Unoriginal / Black-Eyed Susan Climb by Magdalena Bay; New Music Review

Cover for "Black-Eyed Susan Climb" by Magdalena Bay

Feels like deja vu, doesn't it? I'm back with another new music review from Magdalena Bay, since apparently, they refuse to stop releasing these double-singles. I've already posted about their 4 other recent singles, so you can find those reviews at the bottom of this post. At this point, we know the drill, so let's just get right into this review!

Unoriginal

Cover for "Unoriginal" by Magdalena Bay

Out of this new duo of singles, I would say "Unoriginal" is probably my favorite. The message in this one is pretty clear; it's another song about the monotonous life of being a cog in the machine. It's commenting on our complacency of our society even when we are essentially self-destructing ourselves by being selfish or taking our simple lives for granted. Diligently stocking shelves aimlessly despite the fact you can't even pay for basic necessities while your superiors just reap more and more of the benefits, it's a sad-but true- story for many people. While this is an important moral and is very valuable in the current state of the world, it's definitely not the first time this message has been put into a song. In fact, you could even say the message of this song is a little cliche. In that respect, the song actually pokes a little bit of fun at itself; i.e. "This song's unoriginal". This leads to an interesting dynamic where the message is meant to be taken seriously, but there's some kind of underlying irony to it all that makes it kind of unique. The production style is interesting too. The verses have a happy-go-lucky sound that paints the picture of the story even clearer and emphasizes the irony factor, but the chorus has a more dystopian sound going on that creates a contrast throughout the song. The tone of the lyrics always fits the production, which is effective given the message. It's definitely a catchy song too and has already gotten stuck in my head quite a bit. Overall, it's yet another really solid song from the pop-duo.

Black-Eyed Susan Climb

Cover for "Black-Eyed Susan Climb" by Magdalena Bay

This song is pretty straightforward. It's basically just about keeping your chin up and not letting the inconveniences of life getting in the way of your happiness. That pretty much sums up the story that this song is trying to tell. The production is also not too far off from what Magdalena Bay has done before in terms of structure. The only thing really setting this song apart from the others is the instrumentation. It favors acoustic instruments more than their typical synth repertoire. Not that there's no synth elements present in this at all, but they usually only show up at the high points throughout the song. Generally speaking, this song doesn't have a lot interesting going on with it, but that's not an entirely bad thing. A song doesn't need to be super special in order to be good. While this song may not stand out super well in their discography, it's still a worthwhile listen and I have still found myself queueing up the song here and there.

Wrapping Up

There goes my quick review for this double-single release! I didn't think we would get any more songs from them after we had already received 4 new songs in the span of only a few weeks but look where we ended up. So, who knows, maybe in a couple weeks I'll be back reviewing another 2 songs from them. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading this short review post, and I hope you have a good rest of your week.

Earworm ~-~-~o

Thanks for reading!

-Joey :)