#there's also a whole thing about the lyrics of the man who sold the world

[folansstuff]

DAZZLER WORLD TOUR - Jason Loo and Rafael Louerio

New York, NY— May 15, 2024 — Let the music play! With the fall of Krakoa, the X-Men’s dream of coexistence has never felt more impossible. Luckily, mutantkind’s very own pop princess has a song that will unite the masses—and paint a big target on her back—in an all-new DAZZLER comic book limited series! From rising Marvel star Jason Loo (Sentry, Infinity Paws) and extraordinary Marvel newcomer artist Rafael Loureiro, DAZZLER will launch this September as part of the X-Men’s new From the Ashes era!

No stranger to headlining, Alison Blaire enjoyed a successful solo career outside the X-Men in the 1980s with the fondly remembered and long-running Dazzler series. Now, she’s back to inspire a whole new generation, spreading a message of love and acceptance one sold-out show at a time. Her tour is for everyone, but backstage, Alison is joined by a crew of fellow mutants—head of security Domino, personal guard Strong Guy, one-man roadie Multiple Man, drummer Shark-Girl, and expert publicist Wind Dancer! Anti-mutant fervor has never felt more personal, but anyone who tries to dim Dazzler’s light will just have to face the music!

OUT & PROUD AS A MUTANT AND BACK ON THE ROAD! Dazzler, Marvel’s glittering mutant songstress, has been in and out of the limelight over the years – but now the time has finally come for her to take center stage! Dazzler embarks on a new world tour, the culmination and celebration of her entire musical career. But while Dazzler may be ready to focus on her music, her celebrity-mutant status and a violent attack may sideline the entire endeavor before it’s even begun…

“Rafael and I are giving everyone backstage access to the greatest show of the decade: the Dazzler World Tour!” Loo said. “Sounds exciting? Not for Dazzler when she’s facing tons of pressure from all sorts of people trying to cancel her shows. But she’s not going down without a fight.”

“Ever since I can remember, I’ve been crazy about two things: music and drawing comics. To think that I would be able to combine both passions in my Marvel debut is beyond my wildest dreams. Not only that, but with such an amazing X-Men character as Dazzler—I absolutely had to jump at the chance!” Loureiro shared. “When I read Jason’s script, I kept thinking to myself ‘Oh, I’m gonna have so much fun with this!’ Now, Dazzler has a special place in my heart, and I can almost hear her singing inside my head with every page that I draw. I’m honored to be a part of this project, bringing her into the spotlight for all readers and lifting her to her rightful place as a super star!”

Each issue of DAZZLER will also feature all-new song lyrics from Ali’s notebook!

“Get ready to sing along to some new, original songs off of her new album!” Loo added. “Some of them may be about her exes.”

[aemiron-main]

i think we should get “the man who sold the world” in s5 because a.) brenner being referred to as “the man” and “who” and b.) the song involving a guy seemingly meeting his own doppelganger + also lyrics with hivemind vibes (ie, the swap from “he” to “we””) etc vs what i’ve posted about re: brenner actually being a doppelganger/shapeshifter

LIKE?? A SONG WITH “THE MAN” AND “WHO” IN THE TITLE THAT HAS DOPPELGANGER STUFF IN IT?? DUFFERS PLEASE ITS MADE FOR BRENNER

And the fact that this would also be a Metal Gear reference…. Considering the whole cloning thing in MG + twin clones + literally everything else in MG that has huge ST vibes (theres SO MUCH)

[vanilla-phantoms]

I could be so interested in a breakdown of your playlists! I love when people tell me their Kepler thoughts :)

Hoo boy here we go (I think I will do this in three separate posts bc otherwise it will be miles long, but here’s part one)

First off, here’s the playlist again for reference:

1. Tombstone Blues by Richie Havens

This one is on his official playlist by Urbena and it really influenced some of my hcs for him. It feels like a good tone setter for the whole playlist as well as starting off chronologically with his childhood.

“Mama's in the factory, she ain't got no shoes

Daddy's in the alley, he's lookin' for food

I'm in the kitchen with the tombstone blues”

I headcanon he grew up poor with parents who were often absent and working, leading him to become very competent and self sufficient at a young age.

The verses to this song also have this sense of absurdist parody of capitalist wartime America which really fits well for his character as a whole

2. White Room by Cream

This one is also on his official playlist and I’m gonna be honest I mostly put it here for vibes. The lyrics don’t make too much sense except for the repeated train station setting. I especially like this verse for him:

“You said no strings could secure you at the station

Platform ticket, restless diesels, goodbye windows

I walked into such a sad time at the station

As I walked out, felt my own need just beginning”

Idk man. It just fits. There’s going to be a theme in these early life songs of restless frustration.

3. Time Bomb by Rancid

I discovered this song as a Jacobi song, but I can imagine Kepler in his mid teen years falling in with the ‘wrong crowd’ and having a rebellious phase. Once more mostly a reflection of an upbringing forcing him to grow up too fast and a restless anger from being someone very intelligent with few opportunities.

“Well, he's back in the hole where they got him living

Like a rat but he's smarter than that nine lives

Like a cat 15 years old, take him to the youth authority home

First thing you learn, you got to make it in this world alone”

4. King for a Day by Green Day

This is on there for gender headcanons that are very influenced by the headcanons of a friend of mine @vvarren-kepler (who will have more insightful comments about this than me). But it boils down to, Kepler is always someone who uses his image as a tool, and maybe at goddard he uses a traditionally masculine presentation to achieve a specific image and effect and because he knows life will be easier for him that way. Maybe, just maybe, when he was younger with a bit more freedom, he was a bit different.

5. Dirty Imbecile by The Happy Fits

See my other post here for this one:

6. Red Right Hand by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

This one is here for his recruitment into Goddard. I like to hc that Cutter recruited him himself, and so in this song Cutter is the man with the red right hand, coming to “rescue” kepler from his life with high and dangerous promises

7. The Devil Wears a Suit and Tie by Colter Wall

This song is a fun one for Kepler in general, but like the one before the “devil” in this song is actually Cutter. This is another one I have on here for his recruitment. I really like the metaphor of goddard as something kepler “sold his soul” or his humanity to, like Lovelace points out in that one scene.

Highlighting this lyric because I can really see cutter using a “you’re just like me” kind of technique when recruiting kepler:

“I know you, I know you young man

I know you by the state of your hands

You're a six-string picker

Just as I, I am”

8. Megalomania by David Lemaitre

This is for him as he’s just joined Goddard, getting used to the cutthroat lifestyle and feeling a little out of his depth.

9. Call Them Brothers by Regina Spektor

I’ve mentioned before that I hc Kepler as having a younger brother that he was the primary caretaker of growing up but who he is now estranged from. This is the process of that estrangement. I think kepler did stick around and take care of him at least until he came of age and could take care of himself, but not for long after that. This could also be the time he decides to change his name and separate himself from his family entirely (I also hc that Kepler isn’t his real surname)

10. Glory and Gore by Lorde

This one is also on his official playlist, and I’m using it to represent his transfer from more normal work in goddard to the black-ops work he ends up leading. I think he probably didn’t start there, but it’s always where Cutter intended to put him. This lyric is one I think fits him pretty well:

‘Delicate in every way but one (the swordplay)

God knows we like archaic kinds of fun (the old ways)

Chance is the only game I play with, baby

We let our battles choose us’

[musicisinmyveins]

I always thought of myself as a "music buff". I loved music in so many forms. I obviously loved the music my parents brought me up with; which was their tastes I suppose. My Mom had a love for Neil Diamond and Elvis Presley. My Dad, I guess I never really knew back when I was younger who his favorites were. In fact, I am still not sure who they are. Perhaps I should look into that before I no longer can.

My taste in music was a wide variety though. However, what I lacked in, was a knowledge of the members of all the bands that I had a passion for. I knew songs, not always the titles. I knew a few lyrics, not always full tunes. I definitely did not know artists, singers, drummers, guitar players. I suspect when I was growing up I may have known more but as I got older and had children, I definitely became "absent" in the world of anything that wasn't in the life of a child. I am almost ashamed to admit that I barely knew who Kurt Cobain was when he passed away. I mean, of course I had heard of Nirvana, but to have known the whole story of him and his life and to have truly known him, I did not. I was too buy raising small boys to even entertain the idea of listening to anything other than Barney and Winnie the Pooh. I also think, at that stage in my life, I may have been listening to country music or going to dance clubs on the few nights I did go out. I knew the Macarena dance moves, and the lyrics to "Baby Got Back" but there were so few things in life I had time for truly.

When someone comes into your life and either introduces you to good music or perhaps they just simply take the time to teach you about music, artists and how to appreciate something that you once truly loved all over again, you will never forget that person. You also generally never forget the moment that they first made this happen.

For me it was when I was asked who my favorite artist was and I couldn't name anyone and he responded with Dave Grohl. I was so embarrassed when I didn't know who that was. Even more so now.

He made it my homework assitnment to learn who he was and to listen to the Foo Fighters. I will never forget. I took that assignment very seriously. I found a documentary on Netflix and watched it that night. I was sold. I fell in love with Dave and with Taylor Hawkins. I think perhaps I fell in love with all of them to be honest.

Since that day, the man that brought me to that moment has brought me so many more songs and artists and moments in those artists lives. I have looked at stories and documentaries. I know so much about Kurt Cobain now and have fallen in love with so much of his music and have cried about losing such an amazing talent. I will be touching on so many of these stories and songs and artists he has brought into my world. It's oe of the greatest gifts he has ever given back to me.

Dave Grohl. I can't believe that I ever said that I didn't know who that was. I am ashamed of the girl that sputtered those words. I knew a lot of music, good music before that day, but my true appreciation for it has never been what it is like it is since that day.

Perhaps we all have that defining music moment.

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 20th December

Well, I wanted an upbeat rocker, and I think I got two for the price of one! Both artists this week are known quantities, but it's good to see them still scoring some hits and adapting to a more modern sound.

Singing the Blues - Guy Mitchell (peaked at Number 1)

I already knew this song quite well before firing it up - it was a staple of family roadtrips in my childhood, and somehow its mix of chirpy whistling, strummy guitar and repetitive lyrics just wormed their way into some corner of my brain and stuck there, as a result of which I could absolutely sing you the majority of this song by heart. I think it also helps that there's a version that's been adapted as a local football song, where I grew up?

Thankfully, it's quite a good song. Its main trick is that it combines a perky, upbeat tune with some almost theatrically downbeat lyrics about how Guy's never felt more like singin' the blues. He's lost his love, and suddenly the moon and stars no longer shine / The dream is gone I thought was mine. He sings it all with a sort of camp hamminess, especially on lines about how he's gonna cry-y-y-y over you, and you can't help but suspect that Guy's enjoying wallowing in his misery, just a little bit.

It doesn't hurt that the song's got so many other elements that just scream "fun", from the relatively fast pace, to the whistling solo in the middle, to the backing singers repeating key phrases like cry over you and the way that Guy's voice periodically dips into this low-pitched, croony register that's just on the edge of being silly. It's almost tailor-made to sing along with, once you've heard it a few times.

It's also apparently well know among charts fans for having reached Number 1 not once, not twice, but three separate times, as it kept getting unseated and then coming back. One time it got unseated by a different version of Singing the Blues. Which is kind of interesting, if you're a nerd about that kind of thing.

Cindy, Oh Cindy - Eddie Fisher (5)

Is there a more 1950s rock and roll title out there? I feel like Cindy as a name is just peak 1950s, you don't get many babies called Cindy nowadays. No idea what to expect here, but I'm sold on the title.

The song itself starts promisingly, with some slowly booming bass leading into a guitar and string riff, all of which set up Eddie's introduction, where he entreats his love straight away: Cindy, oh Cindy / Cindy don't let me down / Write me a letter soon / And I'll be homeward bound.

It's effective enough, and sets the tone for the whole song, as Eddie then unfolds the story of what he's done. You see, he joined the navy to see a bit of the world, but despite travelling all over the place, he's still pining after Cindy, who he left behind. You get the sense that he maybe only realised this after leaving her behind, and it leads to some of the loveliest moments of the song, as Eddie sings about how I see her face in every wave / Her lips kiss every breeze or about At night I pace the lonely deck, caressed by memories.

It's all pretty classic 1950s fare - how many songs have we now had about lovers separated when the man goes off on some sort of military service? - but the way that Eddie's longing is projected out onto the world around him adds a sort of poetry that in turn brings a touch of class that these "I really miss my girl back home" songs don't always have. And it's the same with the orchestration of it all, which goes a step or two beyond what you'd normally see in songs like this. I mean, at one point, there's even what sounds like an oboe? Which is definitely not part of your standard pop set-up.

The song was apparently not an Eddie Fisher original, but was rather by a band called Vince Martin and the Tarriers. They, in turn, had been inspired by the Weavers and the Kingston Trio, both bands part of an ongoing American folk revival, who were performing a work song called Pay Me My Money Down, itself originally written and sung by black stevedores in the Sea Islands of Georgia. It's an influece that's kind of cool - we're not getting much folk music yet, but it's interesting to see its influence filtering through into the mainstream like this, even if it's limited in scope.

Come to think of it, it's a similar type of folk music that's inspiring people like Lonnie Donegan, but I imagine his take on Pay Me My Money Down would sound very different!

Yeah, I enjoyed both of these songs. They're fun, and are both interesting examples of artists who we were hearing back in 1952, but who've adapted and fitted their sound to work in a more 1956 context. And both attempts are very respectable, even if one's definitely my favourite.

Favourite song of the bunch: Signing the Blues

[je-suis-problematique]

The Should Be Muzzled, otherwise known as "the social outcasts who picked up some instruments and started a band", otherwise-otherwise known as "let's talk about Vesemir's friends".

