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chpkns · 3 years

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BEST ALBUMS 2020

Some albums I enjoyed during quarantine.

Hon Mentions: Campfire Chords - Arkells, A Written Testimony - Jay Electronica, All In One - Jaunt, Punisher - Phoebe Bridgers, Alfredo - Freddie Gibs and Madlib, Thats What They All Say - Jack Harlow, Western Swing & Waltzes and Other Punchy Songs - Colter Wall, This Place Sucks Ass - PUP, Only For Dolphins - Action Bronson, Black Habits - D Smoke, What’s Your Pleasure - Jessie Ware, 3.15.20 - Childish Gambino, Dedicated Side B - Carly Rae Jepsen, Dark Lane Demo Tapes - Drake, After Hours - The Weeknd, color theory - Soccer Mommy, Circles - Mac Miller, Womb - Purity Ring

10) Future Nostalgia - Dua Lipa

One of the lesser, although still significant, tragedies of the 2020 COVID era was that weddings and sweaty club basements the world over were robbed of Dua Lipa’s prolific output this year. Future Nostalgia is hit or miss in places, but the hits come hot and heavy delivering banger after 80′s-disco-inspired banger. Dominant summer jams “Don’t Start Now” and “Break My Heart” are the highlights here, along with “Levitating” (equally good with or without DaBaby). Sleeper tracks “Cool” and “Hallucinate” round out the year’s best pure pop album.

Highlights: Don’t Start Now, Break My Heart, Levitating, Physical, Cool, Hallucinate

9) Women In Music, Pt. III - HAIM

The third album from LA’s sister act rock trio HAIM delivers consistency and growth for the band. There’s plenty of retro heartbreak rock on Women In Music, Pt. III to satisfy fans of HAIM’s first two albums, but lots of new on offer as well including the jazzy Lou Reed inspired sax of “Summer Girl” and Danielle Haim sounding positively Joni Mitchell-esque on “Man From the Magazine”. The auditory production flourishes of erstwhile Vampire Weekend member Rostam are noticeable throughout and help stretch the bounds of the HAIM sisters’ signature Wilson Phillips meets Fleetwood Mac summer rock sound into something more of the moment.

Highlights: The Steps, Summer Girl, Don’t Wanna, Man From the Magazine, FUBT

8) My Turn (Deluxe) - Lil Baby

I’ve almost given up on trying to enjoy or understand most “new rap” but every now and then something breaks through that I connect with for some reason. Atlanta rapper Lil Baby’s My Turn was that album for me this year. There are many reasons I feel I should not like Lil Baby’s music, from his liberal use of autotune to his mumbling delivery, but something always drew me back to it and, listen after listen, it grew on me. Lil Baby’s flow is persistent when he locks in, with matching driving trap production from Quay Global, Tay Keith and others, mirroring in sound the story of Baby’s rise from the streets to prison to the studio. The standout track is late addition “The Bigger Picture”, Lil Baby’s protest anthem on race in America, policing and the turmoil following the killing of George Floyd by police, a political statement from an otherwise apolitical artist, showing that Lil Baby has much more to offer than bravado and autotune.

Highlights: Grace (ft. 42 Dugg), Forever (ft. Lil Wayne), No Sucker (ft. Moneybagg Yo), Social Distancing, The Bigger Picture

7) Miss Anthropocene - Grimes

The third major studio release from Montreal native Claire Boucher, better known as Grimes, doesn’t reach the same highs as its predecessors - 2015′s electro-pop masterpiece Art Angels (which rated number 1 on this list for that year) or 2012′s Visions, the synth-laden fever dream that introduced Grimes to mainstream notoriety (number 2 on this list for 2012) - but it’s still very much worth the time. The vibe of Miss A falls somewhere between Grimes’ previous two albums, and a little darker and messier to boot. Grimes sounds a bit like she’s playing a concert for the end of the world, which feels a bit prophetic for an album released just before a global pandemic took hold. As always, Grimes is out to flex her muscle as a technician and across the album’s ten tracks she mixes diverse sounds ranging from rave synths to banjos showing how far her craft has come since making Visions on Garageband in her Mile End apartment.

