dl talks Zach Bryan and the End of '24
By Your Side by Svend Knutsen
-joi- by dl
Verse Chorus Verse
VCV 225 | Happy Hour v III
(upbeat music) Coming up on episode 225 of First Course First, it's a pre-season, ladies and gentlemen, let's get to it, how exciting. (upbeat music) First Course Universe, how's it going DL here? I am doing well. I'm all on my own and ready to chit chat about music and otherwise. Christmas is over, hallelujah. I actually did not mind it this year. We can talk more on that later. How's everybody else's Christmas gone? Has it gone wonderfully? Holiday season, are we not supposed to say Christmas? How have your holidays been? Whatever, whichever way you celebrate, going to your families, getting to not have to go to your families, all that sort of good stuff. It has been a nice relaxing week, kind of, of getting done with finale editing and chilling. I've got a couple of things I wanna talk about today. Apologies that it's not very well scripted. I don't care. That's why they call it the pre-season. We gotta warm up, we gotta keep our reps in. You know what I'm saying? Finale is done, hope everybody enjoys it. It comes out in a couple of days. I think we did pretty well this. I think we did much better this year with our top 10 best list. I actually like the favorites as well, to be honest. There's one or two albums that I do some eye rolls with, just like Evil and just like Rachel. You know, the Sabrina Carpenter's of the world, but hey, there's a reason that we all have different tastes, right? There's a reason that Evil Rachel and I work and it's because one person's trash is another person's short and sweet. We got some metal from Evil that is much too metal for most people, but again, that's why we have 'em for all you metalites out there. The finale was fun. The poker thing was fun. Yeah, and then coming into season five, gonna be a little bit more, I won't say relaxed, but we're gonna have longer episodes. Can talk about that. Every episode next year is going to be a two-parter. Every single one, that's right. One of the big feedbacks we put out a little bit of a, well, here's, I'll be honest, here's what happened. I got a couple feedbacks in a row if one Rachel actually told me about and then another one from a listener saying that we wished that each episode, each episode seems like it is very target driven, very focused, that maybe I keep us on point too much, which to me was ridiculous until I thought about it, and then I totally get it. If you listen to a certain podcast, you want the personalities, you want the people to be BSing a little bit, and I'm gonna shoot for that this year and just see how it goes. We're gonna try it. We're gonna do each episode's two parts. We're gonna be a little more relaxed with the structure. It's still gonna be the same, we're still gonna do album exchanges, year dissections. We're still gonna do basically most of the things that you've heard of, the episodes that have gotten the biggest scores consistently as far as listeners and downloads are always when we do concentrate on one specific album. So we'll do the DLs 10 out of 10s. The album exchanges always do really well, so we'll keep doing those as well. Those would be the big popular ones. And then of course, the quick buyer reviews, we will do that no matter what. Those do well, but we are going to do no matter what, because those are my favorites and I get to do what I wanna do, right? Ha-ha! I think Sven and I are gonna do some stuff more on indie artists this year, more on that later. I don't know, I need to talk to Sven. I haven't talked to Sven about that. Who knows if he's coming on or not, whoever knows with that guy. But yeah, anyway, the feedback, which is usually positive was very, I wanna just get to know you guys more, do a little more bullshitting, that's what we're gonna do. More time to talk ridiculousness and nothingness alike. What am I talking to you about today? Well, I don't have much. I tried to keep it a little bit winging it, but I wanna talk about one of the albums that has been being played a lot in holiday seasons in my household is the new Zach Bryan, because it is a easy listen. I really, really like it. Amanda loves it. Caroline, the whole thing, it is an easy, put it on, everybody's gonna enjoy a type of album. I also kind of did keep up with the whole Zach Bryan shit that's been going on, so I am gonna talk about that a little bit. Yes, it is another separating the art from the artist conversation, which what we have learned having a music podcast is that is something that you're going to have to do quite often. And although the answer we've already come up with is basically you kind of have to separate the art from the artist or else you will never be able to talk about anyone, 'cause artists are all terrible people. We're still gonna talk about this. If not to inform you to talk ourselves through it, much like therapy. I am my own psychiatrist, which is why I am so insane. I'm gonna talk a little bit about Christmas music, what I was listening to during the whole Christmas time. And then one of the things that I wanna talk about as well is I wanna talk about the industry's predominant album of the year lists. Let's talk about what Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Needle Drop, what everybody said were the best albums of the year and see what we think. Might even throw in one of your, one or two of your lists from Instagram, see what I think about your lists. So that's what we're doing today. But before we get into that, we have to get into the most important part of the day. It is coming up in season five, five, five, five, five. It always will be, it is, what are we drinking? (upbeat rock music) I am drinking nothing exciting, and I apologize for that. I'm actually in, I've been in a deep clean mode. I've taken a week of, not off, but being pretty carefree with work in sales. You're either panicking, scrounging to get whatever numbers you can at the very end of the year, or you've hit and your company's happy, and you're basically just trying to stop people from working as much as they can until January 1st to count towards the other year's numbers. And we were lucky enough this year to be at the latter. So be at the first, not the latter. Man, I don't know why that saying confuses me, but it really does every single time. Anywho, I digress. Basically, I'm trying to keep my team and I and everybody in the office to not really do much work until January 1st. So I've been home a lot more than usual. Also have not been traveling at all. It's been nice. I've been home since a few days before Christmas, and I'm not going anywhere until January 16th. So a lot of time at home. But while I've been cleaning, doing great with that, I have not been big into the drinks. So there's that. I haven't