#also i did this without a single taylor swift song involved hell yeah | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ifuckinglovestvincent · 3 years

Text

THE FORTY-FIVE: ST. VINCENT

Sleazy, gritty, grimy – these are the words used to describe the latest iteration of St. Vincent, Annie Clark’s alter ego. As she teases the release of her upcoming new album, ‘Daddy’s Home’, Eve Barlow finds out who’s wearing the trousers now.

Photos: Zackery Michael

Yellow may be the colour of gold, the hue of a perfect blonde or the shade of the sun, but when it’s too garish, yellow denotes the stain of sickness and the luridness of sleaze. On ‘Pay Your Way In Pain’ – the first single from St. Vincent’s forthcoming sixth album ‘Daddy’s Home’ – Annie Clark basks in the palette of cheap 1970s yellows; a dirty, salacious yellow that even the most prudish of individuals find difficult to avert their gaze from. It’s a yellow that recalls the smell of cigarettes on fingers, the tape across tomorrow’s crime scene or the dull ache of bad penetration.

The video for the single, which dropped last Thursday, features Clark in a blonde wig and suit, channeling a John Cassavetes anti-heroine (think Gena Rowlands in Gloria) and ‘Fame’-era Bowie. She twists in front of too-bright disco lights. She roughs up her voice. She sings about the price we pay for searching for acceptance while being outcast from society. “So I went to the park just to watch the little children/ The mothers saw my heels and they said I wasn’t welcome,” she coos, and you immediately recognise the scene of a free woman threatening the post-nuclear families aspiring to innocence. Clark is here to pervert them.

She laughs. “That’s how I feel!” From her studio in Los Angeles, she begins quoting lyrics from Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Red House’. “It’s a blues song for 2021.” LA is a city Clark reluctantly only half calls home, and one that is opposed to her vastly preferred New York. “I don’t feel any romantic attachment to Los Angeles,” she says of the place she coined the song ‘Los Ageless’ about on 2017’s ‘Masseduction’ (“The Los Ageless hang out by the bar/ Burn the pages of unwritten memoirs”).“The best that could be said of LA is, ‘Yeah it’s nice.’ And it is! LA is easy and pleasant. But if you were a person the last thing you’d want someone to say about you is: ‘She’s nice!’”

On ‘Daddy’s Home’, Clark writes about a past derelict New York; a place Los Angeles would suffocate in. “The idea of New York, the art that came out of it, and my living there,” she says. “I’ve not given up my card. I don’t feel in any way ready to renounce my New York citizenship. I bought an apartment so I didn’t have to.” Her down-and-out New York is one a true masochist would love, and it’s sleazy in excess. Sleaze is usually the thing men flaunt at a woman’s expense. In 2021, the proverbial Daddy in the title is Clark. But there’s also a literal Daddy. He came home in the winter of 2019.

On the title track, Clark sings about “inmate 502”: her father. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison for his involvement in a $43m stock fraud scheme. He went away in May 2010. Clark reacted by writing her third breakthrough album ‘Strange Mercy’ in 2011; inspired not just by her father’s imprisonment but the effects it had on her life.“I mean it was rough stuff,” she says. “It was a fuck show. Absolutely terrible. Gut-wrenching. Like so many times in life, music saved me from all kinds of personal peril. I was angry. I was devastated. There’s a sort of dullness to incarceration where you don’t have any control. It’s like a thud at the basement of your being. So I wrote all about it,” she says.

Back then, she was aloof about meaning. In an interview we did that year, she called from a hotel rooftop in Phoenix and was fried from analytical questions. She excused her lack of desire to talk about ‘Strange Mercy’ as a means of protecting fans who could interpret it at will. Really she was protecting an audience closer to home. It’s clear now that the title track is about her father’s imprisonment (“Our father in exile/ For God only knows how many years”). Clark’s parents divorced when she was a child, and they have eight children in their mixed family, some of whom were very young when ‘Strange Mercy’ came out. She explains this discretion now as her method of sheltering them.

“I am protective of my family,” she says. “It didn’t feel safe to me. I disliked the fact that it was taken as malicious obfuscations. No.” Clark wanted to deal with the family drama in art but not in press. She managed to remain tight-lipped until she became the subject of a different intrusion. As St. Vincent’s star continued to rocket, Clark found herself in a relationship with British model Cara Delevingne from 2014 to 2016, and attracted celebrity tabloid attention. Details of her family’s past were exposed. The Daily Mail came knocking on her sister’s door in Texas, where Clark is from.

“Luckily I’m super tight with my family and the Daily Mail didn’t find anybody who was gonna sell me out,” she says. “They were looking for it. Clark girls are a fucking impenetrable force. We will cut a bitch.”

Four years later, Clark gets to own the narrative herself in the medium that’s most apt: music. “The story has evolved. I’ve evolved. People have grown up. I would rather be the one to tell my story,” she says, ruminating on the misfortune that this was robbed from her: a story that writes itself. “My father’s release from prison is a great starting point, right?” Between tours and whenever she could manage, Clark would go and visit him in prison and would be signing autographs in the visitation room for the inmates, who all followed her success with every album release, press clipping and late night TV spot. She joked to her sisters that she’d become the belle of the ball there. “I don’t have to make that up,” she says.

