Mixtapemotions

  • "Shine Like Stars" by Holland, Saturday, November 20, 2021

    Unlike 2008, 2003 was a pretty busy year in Tooth & Nail. It was coming to the end of the ’90s legendary acts, like Slick Shoes, Dogwood, Ghoti Hook, Bleach, Hangnail, and Side Walk Slam. It was the beginning of the journey for Mae, Anberlin, and FM Static. It was the rebranding of Thousand Foot Krutch, Spoken, and Further Seems Forever, the former bands transitioning out of rap-rock and the latter reappearing without the now-Dashboard Confessional frontman. Throughout the year, though, there were many underrated gems. Furthermore released their melodic hip hop second record, She and I. Beloved released their only record on Solid State. Lucerin Blue released four singles from their Tales of the Knife before disbanding. Watashi Wa released their first album, but it’s not well remembered. 
    FELL LOVE, PUNCH YOU IN THE GUT. Holland’s Photographs and Tidal Waves was released on February 11, 2003. If memory serves me, RadioU promoted two singles from the album, but the the band disappeared later that year or in 2004 because of legal trouble. It turns out, the band wasn’t allowed to use the moniker Holland because another band had the name. If you search AppleMusic and probably Spotify, there are tons of acts going under the name Holland. The band who performed today’s song was formed by brothers Will and Josiah Holland in Houston, Texas as Somerset. The band moved to Nashville, Tennessee and signed to Tooth & Nail Records, changing their name to Holland for their 2003 debut recorded with Aaron Sprinkle. An emo-sounding rock record perfectly in-line with the Tooth & Nail lineup at the time, Holland seemed pretty well equipped for the Cornerstone-to-Warped Tour success that groups like Anberlin, Underoath, Further Seems Forever, and Mae would enjoy. However, for every Anberlin, there was a Watashi Wa. For every Underoath, there was a Beloved. And for every Mae, there was a Holland. Like Watashi Wa, Holland changed their name. Watashi Wa tried to become The Eager Seas, but ultimately had to stay Watashi Wa to push album sales. Holland had to change their name, so they became The Lonely Hearts. Also like Watashi Wa, The Lonely Hearts changed their sound to Americana. Though The Lonely Hearts’ record came out on Tooth & Nail, it wasn’t well promoted and the band went independent after that and hasn’t been making music consistently. 
    FRUSTRATED, MOTIVATED. “Shine Like Stars” and “I’m Not Backing Down” were the two songs that received Christian radio attention from Photographs and Tidal Waves. I never owned this album, but when I found it on AppleMusic, I really liked the emotional song “Because of You,” a tribute to the band’s early days. The song talks about having to break away from family to pursue their dreams. The acoustic song with a string section was a perfect emo song of the time. My favorite part of today’s song is the bridge. The harmonies in “Shine Like Stars” remind me of a Christmas song, an old one sung at church. It makes me feel very young, younger than five on a snowy evening. I’m looking out the window looking at the snowdrifts, shown in the moonlight and by the lone street light at the end of the driveway. I’m looking out as snowmobiles are zigzagging through the fields between our cabin and the village we lived near. I think of the old Christmas songs we sang when the weather got colder. Our country church for a long time didn’t have a pianist, so we sang a-cappella, getting slower as the song went on. There were a few Christian Rock songs around the early ‘00s that gave me a similar “old churchy vibe,” even though they weren’t particularly religious songs. “Marvelous Things” by Eisley sounded like a depressing Christmas carol. The singing on “Walls” by Emery gave me that feeling. 

     https://genius.com/Holland-usa-shine-like-stars-lyrics

  • “Born to Die” by Lana del Rey, Friday, November 19, 2021

    A month before releasing her debut record under her crafted stage name, Lana del Rey, Elizabeth Grant released the title track as the second single for 2012’s Born to Die. Her first record was released on an indie label which eventually was pulled from distribution. Del Rey, at the time known as Del Ray, claimed the label lacked funding. After the album’s release, the singer took to refining her image and writing for her major-label debut. The video for the first single, “Video Games,” went viral after its release in June of 2011. Pitchfork ranked the song as the ninth best song of 2011. “Born to Die” was released in December and introduced listeners to themes of both the album and Lana del Rey’s career, even better than her first single.


    THE ROAD IS LONG, WE CARRY ON/ TRY TO HAVE FUN IN THE MEANTIME. The album Born to Die set up Lana del Rey as an old-soul hipster pop singer. The singer didn’t have much in common with the pop singers of the the early ‘10s other than a few lyrics that could shock a conservative listenership. Lana del Rey’s sophomore record reminded me of the spirit of Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” mixed with Amy Winehouse’s lyrical themes. On top of being highly stylized, Born to Die is highly produced. Listening to the album, I hear hip-hop beats, samples, elaborate string sections, and James-Bond sounding guitar for finishing touches. Born to Die breathes new life into a dusty record. The lyrics on the record have lead a critic to call del Rey’s style “Hollywood Sadcore.” Born to Die references literature, opera, movie stars of yesteryear, and blends them all into a portrait of American culture. The pieces of Americana del Rey picks up on throughout her career makes her music all the more vivid. “Born to Die,” the opening track, sets up the album as American teenager hedonism, a theme she explores throughout the album. Love is the only worthwhile thing and worthy of pursuit, but “life is long . . . try to have fun in the meantime” means numbing the length with drugs, which can cut life short. 

    I CAN SEE THAT ONCE I WAS BLIND. We often think that our generation invented sex, drugs, and good music. Some people think of the good ol’ days when things were pure. I’ve been thinking about this golden age argument lately, especially as I’ve been listening to older music. Tina Turner was born in 1939. The Beatles were born in the 1940s. Rock music has been in our culture for four generations, jazz proceeded rock music. While Leave It to Beaver was on television, playwrights Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, and Tennessee Williams were exploring different aspects of what it meant to be American through their plays. Also the Beats were writing counter-cultural works which would influence the hippies of the ’60s. Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll were just a rehashing of sex, drugs, and jazz, which was a rehashing of sex, alcohol, and bar tunes. The constant wheel of cultural reincarnation makes Del Rey nihilistic in her message. The singer uses the past to show us that really nothing is new under the American banner. Individualist souls who believe that “money is the reason we exist,” men who can teach women “what fast is,” all the while numbing themselves through drugs and alcohol is the America that Del Rey brings to light. While many would say that Del Rey is condoning this lifestyle, and she certainly is glamorizing it, the singer is wrapped in layers of irony, perhaps playing a character. I take Born to Die to be a poignant critique of American culture. I just wish I could feel the same way about Trump’s presidency.  

  • “Someday” by Aaron Sprinkle ft. Matty Mullins, Thursday, November 18, 2021

    Aaron Sprinkle is a musician’s musician. And I’ve talked about him so much that any readers I have would be sick of reading about him. I talked about his solo career when I talked about Fair. Throughout this year, I’ve talked about how prolific Sprinkle has been as a producer, but I’ve rarely talked about his personal music. In his various podcast appearances, Sprinkle talks about how he came to realize that his musical career was about making other musicians sound incredible, as his bands and solo projects under performed in comparison to the records he produced. But when Sprinkle releases his own music, listeners get a look into the genius behind the hit records. Sprinkle’s 2017 record Real Life is perhaps his most accessible work and has received the most critical love due to its keen sense of the contemporary music scene and its ability to link the new to the past.


    WITHOUT A LIGHT TO SHINE OR A ROOM TO GRACE. Ugh. It’s photo day at school. I’m cringing thinking about what I wore. What I thought was cool. But an ’80s photo, presumably of Aaron Sprinkle with his natural or bleached blond pineapple, jean jacket, an single cross earring dangling from his left lobe sets a tone for Sprinkle’s Real Life before you can even start track one, an electronic ’80s/’90s-sounding track featuring Poema‘s Elle Puckett. Listening to the album as a whole, several themes stick out. First is nostalgia for the ’80s and ’90s. I’ve talked about how nostalgia isn’t great for moving music forward. It’s kind of like sugar. It’s great to have from time to time, but a musical diet based on sugar can be dangerous. However, nostalgia by legacy acts is different. In 2017, Sprinkle is producing the music that he wanted to hear as a teenager, but by the time he became a producer, musical tastes were shifting away from that sound. However, Sprinkle’s use of female singers on “Invincible,” “Real Life,” and “I Don’t Know Who You Are” give him a contemporary sound, similar to The Chainsmokers or Alan Walker, so the album blends nostalgia with contemporary music. Which brings up another theme: collaboration. Perhaps why the album works so much better than other Sprinkle records is that listeners are excited to see whom he’s recording with. Sprinkle has recorded with so many acts and on Real Life he calls for favors from Elle Puckett, Max Bemis (Say Anything, Hebrews), Sherri Dupree-Bemis (Eisley, Hebrews), singer-songwriter Stephanie Skipper Smith, and today’s song with Memphis May Fire’s lead singer, Matty Mullins. 

    TEAR-STAINED EYES INSIDE OF YOUR HEAD. Lyrically, “Someday” isn’t one of the strongest tracks on the record. It does fit into the lyrical themes of the record: feeling inadequate, longing for the past, and looking forward to the future as an escape from the present. Musically, though, the song plays with what sounds like midi-synthesizers and maybe an oboe giving the song the feeling of playing an old video or computer game. When Sprinkle produces, he works from feelings rather than analysis. On one of the episodes of his podcast Moontraveling with fellow musician Matthew Schwartz, Sprinkle talked about his ultimate goal in producing music is to recreate feeling he had when listening to music growing up. He talks about listening to the Beatles on the beach and being fascinated with The Cure. On the latest episode of the Labeled podcast, he said that food could also create some of those feelings. Perhaps that’s why Sprinkle’s productions were so meaningful to me when I was growing up and why those albums have created an imprint on my memories. While there are very few albums that he’s produced that resemble a Beatle’s record, somehow he can manufacture moments in a song, corners that we can explore through chords and cadences that remind him of when he first fell in love with music. Likewise, a Sprinkle record and place me in my teenage bedroom with my Sony stereo, or on a roadtrip cramped in the back seat of a Toyota Corolla, or behind the wheel of my first car. Today, when I listen to music, I measure production against Aaron Sprinkle, something I would have never done had I gone down the rabbit hole of listening to Tooth & Nail albums.  

  • "Dead Inside" by Muse, Wednesday, November 17, 2021

    English rock band Muse has been making dystopian concept albums since 2009’s The Resistance. Their third concept album, Drones, has a more fleshed out story than the previous records. Reacting to world governments’ increased usage of drones to carry out covert military operations, the album imagines a scenario in which soldiers are conditioned to “kill with no remorse,” ultimately becoming a human drone, furthering only the government’s cause. By the end of the album, the protagonist wakes up to the manipulation and defects. The album topped Billboard’s Hot 200 album charts and the world tour was filmed and shown in theaters around the globe. 


    YOUR LIPS FEEL WARM TO TOUCH. As a three-person band, Muse has packed a lot into their sound. The band wanted Drones to be a departure from their symphonic sound they created on The Resistance and The 2nd Law, working with producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange to return to a hard rock sound. Lange came to fame for breaking AC/DC into the American rock scene and his production on classic rock albums from Foreigner to Def Leppard can be felt within Drones. However, the producer’s pop sensibility comes into focus on the opening track of Drones. Lange also produced many pop artists in the ’80s and ’90s from Bryan Adams and Tina Turner to the Backstreet Boys and ex-wife Shania Twain. But there’s something flashy about “Dead Inside” like tracks that Lange produced for Lady Gaga. “Dead Inside” sounds like a hipster pop song. It could feel out of place or even an embarrassing attempt of dad-rockers to try to sound relevant. But it’s too catchy and Muse pull off the ironic pop-atmosphere seamlessly. They would flirt with synth-pop on their next record, Simulation Theory, but for the pop influences, “Dead Inside” is the first and last of the band’s venture into pop on Drones.

