sincerelyalie

[sincerelyalie]

“in record time” - a playlist play-by-play

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playlist: in record time description: truly devastating music 

playlist context: felt like breaking my own heart on the way to visit my aunt in irvine by clicking “go to radio” on the saddest song i know (track ii). these songs will make you feel like that cat down there sitting in the washing machine.

disc: i wrote this at 6am T_T

track i: ‘i love you but i need another year’ by liza anne ♫ ♪ 🎵 ♩

golden line:

i can’t salvage your mind while i’m losing mine

the title for this track speaks for itself. the narrator can feel herself slipping in the things she says and activities she engages in, directly stating that she a) knows for certain that she won’t make the safest choices and b) likely needs a diagnosis on a feeling she can’t place, presumably a mental illness. in the chorus, anne tells her lover that “[she doesn’t] want to drag [them] through it”, ‘it’ being the year of self-growth and perhaps therapy that she knows is necessary for her own sake. her partner appears to be willing to support her, but anne laments that they’re “sticking around but how can [they] stand it?” this track differs from the others in that neither party appears to want the relationship to end just yet, but the narrator is faced with the choice between breaking her partner’s (and her own) heart now, or doing the same thing down the line when their relationship no longer becomes sustainable due to their personal struggles. anne’s lyrics leave audiences some listeners wondering if they’d be willing or able to identify when they themselves ‘need another year’, while others will question what might have happened if they’d waited that year when they needed it. 

~~~

track ii: ‘night shift’ by lucy dacus ♫ ♪ 🎵 ♩

our titular track! (see ‘regaining my self worth in record time’ in verse ii.

golden line: the entire refrain. all of it.

you got a 9 to 5, so I'll take the night shift

and I'll never see you again if I can help it

in five years I hope the songs feel like covers

dedicated to new lovers

unpopular opinion: no contact is overrated. not in the sense that it doesn’t work (it does), but because no one talks enough about the toll that distancing yourself from one person can take on your relationships and lifestyle on the whole. dacus does this in her refrain, where she offers herself up for the “night shift” as opposed to the 9-5 that her ex works. taking the night shift to avoid contact with them means she’ll have to face the physical and mental consequences: isolation from friends and family who are also working the more popular 9-5, upheaving her schedule and making herself unavailable in key social hours, and losing out on sleep to take the shift that no one wants in order protect herself. regardless of whether dacus emerges emotionally stronger or more “moved on”, she’s had to dramatically change the entire structure of her life to allow herself to heal, compounding on the initial loneliness of the split. in order to move on, a sort of hopeless injustice has to first be created and radically accepted, no matter how unfair.

~~~

track iii: ‘right where you left me’ by taylor swift ♫ ♪ 🎵 ♩

golden line: 

‘they expected me to find somewhere, some perspective, but i sat and stared’

personally, songs by widely loved mainstream artists that are about losing in love don’t hit as hard because their popularity creates a disconnect where it feels odd to see them present a narrative of grief and rejection. however this song’s cinematic imagery combined with brutal, vulnerable honesty of being stuck in a life-shattering moment while everyone and everything moves on around you. the narrator comments on how “everybody moved on” and cries for help, revealing that she’s still metaphorically stuck in the restaurant booth where her partner called off the relationship— right where they left her. a slow-motion memory unfolds as the verses continue, and the narrator describes in beautiful detail the night— the moment— that she’s forever frozen in. the world never stops, even for a second, and memories feel like chains when you can’t move from where they hold you.

golden line runner up: ‘breakups happen every day, you don’t have to lose it’

~~~

anyway, this has been me doing analysis on song lyrics to dodge the analysis i have to do on an aplac passage. thanks for tuning in to my 6am song reviews :))

sincerely, alie ♡

#playlist #music #liza anne #taylor swift #lucy dacus #right where you left me #night shift #songs

[sincerelyalie]

welcome <3

hello!

it’s 05:31am on a sunday and my reasons for carving out this piece of internet real estate include a) my writing teacher telling us we need to start publishing our pages and b) this one criminal minds episode where a girl’s blog links the fbi to her kidnapper. 

anyway, welcome to my new place to put my words :))

if you’re still here and intend to stay, you can expect

- old school blog posts :)

- book reviews that begin as critiques but end as rave promotion because i am easily impressed + enjoy everything

- a general lack of capital letters

- prose dumps !! 

- dog updates :)

while this site undergoes construction...

song recs: 

‘arsonist’s lullaby’ by hozier

‘night shift’ by lucy dacus

‘HER’ by chase atlantic

book recs: 

the poppy war by r. f. kuang

girl on the line by faith gardner

loveboat, taipei by abigail hing wen

sincerely, alie <3

#blog #general