Mixtapemotions

  • “Disappearing World” by Fair, Thursday, April 20, 2021

     

    In the story of Tooth & Nail Records, which became the definitive Christian Rock label in the early ‘00s, Aaron Sprinkle became the main producer for record after record for the label. Sprinkle is not only responsible for producing records, he also stylized bands and artists who would have otherwise been nothing alike. So, when he we wasn’t busy launching successful bands into the scene, what was he doing in his free time? Sprinkle recorded a number of solo records and two with his band, Fair. Sprinkle’s solo efforts were never as successful as the bands he recorded, and life in the studio took a toll on the musical genius.


    WHERE IS IT THAT YOUR PEACE COMES FROM? “Disappearing World” was the only hit from this 2010 album named after the title track.. Whenever Fair–three of Sprinkle’s friends from his previous band, Poor Old Lu–put out a project, it was a limited release. One single to Christian radio, maybe a video, maybe a couple of local shows. And then it’s back to the studio for Sprinkle. On Season 1 of Labeled (now behind a paywall), Sprinkle talked about how destructive the studio life was for him. He worked around the clock on Tooth & Nail albums. This was the time when Tooth & Nail was signing everyone and sending slightly more than half of the bands to record an album with Aaron. This led to alcohol addiction and burnout. What’s more is that the crash of the music industry forced Sprinkle to work on smaller budgets and reduce the size of his team. He had to make the same great record on a fraction of the budget. Sprinkle broke with Tooth & Nail and retreated to Nashville to pursue other areas in the music industry, producing only records he chose to produce–Anberlin, Acceptance, New Found Glory, Story of the Year, are just a few of his passion projects. As for his own music, he turned to composition. His instrumental series inspired by the Northeast coast is quite nice. 


    I FOUND IT IN A DISAPPEARING WORLD. Every year the earth seems to spin a little faster. I think about Brandon Ebel and Aaron Sprinkle and all who saw the rise and fall of the music industry. They recorded on cassettes and then CDs. There they promoted bands at big festivals and tours and sold tons of merch. Then everything went online to streaming and customers stopped buying music. A couple months ago, I was listening to Taylor Swift‘s Evermore and one song got me to thinking, “What if Aaron Sprinkle produced this album? What would he do differently?” Sadly, what could have been an upward trajectory for Sprinkle ended tragically with the death of rock music. What mainstream music could sound like with the talents of Aaron Sprinkle producing it? It truly is a disappearing world. 

  • “Bang, Bang” (My Baby Shot Me Down) by Daniela Andrade, Monday, April 19, 2021

     

    This is the story of three women and how they interpreted their interpretation of a dream pop classic. The version I chose is a cover, which resembles a cover of this song. Until today, I thought that this song was a Nancy Sinatra original. Played in the opening scene of Kill Bill Vol. 1, the Bride is shot and left for dead outside a dusty El Paso chapel. This scene kicks off an other delicious installment of Tarantino‘s brand of gratuitous violence and overall badassery that the filmmaker is known for. However, if we’re looking for the original tune, think a little more sixties psychedelia with more instrumentation. Finally, the version that goes to the YouTube playlist, by a YouTube-famous Canadian-Honduran singer, Daniela Andrade. This song with its simple song structure and easy lyrics, packs a lot of heat.

    I WAS FIVE AND HE WAS SIX. Written by her husband, Sonny Bono, “Bang Bang” (My Baby Shot Me Down) was one of Cher’sfirst hits, and her first platinum single. Now, there are actually very few Cher songs that I know. In 1999, the year that I really started listening to the radio, her song “Believe” was the number one hit of the year. It was one of the first songs to use auto-tune, and it’s truly an artifact of the day. The other song that comes to mind is her duet with her husband “I Got You Babe,” which was a more folk hippie song. Cher was a person my parents knew, practically a wholesome figure–I think–from the sixties and then somewhere along the way discovered corsets, acting in inspiration movies about children with disfiguration, and made a hilarious appearance in 2003’s Stuck on You, playing a self-indulgent version of herself, at one point offering Matt Damon’s character a handkerchief with Cher embroidered on it. Cher is a pioneering woman in music, who cultivated the career that she wanted. Her ex-husband, record execs, nobody was going to stop her. They tried to shoot her down, but like the Bride in Kill Bill, she has proven quite resilient.

    SEASONS CAME AND CHANGED THE TIME. The daughter of a legend, Nancy Sinatra rose to fame on her own volition. Sinatra was everything Lana Del Rey has built her career trying to emulate. The sparse guitar reminiscent of an old 007 film (Sinatra would go on to sing the theme for You Only Live Twice), the reverb meets the lyrics and makes the song much more haunting than Cher’s original version. When YouTube singer-songwriter Daniela Andrade covered the song, she channels Sinatra’s version more than Cher’s, only in Andrade’s version, it’s a keyboard/organ effect. I happened across Andrade a few years ago when I was on a kick to find the best covers by YouTubers. Her versions of “Feel Good Inc.” and “Summertime Sadness” were pretty great, too. The singer has gone on to have a rich career in her own songwriting, exploring themes in her Latin-American heritage, moving from Honduras to Canada at a young age, and a strict spiritual upbringing in which her Seventh-day Adventist mother restricted secular music from their home. But her early YouTube covers show her fans some of her influences. 
    Cher 1966 version:

    Cher’s 1987 rock version featuring Jon Bon Jovi on guitar:
    Nancy Sinatra version:
    Daniella Andrade version:

  • "Hero" by Family of the Year, Sunday, April 18, 2021

    The 2014 film Boyhood was a highly acclaimed film with an incredible Rotten Tomatoes score, yet nobody talks about it anymore. The film was shot over the course of 12 years from 2001 to 2013 using the same actors and feels like a piece of turn-of-the-century Americana, a kind of early 2000s rendering of a Norman Rockwell painting of the imperfect white, working-class American family. The film not only explores boyhood and coming of age, but also parenthood and the complications of raising a family while trying to better oneself and the struggles of co-parenting through a divorce. The events and pop culture throughout the years are woven into the human themes. The soundtrack for the film is a combination of famed indie artists of the early ’00s and popular music of the time. Seamlessly joining the soundtrack was virtually unknown folk-rock band Family of the Year, with their song “Hero.”

    I DON’T WANT TO BE YOUR HERO. “Hero” appears in the movie toward the end when Mason, Jr., played by Ellar Coltrane, is driving his old pickup down the Texas highway. He is now 18 years old, graduated, and become himself. This comes after a scene with his mother, Olivia (Patricia Arquette). She wonders, “What was it all for?” when she reflects on the hardships of parenthood. She had raised her kids and wonders what’s next for her. She tells her son, “The next big event is my fucking funeral.” She had kept her family a paycheck away from eviction at some points, but ultimately raised a successful family, yet she wonders what it was all for. Family of the Year’s “Hero” serves as a reflection on the themes of the movie. The song talks about the conflict between wanting stability and wanting something greater than what you have right now. You long to be allowed to leave, but you still hold down a job to keep the girl around. 

    I’M A KID LIKE EVERYONE ELSE. Watching Mason’s family struggle in the late early 2000s reminded me of growing up in a family who lived paycheck to paycheck in the ’90s to ’06 when I graduated high school. I remember church pantry handouts and hand-me-downs from cousins. Clinton-era social programs let us go to the doctor when we needed to, and our moldy old house had me sick quite a bit a kid. My dad worked as a logger in New York until the payment was so bad that he decided to go to truck driving school. When my dad became an over-the-road truck driver we started making more money, but we didn’t have health insurance. We prayed we didn’t get sick or injured, and thank God nothing bad happened. My mom would eventually go to nursing school and go to work when I was in high school. I’m very proud of what my family did, but I remember talks with my dad that echoed what Olivia said in Boyhood. What is it all for? The existential question that haunts us with every passing year. What is it all for? “Hero” tells us “Everyone deserves a change to walk with everyone else” but what does that mean? Boyhood, life, marriage, divorce, the economic depression–rituals of the American Dream. Everyone deserves it, but isn’t it all just vanity and vexation of the spirit?
    Trailer for Boyhood:

    Music Video (original cut):

    Music Video (Boyhood cut): 

  • “Holy Water” by The Classic Crime, Saturday, April 17, 2021

     

    When Emery‘s Matt Carter and Toby Morrell started their blog BadChristian in 2013, they started out as a Calvinist alternative to what was considered Good Christian theology which carried over to religious entertainment and eventually led to exploring other world views, theories, and discussions often considered taboo to church folks. The blog turned into a podcast, a listeners’ community, and even a record label, which released albums by Emery, Kings Kaleidoscope, Abandon Kansas, Sherwood, House of Heroes, Lowercase Noises, and today’s band, The Classic Crime, whose frontman Matt McDonald is a friend of the show and former podcaster. The albums released on the BadChristian label showed an alliance in Christian Rock. No longer was Focus on the Family or the Family Christian Bookstore (RIP) going to determine what was holy and what was profane. 


    EVERY DROP OF HOLY WATER COMES FROM THE OCEAN. The evolution of The Classic Crime is quite fascinating, as told on the Labeled podcast. Signed just before the crash of the music industry, they were one of the bands that Tooth & Nail was promoting for the general market. They weren’t supposed to be a Christian band; however, as Matt McDonald explains, someone messed up. When their debut album Albatross was released, iTunes classified the album as Christian Rock. That was the beginning of the end for the band’s hope for general market success. Eventually, McDonald embraced his voice in the Christian Rock community, but the band, in the sense of a five-person unit, ended with their final Tooth & Nail release, Vagabonds. How to Be Human, The Classic Crime’s sixth studio album explores a lot of controversial ground–if you consider it a Christian record. Two songs, including this one, use profanity. This song also suggests a kind of theistic evolution, and it calls into question what is sacred?

    EVERY ATOM IN MY BODY COMES FROM EXPLODING STAR BILLIONS OF YEARS AGO. I grew up reading Genesis as historical fact. I was taught about Adam naming all of the animals, Noah building an Ark, people living for 900 years, and God’s promise never to flood the earth again with the promise of a rainbow. This was basic Adventist teachings, and it was further reinforced by my Baptist education. For Adventists, it also helped that Ellen White’s prophetic commentaries on the Bible denounced Darwin’s theory of evolution and confirmed that yes, God created the earth, and yes, it was about 6,000 years ago. I thought all Christians believed this and were in some sort of cultural war against secularism. However, later I learned about other theories of Creationism, and more importantly, why they were wrong. I had heard about what David Bazan was saying, doubting the historicity of the Bible, but it wasn’t until I read an interview (now I can’t find it) where it seems that someone is trying to provoke Anberlin’s Stephen Christian, wondering how he can be a Christian and believe in young earth creationism. Christian responds to the interviewer that he actually tends to believe in theistic evolution. Then around that time, there was a huge controversy that several Adventist colleges were teaching evolution. My college was one of the most conservative ones, so they pushed back on it and made sure that ALL graduates understood the importance of a six-day creation narrative. If the six-day creation story was false or myth, what does that say about the rest of the Bible? What does that say about Christ’s death and resurrection? What does that say about the Sabbath? What does that say about what we are devoting our lives to? If you unravel one thread in the fabric of faith, it will all come apart and leave you with atheism or nihilism. The funny thing is, the more I play around with these questions of faith, interpretation of scripture/history/myth, the more nuanced I see the world. And that’s far from being nihilistic. To be continued.

