Mixtapemotions

  • “God Gave Me You" by Dave Barnes (repost), Monday, January 29, 2024

    Dave Barnes is a Contemporary Christian singer-songwriter, but he isn’t completely bound by the genre. Barnes is a Nashville songwriter whose songs have been recorded by country, pop, and CCM singers. In fact, his 2010 hit, “God Gave Me You,” became a number-one hit for country singer and future The Voice judge, Blake Shelton. Barnes’s version has a lot less twang but all the production quality of a pop-country hit. Barnes wrote the song for his wife who had been through the “ups and downs” of his musical career. Shelton heard the song on a CCM radio station and decided to propose to his then-girlfriend, fellow country star, Miranda Lambert. 

    WE ARE STITCHED TOGETHER.  The strap-line of the song is told in the title: “God Gave Me You.” The speaker was broken until he met the right person. That person came from God, and together God and the man’s soulmate mend the speaker’s heart. Many of us listen to a song like this and think about our own relationships. We might think about the ways we’ve failed those we’ve loved in the past, or how they have failed us. Christians might look at songs like this as a formula: be the right person, God will send the right person; God will give you 50+ years of a satisfying marriage with 2.5 kids, satiating sex, and ultimate fulfillment that you’ve fruitfully multiplied. And sometimes that works out. To this day, Barnes remains happily married with three kids. Like Shelton, listeners can be enchanted by the handsome dirty blond Barnes holding his guitar, singing about “an angel lovely” being tricked into falling for someone who is out of his league. If only you let God work his matchmaking magic, this fairytale could happen to you. By contrast, Blake Shelton, who covered the song, dedicating it to his new bride, Miranda Lambert, is no longer married to Lambert. As Shelton’s video for “God Gave Me You” (see below) features Lambert, it is no longer played on Country Music Television (CMT). Sometimes love doesn’t work out, and we wonder what went wrong. 

    I’VE BEEN A WALKING HEARTACHE. I’VE MADE A MESS OF ME. In 2014 I used this song in my religion class for my adult ESL students. Somehow we were talking about love and relationships, a topic I really had no business talking about being single and slowly coming to terms with my sexuality. My students felt that “God Gave Me You” was a nice fairytale of a song. The supporting Bible verses, such as Genesis 2:23-24, which says: ‘The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man. That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh” (NIV) didn’t make the students buy into the “divine conspiracy.” And I was buying into less and less. The formula for a good marriage puts so much pressure on both parties and makes the relationship with God transactional. If I do x, God will bless me with y.  If I am faithful until marriage, God will bless me with a “smokin’ hot wife.” And there’s tons of rhetoric regarding the opposite: If you do x, God will allow y to happen to you. If you look at porn, you’ll become a sex addict, a rapist, or maybe even gay. If you have sex before marriage, your marriage will likely end in divorce. The problem was, in 2014 when the divine conspiracy was thwarted, I started to hear stories about marriages breaking up when young adults married because their hormones told them to marry but in their 30s and 40s they realized they didn’t love their partners and they wanted more from their lives. And the biggest thing that shattered this myth for me, was realizing that no matter how I tried to deny my truth, I only saw a life of misery. So that led me to a bit of rebellion.

    Dave Barnes music video:



    Blake Shelton: 

     

  • “Exist” by Eric Nam + Top 23 of '23: Songs 14-11, Sunday, January 28, 2024

    I took a week off from my countdown. I’ve been spending the week planning the direction of my blog for this year, and it always seems like a miracle when I get a chance to write! Today, I’m counting down songs 14 to 11 that were recorded and released in 2023. Not many of these songs were actual hits on the Billboard Hot 100, and all of them were released in 2023. For songs that just missed the top ten, I think that these songs have better lyrics than the top 20, but there is something dynamic missing from making the song a more impactful song on me. Of course, this is completely subjective, and time may prove differently. Still, as of writing this post, I’m going to say that these songs are in the right order. 


    14. “Exist” by Eric Nam. In 2019, Eric Nam began primarily writing songs in English after half a decade in K-pop. But it wasn’t until last year’s House on a Hill that the lyrics and music seemed to sync up. “Exist” is my favorite track from the album. It’s simple but beautiful. The idea of the song is perhaps better expressed in other existential songs, but I feel like comparing them is like comparing yesterday’s sunset to last week’s. All sunsets can be beautiful and so can all songs about existence. But I have a few predictions: 1) Eric Nam’s songwriting is going to get better than this. 2) Nam or another Asian American solo artist will break through into mainstream pop stardom in the next five years in America. I bet against BTS; I’m not going to make that mistake again!


