Mixtapemotions

  • "Sparking" by Eisley, Saturday, July 3, 2021

    Starting in 1997, Eisley originally consisted of three sisters: Sherri, Chantaulle, and Stacy DuPree. Later they added their younger brother, Weston, and their cousin Garron. Forming in Tyler, Texas and performing at their parents’ Christian coffee shop got the DuPree family band early exposure to the Christian music scene. But Eisley set their sights higher. While Eisley may not be a well-known band, they certainly have racked up indie cred over the years. Starting with opening for Coldplay to touring to playing SXSW, playing Conan, touring with the likes of Switchfoot, MuteMath, New Found Glory, Lovedrug, and Taking Back Sunday. All but cousins Sherri and Garron DuPree remain in the band as one by one the siblings married and/or moved onto other music projects.

    FALL…LIKE A SPARROW. When you hear a DuPree sister singing, you instantly know it’s a DuPree sister. However, you probably can’t figure out who is who. The sisters have contributed to quite a few pop-punk and Christian records including The Maine, Say Anything, Fair, and Anberlin. With 2017’s I’m Only Dreaming, Eisley is now a duo with Sherri DuPree at the microphone. However, both official members of Eisley are also entangled in other musical acts. Sherri works with her husband, frontman of Say Anything, Max Bemis, on a project called Perma. Garron works as a musical engineer and a music video director for Eisley, Say Anything, and on other projects such as Anberlin’s Vital. An episode of Lead Singer Syndrome gave an interesting window into Sherri and Max’s marriage and family life. A house full of children, a few moments of peace when after bedtime to write and play music and escaping to her car for moment of peace to record the interview, Sherri and Max are continuing the rock ‘n’ roll family Sherri was raised in. “Sparking” reminds me of listening to that interview. Eisley’s lush music and instruments are usually quite positive. The poetry of “Sparking” depicts falling and being broken, but healing because of the one who loves you. Sherri’s divorce from New Found Glory’s Chad Gilbert (who later went on to marry and divorce Paramore’s Haley Williams), may have left her broken, but her life with Max, motherhood, and music beams in this beautiful Eisley track.

    SITTING HERE ON THE FRONT PORCH. The weather forecast predicts that sometime this weekend the rainy season will begin. While climate change is making  the rainy season more unpredictable, we can typically count on at least two to four weeks of heavy rain at the end of June or early July. It’s nice because it breaks up the scorching summer to before the rainy season (dry heat) and after the rainy season (Oh, God, the humidity!) For almost a month, you can run the fan and open the window during the light rains. It kind of feels like a front porch, like on a rare summer rainy day listening to the rain at my parents’ home back in North Carolina. When the rainy season strikes Korea, you want to be at home. Even when you think it’s cleared up and the rainy season has passed, you can easily get caught out in the rain. This is particularly no fun if you rely on public transportation and you live about a kilometer away from the stop. In 2015 I was caught in the rain many times, trying to chase the end of my fading youth. How I found shelter in your room on the first floor of your parents’ apartment. We spent all day listening to the rain falling, your windows open. We’d drink cheap Korean beer at night and continue to watch television. Your parents were at home, never questioning about the “friend” in your bedroom. It was a strange story and a strange affair that blew over as the rains stopped falling on Korea.

    https://genius.com/Eisley-sparking-lyrics

  • "How Do You Sleep?" by Sam Smith, Friday, July 2, 2021

    Musicians sometimes have to change something about their projects in response to world events. Squad 5-0 released an album called Bombs Over Broadway which showed WWII jets flying over New York City. Bombs unfortunately coincided 9-11, so the record label changed the cover of the album and the band didn’t play the song live at first. Jimmy Eat World‘s hit album Bleed American was changed to Jimmy Eat World also following the 9-11 attacks. CCM singer Plumb changed her 2013 album from Faster Than a Bullet to Need You Now, in response to the Sandy Hook shooting. And in response to the 2020 Pandemic, Sam Smith retitled their upcoming album To Die For to Love Goes. Not only did Sam Smith retitle the album, but also they restructured it. The pre-released singles, “Dancing with a Stranger,” “How Do You Sleep,” and “To Die For” would all be tacked on at the end of the album. 


