Todd In The Shadows

  • 🔧 At about Midnight EST I am going to completely fuck up the site trying to fix something.

Is Todd In The Shadows a lolcow?

  • Yes

    Votes: 126 30.1%
  • No

    Votes: 61 14.6%
  • Todd is Lolcow Adjacent

    Votes: 231 55.3%

  • Total voters
    418
Well, you oughta look at the rest of his Best list then.

  • 10. "Brutal" - Olivia Rodrigo
  • 9. "Easy on Me" - Adele
  • 8. "My Ex's Best Friend" - Machine Gun Kelly ft. blackbear
  • 7. "Good Days" - SZA
  • 6. "Family Ties" - baby keem & Kendrick Lamar
  • 5. "Thot Shit" - Megan Thee Stallion
  • 4. "Todo de Ti" - Rauw Alejandro
  • 3. "Telepatía" - Kali Uchis
  • 2. "Your Power" - Billie Eilish
  • 1. "Meet Me at Our Spot" - THE ANXIETY, Willow, Tyler Cole
Honorable Mentions

  • "Leave Before You Love Me" - Marshmello x Jonas Brothers
  • "Leave the Door Open" - Silk Sonic
  • "Every Chance I Get" - DJ Khaled ft. Lil Baby & Lil Durk
  • "Back in Blood" - Pooh Shiesty ft. Lil Durk
  • "Hell of a View" - Eric Church
  • "Starting Over" - Chris Stapleton
  • "Industry Baby" Lil Nas X ft. Jack Harlow
Ah, yes. The rest of the list. The only ones I knew on there when I listened to it was 10, 9, 8, 1, "Leave the Door Open", "Leave Before You Love Me", and "Industry Baby", and I only genuinely like "Brutal" out of all those.
The 2020s are incredibly underwhelming as of right now. Pop music in general hasn't been good, or as entertaining, since before 2016.
 
I used to be that kind of person but I'm not anymore. As much as I do want rock to be mainstream again, that would mean going viral on TikTok (or recently, getting popular from a show on Netflix). I don't want that kind of exposure. Feels like a Monkey's Paw kind of situation.
This is getting a bit off topic, but I've been seeing more people getting antsy for a "new" rock. The current situation with record labels is awful for bands (since labels don't want to waste money recording and are unfair to artists unless they get viral success), but even in spite of that I've seen a lot of kids coming together to try and form something to recreate the rock of the past. It's unfortunate, since back in the day labels and promotion were basically the vetting for quality control, but in the age of the internet, there's no vetting whatsoever aside from virality (which doesn't even guarantee quality).

I suspect if there's enough demand in the future a new kind of label or website will come around to encourage band development and improve promotion, but as of right now the best way to get yourself out there without a label is just promoting yourself on social media, which barely does anything. It's a bleak situation for people trying to revive rock in the mainstream. But I don't think it's hopeless.
 

It's pretty good! He managed to keep politics almost entirely out so points for that. Keeping in mind that he's Vietnamese makes the bit about the 'Nam song a touch more biting. As usual, Trainwreckords is his best show.
I was bored and I decided to look at the comments.

6ECAF340-6214-44EA-9A8A-B1AFA03C5137.jpegC457CDD2-9A3E-44EE-B906-ABA32D441A62.jpeg17A2CD24-8855-4821-BA6E-5B434DEFF227.jpeg4DA4D6CE-0ED2-4B74-B111-866E8A91B437.jpegFF95F974-5A22-4F03-9074-DCDFA30D41DA.jpegFB44EA45-1377-4B6F-BBB6-0D060420F954.jpeg552A3318-2D8F-4186-9025-20AA3C99A49F.jpeg4B1748C1-D663-4F65-9C5D-411DA150F109.jpegF8BF45D6-7F0B-4AD2-9656-06245CB37D78.jpeg17BEA0EC-E828-4752-ABF3-BC6C9C174D77.jpeg4984C31A-D03F-4EE7-830A-DBD8BC1CC7B1.jpegFC78A9C6-2D02-4048-960B-EC567F818E55.jpeg

And at 1:22, people say Todd does a good Niel Young impression.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Nigor and Lil Miku
Still hoping that Todd will do pretty. Odd. by Panic(!) At the Disco. It was the album that literally split apart the band and changed their sound completely.
Plus, he hasn't done an emo album yet.
 
Still hoping that Todd will do pretty. Odd. by Panic(!) At the Disco. It was the album that literally split apart the band and changed their sound completely.
Plus, he hasn't done an emo album yet.
I remember that one being successful and it wasn't emo.

I want him to do Hot Space by Queen
 
  • Like
Reactions: S@credC
I remember that one being successful and it wasn't emo.

I want him to do Hot Space by Queen
I may have not been there for it but I remember reading that it definitely not did as well as their first album. Imagine wanting more emo pop punk jams and just getting folksy Beatles shit (I'm saying this as an ejoyer od the record too). Like Todd said though, albums can be Trainwreckords for different reasons.
The Queen one sounds good too though! I'm ready for Todd to praise "Under Pressure" and absolutely nothing else off that record.
 
