Mixtapemotions

  • "Closer" by Tegan and Sara, Friday, September 16, 2022 (reworked 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 artist who bring different ideas together ideas from various genres. The result of 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, exvangelical 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 on 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 lead 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, 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 ancient, faux wood entertainment stand in which the television is built in–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, too shy to do so.

  • “Foundation” by Years & Years, Thursday, September 15, 2022 (Repost)

     

    Olly Alexander grew up next to a church, and as a boy he was fascinated by the what he heard and saw from his home. His parents were not religious, but his impressions of the rituals that took place, during particular liturgical holidays sparked his interest in organized religion. However, as Alexander grew up in his sexuality, he came to realize that the church next door was not a place for him. He was still captivated by the symbolism of ritual. He sought community in gay clubs, which became like a church to him. If you listen to Years & Years albums, the themes of religion may almost trick you that you are listing to a Christian album.

    I DON’T REALLY WANT TO BE FINE. The opening track to their debut album, 
    Communion, Years & Years start their brand of Pet-Shop-Shop-Boys inspired electronica with an atmospheric, lyrically minimal track. However, it doesn’t take a lot of words to convey the complex emotions in this song. And if you take the track with the highly symbolic music video, you’ll have something to think about for a while. The video depicts Olly Alexander’s funeral with a hypnotized audience. There are so many symbols calling back to nineteenth-century spiritualism. The song itself sounds like the calm before a storm on the edge of front. It gives me the feeling of the time when a sunny day starts turning ominous, just as the cloud start rolling in–angry clouds. Standing in a field when the first bolt of lighting strikes from out of graying sky. And just as the hail starts to fall, you make a run for it. It’s the atmosphere of the dreams I had when I was young, storm clouds and being completely alone when the thunder rolls and the lightning strikes.

    IF I TRIUMPH, ARE YOU WATCHING? Lyrically, this song makes me think about feeling unworthy of happiness. In my own life, I’ve tried to take the righteous path because I thought it would keep me holy. I felt that pursuing my happiness would lead me away from God. That’s why I  chose to go to Seventh-day Adventist university, rather than a cheaper state school. I avoided people I thought would take me off the straight and narrow. However, in 2014 I couldn’t put off my own happiness anymore. That year opened up my eyes and made me question the systems put in place to make me feel like I was afraid of the world. I often wish I had learned my lessons earlier. It would have saved me a few thousand dollars and maybe I would be on a different career trajectory. Then again, I want to think that I’m on the right path now, and I should just learn as much as I can. Love is possible. I should stop sabotaging my happiness.

  • “Enough for Now” by The Fray, Wednesday, September 14, 2022

     

    The Fray’s eponymous second record was propelled by the success of their first record How to Save a Life. While it’s true that television dramas can still make the careers of bands, in some ways it seems like the storytelling lyrics of bands like The Fray were going out of fashion with each subsequent release from the Boulder, Colorado-based band. But with still eight million monthly listeners on Spotify despite not releasing anything new since 2014, and even lead singer Isaac Slade leaving the band last year, there still is a market for coffee-shop lyricism, even if you don’t hear it on Top 40 stations anymore.

    HE’S NO LONGER WITH US, BUT HE LEFT THIS DUSTY ROOM. Like many of the songs on The Fray’s second LP, “Enough for Now” deals with an emotional subject related to family. The seventh track on the record deals with the death of lead singer Isaac Slade’s maternal grandfather. The lyrics of the song paint a bleak picture about a bitter man who longed to pass on his name with a male heir. Only Slade’s mother was born to the couple. The song accuses Slade’s grandfather of not loving his daughter and leaving his daughter and his wife “without so much as a kiss.” Slade told The Sun that “Enough for Now” was written after a year after processing the grief. This is a conflicted grief for all family members involved. Feelings of love, resentment, abandonment flavored the grandfather’s life and are heightened by death. When the ideal of the family structure contrasts with the cold reality of dysfunction, the underpinning of the house isn’t correctly installed.