really been drinking drinking too much soda. I'm eating too many stuffing flavored kettle chips. I've definitely gained a few pounds. That's for sure. It's the holidays. We know what's up. I'm kind of, anyway, the point of this all is, is that I'm in this cleaning mode currently where I'm essentially pulling a Rachel and just trying to get rid of some of the bottles that have been lying around forever. Some of my liquor bottles that have been around way too long because I just don't drink the, you know, what's a good example. For example, earlier today, I had a rum and coke, which was the Kraken rum, which I'm not a big fan of. It's fine. It has a bad rep for this shitty, overly sweet. It's a, please the masses rum. It doesn't really taste so much like a rum. But it's, I don't think it's bad as people say. I think it's good in a rum and coke. I think it's kind of hard to mess up a rum and coke, but, you know, trying to get rid of the Kraken bottle because I don't love that liquor. Apparently I'll defend it, but I don't love. It's just not one of my favorite rums, that's for sure. And there are better things to put in a rum and coke than a Kraken, although I don't think Kraken's bad. I just said that. Anyway, trying to get rid of things like the Kraken. I've got some, you know, I've got like a couple like grapefruit liqueurs that that's so much, not so much to get rid of as much. I need to bring it to the forefront and use it more. I have way too many bottles of different whiskeys. I have way too many different bottles of gin. I have on a couple occasions, you know, bought Pisco because I didn't think I had Pisco, but I do have Pisco, which I don't know if we've talked about Pisco Sours on this show. It's an amazing drink. If you like a whiskey sour, you should try a Pisco sour. A little more complex, maybe a little too sweet for me, but they're very, very good. Round it off and we are here to what I'm drinking right now, which is a basic college 101 drink. I have an orange fanta with some vodka. I have three or four vodka's that are just, they just don't get drank. You know, when you get into being a cocktail maker, bartender, you don't tend to use vodka anymore. I'm always using whiskey or gin. I do a lot of whiskey, I do a lot of gin, I do a lot of tequila's. I don't use vodka. Vodka's too easy and it's just not as fun. For all of those of you out there that make cocktails, you know what I'm talking about. There are times where people who are really wanting, like if people come over and they really want a vodka martini, of course you're gonna make the vodka martini, but the problem there is that I never have people over. Well, I'll have people over for New Year's Eve. I always have a bit of a party on New Year's Eve. I have people over Christmas morning and then I never have people over. Like maybe one or two times throughout the year, people will actually come over and hang out. So I have too much vodka that I never use and I need to use it 'cause I do, I've gotten to the point where I like Rachel, I have far too many bottles in the house. I'm looking right now, I'm having to rearrange my whole office 'cause I have too many bottles of liquor and it's just, it's caused a huge rift in my organization and I need to fix it because that's what the holidays are for. They're forgetting new random shit, like new desks for my daughter that I don't have room for, setting it up and then figuring out how the fuck to fit it in the house. And that's what I'm doing, that's what I'm drinking. Should we get to the episode? Should we talk about a few things? We're gonna come back, I'm gonna talk about an artist that I've actually enjoyed listening to this year that I can't really stand. So we'll take a break. (upbeat music) We are back, hello everybody. Are you excited for season five? I sure am. Let me talk to you a little bit about the preseason before I get into some jibber jabber. I wanted a jibber jabber about season five preseason. It's going to be a little more easy going than usual. We are still gonna do the Spotify awards that we do and I bitch about every year because I don't like promoting Spotify but it doesn't really work as a promotion anyway. It's not like, I don't think Spotify sees any bump from it. I pay 'em so it is what it is and it's fun to do. So as a podcast over the last few years, you common listeners, we have been doing these episodes where we talk about each other's Spotify end of year. I just forgot what it's called but there's a Spotify end of year thing that I'm blanking on right now that gives you your top five bands that you listen to through Spotify, your top five songs and then a playlist. And then starting last year, Evil had this great idea of instead of just boringly rambling through what each other's list was, which was just not good content, we made it awards just like we do in some of the other episodes and it is much more fun. So next episode, you will have the second annuals, Evil's Evil Spotify Awards where we hand out some awards to each other for stuff on their list, stuff for a surprise to see on Rachel and Evil's list, stuff that we know is 'cause the pod and they would have never listened to some stuff like that. And you can also find out what's wrapped. That's what it's called our Spotify. You can find out what's on my Spotify wrapped. I'll give you a hint. If you listen to season four, that's what's on my raft. I use, but I honestly don't proudly, I do not listen to that much Spotify at home. I listen to Spotify to study. I listen to it at work for background noise, that sort of thing. I do listen to it for certain playlist. If I am having people over for an evening or Fourth of July, I'll just put on a big huge playlist, stuff like that. When I'm at home, I'm listening to vinyl. I listen to more vinyl this year, probably than ever, I definitely bought too much vinyl. Speaks, hey, speaks to, there are a lot of good albums this year. I bought a lot of 2024 albums. I have a good feeling about it. That's gonna be fun. Anyway, next episode, that's what we're doing. The evil wrapped Spotify bleep-blop evil, both because evil's in it and because Spotify is, as they say, evil. The episode after that, guess what? It's Rachel, it's evil and it's DL, and we're doing jack shit. We are just saying hi. We haven't talked for a few weeks. It's kind of getting back into it, remembering how to talk to each other through a Zoom call. We do that finale in person and it's so much better. It's just such better content because it's an actual conversation. As you guys know, when you get, we all do so many Zoom meetings and team meetings and stuff like that now. It's really not a big deal. When you're trying to record a podcast episode and you are doing, you're having to kind of wait to chime in and there's a bit of a delay. It just, it leaves