There’s an ease to Clark’s interview manner that hasn’t existed before. She seems ready not just to discuss her father’s story, but to own certain elements of herself. “Hell where can you run when the outlaw’s inside you,” she sings on the title track, alluding to her common traits with her father. “I’ve always had a relationship with my dad and a good one. We’re very similar,” she says. “The movies we like, the books, he liked fashion. He’s really funny, he’s a good time.” Her father’s release gave Clark and her brothers and sisters permission to joke. “The title, ‘Daddy’s Home’ makes me laugh. It sounds fucking pervy as hell. But it’s about a real father ten years later. I’m Daddy now!”

The question of who’s fathering who is a serious one, but it’s also not serious. Clark wears the idea of Daddy as a costume. She likes to play. She joins today’s Zoom in a pair of sunglasses wider than her face and a silk scarf framing her head. The sunglasses come off, and the scarf is a tool for distraction. She ties it above her forehead, attempts a neckerchief, eventually tosses it aside. Clark can only be earnest for so long before she seeks some mischief. She doesn’t like to stay in reality for extensive periods. “I like to create a world and then I get to live in it and be somebody new every two or three years,” she says. “Who wants to be themselves all the time?”

‘Daddy’s Home‘ began in New York at Electric Lady studios before COVID hit and was finished in her studio in LA. She worked on it with “my friend Jack” [Jack Antonoff, producer for Lana Del Rey, Lorde, Taylor Swift]. Antonoff and Clark worked on ‘Masseduction’ and found a winning formula, pushing Clark’s guitar-orientated electronic universe to its poppiest maximum, without compromising her idiosyncrasies. “We’re simpatico. He’s a dream,” she says. “He played the hell outta instruments on this record. He’s crushing it on drums, crushing it on Wurlitzer.” The pair let loose. They began with ‘The Holiday Party’, one of the warmest tracks Clark’s ever written. It’s as inviting as a winter fireplace, stoked by soulful horns, acoustic guitar and backing singers. “Every time they sang something I’d say, ‘Yeah but can you do it sleazier? Make your voice sound like you’ve been up for three days.” Clark speaks of an unspoken understanding with Antonoff as regards the vibe: “Familiar sounds. The opposite of my hands coming out of the speaker to choke you till you like it. This is not submission. Just inviting. I can tell a story in a different way.”

The entire record is familiar, giving the listener the satisfaction that they’ve heard the songs before but can’t quite place them. It’s a satisfying accompaniment to a pandemic that encouraged nostalgic listening. Clark was nostalgic too. She reverted to records she enjoyed with her father: Stevie Wonder’s catalogue from the 1970s (‘Songs In The Key Of Life’, ‘Innervisions’, ‘Talking Book’) and Steely Dan. “Not to be the dude at the record store but it’s specifically post-flower child idealism of the ’60s,” she explains. “It’s when it flipped into nihilism, which I much prefer. Pre disco, pre punk. That music is in me in a deep way. It’s in my ears.”

On ‘The Melting Of The Sun’ she has a delicious time creating a psychedelic Pink Floyd odyssey while exploring the path tread by her heroes Marilyn Monroe, Joni Mitchell, Joan Didion and Nina Simone. It’s a series of beautiful vignettes of brilliant women who were met with a hostile environment. Clark considers what they did to overcome that. “I’m thanking all these women for making it easier for me to do it. I hope I didn’t totally let them down.” Clark is often the only woman sharing a stage with rock luminaries such as Dave Grohl, Damon Albarn and David Byrne, and has appeared to have shattered a male-centric glass ceiling. She’s unsure she’s doing enough to redress the imbalance. “There are little things I can do and control,” she says of hiring women on her team. “God! Now I feel like I should do more. What should I do? It’s a big question. You know what I have seen a lot more from when I started to now? Girls playing guitar.”

If one woman reinvented the guitar in the past decade, it’s Clark. Behind her is a rack of them. The pandemic has taken her out of the wild in which she’s accustomed to tantalising audiences at night with her displays of riffing and heel-balancing. Instead, she’s chained to her desk. Her obsession with heels in the lyrics of ‘Daddy’s Home’ she reckons may be a reflection of her nights performing ‘Masseduction’ in thigh highs. “I made sure that nothing I wore was comfortable,” she recalls. “Everything was about stricture and structure and latex. I had to train all the time to make sure I could handle it.” Is she taking the heels off when live shows return? “Absofuckinglutely not.”

Clark is interested in the new generation. She’s recently tweeted about Arlo Parks and has become a big fan of Russian singer-songwriter Kate NV. “I’m obsessed with Russia,” she says. In a recent LA Times profile, she professed to a pandemic intellectual fixation on Stalin. “Yeah! I mean right now my computer is propped up on stuff. You are sitting on The Gulag Archipelago, The Best Short Stories Of Dostoyevsky andThe Plays Of Chekhov. I’m kinda in it.” The pop world interests Clark, too. She was credited with a co-write on Swift’s 2019 album ‘Lover’. At last year’s Grammys she performed a duet with Dua Lipa. It was one of the queerest performances the Grammys has ever aired. Clark interrupts.

