Mixtapemotions

  • "(Christmas) Baby, Please Come Home" by Anberlin, Saturday, December 11, 2021

    In 2010 Rolling Stone named Darlene Love’s 1963 song “(Christmas) Baby, Please Come Home” as the number 1 Christmas rock song ever recorded. Born Darlene Wright in 1941, and renamed Darlene Love by producer Phil Spector, Darlene began her musical career as the lead vocalist for the girl group the Blossoms. Besides her career with the Blossoms and her solo career, Love sang lead on two Crystals songs and back up for many notable artists including Sam Cooke, the Beach Boys, Elvis Presley, Sonny and Cher, and Tom Jones. Love also acted on Broadway and appeared in the Lethal Weapon films.  Love performed “(Christmas) Baby, Please Come Home” every episode before Christmas on David Letterman from 1986-2014, except for 2007 during the writers’ strike. 

    PRETTY LIGHTS ON THE TREE. “Baby, Please Come Home” has been covered by many artists including Mariah Carey, Michael Bublè, Death Cab for Cutie, Jars of Clay, among others. One of the most famous covers is the 1987 U2 version. Released on the album A Very Special Christmas among covers of Christmas classics by other popular artists, the album was created to raise money for the Special Olympics. The album was released during the album cycle for one of U2’s biggest albums, The Joshua Tree, which made U2 one of the biggest bands in the world at that time. The bluesy rendition of the Christmas classic actually features Darlene Love on background vocals to accompany Bono’s crooning. Perhaps the U2 version is synonymous with today’s song, but it was the Anberlin version that always makes it to my annual Christmas lists. Recorded for the 2005 Tooth & Nail project Happy Christmas, Vol. 4, Anberlin’s version of this song has landed on several Christian Rock holiday albums and ended up on 2007’s B-side project, Lost Songs. Since the winter of 2005, this became my adult Christmas favorite. I listened to it on Christmas mixes in the car until Lost Songs arrived in November of 2007. It was the song that I’d drive my sisters around Christmas shopping to. The synth-y intro to the forlorn guitar solo before the guitar “crashes” at the end made me think about how Christmas plans always kind of fall apart and we’re just left with the chaos of the season–the shopping, the parties, the getting together. And if we’re lucky, we’ll have some moments of silence as we stare at the Christmas lights on the tree or we witness the soft sound of snow.
    THE CHURCH BELLS IN TOWN, THEY’RE RINGING A SONG. It’s two weeks until Christmas, and I’m forcing myself to feel something. In Korea, Christmas is a day off of work for schools and most offices; however, because it’s a Saturday this year, it’s like it doesn’t exist. Christmas was my favorite holiday when I was a kid. We sang Christmas songs at church. When we lived in New York, we cut down a tree and decorated it maybe two weeks before Christmas. In New York it always snowed before Christmas in my childhood. One year was a little warmer, and it rained on Christmas Eve, but by Christmas morning the rain had turned to snow. The season always started with choosing and cutting a tree a week or two before Christmas. We’d decorate it and little by little presents would appear. We weren’t told about Santa except that some kids believed in him.  Next we celebrated at my Great Grandmother’s house the Saturday night before Christmas with my first and second cousins. The presents were always a letdown for a kid–gloves, socks, hats. Every year I hoped that there would be something fun, but I never minded because there was always great food and so many family members to see. Christmas Eve was always spent at my grandparents’ house with cousins, and the gifts were always more fun. I got Matchbox or Hot Wheels. My family started the tradition of opening presents on Christmas night. My parents didn’t want to deal with the 5 am wake up, but they always let us open one present on Christmas morning. It was usually a board game or something we could play with until the night. We’d always leave the Christmas tree plugged in all day on Christmas day. We usually unplugged in the later morning the other days and turn it on at night, but Christmas was special. We usually played board games, watched Christmas movies, or played with Legos on Christmas day, waiting for the sun to set. Some years since I moved to Korea, my family said that they’d “Save Christmas for me” until I could get home in early January. In 2020, I said that I would try to come home every year, but it’s looking like maybe I can start that in 2023.