to a lot of, it's very easy to lose the elegance of a casual conversation that is so much easier in person. So episode three of the preseason is just evil Rachel and I hanging out talking. I have a couple of prompts. I got a couple of late fan, fan listener questions that I'm gonna make them ask and a couple other things, but we're just gonna talk about music, whatever we want. No outline, no nothing. And then, of course, the last episode of January is, what are you spinning? What are you listening to? When you don't have to listen for the pod? That's pretty much it. That's all we got for the preseason. Through the preseason, we'll talk a little more about what's gonna happen in season five. Fifth year, ladies and gentlemen, pretty crazy. A lot of the same stuff, we're gonna start off with band dissection. I'm not gonna give you, I'm not gonna give up who yet, but I think you will at the very least be intrigued. You all know this band, you all, even if they're not your, "Hey, I listened to them frequently," you respect them. I promise, I would think that most people that listen to this will least be intrigued for the type of band that they are. I will do my own episodes much like this one where I just topics that I've been thinking about lately, music-wise, I will talk on album exchanges. We're gonna bring those back to those a little more with Evil and Rachel and I. We're still gonna do the year dissections, but we're changing the year dissections a bit. Instead of just dissecting the year, instead of just saying, "Hey, how good of a year was it, how bad of a year was it?" Look, last year we did 1994 all year, right? I'm not the one to shout this from the rooftop. Rachel and Evil very much have been that 94 is basically the best album year of all time, that nothing can compare. I don't, I'm not comfortable saying that. As somebody that's, I'm not gonna say likes a wider range of things, but I have the likings for the nerdy crappy stuff that you guys do, and I think that there are some other years that are close. I also think that I can convince Rachel of a couple of these other years as well, because she likes the '60s and '70s rock, like she didn't do the '69 breakdown with us, but I feel like if she did the breakdown, if she saw the albums, I don't know that she'd be saying 94 is the best. Anyway, the point of that is, is that from now on, we're doing the year dissection, and then we are asking the question, and comparing and contrasting, is the year better than 94. So we'll take one year every episode. We'll only, we'll do this three or four times next season five. Let's take a look at the albums. Let's look at the best albums. Let's compare it to 94. Where do the comparisons stop and start? How much worse or possibly better? We're still gonna do our 10 out of 10s. We're still gonna do our new album. Quick fires. Sven and I think we're gonna do some stuff together, and then at the end of the year, it's gonna be same end of the year stuff except since we're on season five, what we're gonna do, what we're adding to the end of the year this time, is we're taking a look back five years. We're gonna do this every time. So now that we're on season five, we're gonna look back to season one. We're gonna look back at our best. We're gonna look back at our favorites. Maybe a couple of the albums we talked about, and we are gonna reassess. We're gonna see how far off we are. You know, a lot of the times, I don't like, I don't watch the Oscars, but I'm interested in what movies win in the Oscars, and then you look back five years later, and you look back 10 years later, and you cannot believe that this did this well, or this did this poorly, and you have the years where something won that you can't believe they won, and then you have that movie that you can't believe didn't end up doing better than the other. Just, you know what I'm talking about. Well, we're gonna do that in season five. We're gonna take a look back at ourselves. So every five years and every 10 years, assuming that we last 10 years, which would be insane, but hey, we've lasted five, which is equally insane. That's season five for ya. Should we get into what I wanna talk about? It's gonna be fun. We're gonna do a lot more bullshitting this year, and I think that's a good thing. Let's get into a topic that I wanna talk about. It will lead to another topic that we've talked about a hundred times, but what I've found is that in music, you can't get away from it, especially now that everything's out there for all to see. I wanna do a little bit of a conversation on Zach Bryan. I first listened to the great American bar scene on the 4th of July, actually. I have a very, very good friend named Denise, who I work with, who's not just like, we half worked together for a long time. We were in the same industry, and ended up working a lot of the same things together, but I was actually lucky enough to hire her last year. And so we've gotten to hang out a lot more. Anyway, she's been one of my greatest friends in the last six, seven years. However long it's been, God, it's been a long time. She is, like I have found, a lot of other females are obsessed with Zach Bryan. My family that lives in my house with me, Amanda, Caroline, also very obsessed with Zach Bryan. I found that a lot of females are very obsessed with Zach Bryan. I'm interested to see what the fallout will be a year, two years, three years removed from what's going on this year with him. Now, starting with the great American bar scene. You know what, I'll even go back farther. His album last year or two years ago, whatever it was, the Zach Bryan, the self-titled that everybody lost their shit over. It was a good album, it really was. I didn't think it was an amazing album. I thought it was poignant, I thought it was, I definitely saw the appeal. I definitely saw where people would really be into him. I get it, I absolutely do. There's a calmness there, there's a genuine earnestness that comes out in his music. You know, it's not, it doesn't sound like a guy trying to be fucking country. It sounds like a country guy. You know, it doesn't sound like a guy that's trying really hard to sound like he grew up in Oklahoma, like 95% of pop country, overcompensating with their big shiny belts and their bullshit twang, which is very unrealistic singing about their fucking dog. Zach Bryan, there was a very earnest songwriting ability there. It was vulnerable and it was at the same time very genuine. Easy, easy, easy type of music to like. When I heard "Great American Bar" scene, there was a lot of, when I first heard it, it was very, every single song sounds exactly the same syndrome. But after a couple listens, there's, first off, I felt very differently about the opening poem in this album than I did in the last one. The last one, it sounded a little bit, it was a little bit somebody aiming above their writing scalability. This one just flowed. This one, the, what is it? I hope to see clear skies and drink beer with the guys and the cheesiness is actually really great in the opening of "The Great American Bar" scene. And I just really, I like the songwriting a lot more in this one. I think it's fantastic. One of Rachel's songs of the year was "28". Her and I both had Zach Bryan's songs as our songs of the year, "Her's 28", which is a great song when, I guess maybe I'll talk about it more in the Spotify thing. But when she gave that as her favorite, I have gone back and I have listened to it and it's such a good song, it's fantastic. The song on my top five was "Pink Skies", which I just think, you know, I talked about it in the finale, you can go back to finale and listen to it. I just, there's a lot of that on this album. There's a lot of stuff that he had definitely been listening to a lot more complex pop intro sort of, he has some hooks that are very, you can pinpoint very specific pop hooks on this album that he was going for a lot more. It's also one of those vinyls that's really easy to put on. I got the "Great American Bar" scene vinyl and I've listened to it, it came late. It was, it was delayed in manufacturing for whatever reason, but I've already listened to it, I've already spun it probably at least three times with the family and it's just, you know, there are those vinyls that you put on and the whole family is just like, you can tell that the vibe is good, everybody's into it, everybody's having a good time. It's definitely one of those albums. It would be in my top five album. It would be in my top five albums of 2024 to spin, you know, in general. Maybe I need to do that. I guess I should, should I do? I think I should do that every year. Should I do like a top five albums that were spun at my house this year? That sounds fun, because "Great American Bar" scene would definitely be on there. And like I said, I didn't get it to late, but it's been spinning a lot. Autumn, of course, you all know it and love it. The "Smashing Pumpkins", my album of the year for 2023, we've been spinning that a lot. I'm telling you, the whole family likes it. You're all wrong and I'm right. Suck it. Dave Matthews, I, as you will learn in the next episode. This was a big year for me getting back into Dave Matthews and I'm okay with it. It was a lot of fun studying. It was a lot of fun doing those episodes of "Spend" and getting back into them. Some devil album, some devil vinyl came out this year. So I definitely got into that. I listened to that a ton, not so much a family one 'cause it's, you know, it's a bit of a downer, but still liked it. We're still into it. As far as the family, if I wanted to get them, it would be before these crowded streets, which of course, you know, who doesn't like that. Peter Gabriel's I/O, my album of the year for 2024. I spun that a ton. The family likes that as well. It's a little more easy going. The easy going vinyl are the ones that usually do the best. And then probably Sanford Means Arms would probably be on there as well. So not a huge difference between what I was spending and what my albums of the year were. You know, I could go back to some of the older ones. My daughter, every time we have a vinyl night, my daughter insists on the royal blood album that came out, not the most recent one, but "Tifoons." She loves that album so much. So we always end up playing "Tifoons." I usually end up with some metric on there. I'm a big metric fan on the vinyl nights. And then it's, what I tend to do is I tend to go alphabetical. I tend to, I am one of those that really likes to make sure every vinyl gets a spin. So I will kind of keep a little bit of track of, you know, well, right now I'm in the A's, we're listening to a little bit of Alice in Chains. You know, I'm in, I'm in the E's. So maybe I'll put on a little ever clear and a little, you know, a little, what else do I have? It's he, a little Billie Eilish for the daughter. Let Billie Eilish work her magic for them. Maybe even a little bit of old M&M. I can't put on M&M. I do have a couple of M&M vinyl, but, you know, with the 10-year-old, there's just so much he says that cannot be talked about. Those are my 2024, this is what I spun this year. I'm sure that there's a lot I'm not thinking of. It was really into the father John Misty, the new one. It's not one of my best albums of the year still, but man, it's a fun one to turn on. A lot of those kind of soul-based, old-school ones, a lot of the back-style stuff is always, it's just so easy to turn on any time you want. And of course, the older soul stuff, we'll have New Year's Eve and I have a bunch of people over and there's always a couple of people that once I start playing those old, you know, like Billie Holiday and Nat King Cole and stuff, there's always a couple of people that are like, "God, like this is just a bit, like why don't I listen to this more?" What they don't get is it's just not the same. You gotta be in a place that has a cozy room and you're listening to it on flights. Gotta be on the records. That's just how it is, you know, we understand it, right? We're in the know, we're the vinyl people in the know. Should we actually talk, Zach Bryan, speaking of the Great American Bar scene, just a small tangent, that's okay. The Great American Bar scene, as I said, it did grow on me quite a bit. So much so that I'm actually surprised it wasn't in my, it was in my albums of the year, at the very beginning of the year, Gary Clark Jr. and Zach Bryan's were my certainties. Like, I was pretty sure Peter Gabriel's gonna be on there, but I also thought that Peter Gabriel, I might outgrow it. It might be one of those after I listened to it, six months down the line. It's like, ah, it was just, it was one of those things. I was just too into the lore of it. No, that just grew and grew and grew on me. Gary Clark Jr. J. Peg Ra, a little bit of the opposite. J. Peg Ra, the more I listened to it, the less I was, I would turn it on. And I, for those of you that love Gary Clark Jr, which I do, I absolutely love him. There's so much that I realized that on that album, I kinda wanna skip. I want my old, bluesy, sounding, amazing guitarist. And a lot of it is a lot more R&B-ish, digitized. I'm not complaining, I think it's a fantastic album. It was our best album of the year. And yes, that's a cumulative. And yes, it was Evil's favorite album of the year. But when we did the vote, it was my number one best album of the year. J. Peg Ra, I did vote it as the best album of the year. So it's, obviously it's not like I have anything against it. It just wasn't the vibe that I was wanting from Gary Clark Jr. There are a couple of songs on it that are amazing, but it just wasn't there. And with Zach Bryan, I kind of outgrew that one too, which is a little surprising, because now that I'm listening to the vinyl a little more since it came out so late, I'm super into it. And what I've realized is that I think I just really fucking can't stand Zach Bryan right now. Now, I've had this conversation on the pod with Rachel and Evil. I've had the conversation with a lot of you listeners who we, you know, whether we've emailed or DMmed or whatever about it. I've had this conversation with friends just hundreds of times, the conversation of separating the art and the artist. Zach Bryan, for those of you that don't know, it came out for a couple of years that he was a bit of a douchebag to women, which for me, not defending, but hey, he's a fucking, he's a, what is he, a 27 year old singer-songwriter who is suddenly one of the most famous people, one of the most famous songwriters in the world. Did we not think that he was gonna be in complete piece of shit? Did we not, King Joffrey is King Joffrey for a reason, right? It's just what happens, you become a piece of shit. Well, that's all fine and good. And I really wasn't thinking much of it. You know, as I said, if you are a music fan, all of our idols is a bad word, but all of the people that we look up to musically when you learn anything about their personal life, they're all fucking pieces of shit. Well, what's hard is when you are faced with it directly, which is something that nowadays happens more and more, right? Thanks to social media, everybody feels that they have to talk about every sentence of their life, you know, a tweet, things like that, which is kind of their own fault. Honest thanks to social media does give certain people a venue to discuss, talk about certain things. You find more out, a lot more info out there, whether it be, you know, fake news or not fake news, you definitely can get the info up to you to figure out if it's true or not, which nowadays, I don't even know how you do that. And this is a prime example, not of what is true and not true. And I'll explain what's going on. So Zach Bryan was dating a woman that works for Barstool. Barstool, so here's the thing. I've always been a bit of a Barstool guy. I really, really like Dave Portnoy. I know that he's kind of one of those annoying New York. I am rich and I kind of flaunt it, but he's a really, really good dude in a lot of the things he does. You know, I really love what he did with the pizza reviews during COVID where all these pizza places, I mean, they would have gone under if it wasn't for his reviews. His reviews brought ton of people and you know, we're talking like hour long waits just because he was doing these reviews. In fact, just, I think the last one I watched of his was right before Christmas or something like that. And it was some small pizza joint in Pennsylvania or Pittsburgh or one of those kind of a area, maybe not so much known for pizza. But that's his thing is you can, you know, if you're in a big city, you can find good pizza. You just gotta, you gotta hunt it down. Anyway, he goes this place, he loves it. The owner is amazing. And he just ends up giving that, he basically finds out that the place is about to shut down. He asks him how much he thinks he needs to stay open for a year, get his liquor license back, which they had trouble getting for some reason. Blah, blah, blah, blah, he ends up just giving him $60,000. He goes in there to do a pizza review. He ends up just giving him 60 grand. I mean, how do you not like stuff like that? The other thing that I really liked that Dave Portnoy did was Dave Portnoy was part of the whole GameStop short thing. I shouldn't say he was part of it. But when Robinhood, so if you haven't seen the movie, "Dumb Money," I think it's called "Dumb Money," fantastic movie. It does a really good job of explaining what happened with the GameStop short, where essentially all of these massive billionaire hedge funds, not all of them. I think there were like three hedge funds, maybe even just one that was shorting GameStop, meaning that it's like being at the craps table and you're betting on the craps bets. You're betting for the person to lose. That's what you're betting on. You're betting on the company to go under. And once it does, you make a bunch of money. You profit off of firings and things like that. It's just another shitty way that billionaires found to make even more billions off of the backs of fucking poor people. It's really ridiculous. Anyway, this Reddit stock guy who I think he just worked for some firm in Boston or something like that, he had a YouTube and a Reddit community and one of the things that he started doing was he started investing in GameStop. He thought that it was undervalued. I think there was also a part of it that he was trying to get a bit of a community together to invest, put a bunch of money into the stock. The stock ends up rising insane amounts. Like this, you think this stupid little Reddit community, well, as we know, coming into our second term with President Trump, these stupid little Reddit communities that are calling each other words that I can't say on here, or I shouldn't say at least. These little communities, these stupid little dumb money idiots, they're actually powerful and there's a shit ton of them and they all start investing the stocks rise. These hedge funds lose billions, billions of dollars like a day. It was a really, really cool story that of course they end up getting bailed out and stuff like that, you know, how all those sort of stories end. But still, it was very cool. One of the ways that all of these small-time investors were able to invest, you know, these little Reddit people that have no mind these, we're talking like teachers and nurses and things like that. They were investing through an app called Robinhood. Robinhood being a place where you, an app where you could invest quote unquote free, it wasn't free. I think they took a percentage off the back end. I don't know where they took a percentage off but they did take a percentage, a very, very small percentage. The, I don't even think it had become an IPO yet. I don't even think that they were public while the GameStop thing was going down. They were actually beholden to one of the massive hedge funds that was losing their ass in this GameStop thing. All of these people are putting stock or buying GameStop stop on Robinhood, right? Before it's even become public. Suddenly, and like I said, these hedge funds are losing billions of dollars a day. It's insane. Well, suddenly one day, Robinhood freezes buying on GameStop, which is completely illegal. Something that you absolutely can't do. Another thing that magically happened, I'm getting too far into the story. I'm sorry for that, but the, I forgot who the name of the owner of the hedge fund was, but he had direct contact with Robin. It was very obvious that they had told Robinhood that we are going to shut you down if you do not freeze buying for GameStop. When that happened, when Robinhood did that, Dave Portnoy had the, I think it was co-owned. I think it was two owners, but one of them, one of the Robinhood co-owners was the kind of the face, the talker. And Dave Portnoy had him on to essentially say, look, I think you're the scum of the earth, but here's your chance to defend yourself. What happened on this? Did you freeze? Did you actually freeze? Did you succumb to a hedge fund? - The way the team handled the crisis, by and large, we were able to protect the firm. We were able to prevent customers from having a bigger discussion. - How can you, that's the part, how can you, in that line, you just said like proud of how we handled it. How can that be possible? - Like, you guys are billed as a firm to retail traders and you screwed them over. I mean, so you protected the firm, that's what you did. And that's what it seems every decision was made to protect Robinhood, but everything that you built up as this image of catering, I mean, you literally, if you really want to protect the firm and protect, I mean, protect the customers, you wouldn't have stopped buying. It's that decision basically had to create the price and left a ton of your customers holding the bag. - I understand how you feel that way and how customers might feel that way, but I think we have to also protect, I mean, customers buying means. - Dave Portnoy went after him. Dave Portnoy went after him. He was on MSNBC, he was only talking about how big of a scumbag this Robinhood place was. He was really, really into it. I think Elon Musk, you know, not sorry, guys, not to defend Elon Musk, but I think he also really, really dragged this Robinhood thing through the mud when they did that with games. - Elon, okay, blood, can you hear us? - Glad the stock impeller. - Hey guys, thanks for inviting me up. It's good to hang with all of you. I'm actually an adherent to the simulation hypothesis. - All right, well, it's full of beans, man. What happened last week? Why can people buy the GameStop shares? The people demand an answer and they want to know the details and the truth. - Yep, yep. Okay, so let me start by giving a little bit of background. So I'm the chief executive of Robinhood. Robin is actually a... - I'll go through this quickly. - Don't worry, this is important. What's going on in the NSCC to make these calculations, but yeah, essentially it was a large number. - Is anyone holding you hostage right now? - No, no, I'm okay. - Anyway, ever since then I've really liked Dave Portion. Ever since then I've really, really liked Dave Portion. I liked what he did with Barstool. I know Barstool is fun. I always thought it was a little more serious. What I didn't realize, the reason I'm bringing this all up is because Zach Bryan started dating a girl from Barstool. Her name was Brianna Something. Her nickname is Chicken Fry. So I don't know. I don't know, you know, how do I say this? It's really, really easy to find a story that says, "Oh, Zach Bryan's dating a girl named Brianna Chicken Fry." And roll your eyes. You know, they fucking deserve each other. Who gives a shit, right? Well, I decided to do a little bit of my homework. What I did is I listened to the website under Barstool, which is called BFFs, which I figured was, you know, at least it's Barstool Sports. So I figured there'd be something, look, this podcast is terrible. I'll tell you right now. It's a fucking stupid podcast. I can't believe Dave Portion only has anything to do with it. In fact, right after all of this Zach Bryan stuff came out like a month later, Dave Portion basically shut the podcast down. He didn't want to be on it anymore. It's basically just like a gossip podcast. He's too old. He doesn't fucking like it, but it's really bad. But I figured if I wanted to talk about this, what I had to do is I needed to actually listen to this podcast. There was an episode where basically, there were two or three episodes, but the big one is when Briana actually came on to BFFs and discussed everything that had happened between her and Zach Bryan. If you listen to it, it's really, really hard to not think that, not just think that he's a piece of shit, but really have a hard time. I honestly think that's when his album dropped out of my top five and I'm, I don't know if it's wrong. I don't know if it's right. I'm sure eventually it's probably gonna fade away. Here's the thing about all this Zach Bryan shit. He and her had an incredibly toxic relationship and there are certain things about it that to me sound very, it sounds like two fucking 14 year olds dating each other. It sounds really, really stupid. And then there are also one or two things that do sound like emotional abuse. They do. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) There are specific stories that stand out more than others that traverse from that just bad relationship in general, very, very immature relationship to getting a little more toxic. Stuff like she was supposed to celebrate her 30th birthday or something like that. And to be the awesome boyfriend, he got her like this big, huge place at a oceanfront and had all her friends go there. But it was also that, you know, that passive aggressive thing that people that you've been with in the past have, where they do something nice for you, but they don't let you forget that they're doing something nice or they make you feel guilty for having to do the something nice. You know, him being the, I can't believe that I'm gonna take off tour to, you know, do your birthday sort of talk instead of making it about them sort of thing. Not even speaking to when they are at the actual party and he gets really drunk really early. So she goes to bed 'cause she doesn't want to deal with it. She wakes up to all of her friends crying because he has gone on this big diet tribe about how he's doing something with his life and they're all fucking losers that are never gonna amount to anything to it at that point. Obviously all of her friends fucking hated him. That's, to me, that's a very telling sign when not just like all of her hangout friends but her work friends, everybody fucking hated this guy that met him, which is pretty telling. What else borders on the line of, you know, inappropriate to the point of abuse? Oh, songs, so she would sing songs as one does. You know, you're in your house, you're cleaning, you're getting stuff together, you're having fun, you're having a drink, whatever. You start seeing him to yourself in your head, right? Well, he got mad at her. Sounds like more than one occasion because she would be singing another guy's music. She would be singing a song she heard on the radio and it'd be from another singer or country singer or a Morgan Wayland type or something and he would flip out and, you know, don't sing another man's song in my house. That's fucking psychotic behavior. That's hilariously psychotic. And again, I'm gonna keep saying it but it really sounds like dating a 13 year old. What else did not want her to have a career? Got really, really pissed off when she went on tour for her podcast, actually tried to get her to quit Barstool, tried to get her, basically offered to pay her double just to quit her job and follow him around. Again, something that I think some people would not see is abusive or anything like that but as an older, wiser and to me, probably healthier person, if you are wanting that sort of thing from a significant other, if you are wanting them not to be an independently successful person, there's something horribly wrong there with you as a person. That's generally accepted knowledge, right? But I do know, I know couples that are not, that it feel the same way. I know couples that they love that jealousy and they love not being able to not be around each other and I'm close with couples like that and I don't get it at all and I don't think it's healthy but to each their own. And of course, one of the biggest red flags for men and women alike, his treatment of peaches. Peaches, of course, being Dave Portnoy's extremely lovable dog, everybody loves peaches, look her up, everybody loves her. They all got invited to one of Zach Bryan's concerts while they were dating and of course Dave asked if he could bring peaches. Yes, of course, backstage, go hang out. Yeah, let the dog is so chill, hang out. Well, Dave Portnoy went, had to go meet people or something like that when he came back, they were keeping peaches in another room because Zach Bryan didn't want him in the backstage room. That's, to me, that's all you need to know about him. That is all you need to know about Zach Bryan. The biggest tell out of this whole thing for me is the fact that Zach Bryan and Zach Bryan's team offered $12 million to her if she signed an NDA. Now, a couple ways to look at this. Number one, sure. He's one of the biggest things in the world right now, what he doesn't need is a bunch of talk railroading, what he's got going with him, his team, his employees, the sponsors, all this stuff, yes. But you do not offer $12 million NDA to somebody unless there's something bad out there. You do not offer a $12 million NDA because of a crummy breakup. And that's why when she in the podcast talks about how there's some really bad text, calls, messages, probably you're not gonna make the light of day just because she doesn't want them to. This is what's really cool is you have to listen to the podcast because you can kind of tell just from the hour, hour and a half of whatever it is listening to her talk to her and the work team. The Dave Portneis on there, a couple, another guy, another girl talking about this. It's pretty clear. First off, I'm sure she's doing just fine on her own, but it's pretty clear that she's not money grubbing. I mean, she didn't take $12 million. That's $12 million. And her take on it, which I really like is, let's say she takes that $12 million, she goes and buys a super nice house, she's sitting on her deck one day and she's like, how the fuck am I supposed to enjoy this when I know that I got this money from Zach Bryan? That Zach Bryan basically paid for all this. I don't know. If you listen to the pod, there's just so many more reasons to believe her than to not and why you wouldn't believe her in the first place. I don't know. But again, the $12 million, that's a lot of fucking money to offer to somebody. You don't offer $12 million unless there's some bad shit that's gonna get out. And it kind of did, and that podcast at least part of it about some of the things that he was doing. Like she went to the whatever, some fucking award show I don't know in a specific dress. And he's texting her about how he can't believe that, you know, the basic, I own the woman. I can't believe you would go out in public in that dress sort of bullshit, which is just like 101 of just bad relationship, bad guy to not be with type shit. All that said, once it gets to that point, once you know what you know and you listen to Brianna talk, it's not about what he did and what he didn't do and what happened in the relationship and what was abusive and what wasn't. It's trying to listen to his music and his specific style of music and who he portrays himself to be in the music and try to, it is so hard to listen to it and have it not feel like complete bullshit after you hear all that stuff about him. He's portrays himself as this simple Oklahoma mama's boy that isn't perfect, but he's doing his best. And then you learn that he's actually just a guy who's using his current fame to his advantage. He's sending $12 million and NDAs. He's treating his girls like shit, which like I said, every fucking singer is not right or does it, but it's for the time being and it'll probably fade away much like I said, I listen to singers that have done terrible things. I don't know if that's wrong or right. I'm sure it's wrong, but I don't know what it is, what it is. That is the coverage I will give Zach Bryan, of course, turns into some other talk that's always gonna happen and that's the way it is, right? Let's move on to something else that I wanna talk about. So we give our top five favorites of the year. We give our top five best of the year all the time, right? What we don't do is we don't really talk about what other venues have given. What we're seeing on Rolling Stone and Pitchfork and Needle Drop and all that stuff. And I think I wanna talk a little bit about it, which is really gonna boil down to one album mostly because that's just the way it is. Now, we do have listeners that we, you know, on Instagram, the best albums of the year start coming out a lot that, you know, they come out usually a little earlier than ours do, so we usually have time to sit with them. I saw a lot of the Cure, the Cure's album was on it. I'm not gonna argue that at all. I thought the Cure was great. As far as our best list, it was on there. I think it was my number two or three for best album of the year. I really did enjoy the new Cure album. It grew on me. I was really nervous the first couple times I listened to it because I did, that was one of the most albums ever for me as on the podcast for people writing, asking me what I thought, if I liked the album or not. People that were clearly very, very invested in it. So I was very nervous to hear it and then was even more nervous the first time I listened to it and I wasn't a really huge fan. And it only took about two or three listens until I was like, "Okay, there's definitely something great here." And it's definitely grown on me. It's still not one of my favorites. It's not gonna be one of my favorites of 24. And I think it's just 'cause I'm not a huge Cure guy. I love the Cure, I respect the Cure. The Cure tends to be one of those bands that people are either obsessed with or they're not. And that's just kinda how it is. But I saw a good amount of them. Of course, JPEG RAW, a couple of people had. Definitely not mad at that as it was ours best of two. Just not surprised. If anything, I thought I'd see a little more Gary Clark, Jr. haven't seen it around the Instagram and Facebook world very much, which does kinda surprise me. In fact, most of you listeners that we end up sharing our best ofs or that you post, I rarely have a problem. There's always one or two that there's always one or two. Usually ends up being more of the folky stuff that's really big right now that I'm not a huge into. And then I do tend to lean a little more metal than a lot of my indie friends. I do kinda like the old school hook pop rock. I'm good with the JPEG RAW, that's for sure. Pitchfork's album of the year was Diamond Jubilee by Cindy Lee. I did talk about it quickly in the finale. I really liked that album. So I'm not gonna argue with Pitchfork. I think that is a very easy best album of the year pick. But I think it's a really good one too. That album is fantastic. It's way too long. It's got so much going on, but really, really good stuff. So I'm actually surprisingly pretty okay with it. The big thing is, and then yeah, it was number two on Pitchfork's. It was number one on Rolling Stone. It was number one on Needle Drop, which just increasingly gets more and more confounding every fucking year. I stopped listening to his reviews probably a year or two ago. We had a bit of a, I don't wanna say, I mean, look, that guy is extremely, you know, comparing him to us is comparing fucking Elvis to whoever was not successfully making albums on Elvis. Well, he's just, he's the most popular music reviewer there is. But we had a fairly negative interaction with him. And I just don't, the reason I tell you that is because that might be why I've tended to like him a lot less over the last couple of years, but his favorite album of 2024 was Brat by Charlie XCX, Rolling Stone's best album of the year, Brat, Charlie XCX, number two Pitchfork Brat. What the fuck is up with this Brat thing? What I did is I sat down and I listened to it again all the way through. I sat down, I said, look, this is probably like the fourth time I've done this this year. I sat it down, I listened to it, I was like, look dude, you are obviously not getting it because this is on everybody's fucking list, everybody's. It's not just that it's not a great album. I'm fine with that. I rarely understand what everybody else loves. I mean, clearly, you know, Taylor Swift is the biggest thing in the world right now. I don't fucking get why. So there's clearly a disconnect there and there's always going to be, and that's fine. It's not the disconnect that bugs me. It's listening to Brat and just searching for what is unique or different, or the biggest problem for me is that every song on Brat hasn't not only has already been done, but it's been done a lot of times very specifically. It was done 9 million times in the early 2000s. That's the biggest thing about Brat is these Brat pop songs, it's treated like this crazy new unique, like holy shit, she did it, she cracked the code. These songs, like we've all heard these songs so many times. And I still, you know, after sitting down, trying it again, it is the biggest "I Don't Get It" album I think that I've ever had since doing this podcast. It is the biggest album that everybody else has been like, this is unbelievable. And I just, and there is something huge missing there. I can't even, even the albums that I can usually be like, look, I get it. I get why like big thief catches people. I get why like the Waha Hachi Tigers Blood album, I get it. I don't, it's not there for me, but at least I get it. I don't get the Brat one, not at all, not even close. I don't know what I need. I need something because it's crazy that kind of like unanimously best album of the year. If it wasn't for Chappell Rhone, it wouldn't even been, well, oh, I guess there was Sabrina Carpenter too. That's a whole other conversation that I don't have to have 'cause I think I pissed Rachel off to the point that she won't even talk to me anymore, which if that was gonna happen at some point in time, we'll see, we're actually recording together tomorrow. We'll see how that goes. I don't think she's, I think she's still mad at me from the finale, but you know, Sabrina Carpenter deserves to be made fun of, right? That's kind of where we're at. So anyway, the moral of the story is that I looked at all the big top lists, which was pretty easy because it was all, Brat was basically it with the exception of, you know, what, some like one or two, Sabrina Carpenter's, I did, you know, one or two Gary Clark Jr's, some Jack White's, the Jack White new album was on a couple of peoples, not mad at that and the Cure, which I can take all those. I'm good with all that. I guess as far as anything else, I can save it for next week's conversation with the kids. Make sure everybody's doing okay. Done with the Christmas music for this year. I do get a little more into Christmas and the Christmas music every year that I'm alive. I just, I'm probably just becoming a softie now that I'm older and family means a little more every year and got the kids around and it's fun. I mean, that kind of feeds into the art versus artists too. I shit, listen to plenty of Ron Spector during Christmas and we all know what he did. But yeah, Christmas music, my opinion on it hasn't changed. I listened to it much less than probably most people, but man, for that week, that Christmas week, I get heavy into it. I play all the albums. I do have plenty of Christmas albums, all that stuff. In Sven's honor, I don't listen to much Michael Buble. I actually really don't like Michael Buble either. So we're okay there. Well, that's pretty much it. Stay tuned, we got a lot of great stuff coming this year. A lot more singular album talks. A lot more 10 out of 10, more album exchanges. Simplifying, simplify, simplify, simplify. Every episode's a two-parter, what's not to love? versecourse, verse.com, at versecourse, verse pod. Hope you guys enjoyed all of season four. Look forward to season five and cheers to you all. We love you. Good night and good luck. ♪ Oh I, oh I ♪ ♪ Wanna stay right by your side ♪ ♪ 'Cause you and me ♪ ♪ We'll fit together naturally ♪ ♪ I see your face that always makes me smile ♪ ♪ So I stand a little while ♪ ♪ Let me squeeze you tight ♪ ♪ Hold you through the night ♪ ♪ It feels so right ♪ ♪ Oh I, oh I ♪ [MUSIC PLAYING]