Mixtapemotions

  • "Everywhere You Look" (Theme of Fuller House) by Carly Rae Jepsen, Wednesday, June 30, 2021

    Carly Rae Jepsen is tattooed in the history of bubblegum pop for “The Song of the Summer” of 2012, “Call Me Maybe.” Jepsen hasn’t matched the success of “Maybe,” but she keeps making music, and her fans adore her. I wrote back in January about her song “Run Away with Me” and how much her album Emotion meant to me in 2015. And while most people are sick of “Call Me Maybe,” it always makes me think about Arrested Development where George Michael can’t help his feelings for his cousin Maeby Funke, but that’s a post for another day. So to end a particularly streak of guilty pleasure songs, why not talk about the theme of Fuller House, sung by Carly Rae Jepsen?

    WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO PREDICTABILITY? Along with Alf and The Cosby Show, Full House is one of my earliest TV memories. First airing in September of 1987 when I was a mere three months old, Full House is a show I haven’t rewatched as an adult, but there is certainly a meme-worthy ’90s nostalgia connected to the show–like whenever you see the whenever Candace Cameron Bure is making some outlandish conservative statement, or the Olsen twins come out of hiding, or you hear something more about the college cheating scandal and you think, “Oh, Aunt Becky. Why?” I can’t see an arial view of the Golden Gate Bridge and not think of Michelle in a back carseat of a convertible. Whenever I see the iconic San Francisco townhouses, I don’t think Tales of the City; I think Full House. In fact, prior to Full House, San Francisco was in America’s consciousness as the capitol of AIDS. I think I heard somewhere that setting Full House in San Fransisco was a strategic move to 1) put the city back in people’s consciousness as a truly American city with nice upper-middle class white families that America can look up to and 2) homo-erasure. Of course I’d have to do more research, like watching 8 seasons of Full House, but I’m pretty sure American family TV skirted the issues of the Reagan/ Bush years. Apparently, though, Kimmy is bi-sexual, so progress? And just so you know, Candace Cameron Bure says, “Loving Jesus doesn’t mean I hate gay people.”

    A LIGHT IS WAITING TO CARRY YOU HOME. When my friend recommended Bojack Horseman back in 2016, I couldn’t help but draw parallels to Full House. The show-within-a-show Horsin’ Around mimics cheesy ’80s and ’90s television shows in general, but the main character of the cartoon, Bojack, seems to be a Bob Saget character. Like Horseman, both were comedians who weren’t particularly family-friendly when he was given their breakthrough roles. Like Bob Saget mostly disappeared after Full House and hosting America’s Funniest Home Videos only to reemerge on the stand-up scene with some filthy jokes, Horseman also reappears with an outlandish media shows. For Saget there was the sex comedy, adult cartoon Farce of the Penguins, a documentary styled movie parodying March of the Penguins. The movie was so bad, my friends had to turn it off. Horseman took another shot at television in 2007 with a more edgy format, which like Saget’s Farce was seen as a critical flop. Saget has appeared on Fuller House, which is a throwback to the good-old-days that really never existed. Even the show’s theme song remembers how a predictable lifestyle set in the good-old-days was a better time. Viewers of the original Full House may recall the days of The Brady Bunch or Leave It to Beaver, completely overlooking counter-culture, of course. Viewers of Fuller House certainly think about growing up in the ’90s as a safer climate, just don’t think about the Netflix serial killer documentaries that we can’t get enough of. Viewers of Bojack Horseman, however, get a much more sinister look at the underbelly of Hollywood, I mean Hollywoo. It’s a land where your heroes on TV had secret cocaine addictions, and fame is certainly not kind to the child stars (Sara Lynn = The Olsen Twins meets Lindsey Lohan?). The backdrop of Horsin’ Around reminds viewers of everything from Mr. Ed to The Cosby Show to Full House. But unlike the triple weddings on the series of finale of Fuller House, Bojack shows us that life and Hollywood doesn’t have happy endings–just the ending of lives and friendships and the ever-pressing existential questions that haunt us in the middle of the night everywhere you look.

    Full House of Mustaches (Deep Fake video featuring Nick Offerman):
     

    Fuller House title credits:
    Horsin’ Around Theme from Bojack Horseman:

    Finally, Ms. Carly Rae Jepsen full track:


  • "Calling You Out" by The Ex Box Boys, Tuesday, June 29, 2021

    I have no idea how this song ended up in my Apple Music library. I had no idea who the Ex Box Boys were. Maybe I had heard it when Apple Music played “infinite” music after an album or a playlist had ended. However, there seems to be no financial incentives for Apple to promote a song from 2008 that seems not to exist anymore. The band’s last Tweet comes from 2016. The band has sixteen monthly listeners on Spotify. Their albums aren’t available on American Apple Music, just singles that have been featured on compilations with other D-list bands. Hailing from Bellevue, Washington, the band’s motto was: “Four dudes. Good music. One vision.”


    THE PERFECT WAY TO MISBEHAVE. In 2010, it appears that Microsoft sued the band for using the name of their console. The band used the Microsoft spelling for their website. Self-professed geeks, many of the band’s song titles have to do with video games. The reviews on Amazon for this album are quite funny. Three listeners have rated the album, two giving it a five-star review and one giving it a one-star review, calling it “gimmicky” and “an attempt to leech onto the gaming industry.” All that is to say, the band tricked me. “Calling You Out” is seriously catchy. It’s lyrically confusing, but the production is pretty good. Until looking into it today, I wondered, “When was this song a hit?” I wondered what kind of music it was. On one hand, it sounds like it could have been an ’80s new wave song. The harmonies remind me of bands like The Outfield. And while The Outfield has more thought-out lyrics, both are pretty cheesy. Or could it be an ambiguous pop-rock boy band like 30h!3 or The Wanted. Is it teen pop? Is it rock?

    THESE PUZZLES ARE MAKING ME YOUR SLAVE. For every musician or band that has made it big, there are thousands that have been lost somewhere along the way. I think of the countless band posters I saw on portapotties at Cornerstone of the next deathcore band playing on a generator stage. Most bands break up and most musicians eventually stop chasing the dream of a record contract when it comes time to start paying the bills. It would take several lifetimes to listen to all of Apple Music or Spotify and not every band has made it onto that platform either because of licensing or obscurity. Whether The Ex Box Boys were purely gimmicky or had actual potential, it’s important to remember two things: 1) the gaming world is pretty hostile. They’ll call you out for anything. They’ll say anything sucks. And they’ll come for your mom. And 2) corporations have much more money than up-and-coming bands. Don’t mess with copyrights, especially if you’re a nobody. 

  • "The Little Prince" (어린이왕자) by Haon & Pullik (Produced by Godic), Monday, June 28, 2021

    In 2012, a Korean rapper taught everyone around the world about K pop by talking about the wealth in a particular neighborhood in Seoul. That rapper was Psy and that neighborhood was Gangnam. However, Korean Hip Hop has not been the bread and butter of the K-pop industry. Sure, hip-hop certainly is featured in the K-pop that gets popular. While BTS has rappers, they fit into the genre of teen pop music. Korean Hip Hop; however, teaches you all the bad words in Korean and will often contain some English profanity too. These days it’s especially popular among high school and college-aged boys.

    WHEN YOU FEEL ME TWICE. Korean Hip Hop dates back to the late ’80s when the government loosened its censorship laws. In early Korean Hip Hop, artists often talked about daily life and Korean virtues. It was not widely performed at first. DJs produced music and the scene was quite underground. But in the mid-90s Hip Hop emerged in Hongdae, one of Korea’s most hopping college towns in Seoul. Korean American artists, some influenced by the music in Korea others influenced by the Hip Hop in the states started writing and producing music. However, Korean Hip Hop would go mainstream (for Korea) in the 2010s when such programs like Show Me the Money, Unpretty Rap Star, and even a show promoting high school students with a dream to be a rapper, High School Rapper hit the airwaves. 
    SO WHAT? SO WHAT? I heard Korean Hip Hop every day before the pandemic. Every Korean gym plays popular tracks by Beenzino, Bewhy, Zico, and a slew of other artists. Some of the songs start out sound abrasive. The English f bombs or sometimes the rapper’s voice is annoying. Some of the songs are instantly catchy, showing how the Korean language is a much more rhyming and naturally rhythmic language than English. I found myself adding more and more songs, even the abrasive ones, to my library. Korean Hip Hop production is formulated to make every song catchy. Take today’s song. A groovy bass-line, sound effects, and the boys interrupting each other, all to the pretty innocuous subject of a French classic. Certainly, the high school boyish tactics might annoy some listeners, but to me it really sounds like how my students talk to one another. This kind of lighthearted rapping is something that I can’t say I’ve heard before in rap music–though I’m far from an expert. One thing’s for sure: if we weren’t in the middle of a pandemic, probably a lot more Korean Hip Hop would make my daily list because I’d be at the gym.
    Performance: 
    Studio Version:

  • “Find Me” by Kings of Leon, Sunday, June 27, 2021

    In 2008, rock music still could be played on pop radio. Kings of Leon was one of the biggest bands when their fourth album, Only By the Night spawned three singles. “Sex on Fire” and “Use Somebody” were unavoidable back then. The southern US band first saw success in the UK, but after Only by the Night, the band were internationally known rock stars, complete with the money, alcohol, drugs, and of course, fiery sex. But before the rock star hedonism, lies a story of three preachers’ sons and their cousin, all grandkids of Leon. According to a Rolling Stone article, the band’s early collaborator, songwriter Angelo Petraglia, suggested the religious band name “Kings of Zion” for the band; however, lead singer Caleb Followill thought Kings of Leon suited the band better. While the mother of brothers Caleb, Nathan, and Jared remains religious, Kings of Leon is far from a Christian Rock band. But the ghosts of their religious past haunts the band’s albums.


    I CAN’T ESCAPE FROM THE GREY. Growing up in Oklahoma and traveling for tent revivals in other Southern states, the Followill brothers lives a strict religious life: no TV, no movies in theaters, no swimming with the opposite sex. Preachers’ kids were to live a life beyond reproach. The boys were not allowed to listen to secular music, but they could play their instruments in church. However, the strict lifestyle was hard on the patriarch, Ivan Leon Followill, who turned to drinking and quit preaching. Similarly, Caleb started to burn out from his fame in KoL. In 2011, touring with their follow-up to Only by the Night, Caleb was too drunk to perform their show in Dallas. He threw up on stage and left, not returning for the rest of the night. The band went on hiatus for about two years.

    I REALLY WANT TO KNOW YOUR NAME, SEE YOUR FACE. In January 2014 Leon Followill, the grandfather of KOL, passed away. Kings of Leon is one of the last bands “Kings of Leon’s Faith Journey” Relevant Magazine. dad resonated with this band. My grandfather was also named Leon. My dad also grew up with religious parents and crazy stories of rebellion, alcohol, religious fanaticism, and marijuana in the hillocks of upstate New York. My dad came from a large family of eight children, so I think strictness took a different form as opposed to my upbringing of two siblings with a stay-at-home mom until I went to eighth grade. Smaller family keep guarded. Still, for all of the inconsistencies and dysfunctions in the large family my grandfather was the glue of the family. When my grandfather died suddenly in 2015 the family lost its cohesion. I never heard my father question the meaning of life as much as after the death of his father. For all of the Potpourri Baptist theology at my father’s side of the family had learned Way to their own ideas about what after life or lack of afterlife might be. My aunts and uncles and cousins were the kings of Leon, living out the legacy of a beloved member of an obscure village in upstate New York. And post-2015 we’re all left with a question, what does that legacy mean?

  • "The Coldest Heart" by The Classic Crime, Saturday, June 26, 2021

    I talked before about how Albatross, The Classic Crime‘s debut album was set to be the breakthrough mainstream album for both the band and for Tooth & Nail Records. And of course, neither of those happened because someone at iTunes or Tooth & Nail or EMI or any combination released this record in the genre “Christian Rock.” Of the two 2006 secular signings of Tooth & Nail, Jonezetta avoided Christian radio, but The Classic Crime admitted defeat and even embraced the genre. With an album like Albatross, it would be hard to hear the songs and not think of Christian Rock. “The Coldest Heart” is a bit Calvinistic for the general music listener.


    A COUPLE OF TEARS AND I’M A BROKEN MESS. “The Coldest Heart” belongs to a sub-genre of Christian Rock I’ve heard called “Shamecore,” a term coined by licensed professional counselor Krispin Mayfield on his podcast The Prophetic Imagination Station.  Shamecore comes from a Calvinist interpretation of the Bible, and verses like Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things” with a focus on the depravity of the human condition as an inescapable reality without the grace of Christ’s sacrifice. Many Christian denominations and congregations take these teachings to the extreme. Pastors demand that their followers examine their hearts and surrender everything to Christ. Lay down your thoughts, your plans, and your ambitions. Let Christ mold you into who he wants you to be. Beat yourself down with humility. When you think you’re doing well, check your intentions. Your righteousness was nothing more than filthy rags to God. And there was a constant soundtrack reinforcing this. So often these songs had to do with sexual purity, like Anberlin‘s “Feel Good Drag” or Seventh Day Slumber‘s “Innocence,” but it could also be about perfection. “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Songs like “Everything You’ve Ever Wanted” by Hawk Nelson, “Mirror” by BarlowGirl, and “Don’t Look at Me” by Stacie Orrico all propitiated this idea that self-worth was found in Christ alone. Paper Route‘s “Are We All Forgotten?” asks the question “If we’ve all forgotten you, are we all forgotten too?”

    I WAS BLIND TO THE THINGS I DID. I’m not talking about this to be sacrilegious. On the contrary, I believe that faith can be healthy. But one of my biggest regrets in life is that I didn’t try harder to accomplish my dreams. I felt manipulated by my upbringing. “God doesn’t want you to go to that college or study that,” was in the back of my mind. God called me to Missionary College where I would study English literature and become an Adventist teacher. I couldn’t imagine allowing myself to go to the much cheaper, much easier to transfer to state schools. Why? Because there was drinking and weekend hook-ups. There my faith would be tested. I bought into the idea that college could be a time when I would build up immunity to what the world offered. I would learn about my faith deeply and be equipped to fight against the damned world. What was my alternative? I was scared that at state school I would surely succumb to the life of drinking and partying and I would probably just become gay. But going to Adventist College really just put me behind because all of that would happen anyway. But I certainly learned a lot about Adventist teachings.

     

  • “Retrace” by Anberlin, Friday, June 25, 2021

    Anberlin headlined a night at Cornerstone in 2007 and 2008, though 2007 was thanks to a bus fire for the boys of Relient K. Their set was a celebration of the band’s fan favorite Cities. By the summer of 2008, though, the band had already recorded and was set to release their major label follow up, New Surrender, on September 30th. The band played two songs from the upcoming album: “Breaking” and their re-recorded classic “Feel Good Drag.” They sold pre-orders at their summer shows, a brown usb bracelet with a special code that, when entered, the album could be downloaded on September 30th along with  four electronic mixes of songs from Cities and New Surrender on the usb to tie fans over until then. Anberlin’s major label debut sold well, but some fans thought the band had gone too soft. Others criticized how much of a rollercoaster the track listing was. New Surrender was certainly a different Anberlin album. After three records working with Aaron Sprinkle, the band worked with pop and rock producer Neal Avron. “The guitarist who can’t be tamed” Joseph Milligan is tempered by the mixing and the addition on rhythm guitarist Christian McAlhaney. And the classic Anberlin emo song titles were changed to more generic ones. For example, “Bittersweet Memory” becomes “Breaking” and “Still Counting Backwards” becomes “Retrace.”

    IT TAKES ME RIGHT BACK WHEN YOU COME BACK AROUND. New Surrender opens with the kick-ass Rise Against style “The Resistance” then moves into “Breaking,” in which the drums might be a just a hair too much for a Top 40 radio song. Then to sleeper track “Blame Me! Blame Me!” At this point literally anything could come next. Another pop song, this time sounding the most Taylor Swift of all Anberlin songs: ”Retrace” is a nostalgic track about lost love in summer and watching the stars fall. But make sure you’re holding onto your sweet tea because the listener is about to be hit by a truck with track five, their re-recorded hit “Feel Good Drag.” Today we focus on “that last summer night,” and the fall that followed it. New Surrender’s release coincided with my first semester Missions College in Tennessee. I had completed two years of college living at home, but in the fall of 2008 I was starting over again like an older freshman. It was another one of my reset buttons. I left behind friends who liked a lot of the same kinds of Tooth & Nail music and who traveled up to Cornerstone every year. I was now around new people, people who were into different things. I’ve talked about how college added to my musical tastes. What was similar, though, was both back home and throughout my time at Mission College, I never became close with anyone who loved Anberlin. I had this fantasy that I would meet a girl who was also an Anberlin fanatic, and we’d get married and sing “Inevitable” to each other and name our first daughter “Adelaide.” I’m sure this has happened to someone; however, I always got a little freaked out by people who liked the band as much as I did.

    EVERY SUBTLE THING SCREAMS YOUR NAME. New Surrender found me in the middle of quite the adjustment to last-minute term papers, instant coffee because the nearest coffee shop was at least 30 minutes away from the most conservative Adventist University that was accredited. I was making new friends of different majors, though, most of them would be in education, English, or communications. I had arrived on campus and attended all of the orientation stuff that didn’t feel too awkward to be at with the freshmen. I met all my English professors and a few freshmen English majors. There were more girls than boys. The boys were either teacher track or hipster playwright track. There was one girl I found pretty fascinating. Let’s call her Lois. We talked about our experiences. She was from Orlando and was trying out the English major thing because she wanted to write for magazines. I said that I wanted to be a teacher. We chatted a bit about books, and then the orientation ended. We kept bumping into each other and having brief conversations, but she seemed to always be in a rush. On Saturday night there was a welcome back party–’90s themed. Not knowing anyone, I wore my Anberlin Cities shirt and hoped to meet someone with the same obsession. Maybe a girl would know who Anberlin was would talk to me. Maybe it would be Lois. I walked into the party. There was a girl struggling to sing karaoke to Third Eye Blind’s “Semi- Charmed Life.” There was a Lego building station. There was a Nintendo 64 competition off in another corner. I bumped into a few people I had met and said hi, but everyone seemed to have their own group. Then I saw Lois. She said hi to me. She was with a guy who had hair cut military length and was thin, but had broad shoulders. “Hi, Allan, you should meet my friend from school. He’s a few years older than me. He’s a transfer student too.” “Hi, I’m Allan.” “Hi, I’m James. James Reagan.” “Like the president?”


    P.S. Dan Wilson, a writer on this song also wrote for a number of artists including Semisonic, The Chicks, Shawn Mendes, Adele, and yes, Taylor Swift.

  • "O" (Fly Away) by Coldplay, Thursday, June 24, 2021

    Coldplay’s nine-track, piano-driven 2014 album Ghost Stories, ends with a meditative track called “O.” Following his divorce to actress Gwyneth Paltrow, vocalist Chris Martin processes the end of his relationship on Ghost Stories. In a video I referenced last month when writing about “Higher Power,” critic Frank Furtado claims that Ghost Stories is a lyrical failure on the behalf of Chris Martin, who disguises his pain behind universal lyrical themes. Furtado goes on to claim that Martin “trades being personal for commercial viability.” He goes on to state that Ghost Stories “is so sparse instrumentally that the lyrics have no where to hide.” These lyrics he claims are silly at times and empty at others. And yet the sparse lyrics and instrumentation from this blue album, garnished with angel wings and dotted with stars, can be just the amount of quiet a grey day needs.

    FLOCK OF BIRDS…This morning I started listening to the latest episode of Our Pod Is an Awesome Pod about Anberlin’s Never Take Friendship Personal. Before listening to the album and reviewing it, they played a game. Host Johnathan Rawson read the lyrics of songs, making his co-host, Luke Schwartz, guess if the song was written by Taylor Swift or Anberlin. Schwartz lost the bet and his penalty is he has to attend church on a Sunday. Anberlin on Friendship and Cities was the height of Stephen Christian’s most confessional lyrics. The band even tried to submit a song to Taylor Swift from their New Surrender era, but she never got back to them. It’s funny because I started getting into Taylor Swift a little late from her sophomore record even though it was already old. Swift’s lyrics, easily understood with banjos and steel guitars, were sometimes a little young for me, but sometimes I looked to her because she wrote like she knew what it was like to be in love or lonely or dealing with difficult friendships. We get nothing specific from Coldplay, but we do get a haunting piano and images. In “O,” the image is a comparison between a lover and the movement of birds. Just as a flock of birds can’t be captured and it’s very hard to tell one bird from another–how do you know it’s the same bird in your neighborhood?–it’s futile to bind love. It’s here today, gone tomorrow. But we can believe that the birds will return, and love will also return.
    AND I ALWAYS LOOK UP TO THE SKY/ PRAY BEFORE THE DAWN. I’m pretty awful at staying in touch with people. If we lose contact, it’s probably because I’m a bad friend. Although my family only moved once, I’ve counted nine times in my life where I’ve had a major change–whether it was a move or a new job–and I failed to stay in touch with the people from my past. Sometimes I thought that these friends were everything to me. Now there’s just a message dated from 2014 at the bottom of my Messenger app. On a quick Google search for “why don’t I have any friends,” I learned that as many as 1 in 5 people don’t have any close friend. The website goes on to talk about why you may not have any friends. I know some of the reasons why. I like hitting the reset button. When people get too sick of me or when I embarrass myself too much, it’s time to move on–like Tom and Daisy from The Great Gatsby. Still, like yesterday the fantasy of having a group of friends that I grew up with and stuck around with even after college is ever enticing. But nope, something was too off about me. I didn’t play sports. I didn’t talk enough about girls. I didn’t do drugs. I was Seventh-day Adventist, so that meant nothing fun on Friday night or Saturday. I was homeschooled. I was too religious or not religious enough. I was gay but didn’t know it yet. So fly on…
    Live Version:

     Chris Martin solo piano:

    Extended version:

    Covers:

  • “Go Your Own Way” by Fleetwood Mac, Wednesday, June 23, 2021

    Fleetwood Mac‘s best known record is Rumors, their 1977 album featuring the vocals of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. However, these members had been recent additions. Formed in 1967 in the UK with drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John “Mac” McVie, the band went through numerous iterations before arriving on the pop charts with their most well-known line up. The subject matter of the hit album is the relationship drama behind the scenes with the band. It’s truly a fascinating story of change and rock ‘n’ roll development that saw the band change from a ’60s blues rock band to a late ’70s hitmaker, with a guitarist who left due to schizophrenia, another guitarist abandoning the group while on tour to join a California sex-evangelism cult, a turbulent marriage between the keyboardist and bass player, and then there’s Stevie Nicks.


    WE CAN CALL IT ANOTHER LONELY DAY. I don’t have much memory of this song when I was growing up. Released 10 years before I was born, it would have been played on classic rock stations, but even when my mom started listening to classic rock in the car, I don’t remember hearing this song. However, I do remember both my mom and dad changed the channel whenever Fleetwood Mac came on the radio. They said they heard too much of this album back in the late ’70s. My mom’s friend listened to it on repeat, so she had heard it enough for a lifetime. My first memory of this song is from the Forest Gump soundtrack. But the memory of this song is about a trip to Florida in mid-July 2012. I was going down to Florida by myself for the first time. I was going to stay with my grandfather and visit my friends. River was getting married, and it was a kind of a college reunion of a lot of my friends. My college was fed by many Adventist high schools, and many of my friends had graduated from the Adventist high school in Orlando, which coincidentally was my mom’s hometown. Several occasions over summer vacation I visited my Orlando friends, and this would be the last of these trips before going to Korea.
    IF I COULD, MAYBE I’D GIVE YOU MY WORLD. Besides River who was marrying another Orlando Adventist High School graduate who was not as close friend, my two best friends in Florida were Jim, my best friend from college and Mark, my roommate for a semester until he transferred to UCF on a much better scholarship. Jim had been my suite-mate for about a year and a half before he graduated, about a year before me. Whenever I visited them they always met up with other friends, and I felt like I was part of their group–a feeling I never really had. It made me feel like I was in some sort of alternate reality where I could have grown up with friends rather than being the kid who had grown out of church but was still dragged there every Saturday while the boys I grew up with stopped coming and we all grew apart. Saturday night before the wedding the next day I hung out with Jim and Mark and some others. They were playing Guitar Hero: World Tour. I tried to play a few songs, but got frustrated at the rhythm game that had nothing to do with playing a guitar. So I just watched them. Jim on vocals, Mark on guitar, another guy on drums, another guy on bass. One of the songs they played that night was “Go Your Own Way.” 

    TELL ME WHY EVERYTHING TURNED AROUND. Sunday night Jim and I went to see The Dark Knight Rises, and he announced that he was moving to Dallas to work for the Adventist conference. I was in the final stages of my paperwork for Korea. I had come to the end of my “spiritual journey” at Adventist university, and the results were not all that I thought they would be. Nothing big had happened. River had published a book about the missionary murdered in Yap. My other friends were getting great jobs at Adventist schools around the country. After River’s wedding there was a list of other friends’ weddings. No prospects of a girlfriend for me, but it seemed like finding a group of friends was good enough. But these friendships confused me–girls I felt no romantic feelings attraction towards and guys that I felt like I had never felt before with. There was always something about Jim and Mark that I wanted to spend more time with them, but never could have enough time. And the time we spent together it felt like it was just killing time until we had to do the next thing like write a paper or meet other people. I didn’t want things to end. It took me my whole life to find friendships like this. But college was over and life was pulling us away. I was never the boy who grew up in Central Florida. Mark and Jim and River’s stories aren’t mine. I am Tyler from New York and North Carolina and Korea. You? You can go your own way.

  • “Summertime: The Gershwin Version” by Lana Del Rey, Tuesday, June 22, 2021

    In 1935, George and Ira Gershwin‘s opera Porgy & Bess premiered with a classically trained African American cast. The opera was one of the last innovation of composer George Gershwin, whose short life’s work was to marry classical and jazz, the popular music of the day. Classical music had always made room for popular and folk styles, whether it was Brahms playing piano at a local tavern or Chopin playing mazurkas, a traditional Polish dance. Gershwin was that composer sneaking into the speak-easy listening to improvised bars of the big bands. This inspired his jazzy classical orchestral pieces like “Rhapsody in Blue” and “An American in Paris.” However, George wasn’t just confined to the orchestral hall. Together with his brother, Ira, the two produced hit after hit of songs that would be sung for nearly a hundred years. One of their biggest hits comes from the beginning of this opera.

    OH, YOUR DADDY, HE’S RICH AND YOUR MA, SHE’S GOOD LOOKIN’ “Summertime” has been covered by thousands of artists, each taking a unique take on the Gershwin classic. I remember when my music teacher gave me the bars of the song to play on the guitar. The strumming moody sound of minors being slowly strummed then muted with the palm, letting the feedback from my amp–it was one of my favorite songs to play. My music teacher said that if I wanted to play that piece, I had to be good at it. My music teacher held a reverence for “Summertime” and “Over the Rainbow.” “Not just anyone can play this song,” she told me when I was playing around, trying to get my cheap Squire Stratocaster to stay in tune. I would play “Summertime” for hours, sweating in my room before my parents got air conditioning. The moodiness of a summer’s night where you have to stay awake until really late for the heat to break and you to be able to go to sleep, the iced tea that keeps you awake through the afternoon heat, the cicadas roaring outside the window, the stench of the chicken farm down the road mixed with sweat in the stagnant breeze, the occasional thunderstorm that calmed things down and gave you a few moments of relief from the North Carolina summer heat –that was the imagery of the song to me.

    ONE OF THESE MORNINGS YOU’RE GONNA RISE UP SINGING. My musical education was just the chords and my teaching banging out the melody on the piano. It wasn’t until much later that I heard “Summertime’s” lyrics. The song is a lullaby, cooing the baby, shielding the baby from the hard facts of life. In fact, the father isn’t rich and there is a lot to harm a baby growing up in poverty among the drug dealers and racial unrest of pre-Civil Rights America. The mournful song longs for it to be true that this baby “one of these mornings [is going to] rise up singing.” The melancholy lullaby still ring true in cities ravaged with gun violence and police brutality, where things have changed on paper, but the same stories continue to play out generation after generation. 

    SO HUSH LITTLE BABY, DON’T YOU CRY. So why the Lana Del Rey version of this song? I chose Lana’s “Summertime” for two main reasons. 1. It seems to fit right after Sufjan Stevens better than the other versions. 2. While Lana’s “Summertime” isn’t the best version, it’s the version we get for 2021. Lana Del Rey continues to become a more and more problematic artist as she tries to explain herself on social media. Whether it’s about domestic violence, COVID, or race, we’re coming to expect the wrong answer from her. However, in the wrongness, Del Rey has actually become a bit of a centrist in the raging culture war, this is not to defend her outlandish statements, but in a 2021 musical landscape we usually only see two sides when really there are many more. Furthermore, “Summertime” is one of the most Lana Del Rey songs written, an artist who makes music nostalgic of pre-1980s Americana, Del Rey has taken much inspiration from the 1920s in albums like Born to Die and Honeymoon as well as recording “Young and Beautiful” for 2013’s The Great Gatsby. Recorded and filmed as a fundraiser for the New York Philharmonic and Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra to help bridge their finances during the pandemic, Del Rey released the track last November. Yesterday was the solstice, so is 2021 the Summer of Lana? Probably not. Let’s race a glass of sweet (or New York unsweet) tea and say “Cheers to sweeping all the issue under the rug for just a little while longer.” 
    Scene from Porgy & Bess

    Ella Fitzgerald version:

    Lana Del Rey version:


  • "Saturn" by Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly, & James McAlister, Monday, June 21, 2021

    Composed as one of his ensemble works, Nico Muhly collaborated with three musicians to produce his 2017 work, Planetarium. The work atmospheric electronica rather than an orchestra, but the powerful songs might remind classical music listeners of Gustav Holst’s 1917 work which packed as much if not more creative punch, The Planets, which innovated classical music and introduced techniques to modern music like the fade out and 5/4 timing. Muhly calls on the work of drummer James McAlister, The National’s guitarist Bryce Dessner, and the vocals of Sufjan Stevens. The National being an artistic (and pretentious to some) band with Dessner collaborating with everyone from Taylor Swift to Phillip Glass, and Sufjan Stevens coming off of his folk record Carrie & Lowell, Planetarium is a quite musical experience, a soundtrack for gazing into the summer night sky. 

    I’LL CONSUME THE CHILD THAT TRAILS ME. For the songs that have lyrics, Stevens pulls inspiration from a number of sources–Greek/Roman mythology, the planet itself, Christianity, astrology, and hinduism are all fair game. The monologue that Stevens creates for “Saturn” is quite a chilling narrative. By the fourth line of the song the speaker, the god himself, reminds acknowledges his most notorious incident: eating his children. Stevens was particularly inspired by the Goya painting, Saturn Devouring His Son, the grotesque image of the very worst of the Titans. Stevens’ interpretation of Saturn’s existence and most despicable deed casts a humanity on Saturn we don’t often see. He’s a “melancholy creature [with a] cannibal addiction.” Through his self-awareness, we come to see Saturn’s side of the story, that he is in fact a victim to fate. It’s either kill or be killed; the song shows the regret of the god who doesn’t control the fates. Although he acts in self interest, he takes no joy in it. The chorus, though, seems to be pointing trying to cast a distinction between the Greek and the Judeo-Christian God. Saturn begs his listeners to denounce him: “Tell me I’m evil. Tell me I’m not the face of love. . . . Tell me I’m not the face of God.” How can something who has done something so evil be a god or even a representative of a god? 

    WHERE THERE’S HEALTH I BRING AFFLICTION. Matthew Arnold in his essay Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism argued that Western culture was built on two pillars, Hellenism and Judaism. He called the Greek pillar “Sweetness and Light” and the Judeo-Christian pillar “Fire and Strength.” He further argued that culture up until his time in Victorian England had over-emphasized the “fire and strength,” but what culture needed to move forward was “sweetness and light.” What followed was an artistic movement in the 20th and 21st centuries of more and more atheistic works. Yet artists from poets to screenplay writers can’t shake the gods from their work. Furthermore, we see dysfunctional Greek gods playing out as humans constantly in every movie we watch. We see the Greeks gods in our own lives. Stevens had just written an album memorializing his extremely flawed mother, who abandoned him and abused him on many occasions when he was a child. Stevens is begging this parental figure not to be the representation of love or of God. Moreover, as an adult, he sees that choices are more nuanced. People make choices that they feel they are forced to make. For example, Stevens seems to come to a greater understanding about his mother’s mental illness and drug addiction when he writes about Carrie on his previous album. In “Saturn” there’s a sadness to the great responsibility it is to be a god, a representative of an ideal. The Bible, in contrasts, says that “God is Love.” This God is different from Saturn, but many note some of the horrendous depictions of punishment he brings, particularly in the Old Testament. It’s certainly no accident that Stevens draws the parallels between Saturn, the Judaeo-Christian God, and Shiva in “Saturn.” The job is up to the listener to decide if it’s a fair comparison.