Mixtapemotions

  • "Auf Achse" by Franz Ferdinand, March 11, 2021

    For a short time in the early ’00s indie rock was king. I loved turning on MuchMusic (later Fuse) and seeing the latest cheaply made videos. Some of these groups pierced the Top 40 radio stations, like The Strokes, Modest Mouse, and this band, Franz Ferdinand. The song “Take Me Out” was the only song I knew of this band. This album came out in 2004, but it wasn’t until junior year of college in 2008 that I listened to it fully. From start to finish, the band’s self-title debut was energetic and puts you in the mood for college parties. The only problem was, I was kind of a loner and sober back then. 

    SHE’S NOT SO SPECIAL. In 2003 a Scottish rock band that took on the name of the assigned heir to the throne of the Austria-Hungarian Empire recorded their debut album in Sweden. The track I chose to write about, Auf Achse, is a German saying that literal means “on the axle,” but idiomatically, it means “on the road.” The song is a reference to a long-running German drama by the same name. Having not watched the show, I wonder if the song references the characters. Or does it mean that you should hit the road if you’re rejected? “She’s not so special, now look what you’ve done boy.” Oh dear. Violence? This particular track isn’t a stand out hit from Franz Ferdinand’s 2004 debut, but it does embody the spirit of the album. Dancey guitars and grooving bass lines make the lyrics slip past you for a few listens. However, when tracks like “Jacqueline,” “Dark of the Matinee,” or “Michael” hit, you realize you’ve been a bit hypnotized by the music. This song relies on repetition for verse and chorus, but packs a lot of punch in its bridge.

    YOU WANT HER, YOU CAN’T HAVE HER. I woke up to this song this morning, and it shaped my day. It reminded me of Saturday nights, driving to Chattanooga. It was decompressing from a strict Adventist campus that only served vegetarian food and no coffee. This album served as an escape into some needed introversion away from my roommate, away from some of the people who seemed a bit exhausting, no matter how nice they were. It was my go-to album for driving to the book stores–a secondhand warehouse of secondhand everything-media. Then to Barnes & Nobel and Books-A-Million across the street. Pick up a coffee and a burger and head back to campus. Nowadays, dating a med-school student, I have some weekends like this again before the tests. A needed weekend of introversion, when I should go shopping for clothes as I’ve been avoiding that since the pandemic. I should get a haircut. I should file my taxes. There are lots of things to do, but after the first full week of school, I just want to listen to Franz Ferdinand and do close to nothing. 

     

  • "Boston" by Augustana, March 10, 2021

    In Season One of The Big Bang Theory, Leonard is moping after his love interest, Penny, starts seeing another man. He comes into the apartment singing this song, quite horribly. “Boston” is Augustana’s biggest hit. It placed on the Billboard Hot 100, it was a Top 40 hit, and a top 10 Adult (light rock) hit. The band formed at Greenville University, a conservative Christian college where Jars of Clay formed before them and Paper Route after them. While the two other bands were comfortable with the Christian circuit, Augustana’s lead singer, Dan Layus, talks about breaking free from the strict rules of Christian college and choosing not to be a Christian band. 

    BOSTON, WHERE NO ONE KNOWS MY NAME. This piano ballad is not only a breakup with a lover, but a place too. If you’ve never moved to a city where no one knows you, it’s freeing. You possess the ability to rebuild your reputation and become whomever you want to be. I’ve done this several times in my life, sometimes by choice and sometimes out of circumstance. When my family moved to North Carolina in 1998, my parents only knew one family there. They ended up moving a year later. My mom was tired of the New York weather and she wanted to be closer to her family in Florida. So we moved between the two sides of my family. Then there was high school. My parents wanted my sister and I to go to a Christian school, but they chose one outside of our denomination because it was much cheaper. Then it was time for college. I decided to go to a Seventh-day Adventist university in Tennessee where I only had a few acquaintances. And then there was Korea. But in all of this moving to a city where no one one knows my name, I was still stuck in the rut of the person I thought I should be.

