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hoseokmylovesworld · 4 years

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Sway Me More | Mafia!Jungkook (M)

Pairing: Mafia!Jungkook x Assassin!OC

Part 2: Sway With Me (M) / Part 3: Sway Me Smooth

Requested: Anonymous:

“ ok i think i got something. i was thinking e2l mafia leader!jk and assassin!oc. they're always competing on killing the same enemies and oc beats kook to it everytime but plot twist he's actually sleeping w oc in secret, his gang doesn't know that she basically does the dirty work for him. maybe a scene where jk is busy in his office and feels something is off and he and oc pull guns on one another but its just a form of power play bc that's their relationship. dirty talk, oral male receiving, reverse cowgirl in his office chair, choking, little bit of degradation bc one of the victims oc had to seduce but kook calls her his little slut bc he's possessive like that and they both just have lots of tattoos and piercings. maybe some light bondage too? he ties her hands and the petname sweetness? i love that shit sm. ok i'm out of ur hair now fksks ”

Genre: Mafia!Jungkook, BTS mafia au, Smut, humor, e2l, angst, pining.

Length: 15,664k Words

Warnings: Strong language, lots of violence, minor deaths, guns, oral sex (male receiving), fingering, unprotected vaginal sex, squirting, overstimulation, orgasm denial, dirty talk, BDSM(?), degradation kink, praise kink, light bondage, choking, breath play, spanking, rough sex (if you couldn’t tell), possessive!jungkook, Mr. and Mrs. Smith vibes.

A/N:

1. Not sure if this counts as a Song Fic, but this ask immediately made me think of Sway With Me by Saweetie and GALAXARA hence the title so that was on repeat haha (Stream Birds of Prey: The Album and Stay Gold for clear skin!!).

2. I didn’t mean to make the OC that crazy she just kinda was. Like honestly I don’t know what happened at the end there. Also, I thought it would be a fun dynamic for them to only refer to each other by last names. (Y/L/N)

3. Shouts out to this anon for being so specific! Writing this fic ruined my search history.

3.b You said a little bit of degradation, but I mighta over did it lol.

4. This is really fucking long. For no reason...I’m not sorry, it’s all worth it in the end. Please leave a comment, let me know what you think

Jungkook sat in the back seat of his black town car parked at the street corner, his eyes never leaving a specific window of the skyscraper adjacent to him. He watched as the piece of shit who meddled with his gang’s last drug deal canoodled with his lady friend in his apartment. Probably a hooker, he thought. This particular criminal to land on the mafia’s hit list, has been known to bring home many a sex worker.

He took a look at his Rolex and sighed; the man as slowly, but surely losing patience. They’ve been here for a good hour. A hit has never taken this long to complete for Jungkook’s team. He communicated his frustrations to his sniper, Taehyung, who was camped out in the building directly across from the apartments.

“When the fuck is this bitch gonna leave?” He grumbled through his earwig to his employee and friend. Taehyung laughs tiredly.

“Yeah, I’m asking myself the same thing. They’re not even fucking, they’ve been talking and kissing for like thirty minutes.” The sniper griped.

Jungkook chuckled, hearing the response in his ear. “Just stay sharp. Or you’re back on cockfight duty.”

Taehyung paused. “You wouldn’t.”

“Just focus, yeah?” Jungkook said, refocusing his binoculars to check on the couple in the apartment so that he could see them clearly. The bright lights in the room and the lack of curtains or shades helped him out immensely with that.

“Sure thing, boss.”

Jungkook could barely craft a response due to the shock that took over him at what happened next. He watched as the female sitting to the left of the target with her legs draped over his thighs, pulled a knife, seemingly out of her crotch, and stabbed the white collar criminal in the gut at lightning speed.

He lurched up in pain and grabbed at the knife only for his date to pull it out and stab him again, making deep eye contact all the while. She was obviously a strong woman to overpower a man of his burley stature. But why would she want to?

“What the fuck was that?” Jungkook asked immediately, continuing to watch the scene unfold carefully.

“Looks like his date just stabbed him.” Taehyung responded, just as confused as his superior.

“I can fucking see that, but why the fuck would the hooker kill him?” He raised his voice in annoyance. The murderous hooker finished the job, wiping her fingerprints off of the knife still lodged in the target's stomach and travelled to a nearby closet.

Jungkook watched, overcome with awe and confusion, as she returned with a duffle bag. And his jaw literally drops when he sees her pull white coveralls out of the duffle bag, put them on over her clothes and switch off the lights in the apartment, completely blocking Jungkook’s view.

“Fuck, what’s she doing now, Taehyung?” He asked quickly, knowing that the scope on his sniper had night vision.

“She’s...cleaning the apartment...and the body.”

So she’s done this before, Jungkook thought pensively.

“Do you recognize her?” He uttered, needing to know more about this woman immediately.

“Hell no, I would remember this bitch.” The gunman responds instantly.

“What the fuck is going on?” His boss muttered to himself and Taehyung took the liberty of answering him.

“She’s leaving.”

Jungkook cocked his head back in surprise. “Well that was fast.”

“You’re telling me...she’s making her way to the street. You want us to go after her?”

He thinks about it. No harm done, he figured.

“No, leave her be. Less mess for us.”

“Roger that.” Taehyung nodded and packed his things. Jungkook ordered his driver to take him home and they called it a very eventful day.

What Jungkook didn’t count on was encountering that same perpetrator again...and again. Ever since he came across this deadly woman the first time, it’s like he can’t escape her now. “The Hooker”, as the mafia were calling her, had killed three more of the names on their hit list of people who had crossed them...directly before Jungkook’s men got the chance to do it themselves.

And the fact that it didn’t affect the gang took a backseat to the amount of irritation it brought them and Jungkook for their victim to drop dead in front of them at the hands of someone else. It angered Jungkook because he didn’t know who she was or her motives. She was obviously dangerous and stealthy and could be coming for them next for all they knew. He knew he had to catch her and find out what she was about.

“Alright, guys. You know what to do.” Jungkook huffed to his men through his earpiece as they prepared to ambush a traitor of the gang. He had been on the run recently, selling mafia secrets and tonight the gang would put an end to him and soon, everyone he blabbed to.

After three days of following leads, they took to tracking and set out after him. Jungkook and his members followed the conspirator from a distance and three different sides in an attempt to corner him in the ominous dark of the night. They were closing in on the ex-gang member consistently and it all seemed to come to fruition when he shuffled into a dark alley.

This is too easy, the mafia boss thought enthusiastically to himself. Jungkook and six of his men sped up in pursuit, hoping to trap the imbecile before he realized he was a dead end. Finally, the group turned into the alley quickly, expecting to find a young man ready to shit his pants. Instead they found his slumped over corpse that had been propped up against a dumpster.

Jungkook’s spine straightened in astonishment. They literally just saw him walk into the alley and he just drops dead? Each of the men look around for who could have done this in possibly two minutes flat. The leader draws his gaze to the roof directly in front of him and grinds his teeth in anger at the sight in front of him. The Hooker from weeks ago stood above them with an amused smirk on her face in a black, hooded catsuit.

“You gotta be fucking kidding me!” He roared.

“Would you clean that up for me? Thanks.” She deflected playfully and took off in the opposite direction, jumping from one rooftop to another.

“Get her.” Jungkook said calmly, still looking at the spot where the woman was previously standing. He’s had enough of this nonsense and he would be getting answers.

The gang moves out immediately, splitting up in search of the murderer. Two of them take the firescape closest to them, while the remaining men circle around the buildings to cut her off eventually. In the meantime, Jungkook calms himself down and examines the body.

“How did she even do this?” He pulled a leather glove from his breast pocket and moved the head of the deceased to the right side, looking him over carefully. He promptly noticed bruising around his neck and blood on the crown of his head.

“She choked you out that fast...without making a sound?” He whispered, completely impressed, but absolutely irritated at the same time. He sighed, at a loss and took it upon himself to actually dispose of the body. He waited in the alley with his arms crossed, thinking of how he wanted to interrogate this possible threat.

His men communicated to him that the woman had seriously injured Jimin and Suga and that Hoseok and Jin would stay with them, but the good news was that they caught her and were on their way back.

“Wonderful.” He sighed sarcastically into his earpiece.

After thirty long minutes, Namjoon and Taehyung re-entered the alley, this time carrying their new victim by her arms, her hands restrained behind her back with the rope originally meant for the traitor. She struggled against their hold as they made their way in until she laid eyes on Jungkook.

She straightened slowly and walked with confidence, studying him thoughtfully as they passed the mafia leader and turned her to face him while forcing her to her knees. She winced slightly as her knee caps came in contact with the hard, wet ground.

The three of them watched carefully as the leader paced back and forth leisurely, his gaze focused on the puddles on the ground with his hand picking at nothing in particular on his lip. His train of thought was disrupted when the voice of the woman echoed through the alley.

“You gonna say something?” She scoffed impatiently. Jungkook turned to her slowly, revealing his dark, disapproving facial expression. He didn’t miss the flash of mischief in her eyes when they finally made eye contact.

“You incopacitated two of my men.” He started, continuing to walk back and forth in front of them with his hands behind his back.

“They were chasing me.” She shrugged.

Jungkook stopped in his tracks at the negligence of her tone. He turned on his heel to face his suspect with a serious face. “Who are you and why do you keep killing my targets?” he demanded, just wanting to get to the point of why they were here. A humored smile broke out across her face.

“Your targets? Someone’s a little full of themselves.” She giggled innocently.

“Tell me and I won’t take a hammer to both your shoulders.” He said smoothly looking deeply into her eyes making sure he got his point across.

Her cocky smirk dissipates but doesn't completely disappear.

“You don’t have a hammer.” she muttered to herself, thinking that the mafia leader couldn’t hear her. He just gave her a pointed look, silently telling her to continue. She licks her lips slowly while holding Jungkook’s stormy gaze.

“I was paid, you asshole.” She muttered.

“By who?”

“No one you and your goons need to worry about.” He sighed and looked up in frustration. “Why?”

The woman shook her head furiously. “Are you daft? It’s my job, obviously.”

Jungkook whipped his head in her direction, his eyes widening slightly and his voice taking on a more agitated tone.

“You disrespect me one more time and I’m gonna slap that smug smirk off your face.” He warned her harshly.

“Promises, promises.” She sang with that self-satisfied grin that he was having mixed feelings about.

With that, Jungkook swifty brought his hand up to backhand the assailant and jumped in her direction, but stopped when his hand was halfway to her face. She didn’t move an inch or even blink. She even narrowed her eyes at him playfully.

He backed away from her, impressed. She may have earned some of Jungkook’s respect that day, but he would never tell a single soul about it. He composed himself, eyeing her carefully. He then enganges her in a more calm conversation.

“Do you know who I am?”

“Yes.”

“Does your employer know who I am?”

“I have multiple. Some do.” She shrugs coolly.

“What do they—”

“Look we know you're in charge of the mafia, or whatever, but we don’t care. The people I’ve killed have wronged more than just you and your circus of idiots here and they deserved to die.” She gestured to the two henchmen holding her in place.

“Besides I did you a favor. Several, actually. I’m a blessing in disguise.” She smiled sweetly.

Jungkook shakes his head in disagreement. “You’re a fucking pain in my ass is what you are.”

“Oh, what a pleasure. And how do you figure that?”

“Some mysterious...aggressor taking out a number of important people on the east side. Wouldn’t that alarm you in my position?” He queried with a raised, pierced brow.

“Mysterious? Mr. Jeon, do you find me attractive?” She leans forward and is yanked back in place by the men flanking her. She held a suddenly sultry and intense light behind her eyes directed at Jungkook.

He couldn’t deny her beauty; anything with a pulse would be attracted to her. Seeing her up close, he noticed her many piercings along her ears, on her septum and her left brow, just like his. He could see tattoos peeking out from her sleeves and neckline of her suit and he wondered just how much of her body was covered by tattoos.

He was trying not to let that get in the way of this interrogation and failing miserably with his mind wandering in dangerous directions. It didn’t help that he couldn’t look her in the eye for too long, her gaze was so captivating and somehow held so many emotions that they caused him to lose focus.

He regarded her thoughtfully for a moment before asking, “What is your name?”

“Deathstalker.” Wow, Jungkook thought to himself.

“You wanna tell me your real name?” He offered, nodding at her.

“That’s the only name you're gonna get. And just a heads up, I’m not gonna talk if you torture me.” She says confidently with hooded lids. Is she bored?, the mob boss thought. He began to pace for a few moments, the only sound in the alley coming from his designer shoes squelching against the damp concrete.

“No...no, we’re not gonna hurt you.” Jungkook decided. The two henchmen that were restraining the woman, looked up in shock. Jungkook has injured or killed people for far less than what she’s done in the past hour.

She tilts her head uncomfortably in the hold of the gang members, to get a good look at the mafia leader’s face. She gasps and beams as if she’s had an epiphany.

“You like me.” She settled.

He whips around to face her. “What are you on about?”

“I thought I was gonna have to seduce you to get you off my back, but it seems you already have a soft spot for me.” She deduced with an appeased grin on her face.

Jungkook’s breathing deepened. He thought quickly of what he could do to draw the attention away from the truth of her statement. He didn’t know what it was about her, but she was different from any of the other suspicious characters he’s interrogated. And for some reason he didn’t want to hurt her, but he couldn’t be seen as weak in front of his inferiors.

In a flash, he was directly in front of her, teeth clenched and gripping her face tightly in his strong hand. His fingers pressed roughly into her jaw, her cheeks were forced to scrunch up, obscuring her vision and her mouth was bound to a permanent, painful pout.

“Stop spewing nonsense, I wouldn’t sleep with you if you were the last woman on earth. You’re too dirty.” He lied gratingly. “I don’t have soft spots for anyone and you would do well to learn that. Come into my sight again and you’ll see what kind of damage I can really do.” He seethed.

“Hot.” Deathstalker replied through forcibly clenched teeth. Jungkook sighed before flimsily releasing her chin, flinging it to the right causing her to wince. Jungkook inwardly did the same at the sight.

“Let her go.” The henchmen do as they are told. “Get out of my sight.” She got up off her knees awkwardly with her bound wrists.

“I’m sure you know how to get rid of that yourself.” Jungkook nodded at the rope around her wrists. She nodded back casually and walked passed Jungkook, brushing up against him as she did so.

“Catch you on the flip side.” She whispered to him before she took off in a run into the night.

Three weeks had passed without a surprise appearance from “Deathstalker” and Jungkook was beginning to think she had actually heeded his warning in the alley. He should be pleased with this fact, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Not only was the thought of her ingrained in his mind, but he was slowly convincing himself that maybe he did appreciate her services even if he wasn’t the one paying for them. His men seem to have gotten lazier with the physical side of organized crime since Jungkook’s encounter with Deathstalker.

Or perhaps with no one to properly clean up the mess left after a hit, he’s noticing just how sloppy they’ve been. Either way, people are talking and names are traveling through the air like pollution; they can’t go on like this.

He and his men have been actively searching for the assassin and any information they could find on her. The leader didn’t disclose his true motives to his foot soldiers for fear of looking weak, but he couldn’t have the feds knocking down the doors of his companies and he was desperate. They succeeded in finding her real name, her past hits and the names of some of her employers, but nothing on where she was hiding or how to contact her.

Jungkook curses himself for not realizing Deathstalker’s worth sooner and tries to calm his rampant mind by chugging his flute of champagne. He looks around, disinterested at the ostentatious group of people at the pompous event he was advised to attend.

As the head of the leading construction company on the east side and since no one suspected his night job, he showed his face in these environments from time to time. This one happens to be an art auction and Jungkook was regretting it by the minute.

He quickly snagged one more flute of champagne before taking his seat in the front row for the auction. Half-way through the auction he considers leaving, he hasn’t raised his number card once as none of the pieces appealed to him. His head began to lull back out of pure boredom before he heard an all-too familiar voice above the noise.

“Two million dollars!” The voice was forthright and attractive, causing every head to turn in it’s direction.

Jungkook didn’t have to look far as the owner of the voice was sitting in the front row as well, roughly twelve seats away. His eyes widened at his suspicions being proven correct. He stares at her for a few moments, taking in her full appearance since meeting her for the first time in the alley.

She traded in the black cat suit for a peach colored cocktail dress that hung off of one shoulder and blinding white pumps. She covered up her tattoos with makeup to Jungkook’s dismay, but still showed off her many piercings and her long wavy hair was pulled back into a sleek ponytail. That’s a good look, thought Jungkook who spared her one last glance before settling into his seat and devising a plan for how the rest of the night will go.

The auction finally came to an end and the elites took to day drinking and networking once more. Jungkook blended in with the crowd, but kept a close eye on Deathstalker, waiting to find her away from her companions. He spotted her amongst strangers, nursing a glass of champagne and intently watching the middle aged crooner sing along with the orchestra.

When Marimba Rhythms start to play

Dance with me

Make me sway

Then he pounced.

He positioned himself behind her and leaned in to speak softly into her ear. “What are you doing here?”

She didn’t flinch or even react to his words, as if she knew he was there, and just continued to enjoy the music. She never failed to impress him.

“Well, killing all your targets actually counts for something. I’m spending my hard earned money on some fine art.” She smiled after a moment. Jungkook came to stand next to her instead. He took a swig from his drink, the two of them still not making eye contact. “You know it’s not polite to brag.”

She finally turns to him to show off her expensive outfit. “Does this dress scream humble to you?”

“No, but it does scream desperate.” He took her in, using it as an excuse to check her out. That cat suit didn’t do her legs justice in his opinion, but this ensemble has his approval.

“For what?” She demanded, cocking her head to the side.

“You tell me—”

“You’re full of shit, Jeon.” The assassin sneered and quickly turned to walk away. Jungkook catches her by the bicep at the last second, attempting to make it look playful and desperately trying to avoid any unwanted attention.

“Wait.” He smoothly but firmly pulled her back to him, guiding her left hand to his shoulder and holding onto her right one before leading her in a slow dance towards the dance floor. He told himself he needed a more discreet position to confide his intentions in her ear again.

Like a lazy ocean hugs the shore

Hold me close

Sway me more

“I have a proposition for you.”

She glances up at him, sporting narrowed and curious eyes. “Oh? This should be good. Last time you saw me, you threatened to hammer my limbs in.” She swiftly stomped on his foot, with a tight-lipped, spiteful smile.

He groaned and gathered himself with closed eyes before getting down to business. “Drop the attitude Y/L/N.” Jungkook grumbled, causing the assassin to freeze, but he made sure to keep them moving. She switches from her normal playful demeanor to a more formidable version of herself and he is almost alarmed by the switch. She leans closer to him to reach his ear and drops her voice to a grave whisper.

“How did you know my last—”

Jungkook doesn’t back down from her close, menacing form and goes as far as to tease her with a satisfied smirk. “Hate to break it to you, but you’re not the only computer genius in this room okay?”

She only glares off into the distance, clenching her jaw.

“What?” Jungkook revels in the feeling of having the upper hand on her. “My men may not be able to catch you in action, but they do know their way around a file cabinet.” He shares proudly, biting his lip with joy.

Realizing the leverage he had over her, Y/N made the decision to hear him out. “What the fuck do you want?” She spat before Jungkook spun her and dipped her quickly. And though she was angry, she moved with grace and he couldn’t help, but admire her beauty.

Like a flower bending in the breeze

Bend with me, sway with ease

“You.” He smirks, already missing her playful personality and hoping to bring it back out. He smiles wider when he succeeds.

She finally cracks a smile and throws her head back, unable to stop herself from laughing. “That’s funny, I thought you wouldn’t fuck me if I were the last woman on earth.” She threw his line back at him effortlessly.

The mob boss hesitates for a split second. “Okay, your memory is impeccable, I get it, but I’m talking about your services.”

Y/N blinks in bewilderment before forming the words she never thought she would. “You want me to work for you?” He nods evenly.

“I’ve already killed five targets for you, Jeon. What more could you want?” She sputtered, not being able to fathom the request. Jungkook only releases her hand, keeping the other wrapped around her waist and nods to the empty balcony of the ballroom before leading her through it’s floor length glass doors.

“Trust me, I’m well aware. It was insanely fucking annoying,” He said earnestly, making the assassin giggle. His heart seemed to lurch at the sound, but he ignored the pleasant pang in his chest to continue his proposal. “Until I noticed how well you clean up after yourself. Leaving almost no trace of your involvement at the crime scene.”

He released Y/N’s waist carefully close to the door of the balcony, peering into the room to see who might be looking at them. They seemed to have a bit of privacy as of right now.

Y/N tilted her head and raised her eyebrows sincerely. “Are you really shocked that the neanderthals you hired aren’t too keen on cleaning up after themselves?”

“I’m trying to compliment you.” He sighed looking up.

“You’re doing a pretty shit job.” She mumbled. He ignores her complaints and carries on. He tucks his hands into his pants pockets and walks towards her.

“My men haven’t been as stealthy as possible as of late and there’s talk that we may have caught the attention of the authorities.”

“Again, are you surprised?” She overannunicated sassily with her arms crossed.

He marched up to her, towering over her small frame intimidatingly. “Don’t push it, Deathstalker.” He sneered at her. Her snark was beginning to piss him off. Why was he always so hot and cold with her?

“Or what?” She said seductively, suddenly snaking her arm around his torso and pressing herself against him. She gazed up at him, with flirtatious eyes

Jungkook bit the inside of his cheek, gazing back down at the woman coolly. He considers feeding into her words and actions for a second, but figures it’s probably just one of her games so he tosses the idea. “I’m trying to make you an offer here.” He insisted. The mercenary sucks her teeth, lets go and turns to walk away. “Ugh you’re no fun...You couldn’t handle me anyway.”

The one time he tried to be professional. He pulls her back by the arm, forcefully pressing her into the stone wall next to the door of the balcony. He presses himself against her firmly while gripping her small waist with one hand and her chin with the other.

"Fine,” He challenged. “Is this what you want? You want me to fuck you right here, up against this wall, like a little slut?" He spoke in a low voice so as not to concern the guests inside and the rumble of Jungkook’s voice in his chest made Y/N’s body start to heat up.

His offer brings a genuine, delighted smile to her face. She tosses the idea around in her head while making heated eye contact with Jungkook. But that would never work, she thought bitterly. Her date would come looking for her soon. Not a good look when you're trying to bag a guy and rob him for his millions. So she decided to tease him instead, It was the perfect opportunity with him being all riled up like this.

"I knew you liked me…” She let her sultry yet snide words linger, toying with the fabric of his collar. “But that would be unprofessional, Mr. Jeon...seeing as you are now my boss." she uttered softly, still keeping her seductive gaze. Jungkook briefly wonders if she could feel his dick twitch when she said his name like that before refocusing on the situation.

When we dance you have a way with me

Stay with me, sway with me

He took the sudden change of pace and her choice of words as her officially accepting his offer and released his hold on her with a grimace. She walks by him, smoothing down her dress with an unfazed expression and heads to the railing to take in the view, as if she wasn’t just assaulted by one of the most important men in the country.

“So you’ll do it?”

She kept her back to him, letting her heavy voice travel over her shoulder casually. “How much will you give me?”

He joins her side, resting his hands on the railing. “Eight hundred, thousand.”

She whips her head in his direction, an obviously offended expression on her face. “Do I look like one of your minions?” Y/N inquired.

“It would be your first job with me, you gotta start somewhere.” He made a gesture with his hand, trying to reason with her.

“I started years ago and I’m good at my job. The best actually…I want a million.” She decided with a hand on her waist.

Jungkook blinked repeatedly, taken aback. “You want me to give you a million dollars?”

“Yes, or no deal.” She answered quickly before he could even finish the question. The mafioso took a step back and laughed silently in disbelief.

“You’re infuriating, you know tha—”

“And you make me wanna vomit.”

“You’re projecting.”

“Oh, suck a dick Jeon!” She began marching towards the glass doors into the ballroom before Jungkook caught her by the arm and brought her back to him swiftly.

“Fine, it’s yours.” He muttered, glaring down at her with frustrated eyes.

The woman simply winked playfully at him and caressed his face. “I knew you’d come around.” She beamed looking satisfied and walked away only to be yanked back to Jungkook’s chest yet again. This time she grumbled in slight annoyance. He made a note to let up on the pulling.

“If you cross me, we will kill you.” He said seriously. She only smiled as if he’d made a joke.

“Unless I beat you to that too.” His face turned angry and he opened his mouth to speak when they heard the glass door open and a voice call toY/N.

“Oh, Ruby, there you are. Is this guy bothering you?” An older gentleman in a suit and a gold chain spoke in a scraggly voice. Jungkook recognized him as Walter Schillings, a white collar criminal who has been giving Jungkook’s men a hard time and definitely landed himself on their hitist.

Thankfully, the scum has never actually seen the mafia leader before so they were able to avoid a tricky situation at this crowded event. Though Jungkook had men scattered throughout the building in case anything went down, he never travelled alone. But, wait. Why was he referring to Y/N as Ruby?

The mafia leader had no time to figure it out because he had to explain why he was gripping this innocent looking woman the way he was. He lets go immediately and addresses the man. “We were just having a convers—”

“No,” Y/N sighs and saunters over to Walter, grabbing his huge hand and having it encompass her small one.

What the fuck is this? Jungkook thought, his heart suddenly racing. He tried to hide his emotions behind a cold demeanor.

“Just some loser trying to get my attention.” She glanced back at Jungkook arrogantly, allowing Walter to slide an arm around her waist and kiss the side of her forehead as they re-entered the ballroom.

Jungkook ground his teeth together at the sight and nearly sprinted to Walter to tear his arm off when he saw his hand reach down and grip Y/N’s ass. It bothered him even more that she hadn’t reacted whatsoever.

He turned away and braced himself on the railing again, attempting to calm himself. “I hope she slits your goddamn throat, motherfucker.” He grumbled to himself, seething with anger.

Jungkook spent the next fifteen minutes pouting on the balcony, gripping the railing in anger with a bothersome boner while the rich and famous boozed it up inside. Surprisingly no one had come out to bother him, giving him enough to time think about what he just saw.

He didn’t know why the sight of Y/N with Walter infuriated him so, but he knew he never wanted to see it again. He wondered how she could flirt with him so heavily and then disregard him completely at the drop of a hat. He just wanted to make her eat her petty words, drive her as crazy as she seemed to be driving him.

It didn’t help that he had been having fantasies of her for the past few weeks in that catsuit just letting him have his way with her. And here she comes, looking like sex on legs and clouding his judgement after disappearing for three weeks. Just who does she think she is? Jungkook sighed frustratedly at the pitiful turn his night had taken.

He wished he had a distraction from his thoughts. He wished he could leave this vexatious place, but something was keeping him here and he had a feeling that, that something was a menace in a dress and liked to play mind games.

Okay, so, the boner that won’t seem to go away may also be responsible for keeping him isolated on this balcony, but he had every intention of taking care of it. He just had to convince Y/N.

He quickly tucked his boner into his waistband and walked back into the ballroom like he never left, eyes peeled for Y/N’s small form among the guests. He sees her enter the restroom from afar and doesn’t think before pursuing her.

On any other day Jungkook wouldn’t dream of executing what was going on in his head, but Y/N was admittedly the most breathtaking thing he’d ever seen and she caused him to think purely with his dick after their interaction today.

He doesn’t know how he managed to skip into the women’s restroom without setting off any of the guests, but he considers it a victory when he’s in and locks the door without thinking about it. He turned to find Y/N touching up her make-up at the large mirror above the sinks.

They make eye contact through the mirror, but they have yet to exchange words. Y/N narrows her eyes questioningly while Jungkook considers the silence and stillness in the room. So far so good.

Jungkook’s shoes clicked on the tile floor as he took a few steps away from the door. “Where did your date go?” He questioned casually.

Y/N finally pauses touching up her face. “He also went to the bathroom, what are you doing in here?” She answers speedily, watching him intently through the mirror. “We made our deal.”

“I came to see you…” The woman hums in understanding and starts on her lipstick again, seemingly uninterested. “You getting all dolled up for him?” Jungkook finishes.

“Essentially yes.” There is a pause before Jungkook just comes out with it.

“So you gonna sleep with him tonight?”

Deathstalker scoffed. “Of course not. I’m an assassin not a hooker.”

Jungkook muffles a laugh at the inside joke amongst him and his men when his new ally finally starts to show some interest. “Why do you care anyway?”

He walks up to her boldly, gripping her waist and pressing against her from behind causing her to put the make-up down and zero in on his face. She continued to watch his eyes when he leaned down to whisper in her ear.

“I just wonder what he would say if I messed up this pretty little face.” He brings his hand up to gently grip her chin, unlike how he did earlier. She smiles slightly, making no attempt to free herself from his grasp. If anything she leans more into his touch.

“Mr. Jeon.” She drawled. “Are you still threatening me?” She bats her eyelashes coyly, knowing exactly what was going on. Jungkook has no idea why that innocent look and the words ‘Mr. Jeon’ falling from her mouth made him hard, but he continually needed more of it. He shuddered lightly at the name and her sweet, sweet voice, barely managing to keep his cool.

“Not in the painful way...unless you like that.” He rasped, brushing her lip with his thumb tenderly. She held back a moan and Jungkook took that as an invitation to take it a step further.

“Do you want me?” He breathed deeply in her ear, sending chills down her spine.

She licked her lips and smiled her signature seductive smile. Jungkook was no match for both her smile and her beautiful doe-eyes. “Oh, Mr. Jeon, you know my pride won’t let me answer that.”

“Cut the games Y/L/N. I’ve had enough of your shit today. Do you want me?” He repeats. He fully pressed his body into hers allowing her to feel the need that he had been accumulating out on the balcony, his breathing getting heavier. She returned the gesture, pushing back against him discreetly.

“I thought we agreed that you would just be my boss.” She said with wide, naive eyes, though Jungkook knew better.

“Well, then, as your boss I hope you would do as I ask and let me fuck you on this sink.” He let his fingers travel from her chin to her throat and let them wrap around her neck ever so gently, giving her just a taste of what was to come. He felt her swallow thickly and watched the innocent look in her eyes turn to primal lust. “So? You wanna see if I can handle you or not?” He whispered, touching his lips to her ear.

She shivered at the touch and quickly turned around to face him. Jungkook leaned in and they were nose to nose. She wrapped her arms around his neck, but their lips barely brushed when she backed away suddenly. He looked into her stern eyes confusedly. “This means nothing.” She said, making sure they were both on the same page. “I’m aware.” he responded before they both pounced at each other, teeth clacking and tongues swirling.

Y/N moaned in delight when Jungkook gripped the back of her thighs and sat her on the granite sink counter with a quickness. He forced her skirt up to her hips roughly so he could properly grind his crotch against her and she seemed to enjoy the rough handling. He made a note of that.

His hands were everywhere on her, massaging her breasts, squeezing her hips and ass, eager to finally be living his most recent fantasies. Y/N revelled in the attention with a smile on her face, hands playing freely in his silky hair whilst he kissed along her neck.

He quickly reached down between Y/N’s legs to find that she wasn’t wearing any underwear. He leans back and their heated gazes meet. “You dirty little slut.” He noted, gruffly. “You like it.” She confidently reassured him. “You’re damn right, I like it.” He mumbled as he attached his lips firmly to hers and applied pressure, rubbing her swollen clit with his fingers. “...Mmm, God, you’re so wet.”

The assassin’s body jerked several times and she moaned into his mouth, grinding further into his touch. She separated from him when she couldn’t take anymore and stared deeply into his eyes. “Please,” she pauses to catch her breath. “Please fuck me, Mr. Jeon.”

Jungkook unzipped his pants before she could even finish her sentence, preparing a condom that he is thanking God he brought with him today. “I like when you say my name like that.” He whispered against her ear.

“I know, your dick told me. Now, hurry before someone breaks the door down.” Jungkook then slides into her easily. Y/N sighs in ecstasy while Jungkook is stunned into silence at the way she gripped his dick. He starts to move almost immediately, holding her in place as he snaps his hips into her, their lips sloppily tangled all the while. The sound of their moans began to bounce off of the tile walls of the bathroom, both of them throwing any cares they had for being discreet out the window.

Jungkook grunted with excitement and pleasure at the sight in front of him. He was watching her moaning form closely, memorizing every detail of her incase he never got this chance again.

“Fuck yes. Your dick feels so fucking good inside me.” She panted, focused on his wide, intense eyes. “Just keep fucking me like that, Mr. Jeon.” He released a satisfied growl at the name.

Even though he had only met her weeks ago, Jungkook never would have guessed that Y/N would be the type to beg for anything. But here she was under him, at his mercy just like in his dreams, begging for him. It occurred to him that the Deathstalker he met would never admit to or do any of this, but Y/N seemed to be living for it. The idea excited him so much that he didn’t know up from down and didn’t bother to control any nonsense that spewed from his mouth in response to her.

“You look like a dirty little slut under me right now. Letting me fuck you in the bathroom while your date’s probably outside waiting or you.” He whispered harshly in her ear, never letting up as he continues to thrust in and out of her swiftly.

Y/N threw her head back and moaned, feeling nothing but turned on by his comments. “Oh, fuck yes..” She murmured, letting herself be carried away with pleasure.

