#the only one i got into ~late~ was taylor in late 2016-early 2017

[yuneu]

i feel like most of my interests that have really lasted ive gotten into when i was a kid or preteen and i just havent gotten into anything else since

[whatiwillsay]

no, no one "made up tily" (regarding the gaylorswift reddit post)

just jumping on here to provide receipts about the roots of tily in the fandom

tily was first dicussed on the l chat as early as 2016!

here is a link to a thread discussing it back in 2016

from 2017:

from 2018:

here's a link to the 2018 thread for good measure so you can see it for yourself

and for good measure here is the first mention of tily on my blog

link (this post you can see is from September 14th 2020)

someone anoned me about it and encouraged that we look into it so we did. that's just how fandom spaces work 🤷‍♀️.

here is the oldest mention of lily Donaldson in our discord simply discussing people talking ab it on the l chat:

here is the oldest mention of tily:

here is that convo expanded:

just people genuinely being into it, being silly, and shipping it cause they look good together and it was a good vibe.

you'll see me there at the bottom (I'm camcake) saying "there's something to this lily ship!" that was just genuine. we were curious ab it. we did not "make anything up". we heard ab it and investigated it.

you'll see all of this dates back only to 2020 while the l chat posts go way back to 2016. I did not join the gaylor fandom until the summer of 2020. I have never posted in the l chat. tily is just a ship. just like any other ship. she was a female friend of taylor's that got a lil close with her for a period of time and some of taylor's "easter eggs" in songs seem like they could tie back to her. i did hear some well sourced tea that taylor was hooking up with someone on rep tour that matched lily's description BUT you have to take gossip like that with a huge grain of salt! while I think tily is a great ship with a lot fun moments and nice "clues" that point to lily, I would also be zero percent surprised if tily did not "happen" and they were only ever friends. as with ALL ships it is impossible to know for sure.

so to sum up 1. tily was first talked about way back in 2016 on the l chat and was discussed on and off for years after that well before I joined the fandom. 2. someone sent me an anon about tily in late summer of 2020 and that inspired us to research 3. we had convos ab it in discord in late summer of 2020 like any normal shipper/fandom friends would do.

feel free to spread this post far and wide.

[9w1ft]

Re: Carolina Herrera and Karlie. We’ve discussed this before, but a lot of people don’t know that Karlie is not simply the face of a perfume in the same way that Timothee Chalemet is the current face of one of Chanel’s perfumes, or Joe Alwyn did an ad for Tom Ford Beau du Jour one time. Good Girl perfume was created especially in conjunction with Karlie being the face of it. She’s not just the face of it, she is the Good Girl. It’s a whole other level of business partnership and branding. It’s been going strong for 7 years, and Good Girl continues to be one of the best selling perfumes in the world. You can be walking down the street in Slovakia or Shanghai or some place, and there’s Karlie The Good Girl on a billboard. Every airport with a duty free in the world, and most Ulta Beautys and Sophoras in the US have her picture showing. CH also happens to be the first runway she walked at fashion week when she was 15. She absolutely would have influence over what they do and we’ve seen it over and over again, including this year and last (remember Karlie did her pink smoke effect before Taylor filmed hers in the LH MV, and the midnight version of GG was developed and announced well before Taylor announced Midnights, and this stuff goes way back to the first ads which had subtle references to This Is What You Came For, and another one where she said “Don’t call me kid” long before Taylor released Illicit Affairs.) There is absolutely no way anyone will ever convince me these things aren’t pre-referencing Taylor’s work, or Taylor’s work is referencing these ads. And the only way this is possible is if Karlie knows ahead of time what’s coming (usually months ahead) and/or Taylor is referencing Karlie ads later. The only reason the former would happen is if they are on good terms (very good terms and Taylor is ok with it) and the only way the latter happens is if Taylor’s obsessed with Karlie.

thank you for typing this out for me i almost typed it up but was like, i’ve written about this, so i went to find a post and then i couldn’t find it immediately and then i started about my day and such and forgot 😆

i think if you’re new its hard to appreciate or grasp what brands are important to karlie. like i remember distinctly way back when when i first got here in 2018 looking at taymojis and people freaking out about there being a stiletto taymoji and how it was a kaylor reference and the photo people were using to talk about why it was a reference was —to me— just a pic of a carolina herrera ad where karlie was wearing a stiletto and i remember thinking to myself, come on guys it’s a shoe, what’s specific about a shoe?? but i was lacking the context of The Swift Life app being released in late 2017 (meaning it was being built/prepped throughout 2017, likely early 2017 with all the other rep promo) in combination with karlie having been made the face of what was then the new carolina herrera good girl perfume just the year prior (mid 2016), which was a big get for her at the time, and that the perfume bottle is stiletto shaped. now, looking back, i understand what about that taymoji was sus, given all this extra context. karlie now being the face of a perfume was a big achievement for her. and the achievement happened to be shoe shaped. so why not celebrate that? etc.

so anyway, if anon is feeling anything like the way i did, but are somewhat interested in kaylor anyway, i would suggest just sticking a pin in stuff like this and moving on for now and maybe coming back to it a half year or year from now after gaining a little more perspective and seeing if your perspective has changed

[foxes-that-run]

Part 3: 70 Heart kisses 2016 on

This post is in three parts:

When Harry got the Heart tattoo

70 Heart Kisses (1D years), and

70 Heart Kisses continued. (Solo career)

The amazing @womanexile and @this-daydream-is-dangerous-13started this off with finding a good chunk of these. This is by no means a complete list, I think that would be impossible. It’s also important to note that only Harry knows what this tattoo is about, why he kisses it or if that is for one person and who that is.

2017

After no performances in 2016 the heart kiss returned with HS1 but less frequently. In early 2016 Harry and Taylor had been close but by 2017 Taylor was dating Joe and Harry was very emotional on stage. See 2017 timeline. Harry also started performing with a guitar which gave his arms something to do and I think less kisses as a result.

Late March 2017 - London- During his Behind the Album performance for HS1, he not only kissed the heart, he also kisses the guitar it’s thought she had given him as a gift! This was a major moment for Harry and one he was emotional in.  He is good at first but there’s a head in hands moment at 28:10. Then, emotional. Time stamps 32:09 during Sweet Creature  37:48 guitar kiss during ESNY 52:45 kisses OTHER arm during SOTT (when he was explaining the rest of the concert to that nervous fan in July, he described this song as “emotional but hopeful” so maybe that’s a hopeful thing, that arm has ‘Things I can’/the Eagle) 

13 May 2017 - London- secret gig at the Garage in Islington - pink pants black shirt 7:52 during Sweet Creature

19 May 2017 - Troubadour, LA, on the eve of their 5 year anniversary of May 20th, while performing Leather and Lace with Stevie Nicks (1:18), Harry started crying and kissed the heart. Harry was really excited throughout the show, they performed two ghosts as a duet after which he said he was losing his s*** (but in a cool way, with a point to presumably James). 

28 September 2017 - Radio City NY - Story of my life may have an aborted arm kiss (2:30) FTDT also (3:35). On Harry and Taylor’s 28 September anniversary. Taylor marked the day with a 70 song ‘Taylor loves’ Spotify playlist.

14 October 2017 - Phoenix - During Meet me in the Hallway (1:39). After “I walked the streets all day”  before “running with the thieves”. This was Harry's last US show and he returned to Europe. His next show was in Paris where he cried twice in FTDT on 'even my phone misses your call' twice. (1:55 and again 3:30)

2 November 2017 - Glasgow- Sweet Creature on “you bring me home” (maybe, this tour had tricky lighting) (2:19) Kiwi and Reputation were released soon after. 

2018

12 June 2018 - Nashville - Sweet Creature (2:45) Harry moves to kiss his arm but doesn’t after “you bring me home” he was in Taylor’s home city. 

30 June 2018 - Chicago - Sweet Creature, a possible other arm kiss (5:11). Taylor and Harry were both in Chicago, Taylor played New Years Day with an introduction about jumping into icy pools that Taylor Nation has cut from their version. 

2 July 2018 - St Paul - Only Angel - the other arm at 3:30 and the heart at 4:33. On the same night Harry changed the lyric of “running with wolves” to “running with you” (2:00) Taylor had played this stadium the night she had the temper trap song as arm lyrics which Harry tattooed on its anniversary. Taylor had been in nearby Chicago when Harry was there the day before and not seen this day. 

In July 2020 Taylor released Cardigan with a reference to a ‘Tattoo Kiss’:

2021

The later we go the less we really know about what is going on. The heart kisses may also have different meanings. 

The 2021 timeline is interesting, starting with talking at the Grammy’s then the Brits, Harry finished writing Harry’s House and Taylor started Midnights in this period. 

22 September 2021 - St Paul - Falling, with Two Ghosts intro (4:31). Wildest Dreams TV was released a few days earlier, Harry and Taylor had spent time in St Paul in the past. 

25 September 2021 - Chicago - Falling, at the end twice with a smile and again during Adore you. When Harry last played Chicago Taylor was also there. 

21 October 2021 - Uncasville, during thank you speech. Harry and Taylor had been in Nashville at the same time earlier that month when Harry had written Satellite.

25 October 2021 - Boston - Falling. An old selfie of Joe and Taylor from 2016 leaked a few days earlier.

27 October 2021 - Atlanta - the start of Falling (0:09) right arm kiss. On the anniversary of 1989’s release. On the same day Taylor posted an instagram reel captioned ‘Basic autumn lovers RISE’ reenacting a 2014 Tumblr post including trying lyrics to ATW ‘Just between us did he love affair maim you too?’

10 November 2021 - Sacramento - Falling - on ‘it kills me we have run out of things to say’ link. Harry wore Red to celebrate the Re-record of Red TV, which is the first of Taylor's albums with songs about Harry. 

13 November 2021 - Arizona, Falling with Two Ghosts intro (2:17), Red TV was released the day before.

19 November 2021 - LA, The Forum, in the welcome speech after thanking his support act. Taylor was in Panama to visit Joe, after Taylor returned for the All Too Well premier she wrote the majority of Midnights including You’re Losing Me. 

28 November 2021 - Long Island - Falling (4:08) Right arm kiss. After this show Harry was MIA and Olivia seen alone. The next week, Taylor wrote You’re Losing me and wore a Gucci Lion Ring to a party. 

2022

As above, we know less about Harry’s relationships now, however the 2022 timeline is also interesting. Taylor completed Midnights and based on it’s lyrics, her relationship with Joe was not great. Harry released Harry’s House and at the end of the year broke up with Olivia. 

20 May 2022 - NYC - ONO - start of Satellite (1:13) another link. On Harry’s House Release, an important life event, in New York, on the anniversary of 20 May at the start of performing Satellite for the first time. 

26 June 2022 - Hamburg during his welcome speech when introducing the support act. Harry was on his European tour dates, in the last months of dating OW. These were the first months of Harry touring the Harry’s House songs.

29 June 2022 - Stockholm - introducing Matilda (1:12 and again at 1:36) Harry said it was great to be back in Sweden (he once tweeted that same phrasing at a time Taylor was MIA in Europe and he posted a colour IG photo) and that he is happiest performing. 

1 July 2022 - Oslo when inducing Matilda, Harry told the story about the party bus, that Oslo has a special place in his heart then that Matilda has nothing to do with that story but is special. (1:50) and again when introducing WMYB (0:06) 

11 July 2022 - Munich during Adore You and LOML. (Better view of loml)

16 July 2022 Vienna - during Adore you, after the crowd saying let me adore you and him saying “okay” 

5 July 2022 - Paris - after saying “I love Paris” while introducing As It Was. Harry and Taylor have referenced Paris many times as special to them. 

31 July 2022 - Lisbon - start of Kiwi (12:49) 

1 August 2022 - Toronto - cinema - kissed the eagle covering ‘things I can’ after “it’s you, and I’m not getting over it” previous kisses have been after break ups indicating wanting to change something

10 September 2022- Madison Square Garden Night 12, LOML. Harry and Taylor were both in NY, Harry started a 5 week stint of wearing the Peace Ring. Neither Harry & Olivia or Taylor & Joe seemed friendly, with both break ups announced in coming months. 

27 October 2022 - LA - introducing WMYB (day music for a sushi restaurant dropped and 1989 anniversary). Taylor was on the Graham Norton show talking about the re-records and announcing the Eras tour. 

29 October 2022 - LA N5 in Sign of the Times 

31 October 2022 - Harryween LA Timestamp 1:50 during LOML before it's unfortunate.. 

2023

The later we go the less we really know about what is going on. The heart kisses may also have different meanings. 

The 2023 timeline is interesting, Harry had separated from Olivia, Taylors separation from Joe was announced. They were both on tour and both replaced setlist songs with older Haylor songs. 

29 January 2023 - Los Angeles, Forum Night 15 - Love of My Life - Anatomical Heart Kiss (0:42) Harry also played Medicine! Between filming Satellite and the Grammy’s

31 January 2023 - Palm Springs - during Matilda , after the lyric ‘make your tea and your toast’. (2:13) The week before Harry put Little Freak in the HSLOT set 

21 February 2023 Perth LOML, During woman re-added to the setlist. 

28 Feburary 2023 - Gold Coast, QLD - during Satellite after “do you want to talk?” (4:48)

13 June 2023 - Wembley - kissed other arm (0:06) during Grapejuice and kissed the Heart Tattoo during As It Was after “...and I’m the one who will stay” (0:41) The day before Taylor played All You Had to Do was Stay as a Surprise Song on the 10th June. Harry played Best Song Ever intro to WMYB.

17 June 2023 - Wembley - at the end of Sweet Creature Harry went to kiss the tattoo and stopped himself then looked at the crowd with a cheeky embarrassed look. (3:16). Gemma had a baby 8 months later. Taylor had a particularly emotional show that night. She gave an extra wild Champagne Problems speech and extra long and weird Betty Speech and had Aaron Dessner out to play Seven and hugs Taylor at the end. Later a photo of TR sitting with Jeff in one of the Wembley crowds surfaced months later. Interestingly, this is the anniversary of Taylors 2011 Lover Journal entry days after Harry was MIA in the US when Taylor had the Temper Trap arm lyrics in St Paul. 

18 June 2023 - Wembley link Wembley n1 during as it was another link. I think the show above sums this up. Cruel Summer was officially released as a single 2 days later.

[writtenbyhutchcraft]

5,44 and 51?

Ahh these are fun ones! :)

5. When did you get into TK?

I'll just tell the full story of how I discovered them haha! So basically in like late 2016/early 2017 I rediscovered some old karaoke videogames for the Playstation that I used to be obsessed with as a kid, and they had some Killers songs on them (Human, Somebody Told Me, WYWY and Mr Brightside). I saw them and was like, 'oh, I remember these songs from my childhood, I've not heard them for ages'. So every time I would play those games I would choose to sing those Killers songs. The music videos were on the games too, and while I was singing I would watch them and find myself thinking, 'Hmm, Brandon Flowers is kind of cute', lol. But at that time for some reason, I thought that The Killers didn't make music anymore, so I thought there wouldn't really be a fandom for me to join (I was very wrong lol).

Then in June 2017, when The Killers did their secret set at Glastonbury, I was watching the festival on TV like I do traditionally every year. I sat down on the sofa to watch whatever band was on, and it was an interview with Brandon Flowers. And I still vividly remember seeing him on the TV and thinking he was the most beautiful man I'd ever seen in my life haha. I was like, 'Omg, who IS this?' And then the interviewer said he was Brandon Flowers from The Killers and I was like, " Wow, the guy I was obsessed with from those music videos is still making music and he looks even better now?" :o

Then after that, I slowly joined the fandom. It took me until like November to join the Killers fandom fully, because at that point in my life I'd just left some toxic fandoms and was having a break from the internet and social media in general. But then in November 2017 I saw another performance The Killers did on TV, and I was just like, 'no, I want to be involved with this, I love this band'. And then that was when I fully fell down the rabbit hole of falling in love with them. The first full album I listened to was Battle Born, and I have a vivid memory of listening to that album for the first time too. I remember hearing songs like Flesh and Bone, Runaways and Miss Atomic Bomb, thinking, 'Wow, I didn't know music could make you feel like this'. Then I listened to their entire discography and Brandon's solo music, I watched every video and interview on the internet, and I became obsessed with learning every fact I could about them. I went to my first ever Killers concert in July 2018 on the Wonderful Wonderful tour and it was genuinely life-changing.