    Mariah Carey:

    Michael Buble:

    Death Cab for Cutie:

    Jars of Clay: 

    U2:

    Light display:

  • “Wish” by Paper Route, Friday, December 10, 2021
























    Paper Route signed to Universal Motown before releasing their debut LP, Absence, following their Are We All Forgotten EP. Only the title track of the EP appeared on Absence, as the band stepped further away from their Americana roots and more into the realm of retro-synth pop. Bassist/keyboardist Chad Howat recorded the album. The band played multiple instruments and recorded in an old mansion near Nashville. I remember reading something about how the album was intended to be rerecorded but the band and the label preferred the originals, but I can’t find an article about that. Absence was the debut of Paper Route as a band, complete with a guitarist, bassist, drummer, and a ton of synthesizers. However, Paper Route would become a revolving door for drummers and guitarists. Only singer and multi-instrumentalist JT Daly and bassist/keyboardist Chad Howat would stay for the entire duration of the band’s career.


    I WISH YOU WOULD LISTEN, TO GET THROUGH IT. Paper Route’s early work includes the theme of breaking up and often consists of the motif of Christmas. Their second EP, 2006’s A Thrill of Hope takes its name from a line from “O Holy Night,” and the songs “Sing You to Sleep” and “The Sound” contrast the magic of Christmas with a sadness of lost love. Their 2009 EP Thank God the Year Is Finally Over contained an acoustic cover of today’s song by another artist, the Christmas hymn, “In the Bleak Midwinter,” and the title track which reflects on the singer’s sheer exhaustion from a busy year on Christmas day. “Wish” is the second track on Absence. Following the ethereal “Enemy Among Us,” “Wish” builds an energy that serves as a counterpoint to the calm in the album. But “Wish” isn’t purely a rock song. The noise-pop bridge that sounds like the musical equivalent of trying to fly a plane when the engine fails and the pilot, without any panic, struggles to restart the engine which sputters back to life as if nothing happened, sets the song apart from any song I’ve ever heard. The rest of the album holds this contrast between rock and electronic, but often both with huge drums. The reviews that I’ve read for this album are mixed. I’ve recommended this album to friends, but no one seemed to love it. I’m not sure that Absence can fully be appreciated on the first listen. 

    I FELL TO PIECES ONE NIGHT IN DECEMBER. I remember on two separate occasions during two different album cycles (Absence and The Peace of Wild Things) singer JT Daly said something like “This has been the hardest year of my entire life.” Whether it was band or personal issues, that transparency had me quite worried about the singer. As we come to the end of another year, taking an assessment of what went well and what we need to work on, I think about Daly’s statement. I only wish that “Thank God the Year Is Finally Over” were available on Apple Music, because that’s a toast that I want to give on December 31. In my assessment of bad years, 2020 would have to be the worst followed by 2016 and 2021 for the third. I’m not at liberty to say why the end of this year is so stressful, but much of it is a culmination of living in a world where it takes increasingly more effort to find relief from my stress thanks to the pandemic. On top of the ordinary stresses of a short-staffed teaching department at the end of the semester, I realize now is the time to make better decisions and build skills for the future. Many friends have decided to leave and it seems that a natural cycle is coming to a close. What’s next for me? What’s next for them? What’s next for all of us.
     

    Live version from Audio Files:

  • "Friends" by Justin Bieber & BloodPop®, Thursday, December 9, 2021

    YouTuber Todd in the Shadows makes a yearly list of what he deems as the worst songs of the year, and last year Justin Bieber bookended the list with “Lonely” at #10 and “Yummy” at #1. Todd’s frank commentary on the 27-year-old singer seemed a bit mean to put in my blog, and I realized that there was a reason Todd is in the shadows. There are several reasons why I chose “Friends” as the song of the day. First, the Tyler Ward version was stuck in my head, and it wasn’t until I watch Ward’s video on YouTube that I realized that the song was a Bieber song. When I watched the Bieber music video, the snow in the video made me think that it made the song fit in on my December playlist. I realized that the Bieber version wasn’t half bad. It was melodic and the electronic production was a kind of song I would listen to, although I’d still prefer the Tyler Ward cover (see below).