“What about it seemed queer?!”

You know… The lip bite, for one!

“Wait. Did she bite her lip?”

No, you bit your lip.

“I did?!”

Everyone was talking about it. Come on, Annie.

“Serious? I…”

You both waltzed around each other with matching hairdos, making eyes…

“I have no memory of it.”

Frustrating as it may be in a world of too much information, Clark’s lack of willingness to overanalyse every creative decision she makes or participates in is something to treasure. “I want to be a writer who can write great songs,” she says. “I’m so glad I can play guitar and fuck around in the studio to my heart’s desire but it’s about what you can say. What’s a great song? What lyric is gonna rip your guts open. Just make great shit! That’s where I was with this record. That’s all I wanna do with my life.”

More than a decade into St. Vincent, Clark doesn’t reflect. She looks strictly forward. “I’m like a horse with blinders,” she says. She did make an exception to take stock lately when the phone rang. “I saw a +44 and that gets me excited,” she says. “Who could this be?” Well, who was it? “Paul McCartney,” she says, in disbelief. “Anything I’ve done, any mistake I’ve made, somehow it’s forgiven, assuaged. I did something right in my life if a fucking Beatle called me.”

Now there’s a get out of jail free card if ever she needed one.

Daddy’s Home by St. Vincent is out May 14, 2021.

#‘I HAVE NO MEMORY OF IT’#LOOOOOL #WHY ARE U LIKE THIS #st vincent #full of shit #annie clark #Annie Clark on beds #yellow is the color for dull ache of bad penetration?

68 notes · View notes

borrovvedyoongi · 5 years

Text

Off Season

kinda like that one taylor swift song but not really, promise. instead, it involves basketball

jaehyun x reader

have I mentioned I'm a band nerd ;)

word count: 2,405

One of the redeeming qualities about your school was most definitely not the class average attendance or the sports teams lack of winning streaks, but hey, give all the money and glory and attention to them and leave the fine arts kids out of it. Are you pissed? Oh, most certainly.

There's little to no funds for the art class, drama class, choir class, and most certainly not the band. At least it's not like one of those cliche movies where you guys are bullied. It's better, no one pays attention to you. It's honest to God good that no one pays attention to students like you, because the popular kids are always caught up in their own petty shit. The dumbest of all shits. Who sent nudes to who, who started liking pictures of who, who's eating lunch with who, who shaded who on who's Snapchat story. Like, who gives a damn?

You can at least appreciate the pom and cheer squad because it's not like you can dance or do flips like they do, and at least they can win something. The football team on the other hand, is a complete joke. There has not been one single game last year where they've won. Not. A. Single. One. Even after they lose you have to play the fight song. The best part is that you get to play the song really slowly when they get obliterated. Nine points to fifty-four. It's incredibly pitiful.

Even after football season is over, you still have to play pep tunes for your mediocre team: the basketball team. At least they're not as bad as the football team and can come close to winning, and actually do it, sometimes. The girls' basketball team is playing and they're doing pretty well. Ten points ahead of the visitors. It's halftime, you don't know how the hell the game works, but you're having fun. You're singing "Hey Baby" like it's your last (because it is, senior year baby!) and you feel like you're having the time of your life, on this Friday night.

Your friends snuck in some Dr. Pepper into the stands and you have to drink some water first in order to not wreck the insides of your clarinet. You have 15 minutes to yourself, so you head to the water fountain. You make your way out of the gym, and you see Jaehyun and Chittaphon talking to each other in the hall way. You make sure to take a quick peak at Jaehyun in his basketball uniform without being obvious. If the football team's players are a snack, this guy is a whole ass meal.

He's almost six feet tall, has nice, muscular arms, and a lean body. You have history class with him and he sits right next to you, and you have Johnny sitting right in front of you. Jaehyun constantly has his body facing towards Johnny, considering he is his only friend in history. It gets kinda annoying when they don't shut up and Johnny has to ask you what the teacher was saying, but when Jaehyun asks, your heart might just burst.

He always speaks in a soft voice and taps your shoulder when he needs something. One day he needed a pencil, which is unfortunately the one day you woke up late and forgot to wear a bra and pack your regular clothes to change into after 7 AM marching rehearsals, so you sported a wrinkly, loose tank top and running shorts the whole day.

"Hey, I left my pencil bag at home while revising for the Socratic Seminar, do you have an extra pencil I can borrow?"

Your eyes widen and you always get shocked when he asks you for stuff instead of Johnny, because it's not like you guys are close or anything. It doesn't help that the teacher put the air conditioner on full blast and his warm, soft fingertips leaves your shoulder and heart ablaze.

