When was the last time you listened to an album from beginning to end?
If you struggle to remember, you are not alone. In a time where our attention spans are shirking at a frantic pace, listening to entire albums has become a lost art.
Yet, when cruising the soundwaves of music streaming platforms, the modern listener can still come across the occasional conceptual album: an album built around one concept, the songs ordered in a particular way as a device to tell a story. The charm of these albums is rooted in their cohesive nature, and the concept serves as a steady path for one to follow. Even less common, though, are conceptual albums centering around a contradiction. The path starts forking and you find yourself in a soundscape composed of elements that should not coexist but do.
Such is the case with the 2024 album Two Star and the Dream Police by Michael Gordon, better known by his stage name Mk.gee. Gordon is no stranger to contradiction as a source of inspiration: just four years before his debut studio album Two Star he released his debut mixtape titled A Museum of Contradiction. Two Star expands upon
this concept, grabbing critics' attention: This album review published in the Rolling Stone claims “the leap from [A Museum of Contradiction] to Two Star is massive”. Two Star ranks 14th out of the 100 best albums of 2024 in the Rolling Stone chart, solidifying Mk.gee’s position as an artist who is both critically acclaimed and loved by audiences.
Soft rock, pop and alternative R&B blend seamlessly while the artist's dreamy vocals create a world that is both sad and hopeful and introduce a narrator who is both present and absent. “New Low’’, the first of the twelve songs in the track list, welcomes, or rather, hastily opens the door for the listener and rushes them inside. As haphazard and fast-paced as it may be, it manages to set the scene, with the two final lines being:
I see you up and down like that
Like you got a new face every time I’m back
There is no doubt we are in for a tale of volatility and opposing concepts, a statement further supported by the following song, How Many Miles. The complete change of pace and sound levels eases the listener’s senses and introduces what I believe to be the key opposition of the album: hiding and revealing.
If you got somethin’, go and hide it
is what the speaker believes is best for a person he desperately wishes would be closer to him. The topic of absence is also approached sonically. Loud and energetic beats follow lush meandering arrangements and echoing vocals, as if the person speaking is disappearing and re-appearing.
Following the track order of the album is crucial for a full-fledged listening experience. Aside from the lyrical speaker present in every song, there is another recurring figure: Rylee. She is first mentioned in “Are You Looking Up” and two songs later turns into the titular character of “Rylee and I”. It is easy to relate to the way the narrator feels about Rylee, because the songs dedicated to her exude the excitement and nervousness any newfound crush brings about. In “Are You Looking Up”, the narrator wonders why she is so closed off and ensures her that
I can shift shapes but I can’t deny,
once more stressing on the act of hiding one’s true self in pursuit of connection. In “Rylee and I’’, though, these anxieties have vanished and the narrator basks in the feeling of being completely accepted by her. Rylee, “an angel, divine” is juxtaposed with another female character- Candy, and the eponymous song dedicated to her follows right behind Rylee’s. The lyrical speaker wishes he could reveal his truest self to Rylee, whereas Candy forces him to open up to her:
Candy is all in my business
And if she’s lookin’ hard, she will find it
The only named addressees in the album are contrasting figures, serving as proof that both the narrator and the people significant to him are defined by duality.
Just as “New Low’’ is a direct introduction to Mk.gee’s contradictory world, the final song “Dream Police’’ is arguably the best possible ending an album of this caliber can have. After having met the two star - whether that might be Rylee and Candy or the narrator’s true self - it is time for us to face the dream police. This ambiguous authority emerges when a major shift has taken place:
She lit the world on fire
The dream police is alive
Everything the listener knows is destroyed, it is time for a new world order to take place. At the very beginning, you are hitting a new low by modifying and hiding yourself in hopes of being accepted, but at the end, the universe resting on lies will inevitably burn. This is not to say, however, that the ending of this story is tragic. The last lines of the album are a repetition of the phrase “All my love’’ and resemble the way one would sign off a letter. What is coming now is unknown to both the narrator and the listeners and there is no resolution to the dilemma, but whatever the future holds, will be faced with love.
