Miley Cyrus' Bass Persuades + Troye Sivan's "Party," Robyn Live, & More! (Patreon Preview)

Hey y'all, DJ Louie here just dropping a preview of this week's Pot Pantheon All Access episode. If you enjoy this snippet and you wanna hear the rest of this episode, plus weekly bonus episodes of this podcast, you can subscribe at patreon.com/potpantheon or click the link in the show notes of this episode. If you're considering subscribing to Pot Pantheon All Access and you use Apple's App Store on your mobile device, we recommend not subscribing to Pot Pantheon All Access using the Patreon app on your phone, where Apple is now charging unnecessary fees for new subscribers. Instead, go to patreon.com/potpantheon on your desktop to subscribe. You will still have access to all of the features of Patreon, including listening to our bonus episodes on your Apple Podcast app. We wish we had more control over this, but sadly we don't, so that's a recommendation to save you a couple bucks. You can also of course subscribe for the audio only, directly here in the Apple Podcast app. Enjoy this preview. Welcome to Pot Pantheon All Access, the podcast where we do even more over analyzing of all your favorite pop stars and do other stuff too. This is your host, DJ Louis XIV. And I am here with my potty in the bush. It's Russ Martin. Russ has the base persuaded you this weekend. - I regret to inform you that it has not. You are of course referring to Miley Cyrus' studio album, "Base per Swades," not to be confused with the title track, "Base per Swades," which we discussed at length last week. I feel similarly to that conversation still in that I find Miley Cyrus to be a perplexing artist with a patchy sense of creative vision. - Patchy is actually, I think, a pretty friendly way to put it. - I was searching for, we'll get into it more. - I was searching for the friendliest way. We're not gonna spend a whole hour talking just about the album that we don't love. We are gonna tackle a bunch of things we're talking about some shows that we went to. We're gonna talk about the Miley record. We're gonna talk about Troy's second single, off of his upcoming album, "She's the best." And if we have time at the end, we are gonna land on who may or may not should or shouldn't do this year's Super Bowl halftime show. It's a little grab bag episode for your nerves. You recently saw a up and coming star, the thorn in the side of the swifty community, Eli. - Can you explain that? What is the drama? Because she did reference that in the show, but I was lost. 'Cause I was brought, let me just say, I was brought to the show by my dear friend, Lizzie Plappender, who brought me sight unseen to this. So I had zero idea who Eli was. I guess maybe besides hearing the one song on Zara Larson's Remix album. So before I say anything about the show, what's the beef with the swifties? - Well, first of all, shout out to Lizzie, who you trust enough to just go to a new show because she is cool and has great taste. - That's nice to have a cool, sapphic with great taste in your life because she will bring you to all sorts of very cool things. - 100%. - I would follow her off a cliff. - The Eli beef, as I understand it, is that she has been critical of Taylor and then that has been responded with aggression and some levels of transphobia from Taylor. - No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, of course, no. I don't think Taylor has ever, that important clarification. I don't think Taylor might not even know who Eli is to be honest, but some faction of the swifties, of course not the whole community, but some fans of Taylor have said some things and she's, I think kind of ducker heels in and I think made some jokes about it too that are not necessarily received with a sense of playful humor. - You're implying that the swifties have done something untoward and sort of overreacted to a criticism of Taylor Swift. - Now what I am implying is that some people who may listen to Taylor Swift may or may not have allegedly done something. Please don't dox me, I have a family. - No, we're safe here, we're safe here, we are safe. - I love this community. - Yeah, that's a little bit of that, but for those listeners who might not be familiar with Eli, she put out an album. I believe last year called "Stage Door." - I think it's called, is that what it's called, "Stage Door?" - Maybe "Stage Door" is the "Deluxe Edition." - "Stage Girl," "Stage Girl." - But I think "Stage Door" is the "Deluxe Edition" of it. - Oh, okay. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, "Stage Girl." She kind of has a bit of a musical theater vibe. The energy is very like Gen Z raised on Glee. Non-derogatory, I think that what she does is cool. It's not for me, but she does have an incredible couple of songs that I really, really love. I think that "Fuck the DJ" is one of the pop songs of the year. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - That song absolutely rips. It's really, really good. I was hoping that she was going to kind of head in that direction because I think that she's a fun presence. She's got sort of a Y2K thing going on. It's very 2003 revival, Disney girl, Fedora. It's very skirt over jeans, if you will. - I gotta tell you something Ross actually speaking of that. Jack and I are currently rewatching old seasons of "Project Runway" from the 2000s. I just personally think that it's like a horrible era for fashion. I know that it's been reclaimed and it's kind of coming back with Gen Z and stuff like that. But I thought it at the time and I still do think it is just one of the bleakest eras of fashion ever. So when Eli took the stage at "Webster Hall," I was truly a guest at "Webster Hall." I mean, I was just like, "This is so so bad." Which I guess is sort of the point, like she's sort of doing like. - It's a little cum. - It's a little cum. Britney cum. I think you're skirt over jeans. - Yes, and it's semi-ironic in the same way that Pink Pantherous's whole office girl vibe was when she first entered the scene as well. - Yeah, you know, it was interesting. Also, you know, I think it's important to say that she is a trans artist so that obviously undergirds a lot of it. Like the show is definitely very queer-coated. Friend of the pod, Ivy Woke, opened. - It was a stand-up set. - Who has a stand-up comic open for a podcast show? - I mean, at first I thought it was weird, but then it kind of made sense because the show was like, it did ruin me of early Gaga in the sense that it was like wildly ambitious, but like hadn't quite come together. I mean, it was way less together than anything Gaga ever did. I would have to say. Or maybe this was what Gaga shows looked like, you know, before anybody really knew what she was doing. I mean, this made like the fame ball or whatever seemed like blonde ambition or something. I mean, it was just totally like rag tag. It was half like pop star performance with dancers and like, she was singing live the entire time and definitely it has kind of like a powerhouse voice. There was also like an American idol quality to the whole thing, like talking about. She was doing vocals in a way that was both aspiring for and parodying kind of like American idol era power singing. Yeah, I do like the song "Fuck the DJ." I don't love a lot of the other songs I have to say. And then there was just a bunch of extent, there was like a narrative. Like it was like a whole story with a narrative like in between songs all of a sudden, this drag queen would come out and do like a fake talk show with her that like felt entirely improvised and like wasn't funny or I was just like missing. Like it just wasn't well put together or like thought out or scripted or anything. So it was just they were riffing and like it just didn't like land that well for me. But the crowd was eating it up. Like they were like her fans were really into it. And I just at some point I turned to Lizzie and I was like, "Are we just like two olds to understand this?" Or and like is that an issue that it feels so insular that like we can't get into it as like new potential fans of this artist. But you know, I kind of left with mixed feelings. I left feeling like she's incredibly talented. I admired her ambition. She really was like going for the gusto with her like idiosyncratic little vision there. And it was really cool to see like the cultivated small but fervent fan base. Like I wouldn't say the venue was totally sold out but the people that were there were like obsessed with her. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And there was a clip of Zarlarsson in the middle of it doing like a sort of like half jokie, half sincere sort of like we've got an uplift trans artist kind of thing that she clearly filmed like backstage after performing on, you know what, one of her festival shows or something like that. Yeah, so it was like, it was both baffling but also admirable is how we would describe it. Like I wouldn't say that I thought it was like great. And I think she has like a pretty far way to go in terms of like calcifying and developing. If the goal is to become a more traditional mainstream pop star, I think she's got quite a ways to go in terms of like bringing that together in a way that will be legible to more people, but I do think she's got the spark of something interesting going on. And like clearly it's resonating with the people that are obsessed with her. Like the people that were obsessed with her were treating her like she was a superstar. So and she was like really going for it. Like she definitely a stage president. She definitely like is commanding. You know, I was intrigued but I wasn't, I was also kind of baffled and often kind of bored. - Mmm, I understand, yes. Yeah, I have always when I dipped in on her or being like, I think it's really cool that she is doing something unique and that she is doing something that doesn't feel just like it is recreation of something from pop's past. I was like, you are trying something new and that's really cool. I really admire that. - There's a true queerness to it. I mean, that's why I brought up her identity or trans identity because it's like, you can sense that it's like a Gen Z's queer take on some of the tropes of our childhood or something like that. And it's like, she's both like admiring it and homaging it and taking the piss out of it at the same time in a way that like, great queer art often does. - Let's talk about both of us having seen Robin's existential tour. - Let's fast forward just to peak millennial behavior. - Going to Robin. - Exactly, yes. - Yes. - You got, I gotta tell you, I walked into that Robin show and I was like, man, everyone here is like, definitely a little bit older than I expected. - It was the Silk Road. - Yeah, and oh my God, Louie, listeners are not necessarily gonna be depraved enough to know what you mean by that. Do you care to share it with the crowd? - If you wanna know, Google it. - Google that. I was like, damn, everyone's a little bit older and Louie, I realized what I was looking into in that crowd was in fact a mirror. - Right. I was like older than what? - What? (laughing) - Older than the image of myself that I have in my head. - I guess the image of yourself that first fell in love with Robin. Now you have seen Robin actually twice this year, is that correct? - Yes, and I've also seen her, I think, five times total. - Okay. - So that actually gave me a lot of context to how I felt about the show. But yes, I did see her earlier this year at the Brooklyn Paramount, which is a much smaller venue. - New Year's Eve? - No, it was originally. - That was just a preview. If you wanna hear the rest of that episode, plus weekly bonus episodes of this show, you could subscribe at patreon.com/poppantion. Click the link in the show notes of this episode or subscribe for the audio only directly in the Apple Podcast app.