"Y-yeah! I only use mechanical pencils so I hope you don't mind." You bend down and start digging in your backpack only to hear Johnny snicker in front of you. At first you ignore it because it's Johnny, and the little (pretty gigantic) shithead laughs at everything, like the pictures of nude statues your teacher took during her trip to Italy. It's only when Jaehyun tells him to "stop staring" when you realize what exactly he's laughing at. It's also then that you realize Jaehyun has a perfectly clear view of the predicament you're in, with the room being cold, you practically giving him a free show, and now that you look down, there's a bit of fake grass down there too. When you're in marching band and have to rehearse every morning for two hours, bits and pieces of the turf from the football field starts to collect in your clothes and then you end up having your own little football field.

Damn, do wish I could choke on those turf turds and never have to think of this day ever again. But no, it gets even better. Jaehyun is polite enough to look at the board and pretend whatever happened just now didn't, and when you finally hand him your pencil, he does something that makes your insides turn in twists and makes your cheeks and ears feel hot. He takes off the jacket he has on and drapes it over your shoulders, and gently places his thumb on your collarbone to sweep the little artificial blade of grass off.

Johnny whistles lowly and Jaehyun hits his shoulder hard enough for him to wince, and looks at you with a sincere smile, dimples and all, and says to you "You can wear the hoodie all day if you want to, I don't need it."

You can't tell if you're living in a fantasy at this moment and you just stare at him and say, "You can keep the pencil all day too." You must be seeing things because you see a faint rosy color collect on his cheeks.

After using the water fountain, you're lost in thought about what happened that day and how dreamy and cliche it all was. You're still lost in thought, and when you turn around you bump into someone, with your face burrowed into someone's (might you add) strong chest.

You look up and almost come stumbling down after being taken aback that Jaehyun is the one you bumped into, and he has a strong hold of your arms to keep you steady.

"You okay there?" You like to consider yourself level headed and not easily swooned by a cute face, but his parted hair and sparkly brown eyes is making you melt, and your band polo is just making you warmer as each second passes while his arms are still around you.

"I'm okay now." You smile hoping that he would just let go already because you are this close to sharting yourself. He puts his arms to his sides and steps aside from you to let you go around him and he gets to the water fountain. You're walking away as fast but casually as possible when you hear him talking to Chittaphon again.

"For a band nerd she's kinda cute, huh?"

"Ten, shut up."

"So you do think she's cute!"

The girls' portion of the game is over, with a tie in the end. The boys are up next in ten minutes.

You come back sweating just a teensy beensy bit after the awkward encounter into bumping into Jaehyun, trying to act normal as you slide into the bleachers next to your best friends Doyoung and Yeri. Yeri hands you back your clarinet paying no mind to your expression. Doyoung doesn't miss the flushed look on your face and pesters you about it.

"Did you see him or something? You look like a tomato."

"Thanks Doyoung. Yes, I did. It was awkward and I don't want to think about it." Yeri's ears perk up and faces her whole body to you.

"Well, now you have to, spill." She says. You try to keep your eyes on the leaderboard but instead have it locked on Jaehyun, seeing him stretch.

"You're drooling dear." She giggles. You hit Yeri in the arm and Doyoung laughs.

"Am not!"

"Are too!"

"Guys, the game is about to start." Doyoung whispers. Your band directors have been keeping a close eye on the band to see if you were paying attention or not. Not because they care about the game necessarily, but because playing pep tunes in time the home team scores a point is important. "Loses the effect" if you're seconds late he says.

All these games you've been forced to go to as a band student never interested you, and you never understood what the hell was going on anyways. The only interesting thing was seeing Jaehyun score points.

"You're being so obvious." says Doyoung.

"Suck my left ass cheek." you say in response.

"You fucking wish." You hit him in the arm and Yeri just laughs. You don't know where you would be without your companions.

The game ends with the boys' team winning (about time.) By then it's 10 pm, you're tired, your friends are tired, and you have a clarinet lesson tomorrow in the morning. You just want to skidaddle outta there as fast as you can, but thank goodness you took your time walking and talking with Doyoung and Yeri, otherwise, Jaehyun might've missed the chance to talk to you.

You shoot daggers at Doyoung when you hear him snicker. Yeri gives you a thumbs up while they both watch you gawk at Jaehyun. That boy is truly Adonis reincarnated, hell, perhaps even better.

"I wanted to say sorry for bumping into you earlier and-" you blink back in surprise. Shouldn't this be the other way around? You were the one daydreaming and being distracted.

"I'm sorry to interrupt Jaehyun but, I feel like I'm the one that should apologize. I was the one spacing out and bumped into you.”

“To be totally real with you, I just needed an excuse to talk to you, regardless if it’s your fault or not...which I don’t think it is anyways, but I digress.” you just blink blankly at him.

“Uhm..okay. What is it you wanted to say?” you ask.

“Would you like to go on a date with me?”

Out of the corner of your eye, you see Yeri smacking her hands and jumping up and down with Doyoung trying to grab her arm to make sure the two of them are out of sight of Jaehyun so they don’t embarrass you. You’ll need to thank Doyoung later.

“I’m really flattered, but why me exactly?” Now it’s Jaehyun’s turn to stare at you blankly.

“Because you’re cute, for one, and you seem like a good time. I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while but couldn’t find the guts to actually ask.” he laughs under his breath while scratching the back of his head.

“Yes.” you say.

