Mixtapemotions

  • “Waffle House” by Jonas Brothers, Saturday, June 3, 2023

     

    Let’s revisit last month’s discussion about The Album, the latest record from Jonas Brothers. Referring back to the interview with Charlie Harding on the podcast Switched on Pop, Nick Jonas explained that the brothers wanted to put “something together that sounded like what coming to one of our shows is like.” Achieving this sound has the band leaning into the past rather than electronic elements or studio sound effects. 

    IT’S GON’ GET FIGURED OUT. Charlie Harding referred to the Jonas Brothers’ The Album’s sound as “album-oriented, band-driven music,” which refers to the music of the ‘60s- ‘80s when many listeners preferred listening to albums over singles. My guess is that the experience of a Jonas Brothers show in the late ‘00s probably wouldn’t be focused on the musicality of the band, but rather the euphoric dopamine rush (for a certain demographic) of seeing the brothers performing. However, with only Kevin strumming a guitar in the band’s recent videos, the “band sound” of a live Jonas experience—in 2008 or 2023–requires many touring musicians who are not Kevin, Joe, or Nick. There seems to be something about fidelity to music that can be played live rather than sample-based music at the core of who Kevin, Joe, and Nick are as musicians, at least for their Jonas Brothers projects, which could literally sound like anything made in a studio. They could have produced an entire album with DJs like Marshmello, and probably fans may not have noticed the difference.

    YOU KNOW IT’S ONLY LOVE. In 2020, the Jonas Brothers performed in the Netflix holiday series Dash & Lily. The band performed some of their new songs after breaking their hiatus in 2019. And while the performance was filmed for a drama, I realized that the demographic of a Jonas Brothers’ show now looked very different. The brothers weren’t just performing for tween girls anymore. It was still pretty clean-cut, but it was pretty much for everyone. In April, the Jonas Brothers performed on Saturday Night Live, performing the closing track of The Album, “Walls” with their producer Jon Bellion and a special appearance by Gospel artist Kirk Franklin. The band also performed their bombastic single “Waffle House,” a song that lyrically digs into the brothers’ family structure as they were growing up with their parents managing their musical success. From both performances, the band’s music utilized a small choir. The band released the single a day prior to their SNL performance, and just as Nick said in the Switched on Pop interview, the sound of both the single and the live performance is quite similar. But what sells “Waffle House” is the nostalgia for a time when millennials were old enough to drive but not old enough to drink, legally. It is the feeling of wanting to be older and following your dreams, but looking back on that time and realizing that those “late-night conversations” were the dream. And with any Waffle House, there’s always the threat of danger. It’s the place where meth-heads mentally unstable people and racist idiots with guns might show up. But that’s a rare occasion, and when you see the warm glow of the yellow lights, you tend to forget about that incident you saw on the news in another city six months ago. So, pour another cup of coffee; order your hash browns smothered, covered, topped, diced, or however; and slab on some butter and fake maple syrup because this night is gonna get interesting.

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

    Lyric video:

    Music video:

    SNL performance:

    Unrelated sketch from earlier this season on SNL: 







  • “Live Forever” by The Fold, Friday, June 2, 2023 (partial repost)

    We all have to pay the bills, and musicians are certainly no exception. Randy Torres formerly of Project 86 works in sound design. Dan Koch of Sherwood writes music for adverting. Stephen Christian is a music pastor. All of these examples, though, have kept the band separate. The Fold released two records on Tooth & Nail Records, but never achieved the greatness of their label-mates, save a Grammy nomination for the packaging of their sophomore record. Though having a smaller fanbase than other Tooth & Nail bands, The Fold started partnering with brands, writing theme songs, most notably Lego’s Ninjago, for which they performed exclusively for seven years. 

    I SPENT A LONG TIME BUILDING LADDERS TO THE STARS. Today’s song comes from The Fold’s 2013 independent record, Moving Past. “Live Forever” is the album’s fourth track. The themes on the album are somewhat humanist and somewhat Christian. The subject of “Live Forever” is not about one’s eternal resting place in heaven, but rather it’s an assertion that “I can’t live forever.” The song doesn’t correct its theology, but rather realizes that death is restful after years of toil, particularly toil caused by fruitless tasks such as “building ladders to the stars.” And coupled with the album cover artwork reminding me of Charon as he sculls his boat along the river Styx, we come to trust death as a natural process. The upbeat tone of “Live Forever” keeps the lyrics from falling into a depression. Practically, who wants to live forever? Who wants to outlive their peers? For much of human existence, early death was a reality. Thirty-five was once considered old, but yet we’re living long and longer these days. And now there’s talk of trans-humanism, scientific advancement that will allow us, or the most wealthy of us, to upload our consciousness to the cloud and download it onto a younger body. If this ever happens, people will have to grapple with problems eighty years often cut short.

    THESE BONES DON’T STAND A CHANCE. I fear the future every day. I fear poverty. I fear losing my loved ones as I get older. I don’t think a teenager ever thinks they will wake up in a thirty-three year old body, but I’m fearing how fast the calendar pages are turning. I’ve heard people say they think life is long. I don’t remember the last time I was bored. It seems there’s always something to fill up my time. And yet, I wonder, does there come a point when you say, I’ve lived a good life; I’m ready for it to end? On my darkest days when I think I’d rather be dead than face what’s up next, but on the way to work I almost step in front of a bus and I start fighting for my life. I think about the sad story I heard yesterday about one of my former coworkers’ daughters died from a genetic disease after she spent her young life studying and working very hard as nurse. It’s horrible to hear about someone dying in their 20s. There’s so much life she couldn’t live. Dying at sixty has us saying “she was too young.” We don’t want the day that we finally have to say goodbye to our loved ones—grandparents, aunts and uncles, and our parents. Mental illness aside, there’s never a good age that we can say, “I’m glad to have lived this long and I hope that I die tomorrow.” Perhaps it’s our mind that wants to live forever, but our bodies protest in the end.

    Read “Live Forever” by The Fold on Genius.

  • "Closer" by Tegan and Sara, Thursday, June 1, 2023 (repost)

    The best music doesn’t happen in isolation but rather comes out of a community movement. I would define community, when it comes to music, as a mixing of artists who bring different ideas together ideas from various genres. The result of a musical community is stronger musicianship by all those involved. Collaboration, the meeting of minds, happens naturally. Throughout the course of my blog, I’ve talked about various communities. Tooth & Nail, Christian Rock, and evangelical communities are definitely the biggest themes. Tegan and Sara grew out of the Northwestern Canadian/American Indie Rock community in the late ’90s, and by 2013 became pop stars. 

    HERE COMES THE RUSH BEFORE WE TOUCH. Many fans may have been introduced to Tegan and Sara when Meredith Grey and Christina Yang danced to their early acoustic, angry girl music in Grey’s Anatomy‘s earlier seasons. The musical duo of Calgary-born identical twins Tegan and Sara Quin started on the acoustic guitar at home and eventually led to being signed on Neil Young‘s label, Vapor Records. The band gained traction in the indie scene. The White Stripes covered one of their songs, and co-writing with Chris Walla of Death Cab for Cutie also helped them gain indie cred in their early career. But in 2013, the duo changed directions. The result was the big-production, synth pop-driven Heartthrob. “Closer,” Heartthrob’s opening track and lead single, sees the sisters explore new lyrical territory in addition to their musical change-up. Tegan sings lead vocals, but Sara encouraged her to sing a straight-up love song, without the dark and dreary lyrical content the group had been known for. According to an article in Rolling Stone, Tegan’s lyrics were about “a time when we got closer by linking arms and walking down our school hallway or talked all night on the telephone about every thought or experience we’d ever had. It wasn’t necessarily even about hooking up or admitting your feelings back then.”
    THE LIGHTS ARE OFF AND THE SUN IS FINALLY SETTING. THE NIGHT SKY IS CHANGING OVERHEAD. In a video series the twins released talking about the songs on the album, Sara pushed the lyrics to “make things physical,” referencing high school romance. Tegan best sums up the atmosphere, stating to Rolling Stone, “These relationships existed in a state of sexual and physical ambiguity.” The music gives the impression of a late-’80s early-’90s slumber party, with the sisters singing karaoke on an ancient, faux wood entertainment stand in which the television is built–younger millennials may not remember that artifact–and childish games like spin the bottle and applying lipstick. The video celebrates couples of all genders and sexualities. Both Tegan and Sara are openly queer musicians from their musical inception and have used their music as a platform in recent years to advocate for equality. “Closer” scored pop radio play and has been featured in several television shows including Glee and Bojack Horseman. The song is a beautifully innocent track about desire–wanting to take things to the next level, but being too young, too naive, and too shy to do so.

  • “Meltdown” by Niall Horan, Wednesday, May 31, 2023

    Pop is having an incredible year. Starting out with Sam Smith‘s genre- (and gender) blending Gloria to this month’s yacht-rock inspired The Album by Jonas Brothers, what I once would consider guilty pleasures I would argue now rival the musical staples of my hipster past. The year isn’t even half over, and I still haven’t digested many of the albums that have come out. But if the two singles, “Heaven” and “Meltdown,” Niall Horan released before his rumored June release of The Show have any bearing on the upcoming album, I’ll be adding this to my list of albums that completely blindsided me with awesomeness. 


    WHEN IT ALL MELTS DOWN, I’LL BE THERE. These days, I’ve been listening to Spotify’s curated playlists at work. “Meltdown” is a song that has been added to several of the new hits playlists, so I started hearing it quite often. I thought the song was catchy, but it initially got lost with the other tons of songs I could never remember. But little by little, I started to enjoy the campfire-like chorus and the fun production sounds. And it made me start thinking about Fine Line by Harry Styles, particularly “Golden,” the album’s opening track. I didn’t know who Niall Horan was. His music appeared in several playlists alongside Taylor Swift and other pop superstars, and because I haven’t been a faithful pop listener, I figured that the singer’s music had just missed me somehow. Part of my process for determining my daily song is listening to music, systematically (in a way that makes sense to me) going through my library, and when I get up from my desk, I see if I’m humming a song. If the song lasts until I return to my desk, I’ll stop listening to whatever playlist I’m listening to and find the album containing the ear worm. If the song is so infectious, I start listening to the artist’s back catalog. 

    LOSIN’ YOUR MIND  IN THE MIRROR. So, I clicked on Niall Horan’s Spotify page and listened to the latest singles and their acoustic counterparts. I started scrolling down, slightly distracted by his photos and how incredibly handsome he is. Then I read his short Spotify biography, and I felt so dumb. Along with Harry Styles, Liam Payne, Louis Thomlinson, and Zayn Malik, Niall Horan was a One Direction member. It’s the kind of thing I can live with not knowing if I hadn’t been writing about music for over two years. But, to be fair, Harry Styles’ critical acclaim and now consistent charting on Billboard’s Hot 100 was the only reason that One Direction came on my radar. Zayn’s music was often played in the gym, so I was aware of him as an artist even if I wasn’t listening to his music. I couldn’t name a Liam Payne song, but I recognized his name if I heard it. Louis Thomlinson has the lowest streams of all One Direction members. Perhaps because of his new music, Horan has the second-highest number of streams after Harry Styles and just above Zayn. Horan, however, has yet to have a Billboard Top 10 hit, so that could be the reason why he slipped under my radar. “Heaven” petered out at number 62. Will “Meltdown” be Horan’s song of the summer?

    lyric video:

    Live performance in Tokyo (on The Voice):

    Acoustic version:





  • “다시 만난 세계” (Into the New World) by Girls’ Generation (소년 시대 SNSD), Tuesday, May 30, 2023 (repost)














    Composed by Kenzie, the professional name for SM Entertainment‘s songwriter Kim Yeon-jeong, the debut single “Into the New World” by what would become one of the biggest K-pop groups, Girls’ Generation, set the tone for a ten-year career of fun, bubble-gummy, uplifting songs. Composed of nine young women all born between 1989 and 1991,  Girls’ Generation has been called “the Nation’s Girl Group,” in South Korea due to their popularity between 2007-2017. Beginning with a sample of Don Henley‘s 1984 classic “The Boys of Summer,” (covered last August by The Ataris), “Into the New World” builds on the nostalgic piano and synth sample. Rather than calling back with longing for the past, this song propels listeners forward into the future.

    I LEAVE BEHIND THIS WORLD’S UNENDING SADNESS. I’ve been pretty critical of K-pop in the past for being political. I used to think that music in America was too political, especially when I was a Republican teenager (cringe). I was annoyed when Coldplay’s Chris Martin said at the 2004 Grammy “May John Kerry be your president someday.” Of course, there were also right-wing musicians, but being found to have Republican tendencies could end a rock band’s career in some cases. In South Korea, because the government subsidizes the industry, idol groups are to be politically neutral. There are very few songs that are overt protest songs which can be found in rock and pop and even country in America. However, today’s song, with its hopeful message of stepping into the unknown future, has become a famous protest song in South Korea, starting in 2015, when students led a peaceful protest against Ewha University in Seoul. Both Tiffany and Yuri of SNSD expressed their appreciation to their fans for using the song to rally for change. Tiffany said, “Right now is the generation for feminists, and it’s an era where messages of women empowering other women are important. I feel like our song played that role, so my heart was happy.” A year later, the song was sung at protest rallies against President Park Geun-Hye. The massive protests against the leader accused of corruption had the people singing a song of hope, demanding more from their leaders. Fans also sang the song on April 11, 2019, when the criminalization of abortion was recognized as unconstitutional in South Korea. Finally, in 2020, the song was sung during anti-governmental protests in Thailand, and fans translated the song’s message to spread hope in Thailand. With the globalization of K-pop–the ripples in East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and North America–it seems inevitable that some songs will be used in protest. 

    LOOKING INTO YOUR EYES, NO WORDS ARE NEEDED. I don’t think that “Into the New World” credits its sampling of “The Boys of Summer,” as it’s never mentioned in most sources. Last September, I talked about how Olivia Rodrigo was inspired by “Misery Business” and eventually gave writing credit to Haley Williams and Josh Farro. Musicians get into trouble all the time for borrowing too heavily from their sources. There are several video compilations of similar-sounding songs. Whether it’s Sam Smith listening to Tom Petty or Lana Del Rey listening to Radiohead, we can hear musical similarities if we keep our ears open. I could make a list of songs that I think sound the same or songs that I’ve mashed up, even disguised as church songs when I played for church (“He Is Exalted” and the guitar from “Don’t Stop Believing“). Some groups like The Verve had their career paralyzed by the litigious Rolling Stones‘ manager. And as much fun as it would be to make a playlist of similar-sounding songs or funny mash-ups like “Creep but It’s All I Want for Christmas” it seems like the project could get out of control. There’s a reason why I only pick one song a day. Tom Petty said it best when he decided not to sue Red Hot Chili Peppers for the similarity between his song “Dani California” and “Mary Jane’s Last Dance“: “A lot of rock & roll sounds alike.” And that similarity can draw parallels in themes in listeners’ minds. “Into the New World” and “The Boys of Summer” may build off of the same arpeggio, but one looks back without any hope for the future, and the other uses the past to build a brighter future.


  • “I Ain’t Worried” by OneRepublic, Monday, May 29, 2023

    In 1986, The United States was in the middle of a decades-long Cold War with the Soviet Union. While the war never heated up, there were some close battles that made the average American squeamish about the possibility of nuclear war, and some went so far as to build their own bomb shelters to help them survive nuclear fall out. But having been born in 1987, I don’t have much memory of Soviet-era rumors of war, and even post-9/11, American views on the U.S. military’s involvement with pretty much anything has been controversial. A film like Top Gun in 1986 was filled with truth, justice, the American way.


    TIME IS RUNNING OUT SO SPEND IT LIKE IT’S GOLD. Last summer, in the midst of a heatwave of ‘80s nostalgia, Top Gun: Maverick hit the theaters. The film was a smash hit and featured Tom Cruise reprising his role as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell. The film was the second-highest grossing film of 2022 and the highest grossing film of Cruise’s career. The film also featured several actors from the original film, including a brief appearance from Val Kilmer. Along with Tom Cruise’s seemingly never-ending sequels of the Mission Impossible films, Top Gun: Maverick adds to a Hollywood narrative that fit men don’t have to age out of blockbuster films. I hope that will soon be the case for veteran actresses as well. Along with stunning visual effects, Top Gun: Maverick’s soundtrack attempted to capture the magic of the 1986 chart-topper. Along with the original score composed jointly by the original film’s composer Harold Faltermeyer, Hans Zimmer, Lorne Balfe, and Lady Gaga; the soundtrack contains Miles Teller’s rendition of “Great Balls of Fire,” the original themes “Danger Zone” and “Take My Breath Away,”  and two original hit songs “Hold My Hand,” performed by Lady Gaga, and today’s song “I Ain’t Worried” by OneRepublic.

    I AIN’T WORRIED ‘BOUT IT RIGHT NOW. I want to reserve discussion about the themes of Top Gun: Maverick until I’ve watched the movie or read more about it. What I find interesting is how even during the breakdown of monoculture and political fragmentation, a film like Top Gun: Maverick could become the highest-grossing Tom Cruise film? And for the big soundtrack, how is a major film score composed collaboratively and what role did Lady Gaga play as a composer? Today’s song “I Ain’t Worried” brings OneRepublic back to their golden age of catchiness. The whistling hook was inspired by Swedish indie band Peter Bjorn & John and evokes a carefree summer feeling fresh for Memorial Day Weekend 2022 and 2023 and with the continued radio play, recent EP release of alternate takes on the single, and the rumors of an upcoming album, the song still feels like a worry-free anthem of 2023.


     

  • “Thousand Miles” by Miley Cyrus ft. Brandi Carlile, Sunday, May 28, 2023

     

    Last week fans were upset when Miley Cyrus announced that she wouldn’t go on tour for her latest record, Endless Summer Vacation. The singer hasn’t headlined an arena tour since 2014’s supporting tour for Bangerz. Cyrus told British Vogue that “singing for hundreds of thousands of people isn’t really the thing that I love. . . There’s no connection. There’s no safety. It’s also not natural. It’s so isolating because if you’re in front of 100,000 people then you are alone.” So, as the music industry is trying to return to normal in 2023, just how many major players will throw a Miley Cyrus wrench into the Ticketmaster machine?

    I’M HOLDING ON LIKE A ROLLING STONE. Miley Cyrus’ eighth studio record Endless Summer Vacation has brought Miley Cyrus back to the spotlight nearly ten years after she swung into the number 1 spot on Billboard’s Hot 100, nude on a “Wrecking Ball.” In fact, this year’s “Flowers” beat “Wrecking Ball”’s 3-week reign atop the Hot 100 chart by 5 weeks, 8 weeks total, and at the time of writing this post “Flowers” has spent the most weeks at number 1 in 2023.  Chart analysts compile data from December of last year, so Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero” is the natural competitor with “Flowers.” Both singles spent eight weeks at number 1, so unless there’s a Lil’ Nas X Tik-Tok upset, it will be interesting to see the former country starts duke it out for number 1 of 2023. But why did it take so long for Cyrus to become relevant again? The answer lies within her own artistry. While critics and some-to-many fans haven’t been keen to Cyrus’ work post-Bangerz and pre-Endless Summer Vacation, it’s clear from interviews  that Cyrus fully believed in her avant-garde productions, even if they didn’t earn her big hits. Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Pets was a complete left turn from the catchiness of Bangerz and subsequent releases were left turns from that release.  

    INSTEAD OF HANING UP, I HANG MY HEAD. Whether we call Miley Cyrus’ left turns into less commercially viable markets a misstep or a god-given right for an artist to experiment, 2020’s venture into rock music reminded critics that Miley Cyrus exists. In the middle of the pandemic, the popularity of classic rock soared as teenagers were listening to Spotify at home. Club records didn’t make sense when music listeners were cooped up indoors on a Saturday night. The lead single from Plastic Hearts, the Joan Jett and Stevie Nicks inspired record, “ Midnight Sky” sees Cyrus singing ‘80s-styled rock. And while the track peaked at only #14, the record showed listeners and critics what a deep-voiced rebel-hearted Miley Cyrus could sound like. We get that sound on Endless Summer Vacation, despite the record being a kind of return to form for Cyrus. You may complain about hearing “Flowers” too much on the radio—something that happens to almost every number one track. It’s unfortunate that “Flowers” has pretty much eclipsed the possibility of other tracks becoming hits because those tracks hold what I think may be a contender for album of the year. The beginning of the album is packed with rock-inspired pop gems. They may not be as catchy as the first track “Flowers,” but like today’s song, “Thousand Miles”—a song originally written about the suicide of a friend—contain a depth of experience not found among her Bangerz. 

    Read the lyrics on Genius. 

    Disney+ Live Performance:

  • “Attention” by Charlie Puth, Saturday, May 27, 2023 + LA Mix

     

    “Attention” was the lead single from Charlie Puth’s sophomore album, Voicenotes. It’s a mid-tempo track that features Puth’s auto-tuned vocals punctuated by a smooth electric guitar. Compared to Puth’s debut record, Nine Track Mind, Voicenotes received much more critical praise. While “Attention” peaked at number 5 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, Puth has yet to replicate the magic of his 12-non-consecutive-week hit of “See You Again” as a featured artist on Wiz Khalifa’s track commissioned for Furious 7 as a tribute to the late Paul Walker. 

    YOU’VE BEEN GOIN’ ROUND EVERY PARTY IN LA. I thought it was about time to start a working playlist for songs about Los Angeles. It’s the first in my Cities playlist series. The playlist will feature songs and artists connected with the city. It’s not an exhaustive playlist, yet. Note that songs about Beverly Hills, Hollywood, and surrounding areas are also fair game. So, let’s take a long weekend trip into the City of Angels!



  • “Say Yes to Heaven” by Lana Del Rey, Friday, May 26, 2023

     

    Lana Del Rey returned this earlier year with the latest installment of her “Carol King Era” of songwriting in Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd?  This new era of the Del Rey persona created by Lizzy Grant feels like a slow progression away from pop hooks, and maybe where this started was with Del Rey’s second album, Ultraviolence. But Del Rey’s real critical acclaim arrived with Norman Fucking Rockwell!, the album that both ended pop Lana and started the ‘70s-styled singer-songwriter that she followed up with Chemtrails over the Country Club, Blue Banisters, and Did you know. 


    GIVE PEACE A CHANCE. Lana Del Rey’s fan base is strong, quick to interpret ever line that the singer writes in the blogosphere. Not only do fans read into her released songs, they also track down her unreleased demos and leak them online. Usually Del Rey pays no attention when one of her unreleased songs is leaked; however, when a sped-up version of “Say Yes to Heaven” started appearing on Tik Tok, the singer addressed the song’s leak by releasing it on streaming services. While the track had been leaked on Tik Tok, fans had been talking about “Heaven” since 2016 when snippets of the song emerged online. With credited songwriting and production to The Black Keys’ Rick Nowels, the song has been rumored to be a track cut from Ultraviolence.  While critics seem to love the new Lana Del Rey, some of us miss the old days of hip-hop beats and wall-of-sound dream pop production. Del Rey seems to be giving the fans what they want with the release of “Heaven,” harkening back to the classic voice, rock guitars, and bad-ass lyrics.  

    LIKE A BARGE AT SEA. I was excited to hear “Say Yes to Heaven,” thinking that Del Rey’s looking back at her musical past may challenge Del Rey to go back to the days when her music was easier to listen to. But “Say Yes to Heaven” feels like a Lana Del Rey b-side. It’s missing something, and I believe that’s the fact that the lyrics don’t hit hard enough. “Say Yes to Heaven” has very short verses and a very simple chorus. It’s also a little cliché: heaven, this song, is falling in love with the speaker. It’s not a “Dark Paradise.” No emphasis is place on how bad this boy is. It’s almost a Lana Del Rey song but it needs to be workshopped a few times before it’s officially album-ready to align the song’s imagery and metaphors with a folk tale in rock ’n’ roll history. Perhaps John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance” could have been a clue as to where the song could have gone, maybe painting a picture of Lennon as a peaceful revolutionary who tried to live peacefully until he was assassinated. There’s certainly a Lennon-Yoko Ono love story Lana could have woven into the lyrics of “Heaven.” Regardless of the weaknesses of “Say Yes to Heaven,” I hope that Del Rey looks at her past eras and thinks about revisiting some of her old songs.

  • "Take My Breath" by The Weeknd, Thursday, May 25, 2023 (updated repost) [Trigger Warning: Discussion of a potentially dangerous practice]

    Berlin‘s 1986 light-rock hit “Take My Breath Away” in its somewhat cheesy ascending scaled-note chorus speaks to the common human experience of falling in love with someone. The old aphorism, “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away,” speaks to the times when life surprises us so much that if the shock of the good surprise were to kill us, we would have died happy. In other words, I may feel “so happy that I could die.” These moments are breathtaking, like seeing a Van Gogh in person, seeing a beautiful woman, or experiencing a new life.  Perhaps this is what The Weeknd intended for his lead single from Dawn FM, “Take My Breath,” but in typical Weeknd fashion, the video and the lyrics hint at a darker side of those breathtaking moments.

    YOU’RE OFFERING YOURSELF TO ME LIKE SACRIFICE. Since Beauty Behind the Madness brought The Weeknd to the forefront of popular music back in 2015 with songs like “Can’t Feel My Face” and “The Hills,” Abel Makkonen Tesfaye has been disguising adult themes as catchy pop tunes, talking about substance abuse like it were a love song. Growing up in Toronto as the child of two separated Ethiopian immigrants, Abel started smoking pot at the age of 11 and turned to harder drugs, and shoplifting in his teens to support his habit. In the past, he claimed that he couldn’t write music without drugs. His masterpieces came from the inner turmoil of broken relationships and his love for mind-altering substances. However, in August of 2021, he claimed that he was “sober-lite,” meaning that he would no longer use hard drugs, calling them “a crutch.” Dawn FM, Abel’s latest full-length offering is the end of the drug-filled saga, and maybe the end of The Weeknd as Abel recently announced that he would begin releasing music under his real name. 
    MAKE IT LAST FOREVER.  The video for “Take My Breath” depicts a dark club in which the attendants are involved with erotic asphyxiation, a potentially deadly practice, yet is said to produce euphoria by those who practice it. Just as in “Can’t Feel My Face,” listeners question where is the line between healthy and toxic. Viewers question the line between reality and metaphor. Whenever I listen to The Weeknd, I have many questions: at what point does it turn from fun to tragic? At what point does the binge become less about fun and more about dependence? And are listeners part of the problem? Do we have front-row seats to a train wreck–a potential Amy Winehouse situation? Are we enabling young Abel’s downfall by funding him as he produces messed up, devilishly divine art? “How do you end up in the backroom of a BDSM club?” daytime Ed Sheeran might ask. It might sound judgmental, but it’s a valid question. Why do people get into kink? From housewives reading Fifty Shades of Grey wondering what it would be like to be tied up to underground sex clubs in New York City to whatever is on the dark web to something as mild as foot or sock fetish (see Honest Trailer’s “Every Tarantino Movie”), many people experience a cold sweat from something those who don’t share the attraction would deem abnormal, unnatural, immoral, or hilarious. There’s little funnier than the punchline of someone’s sexual fantasy being misread, like this scene from the movie Horrible Bosses, when the crew thinks that they have hired a hitman, but instead, the man is a professional urinator. And you better believe that there’s a whole category of humiliation fantasies. But on a serious note, “Take My Breath” uses imagery from erotic asphyxiation, which brings up questions about 1) the practice 2) the dangers 3) the line between euphoria and suicide 4) metaphorical implications, like trust, vulnerability, a person’s mental state when being in love/lust, suicidal tendencies, the line between partying and breaking down, etc. The practice of erotic asphyxiation is dangerous. In the case of autoeroticism, many times it’s misruled as a suicide rather than an accidental death. Sometimes partners can be charged with murder if something goes wrong. Wikipedia lists several notable examples of death by erotic asphyxiation, though I didn’t recognize any examples: an 18th-century Czech composer, a geisha, and a conservative British MP in 1994. In 1983, a mother sued Hustler after her 14-year-old son died from the practice. She claimed that he learned about it from the magazine. Autoerotic asphyxiation was the shocking death of a recurring character on Bojack Horseman season 2, and it was even one of the ways that Kenny died in a South Park episode. The Weeknd wakes up on the club floor at the end of the video, gasping for life-giving air. We breathe a sigh of relief. That could have been an embarrassing way to die. Undoubtedly it would be a shameful death. Then again, SNL’s Halloween skit with Chance the Rapper has an erotic asphyxiation death beat. Stay safe everyone!