#for the record i do know the difference between those three songs

[triforce-of-mischief]

looking for the zelda song that's stuck in your head but you forgot the name of: easy, just remember what location/character/moment it belongs to and search "ghirahim theme" or whatever

looking for the splatoon song that's stuck in your head but you forgot the name of: pain and suffering, if you dont remember the difference between "sea me now" and "calamari inkantation" and "shark bytes" and a million other fish-pun-filled titles then youre toast squiddo

[dilemmaontwolegs]

Wild Nights || CL16 {4}

Pairing: Charles Leclerc x songstress!reader Voice claim: Ashe <- link to her Spotify here if you want to listen to the songs Summary: It's time to say goodbye to Monaco but not to Charles. Warnings: 18+only, phone sex WC: 2.4k

F1 Masterlist || One || Two || Three || Four || Five || Epilogue

You had arrived in Monaco heartbroken and angry but somehow some of those broken pieces had been glued back together in just a few short nights. Now, as you walked through the airport for your flight to Los Angeles you felt a different ache entirely. You were off on a new adventure and following your dreams, but it had come at a cost. 

You turned and blew one last kiss to Charles as he stood still in the busy terminal, a few people waiting patiently to get his attention and an autograph. He smiled sadly and pretended to catch it, holding it to his chest until you disappeared inside the security area.

“Tell me I’m doing the right thing,” you murmured to Bea as she hooked her arm in yours and kept you walking when your feet stopped moving.

“This is your dream and I don’t need to remind you that you can’t waste this opportunity. There aren’t second chances in this industry. You know it and he knows it.” She placed her bags on the belt to be x-rayed and you put yours behind it. “Stop doubting yourself.”

You stepped through the metal detector and jolted when alarms went off. The security guard pointed to your arm and you remembered the charm bracelet that Charles had clasped to your wrist before you left for the airport. The miniature race car hanging was a reminder of your time together and the empty spaces were the promise of more to come if your schedules allowed it. It hadn’t seemed like a big ‘if’ at the time but now you wondered if it was a gentle way of saying goodbye.

“Hello?” Bea asked as she waved a hand in front of your face. “Take it off.”

You swallowed down the emotion that had tightened your throat and fumbled with the clasp until she rolled her eyes and did it for you. “What’s got into you?”

“Nothing,” you uttered as you passed back through the machine without setting it off and grabbed your bags back from the x-ray. You couldn’t put the bracelet back on and felt the emotional weight of the thin chain heavy in your pocket. Bea was still looking at you oddly so you forced a smile on your face. “I’m fine.”

“Mhmm, you nearly put salt in your coffee. You can barely function.”

You groaned as you remembered tripping over your feet getting into Charles’ car. “It was just an early morning, after a late night.”

“Well get used to it, you’re going to live in the recording booth for the foreseeable future.”

“Speaking of, I have a few ideas. Here, have a listen.” You handed her an airpod and went through the recordings you had made with Charles last night. Her head bobbed along to the tune Charles had written on the piano while you played around with some word variations to see which worked best. 

“I like it,” she said with a grin. “Do you have more lyrics?”

You nodded, not needing to tell her that you were overflowing with them. Charles had been your inspiration and your muse all night as he sat beside you on the piano bench, his fingers dancing across the keys with a grace you were envious of. It was easy to imagine endless nights spent sitting right there, everything with Charles was easy - you were just two broken pieces that fit together to hide the jagged edges.

The lights on the plane had turned dark and Bea was fast asleep like most of the passengers as you crossed over the Atlantic Ocean but you had been unable to close your eyes. Your thumbs flew across the keyboard on your phone as words spilled like a torrent from your head and you looked through the collections of songs you had written. 

There was a clear definition between the ones that were written before you landed in Monaco to the ones on your mind now.

You only hoped the record label liked the direction your music was heading. The samples Bea had sent through were all snapshots of your heartache and regret but these new ones were going to show your healing. You weren’t sure what you would do if you couldn’t record them all to narrate the evolution of your growth and help you move forward.

Album Track Playlist: Side A: Moral of the Story Hope You're Not Happy Save Myself I'm Fine ft. Bea Side B: Love You Need Shower With My Clothes On Til Forever Falls Apart ft. Finneas Love Is Letting Go ft. Bea

You were so excited that you didn’t even think about the time when you called Charles. The bracelet on your wrist chimed since you couldn’t keep still and you ran your fingers over the charms he had added when he found time to stop in LA. You had even gone to Miami for the weekend when he was racing there and experienced the explosive atmosphere that he lived for, something that was so vastly different from his calm disposition.

“Hello?” he answered, his voice raspy with sleep.

“It’s me, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

The call dropped and a second later his name popped up requesting a video chat that you rushed to answer. 

“Is everything alright?” Charles asked, the side lamp beside his bed casting a warm glow across his bare chest as he sat up against the headboard.

“I did it,” you squealed as you held up the large vinyl album you had spent months working hard on. “I fucking did it!”

The sleepy glazed look in his eyes disappeared in an instant as he sat up straighter and leaned in to get a closer look at the album art, a proud smile bright on his face. “I knew you would, I never doubted you. Now can I finally listen to it in full?”

“Hold on,” you said as you crossed the room to the record player and showed him the two sides. “Before I met you or after?”

“What’s the difference?” he asked with a smirk since he certainly knew the answer after being a sounding board for your writing process during some very late night phone calls. 

“One is morose and dark, which is kind of your favourite to listen to when you are alone in your bed.”

“You know me so well, but I want to hear you happy.”

You flipped the album to the second side and put it gently onto the tray, carefully dropping the pin onto the edge. The speakers crackled to life before the opening track began, the piano intro sparking the memory of sitting beside him as he played the tune idly at 3am on a Sunday morning. 

You sprawled in the middle of your living room floor watching Charles as he listened to the song with you. It didn’t matter that it was after midnight in Monaco while the California sun blistered outside your window, for those precious minutes where he lay with you on the other side of the world, you were connected. 

His eyes closed as he absorbed it all and you could have believed he had drifted back off to sleep with the peaceful look on his face, but his fingers danced along invisible keys. Still, those green eyes would peek open with a smile whenever you harmonised along with some of the lines but he didn’t dare to say anything and disturb the moment.

One song merged with the next, then the next, until the needle reached the centre and started scratching. You flicked it off and let the silence wash over the room before rolling onto your stomach and propping your phone up, waiting to hear the verdict. 

Charles ran his tongue over his lips and swallowed deeply before he ran his finger beneath his eye and captured the glistening tear that spilled over his thick lashes. “Magnifique, chérie. Je suis tombé amoureux de toi.” He cleared his throat and shook his head. “You made me lose my english.”

You buried your face in the cushion you had been resting your head on and smothered the scream of excitement you let out knowing he liked it. “Thank you, and I’m sorry for waking you.”

“It was worth it,” he said sincerely, “and I can sleep on the plane to Austin tomorrow. I can’t wait to see you.”

“Same, unless you were planning to wear those assless chaps again,” you teased and he groaned at the reminder.

“They told me everyone was wearing them!”

“Maybe in a Texan strip club,” you laughed. “I think you nearly broke the internet.”

He settled back amongst the pillows and pulled one into his arms, hugging it tight. “I wouldn’t mind it breaking.”

You saw his eyes turn down and you sat up, bringing your phone closer to inspect him more closely. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said dismissively but you weren’t going to let it drop when there was obviously something on his mind.

“Charles, there’s no secrets between us, I know you better than I know myself,” you softly encouraged him. “Whatever is worrying you, you can tell me.”

He ran a hand through his hair, his biceps flexing as he did, a nervous tick of his. “My contract runs out next season and this one has been terrible. What if we don’t improve?”

He sighed and the dejection broke your heart as you wished you could reach through the phone and hold him like he needed. Tomorrow, you promised yourself, tomorrow you would hold him and tell him what he always told you - that everything will work out exactly how it is supposed to be.

“I can feel my dreams slipping away, chérie, and I don’t know what to do. This is all Jules and I talked about, winning a championship with Ferrari, and I feel like I’m letting him down, and myself.”

“A lot can happen in a year, Charles, just focus on right now and keep trying your best, that’s something that is in your control.” You could see no amount of words were going to get through to him when he was stuck in his head like he was, so you tried for something different. 

You made your way to your bedroom and closed the door behind you, the sound of the lock clicking enough to draw Charles attention back to the screen. He sat up a little as you put the phone on your drawers giving him a full view of the room he had spent dozens of nights in, whenever he could schedule a layover between flights or have a few days break from work.

“I thought this might distract you,” you smirked as you began to push the straps of your dress off your shoulders, the material pooling at your feet. 

Charles bolted upright and shuffled back against the headboard as his chest rose with the deep breath he took. “You have my attention.”

“Do I?” you teased as you ran your fingertips over your collarbone and over the swell of your breasts still hidden by the lace of your bra. “You look a little sleepy, are you sure you don’t want to sleep instead?”

“You’re driving me crazy,” he groaned as threw the sheets back and pressed a palm to his erection.

“You drive me crazy, especially when I’m in bed all alone and missing your hands on my body.” You reached for the clasp of your bra and let it fall to the floor with your dress, sighing as you teased your nipples and imagined it was him. “What would you do if you were here, Charles?”

“Everything,” he said with a smirk as his hand started to slowly rub over the tented material of his boxer shorts. “I would start with your lips, I love how soft they are on mine. I would kiss every inch of your skin and taste you on my tongue.”

Your lips parted with a moan as the memory of his touch warmed your belly and your hands drifted lower, your thumbs hooking under your panties to slide them down your legs. “What else?”

“Fuck,” he echoed your moan and pushed his boxers over his hips before fisting his cock. “Get on the bed, chérie. I want to see you pleasure yourself.”

You practically floated to the bed on cloud nine and you knew you were already wet before you parted your legs for him to see. His heavy breaths reached you through the speakers as you dragged a finger through the warmth and glided it over your clit. 

“You make me feel so good, Charles. Nothing compares to you, my fingers can’t fill me like you can.”

His abs tensed as he tightened his grip and stroked himself faster. Your cunt clenched at the sight and you fucked yourself in time to his strokes. Your eyes threatened to flutter shut as your toes began to curl but you would daren’t miss a moment of watching Charles pleasure himself.

His chest rose and fell, his lips parted with soft pants as he ran the pad of his thumb over the bead of precum leaking at his tip, his other hand cupping his balls and gently squeezing them in time. You were so familiar with the sounds he made and you knew he was close, just like you were. 

The warmth in your belly was quickly spreading across your body and your back arched as it ignited into a fire that burned through you and Charles’ name tumbled from your lips. 

“Mon Dieu, t'es trop sexy,” he moaned as his entire body tensed and his cock throbbed, thick ropes of cum shooting over his abs. He shuddered as he squeezed out every last drop before sagging back against the headboard and sighing with relief.

“Better?” you asked with a giggle.

“Beaucoup,” he replied with a lazy smile, his body completely relaxed and his mind free for the moment from the worries that had burdened him.

“You’ve lost your English again.”

His chest bounced with a quiet laugh and he reached for a dirty shirt on the floor beside the bed, wiping his mess off his skin. “You have that effect on me.”

“I pride myself on it.” You saw his eyes starting to turn heavy and remembered it was the middle of the night where he was. “You should go back to sleep. I’ll see you in Austin.”

He was already starting to drift off as he snuggled back down in his bed and it wouldn’t have been the first time that the video call had stayed connected overnight. There were bad days when one of you needed that extra comfort of knowing you weren’t alone and it was the only way you could be there for each other. 

“Sweet dreams, Charles,” you whispered as he closed his eyes.

“I love you,” he murmured and you wondered if he would remember saying those words come morning light. Your stomach tied itself in knots as you hoped he did. 

“I love you too.”

Click here for part five.

Tagging: @91vhs @alwaysclassyeagle @applespiez @ravenqueen27 @booksobsess @tempo-rary-fix @baw-sixteen 

[nouvell-vague]

begin again.

warnings: toxic relationship, mentioning weight, slight cheating, insecurity, i think there's more but please let me know !!

you've been thinking that love isn't worth it and only makes you heartbroken and crying every night for the past eight months. you got used to ellie's behavior while you were in a relationship with her. she was always late on your dates—always. even being 30 minutes late was pretty early for her, or worse, she didn't come at all without telling you. she didn't like it when you wore any heels, even those mary-jane shoes you've been dreaming about, because she thought you looked uglier wearing them. ellie is the one who makes you worry about getting fat whenever you gain even a small amount of weight. she doesn't like your appearance if it doesn't match with her taste. she never laughed on your funniest jokes, always mocking your music taste and called it gross. you spent three weeks with crying alone in your bedroom after you caught her cheating with another girl, and it's not just a 'girl', the girl she cheated with was your close friend that you always vented about ellie to her which makes you think you didn't even deserve any love. you broke up with ellie right after the night you caught her, through message because you couldn't even stand yourself to see her face, it hurts so bad, so bad that you thought all girls were the same as ellie. ellie had made you so afraid to having a relationship again, with anyone.

then you met abby anderson a few months after you ended relationship with ellie. she's one of dina's friends that she had been friends with since 9. basically, dina is a matchmaker between you two since she was tired of abby because she had a crush on you for a while and she always vented to dina. you didn't really know about her since you always set your boundaries because ellie was really easy to get jealous. you were full of skepticism at first because you weren't really healed from the past, but dina convinced you that abby is different from ellie, completely different. the first meeting with abby was not really fine; you didn't pay much attention as your mind was busy with your fears and you barely listened to her voice. but as the time went by, what you feared about her was absolutely wrong. a month after the first meet, you could see how abby treated you and it was... different—no, ‘different’ wasn't enough to describe it. abby did things that ellie never did to you, and she didn't do anything that ellie always did to you.

dina was right about abby. she's entirely different from your ex-girlfriend. she always comes earlier than you on every date, or when she comes over your house—she'd came 10 minutes earlier than she said. she bought you a pair of heels that had been on your wishlist for months, saying that those heels looks so good on you.she always got your back every time you feel insecure about yourself, she would praise you, saying sweet things to your ear. she never mock your music taste, instead, she's amused. “you are.. wow, i've never seen any person who has a lot of music vinyls in my life like.. ever! do you mind if i play one of them? maybe i would like it.” then she played one of taylor swift's vinyl on record player, and she liked it, loved it even. which is why ‘so high school’ stayed on her 1st on repeat songs for months. abby laughs on your jokes, every jokes, even when you tell one of your jokes that made ellie pissed off, abby would laughing as she throw her head back like a little kid. “that is the funniest joke, you know?” oh, and it feels so strange to you because your ex would never do that, ever. saturday night, abby came over for another movie night and after the movie ended, you both shared stories, but you struggled to tell yours properly because you felt a bit shy and worried—worried that abby wouldn't listen as attentively as you did. however, she proved wrong. she listened to your stories, got excited, and, god, she even remembered your stories too well.

and on wednesday, you were on a date with abby, again. you two walking out from the cafe, your arms hugging abby's, wide smile on your face. you were about to get into abby's car, while she already inside. but you couldn't move your body as you saw your ex-girlfriend, alone, standing not really far away from you and looking at your eyes. there's no such gaze that you always saw on her eyes back then, you couldn't tell what she was doing. abby was confused why were you still outside, she went out from the car, “is there anything wrong—oh,” abby approached you right away as she knew what were you staring at, swiftly opening the car door for you while keeping her other hand on your back. “hey, let's go. don't we have another place to go?” your eyes were switched from ellie to abby, little awkward smile appeared on your lips. “yeah– sorry." you muttered. once you two already inside, no one breaks the silence, it was all awkward. you couldn't help yourself when your mind went back to those bitter memories, you didn't even realized your mouth opened as you started to talk, “so, abby, uh.. months ago when ellie—” right before you could say more, abby put her left hand on your palm hand, “angel, i just got an idea. what about we watch some movies this christmas? i used to watch those movies with my family every christmas, and i think you'll love it. what do you think?” your gaze was locked on hers, watching how well she tried to change the topic so you wouldn't have to bring up about your ex-girlfriend again. abby smiled to you warmly, waiting for your answer. and you couldn't help yourself from the tears on your eyes—you've never experienced anything like this before, not with ellie, who never appreciated you the way abby does. you began to think that perhaps love is worthwhile if you find the right person. maybe love doesn’t always lead to heartbreak, and maybe you can open your heart again and learn to trust someone new. in fact, you feel incredibly loved with abby, and she makes you feel like the luckiest person in the world.

the tears were coming down through your cheeks and it keeps going as abby's hand wipes your tears, “hey, hey, hey, angel, are you okay? is there something wrong or my idea was—” you shook your head in response, trying to calm down, but you were so overwhelmed by your feelings. “i'm fine, abby. i just...” you trailed off, looking at abby, who looked completely worried. you let out a small chuckle through your tears. “i'm really fine. i'm sorry for bringing up about her again all of so sudden when it's only two of us here, and i.. i never felt like this before when you tried to change the conversation and i really appreciate that, and all things you did to me it's all make me feel like.. i really deserve so much love because back then you know that i was—” abby cuts your words as her lips pressed against yours, and you didn't think twice to melt into her kiss. it was full of love and affection. once the kiss broke, you could see her warm smile, hand caressing your cheeks gently and wiping your tears away at the same time, “shh, don't bring that up again, okay? i know back then was too painful for you, and i want you to get over it because i want you to be happier than before, you really deserve so much love, angel.” you really sure about your face turns red as she speaks, you couldn't hide it. her words were made you feel better. “abby, can we.. uh..” it's hard for you to say the right words as you want to ask her for another kiss, but you were too shy. “speak up, sweetheart. before we go to gelato store that you recommended to me earlier?” oh really, those nicknames were always successfully made you flustered every time. “i– oh, fuck it.” asking her only prolonged things, so rather than wasting time stuttering, you chose to kiss her with your eyes closed. you felt embarrassed but happy when you heard abby chuckle during the kiss. and if dina asking you if you have already healed from the past after this date, you would answer it in less than ten seconds. yes, you healed.

a/n: i don't even know what am i writing right now but yeaaahhhhh !!!!!!! another weird fic is out !!!!

[splatooshy]

what kind of music/artists/bands do you think the scooby gang + the originals would listen to in the early seasons?

OH OH OH

well we know from canon that even without humanity, damon can & will listen to taylor swift without complaint. even though he’s perfectly capable of compelling a music change.

& he listens to depeche mode so he’s automatically cool.

i think the salvatores have very wide tastes, but not much overlap. stefan loves bon jovi to an unhealthy degree, and would probably have been a BIG beach boys fan back in the day. he’s totally over it now though, those records in his cupboard are purely decorative!! damon would love ABBA, head over heels reminds him of katherine & he uses it to outsource his emotions in his no humanity era. stefan tolerates it for lexi’s sake (damon thinks it’s unfortunate that he and lexi have similar music taste. it’s probably the only thing he likes about her). also the cure.

i think stefan cries to bon iver’s ‘roslyn’.

both stefan and damon would be into stevie nicks & florence + the machine & paramore & david bowie (damon in fact knew him rather well back in the seventies…) but in totally different ways. damon loves anthems & grooves, discordant sounds and triplet beats, while stefan digs a good beat & steady rhythm. with a fabulous guitar riff ofc.

bonnie is also a big paramore girly. also hozier. i think she and damon bond over similar music tastes.

caroline listens to taylor swift (fearless is her fav, red & 1989 are 2&3), one direction, jonas brothers, miley, britney etc. she bullies politely asks jeremy to let her use his tech stuff to make her own mixes. she also has a hot pink boombox that she takes to every cheer practice. it’s covered in stickers that won’t come off no matter how hard she tries. yes, vampire strength has been applied.

elena spent the three months between the crash & stefan blasting dean lewis in her bedroom. hozier, bon jovi to seem cool to stefan, janis joplin, probably some british pop like dexys midnight runners, ed sheeran, bastille. but that’s a secret she’ll take to her grave.

jeremy listens to 21 pilots, mcr, p!atd, bleachers (later seasons tho. don’t think they existed til 2015 or something), the neighbourhood, arctic monkeys, fallout boy, etc. probably listens to sheppard on repeat. geronimo just really speaks to him, okay?! absolutely does not copy damon’s taste in music, that’s just a coincidence!!! he’s also the source of elena’s secret love for british pop.

matt listens to elevator music. nah he just plays whatever’s on the radio. my truck is my girlfriend & my dog has fleas kind of country music? idk.

tyler has all of those mix cds like sofresh, each 00s / 90s genre, really does not care what he listens to as long as he can nod his head along.

alaric listens to 80s rock in a dad way & whatever damon plays because damon has dj rights everywhere & will push his way onto the aux.

not really in the gang but katherine listens to male manipulator music. and female manipulator music like ethel cain, fiona apple, etc.

the originals?

klaus listens to smooth jazz. and instrumental covers. he’ll text stefan a link to the lamest love song ever (instrumental) with the caption ‘this is our song’.

kol also listens to smooth jazz, but in a cool way. as well as 00s pop. he and rebekah fight over who discovered what song first. he would absolutely LOVE musicals. has the glee & hamilton soundtracks on his little ipod. BOY BANDS OMG kol has a backstreet boys poster confirmed. also 90s-00s hip hop / rap / pop hybrids. especially nelly furtado.

OH OH THE SHREK SOUNDTRACK. that’s his jam fr fr.

rebekah is a speak now girly through and through. ‘innocent’ is literally her song. she’s just so taylor swift. she would LOVE suki waterhouse, but that’s not for another few years. OH WAIT REBEKAH’S CANONICALLY ALIVE IN 2024. she absolutely listens to chappell roan and it DEFINITELY does not make her think of hayley, why would you say that???

elijah listens to eight hour long symphonies and concertas, but won’t complain if one of the others is hogging the aux. he will not be so childish as to dagger his siblings over music disputes, (klaus), or break their arms (rebekah), thank you very much. he only demands control of the music when damon’s trying to seduce him (succeeding), because elijah knows how to woo & be wooed in return. that includes the romantic playlist. also, damon has a very annoying habit of singing along & playing air guitar when the bridge hits just right, usually whilst there is a cock in his ass.

finn likes renaissance fair music. he considers it to be contemporary, as he was daggered during this period.

[cherrylng]

Muse Interview - Matt Bellamy, Dom Howard, and Chris Wolstenholme [ROCKIN'ON (June 2001)]

Muse's explosive sound of philosophy, “Origin of Symmetry”

Interview: Erika Yamashita / Photo: Masakazu Yoshiba

There is no one who listens to this album and is not astonished. The long-awaited second album by Muse, Origin of Symmetry, is a real eye-opener. One reason for the surprise is that Muse has grown and developed beyond expectations in just a year and a half since their debut album. But another, and the biggest surprise, is the sheer preposterous scale and construction of this album. A concept born of an insatiable interest and passionate thirst for knowledge about what controls and drives the world, the universe and all things. The eleven tracks are assembled with an overwhelming sound. There are hysterical falsettos of lamenting vocals with bold shouts, abrasive and gritty rhythm sections galloping, bass lines dancing, imposing pianos echoing, and guitars making about three different instrumental sounds. The weepy, somewhat folk-like Muse verse is still there, but it's so grandly crafted that you forget about it. There are pushes and pulls, peaks and valleys within each song, and a steady flow throughout the album. Nobody makes an album like this nowadays. It's not at all like the “progressive rock” “co-concept albums” of the past, either. I'm asking you to listen to it, and to receive the almost obsessive feeling inside you. You can't be alone in your thoughts. So, while being swallowed up by the tremendous energy of this album, what remains at the end is somehow a liberating sense of exhilaration. I was amazed that they had managed to get so much out of the album without wasting any of it, and I found myself turning up the volume even more and more. While keeping their minds busy with philosophical ideas, they are different from the introspective and damp mainstream of today's young UK bands.

As this is the first time all three of them have appeared together in an interview, I asked them about their roles in the band: "Dom is the wood, Chris is the oil, and Matt is the spark" and "when the three of us get together we make a huge fire". They have been friends for more than 10 years since junior high school, and there is a chemistry between them that goes beyond that of bandmates. Chris is an early father but a hotshot, and Dom is apparently the wife at Matt's side [1]. The excessive life energy, unique thought process and unbridled creativity of Matt Bellamy is able to continue to flourish without breaking down, thanks to this line-up.

After the interview, I saw the band live at a university hall in Norwich. The performance, which included most of the new album and some of the first numbers, was so strong that it was hard to believe it had only been a week since the start of the tour. The band are extraordinary performers to begin with, but what makes Muse's stage presence shine today is something else than technical conviction. The expression that originally emanated from the enormous mental energy of Matt hits us as a “sound” with powerful physicality. It seems to be visible now. Muse? Well, they're good, but they're a bit…… Even those who had said that were holding their breath at their new live show, their mouths open, and before they knew it, they were transformed into a whirlpool of bodies. Their summer showcase gigs are something to look forward to. In the next issue of this magazine, Matt will talk about each song on the album in more detail!

“At the beginning we were worried, we didn't know what people would think. But now we know that if we play music that we feel is ‘the one’, a lot of people will like it.”

What are your own feelings about the new record, now that it's finally finished? Chris (C): 「Oh, it's good.」 Dominic (D): 「(laughs) Yeah. I think we're all happy with it. It's a very different sound from before and we're happy with our performance. We've tried to do a lot of different things on purpose. Like long numbers and songs without guitars.」 Matt (M): 「A lot of the songs are dynamic, like a combination of several songs. Well, about half of them are hard numbers that are more like our live performances, but the one with John Leckie is longer. I think the bass sound is more prominent this time, after all. The same goes for Dom's drums. I think they're much more pronounced this time than before. I think there's a good balance between the three of us.」 C: 「I think that, unlike before, we've worked on it a lot on tour.」

I think this is one of the biggest albums in recent years. It's a huge leap forward, and it's also full of the feeling that it was so much fun to create the sound in the studio. Everyone: 「(nods their heads vigorously)」 M: 「John Leckie is a guy who really likes to experiment with sound. You can hear all kinds of tinkering with sounds, especially in the songs he produced.」

From the sound of "Plug In Baby" I had a feeling that the sound would be sharper, more solid and more confident, and I was not disappointed. M: 「I think the mix of live instruments and various electronic sounds worked well. But the electronic parts are done on guitar. I had two guitars built that I designed myself. It's a heavy sound, like a synth.’ Plug In’ also has a synth-like sound in the background, but it's played on guitars. One of the guitars has a mess of microphones attached to it. It's a cyber guitar (laughs). You can play it on a plectrum, but if you hit a button or something, it makes a sound.」

You wouldn't break that, would you? M: 「Hahahaha. I won't break it, I promise.」

(laughs). It's a really remarkable improvement, but how is it different from the first album? M: 「The biggest difference is our attitude towards making music. We have confidence in what we're doing, and we're okay with putting it out there for all kinds of people. When we first started out, we were quite anxious and didn't know what people would think. But now we know that if we play the music we think is right, a lot of people will like it. Anyway, it's confidence in every sense of the word. I think we're more open as musicians and songwriters, and I think we've gone a lot deeper than we did on the first album.」

It has a very intricate and complex sound and song structure, was it a difficult record to make? M: 「Not really. For example, on the last album, there were quite a few songs that we recorded once and then re-recorded later and they turned out good, but this time I was satisfied with all the songs after just one recording.」 D: 「It wasn't hard to do. Even before we went into the studio, we knew exactly what we wanted to do.」 M: 「And we rehearsed a lot. We'd done a lot of touring on songs like "Plug In Baby", "New Born" and "Feeling Good", so recording them was a piece of cake, which meant we could spend more time on the other difficult songs. John Leckie came to Devon to watch us rehearse and we discussed which songs to record. We didn't want to waste time in the studio making decisions. So this year we spent three weeks at Real World Studios and a week and a half at Astoria, a floating studio on the Thames. That boat used to belong to Chaplin, and now it belongs to Pink Floyd. And then the last three weeks we went into Abbey Road Studios.」

So was this overwhelming finish something you had in mind from the start? M: 「No, it turned out very different to what I had in mind. I mean, it's hard to predict. Even if you have a direction at the beginning, it changes as the song progresses.」

What are the qualities and contributions of the two producers, Dave Bottrill and John Leckie? M: 「Generally, I don't like producers who meddle in the arrangements. John Leckie is one who never does that. He never tries to change anything, he just lets us do what we want to do. But Dave Bottrill had some input on the arrangements of "New Born" and "Plug In Baby". I never usually accept that, but his advice was very simple and excellent. He's probably the only producer I can trust to give me advice on arrangements. Apart from that, Bottrill is very good at capturing a live sound. So it was perfect for us right after the tour. John Leckie, on the other hand, has a lot of experience in doing a lot of different things. So we could experiment with him. I feel like I can trust his opinion that he's done it this way before, or that it could be better this way. In a nutshell, John Leckie's contribution is a great deal of experience and knowledge. Well, on the last album there was another voice, Paul Reeve, who was a big part of it, he was the engineer and almost co-producer, but I think the tone is more consistent this time. It's basically Leckie and me.」

Was there a particular recording session or song that left the biggest impression on you? M: 「"Megalomania" started out as a quiet song with acoustic guitar and a bit of percussion from Dom, but halfway through it turned into a song with a majestic church organ. Dom was playing very rock drums and Chris was playing a very heavy distorted bass sound, and there was a church organ sound on top of that. It's a powerful mix of very old and new sounds. It's all over the album. On "Screenagers", the bones sound like they're a hundred years old, and then all of a sudden you're surprised by the synth sounds. Almost every song changed a lot during the recording process. We came up with different arrangements and used new instruments. But in general, we made it with the intention of being able to reproduce it live.」 D: 「"Screenagers", by the way, that's a strange atmosphere……」 M: 「It was just the three of us and John Leckie in the studio, and we brought all sorts of stuff in there. Bones, animal claws…」 D: 「Llama toenails and stuff.」 M: 「The four of us would make all sorts of sounds with all these strange objects that we put around the room, and we'd record them first. Then we put the music on top of that in the same room.」

Where did you find all these ‘strange objects’? M: 「Oh, John Leckie has a lot of stuff (laughs). Dom's got a few of them, and I've got a friend who's got a few of those. Most of them are percussion kind of things. Like a bullroarer, a kalimba. Wind chimes and stuff like that. And what else……」 D: 「Bubble wrapping sheets [2]. Thin sticks that make a thunder-like sound. Um……」 M: 「It's a long tube (laughs). It was more to create an atmosphere than a musical instrument. What was it for, let's see…」 D: 「Well, it's more like creating a background.」 M: 「Well, at first I was trying to create a sound like a windy summer day. But then we started going in a weird, dark direction.」 D: 「It was about creating an image of the band being in this kind of place. Like on a porch, or on top of a hill. But it was like we were sitting by the fire. I think the sound of the bubble wrapping sheet is like the sound of sparks bursting out of a fire.」 M: 「If silence is a pure white canvas, this is like painting on a canvas that has something on it beforehand. It's like chaos theory or nonlinear mathematics. It's the initial conditions that make a big difference.」

……Yes. M: 「(laughs) How can fiddling with llama toenails be nonlinear mathematics?」

Anyway, it sounds like it was a fun recording session. D: 「It was very smooth and relaxed.」 M: 「Really? I was stressed all the time.」

Doesn't that mean that Dom is always the relaxed one and Matt is the stressed one? M: 「I think so. I was always worrying about this and that. I was worried and nervous and self-doubting. From start to finish (laughs). Once we'd finished making the album and started touring, that went away. Then little by little, I went into a stress cycle for the next album.」

"We know very little about music before the 90s. There were a lot of bands that made concept albums in the past, but I don't know anything about them."

Hahaha. I don't think there are any bands in the UK today that are willing to take on and stand up for these big themes and concepts. What do you think? M: 「In other words, it's about taking on the responsibility of what you say in your expression and music, right? I think so. Of course, there are lots and lots of bands out there, but amongst the rather well-known UK bands now, there are hardly any that I feel a connection with.」

So, not only is it a concept album that relies on a major theme, but it also has very progressive elements, including themes such as existence and the universe, but despite this it has a strong personality that is not anachronistic or retro. What do you think is the core of this individuality? M: 「Well. I guess we hardly know any music from before the 90s.」 C&D: 「Pfft (laughs).」 M: 「No, no, that's part of it…… There were a lot of bands that made concept albums in the past, but I don't know anything about them. John Leckie often talks about when he worked with Pink Floyd, and when I tell him I don't know any of the songs, he laughs really hard. He always finds it strange. He says we know very little about music that he thinks is compatible with us.」

What do you consider to be the main musical influences of this album? M: 「Yeah, we talked about it a bit the other day, but for me I can see where the influences are coming from. Half of what I listen to is old…… I mean, music from the end of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, like Rachmaninoff, Debussy, and Chopin. I also listen to a lot of piano music. I've gotten a lot better as a pianist compared to last year. Until last year, I was just okay, and in the first album I could do very simple arpeggios. You know, like "Sunburn". But I practised a lot after that. I listened to and studied a lot of piano music. There is a pianist called Evgeny Kissin who plays very complex music, and I listened to a lot of that. I also listened to a lot of Daft Punk, Yell, the old Aphex Twin, and a little bit of rock, like NIN and Deftones. I think it came from being exposed to both very old music and modern music.」

Are you bored of the guitar? M: 「No, no, no, not at all. I just always wanted to be a very good pianist. It's a difficult instrument.」

You originally played jazz piano first, didn't you? When you were a child. M: 「Yes, but it's only in the last six months or so that I've really been able to play the way I want to play. So the piano isn't a big deal, I only use it on two songs or so. But I think it has a lot of influence on songwriting and arranging, because it's easier to come up with interesting chords when writing songs on the piano than on the guitar. But I prefer to play the guitar in live performances.」

You don't bring a grand piano on stage? M: 「No, no. I'll probably play the piano on one song, but it'll be a small electric piano. I love the grand piano, but only if I go that far (laughs).」

How about you two? What are the musical influences on this album? D: 「That's pretty much it. Rage Against The Machine, NIN, and Deftones are the only rock bands that all three of us listen to. There's something in their music that's different from other American bands.」 M: 「Chris's taste has changed the most so far. He used to be all about heavy music.」 C: 「Now I specialise in "Pet Sounds".」

(laughs). Now, about the title of the album, "Origin of Symmetry." M: 「……Is it really good?」 C: 「Hmm? (laughs)」 M: 「Hey, that doesn't look good. How does it feel? What do you think of this title? What do you think when you hear this phrase?」 C: 「Well…」 D: 「(lost in laughter)」 M: 「I hope it's a title that makes all sorts of people think about all sorts of things. It's something that each person can define in their own way. Even if I don't need to define it myself.」

Please give us your own definition as well. M: 「I think several themes will emerge throughout the album. It's…… Well, how should I put it (laughs)…… Well, first of all, it's about "Space Dementia". Futurism. That word could have been the title of the album. Futurism has nothing to do with the history of art, it's just a kind of idea, but I've recently learned that there's a word for personal fulfilment and the meaning of life being available later on, not now. But in any case, I think it would be a mistake to base the meaning of your life on the knowledge you've acquired so far. I think you should always be open to new ideas. And what "Space Dementia" is talking about is the feeling you get when you realise that we are really, really alone in this universe. Also, it's still about atheism and things like that. Not believing in God, and how to deal with that. Some of the songs really speak directly to God - or at least to God, if there is a God. Why are we here, what is the reason for our existence, and what is the reason for God's existence? Those things pop up every now and then (laughs).」

Why are you so obsessed with religion? Did you used to believe in God overwhelmingly? M: 「No, I think it is difficult to believe in God in today's world. Any religion is a stage in the evolution of a particular nation or civilisation, and now that there is such a global connection, no religion is good enough to be applicable to the whole. So I think that by searching for something that works for the whole planet, maybe we can become one. I think that what we call human consciousness - consciousness - has existed since the beginning of the universe when it exploded. The universe started with ten dimensional space, which was divided into two smaller spaces by the explosion, one of which is the four dimensional space in which we live. And consciousness is the evolution of the so-called material elements to a higher state. I think that in the beginning, the universe was fully conscious. The smallest of these was the atomic nucleus, from which electrons were eventually created, and then atoms, which are a higher level of consciousness, and then groups of atoms create the elements…… and so on, and as the degrees of consciousness increase and the individual things merge, they eventually become one complete consciousness. And eventually the aggregation of the elements made the stars. I think the stars have consciousness and the universe is trying to form a higher dimensional order. All the elements that make up the earth and our physical bodies were once part of a single celestial body. Billions of years ago, it was split into several celestial systems by a supernova. So there was once a time when we were consciously one. Now I think we're struggling to reconstitute it somehow, to get back to our original state. We're trying to reconnect with every single person on the planet and with the universe. That's what I sing about on the album (laughs).[3]」

That was a very obvious answer…… Where did you come up with these themes? M: 「I've always wanted to know about that kind of thing, so I've been doing a lot of research. I feel satisfied and happy when I am researching and searching for something. So my research has shifted from religion to science. But I still don't know if what I just said is really 100% correct (laughs). Anyway, I've been reading a lot of books on philosophy of science.」

Does that come from resistance to the fear, for example, that humanity is infinitely lonely and that there is nothing in a human lifetime that we can believe in? M: 「Yes, that's the struggle. That feeling of loneliness and fear is the negative side of my thinking, whereas the positive side of my thinking is that we are all united on a cosmic level and are somehow moving towards a higher order. But what really frightens me is that the universe is in fact on the verge of decay and death. There are signs that what was once perfect is gradually cooling down as it splits into smaller and smaller pieces. It's called entropy, and it means that the universe will eventually die. This is a frightening thought, because it means that there is no positive reason for being alive. But, you know, that's a negative way of thinking, and there are positive ways of thinking too. The universe, which used to be dead, is becoming more and more vibrant, and different species are emerging. If the temperature of the universe keeps dropping, somewhere you get to the point where life can occur, and right now life is occurring everywhere in the universe, and it may be about to form something completely different from what we have seen before. The songs on this album go back and forth between these two ideas of negative and positive, and hopefully I want to be on the positive side (laughs).」

Is "Plug In Baby" actually a song about that? The NME live review said that the lyrics were "like virtual sex", which made me laugh a little. M: 「Hahaha. That was, well, high energy and a bit …… It might not be easy to get into from the line I just mentioned (laughs). I think it can be read in a lot of different ways. I wrote those lyrics a long time ago, and I can't remember exactly what I was thinking at the time. But in the overall context of the album, it's like I'm singing to a human being who was once thought of as a god, saying I've exposed your lies, that I've seen what's underneath but it's no big surprise, that now is the time for a change, that it's time to cleanse everything away and forget your love. Maybe it's time to abandon the old God and celebrate the latest science and technology, or something like that…… Maybe, like that. Haha.[4]」

Do both Dom and Chris share Matt's developing themes about science and existence? Or is it more a case of leaving it to the megalomaniacal lyricists and not revealing anything? Everyone: 「Pfft, wahahahaha.」 D: 「No, I'm really interested in this stuff too. But Matt reads a lot more mathematical books than I do.」 M: 「We talk about a lot of stuff. I sat down with Chris to talk about the lyrics for this album, and we talked about what we were singing about. But I always tell Dom what books I'm reading and what I'm thinking about. It's not like, "Let's discuss this song" or anything like that (laughs). I think everyone talks about these things in their own way. Some people don't need that many words to express an idea. Some people can sum it up in just one sentence. It just takes me about an hour to say that (laughs)…… Well, I could explain that this song is about my girlfriend and how I was recently dumped, but that wouldn't be funny, would it?」

(laughs). M: 「No, I might get dumped soon.[5]」 D&C: 「Hahahaha……」 M: 「I'm doing this because I think I can explain what is influencing me on a deeper level and making me write music. And I think there are many explanations for one thing. I never know which one is the purely correct explanation.」

The majestic number "Megalomania" at the end of the album was tentatively titled "Paradise" or "Multiple." Is it an inside joke to end the album with a song called Megalomania, which means delusion of grandeur? M: 「……Yes.」

In other words? M: 「Hahaha, well, I mean, it's a really grandiose, almost obsessive obsession to find out the identity of the one who controls everything.」

That's what you have inside you. M: 「To find God. Yeah.」

"When I was 16 or 18, what I wanted to do didn't mesh with anyone around me. My way of doing everything was extreme and insane. I always want to go as far as I can. That's life for me, otherwise what's the point?"