    SIXTY YEARS OF SORROW, HE GOT FIVE OR SIX OF BLISS. Even if you do your part, some family conflicts cannot be solved. In recent years, the idea of chosen family has become more and more popular. In the case of family dysfunction and toxicity, it’s much better to chose with whom you spend your time. Chosen family has been a long-standing tradition in queer spaces, but especially in a time when political and religious polarization run high, many people are choosing to forego a Thanksgiving dinner with uncles and aunts in favor of “Friendsgivings” and other occasions in which close friends with compatible ideologies can create meaningful experiences rather than fester in toxic environments. Recent songs like Elton John and Rina Sawayama‘s “Chosen Family” and Harry Styles‘ “Matilda” how comfort of friends can replace family ties. While you might need to keep your cortisol levels in check during the holiday season, it may be impossible to block the emotions associated with a terrible family completely. A chosen family may be a great way of coping with some of the loss one feels when making a choice for mental health.

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

    Audio:

    Studio Live:

    Concert:

  • “Cat” by Relient K, Tuesday, September 13, 2022

     

    Starting out as a three-piece band, expanding to four members, and five members, and finally reducing to back to core members Matt Thiessen and Matt Hoopes, Relient K has been through many changes both sonically and thematically in their discography from their All Work & No Play EP in 1998 to their latest record, 2016’s Air for Free. The band’s maturity on their later releases certainly goes unappreciated by the majority of youth group kids whose parents just wanted their kids to listen to the Christian version of Green Day and Blink-182. Air for Free is mature in that it is nostalgic for childhood and not obsessed with adolescence like the band’s earlier catalogue.  

    GRAB ANOTHER DIRTY TAMBOURINE AND SHAKE IT . The spiritual sequel to 2009’s Forget and Not Slow Down, Relient K’s eighth studio record Air for Free has a similar approach to production. After Relient K had released tons of EPs, K … Is for Karaoke, and a panned attempt at a pop career on the disjointed record Collapsible Lung, Relient K returned to the studio with their longtime producer Mark Lee Townsend, the former dc talk guitarist who had started their career by recommending the barely-graduated boys to Toby Mac and Gotee Records. Townsend has collaborated with Relient K during various stages in the band’s history. But rather than making a Tongue in Cheek punk rock record like their early days, Theissen and Hoopes wanted to record something organic, and in order to into the right mindset for the record, they decided to record on a farm about an hour south of their Nashville homes. Hoopes said of the atmosphere of the farm that it had the feel like they were in their Ohio hometown, despite being in the South. Although Relient K had relocated to Nashville years ago, Air for Free continues to have a northern Ohio feel to it, especially as the band recalls childhood in the sometimes childish lyrics. 

    HE LOOKS A LOT LIKE ME. “Cat” is the 4th of 16 tracks on the standard edition of Air for Free.  Many of the tracks are whimsical on the record. The new summertime classic and Ohio-pride anthem “Mrs. Hippopotamuses’” and “Elephant Parade” join “Cat” as the trilogy of the most whimsical tracks on the record, but many of the others like “Local Construction” and “Mountaintop” have a whimsical air to them as well. In an interview with WJTL radio, Hoopes said that the farm they recorded on had animals running around, and the record feels like a few strays get loose here and there, such as the effect of the cat walking on the piano at the end of today’s song. “Cat” feels like a William Blake observation that speaker witnesses the innocence of a cat hutting a butterfly. The truth is that cats hunt both for food and for sport, so the pretty butterfly, who just woke up from “a new cocoon” might be dead soon. Rather than focusing on the butterfly, though, the speaker is fascinated with the cat. This ragged cat that has wandered into the band’s practice space is dirty and has lived outdoors, eating whatever scraps it can find. The cat takes risks “like [it’s] got nine more lives” and the speaker draws a comparison between the cat and himself when the speaker declares: “it looks a lot like me.” Is it Matt Thiessen’s shaggy hair? Or is it the “Bummin’” spirit of the record that draws a connection between the speaker and the cat?


  • “Here Is Gone” by The Goo Goo Dolls, Monday, September 12, 2022 (Updated Repost)


     The Goo Goo Dolls’ 1998 album Dizzy Up the Girl encapsulates the acoustic alt-rock sound that listeners can instantly identify late ’90s rock. The follow up to their massive 4x platinum record released four years later, Gutterflower, charted higher than their previous records, but ultimately sold much less than Dizzy. The band continues to release music from time to time, including this year’s Chaos in Bloom,
    but their heyday remains in 1998.
    Gutterflower is a fine record and “Here Is Gone” is a fine song. But the acoustic rock band from Buffalo, NY had been there and done that, and the 2002 music scene was moving past pop rock aimed at adult contemporary radio.
    I WAS NOT THE ANSWER SO FORGET IT WAS EVER ME. Johnny Rzeznik has said that the music video for “Here Is Gone,” which features some of the time film tricks, sped up footage of several scenes, cost more to produce than the entire album. The video at youth counterculture in what looks like urban decay. The youth show aggression toward symbols of cultural establishment. It’s kind of an odd video for a an adult contemporary band to make. The song itself is about a break up, about “want[ing] to be free.” The idea that “somehow here is gone” recalls the end of a relationship when a partner is simply going through the motions, often before even realizing that he or she is unhappy. The other partner may be happy and savoring the moments, living in the here and now. However, when faced with the reality of the relationship’s demise, what the other thought was here is actually not real. The moment passed. “Here Is Gone” could apply to any passing trend. It could apply to the world we live in now, which is rapidly changing. How the standard of living you thought you can and should achieve when you were young is seemingly out of reach and perhaps the wrong goal. It could be the pulse of a political trend, one side is grasping for power in what seems to be effective, but it turns out that that ideology is actually in the minority and the people will not tolerate it in the long term. Somehow we hit the target, but the arrow stuck only for a minute before falling onto the ground. This is what became of the Goo Goo Dolls post-Dizzy Up the Girl.

    SOMEHOW HERE IS GONE. This twenty-year-old song brings back so many memories of late middle school and early high school. I was thinking the other day that you can truly feel old when you can remember 20 years with no problem, and this 2002 hit makes me feel both old and young. Of course, this was kind of the last attempt for aging rockers, The Goo Goo Dolls, to write a “cool” pop song that breeched the monoculture of MTV’s TRL, or it may have just been on VH1 or MTV2, when we switched the channels after school because there was nothing on MTV. This song reminds me of going to my friend Michael’s house after schools some days. We had started a band and wrote some pretty amateur songs and practiced them until Robby, Michael’s mom’s boyfriend, a musician himself, suggested we learn to play covers of the classics like Tom Petty, The Doobie Brothers, and other ’70s and ’80s groups. Learning to play simple older songs would have helped us learn to play better, but the band was short lived as Mike couldn’t get along with other kids we brought in to fill out the band, and eventually, I was also out of the band. This was around the time that Mike started dating my sister and things were kind of weird. Somehow here is gone.








  • "Hero" by Family of the Year, Sunday, September 11, 2022 (repost)

    The 2014 film Boyhood was a highly acclaimed film that has an incredible Rotten Tomatoes score, yet nobody talks about it anymore. The film was shot over the course of 12 years from 2001 to 2013 using the same actors and feels like a piece of turn-of-the-century Americana, a kind of early 2000s rendering of a Norman Rockwell painting of the imperfect white, working- class American family. The film not only explores boyhood and coming of age, but also parenthood and the complications of raising a family while trying to better oneself as well as the struggles of co-parenting through a divorce. Woven into the human themes are the events and pop culture throughout the years. The soundtrack for the film is a combination of famed indie artists of the early ’00s and popular music of the time. Seamlessly joining the soundtrack was virtually unknown folk-rock band Family of the Year, with their song “Hero.”

    I DON’T WANT TO BE YOUR HERO. “Hero” appears in the movie toward the end when Mason, Jr., played by Ellar Coltrane, is driving his old pick up down the Texas highway. He is now 18 years old, graduated, and become himself. This comes after a scene with his mother, Olivia (Patricia Arquette). She wonders, “What was it all for?” when she reflects on the hardships of parenthood. She had raised her kids and wonders what’s next for her. She tells her son, “The next big event is my fucking funeral.” She had kept her family a paycheck away from eviction at some points, but ultimately raised a successful family, yet she wonders what it was all for. Family of the Year’s “Hero” serves as a reflection on the themes of the movie. The song talks about the conflict between wanting stability and wanting something greater than what you have right now. You long to be allowed to leave, but you still hold down a job to keep the girl around. 

    ‘M A KID LIKE EVERYONE ELSE. Watching Mason’s family struggle in the late early 2000s reminded me of growing up in a family who lived paycheck to paycheck in the ’90s to ’06 when I graduated high school. I remember church pantry handouts and hand-me-downs from cousins. Clinton-era social programs let us go to the doctor when we needed to, and our moldy old house had me sick quite a bit a kid. My dad worked as a logger in New York until the payment was so bad that he decided to go to truck driving school. When my dad became an over-the-road truck driver we started making more money, but we didn’t have health insurance. We prayed we didn’t get sick or injured, and thank God nothing bad happened. My mom would eventually go to nursing school and go to work when I was in high school. I’m very proud of what my family did, but I remember talks with my dad that echoed what Olivia said in Boyhood. What is it all for? The existential question that haunts us with every passing year. What is it all for? “Hero” tells us “Everyone deserves a change to walk with everyone else” but what does that mean? Boyhood, life, marriage, divorce, the economic depression–rituals of the American Dream. Everyone deserves it, but isn’t it all just vanity and vexation of the spirit?
    Trailer for Boyhood:
    Music Video (original cut):

     Music Video (Boyhood cut): 

  • “Late Night Talking” by Harry Styles, Saturday, September 10, 2022

    I’ve written a lot about Harry Styles since I discovered his talent on “Sunflower, Vol. 6” last August. Whereas Fine Line was kind of a sleeper hit record for me I was expecting a lot from Harry’s House. In some ways, the record met my expectations, creating an old-time vibe that borrows from obscure Japanese jazz records and seventies singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell who even wrote a song titled “Harry’s House / Centerpiece” on her 1975 record The Hissing of Summer Lawns. In other ways, the record feels a bit haphazard, blending the ’80s sound of “As It Was” with ’70s folk and disco. There’s certainly a mood of the record, but it’s not always the mood I’m in.

    THERE’S A HAZE ON THE HORIZON, BABE.. Take for example the second track and second single “Late Night Talking.” On the album, “Music for a Sushi Restaurant” sets up a tangy, tasty concoction of sounds. Lyrically, it’s “Music for whatever you want” fitting as nicely into an Apple Commercial as music in the car, at a party, in the grocery story–because heck, the sexual innuendo is lost on the shoppers– or even at a sushi restaurant. “Late Night Talking” in ways builds on the musical energy of “Sushi,” but introduces an undertone of the melancholy that both plagues the record gives it its heart. The ambiverted sound of flamboyant horns and sad lyrics make the mood of Harry’s House difficult to place. “Late Night” is said to be written for Harry’s latest relationship with actress and filmmaker Olivia Wilde. The song is about stepping out of your comfort-zone to fall in love with someone, even moving across the world to be with that person. Sometimes the other person needs cheering up and naturally we long to be meet our own needs first. “Late Night” shows the speaker forgoing his needs in order to make his love “happier.”

    YOU STUB YOUR TOE OR BREAK YOUR CAMERA. As a follow up to the monster hit “As It Was,” “Late Night Talking” feels a bit underwhelming, especially given the other punchy tracks the album has to offer, but that’s probably Styles’ strategy as “Watermelon Sugar” wasn’t his lead single on Fine Line. Even though “Late Night Talking” isn’t a folk ballad in the way that “Boyfriends,” “Matilda,” “Daylight” or even “Little Freak” is, “Late Night” feels like a slower, blander song on the record compared to the high energy tracks like “Cinema” and “Daydreaming.” Despite the lyrics of “Late Night,” I can’t help but feeling the song mimics catching the flu or a bad cold that keeps you in bed for a while. Like many songs on the record, I just feel my sense of taste dull, and the grays that Styles uses in his singles artwork reinforce the dulling of the senses, kind of many things don’t taste well when you’re congested because you are unable to smell it. To me, the music video also reinforces that congested feeling of being in bed for the weekend rather than going out. While the images of all the people in Harry’s bed caressing is supposed to give the viewer the idea that there will be something sexual happening, the scenes of the bed traveling to other locations remind me of a fever dream rather than something sexy. There’s a haze over this whole album like coming down with a cold just when something important is happening, and perhaps it’s all a metaphor for Styles’ mental health during the pandemic. Maybe it’s a collective feeling we have during a pandemic in which some of us get sick and others fear that we’re going to get sick. “Late Night Talking” is a reminder that love can still happen when we’re sick, and sometimes it’s the disease, and sometimes it’s the cure. 

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  • “God Gave Me You" by Dave Barnes, Friday, September 9, 2022 (Partial Repost)

     

    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: 


    Read the lyrics on Genius.

  • "Shine" by Kim Sung-Kyu (김성규), Thursday, September 8, 2022 (repost)

    In high school, Kim Sung-kyu, the future leader of the boy band Infinite, had to hide his vocal practice from his parents. In high school he sang in a rock band with some of his friends. When he graduated he left his hometown of Jeonju in hopes of having a career in music in Seoul. After failing an audition for SM Entertainment, he tried out for label Woolim Entertainment. His hope was to be a rock singer like his future label mates, Nell. On the day of his audition, though, he was suffering from appendicitis. Determined to make it as a singer, he sang through the pain and went to the hospital after the audition finished. Rather than cultivating Kim’s rock talents, the record label decided to place him as the leader of the their first boy-band, Infinite. Throughout the group’s tenure, they would flirt with rock music; however, it wasn’t until Sung-Kyu’s debut EP, Another Me, that he would be able to make the kind of music he envisioned. 

    WHENEVER THIS TIME OF YEAR COMES, I ALWAYS THINK OF THE WORDS YOU USED TO SAY TO ME. Released at the end of 2012, Another Me is a K-pop album for listeners who don’t really care for the genre, and was an excellent introduction to Korean music. From the vocal intro/title track that is reminiscent of early ’90s harmonies to the near-epic closing track “41 Days,” which displays Sung-kyu’s passionate vocals, this short album is a refreshing look at a soft-rock album when most Koreans musicians, particularly ones with any association with K-pop, had long rejected the genre. Born in 1989, Sung-kyu’s prominence in the music scene corresponded with a rejection of guitars, bass and drums, in favor of synths and trap beats. And while the songs on Another Me are much calmer than some of the rock bands who charted on the pop charts in the ‘90s and ‘00s, the EP has an authenticity that the “other” Sung-kyu can sing to the music he believes in. His confidence will make it popular, rather than chasing trends. Another Me was not a very popular release. Apple Music didn’t have it for a long time, and Sung-kyu’s later releases seem to have received more recognition. But fans of the album seem to really love it. The guitar-driven “Shine,” Like “Time Lapse,” was written by Nell’s vocalist Kim Jong-wan. Sung-kyu stated that he auditioned for Woolim Entertainment because of Nell, so the lead singer’s input on the album brings Sung-kyu’s career full circle. Speaking about the seasons of change, a break up, a longing for the past lover and a longing for the past makes this late ’90s-sounding guitar ballad feel relevant even ten years later.  

    YOUR VOICE, YOUR EYES, YOUR TOUCH THAT LINGERED ON ME. Fall seems to be the most nostalgic season. The life germinated in the spring and brought to fruition in the summer seems to have our minds focused on the new. From the first buds on the trees in late February, we focus on the possibilities that this new life will bring. But our minds start to change with the nearing of the harvest. When the children go back to school, adults realize that the possibilities we hoped for when we were children didn’t go exactly to plan. We stop looking ahead because, in the fall, we’re truly afraid of what bitter cold the winter years of our lives might bring. Hence we buy into the pumpkin spice, the apple picking, the cozy sweaters, a form of carpe diem when it comes to the midlife crisis. We remember “when I was a kid,” looking through old yearbooks, remembering past Halloweens, Thanksgivings, and Christmases. Parents propitiate these traditions or modify them, and thus we repeat the cycle of nostalgia year in and year out until the children leave the house. In the fall, we look back at the year, measuring how far from the target the darts fell. And we can’t just confine it to one year, we might overanalyze our patterns in the fall. We may drudge up old relationships, wondering how I failed her or why he’s no longer around. But before going to call up an ex, remember that the golden light cascading through the colored leaves encapsulates only the good of that other person. Remember that those cold nights when the bitter breeze carries the last of the leaves clinging to the top of the tree only frames your failures, not successes. And when the fall begins, the Korean harvest festival celebrating the first full moon of the fall, Chuseok, be thankful for what you’ve been given this year and in this life. The relationships may not have gone they way you expected, but who are you, God?

    Original verson:

    Live version:

    Live Acoustic Version:

  • “Torn” by Natalie Imbruglia, Wednesday, September 7, 2022 (reworked repost)

     

    In 1995, the band Ednaswap, a female-fronted rock band from Los Angeles, almost released their song, “Torn,” as a single. However, nobody knows Ednaswap’s version. Singer Lis Sørensen recorded the song in Danish as “Brændt” before Ednaswap recorded it in English. Ednaswap’s version draws some comparisons to female-fronted rock bands of the time like Garbage or some songs by The Cranberries. In 1996 the song was covered by American-Norwegian singer Trine Rein, whose popularity declined with the release of her second album. None of the previous versions would be remembered by the English-speaking world. “Torn” is best known for its 1997 recording by Australian soap opera actress-turned singer Natalie Imbruglia, whose version topped the US Airplay charts for 11 weeks. In the UK, the song is the most played ’90s song, and in Australia, it is the most played song on the radio since its release in 1997.

    THERE’S NOTHING WHERE HE USED TO LIE. Of all the versions of “Torn,” Natalie Imbruglia’s captures the “1997 sound” best with the acoustic guitar and tight pop production. On the heels of Alanis Morrisette and Meredith Brooks, the Imbruglia’s music video is also a relic from the past. The video shows Imbruglia singing the song and shooting a scene in which something clearly changed between the actors. They fake their affection when the camera roles, but they constantly have to reshoot because the non-verbal communication between the actors is off. Actor Jeremy Sheffield plays the boyfriend who is the “illusion” who “never changed into something real.” He can’t get into the romantic scene and looks to Imbruglia wanting feedback, but Imbruglia looks more and more dismayed and withdrawn as the video progresses. A song like “Torn” should have spun more singles for Imbruglia. Several songs charted in Australia and Europe; however, to Americans, she is known as a One Hit Wonder. I remember hearing “Torn” years later on Adult Alternative radio when I started listening to some non-Christian radio around 2002.

    LYING NAKED ON THE FLOOR.  Perhaps I came across the song scanning the radio for a Christian song, and the lyrics about the shame of misreading an adult relationship reminded me of Christian music’s use of shame for all things sex-outside of marriage, so I thought this song may have been a Christian song in disguise. After all, in 2000, ’90s Christian rocker, Australian-American singer Rebecca St. James had released the abstinence anthem “Wait for Me,” which was used at True Love Waits rallies. I’m probably not the only ’90s/2000s kid who has mistaken the message of these two songs as being the same: sex is bad. “Wait for Me” is the positive example of waiting until marriage, “Torn” is the what happens if you don’t: you feel dirty, used up, and torn. Rebecca St. James was 23 when she released “Wait for Me.” The singer wouldn’t marry until 2011 at the age of 34. She remains a proponent of sexual abstinence until marriage. But is sexuality a one-size-fits-all? I grew up believing it was to the point of wanting to commit the sin of tattooing 1 Corinthians 6:20 on my groin so that in the heat of the moment, should it ever arise, I’d have to explain that my body was not my own. I hoped this solution would keep me straight and until the waiting forced me into a heterosexual relationship. 
    Ednaswap version:
    Natalie Imbruglia’s version:
    Danish singer Lis Sørensen’s cover:
    Trine Rein version: