Mixtapemotions

  • “Merry Go ‘Round” by Kacey Musgraves, Thursday, September 30, 2021

    In 2019 Kacey Musgraves won four Grammys, including Album of the Year for her Country/Pop crossover Golden Hour.  But from her major-label debut, Same Trailer, Different Park in 2013, the Golden, Texas native singer-songwriter began racking up accolades both in and out of the Country music genre. American Songwriter, NPR, Rolling Stone, Paste, and Spin all had positive reviews of the folksy album, particularly noting Musgraves’ songwriting. Her ability to turn a cliche on its head and subtly subvert the casual stereotypes in Country music, such as sexism, religious sentimentalism, and homophobia, set her apart from the typical Nashville star. Not only was she critically acclaimed, winning the Grammy for best Country Song in 2014 for today’s song, but she turned out to be commercially viable, drawing both Country fans and non-Country fans alike.


    SAY WE WON’T END UP LIKE OUR PARENTS. Kacey Musgraves isn’t the first country crossover. Slate Magazine’s Hit Parade had an excellent history of Top 40 appearances by country music stars when talking about Taylor Swift and Garth Brooks. The ’70s were full of examples of twangy pop hits from the likes of Dolly Parton to John Anderson. The ’90s saw the rise of stars like Garth Brooks and Billy Ray Cyrus on the Top 40. Around the turn of the century, there was Shania Twain, Faith Hill, and LeAnn Rimes. But the podcast makes the argument that no artist can serve two masters. In the end, a country star must choose if they are more loyal to New York or Nashville. Artists like Twain faded because of her trying to please both markets. Country artists could try out pop, but if it didn’t work out, they could quickly come back to country as if their pop career never happened, i.e. LeAnn Rimes and Faith Hill. In the case of Taylor Swift, she wrote an album and then another and then another that didn’t have a country hit. She became such a big pop star that her country background could be forgotten by her youngest of fans. One issue in the country-pop conflict is politics. More and more every year, pop stars have to cater to a liberal audience. Pop stars can be canceled for having the wrong stance on a social issue; however, Country music tends to be quite conservative. Of course there has always been a “rebel” vein in Country music. Whether it’s the country rockers like Charlie Daniels or the Allman Brothers to the pot-smoking Willie Nelson or shock-country songs like Gretchen Wilson’s “Redneck Woman,” there’s been a precedent to push what’s acceptable. But what about an artist like Kacey Musgraves? A singer-songwriter who appears much in the realm of country music, yet loves to curse in interviews, talks about smoking pot, birth control, gay rights, and feminism challenges the establishment of Nashville. She asked in an interview with The Guardian in 2018 “Where are country artists of [color]? Where are the country artists who represent the LGBTQ+ community from a first-person perspective?” She went on to ask, “Why can’t I just be a musician, or an artist, or a singer-songwriter? No, it’s always ‘female musician’ or ‘female singer-songwriter.’”

    IF YOU AIN’T GOT TWO KIDS BY 21. In many ways, Same Trailer is the singer’s most straight-forward Country release. Musgraves sings over a banjo on her debut single “Merry Go ‘Round.” The music video shows old video footage from post-World War II suburban American life, the idealized propaganda of what the American dream is supposed to look like. We see mothers staying home in the kitchen with children playing. The homes have manicured lawns and a new car in the drive way. The song, however, takes a more Southern, less suburban approach to the lyrics. In this first single, Musgraves addresses several themes she will come back to in other songs throughout her career. First, the song addresses life in a small town, with the urgency of settling down and having children. Musgraves, at the time of recording this song was about 23. She was young and not ready to settle like the dust in her hometown. Next, the song casually mentions that there are people in that small town who don’t believe, but are pressured to go to church because it’s the norm in that small town. The pre-chorus introduces us to a family, each member has their own vice: “mama” is part of a multilevel marketing scheme, her brother’s a pot-head, and her father is cheating with another woman in the neighborhood. All of these lyrics are woven together with homophones for Mary. The second verse talks about American consumerism making small-town Americans not strive for greater things. Marriage is something people in small towns do because they’re so bored of their mundane lives. The outlook is bleak, and we long for the singer to break free. She should go to college. She should go abroad. She should become a singer. She should do something. And yet, it’s all too relatable to when I go back to Western North Carolina or Upstate New York. I see imprints of who I could be. And then I think about my life now. How have I settled into the dust of a mundane existence?
    Official Music Video:

    Acoustic performance:

     

  • "crushcrushcrush" by Paramore, Wednesday, September 29, 2021

    Coming off of the success of the band’s breakthrough single, “Misery Business,” “crushcrushcrush” takes the band through the familiar territory of Riot‘s teenage problems. The peaked at Number 2 on the Alternative Radio Play chart. The stadium rock produced rock-pop song is clearly in the style of 2007 rock, when emo was everything. The video depicts the band playing in the desert, the band with their jet black-dyed hair, Haley with her over-the-top stage makeup. This was a time when young bands on Warped Tour could end up on the Top 40. The band would surprisingly outdo their sophomore success, not on their follow-up, though Brand New Eyes wasn’t a total disappointment, but on their 2013 self-titled record, which would produce the Grammy Winning Rock Song of the Year for “Ain’t It Fun.” “Crushcrushcrush” shows who the band is on a fundamental level–a female-fronted emo rock band, a band for late millennials burgeoning just as the world started to take a turn for the worst.

    LET’S BE MORE THAN THIS. Critic Alex Fletcher commented on the single for having a “humongous chorus” but compared the group to Kelly Clarkson and Avril Lavigne rather than serious acts like Metallica. But the band didn’t set out to write a mature effort on Riot! While not glorying in the teenage experience like singer Olivia Rodrigo would do in her 2021 Sour, partially inspired by songs from Riot!, Paramore doesn’t shy away from often embarrassing teenage experiences as fodder for their breakthrough record. When Haley Williams was 12 or 13, she says she had a crush on former bandmate, Josh Farro. He had a girlfriend at the time, so Williams wrote the song “Misery Business.” “Crushcrushcrush” is also an immature song. Crushes impact us most when we’re early adolescents, before we learn tactful ways to express our admiration. A crush begins as a little rushing flutter in the chest. We are selective in the details that we take in about the individual. We may start to idealize this person. Sometimes the spark can burn out with the wrong word, action, smell, etc. We may move on quickly to someone else. But if the initial spark catches the kindling, we may spend hours fantasizing what we will say if we ever get the chance to confess our true feelings. Crushes are universal, and when they don’t work out, they can be rather crushing to our young lives. When we grow up we learn how to keep crushes intact. If you’re both single and of a certain compatibility, go for it. If you are attached and they are attached, don’t. Or watch the office drama blow up. It’s your choice. But nothing compares to the unrequited teenage love. 
    THEY TAPED OVER YOUR MOUTH WITH THEIR LIES. The problem with a crush is that, rather than allowing the other person to be who they are, your thoughts manipulate that person into loving you. Essentially, you create a new person who can only exist in your mind. Even if the moment that you’ve been waiting for happens, and he kisses you when you slip away from the hayride at the youth group fall festival, he will never live up to your expectations. You, the damsel in the tower, have fantasized about how many ways you will be rescued. He’s going to do his own thing. Or worse, he’s going to leave you in the tower, and maybe date your sister. Josh, growing up closeted in a repressive Christian culture, was rarely honest about his crushes. He deceived himself to the point where he would have romantic crushes on the girls at church or school. But when the greasy skins of puberty started messing with his head, he found that it was the experimental sessions of a sleepover with a friend, a Pathfinder campout with another, and late afternoon closed-door covert conversations with the pastor’s son excited him more than the girls they talked about in their forbidden chats. It was male bonding; one-on-one time, seeing a young man light up with arousal. Seeing that sparkle in his eye, hearing the hushed tones of a deepening voice, conversations about his or the other’s body–these were the moments that Josh thought about more than the girls in his class. It’s just a phase, he thought. I will grow out of this and be normal. 

     

  • "Play" by Jax Jones & Years & Years, Tuesday, September 28, 2021

    Coming off the heels of Years & Years‘ second album, Palo Santo, the group collaborated with British House DJ and producer Jax Jones for his debut album Snacks. The song “Play” was released as a single in November of 2018 and would find a place on deluxe editions of Palo Santo like “Up in Flames.” The two songs don’t fit into the story of the futuristic queer/ religious concept album. Instead, “Play” follows Jones’s concept. A colorful music video with  nostalgic goodies, the sweets and toys of a millennial’s childhood, along with the single’s artwork, clearly inspired by Play-Doh, remind listeners of playtime and all of the goodness of a childhood full of sugary cereal, matchbox cars, and action figures. The disco beat and Olly Alexander‘s vocals take that childhood playtime nostalgia to a late-night dance hall.


    MY PHILOSOPHY DON’T LET NOBODY COME TOO CLOSE. The status quo of the song is defensiveness. The singer talks about guarding his heart. The emotional power is so strong in the singer’s heart that he fears that another person will either not be able to understand him or will hurt him. Many people find themselves in this situation. Past traumas from parents’ relationships, taunting by schoolmates, rejection when a middle school boy expresses his love to a girl in his class, realization that one is different from the others, repression of one’s sexual identity all build a wall around the young person. If you look closer at that wall, each brick is an individual situation where fear triumphed over autonomy. For years, I wondered why dating didn’t work out for me. At that time, many of the girls my age were reading I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Joshua Harris‘ book that messed up a generation of millennial, so much so that the author eventually pulled the publication and renounced his beliefs in everything it stood for. The premise, though, at the time was for young Christians to commit themselves to purity and abstinence until marriage. Younger teens had no business dating in the worldly sense. Dating, while it could be as innocent as calling each other up on the phone every night, talking at school, or even going to a movie, was a chance for ungodly lust to fester in the body. When teens got closer to an age when they could legally marry, they could begin courting, which was like what worldly preteen/early teen dating looks like, but with spiritual ramifications. But in a quest for holiness, Harris and the other proponents of early marriage failed to take in the statistical truth that early marriages result in more divorces. While eighteen to twenty-nine year old are adults, their educational and life experiences can render two halves of a married couple incompatible. The late teens who are flooded with hormones often don’t make clear decisions about their future.