    HOW DO YOU SLEEP WHEN YOU LIE TO ME. Sam Smith’s third album delves into much poppier material, even sounding upbeat when the lyrics are sad. The music video for “How Do You Sleep?” is a little awkward, seeing the normally melancholy singer dancing with shirtless men in the background, as if it’s 1999. With songs inspired by the singer’s break up with Brandon Flynn in 2018, Smith no longer writes pining about being incapable of loving or being loved. Love Goes, is a break up record on the opposite side of pain, looking to move forward. Listeners, however, seem to prefer a hopelessly dark romantic Sam Smith. It seems that In the Lonely Hour was Smith’s peak, with Love Goes performing the worst of the singer’s three albums. Perhaps if it wasn’t for the pandemic and the diminishing of the three singles released long before the reworked album, Smith’s concept would have boded better with audiences. 

    I’M DONE CRYIN’ MYSELF AWAKE. There came a point in 2014 after a conflict with my boss, who I had confronted about going against company procedures and he pleaded with me not to tell corporate that I realized that the company was all about money, not ideals. Realizing that fully was liberating. It made me realize that I could take care of me. It was when I started to check out. It was when I started looking for an out. I had invested too much of myself into my job and for what? Working in a Christian school that relied on student tuition and teachers’ sacrifice to keep the lights on was too much pressure and too much work. I lost myself in the futility of the long days from 6 am to 10 pm, Monday through Sabbath and a couple of Sundays a year. Thinking back on the time, starting from Adventist college to the “mission field,” 2008-2014, I think of my cult years. I sunk into my religious roots, hoping to be that kind of edgy one who drank coffee and listened to cool secular music, read existentialist novels, and watched Tarantino and Nolen, yet believed in the the central truths of the Bible, would make me an effective messenger of Christ. The next thing I knew, I woke up in the proverbial van, stuck on a journey without any coffee or a book or music, and everyone else was speaking a different language.  I saw myself as cargo, not a person. I was a novelty to bait potential students. And I became less and less okay with that.

  • "High on Humans" by Oh Wonder, Thursday, July 1, 2021

    Oh Wonder is a British pop duo consisting of a dating couple Anthony West and Josephine Vander Gucht. The group released their first album as a series of singles each month for a year. The album sold over a million copies, being certified gold in the UK and Canada and platinum in Russia and the Philippines. The band grew popularity in the U.S. as well, performing on Conan. The band’s second record was released in 2017 and feature’s today’s song “High on Humans.” Like most of their songs, Oh Wonder’s musical style consists of minimal instrumentation–piano, occasional guitars, drums, and synths–and the two singers singing in unison. Josephine’s vocals are often prominent, as on this song, with Anthony’s vocals being quieter in the mix. 

    SITTING IN THE NEXT SEAT, DEAD HEAT SUMMER. What was the first lesson you learn before going to school? It might have been about not talking to strangers. Parents try very hard to instill fear of predators into their children, and it mostly works. Sure, there’s tons and tons of news articles and documentaries about child abductions, dating site killers, and crazy people who commit acts of terrorism, but for the most part societies have learned to avoid this by yelling “stranger danger” and running away. However, today’s song takes another approach. On the band’s Instagram, Josephine posted a video about how she was inspired to write “High on Humans.” She explains two back-to-back interactions she had when talking to strangers coming back from a trip abroad. The first was some passionate small talk about hot sauce and the second was with a drunk man who lost his teeth. Josephine believes that it’s important to talk to strangers, and this shared humanity can make us feel a high. 
    WE’RE MAKING WAVES OF CONVERSATION. “High on Humans” is a refreshingly optimistic song, particularly when most media tells us to guard ourselves from others. In many situations, talking to strangers isn’t dangerous. But in places like London, Seoul, and New York, it can be strange and uncomfortable. However, it’s pretty common in small towns. I remember when my family moved down south, drivers would often wave to each other on the road, and these drivers didn’t even know each other. At some point we have to put our hopes in strangers. We get a new job, start a new school, join a new club, and we’re thrust into a new scene with different faces. If you find yourself traveling alone, you may have some interesting conversations with strangers if you’re open to it. In a year that I’ve had some of the fewest random human interactions in my life, this song makes me miss those times when you have to greet a stranger. It makes me miss those times when you randomly click with someone over some shared instance of humanity.

