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marmalodi · 3 years

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John Lennon and Yoko Ono Interview: St. Regis Hotel, 9/5/1971

When we turned up at the St. Regis for our first interview, John and Yoko were still in bed. It was nearly afternoon and there was a flurry of activity in the adjacent rooms. May Pang was much in evidence, bustling about, her long black hair swirling around her. (This was a year or two before her affair with John.) She told us that our interview would have to be interrupted by a fitting for Yoko, which turned out to be to our advantage, because in Yoko's absence John was prepared to go back into the past and talk about Hamburg and the role of Brian Epstein.

We were served tea on a silver tray. John chain-smoked Gauloises, and the interview proceeded. It was obvious from the start that he was still angry at Paul, but when I played the tapes back later, I noticed he did not say anything negative about Paul's music. He attacked Paul for being bossy, arrogant, chauvinistic, etc, but in the next breath he would be telling us about Hamburg and about Paul having to be onstage for an hour and a half playing 'What'd I Say,' and you could hear the affection in his voice.

I have listened to these tapes many times, and I have always been struck by the contradictions within John Lennon. He tended to see the world in terms of black and white, and people were either on his good list or his hit list, and often subject to being switched from one to the other, according to which way the conversation turned. He was always outspoken, yet the charm of John's outspokenness was not only his way with words, but also that he was as critical and candid about himself as others. In the end it was this that made him endearing. He bared his soul about everything -- his insecurities, his mistakes -- and when he did so, even when he appeared ridiculous, he was a breath of fresh air in the entertainment world.

One moment I remember during the interview was when John and Yoko were leaning toward the microphone, each jostling the other to tell the story of how they met and fell in love. No one could have been in their presence for those minutes and not have been affected by it.

Neil Aspinal, the Beatles' longtime friend, said, 'The Beatles' world was an unreal world... a war zone.' It surely was. In a way I think Yoko brought John home. He found comfort, love, and understanding with her. He had a son by her and devoted himself to his child. I have no doubt he was a happier man in 1980 than he was in 1967 when he walked into that London art Gallery. - Peter McCabe (1984)

Q: "Let's talk about the Beatles' breakup, and the falling out between you and Paul. A lot of people think it had to do with the women in your lives. Is that why the Beatles split up?"

JOHN: "Not really. The split was over who would manage us -- Allen Klein or the Eastmans -- and nothing else really, although the split had been coming from Pepper onward."

Q: "Why, specifically?"

JOHN: "Paul was always upset about the White Album. He never liked it because on that one I did my music, he did his, and George did his. And first, he didn't like George having so many tracks. He wanted it to be more a group thing, which really means more Paul. So he never liked that album, and I always preferred it to all the other albums, including Pepper, because I thought the music was better. The Pepper myth is bigger, but the music on the White Album is far superior, I think."

Q: "That's your favorite, of all the Beatle albums?"

JOHN: "Yeah, because I wrote a lot of good shit on that. I like all the stuff I did on that, and the other stuff as well. I like the whole album. But if you're talking about the split, the split was over Allen and Eastman."

Q: "You didn't like Lee Eastman (Linda's father), nor John (Linda's brother), and the Eastmans didn't like Allen Klein..."

JOHN: "The Eastmans hated Allen from way back. They're from the class of family... like all classes, I suppose, they vote like Daddy does. They're the kind of kids who just think what their fathers told them."

Q: "But for a while you didn't get along with Linda."

JOHN: "We all got along well with Linda."

Q: "When did you first meet her?"

JOHN: "The first time was after that Apple press conference in America. We were going back to the airport and she was in the car with us. I didn't think she was particularly attractive. A bit too tweedy, you know. But she sat in the car and took photographs and that was it. And the next minute she's married him."

YOKO: "There was a nice quality about her. As a woman she doesn't offend you because she doesn't come on like a coquettish bird, you know? So she was alright, and we were on very good terms until Allen came into the picture. And then she said, 'Why the hell do you have to bring Allen into it?' She said very nasty things about Allen."

Q: "Yoko, you weren't with John the first time he met her?"

YOKO: "No. The first time I met her was when she came to the EMI studio. And you know, when Beatles are recording, there's very few people around, especially no women. If a young woman comes into the room, everybody just sort of looks at her. So I was there, and the first thing Linda made clear to me -- almost unnecessarily -- was the fact that she was interested in Paul, and not John, you know? She was sort of presupposing that I would be nervous. She just said, 'Oh, I'm with Paul.' Something to that effect. I think she was eager to be with me and John, in the sense that Paul and John are close, we should be close too. And couple to couple we were going to be good friends."

Q: "What was Paul's attitude to you as things progressed?"

YOKO: "Paul began complaining that I was sitting too close to them when they were recording, and that I should be in the background."

JOHN: "Paul was always gently coming up to Yoko and saying, 'Why don't you keep in the background a bit more?' I didn't know what was going on. It was going on behind my back."

Q: "So did that contribute to the split?"

JOHN: "Well, Paul rang me up. He didn't actually tell me he'd split, he said he was putting out an album. He said, 'I'm now doing what you and Yoko were doing last year. I understand what you were doing.' All that shit. So I said, 'Good luck to yer.'"

Q: "So, John. You and Paul were probably the greatest songwriting team in a generation. And you had this huge falling out. Were there always huge differences between you and Paul, or was there a time when you had a lot in common?"

JOHN: "Well, Paul always wanted the home life, you see. He liked it with daddy and the brother... and obviously missed his mother. And his dad was the whole thing. Just simple things. He wouldn't go against his dad and wear drainpipe trousers. And his dad was always trying to get me out of the group behind me back, I found out later. He'd say to George, 'Why don't you get rid of John, he's just a lot of trouble. Cut your hair nice and wear baggy trousers,' like I was the bad influence because I was the eldest. So Paul was always like that. And I was always saying, 'Face up to your dad, tell him to fuck off. He can't hit you. You can kill him (laughs) he's an old man.' I used to say, 'Don't take that shit.' But Paul would always give in to his dad. His dad told him to get a job, he dropped the group and started working on the fucking lorries, saying, 'I need a steady career.' We couldn't believe it. Once he rang up and said he'd got this job and couldn't come to the group. So I told him on the phone, 'Either come or you're out.' So he had to make a decision between me and his dad then, and in the end he chose me. But it was a long trip."

Q: "So you think with Linda he's found what he wanted?"

JOHN: "I guess so. I guess so. I just don't understand. I never knew what he wanted in a woman because I never knew what I wanted. I knew I wanted something intelligent or something arty. But you don't really know what you want until you find it. So anyway, I was very surprised with Linda. I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd married Jane because it had been going on for a long time and they went through a whole ordinary love scene. But with Linda it was just like -- boom! She was in and that was the end of it."

Q: "So if the falling out was essentially with Paul, what made you decide not to participate in the Bangladesh concert with George?"

JOHN: "I told George about a week before it that I wouldn't be doing it. I just didn't feel like it. I just didn't want to be fucking rehearsing and doing a big show-biz trip. We were in the Virgin Islands, and I certainly wasn't going to be rehearsing in New York, then going back to the Virgin Islands, then coming back up to New York and singing. And anyway, they couldn't have got any more people in, if I'd been there or not. I got enough money off records and I don't feel like doing two shows a night."

Q: "Do you have any regrets about not doing it?"

JOHN: "Well, at first I thought, 'Oh, I wish I'd been there,' you know, with Dylan and Leon... they needed a rocker. Everybody was telling me 'You should have been there, John,' but I'm glad I didn't do it in a way because I didn't want to go on as 'The Beatles.' And with George and Ringo there it would have had that connotation of Beatles -- Now let's hear Ringo sing 'It Don't Come Easy.' That's why I left it all. I don't want to play 'My Sweet Lord.' I'd as soon go out and do exactly what I want."

Q: "John, you said you 'get enough off records,' but you used to say you weren't as rich as people thought you were. Are you rich enough finally?"

JOHN: "Well, I do have money for the first time ever, really. I do feel slightly secure about it, secure enough to say I'll go on the road for free. The reason I got rich is because I'm so insecure. I couldn't give it all away, even in my most holy, Christian, God-fearing, Hare Krishna period. I need it because I'm so insecure. Yoko doesn't need it. She always had it. I have to have it. I'm not secure enough to give it all up, because I need it to protect me from whatever I'm frightened of."

YOKO: "He's very vulnerable."

JOHN: "But now I think that Allen Klein has made me secure enough, it's his fault that I'll go out for free."

Q: "You mean tour for free?"

JOHN: "Well, I thought I can't really go on the road and take a lot more money. What am I going to do with it? I've got all the fucking bread I need. If I go broke, well, I'd go on the road for money then. But now I just couldn't face saying, 'Well, I cost a million when I sing.'"

YOKO: "It's criminal."

JOHN: "It's bullshit, because I want to sing. So I'm going out on the road because I want to this time. I want to do something political, and radicalize people, and all that jazz. I feel like going out with Yoko, and taking a really far-out show on the road, a mobile, political, rock and roll show."

YOKO: "With clowns as well."

JOHN: "You know what I was thinking -- when Paul's going out on the road, I'd like to be playing in the same town for free next door! And he's charging about a million. That would be funny."

YOKO: "Our position is -- I come from the East, he comes from the West -- a meeting of East and West, and all that. And to communicate with people is almost a responsibility. We actually are living proof of East and West getting along together. High water falls low, you know. And if our cup is full, it's going to flow. It's natural for us to give because we have a lot. If we don't give, it's criminal, in the sense that it's going against the law of nature. In order to go against the law of nature you have to use tremendous energy."

Q: "Let's talk about Allen Klein. He has a reputation as a tough wheeler-dealer in the music business. What made you decide to have him as your manager?"

JOHN: "Well, Allen's human, whereas Eastman and all them other people are automatons. And one of the early things that impressed me about Allen -- and obviously it was a kind of flattery as well -- was that he really knew which stuff I'd written. Not many people knew which was my song and which was Paul's, but he'd say, 'Well, McCartney didn't write that line, did he?' I thought, anybody who knows me this well, just by listening to records, is pretty perceptive. I'm not the easiest guy to read, although I'm fairly naive and open in some ways, and I can be conned easily. But in other ways I'm quite complicated, and it's not easy to get through all the defenses and see what I'm like. Allen knew to come to me and not to go to Paul, whereas somebody like Lew Grade or Eastman would have gone to Paul."

Q: "Did Klein hope to get Paul back into the group?"

JOHN: (laughs) "He came up with this plan. He said, "Just ring Paul and say, 'We're recording next Friday, are you coming?' So it nearly happened. Then Paul would have forfeited his right to split by joining us again. But Paul would never, never do it, for anything, and now I would never do it."

Q: "There was a lot of negative publicity about Klein. Didn't that bother you?"

JOHN: "Well, he's a businessman. He's probably cut many peoples' throats. So have I. I made it too. I mean, I can't remember anybody I literally cut, but I've certainly trod on a few feet on the way up. And I'm sure Allen did also."

Q: "How does Klein compare with Brian Epstein as a manager?"

JOHN: "Well, Brian couldn't delegate, and neither can Allen. But I understand that. When I try and delegate it never gets done properly. Like with my albums and Yoko's, each time I have to go through the same process -- Get the printing size right. I want it clear and simple. I have to go through the same jazz all the time. It's never a lesson learned."

Q: "Let's get back to something we were talking about earlier. The attitude of the other Beatles toward Yoko."

JOHN: "They don't listen to women. Women are chicks to them."

Q: "What about George?"

JOHN: "George always has a point of view about that wide (he holds his hands close together), you know? You can't tell him anything."

YOKO: "George is sophisticated, fashionwise..."

JOHN: "He's very trendy, and he has the right clothes on, and all of that."

YOKO: "But he's not sophisticated, intellectually."

JOHN: "No. He's very narrow-minded. One time in the Apple office I was saying something, and he said, 'I'm as intelligent as you, you know.' This must have been resentment. Of course he's got an inferiority complex from working with Paul and me."

Q: "John, what did you think of Yoko's work when you first saw it?"

JOHN: "Well, her gallery show was a bit of an eye-opener. I wasn't sure what it was all about. I knew there was some sort of con game going on. She calls herself a concept artist, but with the 'cept' left off, it's con artist. I saw that side of it and that was interesting. And then we met."

Q: "Was it love at first sight?"

JOHN: "Well, I always had this dream of meeting an artist woman I would fall in love with. Even from art school. And when we met and were talking I just realized that she knew everything I knew -- and more probably. And it was coming out of a woman's head. It just sort of bowled me over. It was like finding gold or something. To have exactly the same relationship with any male you'd ever had, but also you could go to bed with it, and it could stroke your head when you felt tired or sick or depressed. Could also be Mother. And if the intellect is there... well, it's just like winning the pools. So that's why when people ask me for a precis of my story, I put, 'born, lived, met Yoko.' because that's what it's been about.

"As she was talking to me I would get high, and the discussion would get to such a level that I would be going higher and higher. And when she'd leave, I'd go back into this sort of suburbia. Then I'd meet her again and my head would go off like I was on an acid trip. I'd be going over what she'd said and it was incredible, some of the ideas and the was she was saying them, And then once I got a sniff of it I was hooked. Then I couldn't leave her alone. We couldn't be apart for a minute from then on."

YOKO: "He has this nature, and I'm thankful for it. Most men are so narrow-minded. Somebody once told me, 'You don't make small talk, and that's why men hate you.' I mean, I have so many male enemies who try to stifle me. What the hell."

JOHN: "I did the same, of course. I found myself being a chauvinist pig with her. Then I started thinking, 'Well, if I said that to Paul, or asked Paul to do that, or George, or Ringo, they'd tell me to fuck off.' And then you realize -- you just have this attitude to women that is just insane! It's beyond belief , the way we're brought up to think of women. And I had to keep saying, 'Well, would I tell a guy to do that? Would I say that to a guy? Would a guy take that?' Then I started to get nervous. I thought, 'Fuck, I better treat her right or she's going to go. No friend's going to stick around for this treatment."

Q: Did you know anything about rock music, Yoko, when you first met John?"

YOKO: "I didn't know anything about rock music, or anything like it. I thought of rock songs as something a bit lower than poetry. It was like reading poetry that had a definite rhythm to it."

JOHN: "She used to say, "Why are you doing the same beat all the time?' I used to get very irritated."

Q: "What were your feelings about art and the art world at that time?"

JOHN: "Well, I went to art school and I thought that was the art world, virtually. And they're all such pretentious hypocrites. There was no artist I admired, except for maybe Dali or someone from the past. And when I read the art reviews... I couldn't understand why I wasn't being reviewed for my art, because I always felt like an artist.

"So I went to her show. I was thinking, 'Fucking artist shit. It's all bullshit.' But then there were so many good jokes in it, real good eye-openers."

YOKO: "That's another thing, most artists don't have a sense of humor."

JOHN: "And there was a sense of humor in her work, you know? It was funny. Her work really made me laugh, some of it. So that's when I got interested in art again, just through her work."

YOKO: "All the men I met, I felt they were more pretentious than me, hypocritical, narrower than me, and not genuine. And I'm talented. Because I can compose, I can paint, I can be in many fields. Most men that I met were bragging about their professionalism in one field."

JOHN: "They get one idea and flog it to death, and become famous on one idea."

YOKO: "And fucking conservative, you know? And they talk about women not having a sense of humor. I used to despise every man that I met. I was thinking, 'There's something wrong with me, because everybody hated me for it.' And then I met this man, and for the first time I got the fright of my life because here was a man who was just as genuine, maybe more genuine than me. He's very genuine. And he can do anything I can do, which is very unusual. And I got surprised. And that happened at the first meeting."