Highlights: So Heavy I Fell Through The Earth, Violence, Delete Forever, 4ÆM, You’ll miss me when I’m not around

6) evermore - Taylor Swift

Spoiler alert, this isn’t the highest ranked Taylor Swift album on this list. Surprise released in December, evermore was an early Christmas present to fans of Swift’s surprise summer album folklore (more on that later). evermore continues Swift’s reinvention from pop star to indie singer-songwriter, assisted by songwriting partner Aaron Dessner of The National and a variety of indie darling guest stars - this time around featuring HAIM, The National’s Matt Berninger and another stunning guest turn with Bon Iver. Speaking of Justin Vernon, the album capping title track might be the single best song on either folklore or evermore. And for fans of Taylor’s earlier catalogue like me, the return to country music on “no body, no crime” is like reconnecting with an old friend. evermore is a little messier and less consistent thematically than its sister album, feeling a bit like folklore’s b-sides. But when your b-sides are better than most artist’s a-sides, why not release another album’s worth?

Highlights: ‘tis the damn season, no body no crime (ft. HAIM), coney island (ft. The National), cowboy like me, evermore (ft. Bon Iver)

5) RTJ4 - Run The Jewels

Walking the streets of my neighbourhood with the first listen of RTJ4 in my earbuds, I found myself actually crying at the thought that I would not get to see Killer Mike and el-P perform these songs live in the summer of 2020. The memories of RTJ festival sets past came rushing over me in a wave. That was my first “damn, I miss live music moment” of the pandemic. The fourth instalment of Run The Jewels’ historic rap partnership is more of the same in the very best way. Like the dynamic duo’s previous three instalments, RTJ4 is in your face, moves at a frenetic clip, and takes no prisoners. There’s even another album highlighting collaboration with Rage Against The Machine’s Zack De La Rocha. The politics of RTJ4′s tirades against inequity and the police state feel even more imminent in 2020 against the backdrop of George Floyd, the ensuing protest movement that gripped America, and the 2020 presidential election. I really hope we get a chance to see Mike and el-P tour these songs in 2021, the world needs it.

Highlights: ooh la la (ft. Greg Nice and DJ Premier), goonies vs. E.T., walking in the snow, JU$T (ft. Pharrell Williams and Zack de la Rocha), a few words for the firing squad (radiation)

4) Saint Cloud - Waxahatchee

The majestically twangy folk-Americana of Saint Cloud, the fifth solo album from Katie Crutchfield (stage named Waxahatchee after Waxahatchee Creek, Alabama, where the singer grew up), is a nostalgic cure for the ails of 2020. The soft bluesy rhythms of Crutchfield’s songs feel like a lazy long summer day spent by the water. That was something we needed this year. The songwriting is just as beautiful. The standout track, “Fire”, speaks to Crutchfield’s journey finding sobriety and reconnecting with her southern roots. It also speaks to a longing feeling “give me something / it ain’t enough / it ain’t enough”. On “Arkadelphia”, Crutchfield croons: “We try to give it all meaning / Glorify the grain of the wood / Tell ourselves what's beautiful and good”. In the chaos of 2020, the calm oasis of Saint Cloud is certainly something beautiful and good worth enjoying.

Highlights: Can’t Do Much, Fire, The Eye, Arkadelphia, St. Cloud

3) Suddenly - Caribou

Suddenly was my first genuine pandemic listen and, in the early days of lockdown, I found myself going back to it again and again. So much so, that the opening haunting notes of “Sister” became a kind of touchstone as I adjusted to a weird new work-from-home lifestyle. The chilled out weirdness of Caribou was an extremely welcome presence in 2020. It had been long enough since 2014′s Our Love (2014′s number 1 on this list) that I’d forgotten how enjoyably quirky Dan Snaith’s floaty pseudo-house tunes could be. Suddenly is a little more laid back than the club ready Our Love, which maybe suits it more to a world where dancefloors are closed. The tunes are also tighter, more economical in their length and soundscape. The lead single “Home” sounds downright commercial (in a good way) with it’s motown sampled chorus. Other parts of the album, like the closing “Cloud Song” venture into more experimental territories. All throughout, however, are Caribou’s signature warm chord progressions inviting you to lose yourself in them. Whether you’re looking for a guided meditation or an at-home dance party, Suddenly was the perfect 2020 album for it.

