Most of these "chill-wave" albums --- nostalgia-driven 21st century new wave --- start off great and then get boring after 4 or 5 songs. They sound cheesy in concept, but it's hard not to like the songs if you ignore the song titles. I was never into all the crap the 80's offered; RAMBO, POLICE ACADEMY, etc. etc...hair metal is OK, most of it is so shallow, I liked it more when I was a pre-teen and early teenager even though I've always been "deep" compared to my peers. I mainly like a lot of the synth based 80's music, like "Take On Me" by A-Ha, HEARTBREAK CITY-era The Cars (the bulk of their 1985 overview THE CARS' GREATEST HITS is a blast)...there's a lot of music in the '80's that is synth based I don't like. Some of that I liked a lot more before I came to Christ. Berlin's "Take My Breath Away" is just too slow and simplistic, even though it's obviously a bonafide classic; some people ***really*** like that song. It's never been a favorite of mine. I eagerly await a more useful spending of my time when it comes on Pandora, since I keep creating stations hoping to find a blend of music that actually represents the song(s) that I selected as a jumpstart to the station. They say "pick your favorite song or artist". I don't have a favorite artist. "Losing Your Memory" by Ryan Star is probably my favorite song, but I select that and it ends up a big mess of Coldplay like stuff, some of it IS Coldplay, which in and of itself is not a bad thing, they had some killer stuff in the early and mid-2000s, but nothing that compares with the likes of the station seed in question. It just irks me that they never play anything from prior to 2001 when I select that song. Personally I think the Billy Joel remake of that old song "And So It Goes" has a lot more in common with R.S.'s "Losing Your Memory" than most of this piano-jangle pop or whatever you call it. I always have to skip almost a dozen songs because it's largely stuff I've heard way more times than I ever needed to. The Fray's "How To Save A Life" -- and all the other 11 songs on that album -- are nothing new to me. The Fray's 2nd album onward is mostly garbage songs with a few OK songs mixed in. They NEVER played "And So It Goes". I've used "losing your memory" as a station seed alongside other custom radio jumpstarters but never did it cause Pandora to play "and so it goes" --- neither the original from the '50s or whenever that was (don't remember the name of the group) nor the Billy Joel re-make. Heck, I never even heard them play anything else of similar caliber and quality by Billy Joel. He had some killer songs on his "GHv3" from 1997 that covered his later years before he apparently quit making music unless you count live recordings as "making music". I think "The Downeastern Alexa" or "Shameless" would go great. I think one time I heard Imogen Heap's "Hide And Seek" on a station that I used "LYM" as a station seed after like the dozenth attempt. idk. That would have been the most obvious choice as a song you play on a station named after that great Ryan Star song.
Anyway...I don't know what I'm typing about. Music I don't like? idk.
Most of the chill-wave albums are not available physically. I did find one by a band called Gunship, which is probably the most boring chill wave album I've heard as of yet. Amazon is selling it for $18 and some change + tax. You can get it a little cheaper from their marketplace sellers. The lowest prices are like $15 apprx when you factor in s/h. Amazon offers free s/h, but if you opt out of that you have to pay $4 on top of the $20apprx (it might be slightly less depending on your local tax or if Amazon has a warehouse in your state. When I was living in Missouri through 2015, I didn't have to pay tax on Amazon LLC orders, although there were some marketplace sellers that shipped from Missouri who Amazon's system automatically added tax to items I thought about ordering from those sellers.....) I was considering ordering that Gunship CD b/c I had a real cool typically chill-wave cover, but it's in no way worth $15++. I'd rather wait for ATLAS by FM-84 to come on CD or vinyl than buy a mediocre chill wave album on CD. ATLAS isn't consistently riveting either, but it's better than CHROME BURNING by Mitch Murder, which I got done listening to 8 songs of this morning and found myself rather bored by that 8th song and the one preceding it.
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