#I don’t know how this song ended up on my Spotify wrapped because phoebe bridgers is too emotionally damaging for me to listen to like.

[crossbackpoke-check]

56 and any Yamo pairing! 🫶

i just wheezed so hard when i saw what the song was i almost snorted coffee out of my nose i am so sorry for this one

#56 - kyoto phoebe bridgers + yamo

the story of how this song ended up on my wrapped is too long so it’s going in the tags but. let me set the scene for you.

2026 NHL GLOBAL SERIES™️ JAPAN - Presented by YPPI

November 13 & 14, 2026: Dallas Stars, Montreal Canadiens, Seattle Kraken, Vancouver Canucks

Saitama Super Arena, Saitama, Japan

It’s a pitiful excuse of a consolation prize for not being able to go to the Olympics, but Kailer’s not going to look a vacation horse in the mouth. The arena’s cool. It’s huge. The people are cool. There’s so many more of them than he thought there’d be with jerseys that have his name on the back, and a lot more that have the familiar orange and blue. He takes a picture of the fifth Oilers Yamamoto jersey he signs—this one’s the good Reverse Retro—and texts it to Connor, says,

no one here has even heard of mcjesus

and gets a moon face emoji in response. Leon’s influence. Kailer’s still never really deciphered what that one means, and he doesn’t think Connor knows either.

They don’t have a lot of time off between games, but Kailer’s trying to be a good tourist. His dad had been so happy when Kailer had told him about the series that Kailer’d had to stop him from trying to book a flight a year in advance, and his mom’s been just as bad, sending him every article she sees about Best New Spot in Tokyo! Cool Restaurant! Have You Seen This Japanese Cat Café? that she scrolls across on Facebook since June. Suzy’s in the same boat, so they’ve been crossing off their compiled travel-guide list together, looping in as many guys as they can. Everyone’s been pretty game. All the teams are crammed into close quarters at the same hotel, which means everyone wants to spend as much time as possible outside of it, and it helps that Kailer’s gotten pretty close with all the other guys that the NHL picked up as Global Series figureheads. Robo’s memes? Absolutely fire. The groupchat loves them.

For every item he crosses off the list, Kailer takes a picture and keeps it tucked in his phone notes. It’s like speed-running a scavenger hunt—they’re only here for four days—but he’s doing a pretty good job. His favorite so far has been all the gardens. They’re stunning, trees shining bright red and yellow, and every vendor has been selling maple candies, maple cakes, and even fried maple, though the official maple festival doesn’t start until next week. The second garden he visits, he does it on his own after practice, buying two cakes from a cart near the gate and walking until he loses the bustle outside. It’s easy to get lost in the winding pathways, heading deeper into the quiet, and there’s dozens of benches underneath the burnished leaves where young couples are tucked away on dates, or old friends are laughing and catching up. In some of the little clearings, there’s small shrines where people leave offerings, a prayer for good luck or good fortune.

Kailer stops at one without any people and sets the second maple cake on top of it, then sits and scrolls through all the texts that he’s missed. His mom gets replied to with a picture of him outside the garden gate, grinning and surrounded by other travelers. He sends his brother a picture of a trashy graphic I Love Japan t-shirt with the threat that he’ll buy one for him, and Kailer’s dad gets a picture of the meticulously arranged and cut bonsai that are across from the bench where he’s sitting. The Seattle groupchat gets a recycled meme from Robo, and he gets two thumbs up and an “LMAO” before he can even exit the thread. Finally, Kailer takes a picture of the half-eaten maple cake in his hand, holding it next to a fallen maple leaf on the bench, and gets halfway through typing another message before he thinks better of it.

(On the plane over, Drieds was reading them a story about how when they first introduced the high-speed railway, people were afraid to use it because they thought it would be too fast for their souls to keep up.

“Bro, if that were true, you just left your soul in the middle of the Pacific,” Ebs had laughed. “Planes are faster than trains.”

“Are they?” Matty asked. “Isn’t the train in Japan the fastest in the world?”

Drieds couldn’t make it through the rest of the story over the sound of everyone ripping Matty to shreds, so Kailer didn’t get to ask whether or not they found out anything about planes. Kailer’s not worried about his soul, but the logic makes a strange kind of sense; after all, he traveled 429 miles in five and a half hours once, and that was a little too fast for his heart to keep up.)

Fuck it. Kailer’s been trying to write a response for the past ten days, and he’s sick of swiping in and out of the message, staring at the keyboard so long he starts to see swirls in his vision.

Kailer drafts the text again and sends it, no context, no caption. A text travels faster than a high-speed train or a jet. Maybe it’ll pick his heart back up on the way.

#I don’t know how this song ended up on my Spotify wrapped because phoebe bridgers is too emotionally damaging for me to listen to like. #at all unless i am In It HOWEVER. there is this one silly video that brings me so much joy and made me feel semi-reasonable about listening #to kyoto & it’s the one video of the two painter guys painting the room & the lil guy is being a menace & the other guy just looks at him s #fondly & so lovingly & is that not the thesis of kailer yamamoto. be small be a menace be beloved by everyone. ANYWAY #liv in the replies #look this was going to be such a different thing and then. my brain went HEY BUDDY GUESS THE FUCK WHAT kyoto is a city in Japan. #day off in kyoto. guess who’s Japanese. guess what the nhl loves to do as HIFE publicity. also growing the AAPI audience is HUGE and i thin #they should. like originally i had NO idea what this was going to be (i’m so lying. the line ‘i’m gonna kill you’ but incredibly fond a la #the two painters video kept replaying in my head and i was like l m a o. klimmer & kailer. no plot all vibes it’s klimmer & Kailer that’s i #there is no real plot there is no actual idea the amount of googling that i did to write just this is UNREASONABLE i would love to be norma #about anything ever but i ALSO invented so much backstory to this that has no way of appearing in the actual fic and also jokes for ME #for instance. YPPI is the american manufacturer for yamaha motorcycles and. suzuki. yamamoto. (it’s not my brainworms it’s due to a fancam) #respectfully also i cannot write this fic. i have never been to japan and i think it would take me eight years to google enough #to be relatively comfortable like y’all have never seen the extensive research i put in to fucking phiLLY and a whole other COUNTRY??? #where the premise of the fic is learning how to be a tourist in your life and sometimes you have to grow out of things? #yeah i AM going to make something with the idea of Momijigari and life is ephemeral. is that a plot? no it’s vibes. #kailer goes to japan in the fall and realizes he’s a liar. who lies. (he misses [redacted]) (the redacted is because i haven’t decided) #also also. the garden reference is because a) i spent WAY TOO MUCH TIME ON GOOGLE and found out things to do in saitama and also that #kailer’s grandpa had a meticulous garden and i just think that’s neat #hiding-from-reality-56 #random ficlet is unbeta’d un-anything’d i don’t know WHERE this came from or the real plot of it at all. ok thanks byeeeee

[andillwatchh]

2023 spotify wrapped hahaha

because i don't think i saved my 2022 one and i'm kinda grieving for it, so i'm persevering this year's hereee (and also i just want to plead my case with myself here because WHAT)

okay look 😭 i don’t even know how it got there. i’m still trying to make peace with it/jk. i mean, i was obsessed with it in like january up to march or april (whenever my mcu/st obsession ended) but… i did not think i was this obsessed. pretty sure it was a miscount. (also the fact that my dad has a whole vinyl of this song. i wonder how he’d react if i told him lmao).

