Two of the biggest names in pop music, Shawn Mendes and Justin Bieber, just released a musical collaboration entitled “Monster”.
Throughout the past few months, Bieber has been putting out songs that are short with a powerful message. “Monster” is the latest version of the types of personal songs that Bieber has been creating lately.
The most shocking part of the video is to see Shawn Mendes without his guitar. Every music video or live performance with Mendes features him playing the guitar or piano. Bieber also plays the guitar but he hasn’t been using live instrumentation in his latest works. Perhaps next time they collaborate they’ll bring out their instruments.
“Monster” features a light production on the drum machine and vocals from both Mendes and Bieber.
The song is about three minutes long, which makes it seem optimized for music streaming services. This can be viewed as a positive or negative if other musicians are doing the same thing with their songs. We’ll see a lot more singles, which is a good thing, but some artists may elect to not focus on producing albums, which is the negative part.
Even though Generation Z frequently uses music streaming services, Millennials like me remember a time where record stores existed and you actually had to travel there to pick up your favorite artists’ new creations. Now that music streaming is seemingly here to stay, it is a tremendous opportunity for artist to put out songs to see how successful they may become on the streaming apps.
As a Millennial who has seen the end of record stores and the success of music streaming, I have not invested myself as a music fan and critic to the streaming service options yet. I feel as long as artists continue to make albums, I am going to buy them and listen from start to finish, appreciating it as a work of art instead of just a collection of individual songs.
To Generation Z, it may be considered “old school” but I still have a dedicated music player. All of the music that I generate arts criticism and my personal favorite songs are all downloaded on the 7th Generation iPod Touch (which is probably the last of the product line). Most people would suggest to just put all of your iTunes on an iPhone because it’s more efficient and uses less technology. I agree with that criticism, but I enjoy having a piece of technology that is only for music, so that way I can listen to songs and albums and not have to pause the music in order to pick up a call or text. I don’t think that I will ever fully transition over to music streaming services, I love buying and listening to albums and I always will.
As for “Monster” the song is about not being perfect. People have a lot of expectations and sometimes you can let them down if you don’t achieve what you said you were going to. The song is about it being okay to make mistakes in life and that people should not be labeled a monster simply because they fall short and don’t meet everyone’s expectations. The song is also about having expectations for yourself and pursue them even though there will be some negative people along the way.
“Monster” is a good song that will probably do very well on the music streaming services.
