History WebVideo / SpectrumPulse

* GrayingMorality: He notice Music/TaylorSwift musical arc starting (and his opinion failing) since ''reputation'', having shaky improvement on ''Music/{{Lover}}'', become very good on ''[[Music/Folklore2020 folklore]]'' and ''[[Music/Evermore2020 evermore]]'' and finally culminate into his best album from her since ''Music/SpeakNow'' - ''Music/{{Midnights}}''

* GrayingMorality: He notice Music/TaylorSwift musical arc starting (and his opinion failing) since ''reputation'', having shaky improvement on ''Music/{{Lover}'', become very good on ''[[Music/Folklore2020 folklore]]'' and ''[[Music/Evermore2020 evermore]]'' and finally culminate into his best album from her since ''Music/SpeakNow'' - ''Music/Midnights''

** In "A Look At The Canadian Hot 100 - 2015", for his (positive) review of "Albatroz" by [=AronChupa=], the listed genres are "EDM", "Website/{{Vine}}" and "WTF".

** "Nu-crunk", his term for a variety of HipHop that got big through social media platforms like WebOriginal/{{Vine}} and [=SoundCloud=]. The proliferation of such songs on the charts starting in the mid-'10s was a bane of his existence.

** In "A Look At The Canadian Hot 100 - 2015", for his (positive) review of "Albatroz" by [=AronChupa=], the listed genres are "EDM", "WebOriginal/{{Vine}}" and "WTF".

* PersonaNonGrata: After learning about the controversy regarding Music/{{Sia}}'s film ''Music'', Mark [[https://twitter.com/SpectrumPulse/status/1353037873159745537 tweeted]] that he will no longer cover anything related to her music on the channel again, due to being utterly disgusted with what he learned.

** Album bombs, when artists (especially in the aforementioned nu-crunk genre) exploit the ''Billboard'' Hot 100's rules for streaming to hit the charts with the force of a thousand bricks, displacing other songs and often sapping their momentum so that most if not all of the album's songs, including the {{filler}} (even interludes and sketches in some extreme cases), can chart. It doesn't help that he suspects many of these album bombs are driven more by [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney payola]] with the major streaming services than anything. In 2018, he [[TheLastStraw got fed up]] and instituted a new rule on ''Billboard Breakdown'' for discussing album bombs: if eight or more songs chart off an album in one week, he will only discuss his best and worst of the week from the album and any songs that landed in the top 40. He considered going back on this rule in 2021 and limiting it to just the top ten when every single track off of Music/{{Drake}}'s ''Certified Lover Boy'' landed in the top 40, including becoming the first musical act since Music/TheBeatles in 1964 to score a clean sweep of the entire top five, but decided that he was going to review (and torch) the entire album, saying that, since Drake had gamed the ''Billboard'' charts fair and square, he was going to play fair with Drake's singles too.

* SomethingCompletelyDifferent:
** His review of "We Beefin?" as well as his episode of On The Pulse done entirely in ASMR.
** His reviews of Music/{{Drake}}'s ''Certified Lover Boy'' and Music/KanyeWest's ''Donda'', released at the same time, [[spoiler:where both videos are Mark giving the exact same criticisms to both albums and the artists themselves, with a scene of him giving his unique thoughts on each record in between.]]

* BrokeTheRatingScale: A '''Refusal to Rate''' example: Mount Eerie's "A Crow Looked At Me". The reason being that Mark found it such an emotionally raw and personal album, dealing with the death of the artist's wife, that he felt that it stopped being a piece of "art" and couldn't bring himself to give it any kind of rating.

* RaisedCatholic: Attended a Catholic high school, and nowadays still identifies as Catholic but with complicated views on religion. Believes that the Bible is best interpreted metaphorically.

** Mark himself appears in Part 2 of WebVideo/TheDoubleAgent's ''Worst Hit Songs of 2009'' video as well as the ''[[Music/{{Creed}} Weathered]]'', ''[[Music/LinkinPark A Thousand Suns]]'', ''[[Music/SimplePlan Still Not Getting Any...]]'', ''[[Music/TheoryOfADeadman Scars and Souvenirs]]'' and ''Music/{{Trapt}}'' episodes of ''[[WebVideo/RockedReviews Regretting the Past]]''.

