Phoenix: Entertainment

  What have I been excited about recently? Many things, but one of them is that the French band Phoenix is coming out with a brand new album this year. Here's where you're all, "A French band with a weird name? What?" And this is where I say, you remember them, I swear (you should at least). First lets rewind the clock by four years to 2009. During that year you most assuredly heard either 1901, Girlfriend, Lisztomania, or one of the other songs off of Phoenix's album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. Those songs were everywhere! In Superbowl commercials, in movies, on the radio nonstop, blasting from the boombox of that one guy who still carries a boombox. I mean WAP wasn't the first time that Phoenix has been in the spotlight, but they were pretty ubiquitous in 2009. Which was fine since they make fun, good music in my opinion. They even won Best Alternative album at the Grammys that year.

   The new album will be called Bankrupt! and the first single that has been released is named Entertainment. The song starts with an intro full of synths that sounds right out of a kung-fu movie. There's a pause, a musical deep breath, then boom: the guitars and drums come in. The lyrics are tinged with melancholy. I think the lyrics can be interpreted in two ways: either as a reflection of the band's explosion of success, being caught in the limelight without a way back to what they had before, or a commentary on how with nearly infinite channels and means of entertainment it has become quite difficult to separate and detach from it all. Really though, on a daily, nay, hourly, or even moment to moment basis we are bombarded by different forms of entertainment, whether music, television, computers, internet, phones, and everything that comes in between. The refrain through the song that echoes these sentiments goes, "I'd rather be alone".

   There's a full music video for the single as well and it is crazy and epic and wonderful. It seems as if its is a music video sewn together from a variety of K-Pop videos, but this is not the the case. Give it a watch.

Phoenix
Entertainment