#Spotify: alright. What vibe are we going for? Depressing? Spiteful?

[thyandrawrites]

I've made so many character playlists but I've never seen spotify struggle this much to suggest new songs that match the vibe before this ngro one.

Must be cause they experience the whole spectrum of human emotions for each other and the playlist reflects that lmao

[musicmixtapes]

September 12, 2018 Mix

Spotify Playlist 1. I Wish I Missed My Ex by Mahalia - This song is so uplifting and catchy and about something that is so empowering to listen to, especially after someone important comes in and out of your life, and for some reason, you just don't feel so strongly about it. The large vocal ensemble that is incorporated in the beginning as well as the choruses really magnifies the backbeat and the strength behind the words. From the artist about the song, she says, "...the inspiration came from the fact that I was like, “Why don’t I miss that person?” Like, “What is it about that person, and what is it about me that is making me really not want that lovely person over there?” which I think can be a very relatable feeling to the younger generations where things falling apart is not given the time of day as it used to. Also a great song to sing along and dance to. 2. Hair Slick Back by The Sneaks - One of my best friends Maeve showed me this awesome, totally underrated jam which has one of my favorite, cool bass lines ever. It basically drives the whole song and makes the eerie layered vocals stand out so much. It basically is comprised of a basically drumbeat, the vocals and the bass which is so low maintenance in theory, but when put together creates such an old school low fi punk vibe that new music generally misses out on. Personally, I love to listen to this song when I'm needing an extra boost of confidence and reassurance whilst walking down the streets of the city. It gives that perfect amount of "I don't give a fuck" and also "I care very very much about everything to the point of anxiety" which is a good aesthetic to try to harvest. 3. Consideration by Rihanna & SZA - The ANTI album is iconic and become a staple of many people's lives since it's release in 2016, but some of the songs become an integral part of life at various times and flow in and out based on the mood of life at a current position and time. As of late, I have been deeply reflecting on the emphasis other people put on one's own career and how other people's judgments tend to weigh one down and maybe do things a different way because it seems like the appropriate thing to do. But Rihanna and SZA negate the notion of fitting to people's expectations and sizing down in order to make other's happy. Instead they tell us to "do things my own way, darling" and not to take opinions of other's into too much consideration, to go against the grain and succeed in spite of and because of other's wanting you not to do so. Very empowering. 4. Swoon by Beach Weather - Being a picky snob with music selections is really difficult because it means that in social settings, you automatically judge what music someone else decides to recommend or chooses to play, right? But in a school where so many people have eclectic indie tastes of music, it is also a great things because it means connecting through cool, under appreciated artists and music, such as this song. Someone I'd never met before told me to put this song on when I had people over and I instantly loved it. It is essentially about a person falling for a woman who is both a horrible and wonderful person at the same time, because she has great qualities but causes so much pain and heartbreak to the speaker of the song. The beat behind it is also just super awesome to chill out to, which is always a plus. 5. I'm Not Crying. You're Not Crying, Are You? by Deer and the Headlights - This song is like... 10 years old, which is crazy because it's so awesome and I've definitely never heard it before, but am so happy I'm able to appreciate it now. My favorite line from this is definitely when he sings, "agressively mediocre in every single way" because it totally sums up how most of the world sees themselves and the difficulty in believing in oneself that one is talented and deserves to be where they are. Specifically, this track is about the struggles of being in a band and performing, but I see it as going much, much deeper than that. It's about things not turning out the way they had been pictured or painted out to be and having to deal with the effects of life's way of making things dull after a period of time, even if at one point, we really enjoyed these things/activities. Also the singer's voice is just so quintessential of modern alternative rock and is very along the lines of The Killers, The Strokes, etc... 6. Disorder by Joy Division - Well, I'm not sure that I can really explain this song any better than someone else already has, because it is one of the most popular tracks that Joy Division has released, with good reason (it is SUCH a jam!) As generously described by someone else, this song is about going through a cycle of depression as artists often do and, "This is the struggle of an artist, an unhinged and disconnected artist: how to take pleasure from the things around him, how to use them to make and create, instead of growing bored and detached from them and living solely inside his own head; the protagonist has an artist’s spirit but he can’t live in the normal world, he can’t take the banality of day to day existence as it wears him down and dilutes his artistic purity (spirit) and makes him lose his feeling." As a writer myself, I can totally understand the underpinnings of this song and how the spirit of sensation is so necessary within an artist's life. 7. (I'd Rather Be) Anywhere But Here by Honeyblood - Basically perfect for a person who feels like they are stuck in a relationship that is just unhealthy, boring, toxic, etc and would want to go away, but feels very tethered and then, finally, the other person detaches and the emotional struggle with knowing something is truly gone. On another layer, it also depicts being in an actual place, (city, town, suburb) that is just bland and dull and uninspiring and wanting to escape to somewhere new and seeing someone else being able to do that and the feelings that go behind that as well. The singer's voice is really modern indie style which we always love to hear because it paves the way for women not always needing to belt their entire throat out to sound good and get the attention they deserve. Oftentimes, I feel that this song is important to recall what it is like to be in a liminal space with another person where there is lots of tension, but not the good kind. 8. Copper Mines by Mothers - I think a lot of the songs I have been choosing lately I would enjoy just as much if they were poems instead of songs, which is very interesting because they don't follow the everyday format of a song as one would typically expect. This one is chock full of really intriguing and weird metaphors that don't usually come to mind when describing a person that you would care about or have mixed feelings for. The whole basis behind the "copper" part of the song comes out of the first verse when the singer sings that the person is like when you stick a penny under your tongue and how strange the sensation of that taste is. Just thinking of that mental image is really sour and stinging, which is probably the intended meaning and general emotion of the song. Musically, I really enjoyed hearing the strange melodies that the guitar took on in this piece and how it kind of ended up discordant with the vocals which is very connected to the meaning of the song. 9. Is There A Place I Can Go by Trudy and the Romance - People have discarded songs that are just generally "sweet and cute" themed as of late, because they are not cool and fresh, but why can't they be? I think this track perfectly proves my point because it doesn't do anything so extra and post modern, but just puts a sweet message in a very low fi jazzy kind of way. This is part of a kind of music where it can be regarded as a return to love songs, not because they are copying anything that old love songs used to do, but instead reinventing them and adding freshness to the genre and making love okay again. Just like the revival that many forms of art often has, love is one of them and we should appreciate that in a world that is so twisted in so many ways; in essence, we need love songs again, we need to see that sometimes darkness is okay to dwell in, but so is the light and so are the rose colored shades that those in love look through with such pleasure. 10. Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole by Martha Wainwright - On the other hand, this song is basically the anthem of the opposite of a love song. It's an anger song, a revolution song, a self message song, a song to say FUCK YOU to someone that really deserves it because they have made you feel down trodden and unwanted and unworthy. Very important as well in this day in age when people don't pick their words carefully and basically feel like they can say anything to you without any sensitivity training before it. "I will not pretend, I will not put on a smile, I will not say I'm alright for you, when all I wanted to be was good" is such a mantra that hits way too close to home for anyone who has every dealt with feeling inferior at the hands of a bloody mother fucking asshole who has made you feel that way. Wainwright's passionate and angry tone in her voice with only really an acoustic guitar playing behind really makes the meaning of the song slap you in the face with straight up truth. 11. Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl by Broken Social Scene - Please don't be automatically creeped out by the muffled, alien sounding layered voices that appear in this ever cool and futuristic sounding monotonal song. It describes an insight into the life of a reckless teenage girl who wants love and wants to fit in and how she acts in order to have those things. This is taking that mantra of what being seventeen is like from an older perspective and grieving the loss of youth and innocence. It is described by another reviewer of the song as, “Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl” is sung from the perspective of a woman looking back on her days as a fresh faced seventeen year-old. A melancholy nostalgic chant pervades the song as the speaker comes to the realization that her present self is a far cry from the girl she used to be." The repetition of the lyrics are important because it portrays nostalgia as a time cycle that one keeps going back to. 12. Eulogy For You And Me by Tanya Davis - I don't know that I would necessarily regard this piece as even a song so much as a performative art piece because it is all spoken word except for the last two lines of it, which is sung very simply but aptly. Hearing these words ring through your ears is very important during a period in your life where you are trying to rebuild yourself when you have been torn down by any number of things (a love, a friend, time, a loss, family, depression, illness, etc it goes on forever) The metaphor of having a clock in your life at all times and having to deal with moving on and starting new and how to get on without a person who was a constant in your life for a long time. The thing to remember which definitely reminded me of this song is that people are not always going to be constants, like a math equation, they will be undefinable variables who sometimes float in and out and sometimes that has to be accepted. 13. Painter In Your Pocket by Destroyer - I'm sorry that I'm unoriginal but this song definitely isn't because of the whirlwind of metaphorical language and sensory images we get to have. But the song is told as being, “'Painter In Your Pocket”’s protagonist drunkenly confesses his love to a woman with which he has become infatuated. He’s admired her for years, and although he finds many of her behaviors and dispositions to be abhorrent, he is still fascinated with her. The song’s subject matter is examined through Dan Bejar’s characteristically charismatic and erudite lens." The trope of the woman described in this song is one that would typically be seen in movies as the woman who takes people for granted and thinks the world revolves around her but then still relies on one person to fall back upon because she knows he will be there to pick her up if something goes wrong. 14. Give It All To Me by Black Pool - The chords at the beginning of this song are literally identical to the ones at the beginning of Hallelujah and has the doo wop style of rhythm too which was automatically very pleasing to the ears to hear. Black Pool always has the ability to make a really simple tune very deep and emotional because of the passion and intellect behind the crafting of the words and the innate ability to create a short story out of something very basic. I think this song really points out the regular desire that all humans experience at one point or another where they want someone to devote themselves entirely to them and be the most important thing in someone's life, even if that is kind of an overbearing or ridiculous notion. But honestly, the notalgic 50s doo wop vibe of this really creates the going back to the ways of going steady in a relationship and caring about someone fully and truly and deeply. 15. Life Is Confusing by Langhorne Slim - Since I found this song last week, it has been constantly running through my head and on my brain pretty much all the time. I haven't felt so akin to a song in such a long time, but damn it if I don't feel every part of my soul in this short diddy about life being confusing and people being insane and having to accept that as something that will always be. It is also about the feeling of becoming super busy with all of these confusing nuances of life and having to see someone you care about less and less because of this hectic way of life. I think especially now I relate to this song because being in New York City means that you are constantly moving at the speed of light and even faster most of the time and that means that seeing people you care about becomes really difficult and forging close relationships can be seen as a challenge of sorts. The very folky acoustic sound of this meaningful tune is a really nice transition from summer carefree to fall chaos and all that a new start entails. 16. Shrike by Hozier - Ok so for anyone who doesn't know what the title means (neither did I when I first saw this come out the other day) it is defined as: "a songbird with a strong sharply hooked bill, often impaling its prey of small birds, lizards, and insects on thorns." This ended up making so much more sense in context paired with the lyrics of the song, which is such a Hozier thing to do, thus putting in a lot of thought to a title in order to make the holistic approach to the song that much more in depth. In terms of the song itself, I felt an instant connection while listening, not just because he returned to his roots of soulful guitar and singing, but also because the song's poetic flow is so strong and sparks the writer's mind within all who listen and appreciate writing. In terms of the EP as a whole, "Nina Cried Power" which was released just a few days ago, I cannot stress enough how amazing all of the songs are on their own as well as a collective whole and how much everyone NEEDS to go and listen to it at least once full through. I guarantee you will love it... I love it. 17. Sixty Charisma Scented Candles by Gabriel Meyers - This song kind of sums up all of the other songs that I have previously put in this mix, mostly because it talks about feeling lost, confused, searching for love and not knowing how to find it, trying to decipher where one is in time and space in the grand scheme of things and also just trying to make someone else proud and how others especially close to you perceive you and all the things you try to do. Honestly though, the title of the song drew me in which usually happens to me because of my incessant pension for lyrical greatness. Meyers crooning and soulful voice while he sings about the topics that most people can't fathom to pen down, let alone perform on a track, becomes such a visceral experience even just by listening to it. The repetition of the phrase "When time and space collide I hope I'm by your side" is so intense to hear especially in a musical form. I think this notion is pretty philosophical and music, in a way, can be pretty much a modern form of philosophy that we can understand. 18. This House by Japanese Breakfast - Off of her album, Soft Sounds From Another Planet, comes this beautiful ballad/indie piece that is a slow understanding of what it's like to return back to a place where there is a mixture of trauma and love and how it takes time to try to recollect all of the memories of a place that you once lived and how it can be painful to go back and restart while retaining a sense of who you used to be. Zauner, who is the main singer/songwriter of Japanese Breakfast, told that the song is about, "This was the last song I wrote for the album. A ballad about returning home after a long tour, waiting for your someone to come home. It’s also about the confused desires you feel for someone you once loved, and coming to the realization that it’s not actually the person you miss, but who you were before. A time when you were younger and felt more and didn’t think so much about death all the time." I feel such a deep connection to this song because I love where I am from (suburban NJ) and I have always felt a mixture of sadness and love returning home for a variety of reasons and how pain mixed with nostalgia is very important to feel. 19. Forget Me by Born Ruffians - The first song I found by this artist I included on an older mix and it was the track "Fuck Feelings" which I think should be listened to in tandem with this song because they kind of work as a venn diagram in the sense that there are a lot of shared themes and feelings within both songs, but they depart in the way of that this song is about staying with someone through really difficult times and having a stronger sense of love because of those hard times. A phrase from this song which is central to the theme is "you'll face the light with me". I think this goes to say that two people, when faced with something as intense and scary as death, if they really care about each other, will make it through to the other side and still survive in an afterlife or space of some sort with one another. I would categorize this kind of genre as a soft alternative rock because of the light feeling mixed with a still present rock vibe. 20. Upper West Side by King Princess - Finally, rounding off this week's mix is a Brooklyn native young and fresh artist new to the indie pop scene, who is amazing for incorporating feelings of acceptance, empowerment, equality and queer love as well as general feelings of love and light. This particular track is about being apart of a so called privileged generation of young people who try to portray themselves a certain way in order to feel accepted by the general public society. In an interview with Coup De Main magazine, King Princess commented, "The song is about somebody who is wealthy and all that, and interested in this concept of disguising their wealth to be cool…I think especially in our culture, a huge part of the way that we present ourselves to the world is edited, and it’s digital. You have the luxury of touching things up and editing them and changing them before they hit the real world, and the reality is that a lot of the parts that we show isn’t the core and isn’t the heart of the matter. I talk about that a lot as well in the music because I am definitely a product of that generation" which I think sums the song up perfectly.

Thanks for listening with open ears and hearts

Much love,

Julia