  • "Everywhere You Look" (Theme of Fuller House) by Carly Rae Jepsen, Wednesday, June 30, 2021

    Carly Rae Jepsen is tattooed in the history of bubblegum pop for “The Song of the Summer” of 2012, “Call Me Maybe.” Jepsen hasn’t matched the success of “Maybe,” but she keeps making music, and her fans adore her. I wrote back in January about her song “Run Away with Me” and how much her album Emotion meant to me in 2015. And while most people are sick of “Call Me Maybe,” it always makes me think about Arrested Development where George Michael can’t help his feelings for his cousin Maeby Funke, but that’s a post for another day. So to end a particularly streak of guilty pleasure songs, why not talk about the theme of Fuller House, sung by Carly Rae Jepsen?

    WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO PREDICTABILITY? Along with Alf and The Cosby Show, Full House is one of my earliest TV memories. First airing in September of 1987 when I was a mere three months old, Full House is a show I haven’t rewatched as an adult, but there is certainly a meme-worthy ’90s nostalgia connected to the show–like whenever you see the whenever Candace Cameron Bure is making some outlandish conservative statement, or the Olsen twins come out of hiding, or you hear something more about the college cheating scandal and you think, “Oh, Aunt Becky. Why?” I can’t see an arial view of the Golden Gate Bridge and not think of Michelle in a back carseat of a convertible. Whenever I see the iconic San Francisco townhouses, I don’t think Tales of the City; I think Full House. In fact, prior to Full House, San Francisco was in America’s consciousness as the capitol of AIDS. I think I heard somewhere that setting Full House in San Fransisco was a strategic move to 1) put the city back in people’s consciousness as a truly American city with nice upper-middle class white families that America can look up to and 2) homo-erasure. Of course I’d have to do more research, like watching 8 seasons of Full House, but I’m pretty sure American family TV skirted the issues of the Reagan/ Bush years. Apparently, though, Kimmy is bi-sexual, so progress? And just so you know, Candace Cameron Bure says, “Loving Jesus doesn’t mean I hate gay people.”

    A LIGHT IS WAITING TO CARRY YOU HOME. When my friend recommended Bojack Horseman back in 2016, I couldn’t help but draw parallels to Full House. The show-within-a-show Horsin’ Around mimics cheesy ’80s and ’90s television shows in general, but the main character of the cartoon, Bojack, seems to be a Bob Saget character. Like Horseman, both were comedians who weren’t particularly family-friendly when he was given their breakthrough roles. Like Bob Saget mostly disappeared after Full House and hosting America’s Funniest Home Videos only to reemerge on the stand-up scene with some filthy jokes, Horseman also reappears with an outlandish media shows. For Saget there was the sex comedy, adult cartoon Farce of the Penguins, a documentary styled movie parodying March of the Penguins. The movie was so bad, my friends had to turn it off. Horseman took another shot at television in 2007 with a more edgy format, which like Saget’s Farce was seen as a critical flop. Saget has appeared on Fuller House, which is a throwback to the good-old-days that really never existed. Even the show’s theme song remembers how a predictable lifestyle set in the good-old-days was a better time. Viewers of the original Full House may recall the days of The Brady Bunch or Leave It to Beaver, completely overlooking counter-culture, of course. Viewers of Fuller House certainly think about growing up in the ’90s as a safer climate, just don’t think about the Netflix serial killer documentaries that we can’t get enough of. Viewers of Bojack Horseman, however, get a much more sinister look at the underbelly of Hollywood, I mean Hollywoo. It’s a land where your heroes on TV had secret cocaine addictions, and fame is certainly not kind to the child stars (Sara Lynn = The Olsen Twins meets Lindsey Lohan?). The backdrop of Horsin’ Around reminds viewers of everything from Mr. Ed to The Cosby Show to Full House. But unlike the triple weddings on the series of finale of Fuller House, Bojack shows us that life and Hollywood doesn’t have happy endings–just the ending of lives and friendships and the ever-pressing existential questions that haunt us in the middle of the night everywhere you look.

    Full House of Mustaches (Deep Fake video featuring Nick Offerman):
     

    Fuller House title credits:
    Horsin’ Around Theme from Bojack Horseman:

    Finally, Ms. Carly Rae Jepsen full track:


  • "Calling You Out" by The Ex Box Boys, Tuesday, June 29, 2021

    I have no idea how this song ended up in my Apple Music library. I had no idea who the Ex Box Boys were. Maybe I had heard it when Apple Music played “infinite” music after an album or a playlist had ended. However, there seems to be no financial incentives for Apple to promote a song from 2008 that seems not to exist anymore. The band’s last Tweet comes from 2016. The band has sixteen monthly listeners on Spotify. Their albums aren’t available on American Apple Music, just singles that have been featured on compilations with other D-list bands. Hailing from Bellevue, Washington, the band’s motto was: “Four dudes. Good music. One vision.”


    THE PERFECT WAY TO MISBEHAVE. In 2010, it appears that Microsoft sued the band for using the name of their console. The band used the Microsoft spelling for their website. Self-professed geeks, many of the band’s song titles have to do with video games. The reviews on Amazon for this album are quite funny. Three listeners have rated the album, two giving it a five-star review and one giving it a one-star review, calling it “gimmicky” and “an attempt to leech onto the gaming industry.” All that is to say, the band tricked me. “Calling You Out” is seriously catchy. It’s lyrically confusing, but the production is pretty good. Until looking into it today, I wondered, “When was this song a hit?” I wondered what kind of music it was. On one hand, it sounds like it could have been an ’80s new wave song. The harmonies remind me of bands like The Outfield. And while The Outfield has more thought-out lyrics, both are pretty cheesy. Or could it be an ambiguous pop-rock boy band like 30h!3 or The Wanted. Is it teen pop? Is it rock?

    THESE PUZZLES ARE MAKING ME YOUR SLAVE. For every musician or band that has made it big, there are thousands that have been lost somewhere along the way. I think of the countless band posters I saw on portapotties at Cornerstone of the next deathcore band playing on a generator stage. Most bands break up and most musicians eventually stop chasing the dream of a record contract when it comes time to start paying the bills. It would take several lifetimes to listen to all of Apple Music or Spotify and not every band has made it onto that platform either because of licensing or obscurity. Whether The Ex Box Boys were purely gimmicky or had actual potential, it’s important to remember two things: 1) the gaming world is pretty hostile. They’ll call you out for anything. They’ll say anything sucks. And they’ll come for your mom. And 2) corporations have much more money than up-and-coming bands. Don’t mess with copyrights, especially if you’re a nobody. 

  • "The Little Prince" (어린이왕자) by Haon & Pullik (Produced by Godic), Monday, June 28, 2021

    In 2012, a Korean rapper taught everyone around the world about K pop by talking about the wealth in a particular neighborhood in Seoul. That rapper was Psy and that neighborhood was Gangnam. However, Korean Hip Hop has not been the bread and butter of the K-pop industry. Sure, hip-hop certainly is featured in the K-pop that gets popular. While BTS has rappers, they fit into the genre of teen pop music. Korean Hip Hop; however, teaches you all the bad words in Korean and will often contain some English profanity too. These days it’s especially popular among high school and college-aged boys.

    WHEN YOU FEEL ME TWICE. Korean Hip Hop dates back to the late ’80s when the government loosened its censorship laws. In early Korean Hip Hop, artists often talked about daily life and Korean virtues. It was not widely performed at first. DJs produced music and the scene was quite underground. But in the mid-90s Hip Hop emerged in Hongdae, one of Korea’s most hopping college towns in Seoul. Korean American artists, some influenced by the music in Korea others influenced by the Hip Hop in the states started writing and producing music. However, Korean Hip Hop would go mainstream (for Korea) in the 2010s when such programs like Show Me the Money, Unpretty Rap Star, and even a show promoting high school students with a dream to be a rapper, High School Rapper hit the airwaves. 
    SO WHAT? SO WHAT? I heard Korean Hip Hop every day before the pandemic. Every Korean gym plays popular tracks by Beenzino, Bewhy, Zico, and a slew of other artists. Some of the songs start out sound abrasive. The English f bombs or sometimes the rapper’s voice is annoying. Some of the songs are instantly catchy, showing how the Korean language is a much more rhyming and naturally rhythmic language than English. I found myself adding more and more songs, even the abrasive ones, to my library. Korean Hip Hop production is formulated to make every song catchy. Take today’s song. A groovy bass-line, sound effects, and the boys interrupting each other, all to the pretty innocuous subject of a French classic. Certainly, the high school boyish tactics might annoy some listeners, but to me it really sounds like how my students talk to one another. This kind of lighthearted rapping is something that I can’t say I’ve heard before in rap music–though I’m far from an expert. One thing’s for sure: if we weren’t in the middle of a pandemic, probably a lot more Korean Hip Hop would make my daily list because I’d be at the gym.
    Performance: 
    Studio Version:

  • “Find Me” by Kings of Leon, Sunday, June 27, 2021

    In 2008, rock music still could be played on pop radio. Kings of Leon was one of the biggest bands when their fourth album, Only By the Night spawned three singles. “Sex on Fire” and “Use Somebody” were unavoidable back then. The southern US band first saw success in the UK, but after Only by the Night, the band were internationally known rock stars, complete with the money, alcohol, drugs, and of course, fiery sex. But before the rock star hedonism, lies a story of three preachers’ sons and their cousin, all grandkids of Leon. According to a Rolling Stone article, the band’s early collaborator, songwriter Angelo Petraglia, suggested the religious band name “Kings of Zion” for the band; however, lead singer Caleb Followill thought Kings of Leon suited the band better. While the mother of brothers Caleb, Nathan, and Jared remains religious, Kings of Leon is far from a Christian Rock band. But the ghosts of their religious past haunts the band’s albums.


    I CAN’T ESCAPE FROM THE GREY. Growing up in Oklahoma and traveling for tent revivals in other Southern states, the Followill brothers lives a strict religious life: no TV, no movies in theaters, no swimming with the opposite sex. Preachers’ kids were to live a life beyond reproach. The boys were not allowed to listen to secular music, but they could play their instruments in church. However, the strict lifestyle was hard on the patriarch, Ivan Leon Followill, who turned to drinking and quit preaching. Similarly, Caleb started to burn out from his fame in KoL. In 2011, touring with their follow-up to Only by the Night, Caleb was too drunk to perform their show in Dallas. He threw up on stage and left, not returning for the rest of the night. The band went on hiatus for about two years.