JOHN: "It took me a long time to get used to it. Any woman I could shout down. Most of my arguments used to be a question of who could shout the loudest. Normally I could win, whether I was right or wrong, especially if the argument was with a woman -- they'd just give in. But she didn't. She'd go on and on and on, until I understood it. Then I had to treat her with respect."

Q: "Yoko, did you have any idea of what the Beatles' life had been like, on tours for example?"

JOHN: "She was really shocked. I thought the art world was loose, you know? And when I started telling her about what our life was like, she couldn't believe it."

YOKO: "I came from a different generation. I mean, my friends didn't want me to know they smoked pot, you know? So I thought 'Oh, he's an artist. He's probably had two or three affairs.' Then I heard the whole story and I thought, 'My God!'"

JOHN: "She was just like this silly Eastern nun wandering about, thinking it was all spiritual."

YOKO: "He once said to me, 'Well, were you a groupie in the art world?' I said, 'What's a groupie?'"

JOHN: "So I said, 'Just tell me. I don't want to go 'round and fucking Picasso or someone comes up and says, 'Yes, I've had her.'"

YOKO: "And I really didn't know the word 'groupie.'"

JOHN: "So anyway, I'd been dying to tell her about the 'raving' on tour. I just wanted her to know what a scene it was. I thought it was silly not to say it. And of course the people with us were living like fucking emperors when we were locked in our rooms. That's why they cling so much to the past."

Q: "Talking of your entourage, do you resent it that so many people take credit for their contributions to the Beatles?"

JOHN: "Well, there was an article on George Martin in Melody Maker -- he's telling all these stories. He says, well, I showed them how to play feedback, or put tape loops together, or some arbitrary little technical thing... Where is the great talent of George Martin and Derek Taylor, and the legacy of Brian Epstein? Where is their talent?"

YOKO: "It's like my ex-husband saying that he sacrificed his talent for me, or something."

JOHN: "Well, I never had anything against George Martin. I just didn't like all the rumors that he actually was the brains behind the Beatles. I can't stand that."

Q: "Let's talk about Brian Epstein, your first manager. What did you think of him?"

JOHN: " I liked Brian. I had a very close relationship with him for years, like I have with Allen, because I'm not going to have some stranger running the scene, that's all. I was close with Brian, as close as you can get with someone who lives sort of the fag life, and you don't really know what they're doing on the side. But in the group I was closest to him. He had great qualities and was good fun.

"He was a theatrical man rather than a businessman, and with us he was a bit like that. He literally fucking cleaned us up. And there were great fights between him and me, over years and years, of me not wanting to dress up. He and Paul had some kind of collusion... to keep me straight. Because I kept spoiling the image, like the time I beat up a guy at Paul's twenty-first. I nearly killed him, because he insinuated that me and Brian had an affair in Spain. I was out of me mind.

What I think about the Beatles is that even if there had been Paul and John and two other people, we'd never have been the Beatles. It had to take that combination of Paul, John, George and Ringo to make the Beatles. There's no such thing as 'Well, John and Paul wrote all the songs, therefore they contributed more.' because if it hadn't been us we would have got songs from somewhere else. And Brian contributed as much as us in the early days, although we were the talent and he was the hustler."

Q: "So after Brian died you made 'Magical Mystery Tour.' You said Paul was acting as if he were going to take charge of everything?"

JOHN: "Well, I still felt, every now and then, that Brian would come in and say, 'It's time to record,' or 'Time to do this.' And then Paul started doing that -- 'Now we're going to make a movie,' or 'Now we're going to make a record.' And he assumed that if he didn't call us, nobody would ever make a record. Well, it's since shown that we managed quite well to make records on time. I don't have any schedule, I just think, 'Now I'll make it.' But in those days, Paul would say that now he felt like it. And suddenly I'd have to whip out 20 songs. He'd come in with about 20 good songs and say 'We're recording.' And I had to suddenly write a fucking stack of songs. Pepper was like that. Magical Mystery Tour was another. So I hastily did my bits for it and we went out on the road. And Paul did the thing for his album -- the big-timer, auditioning directors."

Q: Let's go back for a minute and talk about all the early influences on the Beatles. What would you say had the greatest effect on the group? Was it Liverpool? The Cavern? Hamburg? Did Hamburg really improve the playing?"

JOHN: "Oh, amazingly. Because before that we'd only been playing bits and pieces, but in Hamburg we had to play for hours and hours on end. Every song lasted 20 minutes and had 20 solos in it. We'd be playing eight or ten hours a night. And that's what improved the playing. Also, the Germans like heavy rock, so you have to keep rocking all the time, and that's how we got stomping. That's how it developed. That made the sound. Because we developed a sound by playing hours and hours and hours together."

Q: "You all must have found yourself playing in some unbelievably bad conditions."

JOHN: "Yeah, but it was still rather thrilling when you went onstage. A little frightening because it wasn't a dancehall, and all these people were sitting down, expecting something. And then they would tell us to 'mak show'. After the first night they said, 'You were terrible. You have to make a show -- Mak show!' So I put my guitar down and I did Gene Vincent all night. You know -- banging and lying on the floor and throwing the mic about and pretending I had a bad leg. They're all doing it now -- lying on the floor and banging the guitar and kicking things and just doing all that jazz.

"Then they moved us to another club, which was larger and where they danced. Paul would be doing 'What'd I Say' for an hour and a half. And these gangsters would come in -- the local mafia. They'd send a crate of champagne onstage... this imitation German champagne, and we had to drink it or they'd kill us. They'd say, 'Drink it and then do What'd I Say.' We'd have to do this other show, whatever time of night. If they came in at five in the morning and we'd been playing for seven hours, they'd give us a crate of champagne and we were supposed to carry on. We'd get pills off the waiters then, to keep awake. That's how all that started.

"I used to be so pissed I'd be lying on the floor behind the piano, drunk, while the rest of the group was playing. I'd just be onstage fast asleep. Some of the shows, I went on just in me underpants. I'd go on in underpants with a toilet seat 'round me neck, and all sorts of gear on. Out of me fucking mind!"

Q: When did you get into acid? Did Paul time his LSD announcement to coincide with the release of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band?"

JOHN: "No. We'd had acid on Revolver. Everyone is under this illusion... even George Martin saying 'Pepper was their acid album,' but we'd had acid, including Paul, by the time Revolver was finished."

Q: "So why did he make that big announcement?"

JOHN: "Because the press had cornered him. I don't know how they found out about him taking it. But that was a year after we'd all taken it. Rubber Soul was our pot album, and Revolver was acid. I mean, we weren't all stoned making Rubber Soul because in those days we couldn't work on pot. We never recorded under acid or anything like that. It's like saying, 'Did Dylan Thomas write Under Milk Wood on beer?' What the fuck does that have to do with it? The beer is to prevent the rest of the world from crowding in on him. The drugs are to prevent the rest of the world from crowding in on you. They don't make you write better. I never wrote any better stuff because I was on acid or not on acid."

Q: "Did the fact that Sergeant Pepper inspired so many people to try LSD surprise you?"

JOHN: "Well, I never felt that Haight-Ashbury was a direct result. It always seemed to me that all sorts of things were happening at once. The acid thing in America was going on long before Pepper. Leary was going around saying, 'Take it, take it, take it.' We followed his instruction. I did it just like he said in the Book Of The Dead, and then I wrote Tomorrow Never Knows,' which is on Revolver, and which was almost the first acid song -- 'Lay down all thought, surrender to the void' -- and all that shit. Do you remember if Paul's statement on acid came out after Sergeant Pepper?"

Q: "Just as it was released."

JOHN: "I see. He always times his big announcements right on the letter, doesn't he. Like leaving the Beatles. Maybe it's instinctive. It probably is. Anyway, 'Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds' is not about LSD. And Henry the Horse is not about smack on Sergeant Pepper, because I'd never even seen it when we made Sergeant Pepper. But those kinds of stories evolved from it -- people thought if you listened to it backwards it said 'Paul is dead.' All that shit is just gobbledygook."

Q: "Still, many who got into acid might never have followed Timothy Leary but did follow the Beatles."

JOHN: "Well, blame it on Dylan. He turned us onto pot."

Q: "Having written so much with Paul, do you think it's possible for there to be some type of settlement, outside of business?"

JOHN: "Well, there's no way for it to be settled 'outside business,' because it all gets down to who owns a bit of what. It's a house we own together, and there's no way of settling it, unless we all decide to live in it together. It has to be sold."

Q: "Have you missed writing songs with him?"

JOHN: "No I haven't. I wrote alone in the early days. We used to write separately. He used to write songs before I even started writing songs. I think he did. And we'd written separately for years. I wrote 'Help.' I wrote 'A Hard Day's Night.' He wrote 'Yesterday.' They'd been separate for years.

"In the early days we'd write together for fun, and later on for convenience to get so many numbers out for an album. But our best songs were always written alone. And things like 'A Day In The Life' was just my song and his song stuck together. I mean we used to sit down and finish off each other's songs. You know, you could have three quarters of a song finished and we'd just sit together, bring ten songs each, and finish off the tail ends, and put middle eights in ones that you couldn't be bothered fixing, because they weren't all that good anyway.

"We usually got together on songs that were less interesting. Now and then we'd write together from scratch. 'I Want To Hold Your Hand,' things like that were done like that. But we'd been working apart ever since we were working together. It was only news to the public that a lot of Lennon-McCartney songs weren't Lennon-McCartney. That was something we'd agreed on years ago."

Q: "Do you think it was a mistake in retrospect to have named everything Lennon-McCartney?"

JOHN: "No, I don't, because it worked very well and it was useful. Then it was useful, so it was quite good fun. I've nothing against it."

Q: "If you got, I don't know what the right phrase is... 'back together' now, what would be the nature of it?"

JOHN: "Well, it's like saying, if you were back in your mother's womb... I don't fucking know. What can I answer? It will never happen, so there's no use contemplating it. Even if I became friends with Paul again, I'd never write with him again. There's no point. I write with Yoko because she's in the same room with me."

YOKO: "And we're living together."

JOHN: "So it's natural. I was living with Paul then, so I wrote with him. It's whoever you're living with. He writes with Linda. He's living with her. It's just natural."

Source: Transcribed by www.beatlesinterviews.org from original magazine issue

#john: where is the great legacy of brian epstein? where is their talent?#john two minutes later: brian contributed as much as us in the early days #i've seen a lot of quotes from this interview going around on tumblr but not the whole thing #tw f slur #john lennon #yoko ono #the beatles #shanty’s posts

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monkberries · 3 years

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Wait what's wrong with the AKOM How Do You Sleep episode? I remember it being fine but its been ages since i listened to it so if you've got any thoughts I'd love to hear them :)

Be aware, this is only about the first episode, not about the George-focused episode. If they resolve any of the issues I have with the first episode in the second episode, then I sincerely apologize.

First, there are some things they talk about that I agree with! Near the end of the episode, they discuss the dynamic between John and the people around him in a really insightful way, and in a way I’ve often thought about it; both John and the people around him were all kind of in this mindset of “oh, Paul rejected us? Well, we didn’t want him ANYWAY! So THERE!” They also discuss the fact that John was very easily manipulated, and nearly his entire support system (minus Ringo, and shame on them for not mentioning that) basically egged his anger and viciousness on. And they also play/read some interviews with John about the song and tangential subjects, and it’s always nice to hear primary sources.

However, much like their post about Lewisohn, I find a lot of this episode excessive, overtorqued, and generally far too exaggerated. They perceive an imbalance in narratives (which I do think is there, just not to the extent they say) and overcorrect, imho.

First, I want to get my opinion on the song itself out of the way: I listen to it a lot. It’s on my Fall 2020 playlist. I enjoy the musicality, the style; the mood it evokes is extremely strong to me. Sometimes it’s fun to indulge in feeling evil or mean without having to actually be evil or mean! Plus, I love playing it right before Jealous Guy, or Steel and Glass, or I Know (I Know), just to get that maximum John Lennon Mood Whiplash effect. I think George’s solo is vicious and perfect for the mood as well. However, the lyrics are pretty horrendous in terms of their effect on Paul and his feelings; they’re also horrendous in that they’re just not well-written lyrics. IMHO you can tell it was written by three different people all throwing insults at the wall to see what would stick and rhyme. Half of the digs don’t even make sense. “So Sgt. Pepper took you by surprise/You better see right through that mother’s eyes” Wut? “The one mistake you made was in your head” ??? The hell do these things even mean lmao

Anyway. Onto the episode itself.

Around 1 minute in, they say that there’s not a lot of check and balance in the Beatles fandom w/r/t this song, and that much of the fandom espouses that HDYS was “deserved” and “honest”. They reiterate this sentiment over in different ways throughout the episode, and I just do not see that kind of thing being a majority opinion in Beatles fandom spaces at all. Perhaps they are occupying different fandom spaces than I occupy (tumblr/Hey Dullblog/beatlebioreview), and it is true where they are? (In which case, my goodness, find some better blogs to follow, babes!) They talk about how they’ve never seen anyone pick it apart before, and that the discussion around it has not changed, that people have been saying Paul deserved it since it came out. Again, this is does not jive with my experience in the Beatles fandom.

From Shout!, a book with a well known anti-McCartney streak, published in 1981: “John’s Imagine album - despite the plea for universal peace and brotherhood in the title track - launched a thermo-nuclear strike back at Paul with ‘How Do You Sleep?’ a title suggesting crimes almost in the realm of first-degree murder. The McCartney references were unmistakable, and, often, cruelly unjust: ‘The freaks was right when they said you was dead... The only thing you done was Yesterday...’ There was even a two-fingered gesture of contempt for Paul’s new outdoor life with Linda on their Scottish farm.” Also, the RS review spends two paragraphs talking specifically about how heinous and unjustifiable HDYS is. You can definitely say that rock journalism takes some of the attitude of HDYS and runs with them, such as Paul’s music sounding like muzak - that sentiment certainly persisted. But I would argue that most of the shit journos are reacting to and buying into comes from Lennon Remembers primarily, where John says all the same crap and more, and worse, rather than HDYS itself, which they seem to balk at.

They make the claim as well that the Imagine LP has been elevated to some kind of untouchable, un-criticizeable status. In the years after his death, I think there is probably some truth to that, although again, untouchable is an extreme word. Even in 2003, the LP was number 80 on Rolling Stone’s top 500 albums of all time. However, it was 227 on NME’s list in 2013 and dropped to 223 on Rolling Stone’s new 2020 list, suggesting a waning in popularity over time and a willingness to look more objectively at the quality of it.

The thing that really bothered me about this episode is like... They talk about the need for nuanced discussion of the song, right? And that’s all fine and good, and I agree, nuance in any Beatles discussion is essential if you want to get close to any actual truth. However, they then go on to say, quite adamantly, that if you say the music of the song is good, even if you think the lyrics are awful, then they wouldn’t even bother having a conversation with you. It’s very “We want nuance! NO NOT LIKE THAT! YOU’RE DOING NUANCE WRONG!” Like, I’m sorry, the music is good, in my opinion! John is very good at evoking a mood! The fact that I think George’s solo is incredible, or that the keyboard riff gives me chills, or that I think the bass goes super hard, doesn’t mean I don’t understand how rough the lyrics are or the effect they had on Paul. In fact, imho, I think it’s important that we discuss how quality the music is because it underscores the calculated cruelty John exhibited. He worked hard on this song. He wanted to create a very specific feeling out of it, and he succeeded in spades. I think if it had been crappy musically, people would have been much more contemptuous of it than they already are. As I said earlier, some of the digs don’t even make sense; I think they’re bolstered and propped up specifically because the music underneath them is so good. Also, it’s not fucking wrong to enjoy a groove.