  • “Death with Dignity” (Live) by Sufjan Stevens, Friday, April 16, 2021

     

    In 2015, Sufjan Stevens released his saddest album. The songs on Carrie & Lowell give listeners insight into the folk singer’s upbringing and his process of dealing with the grief of losing an abusive parent. Stevens’ mother Carrie had passed away in 2012 from cancer, and “Death with Dignity,” the album opener, finds the lyricist struggling for the words to tell the story. He says “I don’t know where to begin,” showing how something deeply personal is hardest to talk about. The song structure is unique in that there is no chorus, but rather five verses–this is a fact I never noticed in all the times I listened to the song before I wrote about it last year. “Death with Dignity” is best in the context of the entire album, but if you don’t have the time to dive into the depths of sorrow, the song is a sweet twinge of sadness to throw into an otherwise happy playlist. 

    AMETHYST AND FLOWERS ON THE TABLE. I was on the fence about the 2016 pilot of This Is Us. The time-jumping drama was just confusing. Mandy Moore and Milo Ventimiglia in the past and Smallville’s Green Arrow in the present. However, the big reveal at the end of the episode where you learn (spoiler alert) that the third triplet had died, and Rebecca and Jack decide to adopt Randall who had been left at the fire station, and the doctor saying some cliche line about “life handing you the sourest of lemons and using them to make lemonade” all delivered to the tune of “Death with Dignity,” I was sold on the drama. As for the song, Stevens, for being as he is in his lyrics, shies away from celebrity spotlight. He offers little details into his personal life with the exception of this record. We know that his mother Carrie was a substance abuser and struggled with schizophrenia. We know that Lowell Brams was her second husband, and he was present during Stevens’ formative years. Lowell would go on to do some musical projects with Stevens after this album, but it was the death of his mother and the need for closure that drives this album. The second track on Carrie & Lowell get explicit about the abuse, but “Death with Dignity” merely paints the setting–Stevens’ life in Oregon, the death, the abuse, and the forgiveness. 
    WHAT IS THAT SONG YOU SING FOR THE DEAD? Forgiveness is somewhat of a dirty word. I grew up with a fear of not forgiving. The pastor said in a sermon that if there is anyone you’ve not forgiven, you can’t go to heaven with the bitterness in your heart. At that time, I wondered if we should forgive the person who is unremorseful? How do we make sure that we’re not taken advantage of again? Thinking back on that, I realize how many vulnerable people were in the congregation; people suffering from truly evil things done to them. Forgiveness is a process, and it can’t be forced. Carrie & Lowell is a beautiful portrayal of forgiveness as it naturally happens. Learning to forgive your parents for the mistakes they made when raising you is always a process, and when there is clear signs of abuse, forgiveness may be impossible. I’m in no position to say that a victim must confront his or her abuser with forgiveness. I think that anyone who forces forgiveness on a victim adds another layer to the abuse. Music, church, scripture, and poetry are no substitute for mental health professionals, and it’s criminal how pastors have assumed that role. However, just as an album like Carrie & Lowell helped Stevens deal with his grief, so can art and religion be a supplement to our healing.

  • “Panic Switch” by Silversun Pickups, Thursday, April 15, 2021

     

    Shoegaze is a sub-genre of rock music that employs heavy distorted guitars to create what is called a “wall of sound.” Shoegaze came out of psychedelic rock and often creates a hypnotic effect. Not every group that uses “the wall of sound” is necessarily a shoegazer act, but some bands that have famously used this effect are Oasis, The Verve, and the Smashing Pumpkins. The etymology of  “shoegazing” is said to be a description of the guitarists of these bands because they mostly stared at their shoes. While music critics don’t often place Silversun Pickups in the subgenre of Shoegaze, what else would you classify their 2009 hypnotic hit “Panic Switch“?

    IT’S NEVER WORTH MY TIME. Silversun Pickups topped the Alternative Rock chart with this song. Released in 2009, their sophomore album Swoon challenged my 2001 Corolla’s stereo in all the right ways between home and school. The band drew controversy when they were nominated for a Grammy for Best New Artist, despite the fact that their first album Carnavas had garnered a lot of attention. Swoon, however, was their breakout album. Swoon was released on the edge of a transition in the music industry. It was a time when the deeper register voices and post-grunge rock was on a decline and Alternative was implementing new ideas about style. Silversun Pickups’ following records dropped the “wall of sound” for poppier, electronic elements. But songs like “Panic Switch” and “The Royal We” are fun reminder of the kinds of aggressive rock that used to top the charts.

