MUNA’s third and self-titled albumwas released on June 24th. Their album gives the single from September 2021, “Silk Chiffon,” a home. The band also released three other singles from the 11-track album prior to its release. But in early June last year, MUNA released a non-album track–a cover of Britney Spears’ 1999 bubblegum ballad “Sometimes”–for the Hulu original film Fire Island, also released on the same day. The film was written by and stars comedian Joel Kim Booster and co-stars the Saturday Night Live openly gay comedian Bowan Yang in a modern queer retelling of Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudiceset in New York’s legendary LGBTQ+ haven.
BABY, ALL I NEED IS TIME. “Sometimes” is Britney Spears’ second single from her debut record, …baby one more time. Following her smash #1 hit “…Baby One More Time,” “Sometimes” takes a more laidback adult contemporary sound. Like many of the songs on Britney’s debut record, “Sometimes” was produced by Max Martin and written by another Swedish songwriter, Jörgen Elofsson and recorded the track at Cheiron Studios in Stockholm. MUNA’s cover plays into the ’90s but takes an alternative girl-rock take on the Britney classic.As a band of LGBTQ+ musicians, Fire Island isn’t the first film to which MUNA has contributed. The band also contributed to the 2018 Netflix film Alex Strangelove, a film about a high school student who comes to terms with his sexuality. The band performs the song “I Know a Place” in the film. In Fire Island, MUNA’s version of “Sometimes” reprises the song, which the cast sang along to in an earlier scene.
ALL I REALLY WANT TO DO IS TO HOLD YOU TIGHT. I’ve been a fan of Joel Kim Booster since he appeared on a 2019 episode ofGood Christian Fun. When he talked about the intersection of his Christian upbringing and his coming to terms with his sexuality in a strict evangelical home, I felt that I had met a kindred spirit. Plus his knowledge of ’00s CCM which he looks back wistfully with a conflicted feeling about was quite relatable. Since then I’ve followed his work as a writer forThe Other Two, late night appearances onConan, and a dramatic podcast calledMoonface(왕따). I even tried his short-lived sitcomSunny Side, which was, well, cancelled for a reason. I usually don’t expect much when it comes to queer films, as many of them feel like Christian films–an overtly preachy message, lower production quality, and a storyline that doesn’t appeal beyond the limited demographic the film was written for–however, Bowen Yang,Margaret Cho, andHow to Get Away with Murder‘sConrad Ricamorahave me a little more hyped. The film’s director,Andrew Ahn, is another reason I have a little higher expectations forFire Island. Ahn’s work includes two seasons ofThis Close, a television drama that explores the relationship between best friends who are deaf, a gay man and a straight woman. Ahn also wrote and directed the filmSpa Night, a story about a gay Korean-American teen who struggles with familial pressures to achieve the American dream while working at his family-owned Korean-style spa in Las Angeles. I hope thatFire Island is the kind of pride month film that doesn’t fall too much into clichés.
While Mae has emphasized that they “are not a Christian band,” the second full-length original record, The Everglow, on Tooth & Nail debuted atop Billboard‘s Christian albums charts in 2005. For many Mae fans, The Everglow is the album on which the band best demonstrates their vision of being a Multi-sensory Aesthetic Experience, engaging listeners with artwork accompanying the album as a “read along booklet.” The album’s “Prologue” invites listeners to view the album artwork insert in a similar way that children may listen to books on tape from the library.
LOVE, IT’S THE WAVE I RIDE THAT WON’T EVER REACH THE SHORE. Musically, Mae treats listeners to sappy melodies that bring us along on a range of sad-to-happy emotions on The Everglow. The album starts a little slow with the piano-vocal composition “We’re So Far Away,” which feels a bit Broadway for the Virginia Beach-based band. But then The Everglow turns into a rock record, with the guitar-based track “Someone Else’s Arms,” which is closest the album comes to sounding angry. But little by little over the course of their faster rock tracks, Mae embeds a wistful nostalgia into their guitar riffs and lyrics. But just as the album starts to feel like it’s just a variation on the last track, track 5, “The Ocean,” brings back the piano as the primary instrument. The middle is full of singable melodies, but nothing matches track five until the album’s penultimate track, “Anything.” The song pulls out all stops with a catchy guitar riff and bells in the chorus similar to the anthemic sounds of a Christmas song. What also makes “Anything” standout on the album is that it feels like the first time that singer Dave Elkins actually believes the inspiration message he’s been trying to sell himself on throughout the album. It’s a song about regaining confidence after a season of self doubt.
THE ROPE GETS LOOSE AND THE CHAINS UNBIND. “Anything”is a song about the dichotomy of looking homeward versus looking forward. It’s a dichotomy I’ve explored in my personal life and in my blog. The pandemic had many of us succumbing unapologetically to nostalgia for our childhoods. But recently, I’ve started getting out more and as I’ve gotten out I’ve realized that there are still many more days of my youth to gather memories for when I’m old and cannot physically go out and make new memories. I’m no longer a middle school student stuck indoors on rainy days reading reading some mystery in the sands of Luxor, Egypt, head propped up by my Marill plush toy. I am a regent of a kingdom waiting for the prince to come of age to replace me. I better order the ironclad warships to attack a far off land while I still have the power to do so before prince old age banishes me to life of writing, living vicariously through the characters I can create. Life really isn’t as limiting as I thought it was even before the pandemic.
Coming to the end of the year, it’s time to remember some of the musical highlights of 2022. I listened to a lot of music this year and maybe more new music than last year. But there certainly were albums that slipped under the radar. I had every intention of digging into The Weeknd‘s Dawn FM, but somehow I was never in that dark of a mood to resonate with the characteristics of that record. Today, I’m going to reveal my controversial list. Enjoy!
#10. The Loneliest Time by Carly Rae Jepsen. The latest from the “Call Me Maybe” singer is a record that isn’t immediately catchy and could easily fall between the cracks because of all the big releases of this year. The diverse singles showed different camera angles of a maturing pop singer who has solidified her status in music nerd-dom and gay music listeners alike. And with her first explicit labeled song, Jepsen is distancing herself from former tween-friendly aesthetic. I’m sure next year I’ll be digging into songs like “Surrender My Heart” and “Joshua Tree” and writing a blog post about the hilarious “Beach House.” Maybe next year, the art pop vibe of this record will hit at just the right time.
#9INVUby Taeyeon. I didn’t listen to much K-pop this year, but one record that I did listen to a few times was Taeyeon’s latest LP. Last year, she released the single “Weekend,” which became hugely popular and that single was also included on the LP. The title track, “INVU,” was her biggest song of the year and people are still signing as Taeyeon does in the music video. My favorite track has to be “Siren” because of the emotion Taeyeon brings to the song.
#8 Midnightsby Taylor Swift. I was expecting more from Taylor, ngl, especially after the journey she brought us on with folkloreand evermore. Mic the Snare summed up an opinion on the record that I felt when the album came out and struggled to get into it: that it feels like a repeat album cycle of reputation. Despite the lyrics of “Anti-Hero,” though, Swift has become wiser in her lyric writing making Midnights a much more tolerable record with some genuinely good tracks–“Maroon,” “Snow on the Beach,” “Lavender Haze” are interesting lyrically with Jack Antonoff‘s ’80s-inspired production. I’ll keep giving it a try, but as of writing this post, I’m not convinced this is best Swift’s got.
#7 I Blame the Worldby Sasha Alex Sloan. The self-identified sad-girl made a “mad record” in 2022. There was a podcast I listened to reacting to Sloan’s EP Self-Portrait. While the podcasters enjoyed the EP, they hoped that Sloan would never make a full-length record. She did. Only Childis a heartbreaking masterpiece, but it pulls back from the gut-wrenching, sometimes mean-spirited lyricism of her EPs. On this year’s I Blame the World, Sloan is caustic as ever. So, this record may not resonate with you. The title track “I Blame the World” is probably the most catchy, but the other songs are worth a listen. Emo surely is alive in 2022.
#6 MUNA. The June release of MUNA‘s self-titled record came after the group released several singles starting with last October’s duet with Phoebe Bridgers “Silk Chiffon.” The full album was solid. “Anything but Me” was a beautiful break up song wishing the best for an ex. The group also had an interesting post-album release single, the ’00s sounding shock pop song “What I Want,” a song about getting back out in the world after a break up, doubling as an anthem for the once cooped up quarantined listeners. Unfortunately, the album was released the same weekend as Roe was overturned, and that didn’t make for fun listening, and I haven’t really gotten into the album since. The record was really hyped before its release and then kind of forgotten in my other music circles. Maybe we can bring it back next year.
#5 Voyeuristby Underoath. I didn’t listen to this record a lot. It was too dark. I thought that the band had summed up what they wanted to say on 2018’s Erase Me. “Religion is a means of control,” the band continues to argue, wrestling with an evolving spirituality and atheism in the former Christian band. But listening to the documentary mini-series of Labeled: Deep Dive, the band got into the deeper personal issues they had which shaped this record. Voyeurist is a hard record to get into unless you love hard music. Some of the tracks feel bereft of all hope and blasphemous, particularly “Pneumonia,” the album’s closer. Other tracks are just creepy like “I’m Pretty Sure I’m Out of Luck and Have No Friends.” But the most accessible track has to be “Hallelujah,” which blends melody and screaming in a way similar to tracks on Define the Great Line.
#4 Dawn FMbyThe Weeknd.I listened to Dawn FM through once. Similar to the Underoath record, but in a different way, Dawn FM is a depressing record. The ’80s/’90s RnB sounds of the record make the album fun, but the eerie impending doom of the record–death–freaked me out. “Out of Time” and “Take My Breath” are the stand out tracks for me, as well as the voice of Jim Carrey as a radio DJ.
#3Harry’s Houseby Harry Styles. This album has received a lot of hate, and I’m not sure that it’s warranted. Harry’s House is an interesting ride, though it certainly is a little disjointed. Haters say that the songs like “Music for a Sushi Restaurant” are soulless as a Target commercial, but from listening to Styles talk about the album, it seems that he and his team are adding something unique to top 40 pop music. Yes, “As It Was” feels like a less original “Take on Me,” but the album shines in the middle with slow tracks like “Little Freak,” “Matilda,” and ’70s disco fun tracks like “Cinema” and “Daydreaming.”
#2 People Like Peopleby Watshi Wa. I admire what the band did with production on this record. It’s a punk rock record refined by 2022 technology. It’s collaborative, featuring friends of the veteran band. I chose “Let Me Prepare You” as today’s song and the song to represent the album. “Let Me Prepare You” features Gasoline Heart–a band that certainly needs their own post. People Like People may not age well given its reaction to the pandemic and as I sat with the album throughout the year, I wrestled more and more with the themes of government control and reliance on technology. The record seems to fall on the more conservative side of the pandemic, and lead singer Seth Roberts points out the toll that the pandemic had on his corner of the music industry. The album makes a few covert statements on tracks like “Land of the Free” and “Who Who Hu (Man)” comes off as subtly racist. But tracks like “Trust Me,” “Like You Mean It,” “Some Time,” as well as today’s song and the Stephen Christian-featuring track “Zombie” all make the record ridiculously catchy.
#1 Milk Teethby Tyson Motsenbocker. It’s the indie rock album I’ve been wishing Death Cab for Cutie would record. Tyson Motsenbocker tells stories on Milk Teeth, but also has mastered hooks in a way that he has never played hooks before. Sure “Wendy Darling” is a slow start for a pop song, but by the saxophone outro, you may just put the song on repeat unless the instantly catchy guitar riff of “Carlo Rossi” comes on. But it’s not just the hits. The lost loves on “UC Santa Cruz” and “Give Up,” the existential dread of “North Shore Party” and “Time Is a One Way Mirror,” and even the light-hearted “Hide from the World” balance the album. It’s poetry, storytelling, and beautiful instrumentation.
Following up a Grammy-winning record is a daunting task. Kacey Musgraves‘ fourth record Golden Hourwas just a collection of simple pop songs with a twinge of country. For her fifth record, Musgraves attempted a concept record, chronicling her divorce and healing process on star-crossed. But fans and critics have responded to the record with mixed reviews. In his review of star- crossed in Pitchfork, Sam Sodomsky writes: “While Kacey Musgraves’ fourth album intends to guide you from the early stages of a marriage through the aftermath of a divorce, the East Texas songwriter barely mentions the other person at the heart of her story, and her narrator doesn’t seem all that surprised when things start heading south.”
KICK IT AT THE MALL LIKE THERE’S NOTHING WRONG. While star-crossed may have missed the mark as the next great American divorce record, the songs on the album capture glimpses of what a divorce feels like. However, not every song is specifically about divorce. Some songs are just about general disappointment. Musgraves recorded the chorus of”simple times” while she was on tour in 2018, feeling burnt out and homesick. While the song originally may have not dealt with the theme of Kacey’s dissolving marriage, the song fits into the nostalgia one feels when extremely stressed, whether on tour on when dealing with adult problems. Accompanying the album, Musgraves also released a film also titled star-crossed. The music videos Musgraves has released on YouTube, including today’s song, are parts of the film. Rather than today’s song being a simple meditation on the halcyon days of a long-past golden hour, deals with vengeance, though without seeing the larger work, the video is just extraordinarily fun revenge seeing the cast dressed up in rhinestoned masks and bearing medieval arms–a sword, a flail, an axe, maybe a javelin –destroying the wedding shop.
BEING GROWN UP KINDA SUCKS. The music video for “simple times” stars Kacey Musgraves as the queen bee similar to Rachel McAdams as Regina George in Mean Girls. The other girls–actress Victoria Pedretti, wrestler Princess Nokia, and drag queen Symone–steal the scene in synchronized walking in ’90s/’00s mall nostalgia.
The girls themselves play into the nostalgia, although, we may relate to comedian Megan Stalter, never actually able to fit in with these these girls like this with their stone-cold faces, who never once break showing a contrite emotion underneath their cool pastel armor. I’m not sure if Musgraves in her “simple times” remembers being the queen bee, while others tried to penetrate her inner circle. I think about both being excluded from what the cooler kids were doing and excluding kids who were even less cool than me, so I won’t be surprised if I’m remembered kind of as a jerk. Often January is a time when I think about my past, especially when I go home. I find myself looking at shelves of books I bought from the second-hand shop behind the dusty curtains, reading old journals, and cringing about how little I knew about the world. Thinking back on the simple times, I realize I didn’t have a plan for the future, just followed the weekly schedule. School, homework, free time. And somehow, I thought that it would just transform into a time when I’d have my own kids, take them to school and make them do their homework. But it didn’t happen that way at all.
We’ve been through several emanations of Lady Gaga. Her debut album, The Fame, was both a satire and a full embrace of the decadence of pop music. Critics were quick to draw comparisons to Madonna–though Gaga despises this comparison–: both singers celebrate female sexuality and both artists are of Catholic Italian-American families which cause several similarities in themes throughout their discographies, and hence, both singers faced a hell of a lot of controversy. But just when critics said “enough” to Gaga’s avant-garde Artpop, the singer switched things up. She recorded a Country-inspired album Joanne. She recorded with musical legend Tony Bennett, singing mid-twentieth century standards. She won an Oscar for the song “Shallow” from the movie she also received a nomination for her acting, A Star Is Born.
I LOST MY LOVE AND NO ONE CARED. Lady Gaga’s 2020 record, Chromatica, was originally planned for April, but delayed due to the pandemic. It is the return to Lady Gaga house music that her earliest fans had been waiting for. The album was well reviewed, holding a 79% on Metacritic. It debuted at #1 on Billboard’s 200 album charts. While the album did release singles, Gaga’s intention was to make a cohesive collection of songs that were meant to be listened to in the sequence they were released. The three “Chromatica” interludes divide the album into three distinctive parts. The album was received by many LGBTQ+ fans as the album they hoped to hear in the clubs and at Pride, though lockdowns made gathering impossible. The podcast Switched On Poppoints out the lyrical content of the record hinting at Gaga’s personal life, dancing to distract herself from the tears. The album also makes allusions to earlier Lady Gaga albums, but the critics at Switched On Pop argue that Chromatica is in stark contrast to The Fame in that early in Gaga’s career, the singer merely wanted fame but now she is craving “Stupid Love” from someone special. Fame now means little without love.
WHEN I WAS YOUNG, I PRAYED FOR LIGHTNING. Chromatica begins its final act with Lady Gaga’s duet with Elton John in the song “Sine from Above.” This is the third feature on the record, the others being Ariana Grande on the second single “Rain On Me” and K-pop group BLACKPINK on “Sour Candy.” Elton John’s contribution to the record seems perfect to me. It reminds us that Gaga is an heir to the pop-rock extravagance started in the ’60s and ’70s by singers like David Bowie, Elton John, and Freddie Mercury. The inclusion also celebrate the queer energy of decadent pop stars. “Sine from Above” is a pun, playing on the mathematical term for the measurement of the opposite divided by the hypotenuse of a right triangle, if high school math still serves me well. The image on the cover art of Chromatica has a “sine wave.” Someone who receives a “sign from above” receives confirmation that they are on the right path. Gaga prays for “lightning,” which is something that most people want to avoid. Nobody wants to be struck by Zeus’s bolt. Many also attribute lighting to the Judaeo-Christian God, though the Old Testament usually depicts other methods of God exacting vengeance. Some critics have said that Gaga really means to call the song “Sin from Above” meaning that she questions her existence outside of what she has been told is God’s will for humanity. In some ways the song is campy and laughable. Elton John and Lady Gaga can sometimes be a meme of themselves, and Elton John’s over-the-top vocals make some listeners cringe. But I find this song compelling. I was certainly not in the mood from Chromatica when it dropped. I was getting chubby and not thinking at all about getting ready for a “hot boy summer.” I was dealing with depression and existential dread. I didn’t want to dance. I wanted to process my life and my decisions. Now that things feel a little more normal, dance music is okay again. But an introspective dance song potentially about religious trauma from childhood? Sine me up!
New Order formed in 1980 after the three remaining members of the post-punk band Joy Division lost their lead singer Ian Curtis to suicide. Success wasn’t instant for New Order with the start of the new band. New Order’s sound was distinct from Joy Division’s with the inclusion of keyboardist Gillian Gilbert and a growing penchant for synthesizers and electronic dance music. The band’s breakthrough success came prior to the release of their second record, Power, Lies & Corruptionwith the release of their long-play (12″) single “Blue Monday,” which took dance clubs around the world by storm, and even helped to fund the band’s own dance club in Manchester called The Haçienda, a dance club named after the word for a Spanish plantation.
I SEE A SHIP IN THE HARBOUR. New Order spent time in the clubs in New York listening to the latest disco prior to recording their sophomore album Power, Lies & Corruption. According to lead singer Bernard Sumner, the music in those clubs produced tones he had never heard before. The band then set a new goal: they wanted to produce a hit that could be heard in dance halls. So the band got to work back in England at one of Pink Floyd‘s studios using outdated ’70s recording technology to produce their ultramodern 1983 classics. “Blue Monday” was a feat of layering rhythms and synthesizers. The band felt that the song didn’t fit musically or thematically on their second record, so they decided to release the song as a 12″ single prior to the LP’s release. “Blue Monday” was a smash hit and became the biggest selling 12″ single of all time. The band received mainstream success in the UK, even performing on Top of the Pops. But because “Blue Monday” relied so much on programming, it wasn’t a very interesting song to watch live. “Blue Monday” uses repetition and slight variance in that repetition to keep the audience in a trance-like state. The 7:29 song was a barrier for listening for me at first, but now I barely notice that the time has passed!
I THOUGHT I WAS MISTAKEN. Like most of New Order’s songs, the lyrics are only a distant second to the importance of the music. The lyrics about a narcissistic listener who gaslights the speaker starts to become clear with more listens. Sumner said that the title comes from Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions, but the lyrics don’t seem to match the book’s themes. Blue Monday is a day, according to pop psychology, on which many suicides take place. Blue Monday is the third Monday of the year, and after the excitements and disappointments from the holiday season coming to an end, may people experience a sadness or depression strong on that day. The song was created by a band composed of heterosexuals inspired by the music of gay clubs. The track is a huge hit in clubs both gay and straight, and established New Order, not as a hit-making machine, but a creditable dance/rock band nonetheless. “Blue Monday” became the standard for DJs from the ’80s to today, influencing Pet Shop Boys to Skrillex. In a way, the song helped to define the EDM music of multiple eras and has been interloped in songs such as Britney Spears‘ “Work Bitch” and more notably in Rihanna‘s “Shut Up and Drive.” I guess with beats like this, it’s not an average Monday after all!
I realize that today is also Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Please refer to my posts from the last two years and check out my MLK playlist from last year. Let’s not forget the work that MLK did for us.
Live:
Single version (1983):
1988 music video:
Symphonic version from Wonder Woman 1984:
Trailer for Wonder Woman 1984 featuring symphonic version of “Blue Monday”:
The story behind “Blue Monday” Transmissions Episode 8: “Blue Monday”:
With fans’ hearts freshly broken from the whirlwind year of 2014– when Anberlin announced their disbandment, final album, and last world tour—lead singer Stephen Christian certainly wasn’t walking away from music. First settling down in Nashville, he began exclusively writing songs for other artists. But in mid-2015 he released two Anchor & Braille tracks, “Detroit Stab” and “Fatal Flaw.” In February of 2016, Anchor & Braille released Songs for the Late Night Drive Home, the third full-length project with the lead single, “Watch You Burn” and a lyric video proceeding the album’s release.
I WANNA WATCH YOU CATCH FIRE. In interviews Stephen Christian has stated that Anchor & Braille projects usually reflect the style of music he’s currently listening to. For the third installment, Christian talks about listening to Washed Out and M83, which can be heard in the chill, “late-night” synth sounds of the album. Working with songwriter Joey Belville of the ‘90s electronic band The Echoing Green on several songs, the dreamy pop sounds further the vision Anberlin started to realize from their Vital/Devotion era. Lyrically, Anchor & Braille’s second album, The Quiet Life, seemed to be lacking, almost as if Stephen Christian was in the uninspired lyrical phase of Dark Is the Way, Light Is a Place. His songwriting picked up by Lowborn, yet the majority of the last album was about saying goodbye. And while Anchor & Braille and Anberlin often have thematic crossover, it seems that Late Night is a fresh approach with Anberlin’s demise being a distant memory. As an album, Songs for the Late Night Drive Home feels like it’s a soundtrack for after the party and everyone is going home. It’s the emotional opposite to The Weeknd‘s After Hours, in that The Weeknd wrote an album of that partially deals with the emotional crash after the party ends. Whatever you’re driving home from in the late night hours when you listen to Songs for the Late Night Drive Home, probably was something you look back fondly on.
BUT IF I DON’T MOVE ON, THEN ALL THEY’LL EVER BE IS DREAMS. “Watch You Burn” opens Songs for the Late Night Drive Home with dreamy synths. The lyrics are cliché and the metaphors mixed. It’s an empty motivational speech. But Stephen Christian’s voice brings a level of authenticity. It doesn’t matter that it’s a motivational speech that gives no concrete details other than “go out there and get to work,” it’s a song. The song gives some relatable imagery of lying beside the one you love “staring up at ceilings” talking dreams. But the chorus reminds us that if we don’t put our dreams to action, nothing will come of them. And while the lyrics don’t give us a path to success, Stephen Christian is an example of someone who has made his dreams become a reality. Besides his music career, he founded a charity, wrote several books, dabbled in podcasting, earned his MBA while touring full time, and became a music pastor. Not all of these ventures worked out, but he often attributes his success the Rick Ross song “Every day I’m Hustlin’.” And that hustling is what we have to do in today’s economy to make the money we need for the lifestyle we want. Sure, somethings down work out, but “Watch You Burn” challenges us to try.
One of the often forgotten RadioU minor groups, Furthermore was another group that only released two records, 1999’s Fluorescent Jellyfishand 2003’s She and I. Furthermore was a trio consisting of vocalists Daniel Fisher and Lee Jester and DJ Jason Jester. The group arrived on the precipice of Tooth & Nail Records‘ golden age and left the roster shortly after releasing She and I. Fisher went on to play in several bands, and apparently released several other projects under Furthermore after the group’s Tooth & Nail run, including a single in 2020 and several singles earlier this year.
BEFORE YOU SAY GOODBYE. Furthermore is a vestige of when Tooth & Nail signed artists without thinking about the financial consequences. Christian Rap was a burgeoning market for Christian audiences, but rock, punk, and hard music eventually became much of the label’s focus. Christian Rap tended to be more evangelistic, whereas many of the rock bands tended to less focused on evangelism. Furthermore certainly wasn’t to everyone’s taste; Christian labels pushed far too many Eminem-influenced groups and far too few black Christian rappers in the early ’00s. Like many of Tooth & Nail’s odd-ball-out musical acts, Furthermore was sent on tour to open for punk bands like All Wound Up and The Dingees. Furthermore clearly has rock influences–guitar and keys lay the backdrop for Fisher’s rapping as does Lee’s singing. The tracks on Fluorescent Jellyfish aren’t too serious. Their standout track “Are You the Walrus?” which has a video illustrating the song is a humorous song about going to grocery store and the speaker being mistaken for a Beatles-esque guru. She and I, though, while also containing light-hearted lyrics, deals more with serious relationships, domestic violence, and mental health.
A RELATIONSHIP MAY SAVE YOU, OR ENSLAVE YOU. COUNT ON BOTH TO HAPPEN. “Letter to Myself” is a bit clunky as a rap track at the beginning, but there is something about this pre-Emo rap track that brings me back to 2003. It sounds like a modified English class assignment: to write a letter to yourself to read when you are XX age. The lyrics of the song deal with falling in love and dealing with depression, and the lyrics read as a reminder for the speaker to stay grounded. The lyrics could even be read as a suicide prevention note. But listening back to the lyrics, it’s interesting that as a Christian Rock hit how the focus of the song is about the speaker grounding himself and watching out for himself, rather than reaching out to a higher power, and I completely missed that as a 14-year-old. I think back to the letters to myself, the embarrassing composition notebooks of half-written poems and song lyrics and guitar chords. I think about how important my faith was to those letters and how different everything is now. I don’t have those notebooks anymore because they’re not something I brought with me to Korea. However, I would like to look over them this winter when I go in a few weeks. I wonder how shocked 14-year-old Tyler would think of 35-year-old Tyler.
2017’s After Laughteris arguably the best Paramore record both lyrically and musically. Musically, it’s a pop album borrowing synths from the ’80s, interesting drum arrangement, and some pensive guitars here and there. And although most songs are in major keys, lead singer and lyricist Haley Williams masterfully disguises some of the band’s darkest lyrics with smiles and summertime vibes. The name of the album itself is telling. Haley Williams explains that the meaning is the expression the faces of a room full of people stop laughing. Smiles start to fade, maybe some tears are wiped away. While you may debate whether this band fits into their emo punk rock sound, the lyrics are an unadulterated emotional roller coaster.
I CAN’T CALL YOU A STRANGER, BUT I CAN’T CALL YOU. Winter days are the time for last tracks of the album. Cold days indoors with instrumentals make you reflect on life and relationships. As a piano ballad, “Tell Me How” doesn’t pretend to be happy, like most of the rest of the album. While other telling tracks like “Rose-Colored Boy,” “Fake Happy” and Pool” show this beautiful confusion between being the life of the party and dealing with other things inside, “Tell Me How” is a reflective track that drops the pretense of the party. It’s the song for sweeping up the broken bottles and weeping about the fact that the party didn’t solve any of the problems–just hid them for an evening. With lyrics that reference the lawsuits and turmoil that the band had been through as well as the personal cost of losing friendships over differences of opinions, Williams speaks her truth, and it’s a story that’s all too relatable. I wrote about the Paramore controversy several time, but the song that I had chosen was before the great disagreement and the lawsuits took place. This song is the last song on the latest Paramore record, which is basically a war story. The contributors at Genius Lyrics do a great job breaking down the lyrics of this song with quotes from both parties. When a relationship sours, there’s no real healing.