I also take some issue with them saying that HDYS was easily among the worst things John ever did. Like... equivalent or worse than going on anti-Semitic, homophobic rants? Yikes.

There are many instances in this episode where they will go “I often read things like...” or “Jean Jackets will say...” or “I see this a lot...” and then never actually talk about where they see these things or quote directly from them. One instance goes “I often read things like, ‘John Lennon is expressing years of pent-up resentment over creative differences’, as if John is some kind of, like, drunk art teacher doling out free advice to Paul on his music.” I’ve read a lot about HDYS and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that. Just about every discussion of the song I’ve seen says very clearly that it was an unjustified, deeply personal attack. I realize there is an aversion to publicly Naming Names when you’re calling out people who perpetuate a bad narrative. But I want to know where this stuff comes from. I want to actually see what it is they’re upset about.

Lastly, they talk near the end about music innovation and experimentation, and this is where I think things go much too far in overcorrecting a narrative. The well-known narrative for many years post breakup was that Paul was a boring square who wrote granny music. That is true; he was much maligned in the press about that. However, I think post-Hertsgaard, post-Revolution In The Head, post-Complete Recording Sessions, and post-Many Years From Now, that attitude has changed quite a bit. Most serious Beatles fans know now that Paul was the first one to really get into Avant-Garde stuff; most fans know about the fact that he made McCartney 1 basically alone in a homemade studio. Most fans have probably heard or at least heard of Temporary Secretary, lmao.

But it feels like these women are still living in the past where Paul was still being maligned for being a square, so instead they go way far to the other end and say “Paul was the musical innovator, not John.” And that is just flat out NOT true. They were BOTH musical innovators. The fact that Paul was the first to get into avant-garde art does not exclude John from also being incredibly innovative and experimental in his own way. Perhaps he wasn’t doing that on Imagine; they are right that Imagine is a collection of really good but fairly commercial songs. But they utterly discount the fact that he did Strawberry Fields Forever, and I Want You (She’s So Heavy), popularized backmasking, was one of the first if not the first to use amp feedback in a song in I Feel Fine, experimented with recording his voice differently with Tomorrow Never Knows and Revolution, and also the entirety of Plastic Ono Band!!! You don’t have to downplay or erase John’s experimental contributions to music in order to elevate Paul’s. You can elevate both of them. It’s fine.

Also, this is the episode where they say Lewisohn’s book is exactly the same as all the other Jean Jackets books except thicker, and I have a viscerally bad reaction to that for many reasons I have already outlined on this blog. Suffice to say, it is demonstrably untrue (not least because Lewisohn hasn’t published anything in his Tune In series that goes beyond 1962) and unfair to someone who has done an unbelievable amount of legwork to back up his writing. They also compare Lewisohn to Goldman (???????) and call them John and Yoko’s “fuckin bitch boys saying the same shit over and over again.” I have to imagine Goldman was a misspeak and she meant someone else, but still that jarred me lmfao

#about the blogger #Anonymous #podcast blues

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path-of-my-childhood · 5 years

Text

Taylor Swift: ‘I was literally about to break’

By: Laura Snapes for The Guardian Date: August 24th 2019

Taylor Swift’s Nashville apartment is an Etsy fever dream, a 365-days-a-year Christmas shop, pure teenage girl id. You enter through a vestibule clad in blue velvet and covered in gilt frames bursting with fake flowers. The ceiling is painted like the night sky. Above a koi pond in the living area, a narrow staircase spirals six feet up towards a giant, pillow-lagged birdcage that probably has the best view in the city. Later, Swift will tell me she needs metaphors “to understand anything that happens to me”, and the birdcage defies you not to interpret it as a pointed comment on the contradictions of stardom.

Swift, wearing pale jeans and dip-dyed shirt, her sandy hair tied in a blue scrunchie, leads the way up the staircase to show me the view. The decor hasn’t changed since she bought this place in 2009, when she was 19. “All of these high rises are new since then,” she says, gesturing at the squat glass structures and cranes. Meanwhile her oven is still covered in stickers, more teenage diary than adult appliance.

Now 29, she has spent much of the past three years living quietly in London with her boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn, making the penthouse a kind of time capsule, a monument to youthful naivety given an unlimited budget – the years when she sang about Romeo and Juliet and wore ballgowns to awards shows; before she moved to New York and honed her slick, self-mythologising pop.

It is mid-August. This is Swift’s first UK interview in more than three years, and she seems nervous: neither presidential nor goofy (her usual defaults), but quick with a tongue-out “ugh” of regret or frustration as she picks at her glittery purple nails. We climb down from the birdcage to sit by the pond, and when the conversation turns to 2016, the year the wheels came off for her, Swift stiffens as if driving over a mile of speed bumps. After a series of bruising public spats (with Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj) in 2015, there was a high-profile standoff with Kanye West. The news that she was in a relationship with actor Tom Hiddleston, which leaked soon after, was widely dismissed as a diversionary tactic. Meanwhile, Swift went to court to prosecute a sexual assault claim, and faced a furious backlash when she failed to endorse a candidate in the 2016 presidential election, allowing the alt-right to adopt her as their “Aryan princess”.

Her critics assumed she cared only about the bottom line. The reality, Swift says, is that she was totally broken. “Every domino fell,” she says bitterly. “It became really terrifying for anyone to even know where I was. And I felt completely incapable of doing or saying anything publicly, at all. Even about my music. I always said I wouldn’t talk about what was happening personally, because that was a personal time.” She won’t get into specifics. “I just need some things that are mine,” she despairs. “Just some things.”

A year later, in 2017, Swift released her album Reputation, half high-camp heel turn, drawing on hip-hop and vaudeville (the brilliantly hammy Look What You Made Me Do), half stunned appreciation that her nascent relationship with Alwyn had weathered the storm (the soft, sensual pop of songs Delicate and Dress).

Her new album, Lover, her seventh, was released yesterday. It’s much lighter than Reputation: Swift likens writing it to feeling like “I could take a full deep breath again”. Much of it is about Alwyn: the Galway Girl-ish track London Boy lists their favourite city haunts and her newfound appreciation of watching rugby in the pub with his uni mates; on the ruminative Afterglow, she asks him to forgive her anxious tendency to assume the worst.

While she has always written about relationships, they were either teenage fantasy or a postmortem on a high-profile breakup, with exes such as Jake Gyllenhaal and Harry Styles. But she and Alwyn have seldom been pictured together, and their relationship is the only other thing she won’t talk about. “I’ve learned that if I do, people think it’s up for discussion, and our relationship isn’t up for discussion,” she says, laughing after I attempt a stealthy angle. “If you and I were having a glass of wine right now, we’d be talking about it – but it’s just that it goes out into the world. That’s where the boundary is, and that’s where my life has become manageable. I really want to keep it feeling manageable.”

Instead, she has swapped personal disclosure for activism. Last August, Swift broke her political silence to endorse Democratic Tennessee candidate Phil Bredesen in the November 2018 senate race. Vote.org reported an unprecedented spike in voting registration after Swift’s Instagram post, while Donald Trump responded that he liked her music “about 25% less now”.

Meanwhile, her recent single You Need To Calm Down admonished homophobes and namechecked US LGBTQ rights organisation Glaad (which then saw increased donations). Swift filled her video with cameos from queer stars such as Ellen DeGeneres and Queen singer Adam Lambert, and capped it with a call to sign her petition in support of the Equality Act, which if passed would prohibit gender- and sexuality-based discrimination in the US. A video of Polish LGBTQ fans miming the track in defiance of their government’s homophobic agenda went viral. But Swift was accused of “queerbaiting” and bandwagon-jumping. You can see how she might find it hard to work out what, exactly, people want from her.

***

It was girlhood that made Swift a multimillionaire. When country music’s gatekeepers swore that housewives were the only women interested in the genre, she proved them wrong. Her self-titled debut marked the longest stay on the Billboard 200 by any album released in the decade. A potentially cloying image – corkscrew curls, lyrics thick on “daddy” and down-home values – were undercut by the fact she was evidently, endearingly, a bit of a freak, an unusual combination of intensity and artlessness. Also, she was really, really good at what she did, and not just for a teenager: her entirely self-written third album, 2010’s Speak Now, is unmatched in its devastatingly withering dismissals of awful men.

As a teenager, Swift was obsessed with VH1’s Behind The Music, the series devoted to the rise and fall of great musicians. She would forensically rewatch episodes, trying to pinpoint the moment a career went wrong. I ask her to imagine she’s watching the episode about herself and do the same thing: where was her misstep? “Oh my God,” she says, drawing a deep breath and letting her lips vibrate as she exhales. “I mean, that’s so depressing!” She thinks back and tries to deflect. “What I remember is that [the show] was always like, ‘Then we started fighting in the tour bus and then the drummer quit and the guitarist was like, “You’re not paying me enough.”’’’

But that’s not what she used to say. In interviews into her early 20s, Swift often observed that an artist fails when they lose their self-awareness, as if repeating the fact would work like an insurance against succumbing to the same fate. But did she make that mistake herself? She squeezes her nose and blows to clear a ringing in her ears before answering. “I definitely think that sometimes you don’t realise how you’re being perceived,” she says. “Pop music can feel like it’s The Hunger Games, and like we’re gladiators. And you can really lose focus of the fact that that’s how it feels because that’s how a lot of stan [fan] Twitter and tabloids and blogs make it seem – the overanalysing of everything makes it feel really intense.”

She describes the way she burned bridges in 2016 as a kind of obliviousness. “I didn’t realise it was like a classic overthrow of someone in power – where you didn’t realise the whispers behind your back, you didn’t realise the chain reaction of events that was going to make everything fall apart at the exact, perfect time for it to fall apart.”

Here’s that chain reaction in full. With her 2014 album 1989 (the year she was born), Swift transcended country stardom, becoming as ubiquitous as Beyoncé. For the first time she vocally embraced feminism, something she had rejected in her teens; but, after a while, it seemed to amount to not much more than a lot of pictures of her hanging out with her “squad”, a bevy of supermodels, musicians and Lena Dunham. The squad very much did not include her former friend Katy Perry, whom Swift targeted in her song Bad Blood, as part of what seemed like a painfully overblown dispute about some backing dancers. Then, when Nicki Minaj tweeted that MTV’s 2015 Video Music awards had rewarded white women at the expense of women of colour, multiple-nominee Swift took it personally, responding: “Maybe one of the men took your slot.” For someone prone to talking about the haters, she quickly became her own worst enemy.

Her old adversary Kanye West resurfaced in February 2016. In 2009, West had invaded Swift’s stage at the MTV VMAs to protest against her victory over Beyoncé in the female video of the year category. It remains the peak of interest in Swift on Google Trends, and the conflict between them has become such a cornerstone of celebrity journalism that it’s hard to remember it lay dormant for nearly seven years – until West released his song Famous. “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex,” he rapped. “Why? I made that bitch famous.” The video depicted a Swift mannequin naked in bed with men including Trump.

Swift loudly condemned both; although she had discussed the track with West, she said she had never agreed to the “bitch” lyric or the video. West’s wife, Kim Kardashian, released a heavily edited clip that showed Swift at least agreeing to the “sex” line on the phone with West, if not the “bitch” part. Swift pleaded the technicality, but it made no difference: when Kardashian went on Twitter to describe her as a snake, the comparison stuck and the singer found herself very publicly “cancelled” – the incident taken as “proof” of Swift’s insincerity. So she went away.

Swift says she stopped trying to explain herself, even though she “definitely” could have. As she worked on Reputation, she was also writing “a think-piece a day that I knew I would never publish: the stuff I would say, and the different facets of the situation that nobody knew”. If she could exonerate herself, why didn’t she? She leans forward. “Here’s why,” she says conspiratorially. “Because when people are in a hate frenzy and they find something to mutually hate together, it bonds them. And anything you say is in an echo chamber of mockery.”

She compares that year to being hit by a tidal wave. “You can either stand there and let the wave crash into you, and you can try as hard as you can to fight something that’s more powerful and bigger than you,” she says. “Or you can dive under the water, hold your breath, wait for it to pass and while you’re down there, try to learn something. Why was I in that part of the ocean? There were clearly signs that said: Rip tide! Undertow! Don’t swim! There are no lifeguards!” She’s on a roll. “Why was I there? Why was I trusting people I trusted? Why was I letting people into my life the way I was letting them in? What was I doing that caused this?”

After the incident with Minaj, her critics started pointing out a narrative of “white victimhood” in Swift’s career. Speaking slowly and carefully, she says she came to understand “a lot about how my privilege allowed me to not have to learn about white privilege. I didn’t know about it as a kid, and that is privilege itself, you know? And that’s something that I’m still trying to educate myself on every day. How can I see where people are coming from, and understand the pain that comes with the history of our world?”

She also accepts some responsibility for her overexposure, and for some of the tabloid drama. If she didn’t wish a friend happy birthday on Instagram, there would be reports about severed friendships, even if they had celebrated together. “Because we didn’t post about it, it didn’t happen – and I realised I had done that,” she says. “I created an expectation that everything in my life that happened, people would see.”

But she also says she couldn’t win. “I’m kinda used to being gaslit by now,” she drawls wearily. “And I think it happens to women so often that, as we get older and see how the world works, we’re able to see through what is gaslighting. So I’m able to look at 1989 and go – KITTIES!” She breaks off as an assistant walks in with Swift’s three beloved cats, stars of her Instagram feed, back from the vet before they fly to England this week. Benjamin, Olivia and Meredith haughtily circle our feet (they are scared of the koi) as Swift resumes her train of thought, back to the release of 1989 and the subsequent fallout. “Oh my God, they were mad at me for smiling a lot and quote-unquote acting fake. And then they were mad at me that I was upset and bitter and kicking back.” The rules kept changing.

***

Swift’s new album comes with printed excerpts from her diaries. On 29 August 2016, she wrote in her girlish, bubble writing: “This summer is the apocalypse.” As the incident with West and Kardashian unfolded, she was preparing for her court case against radio DJ David Mueller, who was fired in 2013 after Swift reported him for putting his hand up her dress at a meet-and–greet event. He sued her for defamation; she countersued for sexual assault.

“Having dealt with a few of them, narcissists basically subscribe to a belief system that they should be able to do and say whatever the hell they want, whenever the hell they want to,” Swift says now, talking at full pelt. “And if we – as anyone else in the world, but specifically women – react to that, well, we’re not allowed to. We’re not allowed to have a reaction to their actions.”

In summer 2016 she was in legal depositions, practising her testimony. “You’re supposed to be really polite to everyone,” she says. But by the time she got to court in August 2017, “something snapped, I think”. She laughs. Her testimony was sharp and uncompromising. She refused to allow Mueller’s lawyers to blame her or her security guards; when asked if she could see the incident, Swift said no, because “my ass is in the back of my body”. It was a brilliant, rude defence.

“You’re supposed to behave yourself in court and say ‘rear end’,” she says with mock politesse. “The other lawyer was saying, ‘When did he touch your backside?’ And I was like, ‘ASS! Call it what it is!’” She claps between each word. But despite the acclaim for her testimony and eventual victory (she asked for one symbolic dollar), she still felt belittled. It was two months prior to the beginning of the #MeToo movement. “Even this case was literally twisted so hard that people were calling it the ‘butt-grab case’. They were saying I sued him because there’s this narrative that I want to sue everyone. That was one of the reasons why the summer was the apocalypse.”

