#3. White Reaper - Real Long Time
It seems as though every year a song comes along that just takes over the entirety of my summer. It's always an upbeat song that I'll be singing while dancing down the hallways and grocery stores of my life. Interestingly, a lot of times it's from a band that I never really paid much attention to before. Such is the case with our #3 this year from White Reaper. The band is a refreshingly straight-forward garage rock band that doesn't mess around with any frills or foolishness in their music. Singer Tony Esposito has a great punk rock voice that makes every track accessible and enjoyable. Even though You Deserve Love isn't a record I spent a ton of time with this year, any time I listened to it I never really felt the need to skip ahead of any of the tracks.
The band has been kicking it for six years now, and their last record The World's Best American Band crept all the way up to #7 on the US Heatseekers chart, prompting Elektra Records to reach out and sign the band. You Deserve Love definitely shows the fruit of this signing, with much more polish on the tracks and a cleaner feel on the vocals. The first single "Might Be Right" made it up to #1 on the Alternative Rock Airplay weekly list earlier in the year, and #2 on the Rock Airplay weekly lists. It's definitely nice to see some real rock music kicking around the charts these days.
"Real Long Time" followed up by hitting #19 on the Alternative Airplay chart, but it was a song that immediately crawled into my ear when I first heard it. I still spend a decent amount of time listening to music on the radio when I can, and it was nice to be able to hear this song whenever I'd flip to our local alternative station. The song has a thumping bass guitar opening that transitions into screaming guitars and a whole lot of bounciness. It's a song that just sounds fun and happy. It was easy to put the problems of the world behind me and crank up the volume knob any time this one came along. There was a hot minute where I thought this might end up at the #1 song for the year, and it bounced back and forth between 1 and 2 for a while before settling here at #3.
The video for the song features the band rocking out on old-style 8mm film, and it racked up over 250k views to go along with the 2.8m streams the song got on Spotify. I can only hope that, along with bands like The Struts, Black Honey and Royal Blood, White Reaper is one of those groups bringing rock music back to the airwaves.
Favorite Line: "How come what you want and what you get always seem to be two different things?"
Title: Real Long Time
Artist: White Reaper
Album: You Deserve Love
Previous #3s
2019: Smith & Thell - Forgive Me Friend
2018: Vesperteen - Medicine
2017: The Naked and Famous - Higher
2016: POP ETC - What Am I Becoming?
2015: Slipknot - (A) Skeptic; (B) The Devil in I
2014: Future Islands - Seasons (Waiting On You)
2013: The Airborne Toxic Event - Timeless
2012: Walk the Moon - Anna Sun
2011: Matt and Kim - Good for Great
2010: Fear Factory - Final Exit
2009: Owl City - Fireflies
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