‘the night we met’ and ‘the great war’ are toootally because of everlark and i’m happy with it because them <33

‘waiting room’ oh my god!! of course of course. why didn’t i think it’d make it. phoebe singing “know it’s for the better” for 2828299 times in the span of three minutes is free therapy for me.

‘ceilings’ <- again a product of my early year obsession.

march 16 must be a bad day. 559 minutes?? that’s 9 hours. it makes sense though, march was one of the worstt month for me this year

i was on her 0.01 percent or something last year because her songs were literally all i listened to, it was!!

gracie on sep is soo true (i mean of course, but seriously, soo true i can feel it) -> and like full machine being my most listened gracie song!! (so disappointed it’s only on 8th buttt)

phoebe on august is also so true. that was the height of my waiting room era because august this year was << (also i just find it kinda funny that my birthday is on august and i spent it this year with crying to phoebe bridgers. i don’t know, something to look back to i guess)

conan!! i didn’t think he’d make it but look at him! i was sooo obsessed with superache in the middle of the year so makes sense. like the album is almost literally all i listened to. studying late at night? superache. crying staring at the wall? superache. un the mood to scream about the things i don’t even relate to? superache. thinking of your favorite character who has trauma and want to make an edit of it in your head? superache—> and that is why the exit is my most listened conan song *pain*

(i just found out i have about you on the sixth…… help. i swear to god my beginning of the year obsessions and hyperfixations are dominating this year’s wrapped and it’s EMBARRASSING to look at 😭)

okay goodbye thank you for coming to my rambles in shambles <3

#spotify wrapped #taylor swift #gracie abrams #phoebe bridgers #conan gray #<3 #talking

[kimchokejin]

music tag games 🎶

is it cheating to put them all in one post when everyone’s doing it?

thank you to everyone who tagged me i had a full day’s worth of music recs to listen to and bts songs to revisit happy hondadays to ME!

game #1: using your spotify top 100 playlist, shuffle 10 songs and tag 10 people.

thank you @cordiallyfuturedwight @wistfulocean and @seoksao​ for the tag! 💕

i will give the number they were on my list as well

99. Jackie Onassis by Sammy Rae & The Friends

51. Wild Roses by Jack Van Cleaf

73. Stick Season by Noah Kahan

92. New Shapes (feat. Christine and the Queens and Carolin Polachek) by Charli XCX

80. First Thing to Go by Hayley Williams

70. Mic Drop (Steve Aoki Remix) - Full Length Edition by BTS

88. religion (u can lay your hands on me) by Shura

63. No Blueberries by DPR IAN, DPR LIVE, CL

89. Lights by BTS

8. Vibez by ZAYN

game #2 (sponsored by kim taehyung): 💛 choose an artist you like and use the name of their songs to answer this as close to the truth as possible!

tagged by @cordiallyfuturedwight @jiminsproof @blueside-hobi @wistfulocean @seoksao​ thank you you guys are so creative these were so fun to read!

name of the artist: Halsey (it was working too well i had to go for it)

what is your gender: I am not a woman, I’m a god (“i’m god” - kim taehyung)

describe yourself: Ashley (you don’t need to be entertained. i’m entertaining myself)

how do you feel: Alone (but in a good way, an “i needed this” way 😌)

if you could go anywhere, where would it be: Roman Holiday

describe your best friend: Darling 🥰

your favourite time of day: 3am

if your life was a tv show, what would it be called: Still Learning

what is life to you: Hurricane, Heaven in Hiding

relationship status: Bad at Love 😬

what do you fear: Strangers (”i’m a little shy” - kim taehyung), Devil in Me (”i’m a bad boy” - kim taehyung)

game #3: share your top 5 current songs

tagged by @clutterbugs thank you emma!!! i feel like i get to use the free space in scrabble

1. Kiss in My Heart by Junk Fujiyama

i discovered this song a while back on a city pop playlist i think? and it’s been stuck in my head recently (even before indigo!) so i’ve been playing it. it’s just a fun happy song, it sounds like the artist is smiling as he’s singing it

2. ILLELLA by MAMAMOO

another super fun song and i didn’t think it was possible but i am gayer because of it. i have so many feelings about this i will have to hold myself back but i am v i b r a t i n g something’s about to break

3. girl like me by Blessing

this song is acoustic but i think also r&b influenced? i like how the lyrics are somewhat specific but the insecurity is she’s talking about is still super relatable to a lot of people and the singer’s voice is kind of unique

4. complex (demo) by Katie Gregson-MacLeod

this song is just kinda heartbreaking tbh at the end of the day it’s your typical woman trying to “save” a man who's too far gone to spare her a second thought story but the vocals really carry the emotion across in a way i don’t hear all the time so i think it’s worth a listen if you...want to feel sad

5. Ketchum, ID by Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus

i have been in a folksy mood lately and i think a few julien baker/phoebe bridgers/lucy daucus songs came up in my listening and that reminded me about this album. this is my favorite song from it. i think the line “i am never anywhere anywhere i go, when i’m home i’m never there long enough to know” is just really hitting for me rn? i also can’t get over how this is the last song on the album they ended the whole album with

BONUS GAME! i wasn’t tagged in this but i wanted to share this while i’m here in case anyone was interested in doing this for themselves. if you have spotify this bot will judge you for your music taste. it’s like the anti-spotify wrapped. this is what they had to say about mine:

i will tag @joon-rkive, @cheekyquokka, @mutedstring​, @jinsquishes​, @senor-hoberto​ and anyone who tagged me in one game but hasn’t been tagged in one of the others (does that make sense?). no pressure just if any of the games interest you 💕 feel free to ignore me!!!

#tag: i'm it! #cordiallyfuturedwight #wistfulocean #jiminsproof #blueside-hobi #seoksao #clutterbugs #joon-rkive #cheekyquokka #mutedstring #jinsquishes #senor-hoberto #i was relatively normal about this be proud of me please

[jolies-journal]

12 / 01 / 2022

rambles about getting older and time passing (it’s not fun all the time, what a shocker!)

it’s the first day of december which means i’m almost done with the first semester of my junior year of high school. i feel so weird. it’s like my head can’t comprehend that i have three semesters of high school left ever. even though i’m so done with high school, i’m scared to leave, scared to grow up. all of my friends are talking about how they received their cap and gown. they are applying to colleges and getting into them. i’m scared for them to leave, i don’t want them to. as i’m getting older, i’m realizing how odd life is. how slow, yet how exceptionally quick it passes by. it’s like when you want to go to sleep but your body is fighting your brain until it just... doesn’t. then, when you wake up, you can’t remember falling asleep or even being asleep. i don’t know if any of that made sense, but life lately hasn’t made much sense either. leith ross has been a comfort for me as i’ve felt like this. i’ve found that their music has a nostalgic aura to it, a nostalgia for a time that i’ve never felt, perhaps never will.

media talk !! light-hearted conversation to end on a good note :)

since my spotify wrapped came out, it’s made me realize that i generally listen to the same things (pretty much either sad indie folk or some type of bedroom/indie pop) so it’s made me want to diversify my listening, while still listening to the other stuff, of course. so, here’s some new songs i’ve been enjoying recently! i’ve been getting into george harrison, the doors, and the velvet underground. lately, my favorites have been someplace else and here comes the moon by george harrison, soul kitchen and the crystal ship by the doors, and rock & roll and oh! sweet nothin’ by the velvet underground. new music for a new point in life :) (5sos, the 1975, and phoebe bridgers always stay close by) 

life is weird and never stops moving. sometimes i hate that. i’m going to take my makeup off and go to sleep now because i have to wake up early for a student council meeting and theatre rehearsal (it’s for the addams family, i play wednesday!) i hope you’re having a beautiful time, whether it’s morning, night, or anything in between.

with love, jolie

#thoughts #brain dump #music #high school #existential angst

[aquaticstyles]

unchained

A while ago I was asked for a “Have You Ever Been In Love” sequel, and while this is probably not the direction you guys were expecting, this is what I came up with. Also, this one’s (loosely) inspired by the song “Scott Street” by the lovely Phoebe Bridgers (highly recommend listening to the spotify sessions version while listening). Fun fact, for forever I misheard the lyrics, thinking she was saying “unchained” instead of “ashamed.” After noticing that I have, in fact, been wrong this entire time, I realized I kinda liked my version better (sorry Phoebe). And, me being me, I ran with it and it spun into this quick, 1.4k part two. Reblogs + feedback help so much! Enjoy!! xx, Jane 

“Have you ever been in love?”

Harry’s heart stops.

The question catches him off guard, and not just because he’s not used to interviewers asking such personal ones (he guesses this is what he signed up for when he agreed to be the first male flying solo on the cover of Vogue). It makes his heart stop because of his answer, because of the woman that had once asked him the same exact question.

Harry has never been one to linger in his sadness; he finds it unproductive, and quite honestly, completely depressing. After a break up, one can find the caramel-colored curls belonging to the world’s latest phenomenon sweating out his sorrow, or frustration, at the gym, pounding the boxing bag again and again and again. “Nothing another set can’t fix,” his trainer, Mike, would often tease the man in denial, knowing good and well by his posture upon entering the ring, slumped shoulders and an ever-present crease between his eyebrows, that another one had bit the dust the night prior. Mike had learned fairly quickly to never ask questions, to simply let Harry work out his emotions as he pleases, even if that means letting him walk out with wrapped fists masking throbbing, crimson knuckles.

Harry has never been one to talk about his sadness either; he finds it prolongs the pain rather than diminishing it, an annoying gnat swarming around an abnormally large bite from a crisp apple, halting his progression in enjoying his afternoon snack because he just can’t catch the bloody thing. His sister has tried to break him from his stubborn ways, even resulting to getting the lanky man drunk off tequila in hopes of him finally opening up about his incessant missed targets; however, that only ever ends up with Gemma’s arms holding up the giggling teddy bear and folding his bulky body into a taxi, mimicking cramming a cotton ball into a straw. Therapy was suggested and waved off with an inked palm, because if he doesn’t want to talk to his sister about it, how on earth is he supposed to talk to a stranger?

Never-ending claims of “I’m fine,” and “It just didn’t work out,” and “Don’t worry ‘bout me,” and “It wasn’t even that serious.” Sure, each breakup took a little something out of the man that insisted he was “fine,” but eventually, a couple dozen inked journal pages later, Harry would be back to his normal, happy-go-lucky, perfectly-kind self.

All of these rang true for most of Harry’s young adulthood.

All of these were common occurrences, that is, until Harry met you.

You were unlike anyone he had ever met. Selfless, but not in an over-bearing, walk-all-over-me kind of way. Funny, but not in an underlying-hatred, fake-laugh kind of way. Genuine, but not in a look-at-me, fake kind of way. Honest, in a I-want-to-know-everything-that-makes-you-you, ask-you-questions-until-the-sun-rises kind of way. Drop-dead-gorgeous in the most unbelievable, glowing, ethereal, kind of way that he constantly reminded you of. You were the perfect balance, the missing diamond to even out the coal on the other end of the scale.

Loving you felt like the ocean.

In the morning when there’s a hazy screen covering your lenses, clouding the soft sunlight in a muted, white-washed filter. It’s more gray, yet still golden as the shining mass of fire lazily rises from its slumber. It’s calm, clouds stretched apart like cobwebs in the faded blue sky above, waves leisurely, almost too relaxed, crashing along the bleached shore then disappearing back into the horizon. Still sleepy, still new, an entire day ahead of you.

In the afternoon when the sun is at its highest and hottest, radiating down ultraviolet rays that burn your skin, causing alarmingly red shoulders in need of aloe that soon progressively heal and turn into a bronzed exterior. Speckles of light dancing upon excited waves, similar to a neighborhood of children dressed in pink polka dots and orange overalls running towards the ice cream truck filled to the brim with dreams of sugary stomachaches. It’s saturated, every color its brightest and loudest, pops of cerulean and coral. It’s a blanket of comfort, a suffocating scarf. It’s sweet. It’s sour. A cool glass of lemonade sinking into a bed of quicksand. Annoying and astonishing.

In the night, when the yellowing presence is long gone in the awakening of the moon, the deepest indigo swirling in between pockets of stars dotted and flecked into the atmosphere like freckles. It’s black and blue. You don’t know where the earth stopss and the water begins, familiarity lost as the waves erase each new footprint in the sand. The tide is an abuser, sweet as it sings you in, terrifying as it pulls you under. Skinny dipping, vulnerable, exciting, adrenaline, heart thumping, diving, sinking, drowning.

The morning, the afternoon, the night. The happening, the honeymoon, the heartbreak.

Ever since it ended, everything Harry had ever known was cast aside, thrown out like a Gucci jumper from last season. For the first time in his twenty-six years of living, fourteen of those juggling the obstacles that relationships can and will bring, Harry was irreversibly numb, a pair of frozen, gloveless fingertips blue from the icy wind. Not only did he linger in the gut-wrenching grief, he was absorbed by it. Instead of waking up each morning tucked into the bare side of your body diffusing innocent warmth, sipping a steaming cup of black coffee received by hands much smaller than his own, he woke up with a stranger laying on his chest, cold, with a pounding headache the bottle of whiskey had gladly supplied from the night before. The days felt as if they lasted an eternity, time stuck in slow-motion, tick, tick, ticking, one second, one and a half, one and three quarters, two. He watched the seasons pass, the grass dying and regenerating into its natural emerald shade from his bedroom, dust pocketing in the corners of a picture frame containing two pairs of sparkling eyes and genuine, toothy grins sitting on the windowsill. Nights consisted of him lying sleepless on his back, eyes wide awake, thumbs twiddling as the echoes of helicopters overhead drone in and out. Dozens of missed calls remained unanswered: Mum, Gem, Mitch, Mike, Adam, Sarah, Mum, Mum, Gem, Mum, Mike, Mitch, Gem, Mitch, Mum…

He was stuck, a pancake glued to an ungreased pan, charred. It was when this melancholy had prolonged for nearly its sixth month, and all at home remedies (which included drinking, writing, drinking because he was writing, and writing because he was drinking) failed to provide any peace that he decided to give in to the recommendations from almost every single one of his friends: therapy. After the first session, he was ready to book it and sprint off to a deserted island with nothing but a coconut filled with rum to accompany his solitude. Turns out that one session was the mento to his coca cola of bottled-up emotions, exploding months’ worth of buried feelings and memories in an hour. It took the will of God (and Gemma purposefully lying and telling him they were going to get lunch) to get Harry back in the baby-pink-painted interior of his therapist’s office. After months of talking, sorting, compartmentalizing, yelling, crying, healing, unpacking, and reflecting, Harry tackled down the closure he had been chasing. A year and an album later, when he heard your name, he no longer felt trapped, heart beating rapidly, trying desperately to break apart his ribcage, he felt unchained—a prisoner uncaged, pounds and pounds of metal unlocked from his wrists, free.

Before, your name was paired with a colorless photo album, snapshots of vibrancy draining into black and white, frozen, lifeless, still.

Now, your name resembled a film reel of the best moments, your sweater hanging in his closet, your arm thrown around his mother’s shoulder in a polaroid candid, your laugh echoing in the acoustics of his shower after you nearly slipped on the lavender bubbles coating sudsy toes, your hands massaging his scalp, twisting curls into detailed plaits, your foamy lips smushing against a stubbled cheek, leaving remnants of peppermint mocha in the winter air, your satin skirt contrasting from his purple flares in his backyard, playing thumb war and whispering confessions in the moonlight. The good memories built a brick wall to block out the bad, dimming the light of your downfall.

“Have you ever been in love?” The question echoes again in Harry’s ears, causing a grin and a dimple to pop into his cheek. The fuzzies. Once, twice, three times. Click, shake, tape.

“Yeah, I have.”

#My writing #Harry Styles #solo harry #harry imagine #harry blurb #harry fluff #harry one shot #harry styles imagine #harry styles writing #harry writing #harry styles fluff #harry styles fic #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles one shot #writing #imagine #harry styles x you #harry styles x reader #harry styles x y/n #harry styles angst #bf!harry #boyfriend!harry #unchained #unchained type beat #have you ever been in love type beat

[avantguardisme]

i got tagged by @bourgeoix​ to Tell Me Good Things That Happened This Year (last year now i guess) so here are some top 5s of mine from 2020 under the cut!

this will be difficult because i have absolutely no sense of time and don’t know when i did anything this year but i’ll do my best  

movies i watched: (i did have to look up what movies came out in 2020 for this lmao)

emma. (2020) was the last movie i saw in theaters god bless

finally watched someone great this december at my sister’s suggestion and it made me cry!!

almost forgot that the half of it came out in 2020 but oh my god what a good fucking movie (and if you liked the half of it go watch saving face too!! alice wu is a great fucking director and saving face is one of my faves)

i’m like 90% sure i watched parasite this year? anyway it was great & i gotta watch more bong joon ho movies

i really did not watch that many movies this year huh. 

oh wait fuck i forgot about the old guard & enola holmes, which ill group here together as a pair of refreshing action/adventure movies that i really enjoyed!

tv shows i watched:

harlots!! on this blog we love 1) women 2) period dramas 3) charlotte wells in particular

oh i think this year i finally rewatched all of atla! i saw almost every episode as a kid (normally several times and not necessarily in order) and even tho i remembered the show really well it was really cool to see it altogether! and find out i had missed watching TWO whole episodes as a kid

great pretender, but i mostly just liked the first season. fucking gorgeous show overall tho even if it kinda loses its balance thematically in the last arc

queen’s gambit (this is truly the year of my giant crush on anya taylor joy huh)

unsure if this technically counts as television but i got very into dimension 20 this year! especially fantasy high, but i’m also working my way through unsleeping city and crown of candy right now, just very good dnd actual play stuff overall

songs i listened to: (this is not my actual top 5 songs on spotify wrapped bc that’s embarrassing, more like my faves of the year)

ambrosia by rosie tucker

boreas by the oh hellos

i know the end by phoebe bridgers

high in the garden by sorcha richardson

nana triste by natalia lacunza & guitarricadelafuente

books i read:

earthsea! i think i started these this year, i’m currently on the farthest shore & genuinely all of them are so good, stan ursula le guin

the priory of the orange tree by samantha shannon!! yes this book is like 800 pages yes i did read half of it in like a week. i also didnt realize there was gonna be so many gays goin in and boy was i extremely pleasantly surprised

obligatory inclusion of a reading i did for class, but la vida es sueño by calderón de la barca honestly kinda kicks ass, i did a whole paper on one the soliloquies in there and the verse is just good y’all

oh also gender trouble by judith butler which i read a good bit of for my theory class and lives rent free in my brain at this point

uncensored picture of dorian grey by oscar wilde, which im like 90% sure i read early this year and not last year, but time doesnt exist who cares really. love that fucking prose tho, and i think the themes are more clear with the inclusion of basil as an explicitly gay character tbh

good things that happened to me:

got into grad school??? and started grad school???

related, but i wrote a 17 page term paper somehow too, which is a thing i apparently can do now

and i moved across the country and live in an apartment now! and i have so many plants! and a full size bed! and a desk and a bookshelf!

oh shit i almost forgot this was the year i finally got an adhd diagnosis! and now im all medicated and shit its fucking amazing

and i’ve started writing a lot more! not just papers for class and stuff, but also some more fiction which maybe i’ll actually finish one day lmao

uhhhhhhhhh idk who to tag since i dont interact much on here much anymore, how about @romanarcadia @waitingforgalois @equalseleventhirds @yourladybrie @starsighns and literally anyone else who wants in u can say i tagged u :)

#txt #ari adventures #feels weird since i rarely post my actual thoughts and opinions on this blog lmao #dont think i ever posted about going to grad school either? whoops

[fullregalia]

20/20.

This year, in hindsight, was a real write-off. I had grand plans for it, and while I ushered it in in a very low-key manner since I was recovering from the flu, I’d expected things to look up. Well, you know what they say about plans (RIP, my trip to Europe). I got very, very sick in early February, and I’m not entirely sure it wasn’t COVID. Since March, the days have been a carousel of monotony: coffee, run, work, cook, yoga, existential spiral, sleep. My Own Private Year of Rest and Relaxation, if you will. Of course, life has a way of breaking through regardless; I attended protests, completed my thesis, graduated from grad school, took a couple of road trips upstate, and celebrated the accomplishments and birthdays of friends and family from a safe social distance. It was all a bit of a blur, and not ideal circumstances to re-enter the real world, or whatever this COVID-present is. 

Throughout it all, in lieu of happy hours, coffee dates, and panel discussions, I’ve turned even more to culture and cuisine to fill the the negative space on my calendar where my social life once resided. However, since a global pandemic ought not to disrupt every tradition, here’s my year-end round up of what made this terrible one slightly more tolerable. 

TV

After an ascetic fall semester abstaining from TV in 2019 (save for my beloved Succession), I allowed myself to watch more as the year wore on, and especially after graduation. I caught up on some cultural blind spots by finally getting around to The Sopranos, Ramy, Search Party, and Girlfriends. I wasn’t alone in bingeing Sopranos, it absolutely lived up to the hype and then some; this Jersey Girl can’t get enough gabagool-adjacent content, pizzeria culture is my culture!

Speaking of my culture, there was also a disproportionate amount of UK and European shows in my queue. Nothing like being in social isolation and watching the horny Irish teens in Normal People brood. I’m partial to it because I share a surname with the showrunner, so I have to embrace blind loyalty even though there was, in my opinion, a Marianne problem in the casting. Speaking of charming Irish characters with limited emotional vocabularies, I belatedly discovered This Way Up a 2019 show from Aisling Bea and Sharon Horgan. And while Connell and Marianne are actually exceptional students, I found the real normal people on GBBO to bring me a bit more joy. Baking was abundantly therapeutic for me this year, and watching charming people drink loads of tea and fret over soggy bottoms was a comfort. I also discovered the Great Pottery Throw Down, and as a lifelong ceramics enthusiast, I cannot recommend it highly enough if you care about things like slips, coils, and glazing techniques. GPTD embraces wabi sabi in a way that GBBO eschews flaws in favor of perfection, and in a time of uncertainty, the former reminded me why I miss getting my hands in the mud as a coping mechanism (hence all the baking). Speaking of coping mechanisms, like everybody else with two eyes and an HBO password, I loved Michaela Cole’s I May Destroy You; though we’ve all had enough distress this year for a lifetime, watching Cole’s Arabella process her assault and search for meaning, justice, and closure was a compelling portrait of grief and purpose in the aftermath of trauma. Arabella’s creative and patient friends Kwame and Terry steal the show throughout, as they deal with their own setbacks and emotional turmoil. Where I May Destroy You provides catharsis, Ted Lasso presents British eccentricity in all its stereotypical glory. At first I was skeptical of the show’s hype on Twitter, but once I gave in it charmed me, if only for Roy Kent’s emotional trajectory and extolling the restorative powers of shortbread. For a more accurate depiction of life in London, Steve McQueen’s series Small Axe provides a visually lush and politically clear-eyed depiction of the lives of British West Indians in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Lastly, how could I get through a recap of my year in tv if I don’t mention The Crown. Normal People may have needed an intimacy coordinator, but the number of Barbours at Balmoral was the real phonographic content for me.

Turning my attention across the Channel, after the trainwreck that was Emily in Paris, I started watching a proper French show, Call My Agent! It’s truly delightful, and unlike the binge-worthy format of "ambient shows” I have been really relishing taking an hour each week to watch CMA, subtitles, cigarettes, and all.

Honorable mention: The Last Dance for its in-depth look at many notable former Chicago residents; High Fidelity for reminding me of the years in college when my brother and I would drive around listening to Beta Band; and Big Mouth.

Music

My Spotify wrapped this year was a bit odd. I don‘t think “Chromatica II into 911″ is technically a song, so it revealed other things about my listening habits this year, which turned out to remain very much stuck in the last, sonically. I listened to a lot more podcasts than new music this year, but there were some records that found their way into heavy rotation. While I listened to a lot of classics both old and new to write my thesis (Paul Simon, Leonard Cohen, Prokofiev, and Bach) the soundtrack to my coursework, runs, walks, and editing was more contemporary. Standouts include: 

Saint Cloud by Waxahatchee, which makes me feel like I’m breathing fresh air even when I’m stuck inside all day 

La Bella Vita by Niia, which was there for me when I walked past my ex on 7th avenue (twice!) and he pretended that I didn’t exist 

Fetch the Bolt Cutters by THEE Fiona Apple, because Fiona, our social distancing queen, has always been my Talmud, her songs shimmering, evolving, and living with me every year 

Shore by Fleet Foxes, for the long drive to the Catskills 

Women in Music, Pt. III by HAIM, because these days, these days...

Musicians have been reckoning with tumult this year as much as the rest of us, and the industry has dealt with loss on all fronts. I’d be remiss not to talk about how the passing of John Prine brought his music into my life, and McCoy Tyner, who has been a companion through good and bad over the years. 

Honorable mention to: græ by Moses Sumney; The Main Thing by Real Estate; on the tender spot of every calloused moment by Ambrose Akinmusire; Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers; folklore by you know who; and songs by Adrianne Lenker. 

Reading

What would this overlong blob be without a list of the best things I read this year? While I left publishing temporarily, books, the news, and newsletters still took up a majority of my attention (duh and/or doomscrolling by any other name). I can’t be comprehensive, and frankly, there are already great roundups of the best longform this year out there, so this is mostly books and praising random writers. 

Last year I wrote about peak newsletter. Apparently, my prediction was a bit premature as this year saw an even bigger Substack Boom. But two new newsletters in particular have delighted me: Aminatou Sow’s Crème de la Crème and Hunter Harris’ Hung Up (her ”this one line” series is true force of chaotic good on Blue Ivy’s internet). Relatedly, Sow and Ann Friedman’s Big Friendship was gifted to me by a dear friend and another bff and I are going to read it in tandem next week. 