She never wanted the assault to be made public. Have there been other instances she has dealt with privately? “Actually, no,” she says soberly. “I’m really lucky that it hadn’t happened to me before. But that was one of the reasons it was so traumatising. I just didn’t know that could happen. It was really brazen, in front of seven people.” She has since had security cameras installed at every meet-and-greet she does, deliberately pointed at her lower half. “If something happens again, we can prove it with video footage from every angle,” she says.

The allegations about Harvey Weinstein came out soon after she won her case. The film producer had asked her to write a song for the romantic comedy One Chance, which earned her second Golden Globe nomination. Weinstein also got her a supporting role in the 2014 sci-fi movie The Giver, and attended the launch party for 1989. But she says they were never alone together.

“He’d call my management and be like, ‘Does she have a song for this film?’ And I’d be like, ‘Here it is,’” she says dispassionately. “And then I’d be at the Golden Globes. I absolutely never hung out. And I would get a vibe – I would never vouch for him. I believe women who come forward, I believe victims who come forward, I believe men who come forward.” Swift inhales, flustered. She says Weinstein never propositioned her. “If you listen to the stories, he picked people who were vulnerable, in his opinion. It seemed like it was a power thing. So, to me, that doesn’t say anything – that I wasn’t in that situation.”

Meanwhile, Donald Trump was more than nine months into his presidency, and still Swift had not taken a position. But the idea that a pop star could ever have impeded his path to the White House seemed increasingly naive. In hindsight, the demand that Swift speak up looks less about politics and more about her identity (white, rich, powerful) and a moralistic need for her to redeem herself – as if nobody else had ever acted on a vindictive instinct, or blundered publicly.

But she resisted what might have been an easy return to public favour. Although Reputation contained softer love songs, it was better known for its brittle, vengeful side (see This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things). She describes that side of the album now as a “bit of a persona”, and its hip-hop-influenced production as “a complete defence mechanism”. Personally, I thought she had never been more relatable, trashing the contract of pious relatability that traps young women in the public eye.

***

It was the assault trial, and watching the rights of LGBTQ friends be eroded, that finally politicised her, Swift says. “The things that happen to you in your life are what develop your political opinions. I was living in this Obama eight-year paradise of, you go, you cast your vote, the person you vote for wins, everyone’s happy!” she says. “This whole thing, the last three, four years, it completely blindsided a lot of us, me included.”

She recently said she was “dismayed” when a friend pointed out that her position on gay rights wasn’t obvious (what if she had a gay son, he asked), hence this summer’s course correction with the single You Need To Calm Down (“You’re comin’ at my friends like a missile/Why are you mad?/When you could be GLAAD?”). Didn’t she feel equally dismayed that her politics weren’t clear? “I did,” she insists, “and I hate to admit this, but I felt that I wasn’t educated enough on it. Because I hadn’t actively tried to learn about politics in a way that I felt was necessary for me, making statements that go out to hundreds of millions of people.”

She explains her inner conflict. “I come from country music. The number one thing they absolutely drill into you as a country artist, and you can ask any other country artist this, is ‘Don’t be like the Dixie Chicks!’” In 2003, the Texan country trio denounced the Iraq war, saying they were “ashamed” to share a home state with George W Bush. There was a boycott, and an event where a bulldozer crushed their CDs. “I watched country music snuff that candle out. The most amazing group we had, just because they talked about politics. And they were getting death threats. They were made such an example that basically every country artist that came after that, every label tells you, ‘Just do not get involved, no matter what.’

“And then, you know, if there was a time for me to get involved…” Swift pauses. “The worst part of the timing of what happened in 2016 was I felt completely voiceless. I just felt like, oh God, who would want me? Honestly.” She would otherwise have endorsed Hillary Clinton? “Of course,” she says sincerely. “I just felt completely, ugh, just useless. And maybe even like a hindrance.”

I suggest that, thinking selfishly, her coming out for Clinton might have made people like her. “I wasn’t thinking like that,” she stresses. “I was just trying to protect my mental health – not read the news very much, go cast my vote, tell people to vote. I just knew what I could handle and I knew what I couldn’t. I was literally about to break. For a while.” Did she seek therapy? “That stuff I just really wanna keep personal, if that’s OK,” she says.

She resists blaming anyone else for her political silence. Her emergence as a Democrat came after she left Big Machine, the label she signed to at 15. (They are now at loggerheads after label head Scott Borchetta sold the company, and the rights to Swift’s first six albums, to Kanye West’s manager, Scooter Braun.) Had Borchetta ever advised her against speaking out? She exhales. “It was just me and my life, and also doing a lot of self-reflection about how I did feel really remorseful for not saying anything. I wanted to try and help in any way that I could, the next time I got a chance. I didn’t help, I didn’t feel capable of it – and as soon as I can, I’m going to.”

Swift was once known for throwing extravagant 4 July parties at her Rhode Island mansion. The Instagram posts from these star-studded events – at which guests wore matching stars-and-stripes bikinis and onesies – probably supported a significant chunk of the celebrity news industry GDP. But in 2017, they stopped. “The horror!” wrote Cosmopolitan, citing “reasons that remain a mystery” for their disappearance. It wasn’t “squad” strife or the unavailability of matching cozzies that brought the parties to an end, but Swift’s disillusionment with her country, she says.

There is a smart song about this on the new album – the track that should have been the first single, instead of the cartoonish ME!. Miss Americana And The Heartbreak Prince is a forlorn, gothic ballad in the vein of Lana Del Rey that uses high-school imagery to dismantle American nationalism: “The whole school is rolling fake dice/You play stupid games/You win stupid prizes,” she sings with disdain. “Boys will be boys then/Where are the wise men?”

As an ambitious 11-year-old, she worked out that singing the national anthem at sports games was the quickest way to get in front of a large audience. When did she start feeling conflicted about what America stands for? She gives another emphatic ugh. “It was the fact that all the dirtiest tricks in the book were used and it worked,” she says. “The thing I can’t get over right now is gaslighting the American public into being like” – she adopts a sanctimonious tone – “‘If you hate the president, you hate America.’ We’re a democracy – at least, we’re supposed to be – where you’re allowed to disagree, dissent, debate.” She doesn’t use Trump’s name. “I really think that he thinks this is an autocracy.”

As we speak, Tennessee lawmakers are trying to impose a near-total ban on abortion. Swift has staunchly defended her “Tennessee values” in recent months. What’s her position? “I mean, obviously, I’m pro-choice, and I just can’t believe this is happening,” she says. She looks close to tears. “I can’t believe we’re here. It’s really shocking and awful. And I just wanna do everything I can for 2020. I wanna figure out exactly how I can help, what are the most effective ways to help. ’Cause this is just…” She sighs again. “This is not it.”

***

It is easy to forget that the point of all this is that a teenage Taylor Swiftwanted to write love songs. Nemeses and negativity are now so entrenched in her public persona that it’s hard to know how she can get back to that, though she seems to want to. At the end of Daylight, the new album’s dreamy final song, there’s a spoken-word section: “I want to be defined by the things that I love,” she says as the music fades. “Not the things that I hate, not the things I’m afraid of, the things that haunt me in the middle of the night.” As well as the songs written for Alwyn, there is one for her mother, who recently experienced a cancer relapse: “You make the best of a bad deal/I just pretend it isn’t real,” Swift sings, backed by the Dixie Chicks.

How does writing about her personal life work if she’s setting clearer boundaries? “It actually made me feel more free,” she says. “I’ve always had this habit of never really going into detail about exactly what situation inspired what thing, but even more so now.” This is only half true: in the past, Swift wasn’t shy of a level of detail that invited fans to figure out specific truths about her relationships. And when I tell her that Lover feels a more emotionally guarded album, she bristles. “I know the difference between making art and living your life like a reality star,” she says. “And then even if it’s hard for other people to grasp, my definition is really clear.”

Even so, Swift begins Lover by addressing an adversary, opening with a song called I Forgot That You Existed (“it isn’t love, it isn’t hate, it’s just indifference”), presumably aimed at Kanye West, a track that slightly defeats its premise by existing. But it sweeps aside old dramas to confront Swift’s real nemesis, herself. “I never grew up/It’s getting so old,” she laments on The Archer.

She has had to learn not to pre-empt disaster, nor to run from it. Her life has been defined by relationships, friendships and business relationships that started and ended very publicly (though she and Perry are friends again). At the same time, the rules around celebrity engagement have evolved beyond recognition in her 15 years of fame. Rather than trying to adapt to them, she’s now asking herself: “How do you learn to maintain? How do you learn not to have these phantom disasters in your head that you play out, and how do you stop yourself from sabotage – because the panic mechanism in your brain is telling you that something must go wrong.” For her, this is what growing up is. “You can’t just make cut-and-dry decisions in life. A lot of things are a negotiation and a grey area and a dance of how to figure it out.”

And so this time, Swift is sticking around. In December she will turn 30, marking the point after which more than half her life will have been lived in public. She’ll start her new decade with a stronger self-preservationist streak, and a looser grip (as well as a cameo in Cats). “You can’t micromanage life, it turns out,” she says, drily.

When Swift finally answered my question about the moment she would choose in the VH1 Behind The Music episode about herself, the one where her career turned, she said she hoped it wouldn’t focus on her “apocalypse” summer of 2016. “Maybe this is wishful thinking,” she said, “but I’d like to think it would be in a couple of years.” It’s funny to hear her hope that the worst is still to come while sitting in her fairytale living room, the cats pacing: a pragmatist at odds with her romantic monument to teenage dreams. But it sounds something like perspective.

#taylor swift #interview #by taylor #the guardian #lover era #lover album #not sure how I feel about the interviewer's approach...there's a lot of irony in it #but a fun read for us nonetheless

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bangtanblurbs · 3 years

Text

love is not over

song: love is not over (full length edition)

first experience: what do we qualify as the first experience? the release in HYYH pt. 1 or the full length release on young forever? with almost a year in between the releases timing does bring about different memories for me.

the 2015 release of HYYH pt. 1 found me a few weeks after a rather terrifying trip to the emergency room with a diagnosis that would forever change my life - the way i live physically and emotionally. this album was the first album i experienced as ARMY. i found BTS through I NEED U, and quickly devoured the HYYH pt. 1 album in may. love is not over was a track that immediately stuck with me. i remember laying in the grass of my university quad, outside my dorm building, soaking in the sun - putting it on and smelling the spring air. it was tremendously comforting for me. i didn’t immediately look for a lyric translation, i didn’t feel like i needed it. i felt every emotion through the song without even knowing it’s true intended meaning. hindsight - i wish i had looked up those lyrics.

as for the full edition release in 2016, i was actually working in macau at time time as a researcher. i’d been there for about two weeks when young forever dropped. i have the funniest story about me running through the streets of hong kong, completely lost, in mad pursuit of the physical copy of the album. that is for another day though. (also plenty of fun stories of attending the HYYH epilogue concert in macau - i’ll include my horrible video of love is not over from the concert as well). i was so happy to see an extended version of love is not over on the album - i never could have imagined or anticipated it... it was such a delight. having the extended version was almost like what getting young forever was to bookending the saga of HYYH pt. 1 and HYYH pt. 2. i associate this song heavily with my experiences falling in love with macau, falling in love with myself in a way i hadn’t before, and falling head over heels with the world. a very difference first experience considering the low place i was in with the original release.

it is important to note that the extended version of the song adds in the rap verses for all of rapline, and offers us a very different conclusion than the original release (which was a source for debate among 2015 army for it’s place in the larger HYYH saga and the interesting *jibberish* at the ending of the song, more on this in the lyrics section).

feelings: lyrically, love is not over is a breakup song. it’s that kind of song where the singer is begging their significant other not to leave, not to say goodbye. it’s the kind of song you listen to after you get dumped. you’re devastated, the other person seemed perfect... whatever comes next for you, you can’t imagine that person not being a part of it. love becomes nothing but pain in that moment. you lament it. you beg for love to fade and fall away. but... in some ways it’s not. to me, in my view the song is also about one’s relationship with themselves. or at least i see it that way. the song isn’t so much about this one specific girl -- it’s about love in general -- it’s about how they’re upset at the fact that love is always pain for them, it’s goodbye after goodbye, there’s no stability, there’s nothing but pain. i’ll make this point in the lyrics section more clear.

it’s this very point that makes the song resonate with me. at this point in my life, and even now, goodbyes terrify me. i carry the baggage of years of goodbyes, those that were intentional and those that happened for reasons outside of my control. they’re damaging. they make you start to see love as pain. why let others in? why love? what’s the point if it’s all going to end abruptly. you’re left with grief, broken dreams, despair. i’ve been through even more at this point in my life than i had when i first heard love is not over. i should be hardened by the pain i’ve felt over the years. yet - i am not. not completely. i haven’t let bitterness taint me completely.

strangely, when i listen to love is not over, i can’t help but feel in love - the beat - something about the pure R&B sound of it, it’s the perfect build and smoothness, it sounds like what love would sound like (if in fact emotions could become sound waves). the beat is calming and smooth, never loud, never melancholy. the song makes me feel, once again, comforted - like even though i’m hardened, even though love is pain, even though it has the capacity to hurt, it’s not over - and it’s still an emotion that i long to feel and express to those who inevitably come into my life. the song makes think about how i’ll always have the capacity to love and accept love. even if there’s moments i go through where i want to scream that love is dead - i know it’s not, i know that i’ll always love again.

personal connection: i probably relate to this song in a way that very few others do. maybe i’m interpreting it differently, or perhaps it’s because for me, the song doesn’t map neatly onto a life experience for me - yet i still love it dearly and it’s brought me immense comfort. it’s not a song i cry to with the thoughts of a past relationship in mind. it’s more about my internal discoveries and my relationship with how i love, express love to others, and how i experience and process rejection and change in my life.

for me, listening to love is not over brings me to a point where i’ve realize that despite being a hopeless romantic i’m a complete cynic. i’ve taken all the personality tests, i know my star sign... among all of that i can tell you i am deeply idealistic and i live inside my head where i build fantasy worlds and scenarios, where i romance everything. i fall in love with the world around me one-hundred times a day. i’m deeply in love with my friends that i hold dearly close to me. yet, and probably because of these visions of grandeur, i’m often let down. i expect the fantastic, and when things fall short i’m hurt. to make matters worse i’m a deep devotee to the church of self-loathing. i know it’s all my fault that i put so much love and care into everything around me, everyone around me, so when things fail, when inevitably the goodbye comes, i place the blame squarely on my shoulders.

at the point that the extended version of this song came out i was in the process of falling in love with the very world around me. i was out of the US, experiencing something so new and foreign for me. a place that i quickly took in. a place that changed me, made me so much better. healed me to a point where i could leave a toxic relationship - without fearing that goodbye - the goodbye i feared far more was leaving macau, heading back to the states to start my masters degree. i wasn’t in macau for a long time but that experience, i fell in love so many times. not with people per say, but with feelings, with my surroundings, with a slower way of life. when it came time to say goodbye, it was like breaking up with a new life for me. i felt pain. i almost wished i hadn’t experienced a life where i was so happy - only to go back to a world where i had to confront the reality that was my life. the tatters i’d left back in atlanta.

when i came back home things weren’t as i’d left them. i was returning to do my master’s degree at the same institution where i received my four year undergraduate degree. nobody was there that had previously been. i felt abandoned, i felt alone, the love i had in my heart both for a foreign place that was now out of reach, but also for the friends that my university had previously held, hurt. it was pain. i longed and yearned for those places, times, and people yet again. so much so that i hurt myself in the process. i spent nights alone with my wine bottles and emotions. it took a while to get out of the place i was in, but i did in fact love again - love wasn’t over. i learned to fall in love with new people, fall in love with the old in a new way, fall in love with my dreams. for me, love is not over is almost like the story of learning to love yourself, learning to love how you love. and not just in a romantic way, but how you love more generally. if the song were meant to only speak to intense romantic relationships why would namjoon’s verse allude to the shallowness of the relationship at the heart of the song? for me -- i’m still learning how to get back up when love becomes pain, how to recover from putting love into the world and not always receving it back. love is not over. it’s a process. it’s always with me, even if it’s not always returned. even if it’s not always right. it’s there.

song breakdown

musically: i would like to make the assertion that the full length edition of love is not over is one of bangtan’s best songs. every member’s performance shines through, it’s a perfect dramatic ballad song but the rap verses perfectly complement the perfection of the vocal line portions of the song.

the slow and soft start with the piano - it fits the mood of the lyrics perfectly. the way in which the harmonies work together to highlight the emotions of the song. stunning. the introduction of the drum beat at the chorus and the R&B undertrack that runs from the chorus through the rap verses is soothing ~ it picks up the mood completely, infusing the song with hope. the playful beats throughout hoseok’s verse which go in time with “stop” and “dot” it’s complete genius. the melodic backing track that picks up with yoongi’s verse is unexpected but completely complements his increased rap pace. the return to the slow for the bridge as we get the upper-ranges of vocal line... it’s hard to put into words how *perfectly* produced this song is. and -- produced by jungkook. i believe this is his first producing credit, and what a song for it to be. it’s genius in every way. in the outro: version of the song jin is also credited in production and songwriting. it seems that this duo are R&B geniuses along with slow rabbit.

the smooth pick up of the beat - it’s classic R&B at its very very very BEST. the asian style is not something to be skipped as well. there’s clear elements that are echoed throughout the entire HYYH series. the song feels old school, nostalgic for some kind of 90s R&B but with the new twist to it. it fits the mood completely, wishing and longing for something that is now in the past. the song builds around the choruses and in the rap verses, expertly moving the emotions of the song along. much like the song is kind of about the ups and downs of love, the loss and the hope, the ugly and the beauty, the music matches this with it’s changes in tempo and sound. but it’s not overwhelming at all. love is not over is smooth - incredibly so - and it is the kind of song you can put on when you’re down, when you’re up... something about that makes it a complete masterpiece and a never skip.

vocally: i don’t have too much to say here other than love is not over is an OT7 song that showcases the talents of both rap and vocal line beautifully and equally. the balance in the song is one of my very favorite aspects of it. it’s not heavy on either side - we get the raps and we get the beautiful crooning - it’s a masterpiece in songwriting and production. it’s a masterpiece in performance. jungkook’s beautiful higher range is showcased in the opening of the piece and leads off the chorus and is felt throughout with adlibs. taehyung’s velvet lower register often follows jungkook in a beautiful contrast - offering us a soulful sultry sound. then jimin and jin take over and moves the song into the chrous with their beautiful high-registesr. jimin builds the prechorus with power, which then is sung line by line and beautifully with all four voices complementing one another. vocal line harmonizes with one another throughout the song - offering plenty of stunning ad libs as well.

rapline brings emotion and pain to the song with slower tempo raps in the second verse, started by namjoon and concluded by hoseok. namjoon’s gentle rap voice delivers a sense of understanding and comfort. meanwhile hoseok follows him up with a soulful rap, playing with the beat and building into a pleading tone at the end of his verse. the final rap verse is then taken by yoongi - he starts off slow and building to a more quick rap pace, adding in more emotion and bleeding in to jungkook’s crisp delivery of a modified bridge/final chrous. both jimin and jungkook provide several heavenly high notes throughout and the piece is ended with the solemn repetition of love is not over. it’s stunning, the vocals for all members truly shine in love is not over - there is no dominance, and the song makes for the perfect showcase of the group’s total talent.

lyrically: jungkook is listed as the primary songwriter for love is not over, but he was assisted by jin, pdogg, slow rabbit, and rapline contributed their own raps. i think it’s important to note because jungkook was only 18 at the time of the full length release, and even younger likely when he wrote the song. impressive.

now - onto pulling this masterpiece apart completey.

the slow and beautiful start to love is not over is grounded in a feeling of time passing, time flowing, as one sits through a “long night” that they can’t seem to escape. offering us both a headspace we’ve all been familiar with - sitting alone in your room late at night pondering life - and a feeling of something quite dark, the long night that going through a hard time can feel like. the lyrics then move to ask “why are you getting farther away? / so far that i can’t reach you?” these lines are clearly calling out to someone that was at one point very close with the speaker - a lover, perhaps a close friend, an emotion, a past identity... the options can be endless. it’s like as in the previous line, time is fading away, everything is going dark, and so is the relationship at the heart of the song. the song then asks “can’t you see me in your eyes anymore?” the line almost begging, what has changed, why am i no longer someone you consider, no longer someone you’d like to have in your space? in your view? it’s crushing. the speaker can sense the relationship and the other pulling away, their once held affections and desire melting away to darkness - to a lack of presence.

the song then moves into the chorus - almost a chantlike chorus which brings more emphasis and importance to the words. the lines begin: “love is so painful / goodbyes are even more painful.” beautifully outlining that opening oneself up to love, that vulnerability, it hurts - and when loves walks away from you, when the goodbye comes inevitably it’s even more crushing than the initial feelings of fear, anxiety, the nakedness that comes along with falling into love. “i can’t go on if you’re not here / love me, love me / come back to my arms” the speaker begs, pleads, feels completely powerless losing something so precious. when juxtaposed with the title of the song - love is not over - you begin to wonder, perhaps these words are just that? they’re words. there’s ultimately a piece of understanding that love is worth the pain and struggle, there is a hopefulness to this song, but we can’t find it in the chours.

the piece then moves into namjoon’s rap - lyrically powerful and delivered with nothing but raw emotion. he starts off telling an intimate story “you said goodbye to me / every night before i went to bed” emphasizing the closeness of the subject to him -- “i hated that even more than dying / it feels like this night is the end of you and me.” he laments those goodbyes, he’d rather have stayed in those beautiful moments, full of love, full of promise. instead things have gone dark and they’re ending now - the longest night has begun, with a simple “goodbye.” despite having emphasizing the closeness of the subject to him, namjoon then calls into question that “i don’t know you, you didn’t know me” perhaps he says this as an explanation, if they’d truly known one another then they’d have worked things out. made it all okay again. there’d have been no goodbye. it’s the realization that perhaps he’d been in love with someone he’d create in his head all along. he then moves along to say “you’re like hello and goodbye / at my beginning and my end / there” emphasizing that things with the subject had been up and down, all over the place, bliss and pain. this goes back to the statement about love being pain, it’s something the speaker wants desperately, yet it’s causing them pain? thus emphasizing the volatility and absolute confusion that happens to our emotions when they’re tangled up within another.

hoseok’s verse follows with its own beat and style. he emphasizes the separation in the first two lines “everything stopped like our red light / stop” and “nothing more to say, it ends with my tears / dot.” clearly he is drawing a line here, there’s no need for any more interaction between the two. it’s over. which in many ways contrasts with the begging nature of the choruses. which leans me to be inclined to think that this song is more about being in love with the emotion of love, a yearning for the emotion and feeling of love rather than a specific person that didn’t even know you. hoseok continues “i’m not okay i repeat this denial / recite, if you can recite my mind” asking the subject to recognize his emotions, his feelings towards concluding their relationship. “you are my endless love and my girl” the verse finishes out. bringing us back to the true story at hand, but not taking us away from the idea of wanting love for the overall feeling of love rather than for a specific person.

the chorus repeats once again, then we are brought to yoongi’s verse. the emotion builds both in the sound of the song but also lyrically. hope is infused throughout this verse following strongly after more sad toned lyrics previously. he starts off “i always smile at you / even the love is a tragedy for me.” this line makes me think that the speaker recognizes that even if things are falling apart, there was something beautiful about being able to feel at all. that’s a major theme throughout the HYYH series. feeling, experiencing, not necessarily for the sake of others, but for the sake of exercising your youth, for growing, strengthening and building yourself. this part of life is the perfect time for it. “i always cry after it’s over / farewell even though it’s a comedy for you.” yoongi recognizes that the other party doesn’t carry the same emotions as him, it’s completely the oppostie for them. “yes nothing is everlasting / i live without you even i feel like dying” while not exactly hopeful, this line does contrast with the other lines about not being able to go on - yoongi specifically uses the word “live” he goes on, life goes on, he will continue to experience and it is at this point in the song where the first utterance of the song title is made. “over, over, love is not over” emphasizing that even if this is over, love lives on. it might be pain, it might be an unpleasant emotion, but it continues. finally yoongi ends his verse with a plead “please take me out of this endless maze” signifying that he finds the interactions with this particular type of love, or person, or moment in his life confusing and disorienting. but the thing is, mazes have exits - there’s a change he’ll find his way out and onto whatever is next.

the chrous repeats one more time before the song in concluded with the beautiful chants of “love is not over, over, over” flipping the way in which yoongi uttered the line - ending with the word over. offering hope to the listener. the chant urging the speaker to believe their own words. there is a change, love is not over. it will happen again and again - “over and over” as the lyrics provide through the repetition of the lyrics. it’s understated but it’s a powerful message of hope, cycles, and avoidance of a true end.

performance: you can easily find live performances of love is not over, most notably from the EPILOGUE in JAPAN concert. i also attended the HYYH EPILOGUE concert, but in macau back in 2016. i was really fortunate to experience love is not over performed live. i’ve uploaded the video here for you all the enjoy. please don’t mind any screaming you hear, i was clearly beside myself. i remember the emotions i felt hearing the song live - the vocals were pristine, the emotion in each voice was on display, the stripped down live band backing was beautiful. everything about the performance screamed emotion.

all seven bangtan members were seated on stools, dressed in black jeans and white blouses. behind the members a beautiful HYYH logo was lit up with the signature chain-link fence print. the beautiful understated nature of the performance amongst a sea of high-energy performances including baepsae, save me, I NEED U, and fire... the contrast was enough to make every ARMY at the show completely transfixed. did i cry? maybe. did i cry with a strange girl i’d met off of twitter only hours earlier? ...okay i’ll be honest - i really did. the song is powerful just as a track on an album, but experiencing it live, or even just watching the performance on youtube -- it’s powerful. the talents of these men are on full display, both rap and vocal line are able to highlight their abilities beautifully.

tl;dr: love is not over is beautiful. it’s an earlier bangtan song, and it’s earned its place as a complete classic R&B bop. the sounds of each member’s voice, the lyrics, they’re melodic and soothing. the song is about heartbreak, but the interpretations in the context of the greater HYYH saga make it hopeful. love is something we often associate with youth. falling in love with others, ourselves, and our world - it can be painful... especially when we’re young and we realize that things aren’t always as we percieve them to be. but it’s all a part of learning. we will love again, and love isn’t over. it’s a cycle.

#love is not over #bts #jungkook #lyrics #analysis #bangtan #hyyh #young forever

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surveys-at-your-service · 3 years

Text

Survey #315

“can’t breathe to scream / suffocating in this dream / long way down”

Who was your first big crush? I would probably say this guy in high school named Sebastian. We sat beside each other in Art, and I definitely liked him a lot. Man, my freshman-sophomore years honestly involved a handful of crushes before Jason popped into the picture and I lost all romantic interest in everyone else. Where was the first place you drove after you got your license? N/A Is it a blue sky outside right now? No. All North Carolina has known for weeks on end now is rain. We've had very rare sunny days, but for the most part, it's just gray and gross. Was your last breakup a bad one? Nah, I'd say it ended maturely and with a mutual understanding of "why." When was the last time you were surprised, in a pleasant way? Hell if I know. Is there an ice-cream flavor that you strongly dislike? Which one? Yeah, like strawberry. What was the last sitcom you watched? No clue. ^ Do you have a favorite character in that sitcom? Why is that character your favorite? N/A What does the last group you joined on Facebook concern? I am 90% sure it was this group I joined that is literally just about cute yet dangerous animals lmao, mostly reptiles and invertebrates. "Misunderstood biteybois and where to befriemd them" or some stupid shit like that. Has there been a spider in your house at any time recently? Not that I've seen, no. Do you like wearing make-up? Not at all. I only like wearing it for pictures and then taking that shit off. ^ If so, how old were you when you first started to wear it? I started consistently wearing it my freshman year of high school. Then some time later I just showed up one day without any, shocked all my friends, and then only wore it when I felt like it. What foods are you craving lately, if any? Nothing, really. What were some of your favorite foods as a child? Chicken nuggets of course, as well as spaghetti, peanut butter sandwiches, just the typical stuff that kids tend to enjoy. When you were younger, did you ever have a friend that your parents hated? No. Have you ever talked in your sleep before? That's very normal for me, especially now that I have nightmares like every goddamn night. What was the last song you heard, that reminded you of someone? Well, not a real someone, but "The Ordinary World" by the Hit House is 110% one of Fetch's soon-to-be themes. What has brought you joy today? Nothing brought me "joy," really. When was the last time you won a prize in a raffle? What was it? I actually recently won an art rafle on deviantART hosted by a truly amazing artist, like I thought I had no chance, and she's going to be drawing Moondust!!!! :'''') What is the next non-essential item that you intend to buy for yourself? I'm still paying the bulk of my tattoo in May. Is there anywhere in your town/city that's rumored to be haunted? Oh, I'm sure. When you were younger, did you ever think that a certain place was haunted? Bitch I still do lmao. What were your school meals like? Did you enjoy them? This really depended on the menu for the day. My school lunches were nowhere near as bad as some people make theirs sound, but most things still weren't great. I think school pizzas are the most notoriously bad. What kind of granola bar did you eat most recently? I had a cashew bar earlier today. Do you have any books on your shelf that you've read multiple times? I never reread books. What did your last post on social media concern? That I personally wrote, something regarding subtle racism still being racism, pretty much. How do you feel about people using graphic images as a scare tactic to promote their beliefs? (i.e.: PETA, abortion…) I have mixed feelings on this. Like sometimes seeing the brutal side of certain things is definitely useful in opening someone's mind to things they don't want to see/think about, but then there's that, too: it can just be so invasive and unexpected, and thus very upsetting and even scarring. I'd say I'm most for the "appropriate" social media route: using censorship that the viewer can decide whether or not to remove. But you obviously can't do that in like, a public protest with a sign, so idk. Which is harder for you: writing creatively or academically? Honestly, both are pretty easy for me. I enjoy writing creatively far more, though. Do you think gender neutral bathrooms are a good idea? I think it's fine to have them as an option. When was the last time you voluntarily went outside of your comfort zone? Just talking about stuff in group therapy recently. Would you ever use a dating site that costs money, like Match.com or eHarmony? Have you known anyone who had good experience with such sites? No, and yes. Do you think it’s fair that people are able to make a reasonable salary and live comfortable lives just by making YouTube videos? Yes? It takes charisma and talent in some area (humor, education, etc.) as well as consistency for it to be a reliable career, and just consider how often you hear about creators burning out. That happens for a reason. Entertainment is a valid job category and should not be seen as an unfair joke. Whether you’re in college or not, do you become fearful about whether or not you’ll find a good job? Story of my life. What is something you can only understand if you've experienced it first hand? Deep heartbreak. Do you think it's a double standard that a woman can hit a man and expect to get away with it, but if a man hits a woman it's assault? Obviously. Abuse knows no gender, and hitting another person is just that. I do, however, believe in self-defense, also regardless of gender. In terms of a wedding, put these things in order from what would be MOST important to be perfect, to LEAST important... Engagement ring, dress, hair, venue, ceremony, food, pictures, decorations, honeymoon. This requires too much thinking, haha... but I do know the quality of my honeymoon would be most important to me, given that that's personal time with my new spouse and not a public celebration. I feel like what goes on behind closed doors is more important and heartfelt than how you act publicly. Do you have a go-to small talk conversation topic? Probably video games or music, idk. Define "small talk." Does anyone owe you money? Do you owe anyone money? (Besides credit cards) Mom does. She just a few days ago had to borrow $100 for rent. If someone was going to buy you any practical gift (anything except a house or car), what would you choose? It'd be dope as fuck if someone could pay for Venus' next terrarium, but that's a big purchase that I'd have a hard time accepting. How many people do you know with the same first name as you? At least one, but her name is spelled differently. What in your opinion is the best love song ever written? I'm not sure, but I can tell you that "When It's Love" by Van Halen has always been high on the list for me. Was your mother married when she had you? No, actually. I thought she was until my most recent bday, I think. It was just part of a conversation. How old was the first person you kissed? He was a few months into 18. The first person you were in a relationship with, do you still care about them? Of course, he's a sweet guy. We don't talk or anything, but that doesn't mean I don't care about him. Has anyone ever sang to you? Yes. So, what if you married the last person you kissed? That'd be pretty rad. What are you listening to at the moment? "Long Way Down" from the The Evil Within soundtrack. It's funny, like I've loved the game for many years, but I'm now in a serious semi-obsession phase after watching another let's play of it. Have you read the The Hunger Games trilogy? I only read the first book. I loved it, but just never continued. What is your boss’ (or school prinicpal’s) name? N/A Who is the person you dislike the most? That I personally know, probably a former best friend, oddly enough. Do you text your parents often? If Mom's not home, it's not unusual for us to text. I don't text my dad much because he's not a fan of texting. Do you watch YouTube videos often? Pretty much always. Do you know anyone with celiac disease? Sara, my aunt, and my cousin. Those are the ones I know of, anyway. Do you currently have any alarms set? No. How many cars can fit in your driveway? Barely even two. If someone else is here, they usually just park where the road meets the sidewalk of the cul-de-sac. Do you have the ashes of a family member or a pet? Of my dog Teddy, yes. Have you ever been involved in a car crash? Yes, as a kid. Do you prefer flash or no flash on a camera? Definitely no flash. It's more natural, and especially with people, it obviously prevents red eye. How often do you use hashtags? Just about never. Have you ever had whiplash before? No. Have you ever given another person or an animal a bath before? Pets, yes. I could never bathe another human. Is there a birdbath in your yard? No. Weirdest place you’ve ever had a cramp? Nowhere weird, I think... How many lamps are in the room you’re in? How many are actually turned on? Technically three, if you count my snake's heat lamp. Right now that's the only light that's on. Are there any activities you enjoy doing, but can only do for a short amount of time before you get bored or tired of them? Yeah, reading comes to mind first. Is there anything coming out soon (books, albums, movies, video games) that you're looking forward to? I'm not up-to-date on this stuff at all, not even video games. What is something someone recommended to you that you disliked/hated? I know Girt's recommended me music I haven't been a fan of. We like the same general stuff, but there are specific sub-genres we differ in opinion about. Can you unwrap a Starburst in your mouth? ... There are people who do this to even know in the first place??? What is the last thing you ate? Popcorn. Who is your favorite person to spend time with? Sara. Do you know how to grill a steak? I don't know how to cook, period. Do you have a large dog? We don't have a dog currently, but Mom is looking for one pretty intently. We don't know the size it'll end up being. Do you like walking places? Absolutely not. I can't walk far at all without my legs starting to scream at me because leading such a sedentary lifestyle led to muscle atrophy in my legs. It's incredibly embarrassing. Are you a fan of bands most people don’t know of? That's not uncommon for me. Have you ever sent an X-Rated picture to someone? No. Do you think your voice is higher or lower than average? It's deeper than the average woman's. Do you have a pool? No, but I really, really want one... Given how easily I sweat, I would love to use swimming to strengthen my legs. I could also stop the very moment I feel I need to; it in general sounds like something I could quite easily do. How many times have you been on a plane? Ummm including the trips going back, at least six times. Favorite ice cream flavor? Oh my gooooood, if you haven't tried Ben & Jerry's "phish food"... fucking try that shit. It is innnnnncredible. Do you have a TikTok? Nope. Do you enjoy driving? Fuck no I don't. Your favorite store as a teen? Hot Topic was and still is my fave, ha. Favorite YouTuber? There's this one called Markiplier that I think's pretty cool. How many online accounts do you have? A LOT. My whole life is essentially on the computer, so... .-. Do you tend to always be in some sort of drama? Quite the opposite. Do you collect quarters from every state? No. When was the last time your living room furniture was rearranged? Not since we moved into this place. When you were little did you like watching Cartoon Network, Disney or Nickelodeon more? Disney probably topped Nickelodeon. I didn't watch much CN. Who was the last person to kiss you on the cheek? Either my niece or nephew when saying bye. Have you ever seen a magic show? Yes, as a kid. I even had a magician for my bday once. When was the last time you vomited and why? It's been a year or so. It would've been a side effect of starting a certain med that I didn't stay on because it so consistently made me sick. Where do you usually sit when you eat dinner? Either in my bed (I know) or at the dinner table if Nicole is here to eat with us. What time do you usually go to sleep at night? It's typically around 7:30-8:30, occasionally a bit later. I can't believe as a teen, it was my "rule" that I couldn't go to sleep before 10:30 because it was "too early." Nowadays, I can barely imagine regularly staying up that late. Do you avoid using public restrooms? As best as I can. I've seen some nasty shit. What’s your favorite type of cookie? Chocolate chip. How basic.

#survey #surveys #questions #lyrics: ''long way down'' - the evil within ost

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ckret2 · 4 years

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So I’ve got a Spotify playlist consisting of the compiled contents of 81 different Alastor-centric playlists, like I just copied the contents of every single playlist I could find with no cultivation, no filtering, and no censoring. The one limitation I put was no duplicates of the same song—although multiple versions of the same song off different albums was allowed.

And since then I’ve been listening to this all-packed-together playlist on shuffle. It’s brought up several comments/questions. Highlights include:

- To every single person that includes a romance song with lines like “baby you’re my angel” or the like: are you a Radiodust shipper actually referring to Angel, or are you a Charlastor shipper referring to Charlie’s “fallen angel” heritage?

- One of you included an entire creepypasta story about the devil talking a man into killing his ex-wife and her lover as part of a 500-step-long plan to conceive the Antichrist and I’m not quite sure why it was on an Alastor playlist but I appreciate the characterization of the devil in it. I guess a creepypasta is kind of a radioplay of sorts? Maybe more Alastor playlists should just have random radioplays mixed in.

- To the person who included half a Kidz Bop album on their Alastor playlist: I’m not judging, I just wanna know why. I want to understand. I really want to understand.

- I respect all you people that included song covers by Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox and I understand where you’re coming from, but like, if you’re not familiar with music genres from before 1990, I suggest you look up which genre a given PMJ cover is trying to emulate, because if you’re stuffing PMJ covers on a playlist specifically to make them “sound like” Alastor’s era or because you’re going for “songs Alastor would like because they sound like what he’s used to,” then a PMJ cover that makes a 1990s song sound like a 1970s song isn’t quite in the right neighborhood.

- There are different philosophies that go into making a character playlist. Some go “the genre has to fit the character’s era and/or personal tastes, whether or not the lyrics do.” Some go “the lyrics have to fit the character, genre be damned.” Some go “these songs were big/popular when I was into this character so that’s what I associated with them.” Some go “these songs are really out there for the canon character but fit my headcanons.” Some people may have totally different criteria I haven’t even thought of! Anyway the point is: when you mix over eighty playlists together, you get every single playlist-making philosophy mixed together, and it’s an exciting experience to listen to.

- And on that note: every single genre on the planet is on this playlist. We’ve got Britney Spears, we’ve got Vocaloid, we’ve got Thomas Sanders (we’ve got a LOT of Thomas Sanders), we’ve got My Chemical Romance, Two Steps from Hell, Barry Manilow, Oingo Boingo, Within Temptation, Madonna, Kesha, Hans Zimmer, ... we’ve got the poppiest pop, emo, metal, electronic, folk, rap, rock, movie soundtracks, TV soundtracks, classical, disco, country, KPop, Carrie Underwood, every single decade for the last 150 years... and I’m deliberately leaving out all the jazz, swing, electroswing, and musicals, because those are a given for Alastor. Obviously those ones dominate the playlist but it’s amazing how much variety there is outside them.

- I’m frankly amazed by how much of this playlist is Thomas Sanders and Bendy and the Ink Machine. Like. It’s a notable quantity.

- That said, actually the playlist doesn’t quite include every single genre. Like, for example: I can tell y’all want to lean into Alastor’s New Orleanian/Louisianan/Creole roots from how many songs I’ve seen that include words like voodoo, Creole, New Orleans, bayou, uhhhh The Princess & the Frog, etc... And yet aside from a few New Orleanian jazz artists so far I have crossed paths with very little Louisianan music compared to, say... Undertale songs. So here. Start with some Cajun, try some Mardi Gras songs, I’m not totally sure how much of this playlist is “actually from Louisiana” and how much is “other people making songs that they think are Louisianan” but try this one anyway, and once you’ve oriented yourself a bit dig in here. I wanna see ten Alastor playlists with one song that includes “Zydeco” in the title or album name, stat. Sure, we know Alastor’s all jazz and swing and musicals, but I sure don’t listen to only three genres, you probably don’t listen to only three genres, and Mr. Radio Guy Whose Public Title Includes The Word “Radio” Who Likes Bursting Spontaneously Into Musical Numbers probably listens to more genres than you and me combined, and those genres probably started with what was local & accessible & common around where he grew up.

- Then again I haven’t listened to this whole playlist yet, sometimes I put it on shuffle and sometimes I put it in alphabetical order to try to slowly work through it from top to bottom (I’ve made it mostly through the C’s) so maybe y’all hid the Cajun & Creole music down in the D’s. But lemme say this: while randomly shuffling through the playlist, I’ve randomly run into multiple Irish drinking songs & shanties, and randomly run into zero zydeco, so like from those of you who follow the “music that sounds like what the character listens to” philosophy of playlist-making, non-jazz Louisianan music could use a lil more representation. If there’s room for twenty-six Billie Eilish songs there’s room for one BeauSoleil song. (I’m partial to “L’ouragon,” but you do you)

- Somewhere in this massive mixed playlist there are three parody medleys of Disney songs rewritten to be like “here are grimdark edgy lyrics about all of the terrible real-world things happening to the cultures depicted in these Disney movies!” and like, okay, I can see why that merits inclusion in an Alastor playlist, his big moment in the pilot was “take an optimistic song worthy of a Disney princess and rewrite it with grimdark edgy lyrics,” but those three songs still annoy the hell out of me because the specific way they frame the concept of their songs is that Disney movies/songs are “full of lies” and these songs reveal the lies. And then it’s things like... “Aladdin got captured and interrogated by the CIA,” which is definitely a thing that happened to a character living in an ambiguous time period that predates the existence of the United States, much less the CIA, much less the CIA’s meddling in the middle east, by several centuries. Disney was definitely lying about the reality of Aladdin’s day-to-day existence by not depicting American imperialism that predates America. Or “the characters in The Princess & the Frog have to deal with the fallout of Hurricane Katrina,” like, yeah, Disney sure is pulling the wool over our eyes by dishonestly denying the devastating consequences the 2005 hurricane had on 1920s New Orleans. Listen the lyrics are clever and all the things they discuss are real salient social issues but it still drives me nuts that the songs are framed like they’re revealing “lies” being told when half of the movies are taking place in (fantasy versions of!) time periods or locations where the issues they’re discussing didn’t apply, if they’d just framed that one line differently— Okay, okay, I’m finished, I’m done, I’ve got it out of my system

- Every single love song makes me go “are you imagining this song with a ship (and if so which ship) or do you just think Alastor would be into this song?” The question goes double for songs from the 20s/30s, because the odds that they added it to their playlist just because they think Alastor would like the song increases.

- On the other hand, if whoever added “A Formidable Marinade” isn’t a Charlastor shipper I will eat my hat. Also nice work on the gory cannibalism sex song.

- Every once in a while I’ll run into a song that makes me go, now how the heck did you end up on an Alastor playlist? Does this song line up with someone’s very specific headcanons and/or fanfic plot? Do they think Alastor would like this song? Did they happen to like the song and like Alastor at the same time and so they associate them with each other? Examples: “I Got You (I Feel Good)”, “iRobot” (is it the emotionlessness of being post-death?? do they headcanon that he’s got radio hardware replacing his guts?? is it a post-breakup ship song??), “Greensleves”, “Barbra Streisand” (the song, not the singer), “Jolene,” “The Last Steampunk Waltz,” “Seven Nights in Eire,” “Cruel Angel’s Thesis,” and the person who included half a Kidz Bop album, please, I just wanna talk—

- Every time I hear a song that includes the words “hell,” “sinner,” “smile,” or “radio,” I go, “Haha. Nice.”

- An incomplete list of songs that amused me for how on point they are: “Hotel California” (how often do you have a fandom where “Hotel California” is actually very blatantly fitting without having to twist through an extended & convoluted metaphorical interpretation?), “The Hunting Song,” “The Axeman’s Jazz,” and “Time Again”

- I sort of hate whoever put “Circus” by Britney Spears in their playlist and made me realize that lyrically it’s a perfect Alastor song because it is.

- *scrolls past six versions of “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows”* Haha. Nice.

- *scrolls past five versions of “It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)”* Haha. Nice.

- *scrolls past a song from Bambi* Haha. Nice.

- *scrolls past five versions of “You’re Never Fully Dressed Without A Smile”* Haha. Nice.

- *scrolls past eleven versions of “Sing Sing Sing”* Haha. Nice.

- What’s with those of y’all putting steampunk songs in Alastor playlists? Listen, listen: steampunk vibes are for Sir Pentious. Swing vibes are for Alastor. Don’t cross the streams. Take your steampunk songs and make Sir Pentious playlists with them. He could use more playlists.

- The playlist includes 39 songs that include “smile” somewhere in the title.