It's a shame we deleted the post explaining Vesemir's backstory in detail when we decided to wipe the blog because it showcased most of his origin story and how he ended up becoming a bard to begin with so I guess I'll just summarize it real quick: Vesemir was born into a privileged family in the Upper City of Baldur's Gate and since he was a small child he was placed on a set path to go into medicine like his parents (a surgeon and a nurse) but he didn't really vibe with that so he cut contact with his (abusive) family when he was old enough to do so and went on to pursue a career in music. This is like the barest of the bare minimum you need to know about Vesemir to understand the rest of this post.

The first person Vesemir linked up with was Delilah. She's a delinquent lupine from the Lower City who had her hands in everyone's pockets and her snout in everyone's business. She traded in gossip, and had a knack for unearthing the dirtiest secrets and the nastiest scandals in all of Baldur's Gate while also nabbing an expensive family heirloom or two to sell for extra coin. In theory, her talents could have landed her a proper job as a journalist for Baldur's Mouth but she preferred to work as a freelancer if she could even be called that since she hated the idea of having a boss over her head and having to somewhat censor herself in order to write official articles for the gazette. She was young, free, and the world was her oyster – she clicked with Vesemir instantly after meeting him in a tavern and helping him out with some lyrics for one of his debut pieces. She tried to charge him for providing him with fresh content for his ballads but he offered her a long-term partnership instead. He liked her spunk and sharp tongue, she liked the prospect of steady income, and so she agreed to be Vesemir's muse as long as he made it profitable for her. With Delilah, Vesemir never ran out of fresh gossip to sing about and with time, Vesemir even taught her how to sing and play the lute so she could perform with him (I forgot to mention that Vesemir's main instrument is the violin).

The second person to join their little group was Achoris. Achoris was a half-angel who made a name for himself as a musician in the Upper City, performing live at parties and other such lavish events for the nobility there. He was a singer and a harpist with a divine voice and killer looks so naturally he was very expensive and booking a performance from him was considered a privilege. Those who didn't know any better thought that he lived a perfect life of luxury as a rich and rather famous artist, but the truth was far grimmer than that. Achoris was a slave to a greedy man named Sisko who acted as his producer or manager to the public eye but behind closed doors, Sisko would abuse and overwork his caged songbird without mercy. Sisko even sold Achoris' body to fanatical fans, whoring him out for profit's sake. Achoris desperately wanted out, so once he heard of a new bard making waves in the Lower City with the help of the nosy lupine Delilah, he saw an opportunity to escape and decided to seize it. He found out the bard's identity and arranged a secret meeting with him through Delilah, asking for their help to free himself from the magical contract that bound him to Sisko. Vesemir truly did feel for Achoris and agreed to help, not only freeing him of the contract – but also killing Sisko and making a public display of the whole thing. Vesemir then whisked Achoris away, and Achoris was more than happy to exchange life in a golden cage for one on the road.

The last one to join Vesemir was Sythaeryn, a human flutist of middling age. Sythaeryn's career as a musician was plummeting prior to meeting Vesemir – he was struggling to come up with new pieces and the old ones were losing their charm, all because Sythaeryn was too grief-stricken to continue performing following the death of his husband, Mavros. Mavros succumbed to a terminal illness and there was nothing too incredibly dramatic about his passing but Sythaeryn felt as if the sky itself has fallen, he couldn't go on living without his other half. Sythaeryn's depression eventually led him to develop suicidal thoughts and he was truly, seriously considering taking his own life but then he heard Vesemir perform a song about exactly that, lost love and suicide. The song touched Sythaeryn's heart and made him second-guess his decision to end his life that night. He approached Vesemir once he could catch him alone and, out of sheer desperation and loneliness, told him his story and how Vesemir's song likely prevented a death that night. Vesemir invited Sythaeryn for a round of drinks and the decision to partner up with him came up naturally after that. Sythaeryn was very awkward and weird for a while around Vesemir's band since he didn't really expect to make new friends at the lowest point of his life but he opened up to them eventually.

And that's that! Also, the name was Delilah's idea. :)

[gabbysdawsons]

your turn 👀 atticus wayne info dump please, my beloved!

ah Atticus Wayne.

is a mess.

So i'm gonna mostly focus on The Batman!Atticus cause it's been a hot minute since I've seen Gotham and TDK trilogy so the details there are very vague.

Atticus is Bruce's younger brother, and as much as he hates it, it's written all over him. His life has been people can't get ahold of Bruce Wayne so they go to him instead. From the moment he turned 18 he was the middle man between Wayne Enterprises and their investors, even though for all intents and purposes, it should be Bruce.

Atticus Wayne turns 20 and finally finds a way to slip through the cracks. He never much cared for the limelight anyway, and why not make it Bruce's problem while he can?

hop skip and jump forward a couple years. Atticus and Bruce don't talk. They barely did before, and they don't even notice now. Alfred talks for them. He deserves to be paid more just for putting up with this tbh.

Bruce became Batman, Atticus got thrown into Blackgate Penitentiary for two years. He got released a handful of months before the events of The Batman, and he gets tangled up in the drops business, but more specifically, the Iceburg Lounge, or even more specifically, 44 Below. Which is where he meets Vivian Lochlann.

Viv has been working for Oswald for about a year now, she's observant, and calm, and doesn't look at Atticus like she wants anything from him, and he's in love with her by the end of his first month working for Oswald

Viv is my beloved <3 my baby <3 and her and Atticus actually end up like, living with Selina and Annika.

Viv is actually the one exception to the Atticus Wayne and Nora Northall pattern I have going throughout the other iterations of Batman

anyway. he's not aware that Bruce is Batman, at least on a conscious level, on a subconscious level he sees Batman and immediately goes "yes. fight." because we're all about that weird sibling urge to just fucking attack your sibling for no rhyme or reason

anyway. he does not care for Batman, but he puts up with him because Annika is his friend and he wants to help Selina find her

he also has a very cynical approach to Gotham as a city, which anyone would have after seeing the inside of Blackgate

and as for the Riddler, well, if you can't get to Bruce Wayne, his younger brother is a fine backup

and as for Gotham

He's been retconned as Bruce's uncle and Thomas' brother cause I want to have homicide detective duo, Atticus Wayne and Nora Northall

aka just an excuse for me to be able to use Hugh Dancy and Caroline Dhavernas as fcs

anyway. here's his pinterest board and spotify playlist

[riacte]

hello hello, would you mind talking about spopera? Specifically, i saw a post a while ago about space twitter (which was hilarious) and... could you please tell me more about that side of the au :D

(also, what's your favourite little thing in spopera?)

YESS spopera!! And omg I LOVE space twitter. We have a #shitposting channel on the server and it’s my home <3 so thanks for the ask!!

(Coincidentally this is also my favourite thing lolol)

Buckle up because it’s gonna be wild 👀

First we have the genesis of all spacetwt discourse: the trans Lumians discourse. Basically some Twitter (the official name for the app is Twilight in this AU but I’m using Twitter because it’s funnier) users think Martyn is transgender False. Because they’re blonde, the same species, and stick with Ren. That’s literally their rationale. It’s a huge conspiracy with users going “prince of hearts 😍” and deeming it’s “transphobic to use f*lse because it’s martyn’s deadname”. Of course people with common sense go “🤨they look different and their freckles are literally different colours🤨” but the trans truthers don’t listen… it’s a huge argument online 😭

Then of course we have the fanfiction!! Exterra RPF!! Who could forget! We have Launchpad (Wattpad) and the Starchive (Ao3) <3 Someone found out Ren was seen as a delinquent when he visited False during their highschool years and boy you would not believe the EXPLOSION of Bad Boy RK content. It’s embarrassing. It’s funny. Bad Boy RK x Reader…. And of course the classic “got sold to RK and Queen of Hearts”. Because the kids would want that.

There is ALSO discourse on how Launchpad and Starchive characterise Bad Boy! RK. Starchive has those 10k delinquent befriending private school student Falseren fics with lowercase lyric titles. Launchpad just has a lot of X Reader fics.

BTW the most popular Exterra RPF fic is called Cold Spells— a parody of Heat Waves of course. It’s exactly what you imagine it is. The second most popular fic is a Medieval AU called a hand to hold until the end. Yes, it’s the 3rd Life AU. Yes, the author has the trafficpose url. (Check out the real owner of trafficpose here for more spopera content!! :D)

So that’s Starchive in a nutshell. However AO3 also exists… as a chemical compound. Someone (we’re thinking Cub) found AO3 and discovered it could be used in starship launchers. Essential, AO3 fuels ships. Yes it’s a pun.

Also the shipping discourse is insane in this universe. The whole “real people shipping is bad and invasive” thing aside, people just love arguing about the ships. The Falseren shippers fight with the Treebark shippers. People ship Ren x Skizz and Ren x Etho or whatever. And Doc. They also ship Ren with his crazy blue stalker (“😍 10k enemies to lovers 😍”). There are also genuine Treebark Truthers 😭 they call the Falseren shippers “comphet” or “heteronormative” or SOMETHING.

You think it can’t get worse. Well, it can! People ship the raceships. Shipshipping. Like, they humanise the freaking ships. The Dogwarts freighter is humanised into a dilf. People would unironically make tweets like “ // shipshipping idk i don’t like how the fandom portrayals falsewell as an old person it’s kinda ageist :( “

NOT TO MENTION THE SUBTWT DRAMA…. part of #hearttwt (False’s subtwt) don’t like Ren because they think he’s problematic and weird and a “Lumian fetishiser”. So we get tweets like “// red king neg DONT WORRY WE’LL SAVE FALSIE FROM THE STINKY MAN” the replies are like “???? They’re literally best friends???”. People also say shit like “my nyooms nyooms 🥺” “my poor glow glow” unironically.

Have some Space Twitter screenshots I made <3 not entirely canon but it’s funny <3

Also I made Space Gacha. This isn’t spoilers I promise—

yeah. so like. fictional discourse is the only part of world building ive contributed to 💀 also we borrowed a ton of stuff from f1 fandom which is just irl spopera BSBFHSBSA

I can imagine it’ll only get worse with time… anyways if you’ve read this far thanks for putting up with this LMAO

[teenagecriminalmastermind]

fear street appreciation week: day 5!

Day 5 (June 30): Music or Lyrics

today I'm tackling a different prompt for the day in a different way, and examining two of my favourite songs from the trilogy and their lyrics, and how they offer a pretty neat form of foreshadowing for schrodinger's antagonist, nick goode.

settle in, this is gonna be a little longer than my recent stuff.

let's first hit it with Carry On, Wayward Son.

first off, unrelated but props to fear street for rewiring several people's association with this song, and removing supernatural from that equation (nothing against supernatural except for the declining quality since season 5 and a writer's room that can't let two men peacefully be in love on a show about literal supernatural beings).

now onto the main point.

Carry on, my wayward son There'll be peace when you are done Lay your weary head to rest Don't you cry no more

nick is obviously shocked over the reality of his choices, as we see in the movie when he throws up in the bushes. he is very much a wayward son - not only sheriff goode, but also satan's wayward son.

he doesn't really want to carry on the legacy, but he is the eldest and reminded since he was old enough to understand that he has a duty to his family and to the goode line. that and the fact that it comes with guaranteed prosperity for them. he'll certainly be at peace after all this is over (or at the very least, with access to therapy).

Once I rose above the noise and confusion Just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion I was soaring ever higher But I flew too high

Well, his plan was a rip-roaring success with just a hiccup - he did not factor in Ziggy Berman getting in the path of harm's way, and honestly that's on this fuckin idiot.

Though my eyes could see, I still was a blind man Though my mind could think, I still was a mad man I hear the voices when I'm dreaming I can hear them say

Satan has definitely warped his moral compass, if not completely annihilated it and installed a new one by now. He's still a kid and still retains some of his humanity, and this is his first sacrifice - a little too premature in the scheme of things since Joseph Goode got called to the devil's front porch before time - so he's certainly not as ready as they would have wanted him to be. We've seen that Satan's voice calls to the doomed chosen killer, so who's to say a little hand holding in the form of mental pointers wasn't happening with Nick?

Masquerading as a man with a reason My charade is the event of the season

ohhohoho, this is my favourite and also definitely the most obvious of the foreshadowing. here is nick goode, masquerading as the level headed, calm and stoic counselor who rose up to the occasion in this horrific time, not knowing that this whole hell is of his making. nuff said.

On a stormy sea of moving emotion Tossed about, I'm like a ship on the ocean

well, ziggy berman isn't making it easy for him, is she?

Carry on, you will always remember Carry on, nothing equals the splendor Now your life's no longer empty Surely heaven waits for you

I mean, he did get the favoured status of devil's #1 employee for several years, but sir,,, you didn't get that happily ever after you planned with ziggy, did you?

(narrator: heaven did not wait for him.)

and now we me move on to the next one, also from 1978 - david bowie's "the man who saved the world".

you can't bring a person who died due to multiple stab wounds back from the dead with just a touch of CPR.

nicholas goode made a deal with the devil to bring back who he coveted and loved most. in that moment, ziggy was face to face with the man who sold the world.

I must have died alone A long, long time ago

well, a big part of his humanity certainly died when he sealed that deal with the devil, and a decent chunk more must have been taken to bring ziggy back. in the way that matter, nick died to ziggy a long time ago.

Oh no, not me We never lost control You're face to face With the man who sold the world

nick would like to believe he didn't lose control. he brought ziggy back, so of course he still has control of the situation, at least in his mind. and the world is a small price to pay for his universe, isn't it?

[yournameyn]

Feeling Deeply: Chapter 3

Genre: Fluff so much fluff. Arranged Marriage Fic.

Pairing: Namjoon x OC

Summary: The story of two deeply feeling nerds who find themselves in an arranged marriage. Something neither of them really wanted but are now discovering just how much each needed. Away from their childhoods, their families & their homes, Namjoon & Brishti (the OC) are privileged immigrants who slowly build a home, a family & a true sense of self, together in 1960s London. Please note this is not the typical immigrant experience of that timespace and I’ve taken many-a-leap to write the fluuuufffiness I wanted to write.

