Just Jaded Weekly
Written By: Brookyln Poutra
NMM - Billie Eilish, Happier Than Ever
Welcome back to this week's New Music Monday with Jaded Productions! This week, we are talking about the highly anticipated drop by Billie Eilish on July 30th. Billie Eilish released her second album titled ‘Happier Than Ever’, and has already become a massive success and fan favorite.
Billie has been teasing her album for much longer than we even realized. The first snippet that we would get of the album would come in the form of a short film Eilish posted to her Instagram back in May 2020. Billie posted a four minute interlude titled ‘Not My Responsibility’ and it is a visual spine word piece which shows Eilish taking off her clothes while addressing the heavy criticism and body shaming she has received throughout her career. She addresses the negative opinions of others about things like her body and choice of clothing and submerges in a black colored substance to end the video. Eilish has said the words she wrote for this interlude were “some of my favorite words I’ve written.” She says thought provoking things throughout the video and ends it with the statement “if I wear more, if I wear less, who decides what that makes me? What that means? Is my value based only on your perception? Or is your opinion of me not my responsibility?” This short film would end up as a track on her album.
The first single for ‘Happier Than Ever’ was released exactly one year before the full album's release. ‘My future’ was released July 30th, 2020 and was accompanied by an animated music video of Billie Eilish standing in the rain, gazing at the moon until the song switches to an upbeat tempo and shows Eilish’s world getting sunny again. The video was directed by Andrew Onorato and produced by an Australian animation company called Studio Chop, and the song peaked at number six on the US Billboard Hot 100.
The rest of the promotional singles released over the course of 2020 and 2021 all reached the Top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100. ‘Therefore I Am’ peaked at number two, ‘Your Power’ peaked at number ten, ‘Lost Cause’ peaked at number twenty-seven, and ‘NDA’ peaked at number thirty-seven. All of the singles featured a music video directed by Billie Eilish herself.
The album’s title comes from the song ‘Happier Than Ever’ which was first previewed in Billie Eilish’s 2021 AppleTV film titled ‘Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry’. The song started as a few second clip of Billie and her brother, Finneas, sitting on a bed recording a voice memo of them singing the first few lines of the song. The world and Billie fandom fell in love with that short clip, and were elated to find out the song would be the title track for her sophomore album. The song starts out as a soft ballad with Billie singing about how when she’s away from her significant other, she’s happier than ever, but the song takes a turn halfway through. The song turns into a pop rock song filled with Eilish’s screams and angry lyrics about the time she spent in a toxic relationship. The song was accompanied with a music video, also directed by Eilish, and she has repeatedly stated that this music video is her favorite that she has ever made. She took to her Instagram to announce the release of her music video by saying “AHHHHHHHH SO SO PROUD OF THIS I CANT WAIT FOR YOU TO SEE IT JCJSMCJSILDMCJAJKAKABDHSJAHDHAAAAAA best video i’ve ever made”
Luckily for all of the fans that are happier than ever now that Billie has released her album, there’s still more to come. Billie Eilish has partnered with Disney + to present a special concert experience that will be available for streaming on September 3rd. The upcoming concert film titled ‘Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter To Los Angeles’ was made with Gustavo Dudamel, a music and artistic director, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and shot at the Hollywood Bowl.
Eilish will depart on her world tour in February 2022, and she will tour through July. Be sure to check out her new album, and watch her concert film on September 3rd! We hop eyou love it as much as we do!
ARF- Victoria Monét
Happy Friday! This week Jaded Productions is so excited to share one of our favorite artists, Victoria Monét!! Victoria is a powerhouse songwriter, has penned hits for some of the biggest artists today, and has an impressive career of her own music!
Victoria Monét is an R&B/ soul singer, songwriter and producer, and has had two Grammy nominations thus far. Victoria has written hits for close friend and frequent collaborator Ariana Grande. Victoria played a vital part in the creation of Grande’s ‘Thank U, Next’ album, and received a Grammy nomination for album of the year with this project, and record of the year with the hit ‘7 Rings’.
Monét has written songs for other major artists like BLACKPINK, Selena Gomez, Chloe x Halle, Chris Brown Jhené Aiko, Machine Gun Kelly, Fifth Harmony, Kendrick Lamar, Jessie Rheyez, Normani, Kehlani, Jordin Sparks, 2 Chainz, Travis Scott, and many, many more.
Monét’s early life consisted of her appearing on stage in school plays, and singing in her church's youth choir, before eventually forming her own dance group and teaching at local dance schools in Sacramento. She attended Sheldon High School, but was only able to do so after begging her mother to change their address so that she could go to a school with a performing arts program.
Monét’s passion for writing stemmed from an early start of writing poetry, and at an early age, she started learning about production and the music industry and going to Sacramento studios to make music. By chance, she friended record producer Darkchild on MySpace, and he invited her to audition for a girl group he was forming. The group of three girls was called Purple Reign, and was signed to Motown Records, but was dropped before the release of their first mixtape.
After the group broke up, Monét started to focus on her songwriting to make money to continue advancing her music career. She would write songs and record demos, and send them to labels in hopes that they would like her versions so much she would be featured on the finished track. Luckily for Victoria, one of her demos caught the attention of Atlantic Records, and she was offered a record deal. She released her first EP’s ‘Nightmares & Lullabies: Act 1 and 2’ in 2015 under Atlantic records.
Victoria has since decided to be an independent artist, and uses her royalties from her songwriting to fuel her own career. Monét released her album ‘Jaguar’ in August of 2020, and has said that a second part is coming. The album has collaborations with Khalid and SG Lewis, and hit 174 on the Billboard 200 Albums chart.
Victoria announced she was pregnant with her first child in December of 2020 with father John Gaines. The couple welcomed their baby girl Hazel Monét Gaines February 21st, 2021.
Victoria released her most recent single ‘Coastin’ on August 5th, and features fun, upbeat percussion and trumpets. If you like fun, upbeat, fresh and familiar with a feeling of nostalgia, then you will love Victoria. Fans of Monét also like Normani, Chloe x Halle and Sabrina Claudio, so if you like any artists like these then we know you will love Victoria Monét!!
#FreeBritney
By now, it's safe to assume that anyone remotely a fan of pop culture has watched ‘Framing Britney Spears’ or at least heard about her and her decade plus battle with her conservatorship. The documentary released in February 2021 has been a nonstop news story in the music world, and has gained global attention.
Britney Spears has been placed under a conservatorship since 2008, and is fighting to free herself from this conservatorship. But what is a conservatorship? A conservatorship is “the appointment of a guardian or a protector by a judge to manage the financial and/or daily life of another person due to old age or physical or mental limitations”. Britney’s conservatorship is divided into two parts, her finances and her day to day life.
Spears’ conservatorship began after her divorce in 2007. She began behaving wildly, and after losing custody of her two children, a series of public behaviors led to concerns about her mental health and welfare. Spears shaved her head, and hit a photographer’s car with an umbrella. The following year a temporary conservatorship was established after being admitted to a hospital for psychiatric assessment twice. Seeing as her conservatorship was temporary back in 2008, it has been gradually extended for over a decade. Many details and specifics of these extensions have never been made public.
Britney’s father, Jamie Spears, was initially the person in charge of and fully running her conservatorship. In 2019, Jamie had to step down as conservator because of personal health reasons, and was temporarily replaced. Britney requested that this replacement be permanent. The few court records that have been seen by the public clearly show that the conservatorship has been out of hand for years. In a 2016 report, a court reporter wrote "She feels the conservatorship has become an oppressive and controlling tool against her". Documents show that her conservatorship controlled and restricted so many aspects of her life. She was not allowed to make decisions as simple as what color her kitchen cabinets were and as complex as who she would date. None of the decisions were up to Britney. In November 2020, Britney’s request to have her father removed from the conservatorship was denied but a financial firm was named as a co-conservator of her finances and estate instead.
In June of this year, Britney spoke out in court against her father and spoke about her treatment under her conservatorship. Britney’s truth was heartbreaking for the world to hear, and infuriating that this kind of treatment is being allowed under the law. Britney said “I truly believe this conservatorship is abusive. … I don't feel like I can live a full life. … I want this conservatorship to end without having to be evaluated. … I’m not here to be anyone’s slave, I’ve lied and told the whole world I’m OK and I'm happy. It's a lie. I thought that maybe if I said it enough, I would maybe become happy because I've been in denial. I’ve been in shock. I am traumatized … I’m so angry it’s insane. And I'm depressed."
The documentary that was released in February was not approved by Britney. She took to Instagram to say that “I didn't watch the documentary but from what I did see of it I was embarrassed by the light they put me in. I cried for two weeks and well .... I still cry sometimes !!!! I do what I can in my own spirituality with myself to try and keep my own joy ... love ... and happiness !!!! Every day dancing brings me joy !!! I'm not here to be perfect ... perfect is boring ... I'm here to pass on kindness !!!!". Some fans do speculate that Britney does not even control her social media postings, and potentially does not even have the password to her own accounts. Director of ‘Framing Britney Spears’ Samantha Stark said that “While we were making the film, we talked a lot about re-traumatizing Britney and her family by showing these moments. Part of the reason it’s called Framing Britney Spears is there are these still-photo frames that were humiliating to her. We thought it was really important to pull outside the frame because so many people had all these assumptions based on one frame, one still image that they saw… She 100 percent deserves to be mad that we’re still looking at those photos, because it’s ridiculous that we’re still looking at them, and they shouldn’t have been there in the first place. As much as I want to explain myself to her, I totally understand where she’s coming from.”.
‘Framing Britney Spears’ was nominated for Emmy awards in the categories of outstanding documentary or nonfiction special and picture editing for a nonfiction program. Director Samantha Stark said “What I’m hoping the Emmy nomination does is show how many people care about Britney, and how many people want to know the truth.”. The attention that the documentary has gotten has grown so exponentially, and raises the question of if this is happening in Britney’s conservatorship, how many other conservatorships are this way across the country.
The fight for Britney isn't over yet. Spears’ attorney filed a petition as of Thursday requesting that her father be immediately removed as conservator. Many celebrities have spoken out in support of Britney, and her global fandom is fighting for her to be freed. Britney deserves to have her life back, and deserves to be happy again. #FREEBRITNEY