Mixtapemotions

  • “All Around Me” by Flyleaf, Thursday, November 30, 2023

    The eponymous album by Flyleaf opens with a dirty, distorted bass on the song “I’m So Sick.” Then 19 seconds into the song, after lead singer Lacey Mosley (now  Lacey Strum) sings in an eerie, childlike voice, she erupts into a growl. While there isn’t a song on Flyleaf that quite matches the intensity of “I’m So Sick,” the grungy debut album from the Texas-based band proves that a female-led rock band has a place in the then male-dominated genre. The album was released in 2005. Christian Rock radio station RadioU had been playing the band’s demos before Flyleaf’s debut album was released.  The band toured relentlessly on their first album cycle between 2005 and 2008 before returning with their sophomore record, Memento Mori, in 2009. These tours with bands like Stone Sour, Three Days Grace, and Christian bands like Skillet solidified the band’s place in both the Christian and active rock scenes.


    I BEGIN TO FADE INTO OUR SECRET PLACE. In 2007, two years after releasing their debut record, Flyleaf issued their third single from the album, “All Around Me.” Unlike the album’s first two singles, “I’m So Sick” and “Fully Alive,” their third single was much calmer. While the guitars bring a rock element to the song, the heart of it is an airy ballad. And this lighter sound was what drove “All Around Me” to be Flyleaf’s biggest song of their career. Not only was the song a massive hit on Alternative and Active Rock stations, it was the Flyleaf song that crossed over onto pop radio. The song reached #40 on Billboard’s Hot 100. The song, according to lead singer Lacey Mosley when speaking with the radio show LA Loyds Rock 30, is about “meeting God.” She goes on to explain that she sings the song “to God” and that the song is “really intimate.” Listeners may not be able to make the connection that the song is about Lacey’s relationship with Jesus from listening to the song with lines like “my tongue dances behind my lips for you.” Moseley acknowledges that not everyone will see the song as a worship song. She says “You can think about [‘All Around Me’] as a relationship between two people in love, too. I never think about it that way, but what’s so cool about that is I think there [are] parallels everywhere – in everything in life. I think that that parallel is something that God wants to communicate to us, that he gives us relationships like that, an intimacy like that.” 


    THICKENING THE AIR I’M BREATHING. Most of Flyleaf’s general market listenership probably wasn’t thinking about an intimate metaphysical relationship when they listened to “All Around Me.” And while Mosley talks about the song having dual meanings, it transforms me back to high school when many of my peers and I were confused about the line between intimacy with God and with another person. Biologically, teenagers have a heightened sex drive, and this is a modern problem for a society that doesn’t encourage teenagers to reproduce. There are many proposed solutions to this problem in the world, but evangelicals counter sexual desire with abstinence. Getting teenagers on board with this agenda takes a lot of rationalization and a lot of manipulation. The church tries to distract teenagers from sex by avoiding the topic or shaming those who have sex. One of the ways that distracted me from my base desires was worship. Songs and sermons that talked about almost “boyfriend/girlfriend” intimacy between Jesus and you made me put off understanding who God made me to be.  Sex was always treated as the dessert on the shelf, always for later. For now, there was God. Most of the time, I kept a line open in constant prayer with God, sort of how you text a partner throughout the day. Of course, there was pornography and masturbation and intimacy with others, and the church made us all feel like we were cheating on God if we enjoyed anything sexual. I’m not writing this out of anger, as I wrote many of my earlier blog posts. I still talk to God, and I think that certain elements of my experience (and the millions of other evangelical teens who grew up in purity culture) may be beneficial in understanding God. There are certainly times when it’s nice to know that an all-powerful God is helping you out. But the flip side of constantly being watched with judgment when you get horny has probably not left any one of us better for having gone through that.

