Todd In The Shadows Thread

Use way too much air and volume. Beyonce and Ariana Grande are both very guilty of it.

And is there anyone else like Britney who can't sing but has a singing career anyway?

And to talk of his actual videos, here's the guesses the WMG page on Todd has for the best list!

Then again, sometimes there are songs out there that reasonably on either the best or worst list, as Todd (and his team) are the only ones who know it, and he can throw a curveball at us again like with Closer.

Edited by Smasher on Jan 11th 2024 at 1:43:52 PM

Todd haaaaated Style (Taylor's Version). He also didn't like the Fast Car cover very much.

@Willbyr: Too many forgettable guys in that scene? Or just too many people would be really grossed out by the Lynching Song and gave it to the first guy who said yes?

He also said he'd never complain about a good singer doing a good song, and I don't recall him hating the re-recording of Style, just being disappointed.

Listening to both versions back to back, I definitely prefer the original… which is unsurprising, as it’s honestly so perfect a remake could only be a downgrade.

I really enjoyed the digresson in the latest Song vs. Song about different 1980's gimmick raps from white artists (though Wham is in a different category, because it was their first single, not a deprture from their ouvre, as they didn't have an ouvre yet).

Best Hit Songs of 2023 also leaked! He had a lot of candidates this year, while on the worst list he accidentally skipped number 4 and had to add David Guetta's poor sample of What Is Love at the last second!

• Piano Intro: "I Remember Everything" by Zach Bryan ft. Kacey Musgraves
• 10. Cruel Summer by Taylor Swift. Todd is a confirmed (reluctant) Swiftie. "By the end of this year I got it completely and it pisses me off so much!"
• 9. Good Good by Usher ft. Summer Walker and 21 Savage. "Let's here it for songs about being a fucking grown-up, letting shit go and moving on even if it still hurts."
• 8. Ceilings by Lizzy McAlpine. "It's kind of fitting that this song about fleeting relationships blew up on Tik Tok, the most fleeting of platforms."
• 7. Cupid by Fifty Fifty. He thinks this song is the most likely to be forgotten, but "Who said good music had to be remembered forever?"
• 6. Nonsence by Sabrina Carpenter. "So many of these wannabe popstars including Sabrina have written about their angst and their inner worlds. Instead of doing that, what if she just wrote the dumbest song imaginable?"
• 5. Man Made A Bar by Morgan Wallen ft. Eric Church. "I guess a guy puts out 80 songs in a year at least one of 'ems gonna be good."
• 4. What Was I Made For? by Billie Eilish. "This song made me feel for Ken even more than 'I'm Just Ken' did."
• 3. On My Mama by Victoria Monet. "I don't know what to say, it just fucking cooks!"
• 2. Dial Drunk by Noah Kahan. "I love this song, and ladies, if a guy tells you he loves this song, you have every right to take that as a red flag."
• Honorable Mentions:
  • Shakira Bzrp Music Sessions Vol. 53 by Shakira. "She cooks him harder than Arian Robin did at the 2014 World Cup!"
  • Agora Hills by Doja Cat. He got over his problems with her just in time for everyone to turn on her.
  • Harder On You by Parker McCollum. "Much closer to making this list than you'd expect."
  • Super Shy by New Jeans "This is the one K-Pop band I'm really into."
  • Snooze by SZA. "If I cared more about what I thought would age well I would have bumped this up."
  • Jaded by Miley Cyrus. Another hard cut
  • Can't Catch Me Now by Olivia Rodrigo. "I'm gonna make a whole bunch of Hunger Games fanvids once I'm done with this video."
• 1. Bad Idea, Right? by Olivia Rodrigo. Not only his number one song of the year, but also the number one song that stops on the word stop of the year.
• Outro: un x100to by Grupo Frontera & Bad Bunny in the original upload, Boy's A Liar by Pink Pantheress in the official upload.

Edited by Smasher on Jan 23rd 2024 at 6:08:00 AM

The number 4 segment was hilarious, particularly the intro and the Billie doll gag.

And he did the thing with ending the list with a line from the number 1 song again, hooray.

We've got a year where I emphatically agree with both his number 1 worst and number 1 best song. I don't know if that's ever happened for me before, lol.

It’s funny to remember when Todd mocked "Look What You Made Me Do" and Reputation as a complete career derailment, and now a few years later Taylor is bigger than she’s even been. How the hell did that happen.

