#feels very nostalgic for me. I once wrote a lyric that was like 'its so hard when im wishing/like I always do'

[deprivedmusicaljunkie]

ok im literally the nicest person ever so i'll only give u two albums to rank : red and fearless (with their vaults),, aka the longest albums she has,, have fun😘💕

ellie i am literally at my wit’s end.

it’s FEARLESS

forever & always - the petty way she says and i don’t feel welcome anymore… this whole song is just chefs kiss and i have a soft spot for it okay (the piano version HITSSS DIFFERENTTT)

tell me why - it’s kinda crazy that i’m putting this song above all the popular ones but i love it so much. the violin in the intro is just so funny to me idk why, it makes me want to burst out laughing. and taylor is just so angsty here?? this one here. my fav (you could write a book on how to ruin someone’s perfect DAAAaaaAAaaAAaaAyy)

the way i loved you - SCREAMING AND FIGHTING AND KISSING IN THE RAIN she is so distressed i adore it. i also associate this song with my old crush but whatever because i want to feel like this again

you belong with me - SOOO ICONIC i scream-sang this with my best friend and it’s so nostalgic. it’s super pick me but every girl had a pick me phase at one point so it’s okay.

love story - a classic. i should get proposed to this song methinks.

jump then fall - idk why but this song hits different guys 🥲

fifteen - I LOVE THIS SONG. i’m so jealous of abigail if my friend wrote a song about my heartbreak i would be over the moon.

fearless - “this song is about the perfect first date i’ve never had.” same girl. i actually cringe whenever i listen to this song because it reminds me of this guy i used to like so. sorry tay.

the best day - once again, taylor swift reminds me that i have daddy issues. i remember on my first listen of this album i couldn’t get through this song and had to skip it… widiwidiekckekncndcjc teared up on this relisten! so!

mr. perfectly fine - ok tbh i have some nostalgia from this song bc last year they were playing this song in a barbershop in taiwan and i was so surprised ??

the other side of the door - back to december’s bratty little sister. jk i actually love the bridge but how many little black dresses does girly have!!

come in with the rain - oooh i love the “talk to… talk to…” lyrics they’re so yummy satisfying (ellie i’m tiredddddd)

that’s when - this song is sweet. every song is sweet but this is different. twosongsleft

superstar - cresswell vibes! is this song about joe jonas

you all over me - ok ngl. the graffiti metaphor was pretty cringe

untouchable - guys. how is this album worse than debut

you’re not sorry - go off i guess!

white horse - taylor, i’m sorry but. this is getting repetitive. why are you always so fucking heartbroken

we were happy - FEARLESS IS MY LEAST FAVORITE ALBUM THIS IS SO BLAND IM BAWLING

don’t you - this song sounds like every song which sounds like every other song on this album the moment this song ends is the moment i forget everything about it

bye bye baby - was joe jonas really that good of a boyfriend. did she have to release this song. did i listen to it in its entirety. who’s to say. i am so ready for red

today was a fairytale - in my honest opinion. this vault song did not need to be released

change - it’s fine. a standard older sister song. she def wrote this after reading a ya novel. not sure how i feel about her christian era but whatever. hallelujah!

breathe - taylor. girly. let’s have a talk for a second: please have one song on this album that doesn’t sound like every other song on this album. okay?

hey stephen - very basic. nothing really stood out to me yk? (should’ve been replaced by mr perfectly fine tbh)

burning RED

begin again - I HAVE SUCH A SOFT SPOT FOR THIS SONG. LIVE FOR YOURSELF. WRITE NEW STORIES. LOOK AT THE FUTURE. YOUR HURT DOES NOT DEFINE YOU!!!!

all too well (10 minute version) - THE SHORT FILM BROKE MEEE

all too well - OUCHH watch her grammys performance it is so emotional

the last time - YESSSS MORALLY COMPLICATED GRAY AREAS MY BESTIEEEE

red - LOSING HIM WAS BLUE LIKE ID NEVER KNOWN MISSING HIM WAS DARK GRAY ALL ALONE FORGETTING HIM WAS LIKE TRYING TO KNOW SOMEBODY YOUVE NEVER METT

holy ground - i love healing. i love getting over it. i love moving on.

treacherous - FORBIDDEN LOVE!!!!

i almost do - THIS HURTS SO MUCH THIS IS JUST THE 1 IN A DIFFERENT FONT

the moment i knew - this song is genuinely so heartbreaking knowing the details of taylor’s twenty first birthday… fuck you j*ke

the lucky one - yk what her vocals are kinda funky on this one but whatever

sad beautiful tragic - at first i was going to rank it lower but then i heard the bridge and 🤭

the very first time - this is such a cute song i cant wait to listen to it when i fall in love

nothing new - THE LUCKY ONE VIBES !!

state of grace - ok idk if it’s just me but this kinda sounds like a modern day christian worship song? in all seriousness i am obsessed with this song. very movie soundtrack esque.

better man - ooh good soup. i love how she kinda has flashbacks in this song like in all too well.

starlight - really adorable!! i love the dreamy vintage aesthetic and the guitar. could totally see a grandma at some retirement home recounting her glory days.

come back… be here - she’s written better yearning songs. this is whatever

run - what is ed doing here!!!

everything has changed - i’m not a big fan of eddie but he wasn’t bad in this. plus the joker and the queen is such an iconic music video.

i knew you were trouble - so dramatic and for what!!! she slayed

forever winter - this is literally winlet from scarlets pov ???

girl at home - she really is a girl’s girl 🫶

we are never getting back together - it sounds too similar to 22 for me.

22 - not one of her best hits but it still slaps

babe - mid.

message in a bottle - nothing about this stood out to me. not my favorite.

stay stay stay - ew. barf. i hate it.

i bet you think about me - the worst taylor swift song yet. why is there a cacophony of harmonica in the chorus.

[independentartistbuzz]

Hearsing Gets Creative with New Single "Montauk"

Introducing Hearsing, the brainchild of Avery Murphy and Jordan Taylor, a musical project deeply rooted in their shared journey from high school to professional stardom. Their musical odyssey began within the confines of high school corridors, where they co-founded the surf punk ensemble SUBPAR alongside Lukas Henderson and Austin Corona. Since then, these talented individuals have embarked on their own notable ventures in the music scene, spanning projects like LILACS, Jean Dawson, and Lizzy McAlpine. Their collaboration within SUBPAR bore fruit with the release of the band's eponymous album, which garnered over 3.5 million streams on Spotify and maintained a robust monthly listenership of over 21.5k. This early success laid the foundation for Hearsing to germinate, drawing upon their surf punk origins while infusing it with a tapestry of nostalgic melodies and a diverse array of newfound influences, ultimately crafting a unique brand of western music that is distinctly their own.

In March of 2021, Hearsing unveiled their inaugural offering—a self-titled collection of home-recorded tracks that served as a precursor to their burgeoning musical expedition. However, it is in the year 2024 that they truly come into their own, as they unleash their debut professional studio EP, aptly titled "Pastoral." Recorded under the meticulous guidance of producer and singer-songwriter Henry Chadwick, whose impressive repertoire includes collaborations with esteemed acts like Jesse Daniel and Coffis Brothers, "Pastoral" encapsulates the essence of Hearsing's artistic evolution. Additionally, the EP features the deft drumming of Ellington Peet, known for his work with bands like Runnner and Babehoven, adding a layer of dynamism to the sonic landscape. Accompanying the release of "Montauk," the lead single from "Pastoral," is a visually captivating music video that serves as a visual companion to the ethereal soundscape of the track. Directed by the brilliant Diego Diaz Lundquist, the video transports viewers on a cinematic journey through landscapes both familiar and otherworldly. With mesmerizing imagery and evocative storytelling, the video offers a glimpse into the boundless creativity and artistic vision of Hearsing, promising an immersive experience that perfectly complements the introspective mood of the song.

Listen and watch here:

Hearsing reveals of the track:

"We wrote Montauk back in 2022, and it was one of the first songs I wrote where I realized not everything had to be directly about real things in my life. Everything gets interpreted so allegorically anyways, real or not, so for Montauk we got to really have fun making up characters and a world that the song could live in. Montauk is really rooted in metaphors concerning the natural world, the chorus “I feel like a star now, look at the way look at the way that my hair shines, I feel like a star now, just look up in the sky tell me if I’m right” is really exemplary of that. On its face it gives this kind of upbeat optimistic reading of feeling like a superstar or something shiny, but in reality I feel like it would be pretty lonely to be a star out in space, shining millions of miles away for others to see. And I think there’s kind of a double meaning there too because I imagine being some big famous star on earth could also feel similar.

The song is accompanied by a music video made by our brilliant friend, Diego Diaz Lundquist. The video was filmed on 8mm film and is so imagistically rich, it feels really immersive, like it allows you to live in the world that the song exists in. But the video contrasts the made-up lyrical content of the song in that it was filmed in very real areas that are personal and special to us, and it features us, as well as a bunch of our close friends. So the video feels very grounded in something real, which in turn grounds the song and ties it to the way we feel it will live in the world once it’s released, not as something made-up or far off, but something very personal that will be present and will serve to soundtrack important moments in people’s lives, whether those be moments of nostalgic past, pressing present, or longing future."

What sets "Pastoral" apart is not just its impeccable production or the pedigree of its collaborators, but the sheer depth of emotion and creativity that permeates each track. From the wistful nostalgia of "Montauk" to the infectious energy of "Hearsing," the EP traverses a diverse sonic terrain, seamlessly blending elements of surf punk, indie rock, and Americana to create a sound that is both timeless and refreshing. As Hearsing prepares to embark on the next phase of their musical journey, their sights set on conquering new horizons and captivating audiences around the globe, they invite listeners to join them on this exhilarating ride. With "Montauk" serving as the harbinger of their sonic expedition, Hearsing is poised to make an indelible mark on the musical landscape, one soul-stirring melody at a time.

[binagi]

hi my REVIEW of skz-replay (only doing songs I haven't listened to)

doodle :: changbin

doodle is breaking my brain in a bad way, I love experimental songs but my hearing sensitivity with this one 😔😔 still good though I think I can't listen to this with headphones ever again I love changbins rap and mister is very creative so props to him

hug me :: i.n

the CUTEST THE ABSOLUTE CUTEST MY SWEETHEART MY BABY!!! this song is so so so cute I can envision summertime and the beach and romance and it's all wonderful! simple cute song and I will give u a hug!

stars and raindrops :: seungmin

idk how to explain this other than its like a pixelated game on a nintendo switch. the absolute coziness of this song, it's like it's raining outside and you get to have a day off with some candles and fairy lights on and you're lying under your blankets and smushed into your pillows and you're vibing to a video game and you have nothing to do! it's like the long lost brother of star lost! cutie!

connected :: bangchan

this feels very bangchan. which club are we at?? I've never been to a club in my life but this is meant to be played there and you're going to fall in love with him THERE. chan you mf you keep pushing boundaries because you're too scared to commit to the sexiness but you have it! you have it! keep going all in.

limbo :: lee know

first off, never trust lee know he said this was going to be a sexy song. instead he graces us with his beautiful and lovely voice!?! play this at the end of a kdrama. play this in a bollywood movie. make barbie sing this. the vocal line decided this was their time to shine and they were correct.

love untold :: hyunjin

this song feels really nostalgic and it's comforting. I don't think I would go out of my way to listen to this song (same with lee know's song) but I think that everytime I'd hear it I'd be like 'ooh wow hyunjin wrote THIS?' and fall in love again, cute, simple.

run :: han

funky. I've been reeling from that one cover he did with other jyp artists (I hope u know the one because I don't actually know what it's called) so I wanted him to sing that again but alas. once again, funky! feels like dancing while going for a walk (or running, hence the title) in the city at night, just fun!!

zone :: 3racha

WEIRD. YES. I LIKE. I feel like I'm driving down the highway at 4am doing an illegal car race. very 3racha of them to make this! chan's part gives me ateez vibes! intense, loud, cool!

deep end :: felix

WHAT. THE. HECK. I thought seungmins song was going to be my favourite but I-

THIS IS FELIX. THIS IS WHO HAS BEEN HIDDEN FROM US THIS ENTIRE TIME?? THIS WHOLE TIME??

idk how to explain but it's like these songs really brought out the parts of them that were most authentic?

I feel like we see a lot of hyunjins sexy side but he's a very emotional person and songs like love untold, ice cream, lovestay, and little star really show how soft hearted he really is.

same with lee know, I feel like he really plays into his teasing side so much which is so fun but I think its nice that song writing is a way for him to express his emotions and his talents in ways he isn't always able to through group dynamics or like other media.

Felix's song literally broke me. I barely pay attention to lyrics (to be fair I don't even understand what they're saying most of the time as I do not know korean) but this song just pulled me in immediately. I knew felix had such a lovely voice and I didn't have any expectations going into this song (other than it would be interesting) and he blew them through the roof. this song made me feel like I was in the deep end (intention met, also I can't swim so I feel like it's even more dramatic), his voice is soothing but also so sad to listen to because you can HEAR the emotion I'm... in love. thank you my dear felix.

[bobataeminsuga]

everyone's talking about music in your asks so i wanna know what your music hcs are for the genshin boys 👉👈

anon im so sorry for taking so long to reply but i really thought about it... and this is the first time ive ever made like a list of hcs so bear with me

i didnt know whether you meant hcs for the type of music they listened to or like them as musicians so i kinda did both

Genshin boy’s music headcannons under the cut!!

characters: kaeya, diluc, venti, albedo, bennett, razor, xingqiu, chongyun, zhongli, childe, xiao, scaramouche, aether, dainsleif

kaeya:

I get big sweater weather by the neighbourhood vibes from him

bi icon i guess

He loves the neighbourhood

Daddy issues by the neighbourhood yessir

He can play the guitar. his voice is okay, he’s not bad, he can sing and its really nice but its not the prettiest out of all the genshin boys

he loves serenading people and it just works bro, he knows exactly how to make people fall for him

diluc:

a lot of ppl say he would listen to like emo music or something but he listens to classical music

i mean he's a nobleman after all

he grew up learning the piano so he fell in love with classical music at a young age

unlike kaeya, he doesnt serenade people, instead you can find him playing piano at midnight, very captivating (i think i said this in a previous post lol)

hates it when kaeya gets control over the music

definitely the "pop music is so annoying and meaningless" bitch

venti:

nicki Minaj

I dont know why but nicki Minaj

Maybe doja cat too ngl

tbh venti just loves every genre of music

but he really loves everything the nameless bard has ever sung to him - whether it was an original song or not

Learnt every instrument just so he could play the nameless bard’s music wherever he went - venti loves him and his music very much

albedo:

Something magical

ghibli soundtracks maybe?

he likes merry-go-round from howls moving castle that's for sure

maybe chill vibey music

Luke chiang, maybe?