You said you've always thought about the purpose of life and the meaning of existence, when was the first time you thought about that? M: 「Every moment of my life, all the time…… My first memory of my life is a smell. Maybe when I was one or two. The smell of cough medicine spilling on my clothes. But now I think about it, there was me smelling it and there was me looking at it from across the room. I think my whole life has been like that. I think I've been like that my whole life… me looking out from the inside, and me looking at myself from outside, from a distance. Haha…… Any memory I have, there are always two perspectives like that, at the same time.」

You seem mature for your age in terms of what you're thinking and what you're trying to deal with in your music, but do you ever find that you don't talk to young people your own age? M: 「Oh, that. That happens sometimes. I mean, earlier, when I was 16-18, I was very much like that. What I wanted to do didn't really mesh with anyone around me. My way of doing everything was extreme and insane. I always want to go as far as I can. That's life for me, otherwise there's no point. It's a waste of time. But now, I think it's good to talk to other people of my generation. When you talk to people who went to university, they've done so many different things, and there's so much to talk about, it's interesting.」

Do you think there are more or less generational interests and sensitivities, although expressed in different ways? Do you think that themes like the "meaning of existence" that you discuss, which are philosophical and may be considered difficult, resonate with people? M: 「Yes, I think so. When I talk to people I know, I think we're all thinking about the same things. The environment in which we live, the global environment, the relationship between Western society and the third world, and so on. I think overall people are thinking more globally than they used to. ……Probably. Maybe not (laughs).」

Dom has been smiling and listening to what Matt has to say since a while ago, what does he mean to you? D: 「I think he's totally what he says he is. He's constantly raising questions about the world, about people, about society, and this is also like he says himself, sometimes he splits up inside himself without coming to a conclusion.」 M: 「"Origin of Symmetry" is about somehow finding the common thread that runs through all people. And it's hidden in the deepest place, and for me it's music. That's the source of my harmony. Hehehehe.」

So you're saying that music is the anchor that keeps you from constantly treating the world from a split perspective, for better or worse? M: 「Oh, yeah…… Yeah (laughs).」

There are even people who sing songs about the meaning of existence, about emptiness, or about not falling into emptiness, against the walls of their bedrooms. Have you always felt that such a way of expression was not enough for you? If you want to express yourself, it has to be in what could be called "excessive". M: 「Yes. I've thought about it a lot so far, but there are quite a lot of people who don't want to show their inner selves to the fullest. I don't know why. I'm not afraid or ashamed of what's inside me. But I also don't know why I am the way I am. Why do I want to express everything inside and outside of myself so much…… Hehehe……」

What I feel throughout the album here is that the music is like reaching out from the darkness towards a ray of light. D: 「It's good, that’s how it feels.」 M: 「Because I think the darkest moments in life are the moments when you find something truly meaningful.」

I see. I once asked you what hope means to you, do you remember? You said your definition of hope was "a small light above your head at the bottom of a deep, dark well". M: 「Hehehe…… I think so.」

Well, the tour has finally started. Do you feel that with this magnificent new album, Muse have entered a whole new chapter? M: 「Yeah, yeah. I feel that way lately. Everything is progressing at a good pace. Unlike last time, the artwork is progressing well. We're going to use several artists' interpretations of the phrase “seeking harmony in chaos”. One of them will be used as the front cover, and each page will be decorated with a different picture. Each one looks completely different, some artists draw pictures, some sculptures, and some internet art. They are all very good, and I think you can find something in common through all of them. I think it's the same with the songs on the album. I'm trying to find a balance amongst all the noise. I'm trying to find harmony and reason in the seemingly chaotic. I want life to be like that for me. It can be explained in many ways, but there is definitely something at the core. We humans are all like that after all, so I think we should think more about that kind of thing that we all share.」

By the way, there were some people who said that the original cover of "Plug In Baby" was "bad" and "I don't like it" (laughs), so a different design was used for the Japanese version, but what was the mindset behind the design of the cover? M: 「Aliens are something that people came up with when they wanted to escape from loneliness and thought that they exist somewhere in the universe, right? And, this is completely unrelated to this story, haha, but there's another background to it. I had a series of hallucinatory dreams for a while. It sounds like a bad thing to say, but…… When I was in America, I was drinking a lot every night and I always had a headache during the day. I didn't mean to drink that much, but at one point, when I woke up every morning, I thought that I had the same strange dream. I was in a desert-like place where the ground was dry and cracked, the sky was blue and the sun was so bright, and the horizon was so flat and endless that there was no way to escape. There I'm being chased by sharp blades and I'm desperately trying to escape. There are many, many blades flying around in the air, and I try to run and avoid getting hit, but sometimes I get hit. And they pierced me. BBut they didn't cut my body, they just went into a certain part of my brain. Every morning when I wake up, that spot hurts. I can still tell that this spot hurt. And I started to get really worried. I thought there must be something wrong with me.」

In the brain? M: 「Yes. (laughs) Or maybe not…… I saw a film called Communion, which is a very good film, and it was based on a novel, and it was basically about people who were abducted by aliens. It's about how people create that experience within themselves. Especially during creative brainstorming. The film is about a writer who, while writing a new book, falls into a slump and can't write anything. He gets abducted by aliens, but it's actually all in his imagination. But he wakes up every morning with a severe pain in one spot on his head. The alien comes with a sharp blade and drills a hole in his head. It's different from my hallucination I had, but I felt like there was something in common. So the alien picture on the cover was partly influenced by that film. And the contents of the album are also somehow connected. But I think my headache was just because I was dehydrated (laughs). And it went away when I started drinking water.」

Right. But what do you do? What if you were actually being abducted by aliens every night? M: 「Eh…… Heeheeheehee.」

Translator's Note: So many things to say.

[1] Every time I question how and when Belldom came into existence, wondering if this was just something that early Muse fans cooked up for fun, I get reminded that the dynamics of their friendship was already THAT obvious early on and it was even noticed by the Japanese journalists who have interviewed them.

[2] The word that was actually written was puchi-puchi (ぷちぷち) wrapping sheet. If you know what popping bubble wrap sounds like, then that’s what was described.

[3] I’m impressed that the journalist managed to understand the whole thing that Matt was rambling on about to keep up with him, on top of the translator who later had to translate the transcript from English to Japanese. Kudos to them, honestly.

[4] Yes, that is literally Matt describing “Plug In Baby”… word-to-word from the actual lyrics itself. I just edited the part to make sure that it does read as close to the lyrics as possible.

[5] I’ve checked on Musewiki, and I think this Rockin’On interview might be the earliest mention of Matt talking about his and Tanya’s relationship breaking down. Especially given that the interview occurred in early April, right before their live gig at University of East Anglia in Norwich (April 9th, 2001) that the journalist attended as well. So it’s a period of time where they were already separated, but you can see that Matt was going through a hard time accepting it.

That's all to say. Please do support me with my Ko-fi! ☕

[andy-wm]

My thoughts on SEVEN, both the song and the MV, and what it says about Jungkook.

About the song:

My biggest take away from the song is that Jungkook has total confidence in his ability to keep his partner satisfied and entertained. Daily. He also has a good reason to do heaps of laundry.

Also, he gets to say Fu@k a lot (always fun) and his pronunciation has really improved since he collabed with that disrespectful a$$hole who's name i won't bother to mention.

Seriously though, i hope his adulthood will finally sink in for the people who still try to keep him in babyville.

From a musical point of view, he does get to use those magnificent pipes he has, and use them well. The song flexes his vocal range and has lots of dynamic movement. And he gets to rap. I can see why he would have wanted to sing it.

About the MV:

I have a few observations about the mv and the relationship represented. I know it's meant to be lighthearted but that doesn't mean it shows us a healthy relationship so i'm gonna say my piece. Sorry if it's a downer, feel free to skip.

The power dynamic between JK's character and Sohee's character is what i find interesting.

She's totally in control of their narrative the whole way through.

At the start, she's angry and berating him and he's just listening, his head down. Very submissive. Most of the time his hands are in his lap or on the table while she's gesturing to herself and even throwing her hands up. The only time his energy is up. Is when he pulls her away from the falling debris.

She's getting up to leave halfway through his response, too. She doesnt really give him a chance to respond.

Even though he tries and tries to talk to her, she's dismissive, rolling her eyes, ignoring him, constantly walking away before he can finish what he's trying to tell her. At one point she pushes him so hard he falls backwards. He's repeatedly risking his personal well-being to get her to hear his side, but even then, he's still completely submissive. He brings her flowers, he walks three steps behind her, he tries to make her laugh to break the tension so she will listen.

Theres only one point at which he is assertive and that's at 2.55 when he gets around in front of her.

When he does eventually get her to stop and hear him out, he takes the role of a supplicant. She is very much in control of the outcome. She eventually offers her hand, and then basically hauls him along behind her. He is trotting along behind her like a scolded child.

I found it a little hard to watch because JK isn't an actor. Not because his acting is bad but becuase it's really him.

I could be way off, i admit that, but i honestly feel that his character is responding exactly as he himself would respond. He's soft and sweet and gentle, but dammit he believes in them! He's trying his best to placate her even though she is giving him NOTHING back.

I hate that it reminds me of that damn hamburger incident (he's is a sponge cake. Pls dont hurt him, world.)

Anywayyyyy....

My take away is 2 things.

First one is, throughout the MV his character is "fighting *for* the relationship", which is different from fighting within the relationship. He wants this problem they have to be solved, and he's prepared to do the work. Go, you Jungkook’s alter ego.

Second one is, despite a lot of people seeing this as a,stalker situation, the power balance is very heavily weighted towards her. Also, she treats him pretty disrespectfully. If these gender roles were reversed, the comments would be very interesting...

Other than that i loved the aesthetic, the humour, and the energy.

But what does this overtly hereronormative MV tell us about Jungkook's sexual orientation?

I'll say it does not tell us anything about who he likes to do the horizontal boogie with.

He liked the song, and wanted to record it. I have no idea if he had any hand in the MV storyline. If he did, awesome. It's fun.

But let's be real about the likelihood of him coming out to the world through a MV. I'd say it's ZERO. Reality dictates that whatever his own orientation, the MV needed to represent the Jungkook (most of) the world WANTS to see. Dont forget, this song is more of a business decision than a creative decision for Hybe. We know SB had a big part in the processs, and that man is all about the dollar bills.

It's certainly not a personal statement from JK. Its a fun, summer song and he gets to say F◇CK a lot and flex his vocal chops. That's it.

Do i personally think JK is gay? Hell yeah. With bells on.

Do i think he would risk it all?? ('it' being a huge entertainment empire, his own and his friends' careers, social damnation, personal freedom, and the loss of his contact with ARMY)

No, absolutely not. Not for a song that he didn't even write. Not in his solo debut. Not in today's America (sorry American readers, the USA isn't a safe place to be queer right now).

An unrelated question:

Do i think he will show us something more substantial with his album?

I think he will. I truly hope so. I dont think he's going to sing about his orientation but i do think the songs will be meaningful and personal and I'll be quite suprised if there isn't a fair bit of queer subtext.

If he includes a hidden track and Jimin features on it, I will throw a party and sprinkle glitter EVERYWHERE.

Just for fun, here's some JK looking gorgeously gay...

Living his best life in the Butter MV

His gestures... so pretty

No words for this one (cr to photographer)

I mean he's not wrong...

[deke-rivers-1957]

Elvis Puzzler Magazine

I'll be editing this post with my thoughts on each puzzle as I go through it. Thanks @vintagepresley for posting about in the first place.

Pre-Hollywood Puzzles (Despite some of these involving elements both during and after his Hollywood career, they all come before the official movies so they'll all go here).

Ultimate/2 min Trivia: Incredible how obvious my interest in the niche of Elvis movies is that I actually struggled with some of the questions. Funny thing but one of them was whether or not his real hair color was blond. I know he had blond hair as a child but he clearly has brown hair as an adult. Does that still count as him being blond? I know I probably thought about the semantics too much, but it's a true/false question. You wouldn't say Elvis was a blond as an adult but he did have blond hair as a child. I would've reworded it by asking if his real hair color was black.

Mix & Match: I'd say this was pretty easy as long as you know some of the bigger hits. Elvis song titles are simple in that if you only need to find one word, you can use the rest of the title to figure it out.

TV Guide Spot the Difference: 2 of the three had an obvious difference that either involve his name or the heading. The second one was a bit of a challenge since the difference was pretty small.

Word Searches: I appreciate that they each follow the theme well and include specific words from the song/album. The difficulty of them are all about the same.

Missing Letters: I like this one since you really need to keep track of the individual letters for each word. Since there's no space between words, it adds to the difficulty since you need to know how many letters make up each word as well.

Ed Sullivan Show: 5 letters scramble is just not my best type of puzzle. I'm not good at it, but for once the word sudoku didn't give me as much issue. I got the mystery word right away. The criss cross was fun because I learned about so many acts that appeared on the show. You don't realize retrospectively how big the show was until you see how many big names were on there.

Elvis' Christmas Album Spot The Difference: This was really easy. There's so many big presents on the cover that you can tell when something was missing.

Elvis' Golden Records Album Trivia: Some of the stats I have no idea how they verified. For instance, how can you possibly figure out if he sold 1 billion records? Some of the metrics like the Billboard 100 didn't even exist yet so a lot of his early records weren't included in some counts or had to be retroactively estimated. I would've used a more easily calculable stat instead.

Aloha from Hawaii Spot The Difference: One difference I wasn't so sure about was the blue circle on the earth. I had to look really close to make sure they were different shades. I know it's rare but I wonder what someone who's color blind would see. Would they even know there was a difference in colors?

Crossword: I thought the clues involving lyrics from Elvis songs were cool. Some of them though made no sense to me like 46 down being "hon" when the clue was cupcake. How does that fit and what does "hon" even mean outside of a variation of honey? I know you need the h from 44 across and the n from 51 across but you could've just used hen or hun.

Movie Puzzles

Love Me Tender: The word scramble was easy since his songs had very simple titles. The word sudoku was a bit challenging since I'm not used to doing those, but the criss cross was very fun. I love how in the summary they talked about how Clint was exempt from service since I mention that in my review. The main takeaway I got was that I surprisingly didn't know a lot of behind the scenes names for this movie. For instance I never knew Ken Darby was the actual writer of the song "Love Me Tender". When I wrote my review, I didn't go into the same detailing of behind the scenes personnel so it was great to learn more about it.

Loving You: Boy was this quite a jump in difficulty. I made a lot of mistakes throughout all of the puzzles. The 5 letters puzzle was a lot harder than it should've been to me since I didn't associate the same words to what the clues were saying. The word sudoku was a nightmare to the point where I had to use the answer key to finish. I knew the mystery word was Lizabeth because the summary already included her name. The criss cross was a little easier but I still made a couple mistakes on it. Overall, I'm just glad Loving You finally got some representation since it's the least talked about of his 50s movies.

Jailhouse Rock: This a bit easier. The Scramble was very easy but again the word sudoku gave me trouble. At this point I know that puzzle will take me a lot of time. The criss cross I only had one mistake because I miscounted the number of letters.

King Creole: This one took longer to do as I had other stuff going on. Once again the 5 letters and word sudoku were difficult to finish. Only one mistake on the criss cross because I was looking at the wrong section. I'm amazed they mentioned the riots in Mexico that occurred because a lot of teens wanted to see the movie without paying.

G.I. Blues: This one was really easy. The tank one was unfamiliar but once I got one word, the rest was easy to finish. Criss cross as usual was easy as well. What I didn't know was that this movie's soundtrack was nominated for 2 Grammys (one for Best Soundtrack and one for Best Male's Vocal Performance) since I didn't mention that in my review.

Flaming Star: The last letter trivia spiral is only hard if you're not that knowledgable of Yellowstone or Dirty Harry's basic production credit details. We do get a change of pace by having a word search about Western tv shows and a find the different image puzzle. I'd say those two are easy, you just need to pay real close attention to what you want to find.

Wild In The Country: I admit that I'm not that knowledgable in country music either. There was a clue about the leading man from A Star Is Born for the scramble and I have no idea how to spell his last name. Same with a country music legend who grew up with 11 siblings. I got both of their first names but no clue on their last names lol. There was another word search that I had a better time with. Now what was a weird choice was an add 'em up puzzle. The final number doesn't have any significance to the movie so I have no idea why it was included for this movie. I would've changed the given numbers so that the top of the pyramid added up to 1961 (the year the movie was released).

Blue Hawaii: Interestingly there's only 2 puzzles that take up the double page spread: Fill in the Blanks and a word search. The word search I think makes up for having one less puzzle because you're finding a lot more words compared to previous movies that had one.

Follow That Dream: Also only has 2 puzzles that are Fill in the Blanks and a word search. This time though, the word search wasn't that hard. About a third of the page was just a full body shot of Toby which is absolutely necessary. The only thing I wonder though is what exactly is the ceremony from the word search? I wouldn't call the governor seeing part of the highway a ceremony. The court scene at the end definitely isn't one either. If anyone had just seen the movie, let me know if I'm missing something.

Girls! Girls! Girls!: We completely skip Kid Galahad which stinks since I would've loved to see boxing themed puzzles. Only 2 puzzles but this time it's missing letters and a maze. Mazes to me can be tricky since you almost need to start off on both ends and try to meet in the middle. I'd say it makes up for not have 3 puzzles.

It Happened At The World's Fair: After taking a break in the middle of a word search I think that really helped my concentration. It was a decent sized word search since you had to find really long words like paddleboat rides. We also got a new puzzle with code words. I love this puzzle. You got the trivia aspect where you have to find cities that hosted a world's fair and the puzzle aspect where you need to figure out what the other letters are. Definitely makes up for only having 2 puzzles.

Viva Las Vegas: We skip a couple movies and only get 2 puzzles. A Cluefinder puzzle that's only 3x3 for each category is a bit too easy. Since you also only have a word search I think this was a bit underwhelming. I would've added another puzzle like a word scramble that included trivia about Ann Margret.

Girl Happy: We skip Roustabout and only get 2 puzzles. The word search is standard but it was interesting to see the names of some famous pin up girls that I've never heard of. The code puzzle is good in that you're using the alphabet's number positions to spell out the names of songs used in the movie.

Harum Scarum: We skip Tickle Me and still have 2 puzzles. Word builder is fun since you have to remember how to spell certain words. The one word word search shouldn't even be part of this since you're only finding Elvis. It's a general Elvis puzzle when this is supposed to be about the movie. It would make more sense if you're finding his character's name Johnny.

Change of Habit: This is the last movie and even in an Elvis magazine all of his movies past 1965 except for this one was skipped. It's not even a big send off to his movie career. Only one puzzle and it's a measly word search. I feel like they could've done a better job. I understand that this was made by the editors of TV Guide and it won't be a complete package, but the ending of this section is so underwhelming. I might make my own puzzles for the movies that weren't included some day.

Post-Hollywood Puzzles (I know some of them were made during his movie career but that's how it's set up in the magazine).

'68 Comeback Special: Trivia Cross was pretty easy, but Both Directions and Sudoku were hard for me. Only having 3 small puzzles make sense because of the difficulty.

Elvis: TTWII: Only having two puzzles is fair because you have the word search with 18 different Vegas performers throughout history and Hidden Alphabet. That second puzzle can be difficult if you don't know what exact word you're looking for.

From the Archives: Both of these are crosswords and I had to give up by using the answer key. Some of these clues I had no idea what the answer was and made mistakes. What doesn't help is that these were from time periods where I simply wasn't alive to know American culture. I'm not going to know who Mr. Television was or every single movie that came out in 1950s/90s.

Elvis' Giant Xword: For a puzzle this big, I did fairly well. I did have to look up his discography and names to get the spelling right. I'd say for a catch all puzzle involving Elvis, this was pretty good.

Spot The Differences: All fairly easy but I love how we got to see Elvis through his adult life starting with his Army years. I did think some of the differences were a bit too obvious such as having Priscilla's entire shirt be a different color.

Elvis Hit Song Rebus: I thought it was pretty easy for an "end credits" puzzle since it comes after the answer key. As long as you know what his hit singles were, the pictures are pretty easy to put together.

Back Cover Fill in the Blank: As long as you know the quote word for word this should be easy. I admit I wasn't expecting to have a puzzle be on the back cover, so it made for a nice little surprise.

Final Thoughts

I thought this was a great magazine even if there were some missteps. I don't get TV Guide so if these puzzles came directly from issues over the decades, I can't really complain as much. If these were made from scratch, I wish we had at least every movie represented since I was bummed that some movies I enjoyed were missing when others I didn't like as much made it in.

If you haven't gotten one, I high recommend buying one while you still can.

[extraordinaryhistories]

#21 - 'Woman at the Well' (non-album track, 2000)

Beware, traveller: here we enter the most uncharted territories of Sufjan’s catalogue. All sorts of terror in these parts. But all sorts of beauty, too.

Sufjan Stevens’ output, when fully collated, is just staggering. To think that he by all accounts leaves the overwhelming majority of his songs unreleased. By my count, he has upwards of 300 released tracks across all sorts of albums, collaborations, soundtracks and modern classical cycles. He is so prolific that you can stratify his output into multiple, accessibility-based tiers:

Tier One: the heavyweight albums. Illinois, Carrie and Lowell, Age of Adz and Javelin, plus ‘Mystery of Love’ and ‘Visions of Gideon’.

Tier Two: the other mainline albums ­– Michigan, Seven Swans, The Ascension and A Beginner’s Mind, plus All Delighted People.

Tier Three: the most obscure full-length albums and collaborations. A Sun Came, Planetarium, the Sisyphus project, Aporia, Convocations and similar material.

Tier Four: where we start to get deep under the surface. His Christmas material goes here, as do projects like The Decalogue, Reflections and The BQE. Some of his one-off track collaborations, like Moses Sumney’s ‘Make Out in My Car’, are here too. Things that you can probably find on streaming, but that only the most dedicated of fans would care about.

Tier Five: the bottom of the trench. These are songs that many of those most dedicated fans will have never heard unless they are in way too deep. Piecemeal inclusions on no-name compilations, surprise Tumblr releases of demos made twenty years prior, one-off live songs like ‘Wild Horses’. The Wild West of Sufjanilia, where oddities abound.

There are few artists for which anybody could say this: Tier Five contains some of Sufjan’s absolute finest material. Without a shadow of a doubt.

This is especially the case in the very early days. I get the impression that we have only seen a miniscule fraction of the music that Sufjan wrote from the mid 1990s up through Michigan – this was a feverishly experimental period for him, catalogued in all its scattershot glory on A Sun Came but extending its reach far beyond that album. It seems that Sufjan made enough connections and was subject to enough blog-centred hype around the turn of the millennium to get featured on a swathe of multi-artist compilations, as well as other obscure releases. These are remarkably hard to track down these days, but enough internet scouring will lead you to an underbelly of Sufjan’s catalogue that most people don’t even know exists. Thus we get a series of isolated songs, many of which are barely above demo quality, scattered across CDs and mp3s and placed next to artists who have never been heard from since.

B-sides and non-album tracks of artists quite often have that status for a reason. Most artists have the same recording method: enter the studio, build up a series of tracks from loose ideas, select the cream of the crop for the album release, and discard of the chaff. Some of that chaff will be saved for bonus tracks, b-sides to physical releases, or ‘outtakes’ on deluxe editions released decades from now – filler that will appeal to big fans and few others. There is a very strong correlation between distance from the main release and a lack of quality, is my point here. This is the case for the majority of acts. There is a reason that most people don’t consider there to be many exquisite Beatles outtakes, for instance – likewise for Pink Floyd, or The Smiths, or the bulk of other classic bands.

For Sufjan, however, the recording method has always been different. Sufjan is fiercely varied and fiercely focused at the same time – his albums differ wildly in style, but each individual project coalesces around a very particular sound. And because he so insistently curates his albums, nothing on them feels out of place stylistically.

As with other artists, there are a lot of Sufjan songs that don’t make the big leagues. What makes them different is this: their exclusion would have been based less on quality and more on style. Sufjan was just relentless around the period following A Sun Came, and it shows – for every one song that found its way onto a compilation or Tumblr drop, we must imagine ten that didn’t, forever confined to a dusty four-track in a closet or a file on some buried hard drive. He eventually settled on the creative direction of Enjoy Your Rabbit, but this did not stop him writing a plethora of folk, rock and electronic music around this time too, and these songs show the rapidly maturing songwriting of a genius in the making. There are some truly astonishing songs in this creative nether region – they are not quite as mature as the ones that would be found on Michigan, but they are approaching that point with an unstoppable inertia.

And so we go to ‘Woman at the Well’, an unassuming classic of early Sufjan and a song in which we can see clear progression from the A Sun Came days. The steps forward in sophistication are palpable here – ‘Woman at the Well’ is many things that A Sun Came’s songs are not. It is well-recorded, for starters; we are not yet at the hi-fi perfection of Illinois, but there is none of that cassette-derived background noise that dominates the softer songs on Sufjan’s debut. The acoustic guitar sparkles, the drums (lightly) punch, the vocals feel immediate and alive, and all of it comes together to make a song of relieving clarity, like stepping out of a log cabin and getting a breath of the mountain air.

The whole song feels that way, in fact. This one is easy, expansive, effortless, three terms that do not apply to much of A Sun Came. We can put this partially at the feet of the arrangement, which strikes a comfortable balance between layered and intimate: guitars and banjo are supplemented by a cosy array of instruments, among them glockenspiel, organ, drums and recorder, all Sufjan staples that hadn’t been applied with this sort of subtlety up to this point. This is a strum-heavy singer-songwriter tune at its heart; a maturing Sufjan understands this, and uses the additional instruments not to overwhelm the song but to make it richer. Compare with a song like ‘Wordsworth’s Ridge’, where the various elements seem to fight for attention in the arrangement. ‘Woman at the Well’ has a similar palette, but the individual instruments mesh together in service of the chord progression – many components, one machine. How refreshing.

‘Woman at the Well’ bucks trends in nearly every sense but lyrically. This is still an early Sufjan song, and its lyrics are very typical of early Sufjan in that they are unambiguously Christian in sentiment. The song provides a poetic account of an event that transpires in John, in which Jesus encounters and converses with a Samaritan woman. Samaritans and Jews, per tradition, met each other with hostility; the power of the story lies in how Jesus offers redemption to a woman that many other Jews would spurn (a common theme in the Gospels, with echoes in other anecdotes and parables.)

Many great artists, especially during the Italian Renaissance, took artistic inspiration from the story of the Samaritan woman. Sufjan does so too in ‘Woman at the Well’, but in a typically wry manner. Sufjan seems fascinated particularly with the image given in John 4 of Jesus as a giver of living water:

‘those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life’ (John 4:14).

Thus the lines in the second verse about how ‘she supposes he is wet / She was a fountain then’, the message being that Jesus’ eternal capacity for salvation and grace invigorates all those who love him. He is a fountain, so she is a fountain, and she overflows now with goodness. It feels as if this continues the shift in Sufjan’s religious songwriting that we first see in ‘Joy! Joy! Joy!’, and in a lot of the other flotsam recorded between A Sun Came and Michigan. Very early songs like ‘We Are What You Say’ features God as a terror, in the wrathful, apocalyptic Old Testament sense. Here we see a more inviting New Testament sense of God that focuses on love and salvation, just as Jesus preached. There is a hint of Yahweh in the chorus (‘In fire, in fire, down to the last liar’, a very Revelations image), but ‘Woman at the Well’ is otherwise a song of Jesus through and through.

A song of Jesus in a quirky way, though. Sufjan can’t help himself. The Samaritan woman is described in this song not as a fountain but as a ‘fountain pen’ for the majority of its sections. What significance? Little, or everything, depending on your point of view. This is likely just a piece of free-associative wordplay that has the additional effect of making the song’s rhymes less laboured, but I could imagine how Sufjan might enjoy the connotations of ‘fountain pen’. Fountain pens are sophisticated devices; they are refined vehicles of creation out of which culture pours. The quality of Jesus as a refiner of the soul is central to Christian dogma (albeit expressed differently), and may be central to this song too. We have all heard the ‘is this Sufjan song Christian or gay?’ joke in the past (the answer is always both), but for pre-Michigan lyrics, we can just as easily ask ‘is this line complex or just there because it rhymes nice?’

A piece on ‘Woman at the Well’ wouldn’t be complete without at least mentioning the melody. It’s a beautiful one, and it’s notable insofar as it feels like the Sufjan we know and love, down to its smallest rhythms and intervals. Even the best stuff on A Sun Came, like ‘Happy Birthday’, feels a bit like the Sufjan Stevens of an uncanny valley that lies somewhere between Illinois and Either/Or. Not so here. The contour of the main ‘she was a fountain pen’ motif is absolutely classic Sufjan, the ‘pen’ (the 2nd of the scale) lending it a perfect wistfulness that suggests the relative minor. There is still a loose adherence to pentatonic major here, but like so many of the best Sufjan songs, the melodic quality of ‘Woman at the Well’ is that sort of forward-looking happiness mixed with occasional glances over one’s shoulder at the life you’ll never return to. That right there is precisely the reason I started a project like this. Nobody else is capable of such balance. Nobody.

And it’s the reason why we dredge through this early, dusty stuff at all. For many artists it would not be worth it. But for Sufjan, all the same magic and majesty that you’ll find in his mainline releases can be found (on occasion) here. Sometimes it might even be exactly the same magic. Listen to the section of ‘Woman at the Well’ that immediately follows the first chorus (starting with ‘he has her hand...’). If the melody there sounds familiar, that’s because it is. A few years later, Sufjan would repurpose that melody for one of his first true masterpieces, a song about new VCRs and long car trips and taking one last glimpse at your mother knowing that next time you see her she might be an entirely different person. Here it is, the best melody in all of ‘Romulus’, just sitting there on a no-name compilation throwaway that nobody with a safe grip on their mental health has ever heard, years before Michigan was even dreamt of.

That, to a Sufjan tragic like me, is really fucking cool.

[aprillikesthings]

swear to god the amount of time I've spent on this fic that's just looking up release dates of fucking songs/albums like do you KNOW how many times I've had a half dozen tabs open that are just the wikipedia page for [band/person name] discography

because yes I remember that The Beatles' Revolver came out in 1966 but WHEN in 1966, when can I make Adora listen to it while doing homework

for extra-fun points this was back when a lot of music had not only different release dates but the albums had different track lists, between the USA and the UK--American kids had more spending money, on average, than British kids; so American albums tended to be shorter so they could sell the songs as singles and EP's as well. In the case of The Beatles specifically, their really early stuff was across more than one label! Their albums didn't have the same track lists on both sides of the pond until Sgt. Pepper--at that point they insisted on it, and after that the track lists were always the same.

Sgt. Pepper was still released a week later in the USA than in the UK but I wonder if that was like, literally due to the time it took to ship the damn thing across an ocean lolol

Anyway even as an obsessed teenager in the mid-90's I only bothered memorizing the British album names/tracklists, since that's what was released on CD--the singles that weren't on any albums in the UK were released on their own compilations.

I say "bothered memorizing" lol I didn't even do it on purpose it just...happened. I used to be able to just recite the UK full-length albums in order of release.

Wait can I still do it?

Please Please Me, With the Beatles, A Hard Day's Night, ...I'm missing one I think?..., Help!, Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Magical Mystery Tour, Yellow Submarine, The White Album, Abbey Road, Let it Be (hah those last two always trip me up bc they were released in a different order than they were recorded)

Okay let me look and see if I fucked up

OH RIGHT the one I missed was Beatles for Sale. To be fair that album has a lot of...less good songs on it. Though it does have Eight Days a Week on it, which is one of my FAVES. And I got Yellow Submarine and the White Album in the wrong order. (To be fair, Yellow Submarine was mostly "leftovers" from recording Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour; the White Album is a totally different style)

ANYWAY this was SUPPOSED to be a post about writing my fic lol god I spent all of yesterday going "I need to write....I need to write...." but couldn't get any words down, until I watched a chunk of Monterey Pop on youtube and then voila, words fell into the gdoc. The funny thing is that I know I just recently reblogged a post that was like "if you're stuck, write or at least imagine things later in the story" and I keep refusing to let myself do that even thought it keeps working when I give up and do it. Because of course it's by writing things that happen later that I figure out how to approach scenes that happen earlier!

But also at this point, their senior year is going to be two or three chapters!, and "Catra hitch-hikes to SF" is going to be an entire chapter by itself. My actual chapter listings in the doc are unintentionally hilarious because at this point it's going to be, like, twice as many chapters as I was planning. 😩

That said I think I only need a couple more scenes before this upcoming chapter is finally done? But at this rate, by the time they graduate high school the rest of the fic will be basically done hahhhhh

[taylor-on-your-dash]

Writing of Speak Now Timeline

Disclaimer: Hello! Just a quick note before you dive in. As I said in the Writing of Red Timeline, not every album has enough information to pinpoint the exact date on which its songs were written. Sadly, Speak Now is one of those albums, so I based this timeline more on the experiences that I think inspired the songs on the album. Of course, I'm not Taylor, I'm not in her head and I don't know people in the music industry that can corroborate this research. Therefore, there's always the chance that some of the conclusions might be wrong. You are more than welcome to take the sources listed here and come up with your own theories on the condition that you'll credit me. This is 100% my research, originally posted on Reddit on March 3rd, 2023.

Trigger Warning: John Mayer.

Introduction: The making of Speak Now was very different from Fearless which was recorded live, and closer to Debut. After Taylor wrote a song, the first step was to record a stripped-down demo at Nathan Chapman's studio Pain In The Art, where Nathan would play all of the instruments and Taylor would record the vocals. To understand better what "stripped-down" means in this context, listen to Let's Go. All of Speak Now started like Let's Go. Some of the demo instruments survived, and others were re-recorded by other musicians or overdubbed at a later date, between January 2010 and July 2010. Taylor's demo vocals ALL survived. They were not re-recorded.

[Nathan Chapman Interview] “With Speak Now, we deliberately went back to our initial way of working together. We had an unlimited budget, and could have gone and recorded the whole album in the Bahamas, used any studio we liked and whatever musicians we wanted. But we decided to bring it back to the basics on purpose, because we wanted to keep it about the music and our chemistry. [We were trying not] to over-compensate for the pressure we were feeling for a follow-up to Fearless. That's why we stripped it down and made the demos first. Taylor came to my studio and I played all the instruments on the demos, and because I have a good vocal booth, her demo vocals ended up being the vocals you hear on the record. After finishing the demos, we went out to different studios, and tried different combinations of engineers and musicians to replace some of the elements of my demos, mostly the programmed drums, and to do additional overdubs. So Taylor comes in, and plays me a song, and I chart it while listening to her. I then tap out a tempo, she hands me her guitar, I go into a recording booth, put on headphones, start the click‑track and hit record. She's hearing what I'm doing and singing along while she's in the control room, so I know where I am in the song. After that, I program the drums, usually using Superior Drummer in Logic. I play the drum parts on my Roland Fantom G6 keyboard, and then quantise. I then play the fills that I want to complete the drum part. After this I'll put down a bass part, and at this point we make sure we're really OK with the tempo and that we love the arrangement. I may add an electric guitar to make the track bigger, and then she'll go into the vocal booth and she'll sing the song three or four times. We may do a little bit of comping, but she executes these songs really well, and I don't want to mess with her takes too much. The audience wants to hear someone sing with real emotion. From there we'll listen to what we have and we'll maybe add some vocal harmonies and guitars, and I do a quick mix and she's out of the door.”

WRITING OF SPEAK NOW TIMELINE

November 2, 2006: Taylor writes Sparks Fly, after opening for Jake Owen in Portland, OR, on Halloween night. The secret message in the album booklet is Portland, Oregon. She will perform the song for the first time on April 6, 2007, in her native Reading PA.

[From MySpace] Happy Halloween! I'm sitting at the airport in Portland, Oregon... About to get on a red-eye flight (Oh yes, I just said red-eye. Meaning, all night. This should be interesting...)  to Toronto, Canada for another weekend of Rascal Flatts shows. Tonight was awesome. It was a show in Portland at a bar called Duke's, I opened up for Jake Owen. And a little back-story, I've had his album on repeat for the past couple of months... It's an amazing album and I literally cannot stop listening to it. I've got every line memorized, and if you see me on a plane.. Chances are, I'm listening to some song off that album, at a volume level that's probably going to cause long-term hearing damage someday. ANYWAY. I got to walk in on his sound check and meet him. Turns out he's extremely cool, and had bought my album on iTunes. :-) And since I had to leave after one song of his set, he played my favorite song "8 Second Ride" first. Which is another reason why he's awesome.

The writing date was leaked by Steve Hall from the IC on July 21, 2010. Since we didn't have the secret message yet, we didn't have any reason to believe it was written after the Jake Owen show. (thanks @backup-baby-backup!)

Original handwritten lyric sheet:

May 30, 2007: First performance of Sparks Fly in Oroville, CA. Steve Hall from the Inner Circle/Dark Blue Tennessee.com films it and posts it online.

Differences between the draft and the 2007 live version:

“You stand there in front of me” -> “you stood there in front of me”

“Get me with those brown eyes, baby” -> “get me with those green eyes, baby”

“Take your open hand and take me out” -> “reach out open-handed and lead me out”

“Dim the paper lanterns” -> “don’t need more paper lanterns”

“This night is the 31st” -> “my heart is beating fast”

“So let’s make it count now, baby” -> “I could wait patiently”

“I’ll run my fingers” -> “I run my fingers”

“And make no borderlines” -> “gonna strike this match tonight”

“Forgive me when I can’t take in everything you are” -> “and lead me up the staircase”

“You kissed me like you meant it, I swear I saw sparks” -> “I’d love to hate it, but you make it like a firework show”

There was also an additional section: We stood at the gate (and you kiss me) / With the moon on your face / And you’ll kiss me

September 2008: Taylor and Martin Johnson team up to write a diss track about Camilla Belle, called Drama Queen. This is one of the first steps in the Taylor-Joe-Camilla saga, which started with Forever & Always and Drama Queen and continued on Speak Now. There is no evidence that Drama Queen was considered for Speak Now, but for being an unreleased song, it made it as far as being mastered for the OG Fearless so it has to mean something. In my opinion, it would've taken Better Than Revenge's place, if BTR hadn't existed. Taylor talked about the Fearless mastering process on September 30th on MySpace: this song literally CANNOT be younger, since the mastering of a song is considered a legal document, necessary for copyright protection and the collection of royalties.

March 8, 2009: John Mayer tweets: "Waking up to this song idea that won't leave my head. 3 days straight now. That means it's good enough to finish. It's called Half of My Heart and I want to sing it with Taylor Swift. She would make a killer Stevie Nicks in contrast to my Tom Petty of a song."

Taylor's answer: "I freaked out when I heard [it], because I’ve been such a big fan of John for such a long time. I’m really excited about just the idea that he would even mention me in his Twitter!”

March 13, 2009: [From her Twitter] [second source] "A day off in Sydney. Drove two hours out of the city and spent the day on the beach. Wrote a chorus you'll hear on the next record. :)"

March 19, 2009: [From MySpace] ““I’m wiped out. I've been in the studio all day (I know, I know.. We JUST put out a new album. I think I have a problem, I cannot stop writing songs.) It’s so much fun knowing that you can take your time, because you have like a year and a half to make something you’re really proud of. I love recording a few songs, waiting a few months, recording a few more.. Instead of devoting a few weeks to “record the album” and then it’s just done. I like dragging it out, that way you can be meticulous about every detail. Daydream about different ways to put the songs together, and then take them apart. I’m pretty obsessed with the whole process. So needless to say, it was good to be back in the studio with my redheaded producer who I missed terribly.”

Speculation: One of the songs is possibly Mr. Perfectly Fine, since, as we know from Fearless TV, it was considered for Fearless Platinum. Maybe Haunted was also part of the same recording session. Haunted is the first Speak Now song to be copyrighted, so it has to be one of the first songs.

‘Haunted’ is about the moment that you realize the person you’re in love with is drifting and fading fast. And you don’t know what to do, but in that period of time, in that phase of love, where it’s fading out, time moves so slowly. Everything hinges on what that last text message said, and you’re realizing that he’s kind of falling out of love. That’s a really heartbreaking and tragic thing to go through, because the whole time you’re trying to tell yourself it’s not happening. I went through this, and I ended up waking up in the middle of the night writing this song about it.

The secret message is: "Still to this day".

Early April 2009: Taylor and Martin Johnson from Boys Like Girls write If This Was A Movie.

Speculation: I think it was written in April just because of the lyric "six months gone and I'm still reaching" and Taylor and Joe Jonas had broken up six months before, in October.

Literally nothing else is known about this song.

April 23, 2009: The Fearless Tour starts in Evansville, Indiana. Taylor will write most of Speak Now while on tour.

May 22, 2009: Taylor and John Mayer perform White Horse and Your Body Is A Wonderland at the LA Staples Center.

May 23, 2009: Taylor and John Mayer record Half Of My Heart.

May 29, 2009: [From MySpace] “Tomorrow, after the performance on the Today show, I’ll fly back to Nashville and record a lot of new songs I’ve written in the last few weeks.

June 8, 2009: [From Twitter] "In the studio. I don't know whose computer I'm using. Pssh.. Such a rebel right now.."

June 9, 2009: [From Twitter] "If I said I was in the studio with T-Pain, would you believe me?"

June 12, 2009: American publishes an interview with Taylor where she talks about her third album. The interview was probably done in April.

“There are definitely breakup songs on this record, but not too many. I like to balance out the amount of happy songs, breakup songs, sentimental songs, I-miss-you songs, angry songs. I don’t want to try and harp on the same emotion too much because I feel like if you make the ‘angry’ album, that’s going to lose people.”

June 16, 2009: the Jonas Brothers release their new album Lines, Vines and Trying Times, which includes a song called Much Better, that references Taylor:

I get a rep for breaking hearts / Now, I'm done with superstars / And all the tears on her guitar

This is likely the song that inspires Taylor to write Better Than Revenge, since the phrase "much better" is used multiple times in the song.

“The song "Better Than Revenge" is about a girl, who a few years ago, stole my boyfriend. I think she probably thought I forgot about it, but I didn't.”

Fun Fact: Joe Jonas changed the lyrics from "I'm done with superstars" to "I'm cool with superstars".

July 1, 2009: [From MySpace] “What else is new... Recording a bunch of new songs.”

One of them is possibly Better Than Revenge, maybe even Let's Go. Taylor seems still bitter about Joe leaving her.

July 11, 2009: Taylor writes on her diary about going to an antique shop. This is probably the inspiration for Timeless.

[Lover Journal] I just got back from a trip to Canada that was absolutely refreshing and good for the soul. I never really knew what a good thing having no cell or internet could be. But it was a great thing. I did things a little differently up there, and I actually liked it. I started reading self-help books. It’s really uplifting knowing that you can change your life today, tomorrow … just by doing a few things you never thought of. Or doing things differently than you’ve done them before. New things I adopted from a self help book: Get up early. Keep your cool. Don’t tee off on people you love. Laugh more. You can control your moods. Create a love account and make deposits, in other words, show people that you love them. Another new hobby of mine is ….. antique stores. And not just neat, organized antique stores. I really like the ones where there’s so much crap to dig through, you can find absolute treasures for nothing. I went to 2 antique stores in Saskatchewan, and one today in Winnipeg. I bought all these old glass mason jars. I’m gonna use them for candle holders. I bought old scales and watch faces and chairs and old trunks and a bird cage and 2 lamps.

July 21, 2009: [From Twitter] Hanging with my producer Nathan, discussing the next adventure. Album #3.

July 2009: Based on a Lover Journal, I think that Taylor wrote Never Grow Up in July 2009.

Handwritten Lyrics From a Lover Journal:

‘Never Grow Up’ is a song about the fact that I don’t quite know how I feel about growing up. It’s tricky. Growing up happens without you knowing it. Growing up is such a crazy concept because a lot of times when you were younger you wish you were older. I look out into a crowd every night and I see a lot of girls that are my age and going through exactly the same things as I’m going through. Every once in a while I look down and I see a little girl who is seven or eight, and I wish I could tell her all of this. There she is becoming who she is going to be and forming her thoughts and dreams and opinions. I wrote this song for those little girls.

[Nathan Chapman Interview] “The song 'Never Grow Up' is just she singing and I on acoustic guitar. We recorded ourselves live. That song probably happened in two hours.”

September 6, 2009: Taylor announces Fearless Platinum Edition on MySpace, out on October 26, 2009. It includes Jump Then Fall, which was originally written in the summer of 2008, while Taylor was dating Joe Jonas. The secret message of the song is "Last Summer Was Magical". It seems like Taylor doesn't harbor bitter feelings toward Joe anymore.

“We just put out Fearless last year? I know! We’re not putting out a whole new album. We’re re-releasing Fearless with SIX new songs added. I’m so excited for you to hear this new music, see the new pictures, and watch the 50 million hours of bonus content. I love you a lot and I’ll see you on the road!”

September 13, 2009: New York. Night of the VMA incident, where Kanye West interrupts Taylor while she's accepting the Best Music Video Award for You Belong With Me. Taylor starts writing Innocent shortly after.

Based on the themes of the song and on the fact that, according to the booklet, it was written in 2009, I think that Castles Crumbling was also inspired by the VMA incident.

[GQ] “When the crowd started booing, I thought they were booing because they also believed I didn’t deserve the award. That’s where the hurt came from. I went backstage and cried, and then I had to stop crying and perform five minutes later. I just told myself I had to perform, and I tried to convince myself that maybe this wasn’t that big of a deal. But that was the most happenstance thing to ever happen in my career.”

September 15, 2009 (morning): Taylor is still in New York doing interviews, like The View with Whoopy Goldberg. Taylor says that she bought her own condo in Nashville. Unsurprisingly, the main topic is the VMA incident.

September 15, 2009 (night): Taylor attends Owl City's show in New York. She and Adam Young (aka Owl City) had exchanged emails in the previous months. She writes Enchanted after their meeting.

[MTV Interview] “I started writing that in the hotel room when I got back, because it was just this positive, wistful feeling of ‘I hope you understand just how much I loved meeting you.’ Using the word ‘wonderstruck’ [in the lyrics] was done on purpose, because that’s a word which that person used one time in an e-mail... so I purposely wrote it in the song, so he would know.”

[Adam Young Interview] When Young met the 21-year-old music superstar backstage at one of his shows in New York, he was starstruck. "She was on her way up to meet me and that was the most nerve-racking few minutes of my life just waiting to meet Taylor Swift," he says. "When I met her she was glowing and I was too. It's hard to put into words, but I was definitely wonderstruck to meet her." Unfortunately for Young, nothing ever progressed beyond emails and one fateful meeting. "I think I'm not the most romantic and eloquent guy in the world," he admits. "She's just this endearing, wonderful girl and maybe I said something wrong. Who knows. It went on for three or four months, something like that."

Speculation: I think that the first verse of Enchanted is a reference to the View interview that Taylor did that morning.

September 26, 2009: While touring in Little Rock, Arkansas, with Kellie Pickler and Gloriana, Taylor writes a song, possibly Last Kiss.

“The song ‘Last Kiss’ is sort of like a letter to somebody. You say all of these desperate, hopeless feelings that you have after a break-up. Going through a break-up you feel all of these different things. You feel anger, and you feel confusion, and frustration. Then there is the absolute sadness. The sadness of losing this person, losing all the memories, and the hopes you had for the future. There are times when you have this moment of truth where you just admit to yourself that you miss all these things. When I was in one of those moments I wrote this song.”

[Drummer Nick Buda on the recording of Last Kiss, recorded in mid 2010 circa] On "Last Kiss," South African-born Nick Buda said there was an air of real excitement when they were recording the album. “She is awesome to work with and super-appreciative of her players. There was a real chemistry involved in this record.” Their desire to get exactly the sound they wanted extended to changing Buda’s modern drum kit to a vintage one on some choruses in order to get a different tone from some of the bombastic “teenage rock band” sound. “The songs were so well written that very rarely did they go past a third take,” he said.

The secret message is "Forever And Always".

October 17, 2009: [From Twitter] Travis: you look so out of it. Me: I'm writing a song in my head. Travis: oh, I apologize. I didn't realize you were working."

November 7, 2009: Taylor sings "Monologue Song (La La La) at the SNL, where she mentions her breakup with Joe and dating Taylor Lautner.

November 30, 2009: Taylor tweets: “If I had a dime for every time my producer and I blurt out the same thing at the same time, followed by an awkward, uncoordinated high five...”

Late November/Early December 2009: Taylor writes Ours and possibly Superman. Maybe they're the songs Taylor was talking about in the tweet.

[People Country] “I wrote [Ours] when I was about to turn 20. I was in a relationship I knew people wouldn't approve of and it was just a matter of time before everyone found out. When you're first getting to know someone, it's a fragile time, and then you add newspapers and magazine covers and it can get kind of rough. I wanted to have this song to play for him when it got difficult. Singing it for him was one of the sweetest moments I can remember. [I won't say who inspired it], to me, the song says something bigger, which is "I love you, and I don't care what anyone else thinks."”

(About Ours) “I’m excited about telling the beginnings of stories, like the story of this song called ‘Ours,’ where I wrote it about this guy nobody thought I should be with. So I wrote this song specifically just to play it for him, just to show him, ‘I don’t care what anyone says. I don’t care that you have tattoos. I don’t care that you have a gap between your teeth. I love you for who you are.’ And that song ended up actually making it on [Speak Now] and becoming a #1 song.”

That's how Taylor broke down the lyrics for People in April 2012:

“Seems like there’s always someone who disapproves” -> "I felt like I was on a tightrope. I knew that falling in love with the wrong person could freak people out."

“So don’t you worry your pretty little mind” -> "A lot of people have pretty little heads, but it's difficult to find a pretty little mind."

“People throw rocks at things that shine” -> "I kind of made up the phrase. It has a nursery rhyme feel, which I like."

“The stakes are high, the water's rough” -> "Those are the first lines that came to me."

“Lurking in the shadows with their lip gloss smiles” -> "It stereotypes girls who that pretend they're happy for your and are not."

“I'll fight their doubt and give you faith with this song for you” -> "My realization of what we were up against came out in that line. I was desperate to make it work."

“Cause I love the gap between your teeth” -> "My favorite part of the song. It's symbolic of "I love your idiosyncrasies."

“And any snide remarks from my father about your tattoos” -> "My dad thinks that this line is hilarious. He loves to tease me."

[About Superman] “This is about, well, a guy, as usual. This was a guy that I was sort of enamored with. This song got its title by something that I just said randomly in conversation. When he walked out of the room, I turned to one of my friends and said, ‘It’s like watching Superman fly away.’”

Dear John's secret message is "I Loved You From The Very First Day", which is a line from Superman.

The song also includes the line "Wishing the flowers were from you", which may or may not be the same flowers mentioned in Back To December ("You gave me roses and I left them there to die").

Gossip Speculation: This makes me think that Taylor was never deeply in love with Taylor L (-> "And I realised I loved you in the fall") and she left Taylor L for John Mayer (-> "And if you'd never saved me from boredom, I would've gone on as I was")

December 6, 2009: [From MySpace] “I just got back to Nashville this morning after being in LA all week. Today I was out and about and in the studio all day...”

December 11, 2009: Taylor and John Mayer perform Half Of My Heart at the Z100 Jingle Bell Ball concert in New York. After this concert, rumors of them dating surface.

December 13, 2009: Taylor turns 20.

December 22, 2009: [From Twitter] "I was writing a song and my pen fell into the piano. Still trying to figure out if I should do anything about this."

January 11, 2010: [From Twitter] "Studio-ness with all the same boys who played on Fearless. Home-made cupcakes were brought. Awkward fist-pumps happened. Onward!"

January 13, 2010: [From MySpace] Thank you January. I have had this month off. [...] I've written songs on napkins and sat at a giant table with my whole family on my mother's birthday, all of us in one place for the first time in too long. I've gotten to take what has happened to me and process it to my full capability, and celebrate it the way it deserved to be celebrated. I've made new music. I've gone over the memories and jumped up and down with my producer and floated around with nothing on my schedule other than just appreciating what my life has somehow turned into. So thank you for giving me so much to be thankful for this January. Thank you beyond what I know how to say.

[From Twitter] "More recording. So excited. So excited. So excited. See, I said that three times. Once for every album we've made in this studio."

[Music News.com Interview] “The weirdest place I have ever written a song is probably in an airport, and I got an idea so fast that I had to run to the bathroom at the airport, grab a paper towel and write lyrics on the paper towel. I still have it. I still have it in a box in my room.”

“Getting back in the studio with the same guys I trust and know and love.. (right, the pointing one: my producer Nathan Chapman) (Left, the waving one: Bass extraorinaire, Tim Marks. Clearly marked on his road case.) Nick Buddha is in charge of the drums.”

January 2010: It's possible that one of the songs recorded during the January session was Speak Now.

[MTV Interview] "One of my friends... the guy she had been in love with since childhood was marrying this other girl," she said. "And my first inclination was to say, 'Well, are you gonna speak now?' And then I started thinking about what I would do if I was still in love with someone who was marrying someone who they shouldn't be marrying. And so I wrote this song about exactly what my game plan would be."

“This song was inspired by one of my friends who was telling me about her childhood sweetheart, crush guy. They were kind of together in high school and went their separate ways, and it was kind of understood that they were gonna get back together. Then, she one day comes in and tells me he’s getting married. He had met this girl who was just this mean person who made him completely stop talking to all of his friends, cut off his family, had him like so completely isolated. And I just, kind of randomly, was like, ‘So, you gonna speak now?’ She was like, ‘What do you mean?’ And I was like ‘Oh, you know, like storm the church, speak now or forever hold your peace? I’ll go with you. I’ll play guitar. It would be great.’ She was just kind of laughing, and later on I just was wrapping my mind around that idea of how tragic it would be if someone you loved was marrying somebody else. Later I had a dream about one of my ex-boyfriends getting married, and it just all came together that I needed to write this song about interrupting a wedding.”

The secret message for Speak Now is “You always regret what you don’t say.”

In January 2010, things are starting to get serious. Taylor, Nathan and the rest of the group, are at the Starstruck Recording Studio to finish up some songs.

Mid January 2010: In a Rolling Stone interview, Taylor confirms she has already recorded some songs.

“‘I’ll be moving out, living on my own, experiencing relationships,’ she says. ‘All of that will be documented in sort of a photo-album-slash-diary, which will be this next record.’ I’ve written so much for this next record and recorded a bunch of songs already, but I don’t want to give away any of the titles – it’s still too early in the process. I don’t really write for albums as much as I just write for my life and process what I feel, whether that feeling is resentment or hope or happiness or a crush — writing songs helps me get through those moments.”

January 31, 2010: Taylor wins her first AOTY for Fearless at the 52nd Grammy Awards.

February 1, 2010: Bob Lefsetz posts his particularly negative review of her performance with Stevie Nicks at the Grammy's. Mean was likely written shortly after.

“When you do what I do, which is you put yourself out there for a lot of people to say whatever they want about it, there are a million different opinions from a million different people. I get it that not everyone is going to like everything that you do, and I get that no matter what, you’re going to be criticized for something. But I also get that there are different kinds of ways to criticize someone. There is constructive criticism. There’s professional criticism. And then, there’s just being mean. There’s a line that you cross when you just start to attack everything about a person, and there’s one guy who just crossed the line over and over again. Just being mean, and saying things that would ruin my day. […] There’s always going to be someone who’s just mean to you. Dealing with that is all you can control about that situation, how you handle it. ‘Mean’ is about how I handle it, and sort of my mindset about this whole situation.”

"There's a song called 'Mean,' that I guess you could categorize it into feelings and or relationships but it's actually about a critic."

In a later interview with 60 Minutes, Swift revealed that the critic was someone who attacked her performance with Stevie Nicks at the 52nd Grammy Awards, where she sang off-key.

February 3, 2010: Taylor writes Mean.

[InDemand] "There's a song on the record called Mean. I remember I started writing it sitting on my kitchen counter, just playing it. Then I took a plane and flew to the venue where we were gonna play that night, and finishing it in the dressing room.

I'm inferring the date but Taylor went to Australia on February 4th, so that's the closest date to the Bob Lefsetz's post. Alternatively, the other closest date is February 17th.

February 4, 2010: John Mayer is interviewed for Rolling Stone, and a friend of his says: "Nothing is what it seems. He operates in layers of meaning, where a poop joke is so much more than a poop joke. And he’d be a phenomenal chess player, because he knows all the moves so many steps ahead. That’s just how he operates.” (-> "And I lived in your chess game, but you changed the rules every day.")

February 5, 2010: Josh Farro from Paramore announces his engagement. Since he specifies that some people already knew about it, it is safe to assume that Hailey Williams, his ex-girlfriend and bandmate, knew before this date about it. Taylor's interviews imply that they were talking about the engagement, not the wedding.

I've got some news to share with you guys so here it goes... As some of you already know, I am engaged! So, as weird as it is to stay behind, I need to take some time off to plan the wedding and everything.

February 11, 2010: Taylor Lautner's birthday. Taylor doesn't call him, as she confessed in Back To December.

February 13, 2010: Based on a Lover Journal entry from this day, it seems like Taylor and John were no longer dating. Dear John must've been written around this period.

[Lover Journal, Flight from Adelaide to Nashville]: “My horoscope said today someone new is going to come into the picture and change my life in an exciting way. PLUS, its the 13th so it has to be true. Right? Right Well, I don't see it happening in the form of meeting someone. Maybe I'll get an email or a call. From someone fantastic and life changing. Or maybe I won't. That's more likely. I've been obsessing over the new album. I always do that until it's just right. I don't know if I have the formula just right for this one yet. I know there are great songs. I just need to figure out the strands that bond them together into a great album. And I will obsess until it's there. This album, any album, is the next 2 years of my life. It has to be more than amazing. It has to be great enough to keep MY attention for 2 years.”

“The song ‘Dear John’ is sort of like the last email you would ever send to someone that you used to be in a relationship with. Usually people write this venting last email to someone and they say everything that they want to say to that person, and then they usually don’t send it. I guess by putting this song on the album I am pushing send.”

February 22, 2010: [From MySpace] “I’ve been writing lots of songs.”

March 10, 2010: Taylor writes Mine.

[InDemand] "I wrote Mine somewhere on the road, I think in Texas, actually."

According to three different Reddit sources, Taylor was dating a non famous guy from Belmont University. The coffee shop referenced in Mine is a coffee shop in Austin, TX, by the water called Mozart's.

“This is a situation where a guy that I just barely knew put his arm around me by the water, and I saw the entire relationship flash before my eyes, almost like a weird science-fiction movie. After I wrote the song, things sort of fell apart, as things so often do. And I hadn’t talked to him in a couple months. And the song came out, and that day, I got an e-mail from him. And I was like, ‘Yes!’ Because that one was sort of half-confession and half-prediction or projection of what I saw.”

“Lately I’ve had this bad habit of running away from love. Kind of getting to the place where it’s about to commit, and then you just, like, run in the opposite direction. ‘Mine’ is about the idea that I could find someone who would be the exception to that, someone who would be so sturdy and so much of a sure thing that I wouldn’t run from it. Sometimes I look back on a lot of examples that I’ve seen of love, long term, and a lot of times it doesn’t work out. There are goodbyes and people get really hurt, so I tend to be a little ‘run-awayish.’ But I’m never past hoping that at some point that could change. This song is the first single because it has this… There was this moment between Nathan [Chapman] and I, my producer, when I brought this song in and when we made this demo in one day in his basement and we just kinda looked at each other and we were like, ‘This is it. This is the one.’”

[Nathan Chapman interview] “The demo for 'Mine' took less than five hours to record, and sounded almost identical to the record. After that we worked on the track for another four months, off and on [until July], and spent $30,000 to make sure it sounded perfect in the real world.”

[Scott Borchetta Billboard Interview] "Mine" was a turning point in the album’s development. Swift and Chapman had begun recording new songs almost as soon as "Fearless" was released. The two cut demos in his basement studio and would only take those songs to larger facilities once they felt they had an emotional foundation in the basic tracks. Still, it wasn’t until early 2010 when the album truly began to coalesce. Swift presented "Mine" to Borchetta in his office, just a few doors down the hall from the leather couch in the lobby.

"We probably played that song four or five times," Borchetta recalls. "I’m jumping around playing air guitar, she’s singing the song back to me, and it was just one of those crazy, fun, Taylor teen-age moments." And then it got serious. "I said, ‘Keep going,’ " Borchetta says. "She kind of looked at me like, ‘You’re challenging me.’ And I said, ‘Yeah. You’ve found true north here. Keep going.’"

Taylor will talk about being challenged by Borchetta to write more for Speak Now during the Red Era:

“During Speak Now, when I went to (label head) Scott Borchetta and said, 'The album's finished,' he said, 'No, it's not -- you need to keep writing.'”

Early March 2010: According to Scott Borchetta, shortly after he challenged Taylor to write more, she finishes writing Innocent, which she had started 6 months prior.

"Innocent," written after the VMA incident with Kanye West, for example, didn't come to Swift quickly. "Some songs take 30 minutes to write, and some take six months, which was the case with 'Innocent.'

“It took a while to write that song," Swift says. "That was a huge, intense thing in my life that resonated for a long time. It was brought up to me in grocery stores and everywhere I went, and in a lot of times in my life, when I don’t know how I feel about something, I say nothing. And that’s what I did until I could come to the conclusion that I came to in order to write ‘Innocent,’ " she says. "Even then, I didn’t talk about it, and I still don’t really talk about it. I just thought it was very important for me to sing about it.”

March 24, 2010: Taylor has lunch with Taylor Lautner. This meeting is likely what inspires Back To December. (thanks to @backup-baby-backup for locating the article)

[Interview Clip] Transcript: “‘Back To December’ is a song that addresses a first for me, in that I’ve never apologized to someone in a song before. This is about a person who was incredible to me- just perfect in a relationship, and I was really careless with him. So, this is a song full of words that I would say to him that he deserves to hear.”

[CBS Interview] She explained in the interview that she based the song on a conversation she had with the guy about whom she's singing. "It's not loosely based," she revealed. "It's almost word-for-word. It is a song and a conversation that needed to happen, because I don't want to hurt people. If you unintentionally do so, you've got to make that better."

April 3, 2010: Paramore's member Josh Farro marries Jenna Rice. Taylor attends the ceremony. She also goes to the studio in the morning.

[From Twitter] "Nathan you smell really good! Is that a new cologne?" "Thanks! Actually it's a two in one shampoo and soap. From Dial." My producer rules."

April 13, 2010: Taylor comes up with the title "Speak Now" after Scott Borchetta rejects "Enchanted". She also writes in her journal about getting tired of songs.

[From a Lover Journal] “So I've been obsessing over the new records to the point where it's all I can focus on. I'm majorly stressed and borderline losing it, with all these lists and chronic dissatisfaction. Perfectionist-ness. I keep growing tired of songs because I know I've raised the bar and I can beat half of the songs. Scott and I had lunch the other day. We were talking about the record and I had this epiphany. I didn't talk about it in interviews about how I felt about much of what has happened in the last 2 years. I've been silent about so much that I'm saying on this album. It's time to Speak Now. Scott freaked out. He loved it. We have a title, ladies and gentlemen!”

[Scott Borchetta Interview] “At one point, the record was not called ‘Speak Now.’ It was called ‘Enchanted,'” Big Machine president/CEO Scott Borchetta said. “We were at lunch, and she had played me a bunch of the new songs. I looked at her and I‘m like, ‘Taylor, this record isn’t about fairy tales and high school anymore. That’s not where you’re at. I don’t think the record should be called ‘Enchanted.'” Swift excused herself from the table at that point. By the time she came back, she had the “Speak Now” title, which comes closer to representing the evolution that the album represents in her career and in her still-young understanding of the world.

June 5, 2010: End of the Fearless Tour. Around this week, Taylor writes Long Live, scrabbling the chorus in her journal.

“This song is about my band, and my producer, and all the people who have helped us build this brick by brick. The fans, the people who I feel that we are all in this together, this song talks about the triumphant moments that we’ve had in the last two years. We’ve had times where we just jump up and down, and dance like we don’t care how we’re dancing, and just scream at the top of our lungs, “How is this happening?” And, I feel very lucky to even have had one of those moments, nonetheless all the ones that I got to have. ‘Long Live’ is about how I feel reflecting on it. This song for me is like looking at a photo album of all the award shows, and all the stadium shows, and all the hands in the air in the crowd. It’s sort of the first love song that I’ve written to my team.”

“"Long Live," (in parentheses "We Will Be Remembered"), is the first song where I've ever had parentheses in the title. Besides that, though, this song is about my band, and my producer, and all the people who have helped us build this brick by brick. The fans, the people who I feel that we are all in this together, this song talks about the triumphant moments that we've had in the last two years. We've had times where we just jump up and down, and dance like we don't care how we're dancing, and just scream at the top of our lungs, "How is this happening?" And, I feel very lucky to even have had one of those moments, nonetheless all the ones that I got to have. "Long Live" is about how I feel reflecting on it. This song for me is like looking at a photo album of all the award shows, and all the stadium shows, and all the hands in the air in the crowd. It's sort of the first love song that I've written to my team.”

June 9, 2010: Night of the CMT Music Awards, held in Nashville. 'CMT Music Awards' is the secret message of The Story Of Us.

“‘The Story of Us’ is about running into someone I had been in a relationship with at an awards show, and we were seated a few seats away from each other. I just wanted to say to him, ‘Is this killing you? Because it’s killing me.’ But I didn’t. But I couldn’t. Because we both had these silent shields up. I went home and I sat there at the kitchen table and I said to my mom, ‘I felt like I was standing alone in a crowded room.’ Then I got up and ran into my bedroom, as she’s seen me do many times. And she probably assumed I had come up with a line in the song.”

“'The Story of Us' is a song that I wrote about an awkward situation where, well… Let me just preface by saying that I have happened to run into exes in strange places lately. This is about one of those situations where the strange place that I ran into him was an awards show. I was seated a couple of seats away from him and there was so much that needed to be said, and neither one of us was willing to say it. We were both acting like we were engaged in conversations with people that we don't even know. It was just miserable. I was telling my Mom about it later, and I said I felt like I was standing alone in a crowded room. And then I was like, "Gotta go. Bye!" And my Mom is used to that at this point so, that's what this song is about.”

June 13, 2010: Taylor premiers Mine during the 13-hour Meet & Greet at the CMA Music Festival. Fans ask a lot of questions about Sparks Fly.

“'Sparks Fly' is a song I wrote a few years ago and played in concert. You guys have learned it and I think like it, which makes me really happy. When we did the 13-hour Meet and Greet at the CMA Fest, there was a comment I got over and over again. You guys were saying, 'So what about 'Sparks Fly?' Is it going to be on the next record? [...] I played that song at maybe one or two shows, and you guys just jumped on it and really made it something that I had to put on the album because you really showed interest in it.”

Comparison between the 2007 live version and the final one:

First verse: You say my name for the first time, baby, and I fall in love in an empty bar -> You’re the kind of reckless that should send me runnin’, but I kinda know that I won’t get far.

Second verse: So reach out open-handed and lead me out to that floor / I don’t need more paper lanterns / Take me down, baby / Bring on the movie score / ‘Cause my heart is beating fast and you are beautiful / And I could wait patiently, but I really wish you would... -> My mind forgets to remind me you’re a bad idea / You touch me once and it’s really somethin’ / You find I’m even better than you imagined I would be / I’m on my guard for the rest of the world / But with you, I know it’s no good / And I could wait patiently, but I really wish you would…

Bridge: Just keep your beautiful eyes on me / Gonna strike this match tonight / And lead me up the staircase / Won't you whisper soft and slow / I’d love to hate it, but you make it like a firework show -> Just keep on keepin’ your eyes on me, it’s just wrong enough to make it feel right / And lead me up the staircase / Won't you whisper soft and slow / I'm captivated by you, baby I’m captivated by you baby, like a fireworks show.

Speculation: I think that the line "I'm on my guard from the rest of the world" from Sparks Fly being written after "And you figure out why I'm guarded" from Mine is very telling of what Taylor was going through.

June 16, 2010: [From a Lover Journal] After the CMT Music Awards, Taylor works on The Story Of Us for a few days, before finishing it on June 16th, on her way to Nathan Chapman's studio.

[MTV Interview] “I was at an awards show, and there was a guy there, obviously — it all starts there, doesn’t it? It was a guy I had been in a relationship with, falling out, then we end up at the same awards show, both trying to act like we don’t care, both like, you know, chatting up the people next to us. Afterward, I just felt so empty, like we were both fighting this silent war of pretending we didn’t care that the other was there. And I went home, and I wrote this song about it. And at that point, I had this gut feeling, and I knew the album was finished.”

[Lover Journal Page Transcript] “So I've been a little studio rat since the tour ended [...] I wake up to my cell phone alarm around 9:30 each morning, throw on a sundress, skip makeup, tie my hair in a messy side-braid, and head out the door with no shoes on. Because the only walking outside I'll be doing is from my house to my car, then from my car three steps to Nathan's basement studio. I worked on a song for a few days, then basically finished it in the car on the way to Nathan's this morning. It. Is. So. Good. And I can safely say I am DONE writing this record!! This song is up-tempo, and hooky and sort a torn sounding... like this horrible stressed confusion that comes on when you know the person you're pining away for is in the room. There are these invisible walls keeping things from being okay. So you're not fine. And they're not fine. And I'm happy I wrote that song!! :)”

Video: Making of The Story Of Us Demo

It will be the last song she writes before having a writer's block that will end 6 months later with All Too Well.

[USA Today Interview] [All Too Well] came after a six-month writing drought that followed a particularly toxic relationship. "There's a kind of bad that gets so overpowering you can't even write about it," she says of that time. "When you feel pain that is so far past dysfunctional, that leaves you with so many emotions that you can't filter them down to simple emotions to write about, that's when you know you really need to get out."

June 18, 2010: John Mayer presents Taylor with the Hal David Starlight Award, at the 41st Songwriters Hall of Fame Awards.

John's speech: “You could put her in a time machine in any era and she would have a hit record. Don't confuse everybody loving one thing as hype. Sometimes that's everyone agreeing that it's fabulous.”

From now on, Taylor will only focus on the production of Speak Now, tweaking the songs and overdubbing the instruments.

June 30, 2010: Taylor tweets about Amos Heller recording the bass on Mine at the Blackbird Studio. Clips from this day are also released.

July 8, 2010: Taylor is spotted in Maine, while filming the music video of Mine. The final mix of the song is not ready yet.

[Source] Taylor Swift was in Kennebunk today, July 8, shooting part of a new music video at Christ Church on Dane Street. The Rev. Janet Leighninger, pastor of Christ Church said they had been contacted a while ago by a company that scouts film locations and happened to check the church out one Sunday. “Then they called about a week ago and said could they possibly film here,” she said. Leighninger said she was told it would be a country artist shooting a music video, but not who the artist was. “We wanted to make sure it was appropriate,” she said. On the morning of the shoot, Leighninger discovered the artist was Swift.

[People who were there] "It was a blast to watch! Both Taylor and the guy in her video seemed to be having tons of fun and at one point where he proposes and they kissed he looked up at the camera crew and said 'She said no by the way.' The scene lasted about 30 minutes and then they started filming in the house again."

[Mixer Justin Niebank Interview] "Interestingly enough, I'd done some kind of pre‑mix of 'Mine' for a video thing, with the original drums and bass, and Nathan and Taylor were like: 'This is cool, but we want to go a little bit more for a power approach.' So by the time it got to the final mix they had rerecorded the bass and the drums and it sounded great.

The rough version of the final mix is called "Mine JN Master Mix", where JN stands for Justin Niebank. You can also see "SF" which stands for Shannon Forest, the drummer. The old stems played by Nathan are also visible.

To sum up all of the known Mine demos:

First demo: Recorded in March 2010; all instruments played by Nathan Chapman; Mixed by Nathan.

Second demo: Mixed in June 2010, made for the Music Video; all instruments still played by Nathan Chapman; Mixed by Justin Niebank.

Third demo: Called "JN Master Mix": Mixed on July 21, 2010, bass played by Amos Heller, drums played by Shannon Forest, mixed by Justin Niebank, mix ready or almost ready to be mastered.

July 15, 2010: Taylor and Toby Hemingway are spotted shopping in West Hollywood. This is also the day when the orchestra strings for Back To December and Haunted are recorded, arranged by Paul Buckmaster. Taylor's interview in the studio here.

“I wanted the music and the orchestration [for Haunted] to reflect the intensity of the emotion the song is about, so we recorded strings with Paul Buckmaster at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles. It was an amazing experience – recording this entire big, live string section that I think in the end really captured the intense, chaotic feeling of confusion I was looking for.”

Late July 2010: In the meantime, Justin Niebank completes the definitive mixes. Mine is completed on July 21st specifically.

[Nathan Chapman] For Speak Now we had to mix 17 songs in three weeks, and I knew that I would want to go back to tweak some of the songs we had mixed earlier, and I did not want to have to recall the mixing board every time. There just wasn't time for that.

July 2010: Taylor moves out to her own condo in Nashville.

“This summer I've been 99 percent focused on my new record and one percent focused on the fact that I actually just moved into my first place. I'm officially moved in! I'm so excited! As you know, I've been constantly talking about how I've been antique shopping and non-stop planning and construction on this place. It's been really awesome to figure out what it's like to be on your own, just cooking and stuff. I'm having such a blast with it.”

The Never Grow Up secret message is: "I moved out in July".

July 2010: Shooting of the Speak Now Photoshoot with her band, The Agency.

August 4, 2010: Mine is released. It was supposed to be released on August 15th, but since it had leaked its release was anticipated.

August 31, 2010: The Mine Music Video is released. Taylor has a get-together at her home in Nashville with the kids in the video and their families.

Taylor broke down the music video in 2012 in this very funny interview for Vevo Certified;

Behind The Scenes Footage: PART 1, PART 2, PART 3 from the Speak Now Deluxe Edition/Target. This is very unhinged.

[Director Roman White comment] Creating this piece was beyond fun, and I’ve honestly never had a better time on a shoot. Was it crazy hot? Yes. Were there tons of bugs? Yes. Was all of this offset by the insanely gorgeous scenery? 100% YES! We shot the entire piece near Portland, Maine and much lobster was eaten! My AMAZING producer, Tameron Hedge, actually got accosted by a HUGE seagull who took off with her lobster roll (that’s how good they were). Other than that one little incident, Maine was absolute perfection. On the first day, we shot on a private estate with more than 2,000 acres and a private beach, rounding out the second day in a small harbor town. There was a lot going on, and I had a BLAST with the entire gang!

September 12, 2010: Taylor premiers Innocent at the VMAs, a year after the Kanye incident.

“You have to try really hard to regulate what you feel, what you let in, and what you don’t… but then when it comes to making an album, if you make everything general and kind of gloss over your actual, raw feelings, that doesn’t benefit anyone. As far as what to feel and what level to feel it, I can’t really control any of that. It’s just how things hit you, and what you let in is definitely something you’ve got to find a balance for.”

“I think a lot of people expected me to write a song about him. But for me it was important to write a song to him.”

October 25, 2010: Speak Now is finally released.

“There is also the fact that the album is called 'Speak Now,' and that pertains to the album as a concept and as an entire theme of the record, more than I can even tell you," she says. "I've been working on it for two years. Ever since we put out 'Fearless,' I've been writing for this record and conceptualizing it and putting it together in my head, what I wanted it to be. I like to take a lot of time between albums to work up the next one and see what it is. We did the same thing with 'Fearless.' We put two years in between it [and her self-titled debut album] and that gives enough time for me [to] write everything that I live. You have got to give yourself time to live a lot of things, so you can write a lot of things.”

“I wrote all the songs myself for this record. It didn't really happen on purpose. It just sort of happened that way. I'd get my best ideas at 3:00 AM in Arkansas, and didn't have a co-writer around and I'd just finish it. And that would happen again in New York; that would happen again in Boston; that would happen again in Nashville. The songs that made the cut for the albums are the ones that I wrote by myself so – wish me luck!”

“In life you have a lot of situations that pop up and people that come into your life, and sometimes you don’t get to tell them what you wish you would have told them,” Swift said. “This album is my opportunity to do that track-by-track. Each song is a different confession to a different person.”

“Some of the things I wrote about are things everyone saw me go through,” she added. “Some of the things I wrote about are things nobody ever knew about. I’m beyond excited for you to hear these stories and confessions.”

Bonus: The Vault

“My favorite thing to do is make a list of what the album can be, even when I'm in the beginning stages of writing the album and I've got three songs on the list. I still make a list of what the track listing would be like. Which [song] is track one, two or three. And then you keep writing more songs and writing more songs and all of a sudden you've got a list of 25 songs. What I would do is keep bumping off songs that I felt I had overwritten. As you keep writing more songs, your list gets better and better and better. And I did that so many times I can't even count!”

The Vault Titles:

Castles Crumbling

Someone Just Told Me

His Lies

Wonderful Things

I Can See You

Let's Go

Foolish One

Timeless

Bother Me

Electric Touch

When Emma Falls In Love

All of them are self-written.

This post will be edited once we will have additional info on the songs, especially the Vault Songs. Thank you for reading!

[chaosincurate]

A Guide to The Cure, Pt. II: The Pop Phase

After making three consecutively darker records back to back to back, it was time for The Cure to try something else. The next few years would see them experiment with poppier sounds, initially through singles and EPs, to try and create a more accessible sound, but one that still feels true to them. A radical departure in fashion atop the same, familiar skin. The singles they would release (and later compile into the album-length project Japanese Whispers) had mixed results, but with a few fan favourites under their belt with this new sound, they felt ready to make a full album of songs headed in this bold new direction.

The Top

They weren't ready to make a full album of songs headed in this bold new direction.

I generally try to avoid value judgements like that in my writing. I prefer to describe an album's appeal as opposed to it's lack, but this one was a rough listen. I saw some of the reviews heading into this and they didn't paint a very pretty picture, but, especially after the first few tracks were decent (if a little lacking in personality), I was holding out hope that it would give me something to appreciate. It just didn't though. After those first two tracks, I found there to be a steep drop in quality that didn't reverse itself for the rest of the album.

I do think it's very possible for some to enjoy this album though, so long as it's the right person going into it with the right mindset. First, it has to be someone that doesn't mind gimmicky production and songwriting, because there is a lot of that and it can get pretty on the nose. Second, you have to go into it with no pre-conceived notions of how a Cure album sounds. Even heading into this album with the knowledge of both their famous pop sound and their cult classic goth sound, I was not prepared for something that sounded this much like an altogether different band.

So in case it isn't clear already, I really don't recommend this as one of the first albums you listen to of The Cure. Except for maybe in the instance where you know that no matter what you want to listen to all of their discography and want to put this first so it won't ruin your appetite for more as you get the bad outliers out of the way first.

The Head On the Door

If anybody ever said that The Cure weren't elusive, they lied. Right after The Cure's biggest failure to date comes a candidate for their biggest triumph. The Head On the Door is not just a must-listen within The Cure's discography, but also within New Wave as a whole. goth rock and new wave are absolutely very different subgenres, but this album really highlights how transferable the skills are between them. Both support strange and emotive vocalists very well, and both ask a lot of their lyricists, albeit in different ways. Both are also more interested in the soundscape than technical ability when it comes to the instrumentation, although sometimes those two goals align in both styles.

And where there is a stark difference, the band prove able to manage brilliantly. Perhaps it's just my lack of exposure to the gothic sound and therefore it's intricacies, but I feel as though new wave demands more experimentation, and tracks like The Blood prove that this new Cure is capable of striking the balance required between keeping things fresh and ensuring the album comes together well as a cohesive project. I mentioned that different things are required lyrically between the two styles, and Robert Smith makes the necessary adjustments very naturally here. He seems extremely comfortable writing hooky choruses for New Wave as he does rhymeless literary marvels for Goth Rock.

As it stands, there is only one album of The Cure's that I'd recommend as the average listener's first ahead of this one (that album is yet to come), and if you just want to hear the poppier stuff, this is comfortably the best of that bunch for me, even if many of the songs have a goth rock sound sprinkled in.

Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me

I'm going to be totally honest, I'm not sure what to say about this album. Not because it's bland, far from it. Just because there's so much going on that it feels difficult to define. It also doesn't really fit cleanly into any narrative I have going on here.

It feels like a lot of fun was had putting this album together, and probably skews the poppiest of all their albums, but it's also very chaotic, with a lot of songs being outliers to that general skew. Confusingly, their opener is amongst those massive outliers, with a prog-rocky guitar solo intro, that leads into an album very nicely, but not necessarily this album. It's far from bad, but tonally it resembles a compilation album. An assortment of sounds that feel navigated based on raw intuition and what the band thought would be fun. That approach has bundles of charm, but you're going to struggle to leave a lasting impression with it.

That being said, some of the very best The Cure has to offer finds itself amongst this strange project. Just Like Heaven was a hit for a reason, Why Can't I Be You is one of their most endearing songs, previously mentioned opener The Kiss is an amazing starter, and as silly as it is, I love Hot Hot Hot!!!. But there in lies the issue with recommending this album: all I have to say about it is in relation to the individual songs. This album has value to fans of The Cure, because it's just them trying a bunch of different things, so there is very little for someone who isn't already familiar with the band to latch onto. It's a fun listen, but I'd recommend leaving this one until you've heard a few albums of theirs already.

Next Week...

Next week will be the wild mood swings phase. That's going to be released on Friday the 13th (spooky) September 2024 at midnight BST. If you're far enough in the future, you can already check it out you privileged scamp, you!

[reverie-starlight]

Omg! I just found you!! You wrote that piece about Atsumu always picking you first, and it was so cute!!! It made my heart all warm and fuzzy, and I can't wait to see what else you write!! I was wondering if I could join your 200 event??? If so I was thinking Home by Edith Whiskers and Atsumu. Idk why, but the song just screams him. If not pls ignore the last part and have a great day!

You’re so sweet!!! This ask literally made me smile so much ily :(

and this song absolutely DOES FIT HIMMM UR SO RIGHT

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“ain’t nothing please me more than you. oh home, let me come home. home is wherever I’m with you.”

atsumu absolutely loved his career. he’s made a name for himself, broken records, set goals and continuously achieved them… he was living his dream. but if he had to name one thing he hated about being a professional athlete, it would be the distance it put between you and him.

when he was away for games and you weren’t able to come with him, phone calls, facetiming and texting were all you could do to keep each other somewhat satisfied.

some nights were okay, you kept each other laughing and smiling, and for however long the call lasted you were able to distract each other from the hurt of being apart. in those moments you were the only ones who could do that for the other. no one else could make the ache go away.

other nights were particularly bad. when the longing was stronger and the need to hold each other got to be too much, your calls often turned teary and vulnerable.

“i miss ya so much, y/n,” he sniffed into his hoodie sleeve. “i wish i could come home already.”

you tried to reassure him that his trip was almost over, but you’d be lying if you said you didn’t feel like crying too. it just didn’t feel like home without him. “i miss you too, tsumu. but it’s only three more days until you’re you’re back. i can’t wait to see you.”

he gave you an appreciative smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. 

“here, why don’t we talk about what we’ll do when we’re together again instead of focusing on the fact we’re apart?”

this time his smile did reach his eyes as he wiped away a stray tear and pushed his hood back. his hair was a little messed up, his nose was still runny and he looked visibly drained, like anyone would after crying, but you only felt more in love with him.

and three days later, when he was finally in your arms again, holding onto you so tight, he was struck with a realization. 

“ya know before i met ya, i never really got homesick?”

that in itself was sweet, and it tugged on your heart a bit, but you could tell he wasn’t finished so you stayed silent. 

“like, whenever i used to say i missed home i really just missed the comfort of my apartment compared to the hotel rooms. but never to the point of it bein’ more than i could handle. i got used to it, i guess. and my mom and samu. but less so cause i was living my dream and i knew i’d never lose their support. and obviously i still miss ‘em a lot when i’m away, but... it’s different.”

“how so, tsum?”

“now when i say i miss home i’m not talkin’ about my apartment. i’m talkin’ about you. yer my home. that’s why i don’t get homesick when ya come with me. we could literally move to the other side of the world and i think i’d still be fine because home is wherever i’m with you. you are my home, y/n. i’ve never felt more comfortable with anyone in my life. it’s the same level of comfort i feel on the court but in a different way. and like, we can function just fine separately but bein’ apart just doesn’t feel right.”

you looked at him with tears in your eyes. he had put everything you were feeling into words. “you’re my home too, atsumu. this apartment doesn’t feel like home until you walk in. i love you more than anything.” it wasn’t exactly as deep or poetic as what he had come out with, but he held you closer to him and kissed you like it was. because he clearly understood you. 

the rest of the night continued on with an unspoken agreement that you had both definitely found your person.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

he’s literally the love of my life, i had sm fun writing this!! ty for participating and hope you enjoyed <3

please consider reblogging or commenting!

[medusapelagia]

M - Mixtape

M is for Mads (@the-redcrate) that helped me brainstorming and find the right take on my Exchange fic!💜

I hope you will enjoy your present 🎁!

Rating: Teen and Up Relationship: Steve /Eddie (mention of Chrissy /Robin) WT: no one Words: 790

There are different kinds of mixtapes. 

The mixtapes with all the songs that have been recorded from the radio, which are a mix between advertisements, songs without their beginning and songs without their end, there are the copies from another cassette, and Eddie has dozens of those, and then there are THE mixtapes: the ones with the perfect songs in the perfect order, put together to convey a message.

Eddie is the best at choosing the right songs, that is why he has started an entire business where he creates the perfect mixtape for each person and the weeks before prom are his personal high season.

Tens of jocks and shy girls knock on his trailer door to ask him for a mixtape.

Pricing is different and mostly depends on the person who is asking for a mixtape: if the person was a dick to him during the year, that immediately translates into fifty percent more on his usual rate, if he was nice to him he can do a ten percent discount, but they flatter him, well then he will let the other person rob him blind. Especially if the person in question is Chrissy Cunnigham, Queen of Hawkins High.

“So who is the receiver of your mixtape, my queen? Jason Carver?”

She shakes her blond curls “No. We have broken up.”

Oh. That’s new “I didn’t know. Are you ok?”

“Yeah. I mean, it hurt a bit, but it’s for the best, right?” she asks with a hopeful smile and all that Eddie can do is smile back.

“So, who are we trying to conquer?”

“Oh, no, it’s for a friend. She… she is going through a hard period and I thought that one of your mixtapes could cheer her up.”

“So no love songs, am I right?”

She blushes “No, not for the moment at least.”

“Fine. Tell me the name and I’ll get to work.”

“Robin.”

Eddie turns toward Chrissy “Robin? From band?”

She nods.

“And you say she is going through a tough period…”

“Yeah. I mean, she is always with Steve but it’s obvious that he doesn’t care about her like he cares about Nancy, and she always looks so sad at the cafeteria, and I thought that, now that I’m single we could go to prom together, like two besties!”

Eddie raises an eyebrow but doesn’t comment.

“I’ll make the perfect mixtape for you. There is something you would like to tell her?”

She hides her hands in her jacket “Well, I’d like to tell her that she is fun, and caring and that she makes me laugh even on my hardest day.”

Eddie takes notes of everything she says, and then she looks at her “Three days from now your mixtape will be done.” 

She hugs him and when she leaves with her blond ponytail Eddie stares at the notes that he took, it looks like maybe a love song or two is actually needed.

What Eddie is not expecting is seeing Steve the Hair Harrington asking for a mixtape.

“Still trying to get back your lady?”

“Nancy? Nah. We are done.”

“So who is the tape for?”

“Me?”

“You?”

Steve nods “Dustin insists that I have horrible taste in music and that I need to broaden my horizon.” He makes a nice imitation of the kid, then turns toward Eddie “So I thought that you could help me. He is always saying how cool you are, and how cool is everything you do, so...”

Eddie smirks “I thought that my music ‘Wasn’t music’.”

“Come on, you were playing some screaming guy at full volume in front of my house!”

That’s true, maybe Eddie did it to piss Steve off just a little.

“So a mixtape for you? Ok. I’ll do it.”

Steve tries to get his wallet “For the boy who drives the shrimps I’ll work for free. Are you on babysitting duty for prom?”

“Yeah…” he answers bored.

“Cool. I’ll see you there and we will listen to some good music.”

Steve stares at him for a long moment, then he nods and gets back to his car.

In the next few days, Eddie works on twenty different tapes and even catches a couple or two listening to his mixtapes, sharing the headphones, but the one he worked harder on is burning in the pocket of his jacket. He has an entire plan figured out: he will wait for Steve to drop the kids and then he will propose to go smoking at the quarry, listening to some good music, and who knows, maybe Steve will get the message he tried to convey with his mixtape and they will share more than a couple of joints and some good music.

[euniexenoblade]

Favorite music of 2023 :)

I've found myself dealing with a wave of writer's block, and in my desire to get past it I've decided to write whatever I can. Some people said they'd be interested in me talking about my favorite albums of 2023, so here's a short write up about albums I really liked and I hope everyone will give a try.

I found 2023 to be a pretty spectacular year for weird and interesting music. With artists like Lil Yachty doing a neo-psychedelia album (fantastic, give it a listen) and Avenged Sevenfold doing some progressive avant garde adjacent metal album (I think people are wrongly hating on it, it's spectacular), it shouldn't be too surprising to imagine that the bands the mainstream hasn't really heard of are making wild soundscapes unlike anything you've ever heard.

Kicking this off with one of my favorite Korean bands, Parannoul released two albums this year and they were spectacular - both in my top 10 of the year. Parannoul are a wonderful shoegaze band that create these songs that almost feel hypnotic, they create this dream like state for their songs in ways no other band seems to be able to. After the Magic, their third album, is no different in this, but brings a new warmth, brighter instrumentation, and just in general doesn't feel as self loathing and depressed as previous works. The other release, After the Night, is a live recording, which shows that the band can produce the same dreamlike style on a stage, but do it even better. My second favorite album of the year, this live album is so incredible, zoning out to the 46 minute "Into the Endless Night" while high was probably one of my favorite experiences of the year in and of itself. (Also, if you do chose to check them out, please listen to To See the Next Part of the Dream, it's one of my favorite albums ever made.)

Using Parannoul as a sorta link between things, I also found that they worked on a song on the new Turquoisedeath album, Se bueno. I won't claim to be an expert on drum and bass, but I had a killer time listening to Se bueno. When I discovered Se bueno, I also discovered a few other, more abrasive, albums that I kind of group together in my head. Namely Chaser by femtanyl (digital hardcore) and Sisterhood by lostrushi ("digicore" feels like a frantic version of trap). If you like this kind of music, give them a try, all three are on my list.

Everyone's top albums of the years seem to have their one and two spots stolen away by Javelin and Scaring the Hoes. Starting with the latter, Scaring the Hoes by JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown is cool as hell. Beats unlike anything I've heard in hip hop before, and the flows of both men really bring it all together. It's a great album (it's my third favorite of the year), but I also think some focus on some other hip hop titles might be cool. Integrated Tech Solutions by Aesop Rock is just as impressive and interesting and deserves your attention. Alongside that Michael by Killer Mike is a fantastic listen, though it doesn't compare to the previously mentioned two, it's still a great album that deserves your time - he won those awards for a reason. The man got arrested at an award show, the least you can do is stream his album once.

Now, as for Javelin by Sufjan Stevens, it's a great album, but it's also such a sad album. His pain is horrible, and he does a great job at making you feel it. However, the music never really hit me like other albums of the year had. The lyrics murder your heart, but I'm a tad past gay pains and want gay joys. Which is why I want you all to listen to Ultra Paradise by Angel Electronics. Half Ada Rook of Black Dresses, half Ash Nerve (I doubt you know him) this is a trans and gay power pop album that's just beautiful and fun. Songs like Return to the Sky and One Thousand and One Nights are fun ear worms, and the rest of the album just has a level of repeatability and a level of joy and fun that most other albums this year didn't have. Is it as technically impressive as Javelin? No. But, shit, it's nice to be happy for once.

Continuing off of this idea, in 2023 we saw transphobia become horrifically rampant, the right wing are really intent to get rid of us. You can't avoid how much this world hates us now and it makes you want to just scream. It creates this feeling of anger, a desire for violence, like we're past being sad and nice and understanding. In 2023 the Hirs Collective put out an album on par with that emotion. We're Still Here is an aggressive grindcore album put together by trans, gay, queer people in general. My favorite release from the band to date, it's fantastic to see Hirs screaming "We're still here!" as the world tries to erase us. This is my favorite album of 2023, please listen to it, please give Hirs your money, they deserve it and you deserve their music.

A few more albums I wanna recommend that I can't really think of anything in depth to say: God Cum Poltergeist by Crisis Sigil (Ada Rook) is a fantastic grindcore album, Goodnight, God Bless, I Love U, Delete by Crosses is a fantastic synthpop adjacent album and I got to see it performed live and it's amazing music, Reborn Superstar! by Hanabie. is a great Japanese metalcore album, and go listen to Kikuo Miku 7 for some rad Hatsune Miku bullshit.

My top 50 music releases of 2023:

We're Still Here by Hirs

After the Night by Parannoul

Scaring the Hoes by JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown

Dogsbody by Model/Actriz

Desire, I Want to Turn Into You by Caroline Polachek

After the Magic by Parannoul

Goodnight, God Bless, I Love U, Delete. by Crosses

God Cum Poltergeist by Crisis Sigil

uma by betcover!!

Ultra Paradise by Angel Electronics

Reborn Superstar! by Hanabie.

No Joy by Spanish Love Songs

Saved by Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter

Live in Japan by Mass of the Fermenting Dregs

93696 by Liturgy

Resistance and the Blessing by World's End Girlfriend

Kikuo Miku 7 by Kikuo

Javelin by Sufjan Stevens

Integrated Tech Solutions by Aesop Rock

Poil Ueda by Poil & Junko Ueda

Enola Gay by Asia Menor

Upal by Kostnateni

The Loveliest Time by Carly Rae Jepsen

Michael by Killer Mike

Exul by Ne Obliviscaris

Hellmode by Jeff Rosenstock

Hometown to Come by Minhwi Lee

Life is but a Dream... by Avenged Sevenfold

Chaser by Femtanyl

Sadness / Abriction by Sadness / Abriction

O Monolith by Squid

But Here We Are by Foo Fighters

Stone by Baroness

History Books by The Gaslight Anthem

Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love? by Kara Jackson

Rookie's Bustle by Ada Rook

Futility by Yakui The Maid

Let's Start Here. by Lil Yachty

The Age of Pleasure by Janelle Monae

Bee and the Whales by Galileo Galilei

Zach Bryan self titled

Everything is Alive by Slowdive

Let's Hope Heteros Fail, Learn, and Retire by Alice Longyu Gao

Se bueno by TURQUOISEDEATH

Yoshitsune by Poil & Junko Ueda

Perfect Picture by Hannah Diamond

January Never Dies by Balming Tiger

Jenny From Thebes by The Mountain Goats

Never Falter Hero Girl by Katie Dey

Sisterhood by lostrushi

[highwaytothedangerzone502]

Foxtrot Alpha Alpha - Chapter 26

Pairing: Hangman x Female OC

Word Count: 2207

Warnings: Talk of death

Summary: Hangman learned his lesson a long time ago to never show his true feelings when someone's words or actions hurt him. To do so showed weakness that could be exploited, and Seresin men couldn't show weakness. Of course, there was an exception to every rule, and Jake's always came in the form of women, three in particular: his mom, Juliette Kazansky, and the girl whose name he could no longer bring himself to speak. She was the girl that got away; she was his biggest 'what if' and his biggest regret; she would forever be the ghost that haunted his dreams. Jake believed that's where she'd stay, for he would surely never see her again after what he did.

Or so he thought.

Notes: This is the sequel to India Lima Yankee; I'm using the same callsign for the Female OC as in Ghost Story because I just really like it, but they are different characters; chapters in italics are flashbacks.

Also sorry for the delay in posting this (again). I'm trying to unpack and it's going slowly, and I've been exhausted between that and work. I use my downtime to sleep or read (for the record, I now understand why everyone loves ACOTAR).

Chapter Songs: Right Now For Her

****

Hangman

Sophie stayed next to Hangman's side like velcro, only breaking it when she discovered Ghost played guitar. Then, her attention focused solely on the female aviator. Hangman watched the two of them with an entertained smile, but the thought of his impending conversation with Matt never strayed far from his mind. He had barely been able to look at his brother throughout dinner, and when they all migrated to the living room, Matt's inevitable request to talk about 'some family stuff' arose. Not wanting to cause a scene, Hangman reluctantly agreed to it.

The two brothers casually strode outside to avoid being overheard by the women. For a moment, neither spoke. Hangman didn't know what to say. After all, the last time he'd seen Matt had been before he headed to the Naval Academy when his brother snuck him into the house while their dad was away so Jake could collect his belongings. Hangman studied Matt, noticing the fine lines gracing his face, the tiredness in his green eyes, and the sag in his once confident shoulders. Although still handsome, the recent events had evidently taken a toll on him. However, what Hangman noticed the most was the gentleness in his features. He'd only glimpsed those twice in his life: the night their mom died and the day he collected his stuff from the house. It seemed odd to see it now in a situation that was anything but relaxed.

"Were you going to tell me you were here?" Matt finally queried, searching for an answer in his brother's eyes that matched his own.

Hangman leaned back against the porch railing. "I don't know..."

"Wh-what do you mean you don't know? You either were or you weren't!"

"I mean it. I wasn't sure whether I was going to tell you or not. I came here for Ghost, not to solve my family issues, and I knew that if I told you I was here, you'd want to talk about things, and there are some-" Hangman sighed and met his brother's gaze- "there are some things I don't want to talk about. Dad, Nick, I want nothing to do with them. You're the only one that ever tried to reach out to me after what happened to Mom, but them? They made my life a living hell, even after I was gone."

Matt cocked his head, genuine surprise on his face. "What do you mean?"

"After Ghost and Ghoul's accident, Nick texted me. He said: I heard you killed your girlfriend's best friend. Looks like you're adding to your body count."

Horror fell onto Matt's face. "I'm sorry..."

"Oh, he didn't stop there. He proceeded to ask me if I was going to kill Ghost and Coyote next since I apparently cause deaths of those closest to me."

"You don't- Mom's death wasn't your fault, no matter what Dad or Nick say or believe."

"I know that, but you hear something enough, it starts getting to you."

Matt nodded, bracing himself on the porch railing. "It's not right what they did to you, and I'm sorry they've made you believe such bullshit. I'm sorry for any part I played in it, too. I wasn't the greatest big brother when you lived at home, and that's putting it mildly."

Hangman shrugged. "You tried to be there for me when it mattered most: the night Mom died."

"I should've been there for you more than that."

"Why weren't you?"

Matt hesitated, searching for the right words. "Dad wasn't always the easiest to get along with, and you and I both know he and Nick always got along better than the rest of us did with him. Back then, I thought if I followed his lead and bullied you the same way he and Nick did, they'd bring me into their inner circle, and they did to a point, but I always felt like the third wheel. You always had mom, and she loved me, don't get me wrong, but you were her favorite, and not going to lie, I was jealous of that, so I took it out on you, and I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry for it all, and I realize it's late, but you're the only family I truly have left. Nick has estranged himself from me, Dad's knocking on death's door, and I want Sophie to have family in her life. I won't let Nick near her, and Dad was great with her when he had the ability, but now..."

Guilt rose in Hangman's chest. He'd always been so wrapped up in his bitterness over his dad's treatment toward him that he never stopped to think why his brother might be acting the same outside of simply being an asshole, and the more Hangman thought back to his interactions with Matt, the more he realized that his oldest brother never initiated any of the fights. Not really. He usually only joined in once their dad or Nick started it.

"I'm sorry you felt like that," Hangman said, unable to come up with anything better. He meant it, but it still sounded hollow to him.

Matt shrugged. "I never gave you reason to believe I was any better than those two."

Hangman turned around and braced himself on the railing, mimicking his brother's pose. "I'll look into the events at Disney, see when they have good things going on so you, Sophie, and Melissa can come visit."

"Seriously?" Matt replied, looking at his brother in shock.

"Yeah. I mean, you're right. We're the only family we have left now and-"

"I'm not the only family you have left. You're the only family I have left."

"What do you mean?"

"Ghost, Jackie, Charlie- and Nathan when he was alive- they took you in as one of their own and have treated you more like a son than Dad ever did. They may not be your blood, but they are your family, even after all this time, even after what happened between you and Ghost. Speaking of which-" Matt stared pointedly at Hangman- "when are you two going to get together? Seriously, I've watched you silently pine after her since you two met. How long do I and the rest of the world have to endure it?"

Hangman chuckled humorlessly. "The rest of your life. It's not like we stopped talking because of a stupid fight. I killed her best friend." 

"Jake, if she hated you as much as you think she does, you wouldn't be here with her right now. She wouldn't have allowed it."

Hangman swallowed down the hope rising in his chest. He couldn't let himself believe Ghost didn't still hate him, no matter how they were acting toward each other now, because if she didn't, he risked doing something stupid, like admitting his feelings for her. "We're trying to make amends to our friendship for the sake of our other friend, who we're both close to. We don't want to cause her distress by always being at odds, especially while she's pregnant. It's fine, though. I'd rather have Ghost in my life as a friend than not at all."

Matt clapped his brother on the back affectionately. "I won't push. Think we should head back in?"

"Yeah. Don't want them thinking one of us is committing fratricide." Hangman wanted to add that Nick might be capable of it, but Matt had once been close to the middle brother, and Jake recognized that the betrayal hit hard for his oldest sibling. He followed Matt inside, where they found Jackie and Charlie cleaning up the kitchen while Ghost taught Sophie how to play a kid-sized guitar.

"What are we learning?" Hangman inquired, kneeling between the two girls. 

Sophie piped up, "I'm learning chords!"

"An absolutely essential lesson," he confirmed. Hangman nodded at Ghost and added, "You have the best teacher."

"You taught Uncle Jake?" Sophie asked, her green eyes flitting between the two aviators.

"I did. After I almost hit him in the head with my guitar. Accidentally, of course," Ghost said, bumping her shoulder playfully into his.

"That's what I get for scaring you," Jake remarked, nudging her.

"Hey, Soph-" Matt interrupted gently- "ten more minutes, and then we have to go check on Mom, okay?"

"But I want to spend more time with Uncle Jake and Annalise!" Sophie protested, sticking out her bottom lip in protest.

Matt shook his head. "I know, but they got in this afternoon after a long day of travel, and they have some family matters to handle. Maybe we can see Jake again while he's here if his schedule allows."

"You're all welcome to come to dinner tomorrow if you're not busy," Charlie said, entering the living room. "Family is always welcome."

"Only if we can bring a dessert," Matt countered.

"I certainly won't say no to that. How does five-thirty sound?"

Matt agreed, and Hangman scooped his niece into his arms and carried her to the car. She clung tightly to him, still pouting that she had to leave. After hugging Sophie and his brother, Hangman watched them pull out of the driveway and down the street. While Jackie and Charlie reentered the house, Ghost remained at Hangman's side and asked, "How'd it go?"

"I think that's the longest I've ever talked to my brother without fighting," Jake mused, shoving his hands into his pockets. "It was good, though. We worked some things out, and we still have a ways to go, but I think we'll get there."

"Good, good. Then is it safe to say I didn't misread the signal to invite them in for dinner earlier?"

"You read it right. I didn't want to invite them in as your guest."

"You're not a guest. You're family. Mom wouldn't have said what she did earlier if she hadn't meant it."

I'm family to her but not to you. Jake refrained from speaking his thoughts and chose only to nod. "I know, but it's not my home, no matter how much I lived in it with y'all."

Out of his peripheral, he noticed her look up at him. "Where is home for you?"

Wherever you are. The words nearly rolled off Hangman's tongue, but he caught himself in the nick of time, choosing to give a partial truth instead. "In my jet cruising above the earth."

"You feel free up there," Ghost said, sounding like she spoke from experience. 

"Yeah..." Hangman rubbed the back of his neck, wishing he had the guts to ask the question that had been on his mind since his talk with Matt: did she still hate him? "Well, I guess we should head in. I should let you get some sleep. You have a busy next few days."

Ghost nodded subtly, crossing her arms tightly across her chest. "I guess so..."

"That didn't sound convincing."

"I don't like being alone in the house without Dad. It... it feels weird." Her voice hitched at the end, and Hangman realized how close Ghost teetered on the edge of breaking down.

Before he could stop himself, he blurted, "Do you want me to stay with you?"

"What?" Ghost replied, her teary gaze meeting his. 

"I mean, I could crash on the floor or something, but then you wouldn't have to be alone."

"I don't care if we share the same bed. It's not like we haven't done it before, but are you sure? I don't-" Ghost hesitated, tripping up on her words as she searched for the right ones- "We're just now getting back into our old rhythm. I don't want to-"

"We can go as slow or as fast as you want with this. I messed us up, Annalise, not you. I'm going to play this by your rules, so if you're comfortable with me in bed, that's fine. If you're not, that's okay too. This is all up to you," Hangman said softly, aching to reach out and brush the stray tear rolling down her cheek but refrained, not wanting to push her too far. The fact she'd lowered her guard and walls down this much for him remained a mystery, albeit a welcome one. Still, he would risk nothing when it came to their fragile friendship. He swore it could break again at any moment, and he prayed he wouldn't be the cause of it if it did.

Ghost's eyes softened, and her lips tugged upward into a playful smile. "Make sure you shower first. I have a-"

"-weird thing about getting your bed dirty with germs?" Hangman finished knowingly. "I remember."

I remember everything. He wanted to say.

Ghost blushed as Hangman threw his arm around her shoulders and directed them inside, pushing down the fluttering of his heart and the wall he'd broken past with Ghost. Never in a million years did he think she'd allow him to share a room with her again, let alone a bed. The gesture gave him the slightest hope that their relationship had truly turned a corner and that the past would stay just that- the past.

If only Hangman could've seen what the future held.

How wrong he'd be.

How the fragile relationship he'd so carefully repaired with Ghost would shatter at his feet.

****

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[turtleations]

Interview with SEIJI KIMURA (Ex-Zeppet Store vocals and guitar, currently active with solo-unit hurdy gurdy)

Published in the hide BIBLE (by Akemi Oshima) 2008

Note: Just like with INA's interview, I am keeping the honorifics on all names as Kimura used them (i.e. hide is referred to as hide-san throughout the interview).

Note 2: As with the two previous long interviews, this is very, very close to an actual translation. Many of the things I give you here are Kimura’s exact words, just moved from first to third person. The prompts and questions of the interviewer are actual translations.

Note 3: On the name "Seiji Kumura": Usually, when written in roman letters, I found the name transcribed as "Seizi Kimura". I am using "Seiji" because this is was the book uses. I also have it in the title in the order given name - family name, even though on all other interviews I keep the Japanese order of names, because, again, this is what the book does.

Note 4: The desciption in the title is from 2008. Zeppet Store did in fact reunite in 2011.

Kimura-san, after hide-san passed away, you were asked to speak in various places, weren’t you?

Immediately after hide-san’s death, Kimura wasn’t in a situation to talk about anything. He was doing a live radio-broadcast at the time, and about three days after the funeral, there was a broadcast from a satellite studio in Sendai. Numerous listeners gathered there at that time because everyone wanted to hear about hide-san, and it was very hard to speak in all that.

This is going back in time, but when how did you first meet hide-san?

A year earlier, the indies label UNDER FLOWER RECORDS had made 1000 copies of Zeppet’s album “Snap, Slide, Sandpit”, but since they did no lives and were overall unknown, those didn’t sell well. Among the acquaintances of their drummer Yanagida was a stylist who knew hide-san. According to tales from the office, that person passed the CD to a bunch of people, and one copy ended up at HEADWAX.

The CD just happened to end up in hide-san’s office?

Yes. Hide-san was living in LA at the time, but it seems that after he returned to Japan, he took a selection of the CDs scattered around the office home to listen to them. One of them was Zeppet’s, but since it was all sung in English, he didn’t think it was from a Japanese band at first. When he learned that it was from a band near Shimokita, he said “We have to do something with this” and contacted them. At the time, HEADWAX was associated with a band called DEEP, and it was at their one-man live that Zeppet Store met him for the first time. They knew they were to meet him that day, but the band members still questioned it, wondering if this was for real, when the elevator doors opened and hide-san was standing there.

Was he there by coincidence?

No, it was like he had been waiting for them. He was sitting there on his own, going, “Yo!” and they were very surprised.

While you knew X JAPAN, there was no similarity between their music and yours, was there?

None whatsoever. Zeppet Store couldn’t believe it when they heard that hide-san had taken an interest in them. Since their musical activities and their field were so different, it seemed very strange. Until they met him for real, they were sceptic and took that talk with a grain of salt when someone told them about it. It was only when they were drinking with hide-san after the live and he kept talking about their songs and their lyrics that they were thought, “Hey, this guy was really listening to us!”

What image did you have of hide-san after meeting him in person?

Before, Kimura did not know him at all. Even X JAPAN he only knew as far as “Kurenai” and such. They were on TV often, but the only impression he had of hide-san was that he had an existence completely separated from his own. When he heard about hide-san’s interest in them, he borrowed his solo CD from a co-worker, listening to his music properly for the first time.

Did you think it would be rude not to?

Yes, but frankly, in the beginning, he didn’t quite get it. It was completely divorced from X JAPAN, and while Kimura thought that hide-san was the kind of person to be doing appropriately interesting stuff, it was so different from what Kimura listened to that he didn’t know what to make of it.

What impression did you have when you met hide-san for the first time?

It was at the afterparty of a DEEP-live, when hide-san went directly to the members of Zeppet without even talking to those of DEEP, to chat with them on his own. They were drinking and Kimura was lacking confidence in it all, but seeing the earnest look in hide’s eyes, he ended up thinking, “This is a grown man I can trust completely.” It made him happy that hide-san cared about and spoke passionately with them, and he gave the impression of really loving music. At that time, they didn’t talk about business at all, and with hide-san endlessly asking about their lyrics and melodies, the impression changed to that of one single-minded about music. Until then, Kimura had thought him just a scary young man.

After that, did you sign up with hide-san’s label at once?

That fateful album came out in ‘94, they met in ‘95, but with hide-san living in LA, they couldn’t often talk directly. So, they started talking business with the representatives of HEADWAX. They talked about recording a demo tape with all their new songs of that time, but when that tape was done,　it was deemed so good that all those recordings ended up as the final version. Since the songs were all in English, the idea quickly changed to releasing it in the US, and they eventually did so with the album “716”. They met hide-san again when they went to LA.

For the second time?

The second time, yes.

Had it been hide-san’s idea to do a proper recording on the demo tape?

 Yes. Since Zeppet were amateurs, they didn’t really understand the meaning of demo tapes. Since they were now in a studio much more splendid than what they had worked in before, they reworked their lyrics, fixed the arrangements, and recorded it all giving their best.

And suddenly, you debuted in the US.

Yes. Because they released the demo tape like it was a competition, three companies put their hands up for it. They picked the one with the most favorable conditions. Since they would come out specifically in the US, it was decided that they should do some promotion, and while they only gave three concerts, they stayed over there for about a month.

That’s amazing! (laughs)

It was mostly sightseeing. In LA they did serious promotion: Went on the radio, gave interviews, appeared on TV, had a live at the “Viper Room” run by Johnny Depp, and more. They were put in charge of an event by an organization like the Japanese JASRAC [Japanese Society for the Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers]. Because there are a lot of Japanese people in San Francisco, they  interviewed with the local newspaper and gave a concert, but next they went to Seattle and there was nothing (laughing). So they went to have fun at the club night after night.

What was meeting hide-san for the second time like?

Kimura’s got an entire mountain of memories of that second time in LA. One time, hide-san took them to a Japanese restaurant he often went to, and as they went back to the hotel in two cars, music by Zeppet was played on the radio of the car hide-san was in. The car suddenly stopped, and hide-san said, “It’s on!” while crying.

Crying?

Yes. They were drunk, but all the band members and hide-san sat in the car, motionless, for four minutes, and hide-san was crying. And then he fell asleep, with an extremely happy expression on his face. They delivered him home like this.

Did you talk a lot when you were in LA?

They did. Hide-san came to see them live in LA, and after the concert was over, he said, “If you ever win an award, you can say, “Thank you, hide”. That’s enough.” At just that time, hide-san was starting zilch, and Kimura thinks that releasing an album in the US had been his dream as well. It seemed like the fact that he got this small indies band in his employment to debut there first made him very proud and happy.

You said you had three lives; did hide-san come to see all of them?

No, just the one in LA. It seems like he wanted to come to the others, but his own schedule made that impossible. Since there had been no opportunity for him to see them in Japan, LA was the first time he got to watch them perform. Anyway, in Japan, they were a band with roughly fifteen people in the audience. Fifteen was the biggest crowd they had ever assembled. At their worst, it was three.

And then you suddenly gave concerts in the US.

It was like a dream. Until then, they had only had stages of around 20 minutes. Now there were 40 minutes, and that they came out for encores also started in LA.

Did hide-san say anything about his thoughts on your live?

There was only one negative thing Kimura got: That he did not convey enough strong emotions with his eyes. “You have to put a bit more power into your eyes,” he was told. “Don’t make eyes like Mogutan,” hide said and called him Mogutan [Character from “Manga Hajimete Monagatari”, an educational program for children that ran from 1978 until 1984] for a while. Aside from that, he didn’t say anything. He liked Zeppet as it was and didn’t feel the need to interfere with Kimura’s handling of it. He said he was not a producer, just a collector who liked Zeppet, so as long as he could get their work out into the world, he was satisfied. Hide-san didn’t say anything about their musicianship or their visuals. In fact, it was a bit anti-climatic.

Weren’t there any songs he didn’t like?

There weren’t. Their first two albums – the one that got them to meet hide-san and the one after that – were in English, but their debut was made in Japanese. Since he had been singing exclusively in English until then, Kimura was very anxious about that and wondered what hide-san thought about it, but hide-san only said, “It made me cry.” Afterwards, Kimura was called alone to the Sendai concert of the PSYENCE-tour to perform there on his own. He took the Shinkansen to Sendai and performed their single “Koe” before the encore. Since he came alone and didn’t bring anything, hide-san said, “Use my guitar”, and let him borrow it.

Your impressions of that time

It had been just before hide debut, and Kimura realized what it meant to give music his own color. hide-san’s thought process was unpredictable. Kimura thinks his way of thinking must have changed somewhere along the way to keep up with hide-san’s. When they they had someone from the audience come up on stage and dance during the song called “Beauty & Stupid”, Kimura asked hide-san, “Please let me dance as well” and was allowed on stage. Since he didn’t have a personality like that, something must have changed. The tour was stimulating like that. While he was dancing in female clothes wearing a wig, it was pointed out during the MC that “Kimura, who was singing yesterday, is dancing over there.” Later, during the afterparty, DIE-san sang and played “Koe” on the keyboard and the members of hide-san’s band were crying. Inada-san (INA) was wailing. At that moment, Kimura thought, “I’m lucky to debut among people like these.” In the end, Kimura couldn’t keep going with them due to some sudden developments, but it was fun, that year, shocking as it had been.

Zeppet’s activities then?

They also went on tour. When they did their tour starting with their second single, they were also in a place where hide-san was scheduled to be. They saw his live in Sapporo.

Did your impression regarding hide-san change?

Kimura thought that if you know him better, hide-san is a pretty kind person. Even if he raged when drunk, he would always say, “I’m sorry” the next day. While irrational things made him angry, he was never angry at the members of Zeppet. No matter how drunk he was, he always supported them. He took them to a lot of bars, and later they heard from the staff that he paid for everything with his own money. He was like the embodiment of kindness. To Kimura, he was a music-loving, mischievous older brother.

You were taught many things.

Drinking until morning was one of them, that was something Kimura did not know before being dragged around. He liked alcohol, but wasn’t tough enough to keep going all night. He was taught to go through two or three places and finish it off by eating ramen. Then, when moving on, the walked with a skip to their steps (laughing).

What do you mean?

It was a silly thing, but he liked silly things, and he enjoyed being in that circle. It seemed unbelievable to him, a plain guy who had just debuted, should be friends with these flashy people and be on good terms with them.

Were you ever given advice?

Hide-san never told them to do things in a specific way, but at the time of their major debut, he said, “If you’re active in Japan, wouldn’t it be better to do so in Japanese?” Also, they were often told that bands that do not have a concert at the end of the year are not bands at all.

At the end of the ear? On New Year’s Eve?

They were told to “do that, no matter what.”

What were things you consulted with him about?

When it came to writing lyrics, they consulted hide-san on how to put them down in Japanese. Kimura asked, for example, if it was okay to write the song in Japanese and have only the hook in English. hide told him to just write it the way he likes it and see what happens. They were talking about their second single, “TO BE FREE”, and Kimura was told that it wouldn’t be any problem at all. Then, Inada-san taught them various recording techniques. Like how to make the core sound of the guitar stronger. When hide-san was drunk, he talked a lot, but those were just trivial stories. There was talk about music for about the first 30 minutes, after that it’s all silly but fun stories. He did get passionate talking to guitarist Gomi about effectors, though. Gomi-kun was using a guitar called “Jaguar” at the time, and hide-san ordered a guitar with the exact same shape from Fernandez, which had been, again, extremely cool. The song he used it for, saying he was influenced by Zeppet in this, was “Flame”. That hide-san had been so open about having being influenced by them made them extremely happy. At the time of recording “Flame”, hide-san said, “Please lend me your drums”, and so Zeppet Store’s Yanagida beat the drums for that song on the album. There had been plans for a Zeppet Store concert around that time, but then Yanagida went to LA, and Kimura gave a concert on his own for maybe the second time in his life. Now he does that all the time, though (laughing). Then, however, he was like, “Curse you!” towards Yanagida.

He just had to go to LA on his own. (laughs)

The finished song was amazing again. It had a melody Kimura had not heard before, and it was interesting that hide-san said, “I was influenced by Zeppet and this is the result.” Also, Zeppet had a song called “Flake”, and it made Kimura happy that even the title was similar to one of theirs.

Did you watch an X JAPAN live at that time?

They bothered them at the 1996 end-of-year concert. Hide-san wore a green costume and gave off the kind of fashionable, cool air that had led to PSYENCE. After that, they went to the afterparty, and there was a year-end party from the office as well, it was magnificent. The following year, Zeppet, as per hide-san’s advice, also gave an end-of-year concert.

Did you also hang out with hide-san in Japan?

Yes. At that time, hide often went to a bar called “Rally” in Nishiabazu, and since he also took Kimura along, Kimura also ended up going there on his own.

Huh? Until then, you weren’t the type for that, were you?

Not at all. That, too, is clearly hide-san’s influence. One day, Kimura was drinking on his own when hide-san happened to come into the bar. Except, he was walking on crutches. Kimura had heard rumors that hide had broken his foot in Atami, but the people from the office didn’t tell them anything so they wouldn’t worry. Due to his injury, hide-san was not allowed to drink alcohol. It was not often that you saw him not drinking in a place like that, but having a strong sense of service towards those around him, he still stayed with Kimura for two hours and kept him company without drinking. During this time, he was regaling Kimura with wild, hilarious stories from the past until Kimura was rolling with laughter. “I want to meet Kimura’s girlfriend. Let’s call her, so you can introduce us!” So Kimura called his girlfriend of the time and the three of them kept drinking together. When hide-san got drunk, he would always talk about how useless he was. He liked to make fun of himself. It surprised Kimura how a rockstar like hide-san would look down on himself like that. The truth is, Kimura took after that trait and starts by talking shit about himself when drunk.

Hide-san could tell funny stories, couldn’t he?

No matter what kind of story, if hide-san was telling it, you ended up roaring with laughter. He had mastered the art of conversation. In any case, it was extremely funny. The next time they were drinking together, Kimura passed hide-san a cassette with hurdy gurdy [Kimura’s solo unit] music and asked him to listen to it. Then, it was used, without anyone telling him, in LEMONed’s catalogue video (laughing). About forty seconds of it, and the sound was bad, because it was from a cassette. Just letting it flow at its own convenience. Kimura was happy.

Was it rare for people to drink with hide-san?

It was more like a general trend, they were never alone at the time. The moment hide-san aimed for the counter, Kimura was at his side. Since they couldn’t really talk among all those people, those moments were his chance. They requested their favorite music and talked about bands like KISS, POLICE, or QUEEN. It was a wonderful time.

Kimura-san, what did hide-san mean to you?

Even though the things they did and their music were different, he is somehow still a mark Kimura is aiming for. He would probably get angry if he said that, though. As a human being, Kimura loved him, as a man he respected him, and even now he has yet to meet another person with this passion towards the music they are doing. When Kimura lost his way in regard to music during some part of his life, it was hide-san who helped him find it again. If he hadn’t met hide-san, he would probably be doing some other work now. If you think about it like that, hide-san was his benefactor. Although Kimura can’t surpass him, a small ambition to try still exists somewhere.

What did hide-san do as your benefactor?

Kimura loved music and had always wanted to do it, but he didn’t think he could make a living out of it. When he met hide-san, he was twenty-eight years old and pretty late to making his debut as a newbie. As he reached that age, he had given up on a lot of things in his life. He was facing the decision of whether to continue making music while working part-time, or find full employment and become a self-sufficient member of society. It was a time of great worries. Then he met hide-san and his way of thinking changed: He decided that he could trust this person and that he would follow him as far as possible. At that time, Kimura was jobbing at a pachinko parlor, and if he did not become a full employee, he would have to give that up. If he did become one, he could make it to manager. Also, it came with a nice salary – more than double than what he would make as an office worker. Since he was living at the pachinko mansion, quitting that job would also mean giving up his room. His life would change drastically, he’d have to move out, and while he wondered if he could really do this, he was also aware that a chance like the one hide-san offered him would not come again, and so he decided to follow him.

That decision required courage.

So it did. If Kimura remembers it now, he wonders how that was even something to think twice about, but back then, he agonized about it a lot.

He was someone who changed your life, wasn’t he?

If Kimura hadn’t met hide-san, he wouldn’t be the person he is today. He wouldn’t have stood in the Ajinomoto-Stadium. He would probably have continued to do music but would have performed in front of an audience of maybe fifteen to twenty people. Through meeting hide-san and being recognized by him, Kimura became an adult. Hide-san was his patron.

What would you want to tell young fans about hide-san?

They can learn about his music from CDs and DVDs, but the plain, unadorned part of hide-san is not talked about much, so Kimura would like to tell them about him as just a guy. He was made of kindness, extremely thoughtful. Even though he was the main act, he never lost sight of those around him. He showed great consideration for the staff and even gave attention to people like Kimura, who had a completely different view on things. “Kimura-san looks bored, so let’s entertain him” he’d say to the staff. Kimura thinks he was massively tolerant of other people’s faults. He could be troublesome when drunk, but everyone understood that that was just the flipside of all the affection, and no one around Kimura ever said a single bad word about him. Of the people who had even a little bit to do with hide-san, no one really said anything bad. Kimura got the strong impression that he was someone who was loved by those around him no matter what. There is no one else like that. The impression he left was that of a person who wasn’t perfect, but good.

That no one got angry with him even when he was acting irrationally is amazing. Simply put, it speaks of virtue.

Really. When Zeppet was DJing at the LEMONed Club Event, hide-san unexpectedly came to visit. Since there would have been an uproar if he had been discovered, they went drinking together in the back, and because Zeppet Store’s second single had just come out, talk inevitably turned to the band. At this point, hide-san asked a staff member, “Are you promoting it properly?”, showing a glimpse of being the head of their company in a business context. When the staff member said, “I have no idea,” he lost it. So he hit the wall hard enough for it to break and for blood to flow.

……

 Of course he couldn’t hit his own staff member at his own event. Instead, he raged wihtou involving other people and chased a taxi, that’s all. Hide-san liked chasing taxis, it seems. He liked running, too.

Did you see him run a lot?

He did. Running, rolling… He never failed to do something funny. On hide-san’s birthday, Sugizo-san and J-san of Luna Sea came by. J-san had brought a 1-sho [1,8 litres] bottle of Japanese sake that hide-san liked, putting it on the table with a “Happy Birthday!” And hide-san just said, “I appreciate it, J, but I quit drinking Japanese sake. When I drink it, I flip out.” That got him the admiration of his close friends. Hide-san introduced Kimura to Sugizo-kun and J-kun and really, a lot of other people. Even though hide-san is already gone, Kimura still meets people through him. While it’s not just people hide-san introduced him to directly, he became friends with kyo-chan through hide-san, who came to stay the night at Kimura’s just the other day.  

He had a gift for connecting people with each other, didn’t he?

At the time of Kimura’s debut, most of his fans knew him through hide-san, and even now, it’s thanks to hide that he can connect with his fans. Kimura Seiji is someone living his life in hide-san’s protection and is thus inseparable from him. Even now, the memorial portrait of hide-san in the room where Kimura makes his music is properly decorated. For a while, it was right in the center, but he eventually moved it back some because it was awkward like that. Even now there are probably people who mistake hide-san for LEMONed’s producer. But that is far from the truth. Hide-san always said that he was just a simple collector who wanted to release the things that were good. He approached it with the basic mindset that good things didn’t need to be tampered with, Kimura and the others had complete freedom. They only got four singles and one album delivered through hide-san. For the last single, they had to overcome the fact that their guitarist Gomi-kun, whom hide-san had loved, had quit, but they still got extremely high praise for it. Hide-san called them specifically to tell them that he had cried about a hundred times. It’s because of memories like this that Kimura is still taking singing seriously. Because even until today, there’s been no one else to say such things to him.

Hide-san was also gifted at giving praise.

Hide-san’s praise really became Kimura’s stepping stone. That he could just go for it, thinking, “Next, I’ll write another good song” was also hide-san’s power. That single became the last song of his that hide-san listened to. Even though that is what it is, Kimura wanted him to listen to many more songs.

Is there anything you would like to say to hide-san today?

Even now, Kimura still asks hide-san how to deal with it when he has a problem. But now, he has to find the answer himself. He received that strength, and now, by asking, he feels that he is growing up a little. To speak plainly, hide-san’s meaning to him exceeds family. He is so important that inside Kimura, he has the status of a god, even if it seems strange to say it like that. Kimura is truly grateful that he got to meet hide-san, because of that one CD that happened to end up in his hands.