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Tag: Moviola

  • Best of 2025: The Year in Political Songs

    Utility box in Los Angeles with graffiti that reads "Free Palestine" on top and "Fuck ICE" in the center (Photo: Liz Ohanesian)
    The vibe in downtown Los Angeles for 2025. (Pic: Liz O.)

    For the first of Beatique’s Best of 2025 lists, I wanted to highlight political songs for a very specific reason. Politics aren’t brand safe. You’ll risk alienating the people who disagree with you. You might scare off the companies who would otherwise want to work with you. Blah blah blah. But, at a certain point, if you’re someone with a platform, be it music, art, film or writing, you will need to ask yourself, “Am I a brand? Or am I a human being who actually gives a shit about what’s happening in the world?” Hopefully, the latter is the answer. 

    Particularly in this moment, we need artists who are willing to be outspoken. For every semi-anonymous person (or bot) chiding you to “stick to the music,” there will be many more motivated to say, I’m against this too. Some might go to a protest, or write their local representatives or get involved with activist group. Maybe music can’t change minds, but it can prompt the quieter people to raise their voice. And, maybe, years from now, kids listening to the 2025 throwbacks will hear that there were people against genocide and fascism and exploiting workers and everything else that’s coming to a head right now. That said, much respect to the eleven artists on this list. They are by no means the only people making political music in 2025, but they made the songs that have been in my personal rotation. In keeping with an egalitarian theme, this list is not ranked. 

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  • Moviola Captures the Difficulty and Absurdity of American Life on ‘Earthbound’

    Moviola press photo by Carrie Klein
    Credit: Carrie Klein

    In the video for “Slage Wave,” the first single off Moviola’s recently-released eleventh album, Earthbound, the employees of Don’s Tiny Weenies toil over the grill as they dish out Doge Dogs and Pigs on a Golf Course.  “You’re a wage slave, from the cradle to the grave,” the song goes, “you don’t work, you don’t get paid, you don’t get nothin’.”

    Fate- or, rather,  the labor movement- intervenes in the form of a customer in a Johnny Paycheck, who hands over a “Take This Job and Shove It” sticker. A Pete Seeger-like musician follows, sliding a union handbook across the counter. It’s a video that almost has a happy ending, until the hot dog vending machine arrives.

    “We debated on how to end it,” says Jake Housh, who plays guitar and piano/keys in Moviola and also shot and edited the video, “but it seemed kind of realistic maybe that the machines will win.”

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