Evan’s Insight: New Adele Track (10/17)

Well, the time has finally come. Adele, one of the most celebrated and world-renown musical artist of the past decade, has recently dropped her newest single titled “Easy on Me”, and it’s the first to come off of her upcoming 4th studio album “30”. After 6 years of hiatus after her massively successful album “25”, the London-based pop superstar is back with arguably the most anticipated musical release of the year, even with Kanye West’s record-breaking album “Donda” being released earlier in August. With this single, Adele’s clearly chosen a less bombastic return in comparison to “Hello”, but in favor has produced a more restrained, balanced effort that is as somber and sweet to the ears as any of her previous work. In the song, Adele’s portrayal of being fearful of entering a new relationship after her past experiences is wonderfully portrayed, especially in the lines when she says,

“I know there is hope in these waters
But I can’t bring myself to swim”.

Here, she’s willing to let herself into the new relationship, but also clearly hesitant at the same time. It’s no surprise that Adele’s description of a relationship is enthralling and captivating, as it’s almost become an expectation at this point for her to tug on everyone’s heart strings with her relatable and memorable lyrics.

Streaming wise, this song broke all kinds of records. On the first day of its release, it became the most streamed new single of 2021, but also of all time on streaming services such as Apple Music and Spotify, beating out BTS with their single “Butter” and Drake’s “Girls want Girls”. This didn’t really come as much of a surprise, as Adele seems to break new record after new record every time she decides to drop new material.

Hopefully, with more singles and the album on the way, Adele’s return can continue to be a critical but commercial successes.

Evan’s Sports Recap 10/16

This week, we’ve had a boatload of sports to indulge in. Lots of drama, big moments, and heroism has made up another week of thrilling October sports, and most specifically, playoff baseball. The first rounds of the postseason kicked off in grand style, as both Wild Card games proved to be intense nail bitters. While the Red Sox rallied early for 3 runs off of an abnormally tired Cole, the Dodgers and Cards went a full 9 innings in a pitcher’s duel between both staff’s aces: Wainwright and Scherzer. With the Sox and Dodgers advancing, the LDS rounds proved to be filled with just as much excitement. The Astros romped over the White Sox in 4 games with an offensive outburst led by sluggers such as Kyle Tucker and Carlos Correa, and the Red Sox pulled off an amazing 4-game upset against the 100-win Tampa Bay Rays, who had one of the best pitching staffs in baseball. Meanwhile in the NL, the highly-anticipated Dodgers-Giants matchup ended in 5 games with the Dodgers victorious thanks to a key hit from Cody Bellinger, who had struggled all season, that would score the go-ahead run in the 9th. The Brewers and Braves series was dominating by elite starting pitching, mostly housed by the brewers, but unfortunately, their cy-young caliber rotation wasn’t enough to carry their deadened offense, and the Braves knocked them out in 4. With the Red Sox/Astros and Braves/Dodgers matching up this weekend, even more excitement should be on the way for baseball and its fans.

Evan’s Sports Talk: Postseason Baseball 10/5

October is FINALLY here! Arguably the greatest month of sports there is, October is filled with drama, twists and turns, and overall lots of good times shared with friends and family. Where does all this pleasantness come from??? Well, you’ve got playoff baseball, college football, NFL football, the start of the NBA season, NHL preseason, and the list goes on and on. My personal favorite at the time I’m currently typing away at this is good ol’ playoff baseball. Why is this?

When I was a freshman back in high school, I attended my first ever playoff game which was Game 6 of the ALCS between the Yankees and the Astros in 2017. I went to the game with no expectations at all and left as an absolute baseball fanatic. The atmosphere of the crowd, the shitty over-priced carnival food, the home runs, the pitching, everything was perfect. It was one of the best experiences of my life, and I even got to heckle some Yankees fans during the game. Say what you want about how that year’s controversial World Series run is precepted by the baseball world now, but that game changed my life forever. I got to understand why people were so passionate not just about baseball but for sports in general. It’s all about the experience.

With the playoffs coming up this year, I’m hoping there are more great memories made down the line that help strengthen my love for the game.

Evan’s Sports Recap 9/27

As the last week of September comes to a close, many new sports events approach us as October looms closer than ever. But before we dwell into what’s to come, let’s discuss what went down during this week in the sports world (more specifically, the teams that I actually care about). In College Football, our own Oklahoma Sooners battled out a close one with West Virginia as they won by a final of 16-13, winning the game on a game-winning field goal by kicker Gabe Brkic. In the NFL, the Texans took an absolute beating against the much-more competent Carolina Panthers, in which they lost 9-24. Surprise, Surprise, Texans are hot garbage, who could’ve seen that coming! On the bright side, there’s one Houston sports team that isn’t complete trash, and that’s the Astros (no pun intended). They’re looking to wrap up the division and secure their 4th AL West title in the past 5 years, and their magic number to clinch currently stands at a minuscule 2. Their next series is against Tampa at home, and although they’re coming off a sweep against Oakland on the road, being in front of the home crowd should give the boys enough confidence to get the job done. Well, that’s it for this week, and for more, check out next week’s edition, but until then, I’m Evan Rebhorn, and this has been my weekly sports recap.

What helps captivate MY interest in media?

I’ve always been interested in the world of media for a long while now, at least since I created my first social media account on Snapchat. The simple action of putting my name and email down on a sign-up page introduced me into a whole new chapter of my life, one that I still have much to learn about. One of the guiding questions that keeps me invested in trying to learn as much as I can in the world of media is what can I do to separate myself from other media publishers? Whenever I look around, I see plenty of news outlets, social media websites, and others repeat the same formulas to pull in as big of an audience as possible. While this strategy is obviously affective, and it tends to draw lots of clicks for these media outlets, it tends to get bland and predictable after a while, and I can’t help but to want to make something more of myself as I go into the Journalism field. Some questions I ask myself when taking this mindset into consideration are: What topic has nobody else covered that I could make something interesting out of? What connections should I make and what people should I meet in order to get my work out to a larger audience? All of these questions are hopefully things I will take into heart and use to my advantage to help kickstart a successful career in Journalism.

The Skyscraper Model – is it affective?

Decades, centuries, and millenniums have passed by over the history of planet earth, and as this has happened, humanity has evolved over time with the ever-constant state of change in our world, and culture is the main reason for that. We’ve had brilliant and crowing achievements that have taken place in our culture over the years, ex. Shakespeare, Beethoven, etc. There’s also been some moments in our culture which we view poorly upon and would much rather forget, such as Scary Movie, The Kim Kardashian Show, and the entire discography of Limp Bizkit. The model many people use to compare these two types of culture is know as the Skyscraper Model. It’s used to measure the quality of each ends of our culture over the years, and most of the time, it can be fairly affective, however, there’s always guaranteed to be a blurry part of the model purely based on one’s own perception of what high and low culture is. For example, one could consider The Rolling Stones as high culture for being one of the most famous and well-recognized rock bands of all time, but someone else could argue that they don’t hold a candle in comparison the the likes of The Beatles or The Smiths. A lot of the thought put into the model is largely objective, which can often make arguments and discussions over which peice of culture goes where very subjective to one’s own personal opinion. There’s also the factor of taking into account how society’s standards change over the years regarding culture, which is related to the example I made earlier. Ever heard of the phrase, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”? The same applies to how people of 60’s would interpret their own culture compared to how today’s people would view it. At the end of the day, the Skyscraper model may clarify the more universally agreed-upon parts of our culture, but when it comes to the middle area, it’s really all up to our own perceptions.

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