  • “Intro the Gravity” by Falling Up, Wednesday, November 29, 2023


































    On October 25, 2005, Falling Up released their sophomore record, Dawn Escapes. The album, produced by Michael “Elvis” Baskette, varies from the band’s Hybrid-Theory–inspired debut Crashings. Rather than maintaining the momentum of the synth-driven rock on Crashings, the band’s sophomore effort focuses on a dreamy ambiance enhanced with hard rock guitars. The first single from the album, “Exit Calypsan” (Only in My Dreams)–released earlier in 2005 on the Christian Rock compilation X2005— is slower than the singles from Crashings. The chorus brings heavy guitars in to keep Falling Up a rock band. Dawn Escape’s second single, “Moonlit”; however, broke the band’s electronic formula and gave them a riff-heavy rocker. With the two singles preceding the album, listeners were treated to a dreamy experience that perfectly wrapped the dichotomous songs.

    THIS PLACE I PASS. The album cover of Crashings showed a fresh-faced six-peace band. According to their cover artwork, Falling Up looked like a clean-cut Linkin Park boyband in a distinctly 2000s Matrix Reloaded-colored filter. Six young men in a band was quite a lot for any group after the ska era in the late ‘90s. The band had signed with BEC Recordings under the recommendation of their high school friends in the band Kutless, a band that had been the biggest act of the early ‘00s before Underoath and Anberlin.  The band’s sophomore record, Dawn Escapes, did not feature photos of the band on the front, but rather the picture of an old Victorian-style house, similar to the one in the “Escalates” video in a flood. In the album booklet, the house is later almost completely submerged.  The six members of Falling Up appear on the back of the album. After Dawn Escapes, little by little, the high school friends in Falling Up started falling away from the band. Only lead singer Jessy Ribordy, bassist Jeremy Miller, and drummer Josh Shroy stayed in the band throughout their duration until Falling Up broke up in 2016.

    YOUR WORLD IS CRASHING TO THE GROUND. When I listened to Dawn Escapes in my later high school years it was mostly the first six tracks and the final track, 

    “Intro the Gravity.” After “Moonlit,” the album seemed to lose momentum. “Intro the Gravity” was never a single from Dawn Escapes. The song wasn’t chosen for their remix album Exit Lights which featured remixes from the band’s first two albums with more tracks coming from their sophomore record. Yet, the song ends the album perfectly. All songs from Falling Up’s first two records were accompanied by a Bible verse, printed in the album booklet. When I was in high school and when a band’s spirituality gave them points toward being my favorite band, I looked up the verses for some of the songs. I never felt that Falling Up’s inclusion of scripture was particularly important to understanding the song and often made the song more confusing. But cryptic lyrics were Falling Up’s bread and butter. “Intro the Gravity” is based on 1 Corinthians 3:19, according to the album booklet. The verse states: “The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.” If the verse provides context, the speaker of the song is arguing that the subject is foolish for “wanting everything.” Furthermore, the subject is alone when that person’s “world. . . crash[es] to the ground.” The sentence: “This is oceans” possibly relates to the drowning theme of the album from the cover art and the song “Fearless.” The water is a powerful force that can drown or baptize. It can kill or cure.

  • “Head Over Heels” by Kids in the Way (Partial Repost), Tuesday, November 28, 2023

    No ’80s New Wave playlist is complete without a song from Tears for Fears. The band was a huge hit producer on a few of their albums; however, like Third Eye Blind in the late ’90s, Tears for Fears peaked early in their career in the mid-‘80s. Their second #1 hit, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” is their “grocery store classic,” meaning it’s so popular they play it in the grocery store. “Head Over Heels” is a song about falling in love getting older and not meeting the expectations others set out for you. Singer Roland Orzabel said of the song “It is a romance song that goes a bit perverse at the end.” One does wonder why there’s a gun and who the second verse is about. Is it him or her? Two memories are strongly connected to this song. First was the cover by the Christian band Kids in the Way. Second was the opening montage of 2001’s Donnie Darko.