“Wait, what?” he says dumbfounded. It physically hurts Doyoung to overhear how slow you guys are to put two and two together and realize you like each other already.

“Yeah, I’d actually love to go on a date with you.”

Jaehyun smiles that precious dimpled smile and says “I’ll text you when I’m picking you up.”

“You know my number?”

He chuckles awkwardly. “I had to ask one of your friends for it because of how shy I was.” You whip your head around to see Yeri and Doyoung scurrying off to the band room. You really need to thank them later. Perhaps yell at them for giving out your private information like that, but definitely thank them.

“I have to get back to my friends, but I’ll reply when you message me Jaehyun.” Before he even has the chance to say anything else, you’re catching up to Yeri and Doyoung to give them a piece of your mind.

The next day rolls around and you're a little drained from your morning lesson. Trying to play F above the staff in tune is probably the most vigorous physical activities you've ever done. You can march all day, eyes closed while using backwards technique, but an F above the staff is something else.

The night before was also draining, considering you stayed up really late at night to wait for Jaehyun's text. You figured his friends dared to ask you out, something like that, because why would a boy that handsome and popular ask you out? Fortunate, very fortunate, that you didn't fall asleep just yet, because when 12:30 AM rolls around, that's when you hear the high pitched ping.

Jaehyun: sorry for texting late! I hope you're not asleep or anything. I just got back from having celebratory pizza with the team. :P

You: Nah, I was just scrolling through my phone haha, I sleep super late because of band and procrastination. Also, don't you have an iPhone? Why are you using regular emoticons lol

Jaehyun: :D well I'm glad you asked. I just find them cuter lmao

Jaehyun: Like you

You would like to think you're a reasonable person. A reasonable person who sees a good opportunity and takes it. This moment is an example of a good opportunity to flirt back. Did you do it? No, instead you were spazzing out on your bed while texting in the group chat for you, Yeri, and Doyoung about the screenshot you just took of the convo with Jaehyun. Precious time spent on spazzing was wasted. A winky face would have sufficed, but no, you just had to react like any teenage girl in some dumb book. Jaehyun changes the subject after exactly 6 minutes of waiting for your reply.

Jaehyun: Does 6 pm sound good for our date?

You: totally

Definitely didn't sound like a surfer just then

Jaehyun: (typing)

At this moment, Jaehyun was deciding whether or not to call you babe and say goodnight. He was typing for so long that you started to panic (for no reason at all.) If your heart wasn't already racing any further, good thing Ten was sleeping over at Jaehyun's and leaning over his shoulder the whole time, because he pressed send.

Jaehyun: That's cool, see you then babe. Night :)

Needless to say, Yeri and Doyoung were blowing up the groupchat after your screenshot.

A/N: what do you guys think? please send commentary, it would mean very much! I’ll be making part 2...at some point.

#jaehyun scenarios #jaehyun scenario #jaehyun imagines #jaehyun imagine #jaehyun #jung jaehyun #nct scenarios #nct imagines

298 notes · View notes

lovemesomesurveys · 4 years

Text

did you basically waste your life in school, if the world ends in 2012? Well, here we are in 2020. Although, now it really does feel like the end of the world. Anyway, if the world had ended back in 2012 school was all I had done. I graduated community college that year. At least I was doing something then. I can’t say the same for the past few years. :/ do you sing to songs in the car when you are alone? I don’t drive, so I’m never alone in the car. Well, unless I’m waiting in the car while whomever I’m with goes in somewhere. I’ll sing along to songs then or when in the car with my family.

do you laugh at other people when they are alone in their car singing? It can be funny if I catch someone who’s really into whatever they’re listening and full on jammin’ out haha but it’s all good. Like hell yeah, you go you!

have you every actually written a song? Nope.

the world will end in an hour. what do you do? Well shit. It’s 5 in the morning and everyone in my house is asleep. I’d have to wake everyone up and just hug them and tell them I love them and we can all say whatever we want to say and just be with each other.

ever visited time’s square? No, I’ve never been to New York. I’ve always wanted to go, but now it definitely won’t be for a long time. :(

do you live in a place that is full of snow or only wishful, in winter? It doesn’t snow here. :( I wish it did. ever accidentally sent a text message to the wrong person ABOUT that person? Ahhh thankfully, no.

what makes you relax? The only thing that makes me feel truly relaxed is being near the ocean and watching/listening to the waves crash in and out and feeling that cool ocean breeze. I just zone out and don’t think about anything. are you one of those camera whores? Definitely not.

what is the longest amount of time that you have gone without sleep? Like 36 or so hours.

are you tired of being alone? I feel like I’ll always be alone in terms of a relationship. I just don’t see me ever finding someone.

ever cried in public? Yeah, but very rarely.

what color eyes does the person you are currently head over heels about have? I’m not currently interested in anyone in that way.

does the weirdest dream you have ever had involve your history teacher? I’m not in school anymore.

who might that be, anyways?

d03z iiT b@hHt3R y3wH d@T ii R0t3 liiK3 diiz? EW, stop. I’ve never seen it that bad, but yeah I remember when people typed like that and it drove me nuts. I don’t see that anymore, though.