* FanNickname: [[invoked]] Not exactly a "fan", but he often refers to [=6ix9ine=] as "[=SoundCloud=] waifu" after the streaming platform he emerged from. Also he calls Tom [=MacDonald=] "Tommy Boy".

** As of 2021, account hackers, thanks to a bad experience with one who hacked both of his channels to hawk an NFT scam, forcing him to appeal directly to Website/YouTube to get his channels back.

** So-called "[[UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump MAGA]] rappers", a type of right-wing {{political rap}}per that arose in the early 2020s. He regards the entire scene as artless junk that does little more than mindlessly parrot reactionary Fox News talking points, and which only charts because of conservatives buying it ''en masse'' on iTunes less to support the artists than to make a political statement. Every single time a MAGA rap song has shown up on ''Billboard Breakdown'', it was his Worst of the Week. The fact that, in 2021, the genre became a venue for anti-vaccination conspiracy theories especially grates on him; when he discussed Tom [=MacDonald=]'s "Brainwashed", he summed it up thusly:
--->''Okay, two lines into this song, Tommy boy here goes full anti-vaxxer. I shouldn't have to say more. But really, at this point I've realized there's no reason to cover this with anything beyond mockery and derision.''

** Album bombs, when artists (especially in the aforementioned nu-crunk genre) exploit the ''Billboard'' Hot 100's rules for streaming to hit the charts with the force of a thousand bricks, displacing other songs and often sapping their momentum so that most if not all of the album's songs, including the {{filler}} (even interludes and sketches in some extreme cases), can chart. It doesn't help that he suspects many of these album bombs are driven more by [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney payola]] with the major streaming services than anything. In 2018, he [[TheLastStraw got fed up]] and instituted a new rule on ''Billboard Breakdown'' for discussing album bombs: if eight or more songs chart off an album in one week, he will only discuss his best and worst of the week from the album and any songs that landed in the top 40.
** Rap lyrics about [[{{Cuckold}} stealing other men's girlfriends]], particularly the listener's girlfriend, in order to demonstrate how masculine and virile the rapper is. Not only does he find it icky, he thinks it's become a worn-out cliche in hip-hop.

* GuiltyPleasures: When asked in the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXxdzSGPWp0 15,000 Subscriber Q&A episode]] what Mark's big guilty pleasure album is, he whips out an S Club 7 CD.
* HormoneAddledTeenager: Mark's explanation for why his 18 year-old self used to like [[Music/ChrisBrown Chris Brown's]] "Kiss Kiss" in the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJlNvLFQvek Worst Hit Songs of 2008]] {{crossover}} review with WebVideo/TheDoubleAgent.

* ''On The Pulse'': A new series started in 2020, similar to the Trailing Edge but with a wider amount of albums, it is now the primary series on Grondin's main channel, with standard reviews only being made for stunningly good (or stunningly bad) albums.

** His reviews of Music/{{Drake}}'s ''Certified Lover Boy'' and Music/KanyeWest's ''Donda'', released at the same time, [[spoiler:where both videos are Mark giving the exact same criticisms to both albums and the artists themselves, with a scene of him giving his unique thoughts on each album in between.]]

** His reviews of Music/{{Drake}}'s ''Certified Lover Boy'' and Music/KanyeWest's ''Donda'', released at the same time, [[spoiler:where the first thirteen minutes for both videos are Mark giving the exact same criticisms to both albums and the artists themselves before giving his own unique thoughts for each album.]]

* SomethingCompletelyDifferent: His review of "We Beefin?" as well as his episode of On The Pulse done entirely in ASMR.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/youtube_kbqayq31lgs.png]]

He is also a published author, with his first full-length novel ''To Kill A Dragon'' being published in November 2016.

* PersonaNonGrata: After learning about the controversy regarding Sia Furler's film ''Music'', Mark [[https://twitter.com/SpectrumPulse/status/1353037873159745537 tweeted]] that he will no longer cover anything related to her music on the channel again, due to being utterly disgusted with what he learned.

