TGWTG/Channel Awesome

[BettyNewbie]

2018 has been a awful year for Todd in the Shadows.


He's supposed to be a NEW music reviewer, but over HALF of the stuff he's reviewed this year has been a 90s flashback:

ONE HIT WONDERLAND: "Tic Tac Toe" by Kyper
ONE HIT WONDERLAND: "What Is Love" by Haddaway
TRAINWRECKORDS: "The Funky Headhunter" by MC Hammer
ONE HIT WONDERLAND: "Pepper" by Butthole Surfers
ONE HIT WONDERLAND: "Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Dop)" by Scatman John
ONE HIT WONDERLAND: "Missing" by Everything But the Girl
TRAINWRECKORDS: "Be Here Now" by Oasis
ONE HIT WONDERLAND: "Lovefool" by The Cardigans
TRAINWRECKORDS: "Van Halen III" by Van Halen


Plus an 80s New Wave (a genre that One Hit Wonderland already beat into the ground) flashback:

ONE HIT WONDERLAND: "She Blinded Me with Science" by Thomas Dolby


I love the 90s, but this is just boring. I never got into Todd in the Shadows for his commentary on cheesy dance hits from 1995. I got into him for his commentary on today's cheesy dance hits, darnit! I'd know far less about modern pop music and modern pop music trends if it wasn't for him, and his channel will only stagnate into irrelevance if he continues to bury himself into stuff from 20 years ago.

Where are the new music reviews? As he explained in this video (one of the few new reviews he released this year), 2018 has been a very weak year for pop music. The charts have become dominated by trap music, which despite being popular, is very much NOT pop music. He tried to review a trap song last year, and it turned out pretty miserably. It just isn't his genre, and he doesn't get it at all.

Hopefully, things eventually turn around for Todd, and he gets some new material to cover again.

[Tim]

I'm not familiar with this fellow.  Of course, I'm more interested in movies, that music.    So I gravitate towards the movie reviewers.

Still, if this fellow wants to stay current, he should be reviewing current music, not stuff from decades past.

[BettyNewbie]

What makes it worse is that there's no diversity with the older stuff he's been reviewing. He's been hyperfocused on 1990-1997 with little room for anything else.


Why not throw in a few 60s or 70s flashbacks? Yes, that's considered "Boomer music," but he's covered those decades before, and a lot of younger people are interested in music from those decades.

And, what about some 00s flashbacks? I can understand why he may want to avoid 2005-2009 (ie. too recent, 2008/2009 songs were already covered on his show back when it started), but 2000-2004 should be fair game. The early 00s are now 15+ years ago, after all.

And, as much 80s music as One Hit Wonderland has covered, 90% of it has been New Wave with the occasional R&B/dance hit. He's only done a single Hair Metal episode, and it was technically an early 90s song. Hair Metal had far more one-hit wonders than that.


Of course, a lot of his One Hit Wonderland episodes are requests, so they're probably more reflective of what his Patreon donators want him to review than what he actually wants to review. If some of the comments on this video (where Todd himself also complains about all of the 90s music he's been reviewing) are any indication, a lot of them are late 20/30-somethings who just wanna bury themselves into songs they grew up with:

I think the reason all your requests are for the mid-90's is because the kind of people who'd be paying up for requests were kids/teenagers during that time, so nostalgia is playing into it tbh

Yo the nostalgia is strong with us mid 30 year olds... Also we've hit a point where we have disposable income... well I say we... I'm still paying off student debt

Pretty sure people keep requesting 96~98 songs because of the terribleness of the current times.
Obviously they want to escape back to the Candyland crack days of attempting decency.

[Tim]

And, as much 80s music as One Hit Wonderland has covered

I wouldn't mind seeing some 80's music covered.  That was my time, after all, and it would be nice to see someone, who was probably not even alive at that time, take a look at it.

[BettyNewbie]

Aug 23, 2018 17:28:50 GMT -5 Tim said:

I wouldn't mind seeing some 80's music covered.  That was my time, after all, and it would be nice to see someone, who was probably not even alive at that time, take a look at it.

He's already done a lot of 80s reviews, but as I said, most of it's from a single genre -- New Wave. Otherwise, there's a handful of 80s Dance/R&B episodes (two of which were Halloween specials):

"Somebody's Watching" Me by Rockwell (Halloween special)
"Word Up" by Cameo
"Maniac" by Michael Sembello (Halloween special)
"Party All the Time" by Eddie Murphy

And, one College Rock episode:

"Beds Are Burning" by Midnight Oil

And, this is ALL Hair Metal has on his channel. (And, it's a song from 1992!)

"To Be with You" by Mr. Big

Even when it comes to one-hit wonders, the 80s were more than just New Wave and early MTV novelties. If he's going to mainly review older music, I ask is for more diversity.

[Tim]

I always feel like somebody's watching me... 

Yeah, I know that song.  I'll have to check these videos out.

[BettyNewbie]

I recently popped onto Lindsay's channel wanting to watch some old Nostalgia Chick episodes, only to find that every single one of them has been deleted. What happened?


Did some digging around, and while I never found a definite answer, this tweet may be a clue:

Hi Lindsey! Big fan! Question: do you look on your years as the nostalgia chick fondly, or would you rather everyone just forget about that part in your career?

7:26 PM - 31 Jul 2018

If I could scorch it from the digital face of history, salt the earth with lime, burn everything to ash, I would.

8:04 PM - 31 Jul 2018

Lindsay's not a big fan of her older work (to put it lightly).  Given what happened to her behind the scenes (and the fact that it wasn't even her character in the first place), I can't blame her.  I loved the Nostalgia Chick, but she's grown so much as a critic since then, and she deserves to be able to talk about the things she wants to talk about without having to be stuck under the boot of an abusive employer.  Those old episodes were nothing but bad memories for her, and if clearing them from her channel makes her feel better, then she has every right to.

That being said, if you still want to watch her old stuff, it looks like she's dumping it all onto a new, separate channel (and aptly renamed them "Nostalgia Woman" ).

[Tim]

Looks like Lindsay wants to make a clean break from the past and start fresh.

And, considering what happened to her at Channel Awesome, one can't blame her.

[BettyNewbie]

I never liked the circumstances behind her character. As I said, unlike most of the other TGTWG characters, the Nostalgia Chick wasn't Lindsay's own creation. Instead, Doug created the character to be a distaff counterpart to the Nostalgia Critic, and Lindsay got the role through an audition. She was only there because she needed the money, and her creative freedom was more limited compared to many of the other creators there.


That being said... The Nostalgia Chick was my introduction to TGTWG, and I'm not gonna deny that I still get enjoyment out of those old episodes. I always found Lindsay to be a more intelligent, thoughtful reviewer than Doug, and even back then, you could see her growing out of her original "Distaff Nostalgia Critic" role into something more distinct.


I'm also glad that she's moved past TGTWG onto bigger and better stuff, though. She actually now has a show on PBS called It's Lit.

[Tim]

A lot of the folks that started at TGTWG have branched off on their own.  

Aside from Lindsay, Allison has her own series now, as does Matthew Buck and a lot of others who were originally part of TGTWG.

[BettyNewbie]

RIP Nostalgia Chick. Lindsay nuked her entire archive channel last summer, and this is why:

She explains why she privated these videos in this thread:

hxxps://twitter.com/thelindsayellis/status/1294048245593681920

Basically she doesn't look back at her time with CA and the videos she produced while she was affiliated with them fondly. She regrets the entire 5 year span and if she could she wouldn't make these videos available at all. But she also knows if she did that other people would just re-upload them and they would be out of her control. That is why the Vintage ChezLindsay channel was created. But recently the Youtube algorithm has been pushing the old videos into people's recommendations a lot. So she decided to private them for the time being.

(The tweets are now gone due to her deleting her account, so I had to share a Redditor's summary instead.)


I understand why she did it, although I don't think making the videos flat-out unavailable is the best idea. She should try putting up an archive on Dailymotion or Vimeo instead. That way, the videos could be available, but YouTube can't promote them.

Of course, it's now looking doubtful if even her post-TGTWG stuff will remain up much longer. It looks like she wants to quit the internet altogether.

[Tim]

This is a shame, because I like Lindsay.

I agree that she should consider Vimeo or Dailymotion.  YouTube is not the only fish in the sea.

[BettyNewbie]

Mar 29, 2021 11:18:04 GMT -5 Tim said:

This is a shame, because I like Lindsay.

I agree that she should consider Vimeo or Dailymotion.  YouTube is not the only fish in the sea.

All of the TGTWG videos were originally on Blip, because YouTube's time limits and copyright crackdowns made it difficult for them to upload reviews there. But, then, The Mouse (of course) bought Blip in 2013 and shut the site down in 2015, so they all had to migrate back to YouTube and start dealing with all of its bullshit again. Todd in the Shadows, for example, has had to start including paid sponsor ads in his videos because YT kept demonetizing them for copyright reasons.

I know Lindsay isn't proud of that era, but it's sad to see these Nostalgia Chick videos become forever unavailable. She was always 1000x better and funnier than Doug, and there's a lot of good stuff in there (esp. in later episodes). A LOT of people became fans of her through those videos.

Right now, it looks like Archive.org, Dailymotion, and Yahoo have the best (unofficial) collections of Nostalgia Chick videos, and they're still far from complete. Might have to put up with non-English subtitles in some of them, too.

[Tim]

Right now, it looks like Archive.org, Dailymotion, and Yahoo have the best (unofficial) collections of Nostalgia Chick videos, and they're still far from complete. Might have to put up with non-English subtitles in some of them, too.

Better than nothing.

Still, I hope Lindsay considers alternatives.   As I said, I enjoy her videos.