“Not wearing any panties for him, letting him touch all over you, ugh...but I’m the one who gets to have this sweet pussy by the end of the night.” He breathed heavily, not taking his eyes off of Y/N’s face that was contorted in pure bliss. “Flirting with both of us all night long, making us want you. You’re such a bad girl.”

“I am, I’m a bad girl.” She whimpered hurriedly. “I need to be punished, Mr. Jeon.” She finished, her words not completely registering in her drunken state, but they resonated with Jungkook all too well. He forced himself to slow his thrusts considerably and focus on his breathing much to Y/N’s dismay.

She leans back into him and rests her forehead on his, running her fingers through his hair and grinding on him desperately. “No, no, no, no, no, no. Why did you stop?” Her low, lusty voice implored.

Jungkook chuckles lightly. “You’re gonna make me cum sweetheart.” She pulled his hips into her helping him find a new rhythm. “Then by all means, do, Mr. Jeon. I want you to cum inside me.” She purred before kissing him softly.

That set something off in him causing him to pound into her once more. Y/N was thrown back by the force, unable to hold her upper body up any longer. She rested her elbows on the counter and tilted her head all the way back while Jungkook thrusted away into her.

He saw her face in the mirror and appreciated that he got the watch the pleasure they were experiencing together until he noticed her eyes were closed.

He realised he didn’t wanna cum this way. He pulled out of her, ignoring her cries of disapproval, turned her around and roughly bent her over the counter.

“Oh, baby, you gotta see this.” He rasped before sliding into her again and instantly started fucking into her wildly. Y/N yelped before biting her knuckle in order to keep quiet. “Oh my god, yes, fuck me!”

Jungkook grabbed her ponytail and dragged her up off the counter and into his chest so that he could whisper in her ear. She winced, but let him wrap her hair around his fist and pull harder, the back of her head totally resting on his shoulder.

She could see him behind her, relentlessly hammering into her greedy body in all his glory. Maybe she misjudged him. The sight turned her on even more, sending another rush of wetness between her thighs.

“You’d better keep it down princess. Wouldn’t want your date to think his girl was in here getting railed like a slut. Oh, wait.” Y/N wanted to laugh, but Jungkook released her hip to wrap his large hand around the base of her neck and firmly squeezed.

Her eyes immediately rolled back at the gesture, but she made sure to refocus on the mirror as Jungkook was watching closely. The pressure was building in her core more and more. She was gonna fall over the edge any second now, she was so close.

“Oh m-ffffuck, yes! You’re gonna make me cum, Mr. Jeon.” She whined through clenched teeth, looking into his piercing eyes through the mirror.

“Then fucking cum for me.” His deep voice grated in her ear.

“Harder! Choke me harder!” Y/N pleaded as her orgasm crashed right into her. He squeezed tighter at just the right time and with just the right pressure that had Y/N seeing stars and prolonging her high. Jungkook held off his own orgasm, trying not to think about her velvety walls pulsating around him, so that he could watch Y/N fully enjoy hers. And boy was it something to watch.

Her jaw dropped and stilled as her eyes rolled into her head, but it was the most beautiful thing Jungkook had ever seen. Her body was frozen in a perfect arch as he thrusted away into her and her hand firmly cradled his head so that their cheeks were pressed together. He would hold out for as long as he could as she rode her high completely if only to watch her like this for a little longer.

Eventually she tapped Jungkook's hand causing him to let go of her neck and she collapsed onto the counter breathlessly. “Holy fuck.” She gasped as she braced herself on the granite surface.

She coughed a bit and caught her breath and then looked up at Jungkook with fucked out, voracious eyes. He never took his eyes off of her and never stopped pumping his dick into her delicious cunt.

“You gonna cum for your little cock slut, Mr. Jeon?” Y/N croaked, throat sore from being choked. But every word sounded like music to Jungkook’s ears. That look on her face made him wanna blow his load on the spot. “Yeah, baby.” Is all he can offer as his hips break their rhythm without his permission.

“Please, cum inside me.” She moaned out as Jungkook emptied himself into the condom, hips sputtering near the end until they stopped with his dick still deep inside of her. He was in his own head, lost in a post-coital stupor, thinking about how that may have been the best orgasm he’s ever had when Y/N spoke up.

“You can get out of me now.” She said flatly, thrusting Jungkook back into the real world. He murmured an apology and withdrew himself from her, watching her walk casually into one of the stalls without a word or a look in his direction.

He just stood there with his cock out wondering what the hell just happened. He thought they made a connection. He agreed that it wouldn’t mean anything, but was she really that cold hearted to just ignore him after a passionate experience like that? Well, she is a mercenary, his conscience defended, they’re not meant to be caring.

As he heard the stall start to open up he quickly turned around, discarded the condom and tucked himself back into his pants. He then watched as she came back out looking more put together than before.

She washed her hands and began to touch up her appearance again. This time she actually needed it. The foundation on her neck was rubbed off by his fingers, revealing the tattoos that Jungkook missed, her lipstick was smeared and her high ponytail drooped due to the pulling. Awkward silence took over the spacious restroom. Is she really not going to say anything?

He decided to just come out with it. “What was that?”

“What are you talking about?” She requested, haphazardly while fixing her hair in the mirror.

“Well, you were just all over me and now you’re acting like I don’t exist.” He said plainly.

“It’s called sex, you don’t fuck like a virgin so I assume you know what I’m talking about. Besides, I’m not acting like anything.” Jungkook had a hard time believing that. He knew what deflecting looked like, had seen it in many interrogations.

“Then why won't you look at me?” He challenged.

Her eyes widened in annoyance as she reached around to place another bobby pin in her hair. “I’m kinda busy here, Jeon.”

He couldn’t help, but feel bothered that she dropped the sassy formality of calling him Mr., an indication that she was enjoying his company. “Look, will you just talk to me for a sec—”

She suddenly stops what she’s doing. Her breathing is long and deep before she calms down and begins speaking smoothly with her eyes closed. “Look, Jeon. We don’t know each other and I don't know what you think you know about me or what you made up in your head, but you might as well forget all of that ‘cause it’s not real.” She sighed, continuing to recover her foundation.

“That wasn’t real?” He finally commanded. He hated to admit it, but he was slightly bothered when she didn’t even offer him a glance. “That?” She responded, only interested in her reflection.

“That,” He clarified, gesturing to the counter sternly. “What we just did, what we...said.” He gulped nervously. This wasn’t like him, he didn’t get nervous or have passionate sex with strangers and let it effect him. This is only his second time meeting this woman and he let her get in his head. He’s been asking himself the same question since meeting her in the alley: what makes her so different?

She put down her foundation and just stared at it blankly. “And what part of what we said are you confused about, pray tell.”

“Um, ‘I need to be punished, Mr. Jeon.’” He quoted promptly.

Honestly the only thing he was confused about was why she was suddenly being so cold to him. All of the words they shared were noteworthy and he wanted her to acknowledge that. The whole experience still shocked Jungkook and he never dreamed it would actually happen. He just brought up a snippet that he thought might get her attention and maybe evoke some emotion finally. He chose wisely.

Her head whipped in his direction. “And you liked it, didn’t you?” She sneered. “Or perhaps we could talk about how you like to call women, sluts, hm?”

“I thought you liked it,” He tried to get in, but she wasn’t having it.

Jungkook thought her angry face looked nothing like it did five minutes ago or even out on the balcony. She suddenly let out a bitter laugh and Jungkook realized that this woman probably wears many faces. Perhaps to defend herself. Perhaps to survive. Maybe he misjudged her.

“You know, I didn’t take you for a person who throws things that people say during sex back in their face.” She accused, sporting a dark smile.

“Well, I’m sorry, but I didn’t take you for a...a—”

“A submissive?” She shot, putting an end to his stuttering. He deflated, all signs of anger or disapproval gone from his stance. “Yes.” He copped out, not knowing what else to say. “I just wasn’t expecting that.”

Y/N visibly calmed down as well, turning back to the mirror and continuing her work. “Are you surprised?” She muttered, raising her eyebrows.

Jungkook thought for a second before responding, evenly: “No.” Thinking about how much Y/N might have gone through to be so successful as a trained killer, she must have had to be the strongest and smartest person in the room on any given day. There had to be a time where she wanted to take a break, not be the person in charge for once. Jungkook could relate.

His response made her pause, but she only cleared her throat and continued applying foundation in silence. I can’t leave things like this, Jungkook decided. He just got an actual glimpse into her personality and not the same act she puts on for the rest of the world. He found out that they might even have some things in common. He didn’t want her to shut him out now. It may have been a moment of weakness for both of them, but he wanted to continue this.

“I could, you know, help...punish you, i-if you want.” He spluttered with his hands in his pockets, trying to make himself look as confident as possible since his voice had already betrayed him.

Y/N stills and turns to him with a confounded expression, but didn’t say anything.

“I mean, unless you already have a…” Jungkook left out the last word for her to hopefully pick up on, suddenly shy about the world of BDSM.

“No, I don’t.” She rushed out, looking down at the counter and creating an awkward silence between them. “I’ll think about it.” She added genuinely. She looked at him over her shoulder and offered a gentle nod, her expression completely blank.

Jungkook nods back in acknowledgement. “Okay, then.”

“Now get out of here, I’m sure there are ladies that need this restroom.” She pulled on her signature playful smirk, nearly giving Jungkook whiplash. Many faces indeed.

“Yeah, okay.” He gathered himself and walked towards the door, but turned back when he realized something. “Wait, how do I contact you for the job?”

“I’ll call you, now go.” She said packing up her stuff.

Jungkook nodded, unlocked the door and quickly darted out of the bathroom. As he sped by he saw Walter down the hall posted in front of the men’s room patiently waiting for his date. Thankfully his head was turned when Jungkook made his way out of there and to the exit. He smirked wickedly, knowing he got away with his ridiculous plan. “Dumbass.”

Two weeks had gone by since the bathroom incident and Jungkook worked tirelessly to distract himself from thoughts of the beautiful assassin to no avail. He realized there was no escaping her. He thought their rendezvous at the auction would help get her out of his system, but it only fueled his addiction for her and now he was trapped in a vicious cycle that he didn’t know if he wanted out of.

They kept in contact and Deathstalker killed the enemies on Jungkook’s hit list, but this time she was being paid by the mafioso himself unbeknownst to his men. They found themselves in situations much like the first time they ran into Deathstalker more often than not. Only now she had to be more creative as Jungkook’s foot soldiers still thought she was a possible threat.

As Jungkook sat across from Collin Boardly, a corrupt CEO/gang leader, he wondered if this would be one of those situations. Boardly is a fellow criminal that Jungkook was on good terms with until he heard that Boardly’s men have been attacking and blackmailing store owners in his territory. Jungkook insisted that he pay those victims back and restore all damages. He even invited Mr. Boardly to a very private game of poker so that they could properly discuss matters.

They sat in the dimly lit restaurant owned by one of Jungkook’s close friends with their respective security surrounding them. Boardly felt obligated to bring his men as he offended Jungkook and now he was on his turf. Jungkook’s men insisted on backing him up, but he had a strong feeling that none of that would be necessary.

They had already made small talk while getting the game started and Jungkook got straight to business.

“So, I hear you’ve been terrorizing my streets. What’s the story there?” Jungkook inquired calmly. Boardly huffed a nervous laugh at the mention of what his men did. “Personally I think terrorizing might be too strong a word.”

Jungkook’s brows raised and his expression turned serious. “Well, what would you call threatening multiple lives at gunpoint, roughin’ ‘em up and demanding cuts of their earnings then? Business?” He denounced.

“As usual.” Boardly finished the adage with a large smile. Jungkook only looked at him with the same no nonsense expression and Boardly seemed to regret making the remark.

“Just a joke, Jungkook.” He muttered. “I am sorry that I allowed my guys to do that.” He doubled down. “We simply didn’t know how far your territory reached. We meant no disrespect.”

“I appreciate that.” Jungkook replied, anger stirring inside him as he fought not to rip this man’s head from his shoulders.They continued to play in near silence until Jungkook finally pressed him for answers.

“So how do you intend to fix what your guys broke?”

Boardly looked up with a lost expression on his face. “Excuse me?” He grumbled.

“There was damage done to these stores, yes?” Jungkook assessed slowly. “And you’ve already collected cuts from some of the owners…” He can see Boardly’s eyes widen slightly in recognition.

“Oh, you didn’t know I knew that.” The mob boss gathered. “Anyway, I assume you’re ready to pay for that. I was thinking fifty, thousand dollars would cover it.” He suggested calmly.

Boardly tried to give an excuse, stuttering. “I’m-I don't think you understand—”

“I understood you can afford it, judging by those chips.” Jungkook chided, gesturing to the large bet Boardly made in the center of the poker table. Boardly sighed at a loss.

“Kook, listen.” The CEO leaned forward, trying to reason with his opponent. “We’re friends. It was an accident, can’t we just forget this happened?”

“No.” Jungkook responded instantly, his arms crossed. “We were...associates, but now you’re just someone who fucked with my community. So are you gonna pay it back or not?” He seethed furiously.

Boardly swallowed and stared at Jungkook for a few moments, wondering how else to bargain with him. He had too much pride to go through with this deal, especially in front of his inferiors.

“No.” He finally answered.

Jungkook sighed disappointedly. The air in the room turned ominous and it was felt by all. Normally, Jungkook would be killing Boardly by now and he could feel all of his men tense behind him, ready to kill if need be, but he was doing things differently today. He just nodded understandingly, before gesturing with his left hand to get Taehyung’s attention.

“Taehyung. Will you get me a glass of water from the kitchen please?” He asked politely without looking at him. He hears his right hand man head to the kitchen and he turns back to the piece of shit in front of him.

“Why, Collin? Is there something wrong with doing right by those you fucked over?” Jungkook questioned, heatedly.

“No, Kook—”

“Don’t call me that.”

Boardly scoffed and continued. “I just don’t think we did anything wrong. We overstepped, we apologized, I think that should be enough.”

“Well, I don’t. So where does that leave us?”

“I’m not paying for shit.” The CEO shrugged. That really pissed Jungkook off.

“Go to hell, Boardly.” He growled. I’m really gonna enjoy watching you bite it, Jungkook thought sinisterly.

Taehyung placed the glass of water in front of his boss and made the decision to continue to stand at his side, ready if anything were to happen.

“Fine.” Boardly responded bitterly. “So are we done here? Or are you gonna give me a hard time?” He asked, nodding at Taehyung for emphasis. Jungkook shook his head nonchalantly. “No, no. We’re done.” with a haunting smirk on his face. The look put Boardly slightly on edge, but he ignored it and stood up to corral his men.

Jungkook watched him make his way to the door wondering what the fuck was taking so long? He already gave the signal. He started to reach for his own gun to do it himself when he noticed Boardly stop in his tracks and could hear him choking.

Even Jungkook and his men wore looks of concern. The mafia leader got up to get a better view from where he stood and the others craned their necks behind him still ready to shoot first and ask questions later.

Boardly’s men tried to help him as he clutched his throat, but it was no use as he convulsed and fell to the floor before ceasing to move altogether. They looked at each other for answers before turning to Jungkook.

One of the guys who was wearing a blue suit, which Jungkook assumed to be Boardly’s right hand, pulled out a gun and walked towards him. Taehyung and Jungkook pulled theirs as well, causing everyone with a gun to point them at either side.

“You do this?!” Boardly’s guy raged. “How?” Jungkook argued. “How would I do that to him? He probably had a heart attack or forgot to breathe or some shit.” He surmised, trying to place the blame elsewhere.

“Bullshit! What did you do?” He demanded.

“Look, I’m sorry for your loss or whatever, but we had nothing to do with this. Now you all gotta do something with him.” He pointed his gun at the dead body briefly. Blue suit breathes heavily with a stumped expression, not wanting to let it go. No one in the room showing any signs of letting up either.

“How about we all put the guns down and you guys can take him home-or wherever. Yeah? Does that work?” Jungkook prompted gently. After a beat, blue suit nodded, looked back at the rest of Boardly’s men and nodded. Jungkook did the same and slowly, but surely the guns came down and were put away.

Jungkook and his men watched as they dragged the body out of the restaurant and sped away from the large storefront windows. They’re finally able to breathe without stress. “What the fuck was that?” Namjoon blurted causing the rest of them to chuckle.

“I don’t know, but I’m getting the fuck outta here before they come back. See you guys back at base.” They laughed and said their goodbyes. Jungkook walked in the light rain to the next block over and found his town car ready and waiting for him.

He opened the passenger door, addressed his driver, then retrieved a large black duffle bag before opening the backdoor. There he found Deathstalker sitting cross legged in a black trench coat at the other window seat. He smiled fondly at her. She looked beautiful as always gazing out the window at the rain before she noticed him there. When she turned to face him he replaced the fond smile with a composed smirk.

“Took you long enough.” She opined quietly once he sat down and closed the door. “We got held up, literally. I think this belongs to you.” He passed the duffle bag off to her. She received her present graciously, beaming down at the contents happily once she opened it.

“Thank you Mr. Jeon.” Y/N crooned playfully, sporting that signature smirk that never failed to affect Jungkook. “No, thank you.” He responded after clearing his throat. “So you poisoned him?”

She simply replied, “Yup.” while inspecting the cash that filled the duffle bag in her lap.

“But he randomly started choking and shaking. And you say you controlled it with the push of a button?” He wondered with furrowed brows and pouted lips.

“Well, poison, a small nanobot that I planted in his food to attack his lungs and cause internal bleeding, it’s all the same, you know.” She spoke aimlessly, moving on from the money to buff and inspect her manicure.

“Wow.” Jungkook whispered, genuinely infatuated with the thought of that kind of technology and how he could get his hands on it. While he was lost in thought he didn’t notice Y/N scooching closer to him until they were side by side. He turned to find their noses were nearly touching and his heart rate sped up rapidly.

“Now that, that’s over…” she drawled, grasping Jungkook’s hand. He watched unquestionably as she brought his hand to her mouth and inserted his middle and ring fingers all while looking into his eyes alluringly. At the same time, she easily brought her leg up to drape over both of Jungkook’s. He still sat frozen in place by her gaze while she lifted the bottom of her coat and placed his hand against her bare heat.

They both shuddered slightly when Jungkook instinctively began to rub circles into her already wet core, never taking their eyes off each other.

“You wanna go somewhere?” She coaxed breathily. It almost infuriated Jungkook how she didn’t even have to try to get him to agree to anything. He was indeed trapped.

“James,” He called up to the driver. “The Plaza Hotel please.”

Currently, Jungkook was going through paperwork in his office, taking advantage of the slow week he’s had to take care of some business for his company. It’s been a while since he’s gotten to do this so he was pretty backed up and seemingly had a whole afternoon of this to look forward to. He sighed at the thought, but continued to read through the documents and sign them here and there when suddenly he felt something was...off. He put his pen down and looked around the room.

The room was silent as usual, but all of a sudden it was too silent? Jungkook didn’t know how and he couldn’t really make sense of it until he looked up at the ceiling vent. It was no longer producing the usual soft hum. There was nothing. He silently walked under the vent to inspect it when he saw a glint in between the slats. Immediately, he moved from under it and drew his gun, aiming it at the vent.

“I see you motherfucker! Come out right now or I’ll put ten holes in you!” He shouted. The intruder heeded the warning and right away the vent was forced to the floor. Jungkook watched intently as two feminine hands holding a gun slowly dropped down and though it was upside down, it was perfectly aimed at him.

He still had his gun trained on the vent as the trespasser entered through the hole in the ceiling to reveal the familiar face of Deathstalker herself. Only her upper body could be seen as her strong legs held her in place from inside the vent.

She smiled easily at Jungkook as if they weren’t in a stand-off right now. “Hello, Mr. Jeon.” Her tone was calm, but somewhat guarded, telling him what her face never would. Jungkook was stuck between being relieved to see that it was only Deathstalker and being concerned that she was pointing a gun at him.

“Hello, Deathstalker. You wanna tell me why you broke into my office and have a gun in my face?” He queried with a tilt of his head. Y/N only reached up to grip the hole in the ceiling, somehow removing herself from the vent with one hand, her gun and her gaze still trained on Jungkook as she landed on her feet in front of him. More contradicting thoughts swirled in his mind at the sight.

“You finally caught me. I’m proud.” She smirked, removing the hood of her catsuit from her head.

He fights the urge to roll his eyes. “Yeah, maybe you can congratulate me later. Why are you here? You finally turn on me? Did someone send you, huh?”

“Don’t be so dramatic. You have something I need.” She explained with a determined look. Jungkook’s brows furrowed. “Is that so? And what might that be?”

“You know what it is.” Y/N quipped, tilting her gun along with the inflection in her voice. He shakes his head assuredly. “No, No, I have no idea what you’re talking about, but if you wanna put the gun down I’d love to discuss it.” He entreated informally.

“No.” She spoke firmly. A beat of silence passes before Jungkook has had enough. “Put the fucking gun down, Y/L/N.” He demanded gruffly.

“You put the fucking gun down.” She spat right back at him.

“I’m not doing this, just tell me what it is—” He reasoned.

“You know what it is—” Before she can fully respond, Jungkook rushed her, forcing her gun away from him and ripping it out of her hand. He quickly backed up and flung the gun across the room before pointing his back at her. They each caught their breath and Y/N bit her lip frustratedly.

Jungkook gave a triumphant smile. “There, that’s better. You ready to talk now—”

Y/N’s leg swiftly came up to kick the gun right out of Jungkook's hand before he even realized what happened. He looked at the gun sliding away from them on the floor, then back at Deathstalker, who smirked and raised an arrogant brow.

“Okay.” Jungkook uttered right as Y/N charged at him. He panicked slightly at the thought of fighting her, but the instinct to fight back kicked in when she launched herself and wrapped her body around him like an anaconda.

They struggled while Deathstalker tried to take Jungkook to the floor. Luckily for him, he wasn’t only a skilled shooter, but a trained and very skilled fighter as well. It wasn’t long before he freed himself from her vice grip and they were in a standoff once again, this time with their fist raised and ready to defend.

“What the hell has gotten into you Y/L/N? I wish you would tell me what this is about.” Jungkook grumbled as they circled each other, waiting for the other to make a move.

Y/N chuckled mischievously. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Yes, actually!” He exploded. She took his emotional outburst as an opportunity and pounced once again. Jungkook was quicker to react this time and they were practically sparring in the middle of his office and only lord knows why. Jungkook found himself getting irritated because he was barely one step behind Deathstalker in her strikes and attacks.

As they got more invested, Jungkook noticed that she didn’t intend on hurting him, but she did intend to win. Somewhere in the scuffle, he fell behind and let her right hook distract him from the leg that swept his feet from under him. She was on top of him in an instant, with a habitual flat hand at his jugular ready to stop him from breathing. They stare at each other, both of them breathing heavily.

“Got you.” Y/N suddenly whispered smugly. “Now, are you gonna give me what I want?” She prompted provocatively, sliding her hand into the collar of his shirt slowly. The feel of her hot skin on his almost burned with their charged up bodies and wild emotions. He blinked in realization at her increasingly turned on form above him.

“You. Crazy. Fucking. Bitch.” Jungkook fumed quietly, looking up at her in disapproval. She just giggled freely and though usually the sound would bring a smile to Jungkook’s face, it only pissed him off.

He pushed her off of him and shoved her against the wall roughly, holding her there by the neck. “You’ve got some fucking nerve, breaking in here and waving a gun in my face.” He hissed in anger, their noses touching. “You know, if you wanted dick you could have just said so.”

“Where’s the fun in that Mr. Jeon?” She crooned, leaning forward to kiss him and he denied her, coolly tilting his head back. He continued to hold her by the throat to the wall firmly, causing her to choke briefly, but if she was uncomfortable she didn’t let it show.

“No.” He shook his head, Y/N could see his gears turning as he did so. “No?” She echoed, curiously.

“To answer your question. I’m not giving you what you want.” A devious smirk slowly appeared on his face that made Y/N’s body temperature rise. “No, you’re gonna do what I want now and you’re gonna like it.” He breathed, pressing himself against her and brushing her lips with his teasingly. She inhales audibly, trying not to look affected by his sudden behavior.

“But, Mr. Jeon, I want what you want.” She encouraged him sweetly, reaching for him. He put a stop to that quickly by pinning her wrists above her with one hand and resuming his hold on her neck with the other. She grunted and squirmed before giving up, looking up a childish defeated expression, but Jungkook knew she loved it.

He looked into her eyes with a strong dominance that had Y’N swallowing thickly in anticipation. “Are you talking back to me, Y/L/N?” His eyebrows furrowed intimidatingly.

She bit her lip to suppress her giddy smile. She needed to play along and not mock Jungkook’s very real emotions. The dynamic has officially shifted and now Y/N’s main objective was to please him. “No, Mr. Jeon.” She assured in a register slightly higher than her natural voice.

“Really, because you seem to have a lot to say for someone who’s at my mercy. I wonder if you’d still be as talkative with my dick in your mouth.” He growled hotly in her ear sending shivers down her spine.

She shuddered a hopeful response. “Can we find out, Mr. Jeon...please?” She implored when she felt him pull away.

He looked her over, taking in her needy form. “Look at you, already begging for it.” He shook his head in amazement. “I should keep you here and see how long you can hold your breath for me before your face starts to change color.” He whispered while closing his hand tighter around her neck. Y/N hummed delightfully at the feeling, her eyes fluttering shut.

“But you’d probably like that wouldn’t you?” He leaned back in, getting her attention. She opened her eyes and gave a pleasant smile. “You know that I do.” She choked out. He smiled back at her admirably before releasing most of the pressure on her throat.

“No, I got something else planned for y—” He stopped abruptly, looking towards the door because he thought he heard the click of familiar shoes in the hall. His theory was proven correct when he heard them getting closer. He quickly looked to Y/N with wide eyes.

“Get under the desk.” He ordered softly before they both scurry to the huge desk near the window. She easily fit herself under it on her knees facing out and Jungkook took the seat right in front of her. As soon as they were situated, there was a knock on his office door.

“Come in.” He called pretending to look over his files. Taehyung poked his head in with a concerned expression before he fully entered the room. “Hey boss. Everything okay here?” He questioned.

“Yes, fine. Why?”

“Nothing, we just thought we heard some...I don’t know, movement?” As Taehyung spoke, Jungkook could feel hands raking up his thighs and his eyes widened quickly. He tried to compose his expression, but he then felt the unbuttoning of his pants.

No, no, no, no, he thought in a panic. He tries not to focus on just how Y/N got his zipper down as silently as she did and focuses on Taehyung’s lips as he talked.

“Oh, no, yeah. That was just me. I was practicing...sh-shadow boxing.” He lied choppily as Y/N released his already hard dick from his pants.

“In a suit?” Taehyung replied, confusedly.

Jungkook jolted slightly and fought back a moan when the assassin took him in her warm, wet mouth. “Waauuuhh, yes. Yes, I was.” He cleared his throat to cover up more moans when she began to skillfully bob her head up and down on his length.

“Oh, well okay.” Taehyung settled. “So if that’s all—” Jungkook attempted to see him off with no success.

“Anyway, we got a lead on that Deathwalker chick.” He offered in a more chipper tone. Y/N paused her movements, intrigued by the information. What had they found out? Jungkook shamelessly rested his hand on the back of her head and pulled, encouraging her to keep going much to both of their disbelief. She obeys and continues the task eagerly, but careful not to have too much fun or she’ll risk getting caught. “Is that so?” the mob boss replied.

“Yeah, it’s not much, but we assumed you wanted us to brief you on it as soon as possible.” His soldier nodded respectfully.

“Ugh,” Jungkook moaned, half-way masking it as a noise of gratitude. “Thank you, Tae. I appreciate it. We’ll be sure to discuss thisssssss later.” He faltered. “Yes, sir.” Taehyung nodded again, making a face at Jungkook.

“Hey, you okay boss?” He looked closer at his superior with genuine concern. “Never better Tae.” Jungkook forced out quickly. “Are you sure? Y—”

“Taehyung?” The gang leader addressed him firmly. “Yes?”

“Get the fuck out of my office.”

“Yes, sir.” Taehyung nodded, knowing when he was unwanted and without another word he was exiting the office.

Jungkook pushed away from the desk immediately and grabbed a handful of Y/N’s hair as he stood both of them up. She only smiled at the manhandling and wiped the excess spit from her mouth.

“You really want me to hurt you, don’t you?” He snarled at her. She fought back the strong urge to moan a yes and instead just stayed silent with a feigned guilty look on her face. “Take that off. Now. ” He commanded, gesturing to her catsuit. She shimmied it off of her arms and down her legs to reveal her naked body, leaving her heels on, all while Jungkook kept a tight grip on her hair.

“How many do you think I should give you?” He asked, suddenly calmer than before. “How ever many you think is right sir.” She spoke in a small voice, but her innocent act didn’t fool him. He stared at her bare, unapologetically, beautiful body in wonderment before forcing her body to bend over his desk.

He caressed her thighs and backside tenderly and then when she least expected it he delivered a delicious slap to it. Y/N yelped and then sighed with contentment. The wait was over, now the real fun could begin.

“I told you.” Slap. “We weren't.” Slap. “Gonna do.” Slap. “What you wanted.” Slap. “To do.” Slap. “But you just don’t listen.” He accentuated his words with powerful smacks delivered to both of her cheeks and then rubbed at the tender flesh to soothe the sting.

He ran his finger up her spine gently, making her shiver visibly. He smirked at his effect on her, bending his body over hers to whisper in her ear. “Tell me. Are you sorry?” He breathed heavily.

“No, sir.” Y/N panted after a few moments. “I knew it…” He stands up straight, regarding her vulnerable yet durable body.

“You disappoint me, Y/L/N.” He slaps her ass and massages again. Y/N hissed before replying. “I’ll do better sir.” she declared sincerely.

“You promise?” Jungkook lifts his hand and watches as Y/N braces for the impact, watched as her body tensed and her pussy clenched greedily around nothing in awe. He savored the moment, spanking her again.

She hummed graciously at the delicious pain she was receiving from him. “Yes, sir. I promise.”

“But you’re not sorry.” He clarified. “No sir.”

“Why?” His brows furrowed in curiosity, gearing up to spank her again. “Because I love sucking your cock sir.” Y/N whined. He stopped his movements, taken aback and released a soft laugh. “Is that so?”

“Yes sir.” Slap. “Tell me more Y/L/N.” he requested as he moved his left hand to her cunt and kept the right one on her ass.

She closed her eyes and smiled, envisioning herself doing the activity, even licking her lips at the luscious memory of it. “I love how heavy it feels on my tongue. How you force me down on it and it hits the back of my throat.” She mused longingly. Y/N stops speaking and her body tenses as he inserts his thumb into her.

“Keep going Y/L/N.” Jungkook’s tone made it clear that he would stop if she didn’t keep talking so she continued.

“I love how thick it is, oh fuck.” She moans, digging her nails into the wood of the desk as he rubs two fingers against her clit and picks up the pace. “What else Y/L/N?” He breathed.

She gulped in a breath, the sudden pressure taking her breath away. “How you make me gag on it when I’ve been bad and— mmmm, how you coat the inside of my mouth with all your cum when you’re done with me...How you check to make sure I swallowed all of it.” She giggled that last bit breathlessly, grinding back on his hand.

“You’re such a dirty girl Y/L/N.” He moves in and out of her quickly while rubbing her clit perfectly in sync, pulling lewd moans from her until he suddenly removes them, delivering another hard smack to her backside. “Ah, fuck.” She squealed.

“But you’re right, you need to do better. Now count with me.” He ordered sternly.

To which she immediately responded, “Yes sir.”

Y/N counts every hit Jungkook delivers to her extremely tender ass dutifully with her fingernails creating crescents in the mahogany wood below her. By the time they reach twenty, his hand is as red as a tomato and Y/N is quite literally dripping onto the floor in front of him. He watched as her slick dripped out of her cunt from in between her spread legs and onto the floor, creating a tiny puddle of her pleasure.

Jungkook is incredibly turned on by the sight and doesn’t think twice before taking his hard cock and shoving right into the assassin without warning. He didn’t wait for her to adjust, not that she needed to as you could literally mop the floor with her arousal. He just continued to hammer into her with complete abandon.

It felt as if Y/N had forgotten how to breathe and her head shot up from the desk at the abrupt intrusion. “Ohhhhh shhhhhhit.” She cursed choppily with Jungkook’s hips slapping against her, making her ass sting more, but she loved it.

He reached up to push her head down against the desk forcefully and held it there as he fucked into her. “You love the pain don’t you my little cock slut?” He growled out.

“Yes, sir. I love it. Thank you, Mr. Jeon.” She babbled dazedly into the desk.

He pulls out of her then, leaving her moving back in search of him and clenching around nothing. “Please put it back in, Mr. Jeon.” She whimpered, reaching back for him, but she didn’t dare sit up for fear that he might think she was disobeying him.

He smiles and sits down in his chair, grabbing the hands that searched for him and guiding them to it’s arm rests. “Why don’t you come sit down and do it yourself?”

She moves right away and backs up onto him. Bracing herself on the armrests, she hovers above him still facing the desk, grabs his cock and engulfs it in her wetness. They both groan wildly when he is fully seated inside of her and she begins to move up and down.

