its all abt bolt from the blue baby

Album Rating: 3.0

Good review. I thought Sorry was excellent, and while Take Me To The Disco was a step down for me personally, I'm still pretty interested in hearing this (despite it not sounding like my thing at all haha). I like that she is at least continuing to defy expectations. I definitely feel like she could have settled into a comfy Florence Welch-esque groove after her debut without having to put much thought into branching out, so it's nice to see her doing the opposite.

Album Rating: 3.3 | Sound Off

I think I’m one of the few that liked Disco more than the debut (3.4 for the debut, 3.5 for Disco). She’s definitely defying expectations. This is the Meg Myers the earliest EPs kind of hinted was possible.

Album Rating: 2.5

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I discovered Meg randomly only last year well after the 5D life was under way, via trying to find something similar to MARINA (Underground being Meg Myers' MARINA-ish song), and became a mega-fan of the first 2 albums and latest 2 EPs.



I have friends who have gone or are going through a kind of spiritual thing Meg is doing after a lot of trauma. Knowing she's gone through a lot of shit, I don't feel comfortable saying her earlier work is better because of or in spite of it - I just know most of the newer stuff doesn't work, and I worry some people are going to say she went "woke" or "Hollywood" when what I'm seeing is a combination of new things: Yes, usual LA scenester bullshit, but also the kind of modern pseudo-spirituality that neighbors Pastel QAnon (She's posted things that suggest she's an anti-vaxxer too, which, yikes). It also it reminds me of when Alanis decided to hop over to India before her second album, and when Billy Corgan decided he was an Uncle Fester goth ("Eye", Adore). The latter examples turned out better because a) Alanis is far more intellectual and could better filter her spiritual mumbo jumbo into her sound, and b) Billy Corgan had a more cohesive vision which allowed him to stylistically hop around on albums without being a mess. I don't think it's a coincidence that Meg put out an album so all over the place after touring with Billy (even covering "Eye" live)



This on the other hand, is Chinese Democracy messy. It feels like you put several different albums on shuffle. There's numerous good tracks, but other ones fall into the Muse trap of 1-dimensional anthemic messaging.



And worst of all through all this, is I know she was troubled and unhappy and needed a change, but the more she preaches about the new lifestyle or insists she's better now, the less I believe it. Which hurts the songs both now and likely will even more down the road.



PS - I keep trying to find out why this is called "Tzia" and i dont see anything about it being an acronym. Just a remote island off of Greece. Maybe that's where the Kool-Aid is?

Album Rating: 2.5

Some random bulletpoints in addition

- Children of Light to me should have/could have been the blueprint for how to balance the album as a whole, and most of the other tracks could have been tweaked a little one way or or the other to suit it. And yet, it should be an album closer, not opener. It overwhelms everything that follows

- "ME" is having a bad streak after Kitten and Taylor Swift, it's just inherently cringey and awkward. I keep bringing up "Eye" by the Pumpkins, and this song sounds very influenced by it in parts. I hate the start of it, but really dig it when that kicks in.

- She's mentioned Enya's influence a lot in the past. "Some People" is a great Enya inspired track and could have used a bit more of that.

- "Waste of Confetti" has a big Imogen Heap vibe

- A lot of fans were big on "Teenagers" before release and it's my least favorite song, feeling like some second-tier busker you hear at the edge of a protest before the speaker comes up

- I like Luna Shadows. I hate her contribution to "HTIS"

- As much as I dislike "Teenagers", the title track has its worst part, the stretch rhyming generation, salvation, emancipation, etc. It's so trite. The spiritual focus was going to derail the album lyrically a bit, but the overlap into entry-level protest songs is just too much.

Album Rating: 3.0

htis makes no sense like when has meg ever hid that she was sexual??? am i missing something there?? is this not the same woman who wrote desire?

Album Rating: 3.0

also think the numb cover itself is fine but is just a perplexing decision when your biggest song on your last album has the same title



also think covering numb (and including it on your album) in and of itself is kinda lame when your cover of running up that hill is what a lot of people know you for already. nothing wrong with doing covers obviously, but it makes her come off really unconfident in her own material when you're covering two of the most popular songs ever recorded

Album Rating: 3.3 | Sound Off

--Created an account for this review.--

First thought, "Shit, this never ends well". ha ha.



@CxPx: I agree with most everything you're saying. I tired to keep a lot of the psycho-analyzing out of the review and stick to the music, but she has pretty much entangled the two. Listening to the album, it seems pretty clear she's not as okay as she's saying (or at least wasn't at the time of writing/recording).



I get that she has gone through some sort of trauma and she's working it out the best way she can, but she has also made it all public on this album (and social media posts) which opens it all up to scrutiny. Especially when it is such an extreme image and lifestyle change. I tried not to pass any judgement on her as a person or her life choices, and focus on the music as much as possible.



There's a lot of lyrics that are cringy, awkward, and just rough. I think I alluded to that in the review too. She didn't try to pretty them up at all. They're all just unfiltered thoughts.

Album Rating: 3.3 | Sound Off

@AlexKzillion: Ha ha. I totally agree with all your points and had another paragrpah devoted to just those two things. I took it out because the review was already long, and I also didn't want it to read like I was just finding things to pick on her about.



The Hiding That I'm Sexual thing didn't make any sense and kind of hints at her state of mind over the past four years. I don't want to assume how much is real and how much might have just been manifested in her mind, but at least in this case it seems pretty obvious that she has never hid that she is sexual.



I also agree that covering "Numb" when she has a hit single of the same name already was kind of weird idea. When I saw the track name, I was really hoping she was just pulling some Taylor Swift re-recording shit and not covering Linkin Park. I get doing cover songs in general, though. A lot of time they're some of the biggest hits for bands. Look at Disturbed and "The Sound of Silence". They were on their way out of the public eye when that hit.

@cxpx could not agree more with your first post, well said

Album Rating: 2.5

re: "HTIS"



As a more recent fan who knew of her trauma from the get-go, the first time I saw the Desire video/heard the song, I had a very different impression of it than I think most people did/do.



I see more nuance, some of it disturbing and dark. There's a back and forth between the aggressive language of the verse and the submissive "how do you want me" in the chorus, to the extent I wonder if some of the verse is a repurpose of aggressive things other people have said to her. I see HTIS as a (at least attempt at) a healthier more assertive declaration than Desire, which despite the verses, ultimately in the chorus and video has her as someone else's fantasy.



@Willie as I'm sure you've seen she dropped a new video today and in the comments I'm just seeing over and over comments about being an "SJW" or "woke" and it's extremely annoying that people are so surface level. There's 1-dimensional cringe here, but it's still not so simple as "haircut = woke". There's history and context.

Album Rating: 3.0

"I get doing cover songs in general, though. A lot of time they're some of the biggest hits for bands. Look at Disturbed and "The Sound of Silence". They were on their way out of the public eye when that hit."



yeah i kinda thought about disturbed too but i think when you've made your own generation defining hits already it comes off more like a "real recognize real" sorta deal (and i acknowledge the false equivalency there lmao).

Album Rating: 2.5

Covering a nu-metal song is extremely ironic since 90% of nu metal bands covered a 20-year old song in order to get radio play.

Best thing here is the Numb cover and it's not a good cover.

Album Rating: 3.3 | Sound Off

@CxPx: I never thought about "Desire" from that angle. That theory actually makes a lot of sense. It seems to go along with the lyrics I posted in the review, "His kiss was poor, but I felt forced to calm him down, never mind me, just calm down, I’m making myself weak, I must confess I felt it coming, the smell of sex, just give a little to help him out, don’t mind me."



One thing I wouldn't call her is 'Woke' or 'SJW'. Even her "New Society" song doesn't hit on the same topics from the same angle as either of those groups. Whatever ideology she has, it seems to come from multiple places and maybe only influenced by those two groups in a cursory kind of way.



There's nothing on the new album that hits on the same topics those two groups seem to focus on. She seems to be worried entirely about mental/emotional health and unity. As long as everyone takes care of one another, the particulars don't seem to matter to her.



@Alex: She has made her own hits, but she was also kind of on a downward slide. Her second release wasn't received as well as her debut, she lost/left (I don't really know) her major label and her long-time songwriting partner. I think she did need something to kind of get her back into the public eye. The Kate Bush song did a good job of that, and Numb is supposed to be a follow-up to that, IMO.

Album Rating: 3.3 | Sound Off

@StreetlightRock: Glad to see you around. Feels like it has been a long time. Anyway, I kind of feel the opposite. I think the cover song is one of the worst songs on the album (not the worst, though. Save that for HTIS or T33NAGERS).

Being anti-vax is extremely not woke or sjw

Album Rating: 3.3 | Sound Off

Yeah. I haven’t seen anything about her vaccination opinions (I don’t follow her), but if true, that is pretty much the opposite. Like I said, just based on the album, it seems like she’s pulled a little of her beliefs from just about everywhere.

Album Rating: 2.5

"Being anti-vax is extremely not woke or sjw"



Not to mention a lot of people who'd be considered "woke" or whatever tend to be wary of the new agey, spiritual crap because it tends to be weirdly appropriative of either Indian or Native American spiritual practices (sometimes both) on top of all the anti-science

Album Rating: 2.5

Find her "The Underground (Live) " video posted to her own account 5 months ago, where she changed "Don't want no part of your hipster scene. I'd rather die, be buried alive" to "Don't want no part of your hip vaccine. I'd rather die, than live in a lie"