** A double-barrel one: on the July 3, 2021 episode of ''Billboard Breakdown'', he delivered one to Creator/ColumbiaRecords for gaming the charts and the way sales are measured in order to propel Music/{{BTS}}' "Butter" to #1, in a process that he compared to MinMaxing. The following week, after the [[FanCommunityNicknames ARMY]] hit him with one of the worst {{Internet Counterattack}}s he'd ever experienced, he delivered an even bigger nine-minute missive against Columbia, the ARMY, and the entire [[KoreanPopMusic K-pop]] industry, arguing that both chart manipulation and [[LoonyFan awful fan behavior]] were doing lasting damage to K-pop's reputation in the US.

** From the pre-[=YouTube=] days, he delivered one at the end of his [[http://www.spectrum-pulse.ca/2013/04/album-review-willpower-by-william.html written review of #willpower]]:
-->Alright, will.i.am, so let me pass judgement on you as an advertiser: your beats are monotonous and grating, your message is incoherent (if not stolen from better products), and your brand lacks recognizable distinguishing factors in the marketplace. It is the knockoff brand, the cheap imitation crap you get when you can't find anything better. People have asked why I write these reviews: this is one of the reasons, because the listening public deserves better. All throughout this review, I provided links to better songs, ones that have some shred of artistic integrity, songs i can recommend and that will stand the test of time. Even pop art - hell, even pop music, which many would consider the most disposable songs on the planet - deserves better than this advertising masquerading as music.\\
Oh, what's that, will.i.am? You want me to judge you as a musician and artist, not an advertiser? Well, in that case, your hooks lack substance, your beats are badly positioned, your instrumentation is haphazard, your vocal production is sloppy, your lyrics are asinine and arrogant, your delivery is tepid, you waste your guest stars, you shamelessly rip off and plagiarize, and to top it all off, you have nothing to say. You advocate anti-intellectualism, terrible decision making, and misogynist behavior, and you have none of the personality or wit to make any of this transgressive behaviour tolerable.\\
And the worst part, will.i.am, is that you're better than this. That's probably the most infuriating thing about #willpower, in that there are tiny shreds of a good idea here. There are snippets that have real beauty and real potential, and you clearly have the money and industry clout to make the album you want - and you made this trash. It is bar none the worst album you've ever made, and I sincerely hope that if you consider this the height of your talents, that this album flops and your long-overdue fifteen minutes comes to a screeching end.

** The end of his review of Southside by Music/SamHunt features a rather lengthy one
--> But let’s circle back to that word ‘entitlement’, and why this album makes me angry not just at it, but the system behind it, which I’d argue is fair game because this album would not exist at all without that system. Because Nashville radio programmers and label executives have pushed a meritocracy narrative for decades, that if you’re good enough you can make it; most recently this came up when there was pushback against systemic change to get more women on the radio, with the argument of ‘well, if their music was better it’d get there’ - and it’s total fucking bullshit. This is a narrative that is built to enable exploitation of artists who are not as connected or knowledgeable, or who have seen through the system and won’t get in line, which is why Kacey Musgraves getting the equivalent of blackballed by Nashville radio is so goddamn galling. Right now she’s proven she’ll find a way, as have so many others in indie country, but if you want the blazing example of mainstream country hypocrisy, it’s Southside by Sam Hunt. No other album or artist in the modern era has been allowed to fail as many times as he has, both commercially and critically, and still have the support of his label and consistent promotion, for an album that he doesn’t sound like he wanted to make and came out as an undercooked, barely finished disaster across the board. This isn’t just mediocre or forgettable, it’s an album that is actively enabled to suck, but will sell just enough with the full force of promotion and catering to the worst of cultural biases that it’ll push back on people who call it out. In that way, even though Sam Hunt has expressed no political affiliation publically, it’s emblematic of this time and what guys like him have been actively enabled to get away with - and regardless of where you fall, that’s hypocritical and disgusting.\\
Now some of you will say, ‘well, that’s just the industry, that’s not fair to hold the art that only exists because of that industry to that standard, separate the art from the conditions where it was made even though it drips through and shades every element of it’… and while that conclusion is the height of intellectual dishonesty, I can consider Southside outside of that: when it’s not boring it’s infuriating, it wants to push the sound but doesn’t grasp how any component part works, the content is so emotionally incoherent in its framing I thought the dissonance had to be part of the point until you realize there was nothing close to that level of sophistication or effort, and it features some of the worst sequencing on any album I’ve ever reviewed.