Gwen Stefani has always been a part of my life. Who can forget Hollaback Girl or her promotion of Harajuku fashion? But even before all of that, Gwen Stefani was part of one of the most successful rock bands of the ’90s, No Doubt. This is where my personal love of Gwen Stefani begins. No Doubt is absolutely my favorite bands of the ’90s and Tragic Kingdom is one of my favorite albums ever, up there with Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors or Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill. You can imagine my surprise once I heard that Gwen Stefani was releasing her first solo album in 10 years. My expectations were raised even further once I learned that it was inspired by the end of her marriage and her new relationship. I was expecting a Sia-like come back with deeply personal songs mixed in with pop-y love ballads. While I don’t find it as impressive as Sia’s 1000 Forms of Fear, it is far from disappointing and is a great listen.

Let’s start with the negatives. The albums starts off spectacularly, but falter near the end with the 8th, 9th, and 10th songs being tonally dissonant and surely the most strange of the album. Luckily the album picks it back up with the next songs, but it never reaches back to the magic of the beginning of the album. Perhaps my least favorite song of the album is Asking 4 It featuring Fetty Wap. I’m alway wary when artists firmly rooted in pop (or rock) and artists firmly rooted in hip hop work together. It can be great when done right (like B.o.B’s Ariplanes featuring Hayley Williams) but more often than not, the two sounds cannot find a middle ground. It definitely doesn’t work here. Not is the song dissonant from the rest of the album, but the two artists themselves don’t fit well. Gwen Stefani’s clean and clear vocals fights with Fetty Wap’s unique, rough fuzzy vocals.

But of course the album has some knock-out hits as well. In fact, the entire first album is great, my personal favorite being the album’s first song (and sure to be next single) Misery. This song has all the work of a great pop hit that people will be singing along with for years. The lyrics are catchy, the beat is endless fun, and the bubblegum-pop style really suits Gwen Stefani’s solo work, though that is not to say that she can’t do incredible work in other genres as well. Listening to Where Would I Be? provides us a great look at Stefani’s musical talent as it flits between genres throughout the entire song and it works as a comprehensive package of everything that she can do as an artist. While it is not the best song on the album, it is impressive none the less.

Overall the album is a fun listen, though lacking in the sadder songs that are usually featured on break-up albums. To hear the best of the album, I suggest starting with Misery, Make Me Like You, or Truth. These songs are my personal favorites of the album. They are classic Gwen Stefani and will certainly please old fans of her solo work. I am looking forward to hearing more songs from Gwen Stefani as clearly she still has a lot of musical potential left within her.

In preparation for a project, I re-watched Watchmen this weekend. Let me get this out of the way – I’ve never been a fan of Zach Snyder. I haven’t seen every film that he’s directed, limiting to myself to his disappointing comic book adaptations instead. I’ll make the argument that 300 was probably his best comic book adaptation because that was the only instance where the source material actually benefited from Snyder’s muted colors and penchant for sporadic slow motion and extended fight scenes. Should there be any more narrative involved with the film, Snyder becomes utterly lost in his own artistic tendencies, producing a film that may entertain during certain sequences but one that is easily forgotten as soon as the film is over.

Snyder’s allergy to good story is probably best exemplified by Sucker Punch, a film he both directed and wrote. The film is filled with characters that suddenly get incredibly strong and gain Superman-like powers with little to no explanation. It also follows a boring structure where the characters have to get three different items after having their quest literally explained to them by a character that exists solely for exposition. What are their names? I don’t know and I don’t really care. Never before have I been too lazy to even provide a plot summary, but this film has broken my back.

So this was the film that proceeded Snyder’s adaptation of Watchmen. Which contextualizes, somewhat, why the studio would let him create his own project from scratch. I remember when the first trailer for Watchmen came out and one of the title cards read, “From the Visionary Director of 300.” I was cynical even at that point. Visionary? Really? You know what, fine, I’ll give it to him, at least 300 looked nice. At the time, I hadn’t read Watchmen yet and I didn’t even know about Alan Moore either. However, during the time the film was announced, my high school was ripe with anticipation because our very own drama teacher played Nixon in the film. It was a minor role (and honestly, looking back, I cannot say that he was the best Nixon I’d ever seen) but still, it was exciting. So in response to all the energy at my school, I finally read the “greatest graphic novel of all time.” After I’d read it, I could finally remove the quotations – it truly was a work of genius.

Now the problem with adapting something like Watchmen is just that – it cannot be adapted. The way in which the graphic novel is genius is its ability to utilize the medium in ways that only this particular medium can be used: the nine-panel grid repeats certain character positions in order to mirror how Dr. Manhattan exists in a fluid time; the chapter title pages all feature a clock that slowly clicks towards midnight; the image of the blood stain on the smiley face is repeated over and over again; we never quite see the entirety of the slogan, “Who watches the Watchmen?” and so on.

At the very core, film and graphic novels are astronomically different because the means in which they juxtapose images is entirely different – graphic novels use space while film uses time. All those techniques mentioned above are examples of a precise use of spacial juxtaposition: from panel to panel, page to page, or chapter to chapter. The fundamental natures of these two mediums are different! So why does Snyder think the graphic novel is a ready-made storyboard for his film? This is not only a failure to understand the graphic novel, but it’s also a failure to understand film.