I've been in this fandom for six years now, and The Killers are such a big part of who I am and my life. They've got me through so much and I'll forever be grateful that I found them when I did. <3

44. Do you ever want TK to collab with anyone?

I would love a Taylor Swift and Killers collab. Taylor and Brandon have so much in common and are very similar artists (country singer roots, having distinctive 'eras' in their career, lyrical themes of being from a small town/struggles with religion/not fitting in, etc.) Taylor and Brandon's voices would sound great together, and if they wrote a song together it would be genius. The only reason why I might not be sure about a Taylor and Killers collab is that Taylor is a huge artist, and some Swifties online can be really unkind sometimes towards artists she works with. Brandon is quite sensitive and I know he would take the comments to heart if people were mean to him, so I don't know. :/

Also, you know I would love a Killers/Hurts collab <3 They often work with the same producers so it could happen... Or just Brandon and Theo writing a song together. That would actually end me lol.

51. Favorite lyrics?

My favourite Killers lyric of all time is, "Should I just get along with myself? I never did get along with everybody else." from my favourite song of all time, This River Is Wild. This lyric literally speaks to my soul, I relate to it on a spiritual level and it means so much to me. <3

I literally have so many favourite lyrics, everything Brandon writes is my favourite really, but here are a few more: "And if they drag you through the mud, it doesn't change what's in your blood." (From Be Still, this entire song is some of my favourite lyrics though)

"Sometimes it takes a little bit of courage and doubt, to push your boundaries out beyond your imagining." (From Imploding The Mirage, the title track)

"These streets weren't meant to house jet-fueled engine dreams." (From Boy)

Literally the ENTIRETY of the album Pressure Machine, because every lyric on that album is poetry and means the world to me. <3

[blueskrugs]

Some People Do | Nathan MacKinnon

title from an Old Dominion song of the same name. highly recommend a listen while reading.

the only other words I have are that I cried while writing this.  

length: 6.2k words

I know that time just keeps going on And words by themselves can't right all the wrongs

No one ever claimed that dating an NHL player was easy. In fact, it was hard as hell. Dating the face of a franchise, the savior of a franchise, was hard as hell. It wasn’t that you didn’t love Nate. You loved him more than anyone else, more than you sometimes thought was possible. But sometimes you wondered if your relationship was doomed from the start, if carrying the weight of the expectations of Denver on Nate’s shoulders was too much for both of you to handle. 

Nate had proclaimed himself unromantic before, but you didn’t really need flowers and extravagant gifts. With Nate, it was always the little things. He would cook you breakfast in the mornings before you left for work and he for practice. He would sneak into your apartment when you had a long day at work and clean up. (Never laundry though. He always said he was too scared of fucking that up.) It was letting you cuddle on the couch, no questions asked, no words spoken, on days you really needed it; he always seemed to know about those days even before you did. You knew the other boys teased Nate sometimes, everything from ribbing him about being whipped to roasting him for his somewhat abysmal gift-giving skills. Nate would just blush and give them that shy little smile you loved so much. 

That’s the way things were for a long time. You were both happy, comfortable. You wondered sometimes, on the hardest nights, if you had gotten too comfortable. If you had forgotten just where you were, who you were with, and how lucky you were that Nate had ever given you the time of day in the first place. 

You missed the drama of the Avalanche’s historically bad, never-before-seen debacle of a year that had been the 2016-2017 season and came into Nate’s life when they were back on their feet, making a name for themselves in the standings again. You still saw the damage it had done to him, though, in the way he blamed himself for losses, took them a little harder than anyone else– except maybe Gabe– in the way he dialed up his intensity even stronger than ever until he was satisfied. Except he was never satisfied, probably would never be, bar winning a Cup or three. 

The Avs dug themselves out a hole. And then they hit a wall again.

It was the same old shit that always seemed to dog the team, injury after injury, games that just never seemed to go their way, no matter how hard they fought. 

October started out fine. They won more than they lost, and it looked like they could have a chance at being something this year. The end of October came with a string of losses. Mikko went down with a lower-body injury on Halloween. 

November continued a downward spiral. Nate stopped scoring, Burky broke his wrist, and they only won a handful of games the entire month. Nate started coming home late from the arena, sweaty and exhausted; you knew he was running himself ragged, literally, on the treadmill and on drills. His blue eyes were hard as stone, and the set of his jaw grew more tense with each loss the team strung together. 

Road trips were the hardest. From the start of your relationship, you and Nate made a point to FaceTime during roadies. You looked forward to those calls all day, because no matter how terrible the game had been, Nate would see you and smile. You would always do anything for him to smile. The calls continued that terrible season, and for a while, it seemed like nothing had changed. Nate’s eyes were more tired than usual, his brow permanently furrowed, but you would answer the phone, and that would all disappear for a moment when he grinned at you.

You had just gotten out of the shower when your phone started ringing with a FaceTime call. You were surprised to see that it was Nate. You hadn’t been officially dating for very long at all, and he had only left for the road trip that morning. 

“What the hell is on your head?” was the first thing out of Nate’s mouth when you answered the call. Somewhere off camera, you could hear Tyson Barrie cackling. 

Your hand flew up to your hair, which was wrapped in a towel. “It’s a towel, dumbass. And I just got out of the shower, I’m not wearing makeup or anything,” you whined. 

Nate rolled his eyes and opened his mouth to respond when Tyson leaned into frame. “Hi, Y/N!” he yelled. Nate flinched.

There was a moment of darkness and what sounded like the two wrestling on the bed for a moment, before a whispered, “Get out of here!” and a door closing. “I’m sorry about him,” Nate said, picking his phone back up. 

You just laughed. You had only met Tyson one time so far, and he seemed like fun, if not a little crazy. “Let me just-” You reached up to tug the towel off your head. 

“No, don’t! I mean, I think it’s cute,” Nate said. You froze, staring at his blurry face on your phone screen. You were pretty sure he was blushing in the shitty hotel light. “I just- I missed you, and I don’t care what you look like. I mean-wait, I don’t want you to think you need to have makeup or shit on for me to think you’re beautiful.” Yeah, he was definitely blushing now. He was also smiling a little bit, cautiously, as if he was afraid of your response.

You smiled back, settling in against the pillows on your bed, and saying, “Nate, I literally saw you this morning.” He shrugged.

“Wanted to see your face again,” he mumbled. Then, “Can I call you tomorrow after our game, too?”

He did call you the next night, and the night after that, and then roadtrip FaceTime calls became a routine.

As the season went on, you waited by the phone every night Nate was out of town, but slowly the calls became few and far between, until they stopped entirely. 

Most wouldn't forgive what I put you through But I'm here tonight, hoping some people do

Nate started watching game film obsessively, coming home and sitting up for hours. He would watch his own clips, his teammates’ clips, clips from every other team, watching for any mistake or flaw, some way to fix this. He’d always been so serious about schedules and routines, but he started coming to bed later and later. You always tried to get Nate to come to bed with you, wrapping your arms around his shoulders and murmuring a, “Babe, c’mon, it’s getting late,” but he’d shrug you off and say back, “Just a few more minutes.”

You resigned yourself to going to bed alone. Cox started laying in Nate’s spot on the bed. 

The Penguins came to town. The slump continued, for the team and for Nate. Nate got benched. It was December, and all the Crosbys and MacKinnons had come to town, too, planning to celebrate Christmas a little early while everyone could be together. 

Bednar had told Nate he wouldn’t be playing against the Pens following a morning skate. Cale told you he had broken his stick against a wall afterwards. His temper followed him home, came back with a vengeance, and you would never forget the sadness on Taylor’s face and the anger on Sarah’s when he snapped at Taylor over something stupid and let the door slam behind him for good measure. He didn’t talk to any of you for the rest of the night, and he drove to the arena alone.

The Avs won in a game that was nothing short of a Christmas miracle. Nate came home in a slightly better mood, apologized to Taylor, and started channeling his anger into his time on the ice instead. It might have had something to do with the fact that you were sure he hadn’t missed the way you flinched when he had yelled. 

The end of December saw a win streak for the Avs and a scoring streak for Nate. 

“I thought about asking for a trade,” Nate said casually one January night. It was the All-Star break, and Nate had found a cabin on a lake in California to rent for bye week. He didn’t look up at you as he said it, gazing instead up at the stars, and your heart broke.

Nate’s arm was draped around your shoulder, and it had been a comforting weight, but suddenly it felt like it would crush you. You hadn’t been in Denver for the drama of the last teammate that had requested a trade midseason, but you knew the tale, knew the bitterness that was still in that locker room. You knew how it could destroy a team. And you’d had no idea Nate was even considering it.

He kept talking. “Thought about trying to go somewhere where people didn’t care about hockey, somewhere where it didn’t matter if I had been a fluke.” His voice broke. “I just want out sometimes. Get away from all the fucking expectations, the hope that I’ll bring the Cup back to Denver, that I can be the next Sidney Crosby, just the next best thing out of Cole Harbour.” It was the first time you had ever heard Nate say Sid’s name like that, with venom and bitterness.

You were speechless, couldn’t find the words to respond to Nate. You weren’t even sure he wanted you to respond, to argue with him. So you just shrugged off his arm from your shoulders and pulled him into your chest, resting your chin on his head as you watched the stars together.

The trade deadline passed. Nate still wore an A for the Colorado Avalanche, and no one would ever know any differently. 

I know you're hurt, I know it's my fault But I've kept "I'm sorry" locked in a vault

You called Sid late one night in March. He answered quickly, because he always did when you or Nate called, even though it was after midnight in Pittsburgh.

“Sid, I don’t know what to do anymore,” you had cried, with Cox curled up next to you on the couch in the dark. Nate was asleep upstairs, gone to bed early for the first time in a long time. Cox heard your tears and shoved his face into your hand, asking for attention, letting you use him as comfort. You petted him absently as you told Sid everything. And Sid listened, even as you told him stories of the season he already knew, told to him by Nate in similar late night phone conversations, even as it ticked past 1 in the morning in Denver. Sid waited until you finished talking before responding, spewing sympathy and advice that you only half listened to, still caught up in your thoughts. 

In the best days of your relationship and in your worst, you didn’t know what you would do without Sid.

You thought back to the first summer you visited Nate in Cole Harbour. You hadn’t gone the first summer after you’d started dating, as you’d only been together a couple of months, although Nate had begged you pretty much the entire summer. The next summer, though, there was absolutely no getting out of visiting. 

You had never been to Canada before, and you had grown up spending your summers on a lake, but you were convinced nothing would ever compare to Nova Scotia. Nate had laughed at you when you ran out onto his deck, a wide smile on your face. You spun around to look up at him.

“I love it here,” you said. Nate laughed again.

“You’ve barely even been here. You haven’t seen the good stuff yet.”

“I have a house, water, and you, what else is there to see?” Nate chuckled fondly at you. 

You spent the day out on the water with Nate, Sid and the dogs. It was peaceful out there in the sun, the silence only occasionally broken by Sid’s ridiculous laugh or one of the dog’s barks. You were dozing in the sun when Nate came over to you.

“Come swimming with me for a bit.” You raised an eyebrow at him.

“I’m tanning, Nathan.” Sid laughed. Next thing you knew, you were being picked up and thrown over Nate’s shoulder. Sid laughed louder. Sometimes you really hated him and that fucking laugh. “Nate!” you shrieked. “Put me down!”

Nate simply said, “Okay,” before he was throwing you in the lake. You came up spluttering. Nate and Sid were both doubled over in laughter, and dogs were caught up in the excitement and barking. 

“Help me out,” you whined, reaching a hand out of the water. Nate took pity on you and grabbed your hand.

You pulled him headfirst down into the water. 

Sid came up to you on the dock on your last night in Cole Harbour. Nate was up at the house, getting you a blanket and more wine, and you were watching the stars.

“You’re really good for him, you know,” Sid said without preamble, settling next to you on the dock. You waited for him to continue. “I’ve known him for years, and I’ve never seen him as happy as he has been this week with you here.” You blushed. “And you should hear the way he talks about you on the phone, God, I didn’t know it was possible for anyone to get him out of his head and stop focusing on hockey, I don’t know how you do it.” He paused, gazing up at the clear sky.When he spoke again, his voice was soft. “Nate takes everything so seriously. He’s gotten pretty fucked up over bad relationships in the past. I was a little worried when I saw how fast he was falling for you, when he’d call or text me like a middle-school girl with a crush. But I don’t have to worry, because you two are so good together, like you’ve known each other forever, and will be together forever.” 

Nate chose that moment to reappear. “Talkin’ about me?” he asked, pushing Sid out of the way so he could sit next to you. 

“Only good things,” Sid smiled.

Nate draped his arm across your shoulders and the blanket over your legs. You leaned your head on his shoulder.

“I love you,” Nate whispered into your hair, brushing a kiss to the top of your head. 

Nate came downstairs not long after you hung up with Sid. He found you crying on the couch, trying to muffle your sobs into the sleeves of one of his Avalanche hoodies. He made a soft, wounded sound, and you startled. You didn’t have a chance to apologize– for waking Nate, for breaking down– before he was climbing onto the couch next to you. He pulled you into his lap wordlessly, kissing away your tears, holding you as you shook. 

He whispered sweet things to you as you calmed down, I’m sorrys and I love yous breaking the silence of the night. Cox whined, crawling his way into your lap as well. Nate’s heartbeat was steady beneath your ear, his breathing even, and you found yourself soothed by it. The two– well, three, if you counted the German Shepherd who was decidedly not a lap dog– fell asleep on the couch like that. When you woke up again, sunlight was streaming into the living room, and you were still safely wrapped up in Nate’s arms.

He looked younger, softer, in his sleep, the burden of being Nathan MacKinnon momentarily forgotten. You couldn’t help but stare, a soft smile on your face. Nate shifted under you a couple of minutes later, eyes blinking sleepily open. He grinned when he found you inches from his face, already watching him. 

“Good morning,” he whispered, stretching up to kiss you gently. “D’you want breakfast?”

You buried your face in Nate’s neck. “In a minute,” you mumbled. “Comfy.” Nate laughed, loud, and you felt it in every inch of your body that was touching his.

As you sat sipping your coffee in the kitchen later, watching Nate cook you breakfast, like he had for so long, you could almost convince yourself that everything was fine, that the stress fractures of your relationship weren’t on the verge of breaking completely. 

Some people say sorry to hear it's okay But I know it's not so you don't have to say That you understand 'cause I know you don't

In the living room where you had left your phone after last night’s phone call, you got a text. Then another. And another. Nate’s phone started ringing; his face went white, and he dropped the spatula he was using.

Confused, and starting to get worried, you set your coffee down and rushed to pick up your phone. The first thing you saw was a text from Mel, simply saying, “i’m so sorry.” Nate was still on the phone in the kitchen, speaking in an anxious hushed tone to whoever was on the other end. You ignored the handful of other texts you had received in favor of looking at your Instagram and Twitter notifications which were blowing up. You clicked on one with a shaky hand.

Your heart dropped. Your phone fell to the floor with a clatter. 

In the kitchen, Nate’s voice rose, but you couldn’t hear any of the words he was saying over the pounding of your heart in your ears. 