    LIKE I GOT ULTERIOR MOTIVES. Regardless of whether it’s the Tyler Ward cover or the Justin Bieber & BloodPop original, this song give us an opportunity to discuss Bieber. If you were born before 1994, you probably not on the Justin Bieber 1.0 phase. The YouTube star who became the youngest singer to top the Hot 100 charts in 47 years wasn’t critically acclaimed for lines, such as “I was like baby, baby, baby oooh.”  In 2015 my students started talking about this new sound that Justin Bieber was doing. The singer’s voice had changed and he was nearly 18. Public opinion on the singer was now saying that Bieber was cool, and songs like “Sorry” and “Love Yourself” were quite catchy. But after Bieber’s introduction to EDM, which never really has gone away, the singer started appearing on dance tracks by so many artists who won’t be remembered in 20 years from now: DJ Snake, Major Lazor, BloodPop, just to name a few. Bieber went from little pipsqueak to controversial frat boy, singing songs that we’d mostly forget about after getting drunk at the bar on Saturday night if they weren’t always playing it at the gym. To me, Bieber’s career turned into stock music for artificial events. You listen to Bieber at the gym if your AirPods need to charge.
    AND IF IT ENDS, CAN WE BE FRIENDS. Today’s song comes from 2017 between Bieber’s 3rd and 4th LPs. “Friends” is a song about wanting to be close to an ex, which can be a precarious situation. There are certainly people who can do that–Elaine and Jerry. But there are also Rory and Dean situations. In 2018 Justin Bieber married Hailey Baldwin, yet many fans speculate that Bieber never got over his ex, Selena Gomez. Now should Justin be hanging out, texting Selena? Should the three hang out together? Who am I to judge. However, the listener of this song doesn’t get a voice, only the singer. “Friends” is a song that comes from a position of privilege, which is really all Bieber knows. I’m not saying that the singer hasn’t had struggles; the mental effects the star faced in his childhood would set anyone back. But the singer’s diet-Christianity seems to reek of privilege. When Bieber was baptized by former Hillsong Pastor Carl Lentz in 2014, faith to him was like taking on a sponsorship. He began voicing pro-life beliefs and making some religious songs, while others talked about “California weed” with tons of curse words. Meanwhile, fans became upset when they learned about Hillsong’s stance on LGBTQ issues and some iffy racial issues. An Instagram account called @preachersnsneakers took issue with Lentz pandering to celebrity, while cultivating an expensive style. Is Bieber directly responsible? I don’t think so, but it’s worth mentioning that “the poor in spirit” are no where to be blessed. Bieber’s religion is a nice country club for the wealthiest, coolest, cisgendered white men and subservient cisgendered white women, and this church is masterfully parodied on Season 2 of The Other Two. So, no Justin, I don’t think we can be friends.

    Lyric Video:

    Tyler Ward’s Cover:

  • “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" by Sleeping At Last, Wednesday, December 8, 2021

    Sleeping at Last is a band that almost made a song of the day two days ago for their cover of “Chasing Cars” until I made time to listen to the Snow Patrol version and their music, eventually settling on “You’re All I Have.” Like Snow Patrol, Sleeping at Last came to fame, albeit not Snow Patrol-level of fame, from a well-placed appearance in Season 3 of Grey’s Anatomy. The indie-rock band turned solo project of singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ryan O’Neal has had many songs included in the ABC drama and its spin-off, Private Practice. Their cover of “Chasing Cars” was used to add a dramatic counterpoint in the series, as the audience had already heard the original in the Season 2 finale. O’Neal stays busy producing lots of music, composing albums based on larger concepts, such as the solar system, the Enneagram, emotions, land, oceans, and many other topics. 

    WAR IS OVER, IF YOU WANT IT. In the band’s large scope of theme music, they have recorded several Christmas albums. Today’s song is Sleeping At Last’s cover of John Lennon and Yoko Ono‘s 1971 holiday hit, which was written in protest of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. My favorite version of the song is done by Acceptance, but it’s not available on Apple Music. My inclusion of this song comes with a prejudice that I’m reexamining. When I was young and influenced by far-right Christian rhetoric, I believed that this song was dangerous, as was his hit “Imagine,” also released in ’71. I was taught that war is a last resort, but often necessary, and Lennon’s Marx-lifted lyrics in “Imagine” were driving people away from the very foundations of freedom: God, guns, and gold. “Happy Xmas” was a song that removed “Christ” from the title, and that was what the “War on Christmas” looked like in the ’90s and probably earlier. The song wishes Lennon’s son and Ono’s daughter a merry Christmas at the beginning of the track, and the song never says “X,” but always “Christmas.” The lyrics of “War is over, if you want it” strike me as hopeful, idealistic, and naive depending on my mood. Not knowing much about the Christian influence or backgrounds of The Beatles (which would be a fascinating study), I’m assuming that Lennon would have been well-acquainted with popular notions of faith and virtues typically attributed to Christianity. Lennon and the Beatles strayed from state religion of their homeland, venturing into the realm of Hinduism, Hare Krishna, and other eastern religions; however, to me, today, “Happy Xmas” seems to be pleading with the Christian country of the United States, even using some Christianese, using Christmas as a platform of peace and ending the war. If you’re in America and an evangelical, though, Lennon just sounds like a babbling heretic. After years of blatant racism and looking back at wars with no end game, it may be time to listen a little closer to the babbling.