#hazbin hotel #alastor #(how do i tag this. meta on meta? fanmix playlists are inherently meta already but like)#meta

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ivcsisms · 4 years

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𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐨 just released a debut album, 𝖕𝖔𝖎𝖘𝖔𝖓 !

shocking absolutely everyone, ivy serrano, new york’s favorite model and influencer, just suddenly released a debut album ! eagle-eyed fans remember her being spotted outside a recording studio a few months ago, but other than that, it seems no one had any clue the brunette was planning a career in music. the release follows quite a bit of controversy started in bora bora, leading to many accusing ivy of creating drama just for the sake of publicity for her album. whether that’s true or not, the album is surprisingly honest and from the heart, giving the world a sneak peek into the inner workings of ivy’s mind. the title, poison, comes from her former stage-name for exotic dancing and common nickname, posion ivy. immediately after the release, ivy got on instagram live to host a listening party, pausing after some songs to answer a few questions; fans have already been speculating the deeper meanings behind each song, linking the lyrics with ivy’s current and past relationships. read more about the fan theories and descriptions of each song below !

lolita — ❛ alright, so, the first track sets the vibe, ❜ ivy explained before playing the song to the lucky fans who caught the live stream— and thankfully for the rest of us, recorded it so we could analyze her words as well. comments with marty incanti’s name flooded the chat as the song played, to which ivy responded, ❛ i’m just gonna tell you guys now, not every song is necessarily about one person or one experience, and not everything is entirely literal. i was really going for a dramatic effect with the lyrics, since everyone says i’m such a damn drama queen all the time. might as well be one if i’m gonna be accused anyway, right ? anyway, what i’m saying is these songs aren’t necessarily about specific people, but more... inspired by them, i guess. ❜

money power glory — ivy was rather coy in her response to the comments on this song calling her a gold digger, laughing and saying ❛ and what the fuck about it ? our lord and savior thee stallion said i’m in my bag and i’m in his too, that’s why every time you see me i got some new shoes, and i fuckin live by that ! mind your business. ❜

off to the races — ❛ this song is a fucking dream, i love it so much. is that conceited to say, that i love my own song ? whatever, it’s one of my favorites. it’s like... an ode to my fucked up love life, ❜ is how ivy introduced this one, and she clearly wasn’t exaggerating her love for this song, as she couldn’t stop herself from signing along at times. when she noticed fans speculating which of her exes the ‘my old man’ lyrics in the song could be referring to, she was quick to correct them, ❛ no, no, i already told you guys ! it’s not about one person, this one especially. it’s about everyone, and no one. but mostly, it’s about me, the rest is more of a metaphor. ❜

video games — despite the lyrics explicitly mentioning a man, fans believe this song was actually inspired by ivy’s ex girlfriend, coral arenas, due to a deleted picture on coral’s instagram from when the two were together with the caption heaven is on earth with you, which is very similar to the lyrics in the song. this was one of the only songs she didn’t answer questions about, instantly skipping to the next one after playing it, which only furthered fans’ belief due to the notoriously messy breakup the two had after ivy quickly jumped into her relationship with marty.

born to die — ivy explained in the livestream that this song was written most recently, and almost didn’t make the album in time. ❛ it was literally, like, a mad dash to get this one on there. my team was a little mad at me, shout out to them for making it happen ! i started writing this song a really long time ago, but it was mostly just bits and pieces. i finally put it all together the night i met marty. ❜

cinnamon girl — fans are convinced this song is about ivy’s rumored fling, lux santana, so much so that they’re considering cinnamon as the ship name for the two girls. this song obviously has a special place in ivy’s heart, as when asked about this song she simply said, ❛ this one’s kind of hard to talk about right now, but it’s one of my favorites. she turned out not to be the first.. but, it happens, anyway, next song ! ❜ referencing the lyrics: if you hold me without hurting me you’ll be the first that ever did. ouch ! what exactly happened in bora bora ?

diet mountain dew — the inspiration for this song is the cause for quite the disagreement in her fan base, with some believing she wrote it about jordan lee, while others think the song is about tomas lorenzo. both men have infamously on-again-off-again relationships with ivy, similar to the one depicted by the lyrics of the song. the lyrics you’re no good for me but baby i want you are cited most frequently by both sides of the argument, each interpreting them differently. ivy skipped straight to the next song without an explanation, so all we can do is speculate.

florida kilos — fans were shocked by how open ivy was about her use of cocaine in this song, as she’s repeatedly denied rumors in the past that she has a problem with the white powder. she mostly just laughed at the reactions to the song, simply saying, ❛ if you know you know, okay ? ❜ before moving on.

carmen — fans are pretty sure this song is actually about ivy herself, addressing the complexities of dealing with fame, and mentioning her teenage years, which is rather rare for ivy. she doesn’t often talk about her past, and perhaps this song gives some insight as to why. the only explanation she offered is that ❛ it’s a metaphor ❜ so fans are pretty certain they’re right about this one.

ultraviolence — ivy offered a long-winded explanation for the last song, ❛ i had the hardest time picking the first song, but this was always the last one. it just sums it all up, i think. this song also took me the longest to write of any song ever. i literally wrote the poison lines— you’ll see what i mean in a second— when i was eighteen, i actually can’t believe i finally finished it, and made an album to put it on. i thought it was going to live in my brain forever, but now you guys get to hear it, too ! ❜ she was referring to the lines cause i was filled with poison but blessed with beauty and rage and he used to call me poison like i was poison ivy, which are clear nods to the title of the album and her nickname.

after playing the last track, she answered a few more general questions, explaining how she wanted the album to be a surprise because she didn’t want anyone to know about it or hear it until it was ready. she said that even her closest friends didn’t know about the album, so it seems it was quite a surprise for everyone !

@coral911 @martyisms @tomashq @jordanpls @satanfm

#drug mention //#i rambled sm abt each song no one asked for this bUT U HAVE IT NOW #but some of them r rly funny to me laksg i love this bitch sm #also i love that picture of her sm the 'boys' hair clip RLY does it for me #i dONT have a tag for this so im jus gonna put it in #♡ — FILED UNDER › 𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 #♡ — FILED UNDER › 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐫 / 𝐭𝐦𝐳

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songisforyou · 4 years

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Now We Sit in Your Car, and Our Love Is a Ghost (5/8)

I keep playing on repeat / the same set of memories / I’m in the passenger seat / and you are there next to me.

The first boy I date is one I learn to care for on a twenty-four hour drive to Colorado, and on seven-hour drives to and from Kentucky. I don’t think I am ever in love with him, but I learn to love asking him questions in the bubble of the front seat, the night flashing by outside. Inside that bubble, there are no secrets, nothing is too stupid to say, everything we say is full of meaning, and I get to choose the music for hours on end.

I like the way the hours slip away when they’re ours / and I like the way the highway waves goodbye behind the car.

I remember the boy distinctly drenched in the gold of sunrise on the drive back, crossing state after state until the sunrise becomes a sunset and we finally find home in the middle of the night. I sit next to him, trying to memorize his profile, wondering if he sees me the way I see him: beautiful. Wondering if he sees me the way I see him: in great detail, observing the angle of his wrist, one hand holding the bottom of the steering wheel, the way he sings along quietly when I pick the right song.

I know you like wide open spaces / and long horizon lines. / The sun sets in the rearview mirror, we’re / almost out of time.

I write songs about him. They are songs about cars, about sitting next to the driver. Of course Lorde, too, falls in love in a car, and the car serves as the vehicle to convey her love story.

The journey starts in Pure Heroine. In Pure Heroine, “400 Lux,” Lorde sings, “you pick me up and take me home again / head out the window again,” and the chorus calls to mind endless cookie-cutter blocks passing by in the suburbs, the roads “where the houses don’t change / where we can talk like there’s something to say.” She captures the magic of feeling important, of how the car can turn the trivial into the essential, the mundane into the meaningful, providing the closest thing to freedom that she can find in suburbia.

The final track of the album, “A World Alone,” opens “That slow-burn wait while it gets dark / bruising the sun. / I feel grown-up with you in your car. / I know it’s dumb.” I think of this stanza all the time. I play it on almost every car ride when the sunset begins giving way to dusk. The sentiment is the same as in “400 Lux,” where the car becomes a place where we are important. We can fall in love because we can talk to each other here, and in this car, we inhabit a world alone. Maybe it’s stupid. It’s almost unbearably tender, the simple music behind the words, the lone notes, the space around them, the gradient of soft color against the car, the lump in my throat. Maybe I look back one day and think that the things I said were trivial, not as profound as I thought, that I was just a kid—but it doesn’t matter. In those moments, we believe in what we say to each other. We hear each other.

Lorde doesn’t have a driver’s license (to this day). Like me, she is always in the passenger seat, never alone, never an independent traveler, always existing in relation. In his car, she must have felt like an adult. I wonder if she wanted to reach over the seat and touch his face, if she kept looking at him when he was looking at the road, drinking him in, waiting for his eyes to flicker toward her and back to the street, if she sang harmony along with the radio and wondered if he thought her voice was pretty (it’s unconventional, a low, alto growl, but it becomes addictive, works its way into the heart of the listener)—if she did all the same things I did, craved the same things I craved, worried, like I worried, that she was making too much of these moments. Is it stupid?

In Melodrama, we hear the aftereffects of the love, the memory of it. The two songs that mention his car are “Hard Feelings” and “Supercut,” a song about the end and a song about remembering the beginning after the end has come.

In the first, she writes “now we sit in your car / and our love is a ghost.” I swallow these words on long car rides with my ex, when we are in the same group for weekend climbing trips. In the second, the ghost is explored. A supercut is a montage, and Lorde’s is one that cuts together “all the magic we gave off / All the love we had and lost.” In her head, the same moments replay — “In your car, the radio up / In your car, the radio up.” The line repeats itself like the memories, abruptly cutting back, somewhere between supercut and short-circuit. “We keep trying to talk about us / I’m someone you maybe might love.” The song calls back to “400 Lux” and “A World Alone,” a beautiful representation of the way we remember our relationships, our habit of recalling the best parts, of getting lost in nostalgia, finding ourselves wrapped up by the ribbons that tie us to the people we loved.

The love is remembered in one car; the post-breakup recovery in another. “Liability,” one of the most vulnerable, heart-wrenching songs on Melodrama, expresses Lorde’s attempt to come to terms with her breakup, opening with “Baby really hurt me / crying in the taxi / he don’t want to know me.” She is no longer welcome in his car. He doesn’t want to know her (“he,” not “you,” a far cry from the intimacy they shared). Instead, we imagine, he has put her in a cab. A stranger drives her home. Similarly, the entire album begins with “I do my makeup in / Somebody else’s car. / We order different drinks / At the same bar.” We know from this line that she is going to the same place as he is, but she can’t go there with him. She has to take someone else’s car. To begin the album this way is to emphasize the excruciating awareness Lorde has of their parallel paths and the distance between them.

The recovery, in the end, requires finding a new way to move through the world. “I ride the subway, read the signs,” she sings in the second verse of “Writer in the Dark.” In real life, while writing the album, she “took lots of subway rides, auditioning rough mixes of songs on cheap earbuds, which helped give her a sense of how the music would sound in daily life.” The subway is independent, solitary. It enables her to focus on her work. It doesn’t require her to dedicate her attention to the person next to her, the way conversation in the car does. It might be something like her new life, the one where she faces thousands of strangers every night instead of facing the specific person she once loved from the passenger seat. On the subway, in the stadium, she is always on display yet perhaps often unseen, unknown. She has emerged from the privacy of a love affair (in his car) and the privacy of her own heartbreak (in another car) into the individual-yet-communal and decidedly-unromantic experience of public transit. Perhaps it reminds the girl she used to be, when she wrote, “we ride the bus with our knees pulled in” (“Buzzcut Season”) or “we count our dollars on the train to the party” (“Team”), before the complications of the relationship took over. But perhaps it is different — now, there is no mention of anyone else with her. The independence is more complete, if bittersweet.

I take the train from school back to my city. I’ve never driven anywhere alone, since I didn’t get my driver’s licence until a week before I returned to school for senior year, where I don’t have a car. Sometimes I remember the bubble of my ex-boyfriend’s car, but I also think of the way I can put in my headphones on the train and just sit with my own thoughts. It’s a lonely release, a haunted freedom.

#lorde #text post #text #writer in the dark #hard feelings/loveless #supercut #400 lux #melodrama #pure heroine #liability #green light #song is for you #five of eight

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flowersinmytimemachine · 5 years

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The German song that mentions Mclennon

Okay so as I've already said, there is a song in German that names John, Paul and also Yoko Ono. They are only mentioned in the chorus but concerning the topic of the song I think it is worth talking about.

The song is called "Kogong" by Mark Forster. (Sollten das hier deutschsprachige Leute lesen, bitte tötet mich nicht :D)

Here is the official music video:

youtube

1. About the singer

Mark Forster is a 35-year-old German Singer-Songwriter. He had his first major hit in 2014 and ever since has been able to become one of Germanys most famous pop singers. He is known for his catchy and easy-going tunes. Most of the songs talk about love, self-confidence or just having a good time.

Just like many people, I know a bunch of his songs without really being a fan. They just play his hits on the radio ALL THE TIME. Despite his fame, some people say that his songs literally sound more or less the same. (If you want to get a better idea of his usual sound, some of my favourites are: "Flash mich", "Au revoir", EFF- "Stimme")

Why am I telling you all of this? Well, "Kogong" is quite the opposite of that. Maybe you could hear that this song sounds rather melancholic and slow. And guess what? That piano that you can hear in the background? Yep, that's Pauls piano. Mark Forster literally flew to London just to record this song at Abbey Road Studios. He says:

"We recorded 'Kogong' at Abbey Road Studios, in Studio 2, where the Beatles made all their records. And the piano that you can hear in 'Kogong' is the same piano that Paul Mccartney played 'Let It Be' on. That was quite special for me and my band and I think you can hear that the old Beatles spirit somewhat comes through in it."

Kogong came out in 2017. It was released on the only album by Forster that has an overall more serious sound. So what exactly is "Kogong" about?

2. The lyrics

Here are two pictures, one with the German lyrics and one with a translation by me.

When you read the lyrics, you will probably see that it is kinda hard to understand, especially after only one listen. Quite a few phrases don't seem to make a lot of sense. Well German audiences were not so happy either with this piece. Some said that the melody is good even though nobody was used to this kind of song by Forster. But the comments online seem to share the same opinion on the text: Forster probably only wanted to show that he is also able to write more intellectual sounding songs. Many just view it as avantgardist crap. Then again the video has 20 Mio views on YouTube and is currently his 6th most listened to song on Spotify so 🤔

But now about the interesting stuff. How could ANYONE who knows at least the slightest bit about Mclennon not stumble across this line:

"I am fucking Yoko Ono. My heart is Paul and John."

My heart is Paul and John? Yes Mark, I couldn't have said it any better myself. So ever since this song came out, I was curious what all these confusing lyrics could mean. Where is the connection between this one line and the rest of the song? What did Mark Forster say about it?

3. Interpretation

Here is a statement by Forster:

"Kogong is the sound of the heart when it's listening. The song is about small and big things that my heart told me but that I kind of couldn't really hear. I really hope that I'll be able to pay more attention to it in the future, so maybe this song is my new start."

So the subject of the song is not really able to listen to its heart. Furthermore, the lyrics hint on multiple topics and problems that the person has to face:

Being not happy at all, maybe even depressed ("you're not fine, you're only half-way fine"), this could also suggest that the subject has to keep up a facade while suffering inside

Problems in a relationship, marriage or even having an affair ("what you still want from her", "you hug eachother for far too long")

Self-image, Self-acceptance ("Wherever you are, you will always be yourself", "you need your peace")

The above mentioned quote says that this is a personal song. Another time he said that he realised that he wanted to become a singer while walking on the Road to Santiago (hence the line about hiking).

In another interview he stated that he tries to write in the same way as he thinks minus the rhymes. Overall short phrases which came to his mind.

So in concern of listening to ones heart: The lyrics suggest that the subject is not only unable to listen to its heart but rather actively ignores it due to outer circumstances. ("I don't want to hear a thing and am beating my chest like King Kong.").