You sank to the floor and picked up your phone again. You had been tagged in a series of pictures, all of Nate. There was Nate with a girl in a bar, with a girl in his lap, his arm wrapped around her waist, his lips on hers. There was more than one post, too, all dated, starting all the way back in November. All nights when Nate and the Avs were on road trips. Different cities, too, but always the same girl.

Blonder than you. Prettier than you. Better than you, apparently.

There were dozens of pictures. Some were dark and kind of blurry, but all were unmistakably Nate. 

You scrolled through all of the pictures again. Cox whined next to you. Nate still hadn’t left the kitchen, but you knew he had been tagged in all of the posts too. Texts and notifications were still rolling into your phone, from friends and family and strangers. You turned your phone off.

Then Nate was crouching in front of you, brushing your tears away. You hadn’t even realized you had been crying. You scrambled away from Nate’s touch like it burned you; his hand stayed outstretched in the air.

Just ten minutes ago, you had been beginning to think that things could get better again, that you could fix the damage in Nate, in your relationship. Now, everything you had known for the last two and a half years lay shattered at your feet, spread out for the whole world to see.

“You weren’t supposed to find out like this,” Nate murmured.

A hysterical laugh forced its way out of your throat. Your hands were still shaking, but your anxiousness had just been replaced with anger. “I wasn’t supposed to find out like this, or I wasn’t supposed to find out at all?”

Nate flinched a little, and you felt a brief flash of vindication. “I didn’t mean-”

“You didn’t mean what, Nathan? Didn’t mean for me to find out, for the whole world to find out? Or you didn’t mean to say it like that? Like you were just waiting for the right time to tell me, but it never worked out?” Nate had stood up again, but he wasn’t looking at you. “God, I was sitting around like a fool all season, waiting for you to call me, but of course you never did, because you had found someone better than me. Did she get to go to games, too, when you were flying her all across the country?”

Nate was flushed with anger now too. “You don’t understand-”

You cut him off. “No, Nate, I don’t fucking understand. I thought, I don’t know, maybe the past two years actually meant something. So tell me, make me understand, because you lost me a long time ago.”

“Just shut up!” You took a step back from Nate, though he hadn’t moved. You weren’t sure Nate had ever raised his voice at you. “We were in Ottawa in the beginning of November, and we all went out to a bar because we finally got a fucking win. She started flirting, and she had no idea who we were, and it was so nice to meet someone and not have the expectation of being Nathan fucking MacKinnon. I never had to listen to her lie to me about how well I played or some shit about how the team would figure it out, that we could get better.”

“Did all the boys know?” you whispered. “Have you all just been laughing at me behind my back all season, while I’ve been blindly in love with a boy who’s been flying another girl to all of his road games?”

Nate paled and took a half-step in your direction. You backed up again, until your knees hit the couch. “No, they- they knew I was taking the season hard, I guess, so they gave me space. Gabe might’ve been getting suspicious, but I- they would never do that to you.”

“Excuse me for not believing that. I believed you would never cheat on me, either, but here we are.” You turned to leave the room. 

“If you’d just-” Nate was angry again. You spun around, your heartbreak fanning the flames of your own anger.

“If I’d just what, Nate? Stopped caring about you and hockey? Stopped supporting you? Stopped caring about us?” Your voice broke, and you blinked back the tears burning behind your eyes. You had started out yelling again, but now your voice was quiet. “I’m sorry I tried, Nathan. I’m sorry I wasn’t good enough for you.”

You turned again, started making your way towards the stairs. 

“Wait, Y/N, please.” Nate’s voice came out desperate, like he was choking back tears. You couldn’t possibly understand why; he had done this to himself. “I never actually slept with her.”

“Good for you, Nate.” You let out a humorless laugh. “I hope the PR team has fun trying to save you and your fuck-ups. The posterboy of the Colorado Avalanche showing his true colors at last.”

Nate finally let you turn and make your way upstairs. He didn’t follow as you made your way into the bedroom and packed a bag with enough clothes to last you until the next road trip. He was sitting on the couch, stiff and tense, but he jumped up when you came back down the stairs. 

“Where are you going?” he asked, starting to reach out to grab your arm, but stopping himself at the last second, grasping at the air instead. “Please, Y/N.”

“I don’t know, Nate,” you sighed. “But I can’t stay here. I’ll be back to get the rest of my stuff while you’re on your next road trip. Say hi to your other girlfriend for me.”

Nate followed you outside. Cox barked once as you climbed into your car. “But-but you live here, with us! Please, let me fix this.”

You turned to Nate one last time. “You know, you could have fixed everything else that screwed us up this season. I really thought we could’ve been fine. But this, Nate? I don’t know anymore.” 

Nate flinched as your car door slammed. You watched in your rearview mirror as you drove away. His hands were shoved in his pockets, unmoving, and then he was out of sight. 

You drove aimlessly around Denver for a while. You let yourself get lost before you found somewhere quiet to pull over. Except, the breakdown, the tears, never came. Instead, you felt numb and hollow. You had really been foolish enough to believe that you could love Nate through everything, and that he would love you back. Hadn’t Sid said it seemed like you would be together forever?

When Nate showed up at the game the next night with a fresh black eye, no one commented on it. No one commented on EJ’s freshly bruised knuckles, either.

The season ended quietly. The Avs had managed to turn the season around, stop the bleeding, but they never quite could fix the damage. You had moved out of Nate’s house after the fight. You rarely saw each other anymore, but you didn’t tell him you kept going to games until the very end. You just couldn’t keep yourself away, no matter how much it hurt to watch him down on the ice.  

Nate went home to Cole Harbour. You stayed in Denver. 

Sometimes you thought back to the beginning of your relationship with Nate. You remembered what it was like when you first met, when Nate was still shy and quiet. It had been so stupidly fucking cliche, too: in a goddamn Starbucks. 

You listened to the man next to you in line rattle off a list of coffee orders, ranging from basic to borderline ridiculous. The baristas were already beginning to look overwhelmed as the cups lined up. He had the grace to look sheepish, at least, and tucked what looked like a ten dollar bill into their tip jar. You didn’t pay him much more mind after that, stepping to the side and trying your hardest to stay out of the way of other patrons while you waited. Then your grandmother had called, asking for technology help, even though you were hundreds of miles away from home, and you had other family that literally lived five minutes away from her. You were distracted and missed that a barista had called your name. You were still caught up with your phone and didn’t realize until someone was tapping you on the shoulder and tentatively saying your name.

You looked up, surprised, and your entire field of vision was filled with one very blond, blue-eyed, broad-shouldered man. First, you made the connection to him being the one with the list of coffee orders in line next to you, and then, that the man standing in front of you, struggling to balance several coffee carriers, was Nathan MacKinnon. 

“I grabbed your coffee by mistake,” he said. “It got mixed in with all our orders, and I only just noticed it had a different name on it. I’m really sorry.”

You smiled, taking your coffee. “It’s not a big deal, don’t worry about it. I didn’t even hear them call my name.” Nate still looked apologetic. “Did you lose a bet or something?” you asked then, looking at the stack of coffee cups Nate still held. 

He grinned at you. “Something like that.”

You had left the Starbucks that day with Nate’s phone number. At the time, you had no real intent to use it; you didn’t kid yourself. Nathan MacKinnon was a former first-overall draft pick, hero of the Colorado Avalanche, and you were just some girl whose coffee he accidentally stole. 

Nate texted you first. He did that a lot in the beginning. He was always a little awkward– a life spent focused on hockey meant that he wasn’t the best at small talk– but he was sweet and could make you laugh.

When he first asked you out, you said no. You had watched his face fall, watched him bite his lip and take a step back from you. You felt a surprising rush of sadness settle in your chest as Nate’s cheeks flushed with embarrassment. You had said no because you didn’t want to be just another girl, another fling that meant nothing. Suddenly, you weren’t sure if that’s all you would be to Nate, and you were a little scared by how willing you were to see how far it could go. 

“Ask me again in a couple weeks,” you said softly. Nate startled, still looking a little bit like he wanted to run. You looked up at him fondly.

Life went on in Denver that summer without Nate. You went to work. You went home to your empty apartment. Really, it wasn’t all that different from life with Nate in Denver, at least not in the last couple of months. You texted with Sid and Sarah every once in a while, but you got complete radio silence from Nate. Tyson Barrie texted you a video of Cox and Ralph playing one day in mid-July, and you could hear Nate laughing somewhere in the background. You didn’t reply. You didn’t want to admit to how many times you watched the video, just to hear Nate’s laugh again, either. 

“You are not getting my dog a fucking-what it’s called? A puppuccino?” Nate gripped his iced black cold brew tightly in his hand and glared at you. Cox sat patiently at your feet, eyeing the cup of whipped cream in your hand and licking his lips eagerly.

“It’s just whipped cream, babe! And, look, he likes them!” 

Nate raised an eyebrow at you. You had forgotten that the trips you took to Starbucks with Cox while the boys were on road trips were secret. “Y/N.” Nate crouched down and squished Cox’s face. Cox looked unimpressed. “This is a highly trained guard dog. He does not need any fucking whipped cream.” Cox’s tongue darted out and licked Nate’s nose. It was Nate’s turn to look unimpressed.

You bent down to give Cox his puppuccino. He lapped it up excitedly, getting whipped cream all over his nose and whiskers. Nate rolled his eyes at the both of you. 

“You’re not allowed to spoil our children.” You paused, still watching Cox try and get the last of the whipped cream out of the cup. Nate had never mentioned kids before, but you sometimes watched the smile he had when he played with Linnea or Sophie, even though he was still a little terrified of holding a baby. You looked at him, but he was still watching Cox calmly.

“Are you saying that Cox isn’t already your son?” you asked, only deflecting a little, and trying very hard to not picture Nate with a tiny baby of your own. 

Nate scoffed. You both looked down at Cox, who had rolled onto his back, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth. “Besides,” he said, tugging you closer by your hips, “I think Cox will be great with kids, and there’s only one way to find out.”

You just rolled your eyes.

You always had to grit your teeth and smile when someone heard that you weren’t originally from Denver and asked, pretty much without fail, if you had moved for Nate. The answer was always that you had moved for work and had met Nate by chance. If Nate was a part of the conversation, he would chip in that he’d had to work to even get you to consider dating him. He’d always kiss you after that, on the forehead, on the cheek, and he’d look at you like he was the lucky one. And you could look into his eyes and forget for a moment that you’d been upset.

You always wondered why everyone assumed you had dropped your life, your family and friends and your hometown just to follow Nate and his hockey career. Now, you were wondering if you were ready to drop your life, your friends, and everything you loved about Denver just to get away from Nate and his hockey career. 

You didn’t hear from Nate when he returned to Denver for training camp. It hurt in a way you couldn’t articulate, a bone-deep ache, a hollowness that you had never felt before, the fear that you had both let your relationship go past the point of no return while neither of you were paying attention. You thought wildly as you laid in bed alone, if you would ever see Nate again, be able to look him in the eyes and tell him you loved him one more time.

Because you did. You still loved Nate, maybe always would, and you missed him, spent the whole summer missing him, had missed him long before he went back to Cole Harbour by himself. You were terrified that you lost the best relationship you’d ever had. You were too scared to reach out to him yourself, half-sure that he’d never even respond, and that would be all you needed to know that you had reached the end. 

You watched the boys’ Instagram stories as they went golfing everyday after practice. You watched Nate smile and laugh with Gabe and Burky, though you noticed that the smiles never quite seemed to reach his eyes. You looked at the Avs’ social medias every day for the pictures they inevitably posted of Nate. He never seemed to be smiling. You would drive down near the Pepsi Center, only to see his face plastered everywhere. Seeing Nathan MacKinnon around Denver seemed unavoidable; he was on posters and on shirts and jerseys. Seeing Nate, though? Your Nate, with the lisp and the love for dogs, who yelled at his teammates on Fortnite and loved his family more than anything? You weren’t sure you’d ever see him again. 

So whether you kiss me or you close the door Just know that I'm better than I was before

You were surprised when someone knocked on your apartment door one night after dinner, only a couple of days before the regular season began. You were even more surprised when you pulled open the door to see Nate. He startled a little when you opened the door, and you leaned against the doorjamb, allowing yourself to just look at him.

His summer tan had already started to fade. He was wearing jeans, but an old Avs T-shirt, and he was picking at the fraying hem. He was no longer as lean as he was the last time you’d seen him towards the end of the season, but he looked exhausted the same way he did in the final stretch.

It hurt to look at him for long, so you cleared your throat, tore your gaze away from the dark circles under his eyes. Nate shook himself a little, looked away from the 29 on your right shoulder. You had forgotten that you had put on an old, stolen hoodie after work. For a while, it had still smelled like him, but now it didn’t smell like anything. 

“I thought you gave everything of mine back,” was the first thing he said.

You shrugged, tugging the sleeves of Nate’s hoodie over your hands. “Couldn’t bring myself to give it up.” You looked back at Nate. He looked pained. “What’re you doing here, Nate?” The exhaustion of the last couple months, the heartbreak, the worry, showed in your voice.

“I just-I wanted to see you. Wanted to try and explain, if you wanted to listen. I know I’ll never get the words right, and you could slam the door in my face right now, and I wouldn’t blame you. And if you do, I’ll leave you alone. But if you don’t, I will spend the rest of my life apologizing, trying to show you how much I love you.”

You covered your mouth to cover the sob that rose out of your chest. Nate’s eyes snapped up to yours, those bright blue eyes that you still loved so much, and he looked panicked. “Nate, I-”

“Look, if I were you, I’d hate me. Hell, EJ socked me, and I thought Sid was gonna leave me out on the lake to die when I first flew home. If you spend the rest of your life hating me, it’s all on me. You probably wouldn’t be the only one. But, fuck, Cox misses you. I miss you.” Nate stepped closer, reached out to brush his thumb across your cheekbone. 

You let yourself revel in that touch for a moment before you took a step back, clutching your door for support. “I spent all summer wondering if we were over, Nate. Wondering what I could’ve done differently.” Nate bit his lip. He was still standing in the hallway outside your apartment. You hadn’t invited him in, and you weren’t sure you were going to at all. “I don’t know if I can do this again. If I can fall in love with you, be in love with you, and watch you go off on road trips and wonder if I can ever trust you again. I don’t know if I can do this,” you repeated. 

Nate closed his eyes, seemed to be steeling himself for something. He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. And I know it’s not enough, will never be enough, and I’m sorry for that, too.”

You hesitated. Nate blinked once, twice, fidgeted with the hem of his T-shirt again. It would be so easy, you thought, to let him back into your life. 

You closed the door.

The last thing you saw was Nate’s face, hurt but resigned. You leaned back against your door, slid down to the floor, and let the tears that had been burning under the surface for months out.

Part Two! 

[kingstylesdaily]

Why Harry Styles Just Scored His First No. 1 Song

Like any boy band alumnus, he first had to overcome radio’s bias against teen heartthrobs.

Late summer is a great time for sleeper hits: songs that have been hanging around the charts for months and finally hit their stride. Four years ago, in August 2016, Sia’s “Cheap Thrills” reached No. 1 after knocking around the charts since the prior winter, getting its final boost from a Sean Paul remix. In September 2018, Maroon 5’s year-old “Girls Like You” slipped into the top slot after wafting around the Top 10 for more than four months, with a Cardi B verse putting it over the edge. Last year around Labor Day, Lizzo finally topped the Hot 100 with “Truth Hurts,” a song that was two years old and had been rising gradually on the chart since the spring.

This year’s sleeper hit is “Watermelon Sugar,” a wisp of a song by boy bander–turned–self-styled rock star Harry Styles. With a name inspired by Richard Brautigan’s hippie-era, post-apocalyptic novella In Watermelon Sugar, Styles’ lackadaisical tune is not only a sleeper but a grower, the sort of hit that sneaks up on you��I wasn’t sure it even had a fully written chorus the first time I heard it, and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone. Indeed, the whole nation took its time deciding that this quirky ditty would give the starriest, most eccentric member of One Direction his first-ever U.S. chart-topper.

