Monday Mixtape, Vol. 232

So Post Malone jumped on the country music train and wrote an album where pretty much every song has a feature from every big country artist you can imagine. It seems like a popularity/money grab, an easy way for one of few best hit makers of the past decade to find a broader audience, reinvigorate his fans (and maybe himself) and capture the entire population of music listeners. (Posty is the #10 Artist in the World according to Spotify with 77M monthly listeners).

If he genuinely wanted to make a legit country album and wanted to write a phenomenal country album, that kind of album doesn’t have features on 15 of the 18 tracks. The first single is a catchy but mostly empty track with one of the biggest hit makers in country, Morgan Wallen.

It may sound like I’m hating, maybe I am, or maybe I just don’t understand it or wished it wasn’t the lazy features album when an artist has run out of ideas and covers it with names. The only person who really cares about all this is me, and it’s a pretty pointless exercise, but one my mind does and for no great reason is sharing with you.

And yet. I still like some songs on the album. It may not surprise you to hear my favorite song is one of the three songs with no features, “What Don’t Belong To Me,” the first track on this week’s mixtape. It’s one of those catchy sad songs. That’s the Post I like:

Every string, every chord, my guitar
I'll give you everything in the world but my heart
'Cause I gave half to them halfway lovers
I left some to them two drunk summers
Left a piece at the bar with the keys to my car
I know I'm never gettin' it back
I lost a lot to that whiskey-sippin'
I gave the rest to that rockstar-livin'
Take all of me, but thеre's one thang missin'
Baby, I can't give you what don't bеlong to me

As for the rest of the artists on this week’s tape, it’s a blend of rock (what the hell is the madness of this Bad Moves song??? So great.), pop (Sunday (1994) is a legit up and comer reminding me of Beach House and The Cranberries), indie (Steve Lacy is awesome and Omar Apollo is a great talent in the Frank Ocean genre), and the great Fred again (with the help of The Japanese House).

Enjoy!