“Just like that baby, keep bouncing on my cock.” He muttered huskily, placing his hands on her hips. Looking down, he finally noticed the mess Y/N’s juices made on his suit pants. He should have pulled them all the way down, but damn if that wasn’t one of the hottest things he’s ever seen. “Goddamn. Who made you this fucking wet baby?” He grunted, pulling her down on him with fervid force.

“You did, Mr. Jeon.” Y/N breathed heavily with her eyes closed in ecstasy. She could feel her orgasm finally approaching and she was chasing it with every move she made.

“You gonna cum baby?” Jungkook’s voice rasped in her ear. Y/N mentally cursed, already knowing what was coming to her. “Yes, I’m so close, Mr. Jeon.” She whined, trying to plead her case.

It was no use. He swiftly pushed her off of him roughly and forced her down against the table once more. “No, no, no, please, please.” She begged and squirmed.

He only bent down to her level, gripping her chin in his hand. “You should know by now not to fuck with me Y/L/N. Now you need to be punished.” He says whispering sadistically in her ear. “Come on now.”

Jungkook gripped her by her forearms, dragging her up from the table and keeping them in place behind her back like a criminal. He guided her to the expansive wall length bookshelf on the far left of his office. Y/N knew just where they were going and somehow it prompted more wetness to come cascading down her already damp and sticky legs.

He finds the handle on the inside of one of the shelves and pulls on the hidden door to reveal his playroom. The ceiling was a deep red while the walls were painted black with several tools for causing pain hanging on them all around the room. Several large contraptions used for pleasure and pain were scattered along the sides. But Jungkook’s favorite part of the room was the alaska king size mattress against the back wall which had a mirror of the same size attached to the ceiling above it. He loved that he could see every facet of Y/N’s squirming body just by looking up.

“Stand here.” He directs her after stopping under the pair of leather handcuffs that dangled from the ceiling. He lifted and secured both her arms before focusing on her wanton eyes. “You comfortable, sweetheart?” He asked, grasping her chin firmly in his hands.

“Yes, sir.” She replied truthfully. “Good.” He pecked her lips and began removing her boot heels. This created more distance between her and the floor. She was now truly dangling from the ceiling, the balls of her feet barely touching the floor.

Jungkook marvelled at his work and how after a while Y/N struggled to hold her weight against the cuffs. He then undressed quickly and made his way back to her, placing his lips on hers in a rough and passionate kiss that left Y/N breathless and moaning.

She feels a hand thread it’s fingers through her hair and massage her scalp before it’s yanking her back and gripping tightly. She opened her eyes to see Jungkook, lustful and giddy smiling back at her. His hand slipped out of her hair, down her neck, chest and around her torso as he slowly circled her body.

“I wish I could touch every piece of you at once.” He expressed sofly once he was behind her. Y/N breathed heavily with anticipation as his large hands gluided up her raised arms, down her waist, over her hips and ghosted over her plump, raw ass making her hiss. He chuckled at the sound letting his hands wander to her front and administering feather light circles to her swollen clit. Y/N twitched causing her body to sway uncontrollably. Jungkook stilled her, but continued his teasing much to Y/N’s dismay. But she didn’t dare say anything about it, she knew better and she wanted to cum so she stayed silent.

He comes back around to face her and really takes his time appreciating her body. He kisses her lips, along her neck and sucks on her nipples just enough to have her squirming with more want for him. Suddenly he presses down on each of her sensitive nipples with two fingers and she squeaks, painful electricity shooting through her.

He looked her over keenly. “God you’re so fucking beautiful...and you’re all mine to play with.” He kisses her biting her lip. “Who do you belong to?” His fierce tone demanded an answer.

“You, Mr. Jeon.” Y/N avowed, increasingly turned on and desperate to cum.

“Who else?” His hands moved haltingly towards her core, never breaking eye contact. Her eyes flashed knowingly at him. “No one. Only you, Mr. Jeon.”

Jungkook smiled contentedly before it disappeared little by little. He knew the words weren’t true and that she only said them to please him, only said them when they were intimate. But he couldn’t help how much he yearned to hear it, how much he wanted her to truly be his. This room is where they both get what they want no matter what.

Y/N gets someone to dominate her and take care of her needs and Jungkook gets to live out his fantasies of her truly belonging solely to him. But he knew she would never go for that and that he would continue to toture himself this way.

He tucks the thought away as he suddenly plunges two fingers inside of her. “And who does this pussy belong to?” He growled.

Y/N immediately clenches around them and lets out a cracked moan. “You, sir! This pussy is all yours. Oh fuck, ugh!” She cried out. At least Jungkook can be sure of that, he thought as he began curling his fingers into her at lightning speed. He holds her hips in place as he goes to work and Y/N can’t even think about the pain in her arms anymore once she feels her orgasm approaching.

She grunts fervently as the pressure in her core builds and builds until she can’t stand it. She gives no warning, just allowing the glorious, all-consuming feeling to ignite her insides without a single sound. The only noise to be heard in the room was the sloshing of Jungkook’s fingers moving rapidly inside of her and the slap of his palm against her wet mound.

Jungkook was so enraptured by her eyes rolling back into her head that he didn’t notice the clear liquid escaping from her cunt, getting all over his hand and dripping onto the floor. He brought her drooping head up so he could kiss her eagerly as he removed his fingers and stroked her clit like a wild man, getting more of her juices all over him.

She never told him to stop as she was struck silent by the amount of pleasure she just experienced, but he removed his hand and continued kissing her writhing body hungrily. She was out of breath as she twitched and mewled against him, audibly shuddering from time to time.

“Holy fucking shit. You’re just full of surprises huh?” He praised her with her face in his hands. Her only reaction was to smile tiredly. Her body was absolutely spent and still experiencing aftershocks.

“Now let’s see if we can make you do that again.” he says, lifting her legs to wrap around his waist, thankfully taking the weight off of her arms.

She finally speaks in a disoriented voice with her eyes half closed. “Yes, please sir.”

Jungkook pushes inside of her, her cunt was now extremely wet and extremely tight due to that first squirting orgasm and he could tell he wouldn’t last long. He began speedily fucking into her, his hips slapping against her bruised and aching ass over and over again.

Y/N was in another realm of euphoria, this one being better than the last. She didn’t even know that was possible. Her head was tilted all the way back and her eyes were closed, but they were focused. She was too far gone to even remember her own name at this point.

“Please…” She mumbled. “Please what?” Jungkook grunted, his vigorous hips never changing pace.

“Please, please make me cum, Mr. Jeon.” She begged through gritted teeth. “I want it so bad. Please give me your cum.”

“Oh fuck, baby.” He moaned, thrusting impossibly faster, both of them close to the edge.

She felt herself growing slightly over stimulated, but she was so close, chasing that high that made her see stars. She was concentrated on the feeling of Jungkook’s dick pumping in and out of her and hitting just the right spot against her walls. Jungkook felt a force resisting him from inside of Y/N and before he could grasp it he was being pushed out along with Y/N’s cum.

A full fledged scream escaped from her throat that was elongated by Jungkook who swiped at her clit wildly to prolong her orgasm. He watches her twitch and moan helplessly before sliding back in and picking up where he left off.

“No, p-please sir, I can’t.” She choked out, her chest heaving with exhaustion.

He gripped her face roughly in his hand and brought it close to his. “No, you wanted this dick so you gonna take this dick.” He seethed. “That’s what you came here for right?”

“Yes sir.” She cried. Jungkook thrusted up into her half a dozen more times before he came inside of her, ripping yet another orgasm from Y/N. She felt tears slide down her face at the sheer force of energy in her veins. She saw white behind her eyes and her body burned all over in the best of ways.

“Argh!” Jungkook growled boisterously as he came, holding her hips rigidly against his as he came down. When he looked up he could see Y/N practically falling asleep against him, yet her body was shaking slightly. He pulled out of her and released her from her restraints.

“Let’s get you to bed, huh?” He grinned, holding her tight as he let her down because he didn’t expect her to be able to hold herself up. He was proven right as she immediately slumped over his shoulder once her arms were free. The mafia leader carried her to the bed and gently laid her on her back, taking a moment to clean both of them off before he laid down too.

“Y/N? Are you okay?” He whispered sweetly. Initially, the assassin didn’t realize he was speaking to her as she was quickly drifting off to sleep, but after a moment she assured him, “I’m fine Jungkook.”

#bts smut #jungkook smut #mafia!bts #mafia jungkook #mafia!jungkook #jungkook au #hoseokmylovesworld

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natromanxoff · 3 years

Text

How prog were Queen?

By Dave Everley

On 9 January, 1971, Kevin Ayers and Genesis played a show together at the Ewell Technical College near Epsom in Surrey. Ayers was 18 months out of Soft Machine, and making a name for himself as a psychedelically-inclined art-folk rake. Genesis had released their second album, Trespass, a few months earlier, and were carving out a place in the vanguard of the burgeoning progressive rock movement.

There was a third band propping up the bill that night, a bunch of transplanted Londoners calling themselves Queen. In contrast to the wilfully artful approach of the headliners, their music was more straightforward: a heavy, if ornate blend of Led Zeppelin’s earthiness and the flights of fancy of Yes.

Not everyone in the small crowd watching them was impressed, but they caught the attention of one person. After the show, Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel pulled Queen’s blond-bombshell drummer Roger Taylor to one side. Gabriel’s band were about to dismiss their own drummer, John Mayhew, and were looking for a replacement. Was Taylor interested in joining Genesis? The reply was instant: thanks but no thanks. Taylor was utterly dedicated to Queen – there were gigs to play, places to go, and many musical adventures to embark on.

Had Taylor accepted the offer, the course of music – and specifically prog – would have been very different. Genesis would have flourished with Gabriel upfront, though whether they would have survived and prospered as they did without a Phil Collins to step into the breach after their talismanic singer’s departure was another matter.

The knock-on effect on Queen would have been greater. Taylor was an essential part of their carefully balanced four-way chemistry; a chemistry that would go on to throw up some of the most ambitious and game-changing music ever recorded. While Queen weren’t a capital ‘P’ prog band, they were infused with the spirit of the movement, combining its forward-looking values with its absolute disregard for the existing rules. Taking their cues from the likes of Yes, Genesis, Van der Graaf Generator and even Pink Floyd, their flamboyantly cavalier approach would go on to inspire such modern masters as Dream Theater, Queensrÿche and Muse. And, in Bohemian Rhapsody, they ensured that one of the biggest-selling singles in history was, at heart, a prog song. Forget the luxuriant moustaches and sawn-off mike-stands that would come to define them: if the prog ethos meant avoiding the expected, then Queen were definitely a prog band.

“Diversity was probably their greatest asset,” says former Dream Theater drummer and confirmed Queen devotee Mike Portnoy. “From song to song, they could be so different. You could have something that was folk followed by something that was rockabilly followed by something that was metal. And that’s one of the biggest things about prog, having that open-mindedness.”

Queen’s schooling in prog came early on. Brian May’s very first band, 1984, played a 4am slot supporting Pink Floyd at the Christmas On Earth Continued all-nighter in 1967. A year later, his next outfit, Smile – also featuring Roger Taylor – played with Floyd again, this time at London’s Imperial College. By the time of their gig opening for Kevin Ayers, Smile had changed their name to Queen and recruited Freddie Mercury. Collectively, they admired Yes, Van der Graaf Generator and especially Genesis. “Foxtrot is a prog rock classic,” Roger Taylor later wrote in the sleevenotes to Genesis box set 1970-1975. “Arrangements were highly complex in these early days, setting a benchmark for the style of the times.”

When it came to finding someone to produce their debut album, Queen’s first choice was John Anthony, who had worked with both Genesis and Van der Graaf. With Anthony and co-producer Roy Thomas Baker behind the desk, the eponymous album trod heavily in Led Zeppelin’s footsteps. But there was another, altogether more visionary band straining to spread their wings: My Fairy King was a filigreed slice of flamboyant rock’n’roll, while Liar metamorphosised through several different time changes and timings.

Those wings were fully unfurled on the follow-up, 1974’s Queen II. The title was the most prosaic thing about the record: the music inside was as fevered and baroque as rock gets, informed equally by Zeppelin, Yes and crazed Victorian artist Richard Dadd, whose 1864 painting The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke inspired one of the album’s most prog-leaning tracks. It may have been rooted in the heavy rock of the times, but its cavalier approach and sheer sense of scale pegged Queen as a defiantly progressive proposition.

“Queen weren’t like Yes, who had a dualistic role of guitar and keyboards, where both shared the terrain,” says Yes guitarist Steve Howe, supported by Queen at Kingston Poly in early 1971. “Brian had the terrain to himself. The remarkable thing was that he was the front and the back man. It required him to come up with more than guitar solos… He had to come up with a semi-thematic approach to play the guitar. And what he did was keep colouring.”

Queen’s prog inclinations would be deeply woven into the fabric of their early albums, from the audacious multi-part theatrics of Queen II’s March Of The Black Queen to the schizophrenic attack of the two-part Lap Of The Gods from 1974’s Sheer Heart Attack. Even in their more commercial moments, they marched to the beat of their own drum. What other band would have dared serve up something so unusual as Killer Queen?

“It was their diversity,” says Mike Portnoy, who first heard Queen as an eight-year-old in the mid-70s and covered many Queen songs while in Dream Theater. “Their albums took the prototype that The Beatles laid down with the White Album, where you had four different artists bringing in very different styles. Every song was so diverse. You get to A Night At The Opera, and you had this giant multi-layered epic like Bohemian Rhapsody next to something like Seaside Rendezvous or Love Of My Life.”

A Night At The Opera was Queen’s grand artistic statement and their most unashamedly prog album. Pitched around the epic twin tentpoles of The Prophet’s Song and Bohemian Rhapsody, it married their far-reaching vision to a distinctly British barminess. Taken on its own, the eight-minute The Prophets Song, with its incredible ornate a cappella middle section, would be enough to grant Queen access to the Prog Hall Of Fame. But even that sits in the inescapable shadow of Bohemian Rhapsody. Time and success might have lessened its impact, but that song remains the most dazzlingly unique piece of music ever to sell five million copies.

“There are epic things that come along every so often,” says Steve Howe. “There’s Sgt Pepper, there’s Bridge Over Troubled Water. And there’s Bohemian Rhapsody. I don’t know when I first heard it, but once it was there, it was such a formidable thing. You’re thinking: ‘How many tracks did they need to do those vocals? How did they write it? Who invented it? It really was astounding.”

Bohemian Rhapsody encapsulated one of the key things that gave Queen such a distinct identity. Like The Beatles and Beach Boys before them, they used the studio as an instrument – not least when it came to their vocals. And Bohemian Rhapsody raised the bar about as high as it could go.

“They sang each of those parts and triple-stacked them,” says Mike Portnoy. “You heard all three of their voices singing in all three vocal ranges. That’s what made the depth of their music so complex. It wasn’t the instrumentation, it was the vocals. That’s unusual for prog music. When I think of my favourite prog music, it’s always the musicianship that draws me. But with Queen, it was the vocals. It was so deep.”

For all its success, A Night At The Opera would be Queen’s grand kiss-off to their prog roots. Later albums streamlined their sound into a more conventional format. Much like Genesis, the 80s found them swapping experimentalism for chart rock.

It wasn’t until the end of their career as an active band that Queen would again sound so adventurous. During 1989 and 1990, the band began work on their penultimate album, Innuendo, in London and Montreux. In the summer of 1990, Yes guitarist Steve Howe paid a flying visit to the Swiss city, where a chance encounter with a former guitar tech found him being invited to Queen’s studio to hear the album as a work-in-progress.

“Inside, there’s Freddie, Brian and Roger all sitting together. They go: ‘Let’s play you the album,’” says Howe. “Of course, I’m hearing it for the first time: I Can’t Live Without You, I’m Going Slightly Mad. And they saved Innuendo itself until last. They played it and I was fucking blown away.”

If that was surprising, then what happened next was utterly out-of-the-blue. The members of Queen asked if Howe wanted to play on the title track. The Yes man politely suggested they’d lost their minds. It took the combined weight of Mercury, May and Taylor to persuade him.

“They all chimed in: ‘We want some crazy Spanish guitar flying around over the top. Improvise!’” recalls Howe. “I started noodling around on the guitar, and it was pretty tough. After a couple of hours, I thought: ‘I’ve bitten off more than I can chew here.’ I had to learn a bit of the structure, work out the chordal roots were, where you had to fall if you did a mad run in the distance; you have to know where you’re going. But it got towards evening, and we’d doodled and I’d noodled, and it turned out to be really good fun. We have this beautiful dinner, we go back to the studio and have a listen. And they go: ‘That’s great. That’s what we wanted.”

Released as a single in January 1991, Innuendo gave Queen their third Number One single. Like Bohemian Rhapsody 25 years before it, it was as unlikely as hit singles get: a six-and-a-half minute musical jigsaw, complete with flamenco runs, classically-inclined orchestral overloads and maverick 5/4 timing. Queensrÿche covered the song on 2007’s Take Cover album, while you can hear its echo in Radiohead’s Paranoid Android and Muse’s more elaborate sci-fi epics.

“In the world of rock, Queen stands out as a good example of the clash between guitar and piano in songwriting,” Muse’s Matt Bellamy has said. “I think that’s where you stumble across those more unusual arrangements and chord structures.”

Today, Queen have left a bi-polar legacy. They’re arguably best known for their pop hits – Radio Gaga, I Want To Break Free and of course, Bohemian Rhapsody, that ultimate prog Trojan Horse. But their spirit of adventure remains unmatched by all but the boldest of their peers.

“There was no rulebook for Queen,” says Mike Portnoy. “They broke most of the rules that existed, and then they wrote a new set.”

#queen #queen band #roger taylor #freddie mercury #brian may #john deacon

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lonelier-version-of-you · 3 years

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Thoughts on Long Lost that no one asked for, but I’m sharing them anyway

Or, In Which Annie Pretends To Be A Music Critic Because Why Not. I wrote these up as I listened to the album, so they’re my first impressions (except for Not Dead Yet, Mine Forever, and Long Lost, which I’d already heard).

The Moon Doesn’t Mind: An interesting little song, but there’s not much to say about it given it’s only 1 minute and 10 seconds long. I like it. I wish it was longer.

Rating: 7/10.

Favourite lyrics: N/A, because it’s too short to pick any, lol.

Mine Forever: This song was a banger when they put it out as a single, and it’s a banger now. I LOVE it. Songs about unhealthy, obsessive love are like, my favourite thing.

Also, not to bring my favourite unhealthy pairing of two fictional queer neurodivergent middle-aged doctors from a semi-obscure medical soap opera into this, but this song is still incredibly Johnrik vibes.

Rating: 10/10.

Favourite lyrics: “Love is strange, I can’t sleep without you / maybe in the grave I can dream about you / Everybody lies, but I’ll never doubt you / I don’t wanna die, but I can’t live without you”

(One Helluva Performer): A fun vocal interlude track. Not much to be said for it.

N/A for both rating and favourite lyrics.

Love Me Like You Used To: The moment the lyrics started, I immediately decided I loved this song. It’s great. If there’s any justice in the world, they’ll put it out as a single and it’ll go mainstream.

It’s also vaguely Johnrik vibes, though not as much as Mine Forever.

Rating: 8/10.

Favourite lyrics: “I’ve been lost before / and I’m lost again, I guess / but I never lost this feeling / or this pounding in my chest / I have travelled many miles, I don’t want to walk no more / every road and every highway led me right back to your door”

Meet Me In The City: The title immediately brings to mind Strange Trails’ ‘Meet Me In The Woods’, so I was very intrigued to hear what this song was going to be like. I like it. I think it’ll take me a few listens to fully appreciate it, but I like it.

I like the Strange Trails callback - “put on the dress you wore the night we met”.

And the reveal in the second verse that the narrator and his lover are actually having an affair was very clever. I love LH’s way of telling stories through their songs.

Rating: 7/10.

Favourite lyrics: “Forget the life you had and don’t look back / Get your courage up and drink this down / If our love is so wrong / tell me, why does it feel so right?”

This is getting a bit long now, so I’ll put the rest of my thoughts under the ‘keep reading’ button...

(Sing For Us Tonight): Such a brief interlude I have no opinion on it.

Long Lost: I wasn’t a big fan of this song when they released it as a single - I didn’t hate it, but it didn’t do much for me. In the context of the album, though, it’s fantastic! I can see why they picked it as the title track now.

Also, more Strange Trails callbacks - “out in the night all alone in the way out there...”

Rating: 9/10.

Favourite lyrics: “For a while I was held in the myth of the lost highway / In the spell of the night and the lights of the great white way”, and “Send me to the mountains / let me go free forever”.

Twenty Long Years: A melancholy song about the perils of addiction, and another example of Ben Schneider’s gift for storytelling. Just an absolutely brilliant song. I love it.

And I love the outro, with the crowd singing the song. It really adds to the atmosphere of the album.

Rating: 10/10.

Favourite lyrics: “I destroyed my health searching for myself / but there ain’t nothing there to find”, “I made a life out of chasing a ghost / twenty years takes its toll”.

Drops in the Lake: I thought from the title that this would be Johnrik vibes. I was not disappointed. I fucking love this song, oh my god. It’s perfect. It has me lost for words.

Rating: 10/10.

Favourite lyrics: Can I say the whole song? But especially “I go down to the edge of the lake / where I wait through the night for the dawn light to break / Memories of old crash like waves on the shore of my mind / And I pray that the stars will align / I just want us to be like we were long ago”, and “I look up at the uncaring sky / with a prayer on my lips and a tear in my eye”.

Where Did The Time Go: Another short but sweet song. It’s good.

Rating: 7/10.

Favourite lyrics: “May you laugh and sing your life full / may you learn the reasons why / may you live until you die”.

Not Dead Yet: This song got me hyped up for the album when they released it as a single in February, and I still love it now. It’s just so good, catchy, and danceable. I hope I get to go to another LH concert soon (I saw them in 2018, it was fantastic) just so I can rock out to this there. It’s one of those songs of theirs that feels downright magical.

Rating: 8/10. It’s just a damn good song.

Favourite lyrics: “There’s a stranger in my eyes again / I swear to God I don’t know him”.

(Deep Down Inside Ya): Another vocal interlude to add to the atmosphere of the album. It works for its purpose.

I Lied: I know they released this one as a single, but I’m only just now listening to it for the first time, because having already heard NDY, MF, and LL, I decided I could wait to hear this one. I think I made the right choice – it really works with the rest of the album. It’s a beautiful and bittersweet song, with some more great storytelling.

I love the idea of this song – a relationship where both partners are falling out of love, but they think the other one still loves them, until eventually one partner gives up and leaves, thinking they’ll be breaking the other’s heart… only for the other partner to be relieved the relationship is finally over. Good god, it’s like the definition of bittersweet. I love it. I’m a sucker for a good tragic love story.

Rating: 9.5/10.

Favourite lyrics: “I told you I’d be coming back again for you but I’m not / I’m going way out where the world will never find me / I made a claim that I would dance until we’re bones with my bride / I told you I would never leave you all alone, but I lied”

At Sea: Another shorter song. It’s pretty good, I like it. Gives me Lonesome Dreams vibes (as in the album, not necessarily the specific song). Indeed, you could easily read it as being from the POV of the narrator in Ghost of the Shore.

Rating: 7/10.

Favourite lyrics: N/A. It’s too short for me to pick any.

What Do It Mean: This sounds like a perfect mix of Lonesome Dreams, Strange Trails, and Vide Noir. It feels like a mix of all three albums, too, in terms of the themes. I am in love with it. It’s beautiful, and the lyrics resonate with me a lot. It might actually be my new favourite Lord Huron song ever – and that’s saying something, because it’s very hard for anything to overtake ‘Hurricane (Johnnie’s Theme)’, ‘Moonbeam’, or ‘The Balancer’s Eye’ for me.

Rating: 11/10.

Favourite lyrics: The entire first verse. “So much to say, but my words mean nothing / A life spent talking when my epitaph would do / Wasting my days with my mind on the future / And my past like a chain that won’t ever let me go / Where would I go, and would a lone soul miss me? / If I leave in the night, I’ll only be running / With the weight of the world at the tips of my fingers / A long lost soul in the wilderness alone”

Time’s Blur: LH’s longest song ever – and I’m pretty sure it’s their first wholly instrumental piece, too. Sonically, it reminds me a lot of the songs on Vide Noir. It’s a gorgeous piece of music. Gives me chills. The first few and last few minutes especially just feel downright otherworldly, and I mean that as a compliment.

Rating: 10/10.

Overall, I give Long Lost a 10/10. It’s a masterpiece, just like the rest of LH’s albums. Lord Huron are geniuses and I will die protecting their vision. (Kudos to you if you get what that’s a reference to, lol.)

#Lord Huron

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taehyung-rambles · 3 years

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Who Was the Center for the Most Successful BTS B-Sides? (Up To BTS, the Best)

So, I’m finally deciding to make this post after posting about who I thought were the centers in each BTS era. This post is going to be a little stranger because there aren’t as many materials I can use to make my decisions. As such, a lot of my conclusions are going to be based on how I, personally, perceive these songs.

To start off with, I’m going to explain how I’m using the term “B-side” in this post. I’ve seen some sources say B-sides are bonus tracks, songs recorded at the same time as an album but released later, and the “less important side of a record” (this last one refers to cassette tapes and vinyl). For the purposes of this post, B-sides are any songs that do not come with a music video attached.

Don’t Leave Me, Heartbeat, and Crystal Snow are referred to as singles, so they aren’t strictly B-sides. However, I’m including them in this post because they’ve been promoted in a manner that is more similar to BTS’s B-sides than the title tracks. Heartbeat does have an MV, yes, but the footage used was of live performances--none of which included live performances of Heartbeat itself--and footage that was filmed for BTS World, not Heartbeat specifically. Essentially, I’m including these three songs because they seem more like B-sides than singles. Don’t Leave Me was never performed live and was probably only indicated as a single because it was the soundtrack for Signal. Crystal Snow is listed as a single in conjunction with MIC Drop and DNA (it’s listed like MIC Drop/DNA/Crystal Snow), so at the very least, it doesn’t seem like a solo single. Finally, the BTS World soundtrack album lists each song a member of BTS is in as a single. In the first place, that makes Heartbeat being a single a bit redundant, and secondly, it’s only a single for BTS World--not a BTS studio album or EP.

I know We are Bulletproof: the Eternal has an MV, but it’s animated--which is cool, but it isn’t an MV BTS personally filmed for, and it isn’t considered a BTS era. Also, Map of the Soul: 7 doesn’t even list it as a single in the way Don’t Leave Me or Heartbeat were listed. So, it’s in the B-side post.

The second thing I’m going to mention is that BTS have not performed all of these songs live, so the photos I’m using for them are going to end up coming from random live performances. For instance, I used part of the We are Bulletproof: the Eternal performance for Louder than bombs because they came from the same album and both read as somber songs.

Finally, the way I decided on the centers for these songs was as follows: if the song had choreo, I considered that in addition to the vocal; if the song did not have choreo, I essentially had to go off of the vocal presence within the song. That doesn’t mean the member with the most airtime is always going to have the center position, but it will be the case most of the time. There will be some instances, though, where a certain member had airtime somewhere in the middle of the pack, but the parts they were given were key to how the song was perceived, so they came off feeling like a center; an example of this would be ending two of the choruses or a vocal line member having a part in the verses when other vocal line members only sang on the choruses and pre-choruses.

The last thing I want to mention with this is that the live performances dictated most of my decisions. There are plenty of BTS songs that are recorded one way, but the live performance switches up the parts the members sing. An example of this would be Hobi singing Namjoon’s opening in Spring Day because Hobi had no parts to sing or rap in the studio version. The live performance is how BTS uses the song the most, obviously, so if one member is a lot more prominent in the live version than the studio version, the live version is more important to my perceptions as BTS clearly wanted to show that member to fans more for a certain song. This doesn’t happen a whole lot, but there definitely are songs in which one member is invisible the studio version but then is central to the live performance.

I did not go through every single B-side that exists within BTS’s discography because that would take absolutely forever. I am talking about a good chunk, though, because I’ve decided to talk about songs that are either really popular with ARMY, really popular with BTS, or both. I’m also only using OT7 songs, not the subunit songs. I may do a post on those later.

The post I did in this format with the BTS eras included an MV center. Obviously, that’s not going to happen with this post, so we’re just gonna use “Center”, “Co-Centers”, “Secondary Center(s)”, and “No Center” as the labels.

DISCLAIMER: I know my conclusions are weird some of the time, but it’s just how I view the performances of these songs, which is what I mainly used to decide (unless there isn’t a live performance to look at). The fun of this is seeing the different opinions of ARMY, so tell me if you think the center for a song is different than what I think.

DISCLAIMER #2: This is not who owned every BTS B-side. That post will, most definitely come later, but this post is strictly me trying to see who was the objective center for each B-side. Trust me, a lot of my opinions would be very different if I was talking about the top 3 members for each B-side. For instance, there’s plenty of songs where I thing a rap line member had the best part, so they would own the era for me; however, objectively speaking, they aren’t actually in the song enough to center for it.

I don’t know how this song was perceived when it first came out, but it has definitely become a staple to both BTS and ARMY. Any time BTS decide to perform older songs--and I mean old songs--I Like It is usually one of them. They’ve done performances of it since it came out, and are still doing it now, in the 2020s. Of course, that’s because it’s a lovely song with pretty melodies that ARMY loves.

Center: Jungkook

I kind of knew who I was gonna pick for this before I reviewed a couple live performances of this song. Actually, though I still agree that Jungkook is the center for this song, it wasn’t as clear in the live performances as it is in the studio recording. That’s mostly down to the choreography, though, because Jungkook’s voice absolutely runs throughout this entire song. Even if you’ve got Jimin in the center and Jungkook on the side during the choreo, Jungkook’s singing adlibs and harmonizing and all these wonderful things that push him to the forefront of people’s attention. He does center in the choreo the most, too, of course, but I Like It doesn’t have super powerful choreography, so that didn’t make as much of a difference.

Secondary Center: Jin

I gotta tell you, with how much Jin was pushed off at the beginning of BTS’s career, I didn’t think I’d find Jin in a central position for a song that came off of their first album. Jin being on every chorus is really what solidified this for me. Jimin is on every chorus, too, but for whatever reason, he doesn’t stick out as much. When Jin comes to center stage, he really feels like he’s carrying the performance. It may be an obvious thing to say, but Jin comes off like he’s the center for BTS when he’s up front in I Like It. It’s just that Jungkook literally envelops the entirety of the song. Jin is a really strong support, though.

So, Attack On Bangtan is weird because the studio version is such an amalgamation of the members that you can’t really separate who is who on the chorus except for one specific person that we’ll talk about in a second. The reason I’ve included it in this list is because it’s gotta one of BTS’s best power songs. If you think of songs like Not Today or ON that scream intensity, Attack on Bangtan is definitely one of those. Aside from the fact that it’s an ARMY favorite, I think it’s such a strong introduction to BTS and what they can do with their music, so it can’t be easily forgotten.

Center: Namjoon

Like, if I’m being honest, this song doesn’t have much of a center. However, if you’re looking at the studio, it’s almost like Namjoon is the only one there. I mean, the rap line and Jungkook have prominent parts, obviously, because the rap verses are central to this song. Both Jimin and Jungkook are actually noticeable on the chorus, despite what I said above, but in reality, everything in between is Namjoon. Namjoon’s got the supporting pieces of the song for the entirety of it. All those short phrases and background pieces are done by Namjoon, so it reads like a Namjoon song; it sounds like a Namjoon song. If you watch the live performance of Attack On Bangtan--the performances with the choreo, especially--Namjoon seems like he’s leading this troupe of guys on stage. I’ve said this somewhere before, I think about No More Dream, but Attack On Bangtan is another one of those songs that says, “Hello, I’m Kim Namjoon, and I’m going to introduce you to BTS.” It’s a unique flavor of BTS that doesn’t exist anymore, so going back to this older stuff is really interesting. Still, though Namjoon is a definite center, he’s not a super-standout-ish one. Mostly because this song is absolute chaos.

I wasn’t originally gonna do this B-side because I didn’t think it had that much support as an individual song, but rather as a piece of BTS’s older stuff. However, I think this song is banger, and BTS have performed it as recently as 2019, so it’s going in the list.

Co-Centers: Yoongi, Hobi, & Namjoon

This is true rap line dominated song. Namjoon completely dominates the chorus and the end of the song, and Hobi and Yoongi are almost the only other members that stick out the rest of the time. Watching this live, it feels like the rap line is trading places with each other at the center of the song, and the effect is really cool. I will say Yoongi isn’t as prominent as Hobi and Namjoon are, but he still stands out more than the secondary center I’ll talk about in a second. I really don’t think there’s another B-side this banger that so heavily leans on the rap line. There’s eras of BTS’s music that do (like MIC Drop and Not Today), but the B-sides don’t usually. Maybe that’s why I love this song so much.

Secondary Center: Jimin

I’ll concede that Jimin doesn’t actually have a lot to do with this song, but because he’s got such an effective hook during the chorus, he does seem like one of the central members. Jimin does have pretty central moments in the choreo, as well. Not just during his parts, but his character--if you want to call it that--that he portrays on stage is central, as well. Also, he’s got that one part where the backup dancers make him fly across the stage. So, Jimin was hard to miss.

I’m not the biggest fan of Tomorrow, and I don’t know why, because it’s insanely popular within ARMY. The story behind the song is one thing because I find it extremely interesting and meaningful, but the sound of Tomorrow isn’t my thing. In any case, I think it’s pretty clear why I’ve decided to talk about it. The breakdown of Tomorrow is pretty predictable, and it follows what BTS’s centers are probably “supposed” to be (if BTS was like a standard K-pop group), but let’s talk about it anyway.

Center: Jungkook

As I don’t like this song, I can’t say for certain, but if ARMY are talking about Tomorrow, they’re talking about Jungkook, right? He’s got such a strong presence in both the choreo and the vocal, plus the style of both fit him really well. I don’t know if it’s the body rolls people love or the fact that this genre does amazing things for Jungkook’s voice or both, but the stage for Tomorrow 100% intended for Jungkook to be at its center.

Secondary Center: Jimin

This is what I meant by this breakdown being how it’s “supposed” to be. With Jungkook being the main vocalist, it makes sense for him to center. So, if Jimin’s the lead vocalist, then he should co-center. Obviously, BTS are amazing at letting each individual member have a chance to center plenty of times, but Tomorrow was pretty straightforward. Jimin is just, quite obviously, on stage as a support to Jungkook. He isn’t exactly as standout--which is why he’s a secondary center--but Jimin is, without a doubt, a face of Tomorrow.

Y’all, this song was so hard to decide on because the face of this song basically has no parts in the studio version. However, when I think of Spine Breaker, I think of one member first and foremost. I kind of had to call this one based on that and the choreo alone because the member that feels like the center made the choreo for it--you see where I’m going with this, right? As an aside, I know this has an MV that BTS filmed for this song specifically, but no one talks about a Spine Breaker era because they made the MV years later. So, it’s a B-side. Anyway, this song is an absolutely iconic part of BTS’s discography, and BTS and ARMY both love it to bits. Let’s talk about centers.

Center: Jin

If you listen to the song, without watching the live, you can’t justify Jin as the center of Spine Breaker. The thing is, though, he’s made this song his bitch just by being the legend he is. Jin made it his business to own this song despite not having many parts in the original version. I don’t think Spine Breaker is a crackhead song on its own, but if you combine it with the live performance of it, as well as the MV and the choreo, it is absolutely a crackhead song. It only ended up like that because of Kim Seokjin, so how can he not be the center?

Secondary Center: Taehyung

That being said, I do have to pay tribute to who I believe is the vocal center of Spine Breaker. I fully understand that the rap verses are fire, but the essence of Spine Breaker is in the chorus, and that’s Taehyung’s territory. Jungkook bridges the space between Taehyung’s lines in the chorus, but that deep, rich, full voice Taehyung has in Spine Breaker is what gives it its iconic sound. Honestly, for how much Taehyung’s unique vocal tone contributes to the sound of Spine Breaker, he should probably be a co-center, but Seokjin’s presence is too strong. Still, this is close to being a Taehyung song.

This is another B-side that I’m unsure of how it was received when it came out, but it’s iconic as of the 2020s, and I don’t think that’s gonna change. From what I’ve seen circulate about the song, I kind of think it’s only as iconic as it is because of a specific member, but I think it would’ve been popular regardless because it’s an amazing song with a great beat. I just think the reason it became mainstream was because of a certain person. I can say for sure that the reason this song is iconic to BTS is because of one person, but we’ll talk.

No Center

Does that surprise you after I blabbed about Taehyung for a whole paragraph? Here’s the thing: Taehyung made this song a meme because of how he delivers his verse and how badass it is. However, if you watch an entire performance of JUMP, Taehyung doesn’t ultimately stick out more than any other member. Now, I will say that Taehyung having such a long part is really rare for a vocal line member. Legit, the only thing I can liken it to is Jungkook’s bridge in ON. Maybe it’s not that dramatic, but still. Like, Taehyung is 100% the face of JUMP, but it just isn’t as prominent as Jin in Spine Breaker. All the members seemed to appear equally overall (even though Taehyung just appeared once, but for a long time), so JUMP has no center.

This B-side has got to be in the top 10 list of “BTS Songs That Could’ve Been A Single” because it’s that good. I feel like it represents the boys really well and acts as a song that says “fun” without saying “we’re all still babies.” Basically, it feels like the professional--or grown-up--version of songs like Paldogangsan and JUMP. I think there’s a good bit of love ARMY pays to this song for different reasons, so let’s talk about it a little more in detail.

No Center

It depends where you are in the song, honestly. And if there’s a different member that feels like the center at different times, then there is no center. Like, in the beginning, Boyz With Fun definitely feels like it’s being led by the rap line, but then Jimin gets this really slow, long pre-chorus, and Jungkook gets the chorus. But then, you look at the choreo and the middle of the song, and Taehyung’s all over the place. He’s got that kind-of-rap-verse, the bit where he talks and Hobi tells him to stop, and he’s got a super central part in the choreo at the end where the boys watch him do a move and then copy it. So, I think Boyz With Fun did what it should’ve done, which is highlight everybody’s charms.

I think the center for this song is so obvious I don’t even need to rewatch a performance of it to talk about it. I don’t know that this song is insanely popular with ARMY; I think it’s a song ARMY is fond of, but I don’t think it’s got I Like It status yet. I put it on the list because the old RUN BTS and Bon Voyage episodes played this song, like, all the time. That’s why I ended up liking it because I didn’t initially. Because of that, Converse High reads like that BTS B-side that’s promoted almost as much as the title track of the time. Other examples of this would be Mikrokosmos or Dionysus.

Center: Jungkook

It’s really just because Jungkook’s voice is everywhere in Converse High that he’s got to be the center. Airtime usually predicts how often a member will be in the center of the choreo, and Converse High is no different. I imagine Jungkook’s voice just sounded the best to BigHit since this genre is where a clean vocal will shine, but maybe they used Jungkook to juxtapose the meaning of Converse High. Sort of like “oh, doesn’t this song sound like a cute love song?” but it’s actually about what they want their girlfriend’s to wear, you know? I know there’s a lot of theories behind this song, including sexual ones or “fuck this shiny K-pop shit” ones or whatever, but still. Something to think about. Anyway, that was a tangent, and Jungkook is the center for Converse High.

Moving On is such a beautiful song, but up until Sowoozoo, I didn’t think it was considered one of BTS’s most popular B-sides. The fact that the boys performed it at Sowoozoo in 2021, though, made me think it meant a lot to them. I know it tells a piece of their history as young artists, but I hadn’t seen any performances of it past 2015, so the fact that they performed it in 2021 was really awesome.

No Center

This is a song that’s kind of like Life Goes On or Permission to Dance. Those songs were messages to ARMY that didn’t have the need to pick out one member or another to be the face of it, and Moving On is a message to the younger versions of BTS; every member has an equal opportunity to send that message, and that’s what makes the message all the more special.

Butterfly was used as a song to promote The Most Beautiful Moment in Life, Part 2, so clearly, it was deemed pretty important among BTS’s discography. Also, ARMY loves it. There’s always at least one B-side per album that is used like a title track in every other way but by having an MV. Butterfly is definitely one of those.

Co-Centers: Jimin, Taehyung, & Jungkook

I sort of feel like Taehyung could’ve been down as a secondary center, but he also feels like he fills the song more in the end where Jungkook fills it in the beginning and Jimin fills the middle and the end, so putting all three down seemed like the best option. There’s not really a reason to explain this beyond that it makes sense that these three are the most standout since they have the most parts. The maknae line really support this song with their various vocal tones since all three blend into the melody of Butterfly in a unique way.

Of the B-sides that came out around this time, Whalien 52 is probably the least sensationalized, besides Moving On. I was conflicted about putting this one down, but I still feel like it’s reasonably popular among ARMY, and I kind of associate it with Butterfly, for whatever reason, so I had to include it.

Co-Centers: Namjoon & Jungkook

The best way to explain Whalien 52 is that you’ve got Namjoon leading the rap line and Jungkook leading the vocal line. Both of them are very present within the song, so it comes off almost like the other members are featured artists. That’s not really a bad thing for Whalien 52, though, since the story is told really well through Jungkook and Namjoon. The rest of the members offer great things to the tone of this song, but if we’re talking centers, Jungkook and Namjoon feel like they’re taking the lead.

Personally, I don’t think Ma City is one of my favorite B-sides, but from what I’ve seen in various videos across the internet, this song is comparable to Dionysus. That’s not something I necessarily agree with, but if it means enough to BTS to perform all the way up to 2019, and if ARMY love it, then I’ve got to talk about it. Ma City isn’t easy to choose a center for, because there definitely is one, but it depends on if you’re talking about the studio version or the live version. As I said already, I’ll be going with the live for the purposes of this post, so bear with me for this weird decision.

Co-Centers: Namjoon, Jimin, & Taehyung

Originally, Taehyung wasn’t a part of this line-up, and Jimin was a secondary center, but watching the live performance is what made me go with this. Taehyung doesn’t always sing the chorus in the live performances since it’s really hard to maintain a growl like he does in Ma City, but the fact that the chorus is his part is pretty significant. For Jimin, his part on the pre-chorus is, more or less, the most standout-ish part of Ma City. At least, for me. Maybe it’s the way Jimin does it, maybe it’s the melody, I don’t know. Namjoon, though, supports the song completely. He’s the absolute bones of Ma City, and that really comes through in the studio version. Each of these three contribute a lot to the sound of Ma City, so we’re looking at three co-centers.

BAEPSAE is a stronger song than so many other BTS songs, including the singles, and you can take that to the bank. Do I think it cracks the top 10? No. But I do think BAEPSAE is as good as nearly every other big BTS song. Of course, this is one that ARMY also thinks is amazing, and I’d say BTS do, too considering the fun they have with it on stage. If I ever decide to make a post about my favorite B-sides, BAEPSAE will be on it.

No Center

I don’t think I can justify a center for BAEPSAE because it’s almost like the song itself overtakes everything else. Like, yeah Jungkook’s rap verse is one of the best he’s ever done, yeah the rap line kill it, but BAEPSAE is also just that good, you know? Not that it doesn’t matter who’s singing it, but it makes the members shine rather than a singular member making it a wow song.

I’m more or less putting Wishing on a Star on here because I assume it’s a song the boys love. There’s a good handful of Japanese songs BTS hasn’t performed live or have only done so a few times; Wishing on a Star is one that keeps reappearing at Musters, so I figure I’d add it on here, despite it not being my favorite song in the world.

No Center

The reasoning for this is, more or less, because the vocal line (who are the predominant members in this song) all felt fairly represented in the line distribution. A lot of the time, you’ll get a B-side that’s really supported by one member or another while the remaining members fill in the gaps, but Wishing on a Star is feels evenly divided, so each member only stands out when their part comes up. There’s also no choreography, so that nixes that part of the equation. This is the case for some future B-sides, too, but Wishing on a Star only has a center so far as an ARMY feels like one member sticks out more than the rest to them.

I really didn’t like this song when I first heard it because I thought the composition of it was too confused and strange, but now that’s a reason that I love it. It’s one of those iconic BTS B-sides, which may have to do with the dance practice or the message of it or both, but I don’t feel like it’s talked about much anymore. I’m bringing attention back to it here because the centers for this song are so weird considering a pairing like this hasn’t ever happened in BTS’s discography before or since. Well, maybe with one exception.

Co-Centers: Yoongi & Taehyung

I know that everyone calls this a Yoongi song, but to me, it really feels like Taehyung and Yoongi were meant to be partners for this song. The only other song I could liken it to is FIRE because these two are the most prominent in that era, but in 21st Century Girls, it’s like they’re side by side the whole time, while FIRE felt like they were independently central. Both Taehyung and Yoongi have central pieces in other places besides the chorus, but of course, the chorus is the main reason they come off as centers. The vocal and the choreo support it, and I think it’s really fun to have a song with Taegi at the center. I think Yoongi and Taehyung are very similar in their approach to music, so it’s cool to have them partnered in a song. I’m still waiting for a Taegi subunit, though.

This is, I believe, BTS’s first song intended as a message for ARMY, and because of that, it’s become very special to the fanbase. I don’t believe they’ve performed this recently, and I don’t believe they performed it a whole bunch to begin with, but it’s still such a special song that provides a harsh and hopeful view into these boys’ lives. I adore it for that reason, and so does the rest of ARMY.

No Center

This was probably an obvious answer, but like Moving On, 2! 3! doesn’t want to have a center because it’s supposed to a message that the members of BTS are telling ARMY in equal measure. What it did was allow each member to speak at the forefront of the song, rather than having a member at the center of it all. That’s what this song needed, and that’s why it’s so special.

This is another song that I didn’t really like that much because I’m not a fan of straight EDM songs, but I came to find it catchy and--weirdly enough--powerful. I’ve seen a lot of people say that Wings is an underrated song, but I feel like the love it gets from BTS and ARMY plants it firmly in the “iconic BTS B-sides” category. It’s certainly become a fan favorite, as is evidenced by BTS’s usage of it on the Speak Yourself tour and return to it in 2021.

No Center

I will say that Jungkook did feel like center for this B-side initially, but the way the boys perform it live makes it clear that a.) there’s a equal part for everyone and b.) the song is mostly about the beat, not the vocals. It’s a dance track, so it’d be hard to have a vocal stand out when the point of the song is to jam to melody of the music. Jungkook’s voice does sound the most fitting for this type of song, but Wings isn’t dominated by one member or another.

I don’t actually think this song is super popular among ARMY; I think the message of the song has been talked about a lot, but song itself isn’t circulated that much. That being said, I’m gonna talk about it because it was clearly meant as a song for ARMY, much like 2! 3! Since it’s got that kind of meaning attached to it for BTS, it should have that meaning among ARMY.

No Center

There’s a lot of “No Center” B-sides coming around now. I feel like I’m gonna repeat myself by explaining why there’s no center, so I won’t mention it again here. Especially since I’ll probably mention it again later. I will say that Yoongi and Hobi almost felt like centers because their verses stand out the most, but the fact of the matter is, the back half of the song is almost entirely the vocal line. Within the vocal line, Taehyung feels like he has a significant part, but it’s just in the last half. Basically, no center was the only conclusion I could come to.

I don’t think it’s a secret or a stretch to say that Best Of Me is a pretty basic song. However, that being said, it’s one of the handful of BTS B-sides that could’ve been a single. I mean, for BTS, it couldn’t have been, but for pop music in general, Best Of Me is the exact kind of thing that would be played over and over again on the radio. That would probably be why it was a song chosen for their comeback show--or it could be because of Andrew Taggart. Who knows?

Co-Centers: Jimin & Jungkook

Okay, this deduction is true, but like, barely. Genuinely, in the live performance, it doesn’t seem too much like Jikook are the centers; it’s mostly the vocal that makes me see it that way. Once you get past the first chorus, there’s a lot of Jikook in the vocal, and that does mean there’s a lot of Jikook in the choreo, but since Best Of Me has a lot to do with the beat--rather than the vocal--it still doesn’t feel like it has a secure center. I will admit, though, that Jikook do have a stronger presence in the song than the other members, choreo included. They’re almost like the silent centers of Best Of Me.

In the echelon of BTS B-sides, Pied Piper has got sit in the top 10, at the very least, along with the next B-side we’re gonna look at. ARMY absolutely love this song, and it’s become a mainstay in everyone’s favorite BTS songs list. Whether it’s the lyrics, the smoky sound, the way members perform it, or all of the above, Pied Piper is absolutely one of the best songs BTS has produced in their career. Iconic almost seems too small a word for it. It’s definitely gonna be a classic one day.

Co-Centers: Jimin & Jungkook

Yeah, the Jikook center in Pied Piper is just a skosh stronger than it was in Best Of Me. If you couldn’t tell, I was being sarcastic, because it’s really obvious that those two were meant to center this song. I’m almost 100% sure it’s because of their vocals, but it could also be because they were thinking about which members would project the tone of this song the best, and Jimin and Jungkook were the answer. You know, since they are the lead vocalist/dancer and center, respectively. I really do think it was because their voices matched the tone the nicest, though. I’ll keep my opinions reserved about who I, personally, like to hear in this song the most, but it’s no secret that songs that play on head voice and falsetto are always going to fall to Jungkook and Jimin because they’re the most developed members in those registers. Even if Jin and Taehyung have the potential to sound more interesting, at times. Jimin and Jungkook’s voices just fit Pied Piper, no doubt about it, so of course they were going to vocally center the song.

Here’s another one in the same class as Pied Piper, and honestly, Go Go is definitely treated as the more iconic BTS B-side. I mean, the sound of Go Go practically makes it a given that it’s going to be iconic, so I suppose there’s no surprise there. This is another BTS B-side that I didn’t really like when I was just casually listening to BTS’s music, but the deeper I got, the more I realized that Go Go is an example of how high-quality BTS can get with their music. Especially since Go Go doesn’t read like a standard pop song. I think Pied Piper, Go Go, and a handful of other B-sides are clear testaments to how incredibly talented and unprecedented BTS are as a group.

No Center

This was kind of a tough call to make, but the end of the day, no member feels like a true center for Go Go. Maybe it’s because the whole song is unique, so no matter who you’re focusing on, it all seems special. Jimin and Jungkook appear the most in the vocal, and Jungkook centers the choreo the most often, but honestly, if I was gonna peg a center for this era, it’d be Taehyung. I’d liken this B-side to JUMP in that way because a.) Taehyung’s got a pretty long rap-esque part and b.) his part is one of the highlights of the song. For me, it’s the highlight. Taehyung’s part in the second verse, and the fact that he starts the choruses, makes it feel like you’re waiting the whole song just to get to Taehyung. However, that being said, given that the frequency of Jikook is equal to the heavy presence of Taehyung--at least, in my opinion--there can’t really be a center. Plus, there’s the fact that Jikook, while having the most parts, don’t have all of the most impactful parts. A lot of that is the rap line and Taehyung. Bottom line, everyone feels just about equal in Go Go in terms of stand-out moments.

Don’t Leave Me is not it for me, I’m not gonna lie, friends. I still listen to it all the time when I’m going through my BTS playlist, but it doesn’t have the same magic a lot of other BTS B-sides do, in my opinion. I do think there’s some incredible vocal moments in here, though, and I think they all fall on the same two people, so I can’t really imagine any other members centering in this era but them. In fact, when I listen to this song, it’s kind of got a FAKE LOVE effect, where the main thing you notice are the two members jumping up to those high belts in the chorus--well, in FAKE LOVE, it’s actually the refrain, but you get where I’m going with this by now. Anyway, I listed Don’t Leave Me since BTS calls it a single, despite it not having an MV or any big promotion.

Co-Centers: Jin & Jimin

I’m not saying this to be rude, but Don’t Leave Me, deadass, reads as a song where everything is filler besides Jin and Jimin on the chorus. I’m not saying the other members don’t sound good; I’m just saying Jin and Jimin’s voices were definitely meant to be the part people focused on. And, to be honest, I think that’s fair, given the vocal prowess they demonstrate in Don’t Leave Me. Like, is it impossible for tenors to belt as high as they do in this song? No. Is it impressive that they’re able to do it so often? Hell yeah. I’ve always been amazed by Jimin and Jin in Don’t Leave Me, and with the way they stand out, it doesn’t leave room for any other member to center this song. But that’s okay. Every once in a while, it’s nice to have a song with super stand-out members. Every member has a song or two where that’s the case for them, and it’s cool to see the different combinations that pop up in those instances. Jin and Jimin are one such case, and I find the result really interesting.

Japanese Spring Day is one of the most powerful BTS songs, and you can quote me on that. It’s in the same league as Korean Spring Day, Life Goes On, Blue & Grey, Let Go, Mikrokosmos, and Magic Shop. I would venture that many other fans agree with me. Honestly, though, Crystal Snow is one of those BTS songs that just fills you up completely. It’s almost an overwhelming song to listen to, given all the emotion pouring out of it. I’ve gotta say, this is another B-side that really leans on the strong, power vocals coming from one specific member, just like with Don’t Leave Me, and I feel like it’s probably someone you won’t expect--unless you’re expecting it because you know my opinions already. I’m about to write an essay, so prepare yourselves.

Center: Taehyung

Taehyung is such a vocal athlete, and he’s got nothing but opportunities in Crystal Snow to demonstrate that. Crystal Snow marks a really big shift for Taehyung into these higher registers that he’s constantly singing in today. It’s not like he wasn’t hitting notes like this before now, and it isn’t like he still wasn’t singing outside of his vocal range before now, but Crystal Snow really pushed his limits, and he ended up surpassing them--by a good margin. Not to get on my shit again, but the notes Jinminkook are hitting in this song are within their vocal ranges. However, not only are they out of Taehyung’s, they’re way out of Taehyung’s. A baritone doing this with his voice shouldn’t happen as often as it does, and Taehyung’s now comfortable doing it. Absolutely amazing.

But it isn’t only the stunning vocals he’s producing that make Taehyung the center of Crystal Snow--it’s the parts he was given. Taehyung was prominent in Spring Day, as well, but Crystal Snow really pushed him to the forefront. It’s got the same feel as Butter, where you’re expecting the members to switch off more often, but instead, it’s Taehyung. Especially since Taehyung’s got the end of the chorus, the entire build of song is structured so it’s satisfied with Taehyung’s part. I imagine that has to do with the desire for his soulful voice to carry Crystal Snow, and it worked. I know there’s the triple high note, and Jungkook almost has as much airtime as Taehyung, and Jimin sounds incredible, but Taehyung has always felt like the point of Crystal Snow.

Secondary Center: Jungkook

Even though Taehyung was given the most central sections of Crystal Snow, there’s no doubt that Jungkook’s voice is supporting the song, as well. He’s got the foundational pieces of the song, and even though Jinmin are handling the adlibs at the end, if you’re listen to the whole piece, Jungkook is the one with the claim to frequency. It’s not because he had a lot of parts that I consider Jungkook the secondary center--it’s because Jungkook is the thread holding Crystal Snow together. Jinmin are nearly there in terms of being centers, but in the same way a single stand-out verse for Taehyung in Go Go wasn’t enough to center him, neither are adlibs. Even though the adlibs are absolutely stunning.

Knowing the truth behind this song makes me sad to this day, but there’s no doubt that it’s a beautiful song with a great performance. An unusual performance for BTS, to be sure, but still amazing. Oddly enough, Let Go is difficult to pin down a center for because the vocal and the choreo are so disproportionate, which never happens in BTS’s performances. There are songs where Hobi will step out to the center while Jungkook or Jimin are singing for a chorus, or a different member will center for a short dance break than the one who had just finished singing in the center, but Let Go so strongly features one member in the choreo that it makes that member feel like the overall center when, vocally, they’re obviously not.

No Center

Again, like, looking at the choreo only, Taehyung’s the clear center, but vocally, there isn’t a center at all. I imagine they centered Taehyung for the Let Go performance because this was supposed to be a goodbye song, and BTS have said Taehyung is what really drew people in initially, so maybe they wanted Taehyung to be the face of the goodbye. I know I said I was using the live performances to dictate my decisions, but Taehyung really wasn’t all the present in the vocal, at least, not more than anyone else. The choreo does make him closer to a center than the other members, but I think saying there’s no center feels better than giving it Taehyung for the choreo.

We’re getting into the Love Yourself: Tear B-sides, which, I think, are some of the best BTS B-sides yet. 134340 may be on the lower end of that list, but it’s still a better song than a good chunk of the B-sides we’ve look at so far. I feel like this and the following few songs are examples of BTS songs where every member gets to showcase their unique styles because each of their parts feels different, even if they’re singing the same line. 134340 is no different, which is probably why it’s a favorite among ARMYs.

No Center

I can tell you that the rap line and Taehyung definitely aren’t the centers, but I don’t think I can say Jinminkook are the centers. Airtime aside, 134340 is almost perfectly set up so that the members will all have equal parts. Granted, Taehyung fell through the cracks on the vocal end, but he usually does in the middle or at the end of songs. Jin wasn’t present in the beginning, so I suppose Taehyung and Jin balanced each other out. Either way, this isn’t the type of song that’s going to have a center, anyway.

Ah, the infamous “Why hasn’t BTS performed this live?!” B-side. Paradise made this list because of that reason. Prior to 2021, I hadn’t heard much about Paradise, but I’ve quickly learned that this is the single most popular BTS song that ARMY want to see performed live. And I agree. It’s a brilliantly catchy song, and I’d love to see how the members handle the melodies live, since there’s some fun vocal embellishments in the studio version. It’s also a crowd vocal song, which means it’d be super fun to sing with ARMY in the audience. Hopefully we’ll get to hear Paradise the next time a Muster can take place in a live venue.

No Center

Like, Jimin’s got the most airtime, right, but he doesn’t feel like the center of the song. Paradise is the type of sound that really fits Jimin, but with just the vocal to go off of, I can’t really say that makes him a center. Actually, Jungkook and Taehyung sort of feel more central than Jimin, despite Jimin having both pre-choruses. Anyway, I think Paradise it one in a long list of BTS B-sides that don’t actually have centers because the B-sides are typically more well-balanced than the eras are.

Why is it that BTS had all these great B-sides, but like, didn’t perform them until 2019, when they came out in 2018? Were they waiting for the entire Love Yourself album series to release? Either way, it’s a crime we don’t have more Love Maze performances because this song is vibey as hell, just like everything else that came from this album, and MOTS: Persona. ARMY definitely agree with this opinion, which is why it’s become one of the most successful fan-favorites.

Center: Jimin

You know, with the way Love Maze is structured, especially in the last half, it’s really hard for one member to center--and yet, somehow, Jimin managed to do it. Love Maze has got super short lines that feel evenly spread between the members, but if you’re really listening to it, Jimin is sewn into every piece of this song. It’s sort of like Taehyung in Crystal Snow. In retrospect, this makes a lot of sense because everything from Love Yourself: Tear to MOTS: Persona was really Jimin-heavy. I imagine that’s because BTS were produced a lot of groovy-sounding, R&B-esque music during that time, like Love Maze, and Jimin’s tone compliments that vibe really well. Love Maze ended up sounding like a song that Jimin was leading from beginning to end.

In terms of what Magic Shop could be categorized as, it almost feels like this song belongs outside the realm of both BTS eras and BTS B-sides. It’s more like a personal letter to ARMY, so it feels odd talking about in any type of technical terms. Besides that, I don’t think it’s any wonder how Magic Shop made the list of the most successful BTS B-sides. It’s one of those pieces that makes ARMY feel connected to BTS, and it may even be the most connective song we’ve got between us. A warm hug. That’s what Magic Shop is. Not a B-side. Anyway, enough gushing. Let’s get to the good stuff.

No Center

I was really counting on this one having a center, and I honestly thought it was gonna Vmin because I think of them as being super prominent in Magic Shop. I think my personal opinions clouded my perceptions of Magic Shop, though, because Jin is actually the one I feel like I hear the most throughout the song. That being said, Jin does read as a center. In fact, the individuality of the members kind of disappears for me, except in the beginning and the bridge--which is, maybe, why I thought Vmin would be the centers. Magic Shop feels more like BTS, as a whole, singing to us, not the individual members. So, ergo, no center. Sort of an interesting thing to notice.

I’d put Anpanman in the same arena as Go Go. Like, it’s got that party vibe that has made it a more popular BTS song than some of their singles and title tracks. It’s got a bit of childlike vibe, just like Go Go, but where Go Go feels mischievous, Anpanman feels uplifting. It’s definitely one of my most-listened-to B-sides because it’s fun, and it weirdly, it’s sort of another “Message from BTS” song. It’s got some of the best choreography, too, but that’s for another post.

No Center

Lots of “No Center” B-sides piling up. Okay, there’s no center, but if there was gonna be, it’d be the rap line. Even though the vocal line have the chorus and the bridge, the punch in the song comes from the rap line. That being said, Taehyung’s opening of the song feels very central. It’s just that Taehyung barely shows up the rest of the time. Jikook have a lot of airtime at the end, but it feels like they’re barely in the first part of the song. You see why there’s no center? It was close for the rap line, but Anpanman just doesn’t end up having a center.

BTS and ARMY alike adore SO WHAT because it’s the hype song that’s perfect for the end of any concert. I’m not personally a huge fan of EDM songs, but I can’t deny the magic this performance has on stage. It’s like going to a huge house party with BTS as the hosts. It is a dance track, though, and those don’t typically have centers to them. Will it be the same for SO WHAT? Stay tuned on “This post is way too long; I’m just reading the headings at this point.”

Center: Jimin

SO WHAT is 1000 degrees of chaotic, so in a live performances, it’s kind of hard to pick out who’s sticking out, but Jimin is still a definite center for the song. He and Jungkook fit the best with EDM music, and they really utilized Jimin for So WHAT. It’s hard to explain, but it’s like it’s Jimin’s song, and he’s passing off some of his lines to other members to sing. I don’t mean that in a rude way, and, no, I did not forget the iconic Taejin bridge, but Jimin is still the most central member.

Secondary Center: Jungkook

I can’t really deny that Jungkook was all over SO WHAT, too, and I was gonna put him down as a co-center, but Jungkook still didn’t stick out as much as Jimin did. He was, without a doubt, the second most present, though. SO WHAT is sort of focused more on making a beat out of the members’ parts, rather than actually having those parts stand out, because it’s a dance track. So, you get a lot of repeating parts that are dependent on the beat to shine, but Jungkook still managed to stand out beyond that. I had to give him the secondary center position for that reason.

I’m not actually sure how popular I’m Fine is to ARMY, but to me, it looks like BTS presents it, almost, like a single. It’s reminiscent of the way Best Of Me was promoted, which makes sense, because they’re very similar songs. I don’t know if it’s the intricate performance or what, but I’m Fine definitely feels like an important song in the BTS discography, to me. Let me know if you don’t think it should be on this list, but I thought it was meant to be seen as the BTS single that never was.

Center: Taehyung

To be honest with you, Taehyung already felt like the center in my head, even before reviewing the live performance again. I will say, he doesn’t feel like a super established center, as the vocals were pretty evenly divided--actually, they were a bit Jikook dominant--but if you include the live performance, Taehyung does still read as a center. It’s especially true because of the choreo since Taehyung ended up being the central piece for the beginning and the end, plus the bridge had a central piece for him, as well, but the parts he was given were also key to him feeling like a center. Of course, he begins and ends the song, but it’s also the way the song ends. It’s got that reiteration of the “I’m fine” lyric that’s meant to bolster the feeling and purpose of the song, and since Taehyung got that part, it made him seem more central than the other members.

Answer: Love Myself is kind of like Magic Shop. Like, how can you talk about this song in technical terms when it’s just meant as a personal conversation between ARMY and BTS? We’re gonna talk about it anyway. I don’t think this song has gotten the same type of popularity that songs like Go Go or Anpanman have, but Answer: Love Myself is definitely a fan-favorite. There’s no doubt about that. And BTS love it a lot, too. It became sort of an anthem, more than anything.

No Center

I don’t know about you, but when I think of Answer: Love Myself, I think of Vmin’s high note. And, while it’s true that Jimin’s voice runs through the whole song, and Taehyung has some key parts, neither of them could be the center based on that since the other members were prominent, too. And since Vmin was, more or less, the only two contenders, there’s no center. Answer: Love Myself is one of those songs that doesn’t have to have one, though. Or rather, it isn’t supposed to have one. So, this is probably how it was gonna be, high note or not.

Depending on the day, this BTS B-side is my personal favorite. I do have a B-side that’s always my favorite, but many days, Mikrokosmos ties with that one. I feel like Mikrokosmos has become the face of BTS x ARMY in a lot of ways. It seems like it’s always going to be that one, special song that’s meant to tell the world about how important ARMY and BTS are to each other. Though Magic Shop may feel the most connective, I think Mikrokosmos does the job of making ARMY and BTS feel like one being. It really feels like a song that could’ve been a letter to BTS or BTS’s letter to us, and that’s why I adore it so much.

No Center

As this falls under the same category that 2! 3! and Magic Shop do, it’s probably self-explanatory as to why Mikrokosmos wouldn’t have a center. I mean, besides the whole “it’s a message from all of BTS” thing, Mikrokosmos is also really well divided between each member in terms of airtime. Well, between the vocalists, at least. If you couldn’t tell, the vocalists have more of an opportunity to center than the rap line does. Even if the rap line has the best parts in a song, the vocalists usually have the most, and that’s where the centers often come from. Back to Mikrokosmos: there’s no center. The end.

I didn’t really like HOME all that much to begin with, either, if I’m being honest, but now I think it’s one of the most fun songs to listen to from BTS’s discography. Again, I’m not sure if HOME is super popular among ARMY, and I know BTS kind of only performed it a handful of times, but since the quality of it is so high, I figured it belonged on this list.

Co-Centers: Jimin & Taehyung

Ah, ha! We’ve finally got our Vmin co-centered song. I think the way I feel this works is that Jimin is the one who’s all over HOME, Taehyung is the one with the important parts, and they both pop out. Jimin is, without a doubt, a center for HOME, even just based on the sheer amount of airtime he has. Not because it’s a lot, but because the airtime he has feels vital to the sound of the song. Taehyung, on the other hand, has a part in the first verse that’s become iconic, his part in the final chorus was built up to be more noticeable than the other members’ parts in that chorus because he belted, and he belted hard--in the studio version, that is, though he’s done it live once or twice, too--and he ends the song. So, yeah. I mean, I’ve always felt that Vmin were the most stand-out in HOME, and I still think they were meant to be the central members of it.

Okay, I know what I said about Mikrokosmos, and my ultimate favorite B-side is coming up, but don’t touch me when it comes to Dionysus. It’s such a damn good song. Like, it’s almost on par with ON, and I think that’s BTS best song of all time. They 100% promoted this song like it was a title track. Everywhere BTS went during this time, they were performing Dionysus, and often, it was a bigger performance than they were giving for Boy With Luv, which was their title track at the time. Dionysus is a king of a BTS song, and that’s not changing any time soon.

No Center

Considering all the aspects of Dionysus, no, there isn’t a center. If we’re talking about stage presence alone, though, it’s Namjoon and Taehyung, for me. They’re essence on stage is so damn strong during every Dionysus performance that it almost makes them eligible to be co-centers. Really, though, since the parts are allotted fairly equally, so it’s a toss up on who you consider to be the center. Honestly, depending on the energy, any of these member have the potential to be the center. It’s just that, overall, there isn’t one.

Here’s another song, like Paradise, that I hope we get to hear live one day. I mean, the way Jungkook reacted on his 24th birthday VLIVE tells me they kind of forgot it exists, but I can hope. I’d say the desire for BTS to perform this live is pretty high among ARMY, at least at the moment, so I’ve put Heartbeat on this list for that reason. I thought it was a little bit basic when I first heard it, but I still think it’s a beautiful song that the members did wonderful with.

No Center

As strong as my opinions are about who owned this era, I don’t think any of those opinions apply to a center for Heartbeat. Jimin and Jungkook seem like they’re very present throughout certain sections of the song, but then, Jin seems like he’s dominant after the bridge. I do, more or less, feel like the melodies in Heartbeat don’t actually lend themselves to members shining individually, but rather, as a whole. So, I’m gonna go ahead and say Heartbeat is almost a Jinminkook centered song, but not quite.

So, I personally wouldn’t have put Louder than bombs on this list, but RUN BTS told me that this song is one that ARMY really want a live performance of. I’m not exactly sure why--maybe because of Troye Sivan--but if ARMY want to see it badly, then it’s reason enough to put it on this list. I really liked the uniqueness of Louder than bombs initially, and I still commend BTS for always trying new genres and tones. It’s one of the many things that makes BTS amazing.

Center: Jimin

Okay, so this isn’t a very strong central focus Jimin has, but I do definitely see Jimin as more central than the other members. Well, I mean, barely, but still. Usually, Jungkook is the one that’s on every chorus, and the other members rotate, but this time, it was Jimin, and it was really noticeable. I mean, depending on the part, the other members did feel stand-outish. It’s just that Jimin’s presence was that strong. It makes sense, given the tone of this song, that Jimin would center for it, but I do think of this song as more Jimin-centric than it actually is.

I don’t know that We are Bulletproof: the Eternal is actually that popular among ARMY, but I wanted to discuss it out of respect for the message behind it. I think it’s a song that BTS meant to be very special, and it almost seems like more of a goodbye song than Let Go does. On certain days, I find this song really beautiful, on others I find it sad. I don’t listen to it often, but I always experience powerful emotions when I do.

Center: Jungkook

This is another instance where the center isn’t that clearly defined, but whether I’m watching it live or simply listening to it, it’s always felt like We are Bulletproof: the Eternal is being led by Jungkook. I imagine his parts at the beginning and end of the song make it feel like that, but I think giving him those parts was intentional. It’s sort of like Jungkook, the center of BTS, became responsible for presenting this song of gratitude to ARMY on behalf of all the members. It really isn’t something that comes across strongly when you’re considering the entire piece, but nonetheless, Jungkook still reads as a center.

I’m not gonna front and say I love this song as much as other ARMY do, or as much as BTS does, but I cannot deny that Your eyes tell has made quite the impact since it was released. Jungkook’s work usually does receive lots of love from ARMY, but I would venture that they get more love from BTS because they praised him for this song as much as they did for the rest of his music. That’s the main reason I put it on this list. If BTS really love this song, then it deserves to be recognized.

No Center

So, to be honest, in a live performance, Jimin is the member that sticks out the most, to me. However, in this case, I don’t think that equates to him being the center. It doesn’t feel as though Jimin is leading the song or that he’s sticking out because he was meant to be the center; the allotment of the airtime is fairly even, so Jimin only seemed to stand out because his vocals stood out--not because he was the face of Your eyes tell. That being said, it may seem odd that Jungkook wasn’t the center for Your eyes tell, but actually, when Jungkook writes for BTS, his presence isn’t all that strong. I wonder if that’s because he writes for others, rather than from his own experiences. Or, at least, that’s what he’s said. This was a long tangent, but Your eyes tell doesn’t seem to have a center.

This is the BTS B-side that, no matter what songs I may be in love with on a given day, will always be my number one. Blue & Grey absolutely blew me away the first time I heard it, even more so once I learned of the story behind it. Unlike Jungkook and his way of writing music, Taehyung wrote this piece from a hole he had in his heart, in an effort to heal it; that sincerity bleeds through Blue & Grey, and I haven’t heard a song before or since that has felt so utterly real. This is such a unique sound for BTS because it’s quintessentially Taehyung, and BTS being a part of the final product turned a beautiful piece, meant for a mixtape, into a masterpiece.

Center: Taehyung

Again, unlike Jungkook, since Taehyung initially wrote this for himself, his presence is very strong in Blue & Grey. To me, it feels very much like he’s given BTS permission to tell his story while he steers it, dictating only the beginning and the end. More than any other B-side, Blue & Grey feels like it’s being led by one member. I think, though, that was a necessary choice for the emotion behind Blue & Grey to be properly conveyed. I meant it when I said that BTS, as a whole, made Blue & Grey a masterpiece, but Taehyung had to be the main voice because this song is so personal for him. That’s what brings Blue & Grey to life. I would love to see Taehyung shine through more music in the future because he has the capability to create magic.

I knew this song was gonna remain a popular song for ARMY the second I heard it, but I didn’t know BTS themselves really loved Telepathy. In the same way Dionysus was performed a lot alongside Boy With Luv, for a while, it felt like Telepathy was Dynamite’s partner. It’s a song that mimics the style of Dynamite while feeling more like a BTS song. It was exciting to listen to something completely new from BTS, and I think that’s why ARMY responded to it so intensely. That might be why BTS did, too.

No Center

I had to watch three performances of Telepathy before figuring out that there is not, in fact, an intended center. At first you think it’s Jungkook because he has so many parts in the beginning, but in the middle, he’s not really there; then you think it’s Taehyung because he’s got a bunch of back-to-back parts, but I didn’t think it was quite enough for him to be the center; then you think it’s Jimin because Jimin dominates the end. If I had to choose, it’d probably be Vmin because those two really do dominate the last half of the song--plus they’ve got that cute little moment at the end where they’re both humming the melody. Taehyung definitely stands out the most performance-wise, but I don’t think any one member was intentionally put forth as a center. No matter how bubbly Taehyung is while they perform Telepathy.

We’ve come to Dis-ease, the last B-side from the BE album, and the image I have is crap. What can I say? I really wanted to use a photo from the live performance, and the boys weren’t together on stage until the end, so this is all I could grab. Anyway, when the boys released their BE-hind stories on YouTube, I found out from Hobi’s interview that he and Taehyung really love Dis-ease, and Jimin was really proud of the work he did on it. I’m unsure of how much ARMY love Dis-ease compared to the other B-sides on this list, but I’m in the same camp as Taehyung and Hobi when it comes to adoring it.

No Center

I wanted to say Jimin was the center, but I don’t think he really is. He is at the end, but then, Hobi feels like the leader of the song during his verse, yet not for the rest of the song. I will say that, oddly, Jungkook felt sort of absent in Dis-ease. Not because he doesn’t sound amazing--he always sounds amazing--but because his presence in the song was a lot weaker than it usually is. Just like every member has a song or two that they stand out the most in, every member has a song where they don’t stand out a lot. Though, Jungkook did still have key parts to sing in Dis-ease. Nobody really had central parts, though.

Alright, we’ve finally gotten to the end of the road with this post. I hope to add more in the future--hopefully soon. I know I skimmed over a lot of the early B-sides that a lot of fans adore, like COFFEE, Look Here, Blanket Kick, etc., but I didn’t feel like those B-sides stacked up to the reputation songs like Pied Piper and Go Go have. I also didn’t really feel like they’ve had longstanding love for them from BTS like Like It or BAEPSAE have, either. Not that BTS and ARMY don’t love those B-sides, but certain ones have fallen through the cracks where others haven’t.

That’s why this post is a good jumping off point for ARMY to discuss other B-sides they love, because this is, by no means, and exhaustive list. I didn’t intend to name a center for each and every BTS B-side, as there are simply too many, but I think I covered all of the prominent ones. Let me know if you disagree with me--or if you agree, tell me why. There will be more to come in the future, so check back for updates once we’ve got new music to gush over!

#bts #bangtan sonyeondan #kim taehyung #jeon jungkook #park jimin #Jung HoSeok #kim namjoon #min yoongi #kim seokjin

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sunsetinmyvein · 3 years

Text

The Radio Station - Chapter Three - Stay Another Hour or Two

A/N - Sorry this one’s a smidge late, guys. Been laid up a bit these last 48 hours.

19th of September, 2013

Unbeknownst to her, Matty had been just as excited about a second interview as she was. After the praise she had given both him and his music the first time, he had found himself a bit smitten. Waiting for the next time he was in London to hope that the station reached out again had been mildly nerve-wracking, but his patience had been worth it. It gave him the chance that he wanted. He had given her his number in the hopes that maybe she'd make a move. If she came to him first, that saved him a lot of trouble and allowed him to side-step any awkward tension if it turned out she wasn't into him. She hadn’t managed to get out to Reading around her other work obligations, but she’d let him know that she tried. He had hoped this would be the start of more frequent communication. But, they hadn't really had much of a chance to act on anything in that regard. Because as soon as the full-length album was out, the station wanted Matty back on the show.

“It feels like it was only yesterday that I was here.” Matty laughed from the seat across from her as she fiddled with a few things on her side of the desk.

“It’s only been a month, I think?” She mumbled, clearly focused on something.

“About that, if I recall.” He nodded.

“No George this time?” She asked absentmindedly.

“I'd rather have you all to myself.” She hummed a noise in response that made it hard for him to work out if his flirting had landed or not. But he did think that maybe she was trying to avoid looking directly at him. And... maybe blushing? “Been up to much in the last month?” He segued.

“Not particularly.” She said with a shrug. “You? Touring?” She asked back, but he skipped right over that.

“Haven't been painting the town red? Going on dates? Suddenly acquired a boyfriend?” He asked as nonchalantly as possible, suddenly busying himself with his phone.

She let out an abrupt laugh as she finally looked over at him, “No, Matty.” He just nodded thoughtfully. “Come on, you dork. Let's do this.” She said, looking fairly amused by his antics as she pulled her headset back on.

“And we're back, with a voice a few of you might find familiar as he was on the show only a month ago.” She gestured to him to do a little introduction.

“Hi, it's Matthew Healy from The 1975.” He spoke in a calculated voice into his mic.

“Back again so soon?”

“That's what I get for complaining it was too long last time.” He said with a light laugh.

“But you've done a lot in a month! Your full length, self-titled album is out now, you played Reading and Leeds, and you're even playing at the O2 Sheperd's Bush Empire tomorrow.” She listed off.

“Yeah! We never stop, really.” He chuckled as he shook his head a bit. “The acceleration over the last six months has been crazy fast. But we’ve been a band for such a long time so it feels justified.”

“Your enthusiasm and motivation is truly next level.”

“Gotta keep the hype going, you know?”

“Has it left you guys feeling a bit worn out?” She questioned. “That sort of non-stop lifestyle would've burnt many people out by now.”

“Ah, no way! We’ve had five years of doing nothing. This is fun.” He grinned broadly. “I’ve got a break of about a week and a half over Christmas, but I’ve gotta move into a new flat. I’ve got loads of stuff to move. I had to buy luggage while on tour. I have so much fan stuff now – letters, drawings, puzzles of my face.” She couldn't help but laugh at the thought of that and how surreal it must be.

“So, the album is out now. Have you been happy with how it was received?” She asked.

“Like everything that we do, it was totally down the middle. Half the critics absolutely loved it, half of them hated it. I think Vice called it the worst album of the year.” He said with a loud laugh. “It’s so funny how subjective music can be. But I don’t really care, you know. Our fans have embraced it massively.” He smiled.

“Well, it went to number one!” She reminded him.

“Yeah! That was pretty awesome. The fact that it went to number one is amazing.” He huffed with a look of giddy disbelief as he pulled a hand through his hair. “We didn’t really need any kind of statistical validation to be proud of that record, we were as proud of it as we could be as soon as we finished it. But it was nice to know that people still like good music.”

“I can imagine that would've been quite satisfying for you guys. It definitely deserved to reach number one.” She said with a nod.

“You've listened to it?” He asked in curiosity.

“Yeah, I’ve listened to it a bit.” She confirmed with a nod. “Actually, 'a bit' is probably an understatement.” She corrected.

“Oh really?” He blurted out eagerly before clearing his throat and trying to dial it back. “That’s cool.”

“Are you able to tell us a bit about the thought process behind the album? What ties it all together?” She questioned. He noticed she didn't have a notepad this time like she had previously.

“I don’t think there’s a concrete narrative that runs from the beginning to the end. It's not that sort of album. We knew we wanted to make a long album. Sixteen tracks, you know. But I suppose it’s all about me and my relationships, like the EPs…” He hummed for a moment as he tried to pull his thoughts together. “The album ended up being like a scrapbook of conversations and situations that kind of, when it was all put together, made this story of our youth? I think that’s what the album is.”

“Stylistically it’s all quite different, some of the songs sound like they could be from entirely different artists, let alone on the same album.” She noted.

“There’s a bit of a stylistic polarity, it’s quite genre-bending, the sounds.” He nodded in agreement. “But then again, we kind of wanted to make one of those records like the best pop records from the 80s. Like Michael Jackson on Bad. That was kind of the vibe we wanted to do. We didn’t pull any punches. We didn’t think we need to be a bit ‘cool’. We thought we’d just do exactly what we want.” He explained simply.

“That attitude seems to have resonated well with your fans.” She continued.

“Well, we wanted people to feel about our record the same way we felt about records that were really important to us. I want people to love the album, I want people to be able to not listen to the album because it reminds them of someone, I want it to bleed into humanity.” His passion for his music was unmistakable. She felt it was a shame that her interviews weren't filmed, so much of his personality and sheer enthusiasm came through in his expressions.

“It's interesting that you've been able to achieve that sort of appeal with something you've described as so personal and so heavily based around your own experiences.”

“The more specific you are, and the more honest you are about you, the more grandeur the idea becomes. Because if you give someone a really, really specific idea instead of something vague, they can read into it so much more.” He said thoughtfully. “It’s immediately captivating. Rather than a vague idealism that you may or may not have experienced. Whereas if you hear a really specific thing, hopefully across the album there will be something that someone could really,” He clicked his fingers with a look of sincerity, “immediately feel you’ve experienced.”

“You would've definitely gained some new fans now that the album is properly out. I believe I've even heard of a few big musicians singing your praises.” There was always seemingly some artist or other causing a stir on Twitter by tagging The 1975 in their tweets. “Do you guys have any biases towards someone who's famous being a fan? Or do you see all fans as equal?”

“Oh, well, you know, all fans are equal. I mean it’s nice to be validated by those you respect and interesting to be validated by those that you don’t. But that is a nice thing about it – when your heroes become your peers. But…” Matty made a face like he was trying to pick his words carefully, “I don’t really care about the whole celebrity thing very much, it doesn’t really mean anything. My parents are famous. I grew up around it. I kind of understand what it means – or more importantly, what it doesn’t.”

“Do you find that sort of celebrity complex of what that attention means gets to you?” She asked.

“Sometimes.” He shrugged. “It's weird reading so much about yourself. Am I actually this celebrity person I see on my phone or am I me? I don’t really know.”

“Leading on from that then, how are you finding being a role model to so many people now that your celebrity status has grown so much?”

He instantly grimaced. “I’m really uncomfortable with it. Part of me thinks, it’s better they look up to me than a lot of people I know. But I shouldn’t have that responsibility as a 24 year old guy… y’know?” He huffed. “It’s hard for me, because I don’t really hold dear a lot of the values that fame presents. But the world of fame, the world of celebrity, has picked me up from a life of obscurity and put me into this whirlwind of money and bollocks and girls… I think we kind of invest in our own relationships a lot.” He stopped himself for a minute as he took a drink from the mug of tea she'd given him. “I don’t know what to say to a lot of these kids. The whole thing of becoming a figure of sexual desire, that’s understandable. That comes with the territory, that comes with young girls, that comes with them growing up. But the idea of me becoming a figure of intellectual desire? Something people look up to as almost an orator or a speaker or somebody with opinions? That makes me feel uncomfortable.” He shook his head as he scratched at the back of his neck. “Because I’m not this honest person that’s been depicted in the media. I’m very, very defiant about being honest lyrically, but that doesn’t come from a place of genuine lack of care – I’m actually really neurotic and insecure. The only reason those lyrics are like that is because I wrote that album before anyone knew who we were. I didn’t have to think 'am I being too honest?' ”

She paused for a moment as his words sank in. It hadn't been her intention to get him onto such a heavy topic, but he certainly seemed to have no trouble dissecting his thoughts on the matter and she was certain her listeners would be enjoying the insight. “Let's shift onto a lighter topic.” She started, knocking him back to reality. “I've probably heard interviewers ask you about the origin of the band name... three dozen times by now since I asked in our first interview?” Matty chuckled at that, but urged her to continue. “Is it validating to know people are so interested?”

“Good question… I don’t know. I think because… I get a bit tired of it. “ He admitted truthfully. “I really, really appreciate it when someone looks at an interview from my perspective and how it might be for me, because I’m the one who does the majority of them. I don’t know why people are so interested in the name. But then I think, hold on a second, if I didn’t know where a bands name came from would I be genuinely interested? And maybe I would… I think people like to understand music. They like music to be something that’s really consumable and palatable and understandable. Whereas we’re the total antithesis of that, aren’t we?”

“I'm almost tired of hearing it come up in interviews.”

He laughed loudly, “Yeah, so am I.” He nodded. “So. Am. I.”

“That seems like a good point to cut away to a few tracks.” She said with a sigh as she pushed herself back into her chair. “Do you have any requests off the album, Matty?” She asked.

He thought about this for a moment, “What's your favourite off the album?” He asked with a smirk.

“At the moment? I've been listening to Girls a lot.” She answered as she began queuing it up.

“Then let's hear that.” He nodded decisively.

“You heard it, folks. This is Girls off The 1975's self-titled album.” She said into her microphone as she watched Matty take his headset off and sink back into his chair. “Sorry for getting you onto such an intense tangent there.”

“It's all right, I'd rather have an intellectual conversation than have to repeatedly explain the band name.” He said with a short laugh. “That's why you do good interviews - you ask proper questions.” He added as he finished the tea.

They chatted a bit about what they'd been listening to lately, what bands they thought were going to headline next year's festivals, before eventually the interview picked up again. “We're here with Matty of The 1975, and just before we heard their song Girls. Now, Matty,” She leaned forward, and for a moment the look in her eyes made him feel like he was in for another hectic question. “I heard a lot of controversy about the video clip for that song being in colour.”

He couldn't stop himself from chuckling. “Yeah... But it wasn't our first video in colour!” He said defensively. “When we put out the album version for Sex, that came from the idea that everything got so big so quickly, but we still wanted the album version out there before the album came out, you know, to impose our identity and say this is who we are. With that we did a new video for it and it was in colour, it was the first video in colour and everyone went mental. We were made aware that a lot of kids were saying stuff that we were ‘conforming to a major label’ you know, the whole cliché’d band getting too big.” He waved his hand dismissively. “And we got obsessed by that idea because it’s… so not true. It’s so ridiculous. And we wanted to make a video about that – about conforming to a major label. Because music videos are silly, we wanted to make a tongue in cheek video. We just wanted to make a pop video that was really aware it was a pop video. We knew it was obviously gonna split people down the middle but… whatever…” He finished with a shrug. “It was funny.”

“I agree, I thought it was pretty funny.” She replied with a smile. “What do you hope people are getting out of the album now that it's out there for them to listen to?”

“I can only hope that they react in the same way that I do. Because I can only make music for me. Therefore I can only expect people who are likeminded to embrace it in the same way that I do. When we finished Robbers, I cried my heart out. When we finished Settle Down, we went on a night out on the Friday, and it was like five in the morning and I made the engineer steal the keys to the studio and we went back and broke in to listen to the record all the way through. If a song doesn’t make me laugh through joy, or it doesn’t make me dance, or it doesn’t make me cry, or it doesn’t provoke me to be really introspective, then we just fuck it off. Just leave it.” He answered, before quickly trying to summarise himself. “I want our music to make people think about their own life more than our music.”

“That makes sense. The best music always reminds you of specific moments and people in your life.”

“Exactly.” He grinned.

“I heard rumblings that you're already working on the next album?” She asked, watching as he nodded a bit. “I suppose I shouldn't have expected any less given how little time off you allow yourself.”

He let out a laugh, “Yeah, you'd be right. Although, we've had this one ready to go for nearly a year and had some material leftover from it that didn't quite fit in, as well. The new album sounds mental already… it’s very... weird…” He frowned down at the desk as he played the tracks through in his head. “I can’t really tell you what it sounds like. I think it’ll probably be closer to the EPs. We’re so confused now about our lives, that I think this record will be a genuine representation of our confusion in different cultures and different cities and different mindsets.” He explained. “But who cares? We’re only making it because we wanna make it.”

“And from what you've said, song-writing is a big part of your expression.” She prompted.

“One hundred percent. I can’t have a record that is so self-deprecating and self-aware and then be interviewed and not have that translate in the way that I am. Because this band is a genuine extension of my identity, all of the music is me trying to figure myself out lyrically.”

“Has that process taught you much?” She questioned.

“Yeah. It's helped me get my head straight about a lot of stuff. But mainly I’ve really learned that I have a creative responsibility. I used to think I didn’t have any responsibilities when it came to my art, because it was mine. But I’ve realised that so many people genuinely invest in it. I do have a responsibility for it at least to be as good as whatever preceded it… hopefully better.”

“All right, we're nearly out of time.” She sighed, straightening up in her chair. He threw a disappointed look her way, forcing a smile out of her. “But before we call it, last time we spoke was right before Reading and Leeds. How was it?” She asked.

He let out a bewildered sound before speaking, “Reading and Leeds was like a culmination of everything that has happened. It was amazing.” He started with a faraway look in his eyes. “We went to that festival – it was the first festival we ever went to as a band. Just to watch. You don’t expect more people to come and see you over the course of one festival period, because it seems too fast. But we were definitely pulling much bigger crowds by the end of the Summer, it was mental.” He said as he shook his head in disbelief.

“I told you that you guys would be really hard to get a hold of in the future.” She reminded him. “We've had Matthew Healy of The 1975 on the show with us discussing their latest self-titled album. It's out now in stores. Go do yourselves a favour and give it a listen. Thanks, as always, for chatting, Matty.” She said with a sharp nod.

“Always a pleasure.” He said with a grin.

By now, she was expecting him to hang around as she talked through her outro and switched back to the music. He stood up and walked around from his side of the desk, leaning against the wall as she faced him.

“So, where are you off to now?” She asked as she pulled her headset off and placed it on the desk. “Gonna go fill up your free time with overworking yourself more?” She added with a playful smile.

He scoffed, “We don’t get free time. When we do have free time, it’s in London, where we don’t live, when we’re in a hotel, and you have one day off which you do your washing in.” He answered as he rolled his eyes. “But, I assume that you do live near London?”

“Around these parts, yes.” She said vaguely. “Why?”

“We're stuck up here for a couple of days, if you wanted to get a drink or anything.” He suggested with a casual shrug.

“I appreciate the offer, but stand by what I said before.” She started. “It's easier to keep work separate. I've seen it get messy for colleagues.” She elaborated.

He nodded in understanding. “All right, well...” He let out the breath he was holding. “You have my number.” She watched him walk out of the studio as she tried to get her heart rate back under control.

* * *

She probably should've known better than to go out that night knowing that Matty was around London. But her friends had invited her out for a drink, and it was Thursday, it was close enough to the end of the week. And most importantly she felt like she needed a drink after being in such close confinement with that man. Thankfully, her professionalism was easy enough to maintain at work (despite his best attempts at flirting). However, when she was faced with the dilemma of George and Matty walking into the bar they'd been in for the last couple of hours, after she'd already had a few drinks, the lines between work and social life were suddenly a lot less obvious. She shrank back down into her seat slightly, hoping that he wouldn't notice she was here and she wouldn't have to deal with the uncomfortable feeling in her chest. But it was too late. George noticed her and instantly pointed her out to his mate. Fuck sake, George. Matty flashed her a friendly wave, which she returned anxiously. At least he didn't walk over. He and George walked across to the other side of the bar and started playing pool.

She mentally checked out of her friend's conversation after that - finding it too hard to not focus on Matty when he was in the room. The magnetism he radiated was annoyingly undeniable. She nodded occasionally and made approving noises here and there when there was a pause in the conversation for a response. But eventually she was dragged back to reality and actually had to give a response when she heard one of her friends calling her name. She looked over to them with her eyebrows raised, asking them to repeat the question.

“I said,” They laughed before repeating themselves, “we’re going to grab some food down the road. Are you coming?”

“Uh…” She mumbled, suddenly meeting Matty's gaze across the room. “No. I’m not hungry.” She shook her head. “Might hang around here for a bit.”

“Suit yourself.”

Her friends grabbed their things, promptly leaving the bar and thus leaving her to her own devices. She briefly considered that staying here might be a bad idea, but that thought was quickly squashed by the smile Matty threw her way. “Fancy seeing you here.” He grinned as she walked over to where he and George were standing.

“Should've known you'd find me somehow or another.” She said in amusement as she watched George sink one of the smalls.

“Hey, don't blame me.” He held up his hands in defence. “This bar was his idea. Right, George?” He asked as he turned back to the table.

“He's right.” The drummer nodded.

“We just wanted to get out of the hotel for a bit.” He explained with a look of innocence. “You wanna get in on the next game?” He added, suddenly looking eager.

“Sure.” She shrugged as she pulled a barstool over and took a seat.

As she watched them play out their game, she noticed that George was a much better player than Matty was. “You don't seem to be very good at this.” She noted as Matty missed another shot.

“It's still our first game. I need to warm up.” He replied as he rolled his shoulders.

She hummed thoughtfully, “I dunno, George is kicking your arse.”

“George, tell her that I'm not that bad at pool.” He said with a frown.

He shook his head, “I’m not getting involved. This is between you two.”

“I'll show you.” He grumbled under his breath as he took a sip from his beer. “Next game. You and me.” He said with a nod.

“You're on.”

The game took a little longer to finish up than what she had initially expected as Matty tried to hone his skills. She ended up excusing herself to get another drink right before George sunk the last shot.

“Good game, Matt.” He said as he cracked his back. “I'm gonna head back to the hotel. You coming?” He asked as he nudged the singer in the ribs.

Matty eyed the girl standing at the bar. “Nah, I'm gonna stay for a bit.” He answered.

“All right. Don't kick on too late.” He said as he clapped a hand down on his friend's shoulder. “Remember, we've got a show tomorrow.”

“Yeah, yeah. I won't.” He said as he brushed off George's hand. Matty racked up the balls and set up the table again as she came over with her drink.

“Where's George?” She asked, quickly looking around.

“Went back to the hotel.” He answered abruptly.

“Oh.” Was all she could muster in response. No longer having the buffer of someone else suddenly made this situation feel quite... different.

“I've got a wager for you to prove I'm not as bad at this as you think.” He said as he held out the pool cue to her. She raised an eyebrow in question. “If you can beat me in a game, I’ll buy you a drink.”

“And if I don’t beat you?” She questioned with a sceptical look.

“Then you’ll have to buy your own drink to have with me.” He shot back, holding her gaze. He offered out his hand and waited for her to shake on the bet. After a moment of weighing up her options, she shook his hand firmly. “You break.”

For a man who wanted to make a bet on his skills, they hadn't really seemed to have improved any since the last game. After about ten minutes of playing, he had only sunk one ball in comparison to her four. It seemed that he was practically handing out free shots.

“I feel like you’re losing on purpose.” She accused eventually.

“What gives you that impression?” He asked as he shot the cue ball directly in between every possible ball he could’ve hit.

“What were you even aiming for just then?” She huffed with a laugh.

“I was trying to do a bounce shot off the cushion into the five.” He lied as he took a drink. “Your shot.” He handed the cue back to her.

She looked back at the table, seeing that the five was nowhere near where he ended up. “Sure.”

“So...” He started, leaning back against the table. “I thought you said earlier that you like to 'keep work separate'?” He asked casually as he busied himself looking at his fingernails.

“What a good thing neither of us are working right now, then.” She muttered as she sank another ball.

“Hmm, seems that way.”

“And I didn't exactly intend to hang out with you this evening.” She added, taking her second shot and holding the cue out to him. “It's not my fault you invaded my Thursday night.”

“You say that like you're not having a good time.” He frowned as he took it back.

“I wouldn't be here if I wasn't having a good time.” She answered honestly. As soon as he heard that, he sank his final shot. He watched as the eight went straight into the corner pocket. “You… you just lost the game?” She asked in confusion.

“What a shame.” He sighed. “I guess I owe you a drink.” He said with a shrug as he brushed past her and walked to the bar. She should probably feel a bit more confronted about the fact that he'd just lost that game to spend time with her, but her brain was too clouded with the knowledge that he'd just lost that game to spend time with her.

They continued playing pool as Matty brought over the next round, and for some sudden reason, they seemed to be a lot more evenly matched. It was unquestionable how easily the conversation flowed between them, and it was also pretty easy to see the chemistry quickly forming.

“I'm not as good with girls as people think I am.” He debated as he took his shot, after hearing her prattle on about how much women fussed over him on the internet.

“You don't need to be good with girls at this point.” She said as she rolled her eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think you realise how many people want to date you, Matty.” She laughed. “I mean, you’ve got a queue longer than the one to get into Glastonbury.” He couldn't help but join in with her laughter at the reference.

“That doesn't mean anything if I'm not attracting the right people.” He pointed out.

“What sort of people are you aiming to attract?” She asked in an attempt at nonchalance, intentionally looking away from him to hide her nerves.

“Someone like minded. Other musicians, people in the industry,” He paused, waiting until he had her attention before he finished his sentence, “cute radio presenters. That sort of thing.”

As her brain ticked into overdrive at this, she heard the bartender call out for anyone wanting last drinks. It was getting late. “I really need to be getting back home.” She groaned.

“Ah, but the bar doesn't close for another hour!” Matty protested.

“I've got work tomorrow.” She said, shaking her head. “And you,” She punctuated her sentence by jabbing him in the shoulder. “have a show.” He gently took her hand in his, using it as an excuse to pull her closer to him.

“I've done worse than play a show while I'm tired.” He argued, trying to convince her to stay a little longer.

“Well, I have a level of professionalism to uphold.” She smiled back at him. “When are you back in London next?”

He thought about this for a moment, “January.”

“That's forever away.” She said with a frown.

“Good thing you've got my number then.” She nodded slightly, suddenly finding herself losing her voice when she noticed his expression shift. He leaned in closer, and before she'd really had time to properly process it or kiss him back, he'd already moved away. “Keep in touch, love.” He grinned.

Taglist: @imagine-that-100 @dot-writes @tooshhhy @robinrunsfiction @approved-by-dentists

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#matty healy x reader #Matthew Healy x Reader #sunsetinmyvein

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yellowmagicalgirl · 3 years

Text

Once and Maybe Future Chapter 14: Incognito Patrol

When Nimue sees a girl with far too many hairclips and radiating dark magic, it's up to her and Douxie to save Arcadia.

Heyyy, yes I know it's been over six months since I last updated and this fic is now very much not canon compliant. At least this chapter is half the length of all the previous chapters combined.

Originally this was going to be a single chapter covering the events of both "Night Patroll"/"Terra Incognita II" as well as "So I'm Dating a Sorceress" and "The Exorcism of Claire Nuñez", but due to the length I decided to only have it cover the events of "Night Patroll"/"Terra Incognita II" in this chapter; another chapter is going to finally get around to the Clairegana-and-Douxie confrontation and not just the aftermath.

AO3

FFN

It was a normal day at the Zimue records store.

Which was to say, it was absolutely boring, but there were enough customers around that Nimue couldn’t practice magic… or even really do homework for her independent study courses, considering that her manager was here today.

The door opened and closed with a blast of warm late May air.

Nimue shivered and grabbed the counter as the flashback overtook her.

Nimue-the-first did not leave her lake often. She was busy enough with her forge, and she didn’t care much for most people, especially not in crowds. She frowned as she saw wagon tracks on the road; she was getting close to a village or at least a farm. She preferred for her adopted son and his family to visit her rather than the other way around. They may be royalty, but she was a sorceress and far older. They could show her some respect.

Instead, she’d be paying her last respects to her son and her daughter-in-law.

There was a war outside her lake, and there was dark magic fueling it beyond what the Gumm-Gumms could normally use. It had been a long time since she had last seen Uther’s stepdaughter or her green-eyed gaze, but Nimue-the-first knew that Morgana had corrupted herself and was fueling the war. That, or the war was fueling Morgana; Nimue-the-first could feel it in her bones.

Nimue’s bones ached as she was released from the flashback to her first lifetime. She glanced around, trying to figure out just what had caused the flashback this time. However, there was nothing new in Zimue, nothing that would’ve set her off, and definitely not anything that would’ve caused her to flash back that far. Nimue inhaled deeply, trying to see if maybe Douxie was cooking something up next door, potion or otherwise. That had set her off once. She had been tempted to tell him then and there the truth about why she had magical powers, but she had stopped herself. Wizards were normal. Relatively rare compared to most of humanity, but normal.

Reincarnation, as far as she knew, was not. Heck, every legend about King Arthur returning was propaganda, so it wasn’t like he’d reincarnate, much less anyone else from her first lifetime.

It was kind of lonely, walking around with so many memories of bygone eras, but it had been Nimue’s life since she was twelve. Besides, the magic was more than enough to make up for it.

Then again, Douxie would never practice dark magic, and even if he wanted to surely Archie would stop him. She squeezed her eyes as she manned the register. She felt worse with every customer, though it was possible that she just was getting a headache and mistaking it for dark magic. Dehydration, maybe, as ironic as it was.

A girl stepped to the front of the line, holding the new Papa Skull album. She had a white streak running through her dark hair, with multiple colored hairclips and a matching Papa Skull shirt. She looked a little sick, a little sleep deprived, a little younger than Nimue.

Nimue gulped as the girl placed the album on the counter. The girl smiled shyly before coughing into her elbow, loud and shaking.

Magic radiated off the girl as Nimue rung up the album. It was old, and it was dark.

Perhaps being the only one with magic and memories from bygone eras would have been for the best, as lonely as it was.

The girl walked out, taking most of the dark magic with her. There were some traces of it lying in the air like a miasma.

Nimue quickly swiped her hand over her pocket to make sure her phone was there. She’d ask her manager to let her take a break, text Douxie, and the two of them would go after the girl with the dark magic. Hopefully she was just some kid with latent talent who found a dark magical spell on the internet.

“I’m taking my lunch break,” her manager told her right before she could open her mouth. “Make sure we don’t get robbed.”

Nimue made sure her back was turned to her manager before she grimaced and hoped that she had enough hay fever that it was distorting the amount of dark magic she was sensing.

“Nimue, calm down and talk a little more slowly,” he said. They were both on break, her from her day job and him from band practice with Ash Dispersal pattern. Specifically, Hank and Raoul were off to grab burgers for their lunch.

Nimue took a deep breath. “Look, this girl came into Zimue and there was something bad about her. Like, I could feel the dark magic coming off her in waves.”

Douxie decided not to ask her just how she knew it was dark magic, though he did wonder. For someone who had had no training outside of spell books on the internet and his father’s attempted tutelage of the two of them, she progressed remarkably fast. Douxie hoped that Nimue wouldn’t be able to sense years-old dark magic. “Okay, do you want me to fake being sick and go after her?”

“Uh… she left the shop an hour ago.”

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Douxie was secretly glad. Nimue’s reaction to dark magic users scared him.

“Because my manager already doesn’t like me and this was the soonest I could go on break… it could be hay fever, but I made sure to take my allergy meds and I don’t think it is.”

“Okay, okay, well, what does this girl look like?”

“Uh… brown or black hair with a white streak, green, wait, no, brown eyes…” That certainly didn’t narrow down the field that well, but it did help affirm the fact that there was something about the girl Nimue had seen that had her spooked. “Oh, yeah, she was wearing a Papa Skull shirt, and hairclips? Uh, like, two, no, three, no, there might’ve been more… it’d be easier if I could show you.”

“Nimue, we both know that the extent of your drawing abilities are runes and stick figures.”

“No, not a drawing, there’s surveillance video in the store, and she came straight up to the register.”

“Isn’t that illegal? Somehow? We don’t need the law coming in and messing things up somehow.”

“I mean, technically the improvements on your pipes might also be illegal since you didn’t tell your landlord about them and they’re also giving you extra water.”

Douxie grimaced; he still wasn’t entirely sure if one day he’d have to deal with the magically enhanced water turning what was supposed to be his dinner into a potion of some sort.

Zimue closed at 7 PM every day, so at 9:30 PM Nimue snuck out of her house to break in. Her parents thought that she was sleeping after having prepared for finals she’d be taking. She wore a beanie and long sleeves to cover up her dyed hair and magically induced tattoo.

“Douxie, I thought I told you to do something that would make you less recognizable,” she said. He was wearing what he wore every day, except he didn’t roll up his sleeves.

He dramatically placed his hood over his head, and then awkwardly tucked his dyed bangs behind his ears. “Why’d you want the water bottle?” he asked, pulling one out of his pocket.

“For this,” Nimue said, sighing wistfully. She preferred shopping for clothes in the women’s section, but she missed having space in her pockets. She took the water bottle, uncapped it, and then upended it. As she handed the water bottle back to him, she made a swirling motion with her other hand.

Another good reason for wearing long sleeves: her tattoo was probably glowing right now.

A thick fog surrounded the two of them and the storefront.

“Oh. Cool,” Douxie said.

“Wish it could’ve been a smoke bomb instead of a steam bomb, but this is good enough, I guess,” Nimue said. “Besides, we don’t want to set off a smoke alarm.”

Douxie knelt next to the door, pulling out a pair of straightened paperclips. He inserted them into the lock, wiggling them around. His expression grew frustrated, and he closed his eyes. When he stood up once more, he held the lock with one of his hoodie sleeves.

“I thought you could pick locks,” Nimue said. “Well, without magic, anyways.”

“Last time I picked a lock I was in foster care, and before that…” Douxie stared off into the distance, a morose look on his face.

“Before that?”

Douxie blinked and put on an obviously fake smile. “Eh, tragic backstory stuff.”

“That joke stopped being funny halfway through ninth grade.” Nimue pushed past her friend and opened the door. Fog filtered in, covering the cameras. “Okay, so we keep the security footage over this way.”

Douxie closed the door behind him. “You know, I don’t even know if the magic shop has security cameras.”

“Good thing mystery dark magical girl came here, then.” Nimue pulled up the footage. “And good thing my boss showed me how to go through this in case we ever get shoplifted from or anything. Not that we probably will, ever. At least, if we do it’s probably gonna be on my day off. And, there!”

Douxie looked over her shoulder at the slightly grainy video, taking a photo of the girl. “She goes to our school. I saw her outside Mrs. Barros’s office last year. I think she’s a year younger than us?”

Nimue groaned, standing up and beginning to erase the evidence that she and Douxie had broken in. “If she’s a year younger than us, then she might be a member of that stupid pilot program where freshmen could graduate in a year and a half.”

“I can ask the guys; they might know since they still go to actual school.”

“Make sure you get a name; it might make it easier to go after her.”

“Hey, Nimue?” Douxie asked. She threw a glance over her shoulder as she locked up the store.

“Yeah?”

“What are you going to do to her, once we find her?”

“I don’t know exactly, but she’s got dark magic. She’s dangerous, and we’re the only non-dark wizards in Arcadia. We need to stop her.”

Douxie gave her the same sort of faraway, morose look that he did whenever he accidentally shared a detail about his childhood before foster care. Without a word, he turned away and walked to his apartment.

Nimue let the enchanted fog roll away and began to walk home. She tried not to think about Douxie’s question too much. Anyone who used dark magic had to be evil since they’d know better than to use it. They deserved what was coming to them.

“Hey, does this girl still go to our school?” Douxie asked, holding his phone out to the other members of Ash Dispersal Pattern.

“What, do you wanna ask her, wait, no, sorry, forgot you were gay,” Raoul said. Honestly, Douxie was still a little surprised that he had even had to come out to Raoul and the other guys last October. After all, Douxie trying out for Ash Dispersal Pattern had been him trying to confess his crush to Hank back in freshman year. Not that it mattered, anymore, since all the other guys in the band were straight and Douxie had moved on from his crush six months after the band had formed. “Uh, I don’t know?”

“Nimue saw her at the record store, fiddling with a ring, and she dropped it. Nimue found it after she’d left, and she wanted to try to find a way to give it back to the girl. I remembered seeing her outside of Mrs. Barros’s office last year, but I’ve got no idea about if she’s in the year-and-a-half program.”

Hank walked over and squinted at the photo. “She doesn’t go to our school; she transferred to mole high. She’s friends with my ex; the girl’s name’s Claire. Do you want me to go over?”

“Dude, Mary isn’t gonna get back together with you,” Dominic said.

“No, well, I have no idea about Hank’s ex. But no, I’ll go over,” Douxie said.

“Hand out the Battle of the Bands flyers when you get there, will ya?” Douxie took the stack of papers from Dominic. Good, now he actually had a reason to go there.

Multiple female students of Arcadia Oaks High swarmed Douxie, but not as many of them grabbed the flyers he was passing out. None of them were Claire, either. One of them mentioned the nickname that Nimue hated. Personally, Douxie wasn’t sure why it was such a problem; Hank had gone through a phase where he’d called everyone by their first initial, but there were two guys with a name starting with the letter “d” in the band and Dominic was significantly shorter than Douxie. Therefore, “Big D” and “Little D”.

A girl pushed through the crowd and tripped, dropping her books. Douxie knelt next to her helping her grab her books, and then he felt the waves of dark magic coming off of her. Something about them felt familiar, but how? Douxie placed a smile on his face.

“C-Bomb, is it? Consider me blown away, because you are nuclear.” If she knew that he was a wizard, then she would understand that this was a sign of respect. A sign that he recognized her power, but also a sign that he recognized the danger she radiated.

She smiled back but said nothing. Hmm. Maybe Nimue’s theory of Claire being an inexperienced wizard who accidentally cast a dark magic spell was possible, but that powerful without knowing how to sense for magic? That was strange. Perhaps she was goading him?

A boy in blue walked up to them, slinging his arm around Claire’s shoulder. “So, what brings you to our humble school?”

The boy placed a hand on Douxie’s chest, pushing Douxie away as Claire began to cough. That was nice of him. Something about the boy felt oddly familiar, and not just because Douxie remembered seeing him at Benoit’s multiple times. No, Douxie almost felt caught in a feedback loop, like he had sent his own magic outwards and then it got sent back at him. Almost. The magic that got sent back felt purer, less tainted. Innocent, and not yet marred by necromancy.

“The Battle of the Bands is coming up,” Douxie said as he handed a flyer to Claire. “Ash Dispersal Pattern – that’s my band – will be crushing this.” And maybe the hand motion Douxie made was a little too threatening, but there was something odd and Douxie felt like he had to do something to show a little of his strength. Not too much, but enough to make himself seem like he wasn’t a victim. “But, we’re encouraging others to give it a shot.”

Claire coughed again after congratulating Douxie on Ash Dispersal Pattern’s headline performance for Papa Skull last fall. Douxie couldn’t help but wonder if it were a regular cold, or if perhaps the illness were magical in nature. If so, maybe he, Nimue, and his father could find –

No. Douxie would have to help her on his own. Nimue and his father thought that dark magic users were evil and dangerous. They would probably advocate for letting Claire die if the illness caused by her own meddling in dark magic, or perhaps the two of them would grant “mercy” to Claire by killing her. They would probably do the same for Douxie if they ever found out the truth.

Two girls rushed over to Claire, exclaiming that they should be a cover band. Neither of them seemed to have anything magical going on, but Douxie was pretty sure one of them was Hank’s ex.

“I don’t know,” the boy said, pushing Douxie away once more. “We’re pretty busy with our after-school activities.”

Hmm. Were Claire and the boy perhaps trying to learn magic together, much like Douxie and Nimue were?

Claire took the flyer back from the boy and agreed with the girls about starting a band. Douxie glanced to his hands and quickly put them in his pockets. They were empty, and they were trembling. But why? Claire seemed powerful, but not necessarily threatening.

“I look forward to seeing you again, Fair Lady Claire,” Douxie said before walking away. Yes. Perfect. That was exactly the right amount of respect to show to a fellow wizard whose diplomatic position towards you was still unknown but was clearly dangerous due to her clearly dark but hidden power. It was good to know that, after a millennium and a half for everyone else and eight years for himself, his diplomatic training as a prince had finally paid off. If only his parents, Merlin, or Uncle Kay could have been alive and in the right mind to see him.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. This whole morning was stupid. Nimue had been so stupid as to tempt fate. She glanced up from the tile she was trying to kill with her eyes when the door opened and closed, and her best friend walked into Zimue Records.

“Everything okay?” Douxie asked.

“We got fucking robbed,” Nimue said. “This wasn’t supposed to happen to me! If this was going to happen, why not on my day off?”

“Well, at least you have security cameras. Was anyone hurt?”

“No, though the shoplifters played dumb like they didn’t know what shoplifting was. Ugh. At least some cop got there so no permanent damage was caused and I didn’t even need security cameras. How’d flyers go?”

“Fine, I found Claire.”

“Okay, and?”

“And what?”

“And what have you done about her? Fireballs? Potions turned Molotov cocktails?”

“What? No! I’m not blowing up our rival school, and neither are you! No, I just got a feel for her, and I treated her with the proper amount of respect.”

“Proper?”

“Yes. Given that she’s powerful, I called her by the term Lady,” Douxie said as Nimue smacked her forehead. “What? There’s no need for her to immediately want to kill us for disrespect!”

“Douxie, this is why people think you’re straight.” She wrinkled her nose. “Please tell me you’re just being cheeky when you call me Lady Nimue and not trying to curry favor.”

“I’m being respectful to you because you’re my friend… but also sometimes it bugs you.”

Nimue rolled her eyes. “Okay, so what are we going to do about Claire? You have any ideas about how to fight a dark wizard?”

The door opened and closed, but no human walked in. “You two won’t be.”

“You told him?” Nimue said.

“No, but he should have,” Archie said. “You two are louder than you think.”

“I didn’t want you to worry,” Douxie mumbled.

Archie raised an eyebrow at Douxie. “Between raising you,” he said before turning to Nimue, “and teaching you my fur has gotten plenty grayer without the two of you taking needless risks like tracking down a dark wizard.”

“But she could be hurting people! And we’re the only ones in Arcadia who could save the day! If we pull off some sort of sneak attack – “

“You won’t be,” Archie said. “If the two of you are to be fighting another wizard, which you won’t be, I expect you to fight with honor.”

“She’s a dark wizard. She’s evil.”

“Or she’s young and hasn’t had the training that you have. She might not know the difference between regular magic and dark magic. After all, did you know the difference when your powers first awoke?”

Nimue’s breath caught in her throat. Of course, she did; she knew so many things instinctually from her past lives.

“Or Claire’s desperate,” Douxie mumbled, breaking Nimue from her thoughts. Archie turned to him.

“That’s not an excuse to use dark magic, and it’s especially not an excuse I want to hear coming from your mouth – either of your mouths,” Archie said. “If this girl turns out to be a danger to others, or to be using dark magic while being fully aware of the consequences, then fine. I will guide the two of you in planning an attack. But I do not want either of you getting near this dark wizard without me. Am I clear?”

“Yes, Archie,” the two of them said in unison.

“Good. Now, how is studying for finals going?”

#toa zoe #claire nuñez #hisirdoux casperan #jim lake jr #toa archie #tales of arcadia #trollhunters #3below #once and maybe future #my writing #toa mordred #ash dispersal pattern #tight jeans hank

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dustedmagazine · 3 years

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Dust Volume 7, Number 2

Bitchin’ Bajas

The whole country is snowed in and Texas is starting to look a lot like the Terrordome, and we can see how people might not be laser focused on music right now, especially if they’re cold or sick or out of food. But music continues to pour in, in great quantities and beguiling diversity, and a fair amount of it is very, very good. So, while we encourage you to take care of your brothers and sisters first (by donating to organizations like Austin Mutual Aid, Community Care — Mutual Aid Houston, Feed the People Dallas or the Austin Disaster Relief Network), we also present another collection of short, mostly positive reviews of new-ish records that have caught our attention. Writers this time around include Ray Garraty, Jennifer Kelly, Bill Meyer, Justin Cober-Lake, Eric McDowell, Bryon Hayes, Jonathan Shaw, Tim Clarke and Mason Jones.

Babyface Ray — Unfuckwitable (Wavy Gang)

youtube

On his new 7 song EP Unfuckwitable, thanks to his technical skills, Babyface Ray grinds through a great variety of trendy topics under a great variety of beats: from “not rap” rap to “bad bitch” rap to “we got it off the mud” rap. It’s all very professionally done, as you expect from a professional rapper, despite Ray’s claims that he’s not one. But midway through it, behind the misty fog of bouncy production and some lines catching the ear, you can clearly see at least two problems, with the EP and Babyface Ray. First, he doesn’t have anything to say (unlike some hip hop artists who ran out of things to say, he never had any in the first place). Second, he either doesn’t rhyme or goes for a lazy rhyming. The standout here is “Like Daisy Lane”, a catchy little song, with absolutely no substance behind it.

Ray Garraty

Bananagun — The True Story of Bananagun (Full Time Hobby)

The True Story of Bananagun by Bananagun

Ooh look, it’s tropicalia from Australia! The five-piece Bananagun hails geographically from Melbourne, but metaphysically from 1960s Sao Paulo or swinging London. Their first album swaggers like a long-haired hipster in wide-flared hip huggers, fingers snapping, funk bass slapping, keyboards and flutes gamboling in hot melodic pursuit. Multiple band members got their start in similarly 1960s-aligned Frowning Clouds, so the psych garage freakbeat elements are, perhaps, to be expected. But Bananagun runs hotter, wilder and considerably less Anglo. “People Talk Too Much” rattles the foundations with scorching funk percussion, big flares of brass and a vintage Afro-beat call and response chorus. “Mushroom Bomb” likewise heats up psychedelic apocalyptica with seething syncopations of bass and drums. Most of these tracks are a bit overstuffed, with a pawn shop’s worth of instruments enlisted in happy, dippy, everyone-get-in-the-jam exuberance, but am I going to complain about too much joy? I am not. Bring on the Bananagun.

Jennifer Kelly

Andrew Barker / Jon Irabagon — Anemone (Radical Documents)

Anemone by Andrew Barker + Jon Irabagon Duo

Some names tell you exactly where you stand, and others raise questions. Take the name of this record, for example; did drummer Andrew Barker (Gold Sparkle Band, Little Huey Orchestra) and tenor saxophonist Jon Irabagon (Mostly Other People Do The Killing, I Don’t Hear Nothin’ But The Blues) have the aquatic or land-lubber variety in mind? To get specific, is this record a buttercup, or a bottom-dwelling, plant-lookalike life form that waits for other aquatic species to come close enough for it to lance them, paralyze them with venom and chow down on their still-living bodies?

“Learnings,” the first of the album’s four tracks, is true to its name, being a distillation of instrumental tones and free jazz attacks that might remind you of moments from various Coltrane and Pharoah records. It feels familiar, but invigorating. The title tune comes next, and it’s a slower, more laconic performance, attractive enough to be either the sea or land variety. Then comes “Book of Knots,” which suspends an intricate percussive construction over slow-bubbling pops and barks. The record closes with “Branded Contempt,” a juxtaposition of pathos-rich blowing and restless brushwork. One can listen most of the way through this record without guessing whether it owes allegiance to Poseidon or Persephone, but the coarse intensity of Irabagon’s playing in the last minutes is the tell; this record packs a sting.

Bill Meyer

BBsitters Club — BBsitters Club & Party (Hausu Mountain)

BBsitters Club & Party by BBsitters Club

Label Hausu Mountain specializes in weird experimental electronics. Its release of a rare rock record might raise a few eyebrows. BBsitters Club, with the label's founders making up half the quartet, pulls off a tricky feat in becoming an arch rock band. BBsitters Club & Party has enough old-fashioned blues and psych-based rock to suggest a group taking itself seriously. Naming the opening track “Crazy Horse” immediately calls attention to its meta status, even if the track sounds more like Pink Floyd than Neil Young's collaborators (and there's a touch of hair metal in there, too). No group with songs called “Joel,” “Joel Reprise,” and “Joel Reprise Reprise” can take itself too seriously, and that kind of playfulness runs throughout the disc. At the same time, BBsitters Club does take its musicianship seriously. They avoid conventional forms, working in complicated structures full of surprising twists. The group can get a little proggy, but then twist it toward an Allman Brothers-style jam. If it starts to settle into the Woodstock era (see the clear nods to Hendrix and Cream), it jumps to the 1980s with an unlikely easiness. The band goes wherever they feel like rocking, with everyone invited to the party.

Justin Cober-Lake

Bitchin Bajas — live ateliers claus (les albums claus)

Bitchin Bajas - live ateliers claus by Bitchin Bajas

If we can all agree the pandemic has dealt musicians some dizzying blows, that’s hardly to say they had it easy before. Squeezed between tech platforms and spurned by a hostile federal government (speaking for the US, anyway), even on tour they had to contend with iffy financials, physical neglect and — because why not say it louder for those in the back? — literal theft. So Cooper Crain, Rob Frye and Dan Quinlivan found themselves over 4,000 miles from home in May 2018, playing Brussels’s les ateliers claus on borrowed equipment after having their gear stolen (twice) on a European tour in support of Bajas Fresh. “Um, we’re, ah, Bitchin Bajas, from Chicago ... Illinois,” one of the trio says over the set’s first tentative tones. “And thanks ... for coming. This is gonna be great, I think. Or, we’ll see.”

Perhaps it’s not a question of either/or but both/and, the cosmic “we’ll see” of COVID-19 only amplifying how truly great it is to receive this music in the unimaginable future of three years later. As ever with the Bitchin Bajas, there is pleasure in the subtleties, whether that’s an excited concert-goer whooping as “Jammu” picks up momentum or the way each turn of the musical kaleidoscope seems to bring out new hues. That the recording doesn’t represent any dramatic departure from what we hear on the studio album or during other sets on other tours is part of its appeal and part of its power as a balm. We don’t need any more startling revelations right now. In this sense, the whole live ateliers claus series is a reminder that this venue and these artists — from Michael Chapman (vol. 1) up through Will Guthrie (vol. 12) — are still here today. If we can help repay what’s been stolen from them, they’ll be here tomorrow, too.

Eric McDowell

Loren Connors & Oren Ambarchi — Leone (Family Vineyard)

Leone by Loren Connors & Oren Ambarchi

This is the first time that Loren Connors and Oren Ambarchi have collaborated, despite the myriad ties that bind the two guitarists across the global exploratory music scene. Leone offers a trio of pieces arranged like overlapping globs of paint on a painter’s palette: the two artists each perform solo with a collaborative piece in between. “Lorn” is a side-long Connors piece with the guitarist in an experimental mood, hammering the reverb-drenched strings to create a glorious cacophony. Ambarchi’s “Nor” recasts the guitar first as a church organ and then as a subaquatic communications device. When the two pair up for “Ronnel,” it is a symbiotic meeting. Connors picks out notes around which Ambarchi weaves contrails of tone. It is a mesmerizing piece, and, we hope, just the first of many joint efforts from these two.

Bryon Hayes

Buck Curran — WFMU 'The Frow Show' Live Session (Feat. Jodi Pedrali) (Obsolete Recordings)

Buck Curran: WFMU 'The Frow Show' Live Session (Feat. Jodi Pedrali) by Obsolete Recordings

When we last caught up with Buck Curran, he was hunkered down at then ground zero for the COVID epidemic, socially isolating in Bergamo, Italy while recording the lovely acoustic-guitar-and-voice album, No Love Is Sorrow. Half a year later, still deep in the grip of a worldwide pandemic, he made this record, a duet with Italian keyboard player Jodi Pederali, revisiting one song from the previous album and adding three others. The tracks with Pederali fuse Curran’s electric blues with the bright, meditative melodies of Pederali’s piano. The two players interact and overlap in intoxicating dialogue. “Deep in the Lovin’ Arms of My Babe,” reprises the finger-picked folk of Curran’s earlier album, adding a glittering sprinkle of piano to its mournful, wistful melody. The set was recorded for Jess Jarnow’s show on WFMU and released on Bandcamp, and while not as long or as weighty as No Love Is Sorrow, it’s well worth hearing.

Jennifer Kelly

Jürg Frey — l’air, l’instant - deux pianos (Elsewhere)

l'air, l'instant - deux pianos by Jürg Frey

When you put two pianos together, there must surely be a temptation to see how much sound you can get out of them. Swiss composer Jürg Frey does the opposite on the two compositions that make up this CD. Each is so sparse that an inattentive listener might think they are hearing one patient pianist, when in fact they are hearing a pair of deeply skilled interpreters. The task assigned to Reinier van Houdt and Dante Boon is to place their notes in such precise relation to each other that they can influence each other’s pitches without interfering with them. Each musician is, as the title “toucher l’air (deux pianos)” (2019) suggests, inducing a slight disturbance in the atmosphere, lightly pressing transitory shapes into the silence that absorbs each note. “Entre les deux l’instant” (2017/2018) allows the two pianists to decide how closely they will match paces as they trade the roles of melodist and accentuator. Immune to gauche temptation, Frey seems drawn instead to see how much attention and how little sound it takes to accentuate the beauty of silence.

Bill Meyer

Chris Garneau — The Kind (The Orchard)

THE KIND by Chris Garneau

Chris Garneau’s lush, stunning art-pop swoops and whirls and flutters in wild arcs of drama. In this fifth album, the New York City songwriter works in a restrained palette of guitar, piano, electronics and drums, but colors way outside the box with his vibrant, emotional-laden voice, which flies up into a falsetto register with an ease not heard since Jeff Buckley passed. “I know you loved me truly, but we don’t love one way, do we?” he croons on the gorgeous “Telephone,” lofting up into whistle range without losing the purity or the trueness of his tone. Cuts like the title song and “Now On” are prayerfully simple, just framing piano chords and Garneau’s highly charged delivery. But others like “Not the Child” are more intricately constructed with a lattice of picked strings, an antic syncopated beat and staccato vocal counterpoints that dance around the main line. The Kind’s songs are deeply personal and rooted in Garneau’s experiences as gay man, but they’ll resonate with anyone who’s ever loved or longed or regretted.

Jennifer Kelly

Gaunt Emperor — Femur (Self-released)

Femur by Gaunt Emperor

Some would-be emperors may no longer have clothes (looking at you, Trump), but Gaunt Emperor is unabashed about wearing its influences on its sleeve. Femur is the first LP by this California project, and Sunn 0))) and the first few records released by Earth are large presences, looming hugely just behind the sounds Gaunt Emperor generates. If you’re familiar with those other bands, you get the essential idea: deep (really deep) notes and long (really long) sustain from loud (really loud) guitars, and not much else. That said, Gaunt Emperor has an aesthetic vision that seems to be attempting to survey its own territory. While compositions like “Slow Submersion” and “The Birth of Obsidian” work from the playbook established by O’Malley and Anderson, the textures of Gaunt Emperor’s guitar tone have their own sort-of-subtle qualities. They’re pretty good. “Conception,” the second track on Femur, expresses a similar inclination towards melody that Earth began to demonstrate on The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull (2008), but Gaunt Emperor retains an unrestrained relation to volume; you can feel the heat inexorably building in the overdriven amplifier stack. In any case, this is suitable music for pondering massive, ongoing phenomena, like the calving of icebergs off Antarctica’s coast or the steady disappearance of the Amazonian rainforest — not that Femur will make you feel any better about that stuff.

Jonathan Shaw

Luka Kuplowsky — Stardust (Mama Bird)

Stardust by Luka Kuplowsky

Soft jazzy reveries coalesce around this Toronto songwriter’s offhand, semi-spoken melodies. Little accents of acoustic bass, slide guitar, hushed harmonies dart in and out of focus, but the songs themselves come up on you obliquely, filtering in from the vents in evocatively scented clouds. Rhythms sway in undulant, bossa nova syncopations, while chords slide into resolution from slightly off center. A half-remembered jazz flute lick lick lofts through the window. At the center of it all is Luka himself, posing, but not insisting on koan-like observations. “Perfection is a noose,” he confides amid the muted wreck and roll of massed jazz sounds in “City by the Window,” but he seems unbothered by it. Perfection is an accident, and if you look at it too hard, it disappears.

Jennifer Kelly

José Lencastre / Hernâni Faustino / Vasco Furtado — Vento (Phonogram Unit)

Vento by José Lencastre / Hernâni Faustino / Vasco Furtado

Vento is the Portuguese word for wind, and the name conveys that combination of purposeful and chance operations that converged to make this record happen. The trio of alto saxophonist José Lencastre, double bassist Hernâni Faustino and drummer Vasco Furtado didn’t book a studio with the intent to record; they just wanted a place to play for a couple hours. But the engineers had just obtained some microphones and wanted to try out their new toys. Likewise, this improvisational trio did not bring an tunes to the session, but they play with a purposefulness born of shared aesthetic values. Whether are sailing a brisk clip, as on the title track, or gradually unwinding the music at low volume and velocity, as on “Ruínas,” they operate as a real time compositional cooperative, developing their music in linear fashion. While they share a direction, they also value contrast. For example, Lencastre’s breathy tone during the latter tune’s early moments balances Faustino’s pointed twang. Since remorseless microoganisms and anti-cultural politicians are each doing their best to keep live music down, records like this serve a necessary function in reminding us of the life force that motivates improvised music.

Bill Meyer

Lilys — A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns (Frontier)

A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns by Lilys

Kurt Heasley’s Lilys made some of the most ebullient and inventive guitar music of the 1990s. The best Lilys songs sound as though they’re flying apart and being put back together as they hurtle along, killer hooks tossed aside as quickly as they start to drag you in. Though they’re perhaps best known for their Kinks-indebted breakthrough Better Can’t Make Your Life Better, this was actually a sharp turn away from the dense shoegazey atmospherics of their first couple of records. Thus far, Frontier Records has reissued their first two albums, In the Presence of Nothing and Eccsame the Photon Band, both of which are superb. The A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns EP was originally released in 1994, a transitional period when Heasley was still exploring the textural joys of distorted guitars while starting to throw down pop hooks with aplomb. Opener “Ginger” hits similar pleasure centers as Weezer’s debut, released the same year, while on “Dandy,” Heasley’s vocal sounds uncannily like Stephen Malkmus. The previously unreleased “G. Cobalt Franklin” foregrounds searing guitar tones and bulbous bass, the bulk of the melodic layers sounding like they’re bleeding through from the next room, peppered with swirling flange and voice recordings. The second half of this expanded edition comprises songs originally demoed for Eccsame the Photon Band, and later released in 2000 on a split EP with Aspera Ad Astra. They’re decent enough, though feel like they’re missing the spark of the best Lilys creations. So, while this amounts to a far-from-essential Lilys release, it’s fascinating to hear Heasley in transition, working out how to reconcile his love for melody with his immersion in guitar noise.

Tim Clarke

Fred Lonberg-Holm — Lisbon Solo (Notice)

Lisbon Solo by Fred Lonberg-Holm

As befits a guy who has also recorded a “solo” record in the company of a Florida swamp full of frogs, Fred Lonberg-Holm picks his recording locations strategically, and location has a lot to do with how this album turned out. It was done at an old and well-appointed studio in Lisbon, Portugal, where he could be sure that the microphones would catch every creak, groan and polyphonic wail he might draw out of his main instrument. But he also knew, from prior visits, that he would have access to some seriously over-the-hill pianos. While most of the album is devoted to savagely bowed attacks, the odd digressions into detuned, radiant chimes deliver just enough respite to keep you off balance and on the edge of your seat.

Bill Meyer

Dan Melchior — Odes (Cudighi Records)

'Odes' by Dan Melchior

Dan Melchior is likely a recognizable name to Dusted readers; he has made quite a string of releases over the years. This cassette/digital release, recorded in 2016, is a subdued affair, nine songs for the most part following the same blueprint: a track of strummed or lightly picked acoustic guitar with a fuzzy electric lead layered on top. The foundational guitar tracks establish a calm, repetitive cycle, giving some of these songs an almost raga-like feel, in some cases through a hazy reverb: "Tybee" feels like you're sitting in the next room listening to him play through a closed door.

Calling the overdubs "guitar leads" implies the wrong feel. While played through fuzz or distortion, the mood is a woozy one, more opiated than energetic, but in a drifting, pleasant way. There's an over-arching melancholy throughout these songs, one person alone playing to satisfy a need. Knowing Melchior was facing the recent loss of his wife Letha certainly colors it, but even a listener ignorant of that back-story would feel the emotional resonance.

These nine ramshackle, loose instrumental pieces are personal, incomplete, and like having someone entrust you with private stories in song form.