    WHEN YOU SEE YOURSELF IN A CROWDED ROOM. Sometimes choosing my song of the day takes a long process of listening to lots of songs, while other times the song chooses itself. I woke up before my alarm after having a dream in which I was listening to this song. When I went to bed, this song wasn’t on my mind, and I haven’t listened to it for awhile. What’s even stranger is this morning I saw that ten years ago yesterday (but still the 14th in America), Swoon had been released. What a clandestine pick for today! “Panic Switch” is a song about sleeplessness and anxiety. The up-tempo rhythm and crunching bass line helps to give a simulation of a panic attack. The lyrics ask what do you do when you enter the crowded room? How do you defuse the anxiety? Where’s the panic switch? How do I get out of this one? This reminds me of last Wednesday when I was so flustered that I couldn’t make it to class on time. It’s always the worry that you won’t find the panic switch in time. What then?

  • “A Day Late” (Live) by Anberlin, Wednesday, April 14, 2021

     

    You could probably derive 2000s Christian Rock and Christian Rock adjacent bands from two sources: Linkin Park and Jimmy Eat World. Yesterday was an example of how Linkin Park influenced Christian Rock. Today’s example is Jimmy Eat World, particularly their 2001 hit “The Middle.” The first single released from Never Take Friendship Personal sees Anberlin remembering their poppier tracks from Blueprints for the Blue Market, but taking a much more mature approach to writing the lyrics. Rather than a complaint about how “Girls speak in code” and cliches that sound a bit sexist in today’s world, “A Day Late” relies on storytelling about something that could have happened in the past, and really shouldn’t happen now.

    SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT…Never Take Friendship Personal was an album all about relationships, and it was a perfect album for high school. While certainly not as big as Fall Out Boy, I found the lyrics on Friendship to be the perfect soundtrack to drive to school and back home every day Junior and Senior year. “A Day Late” tells the story about someone from the speaker’s past who admits that they had feelings for him. The speaker says thanks but no thanks because “insignificantly enough [they] both have significant others.” However, the song is left ambiguous because the speaker “must confess you’re so much more than I remember” and “Only time will tell” what will happen. The speaker decides to keep this person his “day late friend.” I’m not sure how his “insignificant significant other” would feel about this. It’s a fun, tongue-in-cheek song that probably could get a lot of scrutiny from the “kissed dating goodbye,” “true love waits” culture and those books sold a few shelves over in the Family Christian Bookstore. 

    WE ARE WHO WE WERE WHEN. In 2014, Anberlin decided to release a final album and tour the world for a final time. On this final tour, the band booked two special venues: one in Australia to record Never Take Friendship Personal from start to finish and one in New York City to play Cities front to back. However, in New York, Anberlin surprised fans with an encore performance of Never Take Friendship Personal, which was recorded and released the next year. Additionally, Anberlin played another date in NYC  which was streamed on Yahoo! for a concert series the website was doing that year. While I would have loved to be in New York City to celebrate my two favorite Anberlin albums, I was happy that I could see the band for what I thought would be the last time live on the Internet, even in South Korea. Listening back to this live recording, Stephen yells out “One more time New York City.” Hearing that was like watching the series finale of a favorite show. Even though the album isn’t over yet, it feels like things are wrapping up. It’s not time to say goodbye quite yet, but departure is imminent. Say goodbye to your day late friend. 

    Original Music Video: 

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    Anberlin – A Day Late [Clip]
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  • “Broken Heart” by Falling Up, Tuesday, April 13, 2021

     

    The BEC in BEC Records is short for Brandon Ebel Company and is an imprint label of Ebel’s other company, Tooth & Nail Records. Today, the label serves as the Contemporary Christian side of Ebel’s business, just as Solid State serves as the heavier music side; however, the distinction between the label imprint have not always been so defined. Case in point is Falling Up, whose career started as an explicitly Christian band but later became the creative outlet of vocalist and songwriter Jessy Ribordy to write his science fiction song lyrics. By the band’s third record, Falling Up had become much less about Christian music, and much more about abstract sci-fi landscapes, littered with Greek mythology. And after the band’s fourth album, the label and many fans had lost interest.

    IN THIS MOMENT SYNCHRONIZED INSIDE. But let’s go back to the single that helped the band sell over 50,000 albums the first week of their debut Crashings’ release—“Broken Heart.” This was February of 2004. Linkin Park had redefined the rap-rock genre by mixing electronica and nu-metal. The prior year, Evanescence had released Fallen and harder music had found a spot on Top 40 radio. On the Christian side, Thousand Foot Krutch was killing it with their move to Tooth & Nail and their move away from rap-rock. Christian music could be explicitly Christian or not, and no one seemed to care either way. In fact, crossover success was seen as a pretty good thing. Groups on Tooth & Nail were finding their way onto Warped Tour and MuchMusic, MTV2, and whatever video stations that were still playing videos. Kutless was still a rock band and Jeremy Camp was a rocker with CCM appeal. And the mastermind behind this new wave of Christian Rock was Aaron Sprinkle, producing hit record after hit record. Crashings is an intense album that leaves you wondering where to categorize it, and the lead single, “Broken Heart,” is a good example of the genre-bending style of the record.


    WILL I LEARN TO LET IT GO? I remember when I first heard “Broken Heart” on the Saturday night program on the local CCM radio program. The song gave my stereo a workout. Everything about the song is intense–guitars, bass, electronics, drums–all at times fighting for control. What wasn’t intense, though, were Jessy Ribordy’s vocals. If you stripped the music away, you’d end up with a kind of emo-sounding *N-SYNC. When I both the album, it was on pretty regular rotation in the car. The middle tracks got a little stale, though the song “Jackson 5” was a massive collaboration between their friend Jon Micah Sumrall (Kutless) and Ryan Clark (Demon Hunter) and rapper Paul Wright. Crashings was a sonically-driven master plan for the future of Christian Rock that ultimately never came to fruition. Falling Up’s success peaked on the first record. Their follow up, Dawn Escapes, explored further sonic directions, but Ribordy’s vaguer lyricism that ultimately lost much of their Christian audience. Now there’s very little talk about Falling Up’s Christian radio days. The band had many fans until their end in 2016, but they are often excluded from the conversation on Bad Christian and Labeled. In some ways, it’s like the band never existed. 

  • “Titanium” by David Guetta ft. Sia, Monday, April 12, 2021

     

    The story behind this song is what makes it fascinating for me. In 2011, French DJ David Guetta was recording his follow-up to his breakthrough record. In 2009, his collaboration with Akon in the song “Sexy Chick,” the radio-friendly edit of the song “Sexy Bitch,” had taken radio by storm. This was the early days of EDM finding its way from long-form tracks in the discotheque to topping the Billboard Hot 100 with shorter radio-format songs featuring pop singers. Guetta’s follow-up record was filled with pop stars of the day, but it was this track by a virtually unknown songwriter Sia Furler that not only cemented the careers of Guetta and the elusive pop powerhouse vocalist but EDM and DJ features in pop music. The story that follows reminds me not to give up on my dreams.

    YOU SHOOT ME DOWN, BUT I WON’T FALL. If you watch musical talent shows (i.e. The Voice, American Idol, [a country’s] Got Talent), you realize that 1) a winner of those shows hasn’t made it to the radio since Adam Lambert and 2) if someone is going to make it to the radio, they have to be young, good looking and have extraverted star power. Every season of those shows you’ll see a mom whose kids have grown up and are looking for a second act or a dad who sang honky-tonk bars on the side and sadly most of those singers don’t make it past a few episodes. When an older star wins, ie. Taylor Hicks, little happens for that star’s career. Sia was not on a musical talent show, but she didn’t break through in her musical career until she was 35, a dinosaur in her pop-star years. Furthermore, “Titanium” didn’t immediately transport the singer to stardom. It was more of a “whose this?” until her 2014 solo breakthrough, “Chandelier,” when the singer was 38. 

    I’M BULLETPROOF, NOTHING TO LOSE. So who is Sia? Born in Australia and cousin of the former lead singer Peter Furler of Christian Rock band the Newsboys (gratuitous factoid for you), Sia’s musical career began in Australia. The singer of a defunct ’90s Australian acid jazz band, Sia moved to the U.K. and then to the U.S. to pursue music.  She charted mostly, but few knew her. Eventually she gave up pursuing her personal career and shifted to writing for other pop singers. But when she penned “Titanium” for David Guetta, she recorded her own take on what the vocals should sound like. Guetta had offered the guest spot to Mary J. Blige and Katy Perry. But it was Perry that convinced Guetta to keep the original track with Sia singing. And Guetta did, without even telling Sia that he used her track on his album. The song was everywhere in 2011, especially because shows like Glee and movies like Pitch Perfect made singing powerhouse vocals especially cool. While Sia’s vocals are powerful, she is an introvert at heart. She hides her face on stage and uses actors to impersonate her in her music videos. “Titanium” is a power ballad that everyone, even introverts can draw courage from, and I hope it helps you crush your Mondays.

  • “Not Spring, Love, or Cherry Blossoms (봄, 사랑, 벚꽃 말고) by High4 ft. IU, Sunday, April 11, 2021

     

    Released on April 7, 2014, High4‘s debut single cowritten and featuring Korea’s darling singer IU, “Not Spring, Love, or Cherry Blossoms” has been a staple of K-pop for the early spring. Since I’ve been in the Southeastern part of Korea, the cherry blossoms (in Korean 벚꽃, Americans typically know them by their Japanese name sakura) have bloomed at the beginning of April and peaked in the first half of the month. In Korea, cherry blossoms are nature’s first photo-op of the year. School is usually a little more laidback the week the pink and white blossoms peak, as everyone must quickly get photo before the delicate flowers fall.

    I HAVE NO ONE TO HOLD HANDS WITH AND WALK. When I was growing up and dreaming about experiencing far away places, I thought about eating my way across Europe, seeing golden temples in Thailand or Cambodia, and experiencing the beauty of a Japanese spring. I haven’t been to Japan in the spring; however, a Korean spring is quite breathtaking. The rain and gloom of mid-March gives way to the  blooming of peach and plum trees, then the cherry blossoms. And while it’s sad when the cherry blossoms fall, they are only the beginning of all the flowers that bloom until the cosmos in mid autumn. Before Corona, the country held cherry blossom festivals, where large groups of people gathered to walk and take pictures with the country’s favorite flower. As this song mentions, the cherry blossom time is when couples are more visible, often dressed as twins in the same outfit–a Korean practice that takes place year round. It’s a time when those alone may feel extra lonely, but it’s also a time of realization that the youth doesn’t last forever. Just as these fragile flowers last for a week, life too is pushing us forward.

    IT’S JUST TOO MUCH, THIS SWEET SPRING WIND. This year was a bit of a cherry blossom disaster. 2021 holds the record for the earliest the cherry blossoms have ever bloomed. The weather was so inconsistent, warm then cold and back and forth and rainstorms to finish off some of the blossoms before they could ever bloom. The cherry blossoms 50 feet away started to fall as closer ones started to bloom. Not great for pictures. The peak in my area was some time in the middle of the week and by the weekend the cherry blossoms were washed away by heavy rains. Not great for couples. And Covid restrictions banned gatherings for more than four people. Not great for group photos. As the vaccines for Covid roll out, we can hope for a better cherry blossom season next year. But for CO2 output that is making the winters warmer, we’ll need another solution for that.
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