“Watermelon Sugar” is the third single promoted from Styles’ second solo album Fine Line, which was released last December. That alone is remarkable, given the challenge in the digital age of generating chart interest in anything other than an album’s first couple of singles. Generally, in an era when all of an album’s songs are available to be consumed the day the album drops, you need a remix or a special guest of some kind to gin up chart action months after the song first hits streaming. “Sugar” has none of those. To be sure, there was some gimmickry fueling the song’s leap to the top, albeit of an old-fashioned kind: The song had its best week of sales ever thanks to an assortment of limited-edition vinyl and cassette singles that came bundled with a digital download. Those sales got “Sugar” the last mile on the charts, but Columbia Records wouldn’t have put the physical goods on sale if the song wasn’t already a radio smash—“Sugar” currently has the second-biggest U.S. airplay audience—and they knew they had an opening between current hits by Taylor Swift and a pair of lascivious female rappers I’ll almost certainly be writing about in this space next week. So, fair play to Team Harry: They took advantage of an open chart window, a tactic as old as the Hot 100 itself.

As “Sugar” leaps from No. 7 to No. 1 on the Hot 100 this week—essentially switching places with his ex-girlfriend Taylor Swift’s “Cardigan,” which falls to No. 8—Styles scores only the second-ever chart-topper by a member of One Direction. That includes all of the hits by 1D itself. In its five years of recording, from 2011 through 2015, the band never scored a Hot 100 No. 1. This despite topping the Billboard 200 album chart with its first four studio albums, the only group in history to launch a career with that haul. So … what was that other 1D-affiliated Hot 100–topper I mentioned? It was by ex-member Zayn Malik, the only member to break from the crew while it was still active. Zayn’s smoldering, Weeknd-esque boudoir jam “Pillowtalk” debuted at No. 1—and spent a solitary week there—in the winter of 2016, fueled by blockbuster streams and downloads ginned up by 1D superfans still mourning his departure the prior year and the group’s resulting, presumably permanent hiatus.

Explaining how the top-selling boy band of the 2010s could shift so many CDs and downloads but generate only two No. 1 singles means briefly recapping the fraught history of boy bands and the charts. Selling albums has never been hard for pinup pop groups, since the days of Meet the Beatles! and More of the Monkees. And in the ’70s and ’80s, such precision sing-and-dance troupes as the Jackson 5, the Osmonds, and New Edition managed to generate both gold albums and chart-conquering singles. In 1989, New Kids on the Block had the year’s second-biggest album and four of the year’s top singles, including a pair of No. 1s. But starting in the ’90s, as U.S. radio networks consolidated (fueled by the 1996 Telecommunications Act) and programmers more narrowly targeted specific demographics, radio stations shied away from maximalist teen-pop that appealed primarily to under-18 audiences. By the end of that decade, even as boy bands were enjoying a new wave of TRL-fueled popularity, radio became a chart handicap for them. The Backstreet Boys and ’N Sync had the top-selling albums of 1999 and 2000, respectively—the diamond-selling Millennium and No Strings Attached—but only scored a solitary Hot 100 topper between them, ’N Sync’s “It’s Gonna Be Me.” (Backstreet never hit No. 1: The deathless “I Want It That Way” peaked at No. 6.)

This radio bias against boy bands has persisted into the 21st century. And ever since the Hot 100 went digital about a decade and a half ago, teen-pop’s chart placements have been the result of a battle between rabid downloaders and radio gatekeepers—massive digital sales compensating for modest radio play. For example, radio was what kept the Jonas Brothers from scoring any chart-topping hits during their original wave of teen idoldom; their biggest hit of the ’00s, the No. 5 hit “Burnin’ Up,” sold 2 million downloads but only ranked 55th at U.S. radio. By the ’10s, the same fate befell one-man boy band Justin Bieber. In this long-running Slate series, I have chronicled the blow-by-blow between Justin Bieber and radio programmers that swung from Justin as hit-starved teen idol in the early ’10s to dominant young-adult chart-dominator in the late ’10s. In the early ’10s period, Bieber was a YouTube and iTunes demigod with not a single radio smash to his name. He could sell a half-million downloads of “Boyfriend” in a week and still fall short of the No. 1 spot, thanks (no thanks) to radio.

For One Direction, the chart patterns were the same. A Frankenstein’s monster that Simon Cowell famously threw together in 2010 on his televised competition The X Factor from five solo competitors—Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles, and Louis Tomlinson—1D continually found its singles dragged down on the Hot 100 by radio, even as the band sold truckloads of albums. The pattern was set in fall 2012 when “Live While We’re Young” debuted with a staggering 341,000 downloads but could only get to No. 3 on the Hot 100, thanks to its 50th-ranked radio airplay. In the summer of 2013, the slyly Who-interpolating “Best Song Ever” became 1D’s highest-charting hit ever, debuting at No. 2 with record video views and near-record downloads, but at radio it never got past No. 53. “Story of My Life” (No. 6, 2014), “Drag Me Down” (No. 3, 2015)—no matter how many downloads sold or videos viewed, 1D could never top the Hot 100 so long as its radio spins remained limited.

The reason I’m running down all of this granular chart data is it reveals the hurdles both 1D and its post-breakup soloists had to overcome to top the Hot 100. Like Justin Bieber, they had to become credible radio fodder with adults as well as kids. With his early break from the group, Zayn was the first to pull this off. Though “Pillowtalk” debuted at No. 1 largely due to massive sales and streams, the carnal song did eventually become a No. 4–ranked airplay hit. Cleverly, Zayn had chosen a then-current EDM-inflected R&B mode and dropped his debut while the Weeknd was between albums. Other former 1D-ers have had their share of solid radio hits, including Liam Payne’s hip-hop–inflected “Strip That Down” featuring Quavo of Migos (No. 10 on the Hot 100, No. 4 on Radio Songs) and Niall Horan’s softly bopping pop jam “Slow Hands” (No. 11 Hot 100, No. 2 Radio Songs).

And Harry Styles? He decided to make things harder on himself. His 2017 debut album was chockablock with old-school classic rock. This would be like launching a career in 1964 with big-band jazz. While Styles’ fame ensured a big launch for his Bowie-esque single “Sign of the Times”—it opened, and peaked, at No. 4 on the Hot 100, fueled by strong downloads—radio showed only moderate interest. It eventually reached a modest No. 21 on the airplay chart. Later Harry singles like the twangy “Two Ghosts” and the thrashy “Kiwi” missed the Hot 100 and had little radio profile beyond a handful of pure-pop stations that were loyal to Styles from his 1D days. One admired Harry for following his artistic muse—more Joni Mitchell than Justin Bieber—but as a pop star, he arguably squandered his momentum coming out of One Direction.

What has made Fine Line, Styles’ sophomore album, such a clever left turn is he retained the rock flavor he naturally gravitates toward but converted it into mellow California-style surf-pop, and he let his production team—Tyler Johnson and Thomas “Kid Harpoon” Hull—fashion the songs into percolating radio jams. Each single has opened the door a bit wider: “Lights Up,” a No. 17 last October, is lightly strummed beach music with ethereal backing vocals. And “Adore You,” a No. 6 hit in April (for my money, still Styles’ best single), is thumping electropop. “Adore” in particular served as Styles’ entrée onto radio’s A-list—it reached No. 1 on mainstream Top 40 stations and No. 2 on Radio Songs by early summer.

With this beachhead established, Harry was finally free to let his freak flag fly with “Watermelon Sugar,” which is simultaneously his oddest single and his most infectious. The chorus consists of nothing more than the line “Watermelon sugar high” repeated a half-dozen or more times, with emphasis on the “HIGH.” (TikTok users have keyed into this idiosyncrasy, sharing videos in which the “high” gets its own video edit of the user playacting her best stoner face.) Last November, when Styles did double-duty hosting and singing on Saturday Night Live, “Sugar” was one of the songs he performed, and in that indoor setting, it came off as willfully quirky and seasonally incongruous; the song’s first verse line is “Tastes like strawberries on a summer evenin’.” Now, timed for 2020’s beach season—complete with a video filled with beautiful people on the shore, shot just before the pandemic and, according to a title card, “dedicated to touching”—it’s sitting atop the hit parade.

In short, Harry Styles finally has a profile on the radio and on the Hot 100 that matches his profile on magazine covers, and he achieved it on his own schedule and something like his own terms. Like John Lennon in the ’70s—the founder and nominal leader of the Beatles but the last former Fab to reach the toppermost of the poppermost as a solo artist—Styles just had to find his own way. As that onetime teen heartthrob sang, “Whatever gets you to the light, it’s all right.”

source: Slate

[stuckinapatriarchalbullshitland]

for the f anon. do you have a time line when camren broke up and then made up again? have you got any information on what really happened to camila in 2015/16? did she have a mental brake down? did her anxiety ocd take over? like we know it was bad because her mom was with her everywhere. and she had to be separated from ot4. but privately surely the girls especially lauren and dinah was there for her? how many times was she in hospital. because after every visit the side effects are visible.

I know I took ages to answer this, anon but here’s F answer: (Long ass post coming)

Hello, dear Anon.

I’m gonna answer your questions in order.

1) 2012-2016. This is the timeline that I’m gonna explain just because so you can go check based on the concerts, interviews, etc. Compared to the first years, the timeline from 2017 to today is much simpler because they’ve broken up very few times. This one here that I’m gonna explain (2012-2016), is based on what I know and also my theories. You can, as usual, disagree with me.

In January 2017, Camila talked about the evolution of her music during Lena Dunham’s Women of the Hour podcast, by explaining how she created her life story through the songs she wrote. Starting precisely from the age of 15, when she had her first kiss. She practically and inadvertently exposed the lie she has always been forced to tell regarding the famous first kiss she had when she was ‘17’. [The entire podcast has been removed, unfortunately. But you can go listen to the audio posted by 5HxCC News on Youtube, called ‘CAMILA CABELLO TALK FIRST KISS ON PODCAST’.]

According to the calculations, the kiss must have occurred between December 20, 2012, that is when X-Factor ended, and January 17, 2013, that is when they signed the contract with Syco/Epic in Los Angeles. My guess? It happened that same New Year’s Eve when the Cabellos spent it over at the Jaureguis.

Throughout 2013 until the beginning of April 2014, L and C had a strange relationship. They were friends, but they behaved and did things you wouldn’t do with a friend. Doesn’t that ring a bell? Oh, hello ‘Like Friends Do’!

2014: Become official in early April and broke up in late November. Small parenthesis. They were both 17 years old in April 2014. Oh, hello to you too ‘Used to This’!

2015: From the end of December 2014/the very first days of January 2015, to the beginning of April. From mid-July to mid-October. From the beginning of November to almost mid-December, they did a continuous on-again, off-again that lasted throughout 2016.

2016: from almost mid-January to mid-February. From early March to early April. From mid-May to early June. This makes me laugh. Only the first few days of August, then from mid-August to the end of August, and again, in hops the first days of September, and from after those hops, until almost the end of September. From early October to almost mid-October (broke up only for a few days), and then until mid-November. And lastly, only a few days in mid-December.

2) Camila suffers from one of the variants of OCD since she was 8, and despite seeing a therapist since 2013, her OCD was diagnosed at the end of 2015. C also suffers from anxiety, panic attacks, mood disorders, and depression (all linked to her OCD). These are things that we’ve been able to witness with our own eyes on more than one occasion. She’s always tried to bottle everything up and not show herself 'weak’ in front of people, in front of us fans. The last thing she wanted was to let people know how much she was really struggling, and therefore, she always tried to disguise it as best she could. Many times, even using her humor as a shield. Picture certain events like a time bomb. Picture her depression as a progression ready to explode:

March 2015, mild. October, November, December 2015, and January 2016, medium. From June to August 2016, high, + explosion in early September, which consequently led to the permanent presence of mama Sinu.

Everything has been derived and therefore worsened by: 1) The rhythms that have always been crazy. 2) Having to deal with many people every day. 3) Having grown up in the spotlight and being constantly observed. 4) Labels that told them what to do (through management) even when they just had to breathe. 5) The expectations and the pressure they’d put on her for being chosen as the chosen one. 6) Having her relationship secretly because they’d rather pass her off as a killer rather than queer/bisexual/gay or in any case associate her romantically with a girl. 7) All the hatred constantly received.

And the list goes on… Anxiety consumed her life for a long time. Now comes and goes.

3) Yes, of course Laurinah were there for her. As were Ashlee, Normani, Ally, Hoko, Michel'Le, Lauren (Fuller), Roger, and a few other crew members who were with them on the tour. As were her family, Jenny, Sandra, Marielle, Mariana, Brooke, Megan, Tica, Rebecca, Guido, Steven, Javi, and her other Miami friends.

Guys, Camila is a private person. The fact that she’s private, however, doesn’t mean that at the time or now, she doesn’t have other friends. It wasn’t just Lauren, Dinah, and Ashlee. And as for 5H, of course Mani and Ally were there for her too, contrary to what they want us to believe. Just think about it. And don’t think that only Dinah was their captain. Who was the one who went to Taylor’s ‘1989 Tour’ concert with Camila? Who was the one who went with them to the famous 1975 concert in Los Angeles on April 16, 2014? Who was the one who tried to protect them from the paparazzi in London in 2015? And instead, who was the one who always helped them lie during interviews? Who was the one who could never manage to control her expressions at first glance in questions that caught them off guard?

Ally and Mani were captains as much as Dinah. There are billions of interviews that prove it. In their own way, they always helped and teased them. Think of the video where Ally fakes a laugh as Lauren loudly slaps C’s ass, who screams “Lauren!” Think about the performances of specific songs. One, for example, is ‘They Don’t Know About Us’, and Norminah always teased them especially during that song. Think about when fans asked Ally if Camren was real and she ran away, laughing and not answering. Think of Mani during the ‘BOSS or TOSS’ game. There are millions of other examples.

4) 3 times. But, as we saw with Dinah in that 2017 video, they may have given her intravenous therapies when she needed it. It’s common, especially for overworked artists.

Oh and, guys. I saw that the audio of the uncut interview with Hitz FM station that the girls did in Malaysia on July 6, 2016, which was released on August 5, has returned to spread. I don’t know why it’s back to spreading now since I heard it already, if I’m not mistaken, in 2017, and saved it a couple of years ago. But anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, I saw that they wrote what Camila says, and it’s wrong. Listen to the audio even at full volume if you want, but C doesn’t say ‘False’. This is what happens:

I (Interviewer): “This one an interesting one. Are Camila and Lauren dating?”

L: “No”

C: “Ugh, Jesus Christ”

I: “Yeah, I know” at the same time as what he says, C laughs awkwardly as a result of her comment “It comes down on Google 'cause people are googling it!”

L: “No! It’s amazing how people continue to do that”

I don’t know if whoever wrote that heard wrong or what. If it’s one of those “which name do you hear, Yanny or Laurel?” cases, you know? But I just wanted to point this out to you. That’s all.

Okay. Love u, guys. Stay safe, please. With love, Faby.

[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

THE PRETTY RECKLESS's TAYLOR MOMSEN On CHRIS CORNELL's Death: 'That Hit Me Extraordinarily Hard'

THE PRETTY RECKLESS frontwoman Taylor Momsen has reflected on how the deaths of SOUNDGARDEN singer Chris Cornell and longtime producer Kato Khandwala affected the making of THE PRETTY RECKLESS's new LP, "Death By Rock And Roll".

Momsen, whose band was the opening act for SOUNDGARDEN's spring 2017 run of dates, told Andy Hall of the Des Moines, Iowa radio station Lazer 103.3 (hear audio below): "[Chris's passing] hit me extraordinarily hard. Getting that tour, I'm such a massive SOUNDGARDEN fan, that was the highest of the highs for all of us. And it obviously ended not ideally. I had to take a step back and we canceled touring. I wasn't in a good place to be public, so I went home to kind of reflect on what had happened and try to process. And then I started writing again, and very soon after that, I got the call that Kato, my best friend and our producer, had passed on a motorcycle accident. And that was kind of a nail in the coffin for me at that moment in time. I sunk into this whole depression, and I wasn't entirely sure how I was gonna get out of it, or if I was gonna get out of it. Not to get too heavy here, but the short of it is that music saved my life again. I delved into music, and that's what really pulled me out of it. And this record is really the culmination of all of that. So it's all there in the record."

Asked how one knows it's time to get back to work after going through such a dark period, Taylor said: "You kind of don't. I kind of took a jump. I had written some stuff that I really liked, and that was the first hint of, 'Okay, I've gotta start doing something again.' And that in itself was a process. It was the first record that we did without Kato. We worked with a guy named Jonathan Wyman, who's a longtime friend of mine and the band's — a great engineer, a great friend, a great producer. And it's the first record we actually co-produced. He was a lifesaver in this scenario.

"I'd say this record is like a rebirth for us," she continued. "In one way, it feels like the first record in the sense that we really threw everything — physically, mentally — everything we had at it and in it. And now it's finished, and now I'm excited for people to hear it. Making the record was a part of the healing process."

Momsen has confirmed in a separate interview with Detroit radio station WRIF that RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE guitarist Tom Morello guests on "Death By Rock And Roll". Morello appears on a track called "And So It Went".

Morello joins previously announced guests Kim Thayil and Matt Cameron from SOUNDGARDEN. The song with Cameron and Thayil, called "Only Love Can Save Me Now", was recorded at Seattle's legendary London Bridge Studios, where seminal LPs like PEARL JAM's "Ten" and SOUNDGARDEN's "Louder Than Love" were laid down.

Momsen told The Pulse Of Radio about working at the historic Seattle studio: "In one way it was kind of like walking back in time. You come in and there's just all the PEARL JAM gold records and paintings and there's a wall that's covered in signed drumheads and pictures of people who've worked there. And then the studio itself is very warm and inviting, very comfortable. So it was very suited to what I was used to, but with all this added history to it."

"Death By Rock And Roll", the fourth studio album from THE PRETTY RECKLESS, will arrive in late 2020 or early 2021. It will follow up 2016's "Who You Selling For", which featured the rock radio hits "Oh My God", "Back To The River" and "Take Me Down".

[walkwithheroes84]

The New Mutants Film: Thoughts

I haven’t seen this film, and I do not plan to pay to see it. I’ll stream it when it appears online. I have a long history with this film, and I feel the need to discuss it - even if it is just me pouring my thoughts into a soon to be forgotten Tumblr post. 

I spent my childhood being in love with Marvel comics. They were one of the ways I learned how to read. The 90s X-Men cartoon? It will always be a favorite. The New Mutants hold a special place in my heart, as my dad had a couple of their comics. I remember thinking they were really cool characters. When I got into reading comics on my own (around 2000), I ended up reading The New Mutants, volume 2 and searching for the original run. 

Now,here are my thoughts on the film (and what went wrong). Broken up into parts.

 A History of a Troubled Production:

When The New Mutants film was announced - I think in 2016 - I was excited. I remember reading about the casting and being disappointed that Blu Hunt (who is a descendant of the Lakota tribe) and Henry Zaga (who is a  Brazilian actor) were not to the liking of hardcore fans. Many fans believed the characters were whitewashed as Hunt and Zaga were deemed too light skinned for the roles. (Zaga’s character is meant to be of Afro-Brazilian descent and some considered Hunt to be “white passing” when Dani is darker in the comics.)  But, I was encouraged by the casting of Anya Taylor-Joy, Maisie Williams, and even Charlie Heaton - as I thought they could fit their roles. (Though I understand the whole cast caused backlash in one way or another) 

I also remembering reading about the filming. The original idea seemed to be focused on a “horror” feel.  Josh Boone, the director, wanted an “80s horror vibe meets coming of age story”. However, he was restricted by FOX, who were looking for a more a Breakfast Club meets Cuckoo's Nest vibe - "a haunted-house movie with a bunch of hormonal teenagers. We haven't seen a superhero movie whose genre is more like The Shining than 'we're teenagers let's save the world.'"

I remember reading about the first test screenings, which took place in late 2017/early 2018. And they were positive. People liked the film. The studio liked the film. It was compared to Deadpool. It was described as a “dark YA horror film” and reshoots were scheduled. Then the film's release date got pushed back from May of 2018 to February 22, 2019,to avoid Deadpool 2. This also allowed time for things to be reshot (again) and visuals to be added. They were adding post-credit scenes - first with Jon Hamm as Mister Sinister. And later with a  post-credits scene introducing Antonio Banderas as Sunspot's father Emmanuel da Costa. The studio and Boone wanted a trilogy, with each film having its own horror feel and each being based on a classic New Mutants comic arc. 

Then Disney bought them. Disney was unimpressed with the film, believing it had “limited” potential and that it would fall into a weird section of comic film lovers/horror film lovers/YA lovers. They weren’t sure how to market it. Did they market it to adult comic fans? Horror fans? Teenagers? They just didn’t know what to do - they just knew they didn’t like it and they were worried that the film could confuse fans of the MCU, who might think The New Mutants was apart of the universe. 

So, the original cut of the film had to be edited down and fixed. In March of 2020, Boone was brought back again to finish/rework the film. He stated that no reshoots ever took place and that even standard pickups had never been done. Only 75% of the film was edited and most of the visuals were not complete.  Boone also stated he couldn’t do reshoots, as the cast were now all too old (having last filmed nearly four years ago) and people were spread out around the world during a pandemic. He had to work with what he had and edit out what wasn’t going to work - especially now that mentions of X-Men films had to be taken out/edited down, and any hints of a second film had to be removed.

Critics and Cast Thoughts:

When the film was screened in New York, the cast stated they loved it and they were all excited. They have been promoting it on their social medias and Josh Boone has stated he is happy with the film. But, Bob McLeod (co-creator of the original comic) has voiced his distaste for the film. He feels his characters have been ruined and he does not care for the casting and story. The movie currently has low reviews on most review sites. It’s being called “cliched” “shallow” and “generic”. It has been praised for having its three female leads take on the more “male” roles within the group and for being “pretty coherent”, despite a lot of meddling and reworking. 

Viewer Thoughts:

I haven’t seen this movie. I wanted to see it back in 2017/2018. I was excited. Now...I’ll stream it. I still honestly think that Anya Taylor-Joy and Maisie Williams were solid casting choices based on small clips and gifs. But, I can’t give any solid opinions. I can just list what people who have viewed the final cut, which clocks  in at 98 minutes, have to say:

- There is a love story between Dani and  Rahne. It’s not a “blink and miss it” or “queer baiting”. They are WLW. However, some fans are angry because Rahne is the comics is a canonically straight and homophobic woman. Some have stated that would have liked to have seen Rahne deal with her own homophobic feelings as she deals with her newfound feelings for Dani.

- People are still disappointed in the white-washing of Dani, Roberto, and  Cecilia Reyes. Many are refusing to watch the film based on the casting. 

- People are disappointed/angry with some lines that throw around casual racism. Notable seems to be Illyana Rasputin calling Dani Moonstar names regarding Dani’s heritage. 

- People are reporting that the visual effects are, at times, fairly poor or cheesy.

- People have also said they do like the connections that some of the characters make throughout the film.

Overall Thoughts: 

- It sounds like people are really upset with the white-washing and racism. Which is all understandable.

- I have to say that I feel bad for the cast. When this was filmed, Blu Hunt and Henry Zaga were newcomers - they were probably hoping this would be a big break for them. (Henry Zaga will be in the upcoming The Stand mini series and Blu Hunt is a main cast member on Netflix’s Another Life.) Anya Taylor-Joy was also fairly new when this was first filmed, but she’s gone on to a lot of good roles. She’s fine. Maisie Williams may have been hoping this would release her from her Game of Thrones fame and allow her to branch out. Charlie Heaton probably felt the same, only regarding his Stranger Things fame. They are both talented young people, they’ll break away from the shows that made them famous. Honestly, the whole “younger” cast will be fine, even if this bombs (which it is likely to). They all seem to get on, so I do hope they stay friendly.

- From what I’ve been able to figure out, Disney has NO plans to use these (or really any mutant characters) in any future MCU film or television series. But, they should consider it. The New Mutants - with some major reworks - could make a really good and dark-ish teen-horror series on Disney+. They’d have to rework a lot and recast a few roles, but I think it would work much better as a series. Even Boone’s original pitches read more like a Netflix series than a film. 

- In the end, The New Mutants was a great idea to bring to screen, but due to A LOT of meddling, bad script writing, edits, etc - it just didn’t work out. It’s honestly really sad, especially for long time fans of the team/characters. 

[whatiwillsay]

Rep Songs Written Before(ish) Joe:

1. So It Goes. Written shortly after collaborator Oscar first became a father in March 2015. Timing makes sense as the song has a more EDM feel to it and Taylor was about to show up with Calvin, who was presumably supposed to be the original public muse for the song.

2. Dress. Taylor told iHeartRadio that “almost every lyric was something that I came up with like a year before.” The song is copyrighted for 2017 so “like a year before” would be sometime in 2016 and, depending on when you believe Joe and Taylor got together (Sept 28, “Late November,” NYE) that could put it before Joe.

3. King of My Heart. Kaylors claim this song was recorded in August 2016, as Tay’s outfit in the making video matches what she wears when birthday facetiming with Karlie. Hetlors claim it for early September. Could have been either or none. Taylor’s allowed to re-wear outfits. HOWEVER, in this planted story with E Online from June 2016, an “anonymous source” (read: publicist) says that Taylor feels like “a little school girl with a huge crush” which is INTERESTING and feels like a sign that KOMH (up on the roof with a school girl crush) could have been written as early as June 2016, with recording not happening for a few months.

Those are the only ones I’m aware of. Gorgeous also seems to have been recorded in September, but once again, given the varying stories about how Joe and Taylor met/started dating/got serious, it’s hard to tell if it would fit or not.

Hope this helps!

submission⬆️⬆️⬆️

omg amazing!!!

[zodiacal-dust-and-curls]

Meant to Be

Word Count: 3.3k

Warnings: None that I can think of. Let me know if you see any!

A/N: I hope y’all are ready. This is a little ridiculous, but I had fun writing it. The reader’s character has a name! But her perspective will be in second person and physical description will be vague. (Sorry, I needed a pretty distinct name for this.)

Thank you to @im-justatrashcan for the request and as always a big thank you to my proof-reader and PSM @mollymarymarie

All your life, you’d had the name ‘Ben Jones’ written in black ink on the inside of your wrist. A common place for a soulmark, really. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary about it. Including the name.

It was very frustrating, honestly. It had exhausted you since you were thirteen and everyone else started meeting their soulmates left and right, literally. You’d watched both of your best friends, at the ripe old age of 15, turn opposite directions and bump into their soulmates.  From that day forward, their marks had been so beautifully colored and their soulmates never too far away.

But ‘Ben Jones’? That was like finding a needle in a haystack. Your wrist might as well have said ‘John Smith’.  It haunted you.

By the midpoint of senior year, ninety percent of your schoolmates had found their other halves and you were still alone.

Then one day, in early 2012, you noticed something. Your mark no longer said ‘Ben Jones’. It now read ‘Ben Hardy’ and you felt like life was just about to get more complicated.

Ben had always wondered how he’d meet you, the mysterious ‘Cheyenne Williams’. Tattooed on his tricep, destined to be his forever. Just from your name, he could tell you weren’t English.

It excited him. He always wondered where life would take him, and he knew for sure he’d get to travel at least part of the world.

Growing up, he was never too concerned with meeting his soulmate. Lots of his friends met theirs between 13 and 18. But it never seemed to bother him. He knew he’d find you one day. It certainly seemed like it wouldn’t be anywhere near his home.

When he started his career, he worried about you being able to find him. He had to change his name, there was just no way around it. Even if it was just a stage name, it would still be the easiest way to recognize him.

He worried over something else, too. Because of his career choice, he’d need to cover his mark. It felt like he was hiding you from the world. Even though he hadn’t met you, he never wanted you to think he could be ashamed of you. That just wasn’t true. He just didn’t want anyone to lie to him and use your name to hurt either of you. It was hard to explain your motives to someone you still hadn’t met.

You were the only one that noticed the change in your mark. As long as the first word was ‘Ben’ and it was still black, no one else really seemed to care. Which, helped you avoid a lot of trouble, honestly.

You really had to fight the urge to google the new name. The development had you stuck somewhere between worry and wonder. Worry for your soulmate’s safety, could something have happened to him? Wonder for yourself, had anyone else ever had their mark change?

The best course of action was to not call any attention to it. You didn’t want to become a case study. There was absolutely no one that would be helped by that. Well, out of the people you were truly concerned for (yourself and your soulmate), no one would probably be helped.

Years after the change, only your mother and best friend had noticed. It took them months to see any difference at all, and it wasn’t the mark that caught their eye. It was your demeanor. The girl with a slightly bitter heart and too many choices had finally seemed hopeful. It threw each of them for a loop, but they’d each asked as curiosity got the best of them.

One day in 2016, your best friend, Tyler, convinced you to see a movie with her. She seemed really excited about it. She said it was going to restart the X-Men franchise and give rise to a whole new generation of superheroes. With all her excitement about the film, you couldn’t say no.

That’s how you found yourself transfixed on the pouty blond angel only a few minutes into the movie. You couldn’t quite put your finger on it, but you felt like you’d seen him before. Somewhere. . . But where?

To say that Ben was a little disappointed that he didn’t find you  while shooting his first American film wouldn’t be incorrect. He tried to reassure himself that he’d only seen a small part of the country during pre- and post-production, and there would be plenty more to see later. His career was just starting, really.

There was still plenty of time.

Oh my God. Was that really him? You were so glad that Tyler had run to the restroom immediately after the post-credit scene. You needed to talk yourself out of this. Now.

There was no way your soulmate was an actor. Let alone one that had acted alongside some of your favorites. What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? What am I gonna d-

“Chy? You look a little lost there. Are you okay?” Tyler was back. Oh man, this could be really bad.

“I’m fine, Ty.” You smiled at her, storing all your thoughts away to freak out over later. “Let’s go get dinner, yeah? That movie was crazy long.”

With a roll of her eyes, she agreed. “Leave it to my bestie, with the freaky Mark, excuse me, the mutant Mark, to have that look on her face because she’s hungry.”

You just stuck your tongue out at her and promised yourself that you would check his IMDB later for interviews. Maybe life would be interesting after all.

By mid 2018, Ben still hadn’t met you. He felt like he’d traveled a fair bit. Met new and exciting people. But you were the only person he was just dying to meet.

Okay, maybe that had changed for a hot minute in 2017. He was cast to play a living legend. Could you really blame him for wanting to meet Roger Taylor (the drummah from Queen)?

Ben decided you could probably let that slide. It was just one small request on his growing pile of things to ask forgiveness for.

Hopefully, the upcoming press tour would help him out.

Except that he wouldn’t be going on the American leg of the tour (all the boys had agreed that the name was definitely American, more than likely Southern) due to work. Fate, what game were you playing?

Stalking may have been a tad excessive to describe the ferocity with which you watched a certain Mr. Hardy from that fateful day in the movie theater to now.

You’d looked up several of his interviews, especially any that mentioned his mark, or rather lack thereof. He never brought it up on his own and always seemed ready to deflect with some other comment when asked. There was no way he was your soulmate. He clearly was just one of the UnMarked and wasn’t comfortable talking about it.

It hadn’t even shown up in any of the candids or BTS content you’d seen. He just didn’t have one. It was that simple.

That didn’t stop you though. You still managed to see all his projects. The latest one seemed promising. He was set to play Roger Taylor, yes the Roger Taylor your own mother was in love with as a young girl, and they would even have a press tour stop close to your home town.

Ty had, of course, figured everything out that first day and encouraged you to chase it.

(“He could just be a really private person, Chy. What if he covered it up to protect you?

“Right Ty, I’m sure that’s exactly what some English actor that knows nothing about me did.”

Tyler just narrowed her eyes at you, wishing you would regain a little of the hopefulness you’d had back when the change had happened. “I’m right. Just you wait.”

“I certainly will wait, but don’t expect me to hold my breath.”)

So, you and Tyler had made plans to go to the stop. It could be fun, and maybe you’d finally know if she was right.

“Cheyenne Montgomery Williams, get out of the bathroom or you are gonna miss the whole thing. Jeez.” Ty screamed through the door at you. What were you even doing here? He wouldn’t be here and you knew he didn’t have a mark. He’d never confirm that in interviews, but you just knew it.

“First of all, that’s not my name and you know it.” You pushed the door open with enough force to bump Ty back a little and leveled her with a narrowed glare. “Secondly, so what if I missed the whole thing? He isn’t here.”

“Excuse me?” You heard a voice come from your side. “What did you say your name was?”

You looked in the direction of the voice and released Ty from your stare. “I didn’t. She -,” you used your head to gesture to Ty, hands still poised on your hips and stopped. Joe Mazzello was looking at you with a ridiculous amount of glee in his eyes.

Ben’s phone buzzed from beside him. It was late evening in Rome, where he was filming his newest project.

Joey: Oh, Benny Boy. You aren’t going to believe this.

Benny Boy: Believe what?

Joey: On second thought, I’ve decided not to tell you.

          Yet.

          When will you be able to visit me in the states?

Ben just shook his head. He was sure Joe had good motives, but all he wanted to do after this film was go home and sleep for a few days. He missed his bed and his Frankie.

Benny Boy: We talked about this.

                      I’m going to go home for a bit. I can come visit you in December.

Joey: That’s so far awayyyyy.

           But I shall wait for you.

           Until then, Jonesy.

JM: Are you ready?

The CW: Nope.

JM: Perfect. It’s showtime.

You had just pulled up to the shop Joe had been bothering you about. The man loved donuts and apparently these were the best in Dallas. It was a bit too far from your hometown for you to be overly familiar with the area, but you allowed Joe his indulgences.

It was weird to think that you got a celebrity’s phone number. Much less for such innocent reasons. He really did just want to check on you and figure out who you were before he introduced you to Ben. There was a good chance Joe was more nervous than you were.

“Mate, why am I filming you eat this donut?” It was the one question Ben felt Joe could actually answer. It wasn’t the only question he had, just the only one he thought he could get an answer to.

“It’s going to be transcendent.” Joe fixed his gaze on the prize in his hand, which was possibly the shiniest donut Ben had ever seen. “ Just shut up and point the camera at my face, Jonesy.”

“Really, Joe? Is that anyway to treat your friend?” Ben could have sworn he’d heard that voice before. It sounded like home, but with a drawl.

“Really, Joe? Is that anyway to treat your friend?” You smiled at Joe over the blond head in front of him.

“You know what, Chy? I think it is.” He couldn’t help but grin back at you. “Besides, this one,” he gestured to the man seated in front of him, “has kept the both of us waiting long enough. Don’t you think?”

It seemed like it took him an eternity to turn around and face you. But when he did, you couldn’t look away. Those eyes, the same ones you’d seen all those years ago projected in front of you, were even more breathtaking in person. The mouth that you’d watched form countless words in dozens of interviews, was right there and you waited for it to move.

“I think you’re absolutely right, Joey.” But you couldn’t tear your gaze from Ben. He was here. He was real. It was finally time to see if Ty was right.

“Cheyenne?” He breathed out with a sense of wonder, as if trying your name for the first time.

“Cheyenne?” Ben couldn’t believe this was what Joe had been hiding from him for 2 months. It was you. He found you, the only thing that was still missing from his life.

“It’s very nice to finally meet you, Ben.” Your voice was like music to his ears, especially when you said his name. He didn’t think he could ever get tired of the sound.

He had honestly never tried to imagine you, and he’s very glad he didn’t. Whatever he would have dreamed up wouldn’t have been as good as what was standing in front of him now.

Hesitantly, Ben stepped toward this astonishing woman that was meant to be his. Joe was basically forgotten behind him as Ben moved in to hug you.

The next thing you knew the two of you were moving towards each other. You reached out and hooked your right forearm behind his left shoulder and pulled Ben to you.

Distantly, you could hear Joe cheering. Two of his new favorite people were finally together. First contact had been made. It was finally time to see if Ty and Joe were both right or if they’d just been feeding you false hope all these years (and months).

But he didn’t intervene immediately. Joe let the two of you lose yourselves in the embrace. You were grateful for that. After 20+ years of waiting, at times not so patiently, you felt like you’d finally found your home.

“Okay, lovebirds. You don’t have to completely disentangle, but there’s something I gotta see.” Ah, Joe. He’d waited as long as he possibly could. But Ben supposed he was owed this. To be the first to see his colored Mark.

Ben felt a little wistful for not taking a minute to admire it in the mirror this morning. He wished he would have known that he’d never see the familiar black script on his skin again. It had been replaced with some vibrant color. He was sure of it, and the possibilities of the new discovery left him a little giddy.

Slowly, Ben pulled you to his right and twisted his left arm forward. Sure enough, there in a jeweled red was the name he’d been looking at all his life. But now he had new hope attached to it.

Joe was possibly the most impatient person you knew at this moment. All you wanted to do was hang on to Ben a little longer. You weren’t ready for reality to come crashing down on you.

Ben slowly pulled you to your left and started to twist his arm.

You decided it was time to take the plunge and glanced down at your right wrist. There in a striking red was his name.

The sight brought tears to your eyes. You thought this day would never come. You thought that Fate had been playing a cruel trick on your whole life. But here it was. Living proof.

“Oh. love. Don’t cry.” Ben heard a sniffle come from your  direction. He paused his celebrating to take care of his soulmate. He really could get used to that, his soulmate. “What’s wrong?”

“I just,” you were still fighting tears in the little shop, “I just never thought this day would actually come.”

To hear that broke Ben’s heart. He had always justified his actions to himself (hiding his mark, deflecting in interviews, letting Roger Taylor take your spot as the #1 person he wanted to meet) and now it was time to justify them to you.

“Let’s get out of here, yeah?” Ben rested his forehead against your own. “We can go talk somewhere private.” His voice had softened and taken on a concerned undertone.

“That sounds good. Let’s go.” You waved towards Joe and blew him a kiss. You could see the excitement on his face for the both of you. He was a good friend, truly. You’d have to find a way to thank him for putting the two of you together.

Ben was so relieved that you took him to a park towards the outskirts of the big city. He preferred to think and talk while moving, It helped him focus.

“So I’m sure I owe you some explanations.” He began. He made sure to loop your arm with his not wanting you to get too far away or for his voice to get so loud that passers-by would hear your conversation.

“Yeah, just two really.” He was shocked that you agreed with him. Most of the soulmates he’d seen were so instantly in love, he wasn’t ready for any push back.

“Which one would you like first, love?” If there were two you wanted now, he wanted to be sure they were the ones you wanted and not the ones he thought were most important.

“Why did my Mark change?” That . . . may have stopped him in his tracks a little.

“Your Mark . . .changed?” He was a little confused. He’d never heard of Marks changing.

“Yeah. One day it said ‘Ben Jones’ and the next it said ‘Ben Hardy’. I always worried that something bad happened.” You looked up at him and back down quickly before admitting the next bit. “I may have googled you after X-Men came out and found out that it’s just your stage name.”

Ben wracked his brain for an answer to that one. “I don’t know about that one, but we can figure it out together.” He smiled at you.

“The next one is why haven’t you admitted to having a Mark?” There it was. His biggest fear to have to explain to you. Of course, you would want to know. It probably would have gotten you together faster if he’d just made it public information.

Ben stopped and pulled you closer to him with a hand on either side of your face.

“That was the hardest decision I’d ever had to make.” He looked so sad as he met your eyes. “I wanted to protect you, and myself. I wanted this life and career. I made this choice. You didn’t.”

“Are you joking?” You blinked, a little dumbfounded. “I am never going to hear the end of this from Ty.” You shook your head and grabbed his wrists to pull his hands away from your face.

“Let’s see it then.” You fully met his eyes, a new determination in your own.

“Well, alright.” Ben gave you a cocky smile and  turned around to pull his sleeve so that you could see your own name in a startling blood red on his skin. “What do you think?”

Before you could respond, you reached out and ran your hand from his elbow to his shoulder following the path your name made. “It’s incredible.”

Ben had just watched your face and taken in the quiet astonishment that played across it. He could never have guessed that you really thought this day would never come.

Quickly, he fixed his shirt sleeve and turned back to face you. “Can I see yours?” He asked quietly.

You extended your wrist out towards Ben and he took it carefully, almost as if you would break. He brought himself around to stand next to her so that he could read his own name appropriately.

“I can’t believe it’s really there.” He took in the wine red stain on your wrist that was his name and rubbed the pad of his thumb delicately along it. “Ben Hardy. Who would’ve thought that it would change to my stage name?” He asked mostly to himself.

“I certainly didn’t, but I’m so glad it did.” You placed your hand on top of where his thumb was tracing your Mark and gave him a genuine smile. The one you got in return was absolutely blinding.

“I guess Fate decided that we were meant to be.”

A/N: I hope you enjoyed it! See y’all sometime next week. I’m going to go be murdered by these two tests. Have a good day, lovelies!

Taglist: @rogers-wristbands @deakydeckme

[linskywords]

Stromecat Primer

This is for the anon who asked for one, which YES I will do this thing. I now have copious notes on these two which have to go somewhere. But also I’m relatively new to the pairing, so if people have corrections or things to add, have at it!

Also it’s super long (haha I might as well just have had you guys read my story draft) so I’m putting it after a cut.

OKAY SO.

Here are our boys:

(Dylan. This is his Wikipedia picture but just look at that face. Could not resist.)

(Alex. What a precious Tolkienian Dwarf.)

Okay. So those are our boys. Let’s have us some TIMELINE.

They start playing together in the fall of 2014, after Dylan goes second overall in the 2013 OHL draft to the Erie Otters and Alex signs with them undrafted the following spring. He did not get drafted because he is short and therefore underestimated. They tear it up that year, along with Connor McDavid, who’s playing on a line with them: Alex gets 104 points in 68 games--pretty great for going undrafted--and Dylan gets a whopping 129 points and wins the OHL scoring title.

So our boys are good! Everyone’s very impressed with Dylan. He’s drafted third overall in 2015, after Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel, and everyone’s very excited about the Stromes as the next big hockey family (older bro Ryan was drafted fifth overall to the Isles in 2011). The future is bright.

Dylan goes to Coyotes 2015 development camp. He goes to training camp. He plays in a couple of preseason games. But they don’t think he’s ready, so they send him back down to Erie. Pretty normal. Nothing to worry about.

2015-2016, Dylan’s the captain. Alex and Dylan play on a line together (without Connor this time) and have another great year where they are playing and also living together. Alex gets 101 points in 60 games and Dylan gets 111 in 56. They have a kind of rough World Juniors in there--Dylan plays for Team Canada and ends up in 6th place, and Alex plays for the U.S. and gets bronze but gets injured early on and only ends up scoring a single goal in the whole tournament. But, you know, good year with Erie. Future still bright.

(Look at this adorable pair. Ignore the facial hair on one of them who shall remain unspecified. Also this is presumably 2017 based on the letters on their jerseys but shhhh.)

However, Alex continues to be underestimated because he is short! He also had a bad World Juniors, so people are worried he might only be situationally good with the Otters. He’s passed over in the first round of the 2016 NHL draft and ends up being drafted 39th, by the Chicago Blackhawks, who have a history of drafted very competent undertall players. Also they didn’t have a first-round pick that year so I like to think they might have taken him either way.

Dylan and Alex both go to their respective 2016 development camps. And training camps. Alex plays in a preseason game with the Hawks but gets sent down--again, normal. Dylan plays the whole preseason with the Yotes and stays up, but they don’t really commit to him. They scratch him a bunch and only put him in for 7 games--this is either the limit of what they can play someone and still send them down to Juniors or close to it--over the course of a month and a half. Finally, on November 20, they send him back down to Erie, after 7 games played and...one point scored.

So at this point Dylan’s probably feeling pretty bad about himself. His former linemate Connor went straight to the NHL and is about to start his Hart-winning season. Dylan’s getting sent down for the second year straight.

But! 2016-2017 is an awesome year for the Otters. Alex is an A. Dylan gets made captain again at some point.* Dylan and Alex are living together again, and they’re playing together, and they freaking tear it up. They lead the Otters to a first-place finish in the O and win the J. Ross Robertson Cup (the highest award in the OHL). The guys on the team like to talk about that as the best night of their lives. They make it to the final game of the Memorial Cup, the championship for the whole CHL (which includes the OHL, the WHL, and the QMJHL), and lose narrowly to the Windsor Spitfires. However, Dylan gets a tournament record for 7 points in a single game, and they both have great seasons overall. Dylan gets 75 points in 35 games, and Alex gets 127 points in 63 games--more than two points per game for each of them--and Alex wins the Red Tilson Trophy for most outstanding player in the OHL. Also Dylan got to captain Canada’s World Juniors team, and many people (including me) were excited that he got that opportunity as a way to balance his failures thus far in the NHL, though Canada lost in a devastating final game against the U.S.

*If anyone knows when Dylan became captain again, let me know -- all I could figure out was sometime before the playoffs.

Here is Dylan with the Robertson Cup:

(Note the blond hair, which is an abomination they all inflicted upon themselves as a means to achieving playoff victory. You know, apparently it worked.)

Summer of 2017, Dylan and Alex go to their NHL development camps and training camps yet again. Everyone’s excited about Alex after the year he just had in the O. Everyone’s a little antsy about Dylan because good Lord it’s been two years since he was drafted third overall and is he ever going to be good enough for the NHL? (This was definitely me.)

Anyway the Hawks keep Alex up and start playing him. 2017-2018 is a rough year for the Hawks but a good one for Alex, and he surpasses all draft expectations and leads the team in goals (28). He also gets a commitment from the Hawks early in the year, in the form of his housing letter, and he gets a dog that spring named Ralph DeBrindog who is a shiba inu with his own Instagram account. Here are Alex and Ralph:

But things are not so happy in Arizona. Dylan gets to stay up past the 2017-2018 preseason but the Coyotes once again do not commit to him (no housing letter for him!). Dylan barely plays with the team before he gets sent down to the Roadrunners, the Coyotes’ AHL affiliate.

He does really well with the Roadrunners, so they bring him back to the NHL in late November (and he gets to play against Alex and the Hawks!). But he doesn’t do great there, so they send him back down for most of the spring, only bringing him up for the last few weeks of the season before sending him back to the AHL for the playoffs.

At this point, the future is looking pretty bleak for Dylan. Too old for Juniors, can’t hack it in the NHL despite his high draft number.  9 points in 21 games with the Coyotes in 2017-2018. People saying he was only good because of his good linemates, which, yeah, Connor and Alex are doing great other places. And sure, lots of people have good linemates and don’t put up numbers like Dylan did, but how else do you explain his failures in Arizona?

So the next season, 2018-2019, Alex is of course still playing with the Hawks. He’s doing even better than he did his rookie year, scoring more consistently. Dylan actually gets to play with the Coyotes, which, woohoo, but he’s putting up terrible numbers: 6 points in 20 games. Theories abound, but the upshot is clear--whatever made Dylan good in Juniors doesn’t translate to the NHL. The Coyotes wasted a draft pick.

BUT.

The Blackhawks evidently don’t think so, because on November 25, 2018, they trade Nick Schmaltz to the Coyotes in exchange for both Brendan Perlini and Dylan Strome. And they put the two of them on a line with Alex. And Dylan starts LIGHTING IT UP. As I write this, he’s at 46 points in 48 games with the Hawks. That’s some elite play there.

And did I mention he and Alex are living together again?

That’s right: apparently Alex was Dylan’s second call when he was traded, right after his parents (you can read more about his experience of the trade here, though you need a subscription). And then Dylan moved into his place.

...I can’t figure out how to embed video, but here is the two of them being adorable in the Road to the Winter Classic. Including Ralph, and also the memorable line, “I want to bodycheck you so bad right now.”

And here they are on the ice:

If that pose is not part of their engagement photos, it should be.

So basically, there are two possible explanations for why Dylan was playing so badly for so long in Arizona:

1) Arizona really sucks. (This should not be ruled out regardless of your opinion on #2.)

2) Dylan and Alex are soulmates and Dylan couldn’t play without him.

To be fair, #2 doesn’t explain why Alex was playing fine in Chicago before Dylan got there. But, you know, maybe he’s just less soulmate dependent than Dylan. Either way, everyone, including the two of them, is talking about the chemistry they have on the ice, and it’s clearly made a big different to Chicago’s season. And they get to play with their best friend again.

(Yes, they’ve both called each other that. It’s adorable.)

Some bonus info:

There is an Otter alum group text! It also includes Taylor & Darren Raddysh, Anthony Cirelli, and Warren Foegele. Dylan says they talk about the OHL championship all the time because it was the best night of their lives.

Dylan became the Otters’ all-time points leader by the end of his OHL career (seriously, makes no sense that he couldn’t play in Arizona, barring soulmate-based explanations)

After Dylan played Alex as a Coyote, he changed his Instagram photo to the two of them facing off.

Alex’s nicknames include Brinksy and the Cat. He’s fine with either but is less fond of Kitty. XD

They are legit eight inches apart. More, if 5′7″ is just Alex’s stats sheet height and not reality.

They are adorable best friends and roommates and linemates and need to be together forever.

And now, some pictures to close it out (starting with the Instagram icon one):

[lazybirdxd]

Kaylor: The hidden true timeline

Sometimes reality exceeds our expectations, and oftentimes we are not aware that such reality exists. Until we take a deeper look.

I recently finished reading a (controversial) fanfic by a certain writer (If you’re an old Kaylor you know which fanfic, if you’re new, it’s called “Kaylor: The timeline”) and what stood out for me the most about that fanfic is that it is incredibly accurate in the way it tells the story, a story that is well thought of, it has a chronological coherence and character construction that is very difficult to surpass. The amazing thing about it is not the story in itself, but rather the level of insight it gives about the characters, behavior analysis, recognition of complex emotions and its roots in the characters, as well as a constant foreshadowing of the aesthetics of the coming era (reputation era). I think that because of this complexity and the level of details included, both Karlie and Taylor wrote it. How did I arrive to that conclusion (that many of you older Kaylors also suspect to be true)? -I'll be focusing only on the authorship of the fanfic, if you want me to analyze the story, leave a comment!-

Taylor discussing Karlie’s inability to communicate any uncomfortable situation to Taylor in the 12th chapter of part two.

Well, let’s see. The fanfic has an element of entertainment to it (no, that’s not my strongest argument, but hold on), it’s as if the writer knew which parts of the story to highlight in order for the readers to be engaged with the story from the beginning. But it doesn’t JUST take a good story for a book to be read (or in this case, a Wattpad book), you need to have the right characters in your story for people to feel identified with and represented by them. In essence, the story needs to make sense, needs to remain just a story (that means having the right amount of fantasy and the right amount of truth so that it still feels real), it needs to have complex yet relatable characters that appeal to the essential parts of human nature, and a relatively simple vocabulary (unless your expected audience is very educated) along with descriptive (visual) language, because the public has to imagine the situations the characters are going through, as well as their very environment. Also, your use of your chosen lexicon has to convey all the meaning of your story in its simplicity. I don’t know about you, but these requirements feel like the abilities of a very advanced writer, and not one that just posts random stories that they created in their head after reading a tabloid in the line of the supermarket.

The writer of the fanfic saying he/she had never written anything personal before the fanfic (I cut the screenshot on this one, but I will put the full picture later on)

Anyway, as seen above, our “fanfic” writer claims to have never had any experience at personal writing before this fanfic, which is very suspicious, given the amount of reads that this fanfic has (1.7 Million at the moment of writing this post) as well as the good reviews and people commenting on Wattpad how that is their 4th or 5th time reading the entire fanfic all over again, meaning that for the reads to be this high, the writing has to be at least really good.

I cut the screenshot here, but if you go to the first chapter of the fanfic you’ll see more people commenting similar things.

Now, with regards to the foreshadowing I talked about earlier, the fanfic was written in early 2016, and the reputation era began in late 2017, plus we know Taylor plans her tours and eras one year ahead, therefore she needed to plan the reputation era and tour one year ahead (see section Event promoters), despite her saying in a GMA interview from Lover era that she only plans 6 months in advance (which is just impossible due to recording dates, negotiations, hiring booking agents for the countries she will perform in, meetings to discuss marketing strategies, aesthetics of every era, etc…), therefore by 2016 she had at least some idea of how the 6th era was going to look like. This fanfic weirdly coincides with the aesthetics of reputation long before reputation was released. Hmmm…

This fanfic AU was last updated on February 2016.

“Interesting… Tell me more about this writer”.

Alright. Also, It’s a she and she has a Tumblr account that I took time to carefully read.

Our writer turns out to be a she.

But before I go into really heavy stalking further detail, read this disclaimer: I am no behavioral analysis expert, I do not possess any type of psychology major or minor, I’m not even doing an undergraduate course of psychology, this is me applying all the books I’ve read about human psychology as it is my hobby. I’m a Computer Science student. Having said that, let’s dive right in!

Now, this is what I observed when looking through KaylorFanfiction’s profile:

1. The writer doesn’t share, reblog, post pictures frequently or makes her personal opinion known in topics outside the fanfic(s) or writing in general. (I observed this after spending a significant amount of time scrolling down her blog and just noticing her behavioral patterns).

2. Assertive (short answers to asks on Tumblr).

3. Usually writes in caps to highlight important things (just like Taylor), words or phrases might be uppercase.

If you’re wondering about the numbers, they are questions.

Okay, let’s see Taylor now:

4. The writer is 6 feet tall (like our favorite supermodel).

The link to the questions.

5. The writer is enthusiastic about feedback (like Taylor).

6. Has one female dog named Phoebe Buffay (A pet named after a well-known tv show character.)

Interesting to note that in the second ask, the writer tells that she has only had one puppy, which reminds me of a certain someone who also has only one puppy:

7. Is in college. Or was.

I say was because, although we have pictures of Karlie on her first day of school at NYU, it isn’t completely believable due to a lack of attendance later on if you google “Karlie Kloss attending NYU”, therefore my conclusion is that her proximity to a college environment comes actually from her brother, who truly attended Notre Dame University. An interesting observation that may back my induction is that if you go to KaylorFanfiction’s profile you’ll find that when she talks about college she never specifies which one she’s attending, for that same reason, if it was true that Karlie attended, then she would have no other choice than to be proud of her wife girlfriend through her secret alternative account for her achievements (I mean, it’s NYU, who wouldn’t be proud?). Taylor The writer might have wanted to tell the narrative of a broke college student (the exact opposite of what Taylor is) to go unnoticed on social media, but the quality of the story and the richness of it made it unbelievable that the story came from an inexperienced writer (more on that later on).

In other words, this account was Taylor’s escape bubble where she could talk freely and give her opinions without dealing with the consequences. I was afraid I could be breaking that bubble with this post, but considering that she said she no longer uses the account, I figure that It was safe for me to post this.

8. Has been making connections with literary agents and small publishing presses (as detailed above).

Guess who also makes connections with certain agents and publishing agencies… (See the manager and booking agents)

9. Has a passion for music and wanted to learn how to play guitar on her own as a teenager but stopped.

The full screenshot above, as promised.

Also, doesn’t she being obsessed with music and learning from a young age reminds you of someone else?

Link to the interview.

Link to a compilation of homemade videos of Taylor singing as well as an interview where she says she learned to play the guitar at a young age (minute 1:29).

10. Reads books about music (detailed above) and learns about music in general, from a very young age.

11. Writes original content outside fanfic.

Interesting, given that she never had written something personal before (personal as in of her own making, not as in the fanfic is her life), that makes me question what did she write about before this fanfic? Journalism? But she is obsessed with music, she told us that herself. Could that original content possibly be… songs?

So far we know she is obsessed with music, she discovered she liked to write novels (I’d rather say books) through writing this fanfic, even though she doesn’t read fanfic at all, wonder where she got the inspiration and experience to make it the most read fanfic of that topic on Wattpad if she also never did anything personal, which makes me now believe that by personal she meant her life, because there is no way you can never have done anything of your own creation while having original work. Therefore, the original work she refers to, are songs (as detailed above when saying she wanted to do something with songs). She could have meant anything by saying she wanted to do something with songs, but so far, these are many many coincidences pointing to Taylor the authorship of a particular individual, and as BBC’s Sherlock said: “The universe is rarely so lazy”.

12. The author never reads fanfic stories.

The picture speaks for itself

13. The writer doesn’t like speculation. Compare to Taylor’s 25th birthday tweet.

Interesting…the author is not into speculating, yet she wrote an entire fanfic on a relationship she claims is not real to her. Basically, she ignored the definition of “speculation”.

Thus, if we wanted to make sense of the reasons for her particular fanfic creation writing taking into account that she doesn’t like speculating and that this is just a creative outlet, we would have to assume that what she writes in her story is based on an objective truth, her speech again (not liking speculation) is contradicted by the mere fact that Wattpad is for aspiring writers looking to share their work with the world (usually a fictitious work). So, if our writer doesn’t like speculation, yet creates a “fictional” story on a site dedicated to that purpose, she’s either lying about not liking speculation or she’s hiding the truth in a platform dominated by fiction in the hopes no one will see (through) it. Okay, maybe she’s lying about not liking speculation (after all, people lie all the time), but given the continuous similarities of our writer’s personality with Taylor’s, and the fact that in the universe everything is interconnected, this can’t be a coincidence. But why would Taylor go to such lengths to tell mostly the truth? Well, given Taylor’s character and the way she rose to fame (through what she called “Opening up her diaries for the world to see”) there is an inherent need in her for self-expression, but she can’t express herself freely all the time (remember the behind-the-scenes interview where she’s filming Lover video and she says her life is like a fishbowl) because her career is image-based, and one picture will outspeak any word or explanation she might have. Thus, she might have to go to these or more lengths to truly express herself and her beliefs in order to keep her mental health and creativity flowing.

14. The writer loves to add drama to her writing.

Do I have to remind you of Taylor’s lyrics to Endgame?

“I swear I don’t love the drama, it loves me “

15. The writer has an inclination toward social justice (similar to that of Taylor).

And comparing to Taylor…

Also, the fanfic is very very detail-oriented, and the writer said in a note on one of her chapters:

Finally, to top the icing…

Our writer got knee surgery. The very word surgery sounds to me as a lot of stitches being made. Where have I heard about stitches before? Maybe Out Of The Woods can be a good beginning…

“Twenty stitches in a hospital room”

My dissertation is now over. I hope you enjoyed it without thinking I’m going insane, because that’s what I’m thinking right now. Have a good night/day.

[huachenyu-news]

2019 Mars Concerts Postponed, New Single About to Drop, and More

This just in: On October 22, Hua Chenyu Studio posted on Weibo that the 2019 Mars Concerts had been postponed due to force majeure. Efforts are being made to ensure that Martians (as Hua Chenyu fans are called) will still get to "come home (aka. attend the concerts)" this year. More information will be released within the next seven days. I was just about to post the following article when I got the news. But I don't really know how to pivot from the shocking turn of events to normal everyday Martians news... and it's way past my bed time and I'm too lazy to rewrite it, so I might as well post it as is... Pop artists have been obsessed with hiding clues and callbacks in their works for fans to find lately. From Taylor Swift’s months-long bread crumb trail of clues and cryptic foreshadowing prior to the release of her new single, to Vampire Weekend’s latest album sprinkled with all sorts of references and homage both obvious and obscure, not to mention the new releases of every Marvel and DC movie, plus video games like “Fortnite” and “Mortal Kombat”, it seems that Easter egg hunting might become the new favorite sport for pop culture fans. Though on Mars this has always been the case, since its eccentric prince has a childlike fondness for puzzles and brain teasers, and forging interconnectivity among seemingly disparate events through the thread of a central theme. In as early as 2016, Hua Chenyu’s Mars Concert Tour, intriguingly taglined “Puzzle” that year, was preceded by a series of promo videos filled with riddles, and a “Finding Hua Chenyu” livestream reminiscent of a scavenger hunt that led a group of Martians down many a rabbit hole around Beijing. Hua is also prone to posting obscure clues to his upcoming works on Weibo, such as a blurry picture of a rose, intended as a reference to the French novella The Little Prince, to allude to his participation in SMG’s celebrity travel show Flowers on Trip, or a photo of his flute-playing self obscured by underbrush, cryptically announcing that he would play the flute in his 2017 Mars Concert, or a hotel selfie coupled with the seeming non sequitur “Spring had not ended; the moon was shining”, a hint at his then-new single “Heaven’s Equal”. By either necessity or predilection, Martians have all become hardened sleuths, over-analyzing everything Hua posted, finding meaning where there is none, using advanced photo-processing technologies to zoom and enhance all Hua Chenyu-related photos, from which many major discoveries were made, like that one time Hua posted a selfie on a train, and got off to throngs of Martians waiting for him at the station, because during the short train ride, Martians had already deduced his precise location and train schedule just from the background of his potato-quality selfie (scary, I know). Or that time when Martians zoomed in on his make-up artist Vincent’s Weibo photo and discovered Hua in the reflection of Vincent’s sunglasses. Or that time when Hua posted a photo of himself watching good friend Zhang Xinyi’s new movie in the theatre, and Martians adjusted the contrast and lighting of the photo to show that Hua was the only one in the theatre – he bought all the tickets. Though Hua himself has been laying low and writing songs for his new album these past two months, Martians have been pampered with a constant drip-feed of information about his new songs and upcoming concerts, mostly through interviews, articles and short videos. On October 21, Hua Chenyu studio released a video prelude to Hua’s new song “Conversations with the Martian Child”. Video & translation by 華晨宇 HuaChenYu (official channel) Speculations about Hua’s new album have already veered towards the whimsical and absurd, with theories about the number of chairs in the above video signifying the number of songs in the album, and correlating that with the stage design in a similar Hua Chenyu video featuring an inexplicable surplus of chairs on Super Boy 2013, and then some Martians started adding, subtracting or multiplying various numbers derived from the video and creating new numbers with new mysterious meanings… It’s all going bananas. At this rate, if Hua didn’t release a new single soon, Martians would all be wearing tin-foil hats and hovering over John Nash pinboards plastered full of screencaps, maps, and newspaper clippings connected with strings and arrows by the end of the month. I was originally planning to post an article when the single actually drops, but all this suspense and tin-foil hatting is killing me. Here's Hua's new commercial for Hair Recipe to soothe your pre-new-single jitters. Video & translation by Hua Chenyu English Subs In other news, Hua will be featured in the October 31, 2019 issue of SoFigaro magazine. Click here to buy it on Taobao. Here's a video clip from the magazine. Read the full article

[obtusemedia]

The best songs of the 2010s: #100-76

Happy 2020! Now that the previous decade has finally finished, it’s time to commemorate the 2010s. The decade in which I grew from an awkward teen to an awkward adult. And a decade with a ton of great music. Let’s dive right in: these are my 100 favorite songs of the 2010s.

#100: “Monopoly” by Danny Brown (2011)

Danny Brown is so delightfully grimy. He’s like a cartoon sewer rat come to life, rapping about pills and making hilariously crude jokes. In an anti-drug PSA, he’d be the sketchy weirdo trying to get a kid hooked on bath salts or whatever. And for a quick shot of his non-replicable style, it’s hard to do better than “Monopoly.”

Rapping over a glitchy, menacing beat with his trademark squawk, Brown lands oddball punchline after oddball punchline. In a span of less than 3 minutes, he threatens to defecate on your tape (and he has to clarify that too — “No, literally, shit all on your mixtape”), compares himself to Ferris Bueller sipping wine coolers and then closes his track by describing a woman’s vagina as “smellin’ like cool ranch Doritos.” And that last insult is the perfect distillation of Brown: the Adult Swim of rap. But much smarter than that would imply.

#99: “Shutdown” by Skepta (2015)

At the 2015 BRIT Awards, Kanye West performed “All Day” with a massive crowd of grime artists on stage, all in black, with flamethrowers shooting fire into the sky. 

Four days after the performance, Skepta — one of the artists on stage with Kanye — released “Shutdown.” It’s a much more fitting song for the intimidating, energized and proudly British crowd of MCs than a middling Kanye non-album cut.

“Shutdown” is the kind of song a rapper releases when they’re at the peak of their powers. Skepta was absolutely at that point in 2015, and so his finest single sounds like a coronation. His gruff delivery isn’t too loud, but it’s firm and confident. He knew he was the best MC in Britain, and “Shutdown” cemented that status.

#98: “Amor Fati” by Washed Out (2011)

Washed Out was one of the brightest voices in the turn-of-the-decade chillwave movement, and with cuts like “Amor Fati,” it’s not hard to see why. 

The big single off his debut, “Amor Fati” gives you a similar sensation as taking a shower: Pure bliss and warmth cascade around you. It’s a bit repetitive, but the song is clearly meant to set a mood more than anything else, so that’s excusable. If you need an entry point into chillwave, you can’t do much better than this.

#97: “Los Ageless” by St. Vincent (2017)

St. Vincent’s trajectory this decade took her from an art-pop weirdo who collaborates with David Byrne to a more mainstream art-pop weirdo who collaborates with Taylor Swift. But in that process, Annie Clark was able to pull her sharpest hooks out and put them in use in deceptively dark songs like “Los Ageless.”

With its sleek new wave production from Jack Antonoff, “Los Ageless” could’ve easily fit on most pop records. But Clark’s atonal, shrill guitar bursts and increasingly disturbing lyrics differentiate it. The song’s themes gradually shift from “lol Los Angeles is fake and plastic” to something more tragic. The desperate (in a good way) chorus says it all: “How could anybody have you and lose you/And not lose their minds too?”

#96: “I Like It” by Enrique Iglesias feat. Pitbull (2010)

I’m aware how ridiculous putting “I Like It” — a disposable, trashy club pop hit most people might not remember — on this list. Admitting I that I love this song probably guarantees that I’ll never get a job at Pitchfork.

But then those fuzzy, cheap synths come crashing in. And Enrique Iglesias sings his sleazy come-ons in an auto-tune slurry. And Pitbull delivers a gloriously ridiculous, very-2010 verse that references both the Tiger Woods cheating scandal AND the Obamas (along with gratuitous Spanish and a Miami shoutout). And then there’s the final touch: a prominent sample of Lionel Richie’s cheeseball classic “All Night Long.” It’s too much to resist.

What can I say? “I Like It” hits all the pleasure centers (including nostalgia, seeing as it came out in the middle of my high school tenure) in my brain. It’s a beautifully stupid, hedonistic highlight of the 2009-12 pop golden age.

#95: “The Wire” by HAIM (2013)

Retro-pop standard bearers HAIM had plenty of great singles this decade. But one of their first, the groovy breakup anthem “The Wire,” is still their best.

Unlike many most breakup anthems, which tend to be wildly emotional, “The Wire” is matter-of-fact. The relationship simply isn’t working, and it’s time to end it. That’s that. You’re going to be okay.

The verging-on-curt lyrics mixed with the Haim sisters’ groovy early ‘80s rhythm makes for a pop jam that’s perfect for any “It’s not you, it’s me” moment in your life.

#94: “Helena Beat” by Foster The People (2011)

I know they represent the mainstream selling-out moment of the magical late-’00s MGMT/Passion Pit/Phoenix moment, but I have a soft spot for Foster The People. Their debut album, Torches, might not have much indie cred, but it’s all-killer-no-filler and stuffed with monster hooks. And despite “Pumped Up Kicks” being the big hit, I’ve always preferred the album’s opening track, “Helena Beat.”

With its shuffling disco beat and Mark Foster’s piercing falsetto, “Helena Beat” is likely about as close as alt-rock ever got to the Bee Gees. The lyrics, which tackle addiction, are much darker than “Staying Alive,” but it’s got a similar sense of propulsion.

And let’s not forget — Foster wrote jingles before starting a band, so he can get melodies stuck in your head. And once you’ve heard “Helena Beat,” good luck getting it unstuck.

#93: “Redbone” by Childish Gambino (2016)

“Redbone” might be the smoothest R&B cut on this list. Which is why the song’s sense of dread and paranoia makes it stand out. 

Donald Glover’s scratchy, passionate falsetto isn’t conventionally pretty, but it works well while singing about some unknown boogieman who’s “creeping.” That’s why “Redbone” was a perfect fit for Get Out, because of its lurking dread underneath the comfortable exterior. This is the song that cemented Glover as being a true renaissance man, rather than an actor with a weird musical side project.

(of course, this still isn’t Glover’s greatest musical contribution — that would be the iconic “Troy and Abed in the Morning” jingle. Especially the night variant.)

#92: “Do You” by Spoon (2014)

Spoon has been America’s most consistently great rock band for the past two decade now. Even calling them “consistent” is practically a cliché.

So all you need to know about “Do You” is that it’s another solid Spoon song in a vast catalog of Spoon songs. Lead singer Britt Daniel is still effortlessly cool, the guitar-driven groove is simple and it all goes down easy. By 2014, Spoon had nothing left to prove, except how long they could keep up their streak.

#91: “I’m Not Part of Me” by Cloud Nothings (2014)

Cloud Nothings’ finest moment is four and a half minutes of pure angst and crunchy guitars. Squint hard enough, and “I’m Not Part of Me” is one of the closest approximations to ‘90s alt-rock. And while the Ohio band isn’t necessarily reinventing the wheel here, refining what made past music so great can be just as effective.

#90: “Hello” by Adele (2015)

Despite only releasing two albums this decade, Adele casts a major shadow over the 2010s. Although I find both those records to be a little on the bland side, there’s a reason she was/is a juggernaut. And the example of her prowess is “Hello.”

“Hello” has everything you’d want in an Adele song: It’s about not getting over a breakup, a very relatable topic, and Adele gets to show off her cannon of a voice. But it also has a secret weapon compared to other Adele ballads: ‘80s power-ballad production! The bombastic chorus has more in common with Heart’s “Alone” than any of Adele’s previous hits, and it’s a perfect accompaniment to one of the decade’s most melodramatic singles.

#89: “Slumlord” by Neon Indian (2015)

Despite putting out two essentially perfect albums this decade, Neon Indian’s mastermind, Alan Palomo, doesn’t really have that one mind-melting single. Yes, “Polish Girl” was a decent-sized indie hit, but it’s nowhere near his best.

But “Slumlord” comes damn close to perfection. It’s not quite as heavy on the melted-VCR aesthetic of other songs on Palomo’s best album, Vega INTL. Night School, but it makes up for that with an irrepressible ‘80s techno groove. “Slumlord” is one of those songs that could ride its beat forever — and it kind of does, with the “Slumlord’s Re-lease” coda following it on the album. It’s a nocturnal synthpop jam that even those allergic to keyboards couldn’t resist.

#88: “The Bay” by Metronomy (2011)

While most synth-weilding indie acts were trying to ape MGMT’s high-pitched fever dreams in the early ‘10s, Metronomy decided on a different, sleeker path with their 2011 album The English Riviera. That album’s best single, “The Bay,” is an immaculate blend of silky smooth yacht rock and nervy, tense new wave. Those two opposite styles shouldn’t work together, but Metronomy managed to pull it off regardless, creating the perfect beach anthem for awkward hipster Brits.

#87: “bad guy” by Billie Eilish (2019)

I expect the 17-year-old Eilish will likely be remembered more as an icon of the 2020s than the 2010s, as she has a long and promising career ahead of her. It’s like how Lady Gaga is much more of a figure of this decade, despite her earliest hits arriving in 2009. But “bad guy” — the kind of left-field, innovative pop single that signals a new era — came out in 2019. And it’s too damn weird, catchy and just plain fun to leave off this list.

#86: “Latch” by Disclosure feat. Sam Smith (2012)

It’s a bummer that Sam Smith turned out to be such a bore, because “Latch” — his introduction to the world — is pure electricity. 

Smith and fellow Brits Disclosure, who provide the pulsating, sensual production, were a dream team on “Latch.” All Disclosure needed to do was give Smith plenty of room to unleash his golden pipes, complete with a few futuristic touches. Smith delivered on his end, proving his worth as one of the best vocalists for conveying drama on the dancefloor.

#85: “Need You Now” by Cut Copy (2011)

No, it’s not a cover of the Lady Antebellum hit of the same name. 

There were plenty of ‘80s-inspired epic synthpop bangers this decade; some groups made their entire careers off of them. But what sets Cut Copy’s “Need You Now” above the rest is its sense of patience. It’s an incredibly slow burner, building the tension with a thumping beat and calm vocals until it all explodes with a dazzling climax nearly 5 minutes in. Af that moment, the Aussies fulfill their promise with a euphoric release of synths and thundering drums. 

It’s not a complicated concept for a song, but Cut Copy executed it perfectly.

#84: “The Mother We Share” by CHVRCHES (2013)

Glasgow new wave trio CHVRCHES never really lived up to their promising 2013 debut album, which opened with the anthemic “The Mother We Share.” But man, what a way to start a career.

"The Mother We Share” is all icy synths and furious drum machines, the sounds bouncing off each other like a hall of mirrors. And lead singer Lauren Mayberry’s quiet but confident vocals add the necessary human touch, conveying a tragic feel to the song’s triumphant chorus.

#83: “Night Shift” by Lucy Dacus (2018)

One of the most ferocious, biting breakup songs of the decade, “Night Shift” is a showcase for Lucy Dacus’ vivid storytelling. The Virginia singer-songwriter spends the first half the song setting the scene of a crappy ex trying to halfway make amends, while Dacus’ character holds herself back from lashing out. She saves the visceral emotion for the second half, when the grungy guitars kick in and Dacus lets out a wounded howl, proudly stating that “I’ll never see you again/If I can help it.” “Night Shift” is a tour de force of indie rock songwriting that rewards patience.

#82: “Round and Round” by Ariel Pink (2010)

Much of indie-rock trickster Ariel Pink is a little too jokey and off-putting for my taste. But on his defining single “Round and Round,” he sprinkled in just the right touch of weirdness into a song that otherwise could’ve been a massive easy-listening hit in 1980.

The quirks throughout “Round and Round” — the woozy, off-kilter production, the lyrics that seemingly make no sense, Pink answering his phone in the middle of the song — are enjoyable. But the song’s true strength is in its chorus: a sudden punch of roller-disco AM-lite harmonies that cut through all the song’s oddities. It’s a double-shot of warmth and nostalgic beauty that feels comfortingly familiar, yet still thrilling.

Pink seemed to know the chorus was the key to “Round and Round,” as he makes the listener wait nearly two minutes for it. But its inevitable release is a truly magical moment.

#81: “4th of July, Philadelphia (SANDY)” by Cymbals Eat Guitars (2016)

Heavily referencing an early Bruce Springsteen classic in the title of a song that sounds nothing like Springsteen is quite the flex. But New Jersey indie-rockers Cymbals Eat Guitars pulled it off regardless.

“4th of July” is a clanging, anthemic scuzz-rock track about going through an existential crisis in the middle of Independence Day. While everyone else is making plans for the holiday, lead singer and guitarist Joseph D’Agostino is howling away, “HOW MANY UNIVERSES AM I ALIVE AND DEAD IN?!?” It’s one of the hardest-rocking mental breakdowns put on record this decade.

#80: “I Like It” by Cardi B, Bad Bunny and J Balvin (2018)

Rapping over extremely-obvious samples has been a time-honored tradition in hip-hop, from the Beastie Boys trading verses over The Beatles to Puff Daddy jacking the chorus from one ‘80s hit and the beat from another in the same song.

But Cardi B, and reggaeton superstars Bad Bunny and J Balvin sampling the boogaloo classic “I Like It Like That” was an inspired choice. The trio’s verses are all delicious fun, whether they’re bragging about eating halal in a Lamborghini or referencing a classic Lady Gaga hit.

But that sample, combined with a trap beat and Cardi’s swaggering charisma powering the chorus, is what makes “I Like It” a classic.

#79: “Sign of the Times” by Harry Styles (2017)

Most former boy band members aim for a grown-and-sexy pop anthem once they go solo, whether its Jordan Knight, Justin Timberlake or Zayn Malik. But the standout member of the 2010s’ standout boy band, Harry Styles, chose took a sharp left turn into melodramatic classic rock instead. And it was a brilliant decision.

"Sign of the Times” is about as close to a classic Beatles or Queen power ballad we got this decade, with its clanging Western guitars, lush strings and thundering drum fills. Styles doesn’t have Freddie Mercury’s gravity-defying vocals, but his immense charisma powers the song anyways. It’s not 100% clear what “Sign of the Times” is about, but with its cinematic scope and cryptic lyrics, it’s likely about the apocalypse. And there’s not many superior songs to cry to while the bombs fall.

#78: “Dancing On My Own” by Robyn (2010)

The ultimate crying-on-the-dancefloor anthem, “Dancing On My Own” has already become a standard.

But Swedish alt-pop icon Robyn’s combination of icy synths and heartbroken, jealous lyrics can’t be replicated. Just ask Calum Scott, who slowed down the track into mushy, piano-ballad goop. Yikes.

What makes “Dancing On My Own” brilliant is its resiliency. It’s not a mopey song — Robyn is defiantly still grooving despite her crushed feelings. It’s a siren call for all those who have been hurt and know the only proper way to work out their emotions through cathartic dancing.

#77: “Trap Queen” by Fetty Wap (2015)

“Trap Queen” is an incredibly fun hip-hop banger, but I don’t think I can extoll its virtues quite as well as Fetty Wap’s hype man at the end of the track. So I’ll let him speak:

“YOU HEAR MY BOY SOUNDIN’ LIKE A ZILLION BUCKS ON THE TRACK?! I GOT WHATEVER ON MY BOY!!”

Amen. It’s a real shame Fetty wasn’t able to keep his momentum rolling past a big 2015, but at least we’ll always have the magic dying-walrus energy of “Trap Queen.” HEY WHAT’S UP HELLOOOOO

#75: “R U Mine?” by Arctic Monkeys (2012)

"R U Mine?” offers Arctic Monkeys fans the best of both worlds. On one hand, you have their AM-era slinky swagger. But it also retains the furious rock-n-roll energy of their early days.

Alex Turner sounds like a smooth-talkin’ cowboy here, but the music is anything but smooth. It hits like a semi-truck, with a calvary-charge guitar riff and so many thunderous drum fills you’d think you were listening to the E Street Band.