Strictly Alright

I don’t know if it’s absolute proof that TED is bunk and all but it’s telling that their local affiliate here has opened applications for students. Putting aside the non-quality of their presentations for a second, isn’t their whole deal that they want to introduce ideas that enrich and improve our lives? Isn’t the whole deal of education to teach ideas that enrich and improve our lives? You would think that TED would wholeheartedly take in students, no application necessary. After all, students are busy enough as is and as the stereotype goes, us youngs are an apathetic people so if we want to participate in a program like this, what’s the harm? Instead, they feel the need to make it (more) difficult to be included in all of this and to put their arbitrary and questionable selection process on a group that could ostensibly benefit the most from these talks.

But on second thought, no one, student or not, should have to endure a TED Talk in reality. Fuck those guys.

• I may be making assumptions about the movie’s target audience but fuck it, props to T-Bone Burnett for grabbing a group of artists that steer clear of that audience’s market (save T. Swift and I dunno, Kid Cudi). The sound of this album is, for the majority of it, more No Depression than Seventeen magazine, save that second Taylor Swift song that’s sans Civil Wars (also arguably the worst song on the album). I’d have no problem if it was the latter, but the former fits more with the movie’s aesthetic.
• No, I didn’t say that the Maroon 5 song on this is the best song on the album, what are you talking about. Seriously though, for the second time in that band’s career, someone has made Adam Levine bearable. I don’t know if it’s because he sounds restrained and doesn’t sound like he’s singing against the song like he usually does or because he’s been shoehorned into the the album’s aesthetic by Burnett (maybe both!) but yeah, it’s good stuff. Maybe the next Maroon 5 album should be produced by that guy. If the end result sounds like this song, I’d actually give it a shot.
• I even like that Kid Cudi song and I usually hate that guy! Mind you, he’s not rapping on the track, mostly just chanting and moaning about whatever he’s going on about that’s Hunger Games-related over the backing track that sounds like nu-metal slowed down by Quaaludes, and somehow I’ve made it sound like the worst thing ever, but it’s actually not bad, I swear.