Mixtapemotions

  • “Leave Before You Love Me” by Marshmello & Jonas Brothers, Monday, April 24, 2023 (updated repost)

    With over a billion streams for his hits “Wolves” and “Silence” and 1.8 billion streams for his song with Bastille, “Happier,” Marshmello‘s collaboration with the Jonas Brothers is on the path to being a mega Spotify hit, with nearly 600 million streams as of writing this post. In 2015, Chris Comstock began publishing remixes of songs online, gaining fame under the pseudonym Marshmello. When he performed as a DJ, he wore a white bucket shaped like the confectionary treat. In 2017, Comstock’s identity was confirmed by Forbes,  however, Comstock continues all public appearances with a bucket covering his head.

     I’M THE TYPE TO GET NAKED. Nick and Joe Jonas each get a verse on “Leave Before You Love Me,” while the eldest brother, Kevin, plays guitar and sings back up. Some of the conflict resolved over the course of the documentary film Chasing Happiness deals with Kevin feeling slighted by his younger brothers stealing the spotlight. In 2019, the brothers released their first album in six years. Nick had a very successful solo career and Joe eventually found success fronting a new band, DNCE. But with Happiness Begins the Jonas Brothers, embarked on a new, grown up version of the former Disney Channel band. The brothers continued in this direction with the sexy single “What a Man Gotta Do,” featuring Nick Jonas imitating Tom Cruise‘s famous Risky Business scene. “Leave Before You Love” me was released last year and reached #19 on the Hot 100. The song interpolates Barry Manilow’s “Can’t Smile Without You,” though many listeners have pointed out the similarity to Daft Punk’s “Instant Crush” and Wham!‘s “Last Christmas,” and you can find mashups of the Jonas Brother/Marshmello song with both of these songs. Personally, I found myself filling in “Leave” with parts of “Last Christmas” as I hummed the song all day. 

    IT’S MESSING WITH MY HEAD HOW I MESS WITH YOUR HEART. I can’t help but hear Rick Beato yelling at me for this song. How can you follow up Adele’s organic vocals the spare instrumental parts with a DJ? In fact, I’m trying to figure out what the hell a DJ does? Yes, I get why raves are a thing. I get that DJs play songs that people want to hear and keep the vibe coming, but why do they headline at major festivals. Last year I talked about David Guetta and Alan Walker, even watching a lengthy set of the latter’s to see what he does during a show. And moreover, how can Marshmallo perform his duties underneath a bucket? Is that the point? Please forgive my ignorance. I couldn’t put myself through watching an entire set of Marshmello’s mostly hip hop music during his set at 2021’s Lollapalooza, watching today’s song and “Happier” and parts of other songs. With some instructions to the audience muffled by the bucket, similar to how Alan Walker’s voice is muffled by the mask he always wears, to put up their phones, or to sing certain lines or to just up and down and flipping a few switches on the equipment that’s not really shown, that’s the only glimpse we get of what a DJ does. At least in the music video and the Billboard Awards live performance of today’s song Marshmello is playing a keyboard. I’m not writing this to spark controversy. I’m genuinely confused. 

    Lyric Video:

    Extended version:

    Billboard Music Awards performance

  • “I” by Taeyeon ft. Verbal Jint, Sunday, April 23, 2023 + Spring Vibes Playlist AppleMusic Edition

    “I” was the first single from the first solo EP, or in K-pop terms mini album, by Taeyeon. The mini album is also named I. The Girls’ Generation leader’s solo career has been the most successful of the group, and “I” was a massive hit. Released in 2015, the single features Korean Hip Hop artist Verbal Jint, a rapper who is credited with creating a rhyme structure to Korean hip hop after his debut in the early ‘00s. The combination of Taeyeon’s soaring vocals and Verbal Jint’s rhythm along with the electric guitar feels extremely uplifting to the listener. 


    FLY HIGH.  “I” is a celebration of self, as the song suggests. Taeyeon announces in the lyrics that she will no longer be tied down by confinement of being in the spotlight, but will try to be herself authentically. It’s the kind of song to put on when you feel that you can’t achieve your goals. The song will remind you of all that you have accomplished and help you to focus on the future. It’s the perfect song to listen to on a sunny day. And although it was released in October of 2015, there is springlike energy to this song, making it an ideal jumping off point for the AppleMusic edition of Spring Vibes. A link to this new playlist is posted below:



    Listen to the Playlist on AppleMusic.

    Read the Korean lyrics on Genius.

    Read the English translation on Genius.

     

  • “Carlo Rossi” (Love in the Face of Great Danger) by Tyson Motsenbocker, Saturday, April 22, 2023 (reformatted repost)

    Last year, my most streamed song on Spotify was Tyson Motsenbocker’s “Carlo Rossi” (Love in the Face of Great Danger). I wrote about the song in December, but the weather didn’t seem appropriate for Motsenbocker’s tropical sounds. While it’s only April and I’m kind of on a mini-vacation, I thought that this song would be a fun revisit, particularly after the heavy subject matter from the previous two days. That’s not saying that the subject of this song about falling in love when the world is on fire isn’t just as serious—it’s just the chill guitar riff adds that illusion. Enjoy the rest of the original post from December!

    TAKE ME ON A NEW VACATION. “Carlo Rossi” (Love in the Face of Great Danger) is my pick for song of the year for 2022. Tyson Motsenbocker condenses a novel’s worth of theme into a single song while offering vivid imagery that feels like a classic film, yet it is uncanny how contemporary that classic film seems. On the Labeled Podcast, Motsenbocker unpacked the themes of “Carlo Rossi” and helped listeners understand some of the esoteric language of the song. Motsenbocker sets the song in Central or South America during a riot. The speaker of song and his love climb into an abandoned hotel with a bottle of cheap wine, Carlo Rossi, and drink it from the bottle watching the riot unfold. As I listen to “Carlo Rossi,” I always picture a cinematic version of a Tennessee Williams play, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman or Gregory Peck, portraying an expatriate experience millennials read about in literature class when we read about the Roaring ’20s  or saw in old movies when the advent of the jetliner made tropical destinations all the rage. But we never really enjoyed this experience because of a slowing economy. 


    THEY BURNED A CAR IN THE PARKING LOT. Both on the Labeled Podcast and The Black Sheep Podcast, Motsenbocker talks about the themes of his latest record, Milk Teeth. The title of the record refers to growing up; baby teeth are the soft teeth that we lose in early childhood and sometimes referred to as milk teeth because they are the teeth that grow while a baby is still nursing. He describes the record as the one where he is putting the past to bed, dealing with becoming an adult. He also discusses how the moving goalposts for his generation has created a generation of nostalgia. He says, “As millennials, not only were we not sold that our future was going to be this Blade Runner dystopian hellscape that it’s turning out to be, but we were sold that it was going to be so much better than anything that had ever come before us, that you could be anything you wanted to be; you could be the president; you can be an astronaut . . . and everything you do is amazing.” Motsenbocker talks about living moment by moment in the present, which becomes a collection of moments that feel right that lead to another moment that feels right. On Labeled, Motsenbocker explains that the song deals with his success at a time when the world seems to be on fire. For Motsenbocker those moments that feel right led him into a relationship and into a marriage. It’s a song about coming of age at what seems like the end of the world, and living the best you can with those circumstances. I’ll drink to that!

     

  • “Panic Switch” by Silversun Pickups, Friday, April 21, 2023 (updated repost)

    Shoegaze is a sub-genre of rock music that employs heavy distorted guitars to create what is called a “wall of sound.” Shoegaze came out of psychedelic rock and often creates a hypnotic effect. Not every group that uses “the wall of sound” is necessarily a shoegazer act, but some bands that have famously used this effect are Oasis, The Verve, and the Smashing Pumpkins. The etymology of  “shoegazing” is said to be a description of the guitarists of these bands because they mostly stared at their shoes. The etymology of  “shoegazing” is said to be a description of the guitarists of these bands because they mostly stared at their shoes. While music critics don’t often place Silversun Pickups in the subgenre of Shoegaze, what else would you classify their 2009 hypnotic hit “Panic Switch“?

    IT’S NEVER WORTH MY TIME. Silversun Pickups topped the Alternative Rock chart with this song. Released in 2009, at a time when I was devouring different kinds of music, Silversun Pickups’ sophomore album Swoon challenged my 2001 Corolla’s stereo in all the right ways between home and school. The band drew controversy when they were nominated for a Grammy for Best New Artist, despite the fact that their first album Carnavas had garnered a lot of attention. Swoon, however, was their breakout album. Swoon was released on the edge of a transition in the music industry. It was a time when the deeper register voices and post-grunge rock were on a decline and Alternative was implementing new ideas about style. Silversun Pickups’ following records dropped the “wall of sound” for poppier, electronic elements. But songs like “Panic Switch” and “The Royal We” are fun reminders of the kinds of aggressive rock that used to top the charts.

    WHEN YOU SEE YOURSELF IN A CROWDED ROOM. “Panic Switch” is a song about anxiety, panic, insomnia, and paranoia–all triggering the noradrenaline receptors in a panicked response. The four-piece band has impeccable chemistry, playing rhythmically and filling in the sound completely. Interestingly, although the band’s sound has evolved to less hard-rock-driven music, the original lineup has remained together until their latest album, Physical Thrills, released last fall. with the exception of a year-long hiatus by bassist Nikki Monniger.  The band’s biggest hit, “Panic Switch” is driven by bassist Nikki Monniger who also contributes subtle backing vocals. Lead singer Brian Aubert contributes most of the lead vocals for the band, but occasionally Monniger gives a female perspective to the mostly male-centered alternative rock scene of the early ’10s. The guitar in “Panic Switch” frenetically drones and creates feedback that helps to create the wall of sound. Also contributing to that wall are the keys, played by Joe Lester— a faint organ and something else to create an anxious/ominous mood. Finally, Chris Guanlao makes the song a panic attack at nearly 200 beats per minute, tearing up his drum set. Certainly not a chill song for 4/20, but paranoia, check!


  • “Faint” by Linkin Park, Thursday, April 20, 2023

     

    Twenty years ago, Linkin Park released their sophomore record, Meteora. Throughout the band’s career, their sound would shift to various styles of rock music, but Meteora is not much of a departure from the band’s debut Hybrid Theory. The album did, however, embrace Asian musical instruments on several tracks. At the time of its release, Meteora not only debuted at number 1 on Billboard’s 200 Album charts but also set the record for the most units sold in a week beating Celine Dion‘s One Heart. In 2003, Nu Metal was the ruling dynasty and Linkin Park was the king of the music.


    I CAN’T FEEL THE WAY I DID BEFORE. Speaking of deluxe editions, you can stream Linkin Park’s 20th anniversary edition of Meteora–95 tracks of live performances, B-sides, and demos; some of which have been released like their Live in Texas record and some remastered tracks which had never left the vault. Personally, I don’t have fond memories of this record. I thought of it as a letdown. Hybrid Theory softened Nu Metal, making it more palatable with melody. The electronic elements, hip-hop, and aggression tested my stereo in ways music had never tested before. But the follow-up felt like B-sides of Hybrid Theory. I wasn’t a fan of the lead single “Somewhere I Belong,” which sounded like an exhausted fever dream of Theory, rehashing old themes without resolve and only getting more frustrated. The instrumentals on the record felt incidental rather than serving a purpose on the theme. “Breaking the Habit” and “Numb” were pop songs, with the former hardly reaching a climax and the latter feeling like the formula of “In the End.” I don’t completely agree with my initial reactions to this record, but at the time, I felt betrayed by the band I thought was the most innovative in music, a guiding light to where music was heading. In the end, I turned to Christian Linkin Park imitators like Falling Up and Red to give me aggressive melodic music.

    I WON’T BE IGNORED.  But then there was “Faint,” Meteora‘s third single. Beginning as a guitar track written by Linkin Park’s guitarist Brad Delson at less than a walking pace of  70-beat-per minute, the band’s rapper and co-vocalist Mike Shinoda sped the tempo up to 135 bpm and created one of the band’s most iconic concert tracks. While the lyrics deal with the common, early Linkin Park themes of anger, angst, and getting the courage to say exactly what is on your mind to whoever is causing your suffering, it’s the high-speed delivery–the hip hop and hard rock, the programmed beats, the feeling it makes you want to jump around your house if you’ve even had just one cup of coffee, and Chester Bennington’s growling vocals on the bridge–that make this one of Linkin Park’s best tracks. It’s songs like that that make it feasible to believe that a band, on their first studio album continuing was able to tour their own music festival, Projekt Revolution, bridging the gap between rock and hip hop and continuing the festival from 2002 to 2008 and 2011 in Europe. Today’s song is hopefully the energy you need to get through the week. There’s a time when it feels like you just can’t take anymore and then a rage anthem comes on. Sure, it might make some violent, but I think that the music serves as a release. Others feel that the world is as messed up as you and Linkin Park can commiserate. Maybe they can give you the courage to say what you need to say to the person making your life miserable. 
     





  • “Killer” by Key, Wednesday, April 19, 2023

     

    In high school I spent a good deal of my lawn mowing money on CDs, like many of kids of my generation and before. A brand new CD cost anywhere between $10 and $25, often depending on where you bought it, but also some retailers would sell lesser-known albums at a discount. On a few occasions, a band would issue a re-release and/or a repackaging of an album. This could happen for remastering with new technology not available when the record was first released, anniversary editions of popular records, or most frustrating were deluxe editions not available during the album’s initial release. These deluxe editions held bonus tracks, often a new radio single that didn’t make the original album.


    PROMISE YOU WON’T  REGRET. First, it is important to distinguish between bonus editions exclusive to a store. Artists have released exclusive b-sides on these annoying marketing gimmick, selling one edition at particular store, leaving devote fans to buy every edition of the record. While I think that this practice is predatory, I think that when an album is released with multiple editions from the beginning, listeners can choose which version or versions they want to buy based on the bonus content. For example if you have to choose between a live concert recording, an exclusive new track, or remixes, you can guess which one based on your experience with that artists.  Rereleases, though, trap listeners into purchasing mostly what they have bought before and don’t allow the listener the full story as to whether or not the record was complete in the first place. The first album that I remember getting a repackaging was Skillet‘s Collide. The 2003 record broke Skillet to Active Rock radio and with their signing to Lava Records, the band released a new version of Collide with different colored packaging and a new track, “Open Wounds,” which would be the band’s follow up single to “Savior.” At the time, I thought that the band’s decision to re-release Collide was the right thing to do in order for the band to get the attention I felt they deserved. But then they did that with their next album, Comatose, with the track “Live Free or Let Me Die,” but to be fair, Skillet did give fans a live DVD and several acoustic tracks for the cost of buying the album again. In 2009, Anberlin used this tactic unsuccessfully to push a cover of New Order‘s “True Faith” to the radio by releasing Blue…I mean New Surrender (Deluxe Edition). 

    THE ASHES OF DEAD EMOTIONS ALL COME BACK TO LIFE. In the streaming era, when music is subscription-based, deluxe editions are welcomed to our listening routines. Take for example how Taylor Swift wasn’t happy with how folklore ended with “hoax,” so she added the song “The Lakes,” or that Acceptance’s Wild, Free features three new excellent songs that rival the original ten tracks on the record. But K-pop takes the concept of the deluxe repackaging to its capitalist conclusion, selling full-album merchandise as if the original record had never been released. Today’s song, “Killer” by Key happens to come from one of those repackagings. Last summer, Key released his second record, Gasoline. The visual direction of the record followed the “retro futurism” introduced in Key’s 2021 EP, Bad Love. The album pushed two singles, starting with “Gasoline” and “Another Life,” with “Gasoline” being the only track to chart. Then in February of this year, Key rereleased Gasoline with three new tracks rather than saving them for his next EP or record. The new version of the record updates the artwork. Rather than the Stranger Things–looking album cover for Gasoline, Killer features AI-generated artwork–an animated Key riding a motorbike in what looks like the packaging of a video game. The new lead single, “Killer,” in my opinion, is a lot catchier than “Gasoline.” “Killer” seems to take influence from The Weeknd and ’80s synth pop and lyrically it seems to be influenced by several Michael Jackson songs. The performances Key gives in the music video and on music programs also seem to reference the “Smooth Criminal.” While there’s nothing deep here, it’s certainly killer production. 

    Music video:

    Dance performance:

    Dance practice:

    Comeback stage:




  • “Grapefruit” by Tove Lo, Tuesday, April 18, 2023 (Trigger Warning: Eating Disorders)

    I was first introduced to Tove Lo when the Swedish singer appeared on Coldplay‘s colorful, ebullient record, A Headful of Dreams. Track five’s duet, “Fun,” is one of the more subdued tracks on the record. Given that my mom and even my grand-mother love A Headful of Dreams,  I assumed that Tove Lo was also a “safe for mom” artist. It turns out that Tove Lo is a pretty sexual artist, known for flashing her breasts in concert, which to be fair, isn’t as big of a deal for her European audiences.


    WILL MY OBSESSION PLEASE DIE.  Ebba Tove Elsa Nilsson, better known as Tove Lo, released her fifth record, Dirt Femme,  last year. Unlike her previous records, Lo released Dirt Femme independently on her own label, Pretty Swede Records. The album deals with the singer’s growth over the years and her marriage to Charlie Twaddle. But the liberated singer lays down some ground rules for her marriage in the second track, “Suburbia,” in which she Lo says, “No fake grass, no fake friends . . . . I don’t want suburbia . . . I can’t be no Stepford wife.” Tove Lo has been vocal about her views on marriage, and now a non-traditional view on marriage–Lo spoke with Zach Sang about how she and her husband choose to share a house with friends, living communally rather than isolated from her husband. One subject, though, Tove has never discussed in her music is an eating disorder she had as a teen when she dealt with bulimia. The memories of her eating disorder were triggered when the singer took a role in a Swedish film and had to lose a few kilos for that role.  The singer told AppleMusic: “I went on a diet for the first time in 10 years and it triggered so many memories—the obsession, the anxiety, being hungry all the time.” She wondered, “Can I do this without falling back into old patterns”? She goes on to say, “In the end, I did it and it was fine. To me, it felt like validation that I’d healed.”

    BODY POSITIVITY. The fun retro sounds of “Grapefruit” are certainly a bonus to this song about a serious issue. While, Tove Lo wrote the song claiming victory, even though the song doesn’t resolve the issue, many people still struggle with issues of body image. Of course, this problem isn’t new, with many famous examples of people who struggle with eating disorders. Singer Karen Carpenter died of anorexia nervosa in 1983 during the height of her career. According to The Bulimia Project, 1 in 5 deaths from anorexia nervosa are suicide. Mental health is a big factor in eating disorders, and that may be a reason for body dysmorphia. Today’s song mentions body positivity, which is a term that, according to BodyPositve.org, the term began in the mid-90s to stand in solidarity with those suffering from HIV. The term is linked to the Fat Rights Movement in the 1960s and its two following waves in the 1990s and the 2010s to the present. Now we hear terms like body shaming and fat shaming in online and offline discourse. I think it’s great that we’re giving ourselves language to be okay with our bodies in their natural state. Fat shaming was severe in the ’90s when I was growing up. But now even in fitness communities, we’re starting to realize that one person’s measurements don’t fit another. But even though we have language of acceptance, we still see hot bodies on TV and many of us want to look better. So we join the gym and count calories. But competing with the gym is the latest from Nabisco, in a new limited edition flavor. With some Easter candy left over and that new frap from Starbucks, it gets impossible to lose weight. So we get into this back and forth between our tongue and our abs.

  • “California” by Lana Del Rey, Monday, April 17, 2023 (update repost)

    Lana Del Rey‘s magnum opus, Norman Fucking Rockwell! was released in September of 2018 and earned the singer-songwriters the acclaim she had been laying the foundation for since 2012’s Born to Die. A year after her lackluster album/ collection of good songs Lust for Life, she released the first single from NFR, “The Mariner’s Apartment Complex” and quickly followed it with another single, the 9:38 song “Venice Bitch.” She began building hype for the record, a cohesive record using the Americana formula Del Rey uses best, a year before its release. The singer awkwardly promoted the album in October of 2018, 11 months before its release, at an Apple Keynote event. The singer wasn’t allowed to say the name of the her upcoming album or its single, which she played censored, “Venice Bitch,” as Jack Antonoff played the piano.

    Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post
    Cover,     Public Domain

    YOU DON’T EVER HAVE TO GO FASTER THAN YOUR FASTEST PACE. I remember a coffee table book we had, a warn spiral-bound collection of Norman Rockwell’s most popular Saturday Evening Post covers. The paintings are uniquely American, often slightly uncouth, compared to what would have been considered proper art of the day. Born in 1894 and dying in 1978, Rockwell set out to capture Americans as they were, sometimes overweight, showing full expression to a surprising moment, and in the common working-to-middle class settings of the day. He captured American life in the way that The Simpsons  or  Rosanne captured the American family when the pretense of the cameras in Leave It to Beaver  or The Brady Bunch had packed up and the family was left to untuck their shirts or have an argument. One painting I remember the clearest is No Swimming, a paining in which three boys are running with, trying to put their clothes back on. I stared at that paining taken by the lifelike use of motion and detail of the moving bodies. Viewers don’t know exactly what the boys are running from, but anyone who was once a kid knows exactly what they are running from.  Looking at this painting when I was about seven or eight years old, it made me feel a fascination I had never felt before. 


    I’LL PICK YOU UP. “California” is a song that made me think about going back home “to America.” I think about what my mom says when I’m back home: “We’ll do whatever you want to do. It’s all about you.” That’s exactly what a ten year old wants to hear a couple days of the year, but as a 30-something I think it’s rather sad. I feel bad that when I come home to America it’s such a big deal. I’d much rather just blend into everyone’s daily life, have a few lunches together, and be able to be “back home” a couple times a year so it’s not so special. I’ve thought about getting a job that would let me get home twice a year. However, now with the pandemic and air travel being what it is, it seems being away is inevitable. So as we come closer to the holidays, although most of the references in “California” don’t really apply to me, the song makes me feel homesick. It makes me miss my Lana Del Rey-fan sisters. It makes me miss my friends who show me around into the recently-transformed micro-brewery city full of hipster/redneck nightlife. It makes me miss my parents who make all my favorite foods. If I come back to America, I’ll hit you all up.

    Read “California” by Lana Del Rey on Genius. 

  • “Sun (Acoustic)” by Mae, Sunday, April 16, 2023 (updated repost)

    Between their debut album Destination: Beautiful and their fan-favorite sophomore record The Everglow, Mae released  Destination: B-Sides, which includes live and acoustic renderings of some of the standout tracks, songs that didn’t make it to the record, and demos that would make it onto The Everglow. The chorus of “Sun” contains the the lyrics  “Destination Beautiful,” making “Sun” like the title track of the album, and one of the the most memorable tracks in the middle of the album, and it has one of the finest melodies on the album after “Embers and Envelops” and “All Deliberate Speed.”

    IF YOU’RE WILLING, LET IT GO. In a 2018 two-part episode of Labeled (now available only to Patreon subscribers), Mae’s lead singer Dave Elkins talked about the inspiration for the songs on Destination: Beautiful. Many of the tracks had to do with a disagreement between Elkins and members at his church. Elkins wrote many of the songs, including the first track “Embers and Envelops” in hopes to repair the broken relationship. “Sun” also talks about this misunderstanding. The lyrics on the band’s debut album are vague and arguably immature compared to the subject matter in their more recent efforts, sticking to lines like “something happened.” No one is incriminated, and the song can be applied to the listeners’ own lives and is problems. Mae would eventually reject Christian marketing, and their recent efforts deal with band members’ deconstruction journeys and explorations into art, science, and hallucinogens.  The songs on Destination: Beautiful remind me of a time when my whole world relied on the opinion of someone at church. And listening back to the album, it seems that’s where the frustrations lie. And then listening to how far beyond that Mae has come, reminds me of how we all grow in self-acceptance as we get older. That search for approval seems trivial now, even though at the time, it meant the world to us.

    WAITING FOR THE RAIN TO STOP. “Sun” is the soundtrack to the moody weather of April showers, when days start out clear, only to cloud up and surprise us with showers, or a cloudy morning that clears for a windy afternoon before a weekend of rain, it’s a month of transitions. When life and the weather are in flux, it’s tempting to think of the time as a waiting period—waiting for things to settle down, “waiting for the rain to stop.” You’re waiting for “Destination beautiful.” But you go through enough of these waiting periods and you start to realize that this is your life. What’s the ultimate destination of the weather? Unless climate change obliterates seasons all together, weather is a cycle that will repeat throughout our lives, creating a kind of liturgy of rituals and practices. Yes, we may be working toward something, but becoming that someone doesn’t mean that you were never that person all along. It’s best to just try to enjoy whatever it brings. What’s the ultimate destination of a life but the grave? Best to make the moments count and enjoy the rainy weekend around the corner. 
    Studio Acoustic:
    Live Acoustic:
    Destination Beautiful original version:

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

  • "(*Fin)" by Anberlin, Saturday, April 15, 2023 (updated repost)

    February 20, 2007, Anberlin released the album that defined their career. Most fans don’t remember the release dates of their favorite albums. As for me, I only remember two album releases off the top of my head. The first is P.O.D.‘s Satellite because it was released on September 11, 2001. The other album release I know by heart, as do the fans of Anberlin, is Cities. Anberlin fans call February 20th “Cities Day,” still to this day. In the five years that I’ve been doing this playlist project, I’ve celebrated Cities with a different track. In 2019, it was “A Whisper & A Clamour.” In 2020, it was “Hello Alone,” as I dealt with the depression of what looked like Armageddon. I wrote about “Godspeed” in November of 2022–that year I wrote about “Dismantle.Repair.” and this year I used “Godspeed” as a jumping off point for discussing the entire album. In 2021, I wrote about the album’s closer, “(*Fin).” The themes of spiritual abuse in the song are, unfortunately, as relevant as when it was released. This is what I wrote about it back in 2021:


    WE’RE NOT QUESTIONING GOD, JUST THOSE HE CHOSE TO CARRY HIS CROSS. Everyone remembers 2015 when #MeToo swept the world. Victims of sexual abuse used this platform to call out not only those who wronged them, but also the systems in place that both allowed and enabled sexual abuse to happen. Shortly after #MeToo’s popularity, #ChurchToo and #SilenceIsNotSpiritual appeared as a platform for people of faith both currently practicing and no longer practicing to call out spiritual leaders who had abused their power. Little by little society has become more educated about abuse, and not only sexual abuse. I’m not a survivor of sexual abuse, but I think it’s time to start taking spiritual abuse quite seriously. WebMD defines spiritual abuse as “Any attempt to exert power and control over someone using religion, faith, or beliefs.” Last year when I started listening to the You Have Permission podcast, I was able to put a name to the trauma I experienced in the name of religion. 
    THE UNHOLY GHOST DOESN’T TELL MARY AND WILLIAM EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT TO HEAR. Like white supremacy and misogyny, spiritual abuse is embedded in the church so much so that people can fairly call the whole system abuse. Readers of the Bible are not without textual evidence that the clergy have used for almost 2,000 years to extort money or manipulate followers to do things that they would otherwise not do and threatening hell to those who don’t believe or do. It’s a tale as old as Western culture itself of the child molesting preacher or the “do as I say, not as I do” cult leader who manipulates believers into bed. But it’s deeper than that. It’s the belief that’s taught that your church is the only correct one, and all who stop attending are lost. My church taught that non-believers weren’t going to burn for an eternity in hell, but if they left they were talked about in such a judgmental way that I was always scared to leave the system. “Jesus gave it all for you, don’t you think you should give or do _______,” was the final persuasion point of sermons. I mean, how can a child say no to doing that for Jesus. Finally, there may have not been eternal hell, but there was certainly the end times to keep you up at night. And as a further manipulation tactic, we were taught that no one knows who will be saved until the very end. So you better watch out, you better not pout, you better not cry, I’m telling you why…Jesus is coming, and you’ll only have to endure being hunted down and watch your family members be killed in front of you and if you love something or someone too much, you’ll be too attached to the world in order to be saved, they you can’t be resurrected and live forever with God. “

    TAKE WHAT YOU WILL, WHAT YOU WILL “(*Fin)” is a song for processing these feelings. Lead singer Stephen Christian has sorted out his beliefs, and now serves as a pastor in central Florida. But not everyone has or will. The cliche is that Christians can write songs in minor keys, but they must end on a major chord. This song ends Anberlin’s darkest album on a major chord, but I’m not sure if the question is really answered. I’ve gone through several iterations of my own faith, and still, I feel that the question isn’t answered. Stephen Christian is now a pastor in Florida when he’s not signing in Anberlin or Anchor & Braille. His own father was a pastor, the stories in (*Fin) have to do with his constant moving around as a child and the strange teachings he heard in church. So is this a story of continuing the system of abuse or dismantling and repairing it. I hope that it’s the latter.