    I’LL GET OUT OF CALIFORNIA, I’M TIRED OF THE WEATHER. This line struck me today. No one moves to the Northeast for the weather. My family moved away from it. In music and literature, California often symbolizes the land of Canaan for humanity. Going to California means you’ve made it or are closer to making it. You have shed off the Puritan ways of the East Coast. Yet this song shows and interesting regression, as if to says, I’ve had all of the new and it’s left me empty. I’m going back to enjoy the tradition of a city that used bricks and cobblestone rather than asphalt. This image is especially strong today because, as the new school year has started, new students always ask where I’m from. I have to educate them about American geography. Before I tell my students where I am from, I ask if any students have been to America and where they visited. From there, I’m able to compare what places look like. Certainly the feeling of Boston is a stark contrast from California. LA feels different from San Francisco. Florida is different from North Carolina. Place matters, and if you have a choice, it’s important to find the right city for you.

    https://genius.com/Augustana-boston-lyrics
     

  • "I Am the Walrus" by The Beatles, Thursday, March 9, 2021

    I didn’t listen to much music today. Work is really busy on Tuesdays because I have a lot of classes on Wednesdays. My students will read two poems by Lewis Carrol from Through the Looking Glass. The second on is “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” so of course, my favorite Beatles’ song got stuck in my head. It’s a daunting task to write about the Beatles. Every song they have released has its own field of research. The Beatles discography is like the bible of rock music, from which every sub-genre can be traced. And in the the Beatles discography, The Magical Mystery Tour album falls just after the beginning of what I would call their New Testament–the music after Sergeant Pepper Lonely Heart’s Band, after which The Beatles showed both a maturity in songwriting and a fetish of experimentation in the studio.

    GOO GOO G’JOOB. I may have first heard Bono’s cover of this song in Across the Universe. The scene in the movie calls back to what Tom Wolfe wrote about in Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, talking about a time when hippie culture under the influence of hallucinogenics and Hare Krishna teaching from cult leaders was supposedly the solution to the American consumerism of the 1950s. And those Oxford-shirt-wearing academics couldn’t deny the art coming out of American beat culture–Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs were the voice of a generation of counterculture. Then there were the folk songs of Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. Rock music was a low art, and at first, was lyrically simple. That all changed with groups like the Beatles. With a new age of literary criticism and new lenses to analyze text academically, some academics were bringing in their rock album leafs to figure out the deeper truths contained in the vinyl. To that John Lennon wrote this to “Let the fuckers work this one out,” claiming that it most mostly pure nonsense. But is it?

    EXPERT, TEXTPERT, CHOKING SMOKERS, DON’T YOU KNOW THE JOKER LAUGHS AT YOU. What struck me today from reading “The Walrus and the Carpenter” is how Lewis Carrol uses nonsense to drive his point. He’s writing for children, right? The poem is a kind of Pied-Piper, stranger-danger tale. The Walrus lures the young oysters onto the dry land so that he and The Carpenter can eat them. It’s the classic stranger with candy driving a red van that parents work so hard to warn their kids against. This made me think about growing up being warned about the stranger in the van for adults: sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. When Lennon sings, “I am the walrus,” does he mean that he’s luring you into the van with his interesting words, much like The Walrus in the poem? That’s what Dr. Robert did in Across the Universe. Or is it merely a red herring to lure the literature professors astray while taking a break from “kicking Edgar Allen Poe?”

     

  • "Honestly…" by Eric Nam, Monday, March 8, 2021

    Pop quiz: How many Asian American pop singers do you know? Bonus if you can name one with a Billboard Hot 100 hit. BTS does not count because they are Korean, not American. Give up? I can think of two. First a hip-hop group called Far East Movement garnered a lot of love in LA’s Koreatown and eventually topped the charts with the song “Like a G6.” And you could have also said Linkin Park‘s Mike Shinoda. Otherwise, pre-BTS, the American music industry was quite underrepresented by Asian musicians. With that in mind, the Atlanta, Georgia-born Eric Nam returned to the country of his parents to pursue a career he felt wasn’t likely in America. In Korea, Nam has become not only a popular musician, but also a go-to interviewer whenever movie or pop stars visit Korea. His K-pop is more influenced by singer-songwriters and U.S. pop singers than the girl and boy groups of his high school years. His unique take on K-pop has made him multi-nationally famous. Honestly, American pop music would have been much better with his talent.

    YOU WANTED AN ANSWER FROM THE START. I first heard of Eric Nam in 2014, when he released the single “Ooh Ooh” (ft. Hoya of Infinite). I was starting to listen to more and more K-pop, and these Canadian YouTubers, Simon and Martha raved about him on their Eat Your Kimchi channel. I had know Hoya from his role on Reply 1997. When I watched “Ooh Ooh,” I wondered what I was listening too. K-pop with a horn section? Eric struggling to put on his pants to cover up his Mickey Mouse underwear. A throwback to American bandstand-era television. Cutesy gestures. Really not my style musically. But I wondered why he was so loved, so that made me search for him on YouTube. I found several covers, most notable were “Say Something” and “I Won’t Give Up.” These two songs sold me on his talent. Two years later he released the single “I Can’t Help Myself” (ft. Loco) and kept making consistent pop music, eventually dropping the cutesy style, and dealing with a wider range of subjects, which brings us to today’s song: 2018’s “Honestly.” 

    BABY, I WANT TO YOU TO SAY SOMETHING. A song that starts off by saying, “I love you, but…” is rather unique. This song captures a rather unique feeling heard elsewhere in pop music. It’s similar to Lady A(ntebellum) saying “It’s a quarter after one, and I’m a little drunk, and I need you now.” It’s a feeling of knowing it should be over, but out of convenience, you keep it going, even when you both have totally different goals and expectations, sort of like my first relationship in Korea. You put off breaking up because you feel like there is still potential. You don’t want to heart their feelings, and much more, you don’t want to be the monster. “Why do I deserve happiness?” You ask. So a relationship that should have lasted a few weeks lasts eight months, until you can’t deny your unhappiness any more. In my case it was conflicting schedules and lack of communication that killed it. But also there was no future vision. That person wants you there for when they are free. You want to enjoy your free time with that person or be free to pursue other options. So, “This lie of saying I still love you…”

    Behind the Scenes featuring the acoustic version: 

  • "Coffee" by Copeland, Sunday, March 7, 2021

    It was a rainy summer break during Freshman year of college. I was still driving my ’91 Toyota Corolla, and that was the summer that I binged the first three Copeland albums. It started with 2003’s Beneath Medicine Tree, the indie/rock concept album about love and loss. About a month later I bought, 2005’s In Motion, which was a little more musically diverse. The next year’s Eat, Sleep, Repeat, was closer to musical theater than rock. Each Copeland album had its own unique mood. Today’s song, “Coffee,” comes from BMT, which is the most immature of the Copeland albums. Lyricist and singer Aaron Marsh was fine-tuning his craft at writing sappy love songs, and this album’s lyrics tended to be a little too over the top. The song “Coffee” appears as track 9, with a story as cliche as they get–two small town kids falling in love while talking all night at the diner. The brief brush drum solo toward the end sounds just like coffee shop music. 

    THERE’S A LOVE THAT TRANSCENDS ALL THAT WE’VE KNOWN OF OURSELVES. I’ve been drinking coffee since before I can remember. My parents tell me that I used to steal my dad’s coffee as soon as I could crawl. I must have burnt myself many times. When I was seven or eight my grandma gave me coffee. She told me not to tell my mom because my mom didn’t want me drinking it. Growing up as a Seventh-day Adventist, it was a demonized beverage. But when I was in 10th grade, my family all started drinking it, and we haven’t stopped. I’ve gone through periods that I tried to reduce my consumption, but it was a fruitless endeavor. When I first came to Korea, I wasn’t able to find any good coffee except for sugary instant coffee that came in a stick. I drank a lot of it, and my face got rather wide in the pictures. Fortunately I found better solutions, and now the highlight of the work day is when my coworker and I make French pressed coffee at work. 