A/N: It’s unabashed fluff. And eventual smut but I hope you’re okay with a really slow burn. Like, reaaaally slow. Both our characters are introverts & met as strangers so it’s going to take them a while to get the *ahem* fire going.

Big big big love to @sahmfanficbts, @mintjoonlep, @holdinbacksecrets, @sunshyngal, @xjoonchildx - who give me so much love and encouragement & whose straight up genius writing makes me swooooon!

Characters: Brishti is our OC. She’s a feminist, obviously. She’s Indian, wheatish in colour, curvy & slightly short. Brishti is bengali & her name means ‘Rain’. Her pet name is RimJhim which means the sound of rain. (Namjoon calls her Rim & she calls him Joon) This whole story is a tribute to Forever Rain.

The Namjoon in this fic is what I imagine he would have been had he not followed his dreams at the age of 13. Hopefully, I’m able to do justice to the idea as I write ahead.

Current Chapter: London, late 1963. Brishti & Namjoon meet her colleagues. They listen to the then-rising band The Beatles & take a strong liking to one particular track, if you know what I mean. Again, sorry to spoil but there’s no smut yet. I was not kidding when I said it’s a slooooow burn. Next chapter, it’s happening. There's not much conversation in this chapter, either. Is this almost 3k words of just CONTEXT to the actual smut or just a tease - you tell me!

Also, someone else we love is also introduced in this chapter!

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Previously in Feeling Deeply: Preface Chapter 1 Chapter 2

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Namjoon loved his weekends now. They were like a real couple, Brishti and him… setting the never ending “final touches” in their home, together. They went out to pubs and gardens, libraries and cafes together. And yet, to both their secret dismay, they hadn't moved ahead from that one hug they had shared. They'd played, instead, with words and been more and more intimate in their conversations.

Brishti introduced him to her colleagues - her group among the staff at the British Library. Working there was her pride & these folk were her joy. This was nerve-wracking for Namjoon because he knew how much she loved them. These were her people. Her true tribe. It was almost like he was meeting her parents. Instead of two indian elders (whom he had spoken to on the only international call she had made since their wedding), he found himself faced with a weird band of strangers. An English couple Harry & Kate who had adopted the library instead of a child, an elder woman from Japan, Sayuri-san - whose stories Brishti narrated to Namjoon all the time, a Korean guy (his age!) & Yana, a girl, Brishti’s age who was half English, half Iranian & completely in love with Sam, the black historian from America, as Brishti had reported. As they settled in for their picnic in Hyde Park, Namjoon tried his best to hide his shock when he found Sam was - one, a girl & two, as tall as him. He wondered which attribute threw him off more. Still, he was completely enjoying himself with Brishti’s Unlikely Gang of Weirdos that Will Save The World. That’s what she called them. Sayuri-san agreed - They were all groovy outcasts who had somehow clawed their way into the (apparently) cutthroat world mainstream librarians.

Brishti was glad to see Namjoon really hit it off with the only other Korean she knew, the guy who’d told her about the only place in London that sold black bean noodles, made the right way. Namjoon had almost cried when she had brought them over from work. The two of them spoke as if they had been thick as thieves for years. They talked about Korean poetry and the folk music they had to participate in their childhoods. They spoke about the music archive section of the library, which was heaven for Min Yoongi. The passion in Yoongi’s eyes when he spoke about maybe someday taking a class about world music appreciation was something Namjoon wished to have too, but wasn’t yet ready to admit.

As they were packing up their picnic, the conversation flowed to a new band in the country. Brishti spoke about how every young girl she had met recently just could not stop talking about how groovy The Beatles are. The elders in charge of the music archive brushed them off as a fad but she was insistent to bring it up every meeting - after all, it was teenage girls that had popularised & helped usher in the lyrical music of Vivaldi. Or of Lisztomania - that popularised the soft romantic tones of Liszt which formed the base of the modern love song. Namjoon loved to see her almost up in arms, struggling to find a better word for the admiration that girls had for music and musicians.

“It’s not hysteria… or fanaticism… it- it’s just love.” She had said. No one disagreed. In fact, everyone in her group was persuaded to (at least) give The Beatles a listen over the weekend.

And so, This evening, A Hard Day’s Night played as they arranged books & records at home. Brishti was arranging the books, apparently not having had enough of the task despite working as a full time librarian. Namjoon’s heart ached when he thought about how Brishti loved her job. Thankfully his mind never stayed on that thought for long. Namjoon wished he could pay attention to the song. These days, paying attention to anything but Brishti was almost impossible. The smallest movement in her, the smallest stir intrigued him.

Meanwhile, Brishti had been trying to figure out a way of getting him to touch her &… as silly as that sounded to her rational mind she couldn’t really come out and say it. Night after night when they’d stayed up talking about things or listening to music or just simply reading their respective books, on the floor or by the window with their legs sprawled out in front of each other, she wished he’d touch her… that somehow maybe he’d notice her feet. Strange as it was, she kept thinking about his hands, his fingers tracing the contour of her ankle while she didn’t turn one page of her book for almost an hour.

She understood the problem - both of them were so hyper-aware of each other while pretending not to be that an accident couldn’t really occur. Things had to be done & Brishti thought about how she shouldn’t let tradition dictate who makes the first move. She also kicked herself for not following tradition and stopping him from taking his pillow & blanket away to the couch on their wedding night they were supposed to sleep on the same bed. It made her heart race that she could sleep next to this Korean Greek God-like feminist man. Ufff. She was covered in tense knots everywhere and anytime she even thought of making a move, the fear in her would make her do something else - like unpack all the books into a makeshift bookcase.

They were facing in opposite directions in the same room and Brishti couldn’t help glancing back at Namjoon again and again. The broad expanse of his back made her long to hug him again. They hadn’t touched each other since she let go of the hug. It made her ache, the memory of him moving away from her. Next time they touch, she wouldn’t let go first - of this she was certain.

Brishti looked at him again & smiled, wondering how someone so tall could look so tiny & cute. Namjoon did look surprisingly tiny, poring over the vinyls & neatly arranging them. She smiled thinking about how he had spent some time wondering if the records should be kept chronologically or alphabetically.

Finally, he had announced, “Ofcourse! I have it! The category has to be mood! The...” Brishti loved the small pauses Namjoon took to find the perfect word. “The story of each album and the feeling it brings out!” The way he smiled, pleased with his decision created a flutter in her heart.

Looking at him poring over each song in each album trying to discern what the overall feeling of it was, she felt an unbearable urge to tease him, to disturb his cataloguing. She would go over and irritate him… probably tickle his waist or blow in his ears. Or maybe just nuzzle his neck. Brishti wondered if these things would actually irritate Namjoon or perhaps lead to something else... The thought made her blush so fiercely, she turned to face her pile of books. Brishti wished she could walk over, silently demand a space in Namjoon’s lap, he would throw out anything that crowded his lap & she would sit there, being cuddled, enveloped in him & talk about songs… if she could talk, at such a moment that is.

She needed to stop staring at him and yet, she couldn’t help but look... She was a warm-blooded woman after all. And Kim Namjoon was a particularly delicious man. It wasn’t so much that he was tall… plenty of men were tall. (She rolled her eyes thinking how most everyone was taller than her.) Unlike other men, though, Namjoon was not awkward or gangly. He had wide shoulders and a gorgeous neck. She had to actively keep her eyes focussed on something else when she could see the contours of his chest.

In that first week of them living together she wanted him. She felt the heat of being seen by those sharp beautiful eyes that held a deep fire in them. Brishti found herself thinking more and more about how his back looked, how it would feel to be cuddled up against that broad beautiful chest, how it would feel to touch him and to be touched by him. She blushed & laughed to herself when her spontaneous thought was that she’d like to “climb that tree” - whenever Namjoon stood up after being scrunched over his table, writing. That yearning awakened a much fiercer part of Brishti -

Why couldn’t she?! He was her husband. They have to come closer at some point, so what was she waiting for? Without a second thought, her body moved to get up & walk over to him. But as it had happened every time, her mind caught up to her at the very last minute. As Brishti walked over, bent, stretched out... for a pile of books close to him. She was close enough to touch him. And still, she just picked up the books & walked back. Thankfully for Brishti, she had a natural sort of nonchalance. Something Namjoon envied. Brishti did not know what this little stunt of hers did to him. Namjoon, with his fists balled, had to hold himself back in that moment. He had to stop himself from grabbing her; from pulling her into his lap and having his way with her.

The gentle thread-like tug he had felt when he’d first seen Brishti’s photos... it had become a magnetic pull now. Shocking and also somehow inevitable.

It had been more than a month of them living together and Namjoon was wrestling with something. An idea, apparently. It was as though an idea was caught in a vast net that he had laid out across the ocean of his mind. But he was having trouble fishing it out. He understood there was no point forcing it, that the idea, the thought would emerge when it, or when he was ready.

Taking his time, slowly, Namjoon was understanding how he had done the perfect thing for her, accidentally. He was confused too, when his instinct told him to let his bride sleep alone on their marital bed the first night they had moved in this flat. He had reasoned that it was the decent thing to do. Unknowingly, he gave her the time to explore, to own that space; Not crowding her with his body. Not invading her with expectations that, no matter how silent, would be blaringly evident. That was the right thing to do. Then.

Now things felt different. Now, it felt like she had made that space, this whole home hers. But then that’s where his thought-net felt stuck. The thought he wanted to fish out kept pulling at him, telling him she needed something else now. Like Brishti craved something else now. He wondered if she, like him, craved touch. Was that why her body instinctively moved, stretched, inched closer towards him these days. Was this why he’d found his shirt among the blanket instead of the laundry basket the other day?

Namjoon tried to shake off these thoughts again - they felt dangerous, explosive. What was happening? He looked back at his beautiful wife and saw her stretch her arms, then her abdomen, all the way till her hips and then bend forward to touch her toes. She mewled, very softly when she did that. Namjoon felt the familiar flip in his stomach again. This time, thankfully, the thought leapt up within reach too.

Namjoon suddenly understood just how feline Brishti is. Somehow, it was a key he needed. The idea surged through him & made him stand up. Because it wasn’t just an idea, it was an epiphany. Brishti looked at him, her eyes asking, saying, expecting something he didn’t understand fully.

The tingle that ran down his spine told him he was about to.

“You okay?” Brishti asked, concerned & embarrassed because the move she expected hadn’t come. But then again, it was probably too much to think Namjoon had stood up to carry her & throw her on their bed. Wasn’t it?

He was standing awkwardly in the middle of the room looking confused. Namjoon recovered & asked, “Coffee?”

Brishti smiled & nodded. Namjoon rushed to the kitchen. The catching of this thought excited him. Because after living with her for almost a month, he had just now realised it is this attribute - of being feline-ly feminine or femininely feline - that is what makes his body almost overpower any semblance of restraint his mind had imposed.

At first it seemed silly but soon Namjoon realised it isn’t. Not at all. It really clicked in place like the right key, the precise note does - he understood how to BE with her. Be there for the feline creature-like woman that Brishti was revealing herself to be: The way she walked, slowly almost moodily… letting her feet touch and caress each surface her feet felt. She would be walking across the room but would stop just to walk back and forth, softly, in a way that one can’t really call pacing at all. And everytime she touched something she liked, or saw or tasted something she loved, she made these small sounds that would make Namjoon’s heart melt. They were always half-way between a purr and a moan and they made him wonder what pleasure would make her sound like. Namjoon thought about how Brishti is graceful but her grace, like the curves of her beautiful body, aren’t timid; How, it’s a grace that announces itself... sometimes even before she walks in.

It isn’t the only thing that attracted him to her, not by a far cry. Namjoon thought about how he loves her mind, her words. But this felt, somehow, more… more visceral or... wanting to be. Could something formless long to be touched?; To become tangible, touchable? This feeling, in his chest and his gut. This feeling within him, it jumps, flips every time she walks by. These days it seems like Brishti walks by closer and closer each time she passes him. Like she needs to feel the texture of his skin the same way she needs to feel the slight drag of the rug on the soles of her feet. And it just adds more depth to this deep cavernous feeling within him. Instinctual whispers echoing within-

Why does it feel like he needs to touch a fragrance?

Like all he needs to do is reach out?

Like the moment he will reach out, an essence, an aroma will become an experience?

It felt like Brishti was calling out to him silently. That magnetic pull was stronger than ever and it was pulling him, drawing him to her, telling him to reach out, so she can find her way to him. That feeling, the way he was being pulled… that was feline. Like she needed him to reach out so she could make him hers too. And then, then it happened. The first four notes of ‘And I love her’ played and pulled him to her.

In that moment, in their 7th week together, as Brishti was tracing the lines of Namjoon’s back, gawking at him, thinking about this man - this gorgeous, curious, wonderful man - as her husband… a thought so fantastical it would make her squirm in her seat. Just as she was recovering from the thought, releasing the tension in her shoulders. The knots he didn’t know he caused, Namjoon kept the cups of coffee aside and extended his hand.

‘I give her all my love, that’s all I do…” To him, the instant she did it again, - the stretching her arms all the way up. The little moan she made every time she did that, the way her back arched and highlighted all her curves… it drove him, his body, his instinct to reach out.

“And if you saw my love, you’d love her too.”

The stomach flipped, again. This time, though, his instinct acted before his mind knew what he was supposed to do. Thankfully, his mind caught up -

He had just reached out. Reached out for her to claim him. But to one who didn’t know everything that had been going on inside both their hearts, it would look like he was inviting her to dance. Brishti looked at his hand and then at his eyes and suddenly Namjoon understood the reason for this magnetic pull... these lyrics is what she was saying all along -

“A love like ours could never die, as long as I have you near me...”

She took his hand & left no distance between them. Brishti realised there was music playing in the room only after she took Namjoon’s hand. Before this, she could only hear her own heartbeat, sharpened to an intensity never before experienced. Sharpened to a glint in a way that only love can. Love… and unmistakable, undeniable lust. Her heart had been beating with so much longing it had clouded everything else.

Now, in this moment, with his heart so close to hers, she could finally hear the music. This is what she had needed. This is what her heart had been pining for. And she knew. Without the shadow of a doubt she knew... he had heard her.

Brishti moved to the simple guitar strings that were tugging them both. The melody deepened each time the same four notes played. And each time they rooted deeper in the soil of her heart, she moved him too. His hands on her waist, caressing her curves everytime the four notes played. And they played over and over again… Namjoon followed the lyrics and sang along with his beautiful deep dark chocolate voice in her ears, saying -

“And I love her...”,

And his strong arms around her. How could she… Brishti, even if her name didn’t mean the rain, how could she have resisted pouring?

“Bright are the stars that shine, dark is the sky, I know this love of mine will never die...”

This evening was the first time they’d really touched each other. Stood so close to each other. Moved together.

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Oooooh god you read it?! Thank you so much! Please let me know what you think! Get into my messages about it! I would love to hear what you felt about this!

This is the song that's mentioned here in case anyone is curious.

[taylorswifthongkong]

Taylor Swift broke all her rules with Folklore — and gave herself a much-needed escape The pop star, one of EW's 2020 Entertainers of the Year, delves deep into her surprise eighth album, Rebekah Harkness, and a Joe Biden presidency. By Alex Suskind

“He is my co-writer on ‛Betty’ and ‛Exile,’” replies Taylor Swift with deadpan precision. The question Who is William Bowery? was, at the time we spoke, one of 2020’s great mysteries, right up there with the existence of Joe Exotic and the sudden arrival of murder hornets. An unknown writer credited on the year’s biggest album? It must be an alias.

Is he your brother?

“He’s William Bowery,” says Swift with a smile.

It's early November, after Election Day but before Swift eventually revealed Bowery's true identity to the world (the leading theory, that he was boyfriend Joe Alwyn, proved prescient). But, like all Swiftian riddles, it was fun to puzzle over for months, particularly in this hot mess of a year, when brief distractions are as comforting as a well-worn cardigan. Thankfully, the Bowery... erhm, Alwyn-assisted Folklore — a Swift project filled with muted pianos and whisper-quiet snares, recorded in secret with Jack Antonoff and the National’s Aaron Dessner — delivered.

“The only people who knew were the people I was making it with, my boyfriend, my family, and a small management team,” Swift, 30, tells EW of the album's hush-hush recording sessions. That gave the intimate Folklore a mystique all its own: the first surprise Taylor Swift album, one that prioritized fantastical tales over personal confessions.

“Early in quarantine, I started watching lots of films,” she explains. “Consuming other people’s storytelling opened this portal in my imagination and made me feel like, Why have I never created characters and intersecting storylines?” That’s how she ended up with three songs about an imagined love triangle (“Cardigan,” “Betty,” “August”), one about a clandestine romance (“Illicit Affairs”), and another chronicling a doomed relationship (“Exile”). Others tell of sumptuous real-life figures like Rebekah Harkness, a divorcee who married the heir to Standard Oil — and whose home Swift purchased 31 years after her death. The result, “The Last Great American Dynasty,” hones in on Harkness’ story, until Swift cleverly injects herself.

And yet, it wouldn’t be a Swift album without a few barbed postmortems over her own history. Notably, “My Tears Ricochet” and “Mad Woman," which touch on her former label head Scott Borchetta selling the masters to Swift’s catalog to her known nemesis Scooter Braun. Mere hours after our interview, the lyrics’ real-life origins took a surprising twist, when news broke that Swift’s music had once again been sold, to another private equity firm, for a reported $300 million. Though Swift ignored repeated requests for comment on the transaction, she did tweet a statement, hitting back at Braun while noting that she had begun re-recording her old albums — something she first promised in 2019 as a way of retaining agency over her creative legacy. (Later, she would tease a snippet of that reimagined work, with a new version of her hit 2008 single "Love Story.")

Like surprise-dropping Folklore, like pissing off the president by endorsing his opponents, like shooing away haters, Swift does what suits her. “I don’t think we often hear about women who did whatever the hell they wanted,” she says of Harkness — something Swift is clearly intent on changing. For her, that means basking in the world of, and favorable response to, Folklore. As she says in our interview, “I have this weird thing where, in order to create the next thing, I attack the previous thing. I don’t love that I do that, but it is the thing that has kept me pivoting to another world every time I make an album. But with this one, I still love it.”

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: We’ve spent the year quarantined in our houses, trying to stay healthy and avoiding friends and family. Were you surprised by your ability to create and release a full album in the middle of a pandemic?

TAYLOR SWIFT: I was. I wasn't expecting to make an album. Early on in quarantine, I started watching lots of films. We would watch a different movie every night. I'm ashamed to say I hadn't seen Pan's Labyrinth before. One night I'd watch that, then I'd watch L.A. Confidential, then we'd watch Rear Window, then we'd watch Jane Eyre. I feel like consuming other people's art and storytelling sort of opened this portal in my imagination and made me feel like, "Well, why have I never done this before? Why have I never created characters and intersecting storylines? And why haven't I ever sort of freed myself up to do that from a narrative standpoint?" There is something a little heavy about knowing when you put out an album, people are going to take it so literally that everything you say could be clickbait. It was really, really freeing to be able to just be inspired by worlds created by the films you watch or books you've read or places you've dreamed of or people that you've wondered about, not just being inspired by your own experience.

In that vain, what's it like to sit down and write something like “Betty,” which is told from the perspective of a 17-year-old boy?

That was huge for me. And I think it came from the fact that my co-writer, William Bowery [Joe Alwyn], is male — and he was the one who originally thought of the chorus melody. And hearing him sing it, I thought, "That sounds really cool." Obviously, I don't have a male voice, but I thought, "I could have a male perspective." Patty Griffin wrote this song, “Top of the World.” It's one of my favorite songs of all time, and it's from the perspective of this older man who has lived a life full of regret, and he's kind of taking stock of that regret. So, I thought, "This is something that people I am a huge fan of have done. This would be fun to kind of take this for a spin."

What are your favorite William Bowery conspiracies?

I love them all individually and equally. I love all the conspiracy theories around this album. [With] "Betty," Jack Antonoff would text me these articles and think pieces and in-depth Tumblr posts on what this love triangle meant to the person who had listened to it. And that's exactly what I was hoping would happen with this album. I wrote these stories for a specific reason and from a specific place about specific people that I imagined, but I wanted that to all change given who was listening to it. And I wanted it to start out as mine and become other people's. It's been really fun to watch.

One of the other unique things about Folklore — the parameters around it were completely different from anything you'd done. There was no long roll out, no stadium-sized pop anthems, no aiming for the radio-friendly single. How fearful were you in avoiding what had worked in the past?

I didn't think about any of that for the very first time. And a lot of this album was kind of distilled down to the purest version of what the story is. Songwriting on this album is exactly the way that I would write if I considered nothing else other than, "What words do I want to write? What stories do I want to tell? What melodies do I want to sing? What production is essential to tell those stories?" It was a very do-it-yourself experience. My management team, we created absolutely everything in advance — every lyric video, every individual album package. And then we called our label a week in advance and said, "Here's what we have.” The photo shoot was me and the photographer walking out into a field. I'd done my hair and makeup and brought some nightgowns. These experiences I was used to having with 100 people on set, commanding alongside other people in a very committee fashion — all of a sudden it was me and a photographer, or me and my DP. It was a new challenge, because I love collaboration. But there's something really fun about knowing what you can do if it's just you doing it.

Did you find it freeing?

I did. Every project involves different levels of collaboration, because on other albums there are things that my stylist will think of that I never would've thought of. But if I had all those people on the photo shoot, I would've had to have them quarantine away from their families for weeks on end, and I would've had to ask things of them that I didn't think were fair if I could figure out a way to do it [myself]. I had this idea for the [Folklore album cover] that it would be this girl sleepwalking through the forest in a nightgown in 1830 [laughs]. Very specific. A pioneer woman sleepwalking at night. I made a moodboard and sent it to Beth [Garrabrant], who I had never worked with before, who shoots only on film. We were just carrying bags across a field and putting the bags of film down, and then taking pictures. It was a blast.

Folklore includes plenty of intimate acoustic echoes to what you've done in the past. But there are also a lot of new sonics here, too — these quiet, powerful, intricately layered harmonics. What was it like to receive the music from Aaron and try to write lyrics on top of it? 

Well, Aaron is one of the most effortlessly prolific creators I've ever worked with. It's really mind-blowing. And every time I've spoken to an artist since this whole process [began], I said, "You need to work with him. It'll change the way you create." He would send me these — he calls them sketches, but it's basically an instrumental track. the second day — the day after I texted him and said, "Hey, would you ever want to work together?" — he sent me this file of probably 30 of these instrumentals and every single one of them was one of the most interesting, exciting things I had ever heard. Music can be beautiful, but it can be lacking that evocative nature. There was something about everything he created that is an immediate image in my head or melody that I came up with. So much so that I'd start writing as soon as I heard a new one. And oftentimes what I would send back would inspire him to make more instrumentals and then send me that one. And then I wrote the song and it started to shape the project, form-fitted and customized to what we wanted to do.

It was weird because I had never made an album and not played it for my girlfriends or told my friends. The only people who knew were the people that I was making it with, my boyfriend, my family, and then my management team. So that's the smallest number of people I've ever had know about something. I'm usually playing it for everyone that I'm friends with. So I had a lot of friends texting me things like, "Why didn't you say on our everyday FaceTimes you were making a record?"

Was it nice to be able to keep it a secret?

Well, it felt like it was only my thing. It felt like such an inner world I was escaping to every day that it almost didn't feel like an album. Because I wasn't making a song and finishing it and going, "Oh my God, that is catchy.” I wasn't making these things with any purpose in mind. And so it was almost like having it just be mine was this really sweet, nice, pure part of the world as everything else in the world was burning and crashing and feeling this sickness and sadness. I almost didn't process it as an album. This was just my daydream space.

Does it still feel like that?

Yeah, because I love it so much. I have this weird thing that I do when I create something where in order to create the next thing I kind of, in my head, attack the previous thing. I don't love that I do that but it is the thing that has kept me pivoting to another world every time I make an album. But with this one, I just still love it. I'm so proud of it. And so that feels very foreign to me. That doesn't feel like a normal experience that I've had with releasing albums.

When did you first learn about Rebekah Harkness?

Oh, I learned about her as soon as I was being walked through [her former Rhode Island] home. I got the house when I was in my early twenties as a place for my family to congregate and be together. I was told about her, I think, by the real estate agent who was walking us through the property. And as soon as I found out about her, I wanted to know everything I could. So I started reading. I found her so interesting. And then as more parallels began to develop between our two lives — being the lady that lives in that house on the hill that everybody gets to gossip about — I was always looking for an opportunity to write about her. And I finally found it.

I love that you break the fourth wall in the song. Did you go in thinking you’d include yourself in the story?

I think that in my head, I always wanted to do a country music, standard narrative device, which is: the first verse you sing about someone else, the second verse you sing about someone else who's even closer to you, and then in the third verse, you go, "Surprise! It was me.” You bring it personal for the last verse. And I'd always thought that if I were to tell that story, I would want to include the similarities — our lives or our reputations or our scandals.

How often did you regale friends about the history of Rebekah and Holiday House while hanging out at Holiday House? 

Anyone who's been there before knows that I do “The Tour,” in quotes, where I show everyone through the house. And I tell them different anecdotes about each room, because I've done that much research on this house and this woman. So in every single room, there's a different anecdote about Rebekah Harkness. If you have a mixed group of people who've been there before and people who haven't, [the people who’ve been there] are like, "Oh, she's going to do the tour. She's got to tell you the story about how the ballerinas used to practice on the lawn.” And they'll go get a drink and skip it because it's the same every time. But for me, I'm telling the story with the same electric enthusiasm, because it's just endlessly entertaining to me that this fabulous woman lived there. She just did whatever she wanted.

There are a handful of songs on Folklore that feel like pretty clear nods to your personal life over the last year, including your relationships with Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun. How long did it take to crystallize the feelings you had around both of them into “My Tears Ricochet” or “Mad Woman”?

I found myself being very triggered by any stories, movies, or narratives revolving around divorce, which felt weird because I haven't experienced it directly. There’s no reason it should cause me so much pain, but all of a sudden it felt like something I had been through. I think that happens any time you've been in a 15-year relationship and it ends in a messy, upsetting way. So I wrote “My Tears Ricochet” and I was using a lot of imagery that I had conjured up while comparing a relationship ending to when people end an actual marriage. All of a sudden this person that you trusted more than anyone in the world is the person that can hurt you the worst. Then all of a sudden the things that you have been through together, hurt. All of a sudden, the person who was your best friend is now your biggest nemesis, etc. etc. etc. I think I wrote some of the first lyrics to that song after watching Marriage Story and hearing about when marriages go wrong and end in such a catastrophic way. So these songs are in some ways imaginary, in some ways not, and in some ways both.

How did it feel to drop an F-bomb on "Mad Woman"?

F---ing fantastic.

And that’s the first time you ever recorded one on a record, right?

Yeah. Every rule book was thrown out. I always had these rules in my head and one of them was, You haven't done this before, so you can't ever do this. “Well, you've never had an explicit sticker, so you can't ever have an explicit sticker.” But that was one of the times where I felt like you need to follow the language and you need to follow the storyline. And if the storyline and the language match up and you end up saying the F-word, just go for it. I wasn't adhering to any of the guidelines that I had placed on myself. I decided to just make what I wanted to make. And I'm really happy that the fans were stoked about that because I think they could feel that. I'm not blaming anyone else for me restricting myself in the past. That was all, I guess, making what I want to make. I think my fans could feel that I opened the gate and ran out of the pasture for the first time, which I'm glad they picked up on because they're very intuitive.

Let’s talk about “Epiphany.” The first verse is a nod to your grandfather, Dean, who fought in World War II. What does his story mean to you personally? 

I wanted to write about him for awhile. He died when I was very young, but my dad would always tell this story that the only thing that his dad would ever say about the war was when somebody would ask him, "Why do you have such a positive outlook on life?" My grandfather would reply, "Well, I'm not supposed to be here. I shouldn't be here." My dad and his brothers always kind of imagined that what he had experienced was really awful and traumatic and that he'd seen a lot of terrible things. So when they did research, they learned that he had fought at the Battles of Guadalcanal, at Cape Gloucester, at Talasea, at Okinawa. He had seen a lot of heavy fire and casualties — all of the things that nightmares are made of. He was one of the first people to sign up for the war. But you know, these are things that you can only imagine that a lot of people in that generation didn't speak about because, a) they didn't want people that they came home to to worry about them, and b) it just was so bad that it was the actual definition of unspeakable.

That theme continues in the next verse, which is a pretty overt nod to what’s been happening during COVID. As someone who lives in Nashville, how difficult has it been to see folks on Lower Broadway crowding the bars without masks?

I mean, you just immediately think of the health workers who are putting their lives on the line — and oftentimes losing their lives. If they make it out of this, if they see the other side of it, there's going to be a lot of trauma that comes with that; there's going to be things that they witnessed that they will never be able to un-see. And that was the connection that I drew. I did a lot of research on my grandfather in the beginning of quarantine, and it hit me very quickly that we've got a version of that trauma happening right now in our hospitals. God, you hope people would respect it and would understand that going out for a night isn't worth the ripple effect that it causes. But obviously we're seeing that a lot of people don't seem to have their eyes open to that — or if they do, a lot of people don't care, which is upsetting.

You had the Lover Fest East and West scheduled this year. How hard has it been to both not perform for your fans this year, and see the music industry at large go through such a brutal change?

It's confusing. It's hard to watch. I think that maybe me wanting to make as much music as possible during this time was a way for me to feel like I could reach out my hand and touch my fans, even if I couldn't physically reach out or take a picture with them. We've had a lot of different, amazing, fun, sort of underground traditions we've built over the years that involve a lot of human interaction, and so I have no idea what's going to happen with touring; none of us do. And that's a scary thing. You can't look to somebody in the music industry who's been around a long time, or an expert touring manager or promoter and [ask] what's going to happen and have them give you an answer. I think we're all just trying to keep our eyes on the horizon and see what it looks like. So we're just kind of sitting tight and trying to take care of whatever creative spark might exist and trying to figure out how to reach our fans in other ways, because we just can't do that right now.

When you are able to perform again, do you have plans on resurfacing a Lover Fest-type event?

I don't know what incarnation it'll take and I really would need to sit down and think about it for a good solid couple of months before I figured out the answer. Because whatever we do, I want it to be something that is thoughtful and will make the fans happy and I hope I can achieve that. I'm going to try really hard to.

In addition to recording an album, you spent this year supporting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the election. Where were you when it was called in their favor? 

Well, when the results were coming in, I was actually at the property where we shot the Entertainment Weekly cover. I was hanging out with my photographer friend, Beth, and the wonderful couple that owned the farm where we [were]. And we realized really early into the night that we weren't going to get an accurate picture of the results. Then, a couple of days later, I was on a video shoot, but I was directing, and I was standing there with my face shield and mask on next to my director of photography, Rodrigo Prieto. And I just remember a news alert coming up on my phone that said, "Biden is our next president. He's won the election." And I showed it to Rodrigo and he said, "I'm always going to remember the moment that we learned this." And I looked around, and people's face shields were starting to fog up because a lot of people were really misty-eyed and emotional, and it was not loud. It wasn't popping bottles of champagne. It was this moment of quiet, cautious elation and relief.

Do you ever think about what Folklore would have sounded like if you, Aaron, and Jack had been in the same room?

I think about it all the time. I think that a lot of what has happened with the album has to do with us all being in a collective emotional place. Obviously everybody's lives have different complexities and whatnot, but I think most of us were feeling really shaken up and really out of place and confused and in need of something comforting all at the same time. And for me, that thing that was comforting was making music that felt sort of like I was trying to hug my fans through the speakers. That was truly my intent. Just trying to hug them when I can't hug them.

I wanted to talk about some of the lyrics on Folklore. One of my favorite pieces of wordplay is in “August”: that flip of "sipped away like a bottle of wine/slipped away like a moment in time.” Was there an "aha moment" for you while writing that?

I was really excited about "August slipped away into a moment of time/August sipped away like a bottle of wine." That was a song where Jack sent me the instrumental and I wrote the song pretty much on the spot; it just was an intuitive thing. And that was actually the first song that I wrote of the "Betty" triangle. So the Betty songs are "August," "Cardigan," and "Betty." "August" was actually the first one, which is strange because it's the song from the other girl's perspective.

Yeah, I assumed you wrote "Cardigan" first.

It would be safe to assume that "Cardigan" would be first, but it wasn't. It was very strange how it happened, but it kind of pieced together one song at a time, starting with "August," where I kind of wanted to explore the element of This is from the perspective of a girl who was having her first brush with love. And then all of a sudden she's treated like she's the other girl, because there was another situation that had already been in place, but "August" girl thought she was really falling in love. It kind of explores the idea of the undefined relationship. As humans, we're all encouraged to just be cool and just let it happen, and don't ask what the relationship is — Are we exclusive? But if you are chill about it, especially when you're young, you learn the very hard lesson that if you don't define something, oftentimes they can gaslight you into thinking it was nothing at all, and that it never happened. And how do you mourn the loss of something once it ends, if you're being made to believe that it never happened at all?

"I almost didn't process it as an album," says Taylor Swift of making Folklore. "And it's still hard for me to process as an entity or a commodity, because [it] was just my daydream space."

On the flip side, "Peace" is bit more defined in terms of how one approaches a relationship. There's this really striking line, "The devil's in the details, but you got a friend in me/Would it be enough if I can never give you peace?" How did that line come to you?

I'm really proud of that one too. I heard the track immediately. Aaron sent it to me, and it had this immediate sense of serenity running through it. The first word that popped into my head was peace, but I thought that it would be too on-the-nose to sing about being calm, or to sing about serenity, or to sing about finding peace with someone. Because you have this very conflicted, very dramatic conflict-written lyric paired with this very, very calming sound of the instrumental. But, "The devil's in the details," is one of those phrases that I've written down over the years. That's a common phrase that is used in the English language every day. And I just thought it sounded really cool because of the D, D sound. And I thought, "I'll hang onto those in a list, and then, I'll finally find the right place for them in a story." I think that's how a lot of people feel where it's like, "Yeah, the devil's in the details. Everybody's complex when you look under the hood of the car." But basically saying, "I'm there for you if you want that, if this complexity is what you want."

There's another clever turn-of-phrase on "This is Me Trying." "I didn't know if you'd care if I came back/I have a lot of regrets about that." That feels like a nod toward your fans, and some of the feelings you had about retreating from the public sphere.

Absolutely. I think I was writing from three different characters' perspectives, one who's going through that; I was channeling the emotions I was feeling in 2016, 2017, where I just felt like I was worth absolutely nothing. And then, the second verse is about dealing with addiction and issues with struggling every day. And every second of the day, you're trying not to fall into old patterns, and nobody around you can see that, and no one gives you credit for it. And then, the third verse, I was thinking, what would the National do? What lyric would Matt Berninger write? What chords would the National play? And it's funny because I've since played this song for Aaron, and he's like, "That's not what we would've done at all." He's like, "I love that song, but that's totally different than what we would've done with it."

When we last spoke, in April 2019, we were talking about albums we were listening to at the time and you professed your love for the National and I Am Easy to Find. Two months later, you met up with Aaron at their concert, and now, we're here talking about the National again.

Yeah, I was at the show where they were playing through I Am Easy to Find. What I loved about [that album] was they had female vocalists singing from female perspectives, and that triggered and fired something in me where I thought, "I've got to play with different perspectives because that is so intriguing when you hear a female perspective come in from a band where you're used to only hearing a male perspective." It just sparked something in me. And obviously, you mentioning the National is the reason why Folklore came to be. So, thank you for that, Alex.

I'm here for all of your songwriting muse needs in the future.

I can't wait to see what comes out of this interview.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

For more on our Entertainers of the Year and Best & Worst of 2020, order the January issue of Entertainment Weekly or find it on newsstands beginning Dec. 18. (You can also pick up the full set of six covers here.) Don’t forget to subscribe for more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW.

[shera-dnd]

So remember when I mentioned that one of my projects was a whole ass AU based on a single line from some song lyrics? Well that’s the project!

Because why not take the lyrics to Smile and turn some of that shit very literal?

Also get ready because this fic is gonna be flowery as all hell.

Anyways there is the AO3 link up top and here is the fic itself for those who’d rather read it here

Camps and tents were set, and arenas had begun construction in the cold fields just outside the walls of great Atlas, the city of innovation, riches, and splendor. This could only mean one thing, the Vytal Festival was fast approaching and with it the nobles, knights, and representatives from every last human nation in Remnant.

In an official capacity it was a seven day long celebration of their long lasting peace. In practice people always arrive long before the festival proper, and then start a few festivities of their own until it is time for the main event, meaning the festival itself could easily span a full month of revelry.

That meant a crowd of strangers, countless new faces that no single person could ever keep track of, all gathered outside the gates of Atlas for weeks. Which made it the perfect time for a young fae to play her tricks. Honestly, the lords of men should all be thankful that she wished only to partake in their revels.

The fae woman gathered her belongings in the nearby forest, and checked her reflection in a little pond she had found. Of all the members of her court, she was the one that had achieved mastery over glamours with the most ease, still she planned on spending weeks among the humans, so she had to make sure everything looked perfect.

The face that greeted her was unfamiliar, but also perfectly human. Her skin was a shade darker than the pasty atlesians she would be mingling with, and little freckles marked it in incidental little patterns. Her long wavy hair was kept in a neat little braid even as little strands insisted on rebelling. Her eyes were a beautiful grayish blue, but carried in them an uncharacteristic exhaustion for someone her age.

This was all calculated of course. She had to be beautiful and fair like it was expected of a proper noble lady, but she couldn’t allow herself to look too perfect, or the humans would find her unsettling. It took an experienced hand to craft a face that struck such balance and was still so well suited to the fae that hid behind it.

Satisfied with her work she donned her human clothes - a simple, but charming dress of blue and gold, and a matching shawl to keep her warm - and made her way into the fields beyond.

Her kind had described the city of Atlas as a scar upon the natural world, a hungry parasite starving its host of all it needed to survive as it slowly expanded to consume ever more. The very epitome of all of humanity’s crimes given shape in stone and metal.

She knew these accounts to be true, of course, but standing before it now she found it difficult to not feel awed at the majesty of it all. The city was grand indeed, but to say so felt like an understatement. Grandiose structures rose above the city’s imposing walls and reached towards the sky above. Every inch of them was white marble and polished silver.

And yet it all felt colder than the harshest winter, as if this city was meant to be beheld in awe, not lived in. Every tile, every brick, every unnaturally clean stone, it all declared a single message.

“You’re not welcome here.”

She did what she could to ignore the city beyond and focus her attention on the fields that stretched before her. All around tents and camps were being set, and music could be heard even at such distance. This is what she came here for.

Delicious smells washed over her as she approached the gathering crowds. Many of the smaller camps had brought food from the nations beyond, and prepared their meals around their own campfires, or sold them to passers by, and she was more than happy to purchase quite a few of these unique delicacies.

Around her musicians and artists, from nations all over the world, prepared to perform before what would soon grow to be the largest crowd in all of Remnant. For now they were all street performers, travelling bands, nameless bards, and the occasional trickster claiming to have mastery over the magical arts.

Except some of that magic was very real. Their glamours were good, but no illusion could hide a fae’s true nature from one another. So she saw their faces as clear as crystal and they, in turn, saw hers. They were fae of the seelie courts, living a secret life among the human crowds, and she was the sole unseelie that walked among them.

It was in that moment of distraction, taking in the faces of her fellow fae, that she found herself being pushed aside with considerable force. She turned around, ready to curse whichever fool was responsible for this, only to find a very apologetic looking woman.

The woman in question had dark skin and long curly red hair. Though she wore no armor, her white and green clothes were clearly expensive and finely made. The presence of a staff in her heraldry betrayed her as a Knight of the Winter Maiden.

“My apologies,” the knight blurted out, “are you hurt?”

Something about the way she carried herself made it very hard to stay mad at her.

“I’m well, thank you,” she replied, “but please, do be more careful.”

“I’ll try to,” the knight assured her, before adding, “I don’t believe I have seen you around Atlas before.”

“This is my first time in the kingdom actually,” she lied with ease, “I’m Ilia of the Menagerie Isles.”

“Salutations, Lady Ilia,” the knight beamed as she bowed respectfully before her, “I’m Penny of House Polendina. I would be delighted to show you around the festival grounds, but right now I’m needed for a tournament.”

And with another bow Lady Polendina dashed away with just as little care as before.

Huh, a tournament, she had said? Now that seemed like a good way for Ilia to spend her time.

Said tournament was taking place in the only fully constructed wooden structure around. It was just a simple set of stands with enough space between them to form a somewhat proper arena, but having a proper space to fight in seemed to have gotten many of the knights’ hearts pumping with excitement. So much so that there seemed to be some sort of commotion waiting for her by the entrance.

Multiple men seemed to be arguing with a knight in perfectly white armor, or more accurately shouting at them, since they did not appear to say anything and just tried to make their way around the men and into the arena.

“Lady Schnee!” One of the men called and Ilia froze in her tracks. Years living in the courts around Atlas had left her with a burning hatred for the name Schnee.

With pale skin, and paler hair, the woman who approached them looked like she had been sculpted from a block of ice, and the look on her face was at least as cold as one. Lady Schnee was as severe and uncaring as her name would indicate.

“What is it you want?” She demanded.

“This stranger refuses to take off their helmet, or tell us their name, but they insist on joining the tournament,” the first man explained.