Highlights: Sister, Home, Lime, Never Come Back, Ravi

2) Cuttin’ Grass, Vol. 1 : The Butcher Shoppe Sessions - Sturgill Simpson

2020 was full of unexpected things, many bad but some surprisingly delightful. Firmly in the latter category is Cuttin’ Grass, Sturgill Simpson’s surprise double album made up entirely of bluegrass covers of his own catalogue. A true product of 2020, Simpson recorded the album with a murderer’s row of contemporary bluegrass artists after recovering from COVID-19 and challenging his fans to raise funds for charity in exchange for recording a new album. That album became Cuttin’ Grass, a traditional bluegrass re-imagination of the greatest hits and hidden gems of a country artist who has always strived to avoid being labelled as a country artist. The songs feel effortlessly at home and are given new life amid the frenetic guitar and mandolin picking, flying fiddles, and twangling banjos. If Simpson’s ode to the revelatory experience of psychedlic drug use “Turtles All The Way Down” felt revolutionary on 2014′s Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, it feels like an old standard here with its tempo pitched up and enveloped in the cacophony of the bluegrass ensemble. There is some good old fashioned heartbreak to slow things down too. Mandolin player and backup vocalist Sierra Hull shines on “I Wonder” (a cover of a song originally recorded by Sturgill’s former band Sunday Valley) as she joins Simpson on the chorus: “Tell me am I the only one / drinking and cursing your name?” The juxtaposition of Simpson’s unconventional country catalogue with the most traditional of country music styles just works and the entire hour can be listened and relistened for days. And if you’re still not satisfied, the companion “Volume 2: the Cowboy Arms Sessions” released in December brings back the same supporting cast to explore more of Simpson’s catalogue.

Highlights: All The Pretty Colors, Breakers Roar, Time After All, Turtles All The Way Down, Voices

1) folklore - Taylor Swift

Well, I told you there’d be more Taylor Swift on this list, and here it is. Your number 1 album of 2020 is folklore, the surprise release pandemic project in which the world’s biggest country star turned pop star reinvented herself again as an indie artist. Unlike anything else Swift has put out since RED, nothing on folklore is designed to be played in a stadium. Rather, it’s all more at home in a cabin by the fire, or in your earbuds on a fall walk... basically, it’s music meant for 2020. Like its companion evermore, folklore is the product of Swift’s songwriting collaboration with The National’s guitarist Aaron Dessner. The melding of songwriting styles seems like an odd match at first but sounds like a match made in heaven. Lyrically, Swift’s songwriting makes an evolutionary leap, almost leaving her primary auto or semi-autobiographical comfort zone behind completely (other than, perhaps, in heavily veiled metaphor) in favour of invented stories and semi-historical world building. After a few listens, you discover that the same characters appear in different songs like the imagined history of Rebekah Harkness, the real life former inhabitant of Swift’s Rhode Island home, on “the last great american dynasty” or imagery of “battleships” that “sink beneath the waves” in the ghost story of “my tears ricochet”. In the so-called “teenage love triangle trilogy” of “betty”, “cardigan”, and “august”, Swift tells different parts of the same story from the perspective of different characters. Each song stands on its own, but the discovery that the pieces fit together is wonderful. “betty” is the standout track for me, as a long suffering fan of “country Taylor”. In style, it harkens back to her earlier work, but in substance it’s something new entirely as Swift sings from the perspective of James, the boy who has done wrong by his lover and is seeking forgiveness. The pinnacle of the album is “exile” Swift’s collaboration with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. The call and response interaction of Swift with Vernon’s true to for emma form baritone is chill inducing. Like so many of the unexpected good things in 2020, folklore came from throwing plans out the window and doing what felt right for the moment. This is Taylor Swift making the music she wanted to make. In Dark Knight fashion, it’s the album we needed, if not the one we deserved. It’s the best album of the year.

Highlights: cardigan, the last great american dynasty, exile (ft. Bon Iver), my tears ricochet, epiphany, betty, peace

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mich-blog12 · 3 years

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Good morning everyone! My name is Michelle, I am a grade 12 HUMSS student. Please allow me to share with you guys my interpretation of the imagery and diction used from All Too Well by Taylor Swift.