I wouldn’t be surprised if he could play the piano too but violin me thinks… or maybe viola just to prove how much better he is at music theory oooh so fancy he can read alto clef even though violas suck

Only sings lullabies to klee, doesnt sing otherwise, but he has a very calming and pretty singing voice, everyone wishes he sang more (khoi dao singing :,) )

bennett:

number one victory royale- no jk he doesn't listen to that shit unironically

bennett likes Wilbur Soot

really likes your new boyfriend

but other than that he really likes music with deep lyrics, he likes meaningful things

he also really likes singing, he's not that great at it but he loves it and he wants to get better at it

would probably be a band kid, probably plays the trumpet or something

razor:

razor doesn't really understand music

he doesn't have a favourite genre or artist or song

but he really likes bennett's singing

even if bennett thinks he's bad, razor likes listening to him sing, he thinks bennett is the best singer in all of teyvet

he doesn't know this wilbur soot guy, he thinks those are bennett’s songs and that bennett wrote im in love with an egirl about fischl and doesn’t know how to feel about that

Razor cant play any instruments but if he did maybe drums??? Hm… 

xingqiu:

everyone thinks he likes classical music - which he does, its just not his favourite

he listens to cavetown me thinks

like i think he listens to cavetown if you get what im saying

Sings lemon boy to chongyun even if he isnt a good singer

He plays the flute, not the best, he’s still learning

his older brother plays the violin and they often argue about which is the better/worse instrument

chongyun:

rnb? I get an rnb vibe from him

maybe krnb? like junny and crush

Chongyun is very swaggy imo so i feel like he’d like swaggy chill music therefore krnb

Not the biggest fan of cavetown but if xingqiu is listening to this is home then chongyun knows he has to be there to comfort him and sits through the song anyways 

Chongyun doesnt play any instruments, he sings all the time without realizing it though

he has a very nice voice and xingqiu always tells him this but he doesnt believe this (kinsens singing voice ;-;)

zhongli:

yet another classical music enjoyer

doesnt really mind other genres but he doesnt really like rap

also really likes old rock

journey, the Beatles, queen, he loves it all

but his favourite song is the song guizhong sings to the glaze lilies, nothing can replace that

Cant sing for shit, which is why he cant pick glaze lilies himself

Cant play any instruments either, playing music was always guizhong’s thing, not really his so he never bothered learning

childe:

pop music, whatever’s on the radio im sorry white boy

but also… hayloft? I feel like he would listen to hayloft but the question is would he listen to hayloft?

Surprisingly listens to rich brian bc he heard scaramouche listening once and loved it

Can sing, like he gets the notes right and stuff, nobody wants to hear it though (im so sorry griffin burns)

But sometimes he sings lullabies to tonia, anton, and teucer and :,)

Knows a little bit of piano - he had to teach tonia a bit back home bc they couldnt afford a piano teacher for her until he became a harbinger

xiao:

my chemical romance- nah I'm just joking he likes calming music, mcr and music like that would actually get on his nerves

he likes whatever venti plays

which makes him another big fan of the nameless bard - he doesnt know the songs aren’t venti’s though

JOJI

I think he likes joji, slow dancing in the dark and like you do are his favourites

Agoraphobic by corpse husband

Wishes he knew more about music but whenever venti offers to teach him he gets all “an adeptus doesn’t need to know such things”

He only sings to venti and the traveler whenever he thinks they’re asleep or sings them to sleep but he has sUCH A NICE VOICE (orz kinsen) - traveler and venti team up to get him to sing more

scaramouche:

CHOKE ME LIKE YOU HATE ME BUT YOU LOVE ME

Corpse husband.

literally just loud music with heavy bass I can see scaramouche listening to that

blasts that shit at the zapolyarny palace so that everyone knows he's there

signora hates it - childe, not so much but finds it a bit annoying sometimes

This man cant sing, he refuses to and he refuses to play an instrument

NO WAIT HE LIKES TAKAYAN

Cheating is a crime by takayan is his anthem

aether:

He likes whatever reminds him most of home, whatever makes him nostalgic

butterfly by bts

Youth by troye sivan

how to save a life by the fray

Mr loverman by ricky montgomery?

yeah sad music, he doesn't know where his sister is, he wants to go home, of course he'd be sad

Aether likes troye sivan, he gives me that vibe

Ukulele boy aether :o

He used to play the ukulele and sing with lumine (luyin kana’s voice :”) )

abyss prince aether tho hmmm… might be a different story, i feel like he wouldnt be a ukulele boy but he would still listen to sad music me thinks

dainsleif:

He doesn’t listen to music

Knows about music, but doesn’t listen to it

They say long ago he used to sing a lot, rumour has it he was one of the best singers in Khaenri'ah, he doesnt sing anymore

Hears aether singing and gets sad about lumine (or vice versa)

[dossi-io]

An introduction to DeVita

Do you want to learn all about the AOMG artist DeVita? This article will cover everything you need to know about the third female member to join the labels roster.

The content of this article is also available in video format, embedded at the bottom of this article.

Prelude

In early April of 2020, the Korean hip-hop label AOMG ambiguously announced that a new artist was signing onto the label. This label was grounded by the Korean-American triple-threat; Jay Park, who’s also one of its executives. This is a label with a very organic feel and artist-oriented nature, which stands out compared to many other music labels.

On April 3rd, the label’s official Instagram account posted a video. It was titled, “Who’s The Next AOMG?” where fellow AOMG members talked about this upcoming recruit. They sprinkled small hints and details by sharing their thoughts on the artist without mentioning who.

Around the world, fans immediately began speculating on who this could be. The major consensus was that it had to be the solo artist Lee Hi, due to reporting like this: “AOMG responds ���nothing is confirmed’ to reports of Lee Hi signing on with the label”

A few other names got thrown in fan speculations like Hanbin (B.I), previous member of IKON, Jvcki Wai, and MOON (문) aka Moon Sujin. This despite a few of these already being signed to other labels.

On April 6th, three days later, the account was updated with a part two. This time dropping more hints, which would exclude many names from fan speculations.

On the 7th of April, the label’s official Instagram account posted a short teaser. The video sported an 80’s retrofuturistic setting, with a woman turned from the camera, dressed in all black, rocking braids, and some glistening high-heels. As it seemed to be a female, some were now certain that it had to be Lee Hi. A small few actually guessed correctly that the one who would be joining AOMG would be Ms DeVita.

Finally on April 9th, it was official! She debuted with the music video, from which the teaser clips was taken from, EVITA!, which accompanied the release of her EP, CRÈME.

What does the name DeVita mean?

The name DeVita, draws inspiration and meaning from two things. Firstly, Eva Perón – also known as Evita – who was Argentina’s former First Lady. When Chloe was learning about Eva’s life, it inspired her to combine “Devil” and “Evita”, thus creating “DeVita”. The name signifies the duality of how both Eva Perón and DeVita could be perceived. Either being a devil, or an angel depending on the eye of the beholder. Secondly, Salvatore Di Vita, a character from Cinema Paradiso, was also a source of inspiration.

An introduction to DeVita

Chloe Cho – now known under the artist name DeVita – was born and raised in South Korea, until the age of eleven. In 2009, she moved to Chicago, where she would learn English.

In 2013, she went back to Korea and participated in the third season of the show; K-pop Star. A talent show, where the “big three” (the three largest music labels in Korea) hosts auditions to find the next big k-pop star. However she didn’t win, therefore neither got signed.

Later on, she returned to Chicago and graduated high school. After reflecting on what she wanted to do next, she decided to make music. In 2014, her pursuit to become an artist brought her to the talent show Kollaboration. On this show, she performed covers and actually ended up being a finalist. Despite her talents, she did not triumph as the winner of the show.

Not letting these losses stop her, she started releasing music on Soundcloud. The earliest release I could find, Halfway Love (Ruff), was from 2016. Her catalogue consisted of both covers and original music.

One day, Kirin, an artist and CEO of the music label 8balltown Records, was introduced to DeVita’s music. He liked what he heard and the two linked up. In May of 2018, WEKEYZ, one of 8balltown’s producer duos released a track titled Sugar. This track featured both DeVita, and the AOMG rapper Ugly Duck. This was the beginning of many collaborations to come.

On August 28th of 2018, just a few months later, AOMG released Sugar (Puff Daehee Mix).

This was a remix done by Puff Daehee, the alter ego of Kirin. Along with this track, it was accompanied by a music video starring Kirin, DeVita, and Ugly Duck. For most people, this was their first time seeing DeVita.

DeVita continued doing features on many songs by Korean artists while creating a little buzz for herself. There’s one notable feature, which could be seen as an important milestone in her career. That is her feature on the track Noise, from AOMG artist Woo Won Jae’s project, titled af.

In a tweet a few days after the release of CRÈME, she shared the significance of this moment.

“I was still making minimum wage working at a restaurant back when Noise dropped- I wrote my part during my shift on the back of this receipt paper. This was about a year and a half ago. A little bit after that I got a call from Pumpkin at 3am Chicago time. He said Jay wanted to meet in Philly in 4 hours. They put me on a plane and the rest is history.”

The phone call she mentioned in her tweet, about Jay wanting to meet, must have been made around September 2018. Jay was performing in Philadelphia at the time. The moment they met in Philadelphia was actually captured through a photo of the two. However, this picture ended up getting removed later on.

Fast forward a few months and Jay had just released his Ask About Me EP. The project focused on a western audience, so he went to the States on a promo run. During his visit, he also met up with DeVita once again, as can be seen here.

Finally, on April 9th, her being signed to AOMG was officially announced and she debuted with her EP titled CRÈME. Her joining AOMG, looked like something that happened pretty naturally. The vast majority of artists she had collaborated on tracks with happened to be AOMG members. Getting comfortable with the AOMG family, likely made the decision to join crystal clear.

Artistically

Just a quick look at her body of work thus far, a majority of it is in English. However, she has no issues singing in Korean, as proven by her feature on Code Kunst’s; Let u in. The tone in her voice has this sort of mixture of many singers, a melting pot of sorts. It reminds me of Audrey Nuna, SAAY, H.E.R, some vocal riffs from Dinah Jane, and at times, just a tiny bit of Ariana Grande.

As an artist, she’s still in the early stages of carving out her own unique sound and style. There’s incredible potential here, but her distinct identity is not completely there yet. I see before me a caterpillar that within a couple years, will transform into a butterfly, with its own identifiable pattern to spread its wings out on.

From what she’s shown so far, I would say she seems most comfortable doing R&B and soul music. However, beyond a quick description I prefer to refrain from categorizing her. Mostly because artists generally feel limited when categorized. More importantly, because we have no idea what she has in store for the future.

Debut EP: CRÈME

CRÈME is DeVita’s “crème de la crème”. She constantly modified the tracklist to present her debut project in a way that held her personal standard; essentially presenting us her best tracks. The result is CRÈME, which consists of five tracks, with a runtime of fourteen minutes altogether.

This EP showcases the fact that she is a competent songwriter, able to write some soulful, emotional ballads. It is completely in English and all the tracks are written by her, telling both life stories of her own and that of others. A majority of the production was handled by her “musical soulmate”; TE RIM, but other notable names, like Code Kunst show up as well.

Tracks:

Movies, introduces the project in a very gentle manner. In the track, DeVita paints a picture of a criminal couple, getting a rush, by committing crimes together. The lyrics feel inspired by movies like Bonnie and Clyde. My initial thoughts were that, for some ears, it could possibly be “too” calm as an opener. It doesn’t demand attention the way EVITA! does. Simply put, it’s not a bad track. I would just have put this track later on in the EP.

EVITA!, is something different compared to what I hear from others in the K-R&B lane. I love the 80’s aesthetic in both the track and music video. Sonically, the nostalgic saxophone riffs, warm lush synth pads, thumping bass line, results in a trip back to the 80s. With this recipe, topped with DeVita’s “current” contemporary soul and R&B voice makes for an interesting combination. The music video had that futuristic 80’s look with the neon colors, and I loved how the guns she played around with looked a lot like the “Needlers” from the Halo franchise.  The title is once again just like DeVita’s name, an ode to the controversial Eva Perón. The instrumental was originally used by TE RIM, the producer of the track in 2017. His version has the same title as DeVita’s version and I recommend giving that one a listen as well, as it has a different feel to it. This track was definitely one of the highlights of the EP.

All About You, is a simple yet beautiful piano love ballad. Originating from her own tales of love, her vocals effortlessly capture what she felt during these moments.

1974 Live, is yet another ballad, but this time, with a calm guitar backing, playing a poppier R&B chord progression. DeVita’s voice is given a lot of space to be in the center of the track. As soon as I heard this track I became curious. What was the significance of this year, which would have her title the track as such? My questions were left unanswered… until the EP had marinated a while, when she tweeted: “1974 Live is about Christine Chubbuck”. In case you’re unfamiliar, Christine Chubbuck was a television news reporter, who made history in 1974. She was the first person to commit suicide live on air. According to her mother Christine’s suicide would on paper be due to an unfullfilling personal life. All throughout her life, she had experienced unreciprocated love. With this information tying back to the track, it becomes a lot less ambiguous and reveals a more cohesive narrative.

Show Me, is the final track of the EP, featuring immaculate production from the talented CODE KUNST. The sound is very moody, which fits her voice like a glove. This is my favorite performance on the entire EP, both lyrically and vocally. The lyrics present someone who’s fed up dealing with men, who talk the talk but don’t walk the walk. Now she’s looking for love with someone who’s honest and “real”.

With the project being a year old now, it has already gotten her nominated for both Rookie of the Year along with EVITA being nominated for Best R&B & Soul Track in the 18th iteration of the Korean Music Awards.

A majority of listeners seemed to enjoy the project. Many seem to be in love with her voice judging by the endless amounts of praise she has received, often described as painfully addicting, soothing, smooth, and so on.

I also asked a friend who’s a huge fan of Korean music, especially the hiphop and r&b scene to share her thoughts on the project. Here’s what she said:

"This whole project is empowering, in particular the tracks Show Me and EVITA! DeVita being a new artist, managed to impress me and many more listeners through this EP. As mentioned earlier, empowering lyrics with unique melodies and beats. Especially with the track EVITA! The fact that 1974 Live and EVITA! was referring to, two historically important women, is something that I love. This is one of my favorite EP:s of 2020 and DeVita is now included in my list of favorite artists." @Haonsmom

From what I’ve seen, only a few have been vocal about not really being too fond of the project. Some were left a bit disappointed, as they were expecting more hip-hop and R&B from an AOMG artist. The lack of “danceable” tracks was also a concern to some. Despite these criticisms, one thing was always mentioned; the girl has a beautiful voice and is obviously talented.

After listening to this EP, I hear a lot of potential. Being an EP with just five tracks, it definitely avoids overstaying its welcome. It’s brief enough to allow a listen through the entire project, no matter what you’re doing. My favorite tracks would have to be Show Me and EVITA!, but I found the whole project to be enjoyable. This EP is sprinkled with lovely vocal performances and simple but captivating production. I do still stand by my opinion that Movies would have fit better later in the tracklist if you’re chasing that mainstream ear.

I think the way EVITA! kicks you in the face, demanding attention, would’ve been a better fit as the opening track. In contrast to the other tracks, the energy level is unique, making the placement feel odd as the rest of the tracks have a chill vibe. All in all, this project gave me a taste of the “crème” but left me with a curious yearning for what this chef will whip up for dessert.

Bright future ahead

The addition of more female artists to the AOMG roster was much needed. Hoody was the first and only female member for about four years. This was the case up until late 2019, where she was then joined by sogumm, who had just won AOMG’s audition program called SignHere. Now funnily enough after DeVita, Lee Hi actually did end up officially signing with AOMG on July 22, last year.

Based on what I’ve heard during Devita’s Kollaboration days, she has improved immensely. This topped with her leaving the impression of someone passionate about their craft, bodes well for what's to come. She seems to be someone who'll constantly evolve.

Following an artist, at the early stages of their career, is something that I always find exciting. With such a lovely debut, I cannot wait to see what the future has in store for DeVita.

To view the content of this article in video format simply play the video embedded below.

Thanks for reading, watching. If you enjoyed this content feel free to follow my socials to stay up to date on when new content is posted.

https://allmylinks.com/dossi-io

Credits:

The first image in article: Original photo, pre-edit from @jinveun

Gif from the Sugar Puff Daehee MV: @moxiepoints

[atsunflower]

Semi Eita x Reader

Rated: SFW — Angst, cursing, traffic accident, injury descriptions, slight mentions of anxiety and post traumatic stress. 

Word count: 2070

Author notes: and here is the second part of our F.L.Y collab. I want to thank all the girls from Knights of the coconut and in particular, both @mooshua and @neonghxst who were pretty patient with me and helped me a lot throughout this process. You guys are amazing and I can't thank you enough. I guess that's all. Please enjoy your reading!

F.L.Y Masterlist

If this can no longer resonate/ No longer make my heart vibrate/ Then like this may be how/ I die my first death

He felt suffocated as the breath hitched on his throat.

Staring at his hands, the male recalled how said limbs brought the best time of his life:

A setter position at Shiratorizawa Volleyball club.

A desk job at the public department.

A promise as a rising star along his band, under a label with a contract too good to be true.

Roaming through his memories, he remembers that every single one of his  achievements were accompanied by lights:

The reflectors on the court.

The white lamps from his office.

The blinding lights from the stage.

Once had he everything he wanted. Now it was all out of his grasp — And lights, very similar to the last ones, now plagued his thoughts.

After all, he remembers when they blinded him before the car came crashing onto his body. Chills ran down his spine every time he recalled how the headlights of the vehicle were the last thing he saw before blacking out.

All it took was one second and then, a month at the hospital that turned into a lifetime of pain — it took only an accident for his life never be the same again.

"Maybe this is what they call first death" He muttered to himself, the words tasting bitter in his mouth as he took on his surroundings.

The constant tapping the secretary made on the keyboard left his nerves on edge and, added to the sterile scent hanging on the air, it felt like a reminder of the folder that sat heavy on his lap. In addition, the curious, pitying, eyes trained to his figure did nothing to soothe his anxiety.

Well, it's not everyday you see a rockstar sitting in a clinic waiting room, after he almost died, the man mused in distaste.

"Semi Eita?" The voice called from the door across the lounge. There, a male stood eyeing him as he made his way to the office.

The room was spacious, with a desk, cabinets, a stretcher and some anatomic models. A typical physiotherapist office, he guessed — not like Semi had ever been into one before, though.

"Make yourself comfortable, Semi-san" The brunette said as he organized some papers on the desk surface "I see it's your first time here. I'm Ennoshita Chikara, the physiotherapist who will take care of your condition from now on" They both shook hands as Semi sat on the chair. He cursed internally as he felt no force on his right hand.

"So, what brings you here today, Semi-san?" Ennoshita asked, eyeing Semi's right hand.

The grey haired male gulped before handing the folder to the physiotherapist.

"Here, this is the medical report. Shirabu-sensei made sure to specify everything regarding my hand." The brunette hummed before taking it. Semi couldn't muster up the courage to talk about his condition.

"I know, Semi-san. But I need to hear it for the history taking and you may know acceptance can help you through the recovery process" The apologetic tone made him sick.

"I don't want to talk about it. Could you please just proceed with the therapy?"

"Look, I know it's a sensitive topic but—" The therapist was interrupted mid sentence when Semi stood. The chair screeched on the floor at the sudden movement before the male tried to snatch the folder from the other.

Tried. 

The paper sheets scattered on the floor, since he couldn't take a proper grip on them.

Tears of frustration welled up on his eyes, as he murmured a meek apology only to storm out of the place.

Semi Eita felt the pitying eyes following him all the way back to his house.

At home, he felt in peace.

No sympathetic gazes and no condescending words. Just him alone with his own demons.

I need a bath. And a beer, the gray haired man decided as the weak hand carded through his hair locks. He flinched at the touch, feeling how dull it was — tactless, even. Just a bundle of flesh and bones hanging from his wrist. Nothing like it used to be.

Ignoring the pang on his chest, the man walked through the corridor. By his left, he saw a shining glass door and immediately, a sensation of longing crawled up his spine and clawed at his heart. He opened the tinted surface, entering the room.

The music studio was the same way he left on the accident day: the gray hoodie thrown over the chair, the paper cups of coffee scattered over his desk and the Moleskine with the lyrics he wrote that night. They resembled three months of hard work and the whole place, a sanctuary built of his dreams.

Too bad the room now felt like his own private purgatory.

Running his index finger over the notebook's leathery spine, memories invaded his mind. Regret gnawed on him even though he wasn't at fault — well, who would have predicted that going to get cigarettes late at the night would end up in a near-death experience? Who would've guessed that, on the way back to his condo, a drunk fucker would hit him with his car and vanish from the scene, without calling an ambulance?

If the medical help came sooner, would things be different? He often wondered, even though he knew it couldn't be helped. His friend, doctor Shirabu, said the damage on his arm was too extensive with a chance of recovery little to nonexistent. His heart stopped beating when he heard those words.

Looking back at it, Semi Eita regretted getting out of his house for such a trivial thing. Before, the musician had his dreams to push him through. Now, all he had left was a medical report — written in a horrendous handwriting, if he may add — stating that patient Semi Eita suffered a minor brain damage and multiple broken bones that caused a lower motor neuron syndrome with wallerian degeneration on the median nerve of his right arm — he didn't understand a shit about the medical terms, but he knew it was bad. Well, it's not like paralysed fingers in the form of 'the hand of benediction' could be a good outcome of an accident.

Benediction? More like a curse, he scowled.

Snapping out of his internal turmoil, brown orbs wandered over the music studio, eyeing all his equipment, as the man drowned on the nostalgic feeling.

On the far corner of the room, white tiles smiled at him — Though, it wasn't a sign of sympathy: in the far corner of the room, the black piano was smiling in mockery, as if it laughed at him, knowing his condition.

You'll never play again, The piano said

"I know!" He retorted.

Your career is dead, the piano chanted.

"I know!"

So pitiful, it snickered — and that was the last straw before despair washed through his body.

Semi spotted the electric guitar by his left. Grabbing the instrument by its neck, he threw it at the other. The wooden body crashed onto the keyboard, the ivory keys agonized at the violence.

Not that he cared, though. He was hurting a lot more than the piano did.

And the tears running down his face were proof enough of it.

Absorbed in his self-conscious state, he didn't see you entering the room, eyes roaming over the mess he made.

"Oh my, Eita!" And his body crashed into yours, sobbing uncontrollably. 

"Eita, love" You said softly, testing the waters.

"Get out" He pleaded weakly, both of you still slumped over the carpet of his studio. Your boyfriend stopped crying long ago, but sorrow still covered his face.

The sight was heartbreaking.

"You know I won't" You said, holding him tighter.

"[Name], get the fuck out!" He said an octave louder, pushing you away "The last thing I want now is your pity. And I don't want you to see me like this, either" Ever the proud man he was, hatred laced his voice — and even though you knew it wasn't directed at you and that he didn't mean it, it still hurted.

"I won't leave you. And I don't pity you" You sincerely stated.

"So why the fuck you're looking at me like this?" Hazel irises squinted at you, the hands clutching your shoulder tightened their grip — the hold on your right felt a lot more stronger.

"I'm worried" And then, he laughed.

Hysterically.

Almost scaringly.

"Why waste your time, huh?" You tried to retort, he beated you to it.

"Why bother with a failure for a boyfriend, hm?"

"Eita"

"What's left to you, huh? I bet you're leaving me now that my fucking career went downhill and I won't be famous anymore" The venom of his words scorched your ears.

Throwing insults at you, Semi didn't measure his words and nor did you measure your actions. A second after, all the two of you felt was the stinging flesh.

Of your hand.

Of his cheek.

"So you'll just sit here and cry?" You grabbed him by the collar, eyes boring into his "Shirabu himself said there was a chance. Are you giving up this easily?"

"Shirabu said there was a slight chance" He corrected you, saliva was sprayed over your skin when he screamed at your face.

"And you'll just take it, giving up without a try?" You were so done. The Semi you knew wasn't a spineless man who gave up so easily.

"You don't know how it feels!" He cracked again, the cry went past his mouth, wavering on the air. Your features softened as your hands moved upwards, cradling his face.

"I don't" The words came ragged "But please, don't give up without pulling out a good fight. You're not acting like yourself"

"It's just so hard. You don't get how empty I feel" The man before you was nothing like your Eita.

"For fuck's sake, Eita. Try the surgery and if it doesn't work, wait for the physical therapy results. If it still doesn't work, learn to play with the other hand, goddammit" You leaned onto him, joining your foreheads "Just don't give up. Back to our Shiratorizawa years, you said you wanted to rely on your own strength to show you abilities, because you desire to do things were always too strong. You prided yourself for being free when showing off, then why are you letting this situation hold you down?"

"It's hard. It's like I'm dying, but feels much more worse than that" Words came in a whisper, still reluctant to consider the options.

"But did you die? Did your talent die?" You lightly shook his body, trying to infuse some energy into it "Did you, all of sudden, forget how to make music?" And he saw determination painted in the hue of your irises.

"But—" He tried to argue.

"No buts, even if you can't play in the band, you can still be a producer. Don't let life reap your art away from you" You pleaded, hoping your words could somehow touch him.

Peeking into his face, you observed its features softening as you felt his muscles relaxing under your palms and your boyfriend reciprocating your loving touches.

Your heart was finally at ease.

"How come you always know what to say in the right time, even if it's cliché as fuck?" Eyelids covered the orbs you loved so much as the words were spoken in a serene mode. 

Semi Eita felt peace.

You tucked the broader body inside of your arms, caressing the lean muscles of his shoulders.

"There's a reason why, other than my pretty face, I'm your muse" He playfully scoffed at you, tightening the hold on your waist.

"Who said you are?" You ignored his words, paying attention to the hair locks under your chin "[Name]?" He started uncertain.

"Hm?"

"You're right. Guess if I didn't die in the accident, it's only fair if I don't let my life as an artist go away either" His soft-spoken words meant everything to you.

Relief washed over you as your heartbeat increased in your chest. But the most important was how you could feel Semi's heart beating again.

I'm in my workroom, it's my studio/ The waves go darkly by in a throe/ But I'll never get dragged away again

Taglist: @anseoo @keiijiis @inarizakikoukou @deerixiie @bristil @maramalademadara @thedreadthreadanomaly @catharsisbabey @aprettyfruit @ttsukii @chasekudo @kenmashoe @daijoubuyuki @krusty-cheetahs @ohmythatmiya

[bluebonnet-daniel]

Favorite Songs #70-61

My official list is always changing, with me moving songs around or adding/removing them as needed, but I’m going to go through the list as it goes right now.

#70: Bohemian Rhapsody- Queen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nxrYwT0SIo

What can I say? This is just one of the most fun songs in history.

#69: Jesus of Suburbia- Green Day

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_uAONQ32SE

I grew up in the suburbs, so this song is... nostalgic, let us say. I actually wrote once in a Discord server about how this served as inspiration for the novel I'm currently writing. This is what i wrote on June 22, 2021:

"While part of its own story/concept album, a lot of the bits and pieces of lyric in this song seem to resonate strongly with the early story beats of my web novel, especially a particular character's journey (Zoe's.) As I said before, my story takes place in Suburban America, and this song (by my interpretation, at least, it's a bit more of a doozy) is about someone raised in the suburbs who came to resent them and the toxic traditionalist values they were taught. The song itself can be interpreted as the main character breaking with their religious beliefs, but in my story this beat is somewhat repurposed, as it is about the character discovering a deeper truth to her religious beliefs that was being obscured by her upbringing."

Couldn't put it better than that. Auto-fellatio aside, let's move on.

#68: San Lorenzo- Pat Metheny Group

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RrUS2N2MyI

Get used to seeing this guy's name because he's going to be on here a lot. This is one of the most relaxing and peaceful songs ever. It's always great to listen to when I'm feeling stressed, or just at any time really.

#67: Desperado- The Eagles

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aelpqWEBHR4

A touching song about a self-designated loner.

#66: Epitaph- King Crimson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXrpFxHfppI

Omg Jojo reference??? This is a beautiful song about feeling confused and lost in a world that seems doomed. It got me through a tough time not too long ago. Judging by the comments section of the video, I'm not the only one.

#65: Every Summer Night- Pat Metheny Group

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KaBbwRiAO4

This song is difficult to describe. It has a very unique feel that is quite nostalgic, hopeful, and just cool. This song also properly introduced me to Pat Metheny when I played the Bob Curnow arrangement of it in high school jazz band.

#64: Dying in L. A.- Panic! at the Disco

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iahWWAr82Q0

I actually kind of glossed over this song at first when I listened to this album, but one day it just managed to hit me right, and now it's my favorite song from it. It reminds me a lot of Bojack Horseman. I find it really touching how it conveys the hope of someone new on the scene in LA alongside the feeling of disillusionment of a longtime devotee.

#63: Kitchen Sink- Twenty One Pilots

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gcNBMMQIMk

This song connects to me since I certainly feel like I am a kitchen sink in some ways. I've always felt like a lot of the beliefs/feelings I have contradict themselves, and sorting all of that out is like its own day job. As a result I often feel as if I never truly fit in anywhere, and my only option is to forge my own path. I don't think that's what the song is supposed to mean, but the song itself also says "a kitchen sink to you, is not a kitchen sink to me," so I think that's okay.

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

-Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

#62: Quartet- Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-thazivcnCw

This is the first of many, many Yes songs on this list, as they're more or less my favorite band. (This officially isn't a Yes song, but come on, it is.) It's a curious one, a very cutesy song that has lyrics which I have always interpreted to be religious. I particularly like the third and final section, it is one of the prettiest passages of music I've ever heard.

#61: The Court Of The Crimson King- King Crimson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukgraQ-xkp4

There's a reason why this is one of the most famous prog rock songs of all time. It has a sense of epicness and grandeur to it that makes it very easy to picture the titular court. I like how the song sort of has a fake out ending, before starting the famous "dance of the puppets" segment.

[manjuhitorie]

Hitorie Interview - Skream! Magazine - Feb. 2021 Issue

First and foremost, I'd like to address REAMP as a whole. I couldn't help but pick up on signs inner turmoil and sorrow over wowaka's unfortunate passing, among a brand new resolve. What's your opinion on this such take?

Shinoda: We voluntarily chose to vent those feelings without any beating around the bush. This band has taken a huge twist in terms of the one who sings, writes, and produces the music, after all. There’s no point in hiding that, we felt. To be completely honest, even after all this time we still haven’t exactly regained our balance at all. Sad is sad. In order to express our choice to push onwards, the cards we had in our hands are.... -Actually the word “cards” was a poor choice. We merely had no other option but to express our feelings outright. ygarshy: We weren’t in the place to put together a theme or concept for the album or anything like that either. We felt baffled and confused by the very fact that we were making songs at all, but nevertheless I felt we had to do it, we just have to. We were wishy-washy so, we decided to hold the times we 4 made songs together close to our hearts, and use that as our foothold: to just try and write as we always do. Shinoda: Squeezing a song out was our one and only objective. Yumao: Yeah. The universe wowaka alone had created and his structures and all that.. To be honest, this new album is cut off from it... We chose to not agonize over trying to recreate it, and to rather let whatever we could just flow out of us.

I have a question about the timeline. After wowaka’s passing, when did you make the concrete decision to keep Hitorie alive?

Shinoda: To be real, we still haven’t even made that decision. Yumao: We haven’t concretely said “Let’s keep this up.” or anything. Our mixed emotions are still churning, or how to say it... When we wrote the music we become immersed and even excited about it but, once our songs were laid out on the table we came back to our senses, like “Uhm? Is this okay?” ygarshy: Even now I’ll have sudden thoughts like “Hm? What am I doing here?”, even when we toured as a trio for the Hitori-Escape Tour 2019, I never thought ‘Let’s keep going on like this’ as well, owing to the circumstances. Just, if we didn’t do it we would’ve lost out minds is all. Shinoda: He speaks the truth alright. ygarshy: If we had to make a thoughtful commitment, I think it would’ve taken us hundreds upon hundreds of years until we finally made a move.

Was there not any type of critical moment during the tour wherein you realized “We can do this?”

Shinoda: Truthfully, during the tour I was so deep into it that I barely even the foggiest memory as to what was going through my brain back then. What I can say for sure is that 2 years ago on June 1st at the Memorial Concert (At Shinkiba Studio Coast), before that day I hadn’t stood on the stage in months. For the past 10 years of my life I haven’t gone that long without the stage. So when I got up for the Memorial Concert, despite it being a tragic event, I felt that when I’m up on stage with this band my mental state is the most stable it ever is. We even all went out for Chinese food after that.

The three of you did?

Shinoda: Yep. We drank our heads off and talked about how “We could totally manage a tour too, eh?” Yumao: Since our HOWLS tour (Hitorie Tour 2019 “Coyote Howling”) was cancelled, we felt we owed something, that we had to do something. We may be sad but, even more important than that was the urgency of the situation.

So there was no resolve or concrete decision to tour and make an album then.

Shinoda: Yep, looking back, I think that’s right.

Were you writing songs while touring?

Shinoda: We started writing around March of 2020? Yumao: Due to COVID-19 we had a lot of free time on our hands, so we took the oppurtunity. Though it wasn’t as if we said “Alright, let’s get going!”, we just all knew it was imminent, and that we had to do it at some point. That point was then.

Which was the first song you wrote?

Among the ones which made the cut, “Marshall A” was the first one consummated at the studio. Though “Utsutsu” was the first one made in my head. Around the end of the tour in 2019 the idea for the phrases took form. I felt that if I was to ever write for Hitorie again, this would be it.

”Utsutsu” stresses sorrow way thicker and heavier than any of the other songs in the album, so it makes sense that it came first.

Shinoda: It gets my feelings across, doesn’t it... The lyric and sung melody of “Utsutsu da ne” were around since the beginning.

Did you each make a song voluntarily?

Yumao: Yessiree. It was like “I’m’ere writing, so you'd better pick it up too." Shinoda: We had the slogan "Let's make 10 songs in one month". Yumao: Even if it was one chorus of a song, that would be okay. Shinoda: In the end, the ratio of songs I, ygarshy and Yumao completed was 8:1:1 (Though in the album itself it became 6:2:2). It might seem unbalanced, but this is perfectly balanced for us. ygarshy: Shinoda just makes a heap ton of songs. Shinoda: From there we picked and chose.

Did you have any standards for which would make the cut? Such as befitting of the current Hitorie or not?

Shinoda: That too was all over the place. Personally when I write, I place importance in how it will pan out with Hitorie as a whole but, I also contemplated what would fit our band's current climate. "Should the guitar not be too distorted?" "Should it not sound too 'rock band-ish'?", my mind was going crazy, I thought it would be best if it was entirely chilled out and mellow. There  was a moment when a switch flipped.

It is true that songs such as 'tat' do take that direction, but after listening to the complete album I have to say, the rock band-ish style is in full bloom. There's a lot of distortion too.

Shinoda: Yep, it's distorted. Yumao: And it's rock (giggling). ygarshy: Listening to Shinoda say that just now made me upset.

Why is that?

ygarshy: Because I had purposefully intended for it to be distorted. Everyone: Ahahaha!

So you like distortion (laughing). To push this point further, would it be true to say that those are core aspects of Hitorie's style? Shinoda: Ahh, there’s definitely truth in that.

Yumao: The one most mindful of that had to have been ygarshy. Whatever we release next can’t be too distant from classic Hitorie, he was the one who secured how best to keep the string in tact.

Where was the poster song ’curved edge’ made in the creative process timeline? Shinoda: We upheld the slogan of 10 songs a month for about 2 months, and ‘curved edge’ was the final one. I wanted to make a classic Hitorie style riff-based song, but I didn’t want high-tempos. ‘curved edge’ was where I finally found the perfect balance between my wishes and Hitorie’s standards.

Hitorie never made songs with unwavering low tempos that take off into an uplifting dance breakdown at the chorus up until now after all.  

Shinoda: Yeah. We all made the silent agreement to absolutely not try and make songs like wowaka’s.

I can definitely detect wowaka’s influence on your music, which is natural after being in a band together for so long. So, you kept it at.

ygarshy: We’ve each grown a keen sense for this. Suppose we were to show wowaka a song we wrote that mimics his style... He would make a really disgusted face. We just know, we just have a sense for it.

Shinoda: That’s the thing he despises the most after all.

ygarshy: That’s right. It would be but as a parody. And we wouldn’t want to do that.

ygarshy, you wrote the songs ‘Image’ and ‘dirty, correct. The melody of them feel nostalgic and longing, yet simultaneously evoke a rush and shivers.

ygarshy: In my current state letting the music flow out of me is all I’m capable of. Last spring, or summer was it, where we were showing each other our songs I.... Felt sad. So sad. Like “Why am I writing songs for Hitorie? Why is this what it’s come to?”

Yumao: Yep yep.

ygarshy: That’s why “dirty” and “Image” both are not very elaborate pieces. There’s much room to mix up chords or arrange it to be complex but, I just really had no heart to do that. Whatever popped out of my head wasn’t tinkered in the slightest, my wish was to keep in its organic simple form.

So when you handled the arrangement of music as a band, did you change as little as possible?

ygarshy: For the two songs I brought in, they were nice and stayed as close to demo version as they possibly could. “dirty” especially has a garage-style melody and tone which clicks immediately, so the lyrics and singing were molded to follow suit. Shinoda: Him (ygarshy) and I are the same age and all, so I pretty much can grasp whatever he goes for. Like he was probably going for those late 1990’s declining vibes. ygarshy: Exactly. I had thought to myself that I wanted dirty lyrics, and he actually delivered just that. I’d like to hear the story behind the two songs Yumao wrote as well, “YUBIKIRI” and “faceless enemy”. Both melodies are pop.

Yumao: That just kind of happens with me. Shinoda: He makes my contemplating and agonizing look stupid, because those songs are just as clear as fresh water. Yumao: All I did was squeeze out whatever I could (laughing). To be honest, I think my songs will be the most unacceptable to Hitorie’s listeners. I may be a member of Hitorie, and understand Hitorie like the back of my hand but, from the start I knew I’m incapable of writing songs to Hitorie’s standards. I took a realistic approach. ygarshy: Though I really enjoy the music Yumao wrote before Hitorie. So when he brought it those genuine honest pieces, I was so happy. I think I like the songs more than he himself does.

The fact that you chose to keep Yumao’s songs in the album despite them not being perfectly Hitorie fashioned, sounds like proof that you’ve found your answer for this album.

Yumao: Pedaling to the mettle is what I have to do, it’s all I can do. No matter if it’s acceptable or not, I’m doing what I can. That’s one message behind my songs.

Your song “YUBIKIRI” as the final track of the album has a lot of impact as well. It’s a bright and cheery song yet somehow it brings a tear to the eye.

Shinoda: Doesn’t it?

Yumao: It’s very cheery and it’s the brightest of the mix, isn’t it. When I wrote I was riding the groove in over my head, so I asked Shinoda to make the lyrics sound immature, like something a teenager would click with. I felt knotted up inside, and I needed something to break the chains for me. Completely divert from what Hitorie should or shouldn’t do, I alone needed to express and vent myself. And that’s how this song happened.

Shinoda: Yumao made that direct request of me, so I steered my word choices far away from any purple-prose. The keyboard was played by NariHane of Passpied, and when those 3 were off recording the music without me, I finished the lyrics. That’s how quickly they were zipped out.

After completing a whole album, how do you feel, do you think you will be able to continue on like this?

Shinoda: I don’t know yet. We’ll have to hear the people’s opinions. ygarshy: And what are we going to do after hearing them? After performing all these concerts? is one apprehension I have but,.. everything feels so up in the air.

Yumao: I know we haven’t said anything conclusive but! I want people to know we have a mountain of hypotheses on how we could move forward, on how we could keep Hitorie going, on how we could keep wowaka alive but, for now this album was just a do-or-die for us!

Shinoda: We made it, that’s all we needed.

Yumao: Yep. It was an absolute for us. I want to get that point across. This album is our declaration: that “We’ve taken one step forward”!

[tilbageidanmark]

Movies I watched (and books I read) this week - 29

The Lighthouse, an ominous story about two lighthouse keepers who descend into madness as they are stranded on a remote island. New England horror gothic of the 1890s. Stunning acting and black & white cinematography. Dark and crusty as the soul.

Willem Dafoe’s crazed Hark Triton, Hark monologue.

✴️  2 animated shorts:

✳️✳️✳️ One Small Step, from Taiko Studios: My most favorite not-Pixar animated short about a little girl and her old dad. I watched it 20 times, and I’ll watch it 20 more. 

10/10 - Perfect eight minutes of heartbreak and love.

✳️✳️✳️ Nothing happens, a Danish short: on a snowy field on the outskirts of town, a mysterious group of people gather to watch a flock of ravens.

✴️  

Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Winter Sleep, an epic 2014 Turkish adaptation of Chekhov’s short story "The Wife".

3+ hours long, dialogue-rich and slow exploration of an ambiguous hotel owner in Cappadocia, who is challenged by all the people around him, including his unhappy young wife and frustrated sister. Lyrical, refined, and cerebral - I’ll check out Ceylan’s other films.

✴️  

I didn’t remember that Chekhov wrote many hundreds of stories before dying young at 44. In order to better understand the narrative in ‘Winter Sleep’, I read his story ‘The Wife’ (full text here).

And indeed, the opaque, meandering film left much to interpretation. This short story made much clearer that this was an unhappy marriage, a misunderstood couple who couldn’t communicate any more without both feeling slighted and hurt. I couldn’t see why was the husband so disagreeable to everybody around them. But it helped bringing this broken life into focus.

✴️  

The Lure, a weird Polish horror-musical, very loosely adapted from Hans Christian Andersen's ‘Little Mermaid’. Combining siren sisters, cannibalism, kitschy vampires, MTV and trashy nightclubs in 1980′s Warsaw. The opening scene was the most promising - and it went down from there.

2/10

✴️

Charly, adapted from the sci-fi story ‘Flowers for Algernon’. A “retarded” Cliff Robertson is selected for a miraculous surgery that triples his IQ & makes him a genius. It starts innocently enough trying to address the plight of the mentally challenged, but once he falls in love with his teacher, it gets dated ridiculously fast.

The only lasting part of the movie is Ravi Shankar’s beautiful score.

Charly was the only movie my ‘teenager me’ saw together with my mother: I don’t remember how come we went to the theater and why she picked this one, but I was 15 then.

✴️   2 by Bob Nelson:

✳️✳️✳️ The confirmation: ‘The Bicycle Thieves’ in small town Washington. Clive Owen is a divorced, down-on-his-luck, loser father, who gets to spend a weekend from hell with his 8 year old son. The first half is gloomy and very hard to watch as all the daily things that can go wrong, do. But he gets to bond with his church-going son, and they both find redemption at the end.

This was directed by 60 year old first-time director Bob Nelson.

Best film of the week! 

✳️✳️✳️ Before Confirmation, Bob Nelson wrote the script for Alexander Payne’s Nebraska: another soft story about an estranged parent. This one has old, senile Bruce Dern and his son on a black and white road trip to claim an illusory million-dollar sweepstakes prize. Simple, austere, heart-breaking. 8/10.

✴️  

Ingmar Bergman’s 1975 stage production of Mozart’s masonic The Magic Flute.

First re-watch in 40+ years - what joy!

✴️  

Hilda af Klimt, The Life of an Artist, a short bio of the spiritualist and world’s first abstract painter. By educator Paul Priestley on his ‘Art History School’ YouTube channel.

✴️  

The Little World of Don Camillo, 1952, based on a book I loved as a kid. With toothy Fernandel as an activist priest in a power struggle with his frenemy the Bolshevik mayor. “In a small village in the Po valley”. Nostalgic throw-back to late 40′s Italy.

✴️  

The Insult, a 2017 Oscar-nominated Lebanese story about a cuss word that escalates until it engulfs the whole country. A Palestinian construction worker calls a hot-head Christian mechanic ‘A fucking prick (ARS)’ when he behaves like one, and - like the good middle-easterners they are - neither one can let it go until it nearly destroys both of them.

It would have been even better if it didn’t turn into a traditional courtroom drama in the second half, but still... 5/10

✴️  

David Fincher’s masterful The Social Network, about young hateful asshole Mark Zuckerberg stealing the concept of facebook from the Vinklevoss brothers. Terrific drama, crackling dialogue by Aaron Sorkin, and moody, tense score by Trent Reznor.

Not exactly sure how truthful the story is, but it helped establish the notion that he was always a despicable person, as confirmed in all his actions in the last 20 years,

✴️  

I can’t believe I just watched Long Shot AGAIN, a month or two after my last re-watch! Despite its cliched tropes, I can’t get enough of the romantic chemistry between drop-dead beautiful Charlize Theron & the schlubby guy she once babysat. (Photo Above).

And, O'Shea Jackson Jr. is a carbon copy of his dad, O'Shea Jackson Sr.

✴️ 

Flesh Gordon, a cheesy “sex comedy” from 1974, cheap spoof of the 1930′s Flash Gordon serials. Gratuitous, unfunny soft-core stupidity.

The concept of ‘No Consent’ was central to many of the early sexploitation movies. Not camp!

✴️  

Sons of Denmark, a misfired political thriller, about a growing anti-emigrant, white power movement in Denmark and its effects on the local Muslim population. 3/10

✴️  

The HBO documentary Catch And Kill, Ronan Farrow’s new series, based on his podcast, which was based on his book which was based on his reportage (Talking about milking a story).

Farrow was a hero, Weinstein was a super-creep, and I must stop watching HBO-type documentaries.

- - - - -

(My complete movie list is here)

[lilyhandmaiden]

The Things That Have Gotten Me Through 2020

In the last few minutes of 2020, I thought I would share some of the little things that have brought me joy and comfort and, when both of those were in short supply, have dragged me forward through this year.

12 Monkeys (TV series)

I started watching the 2015-2018 SyFy series 12 Monkeys, which revolves around time travel being invented to stop a humanity-ending pandemic, in February or so, right before it became clear that the current pandemic was going to have a big impact on all our lives. It was... weird timing. Nevertheless, in the early days of lockdown, etc., all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and escape by watching this ragtag group of idiots save the world and, eventually, Time Itself. They were, overall, very bad at it, always getting in their own way, but they won anyway, and that felt strangely encouraging. The show is not unproblematic at times, but its overall message is that, while endings are inevitable, the relationships we form and the choices we make matter. That was something I needed to hear and take to heart. Plus, the series introduced me to Jennifer Goines, one of my all-time favorite fictional characters. As played by Emily Hampshire (Stevie from Schitt’s Creek in a role as unlike Stevie as it is possible to be, at least in terms of self-expression), Jennifer is “brave, impulsive, irrationally rational,” and a force of radical love and compassion for her friends and, ultimately, for herself—even if her brain never works the way she wants it to. May we all try to live in the happily ever now.

 Schitt’s Creek winning all the Emmys

Schitt’s Creek was my big discovery of last year, and its amazing character development in a story about finding oneself and forming connections in the process of starting all over was hugely important to me upon entering into post-academic life. This year, I’ve loved seeing this show’s snowballing popularity, which culminated in its sweep of the Emmy comedy category. Watching the ceremony at home with my cat, I screamed as those wins piled on (not as loudly as Sarah Levy up in Canada, but still). Legends Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy with their first acting Emmys! Dan Levy for writing and directing and acting on his first series doing any of those in a major capacity! Annie Murphy, for her hilarious and heartbreaking and inspiring and masterful portrayal of Alexis Rose, after she was told she couldn’t do comedy without comedy lessons and almost quit acting! The COSTUMES. No cast and crew have ever been more deserving. Love that journey for them! And the fan celebrations afterward were such an expression of communal joy at a time when joy and community were not so easy to come by.

 Folklore and Evermore and Taylor Swift

           It took me about a month to get around to listening to Taylor Swift’s first surprise pandemic album, folklore. Once I did, though, I couldn’t seem to stop. There were stretches of weeks when I only listened to folklore. It was for working and driving and writing and cleaning and thinking. It’s sonically soothing and lyrically gorgeous, pulling from literature, history, memory, isolation. I’ve never listened to an album where I can pick out so many favorite individual lines before. I’ve always admired Swift most for her storytelling, so it’s no huge surprise that I love this album, where she embraces the storyteller role. Still, I’d only really paid attention 1989 and her singles before—and not really even to her singles over the past few years. After about a month of only listening to folklore, all the time, like it had me hypnotized, I decided it might be worth listening through the entire Taylor Swift discography.

           I fell in love with folklore as an album for its bittersweet, nostalgic feel that spoke so perfectly to this moment in time, but the exact moment I fell for Taylor Swift as an artist might have been when my jaw dropped at the cutting specificity of, “Don’t you think nineteen’s too young to be played by your dark, twisted game?” in “Dear John.” And then when I cackled as she wrapped up the song with, “The girl in the dress wrote you a song. You should’ve known.” That was when I started to appreciate Taylor Swift for the way she has, from a very young age, understood her power as a storyteller, and specifically as the teller of her own story. “I was there. I remember it,” she emphasizes over and over in song after song, seizing the authority she might otherwise be denied as a young woman (“when you are young, they assume you know nothing”). Plus, her use of imagery is unparalleled. folklore spoke to this moment in time, but there is a Taylor Swift song for every possible moment and mood, and that became a comfort and escape of its own.

           So, by the time evermore came out, I was able to appreciate it as an event. And that, in these times, is no small thing. evermore is the wilder and sadder of the twin albums, and its songs revolve around endings and, on the other side, improbable hope. Here’s to this pain not being for evermore. Take a nap, Taylor. You’ve earned it.

 Writing

At the end of grad school, I felt like I might never write creatively again. I was afraid that creative part of me had withered up and died. But last year, slowly, it started to come back, and this year it’s been one of my main sources of joy. I’ve written thousands of words, and I’m actually enjoying the process of doing it and proud of the outcome. I know and understand why a lot of people have struggled to be creative this year, but for me, writing my way into another world where I am actually in control of what happens has been my favorite way of escaping this one. It’s all I want to do all day while I’m sitting at work, doing official correspondence. I’m even writing original fiction for the first time in ages, and you know what? It’s not nearly as scary or difficult as I was afraid it would be. Plus, I love talking about writing, sharing enthusiasm and working through problems, with friends. I’m not a fast writer, but I hope to do more of it, and find a way to do it more consistently, in 2021.

 Texting with friends

I haven’t been perfect at it, but I made the decision at the beginning of 2020, before All This even really got started, to do a better job at keeping in touch with my friends. In a year when we’ve had to reconfigure so many things we care about, I can wholeheartedly recommend a weekly text with friends as a way of keeping those relationships and those people prominent in your life. Throughout the year, reaching out on a regular basis to the people I love—when I need them, when they need me, just to say hi—has deepened relationships I care about and has been a constant source of comfort, stability, and fun. So much emotional and physical good has come out of it for me and, I hope, for others as well. This is a part of the year I’m really proud of, and I intend to continue, expand, and refine this program in 2021.

 Learning to cook things

At the beginning of the year, I set the modest goal of learning to cook one simple thing each month of the year. When so many other goals and aspirations got blown up, this is one I was able to keep to for the most part. The holidays got in the way at the very end, but I did learn to cook 10 new things this year. For a person who could cook almost nothing before, this is big progress. It worked so well that this is another program I intend to carry on into 2021.

 My nephew

Last year, I was looking forward to the day when this kid would be able to recognize me. Last weekend, he came running to be picked up with a big smile when I came through the door and hugged me when I left. It’s possible that he thinks Aunt Erin With a Mask and Aunt Erin Without a Mask (the latter of whom appears only rarely) are two different people, but he loves both of us, and we love him. I can’t wait to see what he’s learned by this time next year. I hope the world is a friendlier place for him by then.

Happy New Year!

[thenighttrain]

folklore first listen

pls feel free to ignore this, i just wanted to record my screaming on my blog so that i can refer back to it and laugh at myself someday x

The 1

THE PIANO OMG I LOVE IT AND I LOVE THE BEAT I looooove THIS SONG IT’S SO NOSTALGIC WHO THE FUCK IS IT ABOUT OH MY OGD IM SCREAMING also the swearing I’m living… ok seriously who is this about I am losing my mind. This is so bittersweet I’m ?!!!!!!!!!!!! I REALLY LOVE THIS

CARDIGAN

I ALSO LOVE THIS WHAT ITS’ SO NOSTALGIC and the music video is so pretty wit the green and she looks like an actual forest nymph with the piano and the water and it’s all incredible. YOU DREW STARS AROUND MY SCARS BUT NOW I’M BLEEDING???????? BITCH. THE LYRICS IN THIS ARE FUCKING INCREDIBLE WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK OH MY DISJFASLDFNSADF OH MY GDO I knew you’d linger like a tattoo kiss??????? MAAM?

The last great American dynasty

SO INTRIGUING HOW SHE WROTE THIS??? WHAT IS IT ABOUT? IDK BUT I LOVE IT

Exile

BON IVERRRRRR I LOVE THE WAY HIS VOICE SOUNDS IN THIS AND THE CHORUS IS HAUNTINGLY BEAUTIFUL and the background vocals… omg. This album his the most unique thing she’s ever written I????? I LOVE HOW HER VOICE SOUNDS N THE CHORUS. ‘You were my crown now I’m in exile seeing you out’? YOU KNOW LIKE I CAN IMAGINE THESE SONGS AS THE SOUNDTRACK TO SO MANY OF MY FAVOURITE FANTASY BOOKS IM LOSING MY MIND. ALSO OH MY GOD BON IVERS VOICE AT THE END HOLY FUCK!!!! THIS IS SO GOOD THIS IS ONE OF HER BEST DUETS IM LOSING MY SHIT this song is incredible I am in LOVE

My tears ricochet

TRACK 5 TRACK 5 TRACK 5 AHH I LOVE HOW DEEP HER VOICE GOES AND THE BACKGROUND VOCALS OMG. Oh my god the chorus I am in love, I love her voice sounds so raw on this album, we haven’t heard that in years IF I’M DEAD TO YOU WHY ARE YOU AT THE WAKE CURSING MY NAME?? OMG. This is fully giving me like fae woodland imagery I just love it, the vibes of it all!  AS YOU BURY ME? OH MY GOD IS SHE A GHOST IM SCREAMING I LOVE THIS PERSPECTIVE. HOLY FUCK HOLY FUCK THE BRIDGE!!!!!!!! THE LINES ABOUT SCREAMING. THE BRIDGE IS UNBELIEVABLE AND THE WAY IT JUST FADES OUT I?

Mirrorball

Omg I love the vocal effects! This is full indie pop vibes I AM DIGGING IT. OH MY GOD THE CHORUS BROOO OK I OFFICIALLY LOVE THIS SONG IT’S EXACTLY THE KIND OF MUSIC I LIKE LISTENING TO. ‘Drunk as they watch my shadow, edges glisten’ oh wow the lyrics in this album are fucking otherworldly. Oh fuck this is  agood bridge. I really cannot wait for all the analysis of this album by smarter people because I am not understanding BUT I AM LOVING IT. ALSO IDK WHAT A MIRRORBALL IS BUT I LOVE IT ANYWAY. How does she know such fancy words, I want her brain

Seven

‘I ht my peak at seven’ ok but same? HEYY SHE MENTIONED MOON AND SATURN I AM LIVINGGGGG. It’s so soft and wistful, those are the vibes of this album so far and I am really LOVING IT. PLEASE PICTURE ME IN THE WEEDS BEFORE I LEARNED CIVILITIY I USED TO SCREAM FEROCIOUSLY ANY TIME I WANTED?? IM YELLING I LOVEEEEE THESE LYRICS OH MY GOODNESS

August

ONCE AGAIN I LOVE THE VOCAL EFFECTS, I LOVE THE WAY HER VOICE SOUNDS.  Omg the chorus is catchy! I love the way she sings ‘I can see’! OK THSI SONG IS ONE OF MY FAVOURITES I MEAN JUST LISTEN TO IT? I HAVE BEEN IN A STATE OF SHOCK SINCE LAST NIGHT BUT THIS IS MAGICAL ETHEREAL GROUNDBREAKING NEVER BEFORE SEEN INCREDIBLE PERFECT. OHH GOD THE BRIDGE IS COMNIG UP- YES IT’S AJFDSNAFKJSDFAF SHE WROTE THIS SONG IITS’ SO GOOD MISDFN JASDNFLJK SO MUCH FOR SUMMER LOVE AND SAYING US CAUSE U WERENT MINE TO LOSE!!!!! OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! TAYLOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is one fo her best songs ever EVER OMG AND THE BACKING VOCALS AT THE END AHH AND THE BEAT DROP TAYLOR WHAT THE FUCK YOU’VE OUTDONE YOURSELF A G A I N ??? IM NEVER GONNA RECOVER FROM THIS FUCK

This is me trying

Firstly, this song title is such a mood, especially this year. The beat in this song s so good - THIS SICK BEAT. AHH THERE IS THS COOL INSTRUMENT IS IT A VIOLIN IDK BUT I LOVE IT OMG. ‘THEY TOLD ME ALL OF MY CAGES WERE MENTAL SO I GOT WASTED LIKE ALL MY POTENTIAL AND MY WORDS SHOOT TO KILL WHEN I’M BAD I HAVE A LOT OF REGRETS ABOUT THAT II WAS SO AHEAD OF THE CURVE THAT THE CURVE BECAME A SPHERE I FELL BEHIND ON MY CLASS LATE UNTIL I ENDED UP HERE POURING OUT MY HEART TO A STRANGER BUT I DIDNT POUR THE WHISKEY! Oh god the ‘AT LEAST IM TRYING’ MAAAAM. THAT LAST VERSE FUCK FUCK FUF ASJDO FUCK THE BUILD UP. Listen I don’t know what the fuck this song is about but I do know that I love it I ADORE IT I FEEL LIKE EVERY SONG IS BETTER THAN THE LAST WHAT THE FUCK

Illicit affairs

I’m so intrigued by the title of this song! I LOVE the guitar in this song omg it’s so soft and wistful? IT DIES A MIIIILLIOON LITTLE TIMES……….. I love the little falsettos, that you picked out just for HIM! Take the words for what they are, a dwindling mercurial HIGH a drug that only worked the first few hundred times AND THAT’S THE THING ABOUT ILLICIT AFFAIRS AND CLANDESTINE MEETINGS AND STOLEN STARES they show their truth one single time BUT THEY LIE AND THEY LIE AND THEY LIE A MIILION LITTLE TIMES. LOOK AT THIS IDIOTIC FOOL THAT YOU MADE ME YOU TAUGHT ME A SECRET LANGUAGE I CAN’T SPEAK WITH ANYONE ELSE and you know damn well for you I would ruin myself a million little times. Holy fuck I have 0 words this is. Unbelievable it’s sunning I LOVE the bridge? I?

Invisible string

Oh lord I am not ready for this one. I love the way she sings the pre chorus! Were the CLUUUES I didn’t see—ee-ee. Omg this song is actually so cute. CHAINS AROUND MY DEMONS? WOOL TO BRAVE THE SEASONS? HOW THE FUCK DID SHE WRITE THIS IT’S SO GOOD IM SPEECHLESS also I LOVE the strings in this song, I love the production of this entire album tbh. It’s so chill and stripped back and it makes you focus on her vocals which sound soooo good.

Mad woman

TAYLOR SAID FUCK TAYLOR SAID FUCK TAYLOR SAID FUCK IM LIVINNGGGGG. ANYYWAY I LOOOVE THIS IM DIGGING ITTT I LOVE THE CHORUS EEEEK. the second verse omg I love the anger, the bitterness, you can HEAR it in her voice! It’s obvious that wanting me dead has already brought you two together??? EEK THE BRIDGE a spinster? What a shame she went mad… YOU MADE HER LIKE THAT OMG BITCH

Epiphany

Omg the intro build up - I love it. This sounds like a church choir? Is this about a soldier in war? What? It reminds me of Dunkirk or something omg. This is again so haunting, very slow and the piano only adds to the somber tone

Betty

WHO? IS? BETTY??????? Oh hey this is a gentle intro with this instrument that sounds familiar but idk what it is but I love it. I love the melody in this omg!  SHE SAID FUCK AGAIN SHE SAID FUCK AGAI NOGAS JDFHLDSDKFLD TAYLORRRRRR WOULD YOU TELL ME TO GO FUCK MYSELF??? IM ONLY 17 I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING BUT I KNNOW MISS YOU! BITCH!!!!!!!! This is about like a lost first love! Anyway I really looove how her voice sounds in this and the melody…. I DREAMT OF YOU ALL SUMMER LONG OMG THE BRIDGE IS INCREDIBLE!!!!! Omg awww the only thing I wanna do is make it up to you so I showed up at your party?? AHH THE KEY CHANGE INI THE LAST CHORUS EEEEKKKKKK OMGGGGG WILL IT PATCH YOUR BROKEN WINGS I’M ONLY 17 IDK ANYTHING BUT I KNOW I MISS YOU OMG THE REFERENCE TO A CARDIGAN AGAIN!!!!!!!! AND THE STREETLIGHT! IM YELLING I LOVE THE PARALLELS AND THE MOTIFS and you can just hear the childish innocence int his song, I love it

Peace

This intro is SO COOL AND I AM VIBING HARD TO IT, I LOVE THE GUITAR IN THE BACKGROUND? Ok oh god I really like this one. The devil’s in the details but you got a friend in me I— THIS CHORUS IS AMAZING I ADORE IT. Omg this might be one of my favourites. Holy fuck I cannot get over how good the lyrics in this album are!!!!!!! I TALK SHIT WITH MY FRIENDS IT’S LIKE I’M WASTING YOUR HONOUR! Sit with you in the TRENCHES? Omg! WHAT IS THIS ABOUT I AM YELLING!!!!!!!!! ‘Clowns to the west’ oh hey that’s me. EEK THE SOFT KEYBOARD IN THE BACKGROUND - YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hoax

Last song? Ma’am I am not ready!!!!!!!!! THE PIANO IN THIS OMG. The chorus….. it’s beautiful……….. YOUR FAITHLESS LOVE’S THE ONLY HOAX I BELIEVE IN OH MY GODDDD. I’m yelling I love this so much. I loooove the angst of the chorus, the resignation that this is the one love she wants, even if it’s faithless!  ‘You know I left a part of me back in New York’… THE LOUIS TOMLINSON PARALLEL DAFJKHASFKADS (I know you left a part of you in New York). ‘What you didd was just as hard’ omg what did he doooo?? MY KINGDOM COME UNDONE AHHHHH YOU HAVE BEATEN MY HEART! WHY IS THIS SONG SO BITTERSWEET IM ???????

[hermionegranger56]

ok lads its time for my breakdown of folklore, something absolutely no one is asking for but here we are!! this album. thIs ALBUMMMM. dear GOD. the intersection of my two favorite things, taylor swift and indie folk???? i feel like i’m dreaming. when she announced the surprise drop i literally burst into tears and evidently for good reason lol.

anywho here’s the thing. Red has been my all time favorite album for 8 years now. it holds such an important place in my life and i never thought anything she did could come close (though Lover almost did). but this. THIS IS BETTER THAN RED

the lyrical genius is unmatched here. taylor isn’t just writing songs here, this is POETRY. every song is nuanced, intricate, devastatingly beautiful, with words that’ll haunt me for a long time. and the fact that it’s stories, literal folklore, no longer just about her own life is incredibly creative and is executed so well for someone who has interwoven her life into her entire body of music thus far. folklore blends facts with fiction so seamlessly and is a true exhibition of taylor’s power as a songwriter.

and the vibessss!! from haunting heartbreak songs, to ethereal lost-in-the-woods vibes, to a comforting return to her old self, this album has everything. taylor is without a doubt one of the most versatile artists of our generation, having success and skill in multiple genres and folklore only solidifies this fact.

ALL RIGHT KIDS LETS JUMP IN

the 1: hell yeah explicit tswift give it to me lol you ARE on some new shit!! ok when i first listened to this i hadn’t read her statement about the other perspectives and i was about to RIOT about her and joe breaking up (like they could ever lol). this is such a catchy beat, such a casual?? look at such a painful feeling? a really good start to this album. the part where she goes another day waking up aLONE killlllllls me wow

fave lines: “in my defense i have none/for never leaving well enough alone”

cardigan: (don’t get me started on the mv it’s gorgeous) YES THE TEENAGE LOVE TRIANGLE suchhh a good concept!! the melody of this song is unreal, the chorus makes me want to scream it’s so beautiful, the i-i-i is SOMETHING ELSE. it’s crazy how just the melody makes betty’s pain so palpable, but so enchanting at the same time. it’s bittersweet and cinematic and i’m in love. PETER LOSING WENDY GOD. easily top 5 song here

fave lines: “when you are young they assume you know nothing”, “cause i knew you/ heartbeat on the high line/ once in 20 lifetimes i” “you drew stars around my scars/but now i’m bleeding”

the last great american dynasty: watch hill!!! her watch hill house!! i live near there!! oh i think this song is so clever and i love how it ties into mad woman as well as harkens back to starlight. i LOVE the way she ties her self in, “and then it was bought by me” like ughhh her mind? and its catchy AF

fave lines: “i had a marvelous time ruining everything”

exile: YOU KNOW HOW TO DO AN INDIE ALBUM??? BRING BON IVER INTO THIS SHIT!! wowww this song is haunting and is definitely the “i’m you but stronger” version of The Last Time. the overlap of both of them singing and their parallel lines are flawless. i could play this on repeat for hours and contemplate my whole existence

fave lines: “you never gave a warning sign/i gave so many signs”

my tears ricochet: ok somehow a track 5 with tears in the title is not the saddest song here but DAMN is it good. I love the visual of someone watching over their funeral and reacting. the music is stunningggg here. ALSO i am pretty convinced this is about the whole scott/scooter drama, like the lyrics fit so well? and she said it was the first song she wrote so the timeline kinda fits?? geniusss

fave lines: “I didn’t have it in myself to go with grace”, “and if i’m dead to you/why are you at the wake?”

mirrorball: ohhhh this one is so pretty!! it just makes me want to dance around the kitchen with the person i love??? its comforting, ethereal, happyyy ugh i love it. I also think it could be about her relationship with her fans? like her music shows us different sides of ourselves idk? or just absorbing into a relationship?

fave lines: “on my tallest tiptoes/shining just for you”

seven: i’m gonna call this now: this is going to be the most underrated song on this album. it is STUNNING. POETIC. HEARTBREAKING. the music is so hauntingly nostalgic. and the lyrics, holy absolute shit. they’re a delicate testament to childhood, memory, and innocent love. it’s gut wrenching and i love it so so much

fave lines: “i’ve been meaning to tell you/i think your house is haunted/your dad is always mad/and that must be why”, “and just like folk song/our love will be passed on”, “before i learned civility/ i used to scream ferociously” ALL OF IT

august: and now we get the girl james cheated with’s perspective, which i think is great. its sunny, wistful and sad underneath all that beautiful production. when she slides from the chorus to the “back when we we’re changing for the better” and hits that “mineeee to lose” GOD, it just fills your chest. i feel like even if you never have, this makes anyone feel like they know exactly what a summer fling feels like. one of my faves

fave lines: “august slipped away/like a bottle of wine”, “cancel my plans just in case you call/ and say meet me behind the mall”

this is me trying: the slow pacing of this melody serves to show these EXQUISITE lyrics here. this is so intimate and personal and i feel like everyone can relate to this feeling of just trying to hold on and put on a brave face?

fave lines: “they told me all of my cages were mental/ so i got wasted like all my potential”

illicit affairs: ok all you need to know about this one is a) I’m obsessed b) this is the closest she has come to creating a bridge that makes me feel like the All Too Well bridge has, like scream sobbing in the car type vibe??? its unreal. and this song makes me feel that shitty feeling of: “this was supposed to be casual but oops its very much not” hmmm maybe that’s where the scream sobbing comes from hahah

fave lines: “don’t call me kid/don’t call me baby/look at this godforsaken mess that you made me/you showed me colors you know i can’t see with anyone else”

invisible string: this. THIS is probably her most stunning love song. like. i thought it was Lover. i was wrong. this one is confidently from Taylor’s perspective, about Joe and dear lord i want a love like theirs. and shit does this song put the folk in folklore, the music is so simple and gorgeous and harkens back to her country roots without losing this new sound she has. and the first few notes remind me of Mystery of Love by Sufjan Stevens so instantly im sold. this and betty are tied for my number 1, it’s just too beautiful

fave lines: “time curious time/give me no compasses/give me no signs” “isn’t it just so pretty to think/all along there was some invisible string/tying you to me”, “cold was steel of the axe that i had to grind/for the boys who broke my heart/now i buy their babies presents”, “hell was the journey/but it brought me heaven”

mad woman: FUCK YOU FOREVERRRRRR!!! yes taylor said fuckkkk ugh i LOVE this vibe, the revenge of the mad woman that the town cast out is so eerie and powerful, i’m obsessed. it ties back into the maddest woman of TLGAD and it feels like a spiritual sequel to The Man, the same feminist thread weaving through it. the lyrics are razor sharp and biting, i love it

fave lines: “and you poke that bear/till the claws come out/ and you find something/ to wrap your noose around”, “it’s obvious wanting me dead has really brought you two together”

epiphany: so uhhh THIS is the saddest song on folklore. fight me. the seamless comparison between wartime and the pandemic and waiting for some epiphany that could make sense of all the horrors surrounding the both. idk man, as someone who’s been a covid nurse since March, i just….this one HURTS. similar to Soon You’ll Get Better tbh

fave lines: “hold your hand through plastic now/doc i think she’s crashing out/and somethings you just can’t speak about”

betty: OH I LOVE IT WITH MY WHOLE HEART! this is such a TRIUMPHANT return to old taylor, it is so joyful but sad at the same time?? the harmonica?? the last part of the love triangle?? it sounds like Taylor Swift and Fearless all grown up and it makes me ache for back then, but love where we are right now. tbh the first time i heard this i sobbed through the whole thing just out of pure nostalgia. she’s back but at the same time she never left. this feels like a love song to original fans and it. is. incredible. my favoriteeee goddd

fave lines: THE WHOLE CHORUS BABYYYYY

peace: it’s gorgeous, especially the guitarrr ugh. this feels like delicate’s quiet older sister. i think it’s definitely about joe and how taylor, despite loving him, still has these insecurities and fears about what a relationship with someone in her position could be like? like there will be struggles, but he’s her family and she “would die for you in secret”. stunning

fave lines: “i’m a fire and i’ll keep your brittle heart warm”, “the devils in the detail/but you’ve got a friend in me”, “give you my wild/give you a child”

hoax: i’m surprised she ended it on a sad one (but we still have the lakes!!) but this song is hauntingly beautiful WOW. every line of this absolutely floors me. i think this one will also be largely underrated, but it is pure poetry and deserves so so much hype

fave lines: “stood on the cliffside/screaming give me a reason/your faithless love’s the only hoax i believe in”, “it still hurts underneath my scars/from when they pulled me apart/but what you did was just as dark” “my kingdom come undone/ my broken drum/ you have beaten my heart”

ANYWHO TAYLOR HAS PRODUCED HER BEST WORK TO DATE AND IM READY FOR SAD GIRL AUTUMN

[reubsworld]

This Mess of a Man: The Manics and Masculinity

The Manics never really bought into rock’s testosterone mythology — they’ve always been determinedly androgynous (albeit reluctantly, in some cases), and their entire aesthetic has drawn heavily on the more gender-bending aspects of rock’s past: glam, LA spandex rock, punk. The band’s lyrical/political wing — ie. Nicky Wire and Richey Edwards — took great pleasure in subverting rock’s machismo, and the fact that James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore are more conventionally masculine has only heightened the sense of fascinating variety in the confines of a single group.

Beyond this, both Wire and Edwards have written from a female perspective in a manner that seems at least both well-intentioned and credible. These songs have addressed subject matter that many of their contemporaries would approach with trepidation — prostitution and the male gaze (“Little Baby Nothing”), eating disorders (“4st 7lb”), self-mutilation (“Roses in the Hospital”), destructive relationships (“She Bathed Herself in a Bath of Bleach”) — and generally done so with insight and compassion. Their interest in feminism is also reasonably well-documented — after all, this is a band who were quoting Andrea Dworkin when James Brooks was still in diapers (not, incidentally, a jab at Brooks, whose ongoing engagement with feminism has been fascinating.)

Personally, though, for all that the band’s feminism has been welcome and inspiring, I’ve always been particularly fascinated with their examination of the other side of the gender binary: the nature of masculinity. For all that rock ‘n’ roll is full of chest-beating declarations of manliness, songs that make a genuine attempt at addressing what it means to be a man are thin on the ground — Joe Jackson’s “Real Men,” Pulp’s “I’m a Man,” a few others.

For all their we-destroy-rock-'n’-roll bravado, from the very beginning, there was always something deeply vulnerable about the Manics’ lyrics — some of intentional, no doubt, some of it I suspect less so. Edwards, in particular, seemed deeply ambivalent about many aspects of manhood. Sex was memorably described as “nature’s lukewarm pleasure” on The Holy Bible album track “She Is Suffering,” but even before then, both he and his co-lyricist had oscillated between bravado (“Starlover,” for instance, and the ripsnorting cover of Guns N’ Roses’ “It’s So Easy” they used to do live) and vulnerability. As I wrote yesterday, Gold Against the Soul-era b-side “Comfort Comes” summed this up neatly, switching between the two perspectives in the course of one song.

Anyone who has one Y chromosome can relate to this — as a man, you’re meant to be relentlessly sex-positive, and any ambivalence about it is by implication a slight on your manhood. And even beyond sex, the Manics’ early to mid-'90s output took aim at traditional manifestations of manhood: marriage (“Hibernation” and “Comfort Comes”), libido (“Nostalgic Pushead,” and its killer opening line “I am the raping sunglass gaze/ Of sweaty man and escort agencies”) and even grooming yourself in the morning (“Yourself”.)

The most plaintive expression of this came with “Life Becoming a Landslide,” which found Bradfield howling the simple declaration “I don’t want to be a man” — the immediately obvious implication is that this is a statement of not wanting to grow up, but then, perhaps there are gender implications beyond that, because as well as discomfort with the societal implications of manhood, many of the band’s lyrics also discuss a discomfort with the body. Clearly, this is something particularly identified with Edwards — apart from his well-documented eating disorders, the imagery of torn skin and mutilated forms appear throughout his lyrics, both in his earlier work and on the lyrics that eventually surfaced on Journal for Plague Lovers.

But for all that Edwards’ lyrics moved repeatedly through this territory, the most simple and powerful declaration of gender ambivalence in the band’s ouevre comes instead from Nicky Wire.

Manic Street Preachers — “Born a Girl”

“Born a Girl” is truly one of the most confessional and compelling rock lyrics you’ll ever read,  especially its startling chorus: “I wish I had been born a girl instead of what I am/ Yes, I wish I had been born a girl and not this mess of a man.” It can be read in a variety of ways — as a declaration of latent transsexuality, as an expression of dissatisfaction with the male gender in general, or just as a deeply personal meditation about gender identity.

There’s another layer of complexity added by the fact that Wire gave these lyrics to Bradfield, the band’s most conventionally masculine member, to sing. This wasn’t lost on the singer, whose thoughts on the song are worth quoting in their entirety:

“If I get, ‘What a fucking poofter,’ who fucking cares? Obviously I’m famous for not being androgynous like Nick and Richey were, so because I’m singing someone else’s emotions and ideals I have to describe it to people, like addressing small child: No, he’s not gay, no he’s not a Madam Jo-Jo TV, but he feels there’s no description for him. I think these are Nick’s purest thoughts, complete, unabashed… not courage, that’s too pugnacious, but just… there’s no shame. Whatsoever. He loves wearing dresses, he prefers women’s clothes and he says at the end of the day his favourite person in the world is his mother, because she’s the most pure, beautiful and sensitive person he’s ever known.” [via]

That’s perhaps the most succinct declaration of what’s always fascinated me about the Manics’ examination of gender and masculinity. They’re one of the few bands to look honestly at what it means to be male, and to understand that as with any aspect of sexuality, masculinity is a spectrum — not, as Richey Edwards once wrote, a “fixed ideal.” Their continuing exploration of this idea has been a source of inspiration and insight for me, and I suspect I’m not alone.

[coffeesandfilm]

See you at the Crossroads, Crossroads, Crossroads

DISCLAIMER: I know Crossroads (dir. Tamra Davis, 2002) is iconic and Britney is an icon, and while I can appreciate its place in pop culture, I thought it would be interesting to analyse, and also to see what is says about American attitudes in the early 2000s. 

Now even though this is a fictional story with fictional characters, Lucy Wagner (played by Miss Spears) is clearly meant to represent Britney herself. First we have to look back to the hazy days of 2002, when Britney had sexed up her image with the release of her third album, Britney (2001), featuring classics such as, “I’m a Slave 4 U”, “Overprotected”, and “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman”. Despite its success, a lot of the public and media were unhappy with her pull from the ‘virginal, teen-idol’ image she originally embodied. She famously claimed at the start of her career that she wished to remain a virgin until marriage, and boy, was she ever allowed to forget it. Subsequently, she was constantly hounded by the press to see whether there was any update on this front, and if not it meant people could continue their creepy Lolita-esque fetishisation of her. I suppose this film was Britney’s way of breaking free, and telling the world that she was not that girl in the school uniform anymore, but becoming a young woman in her own right (hence the song title) without being too direct and completely alienating her audience.

To briefly summarise the plot, Lucy (Britney), Kit (Zoe Saldana) and Mimi (Taryn Manning), are three former best friends who now move around in completely different social circles, and are on the verge of graduating high school. As children they buried a chest which featured a treasured belonging from each of them, with the promise that they would meet up and re-claim these tokens after graduation. When the time comes, they begrudgingly agree to meet up once more and do what they promised, with the nostalgia fuelled by re-claiming these belongings inspiring Kit and Lucy to join Mimi (and some random guy) on a road trip to California. Mimi wanted to go to an audition in L.A, Kit wished to go to visit her fiancé, and Lucy wished to be dropped off in Arizona to meet her mother, who walked out on her family when she was young. The random guy who gives them a ride is Ben (Anson Mount), who later becomes a love interest to Lucy, and who she eventually loses her virginity to. As expected the girls have their ups and downs, but ultimately bond becoming closer than ever by the end of their trip, realising how important their friendship is. There are other themes and side storylines included, but more on that later.

You simply cannot watch Crossroads today without appreciating how of its time it is, the 2000s fashion trends, the clichéd high school dynamics, and of course, prime Britney. The three girls are American high school caricatures of sort, Kit is the bitchy but beautiful Queen Bee, Mimi is the edgy bad girl, who is also 5 months pregnant, and Lucy is the sweet, nerdy girl that most of the boys do not notice (yeah right Brit). Lucy’s father (played by Dan Aykroyd, which was a choice) is the stereotypical firm but loving single-dad who works a blue-collar job as a mechanic and has no time for 'anybody's nonsense’. I also enjoyed how Britney possessed the knowledge of a professional mechanic simply through her father being one, pretty standard teen movie logic of course. The girls jamming along to N*SYNC’s “Bye, Bye, Bye” in the car was pretty on the nose too, especially as Britney was still dating Justin Timberlake during this period, but ultimately this is what makes the movie so fun and nostalgic.  

In spite of this, I cannot deny there were certain elements of the film that rubbed me the wrong way. Mimi reveals that she became pregnant through the result of rape by a man who took advantage of her when she was drunk, which in itself I believe was a very brave and progressive plot line to include in the film, and the scene itself was heartbreaking and very well done. What I thought was ridiculous was the fact that this was apparently the first and only time Mimi had been drunk, and of course she had to get punished for it, resulting in her rape and pregnancy, a questionable lesson to teach young girls I think. It is a not so subtle way of saying that, girls partying = bad, I am not denying that safety concerns surrounding partying exist, but there were other ways they could go about it. Of course the question of abortion never even arose within the film as that would be too controversial, the closest we got to her giving up her baby was adoption, and she did not even want to do that. The worrying fact is, is that Mimi being raped is less controversial and more digestible than the concept of abortion, which in my opinion, are some very backwards and conservative priorities to preach. Ultimately as the baby was a product of rape, and Mimi was a teenager, she was never going to be able to keep it in teen movie world, and I was waiting to see how she would lose it. Whilst fleeing a confrontation from her rapist (who turned out to be Kit’s fiancé in a shocking twist of events) she trips down a block of stairs, resulting in her admittance to hospital and miscarries. Whilst still under care, she confides to Lucy that she “decided to keep her” baby before the accident, solidifying the film’s pro-life stance and the idea that she was conforming to motherhood. Everything concerning Mimi’s situation is completely violent and horrific, and to be honest, pretty downright cruel to her character, but ultimately this was still seen as a more acceptable option to abortion. I think this period of time represented a more Conservative America, with post- 911 sentiment resulting in more traditional, Christian values being re-introduced. Even though this film may seem somewhat boundary pushing initially (when dealing with topics such as rape and sex), its whole direction and morals are drenched in Conservatism, which are quite prominent tropes in the American media. 

If I had to do a rundown of the three most ridiculous parts of the movie it would be:

1. Ben having a mini fit because the girls kindly decide to drive his car when he falls asleep at the petrol station. He makes them pull over and starts shouting at some rocks, proclaiming how his car is “the only thing that hasn’t been taken over by chicks”, one of the most fragile things I have ever heard, and one of the most unwarranted reactions ever. 

2. When Lucy’s father confronts her about running away from home, going on a road trip across the country with basically no communication, no money, and with a random stranger, all she has to do is say ‘sorry’ and he forgives her immediately, saying “you made a mistake, everyone makes mistakes, you’re forgiven”. Yes he literally says “you’re forgiven”, a shockingly quick resolution and not the greatest writing in the world.

3. The most cringe-inducing part of the film would be the climactic romance scene between Ben and Lucy. In a heartwarming moment Lucy reads Ben a very personal poem she wrote, which ends up being the lyrics to the song “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” in spoken word form. It is pretty difficult to take seriously, but then again the whole film is difficult to watch if you take it too seriously.  

On a more positive note, I thought Lucy losing her virginity was pretty tastefully done. I mean, it was a fairly standard teen movie scene, but I liked how it was not with some random guy who she had met 30 minutes earlier, or with some ex-boyfriend who she was secretly still harbouring feelings for. She lost it to some guy who she met on a road trip who she gradually developed a crush on, sure they were probably not going to get married and be together forever, but that is standard teenage life. I also appreciated how her deadbeat mum who ran out of the family when Lucy was young (played by Kim Cattrall), remained her deadbeat mum. There was no magical reunion, no moment of enlightenment, her mum was just weak and undeserving of Lucy’s love, which in itself is a difficult pill to swallow. In a way, I thought this was even more progressive than the inclusion of rape, teen media usually preaches Conservative values and the glorification of the nuclear family to its audience. Lucy attempted to reunite her nuclear family, but the film dismissed this notion, and she learnt that the family she already had: her, her father, and her friends, were just as much a family without a mother figure. 

All in all, yeah the film is far from perfect, it was never going to be a an Oscar contender, though I doubt that it was ever its intention. Sometimes a silly fun movie is just a silly fun movie. Britney proves her star power once again, and I was very impressed by her acting, going so far to say that she was the best part of the film. I cannot deny that watching the film makes me feel a ping of sadness, especially as we know what happened to her a few years later, but this film helps keep her legacy alive, and as someone who grew up idolising her, seeing happy Britney will have a special place in my heart.  

[revivedandabandonedkids]

Me, sprinkling the Magical Angst Dust on my children: Ŵ̸͙̜̠̭͍̼̦̐͑̃̍͗͂ĥ̶̡̯͎̠̬̘̺͈͓̜̉͘͘͝a̶̺̣̦͈͓̪̗̣̓͠͝͠t̴̬͌̍͋̊͗̂̀̊̏͝ ̴̥͚̝͉͚̲͒̿͌̓͌̍̕͠İ̵̧̛͓̝̮̘͍̌̈́̉̈́́͜s̷̬̳̭̝͎̓̀ ̸͔͉̱̦̀̆̊Ļ̴̛̝̦̻̯̳̒̿̈́́͑̄͝͝ǫ̷̖̺̃̉̀͆̚ͅv̶̨̝̳̝̩̘̳̑̆̇͛̐͌̊̀̽̚͜ͅe̵̼̳̞̼̟̍̀͐͂̐̀̑͝

I wrote the thing I said I was going to write.

-

Some days he felt like falling. Off of what, exactly, depended on the day. On better days, it was falling off his feet and onto a fluffy and homey bed that smelled like his mother’s famous mochi they would roast over their irori on freezing winter days; it was feeling nostalgic and warm and a little melancholic as well. On worse days however, it ranged from falling off a tree or a cliff or a skyscraper, the fast winds slicing open Shirou’s cheeks and drying up his eyes; it was uncertainty, dread, and death all swirling together in a toxic concoction, pooling in his chest and flooding his lungs; it was falling but never landing.

Fubuki Shirou was ungrateful.

That’s your self-deprecation talking, he’d tried to convince himself, to limited avail.

Logically, he knew that a huge part of the awful feeling came from his self-esteem issues, and that he really was more than capable, but the crushing feeling of falling short still hammered itself into his head, drilling nails into his skull and setting up camp for a long-term stay. It was ugly.

Some parts of him recognized that it would be best to seek help. Other, bigger parts of him only felt sluggish, asking the first parts what’s the point? over and over again. It was like Shirou didn’t even want to get better, and maybe that was the real problem here.

All in all, Shirou was sad. Had been sad for a while. Sometimes he would experience the rare flash of joy dancing on the tip of his fingers, before they ultimately disappeared off in the winds. He could never grasp those, never get to hold them substantially in his palm, never get to keep them.

It’s your curse for being ungrateful. He thought.

Because objectively, Shirou was living the charmed life. He did well in school, he had a decent face, he was mild-tempered and generally well-liked by those around him. He could cook pretty well, not to mention he was an athlete of multiple sports (and a good one at most). Despite losing his family, Shirou ended up doing pretty well on his own, which was what most orphans would probably die for. So it was unreasonable that Shirou still couldn’t be happy after all that.

“You’re not being fair to yourself. Everyone has their problems even if they don’t show it outright.” Afuro Terumi once said to him. “Besides, one’s feelings are always valid.”

Afuro-kun can be persuasive. There was this aura surrounding him that made him look confident and suave, like he was the most comfortable in his own skin. It was a trait that Shirou envied greatly.

See, logically, Shirou knew all that, but his mind refused to soak it in. Either that, or his mind simply didn’t care. For instance, you’re not being fair to yourself, he would say, and his mind would jump up and go there’s no such thing as completely unbiased opinions.

Fubuki Shirou, age 4, was happy.

Fubuki Shirou, age 9, was spiraling downwards in an infinite pit.

Fubuki Shirou, age 14, was now; and now was a mess.

It would be truly depressing if not for him. Enter Afuro Terumi, an actual angel.

If there truly were a god, then Afuro Terumi was probably closer to divinity then he was to the rest of humanity.

Afuro-kun was smooth surfaces and gentle hands. He had understanding eyes and a very warm voice. Above all that, he had a nice smile, and whenever Shirou saw that smile, it was the closest possible thing to happiness for him.

“Why do you smile, Afuro-kun?” he asked, because it was getting harder and harder for Shirou to find the energy in himself to lift his facial muscles into anything softer than a grimace.

“Why not? It doesn’t hurt even when there’s no specific reason for doing so. Smiling has been scientifically proven to be able to improve one’s mood.”

That was Afuro-kun’s answer, accompanied with one of Those Smiles Shirou was referring to. It was a little too bright for him to look at. Afuro-kun’s smiles are like the sun. he reasoned. So bright that we avert our eyes from it, that we hide in shades to avoid it. But we complain when it isn’t present, and we wither and die without it.

Perhaps that too, was a more morbid thought than he originally expected when following that certain line of thought, but it seemed to be a pattern for him by this point.

Less so when Afuro-kun was around though. When Afuro-kun was around, everything seemed quieter. The voices in his head decreased in volume significantly, and he could actually hear the world around him again.

What he loved most about Afuro-kun was most likely the fact that Afuro-kun was caring. Afuro-kun listened, and he didn’t try to force his own views onto Shirou. He didn’t pry. On top of all, he was a trusty shoulder to lean onto.

“Know this,” he would say, teetering on lyrical. “I care for you.”

“But why?” It seemed like the only thing Shirou could say anymore. Every time he opened his mouth, it was to form a question. He didn’t understand anything.

Afuro-kun never mocked him for that. “Because you deserve to be cherished. Because I wish you happiness, always.”

It’s not kindness. Shirou thought. It is almost like a burden. It’s feeling guilty that despite all that Afuro-kun’s done for you, you’re still a mess, and you haven’t done anything for him in return.

Afuro-kun never asked for anything in return, which was a given since he didn’t really ask in general, unlike Shirou.

It was very comforting, but at the exact same time, it was frustrating. His connection with Afuro-kun always seemed so unbalanced. Like it was fragile, and any bit of outside stress could tip the scale and send Shirou toppling down.

Shirou had noticed that Afuro-kun didn’t like to talk about himself, even though it was obvious that he had heavy burdens to carry on his shoulders as well.

Maybe he was uncomfortable sharing them. Maybe he didn’t need Shirou the way Shirou needed him. Maybe Shirou was delusional. Either one of those guesses seemed plausible enough.

It didn’t matter all that much in the end. It wasn’t like Shirou was going to make Afuro-kun talk about things he’d rather not. That would be keeping double-standards at its finest.

So that was their dynamic. Shirou talked about himself. Afuro-kun talked about everything other than himself. Perhaps that was why they were so good together.

How oddly morbid. He thought. Out loud, he said, “I’m a little worried that it might appear as if I don’t care for you.”

“Do you?” Afuro-kun tilted his head. “Care for me, that is?”

“Very much.” Shirou’s mouth went a little dry at that. More than I am willing to admit to myself. He thought to himself quietly.

“Then what is your concern?”

“That you would think I don’t care, and consequently realize that I’m really not worth the time.” And that was the first time he’d been able to put his thoughts into clear, coherent words. “I’m not sure if I ever said this before, but Afuro-kun makes the world a little brighter for me. I want to be able to do the same for you, as selfish as that might sound.”

It was a sort of blind arrogance. I want to bring you joy.

“Fubuki Shirou.” Afuro-kun responded solemnly. “Knowing that you care- hearing you admit that you care- is quite enough for me. You are worth all my lifetimes and beyond.” Carefully, he threaded their fingers together. Shirou clutched it hastily as if it were a lifeline. When was the last time he’d been on the receiving end of any physical affection? “And for the record, you do make me happier. It’s somewhat worrying for me that you couldn’t tell.”

“I wasn’t sure.”

“I wish you were more sure of yourself.”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t waste a wish on that.” Shirou chuckled, not really trying to pick at himself.

“Really? I would wish it a thousand times. If it came true, then it would all be worth it.”

[END]

Do you ever think how fubuki’s greatest fear was being imperfect because i do

anyway here are the notes

[meta-squash]

Intro to the Manic Street Preachers

(In which I wish I still had photoshop so I could make one of those silly slideshow type posts)

It’s come up in at least 3 separate conversations recently that I (or someone) should make an “intro to/how to get into the Manic Street Preachers,” so I’m gonna do that.

Also I tried to be brief but when it comes to the Manics and also writing in general that is not in my nature.

So here goes, a Manics 101 that is slightly longer than I anticipated but not as long as I might have made it:

First of all, a brief Manics history/bandmembers 101:

James Dean Bradfield - Lead singer, lead guitarist. Writes most of the music for the songs. Also has the job of cutting down the lyrics into something he can actually sing.

Nicky Wire - Lyricist, bassist. Writes the lyrics for the songs, with Richey and alone. Says he can’t play bass but is actually quite good. Loves to wear dresses/skirts onstage and is generally a fashion disaster. Has a big mouth and loves to criticize other bands. Has OCD and loves to clean. Is 6′3″ and has great legs and loves to mention both of those things.

Sean Moore - Drummer. Also writes some of the music. Is the only Manic who is classically trained, and sometimes plays trumpet on tracks. Sarcastic and small. Generally quiet and doesn’t like interviews. Is the only Manic actually active on social media (Twitter).

Richey Edwards - Lyricist, rhythm guitarist. Wrote most of the lyrics with Nicky and was essentially the band’s spokesman. Was extremely intelligent. Couldn’t play guitar well, basically stuck to power chords and usually forgot them anyway. Struggled with severe mental illness and addiction. Disappeared in 1995; his body was never found.

The band have all known each other since they were children and all lived in the same neighborhood. The band itself started basically in about 1989. Their thematic mantra was “culture, alienation, boredom and despair.” They were inspired by The Clash, Situationism, the Miners Strike and the various existentialist or absurdist literature they’d read. Their sound and style have changed pretty much every album. They’ve never managed to break into the American music scene but they are/were popular in Asia and Europe. Most of their songs are political or emotional, and rarely talk about love or relationships in the traditional sense. They didn’t go aboveground until 1996 and didn’t get a number one in the charts until 1998.

Where to start:

The Manics have changed their sound/style a lot, so it sometimes depends on what you like.

The bands most popular/charted songs are: Motorcycle Emptiness (1992) Faster (1994) A Design For Life (1996) If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next (1998) Your Love Alone Is Not Enough (2007) Rewind The Film (2013) Walk Me To The Bridge (2014) International Blue (2018)

But, like I said, it depends on what you like. So, here’s a rundown of suggestions for songs to listen to in order to get into them. I’ll link the song itself, give a little description of the album/song style or sound, themes, etc. Possibly some extra info if I think of any. And probably reasons why it’s a good introductory song. I’ll go chronologically, but feel free to pick and choose.

Motorcycle Emptiness - 1992. Generation Terrorists. An epic glam/punk rock anthem critiquing and despairing over the nature of society and modern culture. The band has said that if this song wasn’t included on the album, it would not have been successful. It’s also one of the coolest guitar songs the band has. This is often a starting song for most people.

Slash N Burn - 1992. Generation Terrorists. A much more punk rock song, a critique of the destructive nature of entertainment and “first world” culture, how entertainment means people ignore the ills of the world. This song is a good intro to their more social/political lyrics, and good for those who like the punk sound.

Bored Out Of My Mind - 1992. Generation Terrorists B-side. I’m including this because it was the first b-side I fell in love with. This is an acoustic piece, a lot more yearning and, well, tired/bored. It basically takes a punk riff and slows it down into something a lot prettier.

Roses In The Hospital - 1993. Gold Against The Soul. This is the song that made me fall in love with the band. It’s a critique of the mental health system, and a song about unhealthy coping mechanisms. This album has more of a grunge-feel to it, and is a lot more produced. The song features stair-stepping power chords and a grunge rhythm section with pop flair.

La Tristesse Durera - 1993. Gold Against The Soul. A grunge-style song about the way elderly veterans are (mis)treated and/or ignored by the general public once they no longer serve a purpose. This song has an excellent bassline and some great vocals.

Faster - 1994. The Holy Bible. This is the song the band itself and most fans hail as their masterpiece. An industrial/punk/hard rock song that has been described by James as “a set of sarcastic commandments for the modern age” and by Richey as being about self-abuse and “society speeding up - finds worth is failure.” It is a song that is utterly autonomous and judgemental, an Ubermensch of a song that is extremely powerful. It is, in the words of Simon Price “warped metal and tungsten under unendurable torque.”

This Is Yesterday - 1994. The Holy Bible. The calmest song on the album, this piece is a nostalgic look at the past. I’m mostly including it because the guitar riffs are simple but very pretty. (And because my roommate, who isn’t a fan, said she likes it a lot.)

ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayitsworldwouldfallapart - 1994. The Holy Bible. A fast-paced criticism of racism in the US and UK, filled with political and historical references. An industrial/post-punk style song with some excellent riffs and even better harmonies.

A Design For Life - 1996. Everything Must Go. An anthem for the working class. This song features strings and is a lot more “epic” than previous songs. The album itself is calmer, more radio-friendly. This was the band’s first big hit and the first album after Richey’s disappearance; it reached number 2 on the charts at its release.

Everything Must Go - 1996. Everything Must Go. A song ushering in a change in the band’s sound. It is the introduction of a larger, wider wall of sound, and the anthemic rock style of the album.

Small Black Flowers That Grow In The Sky - 1996. Everything Must Go. A song written by Richey before his disappearance, about the abuse of zoo animals. (In my opinion) The demo is better than the studio version, as it is a yearning acoustic piece that allows the guitar to echo the fragility of the lyrics. (The studio version has a harp that overshadows both guitar and lyrics, so I linked the demo which is my favorite.)

You Stole The Sun From My Heart - 1998. This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours. Lovely lyrics and a simple riff. This album has a cleaner, clearer sound. This song’s sound is optimistic even if the lyrics are slightly sadder.

I’m Not Working - 1998. This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours. A much slower, sadder song. I include this song because I think the lyrics describe a universal feeling. It’s a song that really shows the emotion of James’ vocals.

If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next - 1998. This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours. The band’s first ever #1 single. This is an anti-fascist song about the Spanish Civil War, warning people to be aware of injustices. It’s anthemic and full of echoing guitars.

Intravenous Agnostic - 2001. Know Your Enemy. A return to their old punk sound. This is a slightly more anthemic take on the punk sound, but it works. The lyrics are weird but interesting.

Baby Elian - 2001. Know Your Enemy. A political song about Elian Gonzalez, a Cuban refugee who, as a 7 year old, was the center of an immigration and international custody battle between the US and Cuba.

Freedom Of Speech Won’t Feed My Children - 2001. Know Your Enemy. Another political song. I just love it because it’s SO anti-American.

Judge Yr’self - 2003 (1994). Lipstick Traces. This is from an anthology album, but it was an unreleased song recorded in 1994. Its lyrics are almost Nietszchean, intense and repetitive. Yet another huge hit with most fans, with themes and sound similar to Faster. An excellent if momentary resurfacing of their industrial sound of THB.

Empty Souls - 2004. Lifeblood. This album is more more digital-sounding, a lot more glacial than previous albums. The song is sad and aching, but very beautiful. It features a gorgeous piano riff and lingering guitar chords to complement the lyrics about loneliness.

Your Love Alone Is Not Enough - 2007. Send Away The Tigers. Their biggest hit since Tolerate. It’s a duet with Nina Persson, the lyrics a conversation between two people about what makes someone gain contentment and what does/doesn’t help. This is much more a radio-friendly rock song.

Anorexic Rodin - 2007. Send Away The Tigers B-side. Another favorite b-side and favorite among fans. The lyrics are clearly about Richey Edwards, but the best thing about the song is the fast-paced marching of the distortion guitar and the badass punk rock chorus.

Imperial Bodybags - 2007. Send Away The Tigers. This song is incredibly late 60s/early 70s-feeling, for some reason. An excellent grooving riff drives a song about war and imperialism and how civilian deaths are trivialized.

Peeled Apples - 2009. Journal For Plague Lovers. First track on the album and an intense, sludgy punk intro. The band has said that the lyrics of this song are pretty impenetrable but the visuals they provide are fantastic. One of my favorites, and so much weird, aggressive, wild energy. This album consists entirely of songs Richey gave to the band just before his disappearance. Because of this, the album’s sound kind of combines the sounds of The Holy Bible with the slower, prettier sounds that the band developed over the years.

This Joke Sport Severed - 2009. Journal For Plague Lovers. A short, stark acoustic song about the failure of love and one’s own inadequacy. This song is gentle and simple, with yearning vocals and lovely chords.

All Is Vanity - 2009. Journal For Plague Lovers. A song closer to the post-punk sound of The Holy Bible. A lilting riff that disintegrates into a much harder sound complements the lyrics that illustrate a conflicted idea of the self and a desire for answers.

Postcards From A Young Man - 2010. Postcards From A Young Man. This song returns to the huge, anthemic sound of Everything Must Go. The drumming/guitar is a lot “bouncier” than most Manics songs, but the tune itself has some really interesting turns. The lyrics look back on the past, lamenting losses but refusing to be brought down by them.

Some Kind Of Nothingness - 2010. Postcards From A Young Man. Another anthemic song that incorporates strings/a choir, this song is another nostalgia trip, this time a bittersweet mourning, an acceptance of grief and the ache of memories. It features guest vocals by Echo & The Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch.

Red Rubber - 2010. Postcards From A Young Man B-side. This is a surprise bop. A song about Leopold II’s violent colonization of central Africa (and takes the title from a documentary of the same name), it features synthesizer sounds and distortion guitar. It starts out sound slow and meandering, but suddenly picks up to a frenzied punk pace. The chorus is catchy as hell and angry as hell.

Rewind The Film - 2013. Rewind The Film. This album is almost entirely acoustic. The song itself features Richard Hawley (although I personally like the demo version with Nicky Wire on the vocals) and emphasizes its simplicity with acoustic guitar and simple piano and strings parts. This is yet another nostalgia song, wishing to re-experience happy memories. This one is not as grief-stricken as the other ones, and instead almost seems like a haze-tinged daydream.

As Holy As The Soil (That Buries Your Skin) - 2013. Rewind The Film. A Nicky Wire vocal, this is a song specifically written to/for Richey Edwards. An acoustic piece that features a beautiful trumpet solo from Sean, this song also grieves for the past and remembers good times. But this time it asks for those who are being grieved to return, and reminds them of how much the narrator (Nicky) loves them. This is a song that is so emotional it hurts to listen to but it’s also impossible to stop listening to it.

30 Year War - 2013. Rewind The Film. A departure from the nostalgia-trip of the last few songs, this song talks about the history of Wales and the government war on the working class during the 80s. It also features some lovely trumpet work from Sean and a really cool clapping-style drum beat. The lyrics describe class-related struggles and accuse the rich and the bourgeoisie of using propaganda to blame the poor/working class for their situation and to keep them from rising up in resistance.

Walk Me To The Bridge - 2014. Futurology. This album is a transition into prog rock/krautrock. This song features a heavy marching bassline and synthesizers, a huge glacial sound that opens up into a chorus with shining chords. Nicky says it’s about “the idea of bridges allowing you an out of body experience as you leave and arrive in different places,” but the demo also contains a number of Richey-specific references so who knows.

Sex Power Love And Money - 2014. Futurology. The power of this song mostly rides on power chords that structure it and the almost metallic-sounding synth and drums. The song itself is so fun it’s almost silly, a critique of technology and the entertainment industry that simultaneously takes itself seriously and takes the piss. It is a criticism of the entertainment industry and the way that capitalism erases originality and organic-ness. But it’s also just a fun musical romp that is almost reminiscent of late 90s/early 2000s Bowie.

Futurology - 2014. Futurology. This is a gentler song that fuses the huge glacial sound with something more sunny. The band describe the lyrics as “a statement of existential socialism – belief that humanity is still a viable ideal.” The lyrics and the guitar are optimistic and big, with a nice bass riff supporting the synth sounds behind it.

International Blue - 2018. Resistance Is Futile. A gorgeous, soaring song. Jumps off the back of Futurology’s proggy sound but adds more body. The song itself is about painter Yves Klein and his creation of the color Yves Klein Blue.

Broken Algorithms - 2018. Resistance Is Futile. Returning to their punk roots in terms of the rhythm section and crunchy guitar chords. A song also returning to Nicky’s perpetual subject: the critique of society’s thoughtless dependence on technology/social media and the consequences it can have on social awareness and creativity and the self.