“Do you have reason to deny them entry, or are you simply insistent on wasting everyone’s time?” She said, with a tongue that was twice as sharp as that man’s sword, and thrice as sharp as his wit.

“My lady, the Vytal tournament was created exclusively for nobles and knights,” the other man tried, but a stare from her made him shrink in his armor.

“Do you think me stupid? I know the rules of the Vytal tournament,” she rebuked, “this is not the Vytal tournament, this is an excuse for bored fools to hit each other with swords. If you believe them unworthy of such noble competition, then perhaps you should prove so in the arena, instead of wasting everyone’s time with your pointless pratling.”

With that the men scattered and Lady Schnee made her way back into the arena. Though the white knight’s face remained hidden by their helmet, there was still a sense of amusement with how they held themself after this. Ilia certainly knew who she would be rooting for today.

With that out of the way Ilia joined the crowd by the stands as they watched the knights take turns dueling each other. Neither Lady Schnee, nor Lady Polendina seem to partake in the fighting, though they both took their roles as judges and organizers of the event. Though only Lady Polendina showed any excitement at her role.

Soon enough the duel Ilia had been looking for was about to begin. The white knight versus the loud fool from earlier. While the fool armed himself with a heavy shield and a heavier blade, the white knight seemed to prefer a lighter approach to combat, fighting only with a long and thin sword.

Unfortunately the build up had been much longer than the fight. In but three moves that felt almost like a single fluid motion, the knight had stepped through their foe’s defences, and placed the tip of their sword against his neck. The duel was over, and the crowd sat stunned.

It quickly became clear that no duel would live up to that one today, but that did not mean the crowd could not find entertainment in the matches that followed. Even though the white knight had not shown such swift brutality again, they quickly took the position of crowd favorite as they continued to win duel after duel.

That was until there only stood one soul who had not been bested by their blade. A knight in pure black armor, adorned with valean heraldry, and armed with a pair of shorter blades. Though that knight also hid their face, something about their stance seemed familiar to Ilia.

That sense of dejavu only grew stronger as the duel itself finally began. The swiftness of their movement, the lightness of their feet - even in full armor - the way the twin blades danced around them with ease. Ilia had only known one person who fought like that, but that simply couldn’t be her.

It made no sense.

Distracted as she was by that familiarity, Ilia was caught by surprise by the end of the duel. The knight in black had managed to pierce the white knight’s defense, and had a blade firmly pressed against their neck. The white knight put their blade down and conceded.

The crowd cheered as both knights offered each other a respectful bow and the white knight marched away from the arena.

Lady Polendina hopped and skipped her way to the middle of the arena, gesturing for the crowd to quiet down for a moment.

“It is with great pleasure that I announce the winner of our warm up tournament,” she announced and the black knight took that as their cue to pull their helmet away.

Though the face under it was unquestionably human, and clearly untouched by any magical glamour, there was no doubt in Ilia’s mind as to who she was. That may truly be impossible, but she had only known one woman with golden eyes like those.

“Lady Blake, of the Knights of the Fall Maiden!”

[catastrophoebe]

did someone say dean bohemian rhapsody amv?

i wrote about my process under the cut, if you’re curious! <3

okay hi hello! i wanted to explain a bit about my process behind this video, bc i put a lot of thought into the narrative of it (even if it seems a bit convoluted in execution lol) and i thought it might be interesting to someone (?). credentials: i received the ap lit. award from my school.

i first started by reading about the meaning behind the lyrics of bohemian rhapsody. turns out there’s no definitive answer! freddie mercury refused to say what it was about (other than relationships). the main interpretations i took into consideration were 1) it’s an allusion to goethe’s faust, in which faust, dissatisfied with his life, makes a pact with the devil at a crossroads, exchanging his soul for good looks, boundless opportunity, and the ability to do whatever he wants (the faustian idea being that in order to fully develop, we must flirt with danger but hold onto a sense of higher purpose). 2) the most literal interpretation is that the song is about a murder and an execution. the narrator confesses to a murder, is put on trial, and either escapes or gets executed (an allusion to camus’ the stranger). tying interpretations 1 and 2 together, queen explained once that the song is about a young man who has accidentally killed someone and (like faust) sold his soul to the devil. on the night before his execution, he calls for god (“bismillah”), and with the help of angels, gets his soul back. (hellooooo) 3) most simply, some believe the song is mercury’s veiled reference to coming out.

to me, the progression of the narrative is: the narrator has made peace with his life even though it isn’t ideal ➞ [turning point] ➞ narrator commits “the murder” (but he regrets it! if he hadn’t done it, his life would’ve stayed the same. satisfactory.) ➞ he must deal with the consequences of his actions (he dies, leaving his old self behind) ➞ he is reborn (does he want to be? he thinks he deserves to die, but god won’t let him. or something.) to translate this into dean’s narrative, i tried to do the following: dean has made a reluctant sort of peace with his life esp. following john’s death ➞ sam gets killed [the turning point] ➞ dean sells his soul, essentially “killing” himself ➞ he must come to terms with the fact that he is going to die ➞ he dies ➞ cas saves him (at first dean thinks he deserves to stay in hell, but cas teaches him to break free from that narrative, to come to terms with and accept himself). you’ll also notice i alluded to interpretation 3 a lot with dean “lying to himself,” “facing the truth,” etc. (and with lilith saying “you’re still gonna die. you’re still gonna burn,” because the post that says “olive from ant farm did you just call dean a f*g?” lives rent-free in my head). the whole thing’s kinda messy, but consider everything a double entendre. for example, i wanted “you’re lying to these people and to me...” to represent both the fact that he was lying about how he felt about sam’s death and later himself dying in acting so cavalier and also that he was lying about his identity (his sexualityyyy).

i also broke the lyrics down by verse. intro: the narrator is trapped in his reality. he doesn’t want to be pitied. he adopts a passive outlook in his grief. (dean coming to terms with his feelings after john’s death and his general grief) verse 1: the narrator commits the “murder” and feels regret (dean sells his soul but comes to realize he doesn’t want to die) verse 2: the narrator faces the consequences of his actions (dean realizes too late that he doesn’t want to die, and thus goes to hell). i didn’t write any notes on the following verses, just that the next verse marked cas’ introduction, saving dean. with verse 4 (and the line “i don’t deserve to go to hell”), i wanted to convey that cas taught dean to realize his worth and that he didn’t deserve to die/be in hell.

other notes: i stuck specifically to kripke-era footage mainly to keep it visually cohesive and also just to narrow it down for me (read: i was too lazy to color grade and i’m a kripke-era supremacist). if you’re curious about the notes i took, here’s a pic! i copied the lyrics into a google doc, split the lines into how i wanted to split the shots, and printed it out. in an ideal world i meant to map out what shots to use in blue and audio in red but i got bored with it and pretty much only took notes on the lyrics. i don’t usually take notes (i WISH i had the patience, but i always end up just trying to figure out the video during the editing process), but i knew that i wanted to give this one a lot of time and thought.

if anyone read this far i want to kiss you on the mouth

[path-of-my-childhood]

Taylor Swift Broke All Her Rules With Folklore - And Gave Herself A Much-Needed Escape

By: Alex Suskind for Entertainment Weekly Date: December 8th 2020 (EW's 2020 Entertainers of the Year cover)

The pop star, one of EW's 2020 Entertainers of the Year, delves deep into her surprise eighth album, Rebekah Harkness, and a Joe Biden presidency.

“He is my co-writer on ‛Betty’ and ‛Exile,’” replies Taylor Swift with deadpan precision. The question Who is William Bowery? was, at the time we spoke, one of 2020’s great mysteries, right up there with the existence of Joe Exotic and the sudden arrival of murder hornets. An unknown writer credited on the year’s biggest album? It must be an alias.

Is he your brother?

“He’s William Bowery,” says Swift with a smile.

It's early November, after Election Day but before Swift eventually revealed Bowery's true identity to the world (the leading theory, that he was boyfriend Joe Alwyn, proved prescient). But, like all Swiftian riddles, it was fun to puzzle over for months, particularly in this hot mess of a year, when brief distractions are as comforting as a well-worn cardigan. Thankfully, the Bowery... erhm, Alwyn-assisted Folklore - a Swift project filled with muted pianos and whisper-quiet snares, recorded in secret with Jack Antonoff and the National’s Aaron Dessner - delivered.

“The only people who knew were the people I was making it with, my boyfriend, my family, and a small management team,” Swift, 30, tells EW of the album's hush-hush recording sessions. That gave the intimate Folklore a mystique all its own: the first surprise Taylor Swift album, one that prioritized fantastical tales over personal confessions.

“Early in quarantine, I started watching lots of films,” she explains. “Consuming other people’s storytelling opened this portal in my imagination and made me feel like, Why have I never created characters and intersecting storylines?” That’s how she ended up with three songs about an imagined love triangle (“Cardigan,” “Betty,” “August”), one about a clandestine romance (“Illicit Affairs”), and another chronicling a doomed relationship (“Exile”). Others tell of sumptuous real-life figures like Rebekah Harkness, a divorcee who married the heir to Standard Oil - and whose home Swift purchased 31 years after her death. The result, “The Last Great American Dynasty,” hones in on Harkness’ story, until Swift cleverly injects herself.

And yet, it wouldn’t be a Swift album without a few barbed postmortems over her own history. Notably, “My Tears Ricochet” and “Mad Woman," which touch on her former label head Scott Borchetta selling the masters to Swift’s catalog to her known nemesis Scooter Braun. Mere hours after our interview, the lyrics’ real-life origins took a surprising twist, when news broke that Swift’s music had once again been sold, to another private equity firm, for a reported $300 million. Though Swift ignored repeated requests for comment on the transaction, she did tweet a statement, hitting back at Braun while noting that she had begun re-recording her old albums - something she first promised in 2019 as a way of retaining agency over her creative legacy. (Later, she would tease a snippet of that reimagined work, with a new version of her hit 2008 single "Love Story.")

Like surprise-dropping Folklore, like pissing off the president by endorsing his opponents, like shooing away haters, Swift does what suits her. “I don’t think we often hear about women who did whatever the hell they wanted,” she says of Harkness - something Swift is clearly intent on changing. For her, that means basking in the world of, and favorable response to, Folklore. As she says in our interview, “I have this weird thing where, in order to create the next thing, I attack the previous thing. I don’t love that I do that, but it is the thing that has kept me pivoting to another world every time I make an album. But with this one, I still love it.”

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: We’ve spent the year quarantined in our houses, trying to stay healthy and avoiding friends and family. Were you surprised by your ability to create and release a full album in the middle of a pandemic? TAYLOR SWIFT: I was. I wasn't expecting to make an album. Early on in quarantine, I started watching lots of films. We would watch a different movie every night. I'm ashamed to say I hadn't seen Pan's Labyrinth before. One night I'd watch that, then I'd watch L.A. Confidential, then we'd watch Rear Window, then we'd watch Jane Eyre. I feel like consuming other people's art and storytelling sort of opened this portal in my imagination and made me feel like, "Well, why have I never done this before? Why have I never created characters and intersecting storylines? And why haven't I ever sort of freed myself up to do that from a narrative standpoint?" There is something a little heavy about knowing when you put out an album, people are going to take it so literally that everything you say could be clickbait. It was really, really freeing to be able to just be inspired by worlds created by the films you watch or books you've read or places you've dreamed of or people that you've wondered about, not just being inspired by your own experience.

In that vein, what's it like to sit down and write something like “Betty,” which is told from the perspective of a 17-year-old boy? That was huge for me. And I think it came from the fact that my co-writer, William Bowery [Joe Alwyn], is male — and he was the one who originally thought of the chorus melody. And hearing him sing it, I thought, "That sounds really cool." Obviously, I don't have a male voice, but I thought, "I could have a male perspective." Patty Griffin wrote this song, “Top of the World.” It's one of my favorite songs of all time, and it's from the perspective of this older man who has lived a life full of regret, and he's kind of taking stock of that regret. So, I thought, "This is something that people I am a huge fan of have done. This would be fun to kind of take this for a spin."

What are your favorite William Bowery conspiracies? I love them all individually and equally. I love all the conspiracy theories around this album. [With] "Betty," Jack Antonoff would text me these articles and think pieces and in-depth Tumblr posts on what this love triangle meant to the person who had listened to it. And that's exactly what I was hoping would happen with this album. I wrote these stories for a specific reason and from a specific place about specific people that I imagined, but I wanted that to all change given who was listening to it. And I wanted it to start out as mine and become other people's. It's been really fun to watch.

One of the other unique things about Folklore — the parameters around it were completely different from anything you'd done. There was no long roll out, no stadium-sized pop anthems, no aiming for the radio-friendly single. How fearful were you in avoiding what had worked in the past? I didn't think about any of that for the very first time. And a lot of this album was kind of distilled down to the purest version of what the story is. Songwriting on this album is exactly the way that I would write if I considered nothing else other than, "What words do I want to write? What stories do I want to tell? What melodies do I want to sing? What production is essential to tell those stories?" It was a very do-it-yourself experience. My management team, we created absolutely everything in advance — every lyric video, every individual album package. And then we called our label a week in advance and said, "Here's what we have.” The photo shoot was me and the photographer walking out into a field. I'd done my hair and makeup and brought some nightgowns. These experiences I was used to having with 100 people on set, commanding alongside other people in a very committee fashion — all of a sudden it was me and a photographer, or me and my DP. It was a new challenge, because I love collaboration. But there's something really fun about knowing what you can do if it's just you doing it.

Did you find it freeing? I did. Every project involves different levels of collaboration, because on other albums there are things that my stylist will think of that I never would've thought of. But if I had all those people on the photo shoot, I would've had to have them quarantine away from their families for weeks on end, and I would've had to ask things of them that I didn't think were fair if I could figure out a way to do it [myself]. I had this idea for the [Folklore album cover] that it would be this girl sleepwalking through the forest in a nightgown in 1830 [laughs]. Very specific. A pioneer woman sleepwalking at night. I made a moodboard and sent it to Beth [Garrabrant], who I had never worked with before, who shoots only on film. We were just carrying bags across a field and putting the bags of film down, and then taking pictures. It was a blast.