YOU MAY HATE ME, BUT I CAN’T HATE YOU. “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift” (Matthew 5:23-23). This song reminds me of a sermon I heard growing up based on this passage. The pastor said that if you can’t settle your disagreement, you are not ready for heaven. This bothered me to the core. What was even more disturbing was that the people who agreed this message the most had a blindspot for resenting a neighbor or family member. I want to live as a peacemaker, but sides in a disagreement can’t always be glossed over. Sometimes the reconciliation with a brother or sister takesyears and the sacrifice sits at the altar for years. “I’ve got my convictions, [and you’ve got yours]… and no one’s winning. Tell me how I’m supposed to feel about you now?” The outro ends the song with some hope, as if Williams comes to a moment of realization that friends don’thave to make up, but that letting go of the hard feeling is freeing.
I’ve talked about “Shout” and “Head over Heels,” but neither of those massive hits is the most remembered song from the post-punk band Tears for Fears. You’re unlikely to hear a track from their follow-up to Songs from the Big Chair in the grocery store, not the album’s title track that is subtly about ejaculation, “Sowing the Seeds of Love.” Nor would you hear the later Gary Jules–covered “Mad World” for the film Donnie Darkoand featured on every nighttime drama from Tears for Fears’ first album. “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” is Tears for Fears’ biggest song, yet the lyrics seem to contradict the easy melody of the song, making it slightly misunderstood.
ONE HEADLINE, WHY BELIEVE IT? The syncopated guitar riff, the airy keys, and the somewhat chill vocals of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” act as a siren song, distracting listeners from the truly sinister theme of the song. Lyrics that sound like they could have been lifted from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four wrap around the repeated title hook: “Everybody wants to rule the world.” But if you are my age or younger, the doomsday theme of the song failed to sink in as we were listening to the song while choosing a coffee in aisle 13. I loved maps and the globe when I was growing up, but in the late ’80s and early ’90s, the boundaries changed significantly. The Soviet Union was no more. Germany was reunited. Zaire became the Democratic Republic of Congo. Czechoslovakia split. Communism was crushed by American democracy and all was peaceful and right with the world. Until 9/11. But those ten years between the end of the Soviet Union and 9/11 gave my generation ten years of a childhood free of the fear of nuclear war–something my parents’ generation and grandparents’ generation lived with. Nuclear war seemed theoretical, but it seems that generations before me saw it as a real threat.
THERE’S A ROOM A ROOM WHERE THE LIGHT WON’T FIND YOU. But today, nuclear war seems more and more likely with Russia’s revived interest in getting the old gang back together. But perhaps this fear of nuclear war comes from more provocative world leaders playing to the voyeuristic urges of the public that views news as entertainment. Who hasn’t written about the antigens in the blood of democracy after shocking election outcomes in the mid-’10s? But the heart of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” is just that everyone thinks that they could do a better job. Everybody thinks that they will be the leader who gets a different outcome. And today, in America and other countries, elected officials have shed the belief in self-governance by the people. Instead, there should be a list of rules to micromanage the public. Maybe you see this at work, too. If you have a work ethic and know your job fairly well–fully trained–you can find something to do and maybe do it well. A supervisor can share a vision, take feedback from well-trained constituents, and hold meetings to discuss the progress of the product. But sometimes, the supervisor has another agenda and would rather tell you exactly what to do, step by step. The product you are creating is being dictated to you and you are in no way part of that product, just a machine in its assembly. Which situation breeds better workers? The supervisor who holds the information uses it as a weapon against the workers. And that’s how you get a work environment where you say, “I could do her job, only better!” Indeed everybody wants to rule.
MUNA’s third and self-titled album was released on June 24th. Their album gives the single from September 2021, “Silk Chiffon,” a home. The band also released three other singles from the 11-track album prior to its release. But in early June last year, MUNA released a non-album track–a cover of Britney Spears’ 1999 bubblegum ballad “Sometimes”–for the Hulu original film Fire Island, also released on the same day. The film was written by and stars comedian Joel Kim Booster and co-stars the Saturday Night Live openly gay comedian Bowan Yang in a modern queer retelling of Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice set in New York’s legendary LGBTQ+ haven. 
Mixtapemotions 