What is The Left Ear with Lee?
Hi! I’m Lee, an aspiring writer, and content creator from The Philippines.
With that name, it’s easy to think it’s a music publication, kind of like The Riff or Plethora of Pop, but it’s just… one guy.
I make Album Reviews, sometimes I talk about the latest record, sometimes I talk about a classic, anything can go.
Occasionally I do music essays, which is a broad term for things like lyrical analyses or artist profiles, like Unique’s OBLIVION or The Greatest Band You’ve Never Heard Of.
I’m mainly on Instagram, but I write here on Medium to write extended album reviews, in case my write-ups felt too short.
Now with all that introduction out of the way, What’s up?
I first made The Left Ear in January 1st, 2022 on Instagram. But even before that, I already enjoyed writing about things, especially music.
I had scripts written out in a Google Doc, even if it’s just one about my favorite albums, hoping to turn those to a video essay soon.
But I didn’t like spending time editing, though I can, I’m just not fond of doing it. That’s how I had a whole album analysis written Pre-2022.
You might be surprised to know there’s a bustling scene of people writing review content on Instagram, especially music reviews.
The more I made posts, the more I became aware of all the tons of content creators, writing their thoughts on a piece of music within a 1x1 square, just like me.
Eventually, I transformed my pre-existing account to The Left Ear to write here as well, but also hope to earn money from doing reviews, so now I’m here too.
What Makes The Left Ear’s Album Reviews Different?
The Music
Besides covering the usual albums to cover, I also write for two different niches you might not find anywhere else, Filipino music and Christian music.
Filipino music (also called OPM) is criminally underrated. There’s a lot of gems that go toe to toe with Western music, because they’re not that different.
Many artists make songs in English as much in Filipino, we’re pretty much inspired by foreign acts, whether it’d be British rock bands or Korean girl groups.
But even if their music is great, their success feels limiting to only the country’s area to Filipinos in diaspora.
I wanna serve as an introduction to OPM to foreigners, not just because there’s a bustling scene, but because no one else is doing it like this.
Now, I know that “Christian Music” is a flawed classification for a genre.
As I wrote in another article:
It’s not uncommon for Christian, even just religious music in general, to be pigeonholed into a specific niche corner, even when in reality, there‘s only religious lyrics, and never religious chords or keys or anything like that.
As a Christian myself, I’ll admit it’s not always the type of music to write home about.
I’m well-aware of its reputation as like a “knockoff brand” of more secular music.
…Contemporary Christian Music (also called CCM) is a beast of its own, infamous for its generic tastes and bland to plain bad lyricism.
But the thing is, there’s a lot of cool and noteworthy Christian music out there. If no one’s gonna write about it, who will?
Heck often an artist makes music about the strangest topics but he’s on a Christian label, that’s why it’s considered Christian.
Keep in mind that for secular albums, I never evaluate it in a religious light, in case if you’re worried about that.
The Format
On Instagram, it’s more driven by essays than ratings, and I like to avoid big blocks of text in the process.
I’d describe it as both short yet flowery, more into description and less into comparison, trying to grasp context as best as I can.
It’s not because I have a distaste for comparing things. Though I’ve never been a fan of the “it’s derivative” type of criticism, it’s just because I’m not as eclectic to go there.
Granted, I can’t always avoid that block of text style, but I do have personal rules in designing font size and highlighting choices.
Personal Picks is where I talk about a few noteworthy tracks on the album, and it mostly consists of tracks I like.
I don’t put my Favorite and Least Favorite Tracks, nor my rating in the description. I feel like it undermines all the stuff I wrote because people just skip to that part.
Though, I think writing those are efficient in a way, which brings me to…
The Rating System
In the last slide of every Left Ear post is a simple, color-coded left ear based on its score, Red being the Worst to Green being the Best.
This is only on Instagram, and on every post’s description puts the color codes to the 10/10 system.
Red (0–1/10)
Orange (2–3/10)
Yellow (4–5/10)
Purple (6–7/10)
Blue (8–9/10)
Green (10/10)
This system was inspired off of another Instagram music reviewer, Music Reviews by Pigeon. I couldn’t find his rating chart but it has a lot of colors and it’s messy to say the least.
I think that the color coding idea is cool so for mine, I turned it to a linear 6-color rating system.
Note: I changed the GOOD rating from Sea Green to Purple after a couple people complained that it looked too Green.
I only add ratings to newer albums though, so records released in a past year or so have a plain White Ear at the end.
So far here’s the albums that are rated Green Ear (10/10) for me:
- Black Country, New Road — Ants From Up There (Post-Rock)
- Kendrick Lamar — Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers (Rap)
- Denzel Curry — Melt My Eyez See Your Future (Jazz Rap)*
- ena mori — DON’T BLAME THE WILD ONE! (Pop)*
(*) Blue Ear when first posted but I relegated to Green ever since.
Miscellaneous
Besides music, I’m quite into Geography, History, Political Science, and a bit of Linguistics. I have experience with graphic design as well.
I came up with the name “The Left Ear with Lee” simply because I liked the alliteration. I only realized the possible political connotations after.
I post weekly. The way I format my reviews requires quite some effort too.
I have other commitments, and since people make less Zoom calls and more Onsite gatherings again, time is often spent at that instead.
But I don’t feel confident in sinking all my time for The Left Ear since, if anything, it’s currently just a hobby.
My country isn’t eligible for the Medium Partner Program, I can’t get paid for my stories, I only realized this after working for it this past year.
But hey I’m fine, no need to buy me coffee or anything.
And as always, Listen to both ears.
