Rewind With A Superstar System-Chapter 121: Album Critique

<🎧 Song Recommendation: This Is Me by Keala Settle, The Greatest Showman Ensemble>

...

In a dark apartment somewhere in America, a young man sat slouched in a ridiculously expensive gaming chair.

The walls were filled with LED lights, and a high-end DJ mixing deck sat on the desk, surrounded by three separate curved monitors and a professional-grade microphone hanging from a boom arm.

It was a top-tier streaming setup.

The man, known online as Jack The Ripper, glanced at the small digital clock glowing at the bottom corner of his main monitor.

It read 11:59 PM.

He drew his chair forward and adjusted his heavy studio headphones before looking into the camera lens. "Alright, Chat. Just one more minute to go."

The chat box on his right monitor was being filled with text at a ridiculous pace.

Jack was broadcasting live on Twitch. He had over seven hundred thousand total followers, and his core audience were really loyal. Right now, there were exactly sixty-two thousand people watching him live. In the streaming world, those numbers were astronomical.

He was famous for one specific thing: ruthlessly ranking new music.

Every Friday night, he hosted a segment where he would listen to the midnight drops and rank them live on a tier list from S (God Tier) down to F (Trash).

He was notoriously harsh, deeply analytical, and almost impossible to please. Because of his massive live audience and honesty, most artists usually prayed they didn’t end up on his bad side.

[12:00 AM].

"We are live, boys," Jack said, cracking his knuckles. He navigated his browser to the new releases page. "Let’s see what garbage the industry is feeding us tonight."

He clicked on the first promoted single he had pre-saved earlier that week.

"So, Chat, this first one is called Don’t Fucking Care! by RagingPunkBoy," Jack announced. "We all know him. He picked up the Grammy for Best Rising Artist last year, disappeared for six months, and now he’s back with a new single. Let’s see if he fell off."

The chat immediately started spamming.

[MusicNerd91: I’m already playing it. It’s not terrible tbh.]

[SkateOrDie: Get on with it, blud 🤦🏻]

[Light_Take_Generator: RagingPunkBoy is washed. Put it in F tier right now.-

"Alright, alright, guys," Jack laughed, holding his hands up. "No spoiling in the comments. Let’s hear it."

He clicked play and the heavy distorted bass immediately blasted through his headphones and out to the stream. It was a violent, aggressive funk-punk track with very few lyrics, clearly aimed at a specific niche of listeners.

Jack sat completely still with a deadpan face.

The track hadn’t even reached the fifty-second mark when Jack abruptly stopped the song.

"Yeah, no. This is fucking mid," Jack stated with disappointment. "The mixing on that bass is muddy as hell, and the vocal distortion is just lazy. I’ll place it right in the D tier!"

With a few clicks, he dragged the album art onto the digital tier list glowing on the screen, dropping it near the very bottom.

His harsh dismissal instantly triggered a wave of angry comments.

[PunkRockForever: What is bro feeling like?? 😑 Your own beats are trash and you dare put RagingPunkBoy in D-tier?!]

[MelodyHunter: This dude is way too full of himself. Why am I even watching this stream.]

[W_Takes_Only: L streamer. Unfollowing.]

Jack didn’t care about the hate at all. He simply grinned at the camera. He was known for his harsh critiques, and that unfiltered honesty was exactly why he pulled sixty thousand viewers at midnight.

He was about to click on the next indie submission when his eyes caught a massive banner ad updating on the streaming platform’s homepage.

Jack leaned closer to his monitor and his eyes widened. "Whoa... what do we have here?"

The chat began flooding with question marks.

"My namesake just dropped a surprise full-length album. No fcking way!" Jack yelled in shock.

If anyone were asked what they considered the undisputed song of the summer, millions of people would immediately name For You by Jack Sherwin.

The massive pop rock track had been released in the exact same month as Von’s Masquerade. It had maintained the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for three straight weeks before finally falling to number four when Masquerade went viral.

But that hadn’t stopped Jack Sherwin’s momentum. Eventually, For You climbed back up to number three when the Masquerade hype slightly cooled down, and it had remained comfortably bouncing around the top ten up until this very day. It had over 300 million streams on Musicify alone and was already locked in for Song of the Year nominations.

But now, Jack Sherwin had pulled off his magic again, completely bypassing a single rollout and dropping a surprise twelve-track album.

"Let’s eat, guys," Jack said with a massive smile spreading across his face as he adjusted his headphones. Jack Sherwin was secretly one of his favorite artists.

The album was simply titled YOU. The cover art featured Sherwin wearing a classic cowboy hat, standing in a lush green field with a single rose outstretched toward the screen.

Jack hit play on the first track.

For the next thirty minutes, the stream was a massive listening party. Out of twelve songs, Jack only skipped three times. He listened to the majority of the tracks with a wide smile on his face, nodding his head to the upbeat pop rhythms and offering technical praise for the vocal layering.

By the time Jack concluded the final track, the chat was buzzing. Everyone knew they had just found pop gold that morning.

"Seriously, Chat, this album is gold. As expected of my man Jack Sherwin. He fucking always hits."

The viewers waited for the catch. With Jack The Ripper, there was always a catch.

He didn’t disappoint.

"Unfortunately," Jack sighed and his smile faded a bit. "None of these tracks can meet the absurd standard set by For You. None of them have that exact magic guys."

His eyes darted to the chat, which was already filling up with defensive hate comments. He quickly held his hand up to the camera.

"Don’t get me wrong, guys! It is a fire album. No doubt about it," Jack defended himself. "But Sherwin has just spoilt us for far too long! We expect perfection every time. Even though it’s elite, and I can definitely listen to this all day... I can’t give it the crown. So, I’ll place it in A tier!"

There were celebrations in the comment section. Seeing Jack place an album in the A tier on the first listen was incredibly rare. To the viewers, it was essentially a perfect score, and they weren’t going to argue with his ridiculously high standards.

With the biggest release of the night out of the way, the chat began raging with hundreds of new requests. Independent artists and fans alike flooded the screen with song titles, hoping Jack would review their favorites.

Jack narrowed his eyes, leaning closer to the monitor. One specific request was being spammed far more than any other.

"Lost And Found by Von?" Jack read aloud, raising an eyebrow in genuine confusion. "Who the hell is Von? I’ve never heard of that person before."

The chat instantly turned on him.

[MusicSnob: Do you even listen to music, dawg? 🥀 You never know any songs]

"Let’s see what the fuss is about," Jack muttered, taking a long swig from his water bottle.

He didn’t bother with the curses flying through his chat. He typed the name into the Musicify search bar and clicked on the artist profile. .

"Wait... he has 1.2 million monthly listener. Those are mad numbers for someone with one released song."

Before jumping into the album, he clicked on the single record.

The heavy, infectious intro blasted through his headphones and within five seconds, Jack’s eyes widened in recognition.

"Ohh, I know this song! This is the sound that was trending all over TikTok last month! The one without the music video."

"Chill, Chat. We’re cool," Jack laughed defensively at the rapid raging comments. "I’ve heard about Von now. But viral hype doesn’t equal a good album. Let’s judge him for real."

He navigated back to the newly released album, Lost And Found where he admired the cover art for a second too long before clicking play.

"Alright," Jack said, a slightly wicked, skeptical smile crossing his face. "Let’s see if the kid can actually make music."

He hit play on the first track, You’re Gonna Come Home.

Almost instantly, Jack’s wicked smile vanished. He didn’t skip. He let the entire track play out. He found the production incredibly relaxing. It set a perfect, grounded tone for the project.

When the second track, Frozen Attitude, began, the smooth transition caught him off guard. The heavier, confident beat rode perfectly on the momentum of the first song. Jack felt actual shivers run down his spine. He sat up straighter in his chair, realizing he wasn’t just listening to a viral internet kid. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

But it was the third track that broke him.

When the rock of It Doesn’t Even Matter began sounding, Jack didn’t know when he closed his eyes. The chat box, the glowing LED lights, the sixty-two thousand viewers watching him, they all faded away. The raw emotion behind the song felt really real. It forcefully dragged Jack back to the memory of his own worst heartbreak years ago.

When the song ended, Jack didn’t say a word. He just moved his mouse, clicked the progress bar back to 0:00, and played it again.

And then he played it a third time.

Even more absurd than a notoriously harsh critic replaying a song three times was the fact that the Twitch chat wasn’t complaining. The spam had slowed down entirely. Almost all of the viewers were hearing it for the very first time right alongside him. They were all collectively captivated, feeling the exact same otherworldly experience that the track demanded.

When Jack finally snapped himself back to reality, he cleared his throat awkwardly, wiping a stray tear from his eye off-camera.

"Sorry, Chat. I got lost there for a second. My bad."

He didn’t make any more jokes. He just speed-ran the rest of the entire album.

He didn’t skip a single second. Even when he encountered two tracks with experimental songs that he absolutely would have skipped and trashed in any other instance, the sheer, undeniable quality of the album commanded his respect. His memory of how flawlessly good the project was allowed him to be patient and listen to it fully.

When the final chord of the final song faded into silence, Jack slowly reached up and took his heavy headset off. He set it gently on the desk.

"Chat, Thank you for forcing me to listen to this. Thank you for introducing me to this absolute gem of an album."

He grabbed his mouse, clicked the heavy, rain-washed cover art of Lost And Found, and dragged it to the very top of his screen, right above Jack Sherwin.

"It is really, truly beautiful," Jack said in a serious voice. "S-Tier. Without question."

The chat absolutely exploded in digital celebrations. Emojis, W’s, and massive donations flooded the screen so fast. The viewers were hyped, but more than anything, they were desperate to get off the stream and go listen to it again for themselves.

It was almost certain to every single person in that digital room that Lost And Found was set to become an unstoppable global phenomenon.

And seriously, it was.

All over America and beyond, as the sun began to rise, the internet was speaking. Barely anyone was talking about Jack Sherwin’s surprise new album anymore.

The entire industry’s attention, from the biggest executives to the smallest fans, was locked entirely onto some independent guy named Von who had just dropped a masterpiece.