... I would like to present to you...
... 12 drummers drumming...
... eleven illustrated fandoms...… ten clay characters...
… nine printed errors...
… eight adapted palettes…
… seven Schitt shoes…
… six movie dresses…
… five gold wings…
… four paper pests…
… three growing bathers…
… two storytellers...
… and a lazy day in space.
Or rather, on the 97th Day...
Yeah... that happened.
But here we are, finally, Day 12, with it's drummers drumming and all the music I listening to in 2022. It's full of earworms and stupid songs that blew up on social media and got stuck in my head, and the music that I fell in love with new and old...
Same deal as every year, a Spotify playlist, a YouTube playlist and a list with wittering's for a few of them...
The Queen's guard playing a tribute to Meat Loaf
— Giles Paley-Phillips (@eliistender10) January 24, 2022
📹Jason Wood (FB) pic.twitter.com/13CihNi9Ev
It was such an odd and random thing, but kind of beautiful. And this was only made a little weirder with Queen Elizabeth II also passing away later the same year.
I've always had a huge soft spot for this song. Partly because it's just an excellent song and partly because it reminds me one of my best friend from school, and how much her little sister loved Meat Loaf's music. So the Queen's Guard covering the song made a random and sweet tribute to the artist a little more sentimental for me, because it reminded me of my friends. It also sounded awesome.
Link || Meat Loaf (Michael Lee Aday) || Website || IMDb || Wikipedia || Facebook || YouTube || Spotify || Amazon Music || Apple Music || Deezer
Link || The Queen Just Shared A Sweet Tribute To Meat Loaf by Kate Hollowood via Marie Claire
The Beatles are some of the first music I remember. My parents grew up with them, and so when I was little, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), The White Album (1968), Abbey Road (1969) and Let It Be (1970) were always being played. In my head they're the soundtrack to basically every holiday we took and every trip we made to all grandparents in Glasgow.
The Beatles have been a huge part of my musical lexicon for my entire life, so in February 2022, when Peter Jackson's three part documentary, The Beatles: Get Back (2021) was released internationally, I was really intrigued to see what incite into this world that had been such a major part of my life it would bring.
The footage that Jackson was using to create the documentary was filmed over half a century earlier, in 1970 and had been previously unseen. Primarily made up of unused footage from the Michael Lindsay-Hogg documentary film about the making of Let It Be (1970), technically making this new incarnation a documentary of a documentary. This revealing behind the scenes footage would ultimately become the recorded evidence of the last album the band would record together, taking place over the space of three weeks, they were to write and rehearse fourteen new tracks, and it ultimately lead to their final live performance, their first in three years, the iconic Rooftop Concert.
And it was fascinating! Seeing these four men, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, who have written some of the most iconic and beloved songs of the twentieth century, struggling to work together, with ill-feelings and gradually their falling further apart from one another, which would show some of the breaking points which would ultimately lead to them disbanding. However it also shows the beauty of how their genius sparked off of one another, the joy and brotherly silliness that they had, a glimmer of how they probably worked together in their heyday, when it was as much just fun as work.
Fascinating is really the only word I have to describe this documentary, with its insights into not only the creation of songs I'm ridiculously familiar with, but sad too, seeing how the end came.
If you have access to the documentary and are a fan it's a really interesting watch, and one that I'm currently contemplating re-watching. I could have also included way more Beatles songs on this playlist, but since I generally listen to The Beatles quite frequently, I only included the ones that kept sticking in my head from the documentary.
I also had to include at least one piece of fan art I found, in this sweet little illustration of Ringo sitting at his drums during the series, wearing a red polka dot shirt. It was one of the contenders for Day 11, but I knew I had a space for him here.
Link || The Beatles || Website || IMDb || Wikipedia || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || YouTube || Spotify || Amazon Music || Apple Music || Deezer
This is an ever present earworm in my brain. Any time wellies are mentioned, I end up singing If It Wisnae For Yer Wellies by Billy Connolly, and it's pavlovian...
It's also hilarious, but it's Billy Connolly, he's comedy royalty.
A few months ago I was randomly recommended a video by artist, makeup artist and content creator, Mei Pang (Meicrosoft), in it she was talking about having her I Am The Antichrist To You tattoo cover up. Known for her tattoos and shaven head, this particular tattoo was her most popular, one which has been posted and reposted around Pinterest and social media, but it was one that she got out of spite.
It was a reaction to heartbreak, unrequited first love and rejection, the girl in question, who was deeply religious literally telling her she was a sinner, the devil and the antichrist to her. That anger and heartache lead her to get the tattoo out of spite, though having this tattooed on her chest she was also fuelled by listening to the song of the same name by the singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Kishi Bashi. It was what she had been listening too as she tried to work through this heartbreak and a period of chaos in her life.
When Pang mentioned the song her tattoo was referencing to, I paused her video and went looking for it out of curiosity. It's something I find myself often doing, someone mentions a piece of music in a post and I feel like I need to hear it in context to understand why they love it. What ended up happening was that as soon as I listened to it, I loved it too, and played this beautiful violin heavy piece of music over and over on a loop.
I particularly liked the live orchestral version with the Nu Deco Ensemble live at the New World Centre in Miami Beach, Florida:
It is a beautiful song, and Pang's meaningful tattoo was something which spoke to her at the time, but not everyone - despite it popularity online - felt the same. It affected her professional life, because of the weight and notions around those words, it made people uncomfortable, and look negatively at the her. Brands often avoiding the makeup artist and sometimes model because of it's controversial nature. Though she took this to heart and it damaged her confidence, her choice to cover up the tattoo was also to allow her to move on from the negativity that it still represented, and she chose to have a blast over, where the tattoo is covered by another, but still visible if you look hard enough. It's there to conceal it, not completely erase it.
I think she is a wonderful makeup artist, and if that video hadn't been recommended to me not only wouldn't I have been able to enjoy her makeup artistry, but I wouldn't have found this song, which very, very swiftly became on of my favourite pieces of music in 2022, and one of the most beautiful.
Also, any Rick and Morty fans might also be familiar with the song from the end of Season 5, Episode 3: A Rickconvenient Mort, in which Morty falls in love Planetina, an elemental-themed environmental superhero who's trying to protect Earth. Morty, like Pang, being left heartbroken with this song as their accompaniment.
Link || Rick and Morty 2013 - present) || Adult Swim || IMDb || Wikipedia || Rotten Tomatoes || Instagram || Twitter
Two years ago, on Day 12, I included a song called Good Morning by Lennnie, which after the death of my grandpa in 2020, and the fact that I had been really struggling with my anxiety levels increasing, was something that I had started listening too when I was really freaking out in order to try and calm myself down.
The positive affirmation giving blob and their sweet little songs just seemed to help, and I have continued to have it in my head as a crutch even when the videos and music on Spotify disappeared (though it appears to have been reuploaded now). So, in 2022 when they posted a snippet of a song by Em Beihold called Numb Little Bug, which lennnie had created an animated lyric video for, I, of course, instantly fell in love with it.
"And I just wanna see if you feel the same as me..."
The song was written as a response to the feeling of numbness Beihold felt whilst on antidepressants, a means of helping her own issues with anxiety, but she felt they "sucked the soul and energy" from her. Which is a feeling I know well, when both on or off medication for anxiety and depression, there's always a degree of numbness that comes with it, so the song felt so familiar, and paired with the tiny bug animation from lennnie, it really said things that I couldn't about my own anxiety.
Numb Little Bug is poignant, pointing out that depression isn't necessarily just about being sad, or unhappy, and how numbness can be about surviving and coping with these issues rather than curing them. But the song remains bouncy, happy and hopeful, which is something I think most people strive to be, even when it feels like they can't.
Then to move away from my anxiety riddled world, something fun and a band which will pop up regularly as this playlist continues, Loveless, who over the course of 2022 I became a fan of because of their pop punk covers of songs over social media, covered Numb Little Bug, which of course made me happy...
... it's the little things that sometimes help more than the big ones.
Link || Em Beihold || Website || IMDb || Wikipedia || Instagram || Twitter || TikTok || Facebook || YouTube || Soundcloud || Spotify || Amazon Music || Apple Music || Deezer || Image || Image
I half promised myself that this year I would avoid the usual suspects who end up taking pride of place on my yearly playlists. Not that I wouldn't listen to them, just that if I was going try not to obsessively play them, or get one too stuck in my head, and for the most part I did, the only real times that James Blake and Bon Iver, the most regular features of this days post, have appeared, is as featured artists collaborating with someone else who I'd never listened too before.
And I almost made it to April. But then I heard Monica Martin being accompanied by James Blake in a live piano rendition of Go Easy, Kid, and it's an achingly beautiful song about self-sabotage, the guilt you feel for it and trying to remind yourself that in the end to not take things so seriously.
"You’re gonna look back
And wish you grabbed it all by the throat
And said, fuck it, it’s only rock and roll."
Compared to the original, which is six songs down alongside a few other Monica Martin songs I got a bit obsessed with last year, the version with James Blake isn't hugely different, it's still really moving and her voice is wonderful, but the piano and what is essential his backing vocals just make it so moving it's ridiculous.
It also always ends up reminding me of the movie High Fidelity (2000) and I have no idea why, but there's a song that's used on the soundtrack which this just evokes a memory of that I can't shake.
Anyway Go Easy, Kid, is just a ridiculously beautiful song.
.
Link || Monica Martin || Website || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || YouTube || Soundcloud || Spotify || Amazon Music || Apple Music || Deezer || Image
Link || James Blake || Website || IMDb || Wikipedia || Instagram || Twitter || TikTok || Facebook || YouTube || Soundcloud || Spotify || Amazon Music || Apple Music || Deezer
Mild obsession with games on phones stems way back for me to the classic Snake, on the Nokia 3310:
Every time I played that game, I would think I was doing great, until my friend, David, would borrow my phone to have a go, obliterate my high score and take great joy in rubbing it in my face. But it was addictive, and I don't know if it's gotten better or worst with smart phones and tablets, certainly I've become obsessed with my fair share of games on my phone, but for pretty much the whole of 2022, it was Beatstar, a music game very much akin to Guitar Hero.
Itchy fingers aside, the game both reminded me of and introduced me to some of the music on this list, include Gimme Chocolate!! by Babymetal, a Japanese kawaii metal band, consisting of Suzuka Nakmoto as Su-metal, Moa Kikuchi as Moametal and, at the time of this songs original release, Yui Mizuno as Yuimetal, who left the group in 2018 due to ill-health.
I have never gotten more than one of three out of five stars on this song on Beatstar without using up all my tokens, it is impossible, but it's so freaking catchy, I ended up finding it out, playing it loudly on repeat and singing along even though I don't speak Japanese... so it's lucky that the majority of the song - bar the chorus - is made up of onomatopoeias and the singers shouting "never, never never!"
The song itself is about women who like chocolate struggling with the pressure to maintain their figures and being afraid to put on weight, whilst also desperately wanting to eat chocolate... which with the fast J-pop and kawaii death-metal guitars, drums etc, sounds better in Japanese. Also, I'm going to read the meaning of the song as a comment about the incredible unfair, negative, damaging but far too familiar beauty standard that are put on women from a very young age to diet and think that anything but supermodel skinny is something to be ashamed of. Because fuck people who make you feel bad for wanting to eat a piece of fucking chocolate, or just in general, and shame you because you're not their idea of perfect!
(People like that suck.)
Every year there are songs that just make me happy and want to bounce around and have fun, Gimme Chocolate!! definitely did that. And just after Christmas, without every beating this song, I finally curbed my need to play that bloody music game every day, and now haven't played it in a couple of months... downside, I keep forgetting to charge my phone. Thank god I'm a hermit and messenger on Apple products exists, but curse them for their shit battery life.
Link || Babymetal || Website || IMDb || Wikipedia || Instagram || Twitter || TikTok || Facebook || YouTube || Spotify || Amazon Music || Apple Music || Deezer || Image
Link || Beatstar || Website || Instagram || Twitter || TikTok || Facebook || Discord || Google Play || Apple App Store
Link || Wikipedia || Snake || Nokia 3310
Every year I always end up playing a lot of Bon Iver, and I will never get tired of Justin Vernon's voice, and that amazing, heart warming and compelling sound that he creates, and with no new solo releases in 2022, and a vow not to hyper focus on my favourite artists, I was really happy to find him collaborating with Ethan Gruska.
Written early into the pandemic, the track was written long-distance, neither having met in person. Lockdown came just as they were supposed to meet in person, and spend some time together in the studio, but with stay at home orders in effect, instead they started writing as pen pals, sending each other files and as Vernon recounts, exchanging "the longest, flirtiest texts in history" (NME, 2022), and setting out to still produce something remotely.
“The fact that I now have a song with Justin just completely blows my mind. He’s
been my pie in the sky // I’d do anything to collaborate with artist for a really long
time and having this song together is one of the most special things that has ever
happened to me in my musical life. Life in general! Justin is my favourite pen pal,
person and artist, and I’m so grateful to have made this together!”(Ethan Gruska, 2022)
So Unimportant was on repeat for weeks, not only did I have that little bit of content from my favourite band, but found a new musician who gelled perfectly with them and whose music I would never have heard without. And it gave me other music I really enjoyed such as, Another Animal:
With music I am a bit of a creature of habit, I don't seek out a ton of new artists, but just kind of pathetically wait to hear something new appear amongst the old guard, hoping that something will make me sit up and more than likely give me someone to obsess over for a little while, playing a few of their songs on a loop. Ethan Gruska fit the bill for 2022, but I still need to listen to more.
Ironically, despite this list being over one hundred songs long, I don't actually feel like I listened to a lot of music last year. I've also become lazy, with an Alexa in the kitchen, I ask her to play a playlist I made rather than exploring new music through Spotify or the radio, as I would have done in previous years. So again, when something new appears, I get more than a little obsessed if it's something special. These songs are special, plus the mutual excitement about working together that Gruska and Vernon displayed is genuinely very endearing, making me hope for more from this duo in the future, if I'm very lucky. I'd like to see what else they could produce together.
Link || Ethan Gruska || Website || IMDb || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || YouTube || Soundcloud || Spotify || Amazon Music || Apple Music || Deezer
Link || Bon Iver and Ethan Gruska Share New Song "So Unimportant": Listen by Evan Minsker via Pitchfork
Stranger Things (2016 - present) season four had a few big musical moments, firstly the 1985 classic Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush, which represents the character of Max (Sadie Sink) and her storyline within the show. This meant there wasn't a short or reel anywhere on social media for a while that didn't use it as their musical accompaniment, and luckily, it is a song I love, and have by three different artists in my playlist (Bush, Placebo and Loveless).
But Master of Puppets by Metallica, played through one of the pivotal moments in the show, and included Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn) playing the intense guitar solo from the song. As a fun bit of trivia, someone worked out that this would have only taken the character three weeks to learn (theoretically based on the release of the song on the 2nd of March 1986 to when the episode took place on the 27th), but the actor also learnt to play it in order to give the performance authenticity.
Which leads me to more fan art created by Pedro Allevato:
As Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) says, "most metal ever!"
Link || Metallica || Website || IMDb || Wikipedia || Instagram || Twitter || TikTok || Facebook || YouTube || Soundcloud || Spotify || Amazon Music || Apple Music || Deezer || Image
And we're not done with Stranger Things, we're not done with another pivotal moment in Eddie's story and, of course, we're not done with fan art because there is the wonder that is Chrissy, Wake Up, a musical parody by The Gregory Brothers, alongside a piece of animated fan art created by Nate Swinehart:
The Nate Swinehart's fan art for this song was probably the first of his work that I'd seen, and my initial exposure to the song itself.
Honestly, if you managed to miss this song blowing up online at the middle of last year, it might be a minor miracle, but with the audio from the first episode of season four, Chapter One: The Hellfire Club, The Gregory Brothers, a musical comedy quartet made up of three brothers, Andrew, Michael and Evan, and the latter's spouse, Sarah, set to work creating Chrissy, Wake Up!. The musical accompaniment created a viral hit in this, but also their auto-tuned remix of It's Corn, based on a Recess Therapy interview, this time with a boy about his love of corn on the cob would also become a viral sensation.
Personally it's the little girl who LOVES pickles that I particularly love:
Loveless also did covers of both these songs, though Chrissy, Wake Up, has lived rent free in my brain for a while:
While the Duffer Brothers managed to pick the best of the 80's to soundtrack their show, this fan made song is a serious earworm, and since I've played it a few times while writing, it'll be stuck in there for at least the next few hours. Not mad about it.
Link || The Gregory Brothers || Website || IMDb || Wikipedia || Instagram || Twitter || TikTok || Facebook || Tumblr || YouTube || Patreon || Bandcamp || Soundcloud || Spotify || Amazon Music || Apple Music || Deezer || Image
I have never actively listened to any Charlie Puth before, I definitely haven't listened to any BTS before, but Left and Right seemed to be the start of me realising that Puth writes annoyingly catchy songs and is also pretty silly and endearing on social media. Meaning my YouTube Shorts feed constantly recommended his teasing shorts of him writing other songs, and securing the fact that when this song was released I couldn't get it out of my head.
There were a lot of earworms last year, many it turned out written by Charlie Puth.
Link || Charlie Puth || Website || IMDb || Wikipedia || Instagram || Twitter || TikTok || Facebook || YouTube || Soundcloud || Spotify || Amazon Music || Apple Music || Deezer || Image || Image
I'm going to preface this song choice by saying that I really enjoy the music of The 1975, there's something nostalgic, yet new about their sound and Part Of The Band, with the use of violins, cellos, saxophones and woodwind instruments to create this consistent, almost at times cacophonous building sound, I think is something kind of new from them and I love it, and played it on repeat during 2022. But I'm not unaware of lead singer Matty Healy's at times controversial behaviour, which, is actually when you look at the lyrics of this song, what it's commenting on.
On the 25th of May 2020, George Floyd was murdered by Minnesota police, rightly sparking international outrage, protests and a call to bring the police to justice. Matty Healy responded to these events three days later, tweeting:
“If you truly believe that ‘ALL LIVES MATTER’
you need to stop facilitating the end of black ones.”
Not in itself a controversial statement, in fact it said what people were thinking, however instead of linking to websites supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, or specifically to information to support what had happened, Healy posted a link to the song written two years prior, Love It If We Made It, which featured the lyrics:
"Saying controversial things just for the hell of it
Selling melanin and then suffocate the black men
Start with misdemeanours and we'll make a business out of them"
Though it was probably never meant to appear as such, it was seen as the band using Floyd's murder as a means to promote and sell their most recent album and gain AdSense from video views, as opposed to just highlighting the horror of the events with lyrics about racism and police brutality, which bore such relevance at the time, which was what he had intended:
“Sorry I did not link my song in that tweet to make it about me
it’s just that the song is literally about this disgusting situation
and speaks more eloquently than I can on Twitter"
After this apology Healy deleted his Twitter account.
Part of the Band definitely eludes to this controversy, speaking about how the internet is not an easy place to be part of, and how people want your opinion, but even with the best intentions your words can be taken very badly and skewed from their intended meaning.
"Am I ironically woke? The butt of my joke?
Or am I just some post-coke, average, skinny bloke
Calling his ego imagination?
I’ve not picked up that in a thousand four hundred days
And nine hours and sixteen minutes, babe
It’s kind of my daily iteration"
The lyrics are a reflection of his experience of the internet, cancel culture, ego and cutting himself off from the world for a while so not to say the wrong thing time and again.
It's a beautiful song born out of reflection on many shit decisions and situations.
Link || The 1975 || Website || IMDb || Wikipedia || Instagram || Twitter || TikTok || Facebook || YouTube || Soundcloud || Spotify || Amazon Music || Apple Music || Deezer || Part of the Band || Love It If We Made It
Link || The 1975, Part of the Band: Inside The Lyrics And Their Meaning by Carlo Affatigato via Aural Crave
Link || Wikipedia || George Floyd || Murder of George Floyd
Link || Black Lives Matter || Website || UK Website || Wikipedia || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || YouTube
I have questions. How is the first song that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have released in nine years?
For that matter, how have the band been around for twenty three years?
How does Karen O never age?
How come no one ever thought of pairing them with Perfume Genius until 2022?
And how is this so perfectly nostalgic and yet doesn't sound like anything they've released before?
And you know, upon hearing this the first time - seeing it I should say since YouTube recommended it - I wasn't sure, but I could not get it out of my head, or stop thinking about the video, in which Perfume Genius is a zombie, and I just kept seeking it out... this was a perfect comeback.
Link || Yeah Yeah Yeahs || Website || IMDb || Wikipedia || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || YouTube || Bandcamp || Soundcloud || Spotify || Amazon Music || Apple Music || Deezer || Image
Link || Perfume Genius || Website || IMDb || Wikipedia || Instagram || Twitter || TikTok || Facebook || YouTube || Bandcamp || Soundcloud || Spotify || Amazon Music || Apple Music || Deezer
As someone who is anxious, finding little things to try and stop myself spiralling has been important.
Sometimes it's just trying to remember to breathe... I never realised how often I would just sit, not even just holding my breath, but just not breathing, or how tense my body got with certain sounds round about me made me. I have always been an anxious person, who has lived with depression since I started high school, but actual full blown anxiety, that didn't come on until my grandpa was sick and then the pandemic happened. It is an unbelievable shit feeling, and if I could wake up and have that feeling of anxiety buzzing around my body at a low hum all day disappear, I would be incredibly happy, but until then, I need to find little things, like songs or activities that disperse that feeling, such as the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Grounding Technique, which I learnt about through my favourite Numb Little Bug, Em Beihold' and her song 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
It's simple enough. Breathe and look around your space for five things you can see. That pile of books, the pot plant on the windowsill, the picture on the wall. Then four things you can touch, clothes, the soft fur on a toy or pet, the rough ceramic of your coffee cup. Three things you can hear, the rain outside (currently the kids screaming as they walk home), two things you can smell, and finally one thing you can taste.
See. Touch. Hear. Smell. Taste.
Five. Four. Three. Two. One.
You're trying to interrupt those feelings of anxiety by working through the pattern, by focusing your attention on your other senses, on somewhere and something else. It's distraction. Like counting sheep when you can't sleep, or playing with that game on your phone that helps you shut your mind off.
,
Obviously, for her song, Beihold has flipped the sequence, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, however the theory is the same, and worth trying, and her music was some of my favourite last year. Upbeat, fun, meaningful and all too familiar in content, looking forward to more from her.
Link || 5, 4, 3, 2, 1: Countdown To Make Anxiety Blast Off via The Mayo Clinic Health System
Link || 5-4-3-2-1 Coping Technique For Anxiety via University of Rochester Medical Center
Link || How To Ease Anxiety At Night With '54321' Mindfulness Trick by Chelsea Ritschel via Independent
Link || The 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding Technique: Manage Anxiety By Anchoring In The Present via Insight Timer
Link || Applying The H.A.L.T. Technique To Overcome Negative Behaviour & Anxiety via Insight Timer
That opening riff of Yvette Young's lovingly pointed comment on the midwest emo sound that I love from one particular artist was bang on. I realise this is a fifty one second clip of this multi-instrumentalist, but I love the sound of those fifty one seconds completely.
It also sent me on a deep dive spiral into Bon Iver's back catalogue to find out which song that opening riff reminded me of, and it was...
Link || Yvette Young || Website || Wikipedia || Instagram || Twitter || TikTok || Facebook || YouTube || Bandcamp || Soundcloud || Spotify || Amazon Music || Apple Music || Deezer || Image
...Perth, from Bon Iver's self-titled second album:
The song was inspired by the death of Australian actor Heath Ledger, and named for the place of his birth, Perth.
In 2008, in Vernon's home town of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, he was joined by director Matt Amato, intent of filming the music video to accompany the song Wolves (Act I & II), from Bon Iver's first album, For Emma, Forever Ago (2007), in the snow and cold of late January. But Amato would receive the devastating phone call that one of his best friends, Heath Ledger, had passed away of the the age of twenty eight;
“It was January,” Vernon says, “fucking 25 below. We’re out shooting, and
we come back in, and his phone had been going off.” Ledger, it turned out,
was dead. “So I’ve got this guy in my house whose best friend just passed
away. He’s sobbing in my arms. He can’t go back to L.A. because the house
is under siege. Michelle Williams is calling my parents’ phone. All this stuff.”
For the next two days, Amato drank brandy, cried and reminisced about
Ledger riding horses back home in Perth. The morning he left, Vernon wrote
the song’s first draft. (Bon Iver, Rolling Stone, 2011)
These two men barely knew one another, and Amato didn't know whether to stay and finish working, or go and be with his grieving friends and family. Ultimately he remained, the pair building and lighting a bonfire in the snow, filming it as it burned all day, the lyrics seeming perfectly appropriate for this heart breaking loss of his friends and the cathartic nature of the fire, which created a beautiful harmony between the film maker and the musician during this three day wake. The morning Amato left, Vernon wrote the first draft of Perth, working on the melody and that riff that Yvette Young is parodying and it would become the first song on the record.
I have listened to these songs over and over again since their releases in 2007 and 2011, and I remember being in the workshop at university the day that Ledger's death was announced, every hour the news on the radio reminding everyone in the room that it had happened, and that this promising actor was no longer alive. But I didn't know there was any connection to this tragedy and the songs until last year.
Part of me really misses the more folksy, midwestern emo sound of those first few albums, fully embracing the sadness and isolation of Vernon's state of mind at the time of writing. It's so moving and enveloping and sad, but comforting at the same time. The music of Bon Iver is still some of the most beautiful and moving I've listened too, it's changed over the years, you can still hear that old sound, but it's moved on, grown up, and I still get excited when new songs comes out, and miss it when it feels like years since the last release. Which is why it's always a feature on my playlists.
Link || Bon Iver || Website || IMDb || Wikipedia || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || YouTube || Vimeo || Bandcamp || Soundcloud || Spotify || Amazon Music || Apple Music || Deezer || Image
Link || The Solitary Fame of Bon Iver's Justin Vernon by Josh Eells via Rolling Stone
Link || Bon Iver's 'Perth' Was Inspired By Heath Ledger by Johnny Brayson via Bustle
Link || Perth by Bon Iver via Song Facts
It has become very normal for teasers to drop for films, tv and music. Some simply. upload a teaser post to their socials, others (such as The 1975) completely wipe their social media platforms prior to a new release, Charlie Puth on the other hand teases his audience with snippets of his creative process for a new track for months, keeping them on edge before finally releasing the song.
@charlieputh I’m freaking out wtf just happened….. 💡
♬ original sound - Charlie Puth
@charlieputh If this song gets 100,000 pre saves I’ll finish it and drop it. Link in bio 💡
♬ original sound - Charlie Puth
It's clever marketing for sure, keeping your audience on tenterhooks and feeling as though they are part of the creative process. Or indeed draw in new audiences because watching the process, discovering what that weird noise in a song is, or simply enjoying someone's innate ability to have some silly charming fun. Whatever the science or strategy there is behind it, Puth has a good understanding of it.
Apparently the song started life as a slower, sadder ballad about how Puth couldn't switch his brain off, but it morphed into this incredibly upbeat song about a girl, who he knows is wrong for him but against his better judgment, he's really attracted to her and she know how to turn him on "like a light switch". This is mirrored in an incredibly silly video in which the singer is working out, losing weight, and getting his shit together so he can go and see the girl again for a second chance... only to discover she's with someone else who's none of the things he thought he needed to be, but those changes he needed to make to make himself happier.
This song makes me happy, it's incredibly upbeat and while I wasn't a listener of Charlie Puth when this was released. This drip feeding of the making process for making Charlie Be Quiet had that song stuck in my head months before it every came out because, as intended, drip feeding snippets on social media got it in there. I'll admit to being a sheep and easily lead by this kind of marketing, but the music is fun and he's entertaining, so, hats off to him for working the system and gaining another fan.
Link || Behind the Meaning of Charlie Puth's TikTok-Activated "Light Switch" by Tina Benitez-Eves via American Songwriter
Would it be a playlist from 2022 is Unholy by Sam Smith feat. Kim Petras didn't feature? It was such a change for Smith, given what we were familiar with and expecting from them being more ballads, having them release such a sexually charged song and cabaret style video came completely from left field. And thank goodness! In the past I've really liked Sam Smith, but their ballads had become so repetitive, or maybe it was the curse of the Bond theme for Spectre (2015), but I just got really bored with their music. That is bar a few collaborations such as Latch, with Disclosure. It just wasn't music I was particularly interested in anymre, but Unholy has certainly made me more curious for what may come next.
Link || Sam Smith || Website || IMDb || Wikipedia || Instagram || Twitter || TikTok || Facebook || YouTube || SoundCloud || Spotify || Amazon Music || Apple Music || Deezer || Image
Link || Kim Petras || Website || IMDb || Wikipedia || Instagram || Twitter || TikTok || Facebook || YouTube || SoundCloud || Spotify || Amazon Music || Apple Music || Deezer
Link || Disclosure || Website || IMDb || Wikipedia || Instagram || Twitter || TikTok || Twitch || Facebook || YouTube || Bandcamp || SoundCloud || Spotify || Amazon Music || Apple Music || Deezer
Link || Sam Smith and Kim Petras Just Put Themselves in the Running [...] by Tomas Mier via Rolling Stone
I can explain.
The band Loveless has made about ten or eleven appearances on this list of the music that got into my head in 2022 (though there were definitely more instances that went un-noted) and it's all the fault of my little sister and cover songs.
Loveless are a L.A. based band consisting of Julian Comeau (Vocalist) and Dylan Tirapelli-Jamail (Multi-instrumentalist) which formed in the Autumn of 2019 and through social media, in particular TikTok, have grown in popularity because of a simple idea put forwards by Comeau, "what if it was pop-punk?".
Taking pretty much any song which was popular, or requested by fans, from Lizzo and Billie Eilish to Kate Bush and The Gregory Brothers parody's, Loveless, in particular Comeau, made it pop-punk, covering the songs for his social media audience, and over the space of a couple of months garnering the band two million followers.
I'm almost positive I stumbled across them prior to 2022, but last year my little sister sent me some of their covers and I quickly became a subscriber. This was not only because I love a well done cover and he was covering many of the songs I already loved and had been listening too throughout the year, or that I am a sucker for pop-punk, having listened to way too much of it in the early 2000's, but Comeau was incredibly charming, ending most uploads with a cheeky grin and a "thanks" which always made me smile.
Fortunately not only did I like the covers but also their original material, because through the covers I grew to really enjoy the sound the band created, and again that pop-punk aesthetic harkening back to some of the music I listening too in my teen/twenties and has stayed with me, going from playlist to playlist throughout the subsequent years. (It's funny how many of the bands and music I still listen too from those formative years, I guess it's somewhat of a nostalgic safe zone.)
Being the band who covers songs isn't always easy, especially when you're better known for that than your original music (to the point where I'll admit some of the covers I didn't know weren't original, such as Middle Of The Night, originally by Elley Duhé, which I had never heard). This has meant that over the last few months, as Loveless have been touring their first album, Comeau has pulled back on the number of covers he's been releasing via social media, primarily to try and put their own stamp on the music they're releasing, which is understandable.
It's not often a band kind of dominates one of my yearly playlists, but so many good covers, plus their original music, as I said at the beginning, I could have put more in because of the frequency that they were releasing their snippets of covers. The power of social media for new bands everybody! It's genuinely insane.
Link || Loveless || Website || Instagram || Twitter || TikTok || Facebook || YouTube || SoundCloud || Spotify || Amazon Music || Apple Music || Deezer || Julian Insta || Dylan Insta
Link || How Loveless Took Pop-Punk Covers From TikTok To Lizzo's Ear [...] by Jessica Shalvoy via Variety
I have this thing where I get older but just never wiser
Midnights become my afternoons
When my depression works the graveyard shift
All of the people I've ghosted stand there in the room
I should not be left to my own devices
They come with prices and vices
I end up in crisis (tale as old as time)
I wake up screaming from dreaming
One day I'll watch as you're leaving
'Cause you got tired of my scheming
(For the last time)
It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me
At tea time, everybody agrees
I'll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror
It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero
(Anti-Hero by Taylor Swift)
For about two years 1989 by Taylor Swift lived in my car. It was the perfect mixture of bouncy, fun and sing-along-able, that it made really good driving music, which didn't make me have to flip between stations or mean downloading more music onto my phone that it's pathetic memory could hold. Putting a CD in the car is one of the most reliable ways I know of making me listen to an album from start to finish, though it never stops me from obsessively playing certain songs.
So, even though Swift's new album, Midnights, came out at the end of October, I've still not fully listened to it, but instead got initial completely obsessed by Bejewelled, and then equally obsessed with Anti-Hero, as song about societal pressures, self-loathing, depression and anxiety, which fitted my state of being at the start of November, as real life and the past collided, and knocked me into an overthinking loop I'm still struggling to deal with.
The song in the few months since its release has become one of her biggest hits, and has ranked amongst some of the best songs of 2022 from various sources, but it didn't avoid criticism thanks to it's music video, which featured a current incarnation of Swift alongside a younger version (around 2010 era) and a giant version. The controversy surrounded the fact that Swift was alluding to her struggle with disordered eating by depicting one of the two regular sized Swifts disapproving of the display on the scale the other is standing upon, which originally bore the word "fat" as the weight. With this she was accused of being fatphobic, and reinforcing the stereotype that being fat is bad, and something people should be not only ashamed of, but shamed for.
As someone who has struggled with her weight and the shame and shaming for being fat most of my their life, I wasn't bothered by this word on the scale, because it doesn't matter what your size, we have all been conditioned to think that it's bad, and that you can't be beautiful, talented, or even worthy because of the stigma surrounding it. The pressure to stay thin and be seen as the perfect size to be worthy is no different than being pressured to lose weight. Personally I will never not have the mindset of "if only I was thin" or "when I'm thin" that I will suddenly be worthy of peoples time, of someone's love, of success or attention, but I also know that being thin won't suddenly make me happy.
For the sake of people who were triggered I'm glad that Swift chose to remove this scene from the music video, but it did sanitise her message, which ultimately is that we put the value of weight on our selves more often than not, because we've been so pre-conditioned into believing that the only way to get what we want is to look the way that the media and trends of the time say we should. Demonising and shaming people about there size is just easier now with social media.
My question is however, why shouldn't she express her own trauma in her own way? And why was it okay for Charlie Puth to give a similar portrayal of big is bad in his Light Switch video, was it purely because he did it in a comedic style, while Swift's was more serious? Was it because of gender? Was it purely because Swift was pointed and in big bold letters highlighted that in may peoples psychology the word "fat" is bad?
I have no problem with either of these videos, or their interpretation of how weight is indicative of happiness, in fact I very much enjoyed both and understood the meaning, I just wish that if one was pointed too as being harmful, possibly the other should have at least been mentioned as having similar negative connotations.
Anyway, I love this song, and I definitely feel like "the monster on the hill" a lot of the time.
Link || Taylor Swift || Website || IMDb || Wikipedia || Instagram || Twitter || TikTok || Facebook || Tumblr || YouTube || SoundCloud || Spotify || Amazon Music || Apple Music || Deezer || Anti-Hero Wiki || Image
Link || Go Behind The Meaning Of The New Taylor Swift Single, "Anti-Hero" by Jacob Uitti via American Songwriter
Link || Taylor Swift's "Anti-Hero" Surpasses Her "Blank Space" Record by Mary Kate Carr via AV Club
Link || Taylor Swift's 'Anti-Hero' Lyrics Are A 'Tour' Of Everything She 'Hates' About Herself [...] by Jason Pham via Style Caster
Link || What Taylor Swift's 'Anti-Hero' Controversy Can Tell Us About Fatphobia In Feminist Politics by Jo Adetunji via The Conversation
Link || Taylor Swift Forced To Minimize Her Disordered Eating Experience Because People Complained by Tomas Mier via Rolling Stone
If I like a song it'll be stuck in my head for ages. Sometimes it'll eventually bounce me to another song, then another but having a song stuck in my head is just part of everyday life. The joy of involuntary musical imagery (INMI), a.k.a. earworms, which all too easily get into my brain, as they are want to do. But it also means I associate songs to certain words, someone will say something and my brain will bounce to a song lyrics, or a song will play and like lots of people, my brain will connect to a memory, good or bad.
But here we are, finally at the end of the laughably named 12 Days.
"So I'm just popping in to say
I hope you have a good day."
(Good Morning by Lennnie)
Listening: To Build A Home - The Cinematic Orchestra
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