    I WANT IT TO BE YOU, DIVING INTO MY OCEAN, A BRAND NEW EMOTION. I didn’t completely buy into the I Kissed Dating Goodbye ideas, but they certainly took a lot of Christian girls off the market. If you wanted to date in Christian high school, you had to be particularly aggressive. So I built a wall of excuses. But Alexander isn’t writing “Another Brick in the Wall.” Instead, he’s singing about the time when someone broke through his wall. It’s the moment when the song plays and he realizes that he wants to dance with this person all night. In his other songs, Olly Alexander explores the link between human sexual connection and spirituality. Palo Santo was an album that explored the spiritual experiences in the gay dance halls. Dance is a spiritual awakening for the singer, and the muse of the singer shatters the wall. I, however, built my walls thicker before they ultimately shattered. In college, I no longer had the excuse of I Kissed Dating Goodbye. I thought everything would fall into place, but it turned out that I didn’t actually like girls, but I couldn’t admit it to myself. So I built the walls thicker, choosing to attend a religious college, choosing to go into Christian education, choosing to become a missionary, choosing to fit in with the conservative missionaries. Every brick I added made me feel safer, until I realized that it was a prison. Until I came out to myself, I thought that I was broken and unlovable. But coming out made me realize that what’s true for other people may not be true for me. A brand new emotion entered my vocabulary–freedom to be myself.
    Official Video:

    Visualizer: 

    Live session:

    Jingle Ball Live:

     

  • “Raspberry Layer Cake” by Aaron Gillespie, Monday, September 27, 2021

    If you picked up Out of the Badlands, you may have been expecting Aaron Gillespie’s third album to be in the vein of his prior solo releases. In 2016, Gillespie had long since left his drumming/singing duties in Underoath and had put his own Southern-influenced pop-punk band, The Almost, on hiatus. His next venture was signing to BEC, the Christian imprint of Tooth & Nail Records, and releasing an original Praise & Worship record followed by another one. But as much as he tried, the rough-n-tumble persona that Gillespie is–with his heavily tattooed body and penchant for an unguarded sailor-mouth–Praise & Worship music didn’t pay the bills. What did pay the bills, Gillespie found, was drumming for 4 years of stadium tours with the band Paramore. On the podcast, Where Are All My Friends, Gillespie talks about this period with Paramore as an opportunity to lay his artistic endeavors aside, which ultimately inspired his next projects. These included a reunion with Underoath, a new Almost record, songwriting for other artists, and of course, 2016’s Out of the Badlands.

    I WAS MADE A BASTARD SON BY AN OUTLAW FATHER WHO COLLECTED GUNS. Gillespie talked about the recording process of Out of the Badlands on The BadChristian Podcast. Badlands was born out of the artist touring as a solo musician post-faith-based career. At the time of recording, Gillespie said he still believed in the two faith-based records he recorded, but after bad experiences with the Christian Music industry, including a time when he was uninvited to a Christian Music event because the organizer heard Gillespie use bad language on a podcast. Gillespie’s friend and studio partner for Badlands, Andrew Goldring, convinced Gillespie to record an album as eclectic as his live show. Out of the Badlands contains acoustic renderings of The Almost and Underoath’s songs, covers Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me” and U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name,” and several original tracks. The songs are spare: besides the accompanying drums, lead guitars, and bass-lines, the vocals and acoustic guitar are often recorded in one take in a small room with good acoustics. A surprising amount of profanity is laced in the songs that Gillespie premieres in this offering, particularly for record buyers who had remembered the squeaky-clean lyrics of old Underoath/Almost/solo worship project days or buyers of Tooth & Nail albums which only on a rare occasion, though now getting more frequent, contained a swear word. While I had mixed feelings about this record when it came out–and still do as I’m not fully on board with releasing an album of covers and originals an calling it one’s own–there is one song that takes the cake, pardon the pun, and shows what Gillespie is doing with this perhaps muddled musical experiment. 
    WHEN NO ONE ELSE GIVES A DAMN. Aaron Gillespie set out to encapsulate the process of his divorce in a record, and that record is Out of the Badlands. The highlight of this divorce record is “Raspberry Layer Cake.” Whatever listeners may feel about Gillespie, his Pentecostal upbringing, his leading worship on Warped Tour-to being a worship leader in CCM, his faith deconstruction as he rejoined a now cynical post-Christian Underoath, “Raspberry Layer Cake” is a piece of art. The singer uses the symbol of a cake to summarize his marriage with a woman he married too young. He also addresses the religious pushback when he decided not to be honest with the facts. Christianity has many divorced celebrities. The Christian celebrities who bounce back keep their secrets under wraps for a bit. CCM stars like Kevin Max and Jaci Velasquez and so many others that have a brief Wikipedia entry about their failed marriages, but never seemed to face the backlash. However, Amy Grant’s divorce from Gary Chapman banished her in the mid-’90s; some Christian radio stations refuse to play her music until this day. Gillespie talked about being unable to make his marriage work after several counselors. The couple decided that what was best for their child was an amicable divorce than a loveless, bitter marriage. Still lines like “a lie on your wedding day” make listeners wonder if there’s something else there. As the years pass since this record’s release and since Gillespie’s divorce and post-divorce romantic involvements, he has continued to distance himself from mainstream Christianity. Earlier this year, I talked about the rebirth of Underoath and linked to a video in which Aaron and Spencer Chamberlin discuss their change in beliefs. More and more people are slipping out the back door of the church, into the parking lot, into their cars. Some of them are taking a wistful look back as they go. Others are so hurt they make a b-line for the door. I used to believe that all the answers were found within the sacred walls of the church–walls that were only believed to be sacred. But now I see that pushed out are the divorced, the sexually shamed, the free-thinkers, the LGBTQ community, the feminists, and what’s left? Radicals and the casual who don’t challenge the status-quo.
    Live:

