A Bit About the Artist

Daft Punk is a French electronic music duo comprised of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo. The two met in secondary school and formed a band named after Beach Boys’ 1967 song, “Darlin’,” which is also the song that brought Sheldon back together with Amy in The Big Bang Theory. While Sheldon and Amy remained together forever, Darlin’, the band, was not as long for this world, disbanding after six months. The band’s guitarist, Laurent Brancowitz, went on to form another band called Phoenix, and Thomas and Guy-Manuel went on to make electronic music under a name chosen from a Darlin’ review excerpt, in which their music was described as “daft, punky thrash”.

In 1994, Daft Punk released their first single, “The New Wave,” which showcases the house and techno stylings of the duo with some elements of industrial music. Thomas and Guy-Manuel followed that up in 1995 with their breakout hit, “Da Funk”. While “The New Wave” established Daft Punk’s sonic foundation, “Da Funk” gave Daft Punk its identity. While a typical house structure and flourishes of techno build the song’s base, an anthemic synth hook serves as its frontman. It sounds a little like if a robot got a ZZ Top song stuck in its head(?). This mixture forms the mold of many Daft Punk songs, from “Alive” to “Derezzed”. Still, it wasn’t until Thomas and Guy-Manuel threw in their own voices, albeit robotically altered, that Daft Punk found the sound for their debut album, Homework. This sound wasn’t necessarily novel at the time, but Daft Punk seemed to tap into something that few of their contemporaries had access to, an identity. Perhaps this sounds ironic given that Thomas and Guy-Manuel have concealed their faces since Daft Punk’s earliest days, but the robotic voice singing “around the world” over and over again provided a clear enough picture. When Daft Punk adopted their now synonymous robot helmets for their follow up album, Discovery, the duo’s identity became fully realized.

2001’s Discovery is one of the most identifiable albums of all time. Everyone has heard “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” or “One More Time” at least once, and probably many more times, whether you’ve elected to listen or not. These songs possess an earworm quality that is only rivaled by the poppiest of pop songs. As for the rest of the album, it, along with these two hit singles, comprised one of the greatest electronic albums ever made. It’s an audacious album that is undeniably pleasant. Its boldness does not take away from its mainstream appeal and vice versa. It is a must-listen for fans of music. Daft Punk followed up Discovery with the far less enthusiastically received Human After All. After releasing a live album, Alive 2007, Daft Punk took their talents to the silver screen, where they composed the score for Tron: Legacy to rave reviews, unlike Tron: Legacy itself. With Daft Punk’s legacy at another peak, the duo released their final album, Random Access Memories, in 2013. This album was unlike anything they’d put out before, with more disco influence than ever before. With featured artists like Giorgio Moroder, Nile Rodgers, and Todd Edwards, this was clearly Daft Punk paying homage to their influences. After eight years of silence, save for a Weeknd collaboration, Daft Punk officially retired in 2021.

A Bit About the Song

“Give Life Back To Music” is the first song listed on Daft Punk’s final album, Random Access Memories. It blasts you immediately with a gust of ascending synths and Niles Rodgers’ electric guitar. This reaches a fever pitch, where it all promptly cools off into a grooving guitar riff and disco beat. There’s a pedal steel, performed by Greg Leisz, mixed into the song in an almost synthetic manner. It’s an exceptionally cool sound that leads us into the lyrical refrain, delivered as robotically as ever.

Let the music in tonight
Just turn on the music
Let the music of your life
Give life back to music

This refrain is repeated throughout the song as the guitar, synth, keyboard, bass, drum, and pedal steel elements weave in and out of the song, often manipulated ever-so-slightly. When asked about the lyrics of the album, Thomas Bangalter said, “It’s an optimistic statement. And it’s got a certain innocence that the ‘70s were filled with. No cynicism of any kind.” It’s worth remembering that Thomas Bangalter was not living in America in the 1970s. It’s also worth remembering that Thomas Bangalter was four years old in 1979, so perhaps the innocence he recalls was influenced by his sucking of pacifiers and going “goo goo ga ga” a lot.

Anyway, the song does give off an optimism one might expect out of a four year old. It is yet another undeniable Daft Punk song, and when the gusting, ascending instrumental build up at the beginning reprises in the middle, with an added utterance of “give life back to music,” I am consumed by the optimism and cherubic grin of a four year old boy.

A Bit About Me

I’m driving home from her house, moments removed from sitting up on her bed, lips locked in a kiss. It was probably an exceptionally awkward kiss, as I remember remaining upright throughout, but I had not yet the awareness or care to reflect on that. I was buzzing off the adrenaline of my first kiss since I was 14, and that was with her too. I play this song as loud as I can in my dumb, old Prius and I roll the windows down, unaffected by my gusty surroundings. I am 17, but I am also 14, and most of all, I am 4, and life is only good.

A Bit About the Artist

Modest Mouse is a band formed intentionally in Issaquah, Washington just two years after bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam made grunge the hottest new export out of neighboring Seattle. Modest Mouse is named after an excerpt from a Virginia Woolf short story, “The Mark on the Wall,” in which the narrator discovers a mark on her wall and has an existential crisis. These choices seem to signal an aptitude and partiality for suburban storytelling, but also modest mouse looks cool when you write it in lower case so probably that too. Modest Mouse was formed by lead vocalist and guitarist Isaac Brock, bassist Eric Judy, and drummer Jeremiah Green, and this trio journeyed through several indie record labels before landing at Up for their debut album, This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About. It was released one week after I was born and, though it did not experience immediate commercial or critical success, it has since become an indelibly influential album for countless musicians and me. Its lyrics reflect its road trip aesthetic, concerned with the banality and meaninglessness of life while conflictingly affected by these musings. The sound scape is expansive and daring for a debut, featuring the whole spectrum of what a voice and guitar can achieve, while being backdropped by exceptional drums, bass, and the occasional cello. The songs vacillate in approach constantly, a moody, mellow indie rock song succeeding a rambunctious rock tune on which Isaac coughs and wheezes just as much as he sings.

The band’s sophomore album, The Lonesome Crowded West, served as the band’s critical breakthrough. This album, released just one year later, showcases exactly what was so enthralling about their debut, while presenting it in a slightly more polished product. There is a song called “Lounge” on their debut album and a song called “Lounge (Closing Time)” on this album, and when you listen to them back-to-back, you understand the effect polish and tinkering can have on a song, let alone an album. For their next studio album, Modest Mouse signed with Epic Records, a subsidiary of Sony Music Group, and released The Moon & Antarctica. This album marks Modest Mouse’s shift towards a more radio-friendly style. The album is still chock-full of striking lyricism and an expansive sonic palette, but it’s cleaned up in a way that lets it inoffensively slip right into a car commercial. Their fourth studio album, Good News For People Who Love Bad News, introduced Modest Mouse to broader pop culture with the mega-hit “Float On”. The album certainly doesn’t shy away from the band’s eccentricities, it may actually be weirder than The Moon & Antarctica, but things would be forever changed for Modest Mouse after this.

Modest Mouse followed up “Float On” with We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, which dropped anchor in the alt-rock radio realm, where the band has mostly lived ever since. The band has undergone several lineup changes, with bassist Eric Judy departing the band in 2012 to spend more time with his family. The band endured a tremendous loss in 2022, when drummer Jeremiah Green passed away from Stage IV cancer. Isaac Brock is the sole remaining founding member, but Modest Mouse isn’t going away any time soon. The band just released its first album with an independent label since The Lonesome Crowded West, and the first album following Jeremiah Green’s tragic death.

A Bit About the Song

“The World At Large” is the second song listed on Modest Mouse’s fourth album, Good News For People Who Love Bad News. It is a song about a lonely, nomadic narrator running away from his problems in a perpetual search for blank slates. It’s an interesting topic to introduce Modest Mouse’s first foray into a more radio-friendly sound. The song begins with a descending guitar riff, followed shortly by Isaac’s voice.

Ice age heat wave, can’t complain
If the world’s at large, why should I remain?
Walked away to another plan
Gonna find another place, maybe one I can stand

These lyrics were written following a turbulent time in Isaac’s life. He had been arrested for drinking and driving and charged with attempted murder, as a passenger in his vehicle suffered a dislocated thumb. Additionally, drummer Jeremiah Green departed the band following a nervous breakdown. It’s also worth mentioning that in the 90s and early 2000s, climate change was becoming an increasingly discussed phenomenon. So, our narrator finds himself searching for his place in a world that’s on a ticking clock. Brock’s lyrics escalate the situation when he begins the process of self-reflection.

Walked on off to another spot
I still haven’t gotten anywhere that I want
Did I want love? Did I need to know?
Why does it always feel like I’m caught in an undertow?

This leads into the chorus, which is built out of a harmony of whistles, strings, synths, and a vocal effect that sounds a little like if the Beach Boys made house music. This chorus repeats several times, with different instruments joining in each time. It takes these final thoughts for all of the instruments to enter the fray.

I know that starting over’s not what life’s about
But my thoughts were so loud I couldn’t hear my mouth
My thoughts were so loud I couldn’t hear my mouth
My thoughts were so loud

There’s some great physiological imagery in Modest Mouse songs, but few moments have rivaled my thoughts were so loud I couldn’t hear my mouth for me.

A Bit About Me

My Junior year is coming to an end, which means I’m living out the rest of my childhood on a ticking clock. 3 years in Los Angeles, 2 years in Tokyo, 3 years in Los Angeles, 3 years in Tokyo, 6 years in Los Angeles. I’m living out lucky number 7 in Los Angeles for my Senior year, and then life and where I live is wherever and whatever I choose it to be. I’ve been overwhelmed with the feeling of treading water at each intermittent stop at my 2 homes. Now, with more time spent here than I’ve spent anywhere else before, I feel the earth settling under me. A desirous fire in my heart flares for another, and the graduation-impending winds of change swoop me up and plop me down in my car next to her. I ask her if she wants to hang out some time.

A Bit About the Artist

Tyler, the Creator is the first repeat artist on these playlists, and as a result, he will be the subject of my first attempt at experimenting with this section. If you would like to read a general synopsis of Tyler’s career, please refer to the previous entry, “Song 11, 2013: Domo 23 by Tyler, the Creator”.

For this entry, I’ll be ranking Tyler’s albums from my personal favorite to least favorite, while shouting out some standout tracks in each album. So, here is that…

1. Wolf

   1. “Rusty”

   2. “IFHY”

2. Flower Boy

   1. “Garden Shed”

   2. “911/Mr. Lonely”

3. Igor

   1. “Earfquake”

   2. “Puppet”

4. Bastard

   1. “Seven”

   2. “VCR/Wheels”

5. Call Me If You Get Lost

   1. “Wusyaname”

   2. “Hot Wind Blows”

6. Cherry Bomb

   1. “Smuckers”

   2. “Buffalo”

7. Goblin

   1. “She”

   2. “Analog”

8. Don’t Tap the Glass

   1. “Ring Ring Ring”

9. Chromakopia

   1. “Like Him”

If you’re a new listener, I’d recommend starting with Flower Boy and/or Wolf, depending on how much you tolerate Flower Boy. If those albums make you a fan, I’d consider Igor and Bastard essential listening. Call Me If You Get Lost, Cherry Bomb, and Goblin all have highlights, but they don’t fully engage me in the same way the top 4 do. I can’t recommend Don’t Tap the Glass or Chromakopia, but “Ring Ring Ring” and “Like Him” are good songs.

A Bit About the Song

“Answer” is the sixth song listed on Tyler, the Creator’s third album, Wolf. It’s the song that immediately follows “Domo 23,” and it does so by shifting the mood entirely. On “Domo 23,” Tyler is braggadocious and nonchalant, but on “Answer,” he is vulnerable and chalant. The beat reflects this with a moody electric guitar loop, a staggering drum beat, and some extended minor piano chords.

‘Cause when I call
I hope you pick up your phone
I’d like to talk to you
I hope you answer

Tyler talk-sings this chorus to open up the song, which stands out as one of the few pre-Flower Boy era vulnerable Tyler songs to refrain from redirecting his pain towards violent rhetoric. Still, Tyler can’t quite resist dropping some homophobic slurs, but it’s an early omen of a maturing Tyler.

Mom was onlt twenty when you ain’t have any fucks to spare
You Nigerian fuck, now I’m stuck with this shitty facial hair
Also, stuck with a beautiful home with a case of stairs
So you not being near fuckin’ fire-started my damn career

We learn that the subject of Tyler’s vulnerable plea is his absentee father, whose absenteeism had already been the subject of many Tyler songs, and would continue to be for many years to come. At this time, Tyler’s songs about his father were angry, spiteful, and violent, qualities that are not entirely missing here either. However, the ending of Tyler’s first verse displays a maturity to his vulnerability.

But if I ever had the chance to ask this *****
And call him
I hope he answer

Syd, of Odd Future original member fame, joins Tyler for the chorus this time around, and it’s a moving harmony. The song still sinks into juvenility on occasion, particularly in the last verse.

Day is getting dark like the area’s turning urban
You’ll be fuckin’ nervous like me inside of a church is
But, I’ma get in contact regardless, and
I hope you answer

Tyler reveals that this verse is about a girl in the final line of this song, which is disappointing, but not surprising for Tyler at this time in his career. It wasn’t very surprising that teen boys fell in love with this tongue-in-cheek violence as well.

A Bit About Me

While “Domo 23” was played in the car with the boys on the way to Six Flags, “Answer” was the song I played in the car with the boys on our way home from Six Flags. I would muse about Tyler’s vulnerability, and they would call me things Tyler would probably also call me. In all honesty, they were right, and I was being cringe on top of all of that. But, that’s the beauty in being a teenager. You are not yet self-aware enough to understand just how cringe you are constantly being.

A Bit About The Artist

Tyler, the Creator is a rapper, producer, actor, fashion designer, and one of Tyler Okonma’s many soubriquets. Tyler, born and raised in Los Angeles, followed an unlikely road to arrive at Coachella’s headliner stage. He began his career at 16, co-founding the hip-hop collective Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, and the group released their debut mixtape, The Odd Future Tape, the following year. The tape opens with Tyler rapping over extended piano chords complemented by synthetic horns and strings. Tyler’s lyrical content homed in on a particular genre of teenage angst that dabbles in vulgarity for the sole purpose of eliciting a reaction and lonely lamentations, which serve as a foil and a grounds for his sardonicism. It’s the kind of music any parent would expect a brazen teenager to make, and the kind of music that emboldens teenagers who’ve thought the same dark thoughts that Tyler isn’t afraid to broadcast. As a result, Tyler became a controversial figure in the adult world and a cult hero in the teenage world.

Tyler’s debut album, Bastard, was the first breakout hit by a member of Odd Future. It ended up on Pitchfork’s Top 50 Albums of 2010 list and Rolling Stone’s 200 Greatest Hip-Hop Albums Of All Time list, but it also led to a decade-spanning ban from the UK, imposed by Conservative Party leader Theresa May. Tyler followed up Bastard with 2011’s Goblin, which did little to curry the favor of Theresa May. Goblin was Tyler’s last horrorcore album, but the success of the album’s 2nd single, “Yonkers,” has seared this version of Tyler into the memories of everyone born before 2000. Tyler’s third album, Wolf, marked his first, albeit slight, lyrical and sonic departure as an artist. Much of Tyler’s substance and style remained unchanged. The album is still rife with alter egos like Dr. TC, Wolf Haley, and DJ Stank Daddy, and the extended piano chords are still abundantly present. This time, with the help of collaborators like Erykah Badu and Pharrell Williams, Tyler was able to polish his jazz/R&B-influenced songwriting while lyrically delivering his angst in a more palatable package. This album signaled a shift in Tyler’s music that really took shape with his next three albums, Cherry Bomb, Flower Boy, and Igor.

Tyler experienced a complete metamorphosis in public perception from the release of Cherry Bomb to the release of Igor. In 2015, Tyler leaned heavily into this neo-soul, jazz fusion sound he had dabbled in before, and the crowd went mild. With a middling critical reception, a tepid response from fans, and controversy surrounding the sordid subject matter of songs like F*****g Young/Perfect, it seemed like Tyler was in danger of becoming a lost relic of the early 2010s. Then, in 2017, Tyler released Flower Boy, and the world welcomed a new Tyler, the Creator. A big factor in this sudden reappraisal was Tyler coming out as queer, which recontextualized some of his old lyrical content, particularly his use of homophobic slurs. The album itself is also Tyler’s most focused project since Bastard. Sonically, it improves upon the neo-soul/jazz fusion experimentation of previous albums while simultaneously leaning into Tyler’s pop sensibilities. “See You Again” particularly stands out as his first major pop hit, which shifted mass audiences’ notions regarding what kind of music Tyler, the Creator could make.

Tyler followed up this reanimation with 2019’s Igor, an album for which Tyler assumed a monstrous alter ego, and in turn, the monster of second-wave Tyler, the Creator was complete. If Flower Boy ushered in a new era for Tyler, Igor carved it in stone. It’s hard to believe now that there was a time when Tyler was a controversial figure. His albums are consistently well-received, both critically and commercially, and his face is broadcast everywhere from Supreme to Marty Supreme. He’s become too big to fail, which was once a likely path for his career to take. As Tyler continues to churn out Flower Boy and Igor variants year after year, I recall the artist I found so volatile, caustic, and enthralling in high school. I’m happy that guy found peace, joy, and success in making the music he makes now, but I miss when he was interesting.

A Bit About The Song

“Domo 23” is the fifth song listed on Tyler, the Creator’s third album, Wolf. It begins with a gaudy horn-led intro and a swag-rapper parody performed by Tyler himself. The instrumental continues to build as Tyler delivers the first lines of the first verse.

Sick to my motherfucking tummy
Bitch must think I’m a motherfucking dummy
Because I dress bummy, bitch think I’m broke
Bitch, I ate one roach and I made a lot of money

A goofy, albeit impressively textured, synth-heavy beat drops in, and Tyler’s verse wades into familiar shock humor territory.

Popping since Bastard (manager) Clancy’s my slave master
Thanks to them crackers, my pockets are fatter than excess shit that’s weighing on Jasper

Odd Future, and Tyler’s music as a result, insisted on a parasocial relationship with the group’s members. If you were even the most surface-level Odd Future fan, you would know that Clancy was the name of Tyler’s manager, and that that line is supposed to be interpreted in jest. Similarly, you would know that Jasper, one of the founding members of Odd Future, was one of the more rotund members of the group, and that Tyler is making a fat joke at his expense. This song is full of borderline in-jokes that made Odd Future fans like me feel like we were part of the group. One of the most reflected upon lyrics in this song is an example of one of these in-jokes.

So, a couple f*gs threw a little hisfit
Came to Pitchfork with a couple Jada Pinkett signs
And said I was a racist homophobic
So I grabbed Lucas and filmed us kissing

This is a reference to the controversy Tyler faced around this time as a result of his homophobic lyrics. Tyler stamps this sequence off with a joke, choosing to kiss the one white male member of Odd Future to acquit himself of all racism and homophobia charges. However, many fans have since speculated on the truth behind this joke, particularly in the immediate aftermath of Flower Boy. Tyler is exceedingly familiar with hiding behind a veil of shock humor or alter egos to disguise a truth within, so it’s not without reason to look deeper into these lyrics. Still, there are many more lines here that lead me to believe this is just Tyler having fun.

Now me and Justin smoke sherm and been talking ‘bout freeing perms
And purchasing weapons, naming them and aim ‘em in One Direction

That’s one example.

Hit me on my beeper while Captain Hook suck my Peter
Pan camera, repeat procedure
And when the beat drop, have a goddamn seizure

That’s another.

A Bit About Me

I turned 17 on Tuesday, which is the same day I was born. I’m driving to Six Flags with my friends who’ve been my friends all through high school. Tyler dropped Wolf last week, and I’ve spent the week playing it over and over again. Tyler’s music always toed a dangerous line for me. I loved songs like “She” and “Analog” that presented a softer side to Tyler, while merely hinting at his sinister side, but I couldn’t quite get behind songs like “Tron Cat”. Wolf felt like a breakthrough moment for me. You could hint at an edgier, malevolent side while keeping copacetic. I saw who I wanted to be in this version of Tyler.

A Bit About The Artist

Arctic Monkeys are an English rock band that quite aptly succeed The Strokes in the sequential order of this playlist. Arctic Monkeys consists of childhood friends and founding members of the band, Matt Helders, the band’s drummer, and Alex Turner, the band’s lead singer and guitarist. The band also included Andy Nicholson, bassist, but he departed shortly after the release of the band’s first album. Jamie Cook, on guitars, and replacement bassist Nick O’Malley completed the band’s lineup, and it has remained unchanged ever since. The band started recording demos in their hometown of Sheffield in 2003, eighteen of which were burned onto a CD to give away at gigs. In a post-Napster landscape, these CDs were quickly file-shared amongst fans, with the collection earning a name, Beneath the Boardwalk. The name was given not by the band, but by the first file-sharer, who named the collection after the location he received the CD. The immediacy and reach of file-sharing made Beneath the Boardwalk and Arctic Monkeys an online sensation. Their MySpace page was immensely popular, though the band’s members were unaware of its existence until asked about it during an interview with Prefix magazine.

With the prolific online success of their demo tapes and self-released debut EP, Arctic Monkeys signed to the independent label, Domino, and released their debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, in 2006. This album became the fastest-selling debut album in UK chart history, selling 363,735 copies in the first week, serving as one of several weather vanes for a sea change in music marketing and distribution. Also debuting in 2006, albeit in its startup phase, was a new music streaming platform called Spotify.

As for Arctic Monkeys, the band has experienced the career they imagined in only their most covetous visions of their future. Their sophomore album, Favourite Worst Nightmare, was also an immediate hit, with singles like “Brianstorm” and “Fluorescent Adolescent” lifting them to a new level of commercial success. After a pair of albums that hinted at some experimental, psychedelic rock tendencies, Arctic Monkeys released AM, an album that truly catapulted them into a new stratosphere of fame and fortune. The album can occasionally sound like Alex Turner doing a lounge act crooner impersonation over a Home Depot type beat, but I can’t sit here and act like I didn’t eat that up in 2013.

Arctic Monkeys have since leaned heavily into those psychedelic rock tendencies and Alex Turner’s lounge act delivery, releasing two albums since 2013 in this style, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino and The Car. These albums are not my personal favorites, but I have to respect a group of artists really going for a change of pace. On Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino’s first song, “Star Treatment,” Alex Turner sings, “I just wanted to be one of The Strokes, now look at the mess you made me make”. Depending on the day, I wonder if Arctic Monkeys’ humility and irreverence transcend them over their obvious influences, or if they’re just accurately assessing what’s going on here.

A Bit About The Song

“A Certain Romance” is the first song listed on the band’s fan-dubbed demo CD, Beneath the Boardwalk, but the closing track on their debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. The song begins with a soundbite from the album’s recording engineer, Ewan Davis, whose utterance, “shall I keep rolling,” presents a raw, unedited feel. Then, booming drums ramp up into a similarly ascending guitar riff. It all leads to this cathartic breakdown, which is suddenly usurped by a gentle guitar melody and a more contained drum beat. Alex Turner’s youthful voice cuts in sharply with some unsavory observations about British youth culture.

Well, oh, they might wear classic Reeboks
Or knacky Converse, or tracky bottoms tucked in socks
But all of that’s what the point is not
The point’s that there in’t no romance around there

The entirety of the band’s first album is rife with these mocking remarks, and while they are obviously best suited to a much younger Alex Turner, it’s a shame they’ve been left behind, because his writing truly excels when he’s deriding his peers. The second verse contains a particularly interesting excerpt, considering Arctic Monkeys’ indie, grassroots approach to eventual pop stardom.

There’s only music so that there’s new ringtones
And it don’t take no Sherlock Holmes
To see it’s a little different around here

While this line may contain a bit of unintentional irony in a post-AM world, it must’ve rang out like a war cry in 2006, with the rise of vapid, soulless, indie aesthetic music, now commonly referred to as “landfill indie”. Though I wasn’t a teenager in 2006, I was in 2013 when I heard this song for the first time. Every teenager with even the smallest amount of taste feels scandalized by their “normie” peers. While Arctic Monkeys are far from the shining example of a truly against-the-grain, indie band, this song and this album are essential listening for any teenager who feels like everyone around them sucks. Alex Turner sings the rousing chorus one last time.

You know? Oh, it’s a funny thing, you know
We’ll tell ‘em if you like, we’ll tell ‘em all tonight
They’ll never listen because their minds are made up
And of course it’s all okay to carry on that way

Then, after another instrumental breakdown, he ends the song with a bit of an olive branch.

But over there, there’s friends of mine
What can I say, I’ve known ‘em for a long, long time
And they might overstep the line
But you just cannot get angry in the same way

After all that, the Arctic Monkeys may have a bit of empathy for the posers they rebuke.

A Bit About Me

I’m days away from my 17th birthday, and in my old age, I’m starting to feel nostalgic for a time I never knew. As a 1996 kid born on the cliff’s edge between Generation Y and Z, I possessed a fascination for the elder Millennial culture that preceded my zeitgeist-conscious life. In the past several years, I had discovered Arcade Fire, Bright Eyes, The Shins, Spoon, and Wilco, a collection of artists none of my high school friends had ever heard of, so I assumed the rest of the world hadn’t. Next on my list was a band I’d seen referenced and reblogged on Tumblr, Arctic Monkeys. I liked the name enough, so I decided to give their 30-second iTunes Store previews a shot. What followed was my introduction to one of my favorite albums of the next several years, and my favorite song to belt out the lyrics to in my car, whether I was alone or accosting someone in the passenger seat.

This song stayed with me for years after I first heard it, but its meaning always stayed the same, despite the changes I endured. I, like Alex Turner, desperately wanted to differentiate myself from my peers. I listened to all these cool bands that they’ve never even heard of! What do they know about art? Still, I couldn’t help but crave their approval. I’d felt too long like the weird kid who lived in Japan and came back looking like 12-year-old Aileen Wuornos. I just wanted to fit in.

A Bit About The Band

The Strokes are a rock band from New York City that experienced a swift take-off in 2001 with the release of their debut EP, The Modern Age, and subsequent LP, Is This It, which consecutively crashed into Manhattan’s cultural fabric, bearing metaphorical resemblance to a horrible tragedy that occurred a few months later.

The Strokes, much like 9/11, have a larger cultural impact than the sum of their parts. The band has released 7 albums, and none have been quite as consequential as the first. Is This It is a collection of eleven straightforward rock songs that opened the door to a new zeitgeist. Indie sleaze is most aptly attributed to the sound and style of The Strokes. Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr’s sunny, crunchy guitars, Nikolai Fraiture’s punchy, foregrounded bass, Fabrizio Moretti’s upbeat drums, and Julian Casablancas’ casual, vocal fry-laden vocal delivery all serve this aesthetic in their unique part of the whole.

The Strokes followed up Is This It with another hit in Room on Fire. Their sophomore album has never experienced the commendation of their debut, but it certainly matched its popularity, and is oft-regarded as one of the band’s best albums. The Strokes followed that up with First Impressions of Earth, which is hardly regarded at all, and prompted the band’s first hiatus. The band returned 5 years later with Angles, an album that marked a slight sonic departure for the band as they began to experiment with different production techniques. The guitars here are a little slicker, certainly less crunchy, and the band begins to incorporate a more 80s sonic palette, highlighting synths in the mix more than ever before.

The band immediately followed that up with their fifth album, Comedown Machine, which features some high-highs and some low-lows. As The Strokes do every time they release a poorly received album, they went on a hiatus. This time, they didn’t return until 2020, with The New Abnormal. This album is largely viewed as a return to form for the band, with the band’s slower, more adult approach befitting the year it was released. The Strokes just released their seventh album, Reality Awaits, which has spurred some controversy over Casablancas’ excessive autotune. I have not listened to this album yet, so I can’t comment on this dispute, but I will say that 25 years is a long time for a band like The Strokes to exist. It’s okay to let your teens and early 20’s enter the rearview mirror.

A Bit About The Song

“One Way Trigger” is the third song listed on The Strokes’ fifth studio album, Comedown Machine. The song bursts out with a frenetic, retro synthesizer and an acoustic guitar backing it up. Casablancas swiftly enters the fray with a gentle, fry-less falsetto as he delivers a verse on settling down.

Tell me, tell me, won’t you understand
Show me, show me, show me a better plan
It’s summer lies
It’s someone else’s nothing

Casablancas sings about a current partner with the kind of disaffectedness his voice usually matches. However, his soft falsetto delivery presents a more caring, vulnerable narrator. Casablancas drops the falsetto in the second verse, but his delivery is urgent and frenzied in a way that belies his aloof nature yet again.

Please, please don’t point it that way
It’s just a trigger that goes once and you’ll be unafraid
I wish that I’d been noticed but it never goes that way
The silence that you brought has gone, gone, gone

The song really peaks with a bridge, in which Casablancas seems to lose all sense of control and breaks down.

Show me what to say
Show me what to be
Show me what to see
Show me what to be

It’s quite a striking song, and the lyrics build out the story in an interesting way, essentially cataloguing the inner monologue of a breakup.

A Bit About Me

I’m still 16 years old, and I’ve never been in a particularly serious relationship. My last relationship was in 8th grade, so there’s not much I can relate to lyrically here. But, I turn the song on and go for a drive and think, “yeah, this is awesome”.

A Bit About The Artist

Corey Taylor, Dave Grohl, Rick Nielsen, and Scott Reeder are an unlikely, but not dissimilar, amalgamation of legendary rock musicians. Corey Taylor, the lead vocalist of this song, is better known as the lead singer of the heavy metal band Slipknot. Rick Nielsen, who supplies the lead guitar for this song, is better known as the lead guitarist and primary songwriter of the rock band Cheap Trick. Scott Reeder, the provider of this song’s bass guitar, typically lends his bass guitar to the stoner rock band Kyuss or the doom metal band The Obsessed. Dave Grohl, who drums on this song, assumes a more crucial role as the progenitor of the album/documentary that brings this cast of characters together.

In 2013, Dave Grohl was arguably at his career’s peak. His primary band, Foo Fighters, had earned the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album for each of its last 2 albums, Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace and Wasting Light. Grohl’s career had its lion’s share of highlights prior to 2013, drumming for Nirvana as a 21-year-old. In 2002, he replaced “You Know You’re Right” by Nirvana atop the Billboard rock charts with Foo Fighters’ “All My Life”. “All My Life” was subsequently dethroned by “No One Knows” by Queens of the Stone Age, which features Grohl on drums. Though he had not earned his spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame quite yet, it was abundantly clear they were saving room for him there.

This is the status of Dave Grohl’s career that led him to explore retrospective, hallowed ventures like Sound City, a 2013 documentary about the history of the titular recording studio. Sound City, the film, was accompanied by an album, Sound City: Real to Reel, which featured Dave Grohl and a revolving cast of rock and roll legends. Paul McCartney, Stevie Nicks, Josh Homme, Trent Reznor, and more offer their vocals to this album. Each song is suited to the lead singer’s style and range. The Stevie Nicks song, “You Can’t Fix This,” would not sound out of place on Rumours. The Trent Reznor song sounds like a slick attempt at something off of Pretty Hate Machine. The Paul McCartney song sounds like nothing else he’s ever done, but that is typical of late-stage McCartney. Today, I’m going to be talking about the Corey Taylor song, “From Can To Can’t”.

A Bit About The Song

The song begins with a heavy guitar lick from Rick Nielsen as Corey Taylor matches its brooding bravado with a moody verse.

My torrid autumn
Another season decays
Open up the hollow
And my walls come down

His vocal melodrama is immaculately elevated in the chorus, supported by the introduction of strings. The chorus is repeated three times in this song, and each one offers a variation on its closing line. The first chorus ends with this threat.

This is where I will draw my line
I will draw my line

The song explodes into the heavy, rocking, metal-adjacent song it was meant to be with Corey Taylor at the helm. Corey Taylor’s voice somehow discovers a previously thought undiscoverable level of melodrama as he growls the second verse.

I’m burnin’ my cathedrals
’Cause I don’t pray anymore
Look at all of these people, tragic, little people
They’re smilin’ and they don’t know what for

The second chorus replaces the word “draw” with “blur” for some reason. Then, Nielsen and Reeder shred on their guitars, lead and bass, respectively. Taylor offers another new batch of lyrics on the bridge, largely focused on the same themes of isolation, vulnerability, and a loss of faith. Then, the final chorus ends with the word “blur” being replaced with “cross”.

It’s the kind of operatic, heaving rock song I lived for as a teenager.

A Bit About Me

I’m several weeks removed from my misguided Gatsby party and subsequent fettering from fun and freedom. I still get to see my friends at school, but things have changed since then. My best friend has never shied away from his temperamental ways, but usually those temperaments shine clearly like primarily colors. Red is mad, yellow is glad, blue is sad. Now he’s seeming a little grayer than I’m used to him being. Perhaps that party was the tipping point in our perpetually vacillating relationship, and now all he can muster is apathy. I reminisce on the good days between us. The music we shared a deep, intense fondness for, particularly Foo Fighters and Nirvana. He played drums and I tried to play the guitar, so he was the Dave to my Kurt. I play this song and think of him.

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A Bit About The Artist

Coldplay is not the name of this artist, this artist’s name is Keane, but to properly comprehend Keane, you must first understand Coldplay. Specifically, Coldplay’s hit 2002 single, “Clocks”. “Clocks” is a peculiar pop rock song for many reasons, but particularly due to its lead riff being performed on piano. There are quite a few other pop rock songs that feature piano in a similarly prevalent way, but most of them are power ballads in the fist-pumping vein of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” or Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”. “Clocks” is not the type of song that gets your fist pumping. “Clocks” will unfurl your fist and lead your index finger and thumb up to your chin, a region they will affix to quite ponderously. Against all odds, this became one of the biggest hits of the early aughts, and it didn’t take long for the influence to spread.

Keane is a band from Battle, East Sussex, England, consisting of Tom Chaplin, Tim Rice-Oxley, Richard Hughes, and Jesse Quin. Several of these bandmembers originally joined together under the name Lotus Eaters, while studying at University College London in the mid-90s. Tim Rice-Oxley was actually invited to play piano for another band of young Brits forming at the time, called Coldplay, but Tim didn’t want to let down his Lotus Eaters. Still, he craved change, so he introduced Tom to the band as their new lead vocalist, and together they picked a new name, Cherry Keane, which was later shortened to Keane.

Keane spent most of its early years without a record deal, a burden which carried over into the new millennium, when they were finally signed in 2003. The following year, Keane released perhaps the only piano-led rock song to truly rival “Clocks”. In fact, one could argue “Somewhere Only We Know” is the premier pop rock piano anthem of the 2000s. “Somewhere Only We Know” and the debut album it resides on, Hopes and Dreams, became smash hits, the latter of which becoming the 11th-best selling album of the 2000s in the UK.

To follow up this record, Keane released their sophomore effort, Under the Iron Sea, in 2006. The band described the album as a “sinister fairytale-world-gone-wrong”. The album didn’t perform quite as well as their debut, but it still sold over 3 million copies and even garnered a mildly more enthusastic critical reception. Keane’s subsequent albums never reached the commercial heights set by either of these two albums, but they mantained a steadily successful tenure until a hiatus from 2013 to 2018. The band returned with an album in 2019 titled, Cause and Effect, but their most recent work has come from touring the 20th anniversary show of their debut album, Hopes and Dreams.

A Bit About the Song

“Atlantic is the first song listed on Keane’s sophomore album, Under the Iron Sea. It marks a slight sonic departure for the band, save for massive fans of their song “Untitled 1,” which bears a vague resemblance to Daft Punk’s “The Game of Love” during the outro. The sonic palette of these two songs is more Radiohead than Coldplay. An eerie electronic keyboard opens things up, portending a song much less likely to find itself on the soundtrack of the Winnie the Pooh movie. Then, a buzzing bass line and echo-y drum are added to the fray. Tom Chaplin’s vocals enter, slightly less saccharinely than usual, with lyrics that are not unlike your typical Keane lyrics.

I hope all my days
Will be lit by your face
I hope all the years
Will hold tight our promises

If it weren’t for Chaplin’s icy delivery, this could be a bonus verse on “Somewhere Only We Know”. But, as the song progresses, we gain more insight into Chaplin’s foreboding tone.

I don’t wanna be old and sleep alone
An empty house is not a home
I don’t wanna be old and feel afraid

Not a lot of subtext here, but that’s fine. The song builds and builds until the tension of the song becomes overwhelming, the addition of strings provides a grandiosity typically reserved for Chaplin’s, at times, overbearing voice. At its precipice, the song cascades into a glittery ambient synth and an angelic melody. Sonically, it’s quite moving. Even listening to this now, I am reminded of how cool I felt when I heard this for the first time.

A Bit About Me

I am no longer grounded! The first thing I do is eat weed-laced Cheez-Its with two friends who I then take for a drive around our hometown. I play this song in the car and they compliment it. I feel awesome.

A Bit About The Artist

Jack White, originally John Gillis, was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, where he met his first wife, Meg White. John Gillis took his wife’s last name and applied a common nickname for John to become Jack White. Jack began his professional music career as a drummer for Goober & the Peas, a short-lived cowpunk band of the early-to-mid 90s. As a consequence of the band’s dissolution, Jack and Meg formed their own band, The White Stripes. Meg was a little over a year into learning to play drums, and Jack was shifting over from drums to lead guitarist and vocalist, so simplicity and brevity were necessary characteristics of the band’s sound. Their first two albums hone a distinct sonic identity, with distortion-heavy guitars carving into kickdrum-forward beats. Jack White’s sharp, fixed vocals are a sum of all the band’s parts, complementing their sound by simply adding another layer. In spite of their explosive, simplistic sound, Jack and Meg remained elusive as people, with an intriguingly vague public relationship with one another. It was unclear whether they were lovers or sister and brother, and Jack and Meg played into that confusion. The band’s third album, White Blood Cells, marked a dramatic shift for the band. While their sound stayed consistent, hits like “Fell In Love With a Girl” and “We’re Going to Be Friends” catapulted the band into rock stardom. Rock stardom wound up merely being a stepping stone to greater things for The White Stripes.

In 2003, the band released Elephant, which rocketed the band to stratospheric heights with several major hits like “Ball and Biscuit” and “The Hardest Button to Button”, and, of course, “Seven Nation Army”. Jack and Meg divorced in 2000, but their relationship within the band seemed to remain in good standing. Upon experiencing such a paradigm-altering popularity boost, Jack and Meg’s inner selves were revealed in their reactions. While Meg’s reclusiveness led her to shy away from the attention, Jack welcomed it with open arms. After a couple more albums and an indefinite hiatus, the band ultimately dissolved in 2011. Meg retired from music, while Jack leaned into the spotlight.

Jack White became a lot of things after The White Stripes. The frontman of several other bands, a solo artist, an actor, a record label owner, an icon of Detroit, and of the rock and roll genre. His solo albums have all received critical acclaim, and he’s had his hands in several major commercial successes, from his work with The Raconteurs on “Steady As She Goes” to his work with Beyonce on “Don’t Hurt Yourself”. He’s acted in Oscar-nominated films like Killers of the Flower Moon and movies I like a lot, such as Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. He has achieved virtually all that one can as a garage rocker from Detroit. Still, when I think of Jack White at his best, I think of Meg White drumming alongside him.

A Bit About The Song

“Love Is Blindness” is the first cover song I’ve written about so far, originally written and recorded by U2 for their album Achtung Baby. A tribute album for the 20th anniversary of Achtung Baby was released in 2011, featuring artists like The Killers, Nine Inch Nails, Patti Smith, and Jack White. Jack adored the album’s closing track, “Love Is Blindness,” a melancholic song given a particular edge by U2 guitarist, The Edge’s recent divorce. So, when the opportunity presented itself, Jack leapt straight for the closing track.

Despite his adoration, Jack wasn’t precious about preserving the song’s original sonic palette. U2’s “Love Is Blindness” begins with atmospheric synths and a plodding drum beat. Bono’s voice adopts a gloomier tone than usual, and a sad piano punctuates the vibe. The original song rests in that malaise for its better half, before a jagged, unhinged guitar solo cuts through everything else. The guitar solo is awe-inducing, especially with the knowledge of The Edge’s personal affairs, and it seems like this portion of the song is what Jack White wanted to capture for the entirety of his cover.

Jack’s “Love Is Blindness” opens with a striking, discordant sound, which I assume to be strums of a guitar, but could just as plausibly be a recording of ambient industrial noise. Then, a driving, punchy drum beat kicks in, and a sultry guitar accompanies it. Jack’s voice jolts in, giving the song’s lyrics a malicious reappraisal.

Love is clockworks and it’s cold steel
Fingers too numb to feel
Squeeze the handle, blow out the candle
Blindness

This cover’s violence is cemented with an equally punchy and driving guitar solo. It bears resemblance to The Edge’s soul-baring solo in the original song, and feels like the one part of the song Jack White couldn’t bear to change. The song culminates in one last ominous utterance of “blindness” and a funereal organ.

It’s a song I still enjoy listening to when it’s on, though a severe drop off in hormonally-charged heartbreaks has lessened my need to put it on. It is worth mentioning that this song was included in the soundtrack for Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby.

A Bit About Me

As a result of my misguided attempt at playing Gatsby over St. Patrick’s Day weekend, I’m grounded. I sit in my room, overwhelmed by my own melodrama, with nothing to distract me. I am unfettered only in my trips to and from school and any necessary extracurricular activities. I don’t have my phone to play music, but I unearth my old iPod and use it in secret. I experience the discomfort of perception as I walk around school. I experience a burning shame when I come home. When I finally get to my room alone, I get to wallow in my exaggerated perception of these experiences when I play this song on repeat. I just hope I’m not still grounded in May when The Great Gatsby comes out in theaters.

A Bit About The Artist

Kendrick and Lamar are the first and middle name of Kendrick Duckworth, who is from Compton, California. His music blends subgenres of hip-hop like West Coast rap, jazz rap, and conscious hip-hop, but pop sensibilities permeate even his most experimental albums. As a result, he has achieved nearly unparalleled levels of critical and commercial success. He has five consecutive number one albums on the Billboard 200, the most-viewed Super Bowl halftime show in history, and a Pulitzer Prize. Following a recent, but less recent than you think, feud with fellow hip-hop artist, Drake, Kendrick Lamar finds himself atop the living Mt. Rushmore of the genre. Kendrick Lamar skews on the more deserving end of all the inherently reductive “faces” of any given genre. He may not be what Michael Jackson was to pop or what Bob Dylan was to folk, but among his modern contemporaries across all genres, he stands out in a favorable light.

Kendrick isn’t the most likely face of a genre. While he certainly doesn’t shy away from his pop sensibilities, he doesn’t tend to lean all the way in either. His greatest commercial success, DAMN., is peculiarly structured and features social commentary that you probably wouldn’t hear on a Drake or Taylor Swift album. His other great commercial successes, Good Kid m.A.A.d City and To Pimp A Butterfly, are cinematic in their approach, weaving in skits and spoken-word segments that serve a broader narrative.

Kendrick himself seems to be a reclusive guy when he isn’t performing in front of Super Bowl crowds. He tends to give off a calm-natured interiority, surrounding himself with more life-of-the-party types, from his origins in Black Hippy to his present endeavors with frequent collaborator and consistent cousin, Baby Keem. This makes his rise to hip-hop and pop stardom seem unlikely, but a confluence of timing and talent can really do a lot for a guy. Kendrick’s music caught the attention of West Coast icons Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg at a time when West Coast rap was at its lowest. In the 2000s, New York had 50 Cent and Jay-Z, Chicago had Kanye and Common, and the South had T.I. and Lil Wayne. The West Coast scene had largely gravitated to the Bay Area, with hyphy artists like E-40. Los Angeles was still waiting for someone to succeed its 90s stars. That moment came in 2011, when Snoop Dogg himself dubbed Kendrick Lamar “The New King of the West Coast”.

A Bit About The Song

“Swimming Pools (Drank)” is the ninth track on Kendrick Lamar’s second studio album, Good Kid m.A.A.d City, and it is my favorite song we’ve covered so far. No disrespect to Imagine Dragons, Walk the Moon, or David Nail, but Kendrick Lamar is an artist I still frequently listen to, and “Swimming Pools (Drank)” is one of my favorite songs he’s ever made. The song opens with a cloudy, ominous beat and a pitched-down Kendrick performing a call-and-response passage.

Pour up (Drank), head shot (Drank)
Sit down (Drank), stand up (Drank)
Pass out (Drank), wake up (Drank)
Faded (Drank, faded (Drank)

Kendrick enters the first verse with his voice at regular pitch, as he regales us with stories of alcoholism in his family, before shifting the narrative to his own. The chorus sounds like your typical party anthem, but with the context of the previous verse, we’re clearly meant to consider the normalization of getting blackout drunk rather than celebrate it. The second verse is when things get really interesting. Kendrick adopts a peculiar, nasally voice, which reveals itself to be the voice of Kendrick’s conscience. Kendrick bargains with his conscience, relishing the confidence alcohol gives him to talk to a girl he likes, but fearing for his well-being as he pushes his body past its limit. The verse culminates with this line.

I’m over-influenced
By what you are doing, I thought I was doing the most ‘til someone said to me

This leads right into the party-anthem chorus, which sounds even more harrowing now. If this were a different artist or a different album, the song could end after the second post-chorus refrain, but Kendrick is aiming for something more cinematic on Good Kid m.A.A.d City. The song introduces a bridge, with lyrics that connect the peer pressure associated with gangbanging to the peer pressure associated with drinking.

I ride, you ride, bang
One chopper, one hundred shots, bang
Hop out, do you bang?
Two chopper, two hundred shots, bang

The chorus rings out one last time before we’re given a final verse, which comes from a more vulnerable perspective. Kendrick fears for his life and resents his peers who pressured him into drinking in the first place. This is still making a connection between drinking and gangbanging, because the song ends in a skit, continuing an album-spanning narrative, in which Kendrick gets stomped out while trying to meet up with a girl. Kendrick and his friends retaliate by firing shots around the guys, and in the gunfire, one of Kendrick’s friends is killed.

A Bit About Me

It’s St. Patrick’s Day weekend, and I’ve got the house to myself. My dad went on a surprise sabbatical to Nebraska a few months ago, and my mom finally flew out to bring him back home. I had my first real “liquored-up” experience last summer, and I’ve been craving the feeling ever since. I invite a few friends over. I’ve never thrown a party before, so 15 people sounds like a lot of people to me. Two of those friends convene in my backyard, adopting a stern demeanor. Apparently, the word got out, and what seemed to be the entire school is coming to my house tonight. How do I get alcohol for that many people? My other friend tells me his parents are out at work, and they never check their liquor cabinet. He tells me to hop the fence and slip in through the sliding glass doors in the backyard. I do as I’m told and return home with a bizarre spread of parents’ alcohol. The party starts in a manageable place, so I leave to pick up the girl whom I’m throwing this party for (I had just read The Great Gatsby). We return, and things are starting to spiral out of control. Someone threw up in my sister’s room, someone threw up in my parents’ room, someone’s fighting outside. Sirens blare, and what appears to be 11 patrol cars from the local sheriff’s department pull up in front of my house. Hordes of teenagers are hopping fences and dashing past cops and disturbed neighbors, while I try to lie to this cop. It’s no use, I’m in so much trouble.

A Bit About The Artist

David Nail is a country singer and songwriter from Kennett, Missouri. His middle name is Brent, which is potentially amusing to any fans of both David Nail and The Office (UK). Unlike the David Brent of British TV, David Brent Nail experienced a wave of success as a musician, topping the country charts twice with “Whatever She’s Got” and the song featured in this article. He served as the opener for Taylor Swift’s Speak Now tour in 2011, and even earned his spot among the ranks of bona fide country stars like Kenny Chesney and Keith Urban when he played alongside them in the 2015 Buckeye County Superfest. During this period of mainstream success, the country singer revealed an ongoing struggle with depression, which led him to seek therapy and take a step back from the spotlight. David Nail parted ways with his UMG-subsidiary record label in 2017 and began releasing music independently. Though that music has generally come in the form of EPs, he is set to release his first album since 2016, titled Flowers, in just a few weeks.

I’ll be frank, I didn’t know much about David Nail prior to 45 minutes ago. This song’s inclusion in these playlists is fairly flukish, for reasons I’ll explain in a later segment of this article. Regardless, there’s no better time to start listening to an artist’s other songs than 13 years after you listened to the first song. This deep dive hasn’t necessarily yielded many surprises, but it hasn’t sparked any resentment either. David Nail makes pop country tunes with a tinge of despair. He has a song co-written with former American Idol contestant and winner, David Cook. He has released covers of Adele’s “Someone Like You” and The Weeknd’s “Can’t Feel My Face”. These are not his best songs, but they are interesting asides, to me, at least. In his best songs, he bears a melodic resemblance to Elton John, who is cited by David Nail as an inspiration. His 2008 album, I’m About To Come Alive, exhibits this resemblance without overindulging, and the ornate pop country instrumentation supporting these melodies helps David Nail stand out amongst his pop country peers. His lyricism isn’t quite as singular, but his lyrics rarely shy away from vulnerability, which is always interesting to listen to, at the very least.

A brief aside about Sarah Buxton, the featured vocalist. Sarah hails from Lawrence, Kansas, and possesses a strong country voice compared to the likes of Melissa Etheridge and Gretchen Wilson. She experienced a breakthrough when Keith Urban covered her single, “Stupid Boy”. "This song is the only collaboration between Sarah and David, though all public records indicate that they got along swimmingly in the studio. Now, back to David and the rest of this article.

David Nail is not an artist I’ve featured on these playlists since, and I wouldn’t say it’s likely he’ll be featured again, but I’ve had a good time listening to his music, and I’ll probably do it again soon.

A Bit About The Song

“Let It Rain” is the fifth track off of David Nail’s second studio album, The Sound of a Million Dreams. The song’s lyrics wears its heart on its sleeve, leaving little to the imagination. This is a song about a man cheating on his wife.

The song opens with a solemn guitar riff, the perfect chord progression to help you lament your adulterous ways. David Nail’s voice enters the fold, mixed much louder than anything else here, implanting his warm tenor voice directly into your cranial cavity.

It’s hard to find the perfect time to say something
You know is gonna change everything
Living with the shame
It ain’t nothing like the pain that I saw on her face

These lyrics, while not quite as abstract as other lyrical passages we’ve examined thus far, are much more effective at affecting the listener. The first verse ends with some pretty effective storytelling.

No seven years of good can’t hide the one night I forgot to wear that ring

In that one line, we can gather that David and this woman were married for seven years, he cheated on this woman with a one-night stand, and, apart from that night, he seems to be a pretty stand-up guy.

The song gets its name from the lyrical refrain in the chorus, which is also featured in the outro.

So let it rain, let it pour, if she don’t love me anymore
Just let it come down on me

Ultimately, this isn’t particularly groundbreaking lyrical work, but it’s effective and concise storytelling. The song itself is a fairly run-of-the-mill pop country tune. Upon listening to other David Nail songs, I’d argue that his two most popular singles are not his greatest work. I would implore anyone interested in hearing more from David Nail to check out “Mississippi” and “The Crown”.

A Bit About Me

I’m in this Kinesiology class at school, which requires us to complete some allotment of volunteer work at a local physical therapy office. My friend is volunteering there with me, and after our time is up, she asks me to drive her home. We drive around my hometown, talking about our feelings and playing songs on my cassette-to-AUX converter that make us feel like our feelings are singular and intriguing to one another. Her feelings are intriguing to me. I play her a song by Bright Eyes and another by The Mars Volta, which I loudly sing along to in front of her. She plays me a song by Son, Ambulance, and then this song, despite my insistence that I don’t like country music. I don’t know if I ever really did like this song, but I really liked her, and that had a funny way of getting me to like country music.

A Bit About The Artist

Imagine Dragons is a pop-rock, or Stadium Alternative, band from Las Vegas, Nevada, and that city permeates through every aspect of this band. Stadium Alternative doesn’t go far enough in detailing the grandiose quality of Imagine Dragons’ music. Although this is technically rock music, the structure and audacity of the band's guitar riffs and drum beats have clear roots in dubstep and EDM music of the late aughts and early 2010s. Dan Reynolds, lead vocalist of the band, possesses a bellowing voice, which he keeps at max volume, save for the frequent times he transcends max volume. Guitarist, Wayne Sermon, bassist, Ben McKee, and a curiously lengthy list of former percussionists and multi-instrumentalists all support Reynolds’ roaring vocals with a thunderous play style. What results is the perfect soundtrack for those Monday Night Football promotional interstitials.

Imagine Dragons is a band we’re all familiar with, but nobody really knows. They permeated American culture with hits like “Radioactive” and “Demons” and have since solidified their status as global rock stars with mega-hits like “Thunder” and “Believer”. Despite these chart-topping hits, Imagine Dragons’ cultural impact feels rather nebulous. The band is, quantifiably, the most popular rock band of the 2010s. But it’s hard to point to an album of theirs worth qualifying as an iconic rock album of the 2010s. Albums like AM by The Arctic Monkeys and Currents by Tame Impala adorned the walls of every college dorm room. Albums like Twin Fantasy by Car Seat Headrest and Puberty 2 by Mitski inspired a vociferous online fandom. Even bands with a comparable radio appeal, like Twenty One Pilots, had culturally significant albums like Blurryface. Imagine Dragons are essentially the music industry’s Avatar. Quantifiably, this is the most popular thing in the world, but who really cares about Avatar?

The name, Imagine Dragons, is confirmed to be an anagram, though that anagram is a secret known only by the band’s members. The most commonly speculated phrase for that anagram is Ragged Insomnia. However, other guesses include: Egg Rain Domains, Raiding Mangoes, and Amigos In Danger.

A Bit About The Song

“Amsterdam” is the sixth track off of Imagine Dragons’ debut studio album, Night Visions. I probably haven’t inspired much goodwill towards Imagine Dragons thus far, but there was a time when I absolutely adored this album. The album contains the uncontainably loud hits, “Radioactive” and “It’s Time”, but it also includes some softer, 80s pop and even new wave-inspired songs. “Amsterdam” is one of the latter. The song begins with a sad synth and what seems to be SFX of a train. The bass counts us into the song, which gently blossoms into a placid soft rock guitar riff, backed by a rarely subtle falsetto from frontman Dan Reynolds. Reynolds’ opens the song with an equally rare personal lyric.

I’m sorry, mother
I’m sorry, I let you down
Well, these days I’m fine
No, these days I tend to lie

Each subsequent verse features a similar lyrical refrain, changing only the relative in question. Mother becomes brother becomes lover. The chorus gives Reynolds a chance to show off his booming voice, which bellows this response to his earlier call.

Your time will come
If you wait for it, if you wait for it
It’s hard, believe me, I’ve tried

It’s unclear whether or not the chorus is sung from Reynolds’ point of view, or from that of the relative called out to in each verse. I like to think of it as the relative’s point of view.

The song seems to be called “Amsterdam” simply because Dan Reynolds, at the time of writing the song, had never been to Amsterdam and thought the city seemed cool. If that answer frustrates you, I suggest you stay away from the music of Imagine Dragons. However, if that information doesn’t bother you in the slightest, and everything else I’ve written entices you to listen to this song, I wouldn’t dissuade you from listening. “Amsterdam” is a pleasant pop-rock song.

A Bit About Me

I’m still a 16-year-old junior in high school, blasting pop-rock from the weary speakers of my ‘05 Toyota Prius. When I’m not in that car, I’m in the car of my neighbor, a girl one year older than me. She drives me, my sister, and her sister around, introducing us to weed, OFWGKTA, and this song. It’s a strange amalgamation, but growing up in the suburbs will have you earnestly listening to Earl Sweatshirt and Imagine Dragons in the same playlist.

I don’t always like the music she plays for us, but I always like riding around in that car, a gold 2001 Toyota Camry.

A Bit About The Artist

WALK THE MOON (stylized in 2010s all-caps) is a pop-rock band based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Although pop-rock is a fair assessment of the band’s genre, I think “Stadium Alternative” paints a slightly more precise picture. The band hovers in the Imagine Dragons, X Ambassadors, Bastille sonic space, featuring slick production and a frontman with a booming baritone voice. A discernible new wave influence draws comparisons to The Killers. The name, WALK THE MOON, can easily get lost in the sea of Blank-the-Blank band names of the 2010s (Young the Giant, Portugal the Man, Cage the Elephant, Foster the People).

If you do remember this band, you probably remember them for one of their two hit singles, “Anna Sun”, which greatly influenced their signing with RCA Records in 2011, and “Shut Up And Dance”. The band has released two additional studio albums since the “Shut Up And Dance”-led Talking Is Hard, but the wave of Stadium Alternative had waned, and their earlier commercial success was never quite matched. The band is currently on an indefinite hiatus.

At the time of this playlist’s curation, the band consisted of lead vocalist, Nicholas Petricca, guitarist, Eli Maiman, bassist, Kevin Ray, and percussionist, Sean Waugaman. If you were to draw four men based only on the knowledge that they were in a 2010s pop-rock band, you wouldn’t be unlikely to draw these four men.

WALK THE MOON may not be the most distinctive band, but I find that to be part of the charm. Upon relistening and researching the band’s history and members, I was washed over by a wave of nostalgia for a simpler time. A time when a group of “adorkable” guys with a deep passion for the 1980s could get together and reach such great heights. The heights made possible by legendary indie bands of the aughts, whose work lifted the genre to the peak of pop culture. A culture with deep-rooted flaws, but at least an identity. While many of these Blank-the-Blank bands have become ancient texts, in danger of obsolescence, together they represent one of the last cultural phenomena we all experienced together.

A Bit About The Song

“Quesadilla” is the first song on WALK THE MOON’s debut studio album, Walk the Moon. It was named while the band was performing live, pre-RCA signing, and lead vocalist, Nicholas Petricca, saw a man in the crowd eating a quesadilla. Since the song wasn’t officially named, Nicholas dubbed the song Quesadilla in that moment, and has since reflected on how aptly the name suits the song’s sonic experience.

The song opens with a shimmering synth arpeggio and a drummer’s countdown. Then, a sunshine-and-lollipops guitar riff, booming drums, and a smattering of millennial claps, “heys”, and “ohs” burst onto the track. If I were to compare the sonic experience of this intro to a culinary experience, I would liken it to the feeling of being down to the last Rainbow Sour Belts in the package, and deciding to stuff them all in your mouth at the same time to experience one final euphoric hit of sour delight. Instead of “Quesadilla”, I’d call it “The Last Few Rainbow Sour Belts In The Package”.

The song’s lyrical content has little relation to either title. Nicholas’s booming voice enters the song with the words…

I must’ve tumbled out of a plane
’Cause I free-fell all year
My chute is blooming out like spring
And I’m nowhere now, but here.

This is about as abstract as Nicholas is willing to get. The remaining lyrics detail what could be mistaken for a Hollister ad featuring a young couple.

Water washed around our naked feet
Your blue jeans over in the sand
And we were wrestling in our picnic blanket sheets

With the context of the remaining lyrics, that first lyrical passage seems to express the feelings one might associate with falling in love. I find it to be the most intriguing passage of the song, not only for its abstractions, but also for its subtext. Using a falling metaphor to evoke falling in love is maybe a little obvious, but it also presents a looming danger or uncertainty here. The chute appears to be a signifier of entering into a new relationship, or perhaps settling into it. “I’m nowhere now, but here” is clearly meant to convey intentional, concentrated love, but these lyrics also seem to allude to a shaky foundation. What was this narrator doing before he fell out of a plane? What is he going to do when he lands?

The rest of the song mellows out into a gentler synth-pop tune. It’s quite a pleasant listen for me, even in 2026, though a more particular listener might wretch at some of the more dated aspects of the song’s production, and the generic lyrical content. Still, if you’re making a 2013 playlist, this is a pretty good place to start.

A Bit About Me

I’m 16 years old, and I just started the second semester of my Junior year of high school. I have my license, and my dad’s coworker sold him his 05 Toyota Prius, so I have a means and a method to teenage freedom in suburban Los Angeles. I’ve recently discovered Urban Outfitters and Chipotle, and I’m reading Looking for Alaska, so the world around me is starting to make a lot of sense.

I haven’t kissed anyone since I was 14 years old, and I’m starting to fear my kissing years have passed me by. I was quite the 13-year-old slampiece. Now, I’m gangly, awkward, and braces-ridden. Maybe that’ll all change soon.

There’s a girl I’ve had a crush on since my Freshman year of high school, who I think about when I play this song via the Cassette-to-AUX converter in my Prius. I drive home from Cross Country practice, windows down, blasting this song as I sing along, my still-changing voice beginning to fit in with his.

A curation of music I liked then and a sonic diary of my life in that given year.

In 2013, I was 16, going on 17. Now, I’m 30. My taste in music and life experiences now differ slightly from those of 2013 me. Though I am him and he is me, I often find it hard to recognize myself in these playlists. As life fades into memory, the person you were becomes distinguishable from the person you are.

Dissociation is often, and aptly, perceived as a trauma response or signifier of a severe neurological issue. A Jungian perspective would make a less formidable assertion. Dissociation is a key part of normal, meaning non-trauma-related, complex formation. It allows for an expansion of one’s personality.

I feel like in each playlist, I see that play out. Each year feels like A New Me, and each song is a piece of that whole. So, I thought it would be interesting to write a little something about each song on every 40-song diary-playlist I’ve ever made. Maybe in writing about these songs, immortalizing times and places in my life, I can reanimate my younger selves, currently interred in pop-alt songs from the 2010s.

Ultimately, I just want an excuse to write about music. This blessing may be more of a burden, as many of these songs are now, and perhaps also then, perceived as deeply uncool. But they are the songs I chose, or at least, the songs a version of me chose.

So, starting August 1, I will release an article each day, detailing one song, beginning with the first song on my 2013 playlist. I will structure each article in the following manner…

A Bit About The Artist

A Bit About The Song

A Bit About Me

“Me” being the version of me who added this song to the playlist. Although, as I am writing these now, the me I am now will probably editorialize a little.

One final note: These songs may hold varying levels of importance to me now, but they could all still be incredibly important to another, particularly the artist. I will do my best to be respectful of all artists and songs featured.

One more final note: If you want to know what I’m listening to now, here’s a list of 40 songs I adore right now (which will not be featured on any of the playlists).

When I was 17 years old, I gained 50 pounds of creatine-induced muscle and lost everything else that mattered in my life.

2026,

A question I still ask myself is, was it worth it?

2007,

When I was 11 years old, I hugged all my friends goodbye, then came home to that home one last time, staring down at my Totoro bathmat, wondering what the point of all of them, and all of this was. I returned to the United States with shoulder-length hair, affronting all who remembered me as an 8-year-old with a buzz cut. I was trying to look like Kurt Cobain, but wound up looking more like Charlize Theron in Monster (2003).

Being the new kid at school is most kids’ first bout with celebrity. You’re thrust into the spotlight, every subsequent step scrupulously scrutinized, and questions of your past warp into character derisions. I may have been toying with nihilism, but I wasn’t ready to swim to the deep end. I was desperate to appear normal. I was desperate to make friends. I was desperate to let their meaning drape over me like a jacket.

So, I cut my hair. I cut my hair into the swoopy, fringy model adorned by every tween-age boy of the aughts. I remember 2 girls following me around middle school, whispering something. I assumed they were making fun of me. One day, I turned around and asked who they were. One of the girls made a formal introduction, then motioned to her friend and said, “She has a crush on you”. A wave of intoxicating hubris swallowed me whole and spat me out facing a mirror. I looked at that 12-year-old boy with the perfect swoopy, fringy hair, and he looked back at me, and we decided that this haircut was the most important thing in the world.

2008,

When I started middle school, I had one friend, my best friend. We shared an affinity for video games, Saturday Night Live, and grunge music. We differed in most other ways. He was big, tough, and irritable. I was small, soft, and sanguine. I often felt like a doting housewife to a cantankerous brute. But, I also felt love and loved. He knew me before I had left, and had been the only one to stay once I had returned.

2010,

When I started high school, I had a group of friends. They were all friends of my one friend, and as a result, an immaterial barrier resided between us. After spending 3 years in another country, making other friends, this country and these friends felt just as purposeless. The nihilism was creeping closer to the surface until I met a girl who, against her will, became my sense of purpose.

Despite my swoopy-haired hubris, I was beginning to experience a puberty-inspired interiority. My descriptors shifted from small and cute to gangly and unibrow. My inward retreat was exacerbated by many trips to the orthodontist, which culminated in braces. I found myself facing the mirror once again, embarrassed by who was looking back.

So, I didn’t tell this girl how I felt. I chose instead to sheathe my feelings in a transparent cover. I adored from afar, which didn’t feel far from my other friendships. I had developed an at arm’s length familiarity with the people I chose to surround myself with, while I behaved as if I had no say in the matter. And for three years, that’s how it was.

2013,

I’m 16, and I’m tired of feeling distant. I don’t know where I belong. I go through the kind of bullying every waifish, dweebish boy goes through. I have enough perspective to understand they’re trying to help me. They see me as something weak that must be stronger to survive. I don’t have enough perspective to understand that they hardly know what they’re doing either. I home in on their path because it’s presented to me, and in the eyes of a 16-year-old, everyone else knows more than you.

I’m reading The Great Gatsby in English Literature and contorting its contents to make it mean what I need it to mean right now. Technically, Gatsby’s plan worked! He throws awesome parties and gets Daisy to swoon for his silk shirts. Yeah, yeah, he dies at the end, but don’t we all die at the end of a little story called life?

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s voice joins the chorus of 16-year-old boys telling me I am not good enough, but I can be better. They don’t exactly say the words, “I can be better,” but they show me. They show me via their own image, and the masculine image so exceedingly present in 2010 mass media, it feels omnipresent. I have a clear path to high school cultural cachet, and it starts and ends with some bicep curls.

I’m 17, it’s the first day of my senior year, and I’ve been doing bicep curls, tricep pulldowns, and a myriad of other arms-centric exercises for the better half of the year. I’ve gained 5 lbs of upper arm muscle, and I’ve chosen to parlay that with a two-months-early braces removal to tap into the first-day-of-school recency bias.

I’m new-year-new-me-maxxing.

These material changes grant me the unearned confidence to attend high school parties. Growing up in Southern California gives you, fellow teen, ample opportunity to smoke weed. But now, I’m discovering the other opportunities afforded to me. Coke, Molly, and worst of all, Alcohol. Weed always made me sedate, but these drugs make me feel like striving, like the best is just out of reach, like I can be better.

I know I’ve changed, but nobody else clocks these changes, save for my best friend. He knows me, and he remembers the sickeningly saccharine, puerile pact we made as Freshmen. A pact to never do drugs or drink alcohol. It made perfect sense when I was 14. I didn’t care for much other than Rock Band and Judd Apatow movies. But now, a pact like that was Babytime at the Diaper Factory. My best friend didn’t feel the same way, and, in turn, we weren’t best friends anymore. When our other best friend ended up in a halfway house several years later, I knew he was always right.

That type of thing doesn’t exist in my world yet. My world is gilded by good times, and as the girl I chose to adore from afar tells me she adores me too, I am adorned with a crown of righteousness, exonerated of any and all crimes put forth by former best friends. Everything is exactly as I was told it could be. Everything is exactly as I believed it should be. Everything is exactly as I planned it to be.

One month later,

She breaks up with me. What the fuck. This isn’t supposed to happen. What did I think would happen? I guess I thought the credits would roll. But life continued, while I was happy to live in that moment.

What do I do now?

I dig and dig and dig, until I can lie down somewhere I won’t be found. A me-shaped husk handles my daily operations. He traipses through the life I’ve clumsily constructed for him. He drinks too much one night and wakes up in bed with someone on top of him. He darts to the bathroom, and he and I reintegrate in the mirror as he washes my face and I wash his body.

I have no friends, I have no girlfriend, I have no self-respect, and I have no plan.

This is who I am when I decide to start taking creatine.

2014,

I’m spending my free time at the 3 G’s, Gym, GNC, and Glendale Galleria, where I purchase a plethora of size-too-small tank tops at Pacsun. I’m spending my free time inhaling as many calories as my body will allow me to intake. I’m spending my free time counting reps for each set. I’m spending my free time researching how to carve a defined pec line. I’m spending my free time swallowing pills that do more than make me believe I can be better. These pills make me better.

I have new friends now, friends who see it how I see it. Well, maybe they told me to see it that way, but who cares about who saw what first? With everything else excavated from my mind, I see everything so clearly now.

I never needed my old friends, my old interests, my old desires. All I need is to be big.

At the start of my senior year, August 2013, I weighed 115 lbs (52kg). By April 2014, I weighed 165 lbs (75kg). In a body that didn’t feel like my own, I felt empowered to act out of my mind. I would throw my body at whoever wanted it, and my mind wasn’t worried, because none of it mattered anymore. Or, at least, that’s what I presented to the outside world. In my room, all alone, I spent the free time I had left watching Minecraft Let’s Plays on YouTube. I missed playing video games with my best friend, and 2 of the players featured on this channel reminded me of us.

Some good friends and family saw what I was doing to myself and tried to drag me out of it. But, in the eyes of a 17-year-old, you know better than everyone else. I “C’s-get-degrees’d” myself into a GED, and an acceptance letter to Chico State University, one of the premier party schools in all of California.

I knew I didn’t really belong at Chico when, during welcome week, I met a dude in a Johnny Manziel jersey who entered his contact in my phone as “Justin 9 Inch Club”. He had spent a good portion of the night talking up the size of his penis, so out of respect for a man’s word, I never changed his contact.

My first semester was rife with experiences of a similar nature that led to the same realization. I came home with an academic probation letter, and my parents considered rehab. I thought they were being ridiculous, but looking back at it now, they had the right idea. I watched classmates drop like flies, alcohol and candyflipping – the combined effects of Molly and LSD – were often to blame. I figured myself immune to substances. Don’t they see how big I am now? I’m way too big for a tiny little pill or tab or bottle of Burnett’s to take me down. At 165 lbs, I would’ve been among the smallest of all the dead.

2015,

My second semester was spent at the gym and in my dorm. I spent my free time – which was all of the time since I wasn’t going to class – tanning by the gym pool, reading Fight Club, and playing FIFA 15 with a couple of guys in my dorm hall. I was quietly quitting

my life here, but I did have a few moments of weakness. In one particular moment, I approached the professor of one of the several classes I was failing, teary-eyed and soft-spoken. I told him I needed special permission to drop his class because my best friend had died. He granted me special permission, and I failed 2 other classes anyway. During my last month, I spent all of my free time in the computer lab, applying to jobs and community college in my hometown.

The following 2 years I’d spent as a hermit, recluding myself from almost any socialization apart from passing conversations with my parents, whom I lived with. I was trying to beat myself up, to beat the thing I’d become out of the thing I once was. After misinterpreting The Great Gatsby, you’d think I’d have learned my lesson while reading Fight Club.

2017,

I am out of my body once again. The husk is back, but he’s a little broken this time. Years of reckless, ignorant bodybuilding had taken a toll on my shoulder ligaments. I’m trying to romanticize my life by smoking a cigarette at an old viewpoint we used to go to when we were in high school. The next day, I receive surgery to repair my shoulder, and return home with prescriptions for Percocet and Naproxen. Their combination puts me in a nauseating malaise. I can’t move, I can’t think, I can’t do anything. But they’re making me better. Good timing, too. After 2 years in community college, I’ve been accepted to Emerson’s film school. Finally, somewhere I can start over again. I can be the new kid at school again. I look into the mirror and a frail 20-year-old, strapped into a shoulder-immobilizing brace, stares vacantly back.

God, please let me recover quickly so I can get big before then.

Blood Orange - Essex Honey

I listened to a lot of music about familial loss this year, perhaps melodramatically coping with the distance between my own family and me. In this album, Dev Hynes copes with the loss of his mother, and the result is grim, bleak, but also cathartic and even warm at times.

Fav Song: The Field

Clipse - Let God Sort Em Out

This is another album about familial loss, this time rappers/brothers Pusha T and Malice explore the loss of both of their parents. It’s a little more celebratory in sound and substance, but it’s also one of the few albums to make me cry this year. That was on the second or third listen of my favorite song.

Fav Song: The Birds Don’t Sing

Dijon - Baby

This is the most fun I’ve ever had blind-listening to an album. It’s a love letter to his wife and son, and it forces a smile out of you at every cacophonous turn. Sorta sounds like running Prince through a blender, but I mean that as a very high compliment.

Fav Song: Yamaha

Ethel Cain - Perverts

In stark contrast, this is the least fun you will have listening to an album this year. It’s technically an EP, but it’s a 90-minute-long drone EP, so it demands patience. But, when I’ve given it the time, it’s been fascinatingly rewarding. This album has made me feel less alone during some bleak, introverted moments in 2025.

Fav Song: Vacillator

FKA Twigs - Eusexua

Back to fun, this feels like the album that combines everything I’ve loved about FKA Twigs’s music for over a decade now. It’s dancy but also dark and depraved, and I’ll never tire of listening to her music.

Fav Song: Sticky

Geese - Getting Killed

The algorithm fed me Cameron Winter almost a year ago to this day, and despite my reticence to the algorithm’s curating process, I have fallen deeply in love with his and Geese’s music. It’s zany and fun and full of whimsy, though not as much as 3D Country, but it’s also thoughtful and drenched in anguish.

Fav Song: Cobra

Jeff Tweedy - Twilight Override

Okay, yeah, it’s a 30-song three-in-one Jeff Tweedy solo album. I get that this is maybe a little more up my alley than most. But, each song is gorgeous, layered, and full of storytelling comparable to any Wilco project. Plus, his concept for this album was to create something so expansive, so full of hope, that it may quiet the bad times and bad news outside. I think that’s a cool reason to make an album.

Fav Song: Feel Free

Pink Pantheress - Fancy That

In the Fun Olympics, this album wins gold every time. I think people underrate Pink Pantheress because of the truncated runtimes of her songs and albums, but there is so much inventiveness and a stylistic signature to her music that I think is exceptionally rare. In a way, listening to her music is like listening to the best Spoon albums, there is a clear sonic and stylistic angle, but there are sonic and stylistic moments peppered throughout that will shock your senses.

Fav Song: Girl Like Me

Samia - Bloodless

I spent most of November and December listening to this on repeat. It’s lowkey and inoffensive on first listen, then you start to hear all these sonic details layered underneath. Then, the songs start to break through to your heart. Hate that I’m doing this twice, but it really reminds me of the best Spoon albums.

Fav Song: Fair Game

Wednesday - Bleeds

Another one I got really into towards the end of the year, Karly Hartzman’s voice is an instant pull, even if you’re not typically into Alt Country. Reminds me of the first time I listened to Hop Along, and I became obsessed with trying to sound like Frances Quinlan, a futile effort.

Fav Song: Townies

Movies

28 Years Later

I’ve been a sucker for a Danny Boyle film ever since I was 12, and I torrented Slumdog Millionaire on my Windows 98 computer, and my parents caught me and grounded me. This is an unsurprisingly divisive film, it makes a lot of visceral directorial and editorial choices. But, if you enjoy being stimulated viscerally, which I consider a primary theatergoing purpose, you will enjoy this movie.

Die My Love

In a similar vein, this movie is divisive not only for its stimulating ways, but for its story. Casting Katniss Everdeen and Edward Cullen in this feels like a sinister joke, but I genuinely think any audience willing to drop their guards and let into their hearts and minds two of the greatest performances I’ve ever seen will appreciate this film. Kristen Stewart said something earlier this year about how it’s only men who ever go “method” because they lack the humility or ability to be submissive to the needs of a performance, and I think there is a truth in this sentiment. I think that Robert Pattinson and Jennifer Lawrence both achieve a brilliant femininity with their performances.

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

If you are in the mood for the most stressful theatrical experience of 2025. Rose Byrne gives my performance of the year in a film that makes you hate Conan O’Brien and hate an incorporeal child. I think a lot of filmmakers had kids in the late 2010’s/early 2020’s and are now reckoning with bringing children into this world. Despite how upset this film may make you feel, I think this film has the most humanity of them all.

Marty Supreme

An impossible task, but if you block out all of the noise surrounding this movie, the bombastic marketing campaign, the cast, the Safdie Bros breakup, this is the most fun time had at the movie theater this year, with a hauntingly modest undercurrent flowing beneath the surface. Maybe my favorite Gwyneth Paltrow performance.

Materialists

You will either love it or hate it. Its dialogue is. very playwright-y, it’s a little saccharine, and I actually think that’s exactly what we need. I think so many modern rom-coms are trying to be cool. They’re trying to find some clever gimmick or plot device to serve as the “modern twist” on the classic genre. But, Materialists is not too cool. For a film that aims to hold up a mirror to the modern dating world, it’s never condescending, often self-effacing, and always in pursuit of true love.

One Battle After Another

Similar to Materialists, this film seeks to hold up a mirror to a facet of modern society, the rise of white nationalism in America and the retaliatory insurgence of activists and revolutionaries. But, this film is perhaps even more self-effacing, and also in pursuit of true love, though in this case, the love between a father and a daughter. I think Paul Thomas Anderson gets lumped in with a lot of film bro-y directors, but I think he possesses a humility, and even a femininity, that separates him from the one-note hacks like Tarantino.

Sentimental Value

The Joachim Trier-Renate Reinsve connection is the most exciting Director-Actor relationship I’ve ever seen. This film is reserved and subdued, but moments of cacophonous emotional vacillation rage out in a sudden fury. It feels like the toughest times spent with family, but also the most cathartic.

Sinners

There was a moment in this film that made me tear up both times I watched it in theaters, not for any narrative-driven reason, but simply because I was filled with so much whimsy and merriment while watching what I was watching that I couldn’t help myself. The one time I’ve ever felt like a post-credits scene was warranted.

Sorry, Baby

You could disregard that this is a directorial debut and still be in awe at what is tonally achieved in this film. Felt like entering a sad Massachussetts town VR experience. Maybe that doesn’t sound appealing, but in the coldness of its narrative and of its world, there’s a real warmth, perhaps in relating to this person struggling to reclaim their own humanity.

Weapons

Lastly, an endearing, haunting, confounding film that ends up being just an all-around good time. It’s imaginative and constantly stimulating, and it kind of feels like the best Stephen King adaptation that isn’t actually a Stephen King book. I saw more Halloween costumes of Aunt Gladys than anyone else this year, and I think that alone is worth celebrating for an original horror movie released 2 months before Halloween.

I feel overwhelmed.

Living in a centrifuge of bad times, bad news, and auguries of a pessimistic future.

Feeling my own humanity tugged, spun, and diluted with each go around.

I woke up a lot in my Twenties and thought, “Who even am I?”

I’ve spent years toiling away in the Factory of Inner Monologue, fettered to a conveyor belt that runs in circles.

Worrying that I’d never break free.

Worrying that none of it was worth saying aloud.

I couldn’t imagine anything more embarrassing than oversharing on the internet.

So, I’m trying to adopt a new thought.

It’s all right.

Embarrassing is okay.

Because maybe it makes someone else feel less alone, and maybe it makes me feel less alone too.

So, I’m gonna keep this up.

Not in exactly the same style and structure.

I set goals for each year, and I think the only thing more embarrassing than talking about those goals in a public forum would be to fall short of those goals.

I also want to use this as a space to talk about the things I love.

Movies, music, books, TV.

So, each week, I’ll be writing about those things and about those goals.

Starting today with a list of 2025 favorites.

Lastly, thank you to everyone who reads these. It feels like community.

Love,

Evan

A blue Tesla swerves between lanes, cutting through the stream with reckless abandon. Without confirmation, I know three things about the driver.

1. He’s a man.

2. He has a punchable face.

3. He was probably the type of kid to invite you over to watch him play video games.

I construct a perfect villain, so now I can play hero. I swerve between lanes, cutting through the stream with a pure heart and noble intentions. I slip in front of Evil Tesla Man and hit the brakes.

That’ll teach you, I think to myself.

The Tesla jerks into the median lane beside me, and the passenger window rolls down.

Ah, the loser wants to engage in a bout of wordplay. If only he knew he was challenging a writer!

What’s up, man, I begin, as Tesla Man reaches down, grabs a bottle, and hurls it at my car.

THWAP.

I start to protest as another bottle soars through the air in my direction.

THWAP.

I roll up my window as bottles rain down on my driver’s side car door.

THWAP. THWAP. THWAP. THWAP.

I whip around to a sea of spectators, having suddenly materialized in their cars, and throw my hands in the air, absolving myself of any guilt.

2005, Tokyo. I have an Australian friend, named Ben, whose dad, named Leslie, strangles him whenever he mouths off. I tell Ben that if he ever does it again, I’ll smack him on top of the head with this, and I hold up a plastic golf club owned by our friend, Joe. Fast forward a few hours, it’s time to go home, but Joe doesn’t want us to go, and Ben and I don’t want to leave. We all start whining and mouthing off, and Leslie starts towards Ben, so I grab that plastic golf club and smack Leslie on top of the head.

THWAP.

He lets out a yelp and throws his hands in the air. I start to cry.

Growing up in Japan is lonely sometimes. I love my school and my friends there, but I miss my school and my friends here, and I know one day I’ll be leaving that school and those friends for this school and these friends, and I wonder what is even the point.

School’s out, summer creates a chasm between me and my friends, so I pick up the controller and play my favorite video game, Kingdom Hearts. The main character is a boy who loses his home to a great storm, which flings him onto other worlds with a great responsibility, to protect these worlds from surrendering to the same fate. At first, the boy longs for his missing friends from home and rejects this responsibility, but as he travels to other worlds and makes new friends, he comes to accept it.

There’s a kid who lives in the same courtyard as us named Max. Max’s family is Australian, but he’s not. Max’s sister, an obnoxious, domineering Australian, is Max’s polar opposite. Max is shy and amenable, and generally genial. In fact, Max would be utterly plain if he did not wear a yellow dress, with sunflowers on it, everywhere he went. His sister mocks him incessantly for it, but still, every day, Max comes out wearing that yellow sunflower dress. I wonder why he does it. Why put up with the abuse? But Max doesn’t seem to mind. The dress does look nice, I guess.

2012, Central Valley, California. Forty-or-so teenage boys are stuck in a weekend sleepaway camp in these barracks called Camp Roberts. Each boy attempts to control the situation in their own way. Popular boys are boisterous and omnipresent, commanding every square inch of the room. Shier boys retreat into their cots, some with headphones, others with a book. I’m in my cot with my headphones in when an omnipresent boy approaches.

___ wants to fight you.

What? Why?

The story I’m told is my friend pranked ___, but ___ didn’t want to fight my friend because he’s big. So, I’ll do.

A crowd forms, rules are set, phone cameras are out, and I realize there’s no getting out of this. I take my shirt off and position myself in front of a boy whose shirtless torso portends a beating I am reluctant to receive.

Just don’t fall over.

The timer’s pressed, a flurry of fists, my mind empties itself, save for this mantra.

Just don’t fall over.

___ falls over.

2013, La Crescenta. Heartbroken and hammered, I traipse through my friend’s house party without purpose. I had the best-laid plan to live out this platonic ideal high school experience. Girlfriend, best friends, all trusting loves. But I mistook phase for foundation, and when Fall darkened into Winter, I lost my trusting loves.

The party dies down, and she takes my hand as she leads me upstairs. I feel a warmth phase through me with this hand to hold. We fall into a cot, next to my friend’s bed, and kiss. I sink into the cot’s listless hold. I hover on this gelatinous pillar as my clothes slide off. I feel a sharp pain, and then warmth.

What’s happening?

I might as well be the cot. I might as well be nothing.

Oh, well.

2025, Hollywood. I hover between a husband and a wife, trying in vain to empty my mind and become a cot. I lay beside them as wife directs husband.

Slower, please. Nope, not right there. Do you need me to get on my stomach?

I laugh.

Why the fuck did I just do that?

I’m jealous.

You’ve been together since undergrad? I can’t even imagine.

They possess this comfortability with one another, in a situation I have always found deeply discomforting, and I wish it could have been different for me.

2012, I hurl my fists at ___ on the ground.

THWAP. THWAP. THWAP.

I want to cry.

2012, La Crescenta. It’s Halloween, and the neighborhood girls want to dress me up like a cheerleader. They do my makeup, put on my wig, and I get into a cheerleader outfit. They finish up, and I go inside to see the result. I look into the mirror, and someone else looks back. She’s a beautiful girl. It takes me a minute, and then I realize she’s me, and I smile.

2025, THWAP. THWAP. THWAP.

With my hands in the air, and a display of chaos being scored by the rhythmic beat of bottle on car, I can’t help but smile. Then, laugh.

I let go of the controls.

In 2025, I am in situationships.

What is a situationship?

If you don’t know the meaning of the word, you’re either happier or older than me.

2009, an author named Demetria Lucas uses the term ‘situationship’ in her lifestyle blog to describe a casual relationship, causing, at least one of said relationship’s participants, confusion and emotional distress. She boils it down to being in a situation together, rather than having relations together.

2017, Carina Hsieh writes an article for Cosmopolitan, an article largely credited for coining the term ‘situationship’. Carina doesn’t look fondly upon the label. The very first pull quote in the article reads, “Getting involved in a situationship might be the worst thing you can do to yourself.”

Lucas’s and Hsieh’s delineations of the word focus on the negatives. Ambiguity and distress are the load-bearing pillars of each writer’s definition.

But, have these definitions evolved?

2024, Beth Ashley offers a counter to these definitions in her book called Sluts.

“Generally, when we see women in situationships, we consider them trapped and make a lot of sexist assumptions that they aren’t there by choice. We never consider that a woman might be right where she wants to be, having a sexual and flirtatious connection with someone without the pressure of commitment looming over her.”

In the Refinery29 article I ripped that quote from, its writer, Tanyel Mustafa, argues that communication is integral to a healthy situationship.

2023, Myisha Battle writes an article for Time called “Why Situationships Are Actually Great”.

But, why did I just devote a page to my situationship rabbit hole?

In 2024, the longest relationship I have ever been in ends.

In 2025, Los Angeles is on fire, and I check my phone religiously for updates, commiseration, and...

TEXT.

A flicker of that fleeting good feeling.

It’s from someone from the before times.

Before my longest relationship.

Before the boundaries of my life began to narrow.

Before I started treading water.

My dad was obsessed with pointing out water as a symbol for rebirth in every family movie we watched growing up, so I think of him as I flirtily text this woman I’ve been hooking up with since the Obama administration.

We dance around it until I say it.

____ and I broke up.

I know. _____ told me already.

I’m struck by how quickly news of our breakup has entered the public domain. But, I’m not hurt. I’m trying to find peace in letting things flow around me.

When our conversation shifts toward us, you joke about the absurd duration of whatever we’ve been. You say we could fill a book with all of it.

I don’t really understand metaphor, so I open up Google Docs and type up “Chapter 1: June 2016-January 2017”. I share the Google Doc with you and call it Our Diary of Romance, Intrigue, & Endless Situationships In Your 20’s.

Thankfully, you’re a good improv partner and “Chapter 2” was up the next day.

We traded chapters for the next several weeks, quickly filling up what is now more than 100 pages of our relationship history. Well, not just our relationship history.

2024, the longest relationship I have ever been in ends.

2021, that relationship ignites while you’re still aboard your own relationship. You tell me it’s sinking. Those sails should’ve never unfurled. I wonder when you’ll say that about us.

2020, our ship never left harbor, so why do I feel worn?

2019, my ship is on fire and your ship is on fire and neither of us are on time.

2018, I’m done with ships, I’m burning everything I touch just to be sure it’s not water.

2017, these waters seem calm; what harm could come of our ship here?

2016, I would die between your burning arms, jerry-building a wooden raft to keep you safe from water.

2015, I’m on fire, I need water.

2014, this ship won’t last, but at least I know what it’s like to set sail for a while.

2013, I’ve spent 4 years building this ship for you, why do you keep setting it on fire?

2007, we’re 11 years old running around in a mall in Tokyo. It’s my last week here. I remember waving goodbye, suddenly aware that this was the last look we’d ever share. On the plane back to Los Angeles, I admit it. I love you, but I’ll never see you again.

18 years later, I think… is this the root of my heart’s defect?

I yearn for my great lost love but am afraid to go searching.

100 pages of relationship history have sparked this thought. But has thought spurred action?

I think of my dad again, as I often do in romantic instances. If there was something he was even more obsessed with than pointing out water as a symbol for rebirth, it was honesty.

I think about our vow to brutal honesty with this diary.

How honest have I really been?

How honest should I be?

We’re pulling our clothes back on and you ask

Have you been seeing other people?

Yes.

Cool, nailed it, So raw. So honest. It’s truly liberating to be so vulnerable, so authent-

So where do you see this going?

Oh um well uh you know-

-I’m still figuring things out-

-Let’s see where things go-

-Short term, but open to long!

I’m scouring the seven seas for a new way to say the same vague, non-committal nonsense that my great-great-grandfather said to someone else’s great-great-grandmother.

It’s futile. I’m flipping through matchbook pages striking every name on the rolodex.

Everything around me is on fire. There’s no way I’m ever crossing the Pacific Ocean now.

2014, I’m camping with a group of high school friends during the summer before college. It’s early morning and it’s just you and I sitting on a cliff’s edge in Eaton Canyon. We’re both in relationships now, and nothing had ever happened between us, and nothing ever will.

But, you turn to me and ask

Did you like me?

It was an easy answer, you were my best friend. But, I also knew what you meant. And that was an easy answer too.

Yes.

We laughed and then kept talking about something else. It was within that moment that I understood the soft power of honesty.

I spent years of my life hopelessly in love with someone who would never love me the same.

I spent 12 years of my life building the most important relationship of my life, me and my other best friend. He and I did everything together. He and I watched 2000’s SNL together. He and I went to our first concert together. He came to visit me in Japan. He played games and I watched.

He would be really grumpy in the morning, so while we were walking to school together, I’d think up things to say to make him laugh. If I could get him to crack even the faintest smile, that’d be enough.

2013, I’m too tired to keep doing this. I’m clutching a handle as I swim to shore. He curses my name, and he’s right. I’m a coward. I can’t handle the water. I’ll drink this instead.

12 years later, we don’t talk anymore. But I think about him every day.

I think about my other best friend pretty often too.

I even think about the girl I would’ve swam across the Pacific Ocean for from time to time.

I think about everyone I’ve ever loved, everyone who’s ever loved me, and everyone in between. I feel overwhelming gratitude.

While everything burns, I build a reservoir in their name.

To the one who hikes.

To the one with the Criterion collection.

To the one whose cat I accidentally stepped on.

To the one who watched the season premiere of Family Guy with me.

To the one who showed me labubus.

To the one who took me to karaoke.

To the one who showed me the worst night of my life.

To the one who showed me the best.

To the longest relationship I have ever been in…

The night I met you, I fainted. I woke up to your voice and a concussion test. From then on, I am forever changed. At the end of our relationship, I felt like I was drowning. I felt like I was treading water. I was afraid of the water. I was afraid.

I was afraid of being honest. I was afraid of the truth. Our ship wasn’t built to last, but it was built with a true, powerful love. Our love was a mirror. Scrutinized, nitpicking every blemish, until the picking tore skin. But within that delicate skein of skin, rested something beautiful.

A truth you saw in me and I in you.

We grappled with honesty for 3 years, and I won’t soon forget that. My fears were aided and abetted by your own. But, underneath all of that, was that truth.

Underneath all of this is a truth.

Groundwater. (ha ha)

9 months have passed since we started writing this diary of a situationship, and the most important thing I’ve learned about the word is that it’s pointless. A situationship is a relationship. A friendship is a relationship. There are slight variations in the meaning of all of these ship words, but the fundamental point of each is the same.

Thank you for being honest.