    RELEASE A MILLION DRONES. The title comes from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, of which the album owes much of its inspiration. At the end of the novel, Winston surrenders to O’Brian, who tells him: “Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity.” I had a coworker who always used to say she felt “dead inside,” mainly when reacting to stupid decisions at my previous job. Taking a look at the song out of its directly intended context, it’s pretty relatable. We can certainly criticize the Bush/Obama/ Trump/Biden administrations for pulling off drone strikes, sometimes even killing innocent civilians. We can criticize unjust wars. But it’s part of a larger problem. Orwell sets up a world in Nineteen Eighty-Four in which the people are brainwashed to believe the lies that the government has in place. They are told narratives, which to us as readers, these narratives are nonsense, but to the characters in the fictional world, they fully believe without questioning, except for when Winston gets a moment of lucidity. The easiest thing to do is to follow the narratives, and Big Brother fights against those who question its values. The novel makes us think about whether or not we know the truth or if we are subjects to propaganda. But the government may not be the only entity brainwashing us. It could be the company we work for. We may have seen that the company does some pretty stuff, but we all need to collect a paycheck, right? It could be religion. The Bible says X, so why does my church do Y? Follow along and you’ll be dead inside.
    Official Music Video:
    Lyric Video:

  • "Without You" by Tyler Ward ft. Alyson Stoner, Tuesday, November 15, 2021

    In 2012, Tyler Ward released Hello. Love. Heartbreak, an EP that would shift his music back to originals rather than covers. Before YouTube, the singer-songwriter struggled to find a following, playing local gigs and recording his music at home, practicing his production on himself. He had uploaded covers of popular songs, but didn’t get a following until he had heard that famous singers were going to record a new version of “We Are the World.” So before the new version of ‘We Are the World” was uploaded to YouTube, Ward covered the song, and for a short time, his version was the first video that appeared when viewers searched for the song! Viewers then started subscribing to Tyler’s YouTube channel, discovering his cover songs, and today the singer has 2 million subscribers.

    I COULD HEAR MY SONG PLAYING ON THE RADIO. Thanks to YouTube and Patreon, Tyler Ward has built a successful YouTube music model. Like fellow YouTubers Kurt Hugo Schneider, Sam Tsui, and Boyce Avenue, Ward has done world tours. The YouTube musicians formed a community, often collaborating in each other’s songs. “Without You” features Disney Channel actress-turned singer-songwriter Alyson Stoner, offering harmonies on the track. When Tyler started releasing mostly original music, I wasn’t as interested in him. His 2007 record Vol. 1 was an example of him experimenting with genre–rock, pop, storytelling, but it took him a while to get into the groove of writing music as a pop singer. However, from time to time I find myself listening to a song or two of his. In May, I talked about his 2017 song “Teenage Summer.” Today’s song has beautiful harmonies together with Alyson. “Without You” was released in 2014 and in 2018, Ward released a 24-track compilation of his covers and originals in a record called Covers & Co-writes, featuring songs by Adele, Taylor Swift, Drake, and others, and collaborations with featuring artists like Tiffany Alvord, Chris Collins, Madilyn, and others.
    FACE ON THE COVER OF TIME TIME MAGAZINE. In a performance of “Without You,” Ward says that the song is about a special person, whether a parent, sibling, lover, or friend. Becoming famous and losing the ones you love isn’t worth the fame. On the Podcast Tommy2.net, Ward talks about how he felt that he mishandled his early fame, drinking too much and trying to fill the void with money and girls. He wanted to quit music until he “had a conversation with the maker of the universe” and found a new purpose in his music. Since that time, Ward has become evangelistic at times on social media, talking about a pornography addiction and sharing Bible verses. He has also covered several worship songs. Whatever happened during this dark time or after, the Reddit has a discussion about this. I hope that allegations of YouTuber and former collaborator Alex G are false. I hope that Tyler Ward has truly found a reason to make music, and I hope that he can be satisfied in his faith. However, it is disturbing how many people fall back on Christianity, turning to God to ease their consciences and never having to confess their sins to their fellow man, woman, or person. It makes me think of when Alec in Tess of the d’Urbervilles comes back as a minister, downplaying that he raped her and telling her that she just needs to believe in God. No, I’m not personally calling out Tyler Ward, but please religious people, let’s do better. 