Todd did an interview with a random website. (link/archive)

Todd Nathanson is AKA Todd In The Shadows, an excellent YouTube creator. His in-depth videos are smart and funny, shining a spotlight on unexpected music stories. With nearly 500,000 subscribers to his channel, he’s among the biggest music-centric creators on the platform.

How did you get to where you are today, professionally?

My career path has been… complicated. I was a big fan of many film and music critics growing up (honestly maybe more than I was a fan of actual film or music) and I started reviewing movies and songs in my college paper (I was eventually editor-in-chief). I never imagined that it would pay anything so instead I got a job at a small-town paper; eventually I realized that a steadier job in “hard” journalism would never pay anything either. I quit and started pursuing a teaching degree, but I never wound up with a full-time job, partially because I was more invested in a new hobby I had developed.

“Angry” comedy reviews were popular on YouTube at the end of ‘00s; my friends and I were big fans. There were many of this type but I noticed that they mostly reviewed films and video games; music reviewers were basically absent, and I realized this was a void I could fill. Since I was still pursuing a teaching job and I didn’t want my online life to follow me around, I did all my reviews in a silhouette profile that I thought would make me stand out. I started in 2009, during a time when pop music was at its most obnoxious and overexposed, and it made for easy material for angry rants.

I joined up with a popular review site called Channel Awesome, which was very big at the time and I made a lot of contacts that have stayed with me, and I stayed with the site until it petered out over the years. Over time, I became less “angry” and more informative—I do still try to be funny though. I’ve developed two main other projects besides the Pop Song Reviews I made my name with—One Hit Wonderland, which is about what happened to artists after their only big hit, and Trainwreckords, about albums that ended careers.

Did you have any mentors along the way? What did they teach you?

Honestly, not really—I am entirely self-taught in this field. I have a communications degree with a music minor which taught me a lot about media criticism and music, but otherwise I had no training or experience in film production, film editing, documentaries, broadcasting, acting, or comedy. I learned it all on the job, through trial and error, and by copying other writers and YouTubers I enjoyed. The one person I would say mentored or guided me in any way is fellow YouTuber Lindsay Ellis, who encouraged me to pursue YouTube as a full-time career, and gave me a lot of pointers early in my career (for example, instead of balancing my camera on a TV tray, I could use a tripod).

Walk me through a typical day-to-day for you right now.

I typically put out two videos a month (or just one if it’s a long episode). Sometimes I’ll get struck with a funny observation about a song and I’ll build an entire episode around one joke. Other times, I’ll find a project I find interesting and I’ll do a lot of research. I actually find writing about music extremely difficult so I’ll listen to the song or album over and over again until solid opinions start forming. I’ll also do a ton of research, sometimes books, sometimes Google, and a whole ton of YouTube, looking for clips and footage that will help fill out the video.

How has your approach to your work changed over the past few years?

My stuff is less comedic than it used to be. The One Hit Wonderland and Trainwreckords series especially have become as much documentary as criticism. I remember in 2013 during the Blurred Lines controversies that deeper criticism started becoming increasingly mainstream discourse—stuff beyond just “catchy/not catchy” but more thoughtful and informed by social justice (a trend that hasn’t slowed down at all). I remember thinking my stuff should get deeper. I also do much, much more research than I used to. Back in the days when my videos would barely clear ten minutes, all I had to do was get overexposed to an annoying song until I built up enough material through exasperation. Now my apartment is filled with books, so many books, that I’ve used for research.

I’ve also become comfortable with doing a lot of reshoots. I used to typically just record my takes once and if I didn’t like how it sounded, oh well. Now there are a lot of post-production revisions.

Tell me how you make a video of yours, typically.

Well, I slack off for a week. Then I remember I need grocery money and I’ll try to start turning opinions into a script. After two weeks I sit down and film the entire script, and it’ll take about two or three days to edit it.

Where do you see music journalism headed?

I have no clue; I’m famously bad at predictions. If I had to guess: Nowhere good! There is still great work being produced everywhere but the chase towards SEO has decimated so many great sites like the AV Club, places where you could just be able to browse and read their vast body of work.

What would you like to see more of in music journalism right now?

Archives. This is a problem in basically all online media, music journalism included. certainly I’m grateful for Pitchfork and I wish more sites operated like that, where you could read nearly everything they’ve ever written, easily formatted and categorized. Billboard did a list a couple years about “100 Songs that Defined the Decade” – it was an amazing body of work that summed up the 2010s and it seems to have disappeared into the ether.

What would you like to see less of in music journalism right now?

Clickbait, native advertising. Billboard, a publication/site I like a lot, will just publish the lyrics of a song and the article will be “Here are the lyrics to ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You.’” Rolling Stone tweets “Here are our favorite computer monitors of 2022.” Degrading for everyone.

What’s one tip that you’d give a music journalist starting out right now that wants to use YouTube as a platform?

Learn as much as you can about the actual production side of this. Learn how to edit, learn how to record audio, learn how to deliver narration. I think most people just assume that reading your own reviews out loud is good enough, but this is a different medium and you have to use it properly.

What was the best track / video or film / book you’ve consumed in the past 12 months?

The last season of Barry was pretty amazing! I realize this isn’t a hot take but I can’t stop thinking about it.

If you had to point folks to one thing of yours, what would it be and why?

The thing I’m most proud of recently is a deep dive into Will Smith’s final album in 2005. It was timely, as I wrote it just after The Slap, but the record itself is shockingly revealing from a rapper not generally known for that, and I was glad to be able to uncover it, it felt like there was a new stunning development on it in every song.

Another one I really liked making was on Liz Phair’s “Funstyle,” a truly nutsoid record that most people have probably never listened to. I did a long retrospective on “Whoomp! There It Is” that I wish more people had seen (I talked a lot about its roots in Miami bass and strip clubs, so YouTube punished it for not being advertiser-friendly).

Anything you want to plug?

I do a fun little podcast, “Song vs. Song,” where I pick two similar songs (“Jump” and “Jump Around,” say) and me and my pal Lina argue about which is the best one.
 
Todd does have sound arguments at time, but there have been times where I never understood why he was upset a certain concept. For instance, I don’t know why he gets worked up about white guys playing acoustic guitars. I understand not liking Jason Mraz, but Jack Johnson always has had high-quality songs so why every instance of a white guy playing acoustic guitar sound terrible to him I don’t know.
 
Todd does have sound arguments at time, but there have been times where I never understood why he was upset a certain concept. For instance, I don’t know why he gets worked up about white guys playing acoustic guitars. I understand not liking Jason Mraz, but Jack Johnson always has had high-quality songs so why every instance of a white guy playing acoustic guitar sound terrible to him I don’t know.
Well, back when he reviewed “The Lazy Song”, he talked about it.

1E48690D-B9A1-419B-B25C-EE6EE006F144.jpegDF594869-8FF7-45A3-B5EF-7BAC7FF75AA1.jpeg93648231-CE65-4F5D-B5D1-15F444B592E3.jpeg93C4C541-3586-4B4A-8B8D-A5777817292E.jpeg
 
Slight PL, but my dad played an acoustic and sang for us when we were little, so I can absolutely appreciate a good mellow performance, like say this one:


Music can and should be able to express simple and mildly content emotions. Sometimes you're just putting your kids to bed, or chilling on your porch after a long day. If anything, I'd argue that it's a noteworthy achievement to take something basic and make it memorable like the above Iron and Wine cover.
 
I always took the hating the “white guy acoustic” thing as an early sign of his more far left beliefs. Since cis white straight guys are to blame for everything and all that.
Reading his explanation, makes sense. And there’s also suggestions that this guitar thing is a choice of male feminists. And we all know what this site thinks of male feminists.

Also, obligatory “Anyway, here’s Wonderwall”.
 
This is what burnout looks like.
And I'm not being any meaner than usual, he posted as much on Twitter.
TitS_burnout.jpg
Not much of a fan of either Beyonce or Drake but Big Freedia is usually good for a bop. A better example IMO:
 
  • Like
Reactions: Lil Miku
This is what burnout looks like.
And I'm not being any meaner than usual, he posted as much on Twitter.
View attachment 3510457
Not much of a fan of either Beyonce or Drake but Big Freedia is usually good for a bop. A better example IMO:
Maybe Todd should just take a break. Or make another video about groin shots.
 
I've been watching Todd since around the time he joined Channel Awesome. His videos back then were funny and oftentimes informative, but nowadays it's apparent he's just going through the motions in his videos so he can get those Patreon dollars. I honestly wish he would just stop the Pop song reviews and just focus on One Hit Wonderland and Trainwreckords. It's been obvious for a while that he doesn't care about current pop anymore and OHW and Trainwreckords are where he puts most of his effort now anyways.

Also, his politics are cringey and basic as fuck and I wish he would stop shoehorning them into his videos and his Twitter feed.
 
I've been watching Todd since around the time he joined Channel Awesome. His videos back then were funny and oftentimes informative, but nowadays it's apparent he's just going through the motions in his videos so he can get those Patreon dollars. I honestly wish he would just stop the Pop song reviews and just focus on One Hit Wonderland and Trainwreckords. It's been obvious for a while that he doesn't care about current pop anymore and OHW and Trainwreckords are where he puts most of his effort now anyways.

Also, his politics are cringey and basic as fuck and I wish he would stop shoehorning them into his videos and his Twitter feed.
You’re not the first to share that sentiment, although you are the first to not include the caveat of doing the year end worst and best videos because those bring in the views.
 
Back