Mason Jones

Mint Field — Sentimiento Mundial (Felte)

Sentimiento Mundial by Mint Field

Mint Field, from Mexico City, filters the feedback and noise of shoegaze guitars through a pensive screen, finding an aura of nostalgia in between and among blinding walls of scree. Estrella del Sol Sánchez contributes two of the band’s signature sounds, the dreamy, delicate vocals and the swirling masses of altered guitar. She is supported by Sebastian Neyra on bass and Callum Brown on drums. The volume level varies song to song, but it’s all mesmerizing and good. “Delicadeza” breezes in on the tenderest sort of sigh, the softest, most lyrical strummed accompaniment, but “Contingencia” digs in and pounds, drums cranking, bass thudding and guitars winging out in wild arabesques of distorted sound. The easiest comparison might be the similarly hauntingly voiced Lush, but there’s something special here in the soft, keening soprano calm at the center of even the most agitated cuts.

Jennifer Kelly

Roy Montgomery — Island of Lost Souls (Grapefruit)

Roy Montgomery 40th Anniversary 2021 LP Series by Roy Montgomery

In 2021, guitarist Roy Montgomery celebrates 40 years of music-making with the release of four new LPs, beginning with Island of Lost Souls. Though 2018’s fantastic Suffuse included vocals from artists such as Haley Fohr (Circuit Des Yeux), Julianna Barwick and Liz Harris (Grouper), Island of Lost Souls is entirely instrumental, comprising four pieces, each dedicated to a late artist (actor Sam Shepard, and musicians Adrian Borland, Peter Principle and Florian Fricke). Though wordless, Montgomery’s guitar speaks volumes, flickering and flowing with the liquid grace of a player intimately familiar with both his fretboard and the effects pedals at his feet, sending waves of tone cascading with delay and reverb. Plus, on the side-long, climactic “The Electric Children of Hildegard von Bingen,” Montgomery pitch-shifts his guitar so it really ascends to the heavens, where it takes up residence for 22 minutes. Fans of Windy & Carl, Flying Saucer Attack and The Durutti Column, take note.

Tim Clarke

Jon Mueller — Family Secret (American Dreams)

Family Secret by Jon Mueller

A family secret is usually a multigenerational skeleton in the closet that is either sorrowful or sinister. For percussionist and Volcano Choir member Jon Mueller, it is the former: a series of familial rifts that became the unlikely muse for this collection of reverberating drones. Mueller employs instruments that produce multiple resonant tones, such as singing bowls and gongs, to create rich pools of complex sound. Metallic hues brighten subterranean rumblings while enigmatic dapples of condensed steam coalesce into liquid shapes. The drummer conjures ghastly creatures through extending the vocabulary of his drum kit. Cymbal scrapes become banshee wails and scoured skins emanate uncanny whispers. With Family Secret, Mueller manifests his personal demons as phantom signals. He transmogrifies emotional strife into physical actions which then become ethereal. Ironically, the resulting sounds are actually soothing. Pain has never sounded so sweet.

Bryon Hayes

Primitive Motion — Descendants of Air (Kindling)

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Primitive Motion is the Brisbane-based duo of Sandra Selig and Leighton Craig, and Descendants of Air is their seventh album, previously only available as a CD given away at live shows. You can immediately imagine what the album sounds like based on the artist name and album title alone: rustic yet cosmic, full of space and open to spontaneity. Recorded on the banks of the Enoggera Reservoir, these eight meandering pieces prominently feature the sounds of wind and leaves, plus the calls of raucous Australian birds, while Selig and Craig insinuate suggestions of melodies and chords on nylon-string guitar, woodwinds, and battery-powered keyboards, and gently massage the air with percussive patters. Though part of the appeal of the recording is its deliberate vagueness, the most affecting piece, and the shortest, is “True Orbit,” where a strident theme built around melodica, keyboard and voice seems to emerge fully formed from the aether.

Tim Clarke

Socioclast — S/T (Carbonized Records)

Socioclast by Socioclast

In heavy music’s current moment of endless genre-hopping and hybridization, it’s nice to hear a record that understands exactly what it wants to be. Socioclast is a grindcore record. Like Assück’s grindcore’s records. A lot like Assück’s grindcore records. You get all the high-velocity chugging crunch and guttural grunting — vocals so deep in the gullet that it’s pretty hard to pick up any lyrics. The song titles, however, suggest the ideological dispositions you might expect: “Surveillance, Normalization, Examination,” “Specter Signal,” “Psychodrone,” “Propaganda Algorithm.” There can be a fine line between paying tribute and being derivative, but Socioclast creates an homage rather than an outright imitation. This is 21st-century music. It sounds a lot clearer and slicker than anything Assück or the early Slap A Ham bands committed to vinyl. Like Slap A Ham, Socioclast is a California-based musical phenomenon, featuring dudes who have played in bands like Deadpressure and Mortuous; Colin Tarvin’s death-metal grooves are especially prominent on some of the record’s best tracks, including “Eden’s Tongue” and “Omega.” But this is assertively a grindcore record. Given that version of traditionalism (and yes, events have come to such a pass that grindcore has a tradition), it turns out that Socioclast isn’t all that socioclastic. So goes the strangeness of semantics. But the music is good.

Jonathan Shaw

Space Quartet — Under the Sun (Noise Precision Library)

Under the Sun by Space Quartet

Space is a persistent and multi-faceted theme in the music of the Portuguese electronic musician, Rafael Toral. And while his name is not appended to the Space Quartet’s, make no mistake, this is his band, playing his music. But it is a music derived from ideas that can’t be realized without the right people. So, while Toral has delved repeatedly into the sounds that people imagine they might make and that they actually find in outer space, and he has explored empty and variously filled spaces as starting points for his music, the point of the Space Quartet is to find the right people, and give them enough space to realize a new kind of jazz. Under the Sun is the combo’s second recording, made with a substantially different line-up than the iteration that recorded the self-titled debut for Clean Feed Records. Toral has sacrificed the all-electronic front line and switched drummers, but in doing so he may have found the right crew to take him where he needs to go. Across the album’s two 21-minute-long tracks, there are usually several ongoing dialogues taking place between the players, which manifest intriguing degrees of mutual challenge and support. But the way that Toral’s elongated feedback lines and Nuno Torres’ stuttering alto saxophone phrases flow around Hugo Antunes’ stark, elastic double bass figures and percussionist Nuno Morão’s lightly deployed, carefully modulated streams of textures and beats that extends a lineage anchored in the language that Cecil Taylor’s trio first released into the air at the Café Montmartre back in 1962.

Bill Meyer

Stinkhole — Mold Encrusted Egg (Mangel Records)

MOLD ENCRUSTED EGG by STINKHOLE

The name sort of says it all, but to clarify anyways: Stinkhole languishes in a slimy musical ditch, bottoming out somewhere between the No Wave skronk of Mars and the transgressive caterwauling of Suckdog. As was the case with both of those acts, the dissonance and the gross-out antics can obscure some interesting ideas. Clawing your way through the dense layers of yuck (or, depending on how you’re wired, enjoying it) is integral to the challenge posed by the experience. All the gagging vocalizations, primitivist drumming and semi-tuned bass whomps on Mold Encrusted Egg occupy prominent positions on the surface of songs like “Orange Juice.” But listen to Mold Encrusted Egg a little more closely: there are some rabid grooves, feral guitar breaks and a lot of impenetrably weird environments of sampled sounds, tape manipulations and unidentifiable scree. Is it fun? Does it sound good? Fuck no. The band’s name is Stinkhole. They write songs with titles like “Slippin’ on Slug Slime” and “Emancipated by Hair.” They roll with the whacko punk and noise bands that have congregated around the Berlin-based Flennen digital music zine and its accompanying label. Dig the stink. Rock has rarely been so richly rotten.

Jonathan Shaw

Styrofoam Winos — S-T (Sophomore Lounge)

STYROFOAM WINOS "S/T" by Styrofoam Winos

Stryofoam Winos brings together three old friends to swap songs in Nashville. You might recognize Lou Turner from her solo album, Songs for John Venn, a sly and subversion of the songwriter’s wholesome alt-country charm. Joe Kenkel is a kindred spirit, a folk rock singer with respect but not reverence for the certitudes of Southern life. Says Nashville Scene of his solo Dream Creator, “Kenkel, a sophisticated folk-rock songwriter, documents Music City’s idiosyncrasies on his debut LP, with acutely observant lyrics.” And Trevor Nikrant completes this anonymous all-star line-up; his 2017 debut caught the ear of Aquarium Drunkard’s J. Steel who called it “Oddball baroque psychedelia broadcasted from a basement on the east side.” The three kicked things off with a lo-fi and charming debut, Winos at Home, in 2017, but this self-titled LP takes things up a notch with songs that balance craft with eccentricity. “Stuck in a Museum” jangles and rambles in an antic, neurotically intelligent way, as the narrator finds himself entrapped amid the exhibits, staring fixedly at a teapot from the Tang Dynasty. “Roy G. Biv” turns contemplative—and twangy—as Turner sings plaintively about rainbows and colors, the way things change and how hard it can be to keep up. “Maybe More” glints with mandolin, but remains pared back, as a down-trodden singer (one of the guys, not sure which) sings about a life stuck in neutral, same book, same coat, same jokes, but beautiful. The disc has the feel of a warm, casual gathering, with friends jumping in on harmonies or picking up the bass. The songs are sharp and lovely without a lot of fuss.

Jennifer Kelly

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buzzdixonwriter · 3 years

Text

Tears In The Rain

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe…All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”

-- Blade Runner (David Peebles & Rutger Hauer)

The radar screen manufacturers -- RCA, GE, and others -- started jonesin’ for cash when the end of WWII dried up all that sweat & easy military materiel money.

Commercial consumer television existed before WWII in England, the UK, and Germany but it was a super-expensive technology confined to a few very wealthy homes in a few select markets or in Germany’s case, public venues such as beer halls.

Radar screens and TV tubes were basically different applications of the same thing, so the radar tube manufacturers shifted their production to TV sets pitched to post-war consumers as the must-have status symbol.

Problem: Said TV sets needed something to show and while there was live national network and local programing, most early stations filled their air time with old movies / cartoons / serials / comedy shorts.

That was the cultural gestalt I and other boomers grew up in during the 1950s, an era when much of the on air media dated back to the 1930s.

I’ve always been more culturally observant and curious than others in my generational cohort, and while they blandly / blindly watched Bugs Bunny and Popeye and Betty Boop and Our Gang, I was asking my parents and grandmother and aunt about the odd details I saw in old media (it didn’t hurt that we had a beautiful art deco edition of Collier’s Encyclopedia that my grandparents acquired in the 1920s in the house as well).

As a result I knew far more about the Depression and Prohibition and war rationing and other major cultural events and touchstones prior to our generation than did most other boomers.

When our history and social studies textbooks finally introduced these topics in junior high and high school, I was already intimately familiar with them.

As a result, I fell in love with the Marx Brothers and continue to love them to this day.

And while I watched and re-watched The Three Stooges, once I discovered Laurel and Hardy I left Larry, Moe, Curly, Shemp, Joe, and Curly Joe behind.

But the thing is, to fully understand and appreciate and know and love the Marx Brothers, you have to understand the pop culture of their era.

The same applies -- to a lesser degree -- to Laurel and Hardy.

The key difference is that The Three Stooges are pure physical mayhem: There is nothing to understand.

They are imbeciles who inflict pain on themselves and one another, and while far, far inferior to Groucho / Harpo / Chico or Stan & Ollie, they will outlast them.

Anybody from any era or any culture can access The Three Stooges, but if you don’t understand a “gat” (short for gatling gun) is 1930s slang for an automatic pistol, then Groucho’s line upon seeing a automatic in a drawer with a pair of derringers -- “This gat’s had gittens” -- is absolute gibberish.

Likewise Laurel and hardy require some understanding of how American cultural values functioned in the 1920s and 30s; if you don’t get that, a lot of their humor is lost.

Our Gang / Little Rascals ages better because kids are kids and much of what they do is universal.

But even there much of their references have to do with the Depression or WWII rationing and scrap drives and if you don’t grasp that then those jokes zoom past you.

The situation isn’t confined to pre-WWII media, either.

The Marx Brothers and Laurel & Hardy might possibly be recognized by the current generation as something their parents and grandparents watched, but the Ritz Brothers are forgotten by all except those who specialize in comedy / pop culture history. Wheeler & Woolsey are even more obscure, and Olsen & Johnson obscurer still, and if you’ve ever heard of Lum & Abner my hat’s off to you.

And holy shamolley, those are just the comedians we’re talking about. There’s a whole universe of pop culture lost as fans of old B-Westerns die off, not to mention minor pop stars of music and small movies in the 1930s / 40s / 50s.

Silent movies have virtually disappeared from pop culture today; they are things of the past, historical artefacts.

Thanks to the Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg and Comic Book + and Digital Comics Museum and other sites, literally tens of thousands of hours of old radio shows and countless pulp magazines and comic books and other media are available, but who accesses them today except the truly die-hard genre fans or the pop culture historians?

Why morn their passing?

As Theodore Sturgeon famously observed, isn’t 90% of everything crap?

Yes, it is.

But that doesn’t make it any less of the cultural gestalt, the zeitgeist of the era than the few timeless gems that shine through.

. . .

As pop culture historian Jaime Weinman points out, the boomer generation -- the late 1940s to early 1960s -- offered a particularly fallow time for pop culture.

We enjoyed access to previous generations of pop culture, brought to us in curated form. Even if those curators were costumed local cartoon show and horror movie hosts, we got at least some understanding of what led up to our own generation.

Weinman observes that because of technical broadcast reasons, only a few avenues fell open to new programming -- and that new programming could be rerun again and again to fill in gaps in local stations’ air time.

It created a generation with remarkably deep pop culture roots, even if relative few members of that generation were aware of them.

We were, to some degree or another, aware of a vast library of older pop culture media and icons and idioms.

Ironically, this began changing in the late 1960s, slowly at first, but coming full flower in the mid-1970s as music cassette recordings allowed us to create our own playlists off radio shows and record players, and cable TV stopped being something for the hinterlands and started penetrating urban markets, thus literally uniting the country with first dozens then hundreds and a virtually infinite number of channels and streaming options.

But the real nail in the golden age of pop culture’s coffin was the introduction of home TV recordings and time shifting, meaning we no longer needed to wait for curated programing but could watch what we wanted when we wanted.

Despite a wider range of options, older material became less and less popular, and the lack of curation is a big part of that.

With nobody to supply some sort of context -- even goofy horror host context -- older examples of pop culture became less accessible.

The newer generations look less to the past, more to the future.

. . .

As I’ve written before, endings fascinate me.

Right now I’m seeing a generational shift with the boomer generation’s pop culture rapidly fading to be replaced by Generation Z and the generations to follow them.

I look at the boomer era and wonder how much will survive.

Very little, I’m afraid.

And that includes losing some of the best our era had to offer.

For example, how many people today know of The Firesign Theatre?

In the mid-1960s through the early 1970s, they performed absolutely brilliant satirical comedy on radio and recordings. Their album Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers received a Hugo nomination for best sci-fi drama presentation of 1970.

I still laugh when I hear their recordings -- but I laugh because I lived in that era.

Their humor relies heavily on topical subjects and the counter culture of the late 1960s-70s. They were very much a Southern California phenomenon…and thanks to radio and TV and movies of that era, that culture permeated the entire country.

But that era is gone, and now when I listen to them I laugh, but to use a specific example I laugh because I know who Ralph Williams was and what he meant to Southern California pop culture in that time.

You don’t get that, you don’t get the joke, and the brilliance of The Firesign Theatre’s humor is lost.

Like tears in the rain.

. . .

Cheech y Chong will survive, because like The Three Stooges, their appeal lies in their basic stupidity.

True, many of their routines make contemporary pop culture references, but material like “Dave’s Not Here” is timeless.

You don’t even have to get the drug references to find it hilarious.

Conversely, the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers will fade.

As characters, they are of a particular time and place: Hippie dippie San Francisco.

They can’t survive transplantation, as was demonstrated in their last few stories.

Now there’s an animated series that brings them from the swinging 60s to to Trump 20s and it just doesn’t work.

The creators Don’t Get The Joke.

I don’t blame them for failing to get the joke, but updating the Freak Bros. would be like updating the Marx Brothers.

It can be done, but only badly.

. . .

Music will always have musicians and buffs who will track every obscure item they can find, but a lot of the best and most innovative work will be forgotten by mainstream culture.

This is because in many case, the best musicians are way ahead of the rest of their field, and their innovations are only made palatable by others who take them up and reinterpret them in a way to make them accessible to contemporary audiences.

Frank Zappa, as much as I personally love him as a cultural icon, will fade fast after the last boomer dies.

Basically, he didn’t make singable music.

There are a lot of brilliant innovations in his work, but his lyrics are so idiosyncratic as to be impossible to cover.

That, and a lot of his lyrics and subject matter would not be comfortably acceptable today.

Yeah, when he did it he was trying to make a satirical point, but when modern audiences hear it, they don’t hear the sharp commentary on the culture of his time, they hear songs that seem to glorify sexual violence and racial bigotry.

Most of the people who decry so-called “cancel culture” today are hypocrites trying to justify their own offenses, but there will be creators and components of pop culture who simply aren’t going to make the cut.

I can show you on paper why radio’s Amos And Andy was a brilliantly written show.

You’re not going to get modern audiences to accept white actors doing blackface…or black voice.

Zappa is acceptable today because there are still enough people who get the joke.

When we’re gone, so are most of his songs (his instrumentals hopefully will live on).

. . .

Quentin Tarantino’s star is already starting to set.

His copious dropping of the n-bomb seemed daring and edgy in the early to mid-90s now seems boorish and tiresome.

People don’t want to listen to that, and how can you make them watch what they don’t want to watch?

The Hateful Eight might endure since it gives a sorta context for its racial animosity, ditto Django Unchained, but even they will be problematic due to Tarantino’s Red Apple universe -- a world similar enough to ours to be mistaken for it at first glance but ultimately completely different.

Inglorious Basterds will ultimately fail the history smell test by audiences who will perceive it as wildly inaccurate.

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood probably has the least problematic elements in it, but it too is so firmly set in a specific time and place that only those who lived it can truly appreciate it.

When we’re gone, who can follow the pop culture breadcrumbs that lead us through the movie?

Tarantino is a brilliant writer / director, and film students in the know will study his movies to see how he pulled them off…

…but they’re going to move far past him.

(He may enjoy a revival 50 years from now, the way certain film makers get rediscovered a half century after their deaths. If so, it will be by people able to see past the pop culture references to the real story beneath.)

. . .

Roger Corman and other exploitation film makers aren’t going to as welcomed once the boomer generation departs.

Boomers see them as transgressive artists, tweaking the nose of so-called respectable society.

New generations will see they as creeps who exploited violence and sexism.

(And we shouldn’t mourn its loss; most of it is soft-core pornography. But there were a few shining moments that shine only if you know the context, and that is fading fast.)

. . .

Superheroes probably won’t die out just as Westerns never completely died out, but like Westerns their audience is rooted in a very particular time and place.

I mentioned B-Westerns earlier; once upon a time there were literally dozens of B-Western stars, each with their own face base and merchandising and movies…

…and now there are no more B-Westerns.

We remember Roy Rogers because he’s culturally referenced elsewhere (and Gene Autry because he left a great big museum in his name).

B-Westerns’ success was based on fulfilling audience expectations, essentially giving the same thing they’d seen before, only slightly different.

Superheroes have degenerated into that.

In their current form, they’re deconstructions based on what a previous generation’s pop culture produced.

The superhero market has been supersaturated in the past and collapsed before.

This time when it collapses it will take along countless near-identical characters and storylines.

What emerges from it will be as different from the current iteration of superheroes as The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly was from My Pal Trigger.

. . .

Likewise, if James Bond is to survive, there will be a drastic retooling of the property.

It is possible; Sherlock Holmes has been retooled often.

The original Connery Bonds, the ones we consider to be “iconic” will eventually be viewed as an embarrassment.

The world and its attitudes are changing, and while there will always be room for heroes, audiences will be a bit more discerning about which heroes they want.

The attitudes of the original Bonds will not fly with future generations.

. . .

Finally, one prospect that will make it into the future, though not necessarily on its own strengths, no matter how significant they are.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 has skewered pop culture via bad movies since 1988.

Supported by a legion of fans, there are several books and websites that annotate all the references found in the various MST3K series.

Scholars 500 years in the future will thank these fans and researchers for their efforts.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 and its various annotated spinoffs will be the Rosetta stone of 20th century pop culture.

It will provide a context to make the jokes understandable, but more importantly than that, it will open a window into what people were thinking and feeling in the last decade of the 20th century.

It and the films it spoofed will be studied with near Talmudic intensity (you think I jest; I do not). They’ll provide insight that will help future generations and cultures understand this one.

#Once Upon A Time In Hollywood #Wheeler and Woolsey #Lum And Abner #The Ritz Brothers #The Firesign Theatre #The Marx Brothers #Laurel And Hardy #Frank Zappa #Olsen And Johnson #Our Gang #Little Rascals #The Three Stooges #Groucho Marx #Harpo Marx #Chico Marx #Stan Laurel #Oliver Hardy

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canyonmoonlily · 4 years

Text

| What Goes Up |

live! on tour series

A/N: Here comes the Smut ;)

.....

“Y/N!”

“What?” your entire body lurched upright at the sound of your name. You could hardly see thanks to the blinding sunlight streaming in through the unfamiliar window. You hardly remembered what the hotel you were staying in looked like you’d been so inebriated the night before.

“Alarm!” The same voice that had woken you from your slumber called from beyond the closed door. Oh. It was only then you noticed Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin was playing very loudly. At first, it had worked great as an alarm but you’d grown used to it and could sleep through it like a pro now.

The voice that had called for you to turn it off must’ve been one of your bandmates. According to your phone, it was already 10:30 am so you might as well start your day. You stretched and moved to get out of bed after turning it off only to find you are, in fact, stark naked.

Oh fuck. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.

You hurriedly grab your robe you’d hung on the bathroom door and wrap it around you. You were scared to look in the mirror and see hickies or some indication of promiscuity from the night before. You had nothing against sleeping around, but considering you’d still only ever slept with someone once, you weren’t usually bold enough to sleep with a stranger. Which only means that if you did, in fact, have sex last night it was with someone you knew.

Like Harry.

The last thing you can remember is Harry singing along with George Harrison’s voice as you cried into his chest. Like the emotionally unstable psycho you are! your brain added.

You ripped the metaphorical bandage off and took a glance at yourself in the bathroom mirror only to find no evidence that anyone had touched you the night before. You also didn’t feel sore other than a slight headache. Considering you hardly ate, it took nothing for you to get drunk so hangovers were never really an issue for you.

You feel like you’d know if something had happened the night before. It had been a hot minute since the one and only time you’d had sex before. The only obvious differences in your appearance seems to be the absent of the makeup you’d worn the night before and your clothing. Had Harry taken off your makeup for you? Your chest contracted at the thought of him taking the time to play caretaker to drunk you.

Then you remember the way he’d kissed Kendall the night before, and remind yourself that despite the Game Night events, you were only friends. And that was all you’d ever probably get out with him. You needed to place your mental emphasis on the fact that you had him in your life at all and be grateful for that. There was no point in stringing yourself along on the hopes that one day he’d fall in love with you and the two of you would live some kind of happily ever after. Your life was far from a movie and you were far too old to be entertaining such fantasties anymore.

....

Harry watched you slip out of the green room with a heavy heart. You were like no one he’d ever met before. Last night, with all of your drunken ramblings and your little hands grabbing at his hair, calling him pretty. You had laid with your head in his lap for hours, going on about everything from George Harrison to the inherent good or evil of human nature.

He’d gazed at you adoringly, laughing the night away while the party died downstairs. He’d left Kendall alone but he wasn’t worried about her, she knew he didn’t love her. It was purely a publicity stunt, as always.

Harry shouldn’t love y/n. He knows this. Columbia records was considering signing a deal with your band, a major one that would launch your group even further into music stardom. You’d only released one album, and already had a huge fan base. Harry’s opinion the matter was of great value to the record label, and he’d been given specific instructions not to go and “make any unprofessional or romantic connections with the three of those girls.”

Harry had agreed to those terms, but that was before he knew you.

The first time you stepped into the pre-tour production meeting room he thought he was going to vomit. You’d all stumbled in late, being scolded by your manager, John. You hadn’t noticed Harry was even in the room.

You were slightly shorter than average, with all of the right curves and long, golden hair down to your waist. You donned an old Ben Folds Five tshirt and high waisted denim. You couldn’t seem to keep your hair out of your face. Your bandmates looked pained every five seconds as you whispered what was clearly absolute nonsense into their ears throughout the meeting. The way your eyes sparkled with mischeif, your unabashed goofiness nearly smacked him out of his chair. You were nothing like what he expected when he’d been told he’d be touring with an all girl band. You were the most alive thing in the room.

He knew why you were upset. It was because Kendall was wrapped around him like a fucking sloth after tonight’s show in Cleveland.

His feet didn’t consult with his mind before he found himself following your fleeting figure.

“Y/n!” He called.

You stopped dead in your tracks, refusing to look back at him.

“What is it, Harry?” Your sweet voice was a bit hoarse.

“Where are you going?” Harry’s voice was small, reminding you of your younger brothers back at home. You felt the cold armor you’d wrapped around your heart bend a little.

“To bed.” You responded simply.

“Listen, Kendall and I...it’s not—“

“Harry I didn’t ask. You don’t know me an explanation.”

“I do, though. What happened after game night—“

“—doesn’t need to be talked about it again. I’ve already erased it from my mind. Your secret is safe.”

“Secret? Y/n what the hell are you going on about?” Harry’s voice broke a bit, at that you finally turned to face him.

“I know you probably don’t want her to find out about that—or anyone to for that matter. It wasn’t very professional of us.” The shining of tears on your face took Harry by surprise, as you’d melt your words void of all emotion.

“Y/n I don’t give a shit about her!” Harry nearly yelled. “Well, no, I do care about her but not in that way.”

You narrow your eyes at him. “Then why are you two making out every time I see you together? Harry, you’re not making me feel any better.”

“It’s a stunt. It’s for publicity. To keep the paps entertained.”

“Oh.”

“I....y/n, these last few months we’ve spent...” Harry can feel himself getting choked up as he struggles to meet your eyes. When he does, you can see he’s fighting back tears and you don’t know what you expect him to say next. “I think—no. I know that I am in love with you.”

Your breath gets caught in your throat. The skin tight, bell bottom jumpsuit you’re wearing seems to be 100000x tighter than you remember it being a few hours ago.

“You don’t have to say it back, you don’t owe me anything, I—shit. Shit I’m sorry.” His chin is wobbling now and the world’s biggest rock star is falling apart right before your eyes. But in a second, your lips are on his before the first tear can fall.

His whole body caves into yours, pulling you closer then you think you’ve ever been held in all of your 22 years on this planet. Your hands find his hair as his lips move in sync with your own. They’re soft and sweet and suddenly the only language you know how to speak. He is clinging to you like a man starved, though you know he is anything but.

“I love you. I thought it was obvious already but, I’ll say it a million times if you need to hear it: I love you. I love you. I love you.” You day in between kisses. Harry pulls away slightly to meet your eyes and can feel himself going cold. “What?” Your brow furrows at his expression.

“I just never want to forget the way you’re looking at me now.”

Then your back is against some nearby wall and his lips are on yours again faster than you can register anything that’s happening. The kiss swells into something more urgent, more passionate than before as your tongues begin their dance. His hands are everywhere, and you forget where yours end and his hair begins.

His lips begin trailing to the underside of your jaw and a moan slips out before you can stop it. He groans a response, and you swear you can feel something hard pressing against your lower stomach. Harry’s entire body has caved into yours, you standing on your tippy toes to press yourself more firmly against his willow-y frame.

“Shit-shit. Harry, someone could see—“ it suddenly dawned on you that you’re just passionately making out with in the middle of the hallway.

“Oh—oh.” Harry’s brows furrow and you see a glint of hurt in his pretty green eyes. You gently cup his face.

“No, I don’t mean it like that!” You whisper yell the reassurance. “You know I’d love to be seen with you. I just, H....I’m insecure about this kind of stuff.”

Amusement paints a pretty smirk on Harry’s face.

“You mean....sex?” He teases and you swear you could wrap your hands around his throat and throttle him if you had another 5 inches of height and actually stood a chance.

“Yes, sex, now come on.” You mock his accent and tug him away from the wall, the two of you giggling like horny teenagers.

...

Within a minute Harry has you pressed up against the door of his private bus. He’s fumbling with the strange lock and kissing you like he’s dying at the same time. You’re floating.

Once the latch clicks into place, your feet leave the ground again and your laid against something soft. The warm lighting is hitting Harry in a sinful way—he looks like the color gold personified and he’s smiling at you like you’re the Sun. He towers over you and you’ve never felt smaller. You start to wrap your arms around yourself but he stops you.

“Just let me look at you for a sec, y/n/n.”

With one last heated look he dives back into you and you’re a mess of tangled limbs again. You can feel his hands ghost over your clothed breasts and his lips ghosting over your neck again.

“God, I can’t get enough of your neck. Ya’ve got tha prettiest neck ‘ve ever seen,” he groans with a grind of his clothed, hard cock into your own clothed heat. You’re making noises you’ve only ever made before that time after Game night. And you know you’re ready to give it all to Harry. Anything he wants from you you’re willing to give.

His hands roughly grope at your breasts and you nearly scream. He’s pulling his shirt off and unzipping the top of your jumpsuit before you can do it again. Harry sucks in a breath of air at the sight of your naked chest.

“God—those tits. Just like I imagined ‘em,” he says before taking a nipple in his mouth, suckling on you like some animal. You whimper under his attention and he stops briefly.

“Angel, is this alright?” Harry looks into your eyes and holds your gaze.

“Yes, yes. T-take what you want from me.” You nod vigorously and submit yourself to him. His response is a growl you feel travel straight down to your core.

He goes back to your breasts, leaving lovebites and growling out the occasional “mine.” His lips trail down to your hips, right above your pelvis as he shimmies the rest of your jumpsuit off your legs.

Then the warmth of his breath is on your pussy and a single kiss is pressed to the front of your lace panties.

“H, you don’t have to—“

“I want to. Please.”

You nod and gulp. At this point, Harry’s seen more of your body than anyone else has and seems to be enjoying it. The only other time you’d had sex all the lights had been off and there was next to know ForPlay.

“I’ve just never had someone—do that.” You offer you an explanation. Harry freezes.

“No one’s ever eaten you out?” He asks incredulously, his head poking up from between your thighs. “What the fuck, why?”

Your cheeks heat up and you suddenly can’t make eye contact with him. “Well my ex, he and I only ever did it one time and he just...didn’t.” Harry nearly chokes on his own breath.

“You’ve one ever had sex once?” his hands are gripping your thighs now and he’s subconsciously moving closer to your face.

“Y-yeah. God this is embarrassing.” Your hands cover your now red face and tears gather in your eyes, lower lip trembling. This is not a conversation you wanted to be having but you also didn’t want to lie to Harry.

He pulls his hands away from your face and nearly crumbles at the sight of your glassy eyes. “No, no. Why is that embarrassing? You have nothing to be embarrassed about.” He coos softly, brushing away any tears that had fallen. You felt so small and seen in his embrace.

“Because I thought that maybe I was the problem? That something about me was ...off so he left me after we...you know.”

Harry audibly scoffed and cradled your face in his hands. “I’ve wanted this, I’ve wanted you for so long,” His voice is gruff and honest. “There is no one I’d rather be with right now. And that idiot ex of yours is a fucking madman because you’re never getting rid of me after tonight.”

You kiss him and feel something in your chest ache in an almost foreign way. You didn’t know you could feel like this. He kisses you back harder and the heat between you builds again. His hand cups your lace covered pussy and rubs gently over your clit and you jolt. His lips trail back down to your heat and before you can register what is happening his nose is pressed against your mound and inhaling you like some meal. A growl resonated in his chest and he begins tugging your underwear down your legs.

His tongue delves into your folds gently, teasingly. He finds his way to your clit and then sucks the breath from your lungs. You go pigeon toed and nearly scream at his assault on your most private area. You’re making noises that feel foreign as they leave your mouth but Harry laps them up along with your heat. He’s growling and letting out little sweet comments about how good you taste and you don’t know how you’re going to ever look at him without blushing again.

“H, H I’m close,” you whine out, little body shaking under the weight of his arms holding your torso down. Your hips are bucking up wildly but Harry is comepletely unbothered, giving no indication that he’d heard you at all. It isn’t until he sucks un your clit with a new vigor that he makes his intentions clear.

You’re screaming, toes curling, his name falling from your lips so loudly you’re sure everyone in the stadium can hear you. You’re fucked and you don’t even care, Harry’s cooing in your ear as tears fall from your eyes, descending from your high. He pulls your body into his and whispers sweet nothings in your ear until you come back to reality.

“Are ye alright, angel? We could just go to sleep?” Harry asks gently, warm breath in your ear.

“No, no. I want you. I’m just a little overwhelmed because no ones ever...he didn’t... make me you know.” Your face is heating up again.

“Why are you still talking about sex to me like we’re in middle school, y/n?” He laughs loudly. “I just spent the last 10 minutes face first in your pussy. You can say the word orgasm around me.”

You can’t help but laugh but also swing an arm around to sock him in the chest but he catches your hand and steals your breath with a kiss. His hands slide up the smooth expanse of your back and he straddles you, caging you to the end with his body.

You buck your hips into his, a hand snaking down to palm his rock hard member through his briefs. It feels, much larger than you anticipated. He growls and ruts against your hand like an animal.

“Please, Harry...” your eyes are hazy with desire as they meet his nearly blackened ones. He whips his briefs off and settles himself at your entrance.

“Are you sure? You’ll be stuck with me after this.” He half joked, looking into your eyes with a choking intensity.

“I’ve never been more sure. Please.”

He lets out a loud cry at the feeling of your heat around him and you’re whimpering uncontrollably at the intrusion. But you love it, God it hurts but you love it. Harry had not prepared himself for how tight you would be. It was like bedding a Virgin. Your ex must not have been well endowed, Harry thought.

Harry can’t believe how good you feel, and he’s never been particularly loud, but he’s crying out with every movement. You’re trembling beneath him, whimpering and yelping. Both of you just consumed with the other. You take his hand and place it around your throat, and his eyebrows shoot up in an expression of utter shock. He grips your throat in his hand and builds speed quickly. Milking his cock in your tight heat.

“You feel so fucking good. You’re mine now, mine.” He growls through clenched teeth as his hips snap into yours. You’re practically in tears.

“Yours. Yours yours yours.” His cock has reduced you to a weeping echo chamber.

When the two of you climax it is like the clash of a symphony and he collapses into your body, holding you closer to him than anyone’s held you before.

As you drift off in his arms, one nagging thought plagues you,

What the fuck were you going to tell your bandmates?

#smut #harry x y/n #harry styles x reader #harry styles smut #rockstar!y/n #on tour #harry styles #harry styles fluff #harry styles multichapter

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youcantfiremebecauseiquit · 3 years

Note

idk if u care but crispin gray recently had an interview about his entire career and it kind of changed my perspective of queenadreena…idk if for better or for worse lol. it was weird to see him so dismissive of a lot of his catalogue w katie except for ‘love your money’ just because that was the only remotely chart successful song. i get you want to be able to sustain yourself but jeez him and katie really had a weird back and forth relationship

Sorry i'm replying late, i've seen the interview pop up on Youtube but honestly i was too invested in university shit recently & generally not in the good mood for that but i'm planning to watch. How did it change your view on Queen Adreena, did he say something mean specifically on QA or Katie? I mean i gotta watch it but honestly? Not surprised in the slightest. A few years ago he was asked to describe fave songs he recorded throughout the years and he listed more of Daisy Chainsaw ones than anything else, with Love Your Money as number 1. The differences in their points of view are real something, Katie Jane absolutely HATED Love Your Money, same as Daisy Chainsaw. Kinda apparent he wanted bigger fame but DC dropped fast and QA failed to live up to their predictions.

i had a time when i liked to dig up old Queen Adreena interviews that are lost in the old internet & generally not available for years (which i planned to post on is-she-suffering but my investment in that site is... varied in its intensity). Also that was back in the days when i wrote Queen Adreena book during manic phase and tried to sell it but lost motivation Well since i don't do anything with that knowledge anyway i'll put what i know here as i love fan discussions

So they sure had/have odd back and forth love-hate relationship & that's the reason why their career went how it went. There's been a huge tension between them at some point. I'm sure you know she had a major mental breakdown (probably schizophrenic episode) after Daisy Chainsaw, or even beginning before her leaving, and then she went into isolation and lived with an old woman in Lake District for awhile. She left Daisy Chainsaw cause Crispin didn't want her to come up with her own songs (all of DC was by Crispin except for Lovely ugly brutal world by KJ).

They almost split up as Queen Adreena after Drink Me. The material for The Butcher and The Butterfly was written at different times, originally it was meant to be called Atom Bomb at Bikini but it was constantly delaying and they eventually recorded everything they've got live. So that's obvious right? But i was surprised to find out they were writing songs separately. Some of them (i forgot which though) were written by Katie Jane and Pete Howard's sons band (they're even credited) + some with Melanie Garside, Richard Adams + some other musician. Katie Jane didn't like it. They intended it to be their last album at the time. She also hated live at ICA show but they released it cause they were broke

But that's a digression. I just wanna say that at this point they were done with each other but kept pushing it. Katie had her own art projects and stuff, Crispin started Dogbones with Nomi and i just remember how vaguely pissed at Katie he waas in the interviews. Like he stressed that Dogbones is his number one priority and if Katie wants to do something with Queenadreena, she must wait til Dogbones have a break first or something, and it sounded oddly bitter.

RaCH and Djinn era are just so weird, they had opportunities but let them go in a way. I don't think many people know but they were huge demand in Japan. They entered album charts and were interviewed by 11 magazines and 6 (!)TV stations there (wtf happened to that material i want to know???). But they only played 5 times or less.

Katie said she considers the band dead but they decided they can try to play for a couple more months. But aside from that she 100% lost the interest in the band around Djinn. There's an interview where she says "the overall image is Crispin but the shape will change again at rehearsals". And you can hear it, it’s more blues rock than anything. IMO it's their worst production wise. Instruments are fine but Katie's voice is so badly produced that sometimes i find some songs fucking irritating, cause they didn’t cut out her breaths and the vocals are TOO LOUD, to the point of distorting. As if she stands too close to the mic. The album is fine but it feels unfinished.

And here we come back to Crispin... here's what he said after the QA split:

Why the Dogbones started? “I needed to work more than the previous band I was in was working, the previous band who shall remain nameless, haha… um… Queenadreena. I wanted to work more than the singer of Queenadreena wanted to work… so that’s why it started. Fine by me… but I really like to be in a band, I’m not a solo project kind of guy. The last album (‘Djin’) did come out in the UK, but it was so low key because Katie kind of disappeared so there was little point in promoting it. Personally it’s my favourite by far so it was a shame but there you go… So here are Dogbones, it’s not been an easy ride but we are trying very hard.

Ok so the bitterness is kinda apparent isn't it. I think there were two reasons why they argued so much, first musical differences. Katie at some point lost interest in loud rock music for some years and went the folk way in Ruby Throat. I have a theory that Taxidermy and Drink Me are more influenced by Katie Jane and Butcher and Djinn are more Crispin. During first albums i think Katie more actively took part in music composition and choosing arrangements. She wrote lyrics, melodies but also composed a lot of songs on some little electronic keyboard thing and 4 track (Heavenly Surrender, Pray for me, My Silent Undoing, all Lalleshwari +more). Plus she wanted more peaceful/dreamy sound on Taxidermy than full on rock, Crispin complained about it in some 00's interview, that he'd like it to be more rock. Then there are 2 versions of Drink Me, the original has rough and alt versions of songs (it was sold by Katie and it's leaked on FB and probably YT). Crispin Gray apparently really hated the final Drink Me. Now next album is The Butcher & The Butterfly and it's more standard blues rock, no more crazy dreamy things of previous albums etc., Djinn is even more blues rock but darker. Djinn was his favourite at some point while KJ hated Butcher, not sure about Djinn. So i think they had different views on where they should go, Katie made her weird simplistic creepy tunes (like Lalleshwari) and folk melodies adding that strange things to noise rock. Crispin probably wanted blues & rock.

Other than that, i’m convinced they are bitter exes, lol. There’s been rumours about them dating during Daisy Chainsaw for years, plus Katie had a history of dating band members. Crispin wrote X-ing off the days about her. I don’t know if they dated again in Queen Adreena. Then there’s this interview, timeline is unclear, either The butcher & the butterfly or later:

„Katie writes all the songs herself and often looks for melodies and structure with the drummer. With Crispin - her husband or ex-husband, which is not entirely clear to me - for almost three years she has no longer been in a room. "Sometimes we send him a letter with a new song and that's all we can do. All we have are our lungs and our musical talent and we have to do with it. It is repugnant difficult life, I know most of the time how I should deal with it." But Queenadreena will still remain even exist? "I think so, we are now pretty busy and I see where the ship aground.”

I always wondered what exactly happened after Djinn, i’ve seen Katie Jane say „i think they gave up on me” while others said she disappeared. Other times CG said there’s no bad blood between them but at the same time there’s been some weird tension. As of recent i thought they reconnected somehow through the internet and had a good relation but who really knows.s

I get why Crispin gets irritated when people compare everything he does to „stealing from KJ” but honestly, he gave them good reasons, at least in the 90’s. I can believe Starsha Lee singer isn’t copying Katie cause she’s from Brazil or something and she didn’t know Queen Adreena before. But everything else… Crispin’s problem is that he doesn’t know what he wants. He spent 90’s chasing something, tried singing himself, had girl singer replacements and even one KJ copy. Dogbones was ironically his most original non-Katie band, even with all their grunge influences. In a way he wants to be a frontman and at the same time doesn’t. Idk if he’s very controlling, but Daisy Chainsaw shows he valued his songs/lyrics first & in Queen Adreena he had to step back a lot, cause Katie’s condition was she would be in charge of the lyrics. I don’t think he realizes how strongly Daisy Chainsaw issues affected Katie, i mean from her own words you can read that aside from media attention/hate, her being unable to write lyrics had a role in her breakdown. I think she now let go but for years she hated remembering Daisy Chainsaw and she felt kind of worthless cause she was only somebody else’s mouthpiece. I’m not trying to say he’s cruel or anything, but i firmly believe rock lyrics writers should sing their own songs or else there are problems.

They both were writers-composers with different vision and i have impression they struggled a lot while shaping their songs, cause they both stuck to their ideas. Hence 2 versions of Princess Carwash maybe. Katie once said that he „gets terribly upset with her” cause she writes her songs on a simple wind organ and uses a few chord buttons only. Clash of writer ways/personalities/egos and at some point they had to let go.

Maybe he prefers music/bands where he was 100% in control including lyrics (note he wrote/sang some lyrics in Dogbones too). Daisy Chainsaw achieved bigger success US and UK wise as they were offered to play Top of The Pops, and they’re more well liked/remembered by „general alt public”. Queen Adreena however is way more valued as a cult band, with cult following and admiration in UK & France. Most people think Pretty Like Drugs and other QA songs are his best work and he probably finds it irritating cause truth is, he never managed to be more successful than Daisy Chainsaw/Queenadreena. Love Your Money is ironically the least Crispin Gray/DC/QA sounding song in my opinion. I kinda find it irritating that he downplays Queen Adreena cause it was probably his best work in this band but whatever

So yeah sorry for the word spill, that’s what i can think of it right now but as i said, i haven’t watched the interview yet, it’s just this kind of treatment is in a way consistent for him

#asks

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interesting-blog-name · 4 years

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Björk DISCOG REVIEW Part 1

One of the most recognized avant-garde singers in the world, Björk Guðmundsdóttir is an Icelandic artist who has been releasing critically acclaimed albums since the early 90s, and an icon in the experimental music scene. I thought it’d be an exciting experience to dive into her discography to find out if her music resonates with me, and to understand what this revered singer is all about. I decided to start with her major studio albums first, then moving on to her early work with Icelandic band The Sugarcubes and whatever else she has out there.

Debut

Björk’s properly titled debut is a wild amalgamation of sweet love songs, upbeat house music inspired by the UK’s early 90s scene, a hint of jazz, and of course, Björk’s enchanting voice. I won’t pretend to be a music university graduate or whatever, as I know close to nothing about what 90s music sounded like, what could have potentially influenced Björk on this album, nor will I try to give some sort of lecture about what is going on here; I’ll just cite what I enjoy and what I don’t, and why.

Debut feels authentic, it’s a finely crafted album, from its musical styles to its production to its songwriting. What spiked my interest immediately in it were the drums, and how fresh and varied they were; this is a very percussion-heavy album, the UK beats Björk implements are all about the infectious rhythms that enter your body and seem to control it, but even on tracks not so influenced by the nightclub life, the percussion is very good, in songs such as the opening Human Behaviour, with its fat bass drums, or the iconic, soothing Venus As a Boy, featuring tambourines, strong kicks, some rattle instrument, a prominent sampled echoing sound and a hint of bongos; these are all alongside various other rich instruments, violin passages that flow with the track perfectly, what sounds like xylophones peppering the track, all of this making this the best song in the album, in my opinion.

And when these instruments are not there, of course Björk herself makes up for it. Like Someone In Love is a beautiful ode to, well, love, comprised only of a harp, the singer’s eye-watering performance, and some ambient noise; it reminds me a bit too much of her cover of I Remember You, mostly because they’re both based on harps, but it is still very beautiful on its own. The Anchor Song is the emptiest on the record, closing the album up with some tension and overall introspection. It features only one verse from Björk sung two times, and like three saxophones? Definitely two at least, I’m not sure how they work, but it makes for a great, simplistic finisher (even if latter editions include Play Dead, a beautiful song, but not exactly fitting after the song before it).

Throughout the first handful of tracks, the pattern of “inward emotionally potent song sequenced by urban-life dance anthem, and back again” became apparent to me, but then broke after One Day did not transition into a dance track. Basically, my instant perception was that the record was this rollercoaster showcase of the hopeless romantic experience in a metropolitan, nocturnal city, and it may be, but if it is, it’s not as in-your-face as I initially thought. What catapulted these thoughts was the live version of There’s More To Life Than This, probably the most commercially-adept instrumental tune in the record, performed by Björk in a version purposefully awkward and weirdly personal, where she sings her second verse directly into a mic while the beat faintly plays in the background, fading further and further until the song flawlessly transitions to Like Someone In Love. It really makes you feel like your are at the Milk Bar, the night is packed, and Björk just pulls you into the bathroom and starts singing the rest of the song (for some reason); it reminded me of all those YouTube videos where the uploader takes a popular song, adds some background chatter, and soaks it all in reverb to give you the experience of listening to the song from the bathroom of a party. It is a distinct, creative way of spinning the original dance track around into something more, something that conveys this feeling of slight loneliness, even when surrounded by people, the central topic of the second song, Crying. The lyrics describe the big city, the huge crowds, but conversely the feeling of solitude and missing your loved one, or maybe even a place, it’s not explicitly told who or what Björk misses.

Romance is ever-present in Debut, through many incarnations. Big Time Sensuality, one of the most upbeat tracks here, is about a fresh romantic relationship, and the growing sensation of “something important (...) about to happen”, assumingly between Björk and whoever else. The house beat paints the scenario for this relationship as a club, by default. It brings you into this exciting nightlife, only for you to be pulled away immediately after by One Day, a track so cheerful it’s irresistible, and holding tight to the theme of romanticizing a loved one, then reaching Aeroplane in yet another beautiful transition. I have to admit this is the first song I don’t love in the album, I think it is good, and in the context of the album, definitely brings something new. What sets it apart is, this time around, the bongos are being used to their full extent, paired with birds chirping and a comfortable bass, incremented by occasional saxophone passages, this track ends up very tropical. After this, Come To Me is another passionate song, this time, Björk sings of comforting her partner and nurturing them, which naturally creates a super chill aura to the song. Accompanied by the violins and the lowkey guitars, it makes for a solid track, which in the context of the album I think eases the mood a bit too much, but is appreciated as a solid production, and closes out by bringing out the bongos once again, in a very nice outro (I should also note this is the first appearance of a real drum set on the album [I think]) (I should also also note the bassline sounds a little like early studio versions of True Love Waits by Radiohead, just some trivia).

Violently Happy right afterwards is the least interesting of the house tracks, with a mostly simple instrumental, and vocals Björk seeming to be compressed, or dowsed in some other effect. It’s not a standout in the tracklist to me, but the beauty of Debut is that the worst song is still solid as fuck. I think it’s a very consistent album, that delivers a unique and one-of-a-kind experience.

I didn’t expect this type of sound from Debut, but I was pleasantly surprised. It took me a while to like, but it definitely grew on me on with this 4 a.m. listening session I just had. I look forward to everything else I will listen to by Björk.

FAVORITE TRACKS: Venus As A Boy, Like Someone In Love, One Day, Big Time Sensuality, Human Behaviour

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: Violently Happy

8.7/10

“Lately I find myself gazing at stars, hearing guitars like someone in love.”

Post

Going into Post, I was aware this would be quite different from Debut. I had listened to Army of Me and It’s Oh So Quiet before, seeing as they’re two of Björk’s biggest songs, and they obviously sound nothing like the acid house beats and soft, calming ballads in her debut, and that’s what is good about it, the sudden shift from a relatively safe musical environment to aggressive, chunky electronic production in Army of Me and Enjoy, and the absolute turnaround that is It’s Oh So Quiet.

The bold production decisions are what make this album exciting and surprising, in tracks such as I Miss You, mixing a synth-line with super loud bongos and some addictive synthesized drums, and trumpets at the end of the song, or the famous use of the Locrian mode in Army of Me, creating this menacing, dissonant melody, which perfectly fits the song and serves as an appropriate intro to the album that succeeds it. But they don’t always have to be out there to be notable and great: what I can tell from around the internet is that you can ask every single Björk fan ever what their favorite track by her is and it feels like at least a quarter will answer Hyper-ballad, and (even though I’m not nearly done with her discography) I can I say it’s with very good reason, as it is an amazingly composed song; same with Possibly Maybe, an enheartened slow jam which progresses from a cute love song about desiring to be with the one she’s flirting with, to disappointment in how they treat her, to the breakup, where she states she started wearing lipstick again, sucking her own tongue in remembrance of her once lover.

The album is very love-centered, specifically focused on the desire to be physically with someone, with how Björk mentions her love interest’s touch in plenty of tracks, such as I Miss You, a song about missing someone she apparently has never been with, where she literally asks her significant other “when will I get my cuddle?”. uwu.

(also what is this cover art lmao)

Also including this thirst for deeper contact are the songs Enjoy (“I wish I’d only look, and didn’t have to touch”, “How can I ignore? This is sex without touching?”) and Headphones (”They start off as cells that haven’t been touched before, these cells are virgins”), but the subject matter isn’t always literal and spelled out, as the tracks Isobel and Hyper-ballad seem to play with the idea of a hermit lifestyle, whether it’s at the top of a mountain or in the heart of a forest, with different meanings between the two, however. In Hyper-ballad, she’s isolated from the world alongside her lover, while in Isobel, she’s completely alone, married to herself, as she says. I enjoy the theme, but I think the vocals and instrumentation, while interesting, aren’t as good as many other examples from the album, same with the track previous to it, You’ve Been Flirting Again, which employs very faint and uniform violins under some soothing yet stagnant lyrics by Björk; it serves mostly as an interlude, I suppose, but it could go a little further, in my opinion.

To end the album, Cover Me and Headphones subdue the atmosphere by a lot. They’re very toned down, the first features some really nice windy background noise, and what I think is an oud. It’s an amazing section of the album, and from what I can gather, seems to be about her own experimentation with her music, describing a journey into what I think is this very album, a big departure from Debut for sure. It then transitions seamlessly into Headphones, which, on par with its title, is a much better experience if you are wearing headphones. The buzzing bass, Björk’s nearly ASMR vocals turning into gibberish at the end, and bubbly percussion are all super pleasing to the ears, and it continues the theme of her own musical creating process, singing how her headphones saved her life, and how nothing will ever be the same; it’s almost prophetical, and definitely one of my favorite songs here.

Post is much more colorful, daring and wild than Debut, but I don’t know if I like it better than its predecessor. I feel like Debut is obviously much more comfortable and pleasing than Post, and that even though Post has amazing tracks like Hyper-ballad, Enjoy and Possibly Maybe, as an album, I’m not really feeling it as much as the last one. The sense of cohesion in the last one, and how it used the UK beats to the best of their potentials, mixing them with much more soothing tracks and beautiful vocal performances is what attracts me to it so much. I really appreciate the direction Post took, as I don’t suppose many people were doing anything close to this in the 90s or before, and it certainly has its highlights, but I think Debut just got a tighter hold of me, and I just enjoyed it more, if looking at it from a purely superficial standpoint. The experimentation here is great, but I enjoy how fresh Debut sounds slightly more.

FAVORITE TRACKS: Hyper-ballad, I Miss You, Army of Me, Headphones, Possibly Maybe, Enjoy

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: You’ve Been Flirting Again

8.5/10

“This is really dangerous, cover me. But worth all the effort, cover me.”

Homogenic

Alright shit got real.

This is way better than the last two albums, and they were amazing to begin with. But this album is insane. It’s focused, but also so loose and free. It’s an amazing experience, and I think Björk in her most comfortable style yet. She doesn’t miss the mark in one track of this album, they’re all at the very least good.

It starts off with the delirious drum patterns and violins in Hunter, and I tell you, I haven’t seen a better streak of amazing songs in an album yet: from the intro to 5 Years, all the songs between it are fucking fantastic, and that is only broken by Immature, a track which I don’t think is supposed to be much more than an interlude anyway; then it’s right back with Alarm Call.

I really don’t think I have anything to complain about in this review apart from 5 Years and Immature. On the first listen, I thought Howie B’s version of All Is Full Of Love was inferior to the original, which I had heard and loved a while ago, but I can’t even say that, because this one is perfect as an outro. With the drums gone, the track feels like a goodbye from Björk as you slowly descent from heaven after listening to this album; plus, it comes right after Pluto, by far the most aggressive song in Homogenic, with the singer yelling over her glitchiest production yet. Then it suddenly gives way to that incredible outro. Other amazing transitions include Unravel to Bachelorette, decorated by the overlapping violins, and from 5 Years to Immature. The serene, gorgeous sound of Unravel against the energetic, cinematic Bachelorette orchestra is easily one of the best moments in the album as well.

I find that whenever I find an album really good, I have problems describing why, but I promise this time I’ll try harder than when I listened to MAGDALENE. To start, Björk’s singing and the instruments backing her have never been more in harmony with each other, mainly due to Björk’s and her producers’ focus on maintaining a homogenous sound throughout the record, as its title implies, and this style is the mix of strings and other orchestral instruments (including an accordion at some points) with the odd, sometimes glitchy (All Neon Like, 5 Years, Pluto) other times fleshed out and bulky (Hunter, Immature, Alarm Call) production of Mark Bell, Guy Sigsworth, Howie B, Markus Dravs and, of course, Björk herself. Jóga and Unravel are my favorite Björk songs so far, and the fact that they come back to back, right before Bachelorette, is still crazy to me.

Alarm Call is a beautiful song about how your music impacts the world, and just an anthem of euphoria basically, which might be a little out of place surrounded by the very specific sound the album goes for, with its bop qualities and dance rhythm, but I appreciate it a lot just for how easily Björk can pour her feelings onto a track and make it work out of seemingly nowhere. This song demands happiness from the listener, and it’s extremely difficult not to give in to its groove (“I’m no fucking Buddhist, but this is enlightenment”).

In my opinion, All Neon Like is the perfect embodiment of Homogenic’s atmosphere: it’s not as brilliantly and enormously produced as the songs before it, but it is frigid and ethereal, the lyrics are sung fairy tales, continuing the genius metaphors in Bachelorette.

It’s slightly futile for me to try and dissect Björk’s lyrics one by one, but they do stand out more than in her previous records as well, even though the focus on Homogenic is mainly in its aesthetic. 5 Years is the first song that features lyrics that point themselves against someone, a former love interest of Björk, accusing them of not being able to handle her, and while Immature’s lyrics don’t go anywhere due to them consisting of a verse repeated twice, they follow the theme of abandoning a lover, and this time, the questioning is to herself, wondering how she thought her significant other was a cure to all her personal issues. Hunter, an amazing intro to an amazing album, centers its lyrics around some of the same topics as the outro in Post (Cover Me and Headphones) which describes a voyage into the unknown that was Björk’s musical endeavors at the time, her will to go the distance to create something brand new and exciting. In this intro, she compares it to hunting and bringing the food to the table. It starts: “If travel is searching and home what’s been found, I’m not stopping”. It’s fucking brilliant man holy shit.

Now that I write this, I realize, from 5 Years onward, the songs cease to be about idolizing another person, with tracks such as Immature and Alarm Bell being introspective looks at Björk and her current feelings, and Pluto being about batshit self-change. Even All Is Full Of Love, with its first lyrics being “You’ll be given love, you’ll be taken care of”, seems to be addressing more of the ambient surrounding the person than the person themselves, as if they’re a placeholder for all the angelic ambience around the listener. Maybe the song is literally about placing the listener in this scenario, who knows.

Definitely best album I’ve heard yet, and what excites me is that people praise the next album so much, I’ve never seen someone talk much about Homogenic. I literally don’t know how Björk can top this, but I’ll see.

WORST TO BEST: 5 Years, Immature – Mark Bell’s Version, Hunter, Pluto, Alarm Call, All Neon Like, Bachelorette, All Is Full Of Love – Howie’s Version, Jóga, Unravel

Fuck it, 10/10

“I’m a path of cinders burning under your feet. You’re the one who walks me, I’m your one-way street.”

Vespertine

I am pleased.

This is insane, man. I think I’ll be a huge Björk fan after I’m finished with this discography. Vespertine is meticulous, it’s enchanting, it’s all-around wonderful. You can tell Björk and her team put incredible effort into this album, for it to sound as effortlessly beautiful as possible; not one idea or song here sounds forced, out of its element, or simply put bad. They unite to create one of the most astounding listening experiences I think I’ll ever get in my life.

Vespertine is proud, but introverted. As a sequel to Homogenic, it serves as its lighter half: where Björk described Homogenic as “confrontational”, “active” and “warrior”, Vespertine flips that upside down, and brings microbeats, music boxes and harps to the table. This is a very effective alternative to songs such as Jóga and Bachelorette, where the instrumentals and the singer seemed to try and outdo each other, creating these grand, empowering songs; in this album, they merge together into living, breathing and deeply personal lullabies. One of the most impressive talents of Björk is that she seems to take the identity of her album to heart, and mixes her unique songwriting and singing talents and her otherworldly personality into the project’s own personality, becoming an artform much greater than the sum of its parts.

Songs like Hidden Place, It’s Not Up To You and Pagan Poetry are Björk to the bone, with their more elaborate and ear-catching production, their humongous vocals, and would be comfortable if they were to be pulled from this album into another; however, deeper cuts such as Aurora, Cocoon, Undo and An Echo A Stain are the embodiment of this album’s aesthetic, its frigid atmosphere and tiny, fragile surroundings. They are like symmetrical, unique snowflakes when softer, or huge, arctic blue glistering caves when grander. They’re precise; stable, but at the same time would not work if they weren’t organized exactly how they are.

It’s easy to get too comfortable listening to Vespertine. The tracks are almost spiritual in a way, they convey an unparalleled bliss to the listener, and getting lost in the album is almost part of the experience. Especially in the second half of Vespertine, where things get real lowkey. Songs merge into each other, starting with the wonderful music box interlude Frosti into Aurora, which features one of Björk’s strongest vocal performances, proceeding to An Echo A Stain, a standout for its weird, suspenseful and eerie instrumental, evoking a dark vibe, it sounds like a deep underwater exploration into the darkest abysses of the ocean or some shit. The lyrics are also uniquely confrontational, they don’t portray the undying passion of songs before it, instead proclaiming “Don’t say no to me. You can’t say no to me. I won’t see you, denied.”. With all the vague and spacey lyrics, and the uneventful instrumental, it’s impressive this song progresses so well, mainly due to its weird, unsettling tone that sets itself apart from the rest of the songs. In a way, these odd and abstract lyrics mixed with the ethereal and bittersweet instrumentation remind me of some Radiohead songs, such as The National Anthem, How To Disappear Completely and Ful Stop, and I’m realizing this is a style of music I’m prone to liking.

Sun In My Mouth is not much of a standout topically or sonically to me, as it doesn’t do much to expand upon the sexuality of the album, with lyrics once again referring to inserting fingers into wherever, and closing with “Will I complete the mystery of my flesh?”, the themes seem to have nowhere to go. Heirloom depicts a reoccurring dream about Björk losing her voice, and having her mother and son pour a glowing oil into her mouth, which is a cute and artsy way of saying they’re her fuel for continuing with her craft, I guess. The lyrics don’t go anywhere with themselves after this though, but the instrumental is very creative and memorable, it creates a neat little bubble of involving, resonating synths.

Employing some heavy strings for Harm Of Will, Björk doubles down on the romance of the album, in a rather stripped-down song, with a few vocal highlights from her. It finds its place in the tracklist, I guess, although the oral sex line comes off a bit too strong for the smooth sentiment of the song.

To close Vespertine off, Unison, the longest song in the album, lays back on an ambient sample by Oval, and features one of Björk’s most unique vocal harmonies on its chorus; overall a nice, upbeat outro for a wonderful album.

I will say I felt more excited listening to Homogenic, as I think Vespertine’s romantic, sexual aura doesn’t expand into much after some of the many heavily sensual verses, while Homogenic wasn’t as tight and claustrophobic for me. Vespertine, however, was freer and left a bigger impact on me, It’s Not Up To You succeeded in making me cry. At the same time, none of the songs here felt like they didn’t belong, like they took away from the experience; every sound and line collaborates to make something bigger, something I don’t think I’ll get from many other albums in my lifetime.

BEST TO WORST: It’s Not Up To You, Pagan Poetry, Undo, Hidden Place, An Echo A Stain, Unison, Aurora, Heirloom, Cocoon, Harm Of Will, Frosti, Sun In My Mouth

It is a 10

“I can decide what I give, but it’s not up to me what I get given. Unthinkable surprises about to happen, but what they are, it’s not up to you.”

Medúlla

Björk’s 2004 Medúlla is, surprise surprise, an acapella album. And to further surprise, I liked it.

After Homogenic and Vespertine, I guess there was nowhere to go but towards the more experimental. You can’t really outdo those two albums in their own game, so you gotta branch out, try different things; and trying different things is exactly what Björk excels at, apparently. With Medúlla, all that wild, bombastic or serene instrumentation her previous albums were peppered with is gone, giving way to backing vocals ranging from super deep male bass to angelic choirs, beatboxing, and occasionally an isolated instrument. The album is rooted on the most primary form of music: barely any instruments, almost no effects or audio manipulations, just many voices uniting to become one; lyrics about childbirth, the human body, oceans and, of course, love.

Listening to Medúlla is interesting because it is very familiar, while also being a completely different experience from Björk’s previous albums. Songs like Who Is It and Mouth’s Cradle are unmistakably her, while at the same time being coated with an extra layer of experimentation, and with this new direction, Björk and her team are able to channel an energy that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with some of her best production. Where Is The Line? and Oceania are intricate and complex, showing just how much can be done with only the human voice. The low male vocals and beatboxing structure the songs, the choirs in the background give them depth, all the sounds link with themselves to amount to some incredible songs.

On the flipside, however, few songs fail to achieve that, in my opinion. Desired Constellation is notably bare and empty, with few aspects to its composition. The mystical lyrics that characterize Medúlla are still here, describing Björk playing routinely with stars to form whatever she desires, but apart from that, there isn’t much to experience. Mouth’s Cradle and its successor Miðvikudags are also not of much significance to the rest of the album, as they drift from its acapella compositions by employing some pleasant, but unnecessary synths as the basis of the songs. The simpler, shorter interludes that are peppered through the album are pretty much the standard sound for this record, fleshing it out with small little vocal passages and, of course, gibberish. Show Me Forgiveness, from my interpretation, is Björk apologizing to either herself or her daughter (as implied by the last line, “The girl might live”), for letting her interior voice be drowned out by the exterior; Öll Birtan is a simple buildup to the aforementioned Who Is It, but the best of the bunch are Sonnets/Unrealities XI, the poem it may not always be so; and i say by e. e. cummings over some of the best backing vocals in the album, Vökuró, where Björk sings a traditional Icelandic song in a very intimate and gorgeous moment in the album, and Ancestors, which features some passionate, odd and intriguing growls all throughout it.

It’s remarkable what Björk came up with in this album, the mystical aura surrounding it and forming its lyrics, in particular the verses in Oceania where she takes the role of the Ocean, exploring its perspective of Earth, time and the continents, Pleasure Is All Mine, which describes motherhood and childbirth for a sublime intro, and Submarine, featuring Robert Wyatt, evoking a sense of rebelliousness and urgency. Great album.

FAVORITE TRACKS: Oceania, Sonnets/Unrealities XI, Where Is The Line? Pleasure Is All Mine, Vökuró

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: Mouth’s Cradle

8.8/10

“When in doubt: give”

Outro

I postponed ths review for like 2 months or something, I don’t even know. Basically, from Debut to Vespertine was probably a one-month span of time, while it took me about double that time to actually write about Medúlla, because of what I think was a depressive episode. In the meantime, I started just reviewing shit on RateYourMusic (my username is fantaguarana, if anyone cares). I thought of stopping, I had this feeling that the whole “writing about everything I listen” thing was really forced and starting to become a chore, but now that I actually got to it, I think I notice how much it helps me organize my thoughts on music, compared to just listening to an album and never really reflecting on what it really means.

I’ll probably stop writing about everything I listen to, and leave this blog for the albums that really change me as a person. Have a good day yall.

#björk #post #debut #medúlla #homogenic #vespertine #art pop #art-pop #pop #review #album #album review

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