      

     

  • "Waiting for the Final Leaf to Fall" by Paper Route, Monday, November 15, 2021

    In 2007 Paste Magazine named Paper Route “One to Watch.” And while they never lived up to their potential, the Nashville band recorded music that they believed in. The band released several independent EPs before signing to Universal Records. Their debut LP Absence and remix EP Additions were released on Universal Motown. But before their major-label debut, the band released a 5-song EP titled Are We All Forgotten, a named for a song which would also appear on their debut LP. After sharing several songs on the band’s MySpace page, Are We All Forgotten was released on July 8, 2008. Absence was released on April 28 the next year.

    THIS IS THE FIRST YEAR. Are We All Forgotten featured big studio production the band hadn’t used on their earlier EPs, Paper Route and A Thrill of Hope. The band’s previous work had been more in the vein of Americana. But the complex beats and noisy synths on AWAF showed where the band was heading. Yet, the band’s ear for Americana isn’t completely lost. The opening track “American Clouds” features a harmonica played over a soaring synth-line. The effect on the intro to “Are We All Forgotten” sounds like it’s an acoustic instrument processed through a synthesizer. And today’s song, the moody “Waiting for the Final Leaf to Fall” would be an acoustic guitar ballad if it weren’t for the hip-hop bass, ’80s synths, heavy drumming, and ’80s synths. In fact, one of the reasons I fell in love with Paper Route was their ability to translate their songs into different genres. In their early career, they would translate the studio production into an acoustic, multi-instrumental spectacular on any occasion. But for whatever reason, the band became a revolving door of musicians from album to album. Only singer JT Daly and bassist/keyboardist Chad Howat remained for the band’s full career.
    I’LL PROBABLY SEE YOU ON THE RUN. As fun as it was to see Paper Route performing live acoustic, the band’s co-founder, guitarist/back-up vocalist Andy Smith, left the band a year after their debut LP was released. Smith released an album under the moniker Brother Leather–a weird, but oddly charming album called Meat Mural. Perhaps the band’s shift into electronic music or JT’s vocals rendered Smith’s contribution to the band redundant or maybe it was bad blood or just a desire to do something else, but I almost lost interest in Paper Route when Smith departed. There were two reasons: the first was he was good-looking, but I listen to ugly bands, so that wasn’t a real reason. The real reason, though, was I wasn’t sure what to think of a band without a full-time guitarist. Today, I recognize that there are many “one-person bands.” M83 and Gotye were examples of this changing sound in Alternative music, but even bands like The Classic Crime and Relient K would become just one or two regular members. Paper Route without a guitarist was an early model of this new kind of music. Music that is made in a studio and musicians are hired to perform the artist’s vision. In 2010, the leaves of rock music were turning.

  • "Run (운영) by Nell (넬), Sunday, November 14, 2021

    After a hiatus which allowed each member of the group to complete their conscription for the Korean military, Nell reappeared in 2012 with their fifth album Slip Away in April. By the end of the year, the band started their 3-EP Gravity series. Their second EP in the series, Escaping Gravity, was released on June 10, 2013. Escaping Gravity gave the band a different tone. The lead single, “Ocean of Light” was the most optimistic Nell track they had released up until that point. On August 7th, the band released a single that they recorded for the MBC drama Two Weeks. The upbeat song sounded like it could have been recorded during the same sessions for Escaping Gravity with its guitar and keyboard production and fast tempo. “Run” sets up the show as the song appears in the action sequence before the story begins and also is played at the end of the episode as we see the protagonist framed for murder.


    I FALL AND BREAK EVERY DAY. Airing on MBC between August 7- September 26, 2013, the sixteen episodes of Two Weeks tell the story of a gangster, Tae-san, who had given up a life of crime because he fell in love. But when the romance doesn’t work out, instead of going back to a life of crime, he works in a pawn shop. At the start of the drama, though, he finds out that he is a father and that his daughter has lukaemia. He is a match for his daughter’s bone marrow transplant and is scheduled for surgery two weeks later, but his old gang boss, together with a politician, decide to frame Tae-san for a murder of a special agent infiltrating the gang leader’s operation. The series has Tae-san on the run from the law and from his former life in order to save his daughter. While “Run” may not be Nell’s most poetic song, the lyrics about a tortured existence from which the singer must fight against every day fits well into the drama during the action scenes. The drama currently isn’t available on Netflix in Korea, but a poor quality version, sped up to dodge the copyright police, is available on YouTube. The quality issue makes it hard to be sucked into the storyline, and the sped-up song is very hard to enjoy.