    LET’S HOPE IT’S A GOOD ONE. “Happy Xmas” is proceeding a holiday season full of uncertainty. As a world, we don’t know if our vaccines will hold against Omicron and world travel is again questionable. The return of quarantine measures for people coming back to South Korea makes me wonder if we’ll ever have a normal Christmas season in the future. Personally, I’m dealing with a lot of uncertainty at work, and an existential crisis about when it’s time to move on with my life. Grad school? What to study? Reduce my focus on work and let some things slide? And lots of decisions that are out of my hands that could make next year particularly difficult. Then there’s my blog. I’m determining what I want to do with it next year. Do I really want to spend two hours each day researching and writing? Was this just a quarantine project? Do I want to be a writer? What niche can I fit my writing into? What should I do to improve as a writer? What should I do to build my skills? I’m hoping for a good 2022 in which I can push aside the negativity and focus on becoming a better version of myself. I hope for a year that I can connect with people I care about and learn what it is that I’m supposed to share with this world. 

    Check out the original with annotations

    John Lennon & Yoko Ono version:

    Sleeping at Last version:

    Acceptance version:

  • “Brother” by NEEDTOBREATHE, Tuesday, December 7, 2021


    When I was reading about NEEDTOBREATHE last month, I couldn’t help drawing parallels between another band with a raspy-voiced lead singer, Kings of Leon. Both bands have Southern, faith-based roots. Both frontmen were raised by pastors who were involved heavily in ministry. Like the Killers, the record label of both bands tried to break them in the UK before taking on the American charts. Both bands were composed of at least two family members. In Kings of Leon, the band is composed of three brothers and their cousin. For NEEDTOBREATHE, the band’s line up originally consisted of brothers Bear and Bo and their friends. But before they could release their 2015 record, Rivers in the Wasteland, a sibling rivalry nearly ended the band.

    LIKE A BULL CHASING THE MATADOR. NEEDTOBREATHE’s breakthrough hit “Brother” topped Billboard’s Christian Songs and was the band’s first entry on the Hot 100, peaking at #98. It also rose to #8 on Billboard’s Rock/Alternative Radio Play charts. The radio single, recorded after the album’s release, features singer-songwriter Gavin DeGraw, best known for his 2003 hit “I Don’t Want to Be,” the theme song for the WB/CW teen drama One Tree Hill. According to the director of the music video, Jerod Hogan, the band filmed the video before recording the single version, and thus DeGraw’s verse had to be shot and added to the video. The collaboration possibly pushed NEEDTOBREATHE’s popularity in the rock and adult contemporary charts and set them up for collaborations later in their career, including with Carrie Underwood earlier this year. I prefer the original album cut because I don’t particularly care for Gavin DeGraw’s voice. I didn’t like his whinny 2003 hit, and I didn’t even remember it until researching for this post. Besides Bear’s absence on the second verse, the single version cuts out a very quick jam session of a piano playing some blue notes between the verse and the bridge. All in all, the song is quite catchy, and it’s a song that makes me remember how important family relationships are. When you’re with family, there’s no fooling them. You may be able to present yourself in a certain way, but family remembers who you are. They remember your stupid mistakes, and they see you in your most unfiltered light. 
    I AIN’T MADE FOR RIVALRY.  There’s a pretty epic Rolling Stone feature on Kings of Leon I referenced back in June. The article gives some vivid description about a fight that ensued between brothers Caleb and Nathan Followill after a night out drinking in Nashville. The Relevant article about NEEDTOBREATHE’s big fight isn’t quite as colorful, but we learn that that fight has shaped both 2015’s Rivers in the Wilderness and 2016’s H A R D L O V E. And, although the brothers put their hard feelings aside, Bo ended up leaving NEEDTOBREATHE in 2020. The younger Rinehart brother didn’t share his reasons for leaving in the band’s statement released to The Christian Beat, but the 39 year old currently creates visual arts and is working on new music, according to his Instagram page. Whether or not the family rivalry was a reason for Bo’s departure, working with family can be tough. We can get into a big argument with a family member and solve the problem only for it to come back years later. Bear will always be Bo’s older brother, and with that relationship comes love, responsibility, and resentment. Sometimes “Hard Love” means loving that person in smaller doses. The music video brilliantly depicts the brothers confined in a small space, and sometimes that space is smaller to the point where they have to sit down. With two brothers constantly fighting each other, they need to give each other some breathing room.

    Acoustic Performance:

    Cover by Supernatural star Jensen Ackles: 

    Story Behind the Song:

  • "You're All I Have" by Snow Patrol, Monday, December 6, 2021

    Formed in 1994 first as Shrug and then as Polarbear but finally changing their name to Snow Patrol due to other bands by their former names, the Northern Irish band became very popular in the early ’00s. Their first single “Run” was a hit in the UK. But in America, the band would become famous because of their song “Chasing Cars” when it was included in the season 2 finale of Grey’s Anatomy. “Chasing Cars” is the song most people know by Snow Patrol, and most wouldn’t be able to associate the name with their hit song. The band continues to produce music, most recently releasing 2018’s Wildness.  


    TRAIN THIS CHAOS, TURN IT INTO LIGHT. If you’ve had time to get into Taylor’s Version of Red, you may have noticed a feature by Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody. Once the Indie Rock band became recognized, the band members started working on pop music, and Lightbody writing for Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran. The Snow Patrol singer and songwriter began writing poetry after being inspired by when his English teacher introduced him to the work of Seamus Heaney. After being published as a poet, Lightbody turned to music as his artistic release. As a teen growing up in the ’80s, his writing was concerned with the “Troubles”–the conflict on the Irish Island, a topic that poets such as William Butler Yeats addressed and Irish rock bands like U2 and The Cranberries sang about. In a podcast speaking about the band’s latest album, Wildness, Lightbody talks about how Northern Ireland was closed off when he was growing up, so he had little thought about the world as a whole. He said that “there was no world news. Northern Ireland had enough news.” As he grew up, though, and as the situation improved between the nation of Ireland and the UK territory of Northern Ireland, Lightbody began to look beyond his home, and Snow Patrol set their sights on universal themes, of love and breaking up.
    A FRIGHTENING MAGIC I CLING TO.  My first impression of Snow Patrol, from their 2006 hit “Chasing Cars” was a cool British rock band that “has to be better than this?” I thought “Chasing Cars” was quite a dull song, aiming very hard to be profound. This was long before I binged 17 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy in 2020, so the emotional weight that a song like “Chasing Cars” can have in the right context can give new value to the song. And while the song was also featured in season 6 of Smallville, it came at a time in the show when all of the emotion of the show had dried up. But in college, I happened to get my hands on a copy of Eyes Open. I tried the album a few times, and I only liked “You’re All I Have.” I couldn’t stand Lightbody’s voice. Today, when I listened to a podcast talking about this album, I was brought back to my first impressions of it. The first-time listeners to Eyes Open had a similar review, criticizing the boring music and monotonous lyrics. They called the band “a less good Coldplay” and a dark and dreary band like Death Cab for Cutie, only less poetic. However, after college, this album grew on me. More of a focus on the instruments would have been better, but the dismal sounds of the record–like the exhaust on the snow, like a grey day that you hope will turn–encompasses an emotion. It may be a boring emotion, but it’s human. And if you come from a place where the snow piles up this time of year, and are suffering from crippling seasonal depression, listen to the album with caution. “You’re All I Have” is the gleam of hope before you start that journey into the album.

  • “My Universe” by Coldplay ft. BTS, Sunday, December 5, 2021

    I’ve written a bit this year about how I’m a Coldplay apologist. I believe that the London-based band is very good at what they do. Though so many artists accomplish their sound, both musically and lyrically, better, there’s something uplifting about a new Coldplay album. Earlier this year, I talked about the band’s first single from their ninth studio record, Music of the Spheres, “Higher Power.” The album was released on October 15 this year, but after “Higher Power” the band released the promotional single, the 10:17 track “Coloratura,” which was praised by critics for its composition and production, and the second radio single “My Universe” featuring the South Korean boy band, BTS. The song shot straight to number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the second Coldplay single to top the Hot 100, the first being “Viva la Vida.”


    I JUST WANT TO PUT YOU FIRST.  The reviews for Music of the Spheres were quite low. Metacritic, a database that averages the scores by major publications, scores the album as 55/100. Most critics agreed that Coldplay’s shameless venture into Max Martin-produced pop music was shameless, even for a band that was instrumental for inventing the late ’00/’10 pop-rock sound. “My Universe” in particular is viewed as a “cash-grab.” Recently, due to BTS’s enormous ARMY of fans, every recent single the boy band has released has headed straight to the top of the Billboard Hot 100. Music of the Spheres aimed to be a comeback album for the British pop-rockers. In 2017, Coldplay was a band with a large fan-base. Only Linkin Park had more YouTube subscribers, and Coldplay was the most streamed “rock band.” However, being the top rock band, even if your definition is loose enough to call Coldplay a rock band, made Coldplay a “big fish in a little pond.” The pond of rock music continues to dry up, and the 100 Million+ selling band would be competing with streams and sales by pop and R&B acts like Drake and The Weeknd. A collaboration with one of the highest selling groups of recent years would promote the now middle-aged rock band as cool and hip. Maybe the kids would dig back into their earlier discography and maybe Music of the Spheres would sell well.

    THAT BRIGHT INFINITY INSIDE YOUR EYES. Cynicism about the “cash-grab” aside, the Coldplay-BTS collaboration may have come from a place of sincerity. Originally, Coldplay wrote the song for BTS, as many non-Korean composers have written for K-pop. Coldplay performed in South Korea in 2017 during their Head Full of Dreams Tour. The band has been evolving into a pop act steadily over the course of their career. Their 2011 Mylo Xyloto included a collaboration with Rihanna and much less guitar focus. Head Full of Dreams included backing vocals by Beyonce; however, “Hymn for the Weekend” wasn’t marketed as Coldplay ft. Beyonce, thus the song ran on the momentum of Coldplay fans, not Beyonce fans. The message of “My Universe” is that love transcends distance, language, and misunderstandings. Produced in and out of quarantine, Music of the Spheres aims to bridge fans around the world together. The band began touring again, after swearing off touring during the release of their 2019 record Everyday Life until they could find a way to tour more eco-friendly. Next year, the band is set to embark on a carbon-neutral tour, which could revolutionize the music industry. The musical concept album Music of the Spheres, may have been inspired by Star Wars in “a galaxy far, far away,” but the themes of connection, love, and the human experience are truly not out of this world.
     

    Lyric Video:




  • "All I Want for Christmas Is You" by Anchor & Braille, Saturday, December 4, 2021

    “I~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~I. Don’t want a lot for Christmas.” *struggles to change the radio dial amid gridlocked holiday traffic* “There’s just one thing I need” *hurry up with my damn latte! I think I’m going to die. Why the hell is Starbucks playing Christmas music mid-October?* “I don’t care about the presents” *internal Elaine monologue ‘I think I’m going to die in this department store. Ma’am, why must you spray the perfume so close to my face. I can’t breath! What the earth begins to shake and we’re stuck in here forever underneath mannequins and holiday shoppers and that damn Mariah Carey song stuck on repeat?’* “Underneath the Christmas tree” “No” *raising a strict finger to students who should be studying in the back* “Not before Thanksgiving.” “I just want you for my own/ More than you could ever know.” Every year Christmas music get earlier and earlier. “Make my dreams come true.” Corporate America wants to put us in credit card debt. “All I want for Christmas” Call me Scrooge, but I’d like to go back to childhood when Christmases were magical. “Is” If only we could go back in time to say, 199~ “You~~~~~~~~~” That’s it! 1992! before this song ruled the world.

    ALL THE LIGHTS ARE SHINING EVERYWHERE. Last Christmas, Stephen Christian recorded his daughter’s favorite Christmas song, releasing it as an Anchor & Braille song. All of those emotions listed above are my feelings about Mariah Carey’s 1994 hit, “21st Century ‘White Christmas.’” Overplayed, overrated, but more contagious than the Omicron variant and extremely meme-able. We can wear our earplugs into stores, we can blast the latest Taylor Swift or Adele albums in our noise-cancelling AirPods Pro, but the infection rate is close to 100% that you will have this song stuck in your head at some point during the holiday season. I was stricken by the bug today when I turned on A Very Tooth & Nail Christmas on Apple Music. Try as I might, Mae’s “Carol of the Bells” or Copeland’s “Do You Hear What I Hear?” and not even Anberlin’s “Baby Please Come Home” stuck in my head as I stepped out for lunch this afternoon. It’s the Christmas season, so I wondered how this song would fit into my playlist this year? I wondered how Christmas music would fit in or if it would, this year. I thought about how un-Christmasy this year feels. And then it struck. The ear-virus didn’t come in the form of Michael Buble, Ariana Grande, or Justin Bieber (thank God!). It didn’t come in the hilarious mashup of the isolated vocals of Radiohead’s “Creep” surrounded by the festive sleigh-bells and outrageous piano and back-up singers of “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” It wasn’t the pretty-good-but-not-great House of Heroes cover. It didn’t come by seeing a meme about the song. Instead it came from one of my favorite singers doing a slowed-down rendition, taking the energy of Carey down to be a Christmas song for the exhausted rest of us. 

    I DON’T NEED TO HANG MY STOCKING. Am I being too harsh on the holiday classic? Critics loved the song when it came out. If I were writing a blog in 1994, maybe I would have appreciated the musical elements–the throwback to old Christmas songs, the unique chords, the imitation of a wind-up Christmas music box–but in 2021, I’m too desensitized to whatever musical point Carey was trying to make. To me, Christmas music, the more traditional the better. There is something so much more magical about a small church singing on a snowy evening a hymn from the 1400s than Bing Crosby singing in the ’40s. When I was growing up, several CCM Christmas albums captured an old-time Christmas–whether it was Michael W. Smith’s Christmastime or the artists who sang on the City on a Hill Christmas project. There was something about the 20th century Christmas songs that just sounded like shopping. And they were done to death–disco, punk, soul, pick a genre. My old soul, though, has to cope with a commercialized holiday, so Anchor & Braille is as good a place as ever to start. December’s playlist isn’t exclusively Christmas songs and won’t be from here on out, but as the season picks up, I guess we should address the drop in temperature, the new flavors at Starbucks, the decorations at the department stores, the new specials on Netflix–even if it all seems a little forced.
     

    Anchor & Braille version:

    House of Heroes version: 
    “Creep but It’s All I Want for Christmas Is You” Radiohead/Mariah Carey Mashup:

  • “California” by Lana Del Rey, Friday, December 3, 2021

    Lana Del Rey’s magnum opus, Norman Fucking Rockwell! was released in September of 2018 and earned the singer-songwriters the acclaim she had been laying the foundation for since 2012’s Born to Die. A year after her lackluster album/collection of good songs Lust for Life, she released the first single from NFR, “The Mariner’s Apartment Complex” and quickly followed it with another single, the 9:38 song “Venice Bitch.” She began building hype for the record, a cohesive record using the Americana formula Del Rey uses best, a year before its release. The singer awkwardly promoted the album in October of 2018, 11 months before its release, at an Apple Keynote event. The singer wasn’t allowed to say the name of the her upcoming album or its single, which she played censored, “Venice Bitch,” as Jack Antonoff played the piano.

    YOU DON’T EVER HAVE TO GO FASTER THAN YOUR FASTEST PACE. I remember a coffee table book we had, a warn spiral-bound collection of Norman Rockwell’s most popular Saturday Evening Post covers. The paintings are uniquely American, often slightly uncouth, compared to what would have been considered proper art of the day. Born in 1894 and dying in 1978, Rockwell set out to capture Americans as they were, sometimes overweight, showing full expression to a surprising moment, and in the common working-to-middle class settings of the day. He captured American life in the way that The Simpsons or Rosanne captured the American family when the pretense of the cameras in Leave It to Beaver or The Brady Bunch had packed up and the family was left to untuck their shirts or have an argument. One painting I remember the clearest is No Swimming, a paining in which three boys are running with, trying to put their clothes back on. I stared at that paining taken by the lifelike use of motion and detail of the moving bodies. Viewers don’t know exactly what the boys are running from, but anyone who was once a boy knows exactly what they are running from.  Looking at this painting when I was about seven or eight years old, it made me feel a fascination I had never felt before. 

    I’LL PICK YOU UP. I’m still yet to do a deep dive on Lana Del Rey’s NFR, but I wrote about this song and “Cinnamon Girl” last year. “California” was a song that made me think about going back home “to America.” I think about what my mom says when I’m back home: “We’ll do whatever you want to do. It’s all about you.” That’s exactly what a ten year old wants to hear a couple days of the year, but as a 30-something I think it’s rather sad. I feel bad that when I come home to America it’s such a big deal. I’d much rather just blend into everyone’s daily life, have a few lunches together, and be able to be “back home” a couple times a year so it’s not so special. I’ve thought about getting a job that would let me get home twice a year. However, now with the pandemic and air travel being what it is, it seems being away is inevitable. So as we come closer to the holidays, although most of the references in “California” don’t really apply to me, the song makes me feel homesick. It makes me miss my Lana Del Rey-fan sisters. It makes me miss my friends who show me around into the recently-transformed micro-brewery city full of hipster/redneck nightlife. It makes me miss my parents who make all my favorite foods. If I come back to America, I’ll hit you all up.

  • “exile” by Taylor Swift ft. Bon Iver, Thursday, December 2, 2021

    Taylor pulled a Beyoncé in late July of last year. Pulling a Beyoncé is a record industry term for releasing a studio record without any promotion or explicit social media hints. The term comes from in December of 2013 when Beyoncé released her self-titled album on iTunes without warning. The album quickly shot to number one, and so did Swift’s folklore, an album written and recorded at home during quarantine. Swift worked on the project with producers Jack Antonoff and The National‘s Aaron Dessner. For me on the first few listens, the album was underwhelming. I knew that there was something there, and I was pretty sure that this album would be a defining record of the new decade, but it was hard to get into the right mood for this album, much like other Jack Antonoff’s masterpiece, Lana Del Rey’s Norman Fucking Rockwell. However, the catchy ballad “exile” featuring Bon Iver was a good excuse to dive into the record today.
     

    YOU NEVER GAVE A WARNING SIGN. Bon Iver was one of the cool artists exchanged on my mixed tape disaster in college. While technically Bon Iver is a band, the moniker is synonymous with lead singer Justin Vernon, a singer who locked himself in a cabin in 2006 in his home state of Wisconsin after leaving in Raleigh, North Carolina, when his former band, DeYarmond Edison broke up. After watching Northern Exposure, a ’90s comedy-drama set in Alaska, on DVD, he chose the name Bon Iver for his band name after a French greeting the townspeople use to greet the snow in one episode: Bon hiver–meaning “Have a good winter.” After three months, Vernon emerged with Bon Iver’s debut album. Fast forward to 2020 and Taylor Swift was working on her own home-record. Writing “exile,” she needed a male vocalist to bring the alternate perspective in a duet about former lovers who could not communicate, thus bringing an end to the relationship. According to Disney+’s folklore: the long pond studio sessions, Dessner suggested the Bon Iver collaboration, but Swift was worried that Vernon would say no or pull out before the album’s release. However, Vernon enthusiastically obliged and contributed vocals and in writing the bridge of the song. 

    YOU’RE NOT MY HOMELAND ANYMORE. “Exile” is such a different Taylor Swift song on a very different Taylor Swift album. Folklore takes Taylor back to her country roots without the twang. There’s no EDM and no contemporary radio singles. Swift writes more metaphorically about her life, often creating characters who aren’t the former teen singer. Previously, listeners spent so much time dissecting her lyrics, trying to figure out which relationship each song was about. The songs on folklore, though, seem to be about other people, even if they are sung in first person. The collection of songs that is folklore seems to come together after listening to the album as a whole several times. It’s a long album, and it certainly could have been cut down and refined. But for me, when I get to track 4, the album makes sense. We’re taken even further outside of who Taylor Swift is with the baritone voice of Justin Vernon leading the track. This bold artistic decision is seldom a choice for young musicians who usually give their features the second verse. Vernon’s voice isn’t familiar until the end of the first chorus, when he finally adds his signature falsetto to the production just before Taylor begins her verse. Today this song speaks to me as I’m struggling with some decisions at work. I realized that there’s a lot of decisions that I’m not in control of, and I have to realize that, even if I think that they’re making a mistake, if my voice isn’t valued, it’s not my homeland, not my town anymore. So, the sad break up songs in late November, early December are me trying to process this loss of control.

    Lyric Video:

    folklore: the long pond studio sessions version: