions of the music video, how do you compare them? Does Sabrina's footage strengthen it or take away from the original?
  • Which do you prefer: watching Sabrina dance but not sing in the Work It clip, or seeing her extra appearance in the remix video?
  • If you've seen the whole movie, how do you feel about Sabrina's dancing in Work It? How'd you enjoy this particular scene?
  • What are your favorite visual elements of these videos, and how do you feel the footage relates to the themes of the song?

(I keep calling the version without Sabrina "the original video," even though the remix came first and technically is the original in fact.)

These questions are meant to be a jumping off point for potential discussion, but not a restriction. Feel free to share any thoughts you have, as responses to these questions or more organic reactions!

Come back next week for more Music Video Mania, and stay tuned for when we rank all of the music videos Guest/Feature videos at the end of this month. Polls are still open for all the cycles we've discussed already:

u/tsabin_naberrie — 12 days ago
▲ 13 r/Bazzite

I'm a new PC gamer and would like a more console-like experience with controller operations and whatnot—but still able to switch into Desktop when needed, such as for modding and things—so I've been researching Bazzite. I've got a standard gaming PC hooked up to a monitor on my desk, and outside of when I need to use the desktop, use it basically the way I use my Switch or PlayStation. One thing that's tripping me up, though, is the ISO download selection tool.

The HTPC option (apparently also called "Bazzite-Deck") seems like the correct route for my purposes, but I've noticed that if you select the Desktop option, it then adds the prompt about if you want Steam Gaming Mode. The explanation again mentions HTPCs, and takes you to the page about Bazzite-Deck. So I'm just confused, and haven't been able to parse out a difference after spending some time searching around trying to find info on the matter.

So, is there a difference between selecting HTPC compared to selecting Desktop with Steam Gaming Mode, or does it not really matter? Any recommendations one way or another?

(As an aside… I know next to nothing about Linux and couldn't really grasp what the deal with GNOME and KDE is, but given the comparison to SteamOS, does it make more sense to just go with the KDE option?)

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u/tsabin_naberrie — 18 days ago
▲ 21 r/SabrinaCarpenterFans

The first feature that we are highlighting! "First Love" by DJ duo Lost Kings was released in October 2017, and became part of their EP We Are Lost Kings which came out in September 2019. Sabrina provides the vocals in this track.

Discussion questions:

  • How do you relate the footage of this video to the theme of the song?
  • What are your favorite visual elements of this music video?

These questions are meant to be a jumping off point for potential discussion, but not a restriction. Feel free to share any thoughts you have, as responses to these questions or more organic reactions!

Come back next week for more Music Video Mania, and stay tuned for when we rank all of the music videos Guest/Feature videos at the end of this month. Polls are still open for all the cycles we've discussed already:

u/tsabin_naberrie — 19 days ago
▲ 36 r/SabrinaCarpenterFans

It's that time again! We've spent the last few weeks looking at Short n' Sweet, so it's time to rank each of its videos! You can check out the previous discussions here:

Cast your votes here: https://strawpoll.com/w4nWW0a1dnA

And of course, remember that we are ranking the videos, not the songs.

Note: the form asks for your name, but please give your Reddit username, not your human life name!

Feel free to share any other thoughts you've had about the music videos of this era as a whole, and stay tuned next week for more Music Video Mania, when we take a look at the times she was a Guest or Feature in someone else's song/video! And if you haven't yet, there's still time to rank the EICS videos and the EWO videos!

u/tsabin_naberrie — 22 days ago
▲ 222 r/popheads

Not all artists have them! But some definitely have recurring themes across not just an album but throughout their career, or at least significant chunks of it. So I'm curious which artists have an overarching motif that can be distilled into a single line or couplet that they've written. Obviously not intending to be their entire thesis statement, but still serving in that role because it sums up so much of what they've sung.

For the sake of the argument, when I say "whole career" I don't mean every single song, of course, and it doesn't even necessarily have to be present on each and every album. Especially so for artists who've made a major career change at some point that notably affected the writing of their music (an example of that being artists like Sabrina, who had more restrictions when working under Disney, and got more creative freedom later on in their careers), though incorporating elements from across that range certainly is more compelling. But if someone has been on the scene for over a decade, with a whole bunch of albums, then only considering their last few consecutive albums isn't necessarily representative of their whole discography. Especially a lyric from a song more in the middle of their career, it should be both reflective of what they'd written prior to that, but also inadvertently anticipate what they wrote in later songs. A particular point that they've frequently returned to over the years.

(Also, bonus points if you pick lyrics from songs that are not album openers or closers!)

So, curious to hear about unofficial theses and how they fit into their artists' corpi. And of course, why they work in that regard.

Some examples that have come to mind:

  • Taylor Swift: "Love is a ruthless game unless you play it good and right" from State of Grace (Red, 2012). Given the lyric's position within the album—part of the bridge and then the outro, it's the last lyric of the song, which is the first on the album—I've long felt that it was meant to serve as the album's thesis statement. But I do think this fits as the throughline for so much of her music. She's not exactly unique in writing about the struggles of finding and keeping love; it's been a well-trodden topic for millennia. But it's very much been a focal point for Taylor, since the very beginning, and since Red she has still so often examined the myriad ways it can go wrong—and on occasion, and at last most recently, go right. That lyric is a very succinct way of describing the various experiences she's explored throughout her love songs and her heartbreak songs, and could theoretically fit anywhere in her discography.
  • Coldplay: "Got to keep dancing when the lights go out" from Everyday Life (Everyday Life, 2019). Honestly, this one was really hard to pick, because they've got a whole lot of great lyrics that touch on this topic and the competition was tough. A major recurring theme for Coldplay has been finding hope in bleak times, and seeing the light when you only feel the dark. Admittedly, I do think this theme is more present in the last decade or so, compared to the 15 years priors, but it's something we definitely see in earlier music (such as "God Put a Smile Upon Your Face" back in 2002). They don't deny the struggles out there—personal struggles, or more global ones—but their songs have always maintained a certain optimism that Things Can Be Better if you both believe and work toward making it actually happen.

^(There's a contrapositive to this question, along the lines of "Who's an artist that just doesn't have a clear theme or worldview across their music?" which could be its own discussion. But that's a post for another day, and probably another user.)

reddit.com
u/tsabin_naberrie — 23 days ago
▲ 14 r/SabrinaCarpenterFans

Two weeks ago we looked at the original "Please Please Please" and now we look at its successor. The music video was released alongside the release of the deluxe edition of Short n' Sweet, about half a year after the album came and the most recent video came out. In that time, Ms. Carpenter may or may not have undergone some developments in personal life, which, given certain creative choices of the original music video, may or may not have affected the direction of the remix's video.

Discussion questions:

  • Considering just the videos, do you prefer the original PPP music video or this one?
  • What sort of hijinks do you think Sabrina and Dolly have gone on, and where do you think they're going next?
  • What are your favorite visual elements of this video?

These questions are meant to be a jumping off point for potential discussion, but not a restriction. Feel free to share any thoughts you have, as responses to these questions or more organic reactions!

Come back next week for more Music Video Mania, and stay tuned for when we rank all of the music videos from Short n' Sweet THIS FRIDAY! The poll for Emails I Can't Send is still up, as well as the poll for Eyes Wide Open, if you still haven't voted!

u/tsabin_naberrie — 26 days ago