    13. “I Should Just Go to Bed” by Rosie. I found this song on a new music discovery playlist on Spotify. This song actually stands in the place of several songs from the last few years that have blown up on TikTok. Todd in the Shadows even added one of these TikTok songs in his “Best Songs of 2023,” which crossed over on the charts to become a hit this year– “Ceilings” by Lizzy McAlpine. That song would have scored higher than Rosie’s song, except it was released last year. “I Should Just Go to Bed” is a storytelling track that gets at an underlying emotion that felt a little too much like I was in a time machine back to my twenties. Plus, the girl is a great singer. I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of music Gen Z will give us.

    12. “Cotton Candy” by Jinyoung. Somehow K-pop didn’t connect with me much last year. I also took a year off from studying the language so maybe that had something to do with it. NewJeans’ breakout success was fun. And “Cupid” was catchy, and Fifty Fifty was an interesting story about the group vs. record label. But one song I thought was great was Jinyoung’s “Cotton Candy.” Acoustic ballads by solo K-pop singers rarely get large followings. GOT7’s Jinyeoung hasn’t released much music, just a handful of singles and an EP titled CHAPTER 0: WITH. “Cotton Candy” is a little bit funky and very smooth. The song was a minor hit during cherry blossom season. Of course, there are good feelings associated with this song.


    11. “Super Mall Mannequin” by Quotes from Movies. When I heard this song many times in my Spotify algorithm, I thought it was a big song, or at least going to be a big song. But in 2024 it only has just over 66,000 streams on Spotify. It reminds me of the MySpace era of band promotion, and the song reminds me of my anxiety from my 20s making the anxiety in my 30s seem like it will pass. “Super Mall Mannequin” is about waiting for life to happen before you realize that you have to make it happen. And I think that all of us in our post-pandemic slump of 2023 could relate to this song in one way or another. 




  • “Can’t Feel My Face” (The Weeknd cover) (updated repost) by Andie Case, Saturday, January 27, 2024

    Ah! The weekend: a time when many of us can breathe that collective sigh of relief, leaving our forty hours at the office, forgetting about the boss, and maybe making some time for Number 1. Before I read into The Weeknd’s 2015 hit, the upbeat track reminded me of catching a fresh cup of Guatemalan iced coffee before catching a bus to meet friends for a weekend in another city. One weekend, I was in a cafe in Hongdae that was playing covers of hit songs and I heard a female version of “Can’t Feel My Face” playing. I can’t be sure if it was Andie Case‘s version. However, after adding Case’s version of The Weeknd’s #1 hit, I think it gives an interesting, mellow take on the normally, upbeat song. It’s the alternate perspectives that makes YouTube cover artists and interesting addition to your music library.

    SHE TOLD ME ‘DON’T WORRY. ‘ The Weeknd is known for his melancholy, self-destructive tunes. However, Andie Case’s vibey cover feels like the prelude to a stay-in weekend. Andie Case is a singer-songwriter who gained popularity on her YouTube channel, covering artists. She has collaborated with other YouTubers, such as Boyce Avenue, Kurt Hugo Schneider, Alex Groot, and others. Unlike many of the YouTubers in Schneider’s circle, though, Andie Case often sings the explicit versions of the songs. “Can’t Feel My Face” is The Weeknd’s beautiful love song to cocaine. The numbness that the singer feels is a side effect to the euphoria. There are certain red flags in this relationship, namely the foreboding about “the worst is yet to come” and “the misery is necessary when we’re deep in love” in addition to the numbness. When the singer says “at least we’ll both be beautiful and stay forever young,” the ’80s song “Forever Young” comes to mind. The notion of staying young forever at its best is a Peter Pan-syndrome, but if drugs are involved, it’s probably about overdose or a tragic accident.

    SHE TOLD ME ‘YOU’LL NEVER BE ALONE.’ “Can’t Feel My Face” is beautifully toxic, in a way that pop music has to be. If you wrote a song about going out and having fun with your friends on the weekend, it would probably not chart. But if you can add the undertones of sadness, desperation, or even tragedy, you might have a better chance at a hit. Likewise, songs about healthy friendships and relationships would bore us to tears. Instead, like Taylor Swift, we fall for the song about a guy who drives through the night with no headlights. Addictions to alcohol, sex, and drugs add to what makes a song compelling. We long for flaws because it makes us feel better about our Saturday nights, the partying or the lack thereof that we do. But we start to care for young Abel as he searches for true love. We scream at him to make the right decision. Listening to The Weeknd is the musical equivalent to watching How I Met Your Mother. Both Abel Tesfaye and Ted Mosbey continue to make the same mistake over and over. Sometimes we even wish that we were making those mistakes. So how does Andie Case’s version fit in? Well, it’s certainly a slow song for cocaine. Her version doesn’t make me think about going out and getting wasted and hooking up with the wrong guy. Nope, instead, it’s a book. I can’t feel my face because I fell asleep in that awkward position on the sofa reading a book. Is that toxic? Probably just as much. I’d much rather spend my weekend in, but I have a conflicted feeling about wasting my life.
    Andie Case version:

  • “Grace” by Adoy (repost), Friday, January 26, 2024

    “Grace” was one of the first hits for the South Korean electronic indie band Adoy. The song opens their 2015 debut EP Catnip.  In a recent interview with Front Row Live lead vocalist Oh Ju-hwan and keyboardist Zee talked with Rob Herrera  while they were on their first U.S. tour.  The two musicians talked about their writing process in Adoy. Although Ju-hwan is the lead singer and sings in English, he is not fluent in conversation, so Zee often handles the English questions and translates the interview questions and answers. So why then, would a band choose to write their songs in a language their lead singer wasn’t fluent in?

    WHY DON’T YOU TELL ME? At Cornerstone 2011, the year before the festival folded, Blindside flew from Sweden to sub-headline on Saturday, July 2nd, just before Anberlin closed out the main stage. The show was incredible. The band had just released their first album since 2007’s Black Rose EP,  With Shivering Hearts We Wait, an album that pushed the band into electronic and pop influences. One of the things I remembered from the show was that guitarist Simon Grenehed rather than lead singer Christian Lindskog introduced all of the songs. I wasn’t sure why. I’d seen interviews with the band and Lindskog had spoken. Now Adoy is not Blindside, nor is Korean Swedish, but I find it interesting when bands from non-English speaking countries make an artistic choice to sing in English, whether it’s A-ha or Scorpions or the Japanese pop-punk band ONE OK ROCK. And then you find yourself traveling, even just a few miles north of the border in Quebec, listening to French DJs playing American music with a few French rock bands that seem to be everything that’s missing in the American scene. 

    I WAS ALWAYS WAS DREAMING OF A DAY LIKE TODAY. In the interview with Rob Herrera, Zee explains that Adoy tried writing in Korean, but felt that the sound of English better illustrated their lyrics and the concepts behind their songs. The concept? Zee explains that an Adoy song is about “lifting” and “floating in the air” because they feel that sound promotes a feeling of youth and vitality. Zee explains that he usually writes the lyrics, but sometimes Ju-hwan or other members will write in Korean and Zee will translate the lyrics. A few years ago, the band was on a radio show on a Seoul English K-pop/indie station talking about their upcoming record  Love and performing songs from Love and Catnip. Before playing the song “Grace,” Zee told the listeners that the song was about an impending serious conversation in the car when two lovers were about to break up. But does the relationship still stand a chance? So the “floating in the air” feeling that Adoy’s music gives the listeners is contrasted with the melancholy of the fear of a breakup. “Grace,” lyrically, is similar to “Bike” on the band’s follow-up EP in that both the happiness and the inevitability of the couple’s breakup are told in a calm and positive tone in the nostalgic song. Still, the twinge of sadness in the lyrics isn’t intended to kill the vibe of the song. Played in a largely non-English speaking country in trendy cafes and restaurants, the smooth sounds of Adoy can serve as furniture music, music that sets a mood but not a conversation piece. Well, today, Adoy, you set off the conversation, and we’re all a little sadder because of it!

     

  • “1000 Doves” by Lady Gaga (repost), Thursday, January 25, 2024

    Ten years ago, Lady Gaga released her most avant-garde record, Artpop, an album that polarized both fans and critics alike. To be fair, the album was a statement of a pop star’s artistic vision. To illustrate that vision, Lady Gaga channels ‘60s pastiche in the way that Andy Warhol blended the popular and the artistic. But with the critical pushback of Artpop, Lady Gaga took note and didn’t make another dance-pop record until Chromatica in 2020, instead venturing into acting, singing standards with Tony Bennett, a folk-rock album Joanne, and the Oscar-winning soundtrack to the film she starred in A Star Is Born. In 2020, the Lady Gaga persona could have done anything, and yet she graced fans with a return trip to the dance floor. 


    LIFT ME UP, GIVE ME A START. I’ve been thinking a lot about pop music lately. When I was a  hipster high school and college student, I thought of pop music as a kind of opioid. It puts you into a trance, makes you dance, and makes you not think about the lyrics because they are trivial and don’t matter. But then Lady Gaga released The Fame. I didn’t listen to it right away, but something about the “opioid” of Ke$ha, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, and Lady Gaga made me start listening to pop, and I realized I wasn’t turning off my brain to lyrics. Of course, as a devout Christian at the time, I had a moralistic take on songs, but I couldn’t help but look at these four singers as artists, and I felt that The Fame and The Fame Monster were a codex on pop stars as personas rather than who the actual singer is. Excluding Taylor Swift from this conversation, as she was the primary songwriter on her albums and she wasn’t making club anthems at the time, Lady Gaga was an artist who seemed in control of her artistic direction. At first, it looked like her message was all about sexual liberation and hedonism. But looking at her early songs as brushstrokes, it seemed that she was making a statement about what fame does to an individual and possibly how to divorce oneself from the fame monster.

    I’VE BEEN FLYING WITH SOME BROKEN ARMS. Most critics and listeners alike wouldn’t consider Lady Gaga‘s first three records to be personal. Sure, “Born This Way” is an anthem of self-acceptance just as much for Gaga as it is for her listeners. The same album deals with culturally and family-held religious ideas and pushback on those ideas. There are some personal songs on The Fame that no one listens to. But we really didn’t get to know Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta until Joanne. So wouldn’t return to dance-pop make Lady Gaga less lyrically authentic? Chromatica is surprisingly introspective for a dance record. The mirror that Gaga once held to her audience now examines the artist from the first track “Alice” to the penultimate song “1000 Doves.” There are certainly some “turn off my anxiety and just dance” tracks. Today’s song, “1000 Doves” isn’t loved by diehard Lady Gaga fans, and is even considered one of the weakest tracks on the album. I always thought that the criticism wasn’t fair.  It’s a slow night musically at the discotheque on a rainy Monday night in October. Lyrically, it’s a clear day with Broadway theatrics.  It’s a personal track that would have been impossible before Lady Gaga became a person carved out of the persona. Today’s song may not be the track that you remember from a dynamic album, but it’s worth separating it from the record and reflecting on it by itself.

    Official audio:

    Chromatica ball live:

    Remix:

  • “Drive There Now!” by The Almost+ Wintry Mix: An Apple Music Exclusive

    I made two mixtapes for winter for Spotify. Now I’m going to make an Apple Music winter playlist. I tend to add songs to my Apple Music playlists more than Spotify, so this playlist is more of an ongoing project.  The emphasis is more on the beginning of the year, but anything wintry will suffice. I hope that these tracks keep you feeling warm for the harshest weather. These days it’s easy to give up on the New Year’s Resolutions we made for ourselves. But Spring is just around the corner. We just need a little boost to get through. 

    Check out the playlist on Apple Music.

  • “Chapstick” by COIN (repost), Tuesday, January 23, 2024

    COIN has been hard at work even before the COVID-19 pandemic. Releasing the album their third studio record Dreamland in late February of 2020, the band had plans for a world tour that was quickly canceled as live music came to a halt. During this pause, the band recorded and released a three EP series based on the color spectrum, starting in September of 2020. Combined, the EPs formed the Rainbow Mixtape, released in April of 2021. But the band wasn’t finished in 2021. In September, they released the lead single to their 2022 album Uncanny Valley, “Chapstick,” which had been called the band’s most experimental track up to the release of its parent album.

    HEY CHERRY BLOSSOM, WHAT’S YOUR PROBLEM? In 1970, Japanese robotics professor Masahiro Mori came up with the hypothesis of The Uncanny Valley. He proposed that as robotics developed to create more and more humanlike robots, even to the point of constructing humanlike imperfections on the robot, the more likely that people would perceive the robots as eerie. He even created a formula for calculating the point for calculating the creepiness of the uncanny valley. Since 1970, robotic technology has only increased the number of robots. But today, we’re not so concerned with a Twilight Zone episode of an automaton impersonating or even replacing our physical bodies. Instead, the “robots” we fear today are body-less, for the most part.  These days, it’s eerie to see what artificial intelligence can write. It’s eerie to hear A.I. impersonating celebrities or even hearing music created in the likeness of a famous artist. Sometimes these impersonations are so realistic, we are fooled by the delivery. But mostly, we’re left with a sinking feeling about the likelihood that we may all be replaced by computers that can create content. 

    I DON’T WANT YOUR LEATHER JACKET.  COIN creates a concept album about a robot learning how to love on their latest record, Uncanny Valley. The lead single, “Chapstick,” the band talked about being inspired by a 2017 documentary called AlphaGo about Google’s successful attempt to create Artificial Intelligence to dominate the game of Go–a game similar to chess, only most popular in East Asia. The music and the lyrics of the song feel like they have been developed by A.I. Not in the way that anyone can type into ChatGPT with a prompt: “Write a song about … .” Instead, it feels like earlier iterations of the program. The lines make analogies and create metaphors that don’t land. “I wanna taste your chapstick” feels creepy, but it also seems like it’s almost a line from a pop song–it probably is. But when the surrounding words make little sense, the line is especially uncanny. Today’s song is actually not creepy at all. The robot voice in music has been around since the ‘80s. Nonsense lyrics have been around since a two-year-old started babbling along to his dad’s record collection, singing what he thought he heard. But the implication of what’s to come in art should give us all an uncanny feeling.

     

  • “Love 119” by Riize (라이즈), Monday, January 22, 2024

    Last year, RIIZE (라이즈) debuted on SM Entertainment with their single “Memories” from the single Get a Guitar. The group was comprised of seven members until a scandal broke out with Hong Seunghan (홍승한) who was placed on an indefinite hiatus from the group. The boy band has released four singles so far, with January 5’s “Love 119” as their latest. Rather than a rap, the song features a catchy chant, lamenting a girl who has done the speaker of the song wrong. The speaker frantically dials 119, the emergency number in South Korea, to declare that “the girl’s a killer.”


     SAVE MY LIFE, SAVE MY LIFE. Shortly after RIIZE’s debut, the K-pop community started calling Anton, one of the group’s members, a “nepo baby.” Anton is the stage name for Lee Chan Yeong (이찬영). His father, Lee Yoon Sang (이윤상) is musician who started his musical career playing bass for singer Kim Wan-sun’s backing band. In 1900, he began a solo career. After releasing his 2002 album Migration (이사), he began songwriting and composing for SM Entertainment. He continued to release albums in the late ‘00s, exploring the sub-genre of glitch music. In 2002, he married actress Shim Hye-Jin, his Co-star in his music video for “As Always.” In 2004, Chan Yeong was born in Boston, where the couple resided while Yoon Sang pursued a bachelor’s degree in music synthesis from Berklee College of Music. Chan Yeong was educated in the United States where he learned cello and swimming in addition to the core curriculum. His dream was to be a swimmer before he pursued music professionally. 


    THIS IS AN EMERGENCY. The term nepo baby is short for nepotism baby, a term popularized in the 2010s, but in 2020, the term was shortened to nepo baby. A definition of nepo baby is a child of a celebrity who gains success in a similar field. In the entertainment industries, this practice has been happening since before Johann Sebastian Bach, but one famous example from closer to our time is Jamie Leigh Curtis, daughter of Psycho actress Janet Leigh and actor Tony Curtis. But Jamie Leigh Curtis is an acclaimed actress, so she usually doesn’t get called a “nepo baby.” The term “nepotism baby” first emerged online to discuss the unfair practices in the Bollywood industry. In 2020, “nepo baby” was used to describe Euphoria actress Maude Apatow, daughter of director Judd Apatow and actress Leslie Mann. The term is often given to entertainers that some consumers feel their fame exceeds their talent. As tastes vary, the term has been used pejoratively in online discourse. The discussions about K-pop nepotism had been brewing prior to Riize’s debut, but with the online call out Anton, the singer decided to address the controversy on Twitter (now X).Rather than denying his status, he simply tweeted “born this way by lady gaga.” Was the tweet an acknowledgment of talent or privilege? Or was it both? Wherever my readers stand on the “nepo baby” debate, I think that rather than attacking entertainers, we need to look at the gatekeepers of the entertainment industries. It’s a winning lottery ticket for most people to get famous. For those with connections, success isn’t always granted; however, the lottery is more like having multiple at a local raffle. Whereas, the infamous need luck and talent, the children of celebrities don’t necessarily need luck. Anton is clearly a talented individual. That talent has been grown thanks to his privileged upbringing. But still, he put in the work to become a star, and many in the arts who come from privileged backgrounds. Why is K-pop any different? No, don’t attack the children of celebrities. Instead, attack specific parts of the system that gate-keep the poor from becoming stars—the unpaid training camps, the unpaid internships, the exploitive recording contracts, the under-reported sexual exploitation, the impossible body standards—not the stars who have worked hard for their place in the industry.

    Performance Video:

    Lyrics/Translation:

    Live Performance:

    Music Video: 

  • “Rewind” by The Amazing, Sunday, January 21, 2024

     

    The Amazing is an Indie progressive rock band from Sweden. My dad told me about them, comparing them to the much more popular band The War on Drugs. The band released their first record in 2009 and after a five-year hiatus, The Amazing released three singles last year. Today’s song, “Rewind,” comes from their 2018 record, In Transit. Filled with long, jam tracks and atmosphere-building guitars, the record is a relaxing record for background music suitable for reading a novel on a winter afternoon. I couldn’t find the lyrics for “Rewind” online, so I had to transcribe them on Genius. I would appreciate any corrections. The song seems to be about remembering a lover who is no longer with the speaker, and with the guitars, it seems that the memory gives the speaker fond memories. Today, we’re going to extend that warm feeling with Winter, Part II, a playlist for the second half of the winter from January to March. I hope that these songs help you through the dreariest months.


  • "Hazy Shade of Winter" By Simon & Garfunkel, Saturday, January 20, 2023 (rewritten post)

    Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel met in grade school in their hometown of Queens, New York. In fourth grade, Art sang in a talent show, which prompted Paul to want to be friends with him. Inspired by the early rock group The Everly Brothers, Paul and Art taught themselves how to harmonize. The duo wrote and recorded their first song at the age of 15, and then took up the moniker Tom & Jerry, while they were still in high school. Art took the name Tom Graph and Paul took up the name Simon Jerry Landis. The duo had a hit with the single “Hey School Girl” and even appeared on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. Tom & Jerry signed to Big Records and during that time Paul Simon began recording solo songs, something Art Garfunkel resented. The duo went to college, Paul Simon studying literature and Queens College and Art Garfunkel studying architecture at Columbia University, and recorded solo songs while in college.  


    T�IME, TIME, TIME, SEE WHAT’S BECOME OF ME? In 1964, Tom & Jerry rebranded to their now well-known moniker, Simon & Garfunkel. They recorded their debut album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., though the record wouldn’t be a success until years later when a radio DJ started playing an alternate version of their originally acoustic track “The Sound of Silence.” Sony Records rushed the band to record a follow-up to Wednesday Morning, which featured the electrified version and the title of The Sound of Silence. Most of the songs on Silence were reworked tracks from The Paul Simon Song Book, Simon’s debut record in the UK, where he had lived since the failure of Wednesday Morning. The duo’s third record, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, though, featured mostly new recordings. And from the recording sessions of the duo’s third record, came their hit single “Hazy Shade of Winter.” The song was released as a non-album single but was included on their fourth album Bookends. Paul Simon wrote the lyrics, reflecting on his life in England. The song encapsulates the winter feeling of the young artist “sipping [his] vodka and lime” while “looking over manuscripts of unpublished rhyme.” And although Simon is still a young man 25 years old at the age of the song’s initial release, the brown leaves evoke the urgency of time. 

    HEAR THE SALVATION ARMY BAND DOWN BY THE RIVERSIDE. “Hazy Shade of Winter” was a Billboard Hot 100 number 16 hit for Simon & Garfunkel. The song was recorded by The Bangles and reached number 2. The Bangles’ version electrifies Paul Simons’ acoustic riff, slightly akin to the way that “The Sound of Silence” added even more energy to Simon & Garfunkel’s original version. The cover was recorded for the 1987 film Less Than Zero. In 2019, Gerard Way and Ray Toro of My Chemical Romance recorded an even heavier rock version of “Hazy Shade of Winter” to be featured in a Netflix adaptation of Way’s comic, Umbrella Academy. The alternate-timeline dark-comedic drama utilized Classic Rock songs throughout the show’s run, but “Hazy Shade of Winter” was the first introduction to the series’ style as it was used in the trailer. While both rock versions of “Hazy” sound great, and hold an emotional closeness to me–The Bangles’ version from the second season of Ryan Murphey’s American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace–I think that the original captures the mood of an actual hazy, winter day. It’s the slow pace of an existential crisis. It’s the ugliness of January after winter has worn out its welcome after the joys of Christmas have left you with credit card bills you don’t want to pay back. It’s the distant hope in the lime juice sprinkled into vodka that somehow reminds you that springtime is coming eventually. A Moscow Mule may have only kept the depression of winter harboring in the poet’s soul.