    I HOLD ONTO MY SCAR, WHICH DIDN’T EVEN HAVE TIME TO HEAL. The writers and producers of Korean dramas know how to hook their audience. However, there are so many dramas that I’ve started and quit. These are just a few problems that I’ve noticed when attempting a Korean drama. First, the episodes are just too long. An American network series can be up to 24 to 50 minute episodes, but a Korean drama is well over an hour in length. There are usually less than 20 episodes, so they cram more than a season’s worth of story into a mini series. This could be an advantage; however, it often seems that the writers run out “fun and games” in the middle. The dramas that I have stuck with in the end add interesting characters or plot twists that make sense for the characters they’ve developed. But there’s nothing worse when you get a few episodes in and the plot starts repeating itself. And a single love interest isn’t enough to make a drama flow. So often it seems that the writers focus too much on the love story and not enough on the premise that made viewers love the show. We want more action, more bizarre cases, more conflict between other characters. The last reason I give up on dramas is entirely my fault. I’m terrible at sitting down and watching something. I have to move around–clean, prepare something a class, cook dinner. All of these things make it hard to sit down and read subtitles. I’ve watched so many Episode 1s and so few Episode 16s, but there are a few I enjoyed. My favorite is Reply 1987 (응답하러 1997), and I’ve also enjoyed Netflix‘s Move to Heaven earlier this year. And Prison Playbook had a lot of fun characters. There are several others I’ve finished, but those are three I fully endorse.
    Video with English translation and scenes from Two Weeks:
    Nell performing the song at their annual Nell’s Room concert in 2013:

    Two Weeks Episode 1 with English subtitles (poor quality):

     
     

  • "All Too Well (10 Minute Version)" by Taylor Swift, Saturday, November 13, 2021

    Last year we got two new Taylor Swift records. This year, we get two re-recorded records. In April, we got Taylor’s Version of Fearless. Yesterday, Swift dropped a new version of Red, expanding the 65 minute original album to 130 minutes of the original plus tons of new songs. When Taylor announced that one of her songs was “like 10 minutes long” fans began to speculate that they would finally get to hear the album’s gem “All Too Well” in its original form.  The 5:29 track was already one of Swift’s longest songs, but she revealed to Rolling Stone in 2020 that the original song was whittled down from a 10-minute song that contained explicit lyrics–off brand for Taylor at the time. Along with the release of Taylor’s version of Red, the singer released a 15-minute short film to accompany the new version of “All Too Well” and there was too much to talk about for this not to be the song of the day.