how many christmas trees are in your home during the season? One real one and one mini fake one in my room.

do you remember the reason for the season or are you all for the presents? I most definitely remember the reason for the season.

how many trophies do you own? Zero.

have you ever played any sports that involve a ball bigger than a coconut? I never played any sports.

do you still watch cartoons? I still watch Rugrats, Hey Arnold, and Doug sometimes. I’ve also recently been watching The Proud Family.

what name do you think is the prettiest on a girl? Hmm.

do ya know a guy named ben? Some people call him Ben for short, but that’s not his name. It’s not Benjamin either.

ever told your date you were going to the bathroom and actually left? I’ve never been in that situation.

what never fails to put you in a bad mood? I’m just a very moody person.

do you journal/blog any? This is it.

have you ever read any sarah dessen books? Yeah.

what is the first thing that comes to mind when i say green? Christmas trees cause of the question earlier.

most of you said grass, right? how old are you, by the way? Wrong. And I’m 30.

did you know that you hear/see something that relates to a monkey everyday? Uh.

have you ever made a threat that you went through with? I’m not one to make threats.

how many pillows are currently on your bed? Like 7.

do you share a bed with anyone, or is it allll yours? It’s allll mine.

are you scared to be alone after you watch a scary movie? Nah.

are you totally annoyed when taylor swift wins all awards at an award show? I’m not a Taylor Swift fan, but hey that’s good for her and exciting for her fanbase. I do remember when it felt like she won every single award and I’d be like okay can we let someone else get one? :X

do you own any songs that are from limewire? Haha Limewire. No, I definitely don’t. That was back in like the early 2000′s.

have you smacked anyone’s butt today? No.

are you from the north/south/west/east? West coast, baby.

ya live in america, right? I do.

would you ever want to be a celebrity? Noooooooooooo.

did you ever take ballet as a kiddo? No.

#personal #text #survey #surveys

1 note · View note

thesinglesjukebox · 5 years

Video

youtube

LIZZO - GOOD AS HELL

[7.55]

We look forward to "Juice" hitting the top 40 sometime in 2021..

Katie Gill: It is infinitely amusing that with Lizzo's career trajectory, her songs that are 2-3 years old are getting the radio play instead of her current work. Granted, "Good As Hell" is an absolute banger. But it's an absolute banger that is obviously a product of Lizzo's earlier work, especially when compared the the musical evolution she shows on Cuz I Love You. It's also an absolute banger that seems tailor-made for inclusion in movie trailers or makeover montages but hey, get that bread Lizzo. [7]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Lizzo singles don't expire after three years; they're just like chardonnay, get better over time. [8]

Thomas Inskeep: Goddamn, Lizzo can wring every bit of strength out of a female empowerment lyric, can't she? And she nails the rapping/singing combo like no one since -- I dunno, Lauryn Hill? In fact, maybe she's the rightful heir to L-Boogie's throne? And she does it all so damn joyfully to boot. Talk about fresh air on the radio. [8]

Joshua Copperman: After enjoying Big GRRL Small World, I remember hearing that Lizzo signed to Atlantic, working with the insufferably goofy producer Ricky Reed. It felt like a classic "sell-out" moment even if the term has lost all meaning. This song felt destined to blow up, but went nowhere. Neither did "Phone," and neither did "Truth Hurts." Cuz I Love You could incorporate her earlier, more political work in ways that felt authentic... but then "Truth Hurts" got massive, and "Good As Hell" is well on its way. There's a sense that Lizzo will go further in the shouting party anthem direction. She's a great interview, and a fantastic live performer, but it's disappointing to foresee a Bruno Mars-style trajectory when there's so much more to offer. At this rate, Big GRRL Small World could see a rerelease as the darker, more ambitious follow up, but she's still clearly happier making mindless party music. If she saves the thoughtful political commentary for when Terry Gross calls her "brave", that's okay. [6]

Stephen Eisermann: It is so hard to fault Lizzo's older material. While it's very easy to be cynical about self-empowerment anthems today, Lizzo has consistently shown that she excels at putting herself, a plus-size black woman, first and showing other people how to put themselves first. It's hard to separate her past hits from whatever current story she is involved in (like that horrid Postmates debacle), but, fuck, you are full lying if you say you don't smile on even your worst day when you play this chorus. The background vocals, the energy, the personality -- no part doesn't hold up. There is no chorus like a Lizzo chorus, no matter how long it has taken people to notice. [8]

Alfred Soto: Lizzo released a terrific album this year, you know, on which her sense of rhythm and how a star in waiting presents her material meshes wit the body-positivity messages. [6]

Tobi Tella: Sometimes the strength of a song is enough to push past any factors trying to stop it from entering the public conciousness. "Good As Hell" is a little corny, sure, but it's also empowerment without pandering, an uplifting song that doesn't feel the need to insert generic platitudes. Most of all, it's fun, which is something I think 2019 music totally misses most of the time. [8]

Kayla Beardslee: Personally, I'm looking forward to a couple singles from now, when Lizzo's team will be looking so far in the past for singles to push that they'll arrive at a point before her music career began and encounter a time paradox. If "Truth Hurts" can go #1 two years after its release, anything is possible, and why can't that include Lizzo deconstructing our understanding of time as a linear concept? Oh, and I'm supposed to review the song, too. Yeah, "Good As Hell" bops, will bop, has bopped, bops in the subjunctive, etc. The vocals are fantastic, and the piano riff gives the song a constant feeling of forward motion. It's the kind of track that makes you want to sing along, and even if (like me) you fail at imitating Lizzo's attention-grabbing vibrato, "Good As Hell" is so relentlessly fun that you'll feel happy about it anyways. [8]

Kylo Nocom: The power of hindsight is very strange. I used to see talk go around about how "Good as Hell" sounded like it could have been a hit, and now that it is one, is that underdog appeal still here? I used to think that her being compared to Natasha Bedingfield in Pitchfork's review of Cuz I Love You was unfair, but in hindsight, it's not really that far off. Values PSAs had "Where Is the Love?" then, and the soundtrack to them would be "Good as Hell" now. That's not a condemnation: corny stays in fashion, and with sounds as lovely as the ones Lizzo selects (namely, the drum kit of the chorus and the sampled vocal belts) it's easy to ignore how ultimately juvenile the message feels. [8]

Jackie Powell: Right now as we speak, "Good as Hell" sits at number 30 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was featured in the third film in the cult series "Barbershop," which starred fellow women in hip-hop Eve and Nicki Minaj, both whom Lizzo currently eclipses in relevance. Like the film, this track came out three years ago. This sleeper hit, along with Lizzo's career, has emerged from the ashes. They are a collective rising like a phoenix but with slightly more swagger and chock-full of sass. How is all of this possible? Lizzo's entire being defines what it means to be living in 2019. Self-care, inner strength, and an IDGAF attitude. That's why "Good as Hell" hit harder in 2019 rather than three years earlier. Zane Lowe has referred to this track as an "instant vintage vibe" and that's due to clean but predictable production from Ricky Reed. Lizzo's delivery functions in between a bounce in the verses and sweeping call and response in the pre-chorus and the hook. Her magic remains in the way she works to make her raps more digestible for listeners who live on the throwback playlists on Spotify. She's creating a similar product to Mark Ronson in that they both aim to bring sounds from then and now together in a triumphant union. Thank goodness for Lizzo, someone who has the secret recipe to make anyone feel "as good as hell," a task far from effortless. [7]

Vikram Joseph: It seems kind of fitting that I'm writing this before work on a wet Monday morning, because "Good As Hell" is transformative in a way that's hard to resist. Taylor Swift might have recently claimed that she "want[s] your dreary Mondays" (ok, not yours, Joe Alwyn's), but "Good As Hell" simply will not allow them to exist -- at least for 2 minutes and 37 seconds. It achieves this mostly because of the melancholy that lurks in the corners of the song, and because of the way that classic descending chord progression confers a sense of unconditional positivity in the face of chronic adversity. The delivery of "baby, how you feeling?" should win awards -- most singers would sell it as uncomplicated celebration, but Lizzo sounds incredibly empathetic, concerned even, like she half-expects the answer might be "like shit, Lizzo, I feel like shit." And the song's instant meme -- "hair toss, check my nails!" -- is actually a performance piece in putting your best self out there when your heart feels bruised and tired. The strange, wonderful alchemy of "Good As Hell" is that, through method-acting feeling good as hell when all of your instincts tell you that you really don't, it actually makes you feel fucking incredible. [9]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

#Lizzo #pop #music #music review #writing

3 notes · View notes

fartoomanybats · 6 years

Text

Gorgeous

A/N: AU where Shane and Ryan work at the same place but not together. Very obviously inspired by Taylor Swift’s Gorgeous. Listen to it afterwards and all you’ll be able to imagine is Shane and Ryan or maybe that’s just me.

You should take it as a compliment that I got drunk and made fun of the way you talk.

That was at the last party. Ryan barely knew the guy, and yet he was infuriated by him. How he smirked, how he laughed, how he leaned against the wall so casually that his whole body radiated effortlessness.

Shane. They’d been working at the same place for months. But they’d never been involved in any projects together, so really all their conversations had been brief. In hallways or the break room or that one time asking about when some announcement was going to happen.

So why did he bug Ryan so much?

“I just want to punch him in his stupid gorgeous face sometimes,” Ryan had mumbled to himself at that last party, already drunk with no signs of slowing down. That’s how it had started, a brief moment between them at the party where Ryan just found himself so annoyed with this older man that somehow made jean jackets look cool.

So he’d done the obviously logical thing and drank more until he was full-on doing a Shane impersonation. With a “baby” thrown on to the end of every sentence and a literal swagger in his step.

You’re so cool, it makes me hate you so much.

The worst part of it was the next Monday, though, when Shane brought up how he’d heard Ryan’s jokes at the party.

“Heard you do a pretty good Madej,” he said, leaning up against the counter as Ryan was making himself coffee in the staff kitchen.

“Yeah...” Ryan mumbled, face reddening slightly as he concentrated on the coffee pot, hands fidgeting with the mug in his hands.

“Maybe next time I’ll get to see it,” Shane replied, his tone completely nonchalant.

Ryan merely nodded, wishing he’d never come in for coffee.

“Or,” Shane said, pushing himself up so that he was momentarily close to Ryan. “Maybe next time I’ll do you.” He held Ryan’s surprised gaze a moment before laughing. “An impression, that is.” He then stood fully but shrugged his shoulders. “Or.. whatever.” And with that, he walked out of the kitchen, leaving Ryan a confused and irritated mess in his wake.

You should take it as a compliment that I’m talking to everyone here but you.

At the next party, Ryan was pointedly avoiding Shane.

It wasn’t too hard to do. Their company had a fair amount of people, and most of them were young, and as such, still were down to get drunk at half-stranger’s houses. Probably why we have so many parties, Ryan had mused to himself.

Throughout the night, Ryan moved between groups, talking about work or debating what would happen next season on Game of Thrones. It really seemed like he had talked to everyone but Shane, and honestly, he liked it that way.

A ping from his phone pulled him away from the conversation he was in. He looked down to see a message from Brent, a guy he was talking to, about how he was going to some bar or club or whatever. Ryan read the message without replying, putting it back in his pocket.

“You still seeing him?” Jen asked on the other side of him, nodding toward Ryan’s phone as he put it away.

Ryan shrugged. “I guess.” He raised his cup of unknown mixed alcohol to his lips, taking a drink.

Jen raised her eyebrows but didn’t say anything else.

You should think about the consequence of you touching my hand in a darkened room.

It was a few hours later, when the party was beginning to die down, that Ryan’s luck of avoiding Shane ran out.

Ryan was in one of the back rooms, sitting at a table, having just finished a round of sports trivia with Zach and Justin. The two of them talked about getting more drinks, leaving Ryan alone for a minute.

“No stand-up tonight?”

Ryan looked up suddenly, seeing Shane walking towards the table with that stupid smirk on his face.

“Nah,” Ryan breathed, hoping his voice came out calm. “Not totally wasted this time.” He gestured with a raise of his cup. Being only buzzed was definitely helping him at least keep his feelings towards Shane to himself.

“I see,” Shane said, voice even but with a hint of amusement. He brought his own drink to rest of the table, his hand touching Ryan’s before he pulled up another stool to the table and took a seat.

Ryan blinked several times, glancing at his own hands on the table. The touch had been too long to have been a coincidence. Hadn’t it? His thoughts jumbled around Shane, and damn, how he hated him for it.

Ryan looked up to see Shane looking back, an easy smile on his face and a mischievous look in his eyes that made Ryan’s heart skip a beat.

How did Shane always make him feel like this? Excited and confused and annoyed and hopeful all at once. Hell, he didn’t even know if Shane had a girlfriend, a boyfriend, or if he was single. At this point, Ryan wasn’t sure which was worse.

Despite Ryan’s struggle to find coherent thoughts, the two of them actually managed to hold a conversation. Shane making him laugh so hard that it hurt, and Ryan noticing how that, in turn, made Shane smile even brighter.

“And that’s just how it happened,” Shane finished with a satisfied voice. He picked up his drink as Ryan was putting his back down.

“Sure, sure,” Ryan conceded. He nodded, watching as Shane finished his drink with a lick of his lips.

“I--” Ryan was going to say something, but he found his thoughts had stopped suddenly as he looked up. Meeting Shane’s gaze, looking into his eyes, Ryan felt like he might drown in them, and that he might be okay with that.

“Something interesting?” Shane mused, his tone a mix of teasing and sarcasm, that smirk etching itself into his features once again.

“Shut up, Shane.” Ryan replied without thinking, earning a hearty laugh from the other man.

“My boys!” Came a loud, probably half-drunk voice. Ryan looked up to see Jen, who was smiling at the two of them. “Not to kill the mood, but it’s closing time.” She tipped her drink to the two of them before walking back out of the room, a distant melody of “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here,” following her.

“Fair enough,” Shane said, standing up and stretching slightly, his shirt rising up for the briefest moment. An image that simultaneously made Ryan want to roll his eyes at the cliché but also made him want more. Damn him.

“Closing time,” Shane repeated in a sing-song voice, tossing his empty cup in the trash can nearby. “You got any other plans tonight?”

“What?” Ryan asked, then shook his head. “Oh, no, no.” He took a few seconds before asking, “Do you?”

The taller man looked back at him, his gaze making Ryan's cheeks feel heated. “Mmm, not sure,” Shane replied casually before giving a shrug. “Guess I’ll just stumble on home alone.” He was pulling on his jacket now, turned slightly away from Ryan.

Ryan merely nodded, his heart thudding in his chest.

Shane turned back, looking at him completely before giving him an easy smile.

“Unless you wanna come along.”

#shyan #skeptic believer #buzzfeed unsolved #shane madej #ryan bergara #mine #feedback always welcome :)#sort of implied cheating?#depends on how you see it #like ryan is seeing someone (AKA a few dates/talking) but things aren't really serious or sincere

76 notes · View notes