It doesn’t quite surprise me that Snyder’s latest comic book movie was regarded with much disdain. Dull colors, mass destruction, a lack of story, it’s the same flaws over and over again, yet studios keep entrusting him with comic book adaptations – it’s about as mind numbingly nonsensical as Snyder’s understanding of adaptations in the first place. I haven’t seen Batman v. Superman and something tells me I never will. I know this post reads like a grilling of Snyder…well that’s because it is.

But to be fair, I don’t think anyone can do justice to a graphic novel like Watchmen, so long as we consider the film as an adaptation. The day a good “Watchmen” film is made will be when a director is able to pluck the very themes and motifs of the graphic novel, while restructuring and rewriting a large portion of the source material in order to accommodate a new medium. In other words, the best adaptation won’t be an adaptation at all.

At college, I’ve often felt the pressure to be a more cultured person. Especially as an arts editor at The Michigan Daily, it sometimes feels like everyone knows more about art than you—I feel like I have so many blind spots when it comes to movies (The Godfather, Forrest Gump), TV (Gilmore Girls, The Sopranos), and, especially, music.

To a degree, I’ve made strides to correct my blind spots, and it’s sometimes not that hard to do. I realized recently that I really didn’t know much of Kanye West’s music, and, like him or hate him, he dominates culture so much that I feel like I need to know him. So I’ve been listening to his music a lot, even if it’s in the background while I’m doing other stuff, and now that’s one blind spot that I’ve begun to correct.

But after listening to new music for hours, after going through playlist after playlist in pursuit of greater music knowledge, sometimes I need to just relax and play the music that I’m comfortable with. And that often means bands I discovered in high school or even middle school: Fall Out Boy, Simple Plan, The Story So Far, Yellowcard, All Time Low, A Day to Remember.

My Chemical Romance is one of those bands that usually gets dismissed as something you listened to when you were in your middle school goth phase. Pretty much any band classified as ‘emo’ fits that label. But you know what? I listened to the entirety of The Black Parade a couple days ago, and that shit is so good! Gerard Way’s voice is funny to imitate, but it’s so good, and the production is so good, and every hook is so infectious, and the lyrics themselves aren’t bad. The album got really good reviews when it was first released, being praised as “one of the most cohesive, engaging rock records of 2006,” “one of the best rock albums of the last decade,” and “a piece of work that will challenge every preconception you ever had about the people who made it.”

So why do people tend to laugh a little when that band is mentioned? Why do I feel a little reluctant to wear a My Chemical Romance t-shirt to a party that isn’t themed?

We all think of our tastes in music as evolving. We tend to think that whatever music we’re listening to now is the best music we have ever listened to, that whatever we listened to as kids was automatically worse because we objectively didn’t have as much musical knowledge. And so when we are reminded of those songs we used to like, we don’t get to enjoy them sincerely; we enjoy them ironically. We can dance to them and sing along, but we have to laugh a little and remind everyone around us that we know this isn’t good music; it’s just nostalgia working its magic. Apparently none of the music from our childhoods can be enjoyed on its own terms anymore.

Okay, let’s be fair: some music we used to listen to was genuinely shitty. I have no interest in returning to “Don’t Trust Me” by 3OH!3 or “Shake It” by Metro Station, though even those songs would still probably trigger a frisson of nostalgia at a party. There are some songs out there whose infectious hooks feel genuinely empty; I don’t really admire 3OH!3 for creating one catchy hit. There are some songs that are catchy despite not being especially well-crafted.

But most of the songs we loved when we were younger were great for a reason, and listening to The Black Parade, I don’t feel any embarrassment. There’s nothing ironic about how fucking good Gerard Way sounds when he sings, “My eyes are shining brrriiight” on “Famous Last Words.” There’s nothing ironic about the irresistible urge I have to tap my feet whenever the chorus of “Dead!” kicks in, nothing ironic about the heartfelt mourning of “Cancer” or the iconic piano opening of “Welcome to the Black Parade.” Great art resists irony.

In a way, I’ve already written this same article. In a post about the Disney Channel show Phil of the Future, I described the way people laugh at mentions of shows from their youth, as if those shows were enjoyable then but hold no value now. I argued that it’s worth it to check out the stuff that you used to enjoy, because there’s a good chance it’ll still hold some value. That’s partly what I’m trying to say again, but with regards to music—just because you liked something years ago doesn’t mean it’s automatically shitty.

But I’m also saying irony is a dangerous thing for art. It’s easy to dismiss your younger self, but think back to the time you first discovered those bands. Yeah, maybe “I’m just a kid and life is a nightmare” sounds laughably angsty to us now. But it held a certain appeal for a very specific generation, and it probably helped a lot of confused adolescents realize they weren’t alone.

And hey, maybe it could still help you as an adult. As adults, we’re so quick to layer everything in irony, but maybe what we could all use is a little more sincerity. And after all, if there was one thing Simple Plan and My Chemical Romance were, it was sincere.