    I REALLY WANT TO KNOW YOUR NAME, SEE YOUR FACE. In January 2014 Leon Followill, the grandfather of KOL, passed away. Kings of Leon is one of the last bands “Kings of Leon’s Faith Journey” Relevant Magazine. dad resonated with this band. My grandfather was also named Leon. My dad also grew up with religious parents and crazy stories of rebellion, alcohol, religious fanaticism, and marijuana in the hillocks of upstate New York. My dad came from a large family of eight children, so I think strictness took a different form as opposed to my upbringing of two siblings with a stay-at-home mom until I went to eighth grade. Smaller family keep guarded. Still, for all of the inconsistencies and dysfunctions in the large family my grandfather was the glue of the family. When my grandfather died suddenly in 2015 the family lost its cohesion. I never heard my father question the meaning of life as much as after the death of his father. For all of the Potpourri Baptist theology at my father’s side of the family had learned Way to their own ideas about what after life or lack of afterlife might be. My aunts and uncles and cousins were the kings of Leon, living out the legacy of a beloved member of an obscure village in upstate New York. And post-2015 we’re all left with a question, what does that legacy mean?

  • "The Coldest Heart" by The Classic Crime, Saturday, June 26, 2021

    I talked before about how Albatross, The Classic Crime‘s debut album was set to be the breakthrough mainstream album for both the band and for Tooth & Nail Records. And of course, neither of those happened because someone at iTunes or Tooth & Nail or EMI or any combination released this record in the genre “Christian Rock.” Of the two 2006 secular signings of Tooth & Nail, Jonezetta avoided Christian radio, but The Classic Crime admitted defeat and even embraced the genre. With an album like Albatross, it would be hard to hear the songs and not think of Christian Rock. “The Coldest Heart” is a bit Calvinistic for the general music listener.


    A COUPLE OF TEARS AND I’M A BROKEN MESS. “The Coldest Heart” belongs to a sub-genre of Christian Rock I’ve heard called “Shamecore,” a term coined by licensed professional counselor Krispin Mayfield on his podcast The Prophetic Imagination Station.  Shamecore comes from a Calvinist interpretation of the Bible, and verses like Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things” with a focus on the depravity of the human condition as an inescapable reality without the grace of Christ’s sacrifice. Many Christian denominations and congregations take these teachings to the extreme. Pastors demand that their followers examine their hearts and surrender everything to Christ. Lay down your thoughts, your plans, and your ambitions. Let Christ mold you into who he wants you to be. Beat yourself down with humility. When you think you’re doing well, check your intentions. Your righteousness was nothing more than filthy rags to God. And there was a constant soundtrack reinforcing this. So often these songs had to do with sexual purity, like Anberlin‘s “Feel Good Drag” or Seventh Day Slumber‘s “Innocence,” but it could also be about perfection. “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Songs like “Everything You’ve Ever Wanted” by Hawk Nelson, “Mirror” by BarlowGirl, and “Don’t Look at Me” by Stacie Orrico all propitiated this idea that self-worth was found in Christ alone. Paper Route‘s “Are We All Forgotten?” asks the question “If we’ve all forgotten you, are we all forgotten too?”

    I WAS BLIND TO THE THINGS I DID. I’m not talking about this to be sacrilegious. On the contrary, I believe that faith can be healthy. But one of my biggest regrets in life is that I didn’t try harder to accomplish my dreams. I felt manipulated by my upbringing. “God doesn’t want you to go to that college or study that,” was in the back of my mind. God called me to Missionary College where I would study English literature and become an Adventist teacher. I couldn’t imagine allowing myself to go to the much cheaper, much easier to transfer to state schools. Why? Because there was drinking and weekend hook-ups. There my faith would be tested. I bought into the idea that college could be a time when I would build up immunity to what the world offered. I would learn about my faith deeply and be equipped to fight against the damned world. What was my alternative? I was scared that at state school I would surely succumb to the life of drinking and partying and I would probably just become gay. But going to Adventist College really just put me behind because all of that would happen anyway. But I certainly learned a lot about Adventist teachings.

     

  • “Retrace” by Anberlin, Friday, June 25, 2021

    Anberlin headlined a night at Cornerstone in 2007 and 2008, though 2007 was thanks to a bus fire for the boys of Relient K. Their set was a celebration of the band’s fan favorite Cities. By the summer of 2008, though, the band had already recorded and was set to release their major label follow up, New Surrender, on September 30th. The band played two songs from the upcoming album: “Breaking” and their re-recorded classic “Feel Good Drag.” They sold pre-orders at their summer shows, a brown usb bracelet with a special code that, when entered, the album could be downloaded on September 30th along with  four electronic mixes of songs from Cities and New Surrender on the usb to tie fans over until then. Anberlin’s major label debut sold well, but some fans thought the band had gone too soft. Others criticized how much of a rollercoaster the track listing was. New Surrender was certainly a different Anberlin album. After three records working with Aaron Sprinkle, the band worked with pop and rock producer Neal Avron. “The guitarist who can’t be tamed” Joseph Milligan is tempered by the mixing and the addition on rhythm guitarist Christian McAlhaney. And the classic Anberlin emo song titles were changed to more generic ones. For example, “Bittersweet Memory” becomes “Breaking” and “Still Counting Backwards” becomes “Retrace.”

    IT TAKES ME RIGHT BACK WHEN YOU COME BACK AROUND. New Surrender opens with the kick-ass Rise Against style “The Resistance” then moves into “Breaking,” in which the drums might be a just a hair too much for a Top 40 radio song. Then to sleeper track “Blame Me! Blame Me!” At this point literally anything could come next. Another pop song, this time sounding the most Taylor Swift of all Anberlin songs: ”Retrace” is a nostalgic track about lost love in summer and watching the stars fall. But make sure you’re holding onto your sweet tea because the listener is about to be hit by a truck with track five, their re-recorded hit “Feel Good Drag.” Today we focus on “that last summer night,” and the fall that followed it. New Surrender’s release coincided with my first semester Missions College in Tennessee. I had completed two years of college living at home, but in the fall of 2008 I was starting over again like an older freshman. It was another one of my reset buttons. I left behind friends who liked a lot of the same kinds of Tooth & Nail music and who traveled up to Cornerstone every year. I was now around new people, people who were into different things. I’ve talked about how college added to my musical tastes. What was similar, though, was both back home and throughout my time at Mission College, I never became close with anyone who loved Anberlin. I had this fantasy that I would meet a girl who was also an Anberlin fanatic, and we’d get married and sing “Inevitable” to each other and name our first daughter “Adelaide.” I’m sure this has happened to someone; however, I always got a little freaked out by people who liked the band as much as I did.

    EVERY SUBTLE THING SCREAMS YOUR NAME. New Surrender found me in the middle of quite the adjustment to last-minute term papers, instant coffee because the nearest coffee shop was at least 30 minutes away from the most conservative Adventist University that was accredited. I was making new friends of different majors, though, most of them would be in education, English, or communications. I had arrived on campus and attended all of the orientation stuff that didn’t feel too awkward to be at with the freshmen. I met all my English professors and a few freshmen English majors. There were more girls than boys. The boys were either teacher track or hipster playwright track. There was one girl I found pretty fascinating. Let’s call her Lois. We talked about our experiences. She was from Orlando and was trying out the English major thing because she wanted to write for magazines. I said that I wanted to be a teacher. We chatted a bit about books, and then the orientation ended. We kept bumping into each other and having brief conversations, but she seemed to always be in a rush. On Saturday night there was a welcome back party–’90s themed. Not knowing anyone, I wore my Anberlin Cities shirt and hoped to meet someone with the same obsession. Maybe a girl would know who Anberlin was would talk to me. Maybe it would be Lois. I walked into the party. There was a girl struggling to sing karaoke to Third Eye Blind’s “Semi- Charmed Life.” There was a Lego building station. There was a Nintendo 64 competition off in another corner. I bumped into a few people I had met and said hi, but everyone seemed to have their own group. Then I saw Lois. She said hi to me. She was with a guy who had hair cut military length and was thin, but had broad shoulders. “Hi, Allan, you should meet my friend from school. He’s a few years older than me. He’s a transfer student too.” “Hi, I’m Allan.” “Hi, I’m James. James Reagan.” “Like the president?”


    P.S. Dan Wilson, a writer on this song also wrote for a number of artists including Semisonic, The Chicks, Shawn Mendes, Adele, and yes, Taylor Swift.

  • "O" (Fly Away) by Coldplay, Thursday, June 24, 2021

    Coldplay’s nine-track, piano-driven 2014 album Ghost Stories, ends with a meditative track called “O.” Following his divorce to actress Gwyneth Paltrow, vocalist Chris Martin processes the end of his relationship on Ghost Stories. In a video I referenced last month when writing about “Higher Power,” critic Frank Furtado claims that Ghost Stories is a lyrical failure on the behalf of Chris Martin, who disguises his pain behind universal lyrical themes. Furtado goes on to claim that Martin “trades being personal for commercial viability.” He goes on to state that Ghost Stories “is so sparse instrumentally that the lyrics have no where to hide.” These lyrics he claims are silly at times and empty at others. And yet the sparse lyrics and instrumentation from this blue album, garnished with angel wings and dotted with stars, can be just the amount of quiet a grey day needs.

    FLOCK OF BIRDS…This morning I started listening to the latest episode of Our Pod Is an Awesome Pod about Anberlin’s Never Take Friendship Personal. Before listening to the album and reviewing it, they played a game. Host Johnathan Rawson read the lyrics of songs, making his co-host, Luke Schwartz, guess if the song was written by Taylor Swift or Anberlin. Schwartz lost the bet and his penalty is he has to attend church on a Sunday. Anberlin on Friendship and Cities was the height of Stephen Christian’s most confessional lyrics. The band even tried to submit a song to Taylor Swift from their New Surrender era, but she never got back to them. It’s funny because I started getting into Taylor Swift a little late from her sophomore record even though it was already old. Swift’s lyrics, easily understood with banjos and steel guitars, were sometimes a little young for me, but sometimes I looked to her because she wrote like she knew what it was like to be in love or lonely or dealing with difficult friendships. We get nothing specific from Coldplay, but we do get a haunting piano and images. In “O,” the image is a comparison between a lover and the movement of birds. Just as a flock of birds can’t be captured and it’s very hard to tell one bird from another–how do you know it’s the same bird in your neighborhood?–it’s futile to bind love. It’s here today, gone tomorrow. But we can believe that the birds will return, and love will also return.
    AND I ALWAYS LOOK UP TO THE SKY/ PRAY BEFORE THE DAWN. I’m pretty awful at staying in touch with people. If we lose contact, it’s probably because I’m a bad friend. Although my family only moved once, I’ve counted nine times in my life where I’ve had a major change–whether it was a move or a new job–and I failed to stay in touch with the people from my past. Sometimes I thought that these friends were everything to me. Now there’s just a message dated from 2014 at the bottom of my Messenger app. On a quick Google search for “why don’t I have any friends,” I learned that as many as 1 in 5 people don’t have any close friend. The website goes on to talk about why you may not have any friends. I know some of the reasons why. I like hitting the reset button. When people get too sick of me or when I embarrass myself too much, it’s time to move on–like Tom and Daisy from The Great Gatsby. Still, like yesterday the fantasy of having a group of friends that I grew up with and stuck around with even after college is ever enticing. But nope, something was too off about me. I didn’t play sports. I didn’t talk enough about girls. I didn’t do drugs. I was Seventh-day Adventist, so that meant nothing fun on Friday night or Saturday. I was homeschooled. I was too religious or not religious enough. I was gay but didn’t know it yet. So fly on…
    Live Version:

     Chris Martin solo piano:

    Extended version:

    Covers: