Mixtapemotions

  • “Go Your Own Way” by Fleetwood Mac, Wednesday, June 23, 2021

    Fleetwood Mac‘s best known record is Rumors, their 1977 album featuring the vocals of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. However, these members had been recent additions. Formed in 1967 in the UK with drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John “Mac” McVie, the band went through numerous iterations before arriving on the pop charts with their most well-known line up. The subject matter of the hit album is the relationship drama behind the scenes with the band. It’s truly a fascinating story of change and rock ‘n’ roll development that saw the band change from a ’60s blues rock band to a late ’70s hitmaker, with a guitarist who left due to schizophrenia, another guitarist abandoning the group while on tour to join a California sex-evangelism cult, a turbulent marriage between the keyboardist and bass player, and then there’s Stevie Nicks.


    WE CAN CALL IT ANOTHER LONELY DAY. I don’t have much memory of this song when I was growing up. Released 10 years before I was born, it would have been played on classic rock stations, but even when my mom started listening to classic rock in the car, I don’t remember hearing this song. However, I do remember both my mom and dad changed the channel whenever Fleetwood Mac came on the radio. They said they heard too much of this album back in the late ’70s. My mom’s friend listened to it on repeat, so she had heard it enough for a lifetime. My first memory of this song is from the Forest Gump soundtrack. But the memory of this song is about a trip to Florida in mid-July 2012. I was going down to Florida by myself for the first time. I was going to stay with my grandfather and visit my friends. River was getting married, and it was a kind of a college reunion of a lot of my friends. My college was fed by many Adventist high schools, and many of my friends had graduated from the Adventist high school in Orlando, which coincidentally was my mom’s hometown. Several occasions over summer vacation I visited my Orlando friends, and this would be the last of these trips before going to Korea.
    IF I COULD, MAYBE I’D GIVE YOU MY WORLD. Besides River who was marrying another Orlando Adventist High School graduate who was not as close friend, my two best friends in Florida were Jim, my best friend from college and Mark, my roommate for a semester until he transferred to UCF on a much better scholarship. Jim had been my suite-mate for about a year and a half before he graduated, about a year before me. Whenever I visited them they always met up with other friends, and I felt like I was part of their group–a feeling I never really had. It made me feel like I was in some sort of alternate reality where I could have grown up with friends rather than being the kid who had grown out of church but was still dragged there every Saturday while the boys I grew up with stopped coming and we all grew apart. Saturday night before the wedding the next day I hung out with Jim and Mark and some others. They were playing Guitar Hero: World Tour. I tried to play a few songs, but got frustrated at the rhythm game that had nothing to do with playing a guitar. So I just watched them. Jim on vocals, Mark on guitar, another guy on drums, another guy on bass. One of the songs they played that night was “Go Your Own Way.” 

    TELL ME WHY EVERYTHING TURNED AROUND. Sunday night Jim and I went to see The Dark Knight Rises, and he announced that he was moving to Dallas to work for the Adventist conference. I was in the final stages of my paperwork for Korea. I had come to the end of my “spiritual journey” at Adventist university, and the results were not all that I thought they would be. Nothing big had happened. River had published a book about the missionary murdered in Yap. My other friends were getting great jobs at Adventist schools around the country. After River’s wedding there was a list of other friends’ weddings. No prospects of a girlfriend for me, but it seemed like finding a group of friends was good enough. But these friendships confused me–girls I felt no romantic feelings attraction towards and guys that I felt like I had never felt before with. There was always something about Jim and Mark that I wanted to spend more time with them, but never could have enough time. And the time we spent together it felt like it was just killing time until we had to do the next thing like write a paper or meet other people. I didn’t want things to end. It took me my whole life to find friendships like this. But college was over and life was pulling us away. I was never the boy who grew up in Central Florida. Mark and Jim and River’s stories aren’t mine. I am Tyler from New York and North Carolina and Korea. You? You can go your own way.