    ONE LITTLE BOY, ONE LITTLE MAN, FUNNY HOW TIME FLIES. Roland Orzabel and Curt Smith were part of a ska-influenced, mod-rock band called Graduate. The group toured across Europe, but Roland and Curt felt more at home in the studio. They began playing with new toys, the latest studio technology to come into recording–new synthesizers and drum loops. With these new effects, the new duo only needed to add their voices, a guitar, and a bass. Under the moniker Tears for Fears, the duo’s single “Mad World” started growing in popularity in the U.K. and abroad, and the studio band took to touring again. The band’s second album, 1985’s Songs from the Big Chair   released 5 of the 7 tracks as singles. The album had two #1 Hot 100 hits, “Shout” and “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” The duo has talked about their writing process, writing songs that were very personal to them. They never shy away from introspection or writing emotional lyrics. It’s no wonder why the Emo acts of the early ’00s oven site Tears for Fears as their post-punk ancestors. Tears for Fears’ music videos haven’t aged well. The image of ’80s music videos like Tears for Fears and A Flock of Seagulls put me off of ’80s music for years. The video for “Head Over Heels” is set in a library in which the “hot librarian” is hushing the band as they are performing in the library. By the end of the video, we see that Roland has married the librarian, and they are an old married couple. Roland is in his personal residence which has a sizable library. Recently, Tears for Fears announced a new record coming out in February 2022. The interview cycle now sees the duo, video chatting from their very English homes, complete with extensive libraries.

    I MADE A FIRE, I’M WATCHING IT BURN. Christian Rock band Kids in the Way recorded “Head Over Heels” for their 2005 sophomore record Apparitions of Melody. The band seemed to be on their way to becoming the next big Christian Rock band. Following their immature debut Safe from the Losing Fight, the band’s follow-up record blended alternative with post-hardcore emo rock. The band released a deluxe edition of Apparitions and a third record, A Love Hate Masquerade, the band’s most mature effort, but then the band broke up. “Head Over Heels” is perhaps a nod to influence from Kids in the Way. Tears for Fears’ influence can be heard in many of the ‘00s emo. The band was name-checked by Relient K’s song “In Love with the ‘80s” (Pink Tux to the Prom). The speaker says “My favorite band will always be Tears for Fears.” They even recorded their own version of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” for their K Is for Karaoke compilation. But Kids in the Way’s version of “Head Over Heels” is stereotypically ‘00s emo. Singer Dave Pelsue screams the second verse, bringing the emotional lyrics to the forefront. It’s not the same vibe of a song that opened the cult classic Donnie Darko, but somehow it seems perfectly inspired by the dark film that kicked off the angsty aughts.


    Tears for Fears:

    Kids in the Way:


     Donnie Darko scene:

  • “Better Than I Used to Be” by Mat Kearney ft. AFSheeN + Optimism Mix: Apple Mix, Monday, November 27, 2023

    Last Tuesday I posted my Optimism Mix. But I think we need another dose of optimism today, at the start of the week after Thanksgiving, to boost our productivity until Christmas! Today’s song, Mat Kearney’s “Better Than I Used to Be” is a reminder for of where I came from. And although life is hard now, I can handle it a lot better than before. So as bleak November enters the holiday season and life gets overwhelming, I try to remember how I’ve proven myself before. Today’s challenge seems big, but it was nothing compared to how it was back then. 

    Listen to the Playlist on AppleMusic.

  • “Sprite” by COIN, Sunday, November 26, 2023 (repost)

     Following up their 2020 album, Dreamland, COIN dropped three EPs in early 2021, leading up to their full album, Rainbow Mixtape, released in April. The band wrote and recorded their follow-up album after their 2020 supporting tour for Dreamland was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Singer Chase Lawerence sold his house at the beginning of the pandemic and moved back to his childhood home in Virginia where he began writing music for the next record. The band recorded many songs, yet the songs didn’t seem to have a theme. “We broke it down to its elementary form and felt like colors represented the lyrical and sonic themes,” Lawerence told American Songwriter. Each song corresponded with a color and was released on three EPs. Red-Orange, Blue-Green, and Indigo-Violet make up the three sections of the band’s fourth studio album.

