#albums written on tour while going through shit she thought was mostly about a guy

[longlivetv]

Red and TTPD are truly sisters in so many ways I guess it’s only fitting that they’re also united in deserving flowers they didn’t get

[hangovercurse]

Our Song

At the last show of his tour, Kells invites you on stage for a duet, but it turns into a bit more than that.

Request: “Can you do one where the reader and Colson both are music artist. I know you're doing this with "The Thing We Can't Tell Pete about. But with this one they have been dating for a while and while they are in the middle of the song Colson decides to announce they're dating and gives her a kiss in front of the crowd, and the reader is just in shock. However it ends it up to you. Love ya!!!!!!!!”

Colson Baker x Reader

Warnings: implied smut/ mentions of sex, cursing

A/N: So, I used my own lyrics in here because why not (sue me I guess)

Word Count: 2326

The last two months had been absolute hell on Earth. Yes, you loved your job. Recording your third studio album was exciting but being busy all the time was exhausting. On top of that, your boyfriend being off on tour meant you hadn’t seen him in person in two months, which was driving you even more insane.

It also meant you hadn’t had sex in almost two months.

You’d called each other every night, even if you were both drunk off your asses or faded beyond belief. It had become your routine; get home from the studio, grab something to eat, then hop into the bath and facetime your blond boyfriend.

Tonight, was no exception, but the energy on the call was different. Colson was coming home tomorrow. Granted, he would be going straight to the venue for his concert, but he’d be here.

“You’re still coming tomorrow, right princess?” He asked, a joint hanging from his lips.

You smiled, nodding, “I haven’t seen you in two months. If I’m not there, you should assume I’m dead.”

He chuckled, “good.” He hesitated before continuing, “I was thinking you could perform with me. We haven’t performed White Sea in like a year.”

You bit your lip at the thought of performing with him again. He was right, after you’d finished live performance promo for the song, neither of you had performed it together. “Yeah, I’m down.”

The song was the first one you’d written together; it was actually the whole reason you’d met. “You don’t think people will get suspicious though? I mean, people are already catching on. I feel like performing it out of the blue would add fire to the flames.”

He thought about it, the wheels turning in his head. “I think it’ll be fine. Besides, it’s not exactly a secret.”

You nodded, “I know, we’ve just never really talked about telling people.” The last two words came out softer than you had intended.

Colson and you had been together for a year and still hadn’t officially told anyone outside of your closest circles. You liked the privacy, and getting the media involved always caused problems. So, you kept it to yourself. People saw you out together, but nothing had been confirmed.

Colson left the conversation there, not having a good answer. You had both agreed a long time ago that if people figured it out or someone slipped up and told you would be okay with it, and you would. You just didn’t think it was a big deal if people knew or not.

He started talking about his day on tour, the crowd he’d played to tonight. You told him about the song you were working on. Eventually he got called away by the boys.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, babe.” He smiled at you through your phone.

You smiled, “You better. I-“ You almost slipped up. Almost said those three words so casually. But you’d caught yourself. “I can’t wait.” You covered.

He gave you a small wave before your screen went back, the sound of the line disconnecting ringing through your bathroom. You put your phone on the floor next to the tub, leaning your head back and sighing.

You don’t know why it worried you so much. You knew you loved him, and you were pretty sure he loved you too. There was just something about saying out loud that scared the hell out of you.

 The next day was amazing. As soon as he texted you that he’d gotten to the venue, you were rushing to meet him there. When you stepped into the green room where he was, he ran up to you and grabbed you by your waist. Your arms went around his neck, legs around his as he lifted you up, burying his face into your shoulder.

“I missed you so much.” He mumbled into your skin. Your hands tangled themselves in his hair, holding him closely.

“I missed you too.” You whispered. He lifted his head up and pressed a deep kiss to your lips as your feet came down to touch the floor again. His lips were so familiar, it felt like the world had shifted back into place when you felt them on yours.

He pulled away, forehead and nose still pressed against yours. Your hands travelled from his neck to his shoulders, rubbing the fabric of his t-shirt. “I didn’t think I was gonna survive another night without you.” You said with a slight giggle, making him laugh.

“Well now you don’t have to worry about that.” He said, pressing a peck to your lips.

Before you could pull him back to your lips, your moment was interrupted. “We get it, you guys are cute. Whatever. Can we get hugs from our favorite girl?” Irv joked, pulling your attention to the group of guys near the couches in the room.

One of the things you loved most about being with Colson was how accepting his friends were of you. Slim and you had bonded over your love of music production and mixing, Baze had taught you some more complicated bass riffs, and Rook was your designated adventure buddy (after Colson, of course). You felt lucky that your boyfriend’s family had taken you in as one of their own.

You ran over to them, giving each of the guys a hug. When you hugged Ashleigh, she whispered in your ear, “don’t ever leave me alone with these lunatics again.” You both giggled at that, leaving the boys confused.

After messing around backstage for a while and catching up with your friends (mostly from the comfort of Colson’s lap), it was time for the guys to perform. You set up your spot side-stage with Ash, Irv, and Andre, excited to see the set.

Before he went on, Colson came over to you and pulled you in for a very giddy kiss. Pre-show Colson was your favorite Colson, except for maybe post-show Colson, only because he was so excitable. Every time you sat show side, he demanded you give him a good luck kiss. No matter who was watching.

Watching him was magical, in fact watching all the boys was magical. The way their passion showed through the music and the performance was something that not many other artists could perfect. You felt like you’d never match their level of performing.

When Colson brought out his acoustic guitar and two bar stools, you were a bit taken aback. Normally his shows were so high energy that he never wanted to sit down, even during the slower songs. It wasn’t really his style.

“I wanted to bring out a very special guest today to help slow this down a bit.” He said to the crowd as they screamed. “I haven’t performed this song in a very long time, but I figured today would be the perfect time to do it.”

He looked over at you, a smile on his face. It finally registered in his mind that he was talking about your song. Luckily, you’d had ears put in at the beginning of the show, so that wasn’t an issue. One of the venue’s techs handed you a microphone and signaled you to go on stage.

Once you came in view of the audience they erupted into another round of cheers, making you smile. Colson met you halfway and pulled you in for a sweaty hug. He led you over to the chairs, letting you sit down while he adjusted his mic stand. “For those of you who don’t know, not that there should be anyone who doesn’t know who this is, but just in case, this is Y/S/N. We wrote this song a little over a year ago today.”

You smiled as he started to strum the familiar intro, the lights dimming just a little bit.

Drownin’ in empty space.

You started singing.

Don’t even know my name

Feels like you’re miles away

Close my eyes, see your face

It’s okay

Rook brought the drum beat in as Colson smiled at you, his verse starting

Yeah

I was drownin’ in this darkness

Feeling like I was so heartless

All these drugs makin things harder

They tried to turn me to a martyr

You loved watching him party on stage, but you loved watching this side of him, too. Completely stripped down and raw. Hearing him rap the words you wrote together made your heart flutter, even if you’d written them so long ago.

I can’t handle shit I’m just a man

I tried to tell ‘em, they don’t understand

Riptide’s pulling me away from land

I couldn’t stand till you reached out your hand

And now I can.

The rest of the music came in, the sounds mixing as you began the chorus.

Drownin’ in empty space

Don’t even my name

Feels like you’re miles away

Close my eyes, see your face

The key raised.

Out on the open sea

Feel your eyes watching me

Wanted to fall asleep

Now I believe.

The music kept playing, but Colson’s rap didn’t enter like it was supposed to. Instead, he just looked at you, a fond smile on his face. You tilted your head, questioning him, but he just placed his guitar on the ground and kept looking at you.

“I just want to let everyone here know, that today is my one-year anniversary with this amazing woman right here.” He said into the mic, causing the audience to burst into screams. Your jaw dropped, eyes widening.

He caught your expression and laughed but kept going. “It wasn’t a secret that we’ve been together, but we’ve been quiet about it. But I mean, like, fuck that shit. When you’re in love you should tell everyone, right?”

You smiled at him, your heart picking up speed. “And Y/N I am so fucking in love with you.”

You looked down, trying to hide the heat on your cheeks and the idiotic grin you were sporting. You had never expected this from him. “Like, seriously, this past year has been the best year of my life. Even when we aren’t together you are the one thing that I look forward to the most, every day. You are one of the best things in my life, and I want everyone to know that.”

During his little monologue he had walked over to your chair and pulled you up into his arms. You nuzzled your face into his bare chest, making him laugh. He pulled the microphone away from you both so it wouldn’t pick up your conversation.

“Hey, look at me.” He said softly and you complied. “I love you.”

You had tears in your eyes as you studied his perfect features, “I love you, too.” You whispered. “I’ve wanted to tell you for a while I just…”

“I know, princess.” He smiled, leaning down and pressing your lips together in a sweet, passionate kiss. The audience erupted in applause, cheers, and awes. “Are you gonna say anything?” He asked once you’d pulled away, motioning to the audience with a smile on his face. You shook your head, burying it back in his chest and laughing. He spoke into the microphone, “she got all shy now.”

The crowd laughed with him, shouting supportive comments at you both. “But she said she loves me too so that’s all that matters.” He continued, earning even more cheers.

 After the show, Colson came backstage and immediately attached his lips to yours, hands holding you close. You pulled him into one of the unused dressing rooms, mouths never leaving each other. He hoisted you onto the counter, standing in between your legs, and leaned your back against the mirror.

Finally, he released your lips from his, making you whine. “I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you about all this, but after last night I couldn’t keep it a secret anymore. And you just looked so pretty out there that I-“ You cut him off with a kiss, lips moving together slowly.

He chuckled as you pulled away. “Colson, I loved it. I was hella embarrassed because the first time you told me you loved me was in front of thousands of people, but I loved it. And I love you.”

He smiled, pressing a peck to your lips. “How much do you love me?” He asked, slyly.

You raised an eyebrow at him, knowing something was up. “Depends on your next statement.”

A laugh fell from his mouth as he reached into his pocket, pulling out a small rectangular box. “Because I really hope it’s a lot.”

“What are you doing?” You asked him, giggling.

He lifted the lid off of the box to reveal a key with your first initial painted on one side and a C on the other. “You don’t have to, but if you wanted to maybe think about moving in with me, now you have a key.” He smiled as you took the metal in your hands.

You looked up at him with wide eyes, lips open in shock. “So, you’re asking me to move in with you?” You confirmed.

“Only if you want to. But yes.”

You smiled, looking back down to the key and then up to his face before pressing a passionate kiss to his lips. Your arms went around his neck and his hands went to your waist. “Of course, I want to, dummy.” You giggled and reconnected your lips.

“We’re supposed to go out and celebrate the last night of tour tonight, you’re gonna come, right?” He asked and you rolled your eyes.

“You act like I don’t wanna be around you.” You pushed his chest playfully. “But we might be a couple minutes late.” You smirk.

Colson raised an eyebrow, “oh yeah? And why is that?”

Instead of responding you just giggled and pulled him back into a kiss.

[lochtayboatsong]

The Jesus Christ Superstar essay absolutely no one asked for.

Last weekend, I watched the pro-shot of the 2012 arena tour of Jesus Christ Superstar starring Ben Forster, Tim Minchin, and Melanie C, because it was Easter and it was up on YT for the weekend.  I never managed to do my annual listen-through of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass this year, as is my usual Easter tradition, so I figured “Why not watch/listen to this instead?”  It was my first time seeing and hearing JCS in full, and Y’ALL, it has been living rent-free in my brain ever since.  I have a mighty need to get my thoughts out, so here they are, in chronological order by song.  

1) Prologue: I love the way JCS 2012 makes use of the arena video screen.  The production design and concept clearly took a lot of inspiration from the “Occupy ______” movement, which makes it feel a bit dated now.  But every single production of JCS is a product of its time period, so this is a feature and not a bug.  

2) Heaven On Their Minds: This is a straight-up rock song.  It wouldn’t be out of place on any rock and roll album released between 1970 and 2021, and it boggles my mind that Webber and Rice were both in their early twenties when they wrote it.  Also, the lyric “You’ve begun to matter more than the things you say” hits hard no matter the year.

3) What’s the Buzz: A+ use of the arena screens again, this time bringing in social media to set the tone.  Also, this song establishes right from the outset that Jesus is burnt out and T I R E D by this point in the story.  Seriously, can we just let this man have a nap?

4) Strange Thing Mystifying: Judas publicly calls out Mary and Jesus claps back.  Folx, get you a partner who will defend your honor the way Jesus defends MM in this scene.  Also Jesus loses his shoes and is mostly barefoot for the remainder of the show.

5) Everything’s Alright: Okay, this is one of the songs I have A LOT to say about.  First, it’s important to know that I was a church musician throughout all of my adolescence and into my early adulthood.  The pianist at the services I usually played at was a top-notch jazz pianist, and also my piano teacher for about six years while I as in high school and undergrad.  (Incidentally, I had a HUGE crush on his son, who was/is a jazz saxophonist and clarinetist and also played in the church band, but that’s a story for another day.)  One of the hymns we played a few times a year was called “Sing of the Lord’s Goodness,” which is notable for being in 5/4 time.  Whenever this hymn was on the schedule, it was usually the recessional, or the last song played as the clergy processed out and the congregation got ready to leave, so we were able to have some fun with it.  After a couple verses the piano player and his son would usually morph it into “Take Five,” a famous jazz standard by Dave Brubeck which is also in 5/4 time.  Anyway, the first time I listened to this song in full, it got to Judas’s line “People who are hungry, people who are starving,” and I sat bolt upright and went “HOLY SHIT THIS IS ‘SING OF THE LORD’S GOODNESS/TAKE FIVE.’”  And I was ricocheted back in time to being fourteen and trying to keep up with this father/son duo in a cavernous Catholic church while simultaneously making heart-eyes at the son.  Final note: This is the only song in the musical to feature all three leads (Jesus, Judas, and Mary Magdalene) and is mostly Jesus and MM being soft with each other in between bouts of Jesus and Judas snarling at one another.

6) This Jesus Must Die: I LOVE that all the villains in this production are in tailored suits.  LOVE IT.  Also, Caiaphas and Annas are a comedy duo akin to “the thin guy and the fat guy,” except in this case it’s “the low basso profundo and the high tenor.”  Excellent use of the arena video screen again, this time as CCTV.

7) Hosanna: My background as a church musician strikes back again.  It honestly took me two or three listens to catch it, but then I had another moment of sitting bolt upright and going “HOLY SHIT THIS IS A PSALM.”  Psalms sung in church usually take the form of call-and-response, with a cantor singing the verses and the congregation joining in for the chorus.  If I close my eyes during this song, I have no trouble imagining Jesus as a church cantor singing the verses and then bringing the congregation in for the “Ho-sanna, Hey-sanna” chorus. 

8) Simon Zealotes: This is part “Gloria In Excelsis” and part over-the-top Gospel song.  Honestly it’s not my favorite, but it marks an important mood change in the show.  The end of “Hosanna” is probably Jesus at his happiest in the entire show, and then Simon comes in and sours the mood by trying to tip the triumphant moment into a violent one.  Jesus is not truly happy again from this moment on.

9) Poor Jerusalem: Also not my fave.  It kinda reads like Webber and Rice realized that Jesus didn’t have a solo aria in Act I, so they came up with this.  But it has the distinction of containing the lyric, “To conquer death you only have to die,” which is the biggest overarching theme of the story.

10) Pilate’s Dream: Pontius Pilate might be the most underrated role in this entire show, and I love that this production has him singing this song while being dressed in judge’s robes.  

11) The Temple: The first half of this is one of the campiest numbers in Act I, at least in this production, and it’s awesome.  The second half is one of the saddest, as Jesus tries to heal the sick but finds there are too many of them.  Also the whole scene is almost entirely in 7/8 time, which I think is just cool.

12) I Don’t Know How To Love Him: Mary Magdalene’s big aria, and one of the songs I knew prior to seeing the full-length show.  This production has MM taking off her heavy lipstick and eye makeup onstage, mid-song, which is kind of cool.  Melanie C says in a BTS interview that MM’s makeup is her armor, so this is a Big Symbolic Moment.

13) Damned For All Time: The scene transition into this song is played entirely in pantomime, and I love it.  The solo guitarist gets to be onstage for a bit, A+ use of the video screen again to show Judas on CCTV, etc.  Love it.  And then this song is Judas frantically rationalizing what he’s doing, and what he’s about to do, with Caiphas and Annas just reacting with raised eyebrows and knowing looks.

14) Blood Money: This is where the tone of the show really takes a turn for the dark.  I think this might be one of Tim Minchin’s finest moments as Judas, because his facial expressions and microexpressions throughout this scene speak absolute volumes.  And the offstage chorus quietly singing “Well done Judas” as he picks up the money is a positively chilling way to end Act I.

15) The Last Supper: Act II begins with major “Drink With Me” vibes.  (Except JCS came WAY before Les Miz, so it’s probably more accurate to say that “Drink With Me” has major “The Last Supper” vibes.)  Jesus and Judas have their knock-down, drag-out fight, and it’s honestly heartbreaking, thanks again to Tim Minchin’s facial expressions.  A well-done production of JCS will really convey that Jesus and Judas were once closer than brothers, even though their relationship is at breaking point when Act I begins.

16) Gethsemane: This is Jesus’s major showpiece and one of my faves.  Jesus knows he has less than 24 hours to live, he knows he’s going to suffer, and worst of all, he doesn’t know whether it’s going to be worth it.  It’s an emotional rollercoaster to watch and to perform, and it goes on for ages: something like 6 or 7 minutes.  Fun fact: the famous G5 is not written in the score.  Ian Gillan, who played Jesus on the original concept album, just sang it that way, so most subsequent Jesuses have also done it that way.  Lindsay Ellis has a great supercut of this on YT.  John Legend notably sang the line as written during the 2018 concert.  

17) The Arrest: Judas’s Betrayer’s Kiss is played differently across different productions.  The 2012 version is pretty tame - I’ve seen clips and gifs of other productions, including the 2000 direct-to-video version, where they kiss fully on the mouth and have to be dragged apart by the guards and it is THE MOST TENDER THING.  Then the 7/8 riff from “The Temple” comes back and the 2012 version lets the video screen do its thing again as Jesus is swarmed by reporters.

18) Peter’s Denial: Not much to say about this one, as it’s basically a scene transition.  But it’s a significant moment in the Passion story, so I’m glad they included it.

19) Pilate and Christ: The 2012 production continues with the theme of Caiaphas, Annas, and Pilate all being bougie af, since Pilate intentionally looks like he just came from tennis practice during this scene.  Also he does pilates...hehehe.

20) King Herod’s Song: Tim Minchin says in a BTS interview that JCS works best when Jesus and Judas are played seriously and the rest of the production is allowed to be completely camp and wild and bizarre all around them, and he is bloody well CORRECT about that.  Case in point: King Herod.  There is not a single production of JCS that I know of where Herod is played “straight.”  He’s been played by everyone from Alice Cooper to Jack Black, and everyone puts a different zany spin on him.  In JCS 2012 he’s a chat show host in a red crushed velvet suit, who is clearly having the time of his LIFE. 

21) Could We Start Again Please: This is another of my faves.  Just a quiet moment where MM, Peter, and the disciples try to grapple with the fact that Jesus is arrested and things are going very, very badly.  This is also my favorite Melanie C moment of the 2012 show.  Her grief is very real, and the little moment she has with Peter at the end is very real.

22) Death of Judas: This is basically Tim Minchin screaming for about five minutes, and incredibly harrowing to watch on first viewing.  

23) Trial Before Pilate: Possibly my single favorite scene in the entire 2012 production.  This is another harrowing watch, but there’s so much to take in.  The “set” that the entire show takes place on is essentially just a massive staircase, and the people with power are almost always positioned above the people without power.  In this scene, the crowd shouting “Crucify Him!” is positioned above Pilate, which is a very telling clue to Pilate’s psychology during this scene.  Jesus is at the very bottom of the stairs, of course.  Excellent use of the video screen once again during the 39 Lashes, to show the lash marks building and building until the entire screen is a wash of red.  Pilate’s counting also gets more and more frantic, especially starting around “20.”  And all the while the guitar riff from “Heaven On Their Minds” is playing.  Jesus’s line “Everything is fixed and you can’t change it” is played quite differently in different productions - here it’s defiant, but elsewhere (in JCS 2000 for example) it’s almost tender, like Jesus is absolving Pilate for his part in the trial.  But it always ends the same - with Pilate almost screaming as he passes the sentence and “washes his hands” of the whole sorry business. 

24) Superstar: The most over-the-top number in the show.  Judas, who died two scenes ago, comes back to sing this.  There are soul singers.  There are girls in skimpy angel costumes.  The parkour guys from the prologue are back.  Judas pulls a tambourine out of hammerspace midway through the song.  And Jesus is silently screaming and crying as he gets hoisted onto a lighting beam while all this is going on.

25) The Crucifixion: More of a spoken-word piece than a song, it’s Jesus’s final words on the cross over eerie piano music, and another harrowing watch.

26) John 19:41: An instrumental piece in which Jesus is taken from the cross and carried, at last, to the top of the stairs, before being lowered out of sight as the video screen turns into a memorial wall and everything fades to black.

So.  I know I’m anywhere from three to fifty-one years late to this particular party, but I am on the JCS bandwagon now and I’m thoroughly enjoying myself.  :)

[bananaofswifts]

Taylor Swift appears to be waging war over the serial resale of her old master recordings on two fronts. She recently confirmed that she is already underway in the process of re-recording the six albums she made for the Big Machine label, in order to steer her fans (and sync licensing execs) toward the coming alternate versions she’ll control. But now that she’s followed the surprise release of “Folklore” with the very, very surprise release of “Evermore” less than five months later, the thought may occur: If she keeps up this pace, she may have more new albums out on the Republic label than she ever did on Big Machine in a quarter of the time. Flooding the zone to further crowd out the oldies is unlikely to be Swift’s real motivation for giving the world a full-blown “Folklore” sequel this instantaneously: As motivations for prolific activity go, relieving and sublimating quarantine pressure is probably even better than revenge. Anyway, this is not a gift horse to be looked in the mouth. “Evermore,” like its mid-pandemic predecessor, feels like something that’s been labored over — in the best possible way — for years, not something that was written and recorded beginning in August, with the bow said to be put on it only about a week ago. Albums don’t get graded on a curve for how hastily they came together, or shouldn’t be, but this one doesn’t need the handicap. It’d be a jewel even if it’d been in progress forevermore and a day.The closest analog for the relation the new album bears to its predecessor might be one that’d seem ancient to much of Swift’s audience: U2 following “Achtung Baby” with “Zooropa” while still touring behind the previous album. It’s hard to remember now that a whole year and a half separated those two related projects; In that very different era, it seemed like a ridiculously fast follow-up. But the real comparison lies in how U2, having been rewarded for making a pretty gutsy change of pace with “Achtung,” seemed to say: You’re okay with a little experimentation? Let’s see how you like it when we really boil things down to our least commercial impulses, then — while we’ve still got you in the mood.Swift isn’t going avant-garde with “Evermore.” If anything, she’s just stripping things down to even more of an acoustic core, so that the new album often sounds like the folk record that the title of the previous one promised — albeit with nearly subliminal layers of Mellotrons, flutes, French horns and cellos that are so well embedded beneath the profuse finger-picking, you probably won’t notice them till you scour the credits. But it’s taking the risk of “Folklore” one step further by not even offering such an obvious banger (irony intended) as “Cardigan.” Aaron Dessner of the National produced or co-produced about two-thirds of the last record, but he’s on 14 out of 15 tracks here (Jack Antonoff gets the remaining spot), and so the new album is even more all of a piece with his arpeggiated chamber-pop impulses, Warmth amid iciness is a recurring lyrical motif here, and kind of a musical one, too, as Swift’s still increasingly agile vocal acting breathes heat into arrangements that might otherwise seem pretty controlled. At one point Swift sings, “Hey, December, I’m feeling unmoored,” like a woman who might even know she’s going to put her album out a couple of weeks before Christmas. It’s a wintry record — suitable for double-cardigan wearing! — and if you’re among the 99% who have been feeling unmoored, too, then perhaps you are Ready For It. Swift said in announcing the album that she was moving further into fiction songwriting after finding out it was a good fit on much of “Folklore,” a probably inevitable move for someone who’s turning 31 in a few days and appears to have a fairly settled personal life. Which is not to say that there aren’t scores to settle, and a few intriguing tracks whose real-life associations will be speculated upon. But just as the “Betty”/”August” love triangle of mid-year established that modern pop’s most celebrated confessional writer can just make shit up, too, so, here, do we get the narrator of “Dorothea,” a honey in Tupelo who is telling a childhood friend who moved away and became famous that she’s always welcome back in her hometown. (Swift may be doing a bit of empathic wondering in a couple of tracks here how it feels to be at the other end of the telescope.) One time the album takes a turn away from rumination into a pure spirit of fun — while getting dark anyway — is “No Body, No Crime,” a spirited double-murder ballad that may have more than a little inspiration in “Goodbye, Earl.” Since Swift already used the Dixie Chicks for background vocals two albums ago, for this one she brings in two of the sisters from Haim, Danielle and Este, and even uses the latter’s name for one of the characters. Yes, the rock band Haim’s featured appearance is on the only really country-sounding song on the record… there’s one you didn’t see coming, in the 16 hours you had to wonder about it. Yet there are also a handful of songs that clearly represent a Swiftian state of mind. At least, it’s easy to suppose that the love songs that opens the album, “Willow,” is a cousin to the previous record’s “Invisible String” and “Peace,” even if it doesn’t offer quite as many clearly corroborating details about her current relationship as those did. On the sadder side, Swift is apparently determined to run through her entire family tree for heartrending material. On “Lover,” she sang for her stricken mother; on “Folklore,” for her grandfather in wartime. In that tradition the new album offers “Marjorie,” about the beloved grandmother she lost in 2003, when she was 13. (The lyric videos that are being offered online mostly offer static visual loops, but the one for “Marjorie” is an exception, reviving a wealth of stills and home-movie footage of Grandma, who was quite a looker in a miniskirt in her day.) Rue is not something Swift is afraid of here anymore than anywhere else, as she sings, “I should’ve asked you questions / I should’ve asked you how to be / Asked you to write it down for me / Should’ve kept every grocery store receipt / ‘Cause every scrap of you would be taken from me,” lines that will leave a dry eye only in houses that have never known death. The piece de resistance in its poignance is Swift actually resurrecting faint audio clips of Marjorie, who was an opera singer back in the day. It’s almost like ELO’s “Rockaria,” played for weeping instead of a laugh. Swift has not given up, thank God, on the medium that brought her to the dance — the breakup song — but most of them here have more to do with dimming memories and the search for forgiveness, however slowly and incompletely achieved, than feist. But doesn’t Swift know that we like her when she’s angry? She does, and so she delves deep into something like venom just once, but it’s a good one. The ire in “Closure,” a pulsating song about an unwelcome “we can still be friends, right?” letter from an ex, seems so fresh and close to the surface that it would be reasonable to speculate that it is not about a romantic relationship at all, but a professional one she has no intention of ever recalling in a sweet light. Or maybe she does harbor that a disdain for an actual former love with that machinelike a level of intensity. What “Evermore” is full of is narratives that, like the music that accompanies them, really come into focus on second or third listen, usually because of a detail or two that turns her sometimes impressionistic modes completely vivid. “Champagne Problems” is a superb example of her abilities as a storyteller who doesn’t always tell all: She’s playing the role of a woman who quickly ruins a relationship by balking at a marriage proposal the guy had assumed was an easy enough yes that he’d tipped off his nearby family. “Sometimes you just don’t know the answer ‘ Til someone���s on their knees and asks you / ‘She would’ve made such a lovely bride / What a shame she’s fucked in the head’ / They said / But you’ll find the real thing instead / She’ll patch up your tapestry that I shred.” (Swift has doubled the F-bomb quotient this time around, among other expletives, for anyone who may be wondering whether there’s rough wordplay amid Dessner’s delicacy — that would an effing yes.) “‘Tis the Damn Season,” representing a gentler expletive, gives us a character who is willing to settle, or at least share a Christmas-time bed with an ex back in the hometown, till something better comes along. The pleasures here are shared, though not many more fellow artists have broken into her quarantine bubble this time around. Besides Haim’s cameo, Marcus Mumford offers a lovely harmony vocal on “Cowboy Like Me,” which might count as the other country song on the album, and even throws in something Swift never much favored in her Nashville days, a bit of lap steel. Its tale of male and female grifters meeting and maybe — maybe — falling in love is really more determinedly Western than C&W, per se, though. The National itself, as a group, finally gets featured billing on “Coney Island,” with Matt Berninger taking a duet vocal on a track that recalls the previous album’s celebrated Bon Iver collaboration “Exile,” with ex-lovers taking quiet turns deciding who was to blame. (Swift saves the rare laugh line for herself: “We were like the mall before the internet / It was the one place to be.) Don’t worry, legions of new Bon Iver fans: Dessner has not kicked Justin Vernon out of his inner circle just to make room for Berninger. The Bon Iver frontman whose appearance on “Folklore” came as a bit of a shock to some of his fan base actually makes several appearances on this album, and the one that gets him elevated to featured status again, as a duet, the closing “Evermore,” is different from “Exile” in two key ways. Vernon gets to sing in his high register… and he gets the girl. As it turned out, the year 2020 did not involve any such waiting for Swift fans; it’s an embarrassment of stunning albums-ending-in-“ore” that she’s mined out of a locked-down muse.

[dreamescapeswriting]

“The Perfect Love Story” ~ Jimin X Reader

Word Count: 3,891

Warnings: There are hints at Smut in here/Smutty writing, but mostly its cute and fluffy

Genre: Cute || Fluffy || Smutty Hints || SoultmateAU|| Zip Series

Summary:  Soulmates. Some people had one, others had multiple. You had friends who had had multiple soulmates, you, however, had yet to find yours

Soulmates. Some people had one, others had multiple. You had friends who had had multiple soulmates, you, however, had yet to find yours. It wasn’t just a matter of finding someone and calling them your soulmate, there had to be something to connect you, with one of your friends and her soulmate it was a timer on her wrist until the moment they met, another one of your friends had the colour of their hair tattooed on her ankle, every time they would change their hair colour the stripe would change until they met and the colour would fade. Everyone’s was different, but for a while, you thought you didn’t have a soulmate, that you were supposed to spend your time alone, you couldn’t find what your soulmate cue was and what made you so special for someone else, that was until you were in an exam and began drawing on your skin, you’d finished the exam and had nothing else to do. You’d started with small symbols on your wrist and were about to move onto your hand when you noticed another r red ink spot you hadn’t drawn, it was on top of your hand. It began to turn into a drawing with every passing second, when it was finished it was an unfinished love heart, but drawn as a question mark in red ink, you frowned before finishing the heart with your black pen, smiling to yourself. It was nice to have someone to communicate with even if you didn’t know who they were.

Ever since that day you’d been drawing doodles on yourself and whoever was drawing on themselves that would appear on your skin, you’d come to the conclusion that you couldn’t exchange important details with one another, you tried to write your name to him but whenever you’d try it would change the name to something else, same with writing about meeting somewhere, it was as if it wouldn’t allow you to meet up, no mobile numbers could be exchanged, or other ways of communicating except through a pen and your skin as if it was a pad of paper, which sucked but you understood why there was a plan for everything if you were soulmates and it was meant to be it would be, it was just the way everything worked and no one could change that, it was fate after all. You could, however, write small messages to one another, asking about how your day was, all the usual small talk things.

You were a simple girl who studied between working multiple jobs while your soulmate, well your soulmate was none other than Park Jimin who was in a huge band, everyone knew him, everyone knew about his soulmate talent, some had tried to convince him that they were his soulmate but since they failed to produce a matching drawing on his skin he politely told them to leave. Multiple other fans told him to try and announce what his soulmate cue was to the news but again he knew that if it was meant to be it would be and when the time comes it would be perfect.

He was at a meet and greet when you began doodling out of nowhere, you were bored during a “study” session, you were supposed to be studying for an upcoming exam but you were blocked, you wanted to just get away for a little while and escape the boring textbook that was sat in front of you, you grabbed a pen from your pencil case and you started with a small rose drawing and then added a date in roman numerals along the side of it.

“XII.XII.MMXX.”

Jimin watched in Awe as it appeared on his left wrist, a fan in front of him smiled and watched as every petal was drawn carefully, he was mesmerised by it, his eyes lit up the moment the drawing started to come through, he loved when you drew flowers on him, or rather on yourself, you were creative with everything you drew on yourself, everything around him seemed to no matter anymore, even though his fans were important to him and he loved them, he seemed to love you and your drawings more, even though he’d never met you or knew your name, he knew you were meant to be and he loved knowing someone out there was made just for him and was waiting for him to come.

“She’s talented.” The fan said with a smile on her face, Jimin nodded along and then looked at her with a smile, signing her album and talking with her about the new upcoming tour they were going to be doing.

You sighed, getting no response from your soulmate, it happened sometimes. You just assumed he was really busy doing his thing so you didn’t fret about it too much, you just stopped drawing and got on with your studying.

“Was really busy earlier…Pretty rose.” You smiled at the message on your arm and then wrote back to him.

“It’s fine, I got some studying done. Thank you.” You signed it off with a small heart next to the message and then he began writing back,

“What’s the date?” You looked at the date you’d written down and smiled to yourself, it was the day you would finally be free from university, exams and the stresses of being a college student.

“My graduation date, the day I’m finally free.” He chuckled as the words came through on his wrist, he was sitting in the practice room with the boys, all of them watching as Jimin smiled at his arm like a mad man, they knew what was going on and they liked seeing him so happy all of the time.

“Congratulations, remember to stay hydrated.” You smiled at his message, he always did that. He liked to remind you to stay hydrated, or to remember to eat because you did the same to him. He told you once about how he’d forgotten to eat and drink all day because he was so busy and you made it your mission to remind him in creative ways every day, it started with a drawing of a cute water bottle on your hand and the words ‘Stay Hydrated’ along it and then it turned into silly puns to make sure he would remember, which he always loved and would show his friend Jin the puns, a lover of dad jokes.

“Thanks, I always do!! You too!"

A few days later you noticed that the date you’d written alongside the rose wouldn’t come off your skin, it had never happened before. The rose was gone but the date still stayed there, you wondered if it was the same for your soulmate,

"Is the date still there for you?” You wrote down, biting onto the lid of your pen out of nerves, you didn’t know if he was busy or if the date would even still be there for him, you’d tried multiple times to scrub it from your skin in the shower and bath but it was as if it was a real tattoo now, and if it was real, you were glad you’d done it so neatly and not a scribble.

“Yes…It is for you too?” You smiled, that could only mean one thing.

“It is…It’s the day we’re going to meet!” You couldn’t stop yourself from smiling, you were in the middle of the library but you didn’t care. The time was finally going to come where you would meet your soulmate, finally find out who he was.

“The day you graduate and the day we meet…Sounds like a big and great day for us.” You smirked at your arm and drew a bunch of love hearts back to him before saying goodbye and leaving the library, it was going to be a weird day, you were going to feel weird about constantly looking over your shoulder in case he was there, or wondering how and when it would even happen…What time could it even happen, and how, were you just supposed to continue as if it was another normal day in your life?

“Jimin, do you have any idea how many schools are going to be graduating today,” Namjoon said looking at Jimin who was looking anxious, the date had finally rolled around and he was nervous about how it was going to go down, how you were even going to meet when neither of you had no idea what each other looked like, he didn’t know which school you were going to or where.

You, on the other hand, were nervous about going up on stage in front of the whole university, and people’s friends and family, you were going to have to go up on stage, take your certificate and leave again, you were freaking out enough as it was. All thoughts of your soulmate and how it was going to go down were out of your mind at the moment, all you could focus on was trying to remember not to fall over when you went up onto the stage, or to try and smile a little instead of having a resting bitch face.

“Y/N!” You turned at the call of your name to see your best friend standing there, she dragged you into a hug.

“We’re all meeting at the cafe near Benson’s, 3! Don’t be late!” She yelled rushing off again, you dragged out a pen from your pocket and jotted it down on your hand, you knew it wasn’t going to appear on your soulmate but you needed to try and remember Cafe near Benson’s and then the number 15, you were hoping it would stay there, you were a sucker for forgetting things and everyone knew it.

“The graduate!” Your friend screamed as you entered the cafe, you giggled as people in the cafe all turned to look at you, you smiled at them as a few clapped and then went to sit on the sofa with your friend who pulled you into a tight hug, you were still dressed in the silk graduation gown, you came straight to the cafe from the celebration.

“You looked great up there!” She yelled again, you wanted to tell her to keep it down but you knew when she was excited there was no quietening her down, she just loved to be loud.

“Thank you, I was so nervous.” You whined looking at her and then over at the door, the bell had signalled someone coming inside, you locked eyes with one of the guys, he was dressed in some ripped blue jeans, a black shirt and was wearing a black beanie, small bits of blonde hair poking through the bottom and black face mask, you frowned a little and then looked down at your friend, your face heating up a little, his eyes were bold and felt as though they were staring right into your soul.

“Oh shit, I gotta take this.” She said excusing herself away from the table and leaving through the door, you took off the silk gown and went up to order a cup of tea.

“Hi, I’ll have a cup of tea please, two sugars. Thanks.” You paid and went to sit back down again, your hands tracing over the date on your arm and smiling. You were about to look away when something started to come through.

“I see you.” You frowned looking up from the drawing to around the cafe, no one was looking in your direction so you took out a pen and began writing back.

“Teasing is no fun.” You signed it with a frowning face and then you heard someone chuckle, you glanced up again but no one was looking.

“Who said I was teasing…” You frowned and then wrote back to him, there was no way he could be here right now.

“Prove it.” You waited for a few seconds but then your friend came back into the cafe, panting about how her boyfriend was back home early from work and wanted to take her out to dinner, you nodded and she hugged you.

“I have to go. I’ll see you later, I love you.” She left and you sipped on your drink, looking back on your arm as she left the cafe.

“Cup of tea, two sugars.” You put the cup down and took the pen out.

“Enough teasing…Who are you?” It was silent in the cafe, you stared down at your arm waiting for something to be written back but there was nothing there.

“Hi.” You jumped a little, looking up to see the one who had walked into the cafe from before, his mask gone now, you glanced at his arm and saw the messages between you both written there, it was surreal finally being in front of him after all this time.

“Hi.” You said back, standing up to greet him, there was an awkward silence in the air, neither of you knew what to say to one another, but he sat down and looked at you.

“I’m Y/n.” You introduced holding out your hand for him to shake, he chuckled and shook it.

“Jimin.” You frowned a little, you knew that name somewhere, it wasn’t a common name.

“I think I know that name.” He looked at you for a second and then you frowned shaking your head,

“Isn’t that the name of that dude, in that Korean band?” He stared at you, a smile on his face as you put it all together.

“Holy shit, you’re him.” He nodded and you looked around nervously.

“Shouldn’t you be like…in hiding or something, you guys are huge.” He looked at you and then over his shoulder.

“It was worth it…I had to see you.” He ran his hand along the outline of the date and you smiled, he looked a little on edge though and every couple of seconds he would look out of the cafe window in case anyone spotted him.

“I can go somewhere else if it’s easier for you.” He looked up at you and nodded at you.

“That would be perfect actually…I have a hotel room nearby, it’ll be easier to talk there.” You nodded, getting up from the seat and going to leave with him, not even thinking for two seconds that he could be a serial killer or worse, but you didn’t care, you felt as if you knew him…connected to him, his hand interlocked with yours, it sent sparks throughout your entire body, you looked at his hand and then up to his face.

“You’re telling me! Fans have seen what I’ve been drawing!” You blushed looking at him, you’d been sat in his Hotel room for the last four hours, doing nothing but talking to one another. Getting to know one another more and more on a personal level.

“I couldn’t help it, some would appear during concerts and meet and greets.” He chuckled, going over to the phone and ordering you both some food to eat, you’d met one of his band members already, Hoseok, he’d come by when he heard Jimin had company and he wanted to meet the one that had drawn a rose on Jimin.

“I can’t believe it finally happened.” He said when he came back over to your side, you looked at him with a smile.

“I can’t believe it either…do these stay now?” You questioned, your fingers tracing the date along his wrist and smiling, he was looking at you, studying your face as you smiled at your handwriting in the numbers, he took in the way your eyes sparkled under the dim hotel room lights and the way your lip twitched right before you were about to laugh at one of his lame jokes, he couldn’t get enough of you.

“Maybe they do, I’ve never met anyone with this style of Soulmate before…Hoseok’s was a weird one.” He said interrupting you from your thoughts, you looked up at him and he continued.

“The first words they were ever going to hear each other say were tattooed across the wrist,” You smiled at him and then looked at the door, someone was knocking on it, room service bringing your dinner.

“If I have to tell this story one more time Jimin I’m going to lose my mind.” You groaned into his shoulder, you were doing a VLive together and a new fan asked how you met. You’d been dating for four years now and every chance he got he would tell the story from start to finish, missing no detail of your love story, he loved getting the chance to tell people about it and the fans did love hearing it.

“It’s the perfect love story…see!” He said pointing at all the love you were getting from Fan’s in the chat, you giggled and looked at him, then to the camera.

“Well it’s getting boring, I feel like we should spice it up…maybe say I rejected you for being so cocky and too flirty with me all of the time.” You joked poking his cheek and then looking through the chat.

“Make it into a book.” Someone said, making you giggle a little more, it would make a very interesting story for someone to read, you Jungkook and Taehyung had come up with the idea of turning it into a comic series one time when you were bored in the practice room, but all you had was rough sketches and an outline for a storyboard.

“Like you would ever reject me.” He chuckled pulling you into a kiss, you pushed him away acting grossed out and then looking out of the window. You were on tour with him, he’d asked you to come on their world tour with him and you couldn’t say no. You were currently in Paris and your hotel room looked right in the direction of the Eiffel Tower, it was sparkling under the moonlight and you smiled to yourself, you could have just sat there looking at it all night

“Say, goodnight baby.” He said bringing the phone over to you to wave bye to, you did and he ended to Vlive, you dropped onto the bed and groaned. You could fall asleep right there if you wanted to but Jimin had other plans for you. He came over and rubbed the bottom of your back, you giggled and looked at him.

“What?” You questioned, turning over and laying your head on his lap, you could have stayed there all night.

“Come on baby,” You groaned and sat up in the bed. You had to go to a small meal with everyone else tonight but you were tired from the plane ride and wanted to sleep the night away, just laying in his arms and not moving.

“Fine,” He chuckled pulling you onto his lap, you bent down kissing him, his hands tangling into your hair and holding you close.

“Baby if you keep kissing me like this we’ll miss the boys.” You whispered to him, but he groaned into the kiss and you got up from his lap, you knew what you were going to do to him for making you go out while you were jetlagged and you were going to enjoy it.

“I’m going to get ready.” You said, going into the bathroom and locking it behind you.

You were wearing nothing but a tight fitted body con dress, it hugged your body perfectly and you knew it was driving Jimin wild, all night his eyes were on you. You were sat next to Namjoon all night so you were having long conversations about his lyrics and the upcoming album they were all working on. You’d always been close with each of the boys, hanging out with them whenever Jimin was busy with practice or when he was in the studio, it was nice to have someone else to talk to.

“I think Jimin wants your attention,” Namjoon said pointing at Jimin, you looked over at Jimin who was staring at you, his eyes burning into your skin, you sent him a smile and went back to talking to Namjoon.

“You wore that on purpose." You saw written across the palm of your hand, you looked over at Jimin and winked, not trying to make it too obvious to everyone else at the table what you were doing. He knew you too well, you did wear this on purpose. He’d brought it for you with the intent of you wearing it in the bedroom for his eyes only, it was a short lace black body con dress, so tight you were supposed to wear it without underwear, it was a little revealing but you wanted to tease him, you loved winding him up.

"Don’t ignore me," You continued to ignore him and moved on from Namjoon to talking with Hoseok, he’d been teaching you how to dance a lot lately and you were asking him to teach you one of their newest ones they’d been learning and he agreed to.

"Fuck I bet you’re naked under that dress right now…just you wait till we get back to the hotel room." You smirked, ignoring him again and leaning onto the table to make it look as though you were reaching for the water jug but giving Jimin a view of down the front of your dress.  

As soon as you got into the hotel room your back was shoved against the wall, your arms pinned above your head.

"You wore it on purpose.” He growled into your ear, you smirked at him and he pushed your wrists harder into the wall, you knew just how to wind him up in all the right ways.

“I don’t know what you mean, it’s just my favourite dress.” You whispered as innocently as possible to him.

“Liar.” He whispered, his lips attaching to your neck and sucking in the right spot that made you weak, you whimpered out, his hands releasing you, your arms wrapped around his neck and you pulled him closer to you, his hands moved down to between your legs and he ran his fingers slowly up your thigh, the tips of his fingers just brushing over your exposed clit and he took in a sharp breath.

“So dirty…practically naked in front of all of the boys.” You groaned, he was going to start talking dirty and that was one of your weaknesses, hearing him saying filthy words for only you to hear.

“Fuck Jimin, I need you.” You moaned to him, it drove him wild hearing you beg for him like that, he ground his hips into yours and you could have melted right there on the spot, you were putty in his hands.

“I should have taken you right there on that restaurant table…Huh? Is that what you wanted?” His fingers were drawing figure eights on your clit and you were already a mess, your legs starting to shake and he’d barely even started.

“Jimin, no teasing. I need you now.” He pulled away, taking you over to the bed and pinning you down onto it, his lips finding their way to your neck again.

“You got to tease me all night baby…I’m only just getting started."

[hlupdate]

So what does a young superstar spend his time thinking about? Classic rock, mostly, along with the occasional movie or TV show. Harry Styles has always been a voracious scholar of pop history — the kind of guy who obsesses over John and Yoko album covers and Fleetwood Mac deep cuts. “We’re all just fans,” he says. “I’m just a music fan who happens to make some.” These are just a few of Harry’s favorite things — some influences, some inspirations, some heroes.

Listen along to our Harry Styles playlist here.

Van Morrison The Irish blues bard was down and out in Boston when he wrote his brooding 1968 song cycle Astral Weeks. “It’s my favorite album ever,” Harry says. “Completely perfect.” Harry recently posed with his idol for a backstage photo — inspiring Van to smile, which doesn’t happen too often. The grin is so out of character for Van, Harry jokes, “I was tickling him behind his back.” (He’s kidding, obviously.) On his first tour, before going onstage, he played “Madame George” over the speakers — the epic ballad of a Belfast drag queen. “‘Madame George’ is one of my favorites — nine minutes. I’ve got some long songs but not my nine-minute one — it hasn’t quite come through yet.”

Joni Mitchell Harry got so obsessed with her 1971 classic Blue, he went on a quest. “I was in a big Joni hole,” he says. “I kept hearing the dulcimer all over Blue. So I tracked down the lady who built Joni’s dulcimers in the Sixties. She still lives around here.” He not only found her, she invited him over. “I went to her house and she gave me a little lesson — we sat around and played dulcimers.” She built the dulcimer Harry plays on his new album. “Blue and Astral Weeks, that’s just the ultimate in terms of songwriting. Melody-wise, they’re in their own lane. Joni and Van, their freedom with melodies — it’s never quite what you thought was coming, yet it’s always so great.”

Etta James The hard-living R&B legend could do it all, from raw Chess blues to pop-soul torch ballads. Harry is a devotee of her 1960 debut album At Last! “This whole album is perfect. On that record you have ‘I Just Want to Make Love to You’ going right into ‘At Last,’ which has to be one of the greatest one-twos ever. Her ad libs are so intense. It’s like, ‘Come on, Etta — tell us how you really feel.’”

Wings Paul McCartney’s 1970s band left behind a slew of shaggy art-pop oddities. Harry swears by London Town and Back to the Egg. “While I was in Tokyo I used to go to a vinyl bar, but the bartender didn’t have Wings records. So I brought him Back to the Egg. ‘Arrow Through Me,’ that was the song I had to hear every day when I was in Japan.” The 1971 suite Ram was divisive for Beatles fans at the time, but for Harry it was a psychedelic experience: while making the album, he and his band enjoyed it while lying out in the sunshine on mushrooms. “I love Ram so much — I used to think it was a mixed bag, but that’s part of its beauty. And the one that’s just called McCartney, with the cherries on the cover and ‘The Lovely Linda’ on it.”

John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky Documentary A deep dive into the world of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, during the making of Imagine. “I watched Above Us Only Sky on Netflix,” Harry says. “Seeing him play ‘Imagine’ on piano made me want to take piano lessons.” One of his favorite Lennon songs: “Jealous Guy,” especially the Donnie Hathaway cover. “Have you ever heard the original version of ‘Jealous Guy’? It was called ‘Child of Nature.’ Every time I play ‘Jealous Guy,’ I can’t help singing ‘Child of Nature.’ I really like Mind Games too. My favorite-ever album cover is the John and Yoko Live Peace in Toronto. So beautiful: it’s blue sky with one cloud, and that’s it.”

Carole King For a playback of his new music, Harry arranges to listen at Henson Studios in Hollywood, which used to be the old A&M Studios, in Studio B. Why? “It’s the room where Carole King recorded Tapestry.” Obsessive pop scholar that he is, Harry reveres King as both a singer and songwriter. His favorite: “So Far Away.” “How do people make shit like this?”

Crosby, Stills and Nash These three hippie balladeers summed up the mellow West Coast soft-rock vibe, despite their chemical wreckage. (For the full story, see the great new band bio by Rolling Stone’s David Browne.) “Those harmonies, man,” Harry says. “‘Helplessly Hoping’ is the song I would play if I had three minutes to live. It’s one of my ‘one more time before I go’–type songs.”

The Other Two TV Series He’s a big fan of the Comedy Central series. “It’s a brother and a sister — they’re the Two — and their younger brother becomes a viral YouTube sensation. He’s a Justin Bieber–type thing. He’s 13, and it’s basically those two dealing with that. It’s really funny.” (He’s got a thing for absurdist pop scenes like this — he also recommends the documentary When the Screaming Stops, about a bizarre reunion gig from the Eighties twin-brother duo Bros.)

Paul Simon “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,’ that’s the greatest verse melody ever written, in my opinion,” Harry says. “So minimal, but so good — that drum roll. ‘The Boxer’ is a perfect lyric, especially that first verse.” Paul Simon was one of his childhood soundtracks, with or without Art Garfunkel. “I grew up in a pub for a few years when I was a kid and Simon and Garfunkel were just constantly playing, always. Every time ‘Cecilia’ started, I’d be like, ‘I think I’ve heard this a hundred times today.’”

Hall and Oates “For my 21st birthday, I had a big party, and I convinced myself I really wanted Hall and Oates to play. I knew it wasn’t going to happen — I just had to ask. But just a few months before, they went into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, so whatever it was, it was now three times as much as it used to be. Their rate just tripled — ah, fuck.”

Peter Gabriel, “Sledgehammer” Video “The greatest music video ever. I also love that Eighties synth pan-whistle sound — it basically just exists in this song and ‘My Heart Will Go On.’”

Elvis Presley “The first music I ever heard was Elvis Presley. When I was little, we got a karaoke machine and I sang Elvis, because that’s what my grandparents listened to. I made my grandfather a tape of me doing Elvis songs on one side and all Eminem on the other side. Unfortunately, I accidentally played him the wrong side.”

Harry Nilsson The legendary L.A. eccentric could croon middle-of-the-road hit ballads like “Without You,” but also a crazed weirdo who caroused with John Lennon and pursued his own lunatic pop fantasies. In other words, Harry Styles’ type of guy. “I think of all the great songwriters I love — but they all had their pop songs. Joni Mitchell with ‘Help Me,’ Paul Simon with ‘You Can Call Me Al,’ Harry Nilsson with ‘Coconut.’ You have to conquer the fear of pop.”

Stevie Nicks The Gold Dust Woman and her “little muse” are everybody’s favorite rock friendship. At the Hall of Fame ceremony in March, the sight of Harry dropping to one knee as he hands the award to a radiant Stevie — one of the iconic cross-generational images of our time. They first sang together in L.A. two years ago, when she made a surprise guest appearance at one of his first solo shows. “One of my favorite-ever musical memories. We sang ‘Landslide’ as a soundcheck, and that was even cooler for me than the show — just me and her, in an empty Troubadour.”

They just sang “Landslide” at a Gucci event in Rome, with Harry hitting impossible high notes on the final “snooooow-covered hills.” “We practiced in the dressing room,” he says. He’s got the rehearsal footage on his phone — when he hits that note, guitarist Waddy Wachtel is too stunned to keep playing. “That’s my favorite bit,” Harry says. “Practicing the song together. Just the two of us.”

[charmingturkeysandwich]

I Could Use a Love Song - Ch 1: givin’ up on love, hey love’s given up on me

Summary: Emma Swan, small town orphan and up-and-coming country singer, is known for her voice, her penchant for leather, and her overall (earned) anger toward the world. She’s had a rough go of it – rough enough that every single song of hers is angry or sad – but on the road something (or someone) happens that might change her tune.

(Spoiler Alert: it’s Killian. Cue the gasps of shock.)

Also on AO3.

---

The upside to a truly shitty adolescence? Lyrical inspiration.

Emma Swan grew up a little bit all over the place, but primarily in a small town that was most definitely above the Mason-Dixon line and yet half its population spoke with some kind of southern-esque drawl. Confederate flags were common on Chevy trucks. Friday nights in the Fall were dedicated to high school football and absolutely nothing else. Their town’s only radio station was country, though it played seven different church services on Sunday mornings. To say that the whole town’s dynamic read like a cliché country song… it was more obvious than Emma’s bright red leather jacket in a crowd of cotton camo.

So no one was particularly surprised when the beautiful, damaged orphan with the voice of a (really pissed off) angel hit the road with a country band.

They might not have been surprised, but oh did they talk. After her falling out with the pastor’s son and her quick escape to Pittsburgh, she was every negative stereotype of famous in a small town you could conjure. Lily, the closest thing she’d had to a friend outside of Neal, son of Pastor Gold, would keep her updated on the rumors and the hearsay. Not that she wanted to know, necessarily. She’d rather imagine that her name had simply fallen out of the collective memory of that god forsaken town. But it hadn’t. Her story was on the tongues of every bar patron, Baptist, and boy scout leader north of I-80.

It wasn’t her story, though. Not really. The tales they told of Emma Swan always somehow ended up with her as the villain and not the fairy tale princess, the lost girl with no choice but to suffer at the hands of assholes.

Her parents had been shit. Drug addicts, apparently, and she’d been taken from them. She’d been passed through the foster system from ages 3-12, the best foster parents mostly ignoring her and the worst… well, she couldn’t afford the therapy to even attempt to go there.

She’d wound up with an OK but definitely half-crazy woman by the name of Sarah just before she turned 13 and that’s where she’d stayed, that hick town that just couldn’t get enough of her little sob story. That’s where she’d met Neal, the charismatic son of one of the town’s pastors. His dad had seemed nice enough, did a lot of community work and even owned several businesses, boasting of his commitment to boosting the local economy. For once she’d thought she’d found some people who didn’t suck who might make her life at least somewhat normal.

She, as usual, was wrong. Pastor Gold was… well, off. Way too angry for a dude preaching the New Testament each week. But at least he’d never hurt her. No, that privilege was reserved for Neal, who would beat her to a bloody pulp and then tell his daddy’s flock all about saving his sweet girl from a drug deal gone wrong (poor thing ended up like her parents despite the best efforts of the system, you see).

It was pathetic. And after she went to jail for having the gall to defend her own life from that sociopath, well, that was it. She dropped out of high school during the homecoming pep rally and hopped a bus to the city.

That had been years ago now, of course, but it was her origin story, as they say, and something very important to her on-stage personality. And her internal struggle.

Life had fucked her over and she was pissed. And so for five years after leaving that sleepy, secret-filled little town, all she ever really focused on was her anger. She’d write lyrics on truck stop napkins and sit in a half-stranger’s basement strumming chords on the guitar she’d stolen from the church rectory (she wasn’t sorry). She started out performing at open mic nights and then somehow found some of Her People, those who loved country music but maybe hadn’t grown up in a Dixie Chicks song (if only she could have Goodbye Earl’ed that son of a bitch high school boyfriend of hers before he ever laid a hand on someone new…).

(At least he ended up in prison. You know, eventually.)

(And, hey, her rage got her out there and selling records. But that was on her, not him. Nobody saves me but me, she always said. And she wasn’t about to thank a monster just because she survived slaying it.)

Tonight’s show was in a dive bar in upstate New York and Emma was so damn ready for it. She and Ruby had done a few shots of tequila before slipping on their tight jeans and leather jackets, and David had just finished setting up their brand new sound system that made them sound like they could actually be on CMT and not just playing from someone’s garage. David and Mary Margaret, they were like Johnny and June with their sweetness and Emma could hardly stomach it. But they were her friends, her actual honest-to-god, wouldn’t-rat-her-out-to-the-forest-service-for-underage-drinking friends and she loved them. She loved them and Ruby and even Graham in the only way she knew how: teasing insults, cases of beer, and not running away in the middle of the night even when she was feeling like her whole world could crash town with one wrong word from herself or anyone else.

(She really did need therapy beyond the catharsis of angry singing to half-drunk strangers. Someday, maybe.)

Friend love was a strange, but manageable thing. Well, mostly. But romantic love? Absolutely fucking not. After she left Neal and that town, after she drank away the pain and the frustration, well she thought maybe she’d give romance another try. Turned out the next guy was even worse, somehow, leaving her bruised and bloody when she turned down his marriage proposal at a fancy restaurant in Cleveland (yeah, those exist). The physical pain she had been used to, but the emotional… he called her every name she didn’t deserve and a few that she probably did, and when he finished her off with a few choice comments about the baby she’d lost after Neal threw her out a moving car, well she was done. For good. Never ever would she trust a man again. Preacher’s son or furniture salesman – they were all just… evil. She couldn’t ever again take that chance.

But tonight – tonight she wasn’t thinking about romance or even the past, not beyond the bits and pieces that had made their way into her songs. She was happy, buzzed, excited. Their little tour bus (well, van) family was rising in the ranks and soon she could move far away and get her own apartment overlooking the thriving streets of Nashville. Soon she would be so busy with interviews and music video shoots that she wouldn’t have a single second to spare a thought to those who had hurt her. Soon she would be so rich she wouldn’t ever feel lonely because she’d always have male company in the form of all her Benjamins she’d backstroke through like Scrooge McDuck.

The previous night Mary Margaret had tried to set Emma up with the singer of their opening act, a guy they called August who carried a typewriter instead of a guitar (who she’d definitely seen leaving with a drunk after she’d turned him down, by the way), so Emma had already had her monthly I Don’t Want Love chat with her hopeless romantic friend. Meaning today she was free and clear to just… enjoy this new life she’d spent years building on the bones of all the good girls she could have been.

She high-fived Ruby and David kissed her on the cheek as they took the stage, starting the guitar riff as Emma sauntered out to the opening words of the song. This was one of her crowd favorites, a good one to set the tone for what kind of show to expect, and she was melting into her confident, badass, devil-may-care persona easily by the time they hit the first chorus.

I’m goin’ home, gonna load my shotgun

Wait by the door and light a cigarette

He wants a fight, well now he’s got one

And he ain’t seen me crazy yet

A few people in the front row were singing along and her heart was bursting with pride that she was on this road, that she’d turned such a goddamn nightmare of a life into something positive and productive and while overall it still wasn’t healthy… she damn well was on the road to actually being someone. To finally shutting up the idiots back in Pennsyltucky who were convinced she wasn’t going to amount to anything but a statistic just like her parents (despite having never even tried any drug beyond alcohol and nicotine, the judgmental fucks).

One thing that entertained her beyond reason was listening to Mary Margaret sing backup vocals on the songs Emma wrote. Emma liked to call Mary’s on-stage persona Snow White Trash and Ruby insisted that be the name of the band’s first mainstream album when their big break finally came and Emma actually fucking laughed in the middle of performing her angry song that night because she couldn’t stop thinking about the mismatch.

So when the song was over she apologized to the crowd, told them how much she loved her band and her friends, even the hilariously innocent of them, and asked someone to pass her a beer so she could stop the chuckles from trickling out during the next song.

Next on their set list was one that had been co-written by Emma and Ruby, two girls from two very different small towns, who still had so much shared experience. It used to hurt her to sing it, the depressing nature of where she came from threatening to swallow her whole, until Graham came to her one night after the show, quieted her tearful sobs with a kiss and told her to just pretend it was a movie. She was just telling a story. It wasn’t her town or Ruby’s… it was nothing but fiction.

And that’s how she belted it all out totally devoid of those pesky feelings that made her wish she could just crawl under a rock rather than relive her trauma for the seventy third time this fucking year.

If you ain’t got two kids by 21, you’re probably gonna die alone

At least that’s what tradition told you

This song was a lesser known of theirs so they don’t have as many mouthing the words back, but the energy in the crowd is still so high, despite this song being a little more bummer than banger. So she scans the crowd, watches the faces of the drunk, the joyful, the brooding, and best of all, those who understand.

Off to the left, just at the edge of the stage, she saw probably the hottest man she’d ever seen in real life. Black leather jacket, artfully mussed hair, a smirk that could charm her pants right off if she let him.

It’s not that hot guys didn’t come to their shows. They definitely did. But they were usually more the Jake Owen or Luke Bryan type, the ones that look like they were ready to meet your mama by the third date. This guy, he didn’t seem the take-home-to-parents type (just the kind for her, having no parents and all).

But there was something else different about him. Standing just off stage, standing alone, glancing toward David every so often. He looked a bit too confident, comfortable, like he already had some kind of connection to her makeshift little family, and that set up some red flags.

She was not accepting applications for any new friends at the moment. Or maybe ever.

She’d been staring just a little and people tended to notice stuff like that so of course he eventually locked eyes with her, for just a fleeting moment, and there was something in that one glance that told her he knew what she was singing, how she felt, on a level that most others just… didn’t.

So naturally she broke the gaze and didn’t look back.

Jack and Jill went up the hill.

Jack burned out on booze and pills.

Mary had a little lamb.

Mary just don’t give a damn no more.

From there, Mary Margaret had taken over lead vocals, her cover of Strawberry Wine a nice balm to the mood-dampener that Merry-Go-Round always was. And every show without fail, she always took that transition to gloat about how she’s most definitely not the Mary from that song because she has David and loves him so much and Emma almost always makes the universal gesture for “gag me” to the crowd eliciting laughter and a few errant woo’s.

She didn’t tonight.

First taste of love, oh

Bittersweet

And green on the vine

Like strawberry wine

(sorry Deana Carter, but there wasn’t always some sweet.)

They closed the show with Kerosene, like they always did: high-energy, twangy, and true-to-form for their actual fans. The whole bar was on their feet, jumping and swaying and shouting and spilling their $4 beers on the guy beside them but no one really cared because they were sharing a moment, Emma and each of them, singing out their anger and sadness and ten years of life’s-not-fair.

Crazy how a three minute song could effectively patch the wounds of a whole life.

And, yeah, maybe it wasn’t really patching anything. Maybe it was just distraction. Maybe she was just as much a drug addict as her parents, but her drug was the stage and the music and the connection she shared with every other person in each and every bar who didn’t get the benefit of a first love like any kind of wine.

She sang her song from the diaphragm – broadway voice – but it was like it came all the way from her toes. It was always her anger that defined her, drove her, made her feel alive.

Why not lean into it?

I gave it everything I had

And everything I got was bad

Life ain’t hard but it’s too long

To live it like some country song

Trade the truth in for a lie

Cheating really ain’t a crime

I’m giving up on love, cause love’s given up on me

Songs sung, merch sold, and bar tab closed, Emma headed toward the crew’s van, ready to sleep off the liquor in the third row seats while the lovebirds took the hotel room above the bar and Ruby and Graham found someone’s bed to put their boots under for the night.

It was odd, feeling like the fifth wheel when truly there was only one couple in the band. But Ruby and Graham, they were so in sync with where they were in their life – jand it was just not what Emma was looking for – that she still ended up left out.

Which was fine. Everything was just fine.

Until her path to the van was obstructed by the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen in her life, the smoldering-eyed, confident guy who’d nearly made her forget her own lyrics before she’d promptly remembered to forget him and any other person who might possibly hold the potential to make her heart skip.

(Hearts aren’t meant to skip. That’s not love; it’s a trip to the cardiologist.)

He was definitely about to annoy her, so shouldn’t he look properly… annoying? Not like a goddamn model. That was distracting her from her annoyance and inevitable hate. Because a girl like her? Every song lyric and leather jacket was a clear message: leave me the fuck alone.

He clearly wasn’t receiving the signal.

“Swan, I presume?” he finally spoke, her eyes certainly glaring daggers at him despite her tiredness and BAC.

“Uh, obviously? What do you want.” (It wasn’t a question.)

“To introduce myself, of course! Killian Jones, at your service.”

She stopped a few feet from him, one hand on her hip and the other reaching for the cigarettes in the back pocket of her jeans.

“I’m not interested in any services beyond handing me a lighter. Can you manage that one?”

He smirked at her and reached into his jacket, the click of the zippo lighter in his hand echoing off the brick alley the van was parked in. With a quick flick of his thumb there was a flame and he offered it to her, his eyes burning with something other than the reflection of the fire.

“Ah, yes, that’s something even a one-handed bloke like me can manage.” He clicked the lighter closed and deposited it back in his jacket, only to reveal his left arm – ending at the wrist – from where it had been tucked behind him.

Emma deflated a little, some compassion left inside her despite the unwanted nature of his approaching her. “OK, Captain Hook, what exactly do you want from me?”

(She had compassion, but also very little candor. For the record.)

“Ah, yes, I’ve never heard that one before,” he muttered, rolling his eyes and finally looking like he was receiving her please-go-away signals, but he still soldiered on. “I was meant to be here before the show started, but I had some trouble finding this hole-in-the-wall. I presume by your attitude that Dave didn’t warn you I was coming?”

“You presume correctly. Can you please get on with whatever garbage is happening here? I swear if they put you up to asking me out or something I’m going to kill them. Mary Margaret especially. Because we just talked about this and I know that it’s not your fault that they’re such meddlers but I swear I’m pretty much the same girl who sings on stage in real life and I absolutely want nothing to do with men. Or women, for that matter… I’m not a person who dates and if they thought..”

“Love, please stop. No, I’m not here to ask you out. Believe me, I know I’m not what you need. I mean, technically I am, but not in the romantic sense.”

He paused and waggled his eyebrows and Emma was too tired to roll her eyes so she just closed them, willing the moment to pass. “I’ve been hired to work for you. All of you. Roadie. Can’t play notes on a guitar anymore, but I can haul them in and out of these dumps you lot perform in.”

Ah. He was the guy David had suggested they hire but the group had then rejected the idea and apparently David decided to overrule them all because why would Prince Charming listen to a democratic band vote, anyway? (Ugh.)

“Can you maybe stop insulting the patrons that pay us since that same money is going to be what pays you?”

Drunk laugher and electronic music pulsed out of the back door of the bar they’d played in not long before. Almost closing time now. Emma needed to get out of the open before she had to break someone’s wrist for drunkenly groping her. Again.

“Ah, of course, love,” he replied, finally seeming to be at least somewhat chagrined. “Now if you could point me in the direction of our sleeping quarters, I’ll leave you to your business.”

“First of all, I am not your love. We’ve covered this already and I need you to keep up. Second, do you really think we make enough to have quarters? I’m not entirely sure how we’re going to both pay you and eat. So.”

“So, what exactly does that mean for you or I, Swan?” he emphasized her last name in an effort to prove he was capable of using titles other than ridiculous British terms of endearment.

“Well, Jones, that means that either you go shack up with David and the missus (10/10 would not recommend; Mary gets very horny while drunk and her voice carries), or you do like Graham or Ruby and find a local to make gross sex noises with. Or whatever they do. Don’t know, don’t ask, don’t care.”

“And you, princess?” His tone was a challenge. He wanted her to object to the sickly sweet nickname. And she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.

“I sleep in the van. And I do not cuddle.”

“Oh, it’s not cuddling I’m looking for,” he purred, waggling his stupid eyebrows again. (This time she did roll her eyes, annoyed enough to expend the limited energy she still possessed.)

“Then go find someone willing, buddy. Like I said.”

He shook his head and laughed, already turning back toward the van. “Damn. David said you were difficult, but I wasn’t expecting this. I’ll sleep wherever you don’t. Unless you snore?”

“No, I do not snore!”

“Great. Then we’ll get along just dandy.” He waited next to the van until Emma pulled out the fob to unlock it, sliding open the big door a second after the beep-beep to signal entry. “After you, not anyone’s love.”

“Thanks, Captain. I’ll be in the back. Touch me at your peril.”

They each crawled into the van and settled at opposite ends. Emma tossed Killian a blanket and Killian tossed Emma a pillow that had been lodged in the front seat and they both drifted off to the sounds of Garth Brooks on the Pandora radio Ruby had bought her to ward away the nightmares that inevitably accompanied the silence.

[earwaxinggibbous]

10 Worst Hits of 2018!

I hate the 2018 hit list.

I hate all the artists we brought back. I hate all the new ones we got. I hate the fact that Lil Peep kicked the bucket without getting on the hot 100 but XXXfuckassaton got three hits. I hate that nothing off of Kamikaze reached the year end hot 100 despite it being one of the only good hip-hop albums that dropped this year. I hate that we’re all alive and that Tumblr has banned porn. But life goes on.

Bad hit songs. Bing bang boom.

Fair warning, I’m gonna be hitting a lot of trigger topics including abuse, pedophilia and rape.

10. Lucid Dreams - Juice WRLD

Before I say anything, can I just point out that ‘Juice WRLD’ is one of the absolute worst rap names I’ve ever heard in my entire life.

Anyway, Lucid Dreams.

I feel like rap music has been having a lot of sad pathetic break-up songs lately. And this won’t be the last one, absolutely not. Pretty much everything about Lucid Dreams, much like a seizing, dying epileptic old man, is wriggling and frothing uselessly in a puddle of its own filth. With nothing to do but choke out on a mouthful of blood it can only try to scream weakly through a pool of foamy spit that’s settling towards the back of its throat. It’s sad in the same way that ASPCA commercials are sad, as opposed to how a good break-up song feels.

As Juice WRLD brokely copies the beat of Lil Uzi Vert’s smash hit XO Tour Llif3 from last year, and also randomly samples a song by Sting, he stumbles weakly through lyric after insipid lyric that sounds like it was written by a 13-year-old. I tried to find an example of specific bad lyrics but holy shit, I’d honestly be better off just putting the lyric genius page here, complete with verified translations of this lyrical xanax binge from our boy Juice WRLD himself.

It’s a break-up song, but it’s as whiny as one can get. With Juice WRLD claiming “evil girls have the prettiest face” (gag) and insisting the girl in this song “wants him dead”. His whimpery vocals don’t help any part of this droning septic tank that I can only describe as the closest similarity we’ll ever get between a song and the pokemon Muk.

Even the music video is just a shittier version of XO Tour Llif3, and while it’s honestly more interesting than the other 75% of rap videos, what does it really add? I can only imagine that whoever was directing it realized this song has literally nothing going for it other than the possibility that stoners and pill-poppers will mistake it for XO Tour Llif3 if they’re high enough and threw in some surrealist imagery with the excuse being that, well, it’s titled Lucid Dreams. 

Really the most egregious thing about this song is that, in the lyric genius page, Juice WRLD goes on some tangent about how popping pills isn’t cool and he was popping pills “before it was cool” and now kids are doing it. Hey Hi-C, you know these kids look up to people like you, right? Why not actually make a song about how doing drugs is bad instead of just offhandedly mentioning how you used to pop pills to, quote, “feel a-okay”? Not that I’m assuming you ever thought of that when you were writing this, most likely dosed up on a gallon of cough syrup.

Then again, I dunno if I wanna be preached to by the man who wrote a song titled All Girls Are The Same.

A lot of songs this year were underwritten and boring. Lucid Dreams isn’t the worst offender, but it’s definitely the saddest. And I don’t think it was sad the way ol’ Juicy Juice was intending. Personally, I’d rather just drink the kool-aid.

Blurgh... Muk cannot change you... Muk must replace you...

9. Meant to Be - Bebe Rexha ft. Florida Georgia Line

Is it bad that I honestly wasn’t sure who was the feature and who was the headline of this song?

Anyway, here we have Florida Georgia Line returning for another year of meathead bro-country crap and Bebe Rexha returning for another year of having literally no personality whatsoever with a song that has so little substance it may as well just be air.

I’ve never really extrapolated my thoughts on Bebe, mostly because she’s a complete and utter non-presence in every track she appears on. I honestly didn’t even realize she had a music career of her own, I felt like she just existed to feature on everyone else’s shitty music. What the hell is she gonna sing about besides the damn factory she was built in?

I’ve also never extrapolated my thoughts on Florida Georgia Line.

Here’s what I’m imagining their brains look like:

Yeah. So a combination between two walking cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a literal sex robot. What can go wrong? Well. Everything.

With a title like Meant to Be, you’d think it’s about running screaming into a relationship because you know it’s gonna work. Not so, as it’s actually about staying relaxed in a relationship. We got time, right? At least that’s what like, 75% of it is about that.

Bebe seems more than ready to rush in and get sloppy, but you think Florida Georgia Line are 100% ready to enter a steady relationship with a dead person? I wouldn’t be.

The production is just a piano and some sad trap drums, so basically every other Florida Georgia Line song. It has nothing going for it other than maybe masturbating to the music video and Bebe’s sweet, sweet inflatable titties trying desperately to crawl their way out of her country girl flannel.

And that’s really it.

You tried.

(Or did you?)

8. Friends - Marshmello ft. Anne-Marie

Aww! They’re so cute.

Marshmello is kind of a cryptid to me. I never really understood the whole trend of producers and DJs wearing these weird things on their head. And part of me, well, all of me feels like Marshmello rides purely on quirkiness alone.

Look at him! He’s so wacky!

The production on this isn’t bad per se, other than this high-pitched squeal they drop into the final chorus, but it’s definitely not great and kinda has me wondering why Marshmello is basically producer of the year despite not doing anything much more interesting than all the other producers. At best he has a little bit more energy behind him.

Anne-Marie has apparently, allegedly existed before this year, but I have literally no recollection of any song by her. But if this song is anything to go by, she’s annoying and sucks.

Friends touts itself as “the friendzone anthem” and tries to be relatable to teenage girls who’ve had to friendzone a boy, and if I had to guess this is sort of in response to all the friendzone songs from 2016 like Treat You Better. This would be fine except 1. you’re two years late, 2. nobody wants to hear a friendzone anthem and 3. this song is the highest level of cuntiness anyone can comprehend.

Here’s the thing about the concept of the friendzone. Nobody sits around wanting to friendzone people. Nobody is chilling in their bedroom with their friends wishing they could have a friend who has a crush on them and then that friend is like “I like you” so they can be like “uhh we’re just friends”.

Which is why we don’t really need an anthem for it.

The friendzone sucks. It’s not even a real problem, dudes just make it a problem because apparently being friends isn’t good enough for them. Nobody wants to have a friend who’s crushing on them, nobody’s happy about that. And the catty Mean Girls tone that Anne-Marie takes to it makes it seem like she’s a strong independent woman trouncing on the hearts of men like some kind of TERF horse when really nobody feels that way when having to “friendzone” a person.

Plus judging by the lyrics, this guy is showing up at 2 AM in the rain. At some point you need to stop being friends when he starts obsessively stalking you, maybe a few words to consider would be R-E-S-T-R-A-I-N-I-N-G O-R-D-E-R.

Women have the right to see their male friends as just that. But nobody is proud of having to do it. It’s not a point of pride, it’s just a choice people make, like what shirt they wanna wear in the morning. Trying to sell it as some kind of bootleg female empowerment anthem is pathetic.

Also I swear to god she spells friends as “F-R-I-N-D-S” in the chorus.

“We’re just frinds, Deadmau5.”

7. Yes Indeed - Lil Baby and Drake

Who the good god damn is Lil Baby? I’d never actually heard of him until someone in my music history class gave us a presentation on Lil Baby and how cool he is. I’d literally never heard of the guy before, because I never really listen to any of these hits until the end of the year.

Turns out Lil Baby is just another mumble-rapper, this time jacking his style from Young Thug. Color me surprised, I guess. How come none of the mumble rappers I actually like came back this year? No Desiigner, no Lil Uzi Vert, no Lil Xan? No. Fuck you. You get Juice WRLD and Lil Baby, two of the worst rap names on the planet.

He’s on the list of rappers made famous by Drake, and Drake had a monster year this year. Even with me living in a hole I knew the impact God’s Plan had, but apparently all 25 of his crummy songs charted at some point. That is 25 monotonous Drake songs circulating through the radio stations, 25 Drake songs constantly weighing on the shoulders of the collective public, and 25 Drake songs even his detractors probably knew all the words to just through exposure. Even I’m sick of the guy, and I have Hotline Bling on my Google Play Music library.

Yes Indeed is honestly void of things to say about it. Drake is boring, Lil Baby has one of the worst voices in recent history I can think of, the beat is nothing, it’s just a nothing song. The only noteworthy thing about it is that Lil Baby references Pikachu, a big mistake, as Young Thug also referenced Pikachu on one of his first hits. Though I’ll admit a yellow car has more similarities to the electric mouse pokemon than diamonds do.

What bothers me about this song is less the song itself, as the song is a non-presence, but moreso that in a world where streaming has finally seeped its way into the Hot 100, we have come to the conclusion that this is what people want to hear. They wanna hear Yes Indeed. And I just don’t get it.

Also, “waah waah waah, bitch I’m a baby”. High art.

6. Te Bote - A whole shitload of people

I feel like Spanish reggaeton has been an on-and-off interest of the American public. But it really reached a head recently thanks to Despacito, which all Alexa memes aside, is a great fucking song. But the fruits of its labor have been less than impressive, from last year’s goat-screeching jam Mi Gente to whatever the hell this is.

It’s nice knowing that foreigners write music as shitty as we do.

The title, Te Bote, roughly translates to “I dump you”. But it can be read much harsher in Spanish as bote is often the verb people use to describe tossing out garbage. And boy, is this song... uh... you know.

I don’t like to barf out the word “misogyny” constantly just because, well, anything can be misogynistic if you look deep enough. There’s a point where even I, the ratty little feminist I am, just don’t care. But Jesus, referring to your woman as garbage in the most backhanded way is... wow.

But I’ll be honest, being an English speaking moron, I don’t care about the lyrics. My problems run much deeper than blatant misogyny and pettiness.

Namely that this song sounds like ass.

Te Bote has six artists on it. Six artists, and not a single one sounds good. Most of them are squealy. I don’t actually know who’s who except Ozuna and Bad Bunny. Ozuna is considered one of the worst Spanish artists of today, and I can see why, because he just straight-up sounds like the lovechild of Akon and Lloyd.

As for Bad Bunny, I was slightly more drawn in by him because he looks like a cross between Blackbear and Pitbull, and I dunno if he’s dropped any other better singles, but on this he straight-up sounds like Barney the Dinosaur. Not as much as Lil Yachty, but still. Most of the others sound like autotuned mice, but there’s one guy who tries some kind of low-voiced speed-rapping and it sounds weird and wrong. The production is nothing notable, and uses the bum, bum-bum drumline of literally every reggaeton and Spanish pop song including Despacito.

And I could forgive all of that.

But let’s look at this for a moment. Each artist has their own verse. That’s six verses. Six verses plus five choruses, one pre-chorus, an intro and an outro. And how much does that add up to?

Nearly seven minutes.

Seven minutes of the same beat. Seven minutes of basically the same kinds of singers. Seven minutes of misogynistic lyrics. Seven minutes of garbage, garbage, garbage. Imagine listening to this whole thing. There are people on this earth who have actually sat through this whole garbage song multiple times and thought, “yeah. I like this.” 

I mean of course Te Bote barely got any radio play, it’s nearly 7 minutes long with no breaks. So obviously some massive group of people had to be streaming it and listening to it by choice.

5. Taste - Tyga ft. Offset

Remember Tyga? He was one of the Young Money rappers that didn’t completely fall off after the 2000′s, along with Nikki Minaj and Drake. But after he put out $timulated, a song about how he fucked a 17-year-old Kylie Jenner but, in the words of Slim Shady, “look at her bush: do it got hair?”

we all dropped him, because that’s fucking gross. Kylie Jenner dumped him and is now dating someone else, I forget who because I don’t care. And with us having to deal with 6ix9ine I was comfortable leaving Tyga in the wastelands. 

Honestly? The only reason this song is even here is because it’s a return Tyga single. I’m not even mad about Freaky Friday, because like, whatever, it made me laugh like a stupid idiot, but this? We asked for this. A Tyga single in 2018, about nothing, with a nothing beat, and Offset still bragging that he’s the best member of Migos when that’s like being the twinkiest member of One Direction. And once again, people actively wanted to hear this song about nothing in a year full of songs about nothing that, at the very least aren’t by pedophiles.

I don’t even wanna talk about this anymore.

4. I’m Upset - Drake

Me fucking too.

Like I said, Drake dropped 25 songs on his new album Scorpion, and all of them became hits. The worst of which, in my opinion, being I’m Upset. Just look at that title. That’s how your father talks to you when you slam a window open with a baseball and he walks through the glass shards. 

This one has backstory, my favorite, longtime rival Pusha-T stated in some song that Drake actually had a secret child with a porn star and was planning on using that kid for like, an Adidas sponsorship or something. Which is fucked up. And at least part of that has been confirmed on Drake’s end, he did have a secret son with a porn star.

And then Scorpion and I’m Upset dropped. And it sucked. All of it.

The chorus of I’m Upset is weirdly catchy, but the beat is like every other Drake beat, Drake himself sounds about as upset as he can convey, which is very little, and it’s all just really really boring soundwise. When Drake goes on for long enough he begins to just sound like a bunch of bees. Bees, bees, bees, nothing but bees. And I’m tired of Drake bees! I’m sick of it! I don’t want anymore!

Anyway, lyrically the gist of I’m Upset is about how Drake doesn’t like paying alimony, and NO.

BAD DRAKE! BAD! BAD RAPPER! GO TO YOUR ROOM!

You do not get to be a world-famous rapper with fuckillions of dollars to your name and get to whine and bitch about paying alimony to your baby mama. You don’t get to roll on the floor whimpering about how your evil harpy whore of a porn star one-night-stand is (legally) receiving money from you to take care of the son that YOU ditched. 

You had 25 hits this year. 25. And you’re getting pissy because you have to pay and I quote fifty to a hundred thousand dollars child support. For you that should be nothing. You are practically drowning in money, and if you really don’t wanna pay child support you could, I dunno, raise your goddamn son instead of leaving him in the hands of someone who probably barely makes a fraction in a year of what you make in a month?

Look, say what you want about Eminem. At least he was a good father on record, and if he isn’t a good one in real life I’ll be very very shocked.

I’m upset too, Drake.

3. Roll in Peace - Kodak Black ft. XXXTENTACION

I fUCKING HATE KODAK BLACK

Might wanna consider writing stuff down, Kodes.

May I call you Kodes?

Anyway, Roll In Peace is the only song on this list that isn’t ACTUALLY in the Year End Hot 100, but I couldn’t just let it slide. Not when it’s a collab beween Kodak Black and XXX. Not when it sounds like ass and feels like being shot.

If Drake sounds like bees then Kodak sounds like mosquitos, right in your ear, in the deepest parts that can only be reached by one of those earwax slurping tools. The beat has that flute again, probably because it’s half of what made Tunnel Vision famous. (The other half being controversy of course.) X’s verse has like, two lines to do with the actual plot of this song. And what is the plot?

Oh, poor pitiful Kodak can’t roll in peace. Poor Kodak Black can’t have any time to himself! The media is just all over him and X for no reason whatsoever! He’s never done anything wrong, other than, oh I don’t know, the rape allegations? The abuse? Armed robbery? Assault? That one time X nearly killed a gay dude in prison for no reason other than the gay part?

Yeah, fuck you.

You can’t “roll in peace” because you don’t have the right to anymore. You are a bad person. And X, when he was alive, was a bad person too. Sure maybe he was claiming to be working on self-improvement, but the only way I’d believe it is if I saw it, and it’s too late for that now.

As long as you refuse to apologize, you will not “roll in peace”. As long as you don’t see that you have done something wrong and continue to blame it on systemic racism which is a very real thing that you continue to trivialize again and again so you can avoid your rape allegations, you aren’t allowed to have any peace in your goddamn fucking life.

You can’t try to deflect it on Lil Uzi who posts Satanic imagery on his Instagram despite wearing a Jesus piece. You don’t get to deflect. You get nothing, and you deserve to go broke and fuck off.

There’s a joke I can make, but it’s too soon.

2. Gummo - 6ix9ine

Oh, okay, I can do this.

Uh, Gummo is this really good movie directed by Harmony Korine about some kids in this town that was totally wrecked by a tornado. And after that everything’s in shambles, so these kids can just do whatever they wa...

Oh. Oh dammit.

GOD IS DEAD GOD IS DEAD GOD IS DEAD.

So imagine you’re me looking at the Hot 100 for one of the very first times about a year ago, and you see a song titled after one of your favorite flicks of all time. And sure, it’s being sung by a guy who looks like a Lisa Frank condom, but god you just love that movie so much. And sure, Nicole Dollanganger has already made songs referencing that movie, but you want MORE.

Then you play it and it has literally nothing to do with it.

It’s loud and obnoxious and stupid and has a very clearly hispanic dude dropping the n-word like he fucking owns it. He’s just screaming these nonsense lyrics about nothing. And it’s not like I just don’t get songs with screaming. I have the entirety of Carcass’ Reek of Putrefaction on my phone. But this? This sucks. It sucks! The beat doesn’t fit at all and no matter how I look at it it wouldn’t fit anywhere else, and 6ix9ine’s flow is the death of all art. The only thing he can do, much like a child in a well, is scream and scream and scream and it’s horrible.

And trust me.

This was far before I knew of 6ix9ine’s baggage.

In case you don’t know somehow, this Rainbow Brite little fucker was actually convicted of filming a sex tape of a 13-year-old. While I don’t think he actually had sex with her, he was at some level sexually involved with her.

How did we respond? We gave the ugly fucker a hit. And his hit was this. Where he directly references his sexual involvement with this 13-YEAR-OLD GIRL.

He doesn’t give a shit. And he knows his fans don’t either. He continues to release low-effort garbage music, and in an interview about FEFE he even openly stated that he doesn’t put any effort into writing lyrics. He doesn’t try, he’s a bad person, and his blind fanbase continues to shower him in money like he deserves it. 

We’re idiots.

An awful song made by an awful person. The only way to hold a candle to it would be, well, an even worse song made by an awful person.

Anyway, dishonorable mentions.

FEFE - 6ix9ine ft. Nikki Minaj

This song sucks too. And Nikki Minaj should be ashamed for working with this fuckhead.

God’s Plan - Drake

I’m almost definitely a minority in absolutely loathing this song, but I can’t stand it. It’s not structured, there’s no flow to it, it just feels like a whole lot of nothing with no point. And while I will give it to Drake that throwing money at homeless people is a really good thing regardless of why he did it, it was still a super obvious publicity stunt.

Plug Walk - Rich The Kid

Boring.

Girls Like You - Maroon 5 ft. Cardi B

Also boring. My tolerance for Maroon 5 has lasted way longer than anyone else’s, but I think it’s about time we let them go.

I Like Me Better - Lauv

I’ll be honest, the only part of this song I really hate is the weird synth interludes. The singing is fine, the content is fine, it’s all the perfect level of mediocre without that violin fart synth. 

No Brainer - The ‘I’m The One’ crew, but we replaced Wayne with an actual baby

Really just an even less interesting version of I’m The One, but without Li’l Wayne. Also Justin Bieber kind of looks like a trucker now, and I hate to say it, but that’s the most attractive he’s ever been in my opinion.

Freaky Friday - Li’l Dicky ft. Chris Brown

I’ll be honest, I actually love this song. It’s funny to me, I mean, maybe I’m a simple-minded man, but a good dick joke can send me off the rails. But I’m still at least a little miffed that we’re letting Chris Brown have money, so it gets a mention.

Gucci Gang - Li’l Pump

It would be here if it wasn’t also a hit last year. Consider this a placeholder for any crossover hits I didn’t like, like Mi Gente, Perfect, Believer, and Sorry Not Sorry.

Let’s do number one. And if you know me, you know what this is. If you don’t, don’t just immediately get pissed with me when you read it. Okay? We’re good here? Alright.

1. SAD! - XXXTENTACION

So here’s a fun little sobstory for you. Less than a year ago, my boyfriend introduced me to this great artist. They were in a really oversaturated genre but doing something completely different with it, and I fell in love immediately with their dark topics, interesting production, cool music videos, and general aesthetic. And their name was not XXXTENTACION, it was Melanie Martinez.

Late last year she was pressed with a rape allegation, and one that couldn’t be proved either way. Desperately I scraped through the bowels of the internet in search of something that could disprove it and came back largely empty-handed and wounded. Because Melanie’s music meant a lot to me, and I do mean that. I couldn’t sleep. I wasn’t sure what to do knowing that a person I’d based my own aesthetic, my own writing, my art, and my music on would do something like that. I tried to force myself not to listen to her music, but it just wasn’t possible. 

Over time the wound scabbed up and closed and I finally gave up and decided to split the art from the artist, feeling like at the very least I wasn’t directly giving her any money by downloading her music on Google Play. But I’ll still never be able to get back the way she used to make me feel.

So what I’m saying is, I get it.

I’ve actually gone and listened to a few of X’s songs on my own before doing this. And I put myself in the mind of me a year ago discovering a new artist without those preconceptions. And I felt it. I don’t know how, but I did. I felt it. I listened to Look At Me, and I felt like if I’d heard it before I knew what X had done, I’d probably love it. Sure the production is a fucking disaster but the lyrics are just the kind of shock rap that entertains me. The production on Moonlight is really interesting and while I didn’t think Changes was very good and kind of guilt trippy, I could definitely understand it.

But then I circled back around to SAD!

And I lost it.

Something about this song just kills all the good will I might have ever had for this kid or his fans. And really it’s all because of one line, and everyone probably knows what that line is already.

So according to lyric genius this line might not actually mean what I think it means and could potentially be referring to X’s friend Jocelyn Flores, who took her own life tragically. And though on X’s song about her and every time he addresses her he seems to make it all about himself, he really did seem wounded by it. He seemed like a wounded, mentally fucked-up person who needed help.

Except that this song is about Geneva.

The girlfriend he allegedly abused.

The girlfriend who was pregnant, who he abused, and judging by this line, who he is now performing the age-old manipulation tactic of threatening suicide if she ever leaves on. 

When I remove this song from context, there’s no way of excusing that line. The rest of it I can understand, and he really does seem emotional in the verses, and I know we’ve all been in a place at some point of being somehow spurned by a lover and still missing them in spite of it. But to threaten suicide if they try to leave is inexcusable.

His voice sounds fine, and the beat is once again stolen from XO Tour Llif3, but there’s a point where I can’t really care about it. Because children do listen to this kind of music. And along with Melanie Martinez, this song brings me back to when I was young and one of my favorite songs was What The Hell by Avril Lavigne. A song about cheating on your S/O and not seeing a problem with it. My sister and I would sing and dance to that song all the time, so much that I never really realized what it was about, or that there was anything wrong with it. Not until I was an adult and I looked back on it. And wouldn’t you know it, children can sing along to SAD! too.

I know X is dead. And I know it’s not my business to dictate how people should feel about things. Geneva deserves the right to be sad about X’s death, and she forgives him, even though I really don’t. But the way people have treated her especially after X died is inexcusable, and it’s in part because he wrote songs like this. He didn’t just manipulate her. He manipulated everyone. Every single one of his fans probably really did think he would kill himself if his girlfriend left her. And yes, X is on record having thoughts of suicide, I would never take that from someone.

I used to have a close friend who would feign a panic attack every time someone criticized him. It felt like he was threatening suicide once a week. And I always supported him because I cared about him. It was exhausting. I ostracized people because they knew he was a bad person. I shut people, good people, out of my life because they wanted to help, and I said bad things to them. Eventually we fell out and I was left cold and alone with nobody left to take me back, and I slugged through mud for a year just to pick myself back up.

I can imagine that’s kind of what being an XXXTENTACION fan is like.

And like me, with any luck, they’ll regret saying the things they did too.

That’s all for this year. I’ll get to the best when I have more energy, but now I just can’t.

[tugboatringo]

i saw arctic monkeys last night and now i have to write an essay about how amazing it was

arctic monkeys are my favorite contemporary band (and possibly my favorite band in general but i like too many to easily choose a top contender), and i knew they were a great live band because i’d always heard that and also watched live videos of them several times before, but it still exceeded my expectations by far. and i’m biased obviously, but my sister and i also went with our brother too, who isn’t a huge fan of them but even he was absolutely blown out of the water by them. and i was thinking the entire time they were playing “i have to tell everyone about [x point i realized watching them]” because i was such a wide-eyed baby all the way up on the balcony. i have to tell you this shit.

i’m gonna start with their opening act mini mansions. now i’ll admit i’d heard of them because i know alex turner worked with them over the hiatus but i’d never really listened to them before. and i just have to say, they were really good. do check them out. i ended up buying their shirt when the merch place had run out of the tour shirt that i wanted (i’ll get into them, i’m listening to them on spotify as i type this). the last few songs they performed especially kicked ass, they really got more and more into it as their set list went on, and it was smart the way they did that. so, i recommend them. they were a good opening act and you should check them out. “honey i’m home” was my favorite i’d heard live (that i’ve figured out the name of yet jgfidhu the last song they did was still a little more kickass).

but as good as those guys were, when arctic monkeys came on they immediately blew every other band i’d seen before right out of the water. all the instrumentalists killed it, never missed a beat, alex’s vocals were unwaveringly as good in person as they are on the studio version (except for in some cases on tbhc where his low singing was sometimes kind of noticeably harder for him and came out breathy, but he actually had no problem with any of that live) - and not just that. as much as i feel like listening to an arctic monkeys album is an experience, and that many of their songs feel like they surround you..... at the concert, it was so different from listening to the studio version. it really was better, it was stronger, it not only surrounded you but closed in on you. it was so engaging yet it didn’t seem like it tried to be at all. i’ve seen a good amount of bands in person - 4/6 concerts i’ve been to featured a total of four bands - but no band i’d seen before was that entertaining. it had never felt miles more than listening to the cd before. i don’t know how they did it, but it was incredible. it was constantly surprising. like i said, i’d really never seen a live band that surprised me more than that. no gimmics either (unless you count the cool ass lights but plenty of concerts do that), they didn’t tell any jokes or anything, and they were serious in their execution, they didn’t appear to be half as stoked as the entire crowd seemed to be yet.... they just blew you away. not just the songs, but each one of them.

as i’ve stated before my favorite arctic monkeys album is humbug all day any day, and like a lot of big fans of arctic monkeys i don’t think am is their best album even though i absolutely understand why that was the album that attracted so much of their fan base and gave em a second peak. but i gained a new appreciation for it after seeing those songs performed live, in person. i’d never seen it captured in live videos of them before (again, it really does feel unimaginably different really being there) but most of the am songs they performed live were some of the most entertaining songs they’d performed live, especially knee socks, r u mine? and do i wanna know (in that order). it made me think... i think the only way they could have written and produced that album, was after years of touring and playing for crowds and getting better and better at getting the audience into it. i swear those songs were made first and foremost for the purpose of playing it for an audience, whether or not all the members had that in mind during its production. of course brianstorm and crying lightning and pretty visitors and the view from the afternoon and even four out of five kicked ass live too, comparably as much to those, but... i don’t think those were made for the audience as much as the studio version. i don’t think those were as much more entertaining live as the am tracks.

and you know the fuck what???/ do you KNOW the fuck what???? i absolutely adore nick o’malley. i adore all of marctic onkeys as musicians and people unconditionally, but nick o’malley made my autistic lesbian heart stop. i just wanted to pat him on the head and give him a hug he’s the cutest person and i love him. and he wore this really nice ;_____; long sleeved white dress shirt that looked ;______; so darn handsome on him this is nick’s era before it is anyone else’s fite me i just *crushes rock w my fist* *crunches on remains* I LOVE NICK O’MALLEY

and one last anecdote...... i didn’t think anything hilarious was going to happen that night. and for most people in that stadium to my knowledge, nothing did. but..... well, so i was sitting on the balcony, right? there was a row below me, and the people’s heads in that row were at the same level as people’s knees in mine. and in front of me was this dad-looking guy. probably in his late 50s like my parents. there was a fair amount of dad-lookin guys i noticed. and at some point during songs mostly on fwn and humbug, for a couple of songs, he just... laid his head against my knees, and fell asleep. and he was really pushing his head on them, i don’t know???? what he thought my knees were???? did he realize that they were a person’s knees??? did he think it was the seat???? did he not wonder was he was resting his head on before he fell asleep???? he stayed asleep for at least two full length songs and then during “r u mine?” he was fully awake and JAMMING along this bastard was doing air guitar like sHE’s a SiLVeR LiNIn LOnE rANgEr riDIn THrOuGH aN OpEN sPAcE IN MY MIND WHEN SHE’S NOT RIGHT THERE BESIDE MEE I GO CRAaAZY and it was all ??????? so fucking WEIRD so for all the “true fans” of arctic monkeys (or whatever they think of themselves as) who bitch about 15 year olds who only know do i wanna know and r u mine getting better seats at a concert than they got i’ll have you know..... the only one of those i saw all night was a 50 year old man who - rather than not recognizing earlier monkeys material - literally fell asleep during it. what point am i making with these???? i don’t even know exactly. but uh, i guess it isn’t fifteen year olds who are the least.... true(?) fans of arctic monkeys at the concert. and it shouldn’t be surprising be young fans to be engaged either now that i think of it - young people are all over this band, they’re the ones who are most obsessed. it’s the 50-something dads who only know the am hits i guess.... i guess.

that’s all i can think that i wanted to say last night. basically, i just wanted to get seeing my favorite modern band live off my bucket list in my youth and while i still had the chance, and it still managed to be way better than i expected it. if you like this band to any degree, if you have a chance, see them live for yourself. i really can’t believe how different it was from watching live videos of them all these years - for most bands it doesn’t feel that much better in person. but i genuinely hope i see arctic monkeys at least once more in the future. i’m sure my twin sister diana does. heck, my brother dan said he does too, and he’s seen a lot of concerts. i can’t recommend it enough. but you know now more important i have hugging nick o’malley to cross off next on my list of arctic monkeys-related life goals. i’m not sure how i’m going to execute that one, but. i have time.

[losvcr]

rain (reddie) ch. 1

Type: Series

Summary: Richie and Eddie had dated each other for a long time, and things had been going great - or so, they thought. After Eddie comes home to an empty apartment and a note left behind, the loving relationship of four years tragically ended. Years of never speaking to each other later, the wedding of Beverly and Ben brings everyone back together, including Eddie and Richie. Hotel room mix-ups, drunken confessions, loud arguments between several losers, bad parties, old childhood games, memories, music, love, and drama ensues over the week of preparing for the wedding.

Pairing(s): Reddie, Stenbrough, Benverly

Word count: 2.2k

Chapter Warnings: Your heart might hurt a little

A/N: I’ve written two one shots so far and people seem to like them, so I thought I’d try my hand at a full blown fic. I hope it takes off, because I have some great ideas for this. If you’d like to be updated with the tagging system on possible future chapters, just let me know! Oh, and the losers are around 27 years of age to help out a bit. There will be some stenbrough and benverly involved, but it’ll mostly center around reddie.

Also, big shout out to @r-u-reddie for being the beta of this fic. Without Rose, this shit would’ve been hella bad. She went the whole nine yards in being a beta, so she deserves major credit for this chapter and the next chapters to come. @reddie-asheck did a bit of beta-ing for the first half of the chapter, so they deserve a shout out as well! 

One last thing before I shut my mouth - The song I listened to to get into the mood for tihs chapter is Happier by Ed Sheeran. Enjoy guys!

AO3 link coming in two weeks

Check out the new inspo tag here

“Richie, are you here?”

A trembling, but soft sigh sounded past the blue tinted lips of Eddie Kaspbrak as he closed the wooden door behind him, visibly wincing at the squeaking sounds of his sneakers as they collided with the hardwood floor beneath him.

It was raining. Hard. His previously dry jacket was now soaked to the point that his once-dry clothes took a heavy hit as well.

This caused Eddie’s body to tremble like an autumn leaf, but the immense relief he felt once walking into the warm apartment helped to curb the effect a bit.

“Richie? Did you fall asleep in my bed again?” Eddie called out once more, carefully removing his shoes before walking further inside of his small abode.

There wasn’t much to his apartment; it unfortunately lacked space. It contained one bedroom, one bathroom, and a kitchen/living room that shared the same area. In fact, the common area wasn’t too much bigger than his room, but that was fine to him. He had what he needed. Besides, living in New York meant that any decent apartment would cost a fortune.

He had done his best to make it his own by using subtle, but neat decorations to line his walls and inexpensive furniture in hopes of not making it too cluttered.

After grabbing a towel to dry himself off with, running it over his curls, Eddie walked over to his bedroom to see if his theory was correct. However, a deep frown began to settle on his face when he found both his bed and bedroom empty.

‘Where the hell is he?’ Eddie thought to himself, trying not to become worked up over his boyfriend’s absence.

The first thing he did was try to call Richie a few times once he got off of work. All of the calls went straight to voicemail, which made him a little nervous, but Eddie wasn’t too stressed about it. He knew that sometimes Richie forgot to charge his phone and tended to be irresponsible with handling it.

That was when he did the next best thing, and he checked Richie’s apartment, which was across town from his. His boyfriend’s apartment was slightly more spacious than his, but both of them still preferred to spend more time at his apartment because Richie’s apartment was always a wreck.

This too failed, but he knew he had one more destination to check on before beginning to worry, which was to go back to his own apartment. That, obviously, had failed, too.

Eddie honestly thought that Richie might have been over, given by that god awful smell of cigarette smoke that hit him once he walked inside. His apartment would only smell that way if Richie was over. But, alas, he could not find the curly-headed male anywhere.

“Fucking shit, Richie… now I have to go back out in this rain..” He grumbled to himself after changing out of his soaked work outfit into a fresh pair of jeans and a pastel polo shirt.

While changing, he had thought of one last place that his other half could be, and that was at the studio. Richie had been in a band since he was sixteen, and six years later, they were signed and had anticipated to have such an amazing sophomore album release that a headlining world tour could be on the table.

Eddie was so proud of how far Richie had come, but he still wanted to knock his head off for worrying him.

Even though Richie could be irresponsible, it was unlike him to leave Eddie wondering of his whereabouts. He was trying hard not to jump to the worst conclusions, but the unusual lack of communication had his mind racing: What if Richie got hurt? What if he was lying somewhere dying, breathing his very last breath all alone?

He quickly shook those thoughts from his head, releasing a shuddering breath. He couldn’t think like that. Richie had to be okay.

Walking through the living room, Eddie was moving towards the front door until he saw something on the side table next to his small loveseat. He knew his apartment, and that hadn’t been there before.

His brow furrowed once he stopped in front of the table, curious fingers reaching down to grab a white piece of paper sitting there, the bottom corner charred a brown, ugly color - Richie.

As his eyes read over what he identified as a letter, his grip tightened on the paper so much that his knuckles began to turn white. The paper began to shake along with his hands the longer his eyes scanned the contents of the letter, his stomach having completely bottomed out.

No. This was not happening. His eyes had to be deceiving him.

Once Eddie finished reading the entirety of the note, his hands finally released its hold, allowing the paper to fall as it gently floated back and forth until the floor took it.

His shaking hands remained raised in shock, tears burning in his eyes. He had been completely unaware of his hyperventilating until he found that he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t fucking breathe.

He needed his inhaler. Fuck, where did he put his goddamn inhaler?

“Dear Eds,

How was work today? I hope it was okay. I know sometimes it’s rough for you at the children’s hospital, but I know you love it, Baby Boy.”

Eddie raced across the room to his bedroom (nearly tripping on his coffee table in the process), ripping his closet door open and rummaging through its contents.

He. Couldn’t. Breathe.

“I wanted to say this to you in person, but I knew the second I saw your beautiful eyes and that cute smile, I would be done for. I had to do it this way. I hope you understand.”

Tears streamed down Eddie’s cheeks as he tried to breathe, but the air would not fill his lungs and filter back out as CO2 like normal. He needed his inhaler. Pushing one box to the side, he quickly began to rummage through another.

“I have to leave. I can’t do this relationship anymore. Fuck, I know it’s gonna sound so cliche, but it’s not you. God, I swear to fuck it’s not you, Eds. You’re so fucking perfect. I loved you.”

Finally, after what seemed like hours, Eddie found his older inhaler. Frantically, the male pulled the cap off and pressed the opening to his lips. After inhaling the puffs of rather gross tasting water, he collapsed to the ground, sobs freely falling past his trembling lips. How could he go on after this?

“I hope you don’t hate me for this. If you do, I wouldn’t blame you. I left the key you gave me on the counter. Good luck, Eddie. I want your life to be filled with so much joy.

- Love, Richie”

Only one sentence kept repeating through Eddie’s brain as he sat on his bedroom floor, his sobbing having turned to gut-wrenching wailing.

I loved you.

—

Eddie stretched his arms out as he waited in the airport for Mike Hanlon, enjoying the beams of sunlight hitting his pale skin and the warm weather of Hawaii.

He had never been to Hawaii before, but he guessed that it was time to try something new.

In front of him, a tawny Honda CR-V pulled up. A giant smile graced Eddie’s features as he recognized the driver behind the wheel. However, he did not recognize the beautiful woman sitting next to the driver.

“Eddie! It’s so good to see you!”

The last time Eddie saw Mike Hanlon was over a year ago. It seemed like every time he saw the other male, he somehow looked as if he hadn’t aged a year. He looked great. Anyone who looked over him could tell that he liked to go to the gym, his muscles flexing behind the white tank top he wore as he moved in to hug Eddie.

Eddie easily returned the gesture, a small laugh falling past his lips at the feel of Mike’s full beard scratching and tickling the skin of his cheek. “Nice to see you too, Mikey. I feel like you get a least an inch taller every time I see you.” Eddie teased.

“Or maybe you’re just getting shorter, Eddie.” Mike joked back.

After they pulled back from the warm embrace, Mike stepped to the side to reveal the woman who had been in the passenger seat.

“This is my girlfriend, Whitney.” Up close, she looked much prettier than she did at a distance; freckled skin, the greenest eyes Eddie had ever witnessed in his life, hair darker than night, and a warm smile that made him understand immediately why Mike would like her.

Before he could speak up and introduce himself, she was talking. “Nice to meet you, Eddie. I heard great things about you.” He blinked in surprise when she pulled him into a hug, but after the shock subsided, he hesitantly returned the gesture, which made Mike laugh out loud.

“Come on, let’s get back to the hotel. The others are waiting for us!”

—

On the whole way to the hotel, Eddie worked himself up into a nervous bundle. He did his best to keep up with the small talk Mike and Whitney were throwing at him, but his mind wasn’t quite there. All he could think about was one thing.

One person, really.

He had been distracted with his thoughts all the way from getting out of the car to walking inside of the hotel.  What snapped him out of it was hearing his name being called multiple times from the center of the hotel.

“You made it!”

Soon, he was being enveloped in more warm embraces from his friends that he hadn’t seen in quite a while.

First was Beverly, who was glowing like an angel as she grinned and pulled him in for a tight hug. Afterwards was Ben, his strong arms tugging him into a bear hug that had him playfully gasping out an ‘I can’t breathe!’

Stan Uris gave him a smile that he couldn’t help but return, a teasing handshake from Stan turning into hug.

By the time Bill was pulling him into a hug, Eddie was practically putty in his arms. He hadn’t realized just how much he actually missed his best friends.

“Congratulations, Bev and Ben!” Eddie exclaimed after pulling back from Bill, grinning at the two lovebirds who seemed to be attached at the hip.

“Thanks, Eddie! Did you have a good flight?” Bev asked curiously.

“Well, let’s see. A trip across the continental US with only one stop and extreme turbulence.” He paused, with a mischievous smile, “In other words, it was perfect.”

That brought about laughter, but once it died down, he suddenly remembered why he had been nervous in the first place. Richie.

His heart leapt up into his mouth at the thought, but before he could tentatively ask where the other male was, he was interrupted by a loud yell that had all of them turning to find the source.

“Get the hell away from my bar!”

“Sheesh, it was a joke. How about you laugh a little, sweetheart?”

Eddie’s heart leaped once again at that voice.

His voice.

His eyes finally found him, watching the giraffe of a man stumble his way over and laughing while the bartender behind the counter glared daggers at him.

Eddie’s heart was pounding so hard in his chest that he could physically feel the pulsing all the way in his right temple at the sight of his ex-lover. He felt like he could pass out any second.

The rest of the Losers seemed to grow quiet as Richie finally made it over, a martini glass perched in his hand.

“Some people don’t know how to take a joke, I’ll tell ya. It was like she was saying “beep, beep, Richie!” without–” Eddie felt his face light up once he finally made eye contact with the boy he hadn’t seen in over five years.

The first thing he noticed was his eyes. He could tell that Richie traded in his spectacles for contacts, even though he swore he would wear glasses forever just to be an outlier.

The second thing he noticed was Richie’s hair. The curls were just as he remembered - wild and untamed. Except, they were a bit longer than he remembered. Many people had told Richie that he needed a haircut, but Eddie liked his longer hair.

The third thing he noticed was the tattoos. Part of him was shocked by this new addition, but the other part wasn’t shocked by the nerdy themes that were etched permanently on Richie’s skin.

He watched Richie visibly swallow, before Richie finally spoke to him for the first time in five years.

“Oh, uh.. Hey, Eds.”

[theseventhhex]

The Gotobeds Interview

The Gotobeds

Photo by Shawn Brackbill

The Gotobeds return to the fray with their third full length, ‘Debt Begins at 30’. The esprit de corps and anxiety-free joy that permeates their other LPs and EPs remains intact. The octane is high-test, the engine still has knocks and pings and the battery is overcharged. The Gotobeds - as Pittsburgh as it gets, the folk music of the Steel City - have more tar for us to swallow. ‘Debt Begins at 30’ is an old-fashioned blast furnace and the liquid iron flows. The album's first single, Calquer the Hound, features guest performances by Kim Phuc singer Rob Henry, and Evan Richards of The City Buses. (The album has guests on all eleven tracks. The song has euphony, a sly bridge, plenty of trademark bash, and a spacey outro. It's a sanguine album opener, more Al Oliver than Starling Marte, to put it in Pittsburgh Pirates terms. ‘Debt Begins at 30’ is an old-fashioned blast furnace and the liquid iron flows… We talk to Eli Kasan about writers block, 80s nostalgia and YouTube binges…

TSH: For your current record ‘Debt Begins at 30’, what sort of experiences and perspectives were you mostly impacted by in the lead-up to this release?

Eli: Most of life’s real shit happened to the four of us both cumulatively and independently. Death, divorce, debt, alcoholism, fatherhood, surprise fatherhood were all on the table before this record. It became a time of great reckoning for us, and one that I’m not sure how we’ll top. It did however come together as a group triumph: we’ve managed to hit the 10 year mark of some of us playing together (in various forms). We also managed to try to distil the feeling of adulthood and its horrors and high-points in a punk record.

TSH: You guys recruited a ton of guests to sing and play alongside you on this release, how pleasing was it to have collaborations leading to such amazing results?

Eli: Well, very pleased that you said amazing results – it still boggles our minds that we were able to pull this off. It always makes it more interesting when you can have some outside assistance from folks you admire so highly. It really began as a joke: we had Joe from Protomartyr sing on a song, the idea being when we would tour together, as we often did, that you would be able to hear that song live with the two voices. While writing this LP, we were all listening to trap mixes, Cary suggested guests on every song and I set about carving space for folks to contribute, both big and small. Every person asked said yes, sans John Sharkey who got busy and missed his deadline - though missed, the song made it out alive.

TSH: Also, which collaboration would you say was most intense and unique?

Eli: Hard to say, as I’m loathe to pick a favourite as they all contribute something worthwhile, though Victoria from Downtown Boys’ contribution is notable here because she was the only person who got a blank check to make something. I gave her the song and my lyric inspiration and told her to make her version, so that was thrilling getting such a killer vocal performance back of which we didn’t direct.

TSH: You’ve previously touched on having a preconceived notion of what you want the band to sound like. How has this outlook evolved over time?

Eli: Interesting question and not one I think we or I’ve ever kept top of mind here. Writing interesting pop songs with junk on top ala the Swell Maps was the only real lodestar, so we’ve maintained that through-and-through. Gavin (our bassist) did describe one thing helpful here: Tfp is our third guitarist and changed the sound markedly because he contributes to songwriting and has a different process than mine. Gavin described Tfp as liturgous and scientific in his chasing down iterations of song before “perfecting” the final product (he is a scientist professionally so this is not a stretch), and I’m much more haphazard to which he called “lightning in a bottle”. Harder to do every time, but a thrill when you do.

TSH: What’s the backstory regarding a track like ‘Bleached Midnight’?

Eli: Funny you ask about this track because it relates to the previous question. This track is all Tfp’s baby as he wrote the entirety of it. It came to us mostly fully formed (sans ending) and we had it earmarked from day one that it would bookened the LP. Alex from Protomartyr heard us playing it on tour with them when it was new and would request it off us, which was very kind. The other interesting thing to note here is that it on the surface lacks a guest contributor. I had writers block shortly before entering the studio, but I chanced upon a book written by a friend of mine. He lived with me off and on, and is a brilliant writer. The title and the chorus are his words – words about being addicted to heroin, but seemed perfect for my “war” story (war on the world, war on the self, war internally, etc.). Think the final track was 4 takes – we had it down.

TSH: Also, what sort of memories come to mind when you assess the track ‘On Loan’?

Eli: I can instantly picture the river by Electrical Audio studio in Chicago where I wrote ½ the lyrics. Writers block and nerves had rendered me useless writing the lyrics to it – I knew the theme was being out on loan as a counterpoint to the theme of ‘debt’. I think I had to sing it in like 20 minutes and I sat down and saw our overflowed ashtray - and wrote damn near all of it. We took a break and walked to the river to try and climb down into some weird tunnel (just for fun) and I wrote the end “the radios thrown in the deep // can’t let the dead see you weep // I want a future worth more than mine” and had to keep reciting them on the walk back to not forget them. Another one of Tfp’s solo writing ventures and a very fine one indeed.

TSH: How key has it been to be humorous and not take yourselves too seriously as a band over the years?

Eli: We take the music and writing seriously but not ourselves, I think it has helped us not develop into entitled assholes. Also, the sheer joy we get from writing and playing live I’d hope comes through since we aren’t people taking themselves too seriously – cause that shit is painful.

TSH: Does it feel at times like you’re competing with the best version of yourselves to get the best possible output?

Eli: More like I’m competing with the best LPs I own and their looking over their shoulder the whole time wondering how much of the store they’re gonna let me steal before stopping me. Trying to top your influences is a heady goal and one you likely will always fail at – but that failure is what makes the interesting stuff happen. I sometimes think the opposite of our best selves: in some ways we’re our worst selves when we’re in the band, having Peter Pan syndrome trying to avoid ageing, drinking heavily as a crutch, and playing loudly to cathartically escape whatever ails us.

TSH: ‘Twin Cities’ was shot entirely on VHS. When you think of 90s nostalgia and VCR reminiscences, what comes to mind?

Eli: That was a happy accident and one that makes sense for 30 year old dudes. Though I’ll quote Lou Reed that “I don’t like anyone’s nostalgia but mine” – I think it’s important to shut the fuck up about this point and I’ll tell you why: when I was a young buck working in a record store I had a friend always chiding us over our 80s hero worship. He would joke “you’re freaking me out! You’re dressed like you went to my high school and you’re buying all these records” – but when you’re a kid that perspective does not matter at all to you, so I try to temper my worst impulses to hate on the current trend of 90s revivalism. My opinion on youth culture is unimportant.

TSH: Speaking of VCR, what led to the following tweet ‘If I had a derby horse I’d name it “My Parents VCR”…

Eli: Haha! Twitter is great, it’s like a landfill, all my old thoughts go there to die, though I’m glad that trivial synapse registered with you, even though I have no idea what I meant by it…

TSH: Whilst on tour, how does the band like to chill out?

Eli: We’re preternaturally mischievous so we’re always getting into some shit to make each other laugh. I’ve had friends in different cities note that when we go somewhere together that “it looks like you like each other” which is something I didn’t realise was missing in other bands. Alcohol is a good lubricant in the van – passes the time. Our van has a high ceiling so you can kind of stand up in the wheel-well by the door - so we stand up and dance a lot. The driver gets choice of music and it’s too varied to note, however, we do have these strange ingrained rituals where when we get 20 minutes out from the venue we have to put on rap music and you have to drink a beer – brings the energy up. We have tons of these strange rituals that spring forth from nowhere and only make sense to us, kind of like a bunch of kids who grew up on a dead-end. If only Azzerad or Bob Mehr would contact us to write a book, we could fill that fucking thing with hilarity and tragedy.

TSH: What did you watch on your last YouTube binge?

Eli: It’s been mainly live Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave interviews and Scatman John’s ‘Scat-man’s World’ which is an insane video that Cary has me obsessed with. Watch it, it’s germane in the way it grows on you and you’ll piss your pants laughing at his scat solo!

TSH: Finally, what’s the most important dynamic you feel as a band you’d like to maintain heading forward?

Eli: Managing interpersonal bullshit to keep the squad getting along (which is fairly easy). We all like and buy new music and aren’t curmudgeons about the best stuff already being written, so I think that keeps us vital. Wouldn’t hire a member that didn’t do that.

The Gotobeds - “Twin Cities”

Debt Begins at 30

[kindofsharethat]

so last night people were sharing stories of how they became larries and i thought i’d make a big (emphasis on big) ol list of them because i found them really fun to read

I've been a 1D fan since 2013 and my sister and i always thought that l&h looked so good together but only the bromance and we're like "omg larries destroyed their friendship poor eleanor 1!1!1!", then in 2015 the "i'm gay pretty unfortunate isn't eleanor ?" happened and i was like WHAAT???? and i ended up searching more and more about larry (bc it was the only thing that came to my mind) and i found the videos and then i told my sister and then here we are.

I became a larrie because someone in my dash who rarely post about 1D posted the first louis/fred pic and tagged it babygate. So I went looking into the tag and found everything. I had doubt but then i saw the moment where H touch L arm and i was in! I actually became a fan of the music after. I've done everything in reverse with this band! But when i entered the fandom in feb2016 and i was hopping to see it all end like a month later! But hey, still here! And loving it mostly! End it!

it was 2011 and my friend told me she had found a really good song and the singers were so cute, she showed me wmyb video and i spent the whole day listening to it and then in the evening i wanted to find out more about these 5 guys. i started watching video diaries ans i was looking for the next one but i accidentally clicked "best larry moments" video aaand the rest is history

I became a larrie after aimh tweet hits 2m and everyone on all of my social media started freaking out even though I didn't follow any 1D blogs so I started search about them and now I'm here also at that time I was kinda homophobic 'cause I live in russia and grown up in middle eastern family and now I'm proud lesbian who knows a lot about LGBTQ+ history so thank you to my larents and 1D for making me gay lol 🌈💕

i was a fan since 2011 but didnt know about larry bc i was young and didnt have any social media but around 2013-2014 my friend showed me the "are you and louis dating" vid and i was like the mr krabs meme bc i just couldnt understand why larry would have to be covered up so i went home and watched "why elounor is fake" videos and my eyes were open and ever since that day ive been a larrie and i regret not knowing sooner but im here now !!

i saw the daddy daddy cool tweet and was like dude that's the wrong type of daddywtf? & I hadn't heard about a pregnancy? then a week later I had read the treatise and had a side blog and watched all the freddieismyqueen videos & was in way too deeeep lol. I've never been around when they weren't on the break even, I'm so confused about how I got here but now I can't escape 😝I had never even listened to their music before but then I also did that and was like damn they're so good?!

I just remembered going out once and being quite tipsy when DMD video came on so I pointed to Louis and Harry and said 'they're in love, but shh nobody can know' and one of my friends looked at me with a WTF?? expression on her face and said 'but I thought that was common knowledge'. Mind you, she still doesn't even know their names, let alone anything else. That was around the time bg was still a fresh wound and I'll never forget it bc it was so nice to hear it and also my hangover was a bitch.

I got interested in 1D right after their last concert, like right on Halloween. I became a Larrie that very same day too, right after i read Dan Wattpad's infamous "Harry and Louis hate each other". I saw articles floating around saying how they were enemies, reason for Zayn leaving...blah blah. I was sceptical, then i came across the famous OTRA hug, and i was like, no fucking way they hate each other, not with how they are hugging. I then delved into YT and discovered freddieismyqueen. Bless.

I joined july 2014 (2 months after they 've passed my country ouch) and was instantly hooked because this shit is like crack. Today I'm the darkest larrie that exists preaching the word for everyone who'll listen. I can WAIT for their CO because I have a party prepared? I literally have a wine since 2014 in my cellar that I'm only going to open the day they're free, I have nauthical theme stocked for the party. My friends just know that they have to come and that I'll be crying the whole month!!

weirdly enough i became a larry cos of that stupid channel 4 documentary id never heard of larry or gay shipping or whatever before that and i saw that and i was very mr krabs meme and i looked into it saw that it wasn't evil and gross like they were portraying it and never turned back

I joined the fandom in late 2012 and I wasn't a larrie but I wasn't an anti either i just hadn't looked into it but then i remember during the confirmation of bg on gma i felt bad for harry and i didnt really know why and I was surprised by my own reaction. Then with bg going on I started to realise that none of that could be real I did my research and I've been a larrie ever since :)

I joined the fandom in 2012, used to think Elounor was real but just because I never looked into it and I knew some people thought Larry was real at the time so I checked this insta page that debunked Elounor and I have no regrets 💙💚

When I become a 1D fan, in 2012, I liked elounor and I liked Eleanor unfortunately. I was not that into fandom things so I wasn't paying attention to details. But my whole view changed in 2014 when they came to South America for the WWAT and all those rumors in Argentina with the hotel room and Brazil that was an experience and I was like "ok something is happening here between them" and here I am, 4 years later and going strong as a larrie. I'm on the winning team 😌💅🏼

I became a larrie when my friend first introduced me to fanfiction. I read a larry one and was totally amazed by it. After that, I switched between het ones and larry ones, but always came back to larry. After that, I simply became obsessed with the pair, something that made me fall in love with the band and all of them. I watched the dairies and everything, and just saw how clear their infatuation was. Tumblr and a lot of other sites just simply proved the theory even more. No regrets ❤

i became a larrie late novemeber after a month of being in the 1d fandom. i watched freddieismyqueen videos and other proofs for hours everyday (especially over thanksgiving break)

I wasn't even a fan of 1D, but while I was looking for pictures of them to do a collage for a friend, I found one in which Louis and Harry were looking at each other and, damn, I can't explain what I felt, I just knew it. So, I was trying to figure out if I was the only one thinking there was something between this two, and it turned out I wasn't! I discovered tumblr, and I spent 3 days reading post, watching videos and proofs and...here I am, 3 years after, being the larriest larrie

I became a 1d fan when uan tour had just started and like. I watched all the damn youtube videos in about a week and I noticed that in the video diaries on the stairs they were so ~cozy, and they were so Extra™ on stage and hl weren't like that with the other boys. They just emanated the feelings I suppressed: Ultra Gay. And yeah. That's how it Began for me

I became a larrie when I watched the behind the scenes of wmyb and Louis was saying "I've gotta say it" and Harry was all over him and hid his face in Louis' shoulder and said "no!"

Same like that previous anon i hadnt even considered two guys being more than friends bc of where i grew up. But just watching proof videos of them for a while i kind of realized how in love they were. Thats when i started thinking about how different and colorful the world actually is compared to what I've learned from the people i grew up around

I became a larrie when my friend and I would watch their video diaries together, and I would see the way h&l acted with each other. I mentioned it to my friend and she was like yeah, Larry, and she showed me one YouTube video so I spent weeks watching every single one I could find, all these years later and I've come to accept theres no way to crawl out of this 😂

are we sharing larrie stories? my friend became a fan early 2012 (and a larrie) and was adamant on making me on too, and I finally gave in summer 2013. I rmr the day after TCAs that year, niall tried to do a twitcam and idr how but some article got written abt the twitcam that included a link to those 'you just have to pay attention' videos. I marathoned them all, and it was that arm moment that zayn failed to hide that #sealed it. though my friend gave me the skinny on haylor back in 2012~

i was like a super casual fan since their first album. my friend introduced them to me cuz she was crushing on zayn. i just knew their music but not actually them. i became a larrie during weedgate. weird timing, i know. i saw it on the news and got curious about what was going on. saw the video then got to know about the boys individually through past vids. i started from the very start from the xf vid diaries. those two, not subtle AT ALL. and well, the rest was history.

i was in entirely different fandom back in 2014, but one of my follower turns into a liam stan and starts to post about 1d and there was a post about how harry and louis can't touch each other and i thought that was really weird weren't they bandmates?? then i started digging around and stumble into a treatise blog. here i am now hahaha

I got into this fandom because of my best friend. She showed me week 4 diary video... and I was like are those two in a relationship?? I pointed at louis and harry and she said no why? And I was like I don't know they seem cozy together and I pointed out that harry was staring at louis lips... she didn't believe me first but now she is a larrie😂 So basically I got into this fandom knowing larry is real

I became a fan of the boys 4 years ago. I read about Larry and that fans believed they were together so I went on YouTube and saw some videos and read some stories (I think it was here on tumblr??) and I immediately believed they were together. There wasn't a particular moment for me, it was a lot of things. Probably, above all, the way they looked at each other. They never looked at someone else so fondly. And 4 years later I keep saying the same thing 💖

for me, i always thought louis was gay from way back in 2011 but i didn't really think of harry's sexuality cause i wasn't like a stan i was just a casual fan [which is why it confuses me when people say that if larry isn't real, louis is straight and horrible, no...he still gay as hell babe]. anyway i became a larrie cause i used to really follow celeb gossip and when the news dropped, gossip sites/tabloids kept mentioning harry and larries everywhere so i decided to investigate and...here i am

[ricardosousalemos]

Jay Z: Reasonable Doubt

He was only going to make one album. So goes the story of Reasonable Doubt, anyway, a tale Jay Z has regaled us with at every opportunity since its release on a new and unproven independent label called Roc-A-Fella records. It was the album he made before the world was listening, with only a close crew of friends and associates at the late age of 26.  Every contributor was paid in bags of cash, piles so mountainous nobody involved could be mistaken how they were acquired. It was the valedictory statement of a drug kingpin and the commencement of a brand, a lifetime’s worth of private thoughts discharged before the true business of empire-building could begin. Grand opening; grand closing.

Shawn Carter has always been fiercely protective of his first full-length, to the degree that it sometimes feels like it belongs more to him than to us. He keeps yanking it from streaming services, as if the album is a troubled prep-school kid. He’s thrown it a series of lavish birthday parties, celebrating its 10th anniversary with a full-concert performance in 2006 and commissioning a documentary to air only on his TIDAL streaming service for its 20th. He has curated its legacy so assiduously that Reasonable Doubt seems like the one part of his story about which he remains insecure, the piece of his legacy that might blink out if he didn’t take care of it.

Perhaps he’s never forgotten its relatively inauspicious release. “Ain’t No Nigga” was a hit, for sure, and the album was certified Gold on its release; solid, but hardly world-conquering in the dynastic era CD sales. Critics were impressed, but not overly so: Mainstream and non-hip hop publications noted it was clever at times but mostly a rehash of Scarface and gangster-movie tropes. The Source gave it 4 out of 5 mics—approving, not rapturous. The smaller but more influential world of hardcore rap intelligentsia paid attention to him, but in the shadow of Biggie and Pac, Jay felt like a lesser myth. He announced the album with a statement that he was retiring and henceforth “would only be about the business.” In some alternate universe, that might’ve been it.

In Jay’s mind at least, the album certainly marked the end of an era. At this point, by his own cold-eyed accounting on the song “Politics As Usual,” he had been selling drugs for “ten years.” Along a parallel track, he had been flirting furtively with being a rapper. He linked up with Big Jaz (later Jaz-O), doing a stint as the older man's  baby-faced sidekick and kicking the triplet-time “figgity-figgity”-style flows that were sweeping New York at the time. He toured, briefly, with Big Daddy Kane, and spit some freestyles for New York hip-hop radio. He was an impressive local kid, but no one’s idea of a worldwide star.

In that murky time between his puppyish Jaz-O beginnings and his sober and assured reappearance on Reasonable Doubt, he figured some things out. First, nobody wanted to hear Jay Z excited. Composed, assured, jaded, deeply unimpressed—these were emotions he could radiate without even trying, and they were truer to his nature. Gone were the endearing attempts at dancing alongside Jaz, looking like a kid at his own bar mitzvah being coaxed onto the floor. His years selling drugs had presumably hardened him, and by the time he opened his mouth on Reasonable Doubt’s opening track, “Can’t Knock the Hustle,” he had mastered an unshakable godfather pose. It is hard to convincingly telegraph “above it all” from the bottom of the food chain, but Shawn Carter had a natural haughtiness that couldn’t be faked. “You ain’t havin’ it? Good, me either/Let’s get together and make this whole world believe us,” he barked.

He also figured out how to best wield his clear, surprisingly boyish voice. The syllable chopping disappeared and his words became musical and mellifluous. Even though his voice never rose above a conversational monotone, sailed high and glittering over the music, which sampled butter-soft soul from previous decades, blurred memories of more innocent times. These were the lyrics he’s been painstakingly stacking together in his head for years, (the “no pen, no pad” detail is another famous and well-rehearsed bit of Jay mythos), and he rolled them out, one pearly string of words after another, like he was exhaling a breath he’d been holding forever.

Lines like “By the ounce, dough accumulate like snow” were their own kind of song, and he treated each syllable with a love undetectable elsewhere in his work. On “Can I Live,” he matches the “Fs” and “Ls” in the phrase “illin’ for revenues, Rayful Edmond-like” to create an irregular little mountain-peak rhythm that echoes the stuttering “expectation for dips, we stack chips” line from earlier in the same verse. He was thinking on several levels at once—how phonetics color meaning, how multiple meanings can suggest all the stories that aren’t being told. He wanted us to feel the discomfited hum of his unquiet mind, even if we couldn’t immediately follow every stray thread. What Biggie and Pac did for self-mythologizing and hip-hop, Jay undoubtedly did for the art of close reading.

The narrative that emerges from a close reading of Reasonable Doubt remains startlingly grim; seen up close, it is a masterpiece of dissociation, a graveyard of dead emotions. From the outset, Jay Z projected surface glamor: He was the first rapper to book a flight out to St. Thomas and hop on a yacht just to film a video. He was the guy who made the “Big Pimpin’ video, putting up a million dollars for the budget. But the message behind all of this flash was always clear: It was all too late for him, and the money was just cold comfort.

This is never clearer than on “D’Evils,” maybe the bleakest, saddest song ever written about the well-worn theme of the psychic toll of drug dealing. “Shit is wicked on these mean streets” could be a boast, the prelude to some exuberant Eazy-E-style tall tales, but the next line echoes in pure psychological space: “None of my friends speak, we all trying to win.” The song’s most lurid moment of violence, and maybe the most brutal scene in all the Jay discography, occurs off-camera, so to speak, only by implication: To locate a rival, Jay kidnaps the mother of his child and stuffs bills into her mouth, force-feeding her crumpled, filthy money while she weeps as he demands information. It is a gruesome scene, but Jay the writer is uninterested in the visual; he’s drawn to the contusion it leaves on her psyche and his: “Don’t cry, it is to be/In time, I take away your miseries and make it mine,” he tells her flatly. It is a chilling promise to both end her life and carry the act with him until the end of his own.

Much later in his career, further removed from the shock of his time dealing drugs, Jay would root around in the messier, more visceral stuff of his early traumas. On “This Can’t Be Life,” he opened his heart to a former girlfriend who miscarried. On “Still Got Love For You,” from Beanie Sigel’s 2001 album The Reason, he raged at his absent father, even allowing his imperial voice to crack slightly: “I’m a mess, Dad/Still I love you no less, dad/Hope you didn’t think success would make me less mad.” But at age 26, too old to be a burgeoning rap star and far too young to be as tired as he often appeared onstage, he was still in the blast radius of his former life, and all the wounds it left on him were still open. The wide-brimmed hat concealing his eyes, the white suit and fancy cigar of the album’s cover—they were expensive gauze pads, covering a ravaged body. On “Politics As Usual,” perhaps the silkiest track on the record, he is “Cursing the very god that brought this grief to be.”  

This album’s legacy is both magnificent and lonely, an immaculate crystal chandelier gathering dust in an abandoned mansion. Every line gleams, begging you to memorize it but forbidding you from loving it. Its impact was subterranean, subliminal—Kendrick Lamar picked up on the notion of “D’evils of Lucy” as recently as 2015, with To Pimp a Butterfly. Other rappers picked up on his chilly, bored pose, but as his rapping was really too byzantine to convincingly imitate. It wasn’t until he slowed down his flow, breaking off glittering bits of mind that people could hold onto, that his influence penetrated and spread. Decades later, everyone flows like Jay Z, but not the Jay Z of Reasonable Doubt. That guy is still alone with his thoughts, learning to live with regrets.

Maybe this is why Shawn Carter the man seems to have such a wistful fondness for the album and the time it represented. It feels doomed in its melancholy that it will be misunderstood. “I hope you fools choose to listen, I drop jewels, bust it,” he rhymed on “Feelin’ It,” and then sneered, “Y’all don’t feel me,” a moment later. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy in rhyme, the sound of a guy baring his heart and freezing it in carbonite in the same breath. “Sometimes I hear myself moaning,” he adds later, after he’s let his guard down slightly to take a small hit of weed. It’s a startling moment of depersonalization, the sound of pain whistling like wind through the cracks in a fractured psyche.

One of the only other times Jay admits to smoking weed on record came years later, on The Black Album, a lifetime’s worth of accomplishments later. “I try to smoke weed to give me the fix I need /For what the game did to my pulse with no results,” he rapped ruefully on “Allure.”  The Black Album ended his most coherent, compelling, and memorable era; the hustler makes it all the way to the beloved corporate American icon and bows out on top. He had sold out Madison Square Garden, and the entire music industry knelt at his feet. Everyone felt him. But the only place he’s ever truly wanted to get back to was here.

[cadem28]

180804 Dreamcatcher Fanaccount

Dreamcatcher fannaccount

Hello everyone, I went to the dreamcatcher concert in Bogotá and I’ll try to capture how my experience at their concert was. Obviously I’ll preface this with the fact that English isn’t my first language and it’s been a while since I’ve written essays or any long form piece so just try to bear with me and if something isn’t clear just ask me and I’ll try to clarify.

Going back a bit I bought the tickets the day they went on sale, one for me and one for my friend who isn’t really into dreamcatcher but thought it was gonna be fun (which it was) so he tagged along.

We got to the venue and started lining up at around 4:30, the theatre was in a somewhat sketchy area on a closed street (idk how you call that someone help me here) so for the most part I was a bit paranoid that something was gonna happen, either to us or just in general. Stuff actually did end up happening, for example someone broke a glass bottle, and we saw a guy scream at a woman on the street over some altercation they had, initially I thought the guy was shouting at his wife, who promptly responded “No one IN THIS COUNTRY speaks like that to me”, but in fact it was just some random woman and he went with his actual wife and baby later, real crazy shit.

Interestingly enough, there were a lot of street vendors selling unofficial merch to the people in the line, mostly hats and t-shirts with different DC logos. I noticed the guys weren’t selling too well considering that every time they passed they had the same exact pieces and people didn’t seem too keen on buying them. Originally their asking price was 15K pesos for a hat (around 5 US dollars, exchange almost 3K pesos for 1 dolar) and 25k pesos/12 USD for a t-shirt, at the end of the concert the guy was selling them for 10K pesos/3 USD for the t-shirts so I hope it wasn’t too rough of a day for them. Annyways damn this is getting long and I haven’t even begun with the concert.

Anyway, at around 5:40 the line started moving and we began entering the venue, which was really pretty inside and gave me a good vibe. When we got in we were given a number which was going to be used for a raffle but I didn’t win so idk what they got. At around 6:40 the venue started playing the dreamcatcher songs so we were sure that the concert was finally starting but the curtains weren’t opening, so I thought it was a mistake and that someone from audio had fucked up but no, they let You&I, Fly High, Good Night and Chase me play. Surprisingly people were going fucking crazy JUST for the audio of the songs, they did the fan chants and clapped and cheered after every song, and they screamed loud as hell too, the gender distribution of the concert was around 65% girls and 35% dudes so the girls screamed for literally everything and anything. People really where having a mini concert with just the audio before the concert actually started.

So the concert eventually began, and immediately people started putting their phones up to record. We had floor/pit/idk how you people call it tickets and it was standing room only so essentially this meant that we were gonna have to see the concert through these people’s screens and I was just so heartbroken that it wasn’t gonna be the experience I thought it was going to be. Fortunately, my friend had the genious (and I mean it) idea of actually moving back, because due to the angle or elevation or like physics dude idk, and we actually had a clearer view of the girls that way.

Fly High, Emotion and their other ballad uhhhh how is it called.

The curtains opened and RRAH, they were there, these K-Pop people we had all been seeing on the internet for our entire fan lives were there, they existed, Siyeon, Gahyeon Dami, JiU, Handong, Yoohyeon and SuA, they were REAL, but even more so, people in this country haven’t had a K-Pop concert in like never (aka 5 years) so for this new generation of fans that attended it finally felt like K-Pop was something real, that it existed outside of the internet and it was finally in front of our eyes, it was extremely surreal. As for these first 3 songs I personally was just kinda sorting my view so I didn’t really pay too much attention to them, plus Dreamcatcher’s ballads are kind of weak and Fly High isn’t their greatest title imo so yeah didn’t miss much (I think).

Group, Individual and unit covers and You&I

Here’s where the real concert started, at least for me. I didn’t look at any of the setlists of the previous concerts in the tour so every cover or special stage was unknown to me. I don’t exactly know the order in which they came so I’ll just try my best to remember. At first they started playing this sort of weird dubstep freaky music and I was confused as to what was happening, but then the song started playing, Imagine Dragons – Believer and holy fucking shit, I had seen videos of the cover and was personally underwhelmed by it, but IRL? Just Woah, they hit every move with inch-perfect precision and “punch” in it, they really out here looking like they were trying to prove a point, to who? For what? I don’t know but they made it look like if they were doing some indigenous exorcist ritual that their life depended on. Every kick, every move, every time the chorus hit they just fucking unleashed, I adored it and at multiple times I audibly screamed “Que gonorrhea”, the upper latin america equivalent of holy shit to my friend, who despite being as impressed at me didn’t really show it, but more on that later.

I think after that they did You and I which was the performance in the entire concert, just the intensity and Dami doing her magic trick which idk where it even came from blew me away. People did the fan chants super loud and went even crazier for this song than the others. If this concert was an album then this was the title track.

After that, the unit covers started, for every one we’d get a mini VCR/Video on the screen hyping up which members where to come. First came Yoohyeon and Gahyeon covering Tayeon – I. This was a special song for me since I knew Dreamcatcher had a cover of SNSD ITNW so I really wanted them to do it since I love SNSD, so instead of that we got this and just wow. The song being the power ballad it is gave Yoohyeon the chance of hitting the incredible high note in the middle of the song and it was this magical moment where everyone in the audience could feel it, her strength and the power in her voice. Having never seen anything like it live, through my mind came the thought of “Wow, this really what we live for, this K-Pop stuff might be weird and a lot of people might not get it but damn, moments like this are what we’re here for”.

Next up was JiU and Handong doing Troublemaker – Troublemaker. Obviously I knew the song was a bit raunchy but JiU and Handong really said fuck this PG shit we doin it how it meant to be done and they WENT FOR IT. There was none of this hover hand stuff I had seen on the performances on Korean shows, they were grabbing each other’s ass, breasts and anything in between and not apologizing to anyone for it. On the contrary every time they crossed any physical line people went nuts, screaming like I had never heard. Real strong cover.

Coming up was SuA and Dami with Taemin – Move. Strong cover but I don’t remember much of it, Dami was the most popular member but she also seemed kinda tired.

Finally came Siyeon’s solo with Alan Waker – Faded and god damn. Ya girl was born to be a rockstar, I figured it out 2 seconds after she started singing, her voice just had such projection and she had the superstar vibe going on so hard. When she sang people payed attention, she grabbed us and didn’t let us go ever. At the end she set up the microphone stand and kicked it down in a real power move which kinda made me realise that she was the one running shit around here. Thinking back she 100% was the MVP of the concert, not just because of her stage but also because in every performance she was the one who went the hardest, both singing and dancing, she put the concert on her back and if I you asked me who is main dancer and main singer in that group, just based on this concert it would be both her. Back to the song however, my friend commented to me that he actually did know this song, so I was like “okay, my boy gonna get hype finally, maybe sing it a bit or something” but nope, he just stood there and I know it’s just the way he is but I think on some way he certainly affected my concert experience, I saw everyone going crazy and in some ways I felt like I was separated from that because I payed attention to my friend having a good time, which he didn’t seem to be having even though later he told me he loved it, but also because we were so far back in some ways it felt that yes we could see better but we weren’t really part of all the concert.

Then came the Q&A segment which was just messy all around, Dami did despacito and every girl did some variation of sexy dance to a song I couldn’t really recognize. They did great, all of them. They tried answering fan questions later but the translator was just not good at all, I couldn’t understand anything she said so idk what they were asked or what was answered, groups that come in the future get a better translator please, also they did the raffle with the numbers for the prizes but since I didn’t win I don’t know what they won, maybe I would’ve talked about it if you had chosen me @WhoeverOrganizedThis but no. They also did the usual K-Pop fan service stuff like aegyo, however they did at one point start “kissing”, I use the quotation marks because they did that thing of turning around and covering themselves with their hair so no one could see their faces which tells me they almost certainly were faking it. Personally I really disliked this, they more than likely aren’t kissing like that in their personal lives and I just don’t see the need of these world class dancers, singers and performers lowering themselves to doing something they probably aren’t all that comfortable in doing even if they’re faking it. It ain’t necessary and unlike in the Troublemaker performance there wasn’t any rhyme or reason for doing it other than getting a reaction out of the fans, but they did that all throughout the night based on their talent alone so I just don’t see why. Please cut it off.

After that I think they did the B-sides of their newest album, the You&I one which personally I don’t care for so I just remember they used Which star as the fan engagement song (i.e to wave to people do hearts, finger hearts, take the flags given to them, etc.) and that I went to the bathroom, nice bathrooms in the venue but for reason the door started opening when I was peeing so like if anyone that owns the theatre is reading this please fix the left room door dude that shit don’t close I promise.

They also did some Maroon 5 covers but who cares about maroon 5, their only good songs are Maps and Animals.

Remaining title tracks, Sleepwalking and Full Moon

This was the best part of the concert. Re-energized after the break they went HARD on every single track, the formations, the timing, these girls danced like they had a death wish or as if their lives depended in this concert only. The line they form in Sleepwalking with the gun sounds, the riffs before the chorus on chase me, good night and full moon as a whole, just woah. By the second these girls were redefining what I believed was possible to do with the human body and the crowd were with them every single step of the way, screaming, fanchanting and getting lost in their music in a way I wish I could have done too, but just my friend wasn’t with the hype and I could never immerse myself in the vibe and the mind of the crowd unfortunately. They closed with Full moon and we left after that.

Closing thoughts

Couldn’t have asked for a better show, on the girl’s side everything was sharp as diamond. External factors like my friend, who I love but I don’t think this is his scene or the translator took me out of the event enough times that I feel I didn’t get to enjoy the show as much as I should’ve, which makes me incredibly sad since this is probably one of the top groups in terms of performances in the entirety of the genre. Unfortunately I think my friend was the biggest factor out of those, and like I said I love him but it did really feel like he was there as a favour to me rather than enjoying himself, which I don’t want at all. KARD is coming up so I don’t know what I’ll do, I could get him a bit drunk but at the end of it I just think it’s better for me to go with people who are more into the genre and allow me to be my real crazy fan self which obviously is hard to be with people who don’t entirely “get it”. Annyways this shit long as fuck I don’t think anyone actually read it up unitl here considering I’m not that good of a writer, so I’m sorry (again).

Best original dreamcatcher songs: You & I

Best Cover: Imagine Dragons – Believer & Siyeon – Alan waker Faded & JiU Handong – Troublemaker, actually all of them man this group talented af.