But before that, let me introduce Taylor Swift to all of you first. Taylor Alison Swift is an American singer-songwriter. She was born on December 13, 1989, in West Reading, Pennsylvania, US. Her discography spans multiple genres, and her narrative songwriting, which is often inspired by her personal life, has received widespread media coverage and critical praise.

From the lyrics "And you call me up again just to break me like a promise","And it smells like me. As we can see, Taylor used simile in these lines. She compares herself as the promise that could break with the use of a like and the meaning of simile is a figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind that is often introduced by like or as used to make a description more emphatic or vivid.

"I'm a crumpled-up piece of paper lying here." Taylor Swift compares herself to a crumpled piece of paper which when crumpled is simply will be discarded, just like when you're broken up with. The memories of the relationship are still attached but they will soon fade away because it is not important to your partner anymore. Taylor was wounded when she was dumped, according to this metaphor. "Crumbled" is another term for 'broken'. A balled-up piece of paper will never be the same again, and so is she.

"Time won't fly; it's like I'm paralyzed by it." This line is a personification because time is definitely can't fly and it will never paralyze someone. The lyrics created by Taylor means that the time is so slow that she even think she was stuck with her situation right now.

"Autumn leaves falling like pieces into place." It seemed that all of the pieces were falling into place like autumn leaves. However, she had no idea that the fall of autumn leaves signaled the start of the winter season when trees hibernate. Essentially, the trees perish. Taylor was naive and optimistic when she realized this.

"Your cheeks were turning red." The imagery used in this line is visual imagery that engages the sense of sight. This is what you can see, and includes visual descriptions. Cheeks were turning red means that that someone is so happy or maybe embarrassed.

"We're singing in the car, getting lost upstate." This line used the imagery of auditory since the word singing is in there. Auditory imagery engages the sense of hearing. This is the way things sound. Literary devices such as onomatopoeia and alliteration can help create sounds in writing.

That's all everyone, thank you for lending me your precious time. Have a great day ahead!

#blogessay #alltoowell #literati

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hannahhaedike-blog · 4 years

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The main text within this multimodality example is clearly auditory, but because we also get to take a look at the cover art, we get a sense of visual & spatial text as well. With auditory being the main text, I’m able to picture what I’d like as an audience member rather than what I’m “supposed” to picture. This song brings me back to when I was in London & I image myself walking down all the streets mentioned in the song. This is by the far the most different of the three examples because there isn’t a primary visual text. Once again it comes from the same time period as the other two but completely different location & form of publication. This goes right along with the last example in levity. I find it interesting that all three of my examples are light hearted, or with the first one, attempting to be light-hearted. I love this song even though I’m not the biggest fan of Taylor Swift. & I think this is my favorite out of the three examples because of the way it makes me feel & the memories that I associate with the song

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theparaminds · 5 years

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There is no beginning, there is no end. There is only growth, there is only improvement. This has become the ongoing mantra stupid rich kid revolves his artistry around, the ideology he answers his anxieties with and the philosophy he’s used to open more doors than he could’ve imagined possible. It was often unnatural for his truest self to be reflected within his work, feeling as though he needed to fully understand the complexities of the human existence before speaking on any of them. Yet now, he knows his understanding, and subsequently, his highest art will come by overcoming the entrapping stagnation, expressing all he intakes with unflinching, beautiful confusion.

Coming off the heels of a new EP and on the cusp of a brand new album, stupid rich kid has a new pathway at his fingertips, a chance to subvert his past mistakes. A chance to create the narrative surrounding his work. By pairing his wise-beyond-its-years lyricism with the lush auditory playground he’s established, stupid rich kid is teaching as he learns, finally living life without the fear and distractions that woke with him in the morning, and stayed with him as he attempted to sleep at night.

It’s, above all, stupid rich kid’s endless pursuit for artistic truth, and therefore personal bliss, that explains the core of essence. Like a beach in winter, it doesn't always make sense, but it’s the alluring contrast between confusion and beauty that builds a musical landscape like no other. His commitment to progressing himself towards the promised land of artistry is to be admired, to be cherished. While he may not know the end, and often wants to disregard the beginning, it is the present which he has grounded himself within, living with a joy previously unknown and a passion ignited brighter than ever.

Our first question as always, how’s your day going and how have you been?

I've been real good, real tired though, but staying busy.

Yesterday you were posting a little of being at Laneway fest, how was it to be around that creative atmosphere and see a lot of the scene come together?

It was good, just cool to have good fun. It was nice to see people having a good time and I really had a nice day.

It's a crime not to start with the most obvious thing, you just released a new EP. What’s kinda been your reflection on the reception and have you gotten the peace you hoped to achieve from it?

I haven’t been too proud of anything I’ve released up until this EP. When I was 15 and super young, I was also naive and had no idea what I was doing, especially when I released Girl, which I’ll be taking off of streaming. With next to no self-confidence or ability in music, I spent a whole year staying real low key and just working on myself as an artist, searching for my sound. I think the singles I released over 2018 were cool and I was starting to find my sound a bit more for sure, but still didn’t sit right. I don’t know, I guess I wasn’t happy with who I was, how I got there or where I was going, which is something I talk about quite a bit on the EP and album. The EP is definitely a truer reflection of my sound and vision, and 2 years later, I’m feeling a lot more comfortable as an artist. I never have any regrets, because regrets are just mistakes you’ve made that you haven’t done anything to fix. Definitely made a few mistakes at the start of my career, but I’m slowly patching them up and learning along the way. I’m still young, I just turned 18, and I’m just trying to constantly prove and improve my artistry to everybody and more importantly, myself.

In your mind, you talked about it being a prelude to the album. How do you think it'll compare between the two projects and what can people expect from the next one?

In my mind, I don't think I’ll be as surface level on the next one. I know that I'll talk about things I usually don't but need to explore in depth much more.

Is it key to you to always challenge yourself and not allow yourself to stagnate?

Yeah exactly, I look back at the EP already and wish I changed certain things. That's why it's good practice though, every song is different and it teaches me what people do and don't like and it surprises me as well, as their ideas sometimes differ from mine.

The songs are very different on the project, but you also talked about how you made the project in a couple months, so has it been just a month of learning and experimentation?

I had Attitude and Sonar in the works already, with Libra sign already out there, so it wasn't hard to put together, but to get the songs to the level I wanted was a little more difficult and it was just good to finish something completely.

As the last two months have gone, even though it's a short span, is there art, music or movies you've found yourself drawing from that really shaped this EP?

Taylor Swift generally shaped a bit of it, I don’t know why, shoutout to Taylor Swift. Skate 3, like the video game, that had a lot of impact on it. And generally just my friends and all that helped a lot.

What would you say then is your favorite video game?

I have like every Assassins Creed so probably that, I haven't played them in years, but honestly probably that.

While you did have a lot of collaboration on the EP and with past single releases, is that something you hope to continue with the album or do you want to become more singular?

I prefer working with people 100%, I get the best product of myself if I’m working with other people. I always end up pushing them, which ends up makes them push me and then we get something stronger out of it. The more somber songs I like to be like a cat and just take my time and stroll around.

When you're working with people it’s not competitive though, is it? It's more wanting to just create the best art possible from what you're saying.

I've felt both before and I'll tell you that I've never released anything that I’ve felt was competitive just because it's terrible and not why I make music. I always say that talent is not based on streams, and people need to see that.

Well at times it does feel like the New Zealand scene doesn't get the recognition due to location and whatnot, and it seems like you have a strong understanding that fame doesn't equal success. Which poses the question of what you do see as success if it isn't fame or fortune?

Honestly in some respects, as long as I’m happy I’m successful. I want to work with my idols. Success looks like changing the name for New Zealand and showing that we make really cool, special stuff.

If you could hold a show anywhere on the planet, with money not being a restriction, where would you do it at?

Pink Floyd played it once back when they made Echoes. It’s this like Roman amphitheater, that one is unreal beautiful and I’d go there in a heartbeat.

As you're prepping for this album, what personal goals do you want to achieve beyond music and art?

I guess staying really happy. I always talk about happiness like a wave that goes up and down, I always got scared when I was younger because when I was happy I knew it would go downhill and I’m at that point now, so I don't want to fear it going back down.

In your process, when you created a set of songs and you're trying to cut it down, how do you filter out what's artistically necessary?

It has to all flow from start to finish, it has to be like a Pink Floyd album. It’s like how you don't want to watch a movie with the scenes all out of order. It should be like a rollercoaster.

When you create, do you feel as though you have a goal to resonate with certain listeners or is your output more so for you and something you're just happy others relate to?

I don't know, whenever someone's asked this always just says ‘that outcast kid’ they want to connect to, and I for sure feel that. But instead of just the outcast kid and saying I've been you before, I want to do that for everybody. I played a show not that long ago where there all types of vastly different people in one room, but they were all cool with each other and enjoying the same songs.

One aspect you haven’t fully delved into is the visual side to your art. Is that something you hope to build more on leading to this album?

Yeah, I have an art director now, so we’re planning a lot of crazy visuals and I think the rollout for the album will be very visual based and something unique.

On that note, what’s your favorite music video you’ve ever seen?

Nikes by Frank Ocean for sure. I remember that was such a great roll out. I had Endless on a tab in my computer at all times and was just listening whenever I could. I also spent all money on the Boys Don’t Cry Mag and both his Vinyl.

Wow, you're a legend for having all of that. What in your mind is the biggest inspiration you draw from Frank and his work?

Well, I'm not super inspired by him in a musical sense. I actually feel I don't draw anything in that way. But I've always loved his elusiveness, the fact he's so big and no one knows him. I also just love that he's always challenging himself.

As a final question, what is the memory that at the end of this year, you hope to create for yourself? The one you want to leave this year knowing you got to experience?

I want to see myself having heaps of fun, just with my friends, ones I have and haven’t met yet. Making all the music in person and seeing it all come to fruition in person is my biggest vision for sure.

Do you have anyone you want to shout out or anything you want to promote? The floor is yours.

Shouts out everyone on the EP; so that’s Garrett (Postcard Boy), Seungjin, Maxwell (Young). Tom (Verberne) as well. Oh and then also Yuki (Hugo) and James Thorrington!

Follow stupid rich kid on Instagram and Twitter

Listen on Spotify and Apple Music

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foursprout-blog · 6 years

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A Few Songs That Helped Me Get Through 2017

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/happiness/a-few-songs-that-helped-me-get-through-2017/

A Few Songs That Helped Me Get Through 2017

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Chrissy Stockton

Every year I keep an auditory scrapbook by dragging the song I listened to the most (or that meant the most to be) that month into it’s own playlist. At the end of the year I have a soundtrack for the year. Years later (this is the 11th year I’ve done this) I can go through an old annual playlist and know exactly what I was doing and feeling each month because of how visceral the memory of loving and relating to music is. Here are few songs that helped me get through 2017:

January — ‘Lost in my Mind’ by The Head and the Heart

I’d gone to this concert a few months earlier with an old friend and had one of the best nights of that year dancing and being affectionate and the way you feel when you’re around someone who knows you and loves you and makes you feel like the best version of yourself. I don’t see her often so it was novel for me to remember feeling like this. This month we also started working on the Thought Catalog magazine in which I had an essay about when I lived with this friend on a mountain as part of an intentional community of students with no wifi and wood burning stoves in all our cabins. The Head and the Heart was the perfect kind of music for me to romanticize the life I had there and the people I loved and who loved me and how lonely I feel for a community like that sometimes.

This month I was also obsessed with this Phillip Roth quote and thinking about how I could live my life like this:

“I read till all hours if I want to. If I get up at five and I can’t sleep and I want to work, I go out and I go to work. So I work, I’m on call. I’m like a doctor and it’s an emergency. And I’m the emergency.” — Phillip Roth, Into the Clear

I don’t know if I’ve made that much progress over the year of figuring out how to be in more of a community again, or how to orient my life so that it feels like “I’m the emergency”. I don’t know how to do that on a big, real, permanent scale. I made a secret facebook group for my writer friends to do peaks and valleys every week or so, which has been really, really good. I went to Montana on another trip that was meant to be more about being with people than it was about being on vacation. I’m trying to do more.

February — ‘I Don’t Wanna Live Forever’ by Zayn and Taylor Swift

I went on a yoga retreat way up north with a friend and we had fun driving up there but then on the way home we kind of had to drive in silence for about 45 minutes before we could finally turn the radio on because every sensory experience felt like overload after 4 days of being without a phone or listening to music or doing anything but yoga and reading quietly. We’re both Taylor Swift fans and I love the moment of a good pop song where you hear it everywhere you go and it just makes you happy. It was a really good memory to be silly and sing along to this song with someone after being so serious for so long.

March — ‘In Your Atmosphere’ by John Mayer

I watched John’s live concert Where the Light is like 40 times this month, particularly him performing this song. I was thinking about how I need to be more hopeful than nostalgic.

In the song, John says:

“Wherever I go, whatever I do, I wonder where I am in my relationship to you. Wherever you go, wherever you are, I watch your life play out in pictures from afar.”

I was thinking about how much I hate that I have to be on Facebook. I hate how much people can look me up and read about me even though I also think that for me personally being transparent about my life is one of the healthiest things I do on a consistent basis, and something that helps me learn and grow faster than if I weren’t doing it. And Facebook is so important, it’s so much free information. I want to be a commercially successful writer and every day when I am on Facebook I am getting a free education in what makes people want to read or look at something.

April — ‘Love on the Weekend’ by John Mayer

I spent this entire month thinking about a vacation I took the north shore of Lake Superior the previous winter and how magical it was and every night I was there I took a bath and opened the window so I could hear the waves crashing while I was cozy in the tub.

This was a really difficult month because I was dealing with a lot of personal stuff and this song helped me escape and think about the simple, good times I’ve had in the past and will have again in the future.

May — ‘I Love You Always Forever’ by Betty Who

I discovered Betty Who because she sings on one of my favorite Troye Sivan tracks and I think all I did in May is space out and listen to this on repeat.

June — ‘Higher’ by Carly Rae Jepsen

I think the only people in the world who aren’t Carly Rae Jepsen fans are the people who haven’t heard the first 45 seconds of ‘Higher’. I listened to Emotion Side B on repeat all month and particularly one day when my cousin and I were going to a beach in Wisconsin which involves an incredibly idyllic drive through the river valley and around some cliffs before you get to this little beach town on the St. Croix. It was such a peaceful and happy day and I think I was feeling really happy and hopeful all month.

July — ‘Lust for Life’ by Lana Del Rey and The Weeknd

I went to see Ryan Adams in a neighboring city and didn’t plan it out very well so I ended up getting a ride home from a friend who didn’t even go with me and we ended up driving around for a really long time listening to music and talking. It was a very July Forever kind of night and we listened to this song but it was also just in the same howl-at-the-moon kind of vibe.

August — ‘All I Really Want’ by Alanis Morissette

The only things I did in August were work and walk around the lake by my house and listen to Joe Rogan and My Favorite Murder. But I liked this song I rediscovered, especially the remastered version. It’s a very bossy demand for reciprocity and it made me feel very in control of everything around me as I spent an entire month against a deadline for a 25k word project I wanted to have done by September.

September — ‘Free/Into the Mystic’ by Zac Brown Band

This is kind of cheating because it’s two songs in one, but I was listening to a lot of live recordings this month and went to Montana and just had a very happy, chill month which is reflected in this track.

October — ‘Over When it’s Over’ by Eric Church

I don’t know how I discovered this song but the more times I listened to it, the more times I needed to listen to it. It was a really stressful month and I was working so, so much and when I’m stressed out I romanticize songs about breakups. It just feels cathartic to think about the end of whatever period of stress I’m going through even when it has nothing to do with a romantic relationship.

November — ‘Oh Baby’ by LCD Soundsystem

I think if you opened up my body and a song came out it would be this one. It’s a very Chrissy song, very emo and depressing but in a way that is fun to dance to. I went to an LCD Soundsystem show this month and all my friends left or spent the entire show on a biz call in the lobby and everyone was super apologetic about it and I was like “um I am having the time of my life you’re fine.” I was alone in a crowd dancing to some of my favorite music. There are very few things that make me happier than that kind of night.

And through the rest of the year, there were some other tracks that were there for me as well. You can find your own Spotify year in review here and work backwards to make yours.

#Happiness

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