    Studio Version:


     

  • "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen, Sunday, September 26, 2021

    Some music critics have called this the song of the 21st century. If you’re sick of this song, I don’t blame you. If you’re from Canada, you got an extra dose of Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe,” when it charted in October of 2011 and hit number 1 in February, several weeks before it charted in America. It was the song of the summer of 2012, spending 9 weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100, and it was rated as the second most popular song of the year, behind Gotye and Kimbra’s “Somebody That I Used to Know.” We have to thank Justin Bieber for tweeting about this song when he heard it while touring in Canada. Personally, I do get sick of songs, but I have never gotten sick of this catchy disco-infused track. It’s maybe my guiltiest of pleasures. Whenever I hear it, it makes my day, and it would have been my song of the day when I heard my students singing the song in class, but another ear-worm, “Careless Whisper” beat it out. The more I learn about “Call Me Maybe,” the more enamored I get. 


    I THREW A WISH IN THE WELL. In 2011, Carly Rae Jepsen was a folk singer, who had charted modestly on Canadian radio. When she wasn’t making music or playing shows in Canada, she was waiting tables. She was recording an EP to follow up her debut studio album Tug of War, penning “Call Me Maybe” with Travish Crowe as a folk tune. But producer Josh Ramsay, lead singer of the pop punk group Marianas Trench, turned the song about teenage love into the powerhouse pop track it is today. In March of 2012, Jepsen released a music video for the song. The video featured Jepsen lusting after the boy next door, played by actor Holden Norwell as he takes off his shirt and mows the lawn. Later in the video, she provocatively washes her car in order to catch his attention as he tinkers under the hood of his car. The video’s twist at the end, that the hunk is interested in one of the male bandmates–Travish Crowe (the writer of the song), is perhaps the reason that the video became so popular. It was a funny, awkward situation for all involved, including actor Holden Norwell, who revealed in an interview with iHeartRadio Canada that the scene originally called for him to kiss Crowe, but Norwell didn’t feel comfortable with that scene. Passing his phone number fit quite well with the song, though. Many have criticized the actor who spoke out about “being forced into the role,” as Norwell says that he regrets playing the gay character in the music video because he is often mistaken for a gay man in real life. 

    HOT NIGHT, WIND WAS BLOWIN’ In 2020, Carly Rae Jepsen released a video called “Me and the Boys in the Band.” The song talks about missing the touring life and spending time on the road with her bandmates. The song also serves as a reminder that solo artists are more than one person behind the production. “Call Me Maybe” may not be a band-heavy track. Casual listeners may miss the lead guitar. The ear may only hear the disco strings–played on the keyboard. Solo singers can go into the studio had never meet the musicians making their backing music. In some cases, all of the music could be taken as samples from music recorded in any time period. But Carly Rae Jepsen is quick to show her bandmates in her videos, including her most famous song “Call Me Maybe.” Earlier this year, when I wrote about “Run Away with Me” from her follow up Emotion, we see footage of Jepsen hanging out with her bandmates as they tour the world. When I was growing up, my rock-band-loving friends and I scoffed at backup bands. When you’re young and the rock bands were still viable, it seemed like the height of any musician is to be in a band like Creed, even just a drummer who has a small role in a music video. But as I grew up and learned more about the music industry and found out how very few touring band-bands (as opposed to bands that tour in support of an artist like Carly Rae Jepsen) make any money. When you’re a teenager, there’s something romantic about sleeping on the floor, eating TacoBell for every meal, and waiting for that big break with a big record executive at your show only to undersell your record because kids don’t like rock music anymore. Maybe the solution was more about listening to your music teacher, practicing scales while sitting down, training your ear with covers, playing the gigs, and getting a job with a studio. I digress. I rest my case that “Call Me Maybe” is a worthy song of the day. 