    I LEFT MY SCARF THERE AT YOUR SISTER’S HOUSE. I think I had heard this song before, but I never really listened to it until today. I watched the music video, which was a compelling interpretation of the song. I remember hearing that the song was rumored to be about Swift’s short-lived relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal, but I’ve never been much for celebrity gossip. I couldn’t care less about celebrity sightings at the Hollywood 7-Eleven, and I’m certainly not keeping up with Kim and Pete Davidson. But Taylor Swift’s lyrics remind me that celebrities are people too. They’re not just flat characters until we see them on the screen. Taylor takes us back to the fall of 2010, when she started dating Gyllenhaal in the peak of his fame. Jake was 30, Taylor was 20. A previous relationship between Swift and John Mayer had an even bigger age gap: Taylor 19, Mayer 32. Like Mayer, whose relationship with Taylor is allegedly chronicled in the song “Dear John,” Gyllenhaal broke Swift’s heart, despite the relationship lasting only two months. The intimate details about this relationship are poignantly described in the lines of this song, pulling the listener into an engaging romantic-comedy style romance. It reminds listeners of break-ups and the red flags too often overlooked. It makes listeners think of the good times before the bad.
    YOU KEPT ME LIKE A SECRET, BUT I KEPT YOU LIKE AN OATH. Hosts of Spotify’s The Ringer: Every Single Taylor Swift Album Nora Princiotti and Nathan Hubbard talk about the disjointed sound of Red. The hosts argue that Red served a purpose to prepare her fans for her pop career, while linking her music to her old genre. The songs alternate between country and pop, between producers, and between musical ideas. The lead single “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” established a relationship with Shellback and Max Martin that would score Swift her first Hot 100 #1 hit. Her work with Ed Sheeran, Jack Antonoff, Snow Patorl’s Gary Lightbody would continue throughout her career. But the conceptual reason Swift’s Red alternates between Country and Pop was that she wanted to convey the emotional rollercoaster of unhealthy relationships. Gyllenhaal, who didn’t even come to Swift’s 21st birthday party, hasn’t talked much about his relationship with the young singer. The lyrics of “All Too Well” portray a young girl in love with an older man, but the older man doesn’t take her seriously. The video shows an argument between the couple. The girl is upset that the man ignores her when he is with his friends, even brushing away her hand. He then claims he didn’t do that. Whether or not the details of the Taylor-Jake relationship are accurately portrayed in “All Too Well,” the song reminds listeners that there is a reason we fall for “that guy” with all of his flaws. The way he makes us feel when we’re alone is different than when we’re together in public. And while it may be fun to be a secret for a little while, the oath will certainly be broken by someone in an unhealthy relationship.

  • “Chicago” by Sufjan Stevens, Friday, November 12, 2021

    Sufjan Stevens Presents: Come On Feel the ILLINOISE was the breakthrough album from the singer-songwriter. The second in an ambitious series to create an album about each of the 50 states, though later retracted as a joke, Illinois topped Billboard‘s Heat Seekers charts and introduced countless new fans to Stevens’ musical storytelling. Musically, Illinois is dense. Layer upon layer of sound is added to a composition that sounds sometimes like a marching band, sometimes like a jazz band, sometimes like a folk song, and sometimes like a symphony. Stevens prepared the lyrics by obsessively immersing himself in writers, poets, and historians who wrote about the state in order to reference some of the most Illinois things that locals of the small towns and large cities could pick up on the record. The album is rich in geography, historical figures, and mythology of the midwestern state.


    I FELL IN LOVE AGAIN. Illinois has a score of 90% on Metacritic, ranking at number #54, at the time of writing this post, just above Carrie & Lowell at #55, which also has a score of 90%. I would personally rate Carrie & Lowell higher than Illinois based on listenability. Some of the moments on Illinois, while I don’t dispute their artistry, are not as easy to listen to as the smooth sounds of album that tributes his mother. After lots of frills and instrumentation, Illinois starts to pick up momentum with the disturbing track “John Wayne Gacy, Jr” about the serial killer who preyed upon young men in the ’70s. At track number 9, the soft orchestration of “Go! CHICAGO! Go! Yeah!”–better known by its single name “Chicago” starts. The musical contradiction of the soft strings playing the melody with the fast trumpet, piano, and drums creates a carefree youthful sound, with an underlying urgency. The lyrics are a semi-autobiographical roadtrip Stevens took with a friend from New York to Chicago. However, in the singer’s unstable childhood, he spent some time living in Chicago, even going to his first rock concert in the city. There is a hopefulness in the song when the choir sings “All things go,” making whatever hardship about sleeping in a van or selling your “clothes to the state” seem to be worth it.

