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New To Us: GHOST | Top 5 Songs - First Impressions
27 Plays1 year ago
In another New To Us video, we discuss Ghost for the first time!
We listened to the 5 most popular songs on their Spotify and give our opinion and first impressions of the band and whether we’d listen to more!
You can also watch us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7mfJVCp_TzbPNZNMMemJuw
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Transcript
Ghost's Rise in Metal
00:00:00
Speaker
In recent years, the popularity of ghosts' music has taken the metal world by storm. We'd only heard one song prior to this, so we listened to their top five most popular songs on Spotify. They were Mary on a Cross, Dance Mcarver, Square Hammer, Jesus He Knows Me, and Call Me Little Sunshine. Here are our thoughts.
Is Ghost Truly Metal?
00:00:26
Speaker
After hearing these songs, my first kind of thought was, you know, can you call Ghost Metal? What I did like, it's obvious in the tone of the instruments, their lyrical content, specific riffs and guitar tones and stuff, that they aren't metal band at the bass. But it brings into question things like the melodies of the songs, the structures of the songs, they're very poppy, aren't they? The chord progression in Square Hammer Chorus, the chorus of Mary on a Cross and the guitar riffs in Dance Macabre, all kind of
00:00:54
Speaker
almost blur the lines of, is this pop or is it metal? But undoubtedly they are a metal band, but there is a lot of poppy elements in the music.
Melody and Theme Contrast
00:01:03
Speaker
Something I heard a lot throughout listening to the five songs we mentioned is contrasts. I mean, music and lyrics, super contrasting. You can have really lovely and nice to listen to melodies with really dark and mysterious lyrics. It's unsettling, isn't it? Yes, it is. And songs like Marion Across are a great example of that.
Broadening Audience Reach
00:01:26
Speaker
aspect of the songs that I really enjoyed was the accessibility that I heard in it. I thought that actually each song as we'd mentioned had its moments that could have been like a pop song. You know in Dance Macabre I thought it was like the Disco 2000 by Pulp. In Mary on a Cross I heard the Boomtown Raps in the chorus and obviously you've got that Genesis cover and we know Genesis were essentially a pop band in the 90s. But I think this is a good aspect of the music because
00:01:51
Speaker
you're allowing a new type of listener in. If you're making two and a half, three minute songs that have poppy choruses and poppy verses and melodies, but with heavy metal music, this is opening up metal to a wider, poppier audience. And I think that is not a bad thing at all. Talking about accessibility, we can't not mention the vocals and Tobias Forge has got a very nice and pleasant vocal tone, which I think
Ghost's Musical Evolution
00:02:17
Speaker
makes it even more accessible, doesn't it? Yeah, if you put any other kind of metal vocals in, it's completely different. Yeah, it's gonna make the whole sound totally different. I also think that use of harmonies, and I mean such wide use of harmonies, I think I heard lots of vocal harmonies in each track we listen to. I think that also contributes to accessibility.
00:02:41
Speaker
Now, despite all this talk of accessibility and poppiness, which we've said overall might be a good thing, we are a metal channel here, and I felt there were a lot more metal songs. Now, disclaimer, I shouldn't have done, because it goes against the rules of this video, but I did listen to some earlier Ghost songs, because I wanted to hear what the fuss was about. You know, these first five songs have a certain sound about them, which I thought might have been different to earlier albums. And I listened to three other songs, Serice, Year Zero and Con Clavidio,
00:03:09
Speaker
And I just felt they were so much more metal than the five popular songs. But I suppose, you know, they just had that dark undertone, dissonant music, a heavy chugging guitars in them. And I thought they were much more metal than the songs we heard.
Uniqueness vs. Accessibility
00:03:23
Speaker
But the writing's on the wall because there's a reason those five songs are the most popular, I think.
00:03:27
Speaker
So did you like those five songs? No. Sorry. No, I didn't like them. I didn't think there was anything special about them. For me, if you say pop metal, the first song I think of is Afterlife by Avenged Sevenfold because it is a song that you can sing along to, anthemic chorus.
00:03:44
Speaker
nice easy verses but still the root is in metal and there's a complicatedness about it that there's this you still get the sophistication of metal in that song with these five ghost songs i just didn't think there was anything special could have been a pop song they could have made it heavier or longer anything i didn't enjoy it but those other three songs i mentioned i enjoyed a lot more what about you i enjoyed the choruses but that's about it
00:04:09
Speaker
I think at the core of those five songs, they were quite similar. And again, like you said, there's a reason they're so popular. They're so easy to listen to. They're easygoing songs, although they are done by a metal band. But I would definitely check out the heavier stuff. I think I would like it a lot more.
Exploring Heavier Tracks
00:04:30
Speaker
So for me, and I think it's safe to say us, the jury's still out on Ghost. The five songs we listened to we weren't really fans of but I know I shouldn't have but I did listen to those other songs and I enjoyed those. Now Ghost fans, you let us know in the comments below some heavier stuff by Ghost that we should definitely check out and we will do a new video about it. Yeah and let us know your favorite Ghost songs as well, we want to know that.
00:04:53
Speaker
Thank you so much for being here with us today. We hope you enjoyed the video. Don't forget to click like and share our video on your socials. Have a mountain day. Have a lovely day. We'll see you very soon.