Edited by Lyendith on Jan 21st 2024 at 12:09:47 PM

Someone on the Todd sub said that his number one song as of 2020 is a cursed spot:

• 2020: Morgan Wallen got caught saying the N word and he betrayed Todd by making worse music.
• 2021: Willow Smith wrote a novel that was super racist.
• 2022: Taylor Swift left her longtime boyfriend for an asshole and let shady people into her inner circle, including said asshole. And nobody likes billionaires.

What will happen to poor O-Rod?

Edited by Smasher on Jan 23rd 2024 at 3:04:52 PM

Uh, what.

Maybe this list will end up growing on me, but right now I'm kind of bummed by how many songs are super low-key or outright depressing :/

Edited by wisewillow on Jan 21st 2024 at 6:49:42 AM

It's called Black Shrine Maiden and it's Islamophobic and portrays desert people as savages.

“The Amazigh are dangerous on their best day. They have little regard for anyone who doesn’t worship the Muslim god — and even their own tribes are always at war with one another.”

Not only that, but she and MGK made a song that Todd hates.

Edited by Smasher on Jan 21st 2024 at 6:29:46 AM

I like that 2023 best list was kind of the antithesis of 2022’s.

Much of the best songs from 2022 were also huge hits in the mainstream, whereas 2023’s best songs were mostly moderate successes.

Also, it’s soooo great to see Victoria Monet get the love she deserves, especially since a certain other You Tube music critic hasn’t seen the light yet. She’s fantastic. Also, Snooze is a modern R&B classic.

List is up proper now.

I find it funny that my two favorite songs this year were the one he used as the piano intro, and the one he played over the closing credits. That #1 spot is a really good choice, it rounds out my top 3. I was also very surprised to see "Escapism" by Raye completely snubbed. Other than that, I wasn't familiar with half of the songs on this list, so not much else to add.

Edited by FernandoLemon on Jan 23rd 2024 at 7:22:47 AM

there's been cases of crossover between the Worst and Best lists, but I think this might be the first time the #1 artists on both losts each made an appearance on the other?

Rihanna topped both lists in 2012.

Oh come on, she sings the interpolated hook on "Take Care", she's basically as much of a presence as Drake.

Edited by FirstSnow on Jan 25th 2024 at 1:49:47 PM

But as the guest in the Best one. (which I had to check, I usually only revisit the Worst lists because they're funnier, plus many of the Best tracks are ones I've never heard in the wild, particularly from '17 forward and the country ones)

Many funny bits here, such as #10 (which made discover I've heard Cruel Summer before but didn't even know who sang it), #5 (after all, it's by his #1 Worst), and #4 (BTW, agree with the other who mentioned too many low-key\depressing tunes; Billie's song is fine, but I prefer the Dua Lipa contribution to Barbie for being unadultered fun). And #1 shows a major difference to Buckley, who put "bad idea right?" on his worst list because he's an angry cynic who dislikes how Olivia keeps reusing the same theme (with added barbs at the Retraux video and her vocal abilities), but Todd loves the song because it's entertaining as hell while providing a Genre Throwback to the sorely missed alt rock of the 90s\2000s (a few years back he made sure to note how his Best list showed "the long overdue ascension of a struggling artist we all wrongly assumed had squandered every last chance: the guitar").

Hope it doesn't take too long for Todd's next video. He might joke on "I also don't have a clue what I was made for. Not to review music, I'll tell you that." but he's still my favorite in this crowded niche of reviewers (many of whom admit Todd as an influence).

Sad that "Rush" by Troye Sivan didn't even merit an honorable mention. Was my biggest bop of last year.

I did like the part where one of the groups on the list has already had its members replaced. That's some good pop culture ephemera.

Sucks that it happened since they dared to have opinions and dignity.

Since the hit blew up, I wonder if there's any interest in hiring all the members to make a new band, either by Korean or American producers. If you can get all the talent behind a song, it's worth a shot surely.

Updates on Twitter about some of the songs people have mentioned as snubs:

• Escapism by RAYE is "a good song" but didn't hit him the way it has other people. "Pales in comparison to Chandelier."

• He's not a Zach Bryan fan generally, hence no I Remember Everything, but he could have put Oklahoma Smokeshow as an HM.

• He hated the Beatles resurrection song

• Liked Boy's A Liar fine enough but didn't have much to say about it

Also, we have confirmation on the new criteria: Hits Top 20 or makes Talk of the Charts' Year-End Top 200.

These comments seem eerily targeted at me, considering I'd put all of these on my Top 5 (and, like I said, "Bad Idea Right?")