    IN A VAN, WITH MY FRIEND. My first exposure to Sufjan Stevens was this album, but I didn’t jump on this record. My sister listened to it, but I thought it was a little too much “what the kids are listening to these days” when I was in college. I remember one of my roommates bought this album used at a massive used media store near my college. I slowly got into Sufjan Stevens, starting with “Casimir Pulaski Day,” which examined a faith, despite not having a prayer answered. When I saw the movie Little Miss Sunshine, which featured “Chicago” I started listening to Stevens more. The quirky indie film about a family on a roadtrip for their daughter to fulfill her dream to enter a child beauty pageant, while each member works out his or her personal demons was quite a memorable comedic existential film that was only enhanced with two songs by Stevens on the soundtrack. “Chicago” both appeared in the trailer and in the film. In the trailer, we see the family running to catch their runaway yellow Volkswagen T2 Microbus. Listening to “Chicago” reminds me of that scene along with Steve Carell playing a suicidal Proust scholar, Paul Dano breaking his character’s sworn silence after receiving some bad news, the comically creepy MC of the pageant, and of course, Little Miss Sunshine herself performing the *cough* dance routine, central to the film. Ultimately, though, the film is about family and the bond of being “in a van” together. I think the warm tones of Stevens’ orchestration capture this togetherness. Even when there is so much sadness to be felt in his music, there are truly bright and beautiful moments too.

  • "Home Is a Fire" by Death Cab for Cutie, Thursday, November 11, 2021

    Codes and Keys was a very different Death Cab for Cutie album. The records prior to the band’s 2011 album were guitar-based, but the band’s producer and guitarist Chris Walla and lead singer Ben Gibbard decided to make guitar a secondary feature of the band’s seventh album. Furthermore, the band broke with the melancholy, producing what listeners found to be a decidedly more upbeat, positive Death Cab record. Codes and Keys was written and released in a time when Ben Gibbard was married to actress Zooey Deschanel. But just as everything seemed to be going well–a number 1 Alternative hit and a number 1-selling rock album–the success wouldn’t last.

    PLATES, THEY WILL SHIFT. I’ve talked about how Death Cab for Cutie was so influential on my college experience. I don’t think I’m in a unique position, though, because Death Cab was the cool band for twenty-somethings for half a decade before Plans. The spiritually ambiguity of the record seemed to speak to millennials and millennial Adventist youth coming of age, possibly at the end of the world. In 2008, Death Cab released their follow up to plans, Narrow Stairs, which wasn’t as popular with the Adventist college kids, but to me it was an in-the-moment record I could enjoy of a band that I had just gotten into. I didn’t listen to Keys and Codes very much, though. I remember hearing “You Are a Tourist” on the radio, but my musical tastes were shifting away from Death Cab in 2011. The fact is, though, I never bought a Death Cab album. I was able to listen to their music because of friends and friends of friends in college who had several Death Cab albums. In 2011, I was about to graduate and not always seeking out the newest music. But thanks to AppleMusic, I started listening to some songs from newer Death Cab albums, including today’s song “Home Is a Fire.” The moody track was a bit of a sleeper in my Coffee playlist, but the forlorn guitar and keys today struck me. This led me to revisit Keys and Codes and The Narrow Stairs and listen to a few tracks on the band’s 2015 record Kintsugi. I was impressed by the difference between Narrow Stairs and the two following albums. It wasn’t like it was two different bands, but I was impressed by the layered sound and drums on the albums in the first half of the ‘10s. 
    CARS ON THE FREEWAY ATTEMPTING A CLEAN BREAK. Death Cab for Cutie recorded Keys and Codes in eight different studios, three weeks at a time. Band members wanted to spend more time with their families, rather than being hulled up in a studio for a month, like when the band recorded Plans. The decision to shift Death Cab’s sound from guitar-based rock to layered, composed music may have been the reason why Chris Walla lost inspiration by their 2015 record, first stepping down as the album’s producer and then walking away from the band itself. Lyrically, while this record has been called the band’s happy record, the opening track “Home Is a Fire” is rather unsettling. Lyricist and singer Ben Gibbard had married Zooey Deschanel in 2009, between this album and Narrow Stairs. Code and Keys was released on May 31, 2011. On November 1st, the couple announced their separation. The couple divorced by the closing of 2012. While their second track on Kintsugi, “Black Sun,” seems to address Gibbard’s break up, “Home Is a Fire” uses imagery that portrays an unstable environment. We have the imagery of an earthquake shaking the house before it’s engulfed in flames. The “agnostic, lapsed Catholic” Gibbard who celebrated his sister’s lesbian wedding may be telling some truth about family disagreements in the past. Or is it the house that he built with the New Girl actress? Either way, it’s a melancholy realization when you start to question the stability of a relationship.