#listening to poppy while drawing this and their music slaps how did I never listen to it

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[chorusfm]

Jordi Up Late – “To Be Your Friend” (Video Premiere)

Today I’m excited to share with everyone the new single and music video from electronic indie-pop artist Jordi Up Late, called “To Be Your Friend.” While Jordi continues to steadily release new singles, her plan is to eventually string some more recordings together for an EP or potentially a debut full-length LP. On this great sounding new single, Jordi Up Late shared: ”TBYF” is about experiencing the dichotomy of resentment and gratitude after falling for the ‘idea’ of someone and facing that your disappointment lies in your own expectations of a person who was incapable of loving you before meeting you. In the end I gave the benefit of the doubt by extending friendship only to feel my hand slapped away and taken for granted. Though I am resentful in the dark melodies of the synth, and at times in the lyrics, I remind myself of my own power in singing directly and unapologetically to this person. I speak plainly that loving one another was impossible considering his lack of confidence and that loving him was only worth it for the lessons learned.” With a plethora of hooks and impressive songwriting chops, Jordi Up Late has crafted a single worthy of your next perfect playlist. I was also able to catch up with this artist for a brief interview. The story explored in “To Be Your Friend” is quite vulnerable, an admittance of being in a toxic situation that didn’t necessarily end on a good foot. Does writing about these harder relationships bring about catharsis, or is it slightly intimidating to bare all via your music?  Writing about harder relationships definitely brings a deep catharsis. Sometimes I don’t process a relationship or a painful situation fully until I have written about it because words and emotions flow out without judgement. Ultimately I know the honesty will be good for me and will be good for the song.  It’s not intimidating to write the music, I’m generally an open book but I won’t lie I cry when I’m writing sometimes or when I listen back to a mix.  Sonically, where did you draw inspiration from when writing “To Be Your Friend?” Sonically, “To Be Your Friend” became about exploring how a ballad could feel dark, electronic, synthetic, poppy but deeply real and relatable.  I always draw inspiration from artists who are doing ballads in a non-obvious and edgy way. Those artists include people like James Blake, The XX, Rosalia, and Grimes. The goal for me on this track and for much of my upcoming EP was to produce haunting and edgy melodies in the context of modern electronic music, which is totally cross genre.  Where did the idea for the song’s visual come from? And how did the process of bringing it to life turn out? The Idea came from a personal experience. I never really ideate a song. They just happen. I was feeling really sad and frustrated about a certain relationship but at the same time feeling a lot of empathy for a person who was struggling in their own right. He is also an artist and I know more than anyone how dark we artists can feel. Art and music is often the light. For the visual representation of “To Be Your Friend,” I wanted to create a surreal space representative of the dark but beautiful places we artists go to in our minds. Where we cry, project, find pain, find power, and peace in creation.  --- Please consider becoming a member so we can keep bringing you stories like this one. ◎ https://chorus.fm/features/jordi-up-late-to-be-your-friend-video-premiere/

[onceabluemoonwrites]

Elven Oath

Fandom: Yuri on Ice

Summary:  The first time Minami sees the Spring God, he is decidedly unimpressed. But with every step Yuuri takes, flowers bloom, and slowly, slowly, awe begins to spill from Minami’s soul until he is a flowing river of happiness, ooh-ing and aah-ing over each newborn flower. Lohengrin, Minami wants to belong to Yuuri’s court.

Disclaimer: I don’t own Yuri on Ice

FF.net | AO3 | Tumblr   (my other entries: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

You can find my writing progress here.  If you can’t keep straight who’s what anymore, here’s a list, plus some extra background information for those who’d like to read it!

My fic master list here.

This was written for the Yuri on Ice Fantasy week ( @yoifantasyweek for those interested in checking out the other authors) 11/14/17- yoifantasyweek Day Two: Yellow. I used all three prompts: ‘’Elf’’, ‘’Sunflower,’’ and ‘’’Happiness’’. 

This is part of the Land of Gods and Monsters ‘verse, but can be read as a standalone fic.  You can find a note on the chronology of this ‘verse here.

Sunbeams trail over the forest floor, dew drops gleaming in the first light of day. Flowers curl open, petals unfurling.

Minami rolls out of his comfortable flower cradle, opens his eyes mid-flight and screams.

No, not the usual ‘’Goodmoooooooooooooorning!’’ – indeed, what leaves his mouth is a terrified scream of the likes you’ve scarcely heard. 

Ouch. Dust-speckled and limbs aching, Minami picks himself up and comes face to face with- a foot?

Big folk dancing in the Fairy Meadow? Minami clenches his teeth.

He shakes a fist at it, craning his neck to see more. ‘’Hey, bigfoot! I oughta teach you a lesson!’’

The foot disappears behind two knees carefully lowered to the ground. It results in a thwack hard enough to make Minami stumble, and oh, by Lohengrin! The God’s face is so close! Minami eyes him nervously. He’s the size of the giant’s nose, and he has never wished more he wasn’t an elf anymore!  Oh, if he hadn’t been so foolish and chosen a court already, he could’ve fled from this enormous God with his monstrously big mouth!

But Minami has no wings, so this is it. He swallows, heart pounding. ‘’I’m not afraid of you!’’ He squeaks, jabbing a finger toward the eye, jumping up and down.

‘’I apologize,’’ The vibrations knock Minami off his feet.

He bristles. ‘’You’re gonna have to do better than that, buddy!’’ He sizes him up, jumping from one leg to the other, fists raised. ‘’Come at me, bro!’’

Okay, maybe he shouldn’t have imitated the Fairy Queen, but this God is clearly out of line and Minami is putting him back in his place! Atta, boy!

The God flinches, drawing back a few meters- considerable length for someone who is only five centimetres tall. ‘’Hah, saving your own skin!’’

The God blinks. ‘’I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m Yuuri, the Spring God. I came to pay my respects to Mila.’’

Minami’s mouth drops. ‘’You’re the one she’s always going on about?’’ Yuuri turns beet red. Minami flails. ‘’You’re not nearly cool enough to have my Fairy Queen in your court!’’

Yuuri’s eyes widen. ‘’No, no, no! Mila’s part of my mother’s court!’’

‘’Then you’re an imposter!’’

‘’No, I’m not!’’

‘’Yes, you are! And even if you were who you say you are, you’d still be my rival!’’

‘’What?!’’

Minami crosses his arms as the God splutters. This, the Spring God? Ha!

They’ll see about that!

‘’How dare you return here, you fiend! I shall slay you!’’ Minami growls.

Yuuri takes one look at him, gasps and flees.

…Towards the main village, but that’s not the point.

His grass halm armour totally scared his rival!

‘’Kenjirou, what did you do now?’’

Minami looks up from his berry staple. ‘’Mila! I expelled the imposter with my fearsome growl!’’

His Queen blinks and bursts out in laughter. ‘’He was worried about you because of your hornbill cry.’’

‘’My lion roar!’’ Minami stomps his foot.

She pats him on the head, wiping away a tear. ‘’Yes, yes, hold on to your dreams, little elf.’’

His shoulders hunch as she flies away. ‘’This is all your fault, stupid Yuuri. I’ll get you, just you wait!’’

Pelting berries at the God is great stress relief, even if it doesn’t accomplish anything. But then again, the red stains will be a pain to wash out! 

Minami grins. He’s a great rival!

Yuuri comes by once a week and Minami’s getting tired.

Lying on the edge of his flower cradle, he eyes the God as he tip-toes past as not to disturb the other elves.

Hey- that’s funny!

Minami gets onto his hands and knees and leans over the yellow petals. There! Where Yuuri’s feet touch the ground, flowers sprout!

Clambering down the stem, he runs towards the footprints.

Bluebells, daffodils, even a few dahlias! Minami gasps in delight. There are even sunflowers! Dancing around the footprint flowers, he cheers. He has the best eternal rival ever!

He stops dead in his tracks, nose to nose with the place where blue flowers must’ve peeked out between Yuuri’s toes, the first to be born.

Yuuri is his eternal rival. He isn’t supposed to be cool.

What now?

‘’Why don’t you play with me anymore?’’ a voice comes from above.

Minami crosses his arms. ‘’I didn’t play with you! We fought!’’

‘’Oh…’’  

…Why does Yuuri’s wince make him feel so guilty? Minami chews on the inside of his cheek.

Sunflowers wave in the wind above his flower cradle, and it’s like their colours are tattoed on the inside of his eyes. Even when he sleeps he gets no rest. Is this what wretchedness feels like?

It tastes like bile in his mouth.

Minami tries hard, but with every step Yuuri takes, flowers bloom, and slowly, slowly, awe begins to spill from Minami’s soul until he is a flowing river of happiness, ooh-ing and aah-ing over each newborn flower.

No God’s gonna make a fool out of him, but Lohengrin, Minami wants to belong to Yuuri’s court. His heart screams: Take me, I’m the best elf they’ve got! 

…But surely Yuuri has gotten offers before. What if his fairies don’t like him? What if Yuuri doesn’t like Minami?!

Minami’s pretty sure he botched that up early in the game. He swallows and stands up with dread-filled legs. No- stop with the heavy boots. He could do this! He can… He can!

‘’HEY, YOU!’’

Okay, not the best opening, but Minami once said: ‘’Is that a wart or a whisker?’’ to a kitsune and survived, so this is definitely an improvement.

Yuuri blinks. It looks strange, now Minami’s on eye-height. ‘’How did you get up there?’’

Minami puffs his chest out. ‘’I climbed!’’

‘’…How do you plan on getting down?’’

‘’Climb-‘’ Minami sees the depth beneath him, flails and- Yuuri catches him in the palm of his hand.

‘’Careful!’’

Minami pouts. ‘’See, if you’d make me part of your court, you wouldn’t need to rescue me! I’d be able to fly all on my own!’’

‘’What?’’

The elf turns beet red, pushing his fingers together. ‘’Part… of your court.’’  He flaps with his arms. ‘’So I could fly and all! And help you carry out your duties. And look at the sunflowers ‘cause they’re so pretty and…’’

Yuuri’s poppy cheeks are the cutest thing he’s ever seen. Whoever is cooing out there, Minami certainly agrees with them! Wait- there is no one else here. By Ortrud! The elf slaps his hands in front of his mouth, attempting to wrestle the sound back in.

Yuuri bites his lip. ‘’I don’t have a court, but if you’d like to be the first, you can!’’

Minami’s jaw drops. ‘’But… How do people not fall to their knees and beg you to enter your court? I mean, that was my plan B! I had a plan C too, which consisted of crying a lot and telling Mila I was going to be a child forever because I only wanted the coolest God. I’d be Peter Pan, can you imagine?!’’

Yuuri’s flush creeps down his neck. He opens his mouth, but Minami is on a roll and no stop signs are going to halt him. ‘’Wait- you want me as your Fairy Queen?!’’

The Spring God nods. ‘’If you please.’’

‘’Oh, I’m pleased, alright!’’ Minami chirps, patting Yuuri’s thumb. ‘’Lemme get up there and give you a smooch on the forehead!’’

And that he does.

Magic transfers better via skin to skin contact, and there is no greater place to kiss than the third eye. Yuuri smiles as the elf huffs and puffs. Kissing his index finger, he places it carefully on Minami’s forehead.

It tickles- laughter bubbles up in Minami’s throat as the magic rushes through him. It’s a wild river, splashing everywhere, wetting his skin and dripping along his throat and his back, until the water freezes, wing-shaped. Fragile, swan-feathered and red.

‘’They’re so beautiful,’’ the awe is clearly audible.

Minami is an adult now. ‘’Yahoooooooooooo!’’ He shoots up into the air, buzzing in circles around Yuuri’s head. ‘’Yuuri, look! I’m a fairy! A real fairy!’’

Yuuri laughs, voice vibrating through the air, but Minami stays where he is, wings easily steering against the current. ‘’A real Fairy Queen!’’

Minami slaps his cheeks, kicking in the air. ‘’Oh, I’m gonna leave the village! I’m the first part of your court! Waaaaaaah! Mila’s not gonna believe it! Ha! Sara’s not gonna believe it! I’m a Fairy Queen, Yuuri, your Fairy Queen!’’

‘’The best one a God could have.’’

Minami will die from Yuuri’s awesome levels one of these days! But first… First, he has a court to make!

Author’s Note

Minami is a precious cinnamon roll, protect him. 

The songs I listened to while writing this:

Minami’s music box.

Lohengrin prelude.

The outcry ‘’Lohengrin!’’ must’ve been pretty obvious, but ‘’Ortrud’’ is the antagonist from the same opera. For those not familiar with the opera, Minami’s wings being ‘’swan-feathered’’ is also a reference. At the end of the opera, the swan that was constantly present turned out to be a cursed man. In this case it is no curse, but I thought it’d be fun to keep a bit of a theme! *grins*

[chorusfm]

Jimmy Eat World – Chase This Light

I’m not sure I have ever anticipated a new album with quite the furor that I anticipated Jimmy Eat World’s Chase This Light in the fall of 2007. Futures had been a game-changer for me, the album that transformed me from a budding music listener into a voracious, lifelong die-hard. As often happens when you’re young, the three years that stretched between the October 19, 2004 release of Futures and the October 16, 2007 release of Chase This Light seemed to last an eternity. (I was 13 when the former came out and 16 for the arrival of the latter.) The wait was eased a bit by the 2005 release of the Stay on My Side Tonight EP, but the dark, moody nature of those songs only made me want a full-length. An album packed of songs like “Disintegration” and “Closer”? Count me in. Chase This Light was decidedly not that record. Futures gave the band two basic paths forward. The first was to embrace the moody, late night autumnal vibe that manifested on songs like “Polaris” and “23.” That path evidently led to Stay on My Side Tonight, which was made up of songs the band had written for Futures but hadn’t finished or put on the record. The second possible path was for Jimmy Eat World to keep following their arc as a glossy studio band. They’d made Futures with Gil Norton, a well-respected rock producer known for making big, robust rock albums. Futures sounded appropriately huge, and there was some feeling—particularly in radio singles like “Pain” and “Work”—that Jimmy Eat World could be a massive radio rock band for the new millennium if they wanted to be. They could prove that “The Middle” wasn’t just a fluke hit. That path led to Chase This Light, which was and is Jimmy Eat World’s biggest-sounding, glossiest, most pop-influenced record. They brought in Butch Vig to executive produce, hired Chris Lord-Alge to handle mixing, and wrote songs like “Big Casino” and “Always Be” that had truly massive earworm choruses. It wasn’t their fault that radio rock died a swift death between the fall of 2004—when bands like Green Day and The Killers were delivering radio hit after radio hit—and the fall of 2007. The singles from Chase This Light still did relatively well: “Big Casino” went to number 3 on the rock charts and hit the “Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles” chart. But Jimmy Eat World evidently weren’t destined to become a radio band, and Chase This Light didn’t fundamentally change their fanbase or their general narrative. Monitoring the release of Chase This Light at the time, I remember that some fans were put off by the poppy sound and muscular arrangements. Gone was any trace of the rawer emo sound that had characterized Static Prevails or Clarity. Instead, Jimmy Eat World made a record that—sonically, at least—mirrored its bright, colorful album cover. For a fair chunk of the early fanbase, Chase This Light probably marked the beginning of the end for Jimmy Eat World. Such fans are easy to spot these days: they hail the trio of Clarity, Bleed American, and Futures as the band’s peak and have little use for anything that came after. Personally, I didn’t buy into any of that. I’d become a Jimmy Eat World fan with Futures. I liked their glossier sound. I mostly didn’t think Clarity was all it was cracked up to be. (I’ve since recanted on this point.) And I was at a moment in my life where I really needed a record like Chase This Light—a record that sounded anthemic and hopeful, but one where, if you actually paid attention to the lyrics, you’d hear the sharp singe of heartbreak and the bitter ache of doubt and regret. Chase This Light is the saddest Jimmy Eat World record. It doesn’t sound like it on first blush. Storming out of the gates with the propulsive “Big Casino,” Chase This Light stacks five straight anthems before hitting its first ballad. Those song sound bright and cheerful, too. “Let it Happen” has a refrain that goes “I can laugh it off/Ha ha ha ha ha ha,” while “Always Be” kicks off with finger snaps. Spend a few moments going over the lyrics, though, and these songs morph from blissful pop jams into cruelly catchy confections of heartbreak. “Big Casino,” for instance, is packed with regret and delusions of grandeur, told from the perspective of an aging dreamer who still thinks he’s going to get his big break. “I’ll accept with poise, with grace/When they draw my name from the lottery,” Jim Adkins sings in the chorus, envisioning himself as the guy whose hand everyone will want to shake. He knows it’s not happening (hence the bridge, “I have one last wish/And it’s from the heart/Just let me down/Just let me down easy”), but he’s willing to fantasize. “Always Be,” meanwhile” is a quintessential boy-loses-girl song. The first verse picks up in the middle of a late-night drive, mere hours before a relationship fractures. “I’ll force a laugh to break the silence,” Jim Adkins sings, before acknowledging that “It’s gonna get harder still/Before it gets easy.” The couple in this song has grown so distant that they can’t even communicate with each other anymore—not even when they’re sitting in the front seat of the same car on a lonely dark highway, with nothing but fake, nervous laughter to cut the tension. (Don’t ask me why they didn’t just turn on the damn radio.) “She’ll always be/A little hard for me to reach,” goes the key line in the chorus, and if it’s not the most gutting thing Jimmy Eat World ever wrote, it’s close. Don’t even get me started on “Carry You,” a song about being so hung up on a former flame that you get stuck in a feedback loop of the memories you have of them. “Here’s to living in the moment, ‘cause it passed,” Adkins sings in the chorus. The protagonist in this song can’t stop building up this old, dead relationship in his head. He’s probably built it up so much that he remembers things as being better than they ever actually were. He’s created a total fantasy based on the relationship he could have had, and he legitimately can’t let it go. The most cutting line is “Roll down the windows, let the cold air come in/Slap my face just to feel you somehow again,” because even remembering the worst moments of the relationship is apparently better to this guy than letting go and moving on. And then there’s “Dizzy,” an arguable contender for the title of “best Jimmy Eat World song” (and probably for “best song of the 2000s” as well). “Dizzy” was actually the second song I heard off Chase This Light. When this album came out, it was still a few months before I figured out how and where to watch for album leaks. My brother snagged the leak, though, and he sent me “Dizzy” via email, saying something like “You have to hear this now. I think it might be the best thing they’ve ever done.” In the weeks that it took for the album to come out and make its way to me, I played that song dozens, maybe even hundreds of times. There was an ache to it that wasn’t quite like any other song I’d ever heard. It seemed simultaneously hopeful and completely hopeless—like the relationship at the center of it might be salvageable, but also maybe not worth saving. 10 years later, “Dizzy” still hits me like a bag of bricks to the gut. While “23” is my go-to favorite JEW song, Jim Adkins has never been more on his game as a lyricist than he was on “Dizzy.” Expressions of affection that seem to be meant for someone else; desperate late night calls from a payphone, leading to nowhere but a lonely answering machine; conversations that go around and around in circles without either person saying what they really need to say. “Do you hear the conversation we talk about?” Jim Adkins asks in the explosive chorus. In the acoustic version, it’s “Do you hear the conversation we talk around?” The boy and the girl in this song, they both know it’s over, but neither has the guts to say the words. Ironically, that stubborn reluctance to tear off the band-aid ends up making everything exponentially more painful for both parties. “You said you’ve never have regrets/Jesus, is there someone yet/Who got that wish?” Jim Adkins sings on the bridge, before asking “Did you get yours, babe?” We don’t get the answer in the lyrics, but we know it’s a “No.” In the kind of relationship this song describes, no one gets out without regrets. I can still remember every moment I spent with these songs in the fall of 2007, blasting them as I drove around town with my newly-minted driver’s license, or leaning on them at the end of a few exceedingly hard days. I recall being struck by how good it felt to hear Adkins’ voice again, how listening to this album those first few times felt like reconvening and commiserating with an old friend. Even by Thanksgiving break, a month and change after the album hit the streets, I was still spinning it religiously, reveling in the hooks of “Here It Goes” or “Chase This Light” and wondering why this sound couldn’t be on the radio. These days, it’s hard for an album to take hold of my life like that. With so many records to listen to and streaming services always there to give us instant accessibility, most of us are scattered in our focus when it comes to music. It’s rare now that a new album will get even a week out of me without sharing real estate with half a dozen other LPs. Jimmy Eat World, though, is one of the few bands that can still command my undivided attention. Last year, I went on a road trip right after I got my hands on Integrity Blues. I listened to it five times in about eight hours of total driving time. Still, without Chase This Light, I don’t know if Jimmy Eat World would have ever become that band for me. Futures made me a fan, but Chase This Light immortalized them as an all-time favorite. It branded its hooks, pristine sound, and devastating lyrics onto my soul during one of the most tumultuous years of my life. In doing so, it made Jimmy Eat World a band that I could never turn away from. A few years ago, when I wrote about Futures and how it inspired my obsessive love of music, I called it “a lightning bolt to the heart.” Chase This Light may not have been the commercial success it should have been, but it did prove to me that lightning could strike the same place twice—at least when it came to my own personal connection with music. Futures kept me afloat when I was 13 and staring down the possibility that I’d have to leave my hometown and move someplace where I didn’t know anyone, right before high school started. Chase This Light came along and did the same thing when I was 16, buckling under the pressures of school, adolescence, romantic confusion, and the lead role in a high school musical where I had to bear the brunt of an emotionally abusive director. Since then, every single Jimmy Eat World album has found me at exactly the right time: Invented in the autumn where I navigated through the euphoria of young love and the loneliness of a long distance relationship; Damage as I wrapped up my final weeks of college and bid farewell to my friends and the town we’d called home for four years; and Integrity Blues as a chaotic election year and a fractured world had me yearning for the simpler angst of my youth. For some Jimmy Eat World fans, Chase This Light was the end of the line. I’m proud to be one of the people for whom it was just the beginning. --- Please consider supporting us so we can keep bringing you stories like this one. ◎ https://chorus.fm/review/jimmy-eat-world-chase-this-light/