... I give to you...
... twelve drummers drumming...... eleven social leaveners..
... ten years of posts...
... nine freckled faces...
... eight lockdown locks...
... seven irregular choices...
... six movie dresses...
... five gold rings!..
... four sassy cats...
... three ballpoint pens...
... two in/appropriate characters...
... a little souvenir.
It's the last day of 2020's 12 Days of Christmas, and as with every year it's all about the music that I listened too, was obsessed with, was tormented by and loved for one reason or another.
It's not deep, it's a list of all the songs that have been part of my year, and the reasons why for a few of them.
As always there's a Spotify list of all but one of the songs (track one irritatingly), and a playlist of YouTube music videos for anyone who can't access Spotify, or just like watching the music videos that go along with them...
While January was mostly plagued by the earworm, Toss A Coin To Your Witcher, sung by Joey Batey in the Netflix series The Witcher (2019-), the first song of 2020 that I really remember obsessively listing too was Cinnamon by Hayley Williams.
I've had a soft spot for Paramore, Williams band, for a long time, my little sister introducing them to me in (I think) 2007, when their second album, Riot!, was released. So, when Williams began releasing songs from her first solo album, Petals for Armor, in January, I was curious.
Cinnamon is a song written in response to the musician moving into an empty house after the breakdown of her marriage and subsequent divorce, and in an interview with Pitchfork, Williams explained that she'd rediscovered lyrics she'd written on the subject:
"I found this old lyric I had written, which actually used to be for a very Pinback-sounding acoustic guitar song. It talked about a vision of my house when I first moved in and the walls were bare. Moving through my home felt like a new discovery all the time. I was discovering myself, really."(Hayley Williams, 2020 via Pitchfork )
However, rather than the track being a lament about being alone, instead it was about her comfort in being on her own, and having her routine, and that if anyone wanted to be part of it, if she was to let them in, they're not want to leave.
The music video however really taps into that nervous energy of being in a new space, completely alone for the first time, and every creak and sound in the house being foreign, and not knowing if it's just the house or something, or someone more sinister lurking in the unfamiliar surrounding.
The video definitely amplified the mood of the song and got it stuck in my head and put on repeat whenever I was playing music at the start of the year.
Link || Hayley Williams || Website || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || YouTube || Spotify || Apple Music
Link || Hayley Williams Breaks Down Every Song [...] by Jenn Pelly via Pitchfork
Lover, You Should've Come Over, track seven from Jeff Buckley's only studio album, Grace, kept popping up in 2020, and I couldn't understand why it resurfaced now, when it was released in 1994, three years prior to Buckley's death.
It wasn't a bad thing, I love Jeff Buckley, in fact I would consider Grace to be one of my favourite albums, but it seemed weird that all of a sudden it was around, and people were making videos on YouTube about it, critiquing his style and voice (mostly positively). It was like a whole generation of people had only just discovered him and had fixated on that particular song.
It was because not only was it featured on the soundtrack for the film How to Build a Girl (2019), but 2019 had also been the twenty-fifth anniversary of the albums release.
The song was inspired by the end of one of Buckley's relationship, and is a lament to the loss of the person, but also he's too young to be full committed but too old to behave childishly...
"Too young to hold on,
And too old to just break free and run
But tonight, you're on my mind"
(Lover, You Should've Come Over by Jeff Buckley)
... but he's not over her. He's still in love with her and essentially he's kicking himself for letting the relationship fail. The lyrics and the building swell of the song show that.
Buckley died of accidental drowning on the twenty-ninth of May 1997, after going swimming the Wolf River Harbour, Memphis, Tennessee. Grace was the only album that he completed, the posthumously released Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk, on which Buckley was working at the time of his death, came out a year later, and consisted of studio tracks and demos.
As a legacy, Grace is a pretty perfect album, and Lover, You Should've Come Over is a beautiful and emotional song, and shows the musical talent that Buckley had and wasn't able to continue showing.
I've listened to that album so many times that I can't even count, and if I'm honest, I don't remember the song. So having it brought to the forefront in 2020, and getting to hear it outwith the album, on its own, in all its glory, I'm really thankful of. And as much as I love Buckley's cover of Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen, I think this has become my favourite song from the album.
