The USoS 2020 Class: Colorado, Maryland, Oregon, South Dakota, Wyoming

Greg Lehner
May 9, 2020
3 min read

Welcome to Mother's Day weekend - at least here in America. Are you celebrating with your loved ones? If you cannot make it to see your mother this year, maybe she'd like to receive one of the songs below. In fact, these are the final five songs from Semifinal One. We announced them a few weeks ago, but they never got their own attention till now. So... here they are!

Colorado Thousand Frames - Regret You Submitted by Martin

This male-female duo rock ‘collective’ from Denver formed in 2012 with the goal of using music to power through adversity. They describe their sound as ‘cinematic’: haunting, heavy melodies and epic guitar solos. This fits the theme of “Regret You” well, a heartbroken yet empowering breakup song. The moody music video was filmed at the Marquis Theater, a famous theater in Denver.

Maryland Lower Dens - I Drive Submitted by Derek

Maryland’s song choices over the years have varied greatly in genre, and after finding success for the first time in 2019, they stay knee-deep in the alternative indie scene. Lower Dens' fourth studio album, “The Competition,” includes the song “I Drive” - a curious little tune about what’s been lost between two people in a relationship when one is unwilling to sacrifice things for the other. The “driving” at night refers to the other getting ‘what they want’ when the other is asleep. A bit insane? Yeah, maybe.

Oregon Tessa Violet - Games

Submitted by Derek

This golden-haired pop singer may have been born in Chicago, but she grew up in the desolate city of Ashland, Oregon. Not to be outdone, in the last fifteen years she’s lived in Hong Kong, Thailand, and New York City. Oh, and by the way, she also has a sustainable YouTube career with 1.7 million subscribers. What can I say, every year there's a 'YouTuber' entry. Despite all this, she’s never cracked the music charts, but “Games” is a well-polished bouncy pop single that certainly deserves success.

South Dakota LAYNE - Hair So Wild

Submitted by Greg

Layne Putnam was born and raised in the Black Hills area (Rapid City), and moved to California in pursuit of a music career. This sound might be the closest thing to ‘dream pop’ we've had in this edition thus far, but she goes a bit ‘harder’ than that. In “Bad Feeling,” there’s not much to say; it's a love song about that classic “should I/shouldn’t I” attitude. Should I stay or should I go? You decide.

Wyoming Whippoorwill - Eventide

Submitted by Greg

From one of a handful of states that have yet to qualify, Wyoming digs deep into their catalog to pull out - a former contestant. You might be saying “What? I’ve never seen this band before!” This is true. But guitarist Alysia Kraft, who is also the songwriter, was the former lead singer of The Patti Fiasco, who represented Wyoming in 2017. Her other bandmates are from Texas and Fort Collins, Colorado.

With Semifinal One out there in the open, the next announcement will be all songs from Semifinal Two! Stay tuned as we dissect another great selection of songs and states.

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PLAYLISTS: As mentioned last week, a full YouTube and Spotify playlist of Semifinal One's songs are now available. You can listen to all 25 songs at these links (in the correct running order).

---- VOTING:

May 15 may be a bit optimistic, but we're going to try and get things going. The voting period will last three weeks from the day it opens.

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.) If you have any suggestions or ideas, please email us.

Cheers!