  • “Summertime: The Gershwin Version” by Lana Del Rey, Tuesday, June 22, 2021

    In 1935, George and Ira Gershwin‘s opera Porgy & Bess premiered with a classically trained African American cast. The opera was one of the last innovation of composer George Gershwin, whose short life’s work was to marry classical and jazz, the popular music of the day. Classical music had always made room for popular and folk styles, whether it was Brahms playing piano at a local tavern or Chopin playing mazurkas, a traditional Polish dance. Gershwin was that composer sneaking into the speak-easy listening to improvised bars of the big bands. This inspired his jazzy classical orchestral pieces like “Rhapsody in Blue” and “An American in Paris.” However, George wasn’t just confined to the orchestral hall. Together with his brother, Ira, the two produced hit after hit of songs that would be sung for nearly a hundred years. One of their biggest hits comes from the beginning of this opera.

    OH, YOUR DADDY, HE’S RICH AND YOUR MA, SHE’S GOOD LOOKIN’ “Summertime” has been covered by thousands of artists, each taking a unique take on the Gershwin classic. I remember when my music teacher gave me the bars of the song to play on the guitar. The strumming moody sound of minors being slowly strummed then muted with the palm, letting the feedback from my amp–it was one of my favorite songs to play. My music teacher said that if I wanted to play that piece, I had to be good at it. My music teacher held a reverence for “Summertime” and “Over the Rainbow.” “Not just anyone can play this song,” she told me when I was playing around, trying to get my cheap Squire Stratocaster to stay in tune. I would play “Summertime” for hours, sweating in my room before my parents got air conditioning. The moodiness of a summer’s night where you have to stay awake until really late for the heat to break and you to be able to go to sleep, the iced tea that keeps you awake through the afternoon heat, the cicadas roaring outside the window, the stench of the chicken farm down the road mixed with sweat in the stagnant breeze, the occasional thunderstorm that calmed things down and gave you a few moments of relief from the North Carolina summer heat –that was the imagery of the song to me.

    ONE OF THESE MORNINGS YOU’RE GONNA RISE UP SINGING. My musical education was just the chords and my teaching banging out the melody on the piano. It wasn’t until much later that I heard “Summertime’s” lyrics. The song is a lullaby, cooing the baby, shielding the baby from the hard facts of life. In fact, the father isn’t rich and there is a lot to harm a baby growing up in poverty among the drug dealers and racial unrest of pre-Civil Rights America. The mournful song longs for it to be true that this baby “one of these mornings [is going to] rise up singing.” The melancholy lullaby still ring true in cities ravaged with gun violence and police brutality, where things have changed on paper, but the same stories continue to play out generation after generation. 

    SO HUSH LITTLE BABY, DON’T YOU CRY. So why the Lana Del Rey version of this song? I chose Lana’s “Summertime” for two main reasons. 1. It seems to fit right after Sufjan Stevens better than the other versions. 2. While Lana’s “Summertime” isn’t the best version, it’s the version we get for 2021. Lana Del Rey continues to become a more and more problematic artist as she tries to explain herself on social media. Whether it’s about domestic violence, COVID, or race, we’re coming to expect the wrong answer from her. However, in the wrongness, Del Rey has actually become a bit of a centrist in the raging culture war, this is not to defend her outlandish statements, but in a 2021 musical landscape we usually only see two sides when really there are many more. Furthermore, “Summertime” is one of the most Lana Del Rey songs written, an artist who makes music nostalgic of pre-1980s Americana, Del Rey has taken much inspiration from the 1920s in albums like Born to Die and Honeymoon as well as recording “Young and Beautiful” for 2013’s The Great Gatsby. Recorded and filmed as a fundraiser for the New York Philharmonic and Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra to help bridge their finances during the pandemic, Del Rey released the track last November. Yesterday was the solstice, so is 2021 the Summer of Lana? Probably not. Let’s race a glass of sweet (or New York unsweet) tea and say “Cheers to sweeping all the issue under the rug for just a little while longer.” 
    Scene from Porgy & Bess

    Ella Fitzgerald version:

    Lana Del Rey version:


  • "Saturn" by Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly, & James McAlister, Monday, June 21, 2021

    Composed as one of his ensemble works, Nico Muhly collaborated with three musicians to produce his 2017 work, Planetarium. The work atmospheric electronica rather than an orchestra, but the powerful songs might remind classical music listeners of Gustav Holst’s 1917 work which packed as much if not more creative punch, The Planets, which innovated classical music and introduced techniques to modern music like the fade out and 5/4 timing. Muhly calls on the work of drummer James McAlister, The National’s guitarist Bryce Dessner, and the vocals of Sufjan Stevens. The National being an artistic (and pretentious to some) band with Dessner collaborating with everyone from Taylor Swift to Phillip Glass, and Sufjan Stevens coming off of his folk record Carrie & Lowell, Planetarium is a quite musical experience, a soundtrack for gazing into the summer night sky. 

    I’LL CONSUME THE CHILD THAT TRAILS ME. For the songs that have lyrics, Stevens pulls inspiration from a number of sources–Greek/Roman mythology, the planet itself, Christianity, astrology, and hinduism are all fair game. The monologue that Stevens creates for “Saturn” is quite a chilling narrative. By the fourth line of the song the speaker, the god himself, reminds acknowledges his most notorious incident: eating his children. Stevens was particularly inspired by the Goya painting, Saturn Devouring His Son, the grotesque image of the very worst of the Titans. Stevens’ interpretation of Saturn’s existence and most despicable deed casts a humanity on Saturn we don’t often see. He’s a “melancholy creature [with a] cannibal addiction.” Through his self-awareness, we come to see Saturn’s side of the story, that he is in fact a victim to fate. It’s either kill or be killed; the song shows the regret of the god who doesn’t control the fates. Although he acts in self interest, he takes no joy in it. The chorus, though, seems to be pointing trying to cast a distinction between the Greek and the Judeo-Christian God. Saturn begs his listeners to denounce him: “Tell me I’m evil. Tell me I’m not the face of love. . . . Tell me I’m not the face of God.” How can something who has done something so evil be a god or even a representative of a god? 

    WHERE THERE’S HEALTH I BRING AFFLICTION. Matthew Arnold in his essay Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism argued that Western culture was built on two pillars, Hellenism and Judaism. He called the Greek pillar “Sweetness and Light” and the Judeo-Christian pillar “Fire and Strength.” He further argued that culture up until his time in Victorian England had over-emphasized the “fire and strength,” but what culture needed to move forward was “sweetness and light.” What followed was an artistic movement in the 20th and 21st centuries of more and more atheistic works. Yet artists from poets to screenplay writers can’t shake the gods from their work. Furthermore, we see dysfunctional Greek gods playing out as humans constantly in every movie we watch. We see the Greeks gods in our own lives. Stevens had just written an album memorializing his extremely flawed mother, who abandoned him and abused him on many occasions when he was a child. Stevens is begging this parental figure not to be the representation of love or of God. Moreover, as an adult, he sees that choices are more nuanced. People make choices that they feel they are forced to make. For example, Stevens seems to come to a greater understanding about his mother’s mental illness and drug addiction when he writes about Carrie on his previous album. In “Saturn” there’s a sadness to the great responsibility it is to be a god, a representative of an ideal. The Bible, in contrasts, says that “God is Love.” This God is different from Saturn, but many note some of the horrendous depictions of punishment he brings, particularly in the Old Testament. It’s certainly no accident that Stevens draws the parallels between Saturn, the Judaeo-Christian God, and Shiva in “Saturn.” The job is up to the listener to decide if it’s a fair comparison.

  • "Mrs. Hippopotamuses'" by Relient K, Sunday, June 20, 2021

    Born south of the Erie Canal in Canton, Ohio, Matt Thiessen, wrote a tribute to his home state on Relient K‘s 8th studio album, Air for Free. Relient K started in Ohio, with three friends–Thiessen, guitarist Matt Hoopes, and bassist Brian Pittman. Relient K has seen many phases and had many member change ups; however, the glue of the band has been Thiessen and Hoopes, who are the only remaining members of the band and who are pictured on the cover of Air for Free. Released six years ago, Air for Free explores existential themes from an aging former teenage band. Then in his mid-thirties, Thiessen touches on themes of love, growing up, and faith. While the songs on Air for Free are mostly light-hearted (a notable exception is “Man“) and sometimes silly, the songs are certainly more mature than anything the band has done before. And while it might not be the rock out anthems of youth group church vans, it’s lyrically nostalgic of those days at times while pushing their listeners forward.


    I GREW UP IN THE STICKS. Canton, Ohio has a population of about 71,000 people as of 2019. It seems to be cool to say you are from a small town. It’s part of the fame origin story. Look at me, a guy from Podunk, XX made it big, you can too. I, too, grew up in the sticks, but there were far more sticks than people, where I was born. When I tell my students I was born in New York, I have to show a slide show of my reality. I was born in Norwich, NY the city that was a 30 minute drive depending on the weather and the condition of the pot-holed dirt roads. The population of Norwich was about 7,000 as of 2020, though it was probably bigger when I grew up because people left with the decline of the rustbelt in the ’90s. The town I went to school in was Oxford. It has a population of about 4,000 people. But my address was McDonough with its 850 people living there. My family moved to Morganton, a bustling city in North Carolina with about 17,000 people living there. Part of me always wonders what would have happened if I stayed in New York. I’ve attempted writing a novel about it. I tended to idealize the scenes of my childhood landscape–the cool summers, the heavy snows in winter, the wood stoves and chilly mornings in the fall, the New York pizza and Italian food. But my family was right to move south to a better home, out of the moldy trailer that kept me sick every winter.

    SUMMERTIME IS 45 MINUTES AWAY. Thiessen references Ohio’s amusement part Cedar Point, located on Lake Erie in Sandusky. In North Carolina we had Carowinds. Before we moved, we had the country fair in late August. Sure some people got to take a trip to Hershey Park in Pennsylvania, but my family didn’t spend money on that kind of thing until we moved to North Carolina. Carowinds used to be owned by Paramount, so they had themed rides for movies and television shows. Their flagship ride was Top Gun, a steel rollercoaster that was supposed to simulate flying in fighter jets as in the Tom Cruise movie. Later, they opened Borg Assimilator, a scary looking ride that had a prohibitively long line to board it. Luckily, that line prevented us from taking it because it later got stuck with the passengers upside down for 45 minutes. In 2006, Carowinds was purchased by Cedar Fair, which resulted in the renaming and rebranding of most of the rides. I was a young adult and Carowinds didn’t feel the same. It was an eerie feeling calling the rollercoasters by a different name. 

     

  • "Hotel Aquarium" by Falling Up, Saturday, June 19, 2021

    In 2007, Falling Up released their third studio record, Captiva, returning to the production of Aaron Sprinkle. Unlike their debut album Crashings, also recorded with Sprinkle, on Captiva, Sprinkle plays the role as songwriter alongside lead singer Jessy Ribordy. Captiva also marked the end of four years of a daunting release schedule. Their debut album and follow-up Dawn Escapes were released within just 20 months of each other. They then released their remix album, Exit Lights a year later. Captiva attempted to keep hype in the Christian Rock and pop market, releasing four singles, the first of which is today’s song, “Hotel Aquarium.”


    ALL THE LONELINESS IS FILLED BY YOU INSIDE. In April, I wrote about the band’s first hit, “Broken Heart.” By the band’s third album, musicians started shuffling to other, more successful, more overtly Christian bands. Falling Up’s lyrics started mentioning Greek gods and space. Frankly, Ribordy’s lyrics sounded more like an acid trip and less like a church service. And while some bands have eased into the secular market and are beloved by CEO Brandon Ebel, Aaron Sprinkle, and their scene, Captiva shows a major decline in the band’s popularity. On their previous albums, they collaborated with many artists including Jon Micah Sumrall (Kutless), Ryan Clark (Demon Hunter), Solomon Olds (Family Force 5), Trevor McNevan (Thousand Foot Krutch), and even CCM singer Rachel Lampa; however, after Captiva, the band started working with Casey Crescenzo (The Dear Hunter) to produce low-key indie rock. I’ve always wondered what was the drastic switch? And more importantly, why is no one talking about Falling Up? Tooth & Nail and BEC have seemingly forgotten them and they have only been mentioned in passing on the Labeled podcast.
     
    IS THIS ANOTHER COMPLICATION I FACE? I have a theory about this album. I can piece it together based on the Jesus Freak Hideout Interview from 2015 and statements made by Aaron Sprinkle I’ve heard on various podcasts including Labeled and the BadChristian Podcast. Sprinkle has said that he wouldn’t name the bands that he didn’t enjoy working with, but he said that he didn’t like working with bands who came to the studio unprepared. While Crashings is perhaps one of Sprinkle’s most underrated works, Captiva sounds more like a chore. Looking at the writing credits and how musicians had left the band, I wonder if Falling Up was one of the bands Sprinkle was talking about. Captiva isn’t an album that I go back to listen to and feel much nostalgia for. In 2007 there were much better releases on Tooth & Nail. And while other groups have ventured into fantasy lyrics (i.e. Copeland), fans and other bands in Falling Up’s scene started to distance themselves from the band. My guess is that something happened during the production and/or the album cycle of this record that alienated Falling Up from the Christian Rock and Christian Rock adjacent scene. According to Ribordy, BEC stopped communicating with the band after they recorded their fourth record Fangs! The record label never dropped them, but they were reluctant to fund their fifth record. And there wasn’t an offer for the band to join the much more secular-friendly Tooth & Nail side of the corporation. Ribordy also mentioned that he is working on a semi-autobiographical fictional novel in which he will talk about his experience with the music industry. However, he is yet to finish the novel. I only hope that whatever happened, someday Falling Up’s story can be told. It’s a shame that a band with 3 number one hits from their first album is almost completely forgotten by everyone except for Jesus Freak Hideout. But then again, there’s Jennifer Knapp and Ray Boltz.

  • "Ghost" by Yellow Ostrich, Friday, June 18, 2021

     

    Yellow Ostrich is another one of the bands I discovered on a NoiseTrade Sampler around the end of college. The band is currently the solo project of singer/songwriter Alex Schaaf. Formed in 2009, they released several albums and EPs before disbanding in 2014. However, in March of this year, Schaaf came back with a Yellow Ostrich album called Soft. Today’s song comes from the 2012 EP by the same name Ghost. While being a bit of a sleeper, the minimal instrumentation in the early part of the verse along with the slow drum beat makes the song a little creepy. By the verse we have some more piano, but by the bridge we get a noisy guitar solo. Lyrically, the song talks about a relationship that’s expired. He doesn’t remember the color of her eyes, but he sticks with her because he’s afraid of being alone. 

    MY FAVORITE GHOST, MY PRIDE, I STUMBLE ‘TIL I’M LOST. Like many very conservative Christians, Seventh-day Adventists traditionally teach their followers to avoid the supernatural outside of the Bible. It wasn’t unheard of to hear of Adventists not allowing their kids to watch any Disney movie. In fact there were several movies that we weren’t allowed to watch, although thanks to public school, cousins, and friends, I saw a few of the supernatural movies of the early ’90s. This stance against the supernatural made Shakespeare a controversial read, even in college. However, about the time I read Hamlet for my literary theory class, I started to think about the symbolism of ghosts in literature. I thought about Coldplay’s “42” which says: “Those who are dead are not dead; they’re just living in my head.” I thought about the beginning of Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! when the author talked about the metaphoric ghosts that haunted the South after the Civil War. In Korea, there was a display at the Daegu Art Museum about ghosts. The gallery included several artists’ paintings, photographs, videography, or multi-sensory depictions of hauntings. To me, ghosts started to be unprocessed parts of the past, both traumatic and enlightening. They are memories and words of people who have either died or are no longer accessible to us. I thought about how unhealthy repressing ghosts is for our mental health. 

    I’VE BEEN USING YOU FOR YEARS EVEN AS YOU DISAPPEAR FROM MY MIND. However, it’s not always healthy to hold on to the ghosts. For example, relationships that have expired are best put away in boxes, only opening to remember for insight. Ghosts can also be friends who haven’t seen in years. You drifted apart as your lives are now completely different. You’re in other time zones pursuing dreams that the other doesn’t understand. Land bridges are swallowed by the sea and there’s Facebook, but can you really relate the information digitally? Throughout my life, I’ve taken a page from my parents’ playbook, establishing and leaving. When my family moved from New York, they took us out of relative isolation and dropped us into a new social scene with new kids at church. Then there was high school in another town with new kids and a new scene. Then I went to college in another state where I knew no one. Then I came to Korea and moved cities. With every move you have the opportunity to reinvent yourself, becoming a more or less true version of yourself. The awesome thing about being in your thirties, is you start to care less, so you can start to be more authentically you. 

  • "Save Me" by Remy Zero, Thursday, June 17, 2021

    Remy Zero is best known for their 2001 hit “Save Me,” which was the title card song for the 10-season WB/CW DC Superhero drama, Smallville, a Superman origin story set in a small Kanas town, following the young adulthood of Clark Kent. Forming in 1989 in Birmingham, Alabama, the band’s breakthrough was a tour with Radiohead. Their songs were featured on a number of early ’00s TV shows and movies, including Garden State, Fanboys, and She’s All That. “Save Me” wasn’t especially popular, peaking at #27 on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart. In 2003, the band called it quits after releasing three full length albums. In a Smallville actors’ commentary of a season 3 episode, John Glover and Alison Mack banter about the theme song. Mack says that she heard that they broke up. Glover asks, “Who got the house?”

    I DON’T CARE HOW YOU DO IT. I’ve talked about my channel flipping through the Christian music video stations and MuchMusic (later Fuse). Remy Zero was the kind of new alternative music I loved. Wall of sound guitars, higher than usual vocals, the band sounded like a cooler U2 for a new generation. Of course they never got that popular. Around 2003, ABC Family started playing old episodes of Smallville. My family saw the previews and we all said it looked dumb. Maybe we all secretly wanted to give it a chance because I did. Anyway, one night it was on after some old show we were watching on ABC Family and we didn’t turn off the pilot. Then the theme song played, and I remembered the song from MuchMusic. There was also the Lifehouse song in that episode. In fact, it was the music that hooked everyone, except my mom who has a very low tolerance for supernatural dramas. Soon we were all hooked on the love triangles, the guest stars, twisting storylines, the villains, and of course the “freak of the week”–Smallville citizens who had been infected by kryptonite meteors that gave them superpowers that usually enhanced what started out as pure intentions but transformed the characters to a parable of the flawed human condition.
    JUST STAY WITH ME…By season 6, music was no longer an integral part of Smallville’s production. The storyline started declining as the writers changed, but my sisters and I were committed. The best seasons were when Clark and his friends were in high school, when Lex was fighting to not become evil, when his father was listening to opera, plotting the world’s demise, when there was sexual tension between Clark, Lana, and Chloe before it got ridiculous. I found myself relating to Smallville on several levels. First, the characters were maybe a year older than me. Of course, like most shows, the actors were in their 20s and 30s. Second, the show was pretty moral but it had an edge to it. It was pretty relatable to a Christian school kid as the early episodes promoted waiting to have sex. And when characters acted promiscuous, there were often consequences for their actions.  In later seasons, as the characters grew up, the writers scrapped this morality plot device, but even into season 4, it was like watching Christian school kids and their moral slip ups. One other thing I related to watching Smallville was Clark’s secret. The show time and time again showed that when people found out about Clark’s secret powers, they tried to exploit him. Thus, he always tries to keep his powers a secret. I had secrets too. I shuttered to think what would happen to me if anyone found out about them. But I usually down played those secrets. It only affected my private time, and the rest of the time I was just Tyler, the kid who tried so hard to be like everyone else. I thought if I drown my identity with music and church, the other identity wouldn’t be true. Funny, an extremely homoerotic show taught me about closeting myself. There was Lana and Chloe to make it seem okay, but really, a shirtless Tom Welling what it was all about.

  • "Seventeen" by Troye Sivan, Wednesday, June 16, 2021 (Warning: Graphic Descriptions of Pornography and Sex)

     

    The opening track to Troye Sivan’s Bloom, “Seventeen” tells the story of Sivan losing his virginity to an older man he met on Grindr. Sivan looks back on this first encounter fondly, despite the man knowing Sivan was underage. The age of consent is a pretty complicated issue, and the law varies from place to place. There are issues of sexism, homophobia, and maturity involved when people pass judgement on age gaps between partners, especially if one is below the age of 18. Sivan has talked about this song, saying, “I don’t ever want to come across as condoning [sex with someone underage] or anything like it. But. . . I felt a responsibility to tell the true story of the curious gay kid who puts himself in some kind of shady situation to fund a connection, like all of us crave.”