Link || Jeff Buckley || Website || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || YouTube || Spotify || Apple Music
I'm not going pretend that this is the last Bon Iver song on this list, or that I'm not a broken record about how much I adore his music. It's well documented that if I had to pick my favourite musicians that he and James Blake would be at the top of the list, and in 2020, they were two people who kept releasing music that I found really uplifting.
PDLIF (Please Don't Live In Fear) was written in quarantine. Files were passed from Justin Vernon to a group of collaborators, and back again, building the song amid our lives being turned upside down by the pandemic. This was the musicians way of producing a little message of hope and a means of raising money for humanitarian aid organisation Direct Relief. All proceeds raised by the songs streaming online was going to help support Covid-19 relief efforts and the distribution of PPE to frontline healthcare worker.
PDLIF is a little message of hope and solidarity. You're not alone, even when you are, we're all going through this, and it's scary, and no one can tell you exactly how we're going to get out of it, but there's hope.
Vernon always walks this weird line between songs of despair and depression, and those with this sense of uplifting and emphatic reassurance. And this one's no different. Like many of his songs, it builds, in layers of saxophone (a three note sample from Visit Croatia by Alabaster DePlume), strings, piano and distortions that have grown to be part of the Bon Iver sound over the last few years.
This was a balm. It was soothing and reassuring. I'm biased because I love Bon Iver's music so much, but when this came out in May, when we had more than just the pandemic to worry about, even just someone saying please don't live in fear, in amongst every news report and conversation being about lose and fear, it was calming. It was something to say in my head and let me take breath.
Link || Bon Iver || Website || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || YouTube || Spotify || Apple Music
With gigs and concerts around the world cancelled until further notice in 2020, musicians took to social media to give impromptu concerts for their fans. Rufus Wainwright turned his Robe Recitals into Quarantunes, Trixie Mattel gave us Full Coverage Fridays, and James Blake performed live on Instagram, playing requests and covers as he talked to his fans.
He also started posting the odd cover, including Stevie Wonder's Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer...
A song describing a failing relationship as the changing seasons of the year, Blake's live piano performance makes the song sound like an old fashioned, heartfelt lament to lost love, and it's beautiful. I didn't know this song before this, I like the Stevie Wonder version, but I love this one, and Blake giving these hour long Instagram Live performance, was brilliant. I'd love to see him live one day but right now this was perfect, and I really hope he decides to do more.
Link || James Blake || Website || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || YouTube || Spotify || Apple Music
Cynthia Nabozny aka CYN's song Drinks is about her ex and shrugging off his bullshit by going to a bar with her friend and getting drinks. It's upbeat and an earworm and I listened to this a lot, in particular the live version, which is the one I listened too first.
There's not a lot to explain here, I just really like CYN's voice and as a fuck you song, this one's pretty good.
The song Little Girl Blue and the Battle Envy by Skating Polly has been annoying me.
I love it! It's every bit the 90's grungy girl band aesthetic I like, but it sounds so familiar and I can't pinpoint what band, or singer, or song it sounds like. It's lead me to listen to it over and over again trying to work it out and firmly falling for the song.
There's definitely a sound of Breeders, Cranberries, Hole, Garbage, Veruca Salt, Smashing Pumpkins, Auf De Maur, Paramore, Mazzy Star, The Sundays... I keep almost working it out, finding the person or guitar riff it reminds me of and I just can't get there. It shouldn't bother me, I really like the song on its own, but it just keeps niggling at me because it feels like I've forgotten a song or something from my past and I can't work it out.
It doesn't really matter in the end. It's a great song, and while being interviewed for Louder Sound, Kelli Mayo, lead singer and writer for the band, which also includes her brother Kurt Mayo and step sister Peyton Bighorse, spoke about the meaning behind the song:
"The most dismal song I’ve ever written. On the surface it’s about a soldier who would rather live with the shame of leaving her post, or even a life sentence, than deal with all the pressure and commands that come with the 'glory'. I guess on a more personal level it came from a place of feeling like no one was letting me make choices for myself and I was just being yanked into a billion different directions based on what they thought I should be. I dealt with a lot of anxiety last year, along with weird things like passing out, my ears ringing, getting tunnel vision, so there’s some references to that, too. But I was really just writing in dramatised circumstances through a character. That’s my favourite way to vent."(Kelli Mayo, Louder Sound, 2018)
This is exactly what the song sounds like. Venting that feeling of not being in control of your life.
Anyone else feeling like that right now?
Link || Skating Polly || Website || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || YouTube || Spotify || Apple Music ||
Link || Skating Polly's track by track guide to The Make It All Show by Briony Edwards via Louder Sound
Empty Love, by GRACEY feat. Ruel is a song about social media and how people often put on a front of the perfect life before likes, and that even when you're having a bad day, you'll put a smile on and keep up appearances, even when things are fallen down around you.
"Like after like but I'm like losing my mind
'Cause I'm fully aware that I'm just wasting my time
Keeping the lows inside, I'm never asking for help
But do you ever get tired of pretending to be yourself?"
(Empty Love by GRACEY feat. Ruel)
More than ever with social distancing people are relying on social media to communicate, interact and also earn money, and the personality you're putting out is hopefully yours, but we all edit ourselves. Sometimes that's simply just to protect ourselves from hurt. You don't tell people about the bad crap that's happening because you don't want to think about it or because you don't want people thinking about you in that way, so you disguise it.
Maybe this is why cancel culture has become so prevalent among social media creators. They've spent their careers building up a persona that might be real, but might also be a construct of what they think people want to see and what they're willing to give to people. They're characters, and when your character gets revealed to be false or your mask slips a little in the wrong way, you're cancelled. Personally I don't love cancel culture, but you can't deny that there's a falseness in the perfect lives people show online.
Empty Love is a great song, and it really shows that duality and sometimes deceptiveness that social media produces.
Link || Gracey || Website || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || YouTube || TikTok || SoundCloud || Spotify || Apple Music
Link || Ruel || Website || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || YouTube || SoundCloud || Spotify || Apple Music
There are a few albums I have really strong, happy memories about as a kid, and a lot of those centre around car journeys with my family.
Most trips in the car of any significant distance would be to both sets of grandparents in Glasgow, and most of those trips would be spent with me feeling sick. I couldn't read in the car, play games, even glancing at my sisters book or out the car window at the wrong angle would end up with us pulled over in a layby and my hair being held back. One infamous time I managed to get all the way to my grandparents, I'd been shifted to the front seat at some point on the two hour drive down and as my dad stopped the car outside the house... well, I ended being ushered into the house and put in a bath with the smell of Dettol and Badedas bubble bath surrounding me.
Outing myself as the girl with car sickness isn't the point of the story. The point is I couldn't do anything in the car that didn't make me feel unwell, so the music my parents played was really important to me because it's what I had to entertain and distract myself.
We'd listen to The Beatles, John Martyn, and James Taylor. Those were our staples. And those are the song and the music that I still love.
In August 2020 Bon Iver released AUATC (Ate Up All Their Cake) and as I listened too it, obviously already in love because I've never not loved anything he's released, I recognised something...
"(shed a little light on it)
[..]
(will you shed a little light on it?)"
(AUATC by Bon Iver)
He was sampling James Taylors civil rights anthem, Shed a Little Light, from the 1991 album New Moon Shine, which was the album that was always in the car.
It's such a small amount used of the song, but Bon Iver translates it into their own stand against capitalism, corporate greed and marginalisation, something which has only been highlighted further during the pandemic.
The original song, Shed a Lttle Light, was written as a tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. and the work, attitude and influence he had on the civil rights movement:
"Mr. TAYLOR: (Singing) Let us turn our thoughts today to Martin Luther King.To me, King is really one of the central heroes, you know, just in our time, a real exceptional, rare person who contributed the right things at the right time. You know, I think my parents, they led me into an awareness of what was going on. You know, they felt amazingly strongly about the civil rights struggle, and I guess it stayed with me. It always stayed with me. So it came out in a song." (James Taylor Interview by Ed Gordon for NPR Music)
When I was a kid, it didn't occur to me that this song was about the civil right movement. It was always just one of my favourite song from the album - swiftly followed in both ranking and track listing by The Frozen Man - so hearing it sampled by one of my favourite current artists was lovely.
And I still have the original tape we played in the car. I don't have a tape player. I don't have any way to play it. And while I have it on CD, that tape was played so many times in the car during my life, that I couldn't throw it away.
Link || James Taylor || Website || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || YouTube || Spotify || Apple Music
Link || Music Interviews: James Taylor Gets Ready for Summer Tour by Ed Gordon via NPR Music
Link || Bon Iver "AUATC" Statement via Shorefire
One of the songs James Blake covered during his Instagram Live streams, and subsequently released, was Godspeed by Frank Ocean, which Blake produced, arranged, played piano on. Maybe that's why it suits him, because he had a hand in it, and while I prefer Blake's version, the song by either musician is simple and earnest.
I listened and listened to this song throughout September. Over and over, because Blake's heartfelt and haunting version of the song kind of embodied how I was feeling during that particular month.
Link || James Blake || Website || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || YouTube || Spotify || Apple Music
When I first heard Stranger by Jacob Banks being played by my little sister, through the door of the shower room, I actually thought it was Bon Iver. I know, I'm obsessed, but the beginning of the song...
"Stranger
Once upon a time, we were the chorus
Fallin'
Coming out the other side feeling foreign
No one makes it out alive
Drinking freedom like it's wine"
(Stranger by Jacob Banks)
... to me had a definite sound and quality of Justin Vernon.
To be fair, listening back to it, I don't hear it as much. Jacob Banks has a deeper, richer voice than Vernon, who, even in his lower register during songs such as I Can't Make You Love Me and Hinnom TX, isn't quite there. He sticks more in the middle and falsetto ranges, but I think the slight distortion on Bank's voice added to my initial confusion.
Not that I was at all disappointed. Bank's song is vulnerable and soulful. He's singing about the end of a relationship and the eventual breakup - as so many singers do - and shows the best and worst sides of that period of time.
It's just beautiful. It's a beautiful sound.
Sometimes my sister having her music turned up too loud while she's having a shower is incredibly fortunate.
Link || Jacob Banks || Website || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || YouTube || Spotify || Apple Music
In certain parts, Delete Forever by Grimes sounds really like songs from The Sundays. I'm not sure whether it's the music, her voice or a combination of the two, but listening to it I get real pangs of nostalgia.
Realistically this was basically the only song I listened too in October. I just couldn't get this song, which is an ode to the friends Grimes has lost to heroin, out of my head. It's such a weird combination of musical styles, including folk, Britpop and dance, with banjo, acoustic guitar and electronic drum and bass, and a pretty upbeat melody with incredibly earnest subject matter... it shouldn't work really, but it does.
Plus it's that upbeat guitar backing that reminds me so much of The Sundays song Here's Where The Story Ends, with it's "little souvenir of a terrible year" that I spoke about all the way back on Day 1.
It wouldn't have been a complete list in 2020 without at least one Billie Eilish song. Turns out there are four, Everything I Wanted, My Future, Watch and Therefore I Am.
I've chosen to write about her here, with ironically the only song of the four that wasn't actually released in 2020, because I really like the way she sings the chorus:
"I'll sit and watch your car burn
With the fire that you started in me
But you never came back to ask it out
Go ahead and watch my heart burn
With the fire that you started in me
But I'll never let you back to put it out"
(Watch by Billie Eilish)
I was pretty much obsessed with When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? when it came out in 2019. It was one of the only full albums I listened to repeatedly that year, the act of listening to full albums becoming rarer and rarer now that I stream more music than I buy physical albums. Which is why it took up multiple places on last years Day 12, and also why I'm really happy that everything she's released this year I've really enjoyed.
