The USoS 2020 Class: Iowa, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Vermont
Happy weekend, everyone. Well, guess what? We made it! At least, halfway... But without any further ado, here are another five songs that will be participating in Semifinal One in 2020. The final announcement of songs will be coming tomorrow.
Iowa Halfloves - A Little Lie Submitted by Greg
Outside of Des Moines (the capital of Iowa) lies Iowa City, a college town with a thriving music scene. From this came Halfloves, which were hailed as "the best currently active rock band in Iowa" by the Iowa Informer. Damn! They recruited Brandon Darner (who worked with Imagine Dragons) to produce their album, Dazer Singles. Now we’d be hard-pressed to call this particular single ‘rock’, but the orchestration and construction of this song is a great throwback to traditional songwriting.
Montana Tim Montana - American Thread Submitted by Derek
We think it’s really hard to walk that fine line between something that is musically or lyrically jingoistic, versus singing about enjoying the way you live life. Tim Montana’s “American Thread” walks that fine line, but it’s his vocal delivery that really sells it for us every time. On the opposite side of streamlined country music is country rock, and Tim definitely represents it well.
Nevada Amy Guess - Holy Hell
Submitted by Greg; artist idea by Selvin
Miss Guess flies between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. With a purely pop-rock style, her voice can soar - and we definitely get that sense in the chorus of “Holy Hell”. Critics have said that she “has a knack for crafting shimmering, catchy singles soaked in synths and dripping with emotion.” The most recent album, “10 Times Out of 10,” is about her most recent relationship and all the ups and downs that came with it. Can you ‘Guess’ if Holy Hell was an ‘up’ or ‘down’ moment?
Ohio Moonbeau - Hair So Wild
Submitted by Greg
Okay, so take the lead singer of Arcade Fire, give him a mullet, and dip him into a vat made of 1987 and you get Moonbeau. Based out of Cincinnati, Christian Gough joined up with Claire Muenchen to create dance-able, infectious synth melodies. Maybe the song title is on point, but we’d rather leave the hairstyle back where it came from (sorry, Christian. We love the music!)
Vermont Francesca Blanchard - Baby
Submitted by Derek
Vermont is desolate and unpopulated, but there’s always something interesting coming from there - and we think this year is no exception, though this is maybe their least crazy single in a while. Francesca Blanchard is a bilingual recording artist (she also writes and performs in French). She has been praised for her music mixtures of jazz, folk, and roots-rock ‘avec des chansons françaises’. She dropped her EP in February, and she’s also a humanitarian, having donated proceeds to Hurricane Maria efforts and has worked extensively in Ecuador.
We are happy to have finally shared more than half the songs! Earlier in February, some of the Semifinal 2 songs were announced; the remainder will be shared throughout May.
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PLAYLISTS: A full YouTube and Spotify playlist of Semifinal 1's songs are now available (SPOILER ALERT). You can listen to all 25 songs at these links (in the correct running order). We think you'll be quickly reminded of how much quality and variety this first semifinal is bringing!
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Now... about the voting itself. We're still going to aim for May 15, and a closing date of May 30. We may add an extra week in there, because again, it's "Jury Only" in the semifinals. And speaking of, we are still brainstorming ideas for how the public vote will work this year, after a couple years of grouping songs into 5 (it really comes down to how good the other songs in your group are.) We will just have to wait and see.
Cheers!
