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"Erase" (Acoustic Cover of Copeland) by Charles Angell, Wednesday, February 8, 2023 (updated repost)
YOU’RE STILL A BREEZE UPON MY SKIN. Of the Copeland covers, Charles Angell’s version of “Erase” is one of the best. The finger-picking guitar captures part of what Copeland’s original masterpiece conveys, but in other ways, the calm acoustic guitar void of the band’s calculated injection of the disjointed beat on verse 3, keeps the song forlorn. Copeland’s version leaves the listener wrecked. Their comeback album,Ixora, surprised fans when the band decided to record new music in 2014. The album was released on November 24. The songs were more concrete and often more optimistic than You Are My Sunshine, and the band delved into some mature love song-writing. But by track 4, the album takes a turn. “Erase” may be the most gut-wrenching Copeland song. It reverts to the strange imagery from prior albums. Why is the singer “tasting armor”? Moreover listeners wonder if there are spiritual implications to this break up song?SO YOU JUST COLOR ME TO GREY. When Gotye wrote “Somebody That I Use to Know,” he used concrete details, like “sending a friend to collect [his] records” to describe that awful feeling when someone you loved doesn’t recognize you anymore. Copeland conveys the feeling of being erased by someone, using fewer details. Marsh sings with conviction, though, stating that whatever happens now, the past is etched into him and he is etched into that other person. The song reminds me of the Bible story in Genesis in which Jacob wrestles the angel, not giving up, demanding that the angel bless him. In the same way, the singer of this song is telling his lover or possibly God that he refuses to be erased. Despite Marsh’s claim that he doesn’t write Christian or even spiritual songs, it’s safe to say that many of his listeners interpret the song in a spiritual lens. Which brings me to my first experience listening to Ixora. I was coming off a turbulent year in my faith. I was listening to the album on New Year’s Eve, 2014 on a train back from a vacation in Busan with my friend. That trip was a vacation from myself, from the broken relationships I gotten myself into. I had decided to be honest with myself since the beginning of that autumn, admitting that I was gay. But that admission came with a few months of catching up and making mistakes. Ixora was the soundtrack for me collecting my thoughts on the train, and “Erase” was a spiritual climax. I asked the question to God, “What does it mean if it’s impossible to live up to your standards? Am I just damned to Hell because it’s impossible to follow you?” But Marsh sings with conviction “You won’t erase me / So you just color me from grey.” I began to realize that my view of God as a strict rule-giver in the sky might be off. If I believed that he made me who I was, maybe he’d accept me for who I am. Maybe the truth that was in my bones, the truth that I saw, the truth of human psychology was real, and parts of the Bible were not. This freedom of belief was scary to my indoctrinated mind. But without that spark of hope, it was far scarier.Read “Erase” by Copeland on Genius.Copeland Original Version:Ixora Twin version:Ixora + Twin version combined: -
Today we have another offering from Falling Up’s Captiva, the transitional record between their mainstream Christian Rock career and their dive into pure lyrical experimentation. I believe that “Maps” was one of the last Christian Hit Radio (CHR) singles for the band. Christian Hit Radio was perhaps the least successful Christian music genre. The genre tried to parallel Top 40 pop stations, offering a mix of Christian hip hop, pop, adult contemporary, and rock. One of the best examples of the Christian Hit Radio stations was Air1. While Air1 still around, it now claims to be a “Worship Radio station.”
ONE LAST HOUR BEFORE THIS PLACE IS ON FIRE. In the early ‘00s, Christian Hit Radio stations, such as Air1, served as a place where listeners could hear the heavier Michael W. Smith and Rebecca St. James songs and the calmer P.O.D. and Anberlin songs. Air1 also played pop stars like early Jonas Brothers and Jordin Sparks as well as publicly Christian general market artists such as The Fray and Daughtry. Unlike the harder station, RadioU, Air1 didn’t do well with the “ambiguously Christian” bands that started springing up in the ‘00s. While the station played four singles from Anberlin’s Blueprints for the Black Market, the station skipped the singles from Never Take Friendship Personal and only played “The Unwinding Cable Car” from Cities, which was the last they played Anberlin.
THE FURTHER I’M FROM YOU, THE HARDER I TRY TO EXIST. Falling Up’s first record, Crashings, contained three number 1 singles on Air1. I don’t remember Dawn Escapes being a hit on Air1 as it was on RadioU. “Maps” seemed like a last attempt at Christian pop music. The lyrics are vaguely spiritual, possibly interpreted as trying find direction, being led back to God. Falling Up’s lead singer Jessy Ribordy started to steer away from overtly Christian lyrics, with Captiva being the last time mentioning “Jesus” in the lyrics directly. While there were certainly overtly Christian Rock bands after 2007, I think that Captiva serves as a kind of musical divorce from the “Christians Rock band” and “Christians in a band.” The Christian Rock band put their message first, and the sound of the music often suffered and sounded generic. Then the “Christians in a band” started writing more abstract music, sometimes started cursing, and little by little drifted away from the genre of Christian Rock. Of course this is an oversimplification, but 2007 seems like an interesting year on the cusp of a break up.
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“Light the Fire” is a stand-out track on Search the City’s 2013 record Flight. The song begins with a cheap-sounding recording; an acoustic guitar accompanying a group of singers led by Search the City’s frontman gives way to a fast punk beat and gang vocals. The lyrics call out an antagonist, mixing metaphors to describe the listener (the song’s you) and his actions and attitudes. The speaker of the song, though, speaks in terms of “we,” a collective who was victimized by the listener. The listener has been found out for his lies and the speaker is “done with [the listener’s] speeches . . . [and] reasons.”
YOUR SECRETS CAME ALONG AND WE SAW YOU FOR WHAT YOU REALLY ARE. Last night, I got some news that a coworker I had struggled to work with for the year would not be renewing his contract. It had been a year of mind games in the office, yet had tried to present himself in a good light to higher ups. But he couldn’t keep his laziness a secret; he couldn’t keep his racism a secret. He couldn’t keep his allegiance at work. There are times when I am done with people. It doesn’t happen often, but after that point, I am completely divested from any conversation I have with that person. With this co-worker, one afternoon when he wasn’t planning for classes —the norm for this coworker—but rather reading the news and trying to engage my other co-worker and I in a distracting conversation, he just casually asked to himself, “What’s marital rape?” His question came after months of establishing himself as sexist/racist/homo/ trans-phobic machismo bro, belittling the experience of anyone who was not of his persuasion. I was done with him, but I still had the majority of the year to try to tune out the conversation. And he never got better, just worse.
YOUR BIGGEST STORY LEFT NO SCAR. “Light the Fire” is a confusing song. First of all, what does fire represent in the lyrics? To me, it seems that it is either passion or destruction in the context of the lyrics. “Lighting the fire” could mean destroying the bonds that the listener has placed on the speaker or it could mean destroying the lies, burning them up. It could also be interpreted as a passion that had been suppressed by the listener. Under the listener’s lies, the speaker has put aside his or their desires because of the mind control the listener had them under. And when the speaker comes to that realization, he won’t let the listener stifle the passion, which ultimately grows like a fire after the hindrance is gone. Today, I’m thinking about passion as a fire. Last month, I was kind of on hiatus with my blog, reposting so many times because I was too busy to take the blog seriously. I wondered what the blog really meant to me and whether or not I should fight to keep it going. But today I realized that this is the fifth original post that I’ve written for this month—pretty good considering my track record. Of course a lot can change when school starts, but I feel like there’s a season three around the corner in which I hit a stride, hopefully writing content faster. But I need to develop what that season of my writing looks like. It’s probably less well researched posts and more daily-life reactions. We’ll see. Time to light the fire again.
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While Jimmy Eat World purists cite Clarity as their favorite and their true break-through album, most of us humble music listeners would have never heard of one of the defining bands in the pop-punk/ emo scene if it wasn’t for their 2001 record Bleed American. It was specifically their second single from the record, “The Middle” which is the band’s most well-known hit. When you’re talking about hits from your child-hood and bands you like, many people won’t recognize the name of the band but they know the song. Jimmy Eat World had released two albums on Capitol Records when the first wave of emo sparked by bands like Sunny Day Real Estate became popular. Jimmy Eat World, though, underperformed and was dropped by Capitol. The band then recorded Bleed American independently but signed to DreamWorks before releasing the record.
DON’T WRITE YOURSELF OFF YET. First Jimmy Eat World released the title track “Bleed American” to rock radio before releasing “The Middle.” The second single reached #5 on Billboard’s Hot 100, an unheard-of success for the emo genre at the time. Steering away from controversy Jimmy Eat World changed the title of their fourth record Bleed American to Jimmy Eat World following the September 11 attacks, but changed it back in 2008. The band never duplicated their success, though continued to gain rock radio airplay. The band continues to play, but seems to be more of a “band’s band”—more of an influence on the scene than one that is listened to regularly. Still, the Jim Adkins-fronted band will forever be remembered in the fall of 2001 for their radio single, which was certainly boosted by the song’s popularity. The video shows the band performing at a house party where all of the attendees are in their underwear except for one guy. Toward the end of the video, the young man is about to give in to the peer pressure and strip down to his boxers, but he sees a girl who is also uncomfortable with the peer pressure.
IT JUST TAKES SOME TIME. I remember an interview with MTV or another music channel that Jimmy Eat World said that they actually played for house parties like the video early in their career. The video has sometimes been called “The Underwear Song” or “The Underwear Band” because of the video. Another cool effect that viewers liked was that during the guitar solo, an actor jumps into the pool, and the solo sounds blocked like hearing it from underwater. Besides the popularity of the video, the song resonated with teenagers and those going through a transition in life. Being “in the middle of the ride” can be a frustrating time. We feel that angst especially during and after puberty, but there are definitely periods in our lives where we also feel trapped on the ride. We tell ourselves just a little further; that we can endure anything as long as it’s temporary. However, I’ve started to worry about the end of the ride. Someday, the ride will be over, but doesn’t that mean death? I think it’s time to start enjoying the middle. Heck, let’s enjoy it all because once it’s over it’s done. And someday, we’ll be too old to be going to underwear parties!
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Carly Rae Jepsen announced the second single, “Now That I Found You” from her fourth record Dedicated as part of the promotion for the third season of Netflix‘s Queer Eye. Many of the songs on Jepsen’s 2019 record dealt with break ups and loneliness, much like her latest record, The Loneliest Season. The lead single and the album closer, “Party for One” deals with a love for oneself above the fleeting, divided attention from another.
MY HEART’S A SECRET. While Dedicated contains songs of self-actualization and self-acceptance, many of the songs deal with sex and love. “Want You in My Room” is probably the horniest the singer has ever gotten, and still she never explicitly says what those “bad things” she wants to do to the listener. “Happy Not Knowing” is a song about willful ignorance in order to keep a relationship going. And yet some of the songs are straight-forward love songs. “Now That I Found You” is one of them. The lyrics of the song sound like a fairytale romance leading up to a happily ever after. Carly Rae Jepsen has said in an interview that she wrote this song about her cat. The video (see below) takes this interpretation too. We see Jepsen finding a stray kitty in the rain and bringing him home. The video gets hilariously radical: the cat somehow multiplies; she smokes pot/catnip which causes her to hallucinate; then, at the end of the video, she meets a handsome man who also has a cat. Match made in heaven? At the pound?
I FEEL I’M COMIN’ ALIVE WITH YOU. In years past, I dedicated the days leading up to Valentine’s Day to love songs. I’ve blogged about how, ever since I’ve come out to myself, I’ve been trying to make up for the shitty feelings I’ve felt surrounding the holiday when I was growing up–the single’s awareness day. I hated the pressure I felt in high school and college to have someone to show off on the commercial holidays. But having survived a straight-passing childhood and young adulthood and then being in a relationship with someone who cares much more about the daily relationship than the in-your-face holidays, I feel like telling people that being single is okay. However, I do feel bad something I did without thinking. I booked my return ticket to Korea on February 15th, meaning that I won’t be able to celebrate Valentine’s Day with my boyfriend. Of course, it’s a Tuesday and a work/school day, so our celebration would have been meager anyway and may have not happened. He would say don’t take the day off; he has to study and can’t spend time together. But what’s worse is that I have to crash my sister’s Valentine’s Day and maybe my mom’s. My bad.
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Next Friday, we’ll see the return of Paramore after a five-year hiatus. Following the release of 2017’s After Laughter and the promotional tours, the band decided to take an indefinite break. Next week the band will release This Is Why, which seems like a return to form for the band that got their start in pop-punk and emo. In the the six years between After Laughter and This Is Why, pop-punk made a comeback; Paramore’s former guitarist Josh Farro and lead singer received writing credits on Olivia Rodrigo’s mega-hit “good 4 u” in 2021 for a controversial interpolation.
I’M OFF CAFFEINE ON DOCTOR’S ORDERS. On Paramore’s 2017 After Laughter lead singer Haley Williams begins to process her divorce from New Found Glory‘s guitarist Chad Gilbert. After touring and promoting After Laughter, Paramore took an indefinite hiatus. Williams started writing music which eventually became 2020’s Petals for Armor, an album in which she analyzes her divorce in a less filtered, more explicit way than she ever expressed on a Paramore song. However, Williams’ solo project was not Paramore, and fans anxiously awaited an announcement on whether the band would call it quits or would return with new music. In January of 2022, Paramore was announced as the co-headliner for the When We Were Young festival, a packed lineup of mostly “elder emo” acts popular fifteen to twenty years ago. And unlike some of the reunited acts for festivals, Paramore’s reunion wasn’t completely set in the past. In late September of last year, Paramore released the lead single from an upcoming album, the eponymous track “This Is Why.” The single was accompanied by a video featuring the band performing in a trailer in the desert. The song was a departure from the ’80s synth sounds of After Laughter, instead involving a disco-sounding chorus and ’70s guitar jamming.
I STILL NEED A CERTAIN DEGREE OF DISORDER. “C’est Comme Ça” is the third single from This Is Why and features a spoken-word verse from Haley Williams. The song roughly translates from French as “it is what it is,” and comes from a longer phrase “C’est comme ça et pas autrement,” meaning there’s nothing we can do about a bad situation. The song deals with the PTSD Williams and the world as a whole have dealt with throughout and after the pandemic. The song specifically addresses Williams’ mental health as not only she dealt with a pandemic but also finalizing the process of her divorce. When the band talked to Zane Lowe about the song, Williams talked about adjusting to life in her 30s, saying that she prefers to be in bed by 8 with a cup of tea, which is something she never had imagined for her life. And yet, “C’est Comme Ça” embraces Williams’ addiction to disorder. It’s how she thrives and possibly the spark that keeps the modern-day Fleetwood Mac together. The disorder this time might just have to be Williams dating longtime guitarist Taylor York. But it may turn out to be functional. What will be will be.
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I’ve definitely talked about my love for the music of the late ‘90s. The often anodyne lyrics (Third Eye Blind being a notable exception) of the pop-rock groups around the turn of the millennium are arguably forgettable. Ballads pining for lost loves, songs of devotion and admiration, mild “We’re Not Gonna Take It” in a much less rebellious tone all graced the radio with a few edgy “Bitch”es and “Semi-Charmed Life”s. The last generation of radio listeners heard the tones of an acoustic guitar with electric lead embedding sometimes gravelly vocals but more and more men with higher voices than the grunge/post-grunge movement performed in a major key opposed to the minor keys of the grunge and hair metal movements proceeding the millennial pop-rockers. That was the context for Vertical Horizon’s breakthrough, Everything You Want.
I DON’T THINK YOU NOTICE. Lead vocalist Matt Scannell and guitarist Keith Kane started Vertical Horizon in 1991 while they were students at Georgetown. After releasing two independent albums the band signed to RCA and released their massive album Everything You Want. The title track, the album’s second single, topped the Hot 100 and the album spawned two singles after “Everything You Want.” But Vertical Horizon was a kind of one-album wonder. Their follow-up, Go, was under-promoted; the lead single “I’m Still Here” only receiving promotion on Adult Pop stations. The band continued though and even released an album as late as 2018. My personal experience with Vertical Horizon, like most music listeners, goes back to the hits. In my case it was a hotel room on a 4-H trip watching music videos on VH-1, something forbidden in my house at the time. The video for “Everything You Want” was on, and my only memory of the song was the quote: “every six seconds you think about sex,” which I probably reacted obnoxiously in a room full of boys whom I barely knew. I certainly heard the other singles on the radio when I started listening to the radio a few years after the band’s peak, though I don’t remember hearing their final single from the record, “Best I Ever Had” (Grey Sky Morning). I first heard a cover of that song in 2005 when country singer Gary Allan released the single from his album Tough All Over.
‘CAUSE I LIKE SOME SUFFERING. I found a copy of Everything You Want in an under- $10 bin at Sam Goody and because I liked so many of the songs I bought it. The rest of the songs on the record were good, but nothing was spectacular, warranting regular rotation in my car during my junior or senior year. However, today’s song, “Finding Me,” was a highlight from the album, and I felt it stands with the singles of the record. The song shows off lead singer Matt Scannell’s upper range and the lyrics and self-reflective lyrics resonated with a high school junior wondering what his life would hold. It’s that vein that makes “Finding Me” my song of the day. While I haven’t been writing much since I’ve been home, I’ve been having conversations with family members and high school friends about some pretty emotional stuff. It’s so interesting how much I missed in certain situations or how much I didn’t know about a friend or family member. It’s also interesting to hear the opinion of an outsider—a partner of a friend or family member who didn’t live through an experience—and how that outside perspective could be a key to a deeper understanding. I know that one of my biggest flaws, especially when it comes to writing and just living, is getting outside of my own head. I have a cognitive realization that different people are motivated by different things, and they have different preferences. But it’s hard for me to emotionally get there. Too often I revert to the things that I want; I talk about myself when I should listen to others. I’m obsessed with finding me, that I fail to listen to you. But I hope that admitting the problem will lead to shedding some of this narcissism.
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MUNA is an alternative pop group composed of three friends who studied together at the University of Southern California. The trio self-produced their debut EP and uploaded it to Bandcamp and SoundCloud. The band’s success with their debut EP led to the group signing with RCA records and releasing their 2017 debut record, About U. In May 2021, the band announced that they had signed to Phoebe Bridgers‘ Saddest Factory record label. The group recently released the single “Silk Chiffon” which features Bridgers singing a verse. The song is one of the group’s few singles to chart on Billboard, peaking at #35 on the US Alternative chart.
KEEPIN’ IT LIGHT LIKE SILK CHIFFON. I think I first heard MUNA in the awkward teen comedy Alex Strangelove, a story about a high school senior who is struggling to understand his sexuality. All the members of MUNA identify as queer, though, as a lyricist lead singer Katie Gavin often avoided pronouns in the group’s earlier music to allow all gender and sexual expressions to relate to the band’s music. The group is known for their their dark lyrics. Their latest LP, 2019’s Saves the World, is an addictive break-up record, filled with depressing lyrics, but often using upbeat, deceptive chord progressions. Phoebe Bridgers is known as a “serial collaborator,” which has made the 27-year-old singer quite a versatile star. So many of my music snob podcasts and YouTube channels praise the singer-songwriter. Some even credit her for saving rock music with her two LPs. In addition to collaborations with MUNA this year, she has appeared on Lorde‘s Solar Power, The Killers‘ song “Runaway Horses,” Taylor Swift‘s “Nothing New,” Paul McCartney‘s “Seize the Day,” Julien Baker‘s “Favor” and two songs by Lucy Dacus.LIFE’S SO FUN. “Silk Chiffon” is a positive anthem about queer love. Gavin sings about a girl dressed in a silky dress, while the singer is wearing a mini skirt and rollerblades. Silk chiffon is not only what the girl is wearing, but the singer draws a comparison between the girl and the luxurious feeling someone has when “trying on” a light fabric. Phoebe Bridgers, who identifies as bi-sexual, sings the second verse of the song. Bridgers’ verse takes the song to another perspective. It is the feeling of someone looking at you “with a ‘you’re on camera’ smile.” You feel flattered and you forget that you’re “feeling anxious” about whatever’s going on with your day. There is only one dark element of the ordinarily dark pop group’s latest single. The video, directed by Ally Pankiw, a writer for Schitt’s Creek‘s final season, develops a love story between a camp counselor (portrayed by Bridgers) at a conversion-therapy camp and a girl who was sent away to the camp (portrayed by Gaven). By the end of the video, some of the camp attendees break free and go to a gay bar. Even some of the counselors (Bridgers included) break free from the restrictive camp. It seems that in recent years, the media has shed light on gay conversion therapy camps. In August, director Ryan Murphy released the Pray Away documentary, which follows the dissolving of Exodus International and about former leaders in gay conversion therapy who have changed their views on the practice and embraced who they are in the LGBT community. The adolescent feeling of “Silk Chiffon” for anyone who is becoming aware of their same-sex attraction may be entangled with religious push-back. Mine certainly was. But eventually you have to jump onto the back of the pick-up truck and ride into town. Staying on the farm leads to a life of misery and constant lying to yourself.Read “Silk Chiffon” by MUNA on Genius.
Mixtapemotions 