    THERE’S PLENTY OF TIME LEFT TONIGHT. It seems that most weekdays I can drink as much coffee as I want and sleep well. However, there’s something about Sundays that an afternoon coffee will keep me up until 2 am. I hate Sunday nights. With the anxieties of the work-week looming, it’s a race to prepare everything–the laundry, the meals, the cleaning. We get to the afternoon lag and the decision: to drink coffee and sleep horribly or to suffer through the Sunday race to Monday. Sorry, Aaron, it’s probably too late for coffee. Sunday isn’t a great night. Let’s postpone until at least Thursday. Who needs sleep on Thursday night? The second week of the semester starts tomorrow. Time for the grind to begin. Fortunately the daily grind includes Columbian and Brazilian beans. 

    https://genius.com/Copeland-coffee-lyrics

     

  • “This Is Heaven” by Nick Jonas, Saturday, March 6, 2021

     

    Chasing Happiness is a documentary telling the story of the ups and downs of the Jonas Brothers‘ career. Even though I was not a fan of the Disney Channel stars, CH was a telling human story about faith, family, and fame. Debuting in 2006, Kevin, Joe, and Nick took tween girl’s hearts by storm. I was, however, within almost the right demographic to completely ignore the band’s existence. While I was off at college listening to MGMT and Fleet Foxes, the Jonas Brothers meant a whole lot to the younger millennials. I say almost the perfect demographic because the band gave a lot of press to their Christian upbringing. Some of the Christian publications I read praised the young men as they wore their purity rings and kept a squeaky clean image. But there was a lot more to that story.


    IF YOU TOLD ME THAT MY FATE WAS ON YOUR FINGERTIPS, THEN, I WOULDN’T BELIEVE YOU. Last week Nick Jonas hosted and performed two songs on Saturday Night Live. After being introduced by his older brother, Kevin, Nick premiered this late ’80s/early ’90s song, complete with a saxophone solo. Lyrically this is a love song for his wife, actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas; however, I found the use of religious imagery in this song fascinating and totally on brand of what my blog has become: processing religious trauma. One of the most powerful scenes in Chasing Happiness is when the brother go to visit their home in Wyckoff, New Jersey. The brothers’ father was a minister in a small town Assembly’s of God church. Their parents did everything they could to help the boys succeed in their musical career, which caused tension between the church and their minister. The brothers had a successful first album only to be dropped by their label, and to make matters worse the church fired their father and evicted them from their family home. The scene in the documentary shows that moment as pivotal in how each one of the brothers started to splinter with Christianity, even if it was still present in their careers.

    Nick Jonas posing for
    Calvin Klein.

    YOUR BODY, MY MOTIVATION. After the Jonas Brothers’ hiatus starting in 2013, Nick Jonas’s career began to blow up. Like many other Disney stars, he stopped making G-rated music, and he also shook off the Christian following. I mentioned the Jonas Brothers last month when I talked about purity culture. The band has talked about these rings a lot because they were asked about them throughout their career. Nick spent his early 20s embracing his role as a sex symbol. Whether it was Calvin Klein ads or shirtless photo shoots, Nick Jonas was no longer the 13-year-old star. In 2018, Nick married Bollywood actress  Priyanaka Chopra, and the two have been media darlings since then. As a love song to his wife, “This Is Heaven” focuses on the here-and-now of love, rather than the heaven his father preached about. Instead of focusing on what many believe will be the soon-coming tribulation before the return of Christ, Nick focuses on how every moment in love gets better and better to the point where you can’t comprehend it getting any better. And a love ballad with a saxophone solo, how could it get better?

    Lyric Video:

    Saturday Night Live Performance:

  • "TAKE ME" (AS YOU FOUND ME) [Live From Williamsburg] by Anberlin, Friday, March 5, 2021

    Before their hiatus in 2014, Anberlin had two summer acoustic tours. From the first tour, this live version was recorded in Brooklyn. Stephen Christian‘s live vocals have not always been on-point; however, slowing songs down didn’t defeat the intensity of Anberlin, instead, the songs focus on ambiance and Stephen’s vocals. This song, which got some time in the band’s setlist when Dark Is the Way, Light Is a Place was released never got the love the band expected. I remember hearing an interview with Stephen in which he said he thought that this song would put them on the map. My criticism of that was the lyrics of this song were not clear. Who or what is it about? Anberlin from Never Take Friendship Personal to New Surrender lyrically may have been cryptic, however, listeners could figure it out.

    Criticism aside, listeners can get lost in Stephen’s vocals in this concert and this track starts us out right. Stephen doesn’t shy away from the raspy, and he uses a vocal technique he said in the Cities livestream More to Living Than Being Alive, that it’s a vocal technique he learned from the lead singer of The Juliana Theory.

    What Does This Song Mean To Me?: Authenticity is everything. The Christianity of my young adult life was all about “keeping your nose clean,” as my music teacher once instructed me. It caused a lot of anxiety as it made me think that I had to be “all things to all people.” The damage that this did was that I lost myself in this ultraconservative alter-ego. As I get older, I feel I shed more and more of the weight of expectations put onto me. It’s truly the blessing of getting older caring less and less about what other people think about you. What I come to find is the need for people who “take me as [they] find me.” 

    https://genius.com/Anberlin-take-me-as-you-found-me-lyrics

  • “Rose-Colored Boy” by Paramore, Thursday, March 4, 2021

    I referenced this song last week when I talked about how the songs on this album illustrate complicated emotions that many songwriters can’t describe. “Rose- Colored Boy” epitomizes the times that you want to be alone, you want to let the emotion out, but some obligation is in the way and you have to keep it together. What’s worse is a person close to you is trying everything to get you to keep it together just a little longer. However, humans have to process the dark and ugly at some point. And it never falls on someone else’s schedule. What you don’t want to hear in those moments is an optimist’s cliche. You don’t feel like laughing. You don’t feel like smiling and nodding anymore. This person is close to you, and they need to see you at your worst. Well, watch out Rosie!

    I JUST KILLED OFF WHAT’S LEFT OF THE OPTIMIST IN ME. Take a moment to read the poem by Ogden Nash, “The Outcome of Mr. MacLeod’s Optimism,” and you’ll find yourself siding with Mrs. MacLeod. Optimism can be downright annoying when you need to vent. Whereas Nash humorously encapsulates the demise of the “Rose-Colored” husband, I think this song, with its contradicting upbeat sound music and its introverted lyrics, captures what Nash is talking about in a way that feels more at the moment. There are several situations that this song brings to mind. The first is being a teacher, dealing with school administration on break times between classes.  There have been many times that I’ve had to leave meetings so angry with admin, but I had to put on a smile and go teach a class. I’ve seen my coworkers do similar things, dealing with phone calls from home and situations that they have to cool down from and go to class, pretending that the kids are all that matter. Adulthood is all about compartmentalizing. 

    DON’T MAKE ME LAUGH, I’LL CHOKE. Another thing this song reminds me of is being in love with someone who goes through extended periods of depression. I talked about the pressure in Korean culture on Sunday. When you are in love with someone who is reaching for their dreams, but it is uncertain that they will succeed, you want to be encouraging. How do you encourage that person? How are you there for that person? What words do you say? The optimistic answer is the wrong one. It just makes them resentful. Then the darkness starts to take over you. Your happiness starts to fade too. Your attacks with optimism are now meant for you to keep a little of the dying sunlight so that you don’t get trapped in a vast barren darkness together with the person you love. Fortunately, 2019 worked itself out and the dream was reached. I do wonder if the darkness will ever show his face again. How can we deal with it? What have learned from the first, second, and third times?

  • "Boulevard of Broken of Broken Dreams" by Green Day, March 3, 2021

    Green Day is one of the most influential bands to the bands that I like. Most influential music stays in the past; however, with their release of American Idiot, a concept album or punk rock opera about a teenager dealing with American life, Green Day saw new heights in their career. “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” was the band’s biggest hit, and this album transformed the punk rock trio into something more versatile than the same three chords indicative of the genre. American Idiot was the quintessential album to have in your collection when I was in high school, and “Boulevard” was one of the coolest pop song on the radio. So sticking with the theme of emotional turbulence, I nominate this song for the day as it unleashes my high school memories.

    DON’T KNOW WHERE IT GOES. If The Beatles are the first day of school of rock music, Green Day is rock’s retirement party. Seriously, if you check out YouTube nostalgia lists of top songs of the year, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” is close to one of the last ones played. Sure, you have Coldplay and Imagine Dragons, but Green Day is one of the last groups that adheres to the traditional rock sound of electric guitars, bass, and drums. Yet while the genre may be aging, when I look back at this album, it still rings true lyrically. As I’ve said before, I bought into Republican arguments when I was in high school, so I had a love-hate relationship with this album. On the one hand, the album was an obvious jab at American Idol, which was still a successful reality show. It was clearly satirical and used metaphor to address real issues in my teenage world. America was spending so much money in a war that seemed hopeless, even to many conservatives. George W. Bush had garnered so much disrespect around the world, and every year a little bit more of the Republican narrative was becoming harder to believe. Yet, this album was a clear attack by the liberals trying to make our society more and more Godless, I thought. I grew annoyed with the liberal media attacking traditional values. How dare Coldplay’s Chris Martin stand up at the Grammy’s and say “May your next president be John Kerry.” You’re not American, so stop influencing our elections. That was my thought back then.

    READ BETWEEN THE LINES. Everyone agrees that America is messed up. The problem is no one can agree what is messed up about it. Living abroad makes me look at my conservative ideas that I got from my upbringing and shake my head. I’ve seen too many American idiocies, and I have to explain them to my students. And then there’s the shame of being a cultural ambassador for my country that was lead by a bigot who openly only cares about how much money he can extort from the country I live in. I get a little nauseous whenever I meet American Idiots living abroad, who spout racism and have no empathy for those seeking a better life in my country, which was supposed to be the country of immigrants. If you meet too many American idiots, the natural progression is to wander the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. And it does feel lonely, like the world has gone crazy or you have. Still, I feel a little guilty after how I dismissed Chris Martin’s speech in high school. I don’t live there. Why should I have an opinion?

  • "White as Snow" by Haste the Day, Tuesday, March 2, 2021

    March can take a rainy day and turn it into a snowy night. Waking up to a wet and white world on the first day of school, the day was filled with uncertainties. The first day of school is always a game of catch up, trying to figure out what is going on from others who may or may not know what is going on. As the mild winter took a turn for the cold, the mystery of the weather reminded me that anything could happen in the classroom. Whenever skies look clear and blue, a thunderstorm can be lurking in the principal’s office. Just like snow storms, headaches can come out of nowhere. Particularly when the stifling heat of the office meets contentions with unfavorable schedules to be sorted. And while today there were no classes, the doppler radar looks like an active storm season begins tomorrow.

    IT’S NOT LIKE YOU WOULD KNOW, WOULD YOU? Christian metal core band Haste the Day has had their hits and misses for me. My first exposure to them was their Pressure the Hinges album, which had a few bangers. Later I discovered their first album’s cover of Goo Goo Dolls’ “Long Way Down.” The follow up to PtH slipped by me and then this single hit me. The album cover added layers to this song. The title of the album is Attack of the Wolf King, and if you take this song as part of the album’s concept, you start to feel very cold. The lyrics that draw on the crucifixion of Christ, but there also seems to be something medieval or maybe post-apocalyptic suggested in the lyrics and music. The song seems simple enough with the theme of Christ’s atonement, but the album title left me wondering. Who is the wolf king?

    I’VE WALKED WITH THE KINGS. Biblical context tells us to beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing (Matt 7:15), or false teachers who lead followers astray. So to most people who are aware of this metaphor would interpret it through the teachings of Jesus that wolves are wise and destructive to the kingdom of heaven. HOWEVER, when I watched the Netflix limited series The Family, the story tells how Doug Coe’s teaching influenced evangelicals to embrace THE WOLF KING, a leader who uses brute force to push his will. Coe taught that it was the the Christian’s job to flirt with the Wolf King in order to establish a relationship to accomplish two goals. The first of which is to keep Christianity safe from the Wolf King, avoiding pre-Constantine Roman-like persecution. But Phase II is insidious. Use the Wolf King to persecute non-Christians, making it uncomfortable for anyone who doesn’t subscribe to this form of Christianity. Whether or not Doug Coe’s tactics will work in an evermore secular world is yet to be seen. However, we’ve seen five years of Evangelicals embracing the Wolf King rather than the lamb, white as snow.