Whenever there's a musician I really like, who produces an outstandingly good album (especially if it's their first), there's always that little bit of terror that future releases won't be as good, or that at least they wouldn't grab my attention in the same way. There are so many artists who succumb to the curse of the difficult second album, especially after being hailed as the next best thing and capturing the public zeitgeist. Only thing worst might be to be nominated for a Mercury Music Prize for your first album, then you just have to pray you lose and don't get hit with the curse.
In fact the only song I didn't love from Eilish this year was her James Bond theme, No Time To Die. It's great that she got to write the theme, it's definitely grown on me a lot since it was premiered in February, but whether it's Adele, Sam Smith or Billie Eilish, these particular Bond themes are all too samey.
They're all good songs, they work as the Bond theme, but while Adele and Smith stylistically are relatively similar, I didn't expect Eilish's to sit quite so neatly with them. Her style I never would have put with those two musicians and so, I guess when it was announced that she'd write and perform the theme, I expected something a little bit different from your traditional Bond ballad.
But that's just my opinion and fuck that. She's stupidly talented and I love her music and voice and I can't wait for her next album to be released.
Link || Billie Eilish || Website || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || YouTube || TikTok || Spotify || Apple Music
It feels fitting for the last song on my list to be Sam Fender beautiful Christmas song.
A cover of Winter Song by Lindisfarne, Fender released the song to help raise money for The Big Issue, all the proceeds being split between the magazine and the vendors.
"I wanted to do a Christmas song, but I didn't want to do something that was crass and cr*p. Winter Song is one of my favourite Christmas tunes and Alan Hall is one of my heroes [...] so I just wanted to do something that was close to home and close to my heart and that's why I picked it. If you listen to the song and the original track the lyrics are actually really poignant and relevant for the time. It's basically a Christmas message of trying to be more empathetic about people who are worse off than you."(Sam Fender Interview for Radio X, 2020)
And it's beautiful and moving, there's nothing crass or crap about it. It's not your typical novelty Christmas song, the ones that gets pushed to the number one position in the charts, and becomes iconic for it's ridiculous video or earworm nature. There's always a place for those Christmas songs, but this is just wonderful.
I listened to this on repeat over Christmas. It was the first song I was playing when I put music on in December, it was the song I was quietly singing around the house and was probably the last song I listened too on New Years Eve.
It's rare I include an actual Christmas song in my list, but I can't think of one that I've ever had this kind of reaction too. And it's the perfect place to end.
Link || Sam Fender || Website || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || YouTube || Spotify || Apple Music
Link || Sam Fender on Winter Song cover: "I didn't want to do something crass and cr*p" via Radio X
And that's it. The 12 Days are over, thankfully sooner than last year, though later than I would have liked.
I'm still kind of dumbfounded by the fact that I've been doing this for ten years. It seems insane. But I'm glad despite my lack of spoons that I did it and produced all twelve days. As much - self inflicted - work as it is, I love making these posts, and even after ten years, I still want to do it better, find more interesting things to post, write more cohesively as well as interestingly, and even though I'm sure I'll question whether it's worth doing for 2021, I hope I will. I hope I'll post more throughout the year as well.
2020 has been crap. The pandemic has made life harder and more uncertain, and 2021 hasn't exactly started off in a good way, but there's light somewhere in the distance. For example, both my grans and my parents have had their first vaccinations, which isn't a cure all, it doesn't mean they're immune, but it means they're a little safer than they were a month ago.
And it would be really easy to sink and let 2020 instantly consume 2021 in negativity before it's even had a start, and even writing that I'm rolling my eyes at myself, but it's true, we can sink and let it consume us, or we can take it day by day and get through it. Don't let it become the Swamp of Sadness from The Neverending Story (1984).
(I may have been watching that particular film today, so it's in my head, but it's a good analogy for not letting that sinking feeling from 2020 drag you down. Don't be Artax!)
Stay safe, stay home if you can, wear a mask and dispense with the idea that not seeing people is antisocial, because it's not, it's the most caring thing you can do for anyone in your life that you care about.
Anyway, enough saccharin pandemic stuff and for one last time.
Happy New Year & Merry Christmas!
Love,
Emily xxx
..................................................................................
Listening: Winter Song - Sam Fender
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