    SUNRISE IN ORBIT. Rather than telling a story, like in their 2020 song “Cemetery,” “Sprite” speaks poetically about Lawerence’s feeling of isolation. The song seems to be addressing a romantic relationship, perhaps someone the singer has cast aside in the past. “Sunrise in orbit” seems to be drawing a parallel between being in space and being disconnected from a loved one, or family. As children, many of us dream about growing up to be an astronaut. But what we don’t realize as children is that being an astronaut means long periods of time being unreachable to loved ones. Under normal circumstances, a touring band might have thought about the isolation. “Sunrise in Harlem,” denotes a different city every night, different time zones, a grueling schedule has made many bands quit. However, many around the world knew isolation because of the pandemic. In 2021, Nick Jonas released an album titled Spaceman which tackles the metaphor of living on another planet, away from the ones you love. I think that the imagery of looking at the world in space, along with the line “your eyes were never blue,” gives “Sprite” its color in COIN’s spectrum. 

    THERE’S NO PUDDING, BUT HERE’S THE PROOF.  The question, though, is why is the song called “Sprite”? The green-labeled soft drink produced by Coca- Cola is the most common usage of the word today. Merriam-Webster’s dictionary lists these as the following definitions: 1a) an elf or fairy b) an elfish person  2a) a disembodied spirit or ghost b) a soul. Other popular uses of the word are a kind of computer graphics, a British motorcycle or car, a classification of butterflies, a fairy in the Artemis Fowl series, a creature in Dungeons and Dragons, a Marvel universe character, a term for lighting, or a special melon cultivated in North Carolina. Maybe the song refers to the second definition, a disembodied spirit. Imagining the ghost floating around the earth, watching the sunrise every ninety minutes adds to the loneliness. In the middle of the pandemic, many of us turned to simple hobbies and things that reminded us of a simpler time. We reassessed our relationships. Chase Lawerence found that family and listening to ’70s R&B and George Harrison were exactly what he needed. For me, I revisited music from my teenage years and started to fall in love with modern artists who were incorporating sounds of the early ’90s. Under normal circumstances, I would say that nostalgia isn’t the best way forward. We love nostalgia because it’s a tried and true formula for our entertainment. It’s sweet and we don’t have to challenge ears, eyes, and minds with new material. Nostalgia might be the only thing keeping us from stagnation and fear. But eventually, we’ll see that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. And if it’s too sweet, we might just get sick of the nostalgic overload. Luckily, the carbonated, bubbly music of “Sprite” keeps the sweetness quite fresh.


    Read “Sprite” by COIN on Genius.



  • "Disappear" by Number One Gun (ft. Stephen Christian), Saturday, November 25, 2023 (updated repost)

    This Is All I Know is the final album by Number One Gun. The band from Chico, California, became one member–Jeff Schneeweis—in 2007 on the band’s The North Pole Project. The other members went on to form the band Surrogate and work with other bands such as Emery. There was a lot of controversy surrounding Number One Gun’s last album, related to the late fulfillment of crowdfunding. Some backers for the 2014 album claimed as of 2021 they hadn’t received what they had been promised. After releasing This Is All I Know, Schneeweis declared that Number One Gun finished and started releasing music under the moniker Lael. This Is All I Know is the end of a Christian Rock era: a band that stuck around even though they never particularly stood out as anyone’s favorite band.

    HEAVY IS UPON US. Just as Anberlin had announced their farewell in 2014, several other bands called it quits. In 2017 the band Yellowcard, along with Anberlin drummer Nathan Young, recorded their final album and gave their farewell tour. After Anberlin ended, Stephen Christian was busy first in Nashville as a songwriter and then as a Worship leader in New Mexico. He released a worship project titled Wildfires and an Anchor & Braille project titled Songs for the Late Night Drive Home. He also offered guest vocals on Fireflight‘s “Safety” and Number One Gun’s This Is All I Know including today’s song, “Disappear.” Stephen and Anberlin reunited in 2018 to play a show with Underoath in Tampa, Florida. Anberlin has remained active, but Stephen announced last month that he would be taking a hiatus from touring with the band and Matty Mullins of Memphis May Fire would step in on the band’s 2024 tour dates. In the announcement, Stephen said that he wanted to step back from his touring duties to focus on his family and his other ventures such as his pastoral role. 


    HATE IS OVERRATED. One of the reasons I started this blog was to indulge in the stories of disappearing artists. Sometimes bands get a farewell tour. I remember watching Anberlin’s farewell tour around this time in 2014 on Yahoo!’s concert series. Of course, Anberlin was one of the successful acts that not only had a farewell tour, but subsequent “welcome back” tours. Anberlin determined that being an independent act works because they have fans who will go along with whatever they do. Smaller acts didn’t always have that luxury. What about bands that recorded one or two albums only to be dropped from their record label. Sometimes we get press statements. Sometimes we get “we’re looking around for another label” statements. Most of the time casual fans aren’t scouring the Internet for an article about whatever happened to Acceptance or Edison Glass. Thanks to podcasts, I’ve been able to become more connected with my music, but still there are a lot of bands left unaccounted for. And how long does it take us to recognize a band as missing? While the pandemic had been a time of great innovation for bands with large, established fan bases, we may be asking ourselves whatever happened to their opening acts? As rock radio stations disappear, the stations that are left contain bands that can’t crack the top 10. Without an active fan base, the big bands will stay big, and the smaller bands will, well, disappear. Is it survival of the fittest? No, it’s truly a battle of the bands.


    Read “Disappear” by Number One Gun on Genius.




  • “My Heart Escapes” by Blindside, Friday, November 24, 2023


































    In 2011, Blindside released their first album in six years, With Shivering Hearts We Wait. The album followed the band’s experimental 2007 Black Rose EP, which contained new songs and live tracks from the band’s 2005 record The Great Depression. The band’s 2005 record was a sonic departure from the band’s refined sound on their Elektra Records-released and Howard-Benson-produced Silence and About a Burning Fire. The sparse production and instrumentation and the gloomy lyrics of The Great Depression deterred fans, but Black Rose brought some back. By the time the band released their sixth record, With Shivering Hearts We Wait, anticipation couldn’t be higher for fans who hadn’t forgotten about the band.


     THE BREATH OF RAIN IN MY LUNGS. With the return of Howard Benson, With Shivering Hearts We Wait is a natural follow-up to About a Burning Fire. While Fire is a heavier album than Hearts, the guitars sound fuller with Benson behind the boards compared to their fifth album The Great Depression, produced in Sweden by Lasse Mårtén. With Shivering Hearts We Wait wades more into an alternative rock sound, flirting more with pop and less with post-hardcore than its preceding albums. The same producer who had masterfully refined the band on songs like “Pitiful” and “Sleepwalking,” blending lead singer Christian Lindskog’s scream and clean vocals with guitarist Simon Grenehed’s guitars, creates a moodier vibe on Shivering than any of the band’s previous work. As a hardcore band on the band’s prior record, Lindskog falls flat not because of his scream but because of the guitar. Blindside is in no way a tame band on their 2011 record, but Christian’s vocals tend to erupt into a scream in a fit of passion towards the end of the song, as a kind of icing, rather than a song that relies on the screaming. 

    I NEVER MEANT TO GIVE IT AWAY. I think that With Shivering Hearts We Wait was a satisfying follow-up for fans. Of course, there’s the Blindside purists who actually like an album of songs that sound virtually the same as Christian Lindskog’s blood-curdling scream punctuating tinny drums and guitar/bass duplication. My opinion is that Blindside works much better as a post-hardcore band. Post meaning that the band has hardcore roots, but uses those elements to make hard rock that sounds more refined with rough edges. I think that the second track, “My Heart Escapes” on Shivering demonstrates the core of a post-hardcore band trying to make it in the early 2010s. Sure, the lead single “Our Love Saves Us” and the Swedish radio single “Monster on the Radio” demonstrate where the band went to try to stay relevant in a changing music scene. On the other hand, “Bring Out Your Dead” is a refined version of the band embracing the hardcore part of post-hardcore. But today’s song isn’t a pop song in disguise—not that there’s anything wrong with Blindside doing whatever they want to. Ultimately the songs, no matter how pop, electronic, or heavy, come back to a feeling—shivering. It’s a cold summer in Sweden or the chill of the late fall somewhere further south. The album has a familiar feeling but also an eerie one, similar to the CD booklet of the young man alone in the woods. In 2011, we knew this band but as they performed on the main stage at the penultimate Cornerstone—flying over from Sweden just for that show—it felt like a premature wrap-up. By 2016 at the latest, we should have had a follow-up. The band hasn’t announced a breakup and even released a single, “Gravedigger” in 2019. They played Furnace Fest last year. But we’re left shivering in the cold, waiting for the follow-up from Blindside. 

  • “Thank You” by Ray Boltz, Thursday, November 23, 2023

    Ray Boltz is a retired singer-songwriter. He is best known for his Contemporary Christian inspirational songs that graced Christian radio in the early ‘90s. His breakthrough hit, “Thank You,” was the sleeper hit that propelled the singer to become one of the biggest names in the genre. The song won Song of the Year at the 1990 Dove Awards, the Gospel Music Association’s annual award ceremony. The singer had a prosperous career in the industry throughout the ‘90s. In the early ‘00s, he began to embrace a new image, incorporating rock music into his concerts–a stark contrast to the light church music for which he had come to fame. He even founded a rock label, Spindust Records, signing the band GS Megaphone. Boltz appeared in one of the band’s music videos, riding a motorcycle. This rock ‘n’ roll image was much less shocking to fans than what Boltz revealed in 2008. 


    I AM SO GLAD YOU GAVE. Ray Boltz recalls his conversion experience when he was 19 at a Christian concert in a 2012 interview with Voss Video Productions. He explains that the band seemed to be glowing because of their love for Jesus, and Boltz realized at the end of the concert that “Jesus wasn’t just a person who lived a long time ago.” He prayed at the end of the concert, asking Jesus to come into his heart. Boltz started his musical career at the age of 29, when he recorded his first album Watch the Lamb. But soon after he released his first album, the small record label he signed to went out of business. The label released the rights back to Boltz, who was then able to market his music independently. Eventually, Boltz signed to Word Records, one of the biggest Christian labels, and released The Altar in 1989. In 1994, he re-released Thank You, though the song had already won Song of the Year in 1990.  Boltz wrote the song as a pastor appreciation gift for his local church. In the song, the speaker has a dream about going to heaven with an unnamed friend. Many people line up to tell the friend about how little actions–praying, giving money, teaching–helped others make a decision to follow Christ. The song became a hit on Christian radio and has been sung in countless churches. According to some sources, the song was performed at Mother Teresa’s funeral. 

    I AM A LIFE THAT WAS CHANGED. In the early 2000s I remember hearing “Thank You” for special music at church. The guy that sang it sounded like Kermit. Interestingly, there was also a singer at church that sounded like Miss Piggy. But that’s a story for another day. Some of the musically conservative church members went to see Ray Boltz in concert. They complained that the music was deafening and that the singer was just bringing glory to himself with his “rockstar attitude.” None of Ray Boltz’s hits warrant a rock concert. I forgot about Boltz until 2010, when an article mentioned him after Jennifer Knapp came out as gay. In 2008, Ray Boltz came out as gay to the Washington Blaze, an LGBTQ+ publication. Boltz claimed that he always knew that he was gay, but tried to essentially “pray the gay away.” After over thirty years of struggle, which included a wife, four children, and several grandchildren; Boltz says that he had become suicidal because he could no longer keep his secret. His family came to fully accept Ray, though he and his wife Carol divorced. Since coming out, Ray hasn’t been fully accepted by the Christian community that once decorated him with awards. However, Boltz remains in the faith and even recorded an album in 2010 called True. 

    GREAT IS YOUR REWARD. I realize that including Ray Boltz’s “Thank You” in my playlist is a bit of a bomb. I know that most people, myself included, don’t want to listen to this song regularly. The song feels like what Ned Flanders listens to on the regular. But Ray’s story is fascinating to me. I don’t listen to Christian radio now, but I have a feeling that they don’t play Ray Boltz much. There are certainly a ton of Christian artists from this era who can fill the void  of slow inspirational offering collection or telethon songs. But I also think that there’s been a bit of erasure of Boltz’s legacy. It’s incredibly hard to find sources about Christian music from the pre-Internet age. I really would love it if CCM Magazine archives were easily accessible. But it seems that Christian music is a genre of artists that conform to a strict morality clause, and an artist is rendered useless to the cause when they deviate from that clause. It’s almost like there’s an attitude of “Thank you for giving to the Lord. Next.” Today, we’re giving Ray Boltz a little appreciation. His message now is to embrace who God made you to be–whether that’s gay, straight, bi, pan, trans, non-binary. He has laid a foundation for countless queer Christians to reconcile their faith and their sexuality. And for that, I sincerely thank you Mr. Boltz. I hope that your reward is great. 

     

  • "Free Fallin'" by The Almost (Tom Petty Cover), Wednesday, November 22, 2023 (updated repost)

    “Free Fallin’” is certainly synonymous with Tom Petty, but today, we’ll look at a few versions of the song, but due to the Christian Rock theme of the last few days, ultimately I chose The Almost‘s version to be the official version for my blog. As pointed out in an excellent video by 12Tone (see below), there is a lot of meaning packed in the musical theory of the song, ultimately illustrating that there are pros and cons to being free. 

    ALL THE VAMPIRES  WALKIN’ DOWN THE VALLEY MOVE WEST DOWN VENTURA BOULEVARD.  Tom Petty released his first solo record Full Moon Fever in 1989. The first song recorded for the record and first track on the record is “Free Fallin’.” The song is one of Petty’s biggest and most recognizable tracks. It was also his last top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100. The simple ballad is partly a breakup song and partly a love song for his then home of Los Angelos. The Gainesville, Florida, native always kept a rebellious Southern flair in his music, but California was where he and The Heartbreakers forged their career. Freedom in this Tom Petty classic refers to a break up between the speaker and a “good girl.” The speaker claims not to miss her but also wants to “write her name in the sky.” The speaker is free, which feels good, but also without that “good girl” to ground him, he is heading for a crash. For Petty, that crash came  seven years later, in 1996, when he divorced his high school sweetheart Jane Benyo. He turned to using heroin, which he claimed was due to depression from the dissolution of his marriage. Petty’s new music lost cultural relevance in the ’90s, as many musicians fail to keep momentum over multiple decades. But by his death in 2017, and as of today with nearly 8 million monthly listeners on Spotify, countless spins on classic rock stations, and movie placements, it’s safe to say that the rebel spirit of Tom Petty won’t be backing down anytime soon.

    I’M A BAD BOY FOR BREAKING HER HEART.  A staple at a John Mayer concert and covered countless times by everyone from Guns ‘N’ Roses to Coldplay, the legacy of “Free Fallin’” has become a late 20th century standard. Indie band The Pains of Being Pure At Heart even recorded a cover version of Petty’s entire Full Moon Fever. But today’s version comes from Punk Goes Classic Rock. The Almost covers “Free Fallin’.” Released in 2010, the cover coincides with the band’s 2009 sophomore record, 
    Monster Monster. A fellow Floridian, Aaron Gillespie the then former drummer for Underoath left the band to focus on his alternative rock band The Almost, during a turbulent time in Underoath. But Gillespie, like Petty, found that the freedom wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. The Almost’s third record, The Fear Inside Our Bones failed, which caused Gillespie to pursue a career recording worship music. Worship music didn’t work out either, which led him to give up releasing his own music for several years, touring as the drummer for Paramore. All the while Gillespie was going through a change in his beliefs and a divorce. Finally in 2015, Gillespie rejoined Underoath and has been with them ever since, though releasing solo records and another Almost record in 2019 called Fear Caller.

    The Almost cover:



    Tom Petty original:


    John Mayer cover:



    The Pains of Being Pure At Heart cover:


    “Understanding Free Fallin’”:




  • "Brightside" by Turn Off the Stars, Tuesday, November 21, 2023 + Optimistic Mix

    “Brightside” is the last song on Turn Off the Stars‘ only album. It’s simple guitar and vocal track about something better happening that transcends the gloomy reality. It’s a kind of pep talk in a song. Today, I wanted to collect a few songs about optimism. With the dark months ahead, seasonal depression is real for so many people. The holiday season also can be a dark time when dealing with family or remembering those we lost. “Brightside” reminds us that sadness is just a passing state. The colder seasons are coming, but spring will come again with the sunshine.