Hello, fellow music lovers! A stage name means a lot to a band or artist as it pertains to their music. Some may sound bland, and some may sound creative. The artists that I’m posting about this week have creative-sounding names that are hard to forget. I’ll be blogging about Washed Out and Joon Moon.

Washed Out

When I first saw this name on Spotify, I was expecting it to be the name of a band. It turns out that it’s actually the stage name of solo singer Ernest Greene. Washed Out is an American chillwave singer, songwriter, and record producer. He just dropped his third studio album, “Mister Mellow”. The songs on this album are mostly distorted with a lot of dissonance in the instrumentation. By that, I mean that you can hear dissonant chords throughout, especially from two different instruments being played together. In most of the songs, it’s as if the vocals are trying to fade into the background, but they are actually at about the same level as the instruments instead. Both of these qualities combined make the songs sound dirty yet still awesome. That’s why I think there is a bit of irony behind Washed Out being Greene’s stage name. The word “wash” is associated with cleaning something.

Joon Moon

Joon Moon is an American neo-soul band that consists of Krystle Warren, Julien Decoret, Raphael Chassin, and Sebastien Trouve. “Joon” is a Persian word that literally means “life” or “dear”. The moon is also viewed as a beautiful astronomical body that we have the pleasure of seeing in the sky just about every night. I believe that this band got their name because they strive to express beauty, peacefulness, and strong emotion attached to touchy subjects in all of their songs. It’s no different in their new EP, entitled “Tiger EP”. It contains tracks such as “Tiger” and “Call Me”. “Tiger” has a nightly piano sound and driving yet relaxing percussion that would probably put most people in a calm mood. Along with those, some of this song’s lyrics convey a message of hidden love and emotions, such as “Who’s hiding how they’re feeling?” and “Who’s slightly maybe in love?”. However, most of the lyrics also convey a suspense message. These include “Who’s dancing around the question?” and “I know who you are”. I find this to be a bit ironic in comparison to the band’s name and the instrumentation of “Tiger”. “Call Me” has a lively piano and percussion sound that persuade people to calm down. The lyrics are about a breakup and the singer being ignored by his ex. The title comes from a line in the song that says, “Why won’t you call me?”. You can also hear the message incorporated in the singer’s voice in the main chorus. The singer accomplishes this by variating his pitch several times whenever he says and holds  “say”, also known as intonation.

There you have it! This goes to show that stage names are more than spontaneous ideas that come to mind. Stay tuned for the next Skinner Music Blog Post!