Folklore includes plenty of intimate acoustic echoes to what you've done in the past. But there are also a lot of new sonics here, too — these quiet, powerful, intricately layered harmonics. What was it like to receive the music from Aaron and try to write lyrics on top of it? Well, Aaron is one of the most effortlessly prolific creators I've ever worked with. It's really mind-blowing. And every time I've spoken to an artist since this whole process [began], I said, "You need to work with him. It'll change the way you create." He would send me these — he calls them sketches, but it's basically an instrumental track. the second day — the day after I texted him and said, "Hey, would you ever want to work together?" — he sent me this file of probably 30 of these instrumentals and every single one of them was one of the most interesting, exciting things I had ever heard. Music can be beautiful, but it can be lacking that evocative nature. There was something about everything he created that is an immediate image in my head or melody that I came up with. So much so that I'd start writing as soon as I heard a new one. And oftentimes what I would send back would inspire him to make more instrumentals and then send me that one. And then I wrote the song and it started to shape the project, form-fitted and customized to what we wanted to do.

It was weird because I had never made an album and not played it for my girlfriends or told my friends. The only people who knew were the people that I was making it with, my boyfriend, my family, and then my management team. So that's the smallest number of people I've ever had know about something. I'm usually playing it for everyone that I'm friends with. So I had a lot of friends texting me things like, "Why didn't you say on our everyday FaceTimes you were making a record?"

Was it nice to be able to keep it a secret? Well, it felt like it was only my thing. It felt like such an inner world I was escaping to every day that it almost didn't feel like an album. Because I wasn't making a song and finishing it and going, "Oh my God, that is catchy.” I wasn't making these things with any purpose in mind. And so it was almost like having it just be mine was this really sweet, nice, pure part of the world as everything else in the world was burning and crashing and feeling this sickness and sadness. I almost didn't process it as an album. This was just my daydream space.

Does it still feel like that? Yeah, because I love it so much. I have this weird thing that I do when I create something where in order to create the next thing I kind of, in my head, attack the previous thing. I don't love that I do that but it is the thing that has kept me pivoting to another world every time I make an album. But with this one, I just still love it. I'm so proud of it. And so that feels very foreign to me. That doesn't feel like a normal experience that I've had with releasing albums.

When did you first learn about Rebekah Harkness? Oh, I learned about her as soon as I was being walked through [her former Rhode Island] home. I got the house when I was in my early twenties as a place for my family to congregate and be together. I was told about her, I think, by the real estate agent who was walking us through the property. And as soon as I found out about her, I wanted to know everything I could. So I started reading. I found her so interesting. And then as more parallels began to develop between our two lives — being the lady that lives in that house on the hill that everybody gets to gossip about — I was always looking for an opportunity to write about her. And I finally found it.

I love that you break the fourth wall in the song. Did you go in thinking you’d include yourself in the story? I think that in my head, I always wanted to do a country music, standard narrative device, which is: the first verse you sing about someone else, the second verse you sing about someone else who's even closer to you, and then in the third verse, you go, "Surprise! It was me.” You bring it personal for the last verse. And I'd always thought that if I were to tell that story, I would want to include the similarities — our lives or our reputations or our scandals.

How often did you regale friends about the history of Rebekah and Holiday House while hanging out at Holiday House? Anyone who's been there before knows that I do “The Tour,” in quotes, where I show everyone through the house. And I tell them different anecdotes about each room, because I've done that much research on this house and this woman. So in every single room, there's a different anecdote about Rebekah Harkness. If you have a mixed group of people who've been there before and people who haven't, [the people who’ve been there] are like, "Oh, she's going to do the tour. She's got to tell you the story about how the ballerinas used to practice on the lawn.” And they'll go get a drink and skip it because it's the same every time. But for me, I'm telling the story with the same electric enthusiasm, because it's just endlessly entertaining to me that this fabulous woman lived there. She just did whatever she wanted.

There are a handful of songs on Folklore that feel like pretty clear nods to your personal life over the last year, including your relationships with Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun. How long did it take to crystallize the feelings you had around both of them into “My Tears Ricochet” or “Mad Woman”? I found myself being very triggered by any stories, movies, or narratives revolving around divorce, which felt weird because I haven't experienced it directly. There’s no reason it should cause me so much pain, but all of a sudden it felt like something I had been through. I think that happens any time you've been in a 15-year relationship and it ends in a messy, upsetting way. So I wrote “My Tears Ricochet” and I was using a lot of imagery that I had conjured up while comparing a relationship ending to when people end an actual marriage. All of a sudden this person that you trusted more than anyone in the world is the person that can hurt you the worst. Then all of a sudden the things that you have been through together, hurt. All of a sudden, the person who was your best friend is now your biggest nemesis, etc. etc. etc. I think I wrote some of the first lyrics to that song after watching Marriage Story and hearing about when marriages go wrong and end in such a catastrophic way. So these songs are in some ways imaginary, in some ways not, and in some ways both.

How did it feel to drop an F-bomb on "Mad Woman"? F---ing fantastic.

And that’s the first time you ever recorded one on a record, right? Yeah. Every rule book was thrown out. I always had these rules in my head and one of them was, You haven't done this before, so you can't ever do this. “Well, you've never had an explicit sticker, so you can't ever have an explicit sticker.” But that was one of the times where I felt like you need to follow the language and you need to follow the storyline. And if the storyline and the language match up and you end up saying the F-word, just go for it. I wasn't adhering to any of the guidelines that I had placed on myself. I decided to just make what I wanted to make. And I'm really happy that the fans were stoked about that because I think they could feel that. I'm not blaming anyone else for me restricting myself in the past. That was all, I guess, making what I want to make. I think my fans could feel that I opened the gate and ran out of the pasture for the first time, which I'm glad they picked up on because they're very intuitive.

Let’s talk about “Epiphany.” The first verse is a nod to your grandfather, Dean, who fought in World War II. What does his story mean to you personally? I wanted to write about him for awhile. He died when I was very young, but my dad would always tell this story that the only thing that his dad would ever say about the war was when somebody would ask him, "Why do you have such a positive outlook on life?" My grandfather would reply, "Well, I'm not supposed to be here. I shouldn't be here." My dad and his brothers always kind of imagined that what he had experienced was really awful and traumatic and that he'd seen a lot of terrible things. So when they did research, they learned that he had fought at the Battles of Guadalcanal, at Cape Gloucester, at Talasea, at Okinawa. He had seen a lot of heavy fire and casualties — all of the things that nightmares are made of. He was one of the first people to sign up for the war. But you know, these are things that you can only imagine that a lot of people in that generation didn't speak about because, a) they didn't want people that they came home to to worry about them, and b) it just was so bad that it was the actual definition of unspeakable.

That theme continues in the next verse, which is a pretty overt nod to what’s been happening during COVID. As someone who lives in Nashville, how difficult has it been to see folks on Lower Broadway crowding the bars without masks? I mean, you just immediately think of the health workers who are putting their lives on the line — and oftentimes losing their lives. If they make it out of this, if they see the other side of it, there's going to be a lot of trauma that comes with that; there's going to be things that they witnessed that they will never be able to un-see. And that was the connection that I drew. I did a lot of research on my grandfather in the beginning of quarantine, and it hit me very quickly that we've got a version of that trauma happening right now in our hospitals. God, you hope people would respect it and would understand that going out for a night isn't worth the ripple effect that it causes. But obviously we're seeing that a lot of people don't seem to have their eyes open to that — or if they do, a lot of people don't care, which is upsetting.

You had the Lover Fest East and West scheduled this year. How hard has it been to both not perform for your fans this year, and see the music industry at large go through such a brutal change? It's confusing. It's hard to watch. I think that maybe me wanting to make as much music as possible during this time was a way for me to feel like I could reach out my hand and touch my fans, even if I couldn't physically reach out or take a picture with them. We've had a lot of different, amazing, fun, sort of underground traditions we've built over the years that involve a lot of human interaction, and so I have no idea what's going to happen with touring; none of us do. And that's a scary thing. You can't look to somebody in the music industry who's been around a long time, or an expert touring manager or promoter and [ask] what's going to happen and have them give you an answer. I think we're all just trying to keep our eyes on the horizon and see what it looks like. So we're just kind of sitting tight and trying to take care of whatever creative spark might exist and trying to figure out how to reach our fans in other ways, because we just can't do that right now.

When you are able to perform again, do you have plans on resurfacing a Lover Fest-type event? I don't know what incarnation it'll take and I really would need to sit down and think about it for a good solid couple of months before I figured out the answer. Because whatever we do, I want it to be something that is thoughtful and will make the fans happy and I hope I can achieve that. I'm going to try really hard to.

In addition to recording an album, you spent this year supporting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the election. Where were you when it was called in their favor? Well, when the results were coming in, I was actually at the property where we shot the Entertainment Weekly cover. I was hanging out with my photographer friend, Beth, and the wonderful couple that owned the farm where we [were]. And we realized really early into the night that we weren't going to get an accurate picture of the results. Then, a couple of days later, I was on a video shoot, but I was directing, and I was standing there with my face shield and mask on next to my director of photography, Rodrigo Prieto. And I just remember a news alert coming up on my phone that said, "Biden is our next president. He's won the election." And I showed it to Rodrigo and he said, "I'm always going to remember the moment that we learned this." And I looked around, and people's face shields were starting to fog up because a lot of people were really misty-eyed and emotional, and it was not loud. It wasn't popping bottles of champagne. It was this moment of quiet, cautious elation and relief.

Do you ever think about what Folklore would have sounded like if you, Aaron, and Jack had been in the same room? I think about it all the time. I think that a lot of what has happened with the album has to do with us all being in a collective emotional place. Obviously everybody's lives have different complexities and whatnot, but I think most of us were feeling really shaken up and really out of place and confused and in need of something comforting all at the same time. And for me, that thing that was comforting was making music that felt sort of like I was trying to hug my fans through the speakers. That was truly my intent. Just trying to hug them when I can't hug them.

I wanted to talk about some of the lyrics on Folklore. One of my favorite pieces of wordplay is in “August”: that flip of "sipped away like a bottle of wine/slipped away like a moment in time.” Was there an "aha moment" for you while writing that? I was really excited about "August slipped away into a moment of time/August sipped away like a bottle of wine." That was a song where Jack sent me the instrumental and I wrote the song pretty much on the spot; it just was an intuitive thing. And that was actually the first song that I wrote of the "Betty" triangle. So the Betty songs are "August," "Cardigan," and "Betty." "August" was actually the first one, which is strange because it's the song from the other girl's perspective.

Yeah, I assumed you wrote "Cardigan" first. It would be safe to assume that "Cardigan" would be first, but it wasn't. It was very strange how it happened, but it kind of pieced together one song at a time, starting with "August," where I kind of wanted to explore the element of This is from the perspective of a girl who was having her first brush with love. And then all of a sudden she's treated like she's the other girl, because there was another situation that had already been in place, but "August" girl thought she was really falling in love. It kind of explores the idea of the undefined relationship. As humans, we're all encouraged to just be cool and just let it happen, and don't ask what the relationship is — Are we exclusive? But if you are chill about it, especially when you're young, you learn the very hard lesson that if you don't define something, oftentimes they can gaslight you into thinking it was nothing at all, and that it never happened. And how do you mourn the loss of something once it ends, if you're being made to believe that it never happened at all?

On the flip side, "Peace" is bit more defined in terms of how one approaches a relationship. There's this really striking line, "The devil's in the details, but you got a friend in me/Would it be enough if I can never give you peace?" How did that line come to you? I'm really proud of that one too. I heard the track immediately. Aaron sent it to me, and it had this immediate sense of serenity running through it. The first word that popped into my head was peace, but I thought that it would be too on-the-nose to sing about being calm, or to sing about serenity, or to sing about finding peace with someone. Because you have this very conflicted, very dramatic conflict-written lyric paired with this very, very calming sound of the instrumental. But, "The devil's in the details," is one of those phrases that I've written down over the years. That's a common phrase that is used in the English language every day. And I just thought it sounded really cool because of the D, D sound. And I thought, "I'll hang onto those in a list, and then, I'll finally find the right place for them in a story." I think that's how a lot of people feel where it's like, "Yeah, the devil's in the details. Everybody's complex when you look under the hood of the car." But basically saying, "I'm there for you if you want that, if this complexity is what you want."

There's another clever turn of phrase on "This is Me Trying." "I didn't know if you'd care if I came back/I have a lot of regrets about that." That feels like a nod toward your fans, and some of the feelings you had about retreating from the public sphere. Absolutely. I think I was writing from three different characters' perspectives, one who's going through that; I was channeling the emotions I was feeling in 2016, 2017, where I just felt like I was worth absolutely nothing. And then, the second verse is about dealing with addiction and issues with struggling every day. And every second of the day, you're trying not to fall into old patterns, and nobody around you can see that, and no one gives you credit for it. And then, the third verse, I was thinking, what would the National do? What lyric would Matt Berninger write? What chords would the National play? And it's funny because I've since played this song for Aaron, and he's like, "That's not what we would've done at all." He's like, "I love that song, but that's totally different than what we would've done with it."

When we last spoke, in April 2019, we were talking about albums we were listening to at the time and you professed your love for the National and I Am Easy to Find. Two months later, you met up with Aaron at their concert, and now, we're here talking about the National again. Yeah, I was at the show where they were playing through I Am Easy to Find. What I loved about [that album] was they had female vocalists singing from female perspectives, and that triggered and fired something in me where I thought, "I've got to play with different perspectives because that is so intriguing when you hear a female perspective come in from a band where you're used to only hearing a male perspective." It just sparked something in me. And obviously, you mentioning the National is the reason why Folklore came to be. So, thank you for that, Alex.

I'm here for all of your songwriting muse needs in the future. I can't wait to see what comes out of this interview.

*** For more on our Entertainers of the Year and Best & Worst of 2020, order the January issue of Entertainment Weekly or find it on newsstands beginning Dec. 18. (You can also pick up the full set of six covers here.) Don’t forget to subscribe for more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW.

[1962dude420-blog]

Today we remember the passing of Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton who Died: July 25, 1984 in Los Angeles, California

Willie Mae Thornton (December 11, 1926 – July 25, 1984), better known as Big Mama Thornton, was an American rhythm-and-blues singer and songwriter. She was the first to record Leiber and Stoller's "Hound Dog", in 1952,which became her biggest hit, staying seven weeks at number one on the Billboard R&B chart in 1953 and selling almost two million copies. Thornton's other recordings included the original version of "Ball and Chain", which she wrote.

Her recording of Hound Dog, written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller in 1952, and later recorded by Elvis Presley, reached Number 1 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. According to Maureen Mahon, a music professor at New York University, "the song is seen as an important beginning of rock-and-roll, especially in its use of the guitar as the key instrument".

Thornton's birth certificate states that she was born in Ariton, Alabama, but in an interview with Chris Strachwitz, she claimed Montgomery, Alabama, as her birthplace, probably because Montgomery was better known than Ariton. She was introduced to music in a Baptist church, where her father was a minister and her mother a singer. She and her six siblings began to sing at early ages. Her mother died young, and Willie Mae left school and got a job washing and cleaning spittoons in a local tavern. In 1940 she left home and, with the help of Diamond Teeth Mary, joined Sammy Green's Hot Harlem Revue and was soon billed as the "New Bessie Smith". Her musical education started in the church but continued through her observation of the rhythm-and-blues singers Bessie Smith and Memphis Minnie, whom she deeply admired.

Thornton's career began to take off when she moved to Houston in 1948. "A new kind of popular blues was coming out of the clubs in Texas and Los Angeles, full of brass horns, jumpy rhythms, and wisecracking lyrics." In 1951 she signed a recording contract with Peacock Records and performed at the Apollo Theater in 1952. Also in 1952, while working with another Peacock artist Johnny Otis, she recorded "Hound Dog", the first record produced by its writers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. The pair were present at the recording, with Leiber demonstrating the song in the vocal style they had envisioned; "We wanted her to growl it," Stoller said, which she did. Otis played drums, after the original drummer was unable to play an adequate part. The record sold more than half a million copies, and went to number one on the R&B chart, helping to bring in the dawn of rock 'n' roll. Although the record made Thornton a star, she saw little of the profits.

On Christmas Day 1954 in a theatre in Houston, Texas, she witnessed fellow performer Johnny Ace, also signed to Duke and Peacock record labels, accidentally shoot and kill himself while playing with a .22 pistol. Thornton continued to record for Peacock until 1957 and performed in R&B package tours with Junior Parker and Esther Phillips.

Thornton's success with "Hound Dog" was followed three years later by Elvis Presley recording his hit version of the song. His recording at first annoyed Leiber who wrote, "I have no idea what that rabbit business is all about. The song is not about a dog, it's about a man, a freeloading gigolo." But Elvis' version sold ten million copies, so today few fans know that "Hound Dog" began as "an anthem of black female power." Similarly, Thornton originally recorded her song "Ball 'n' Chain" for Bay-Tone Records in the early 1960s, "and though the label chose not to release the song... they did hold on to the copyright"—which meant that Thornton missed out on the publishing royalties when Janis Joplin recorded the song later in the decade. However, in a 1972 interview, Thornton acknowledged giving Joplin permission to record the song and receiving royalty payments from its sales.

As her career began to fade in the late 1950s and early 1960s, she left Houston and relocated to the San Francisco Bay area, "playing clubs in San Francisco and L.A. and recording for a succession of labels", notably the Berkeley-based Arhoolie Records. In 1965, she toured with the American Folk Blues Festival in Europe, where her success was notable "because very few female blues singers at that time had ever enjoyed success across the Atlantic." While in England that year, she recorded her first album for Arhoolie, Big Mama Thornton – In Europe. It featured backing by blues veterans Buddy Guy (guitar), Fred Below (drums), Eddie Boyd (keyboards), Jimmy Lee Robinson (bass), and Walter "Shakey" Horton (harmonica), except for three songs on which Fred McDowell provided acoustic slide guitar.

In 1966, Thornton recorded her second album for Arhoolie, Big Mama Thornton with the Muddy Waters Blues Band – 1966, with Muddy Waters (guitar), Sammy Lawhorn (guitar), James Cotton (harmonica), Otis Spann (piano), Luther Johnson (bass guitar), and Francis Clay (drums). She performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1966 and 1968. Her last album for Arhoolie, Ball n' Chain, was released in 1968. It was made up of tracks from her two previous albums, plus her composition "Ball and Chain" and the standard "Wade in the Water". A small combo, including her frequent guitarist Edward "Bee" Houston, provided backup for the two songs. Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company's performance of "Ball 'n' Chain" at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and the release of the song on their number one album Cheap Thrills renewed interest in Thornton's career.

By 1969, Thornton had signed with Mercury Records, which released her most successful album, Stronger Than Dirt, which reached number 198 in the Billboard Top 200 record chart. Thornton had now signed a contract with Pentagram Records and could finally fulfill one of her biggest dreams. A blues woman and the daughter of a preacher, Thornton loved the blues and what she called the "good singing" of gospel artists like the Dixie Hummingbirds and Mahalia Jackson. She had always wanted to record a gospel record, and with the album Saved (PE 10005), she achieved that longtime goal. The album includes the gospel classics "Oh, Happy Day," "Down By The Riverside," "Glory, Glory Hallelujah," "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands," "Lord Save Me," "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," "One More River" and "Go Down Moses".

By then, the American blues revival had come to an end. While the original blues acts like Thornton mostly played smaller venues, younger people played their versions of blues in massive arenas for big money. Since the blues had seeped into other genres of music, the blues musician no longer needed impoverishment or geography for substantiation; the style was enough. While at home the offers became fewer and smaller, things changed for good in 1972, when Thornton was asked to rejoin the American Folk Blues Festival tour. She thought of Europe as a good place for herself, and, with the lack of engagements in the United States, she agreed happily. The tour, beginning on March 2, took Thornton to Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Sweden, where it ended on March 27 in Stockholm. With her on the bill were Eddie Boyd, Big Joe Williams, Robert Pete Williams, T- Bone Walker, Paul Lenart, Hartley Severns, Edward Taylor and Vinton Johnson. As in 1965, they garnered recognition and respect from other musicians who wanted to see them.

In the 1970s, years of heavy drinking began to damage Thornton's health. She was in a serious auto accident but recovered to perform at the 1973 Newport Jazz Festival with Muddy Waters, B.B. King, and Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson (a recording of this performance, The Blues—A Real Summit Meeting, was released by Buddha Records). Thornton's last albums were Jail and Sassy Mama for Vanguard Records in 1975. Other songs from the recording session were released in 2000 on Big Mama Swings. Jail captured her performances during mid-1970s concerts at two prisons in the northwestern United States. She was backed by a blues ensemble that featured sustained jams by George "Harmonica" Smith and included the guitarists Doug MacLeod, Bee Houston and Steve Wachsman; the drummer Todd Nelson; the saxophonist Bill Potter; the bassist Bruce Sieverson; and the pianist J. D. Nicholson. She toured extensively through the United States and Canada, played at the Juneteenth Blues Fest in Houston and shared the bill with John Lee Hooker. She performed at the San Francisco Blues Festival in 1979 and the Newport Jazz Festival in 1980. In the early 1970s, Thornton's sexual proclivities became a question among blues fans. Big Mama also performed in the "Blues Is a Woman" concert that year, alongside classic blues legend Sippie Wallace, sporting a man's three-piece suit, straw hat, and gold watch. She sat at center stage and played pieces she wanted to play, which were not on the program. Thornton took part in the Tribal Stomp at Monterey Fairgrounds, the Third Annual Sacramento Blues Festival, and the Los Angeles Bicentennial Blues with BB King and Muddy Waters. She was a guest on an ABC-TV special hosted by actor Hal Holbrook and was joined by Aretha Franklin and toured through the club scene. She was also part of the award-winning PBS television special Three Generations of the blues with Sippie Wallace and Jeannie Cheatham.

Thornton was found dead at age 57 by medical personnel in a Los Angeles boarding house on July 25, 1984. She died of heart and liver disorders due to her longstanding alcohol abuse.

[melisa-may-taylor72]

ROGER TAYLOR: THE QUEEN'S SOLOIST- PELO MAGAZINE-  JULY, 1981

As a group, QUEEN has accomplished almost everything that a rock band can dream: big international tours always crowned by success, exploration and conquest of new territories, several albums number one in sales, double live album, conceptual album, soundtrack of a film. And now they will complete one of the few missing achievements:  A solo album. The first to set foot in these waters was Roger Taylor, the drummer.

Although Roger Taylor began his musical career as a teenager, when he wanted to become the best drummer in the world, he soon realized that it was going to be difficult for him to reach those heights, and changed his goal for that of knowing success through Queen. However, the years passed, there were fewer challenges to accept, and then now the thoughtful and coherent Taylor decided to make "Fun In Space", his first solo album (which promises to be a blast), revolving around the subject of science fiction, which has always fascinated him. Two years ago he started working on this project, in Queen's studios in Montreux, Switzerland, gathering all the material and all the ideas that did not fit within the musical spectrum of the band, but obviously, were going to serve him in this work outside the band.

FUN IN SPACE

When he began to think about this project, Taylor had doubts about whether or not his bandmates would accept his need to make a solo album, and whether or not they would like the result. Today, after the album's initial success, everyone seems to be happy with Taylor and his work; even he himself, plans to start with another solo album as soon as the recording of Queen's next work, in this month, is finished.

Taylor composed, played and arranged his entire disco-galactic experience. "Fun In Space" reflects, from beginning to end, all of Taylor's fascination with the cosmic and the ethereal, which he skillfully mixes with rock. Technically, it's an impressive achievement, but overall the album gives the impression of being, seen as a whole, a toy of a rich man who has nothing else to do 😠😠😠😠😠. It lacks a little feeling, is lyrically lazy, androids abound. On the inside of the cover, Taylor says: "I like it. If you don't like it, I'm sorry." 😛There are really nice parts, like the acoustic introduction to "My Country" or the riffs to "Let's Get Crazy", but, again, something is missing. There's no doubt about Taylor's talent, which is perfectly appreciated within Queen, and there's no doubt that most of the band's fans will like this album either. But,... But maybe Taylor's opinions are better than the critics. (They sure are!!!)😏😏😏😏

INFINITE HORIZONS

-Is there a particular reason why you chose this subject as the core of your first solo album?

Yes, I've always liked the spatial, the cosmic, I've always been attracted to it, ever since I was a kid. I have tons of books on the subject at home. Graphically and imaginatively, it's a very strong subject, with infinite horizons. In this field there is everything to invent, to say, to create, and we have to take advantage of it while we are on time. Another reason why I chose a spatial topic is that I wanted to start from something totally distant and different from Queen, to make the thing varied.

-What did the others say about the finished album?

Well, when I announced them that I was going to do a solo album, Freddie was the first to react, and he said: "From now on I tell you that if it's a piece of crap I'll tell you without any consideration". But finally everyone liked it, I even think they like it a lot more than I expected. I don't think they have any reason to be upset that I want to diversify a bit, because they have to know that just because I make a solo album doesn't mean that I want to separate myself from Queen or that I'm not happy with the work with the band. Sometimes you just want to do something different.

Did you ever think of doing a solo tour playing your album live?

No, not at all, it wouldn't make the slightest sense. This album was, for me, a bit like an exercise, a way to show people that drummers can do other things besides drumming.

Do you think this album could be a consequence of feeling frustrated for not being the main figure of the band?

I don't know, I haven't thought about it... Yeah, I guess there must be some of that, to some extent. But I feel good and satisfied with my role within the band. My professional life is totally dedicated to Queen. This album I made it, more than anything, to give it a bit of free rein to my personality, to liberate me a little in an non-group aspect. There seems to be a kind of tendency for drummers to make solo albums nowadays: Phill Collins has just made one, Nick Mason, from Pink Floyd, is bringing out his...

What do you think of yourself as a drummer?

When I started playing I wanted to be the best drummer in the world, but when I heard John Bonham and Buddy Rich, I realized that this aspiration didn't make the slightest sense on my part. I don't think I can expect so much from my technical skills. Besides, I don't like drum solos anymore; I think the era of the drummer's shining in rock is over and over a long time ago.

But then what is your professional goal? To be a well-known drummer and nothing else?

No. What happens is that the story of pretending to be an excellent drummer no longer attracts me. I'm part of a band; no more, no less. That's it, and that's enough for me. For me, the most important thing is not to get the first place in the world as a drummer, but to reach to people. That's what I'm most interested in right now, and that's what I'm trying to achieve.

THE FUTURE SOLOIST

Do you think being a great drummer and reaching out to people are opposites?

Not opposite, but different. I don't criticize those who are great drummers, they are exceptional musicians. There are very few drummers who reached a truly excellent level, and they did it because they gave the drumming a new and extraordinary dimension. John Bonham was the greatest rock drummer of all time. And, of course, so was Keith Moon.

Do you think the success of your album is or will be due to, basic and mainly, the fact that you are a member of Queen, or do you think your own name will also sell too?

It's very likely that there going to be a certain number of albums sold because I did it, Roger Taylor, Queen member, or not. I think the name weighs in either case. But you have to remember that the individual parts of a band are not equal to the unit, to the total result. However, I think there will be a lot of people who will buy the album itself, because they like it, regardless of my name and the band I belong to. In general, people don't just buy records; they buy what they want.

Do you plan to continue making solo albums in the future?

It's very likely that if I have more ideas, things that interest me and I like, I'll make another solo album. But it's not certain at the moment. Anyway, I want it to be very clear that for me Queen will always occupy the first place.

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(Original Material)