The Half-Baked Newsletter Newsletter
As the year expires, we look back at what was, what is, and what might still be.
I think I’m being haunted.
I can’t be sure, but my door knocker just morphed into the face of my old manager at On the Border Mexican Grill & Cantina, the scented candle that I carry through my cramped apartment has extinguished, and, outside, I can barely make out the labored breath of a chain-ridden phantom who didn’t realize I lived on the third floor.
Well, there’s not much to do now. Might as well grab some eggnog, sneak in some Fireball, and wait for—
The Ghost of NTS Future
Future first? If I had to proffer a guess, I would suppose that these spirits are going to visit us in the opposite order because they deemed it would allow for a better flow of the newsletter. How considerate of them!
Anyway, here are five half-baked ideas you may encounter next year.
1. To Reveal or Not To Reveal
Earlier this year, Needless to Say held a brief competition in which songs of various genres and decades (nay, centuries) competed against each other to determine which work was better.
This casual disregard for the artistic process was meant to prove that fade outs are lazy bits of songwriting. I ultimately failed in that endeavor—you can read it for yourself here. However, the most important takeaway from that post was not my tastefully nuanced conclusion. Rather, it was the following text from my dad, received shortly after publication:
“Fade out blog was your best yet. A fun read. Have to go listen to the tunes now.”
Thanks, pops.
Always eager to please my father fans, I attempted to reduce, reuse, and recycle the format of that newsletter. Except this time, it wasn’t songs entering the NTS tournament of champions. It was movies.
The goal was to determine if writers should present new information in a screenplay via a dramatic reveal or by letting the audience in on the secret before the characters.
In a meta bit of foreshadowing, I will not spoil my findings on the subject. Instead, I’ll simply tease that the post features an unhinged take on the previously-unchallenged concept of dramatic irony and refers to Alfred Hitchcock as…let’s see here…a “fraud.”
2. The Impossible Mandate of Live Music
I’ve been kicking this one around in my mind for a while. The main argument is this: it’s wild that we expect bands to craft sonically interesting albums in the studio and then perform them live on the stage.
What other art form involves anything like that?
A studio album and a live performance are two different mediums. And as music production continues to evolve, the transition from the booth to the stage increasingly requires a conscious adaptation of the recorded material.
It’s like making a movie, releasing it in theaters, and then immediately touring the country with the staged version of it. Except if the play is too different from the film, everyone gets mad? As though the fact that the filmmakers used devices unique to their medium is a bad thing, and therefore the movie is somehow less artistic for indulging in them.
What I’m trying to say is: maybe the best live shows don’t have to sound like the album at all. Maybe live shows, I think, could do a little bit more.
I know I’m probably making a false equivalency between movies and music, and perhaps even plummeting down a slippery slope into a straw man who’s finishing up his post hoc.
But hey, it’s the half-baked newsletter newsletter. What else did you expect?
3. The Severance Score Is Really Good
You know, this one might be less “half-baked” and more “raw.” All I really have to say is this: the score to Apple TV+’s Severance is really good, and I’m really excited for the new season.
4. It Takes Two: The Magic of Duets
I realized this year that I love duets. And so, as with most things that I realize I enjoy, I asked myself the classic question: why?
The answer has to do with energy levels, narrative arcs, and Freddie Mercury. I’m just not quite sure how it all fits together yet.
But if you’re interested in this, you might like this post about second verses. There’s some stuff about energy levels in there too. And narrative arcs. No Freddie, unfortunately.
5. Not Your Savior: Hypocrisy in Art
I think Kendrick Lamar is the greatest rapper alive. And I think Bo Burnham is one of the best comedians alive.
I also think they’re both hypocrites, because they’ve both told me that they’re hypocrites.
But does this meta-acknowledgement of their shortcomings give them a free pass to do anything they want and still feed it into their narrative?
Can Kendrick headline the Super Bowl without facing accusations of selling out simply because he’s already admitted that he’s “the biggest hypocrite of 2015” and, therefore, “not your savior?”
Can Bo Burnham lie to us repeatedly just because he’s told us, “I'm not honest for a second up here?”
Are these cop-outs from responsibility or rare instances of truth-telling in two industries averse to honesty?
“Art is a lie, nothing is real.”
- Bo Burnham
While I would love to share more, a faint golden light has appeared behind my front door and a grape has rolled across the hallway. It must be time to come in and know—
The Ghost of NTS Present
Sometimes, I find things that I like. Not enough to dedicate a whole post to them, but enough to add them to the note I have in my phone titled “Things I like.”
Here are some of those things:
The pick scratches in the guitar solo of Reapers by Muse1.
Every frame of Arcane.
The structure of Cage the Elephant’s “Shake Me Down”.
The dolly zooms in the television program Severance2.
Unstoppable forces of evil in film & TV (e.g. No Country for Old Men, The Killing of a Sacred Deer)3.
The new “Do You Hear What I Hear” collaboration between Josh Groban and The War And Treaty.
The opening 15 minutes of Peacock’s The Day of the Jackal.
Common tone modulations.
Any album that is named after a non-titular phrase in one of the album’s songs.
When Eddie and Fredward are not criminals in The Gentlemen.
The way that the Swiss Army Man score sounds like someone going insane4.
When Jed Bartlet puts his hands in his pockets.
I’d love to continue, but the present is ephemeral, and it’s time to confront—
The Ghost of NTS Past
You’ve heard of Spotify Wrapped. Now get ready for: NTS Enclosed™️! Let’s hand out some awards for my year in art:
Best Movie-Going Experience: Dune: Part Two. In IMAX. On my birthday.
Best Real-Life Needle Drop: Childish Gambino’s Bando Stone and The New World right before a run. Hearts weren’t the only things flying that day.
Best Horror Movie That I Watched Just to Write That One Newsletter5: Poltergeist.
Best In-Movie Needle Drop: I genuinely got goosebumps when Ryan Gosling blew up a boat while YUNGBLUD’s cover of “I Was Made For Lovin’ You” blasted. And you know what? I’m only a little embarrassed.
The ‘I Think I’m A Huge Fan Now’ Award: This prize can only go to Mr. Glen Powell, who I saw for the first time this year in Hit Man6, Twisters, and Everybody Wants Some!
Best In-Show Needle Drops: Anything in Shoresy.
Best Live Performance: I know, I know, I wrote a whole post about how incredible the Saint Motel concert was. But, shortly after that, I witnessed the splendor of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban live in concert. And once you’ve heard “A Window to the Past” performed live, everything else is fighting for second.
Most Gasp-Inducing Book Passage: The last fifteen pages of Pierce Brown’s Golden Son. So much for a relaxing beach read.
Most Surprising Tears Shed at a Sports Documentary About Mac and Deadpool: I can’t explain it. I won’t explain it. But darn it, Welcome to Wrexham really got to me. Up the town, I say.
Favorite Albums of the Year: I’ll give you a few here, in no order, because how could I just pick one?
Nick Cave’s Wild God hit me in the emotionally-complex-and-kind-of-weird-but-I-think-I-really-like-it kind of way that the Bad Seeds excel at7.
Glass Animals’ I Love You So F***ing Much kind of runs together at times but I still found myself listening to it on repeat8.
Kendrick’s GNX came out of nowhere and hijacked my end-of-year listening plans9.
Tyler’s CHROMAKOPIA is thoughtful and fun, even (especially?) when he’s rapping about household chores.
The Black Keys’ Ohio Players continues the trend of Dan and Patrick carrying the torch of guitar-driven rock and blues into the night of today’s popular music10.
Best Score: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s head-banging accompaniment to Challengers.
Favorite New TV Show(s): Say Nothing and English Teacher11.
Best Thing I Made: I’m quite proud of this short film that I scored12.
And now for the big one. The highest honor of the Needless to Say newsletter. It’s time to present the nominees for this year’s NEEDED TO SAY™️ award:
Rules Shmules: When Analysis Fails (link)
Striking a Chord: Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Perfect Ending (link)
Bathroom Breaks: Honesty in Film (link)
Take Your Time: The Pitfalls of Efficient Storytelling (link)
Cut the Chord: In Offense of the Fade Out (link)
These nominees were chosen through a combination of reader feedback and my own personal biases. But there can only be one winner. And so, after consulting with my brother loyal fanbase, the NEEDED TO SAY award goes to:
And suddenly I’m awake in my racecar bed. My sleeping cap is askew, my heart is full, and there’s an intelligent boy outside who won’t shut up about the size of his turkey.
Those cheeky spirits did it all in one newsletter.
Needless to say, it’s been a good year. Thanks for being a part of it.
Interestingly, I do not like the sound of fingers sliding down the strings on acoustic guitars in recordings. Go figure!
As you’ll notice, I liked most things about Severance.
Forget what I said earlier. I might like this enough to write a whole newsletter about it.
A few years ago, my family decided to fire up Swiss Army Man for family movie night because Harry Potter was in it. Once his wand started pointing north, we lost half the room.
This isn’t a condemnation of pop music—I liked Taylor’s album well enough, brat was pretty cool, and Short n’ Sweet has some undeniable bangers on it.
To be fair, I didn’t watch much new TV this year. But these were good.