On the “Barack Obama published a 700+ page memoir, crippling the printing industry’s supply chains” front, grad school severely hamstrung my ability to read for pleasure, but I managed to get through almost 30 books this year, some old (Master and Margarita), most new-ish (Say Nothing, Nickel Boys). Four 2020 books in particular enthralled me:

Uncanny Valley: Anna Wiener’s memoir has been buzzed about since n+1 published her essay of the same name in 2016. Her ability to see, clear-eyed, the industry for both its foibles and allure captured that era when the excess and solipsism of the Valley seemed more of a cultural quirk than the harbinger of societal schism.  

Transcendent Kingdom: Yaa Gyasi’s novel about faith, family, loss, and--naturally--grad school was deeply empathetic, relatable, and moving. I think this was my favorite book of the year. Following the life of a Ghanaian family that settles in Alabama, it captured the kind of emotional ennui that comes from having one foot in the belief of childhood and one foot in the bewilderment that comes from losing faith in the aftermath of tragedy.  

Vanishing Half: Similarly to Transcendent Kingdom, Brit Bennett’s novel about siblings who are separated; it’s also about the ways that colorism can be internalized and the ways chosen family can (and cannot) replace your real kin. It was a compassionate story that captured the pain of abuse and abandonment in two pages in a way that Hanya Yanagihara couldn’t do in 720.

Dessert Person: Ok, so this is a cookbook, but it’s a good read, and the recipes are approachable and delicious. After all the BA Test Kitchen chaos this summer, it’s nice we didn’t have to cancel Claire. Make the thrice baked rye cookies!!!! You will thank me later.

Honorable mention goes to: Leave The World Behind for hitting the Severance/Station Eleven dystopian apocalypse novel sweet spot; Exciting Times for reminding me why I liked Sally Rooney; and Summer by Ali Smith, which wasn’t the strongest of the seasonal quartet, but was a series I enjoyed for two years.  

Podcasts

I’m saving my most enthusiastic section for last: ever since 2018, I’ve been listening to an embarrassing amount of podcasts. Moving into a studio apartment will do that to you, as will grad school, add a pandemic to that equation and there’s a lot of time to fill with what has sort of become white noise to me (or, in one case, nice white parents noise). In addition to the shows that I’ve written about before (Still Processing, Popcast, Who? Weekly, and Why is This Happening?), these are the shows I started listening to this year that fueled my parasocial fire:

You’re Wrong About: If you like history, hate patriarchy, and are a millennial, you’ll love Sarah Marshall and Michael Hobbes’ deep dives into the most notable stories of the past few decades (think Enron and Princess Diana) and also some other cultural flashpoints that briefly but memorably shaped the national discourse (think Terri Schiavo, Elian González, and the Duke Lacrosse rape case).

Home Cooking: This mini series started (and ended) during the pandemic. As someone who stress baked her way through the past nine months, Samin Nosrat and Hrishikesh Hirway’s show is filled with warmth, banter, and useful advice. Home Cooking has been a reassuring companion in the kitchen, and even though it will be a time capsule once we’re all vaccinated and close talking again, it’s still worth a listen for tips and inspiration while we’re hunkered down for the time being. 

How Long Gone: I don’t really know how to explain this other than saying that media twitter broke my brain and enjoying Chris Black and Jason Stewart’s ridiculous banter is the price I pay for it.

Blank Check: Blank Check is like the GBBO of podcasts--Griffin Newman and David Sims’ enthusiasm for and encyclopedic knowledge of film, combined with their hilarious guests and inevitable cultural tangents is always a welcome distraction. Exploring a different film from a director’s oeuvre each week over the course of months, the podcast delves into careers and creative decisions with the passion of completists who want to honor the filmmaking process even when the finished products end up falling short. The Nancy Meyers and Norah Ephron series were favorites because I’d seen most of the movies, but I also have been enjoying the Robert Zemeckis episodes they’re doing right now. The possibility of Soderbergh comes up often (The Big Picture just did a nice episode about/with him), and I’d love to hear them talk about his movies or Spike Lee (or, obviously, Martin Scorsese).      

Odds & Ends

If you’re still reading this, you’re a real one, so let’s get into the fun stuff. This was a horrible way to start a new decade, but at least we ended our long national nightmare. We got an excellent dumb twitter meme. I obviously made banana bread, got into home made nut butters, and baked an obscene amount of granola as I try to manifest a future where I own a Subaru Outback. Amanda Mull answered every question I had about Why [Insert Quarantine Trend] Happens. My brother started an organization that is working to eliminate food insecurity in LA. Discovering the Down Dog app allowed me to stay moderately sane, despite busting both of my knees in separate stupid falls on the criminally messed up sidewalks and streets of Philadelphia. I can’t stop burning these candles. Jim Carrey confused us all. We have a Jewish Second Gentleman! Grub Street Diets continued to spark joy. Dolly Parton remains America’s Sweetheart (and possible vaccine savior). And, last, but certainly not least: no one still knows how to pronounce X Æ A-12 Boucher-Musk.

#year in review #2020 #this was a terrible year #books #podcasts #tv #movies #banana bread #dessert person #niia #transcendent kingdom #vanishing half #gbbo #pottery throw down #the crown #you're wrong about #blank check #how long gone #chris black #home cooking #baking #uncanny valley #fiona apple #fetch the bolt cutters #waxahatchee #saint cloud #haim #fleet foxes #john prine #music

[tonguetiedmag]

interview: sleep on it

With only a few shows left of their final club tour of the year, I chatted with Teddy Horansky (guitar, vocals) of Sleep On It before their performance in Denver about his newfound love for photography, Sleep On It’s most underrated song, and future music-- as well as some potential headline shows.

How are you?

Good! I’m very tired today. Just driving catching up with us--we drove overnight, but excited to be here!

Definitely a hard drive to and from Denver.

Yeah, it was just a far drive and we’re not sleeping that much, but it’s gonna be a good show; it’s sold out, and I’m happy to be here.

Good! Get any sleep last night?

Got a couple of hours in the van and a couple hours at our friends but it’s kind of sporadic. We’ve got a day off tomorrow which is good!

What are you guys doing?

Driving to salt lake ... this time we’re playing a venue we haven’t actually played before, Kilby court ... I’ve heard it’s outside but I don’t know for sure... I hope it’s not.

I hope it’s not either, for everyone’s sake! You guys always talk about promoting an inclusive environment at your shows, so I’m curious how you’ve seen the effects of that and how it’s affected fans?

I’ve always been in the mindset of a little bit goes a long way, just with talking to everyone at the end of the night, and making sure everybody is having a good time, we just try to promote that. And on stage; we try to have a very welcoming, inclusive environment, we want people to feel welcomed and safe at our shows. I think we’ve taken cues from other bands, we’re not the first one to do this stuff, but bands like the Maine go out of their way to have a close connection with the fan base. I think that ultimately makes fans of that band for life. It’s just something about that connection and being accessible.

Have you ever had fans comment on it? Either to you, or thanking you for it?

Yeah, all the time! We’ve got sleepyhead, that’s our street team, we’ve got a Facebook group and people post about it all the time in there. ..Obviously we can’t fix anything [messed up things in the world] but we can provide that safe space, it’s somewhere to go and have a good time for a few hours.

What’s your favorite thing about playing club shows?

Intimacy. Playing at warped tour and stuff you’re outside and it’s open air, and it’s cool and fun, but being really close to the fans in front of us on stage and that intimacy, we all feed off of that energy. Playing venue shows and just seeing that reaction right in front of you gets a little crazy and gets us feeling alive.

It’s your first club tour since Luka[drums] hurt his shoulder. How has it been having him back?

It’s amazing. It’s not really Sleep On It without Luka, and our friend Eric did a really great job filling in, but it’s obviously a situation we don’t want again-- we want to make sure Luka stays healthy. I would say he’s the “soul” of Sleep On It; his energy, his character, and he’s a phenomenal drummer. It feels good, it feels very natural.

What have you been listening to on drives?

Lately I’ve been listening to this podcast called “Lead Singer Syndrome” with Shane[Told] from Silverstein, where he interviews other bands, and that’s really cool. I feel like I, more than most of the guys listen to weird different stuff. I’ve been listening to the new J. Cole record a lot, there’s a lot of hip-hop I really like--I really like Kendrick Lamar and Vince Staples and stuff like that. So I’ve been listening to that a little bit more,[and] a lot of people are putting out their end of the year best albums, so I’ve been trying to find more albums[that way].

Like the “Spotify Wrapped” stuff?

Yeah! That, and just people posting their top 10 albums of the year. I’m admittedly not the best at finding new stuff, so end of the year lists are really great because everyone loves all these records, so I check them out. I was also listening to boygenius yesterday which is Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers and another person[Lucy Dacus]...[they’re] not a supergroup but a side project thing, so that’s been cool.

Overexposed came out a year ago. Do you guys have plans to headline that album?

We’re going on tour with another band in the spring as direct support, hopefully we’ll be announcing that very soon. Two weeks after this tour is done we start recording LP2... I’ve been writing a lot [and] it’s been such a different process from writing Overexposed ; like we had a really long time to write it—everyone says you have your whole life to write your first record, and in a sense it’s kinda true, but this is the first time we’ve wrote a record while we’ve been touring a lot. ..I had some time before Warped Tour where I wrote a lot, and now I’m trying to write more and more and I feel pretty good about it. We’re going out to LA to do the record in January, so there’s talks of a headliner next year-- nothing is confirmed yet and there’s a lot of things up in the air, but we would definitely love to do some headlining shows next year.

What’s your favorite thing to do when you’re not doing music?

Travelling. I love to travel, my girlfriend is a flight attendant so we love to take trips when we can--went to Tokyo earlier this year, that was really sick. We went out to Boston for a few days to visit my grandparents. I’ve also gotten into photography this year- I got a film camera for Christmas and had never done photography in my whole life, but I wanted to, and film photography just seemed really interesting to me... It coincides with—I like to travel, and now I like to take pictures, so it helps me experience wherever I am a bit more when I have my camera with me. I love doing that, and also just spending time with my girlfriend, my family and stuff like that. Exercise, which admittedly has taken a backseat recently with all the band stuff going on, but I try to stay active and physically fit as much as possible.

That’s really important, especially I’m sure with living in a van however much of the year.

Yeah, just mentally[it’s important].

In your opinion, what’s your most underrated song?

I think the title track from Overexposed . I don’t know, I mean people still like it—that’s one of our favorite songs, we like playing it live. We haven’t played it live in a while so it’s hard to say if it’s underrated or not, but I think that song is really awesome and hopefully we’ll be able to play it. If we do any headline shows next year I’m sure that’s one we’d like to play.

Where have you guys played it before?

I feel like we played it on the Four Year Strong tour last year, a while ago. We played it before the record even came out, it’s just a fun song to play live— and tours like this where we’re support, our sets are short so we’ve gotta play the hits.

Since Overexposed came out your guys fan base has grown quite a lot. How have you adjusted to that?

It’s been great. I feel like it continues to grow every day, especially being on tour out here. I just love seeing positivity, the community of the fan base. We really try to cultivate a fan base that’s really supportive of each other, so that’s super rad. We would love to play overseas next year, I feel like it could definitely happen, and expand that fan base internationally. It’s just been humbling—it’s a good thing.

And for Tongue Tied’s signature question— how would you describe your music to someone who can’t hear?

I would say it’s rock, it’s upbeat, it can be aggressive but also pop-driven, and that we try to be very honest lyrically; writing about songs dealing with sadness, but also hopeful songs—I think somewhere in there is what we sound like.

Check out Sleep On It online:

https://www.sleeponitband.com

https://www.facebook.com/sleeponitband/

https://twitter.com/SleepOnItBand?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Interview by: Liz Holland

#liz holland #music #live music #concert #sleep on it #interview #sleep on it interview

[jafreitag]

2020

On January 1, 2020, I went to LNHQ. The holiday party had happened a few days earlier – a sorta-epic “booze cruise” with Lana Del Rey off the Catalina coast. Everybody nursed hangovers on flights back home, and then bugged off to celebrate their new years with their people.

The office was spotless – just a few dust motes floating across the afternoon sunlight in the conference room. I grabbed a piece of chalk and wrote “What if…” on the green board. It was intended as a turn-the-page talking point. OM and I had had a sit-down after we got back from Cali. Good talk, honestly. He’s well-versed in stuff that I do not understand, and he’s driving the proverbial bus as the new LN CEO. Lotta heartfelt questions from him, lotta heartfelt idks from me. “You gotta…” and “Yeah, I suck at that, but what about…” Some bourbon later, we adjourned. “Love you, dude” and “love you back, man.” Let’s meet next week and ok.

So that’s why I was there. What are we doing? What if… What if we actually try hard? What if ECM keeps killing it on Instagram? What if Jane and Trevor come back? What if we move to a new location, and the corporate and content wings find a new synergy? What if all of the sponsorships pan out? And O’s settlement with Adidas? Sky’s the limit, right? Let your imagination wander. I mean, what if Fiona Apple puts out a new album in 2020, and it’s not just great, but better than The Idler Wheel, which was the best album of 2012?

Seriously. What if?

Or what if the entire world breaks?

That wasn’t in my head back then.

It’s December now. And we’re in a global pandemic, which is getting worse (or at least not getting measurably better) every day. This year has been indescribably difficult for all of us, particularly the ones personally affected by Covid-19. And it has been difficult for businesses across every sector, particularly entertainment. Seen a show lately? Nope? Me, neither. At the beginning of the summer, I paid Laura Marling to watch a stream of her performance at Union Chapel in London. Seemed cool then, seems irrelevant now.

We can’t help artists/bands, really, until we can see them again. And who knows when that will be? Next summer? Next fall? Maybe 2022 before we all feel safe in massive crowds again (even with masks)? Maybe never? Until then, we have streaming services. And … woof. That’s an Apple/Spotify cart that I’d prefer not to upend, mainly because it benefits me, but it’s worth some words.

I’m a Spotify person. My home team is comprised of six Spotify people. We pay, collectively, $14.99/month to stream almost any music ever recorded and released. That’s around $2.50 per person per month. Pretty good deal, right? For sure. Here’s the problem: Spotify pays $0.003 per stream. That’s 1/3 of a penny. If you’re a Zeppelin or a Beatle or a Stone, that’s just a nice little dividend. (Keith is like, “Hey, baby, I love Spot-ify. I bought this sweet fedorah with that check.”) If you’re somebody else, somebody less established in the Rock-royalties pantheon, you’re probably not buying a hat. You’re probably hoping that Spotify might, might, pick up your next cup of coffee – or one at the end of the year, I don’t know how that works.

Spotify does this year-end Wrapped thing. You get a weird Snapchat/Instagram video that tells you stuff. Your most listened-to artist/band, your also-rans, etc. You also get some pretty sweet virtual (and unearned) affirmation.

My win was this.

911 seems good. It’s better than 11. The green-dotify didn’t specify whom those new artists were, which sucks, but I have a decent idea. And I’m guessing that many of those artists have Bandcamp pages, and I didn’t visit any of those. Actually, that’s not true. I did visit the Car Seat Headrest page because Will put out three different iterations of the new record on streaming, cd, and vinyl. It was mostly the same – alternate sequences and some alternate versions of certain tracks. The alternate versions weren’t on Bandcamp. You had to buy all three formats to get the whole record. Or you had to be ok with the iteration that you got. Or you could just find the alternate versions on YouTube. Sure, they wouldn’t be on your phone, but you got to hear them.

That’s not me being petty or cheap. I could’ve bought the cd and vinyl iterations. And I could’ve bought alot of music on Bandcamp, but I couldn’t have bought 911-new-artists worth. How many could I have bought? Not sure. How would I have decided? Not sure. I’m glad that I discovered that many sounds, and I’m concerned that most of those sounds were produced by real people struggling to create in this challenging (intentionally undersold the adjective there, but “terrible” and “horrible” seemed trite) environment. I’m more glad than concerned, if you follow the dichotomy. And I’m not happy about it. Having identified the problem, however, I’m flummoxed about a solution.

I listened to alot of music in 2020. #WFH #FTW (And two hashtag sentence fragments make a sentence. I just checked the LN style manual. Jane said ok.)

Alessandro Deljavan is an Italian pianist, who was born a few months before I graduated high school. He recorded Erik Satie’s piano works. My best friend and I listened to that alot this year – she calls it “sleeping music.” Miles Davis, obv. Early-covid, I made a chronologically-tight playlist of his pre-Columbia material. Mid-covid, I started a chronologically-tight and still-unfinished playlist of his fusion material. Jenny Lin? I think that’s a holdover from last year, when sleeping music was her Chopin’s Nocturnes. CSH was my lawnmowing soundtrack. Daniel Baremboim? No idea, maybe I hit his Mendelssohn’s Leider ohne Worte too many times during the days.

Minutes listened and top genre are what I want to talk about, real quick, before I get list-y. 115,891 minutes is 1,931 or so hours, and 80.5 or so days. I listened to two and a half months straight of music this year. That’s not a brag or even a humble brag. It’s a fact. And most of that (trust me here, I ran my ass off to playlists) was Indie Rock – the aforementioned “new artists.” How can I help them, besides streaming their amazing work over and over and over, and championing them here? Shouting indirectly at Spotify on social media seems unlikely to change a flawed system. Anybody with more constructive ideas can share them below the line.

Ok, the list.

I did it. I broke the unspoken rule (nobody gets #1 twice), and I’m ok with it. 2020 was a unique year. Up top, that’s Fiona from a Zoom call over the summer. She didn’t really know about Liner Notes, but she was willing to talk while walking her dogs. I wasn’t sure that Fetch the Bolt Cutters would be the album of the year at that point, but it was a nice chat. Tbh, I struggled to finalize the list because any of the Top 10 could’ve been Top. The margins were very fine. (And fwiw, I may tweak things a bit over the next few weeks.) Links to Spotify. And COME ON, Spotify. Pay artists more, and pay indie artists even more than that.

Fiona Apple – Fetch the Bolt Cutters

Phoebe Bridgers – Punisher

Waxahatchee – Saint Cloud

This Is the Kit – Off Off On

HAIM – Women in Music Pt. III

En Attendant Ana – Juillet

Samia – The Baby

Kelly Lee Owens – Inner Song

Adrianne Lenker – songs / instrumentals

Porridge Radio – Every Bad

SAULT – Untitled (Black Is) / Untitled (Rise)

Taylor Swift – folklore / evermore

The 1975 – Notes On A Conditional Form

Car Seat Headrest – Making a Door Less Open

Perfume Genius – Set My Heart on Fire Immediately

Lomelda – Hannah

Fleet Foxes – Shore

Soccer Mommy – color theory

Beach Bunny – Honeymoon

Retirement Party – Runaway Dog

Shopping – All or Nothing

Ela Minus – acts of rebellion

The Strokes – The New Abnormal

Fontaines D.C. – A Hero’s Death

Kate NV – Room for the Moon

Dehd – Flower of Devotion

Gum County – Somewhere

Bad Moves – Untenable

Jeff Tweedy – Love Is the King

Laura Marling – Song for Our Daughter

Autechre – SIGN

Four Tet – Sixteen Oceans

Sorry – 925

Dream Wife – So When You Gonna…

Fenne Lily – BREACH

Margaret Glaspy – Devotion

Jordana – Something to Say to You

Hinds – The Prettiest Curse

Gorillaz – Song Machine: Season One

Tame Impala – The Slow Rush

Tycho – Simulcast

Ólafur Arnalds – some kind of peace

Ezra Feinberg – Recumbent Speech

Slow Pulp – Moveys

Young Jesus – Welcome to Conceptual Beach

Bartees Strange – Live Forever

U.S. Girls – Heavy Light

Empress Of – I’m You’re Empress Of

Charli XCX – how i’m feeling now

Oliver Coates – skins n slime

LN is on hiatus for a little while.

More soon.

JF

from WordPress https://ift.tt/3rDCuuR via IFTTT

#IFTTT #WordPress