    AGE IS JUST A NUMBER. Troye’s experience of losing his virginity at 17 is very different from mine. For one thing, when I was 17, there weren’t smartphones. Seventeen was the time I had keys to my first car, but I was a pretty good kid–home by 10, practicing guitar, doing homework, working odd jobs, going to church. But there was the hidden shame of pornography. I knew all the guys were looking at porn and trying not to. My shame was deeper than that. I remember my first encounter with pornography. It was just like everything mothers try to keep their sons away from–at a friend’s house, a stuffed away magazine at the age of 12. I remember not being aroused by it and thinking, what’s wrong with me? In my early teens, my friends started sharing porn, and they especially liked lesbian porn because there were no men in the scene. Scrolling through my friend’s computer after he finished, I exited a bunch of windows before seeing a threesome with two girls and a guy. The girls were off to the side kissing completely naked, and the guy was watching, masturbating. That was the first man I ever saw in porn. I was drawn to him. He wasn’t the most handsome man I had ever seen, but he stood there confident, naked, and hard. From an early age, men had dominated my sexual fantasies, but I thought of it as more of “mentorship” fantasies. In my mid-teenage years, these “mentorship” fantasies got more and more graphic.

    IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, SAW THINGS I’D NEVER SEEN. By 15 I started looking at porn at home on dial-up. It was a matter of stumbling across the wrong file on Kazaa, an illegal file-sharing site. I’d stay up so late some nights waiting for files to come through, only to be disappointed or deeply ashamed. It was a shared computer, so I also had to learn to cover my tracks. However, one night at about 2 in the morning, I opened an image that burned into my memory forever. It was a picture of two men having anal sex. It wasn’t that the men had perfect, 20-something year old bodies, lean muscle, and hairless chests, which they did. It was the expressions on their faces. It was just as what the boys at school said: don’t let another guy do that to you. You’ll like it so much that you’ll never want to have sex with a girl. From the facial expressions, I could see why. The intimacy I saw on their faces was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. In that photo, they looked like they were offering each other their souls in two very different ways. The top had a quiet strength to him, yet something in his eye looked a little vulnerable. The look on the bottom’s face, though, was pure ecstasy as he lost himself to the man inside of him. I was probably sixteen when I saw that picture. Church made me feel so guilty about enjoying and ultimately wanting to experience something like that photo. So, I put it on the back burner. I would pray for forgiveness and believed that God would change my affections to more natural ones. 
    https://genius.com/Troye-sivan-seventeen-lyric

  • "My Bad" (내탓) [KSHMR Edit] by Advanced (어드밴스드) ft. Shaun & Julie Bergan, Tuesday, May 15, 2021

    Advanced is a South Korean DJ and producer duo. The original song is sung by singer-songwriter Shaun, whose success referenced in this song, brought him to prominence in Korea and internationally. The English version is sung by Norwegian Singer Songwriter Julie Bergan. The track is remixed and the lyrics are not an exact translation. Shaun’s recording of the track is much better vocally and musically. It also has a richer lyrical content in the original Korean. This is not to say that the English version isn’t any good. “My Bad” is a kind of behind the music surrounding the rise of Shaun’s success, telling the story of a young musician honing his craft as a DJ.


    I REMEMBER WHEN I CALLED YOU AND SAID I HAD A #1. In February, I talked about the rise and controversy related to Shaun’s breakout hit “Way Back Home.” Shaun built his career in the music industry as an electronic musician in rock, pop, and EDM. His high vocal range and ability to make music sound classic and new at the same time has helped him become a beloved artist. That is for the listeners who have dismissed the controversy surrounding “Way Back Home.” But as the young artist cuts his teeth as a DJ, “My Bad” tells the story of the girl who got left behind. Shaun is known for his album covers and music videos featuring Korean models. “My Bad,” however, includes a young male character in the music video. The scenes depict them stuck in a fish tank drowning, but later, we realize that they were only pretending. But the imagery, nonetheless, depicts what it might be like to date a starving artist. It might be an adventure at first, but the two being stuck in a tiny studio apartment where the queen-sized bed barely fits (the English version) and with 2 people a dog and three cats (the Korean version), tensions begin to rise.

    BUT THE MONTHS WENT BY AND SUDDENLY OUR PLACE RAN OUT OF SPACE. I ENDED UP PUSHING YOU AWAY. I’ve felt several times that I’m waiting for my real life to start. You know, when you buy a house, have a cat, eat a salad every night. That life. I’m waiting for the right job to fall into my lap so that I can make it happen. Waiting for a partner to get into medical school so that we could finally move in together. I’m waiting for the day when my job doesn’t suck so much. I’m waiting for the day that my house is finally easier to clean. I’m waiting to be the person I want to become–a fitter, smarter, wealthier me. And it’s not just waiting, I do put in the work. Maybe not always enough. Some days I get lazy. Some days I get depressed and just give up. Most of the time I pick myself back up. But really, when is it going to happen? For years I used student loans as an excuse for not moving forward. Eight Hundred dollars is quite a chunk from the paycheck, and I’ve gotta have a little fun. In high school I was taught to “eat beans now so you can eat steak later.” When is the steak coming? Speaking of beans, I probably shouldn’t have spent so much money on coffee. I’m a little better at not thinking about living in tomorrow, when my life will actually start. It’s actually happening now. What choices can I make for a better future Tyler?

    Lyrics (English, Korean Romanized, Korean)
    Original Video: 

    Julie Bergan KSHMR Edit:

  • “Lonely Nation” by Switchfoot, Monday, June 14, 2021

     

    In 2003, Switchfoot reached their career high when they released their fourth album, The Beautiful Letdown. The band had been gaining popularity from their third album Learning to Breathe. Three songs from the album were featured in the movie A Walk to Remember. What happened next was the massive rock radio/Top 40/Christian Rock hit, “Meant to Live.” The Christian surf rock band never quite reached the same level of success on their subsequent releases, but they consistently had tracks show up on Mainstream Rock and Alternative charts for years to come. And the Christian market? They devoured Switchfoot albums.

    SCREAMING WITHOUT LUNGS. Lead vocalist Jon Foreman set a distinct tone in Christian Rock. Arriving on the scene in 1997, Christian Rock was in the middle of a culture war. There were three big bands at the time: the Newsboys, dc talk, and Audio Adrenaline, and their message was “stand up for Christ no matter what you look like.” The lyrics of these bands were on the radical side for the time, essentially mirroring the televangelists who condemned their rock ‘n’ roll sound. Jerry Falwell had to be a bad guy if they kicked dc talk out of Liberty University, and yet, the lyrics of Christian Rock protested taking prayer out of public schools, teaching evolution, and promoted sexual abstinence until marriage–all core values of evangelicals and the moral majority. But then there was Switchfoot. Jon Foreman’s lyrics are much less about personal morality and much more about social justice. Some of the values were the same, but Foreman’s approach was much more positive toward the world and more critical of the church. “Lonely Nation” is an example of where Switchfoot starts to set themselves apart from where Christianity headed around 2016.

    DON’T LEAVE ME HOLLOW. I’M TIRED OF FEELING LOW.  In 2016’s “Looking for America,” featuring Christian rapper Lecrae, Switchfoot took their message even further–refusing to align with an evangelicalism that propitiated racism. Sadly, fellow Christian Rocker, Skillet‘s John Cooper, has denounced Critical Race Theory as being a divisive force in the Church.  It’s Cooper’s downplaying of racism that shows that Christianity needs voices like Foreman’s to challenge the status quo. Foreman’s challenge in “Lonely Nation” is to stop letting corporations control us in a perpetual cycle of consumption. Of course, it’s nearly impossible to stop being a consumer, and I don’t think that’s the point. Foreman wants us to examine it and try to define our lives with something other than the things we buy. He reminds us that corporations don’t have our best interests at hand. I remember listening to this song on my iPod on the shores of the Pacific in Yap, thinking about what was next for me and my career. I thought about becoming a teacher who lives for others, rather than myself. Listening to Switchfoot does this. Foreman’s lyrics, played in the youth group van, challenge the kids who are really listening to be better than the evangelical status quo. “Looking for America” tells us, sorry Skillet, but you’re looking at this from a too simplistic worldview. If we follow your teaching, Mr. Cooper, what changes? Nothing. Same old formula. Same old broken system. If we follow your teaching, Mr. Foreman, what changes? Everything.