Artwork by me: Enrique Seemann

The first time Nina Simone felt the world close a door on her for being Black, she was seventeen, and she had one clear dream.

She wanted to be a classical concert pianist. The first great Black pianist in the grand halls, playing the Bach she had loved since she was a girl. She learned to play by ear before she could read, and she prepared for that dream her whole life. And when the moment came, the elite conservatory she applied to turned her down. She was always certain why, and that wound stayed with her for the rest of her life.

So she did something else. She started playing in bars to survive, began singing almost out of obligation, and by sheer force of being extraordinary she built a career no one handed to her. By the early sixties she was Nina Simone: a respected artist, with hits, with a place of her own in a world that had never made it easy. She had won, in her own way, in spite of everything.

Protest music held no appeal for her. It struck her as too simple, and she felt that simplicity stripped the dignity from the very people it claimed to defend. She wanted her music to be beautiful. Not a weapon.

And then came 1963

In June, Medgar Evers, a civil rights leader, was killed in front of his home in Mississippi. In September, four men from the Ku Klux Klan planted dynamite beneath a Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, a gathering place for the Black community and the movement. The blast killed four girls who were getting ready for the Sunday service: Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, and Carole Robertson, all fourteen, and Denise McNair, eleven.

When Nina Simone heard the news, her first reaction was not to sit down at the piano. It was to gather materials in her house and try to build a homemade gun. She was going to go out into the street and kill someone, and she said later that she did not care who.

Her husband, Andy, stopped her with a single line. “Nina, you can’t kill anyone. You are a musician. Do what you do.”

She shut herself in a room. An hour later she came out with a finished song. She said it poured out faster than she could write it down, like a wave of fury, hatred, and determination. In that moment, she recalled, it was as if she finally understood what it meant to be Black in America in 1963. The pieces of a puzzle that had never fit together suddenly clicked into place.

But that truth was not new to her. It was the same wall she had come up against her whole life, the same one that had shut the conservatory door. What was being done to her people was not some cause she chose to defend from the outside. It was hers. It had always been hers.

And all her resistance to mixing art and politics dissolved in a single afternoon. The gun she could not build became a song. Writing it, she said, felt like firing ten bullets back at the men who set the dynamite.

She called it Mississippi Goddam.

A show tune with teeth

The first thing that throws you when you hear it is that it sounds happy. And that is on purpose. The arrangement is cabaret, almost a Broadway number, bouncy piano, a rhythm that gets your foot tapping. On top of that brightness sits a lyric of pure rage, and that collision is the weapon. The music disarms you with a smile, and the words hit you once your guard is down.

The lyric names places the way you would list wounds, and none of them at random. Alabama, where the girls had just died. Mississippi, where Evers had been killed. Real names of recent pain, sung over a music hall melody. Onstage, Simone introduced it with a sharp irony: this is a show tune, she would say, but the show hasn’t been written for it yet.

And it asked no one’s permission. Near the end she stops begging for patience, that word her people were told again and again, and spits it back. Patience had run out.

What it cost her

She said it knowing what it cost. She was not naive. She was an established star, with more to lose than almost anyone, and she still released the song with her name on it.

The price came fast. Southern radio stations banned it and the boycotts began. One station in Carolina sent the promotional copies back snapped in half, inside their sleeves: broken music, returned to sender. For an industry that barely tolerated a Black artist with opinions, the song was too much.

But the sharpest moment was not the censorship. It was the stage. The version we know today was recorded at Carnegie Hall, before a mostly white audience. Between verses, Simone would drop her joke about the show tune, and the crowd would laugh. Until she said: I bet you thought I was kidding, didn’t you? And the laughter would die. She was looking them in the eye, singing to them. Little by little they understood that this was not entertainment, that the one on trial was their own comfort.

The song turned her into something else. Her commercial success, so hard-earned, began to slide the moment she threw herself into the movement. She said later that the industry punished her for it, boycotting her records. But at the same time she became a voice of that fight: in 1965 she sang it to the crowd marching from Selma to Montgomery, changing the lyric to name Selma, because the song breathed and updated itself with every new wound. She was a friend of Martin Luther King, of James Baldwin, of Lorraine Hansberry.

Years later, Nina Simone left. She was tired of a country she felt would not change, that had taken her friends and kept denying her what was fair. She lived in Liberia, then in Europe, and died in France in 2003. But leaving was not surrender. It was the same integrity as always: she had not swallowed the silence, and she was not going to swallow the hypocrisy of faking love for a place that treated her people that way. She left with her head high.

And here is what they could not break. They could snap the records in half and send them back. The song, they could not. It kept playing in the marches, it kept waking people up, it is still alive today. The country lost her. The voice that cost her so much to build, the one she chose not to silence when silence would have suited her better, that one stayed.

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Artwork by me: Enrique Seemann

The happiest song in World Cup history began as an anti-colonial satire. It was sung by soldiers.

It is hard to believe when you hear it, with that chorus half the world chanted in 2010 without understanding a single word. But before Shakira, before the stadium in South Africa, before the four billion views on YouTube, that melody had another name, another language, and a meaning almost opposite to the one it ended up with.

This is the story of how a song can travel so far from where it started that it ends up saying something else entirely. And of who a song belongs to when that happens.

A military march born from war

The chorus you hummed in 2010 is not Shakira’s. It belongs to a Cameroonian group called Golden Sounds, who in 1986 recorded a song called Zangaléwa.

The original is long, with several sections and more than one chorus taking turns across the minutes. One of them is the part the whole world would come to recognize: that “zamina mina, waka waka” Shakira picked up. It was not the song’s only hook, or even its first. But it was the one that crossed the ocean.

And here comes the first detail no one expects: the members of Golden Sounds were part of Cameroon’s Presidential Guard. Actual soldiers. The chorus came from even further back, from a slang that Cameroonian riflemen had invented to talk to each other during the Second World War. Zamina mina and zangaléwa were not catchy nonsense sounds. They were military questions. One translation of zangaléwa is something close to “who sent you?”

But the most interesting part is not where the words came from. It is what they were making fun of.

In the video, the musicians dress up as soldiers, with colonial helmets, their clothes stuffed to look pot-bellied, and in some shots their faces painted white. It was not a silly costume for the sake of it. It was a satire of the African officers who had worked with the white colonizers, getting rich by oppressing their own people. A mockery, from inside the army, of the soldier who served power instead of his own.

So Zangaléwa was never a party song. It was a protest, dressed up as a catchy march so it could say what it needed to say.

The trip to Colombia

What happens next reads almost like a novel.

In the late eighties, DJs from West Africa started bringing African music to Colombia’s Caribbean coast. Zangaléwa played in Barranquilla and Cartagena, where people renamed it with titles of their own: “The Military,” or “El saca lengua.”

Barranquilla. The city where Shakira was born and raised.

No one can prove exactly where she first heard it, and she has never told the story precisely. When she was asked about the song’s origin in 2010, Shakira said the inspiration hit her all at once, walking across her farm in Uruguay, from the barn to the house. She did not mention Cameroon, or Golden Sounds, or the chorus the rest of the world had been singing somewhere else for decades.

Maybe it really did come to her that way, like an old memory that returns without announcing where it came from. Or maybe the official story was more comfortable than the real one. Both things can be true at once.

What changed along the way

Here is the heart of it, and the most delicate part.

When a song travels this far, it does not just change language. It changes meaning. And somewhere on the road from Cameroonian march to World Cup anthem, something turned around.

The original mocked the soldier who obeyed. The new one told the player to be a good soldier. Shakira’s lyrics talk about being on the front line, rising like a champion, doing your duty. Some read it as a complete flip of the message: a song that questioned military authority, turned into an anthem that celebrates following it. Others see it simply as what happens when a song changes hands and eras, no bad intent, just drift.

What is hard to argue with is that the political edge of the original disappeared. The satire was gone. What stayed was the energy, the rhythm, the irresistible chorus. What left was the reason it existed.

Who does a song belong to?

When Waka Waka became the official anthem of the 2010 World Cup, neither Shakira nor FIFA credited the Cameroonians at first.

And there was an extra layer of discomfort. It was the first World Cup ever played on African soil, a huge moment for the continent. Many South Africans wondered why the official song was sung by a Colombian and not an African artist. The melody came from Africa and was returning to Africa, but it was passing through an outside star to get there.

Public pressure grew, mostly online, and it worked. Sony and Shakira’s team agreed to credit Golden Sounds and to negotiate compensation out of court. The group themselves stepped in to calm things down, saying it was not plagiarism, that the singer had simply readapted the song, and that there was an agreement.

But the deeper question kept floating, and it is not an easy one to close. Does it belong to the people who created it? To the one who made it play across the planet? To the soldiers who invented those words in a war? To the DJs who carried it across the ocean? A song that passed through so many hands, whose is it in the end?

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Artwork by me: Enrique Seemann

Back in 1978, a producer in London imagined a future where record labels would keep computers in the basement, manufacturing artists. No musicians. No bands. The machine would write the songs, and the public would never know the difference.

It sounds like a 2026 headline.

But he thought it up almost half a century ago. And instead of just sitting with the idea, he did something stranger: he wrote a song about it. One so catchy that, two years later, it became the very first thing MTV ever broadcast.

It is called Video Killed the Radio Star, and it is far weirder and far more prophetic than the eighties classic you think you know.

A fed-up producer and a science fiction story

The producer was Trevor Horn. By the late seventies he had spent years making records for other people without ever breaking through, mostly because he could never get his hands on a good song. By his own account, he got so fed up that he reached a simple conclusion: if he couldn’t find a great artist and a great song, he would just write one himself and become the artist.

Two things were rattling around his head in those days. One was The Man-Machine by Kraftwerk, a sound that seemed to arrive straight from the future. The other was a short story by J.G. Ballard, a British science fiction writer, about a world where traditional music had been replaced by a technology that no longer needed singers.

That image stuck with him, and not in the pretty way. It was not the bright future that grabbed him. It was the singer left over, made unnecessary by something newer and more efficient. That unease was the seed of everything.

Years later, looking back on where the idea came from, Horn put it like this:

“I had this idea that in the future rather than people playing music, there would be people working at a computer. And a record label wouldn’t sign artists, it would just have computer-generated artists. The computer would write the songs.” Trevor Horn to American Songwriter (2021)

So in 1978, together with Bruce Woolley and Geoff Downes, he wrote a song about all of it. The first demo came to life in Downes’ flat in Wimbledon Park, which sat right above a monumental stonemason’s, the kind of place where headstones are carved. The detail is almost too good: a song about things becoming obsolete, written above a workshop for tombs.

What the song actually says

It is worth slowing down on what the song is about, because that is where everything lives.

It is not a protest or a shout. It is a small, sad story. The lyric speaks directly to a radio star, someone who was huge in another era and whose heart broke when the pictures arrived. The two meet again in an abandoned studio, listening to old recordings, remembering the jingles that used to play everywhere. And a chorus that keeps insisting on the same thing: there is no rewinding, we have gone too far.

It is an elegy. It neither celebrates the future nor curses it. It accepts it as inevitable while quietly mourning what it takes along the way.

That is the trick of the song. The fear is not in the lyric, screaming. It is in the tone. In that mix of a bright melody and nostalgia for something that is only just being lost.

The band that was supposed to be fake

And this is where that unease turns into something more interesting than a melancholy song.

Horn did not just write about machines replacing people. He built an entire band around the idea. The Buggles were meant to be a fiction: a synthetic pop group, the kind a couple of programmers might cook up on a computer. He was not running from the machine that unsettled him. He was playing at being one.

That, again, in 1978. Almost half a century before we had a name for it.

The irony is that it backfired. The single, now a duo of Horn and Downes, came out in 1979 and hit number one in sixteen countries. Horn ended up forced to become a flesh-and-blood pop star, face and all, a role he never wanted and still cringes about. The fake band turned real on the strength of its own success.

Even the sound is part of the joke. Horn sings in a deliberately robotic voice, and the whole arrangement is processed to feel computerized. A song about the fear of machines, sung by someone pretending to be one. The fear and the tool, in the same recording.

And then MTV happened

On August 1, 1981, a new channel went live in the United States.

The first video MTV ever broadcast was, of all the songs in the world, Video Killed the Radio Star.

Think about that for a second. A song mourning the end of the radio star, launching the very machine that would push the next generation of musicians toward the same fate. That obsolete star in the lyric stopped being a character. The screen that had made her unnecessary was now powering an entire empire.

Too perfect. A little cruel.

Because radio did lose something. It was invisible, and that was its magic. You had to imagine the face behind the voice, build the scene in your own head. A song could feel like it belonged only to you, even if thousands were hearing it at the same time. With video, suddenly music had a face, a body, a look. It was no longer only heard. It was seen. And from there, no going back.

The same fear, again

And that is what makes the song bigger than its own moment. What unsettled it was not video, and not even computers. It was something that keeps coming back.

Radio stopped being the center. Television changed the rules. Then the internet changed them again. Then social media. Then streaming. Now AI.

Always the same script. The machine arrives promising more access, more speed, more possibility. And the same knot always shows up in your stomach, the one the radio star in the song already felt: the fear of becoming obsolete, of something human being flattened, of the craft turning disposable. Every leap gives you something and takes something at the same time.

Radio asked for imagination.

Television asked for attention.

The internet asked for speed.

AI asks for trust.

And here is the ending the song itself could never have imagined. In late 2025, MTV switched off its music channels. Streaming did to music television exactly what television had once done to radio.

The last thing MTV Music aired before going dark was, once again, Video Killed the Radio Star. The same song it all began with, forty-four years earlier.

Video killed the radio star. And in the end, the next machine came for video too. The song wound up singing its own farewell.

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Artwork by me: Enrique Seemann

July 1969.

Millions of people around the world were gathered in front of their televisions, watching something humanity had never seen before. A rocket leaving Earth. A man stepping onto the Moon. It felt like the beginning of something new, almost mythical. Technology had carried us farther than ever before. For the first time, the impossible felt reachable.

And somewhere in the background of that moment, another story was quietly unfolding.

Just days before the Apollo 11 mission, a relatively unknown musician named David Bowie released a song called Space Oddity. The timing felt almost too perfect, as if the song had arrived exactly when the world needed it. The BBC even used it during their coverage of the moon landing, broadcasting it into homes across the UK while humanity celebrated its greatest technological triumph.

But there was something unsettling about it.

Because while the world watched astronauts land safely on the Moon, Bowie’s astronaut never came back.

The Dream of Space, and the Fear Behind It

The origins of Space Oddity trace back to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bowie saw the film and was deeply affected by its atmosphere, not just the spectacle of space, but the silence, the isolation, the feeling of drifting into something vast and unknowable. The film captured both the wonder and the anxiety of technological progress, and Bowie wanted to translate that feeling into sound.

At the time, the late 1960s were filled with contradictions. The world was obsessed with progress. Rockets were being launched, computers were becoming more powerful, and humanity seemed to be racing toward the future. But beneath that excitement, there was also fear, fear of nuclear war, of losing control, of becoming disconnected from what made us human.

Out of that tension came Major Tom.

Drifting Into Silence

What makes Major Tom so fascinating is not the mission itself, but what happens afterward. At first, everything works perfectly. The launch is successful. Communication flows smoothly. The technology does exactly what it was designed to do.

But then something changes.

Major Tom drifts.

And eventually, he stops responding.

There is no explosion. No dramatic malfunction. No moment of chaos.

Instead, he drifts. Untethered, physically, emotionally, existentially.

The connection begins to fade. The silence slowly takes over.

That silence is the real center of the song.

And somehow, decades later, it still feels familiar.

Major Tom no longer feels distant. He feels closer than he should.

It’s easy to recognize that silence today. In quiet rooms. In long hours spent in front of glowing screens. In conversations carried through speakers, with voices that exist somewhere else.

Many of us now live surrounded by technologies that promise connection. We carry devices that allow us to speak instantly to people across continents. We attend meetings without leaving our homes. We collaborate with voices that exist only through screens and speakers.

Technology has brought us closer than ever before.

And yet, sometimes, it feels like we’re drifting farther away.

The Sound of the Future

Sonically, Space Oddity helped create the sound of the future. Bowie played the stylophone himself, a small, inexpensive electronic instrument that produced the strange, wavering tones that now feel inseparable from the song. Alongside the Mellotron and sweeping orchestral arrangements, it created something cinematic, something almost otherworldly.

The technology used to record the song mirrored the technology it described: experimental, uncertain, full of possibility.

At first, the song wasn’t an instant success. It took time, and even a re-release years later, for Space Oddity to truly find its audience. But when it did, everything shifted. The song became Bowie’s first major breakthrough, opening the door to a career built on reinvention, experimentation, and constant transformation.

Major Tom didn’t disappear either. He returned years later in Ashes to Ashes, changed, fractured, more human than before. Almost like a reflection Bowie kept revisiting throughout his life.

Connected… and Still Alone

In many ways, the modern world resembles the inside of Major Tom’s capsule.

Everything works. Systems function. Messages are sent and received. Information flows constantly. We are connected to networks that span the planet.

But connection is not the same as presence.

And communication is not the same as closeness.

There are moments, quiet ones, often unnoticed, when the room feels too silent, even while notifications keep arriving. Moments when the world feels distant, despite being only a click away. Moments when progress feels vast, but strangely empty.

Moments when we drift.

Maybe that’s why Space Oddity still feels so relevant today. It isn’t the rockets or the lunar missions that make it endure. It’s something quieter, more unsettling, the emotional cost of progress. The farther we move into the future, the more deliberate we have to be about staying human.

Major Tom wasn’t just an astronaut.

He became a symbol.

A figure floating in silence, surrounded by technology, still searching for connection in the middle of infinite space.

Somewhere in the Silence

There’s something haunting about the way the song ends. No dramatic explosion. No heroic return. Just distance. Silence. A voice fading into nothingness.

And perhaps that’s the most unsettling part.

Not the vastness of space, but the possibility of being alone within it.

Because sometimes, progress doesn’t feel like arrival.

Sometimes, it feels like drifting.

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Artwork by me: Enrique Seemann

Gorillaz was never a band in the traditional sense.

Created as a virtual project by musician Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett, it was imagined from the beginning as something open rather than fixed.

A space where different voices could enter, coexist, and disappear without needing to belong to a single identity.

Albarn has been the only constant on the musical side, and that turned Gorillaz into a meeting point. Over the years, artists from completely different cultures, genres, and generations have passed through it. Some already established, others still unknown at the time.

More than a band, Gorillaz functions like a space.

A place where different worlds meet for a moment.

The Mountain

That idea takes on another weight in The Mountain, Gorillaz’s most recent album.

The record is born from a deeply personal moment for Albarn and Hewlett. Within just a few days of each other, both lost their parents. It was inevitable that this experience would find its way into the music.

But it doesn’t stay in grief. It moves toward something else.

During that same period, Albarn traveled to Varanasi, one of the oldest living cities in the world. There, on the banks of the Ganges, he scattered his father’s ashes.

It’s a place where death is not hidden. It’s lived.

In Hindu tradition, death is not understood as an ending, but as a transition within a larger cycle. Rituals happen in plain sight. Life continues around them. There isn’t a clear rupture between what ends and what follows.

That idea runs through the album.

The Mountain doesn’t feel like a record about losing something, but about continuing to move afterward. About how to keep going without having a clear answer.

The mountain appears as a symbol of that process, a journey that repeats itself.

Rise. Reach. Descend. Begin again.

A cycle more than a destination.

That way of seeing death changes how the album is built.

Voices don’t disappear. Memories don’t stay still. Influences reappear in other places.

The past doesn’t vanish. It transforms.

And that’s exactly where The Manifesto begins to make sense.

The Manifesto

The song begins with Trueno.

It doesn’t enter with force. It enters looking forward.

“No sé qué va a pasar mañana cuando responda a la luz que me llama.”

(“I don’t know what will happen tomorrow when I answer the light that calls me.”)

That light can be read as something more than the future. It can be a call toward something unknown, even toward the end. And still, there is no resistance.

His verses don’t speak directly about death, but they orbit around it the entire time: it appears in the form of questions, of legacy, of what remains afterward.

“Solo dame 21 gramos pa’ sentirme firme”

(“Just give me 21 grams so I can feel steady”)

a reference to the idea that the soul weighs 21 grams,

“Y yo te dejo mi legado antes de irme”

(“And I’ll leave you my legacy before I go”)

There’s no fear in the way he says it. Instead, there’s a quiet acceptance. As if moving forward mattered more than fully understanding.

That’s why his imagery isn’t dark, but organic: trees as teachers, wind as guidance, the mountain as experience.

“Me encanta sentir el viento, subir la montaña sin aliento. Al final lo que importa es el intento”

(“I love feeling the wind, climbing the mountain breathless. In the end, what matters is the attempt”)

The mountain is not a destination. It’s the process. The constant effort, the exhaustion, the act of continuing even without knowing if there is a clear ending.

And just when the song feels settled into that rhythm, Damon enters.

“Oh, the mountain, it is high. Yeah, the mountain’s sad so the mountain cry…”

His voice doesn’t push the story forward. It holds it. It introduces a broader idea: the mountain remains.

“But the mountain stays on still.”

People change. Generations pass. But something remains unmoved.

On that foundation, Proof enters.

His voice comes from another time, and from another emotional place. His verse is violent, direct, full of confrontation:

“This Uz’ can be deadly, slugs move through your chest piece… Now you sleepin’ in a box.”

Here, death is not something to contemplate or accept.

It’s something that happens.

Suddenly, without time to understand it.

And still, it doesn’t break the song.

Because The Manifesto doesn’t try to present a single way of understanding death. It places them side by side.

Trueno looks at it as part of a path. Proof confronts it as an immediate impact. Damon observes it from a wider distance.

Three different ways of approaching the same thing.

And in the middle of all of them, the mountain remains.

That’s where the song stops being just a collaboration and becomes an idea.

Proof died in 2006.

And still, he’s here.

As a memory, but also, as an active part of something new. As if time weren’t a straight line, but a space where different things can meet.

Toward the end, the song shifts in tone.

“You’re not alone…”

For a moment, it feels like it might close on something more human, more intimate.

But then another layer appears.

“Only automatic now…”“Slow-release pills…”

The song doesn’t explain it, but it suggests something.

After everything the song proposes, the search, the attempt to understand, the connection to something larger, another possibility appears: to stop searching.

To live automatically.

To numb the process.

To avoid facing it.

And the song never tells us which one is right.

It simply leaves both there.

Like two different ways of moving through the same thing.

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Artwork by me: Enrique Seemann

Released in 1997 as the lead single from their self-titled album, Beetlebum marked a major creative turning point for Blur. Moving beyond the playful confidence of Britpop, the song revealed a darker, more introspective side of the band. It quickly climbed to the top of the UK Singles Chart, becoming their second number-one hit and signaling a new chapter in their artistic journey.

Behind its rich, layered sound lies a story of emotional turbulence, creative reinvention, and personal change.

The Story Behind the Song

Damon Albarn has described “Beetlebum” as one of his most personal and emotionally honest songs. It was written during his relationship with Justine Frischmann, the lead singer of Elastica, at a time when both of them were struggling with heroin use. The song reflects that blurred space where love, dependency, and escapism became deeply intertwined.

The title plays on the idea of “chasing the dragon,” a common way of referring to smoking heroin, filtered through Albarn’s own instinctive wordplay. “Beetlebum” wasn’t a carefully planned phrase. It came to him naturally, reflecting the hazy emotional state he was in at the time. It captures both the search for escape and the emotional dependency that shaped his relationship and his songwriting.

But “Beetlebum” isn’t just about addiction. In interviews from that time, Albarn described the feeling of the song as “sleepy and sexy,” with something “complicated” underneath. That mix of tenderness and disorientation mirrors the highs and lows of his relationship. Love and escapism became deeply intertwined, shaping the song’s emotional tone.

Decoding the Lyrics

The lyrics of “Beetlebum” are intentionally mysterious, but the emotional tension is unmistakable. Lines like “She’ll make you come, she’ll make you go” suggest the push and pull of desire and dependency, capturing both the thrill and the instability of complicated love.

The repeated refrain “Beetlebum, what you’ve done?” feels less like an accusation and more like a moment of quiet reckoning, a blurred space between pleasure and regret. Albarn leaves the imagery open-ended, allowing listeners to project their own experiences onto it. That ambiguity becomes part of the song’s power, revealing a fragile emotional state without ever spelling it out completely.

Crafting the Sound: Coxon’s Hypnotic Layers

The sonic landscape of “Beetlebum” perfectly complements its emotional complexity. Graham Coxon’s guitar work sits at the center of the song, shaping its restless and hypnotic mood. Inspired by alternative and shoegaze artists like Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine, he blended distortion and texture to create a sound that feels both fragile and abrasive.

The main riff mirrors the emotional tone of the lyrics: circular, dreamy, and slightly unsettled. Recorded across several London studios, the track reflects the creative tension between Coxon and Damon Albarn at the time. Yet that friction became productive. Out of it emerged one of Blur’s most layered and introspective recordings.

Themes: Love, Addiction, and Reinvention

“Beetlebum” captures a moment of deep personal and creative transition for Blur. By the mid-1990s, Britpop was beginning to lose momentum, and the band was searching for a new emotional and artistic language beyond irony and bravado.

The song reflects the tension between control and surrender, intimacy and dependency, stability and escape. It lives in the space between wanting to hold on and knowing something is falling apart. That emotional ambiguity became central to Blur’s reinvention, marking their shift toward more vulnerable, introspective, and emotionally direct songwriting.

Cultural and Critical Reception

When “Beetlebum” was released, it went straight to number one on the UK Singles Chart, becoming Blur’s second chart-topping single. More than just a commercial success, it signaled a clear creative shift. Critics praised its maturity and emotional depth, often pointing to it as one of the band’s most sophisticated and fully realized songs.

Fans responded strongly as well. For many listeners, it marked the moment Blur moved beyond Britpop’s playful irony and embraced something more personal and inward-looking. Its layered production and vulnerable tone helped it stand out not only within the band’s catalogue, but also in the wider landscape of late-1990s British rock.

My Personal Thoughts

“Beetlebum” feels like a song about standing at a crossroads. It’s not just about Damon Albarn, but about Blur as a whole. You can hear the weight of what they were leaving behind: the Britpop anthems, the irony, the comfort of a familiar sound. Instead of clinging to it, they chose to move forward. They embraced uncertainty and turned it into something raw, emotional, and honest.

The lyrics are open enough that Damon’s story slowly becomes your own. Feelings of longing, regret, confusion, and the need for control are things most of us recognize in ourselves. That’s why the song continues to resonate. It doesn’t explain everything. It simply sits with those emotions and lets them breathe.

And then there’s Graham Coxon’s guitar work. The riff feels like life itself: repetitive, layered, sometimes dissonant, sometimes beautiful. It proves that storytelling doesn’t always need words. Sound alone can carry memory, tension, and meaning.

For me, “Beetlebum” captures that fragile in-between space we all pass through at some point. The moment when you know you can’t go back, but you’re not sure where you’re headed yet. Blur turned that uncertainty into something timeless. And that, more than anything, is what makes this song continue to matter.

Other Blur Songs I’d Recommend

1. Out of Time

Released in 2003 as the lead single from their seventh album, Think Tank, “Out of Time” marked a significant departure from Blur’s earlier Britpop sound. With its melancholic melody and restrained arrangement, the song reflects on themes of emotional distance and quiet disillusionment.

During the album’s recording, Graham Coxon left the band after the initial sessions, leaving only a limited presence on the finished record. It became the only Blur album where he was not a full-time member. His absence gave Think Tank a softer, more atmospheric tone, and “Out of Time” emerged as one of the clearest expressions of that transitional period.

2. End of a Century

Featured on their 1994 album Parklife, “End of a Century” explores the quiet routines and emotional stagnation of domestic life. Damon Albarn once described it as a song about couples “staying in and staring at each other — only instead of candlelight, it’s the TV light.”

The opening line, “She said there’s ants in the carpet,” refers to a real ant infestation that Albarn and his then-girlfriend Justine Frischmann experienced in their home. That mix of everyday detail and emotional distance makes the song quietly devastating.

3. Tender

A centerpiece of their 1999 album 13, “Tender” showcases Blur at their most emotionally open. Built around gospel-inspired backing vocals and a slow-building arrangement, the song explores themes of vulnerability, forgiveness, and emotional recovery.

Written during a turbulent period in Albarn’s personal life, “Tender” feels like a public confession wrapped in a communal embrace. Its warmth and sincerity make it one of the band’s most enduring and deeply felt recordings.

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Artwork by me: Enrique Seemann

SAULT don’t present themselves as a traditional band. In fact, they barely present themselves at all.

Since emerging in the late 2010s, the project has operated more like a collective than a group with visible members. It’s known that Inflo sits at the creative and production core, and that voices like Cleo Sol have been essential in shaping their sound. Beyond that, very little is officially defined. There’s no fixed lineup. No clear biographies. No public narrative telling you how to read them.

But that isn’t absence. It’s a decision.

SAULT seem to work from a very deliberate idea: removing weight from everything around the music so the music has to carry everything itself. No constant interviews. No explanations. No characters. No forced context.

Instead of telling us who they are, they let the records do the work.

And the records keep coming.

Since 2019, they’ve been dropping album after album, sometimes even a few in the same year, effortlessly weaving together soul, gospel, funk, R&B, jazz, and spoken word. It’s not like a random mix or wild experimentation, but rather a single voice that’s stretching, adapting, and reshaping itself to perfectly convey what needs to be said. What really stands out isn’t just how much they’ve done, but how consistently they’ve done it: there’s no feeling of rushing, filler, or just repeating things without purpose. Everything sounds intentional, careful, and essential.

In a landscape where almost everything revolves around visibility, SAULT do something quietly uncommon: they gently shift the spotlight, keeping it firmly on the music.

It’s not that they hide. They simply never asked to be seen.

Good Things Will Come After the Pressure

Good Things Will Come After the Pressure lives inside Chapter 1, an album that carries a quiet sense of faith. The gospel influence is there, but the music keeps it light. Grounded. Human.

It’s not about preaching or big declarations. Faith here feels practical: staying upright when things feel heavy, continuing when there’s no clear way out yet.

The song moves with a warm, steady groove. Bass, drums, and guitar holding a constant pulse, almost physical. It doesn’t rush. It doesn’t push. It holds. As it unfolds, wider layers open up: arrangements that expand the space, voices that feel added, as if the weight stops being individual and becomes shared.

It feels less like a message and more like presence. Like someone sitting next to you, without needing to explain anything. Just saying: I know it’s heavy. I’m here.

Time, attention, and choosing not to be everywhere

The way SAULT release their music reinforces all of this.

For years, several of their albums didn’t arrive first on streaming platforms. They appeared as direct downloads, sometimes available only for a limited time. As if listening itself required a choice: being there when it happens, or letting it go.

The clearest example was Nine, released in 2021 and removed after 99 days. A simple, firm gesture: this exists now, not forever.

There were moments when SAULT released multiple albums almost at once. No warning. No buildup. No calendar.

A move often associated with pop spectacle since Beyoncé popularized it, but here stripped of everything extra. No media shock. Just coherence with the way they move through the world.

Even live performances followed that logic. For years, SAULT barely existed on stage. Their first public show didn’t happen until late 2023, after they had already built a massive discography. And even then, the performances felt like exceptions, not routine. Singular events. No long tours. No constant presence.

That creates something rare today: real scarcity. Once it’s there, everything shifts. How you listen. How much you care. How long you stay.

What they talk about (when they talk)

Although SAULT move freely across genres, there’s a clear thread running through almost everything they do: community, resistance, and faith.

Gospel’s influence is clear, not as doctrine or rules, but as something emotional. The collective voice. Repetition as support. The belief that nothing truly important is meant to be done alone.

That became explicit in albums like Untitled (Black Is) and Untitled (Rise), released during the height of Black Lives Matter. Records that don’t react with urgency or noise, but with depth. Pain, memory, dignity, shared strength.

They’re not albums of slogans. They’re albums that stay with you.

More recent projects continue that line from a more intimate place. The politics don’t disappear, they move inward. Music that doesn’t try to distract or escape, but hold you. Music that doesn’t promise quick solutions, but does offer presence.

And maybe that’s why SAULT works the way it does.

Because they don’t try to occupy all the space. Because they don’t explain themselves. Because they don’t stay longer than necessary.

They appear when they have something to say. They leave something that carries weight. And they trust that to be enough.

In a world that never stops talking, that choice feels quietly solid.

My Personal Thoughts

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Artwork by me: Enrique Seemann

There are songs that resonate with you quickly. I don’t know about you, but a lot of the time I don’t really pay close attention to the lyrics at first. I don’t fully know what they’re about. It’s the vibe, the rhythm, the mood that pulls me in first.

That’s exactly what happened with Tell Me Why.

I was hooked. I kept playing it on repeat. Not because I understood it, but because of how it felt.

That caught my attention. Usually, when something grabs me, I want to figure it out right away. This time, I didn’t. Hitting play again was enough.

The Curiosity That Comes Later

After listening to it so many times, I thought: I’d love to include this in Boombastic.

But I hesitated. Gotts Street Park don’t come wrapped in a loud narrative, and I wasn’t sure whether there was a clearly defined story behind the song or not.

Still, I got curious.

And what I found made everything click even more.

Gotts Street Park don’t really work like a traditional band. They describe themselves as a group of songwriters, instrumentalists, and producers who write and record together, usually starting from the studio and the shared moment. Many of their songs don’t begin with lyrics or a closed narrative, but with an instrumental base. A groove. An atmosphere that slowly takes shape in the room.

Their sound pulls from old soul and jazz, from recordings made with real instruments, from a restrained aesthetic that never pushes too hard. There’s an idea that runs through everything they do, one they’ve mentioned themselves: substance before style. Patience. Space. Listening before acting.

That also explains a lot about how they collaborate.

In interviews, they’ve said that when they invite someone into the studio, it’s not to “sing over” something that’s already finished. In fact, when talking about “Favourite Kind of Girl”, they’ve mentioned that they never would have produced that same instrumental vibe if Flikka, the other artist hadn’t been in the room. The presence of someone else changes the song.

Tell Me Why feels exactly like that.

The instrumental opens the space, but it’s Olive Jones’ entrance that gives it emotional direction. She doesn’t sing to impress. Her voice stays close, almost at the level of thought. As if the song weren’t a stage, but a small room where everything happens quietly.

There’s a video where Olive performs it live, in a garden, with almost no distance between her and the listeners. Watching her play it like that completes the picture: this song doesn’t need to raise its voice to say something.

Once I understood how they work, the song made even more sense. Not because it revealed something new, but because it confirmed what I’d been feeling from the start: there’s no rush here to arrive anywhere.

What It’s About, At Least for Me

For me, Tell Me Why is about a dynamic of attraction.

The kind that feels intense, easy, almost addictive. There’s chemistry, closeness, desire. Everything flows. Everything feels good. And still, from the start, you can sense how fragile it is.

The song knows it too. “We know hell’s on the horizon.” There’s awareness here. No one walks in thinking this will be simple or forever. They walk in anyway. Because attraction often weighs more than the warning signs.

“The more I get, the more I want.” That line sits at the center of it all. Not as a complaint, but as an admission: some connections don’t settle you. They pull you in deeper.

The whole song lives in that quiet in-between. We could get closer. Or we could cut our ties. And no one wants to decide yet.

Seduction runs through it, but not as a game. More like a language. The body, the night, movement. Desire stepping in where words would force a conversation you’re not ready to have.

That’s why “tell me why I shouldn’t leave” doesn’t sound like an ultimatum. It sounds like doubt. Like enjoying the pull, while knowing that staying has a cost.

Tell Me Why stays right there. In that attraction you know isn’t good for you, but still feels good while it lasts. In that space where enjoyment and awareness exist at the same time.

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Artwork by me: Enrique Seemann

Some songs don’t arrive with the calendar. They arrive with a mood.

River opens like a familiar scene: it’s coming on Christmas, people cutting down trees, reindeer going up, carols filling the air. And then, before you can settle into the warm illusion of the season, Joni does something quietly devastating.

She plays “Jingle Bells” on the piano, but she twists it. It’s the same shape you’ve known your whole life, only now it sounds like a memory you can’t quite trust. Like joy seen through a window on a night you’re not invited into.

And that’s the first truth River tells: sometimes the holidays don’t amplify happiness. They amplify contrast.

The Context: Blue, and the Cost of Being That Honest

In 1971, Joni Mitchell released Blue, an album that doesn’t feel written as much as exposed. It was recorded at A&M Studios in Hollywood, but it doesn’t sound like a studio. It sounds like someone sitting alone, speaking plainly, without checking whether the truth is convenient.

Much of Blue lives in the aftermath of love: the kind that changes you, and the kind that leaves you holding what’s left. Joni had recently come out of her relationship with Graham Nash, and the album stays close to that emotional climate. There’s longing in it, but also distance. Desire, but also clarity.

That’s why River stands apart from a typical breakup song. Because it isn’t only about loss. It’s about responsibility.

When people describe Joni as a “confessional” songwriter, they’re often thinking of River: a song where she doesn’t ask to be rescued or reshape the story to emerge spotless. She simply acknowledges she was hard to be with.

Not as drama. Not as self-punishment. Just as recognition.

The Line That Changes Everything

Most holiday songs are about arriving. Home. Love. Reunion. Light.

River is about wanting to leave.

Not dramatically. Not destructively. In the simplest fantasy imaginable:

“I wish I had a river I could skate away on.”

It’s a desire for distance. For quiet. For a temporary suspension of expectations.

And then comes the line that reframes the entire song:

“I’m so hard to handle, I’m selfish and I’m sad.”

It doesn’t soften the feeling. It doesn’t redirect blame. It turns inward, calmly, without spectacle.

Why It Resonates

There’s a reason River has slowly drifted into the Christmas canon, even though it resists the role. It captures something many people feel in December but rarely articulate.

The season is beautiful, yes, but it’s also reflective. A time of endings, of emotional accounting, of looking back whether you intend to or not. Nostalgia surfaces. Absences feel sharper. Not because something is wrong, but because the year is closing.

The lights don’t always soften that. Sometimes they make it clearer.

That’s why River endures. It doesn’t fight that feeling or try to resolve it. It simply gives it shape.

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Artwork by me: Enrique Seemann

“Shine On You Crazy Diamond” is more than a song; it’s a deep, emotional tribute to former Pink Floyd member Syd Barrett. Released on the 1975 album Wish You Were Here, this piece combines nostalgia, admiration, and sorrow, reflecting what Barrett meant to the band and how his unexpected departure impacted its members. Divided into nine parts, the song offers a unique musical journey that feels like an exploration of memory and loss, leaving a lasting impact on all who listen.

The Shining Diamond of Psychedelia

Syd Barrett, the creative genius behind Pink Floyd’s early psychedelic sound, was more than just a musician; he was a symbol of the 1960s counterculture. With his unique personality, experimental guitar skills, and dreamy lyrics, Barrett perfectly represented the spirit of the era.

He blended music and art in a way that was all his own. His innovative style and fearless approach quickly made him a symbol of the psychedelic movement. But as Pink Floyd’s fame grew, the pressures of the music industry, combined with Barrett’s increasing use of LSD and mental health struggles, took a heavy toll on him. By 1968, Barrett’s condition had deteriorated to the point where he could no longer perform consistently, leading the band to make the tough decision to continue without him.

By 1975, Barrett had become a legendary figure in the minds of his former bandmates, a symbol of both genius and tragedy. His absence left a deep hole, one that ”Shine On You Crazy Diamond” tried to fill by honoring the memory of their lost friend. The song became a heartfelt musical tribute, capturing the bittersweet memory of a brilliant mind that burned brightly but sadly faded away too soon.

A Surprising Studio Appearance

One of the most moving moments during the recording of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” happened when Barrett unexpectedly showed up at the studio. It was June 5, 1975, and Pink Floyd was in the midst of recording sessions. Barrett, unrecognizable with a shaved head and altered demeanor, entered the studio without warning. At first, the band members didn’t realize it was him; Roger Waters even mistook him for a studio technician. When they finally recognized him, the atmosphere turned melancholic and surreal, a painful reminder of how Barrett’s brilliance had faded. This encounter gave even greater weight to the song, turning it into an emotional farewell that the band hadn’t anticipated.

The Homage in Every Note: Song Structure

The structure of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” is as ambitious as its meaning. Spanning over 25 minutes in its full version, the song is divided into nine parts, beginning with an instrumental introduction of synthesizers and guitar that evokes a profound sadness. David Gilmour’s melodic guitar solos seem to express the pain and loss the band felt, while Roger Waters and Richard Wright add layers of keyboards and sound effects that create an ethereal, almost ghostly atmosphere. Each part captures different emotions, from admiration to grief, crafting a slow-motion farewell to their old friend.

Symbolic Lyrics: Waters’ Poetic Voice

Roger Waters’ lyrics in “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” are both an homage and an elegy. Lines like “Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun” and “Now there’s a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky” reference Barrett’s mental decline, highlighting how his once-bright light faded into darkness. Additionally, the initials of the song’s title, S, Y, and D, subtly spell “Syd,” a thoughtful touch that makes this song a deeply personal tribute. Waters’ verses capture Barrett’s duality: a genius trapped in his own brilliance.

A Legacy of Memory and Loss

“Shine On You Crazy Diamond” has transcended as one of Pink Floyd’s anthems and as a unique piece in rock history. Beyond being a progressive rock track, it’s an ode to friendship, loss, and the memory of a misunderstood genius. Through this piece, Pink Floyd turned the pain and admiration for their old friend into a timeless tribute, reminding us of the fragility of genius and the high price some pay for it.

My Personal Thoughts:

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Artwork by me: Enrique Seemann

Devendra Banhart is known for his super unique style, mixing different genres and adding a funny twist to his music. ”Your Fine Petting Duck” is a great example of this. It’s a funny and sad song about love and heartbreak. Banhart changes the music and the lyrics in unexpected ways, and it all works together to make the song feel real and relatable.

Musical Composition: A Journey Through Genres

The song begins with a gentle, nostalgic melody reminiscent of 1950s pop, setting a lighthearted tone that evokes the innocence of early romance. This initial simplicity is soon disrupted as the track transitions into a disco-infused beat, with Banhart delivering lyrics in German—a surprising twist that challenges listeners’ expectations. This genre-blending mirrors the unpredictable emotional landscape of relationships, where moments of joy can swiftly turn into confusion or melancholy.

Lyrical Content: Whimsy Intertwined with Reality

In “Your Fine Petting Duck,” Banhart mixes sweet nothings with hints of sadness. While expressing love, they also admit to past mistakes and the fact that they might have to say goodbye. The song takes a strange turn in the second half when it switches to German lyrics. This adds a dreamlike quality, focusing on the idea of being apart and being free. This whole thing shows how romantic relationships can be both close and far away at the same time.

Production Elements: Crafting Emotional Layers

Banhart’s production choices really bring the song’s meaning to life. The warm, cozy sound at the start is a total contrast to the upbeat, danceable rhythm that comes right after, making for an exciting listening experience. This intentional contrast highlights the song’s message about love being unpredictable, reminding us that relationships can change in all sorts of ways.

A Satirical Twist on Traditional Love Songs

Ultimately, “Your Fine Petting Duck” serves as a satirical take on conventional love songs. By blending earnest affection with tongue-in-cheek detachment, Banhart invites listeners to question traditional portrayals of romance. He highlights the absurdity in our romantic expectations, where passion can quickly turn to ambivalence, and where fantasy often doesn’t align with reality.

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My Personal Thoughts:

Banhart’s “Your Fine Petting Duck” is a hilarious and thought-provoking take on love songs. It shows how unpredictable love can be, and it’s okay to embrace its surprises. Remember, relationships are never easy, they can go from happy to confusing in a flash.

Other Devendra Banhart Songs I’d Recommend:

1. Rats

“Rats” stands out with its dark, introspective atmosphere, exploring themes of isolation, existential dread, and societal disillusionment. With haunting melodies and a stripped-down instrumental approach, Banhart captures a sense of vulnerability and introspection. The lyrics, filled with imagery that suggests loneliness and frustration, give the song an emotional weight that contrasts with Banhart’s lighter work. It’s a powerful exploration of the struggles of self-reflection and finding one’s place in a complex world.

2. Santa Maria de Feira

This song, inspired by Banhart’s experiences in Portugal, combines folk rhythms with a lively tempo that reflects the vibrancy of cultural immersion. “Santa Maria de Feira” feels like a celebration of discovering new places, capturing a playful spirit through rhythmic guitar and uplifting melodies. It’s a joyful, energetic piece that reveals Banhart’s curiosity about the world, inviting listeners to feel the pulse of a small Portuguese town.

2. Für Hildegard von Bingen

In this track, Banhart reimagines the life of Hildegard von Bingen, a visionary nun, mystic, and composer from the 12th century, picturing her as a “VJ” (video jockey) in a modern setting. The song humorously envisions Hildegard escaping the confines of her convent to embrace a new life as an artist in contemporary culture. This playful narrative underscores Banhart’s interest in blending the old with the new, merging historical references with a modern twist to celebrate creative freedom and the idea of rebirth.

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Artwork by me: Enrique Seemann

“Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” is one of the most memorable songs from Paul McCartney’s 1971 album, Ram. This album was a joint effort between McCartney and his wife, Linda, and it was released during a really important time in McCartney’s career. It was his second solo album, and it was the first one that was officially credited to both Paul and Linda. Just a year before, The Beatles had officially broken up, and all four members were trying to figure out who they were outside of the shadow of arguably the greatest band of all time. For McCartney, this time was both exciting and scary. He was trying to figure out who he was as an artist, but he was also getting a lot of criticism and doubt from fans and critics.

Why Ram?

The title of the Ram album holds deep meaning. After The Beatles broke up, McCartney went to his farm in Scotland to find peace and inspiration in nature. The image of a ram, strong, independent, and living in the countryside, symbolized McCartney’s desire to show off his unique personality and creative freedom during this tough time.

But Ram wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Songs like “Too Many People” had some subtle jabs at John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Lines like “Too many people preaching practices” were aimed at Lennon’s public statements. McCartney later admitted to these hidden messages, which add a bit of tension to an album that’s mostly lighthearted and charming. This mix of conflict and playfulness sets the stage for tracks like “Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey,” where nostalgia and experimentation come together in a fun and exciting way.

A Nostalgic Patchwork of Ideas

“Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey” is a musical masterpiece that combines two distinct sections. The first part, “Uncle Albert,” is based on McCartney’s real-life Uncle Albert Kendall. The lyrics, “We’re so sorry, Uncle Albert,” express a sense of regret between generations, reflecting Paul’s understanding of the differences between his time and his uncle’s.

The second section, “Admiral Halsey,” takes a different turn, bringing a playful and defiant vibe. The reference to Fleet Admiral William “Bull” Halsey, a prominent figure in World War II, symbolizes authority figures and the establishment. In the early ’70s, younger generations were beginning to question these authority figures, and McCartney cleverly weaves these themes together, creating a narrative that’s both whimsical and thought-provoking.

Experimental Production

The recording of “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” showcases Paul McCartney’s innovative approach. Norwegian engineer Eirik Wangberg was the mastermind behind putting together the song’s different parts, creating a mix that sounds like The Beatles’ Abbey Road. McCartney also teamed up with George Martin to make the orchestral arrangements, which were recorded in New York. To make the song even more immersive, they added environmental sound effects like thunderstorms and bird calls, so it’s just as much about the sounds as the words.

Reception: A Quiet Victory

The Ram album got some mixed reviews when it came out, but “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” totally rocked the charts! McCartney finally achieved his first post-Beatles number-one hit in the US, proving he can still make hit songs on his own, not just because of his old band. Over time, the song’s charm and experimental nature have become a hallmark of McCartney’s work, loved for its daring to break rules and embrace fun.

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My Personal Thoughts & Other Paul McCartney Songs I’d Recommend

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Artwork by me: Enrique Seemann

In 1977, Iggy Pop’s album Lust for Life dropped, and one of its best songs, “The Passenger,” came out. It’s become a classic, and for good reason. The song has a hypnotic beat and deep, meaningful lyrics that talk about exploring, being alone, and staying strong. But there’s a cool story behind it. It’s about Iggy Pop reinventing himself, making friends, and surviving. And guess who’s connected to all this? David Bowie!

The Context: Reinvention with Bowie’s Guidance

In the mid-1970s, Iggy Pop’s career was in a rough spot. After The Stooges fell apart, Iggy was struggling with addiction and didn’t know what to do next. But then, David Bowie came along. Bowie saw something special in Iggy’s raw talent and chaotic energy, and he invited him to join him in Berlin. Bowie was also going through some tough times himself, escaping the pressures of fame and his own struggles with drugs. This was a turning point for both artists.

While living in Berlin, Bowie and Iggy got into the city’s art scene and its raw energy. They made some amazing music together, including two classic albums: The Idiot and Lust for Life. It was during this time that they wrote ”The Passenger.” Iggy was inspired by his experiences riding around Los Angeles in Bowie’s old 1960s Mercedes-Benz. The drives gave Iggy a unique perspective. He could see the whole city from behind the glass, like he was watching it from a distance. But he was still deeply fascinated by it all.

Musical Composition: Minimalist and Mesmerizing

The song’s guitar riff, made by Ricky Gardiner, is like the rhythm of those car rides, steady, repetitive, and soothing. It’s different from the more upbeat tracks on Lust for Life, so Iggy’s voice can shine. In the studio, Iggy made up the now-famous ”la-la-la” part, a moment of pure spontaneity that perfectly captures the song’s free-spirited vibe.

David Bowie’s ethereal backing vocals add a touch of magic to the track, but Iggy’s voice is still the star. The whole album Lust for Life was recorded in just eight days! That’s how much Bowie and Iggy clicked during that time.

Themes: Observation, Freedom, and Identity

“The Passenger” is all about observing the world. The lyrics, partly inspired by Jim Morrison’s poetry, put Iggy in the role of an outsider, a passenger who watches everything happen without trying to control it. Lines like “I see the bright and hollow sky” make you feel like you’re both in the world and not really part of it.

The song also reflects Iggy’s journey at the time. He was riding shotgun in both a literal and metaphorical sense, allowing Bowie to guide him while rediscovering his own artistic voice. This mix of freedom and dependence gives the track a really deep and personal feel.

Cultural Impact

“The Passenger” has become a total rock anthem, featured in movies, ads, and tons of covers. Siouxsie and the Banshees’ 1987 version really brought the song to the masses,

Its lyrics about wanderlust and just taking it all in still hit home, which is why Iggy Pop always includes it in live shows and it’s become a classic.

“The Passenger” continues to be a hit, proving Iggy Pop’s lasting impact as the “Godfather of Punk.” Even though punk changed over time, the song shows how he can mix raw energy with deep thoughts.

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There’s a strange kind of magic in Black Night, a song so hauntingly powerful, so emotionally charged, it almost feels like it wasn’t meant to happen. And in a way, it wasn’t.

Frank Sinatra Jr. was never supposed to be a songwriter. Not in the eyes of the world, at least. He carried the weight of a last name that was more legend than lineage. He was expected to sing standards, wear the suit, keep the legacy intact. But in the late 1960s, as the world around him shifted and cracked, so did something inside him.

And from that fracture came Black Night.

A Shadowed Legacy, a Private Storm

By 1969, Frank Jr. was 25. He had been kidnapped at gunpoint six years earlier, an event that made American national headlines and etched his name into public consciousness in the worst possible way. Though he was released unharmed, the emotional toll lingered. He returned to music almost immediately, but not as a man with a blank canvas, he was the son of Frank Sinatra. Everything he did was filtered through that lens.

He wasn’t just trying to make music, he was trying to build an identity within the shadow of a titan. And it was heavy.

While his father was still performing to sold-out crowds and recording with the best orchestras in the world, Jr. was quietly carving out his own path. That path was darker, more introspective, more fragile. It didn’t shout, it bled.

Black Night was written during a period of creative frustration, personal loneliness, and quiet rebellion. He had been performing in clubs, working with a jazz quintet, and slowly getting disillusioned by the predictability of the circuit. So one night, he wrote. Not for an audience, not for a label. Just for himself.

What came out was raw.

Black night, black night / ’Neath the silent starry light…

It wasn’t metaphorical. It was how he felt. Unseen. Alone.

The Explosion That Shouldn’t Work

And then something unexpected happens.

About halfway through the song, right when you’re certain it will remain in that low, aching register, the whole thing erupts. The orchestra comes in like a tidal wave. Strings, horns, drums, all rising in a near-cinematic swell that feels both out of place and completely perfect.

It’s not uplifting in a cheerful way. It’s transcendent. As if the sorrow couldn’t be contained anymore and had to burst into something else, something enormous, beautiful, defiant.

That’s the genius of Black Night. It doesn’t resolve its pain, it expands it into something magnificent.

And somehow, that makes it more human.

A Voice on the Edge

Frank Jr.’s vocal here is a revelation. It doesn’t have the swagger of his father’s or the edge of other crooners of the time. What it does have is vulnerability.

You hear the ache in his phrasing, the way he holds back certain notes and lets others fall apart. He’s not performing for us. He’s confessing.

And then, just as the orchestra crests, he pulls back again. The song fades into the same lonely space it began in. Nothing is fixed. But something has changed.

He said it. He let it out.

And that’s enough.

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My Personal Thoughts & Other Frank Sinatra Jr. Songs I’d Recommend

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Artwork by me: Enrique Seemann

When “Heroin” by The Velvet Underground first emerged in 1967 as part of their debut album The Velvet Underground & Nico, it was unlike anything else in rock music. The song’s haunting, unapologetic look at addiction was as bold as it was groundbreaking. Written by Lou Reed, “Heroin” wasn’t just a track, it was an experience, a chaotic journey through highs and lows that mirrored the drug’s impact on the human psyche.

A Catalyst for Andy Warhol’s Attention

The Velvet Underground caught Andy Warhol’s eye at the Café Bizarre in Greenwich Village, and “Heroin” played a pivotal role in that moment. Warhol’s fascination with the band wasn’t just about their music, it was their edge, their defiance of norms, and their willingness to explore the darkest corners of the human experience. This collaboration would lead to Warhol becoming their manager and introducing Nico into their lineup, shaping one of the most iconic albums in rock history.

Musical Structure: A Rollercoaster of Emotion

“Heroin” doesn’t follow a traditional verse-chorus structure. Instead, it ebbs and flows, with tempos rising and falling like the surges of adrenaline described in its lyrics. John Cale’s viola screeches and Moe Tucker’s percussion build intensity, perfectly complementing Reed’s raw vocals. The song feels almost hypnotic, dragging listeners into the chaotic emotional spiral it portrays.

Lou Reed used “Heroin” to channel the raw, conflicting emotions tied to addiction, both its tempting allure and its devastating consequences. The song doesn’t glorify drug use; instead, it pulls listeners into the dark, hypnotic world of escapism and existential dread, leaving them to wrestle with its haunting honesty.

Themes: Alienation and Despair

Reed’s lyrics delve into the psyche of someone trapped in a love-hate relationship with heroin. Lines like “Heroin, be the death of me” don’t glorify the drug, they expose its dark grip. The song’s narrative is deeply personal yet universal, touching on themes of alienation, despair, and the search for meaning in a chaotic world.

Cultural Impact and Controversy

Upon release, “Heroin” shocked listeners and critics alike. Radio stations refused to play it, and mainstream audiences were baffled by its raw intensity. Yet, it became a cornerstone of The Velvet Underground’s legacy, influencing countless artists with its brutal honesty.

David Bowie and Patti Smith both cited The Velvet Underground as a formative influence, drawn to their raw sound and fearless exploration of taboo themes. Songs like “Heroin” captured that spirit with haunting clarity. Decades later, it remains a chilling reminder of how music can confront uncomfortable truths with brutal honesty.

My Personal Thoughts & Other The Velvet Underground songs I’d recommend.

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Artwork by me: Enrique Seemann

Some songs don’t just play, they carry you somewhere.

From the moment Thinking of a Place begins, it doesn’t feel like something you simply listen to. It feels like something you drift into, like stepping into a dream, a memory, or a road you’ve driven before but can’t quite place.

It stretches across nearly eleven hypnotic minutes, yet time feels irrelevant when you’re inside it. It moves like the sun casting golden light across an open highway, slow, patient, endless. It’s not trying to take you to a specific destination, but somewhere deeper somewhere inside yourself.

But what is it about this song that makes it so immersive? Why does it feel like a place you remember, even if you’ve never been there?

To understand, we have to go back to Adam Granduciel’s headspace at the time, the singer, songwriter, and mastermind behind The War on Drugs. Because this song wasn’t just written. It was discovered, unraveled, lived.

A Song Born from Transition & Searching

By the time Thinking of a Place was written, Adam had already spent years in motion, physically and emotionally.

The War on Drugs had exploded in popularity after Lost in the Dream (2014), an album drenched in isolation, anxiety, and the ache of someone trying to outrun themselves. The success was overwhelming. Granduciel had gone from making music in solitude to fronting a critically adored band, touring nonstop, and suddenly being “known.”

But when the whirlwind settled, he found himself at a crossroads.

Lost in the Dream had been created from a place of pain and introspection, but what happens when you move past that? When the album that defined you was built on isolation, how do you step into something new? For Granduciel, the answer wasn’t in retreating to a Philadelphia apartment, endlessly layering songs in solitude again. That chapter was over. He needed movement, something different.

So, he left for Los Angeles, a place that felt like the opposite of where he had been. Instead of solitude, he sought collaboration. There, he met Shawn Everett, a producer known for his experimental, almost painterly approach to sound. Everett wasn’t interested in perfection he was interested in texture, atmosphere, the feeling of sound itself.

For Granduciel, this was a shift. Instead of obsessing over every sonic detail alone, he let things breathe. He played with new tones, let songs unfold naturally, and stopped trying to control every element. And that’s where Thinking of a Place began, not as a song, but as a feeling, a place Adam was searching for within.

A Song That Moves Like a Memory

When Thinking of a Place finally took shape, it became the longest, most expansive song The War on Drugs had ever recorded. But it doesn’t feel long it feels like something you dissolve into.

The song moves slowly, effortlessly, like it has all the time in the world. It’s drenched in warm nostalgia, yet there’s something unreachable about it like watching an old film reel where the images are familiar, but the details are blurred.

The music sways between gentle waves of sound, never rushing, always stretching forward, like a road disappearing into the horizon.

And then there’s that moment the midway shift, where the drums vanish, the chords stretch, and suddenly, it’s like you’ve stepped through a portal into another dream entirely. It’s the same song, but now it feels wider, more distant, more infinite.

It doesn’t demand your attention. It drifts, unspooling like a memory you’re trying to hold onto but can’t quite grasp.

And before you know it, the song fades, leaving you somewhere in between somewhere familiar, somewhere far away.

Lyrical Themes: Longing, Distance, and Fleeting Time

Unlike many War on Drugs songs, Thinking of a Place doesn’t narrate a clear story. It paints moments and impressions leaving space for you to fill in the blanks.

“And I’m thinking of a place and it feels so very real…”

It’s nostalgia without specifics, longing without certainty. The lyrics float between love, memory, and distance, yet they never settle on one meaning. They shift, like time itself.

And then there’s the line that lingers long after the song ends:

“Love is like a ghost in the distance, out of reach.”

It’s haunting a reminder that some things whether love, time, or memories are always just out of reach.

You can feel them, see them, almost touch them… but they slip away, leaving you chasing their shadow.

The Recording Process: A Song That Was Built Like a Landscape

The band recorded Thinking of a Place during the sessions for A Deeper Understanding, but its origins were different from the rest of the album. Initially released as a standalone single for Record Store Day in April 2017, the track had a more spontaneous, organic feel compared to the rest of the album, which was meticulously layered over months.

Granduciel’s approach was almost painterly. He layered textures, let sections expand freely, allowing the song to find itself rather than forcing it into shape. Shawn Everett, known for his obsession with depth and atmosphere, helped sculpt that vision. He wasn’t just mixing sound, he was shaping space, making sure every note felt like it was drifting through an open horizon rather than locked into a rigid structure.

And then there’s the harmonica.

A distant, ghostly voice weaving through the song’s vast, cinematic sprawl. Whether it was a spontaneous addition or carefully placed, it feels like something that was meant to be there, as if the song had been waiting for it all along.

Like Thinking of a Place itself, it feels eternal not created, but discovered.

The War on Drugs at Their Most Expansive

More than any other War on Drugs track, Thinking of a Place feels like the ultimate distillation of their sound a mix of Dylan-esque storytelling, Springsteen like romanticism, and My Bloody Valentine inspired dreaminess.

It’s a song about distance, yet it draws you in completely.

It’s about time, yet it feels endless.

And maybe that’s why it resonates so deeply.

Because we all have that one place, that one moment, that one feeling we return to something distant, something that feels real even if we can’t explain why.

Somewhere we’re still searching for.

Somewhere we know we’ll never fully reach.

And somehow, that’s enough.

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Artwork by me: Enrique Seemann

When Mac DeMarco released “Chamber of Reflection” on Salad Days in 2014, it showed a whole new side of him. Known for his goofy charm and breezy guitar tunes, Mac took a surprising turn with this introspective, synth-heavy track. Its hypnotic loops and stripped-down production pull you into a world of reflection and solitude, offering a moment to just stop and think—a big shift from his usual laid-back vibe.

The Masonic Influence: A Space for Reflection

The title comes from Freemasonry, where a “chamber of reflection” is a small, quiet space meant for self-examination. Mac was fascinated by this concept and used it as a metaphor for personal growth. Just like the Masonic room, the track feels like a mental escape—an invitation to step away from all the noise and take a good look at yourself. It’s a moment to pause, reflect, and figure out where you’re going.

The Story Behind the Song

When Mac was working on “Salad Days”, he was feeling the weight of his growing fame. After “2” made him a breakout star, the constant touring left him totally burnt out. He described that time as draining and full of questions about who he was and where he was going.

“Chamber of Reflection” became his way of dealing with all of that. Recorded in the quiet of his home studio, it’s like a musical retreat—a space for him to step back and reconnect with himself. The hypnotic loops in the song feel just like those moments when you’re lost in your own thoughts, trying to make sense of it all.

Musical Inspiration: A Hidden Loop and City Pop Roots

Mac found inspiration for “Chamber of Reflection” in Japanese city pop, especially Shigeo Sekito’s The Word II, which he sampled for the track. He loved how the genre’s smooth and dreamy soundscapes matched the reflective vibe he wanted to create.

At the heart of the song is a loop from his Korg Mono/Poly synthesizer, a quirky, analog keyboard he scored at a bargain price. Its slightly imperfect sound became the soul of the track, giving it a warm, hypnotic feel. As always, Mac’s DIY approach shines through—he played and recorded everything himself, turning the song into something personal and raw.

Themes and Lyrics: Solitude and Growth

The lyrics might seem simple, but they carry so much weight: “Spend some time alone / Understand that soon you’ll run with better men.” They remind us that stepping away from life’s distractions—though not always easy—is sometimes exactly what we need to grow and find clarity. Mac’s soft, understated delivery makes the message feel intimate, like he’s letting you in on something deeply personal.

The looping melody amplifies this reflective mood, creating a meditative space where you can really immerse yourself. It’s the kind of track that feels like a quiet companion—comforting yet thought-provoking, offering both solace and a gentle nudge to reflect on your own path.

Cultural and Critical Impact

Even though it wasn’t released as a single, “Chamber of Reflection” has become one of Mac’s most-loved songs. Its themes of self-discovery and solitude really hit home for a lot of people, making it a go-to track for those quiet, introspective moments. Over time, it’s found a life of its own—showing up on indie playlists, getting covered and remixed, and cementing its place as a fan favorite.

Critics loved the song for how different it was from Mac’s usual style. It showed a more mature, emotional side of him while still keeping that raw, DIY charm he’s known for. It’s one of those tracks that just feels timeless.

My Personal Thoughts

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Artwork by me: Enrique Seemann

In early 1971, David Bowie wasn’t yet a rock star—not in the way the world would soon know him. He had spent years shifting between folk, theatrical pop, and experimental sounds, trying to find a voice that resonated beyond a single hit.

At the time, he was living in Haddon Hall, a grand but crumbling Victorian mansion in Beckenham, South London. He shared the space with his wife, Angie, and a rotating cast of friends and fellow artists. The house was a place of eccentricity and reinvention—walls covered in drawings, costumes strewn across furniture, a piano placed right in the center of it all.

That piano would become the birthplace of Hunky Dory, the album where Bowie would finally begin to shape the artist he was meant to be. And one of its most intriguing songs, "Oh! You Pretty Things," was among the first glimpses of his obsession with transformation, evolution, and the generational shifts he saw coming.

A Song That Wasn’t Meant for Him—At First

One of the most unexpected twists in the story of "Oh! You Pretty Things" is that Bowie didn't originally release it himself. Instead, he gave it away.

At the time, Peter Noone, the former frontman of Herman’s Hermits, was launching a solo career. He was looking for a song that would give him credibility beyond his bubblegum pop past. Bowie—still an unknown figure to most—had recently started working with producer Mickie Most, who was also overseeing Noone’s career.

Most saw an opportunity: Bowie had songs, and Noone had an audience. Noone later recalled that he barely understood the song’s meaning when Bowie handed it to him. He found the melody catchy and the lyrics intriguing but admitted that its philosophical depth—references to Nietzsche, evolution, and the rise of a "Homo Superior"—was lost on him.

Bowie, however, didn’t seem to mind. He was playing the long game. Let Noone make it a hit first—he would come back for it later.

And that’s exactly what happened. In April 1971, Peter Noone’s version of "Oh! You Pretty Things" was released, with Bowie playing piano on the track and singing backing vocals. The song climbed to #12 on the UK charts, giving Bowie something he hadn’t had in years: a proven commercial success.

A Song That Came Like a Vision

Bowie often said his songwriting was spontaneous, sometimes waking up with whole songs in his head. Whether ‘Oh! You Pretty Things’ came that way is a mystery, but it has this hypnotic quality that makes it feel like it came from one of those instinctive creative bursts.

The song has a strange quality to it—both urgent and dreamlike, as if Bowie had tapped into something just beyond the reach of conscious thought. He often spoke about his fascination with transformation and the ever-changing nature of identity. Whether intentional or instinctive, his songwriting frequently captured themes of change, destruction, and rebirth, almost as if he was channeling a vision of something bigger than himself.

Some say this was one of the first moments when Bowie truly became Bowie—not just an artist, but a vessel for something larger, something prophetic.

A Deceptively Simple Sound

Unlike the rich orchestration found in other Hunky Dory tracks, "Oh! You Pretty Things" is built around a lone piano and Bowie's voice, giving it the feel of an old-fashioned cabaret song—except for the fact that it’s predicting the end of the world as we know it.

The song lacks drums entirely, which adds to its floating, hypnotic effect.

The piano on “Oh! You Pretty Things” was actually played by Bowie himself, unlike other Hunky Dory tracks where Rick Wakeman—a virtuoso keyboardist who would soon join Yes—contributed. Wakeman did play on songs like “Life on Mars?” and “Changes,” adding his signature classical touch to the album.

The highlight of the song is the chorus, where Bowie’s voice soars dramatically on the phrase ‘Homo Superior,’ almost as if he’s declaring the arrival of the next evolutionary step himself.

What Is the Song Really About?

The lyrics paint a picture of a world undergoing a radical, almost apocalyptic change. Bowie opens with an ominous observation:

"Look out my window, what do I see?

A crack in the sky and a hand reaching down to me."

It sounds biblical, almost like an intervention from a higher power—or something else.

Then comes the warning:

"Oh, you pretty things, don’t you know you’re driving your mamas and papas insane?"

Bowie suggests that a new generation is rising, one that will replace the old. The "pretty things" of the title aren’t just youthful rebels—they are the precursors of something greater, something inevitable.

My Personal Thoughts

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Artwork by me: Enrique Seemann

The story behind The Beach Boys’ “Never Learn Not to Love” is shrouded in a dark and complex web of events. What started as a potential musical collaboration took an unsettling turn, connecting the band to one of the bleakest chapters in American history: the involvement of Charles Manson and his infamous “Family.”

Encountering the “Family”

It all began in 1968 when Dennis Wilson, the drummer of The Beach Boys, offered a ride to two unknown young women, Jo Bailey and Pat Krenwinkel. Unaware that they were part of the notorious “Manson Family,” led by the charismatic and disturbed Charles Manson, who sought to infiltrate the music industry through his followers. By inviting the girls into his home and offering them milk and cookies, Dennis unintentionally opened the door to this dark world. That same night, Manson and his “Family” arrived at Dennis’s house, taking possession of the place. When the drummer returned from a recording session, he found a surreal scene: his house was filled with people, a school bus parked outside, and a strange, small man with a beard acting as the host.

Initially intimidated, Dennis was quickly captivated by Manson, who knelt before him, kissing his feet and assuring him he meant no harm. This strange encounter led Dennis to become fascinated by Manson’s presence, as he exerted a hypnotic control over his followers. The Manson Family ended up living with Dennis for several months. At that time, The Beach Boys were not in their best shape. The departure of Brian Wilson from songwriting due to mental health issues and the failure of a recent tour with guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi left the band vulnerable. Additionally, Dennis had recently divorced and moved to his new home on Sunset Boulevard. The arrival of the girls accompanying Manson, combined with Dennis’ desire for a voice of his own within the band and his interest in Manson as an aspiring songwriter, led him to welcome them with open arms.

The Relationship and Manson’s Influence

As the relationship between Dennis and Manson deepened, Dennis was captivated with Manson’s musical abilities. Manson even taught him how to play guitar. In turn, Dennis introduced Manson to several music industry contacts, including Terry Melcher, a notable producer known for his work with The Byrds.

However, the relationship began to deteriorate as the costs of hosting Manson’s group increased. Reports indicate that Dennis spent over $100,000 on food, drugs, property damage, and penicillin injections to treat the gonorrhea of Manson’s followers. After incurring significant expenses, Dennis took advantage of a Beach Boys tour to encourage the family to move out. Manson and his followers relocated to Spahn Ranch, where Manson’s control over them only grew stronger.

A product of the musical collaboration and the ongoing connections between Manson and Dennis was a song that Manson had written, “Cease to Exist.”

The Beach Boys recorded a modified version of the song in September 1968, renamed it “Never Learn Not to Love,” and released it without crediting Manson. Although Dennis reportedly compensated Manson with money and a motorcycle, Manson felt betrayed by the changes and the lack of proper acknowledgment.

Despite the tension, Dennis attempted to help Manson secure a demo session to present to the Beach Boys. The band had recently launched its own label, Brother Records, and was actively seeking new talent. They recorded a significant amount of material in Brian’s studio, but ultimately did not sign him. After that rejection, Manson focused his efforts on impressing Terry Melcher, managing to get him to visit for an audition at Spahn Ranch, but he was stood up. Manson took the rejection personally and sought out Melcher, knowing where he lived. Upon arriving, he discovered that Melcher no longer resided there and that the place was occupied by none other than Roman Polanski and his wife, actress Sharon Tate. Later, Melcher did visit Manson for an audition but ultimately rejected him. This blow crushed Manson’s dreams of breaking into music and left him desperate for income. Afterward came the infamous murders, and Manson began to harass Dennis for compensation over “Cease to Exist,” threatening to kidnap his son or kill him. This had a tremendous impact on Dennis’s life, leading him to struggle with substance abuse, which ultimately contributed to his early death.

The Contrast between “Cease to Exist” and “Never Learn Not to Love”

In “Cease to Exist,” Manson uses direct and almost coercive language, with lines like “Cease to exist” and “Submission is a gift, go on, give it to your brother.” These words reflect his philosophy of control, urging his followers to renounce their identities for the sake of loyalty to him and the community. The phrase “submission is a gift” becomes a manipulative mantra, suggesting that surrendering one’s will is an act of love.

In contrast, The Beach Boys transformed the tone significantly in “Never Learn Not to Love.” The title shift emphasizes an idea of eternal love, moving away from the heavy connotations of “Cease to exist.” In their version, submission feels more like a romantic gesture than absolute surrender. While they retain some similar lines—such as “I’m your kind, I’m your kind, and I see”—the overall context shifts, making devotion appear to be a choice rather than an obligation.

The line “Never had a lesson I ever learned” appears in both songs, hinting at rejecting conformity. However, in Manson’s version, it carries an unsettling warning that we all eventually “get our turn,” adding a darker vibe that’s missing from The Beach Boys’ take. In “Never Learn Not to Love,” the line loses its menacing tone, suggesting a more carefree view of love.

Another significant change occurs in the chorus and the final vocalizations. Manson’s repetition reinforces his themes of submission and conditional love. In contrast, The Beach Boys maintain a similar vocal structure, but it feels more ambiguous, conveying a sense of romantic urgency rather than a demand for obedience. These shifts in vocal style and production help to mask the darker themes present in the original song.

Reflections

The story of “Never Learn Not to Love” is a striking reminder of the complex dance between art and the darker sides of human experience. While The Beach Boys softened Manson’s original message into something more romantic, the song’s origins remain tangled with the unsettling events of the Manson Family. Dennis Wilson’s brief brush with Charles Manson and the fallout that followed reveal the fragility of personal connections and the shadows that can linger behind creative work.

As the music industry continues to face its past and the influences that shape its stories, “Never Learn Not to Love” shows how songs can carry their history. It encourages listeners to think about the intricacies of love, control, and artistic integrity while reminding us that even the most beautiful tunes can come from the darkest places. In this sense, the song isn’t just a snapshot of its time; it’s a meaningful exploration of the human experience, inviting us to reflect on our own relationships and the narratives that define them.

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