  • "Glass Heart Hymn" by Paper Route, Saturday, September 25, 2021

    Taking long breaks between albums in order to self-record in old mansions around Nashville, Paper Route has only produced three full-length albums in their fifteen years active. Whenever they announce a new album, it’s met with delays. Their sophomore album, The Peace of Wild Things, is no exception. After the departure of guitarist/co-vocalist Andy Smith, the band didn’t have a permanent lead guitarist, and wouldn’t until Nick Aranda joined the band before recording Real Emotion. The Peace of Wild Things is a more pop-friendly album than their etherial debut, Absence. Peace builds the band up lyrically and contains some memorable choruses. But songs like “Sugar,” “Rabbit Holes,” “Tamed,” “Calm My Soul,” and today’s song, “Glass Heart Hymn,” the otherwise straight-forward pop album down an artistic journey.


    MY FEET HAVE LED ME STRAIGHT INTO MY GRAVE. Named after a poem by farmer and environmentalist Wendell Berry, The Peace of Wild Things evokes contrasting emotions upon listening to the album. There are moments of love and there are moments of heartache. Songs like “Love Letters,” “Two Hearts,” and “Sugar” satisfy the listener with the peace of a love song, but wildness is not far behind. In an interview with Tyler Huckabee for Relevant Magazine’s podcast, singer J.T. Daly says that on Peace of the Wild Things it is the first time that the lyrics have him “nervous and embarrassed” to reveal so much of his life. While listeners won’t hear anything too incriminating, the lyrics are provocative, making listeners wonder what happened. A lyrical motif that Daly follows throughout the album is early chapters of Genesis. In “Love Letters,” the speaker is found “sleeping in Eden’s garden,” in today’s song, Cain, the first murderer, represents a broken relationship. In “Sugar,” a line might reference the division of the world after the failure of the Tower of Babel. “Glass Heart Hymn,” the fourth track, drags down the melancholic resolution that “Better Life” left the listener with. “Glass” is also the first major musical shift on the record, which had been drums, keys, and mid-tempo ballads. Electronic drums, synths, and Daly’s crooning make the song sound like it’s a lost track from around 1983. Lyrically, “Glass Heart Hymn” is one of the most overtly religious on the album. Paper Route had avoided the Christian Rock label on their first record, but by this record, RadioU embraced them and welcomed them into the fold. Using the Cain and Abel story, Daly explores longing for forgiveness, and in the chorus, he gets it, via “Hallalujah[s] rain[ing] . . . and pour[ing]” upon him.

    LORD, HAVE YOU WALKED AWAY FROM ME? There is nothing that instills more fear into the heart of a church-raised child than upsetting God. The message comes as a double-forked tongue. The nursery school teacher says that Jesus loves you unconditionally, yet tells you the Bible stories about great men in the Bible whom God had chosen to do incredible things, only for them to turn their backs and do wicked things. For every King David, there was a King Saul. For every Daniel there was a Nebuchadnezzar. The cost of following God was high, and the path was steep, and narrow. In Mrs. Davis’s Sabbath School class, in the weekly Sabbath School magazine, in the Arthur Maxwell ‘s illustrated Bible Story volumes littered throughout doctor’s offices across America and in Allan’s home, before adolescence Allan was equipped with a knowledge of Biblical history. The tales of how those who would be great men made decisions centered around pride, some around selfishness, became villains, and were ultimately obliterated by divine retribution, helped him make decisions in his daily life. But sometimes, the voice of the villain would sound all too reasonable. What if he had been among the boys who mocked the prophet? How would he feel if God hadn’t accepted his sacrifice? Why couldn’t Cain give what he had to offer? There were always answers to this. In college he would read Conflict of the Ages series, which Adventists used as their primary interpretation of the Bible. The voice of the 19th century prophet Ellen White supplied the right way to read the scriptures. Why did he feel so cold after reading her works, though? Why did he feel more alienated? Why was his religion so alienating? Why couldn’t he get every thought into submission? But the fear of being further alienated from those deeply entrenched in the Adventist tradition kept him in. How could he be alienated from his God? How could he ever walk away?

     

  • “Months and Years” by Abandon Kansas, Friday, September 24, 2021

    Prior to signing with Gotee Records in 2009, Wichita-based band, Abandon Kansas garnered radio play on RadioU as an indie band. The band recorded with Gotee for five years before going independent, partnering with BadChristian Music to release their final project, Alligator, an album in which lead singer Jeremy Spring talked about with the BadChristian Podcast as an album dealing with his personal struggles in the band/Christian band circuit, dealing with doubt, substance abuse, and depression. To some Christian music fans, Alligator was too profane compared to their previous works and other Christian Rock bands in the scene. To others, Alligator proved to be a refreshing take on authenticity which the confounds of most Christian record labels censored. After the album was released, the band planned to tour with the album, but ultimately personal issues forced Spring to cancel the tour. The band went on indefinite hiatus, but in 2019 they renamed the band to Glass Age, releasing a three-song EP titled Bloom and taking the band in a different direction. 


    MOMENTUM IS HARD TO GAIN IN THIS KIND OF RAIN.  “Months and Years” is Abandon Kansas’s first radio single, and talks about the passage of time when people are separated. It also chronicles the dreams and struggles of a band trying to define their purpose. It reminds listeners to look back on their dreams and look to purpose that brought them to the point of pursuing them. Today this song speaks to me as I’m reevaluating my role as a writer and if it’s something I want to pursue. When I started blogging every day, I thought that it would be easy: just research and write about the songs that I love. I could discover new music and introduce my readers to my tastes in music. But little by little, I realized that the songs were shedding light on dusty corners of my soul that I felt compelled to explore. One of the reasons why I started writing again this year was to learn how to talk about myself, to tell my story–why I think the way that I do, how I adapted and shed certain beliefs. Yet, the process is terrifying at times, leaving me vulnerable to what the Internet has to say. I’ve been reflecting on my recent posts–since I started fictionalizing, since I stopped making every post about facts that I drummed up online–and I wonder what kind of writer I should be. Does this project continue into the next year? Do I continue to use it as my practice canvas? And ultimately, how can I ever find the time for rewriting when just writing a first draft takes up so much of my evening?

    A COUPLE OF MONTHS HAVE TURNED INTO SEVERAL YEARS. The Fall is often a time when I start to question my New Years Resolutions–the ones that have made it thus far. I go through depressive moods, often taking long walks, talking to myself. It’s quite embarrassing if I run into someone I know. These long walks around the neighborhood around the walking path around the small lake or across the college campus near my house clear my mind. I question why I’m writing a blog about music. I question every core element and think about problems I’m having. Why something isn’t fulfilling. I then make a plan about how to fix it. Hopefully, this gets taken care of in one long walk and one missed deadline. I’ve found, so far, with my blog that I haven’t missed a day yet. Gym commitments, diet commitments, Korean study commitments, often have withstand the answer to these existential questions. Music does not need to answer that question. I’ve found that music is the answer. A song can take my mind to a special place. A song helps me imagine the possibilities of being a different person or being in a different place. I noticed that after college I was less open to new musical tastes. These days I might prefer a good Bruce Springsteen song to something screamo with a melody. I may not be chasing what’s young and interesting–there’s too much I missed from the past–but I refuse to let my love of music fade. In these next months, I will determine the genre of writing that will accompany the soundtrack. I will experiment. I will perfect. And I will be ready for another year of blog entries.

     

  • "Frail" by Jars of Clay, Thursday, September 23, 2021

    Before their massively successful 1995 studio debut, Jars of Clay released a self-produced demo titled Frail, which included several songs that made it to their eponymous release. Two songs, though, were reworked and found their way onto their less commercially successful sophomore release, Much Afraid. Departing from their acoustic folk-rock sound, Much Afraid sounds like a 1997 album. It spawned two singles, “Crazy Times,” peaking at #38 on the Modern Rock singles, and “Five Candles” (You Were There), originally written for Jim Carrey‘s Liar Liar, but eventually used in Michael Keaton‘s Jack Frost.  Much Afraid is a fine Jars of Clay album. It’s more fun to listen to than their debut, varying between folk-rock and modern rock. However, it failed to propel Jars of Clay into the 1997 rock scene. Listeners may not remember them amongst their contemporaries, like The Goo Goo Dolls, Third Eye Blind, and Matchbox Twenty. Instead, they are a solid entry on the WOW 1999  tracklist, right after dc talk and the Newsboys. 

    YOUR PAIN BECOMES MY PEACE. Every year a collection of Contemporary Christian radio singles is released on a compilation CD. This collection was a list of songs that either were big hits on the charts or were projected to be big hits in the following year. In November 1995, WOW 1996 was released. I became aware of the collection because of summer camp in the year when I was a middle school student. While WOW 2000 had already been released, the camp counselors seemed to love WOW 1999 and incorporated the songs into everything. The activities that I signed up for were canoeing and rock climbing. The rock climbing wall was located in the same place and time as gymnastics, which meant that the young gymnasts had to practice for a routine they would perform on the final Saturday night. They tried the routine with disc 1 of WOW 1999. “Into Jesus”? Too slow. “Entertaining Angels?” Not quite. “Crazy Times?” A little too varied in tempo. “Love Me Good?” They blasted Michael W. Smith‘s vibey, electronic-bass-lined track over and over. So I came home from camp and thought I could buy this cool, new Christian album. But then I came to find out that rock music, of any kind, is evil. I hadn’t listened to much secular music up until that point, but I do remember hearing my dad’s music, classic Southern rock, Pink Floyd and ’90s bands, but it was pretty much confined to the garage when he was tinkering on a car, which, to me, was just a messy, uninteresting puzzle. However, my mom, who had stopped listening to popular music when she back to church only played classical or traditional music in the house. As a teenager with new feelings of questioning the world and sometimes anger, rock music could speak to those feelings in ways that Bach couldn’t. But after my mom’s friend’s special testimony about how her husband had been a wild rebel, “Runnin’ with the Devil” until he threw all of his tapes, including a Christian metal group, off the bridge (putting more plastic into the earth), it was concluded: no rock music was allowed in the house. I would have to sneak all of my CDs–for a time.

    IF I WAS NOT SO WEAK. . . It wasn’t until years later that I finally bought Much Afraid. Eventually, my mom even started listening to this music. She grew to love Michael W. Smith, especially his This Is Your Time album. My mom’s friend started listening to the Newsboys. All that talk about the evils of rock music seemed to be hinged on an unclear definition of what rock music is. The Newsboys = ok. Skillet, P.O.D. =hide. But one group I could never play in the car was Jars of Clay. Somehow, my mom thought they were Nirvana-heavy. I thought that their debut album would be like something I had heard from dc talk. Turns out it was one of the calmest albums in my collection. Eventually, I bought Much Afraid at a discount as a cassette. The album was much better than their debut, and not weird like If I Left the Zoo. One of the standout tracks on Much Afraid was the nearly 7-minute fifth track, “Frail.” The song gets more chill as it goes on, using a New Age-sounding English horn in the spaces between the lyrics. Dan Haseltine’s voice is always calm, which was probably one of the reasons they never made it as a rock band. “Frail” is beautifully meditative. But, when I read the meditation in the lyrics, it’s a bit disturbing to my current deconstructed Christian worldview.  “If I was not so weak, if I was not so cold . . . I would be “What? We finally hear the final word of the sentence at the end of the song: frail. Rock music has its problems, and parents can help their teenage children make the right decisions for the right songs at the right time. But Christian Rock, well, it can focus so much on one’s lack of self-worth–not saying that secular music doesn’t do that–that it can be harmful to a person’s mental health. “Frail” is one take on Christianity, and it’s valid. But, if you meditate on it too much, you might fall into the trope of Christian songs that dwell on the fact that you are an unredeemable “piece of shit,” in the words of Kevin and Caroline from Good Christian Fun.  

     

  • "Second Hand Smoke" by William Fitzsimmons ft. Abby Gunderson, Wednesday, September 22, 2021

    Before becoming a full-time musician, William Fitzsimmons was a practicing mental health therapist. Music was always a presence in the singer’s life when he was growing up. His father built a pipe organ in their family residence. Turning to music, the former therapist writes songs about intellectual conundrums, love and loss. Graduating from the Reformed Presbyterian Geneva College, the artist, throughout his career, has kept a faith in the musical conversation. Throughout the singer-songwriter’s discography, music has been therapeutic. His sophomore record, Goodnight, helped him process his parents’ divorce when he was a teenager. But the story behind Mission Bell is about a personal mental health crisis in the making. 


    WASHED HANDS, CHANGED PLANS. In an interview with Two Story Melody, Fitzsimmons revealed that he had recorded with his friend and bandmate, but he found out that his wife had been having an affair with this friend. He threw away the original recordings, rewrote the songs, and recorded a breakup record. The soft-voiced, big bearded singer keeps his music mellow as always. Mission Bell is still the same kind of Grey’s Anatomy/ Brothers and Sisters coffeeshop music of his early career, not even using a profane word to express the emotion, though he would curse on following releases. But throughout the 10-song journey that is Mission Bell, listeners hear a full range of emotion. From the first single and opening track “Second Hand Smoke,” the song of the day, to the closer “Afterlife” with its eerie electronic guitar/synth production, the songs are bathed in metaphor. I listened to “Afterlife” a lot last year. My Apple Music play count has the song in my Top 30 plays. There was something about the song that made it very 2020, pandemic-friendly. “Second Hand Smoke” gets the album off the ground quickly, establishing the “William Fitzsimmon” sound. The metaphor is a hazy comparison, equating love to something toxic like the secondhand smoke from a cigarette. The music video depicts the stages of a love affair in a rural costal area, ultimately leaving the couple parting ways in the end. Smoke isn’t good for the lungs. Smoking is bad for your health. The fumes that the relationship was running on, left an unpleasant film on the clothes, and at some point, you have to change them. 

    I WAS HOPING THAT SOMEBODY WOULD BREAK MY COVER.  Honesty hides behind the wisps of smoke, and when the smoke has cleared, will you like what you see? It’s a question at the center of the song. Ultimately, the very person whom Fitzsimmons has entrusted his heavy, poet’s heart to, breaks his trust. But this story is as old as humanity. Ever since people have decided to be monogamous beings–whether we believe in the Genesis story or if we look at the historical joining of two families as a mutually beneficial arrangement–the sacred union has had some problems. While problems like infidelity are as old as time, “love marriages,” as opposed to arranged marriages became more prevalent after the Enlightenment of the 1700s, which marriage researcher Stephanie Coontz called the “Radical Idea of Marrying for Love.” As more emphasis was placed on women’s rights, a marriage, ideally, became an equal meeting of the minds and bodies. But in this equality, there is more that can go wrong. Questions about if you can ever really know another person, if another person can really accept the darkest parts of you, if a marriage commitment can really last from the time a person is 18 or 28 or 38 until “death due us part.” No two marriages are alike, whether successful or failed. Questions about if it’s more of an intellectual partnership, a sexual outlet, an old-fashioned business alliance keep marriage therapists in business. And then there’s the fact that we turn on television and the series that play William Fitzsimmons’ music can’t keep a married couple together happily. As audiences, we get bored seeing marital bliss. Our own upbringings, whether watching our parents or our parents’ close friends’ marriages fall apart, make us wonder is there such a thing as an equal meeting of the body and the mind? Or is all as toxic as secondhand smoke?

     

  • "Right Now" by Mary J. Blige, Tuesday, September 21, 2021

    Mary J. Blige is a living legend of R&B and pop music. She’s enjoyed critical and commercial success from her debut album, produced by Sean Combs (a.k.a. Puffy Daddy). Her music sold well into the 2010s, but by 2014, the now middle-aged singer was looking for something new to freshen up her music.  This included relocating to London, working with younger musicians, such as Disclosure, Sam Smith, and Naughty Boy, who wrote her songs, and allowing the creative collaborative process to make the record. Blige hoped to take inspiration from the British sound that had become a significant pulse in the pop music of the 2000s and 2010s with artists such as Adele, Amy Winehouse, and Sam Smith. The result was what Billboard called the album “objectively [Blige’s] best [release] since 2005’s The Breakthrough.” 


    NO, NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU THE TIME. I first heard Mary J. Blige in 2001 in her song “Family Affair.” I didn’t care for the song for a few reasons. First, I thought it was too slow. It seemed to go on forever. But the truth is it’s pretty average in length. Second, the video was a little shocking to me as a sheltered12-year-old. But the third reason, I’m regretful of: racial bias. Having just rewatched and relistened to “Family Affair,” it’s really not that slow nor shocking. True, it was a massive hit and thus unavoidable on the radio, but I wonder if I treated this song unfairly because of the way ’90s R&B and Hip Hop was treated in my house–change the channel whenever it came on. I remember hearing my dad saying, “This kind of music isn’t for us,” which may be right sometimes, but I lament my lack of musical diversity when I was growing up. Although Mary J. Blige was off my radar, my friend, Stephen makes a best of the year list, and in 2015, he ranked “Right Now” as his 31st best song of that year. My friend Janelle also wrote commentary on Stephen’s list. I listened to Stephen’s top 40 of the year, and I was impressed by the Mary J. Blige song. It was smooth in the verse but used disorienting synths in the right places on the chorus. It was wasn’t until last year, though, that I started listening to the full album, The London Sessions. I found the album to be a soft, sometimes dreary collection of mid-tempo R&B songs twinged with electronica and smooth jazz. The album has a nice rainy-day feel for it, and it’s been pretty rainy lately. “Right Now” is a song in which Mary J. Blige releases her emotion about a lackadaisical lover. She doesn’t have time for his games.  

    YOU TAKE FROM ME, SO WHY YOU HOLDING BACK? Do you ever sit around wondering why friends don’t come around here anymore? What was the final straw that made that person fade out of your life? On Chuseok of 2014, a three day harvest festival in Korea in which most of the shops and restaurants are closed, Allan’s friend from college, Sarah, was visiting Seoul. She visited some of her friends who were also in Korea, whom Allan had never met, but she ended up spending a lot of time with Allan. The two had been inseparable in college, talking late into the night about books and television shows, arguing the nuances of meaning in the meaningful and the in the trivial. Anyone who witnessed their late-night conversations on the promenade between Miller and Davis Halls or sitting in class together would have wrongly assumed that they were a couple. They were just a couple of English majors. On occasion, those late night conversations might include a boy Sarah had a crush on or a girl Allan admired. “You know,” she said one night as they overlooked the dormitories. “Everyone says that we should be together.” “What do you think about that?” “No offense,” Sarah paused for a moment and looked at the sky. “But I don’t see it.” Allan gave a soft laugh, as if trying to stifle it from being heard from the rest of empty campus. “You know, in some other timeline, we would be so good for one another,” she said. “I know what you mean. It’s like we’re an old married couple, without the spark.” “Exactly!” Sarah shouted a little louder than she expected. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to articulate that. So we both find that spark with other people, and it hasn’t worked out yet.” When Sarah visited in the Fall of 2014, though the two of them couldn’t pick up where they left off. Too much time had passed. They met on the day before Chuseok and decided to spend the day at a museum that was open and go Seoul Tower to look at the full moon. But Allan hadn’t come alone. On the day before Chuseok, Kelly tagged along before traveling to her parents’ home on the East Sea the following day. What Allan thought of as a nice day with two of his favorite people was actually a day full of misunderstandings and subtext.