Interview: Tanner Merritt

Tanner Merritt
Mary Varvaris

A lot has changed since I caught up with O’Brother last year. For one, touring again is a possibility for the band – over 105 million Americans have been fully vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus, which brings the country closer to post-pandemic normal. For vocalist Tanner Merritt, he has written a ton of new solo material due to monumental personal loss. Last year, O’Brother was riding high: They had released their long-awaited fourth album, You and I, to unanimous praise and incredible sales for a newly independent band. 

The album relished space and classical guitars while intentionally leaving vague lyrics to listeners’ imaginations. As beautiful as You and I is, there was a dark undercurrent beneath the track “What We’ve Lost.” A kind of follow-up to Endless Light’s “Black Hole,” Merritt needed an outlet to write about his father, Cyrus’s decade-long fight with Alzheimer’s disease. Then COVID hit, and Merritt spent most of the year in total isolation alongside his mother, watching his father’s condition worsen until he passed away on November 4, 2020, two days after his 63rd birthday. 

Read More “Tanner Merritt”

The Untold History of the ‘Take This to Your Grave’ Artwork

Fall Out Boy
Jason Tate

Alex Toor has done a deep dive into the history of designing Fall Out Boy’s Take This to Your Grave artwork:

Fast-forward nearly a year later and I was able to get in touch with Mike Joyce, designer for Take This To Your Grave and founder of Stereotype Design. Mike has generously shared several never-before-seen assets from the making of TTTYG exclusively with The Bad Habits Collection. The following is a complete dissection of these contents, their fascinating history, and the artistic process that guided the way.

TikTok Is Helping Make Pop-Punk a Thing Again

Tik Tok
Jason Tate

Aliya Chaudhry, writing at Consequence:

But there’s another major factor bringing pop-punk back, and it’s causing a lot of change in the music industry. TikTok has been revitalizing hits from the 2000s and 2010s – many of them scene staples like 3OH!3’s “DONTTRUSTME”, Paramore’s “All I Wanted”, and All Time Low’s “Dear Maria, Count Me In”. It’s also bolstered newer songs, like “I Miss Having Sex but at Least I Don’t Want to Die Anymore” by pop-punk-adjacent band Waterparks, who didn’t even release the track as a single (and have subsequently signed to hip-hop label 300 Entertainment). YUNGBLUD, whose work combines elements of pop and punk with other genres, frequently collaborates with Machine Gun Kelly and Travis Barker, and his song “parents” went viral on TikTok earlier this year.

Next level: When TikTok can get all those pop-punk bands that should have been huge back in the day a viral hit. Come on, let’s see some Lucky Boys Confusion dance move videos.

Facebook Bans Honest Signal Ads on Instagram

Facebook
Jason Tate

Shoshana Wodinsky, writing at Gizmodo:

A series of Instagram ads run by the privacy-positive platform Signal got the messaging app booted from the former’s ad platform, according to a blog post Signal published on Tuesday. The ads were meant to show users the bevy of data that Instagram and its parent company Facebook collects on users, by… targeting those users using Instagram’s own adtech tools. 

The actual idea behind the ad campaign is pretty simple. Because Instagram and Facebook share the same ad platform, any data that gets hoovered up while you’re scrolling your Insta or Facebook feeds gets fed into the same cesspool of data, which can be used to target you on either platform later.