Seems like there is a constant dispute between the heart and the subject. Which finally leads us to the line:

"I am fucking Yoko Ono, my heart is Paul and John."

How could a seemingly average pop singer connect a song about inner conflicts, love and self-image to John, Paul and Yoko Ono??

Well Forster said that he literally grew up with the Beatles and that they influenced him deeply. But to connect specific names to this topic, he couldn't only have been enjoying their songs. He has to know about their history and especially about their break-up. I've read a few opinions that "John" is only in there because it rhymes with "Kogong". So if he came up with that name and him being a Beatles fan, maybe the association to John Lennon isn't that far off. But why "fucking Yoko Ono"? Mark says:

"Yoko Ono is often accused of breaking up* the Beatles. And sometimes that's how I feel about my heart: Yoko Ono brings me and my heart apart." (*literally bringing apart)

?Eh?

Tbh that's hella confusing. I think he was kinda joking tho since he also states that the "fucking" is in there because of that British town. Which obviously makes no sense. Since Forster is serious about the rest of the song, its almost like he doesn't really want to talk about the true meaning of that line.

I mean the "John" could have suited only as a filler word at first. But I just don't think that other songwriters would automatically then connect that to Yoko Ono and especially Paul. Furthermore John and Paul form an unity here in the symbol of the heart. Despite the songs topic that's just such an romantic association.

Of course the average listener could easily say that this is all random nonsense. But for me who is genuinely interested in the Beatles/ Mclennon, this line doesn't seem out of context.

So if we take the lyrics of Kogong seriously, Mark Forster connects difficult romantic relationships and listening to your heart with John and Paul. Btw I know that Yoko didn't break up the Beatles, but Mark Forster is only talking about the infamous accusation of such. And even if he's only referring to the rumored breakup, wouldn't it be Beatles VS Yoko or Beatles VS John and Yoko? No, Mark Forster has to put John and Paul on one side and due to the metaphor with the heart, they together are portrayed as something pure, something romantic.

4. Conclusion

Well I can't really break the song down to every little phrase and its possible meaning. I think this post is already long enough 😅

Nevertheless "Kogong" by Mark Forster talks about conflicts with the inner-self concering love or becoming the person that you really are. All of this is quite explicitely connected to John and Paul (and Yoko) in the peak line of the chorus. (Just the way Forster sings this part is so...honest and amazing..). In my opinion, Mark Forster implies a really close (possible even romantic) connection between Paul and John while being put up against Yoko.

Shipping Mclennon or viewing their relationship as very close/romantic is often connected with horny teenagers on social media who make up crazy theories to satisfy their own desires. But here we have a man in his 30s who seemingly hints on similar ideas concerning their relationship in one of his most famous songs. And I know that this is not the first time that pop culture mentions their connection in that way but its actually the first very serious approach that I know of.

And maybe I am really reading too much into all of this. ( I mean I'm a Mclennon shipper after all lol) But in the end we still have a man who flew all the way to London just to sing-scream "I am fucking Yoko Ono, my heart is Paul and John" at Abbey Road Studios and I think that's pretty cool.

If you finished this mess till the end, thank you so much and let me know your opinion on it! ☺️🙌

(Sorry for any writing mistakes and I also have the sources of the quotes at hand, but obviously they are in German)

#mclennon #john lennon #paul mccartney

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ohblackdiamond · 4 years

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kiss autobiographies/memoirs and their usage in fanfics

One of the more interesting things in KISS fandom, I feel like, is what sources writers tend to pull the most from. There are hundreds of interviews, clips, even candid to semi-candid footage, but by and large, if anyone’s pulling directly from any particular sources (myself included), it tends to be the autobiographies.

More specifically, it tends to be Peter’s autobiography, Makeup to Breakup: My Life in and out of KISS.

I’ve often wondered why, and the simplest, easiest reasoning is that his book is, by far, the most typically rockstaresque of the four, with very indulgent, often sleazy accounts of the orgies, nightlife, and general decadence of the late ’70′s. Many of Peter’s accounts have been said to be greatly exaggerated if not fabricated (sidenote: Lydia’s also called out Gene’s exaggerations/untruths on a frequent basis, particularly regarding how much money the band made during the early days, so this is definitely not a case of an ex-wife being bitter). But I feel like even keeping that in mind, there’s an odd ring of emotional truth in the way Peter describes the band’s rise to the top and the spats, drug use, and tensions that resulted in his first firing.

The way he describes Paul and Gene in particular post-1980, pre-Reunion, and his deliberate seeking out of Mark St. John to play for another of his solo album efforts makes it pretty abundantly clear that he was watching KISS-- bitterly-- from afar. And I don’t know, I think that resonates with people. Wanting to root for the underdog. Or, well, undercat, as the case may be. There’s a lot in there I’m apt to take with about a pound of salt (Peter, you’re not Rambo), but I do feel like Peter’s autobiography is accurate as far as the summations of his feelings go, and some of the stories are a little too weird (and a little too enthusiastically-written) to be fabrications. I mean, Gay Kitchen, where he and Paul spend a week making double-entendre menus, “cooking” hot dogs, and serving them up to Gene and Ace, all while gleefully hitting on each other? Getting somewhat weirded-out and traumatized while having sex with a girl wearing the Catman makeup, because it’s basically like having sex with yourself? Seems pretty legitimate. Peter’s book goes in hard on everyone in an expose that’s more bitter than gleeful, while exposing his own faults and foibles far more than he realizes.

Peter portrays himself as a very needy guy. I don’t think it’s what he meant to do, but it comes across in almost every single page. He’s paranoid. He owns up to his threats to quit the band, and he seems somewhat aware of what’s spurring his insecurities (an inferiority complex stemming from feeling like the remainder of the band hadn’t “paid their dues,” and an awareness that BFFs-for-life, college-educated Gene and college-...started Paul had a prior edge on high-school dropout Peter from the start). His flares of temper and impulsivity, his drug addiction, and the multiple trainwrecks left in the aftermath, aren’t toned down or glossed-over. It’s a weirdly fascinating perspective.

Paul’s autobiography, Face the Music: A Life Exposed, gets pulled from as a source probably the second most often, for similar reasons. Paul’s book is a lot more intensely curated, I’d say; as always, he’s extremely image-conscious and probably purposely waited until everyone else’s book was out before he opted to go for the kill. And he does. With everyone. Each original KISS member earns himself nearly 45 minutes of ranting, and those that come after don’t typically fare a whole lot better. But as with Peter’s book, that’s not really what writers tend to pull from so much as the personality portrayed there, and, well. Whoo, boy.

I don’t think Paul realized his own book was quite as unflattering as it is, or he probably wouldn’t have published it. Again, he runs into the same issue Peter does (and to a far smaller extent, Gene in his own book), where dragging everyone from family members to the band to Bill Aucoin to exes to, yes, Slash, only serves to unintentionally drag himself. I mean, the guy was petty enough to add Ace walking in and using the toilet while he (Paul) was in the shower to his own autobiography. I don’t doubt it happened, but it’s such an unnecessary jab. Anyway, Paul has likely-true anecdotes (Ace kissing Peter’s dick, Ace and Eric’s makeouts), scattered in a soup of unending anxiety and insecurity, stemming from pretty obvious sources (unhappy home life, childhood bullying due to microtia, failed albums, Gene dumping him). Same underdog sort of scenario, which I think a lot of fic writers (and KISS fans in general) identify with. He discusses starting therapy as a teenager, having panic attacks and severe anxiety-- which I think is cool of him to do; I think destigmatizing mental illness is a great thing. I’ve been in and out of therapy and on different SSRIs most of my adult life, and I do value that he’s open about his experiences there.

He acknowledges some of his own faults, stuff like how he can dish out all sorts of jabs, but he can’t take them in turn. There’s even a bit where he mentions a girl telling him that he’d never be happy because he was so critical of others. ... But then he just doesn’t quite seem to stop. He keeps dishing out the jabs, like when he opens up with Gene being fat when they first met (and saying he looked like he belonged in Hee-Haw) in a way that seems more straight-up mean than, uh, anything else. So, uh, I don’t know. It’s not exactly the character study he probably meant it to be, but it’s pretty interesting.

tl;dr why are paul and peter’s books the ones people pull from when they write fanfics? probably because they have the homoerotic stories (although gene has the ace-and-his-older-gentleman photo!) and they give a clearer picture of who’s behind the facepaint than ace’s and gene’s do.

#hey look ma i brought out the capitals #kiss the band #peter criss #paul stanley #kiss fanfiction #ace frehley #gene simmons

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moonshinelouis-archive · 4 years

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fine line analyses

these are thoughts; my thoughts. if you don’t agree please be reasonable and just ignore.

tumblr fucking ate this post so here i am. rewriting it all.

tw: i talk about alcohol, drugs, grief, and death

the album in general uses the extended metaphor of yellow. the colour is mentioned in nearly every song and i’ll explain why or why not later. the yellow is hope, happiness, and all things nice but as all archetypes it has a ‘dark’ side; it means cowardice and/or deceit. it also seems to follow the hero’s journey which is interesting.

side a: love/light vs dark. exposition.

golden begins the album already in sunshine; in happily vibes imo. gold is the ultimate illuminated colour, so to use it is... the next level, especially as the album opener. “take me back to the light / i knew you were way too bright for me” are ideas that come back in lights up. i love the juxtaposition in this song: “hold [the golden (light)], focus, hoping,” and then a couple lines later, “i’m hopeless, broken”; showing that at the same time, he’s hopeful and hopeless. i love that he alludes, in the entire song, that his person is the sun but he never says it outright: “you wait for me in the sky / [your light] browns my skin just right / you’re so golden,” which come back in sunflower. “i know that you’re scared / because hearts get broken / because i’m so open” immediately made me thing of strong. both he and his lover overwhelm each other at times: “you were way too bright for me,” “you’re scared / because i’m so open”; but ultimately this is a song about devotion: “i don’t wanna be alone / loving you’s the antidote.”

watermelon sugar doesn’t have anything outright yellow; however, the entire lyrics are rooted in imagery surrounding summer which inherently involves a sunny, especially when he calls out that it’s “warm,” that there are “berries,” that it’s “the end of June,” so my point stands. this song has already been analysed, i think, so i’m not gonna go too into it; in a nutshell, it’s the sweetest of loves. “tastes like strawberries on a summer evening” calls to we made it’s “remember how it tasted / looking into your eyes,” and the absolutely feral warm image of tasting moments makes me crazy...the tenderness..oh god.. “it sounds just like a song” comes back in many other tracks; in sunflower, “plant new seeds in the melody” -- try to find new beginnings in the music -- and also “want you more than a melody.” harry says this one was “the hardest one to finish” which could suggest ongoing events.

adore you has yellow in “honey” and “lemon” and hidden in “summer skies” and “brown skin.” thematically, this song is the same as watermelon sugar; devotion. “walk in your rainbow paradise” -- a rainbow is renewal, promise; a gateway, the calm after the storm. to be with his lover is to walk in paradise, away from all evil. though their lack of communication plagues them, it can sometimes be how they find their peace: “you don’t have to say you love me / nothing / [that] you’re mine.” “i’d walk through fire for you” reminded me of happily and through the dark.

lights up, too, has already been discussed at length; “what do you mean? / i’m sorry by the way / i’m never coming back down / can’t you see / i could but it wouldn't stay?” will speak volumes to anyone who’s been closeted, even if nothing extreme. “i’m never coming around / it’d be so sweet / if things just stayed the same” would be the melancholy and fear of watching those you love slip away because of something you can’t change; and, even if it doesn’t, there will always be the little things that change, like how you’re perceived. “all the lights couldn’t put out the dark / running through my heart” is one of my favourite lines; it speaks of the things within himself he’d rather hide, and yet, all the pride he’s told to have does nothing to erase his bitterness towards the feeling -- internalised homophobia/transphobia. however -- “step into the light / so bright sometimes / i’m not ever coming back” -- as overwhelming, as scary, as engulfing as it all may be... it’s much better to be in the light than in the dark; back to golden. the yellow in this song is in the ‘light.’

side b: complete abstinence of yellow. abyss.

cherry presents vibrant red rather than yellow, perhaps to illustrate the glossy jealousy he expresses in this song, and possibly to say he is angry despite sounding defeated. thematically similar to woman. i don’t think this song is dismissible because its aspects all come back: “gallery” is again in sunflower; “don’t call me baby” returns in to be so lonely. “there’s a piece of you in how i dress” reminded me of “painted nails make harry beautiful” :’) also, “your accent” is pretty loud. if anything is to be said about the ending, is that it’s in the “language of love.”

falling is very clearly the death in the hero’s journey; the lowest point from which he could only rebirth. again there are communication issues: “forget what i said / it’s not what i meant”; “we’ve run out of things we can say.” and then there’s rediscovery: “what am i now?” he asks, after having asked the listeners if they know who they are; and his despair seems tied to insecurities -- “what if i’m someone i don’t want around? / what if i’m someone you won’t talk about? / what if you’re someone i just want around?” (notice the flip of pronouns in the last two; switching the blame. harry and louis seem to do that a lot; the blame is passed from one to another in songs. he blames himself in this one, though: “there’s no one to blame but the drink and my wandering hands.”) the biggest insecurity lies in the line: “i get the feeling that you’ll never need me again,” in which harry just wants.. to be needed; to be loved and to be in love. overall he’s asking for redemption, whatever of.

to be so lonely is still sad, but obviously a rise; a rebirth. “don’t blame me for falling / i was just a little boy / don’t blame the drunk caller / i wasn’t ready for it all / you can’t blame me, darling / not even a little bit / i was away / and i’m just an arrogant son of a bitch who can’t admit when he’s sorry” -- the opening verse is just all excuses, all flimsy at best; pushing the blame around. “i was just a little boy” had me screaming; “don’t blame the drunk caller” is distancing himself as far away as possible even though....that’s him, drunk-calling; he said so in falling: “there’s no one to blame but the drink and my wandering hands.” the last one is not even trying; he just straight up says he’s arrogant.. lol. again he’s rooting onto insecurites: “i just hope you see me / in a little better light” asks his lover not to only see him as the stupid little boy who became a needy and arrogant drunk caller; and again he pleads for mercy with rather nonsensical logic: “do you think it’s easy? / being of the jealous kind?” overall, these three songs together could be interpreted as a breakup, though the romantic songs in the album would support better that there have been really rough patches in their relationship; specifically times in which they were caught in untimely scheduling inconveniences amid fights. but see it how you will.

she is a projection. harry tries out the ‘normal guy’ archetype, giving his character a nine-to-five office job and the predictable (supposedly married) life with kids; he likely did this to try out a different perspective of his feelings and/or to appeal to his audience, who is mostly not made up of millionaires. right away, he’s pretending, with the most basic of things: “[he] sends his assistant for coffee in the afternoon / around 13:32 / like he knows what to do.” as for the whole chorus and “a woman who’s just in his head / and she sleeps in his bed / while he plays pretend” is, to me, the woman inside him who aches to be seen; she represent his struggles with binary genders, both of which are oppressing. “he takes a boat out / imagines just sailing away / and not telling his mates / he wouldn't know what to say” is literally eroda?? and shows communication issues. again.

side c: ascending

sunflower makes the yellow comeback.. loud and in your face. the sunflower is commonly associated with the sun tarot card, which often depicts them with children, who are mentioned... the card stands for clarity and success. this song is thematically like watermelon sugar and adore you, but it just has that stoner vibe you know ? “kids in the kitchen listen to dancehall” triggered “even as young as you are.” again, there are communication issues; “i’ve been trying hard not to talk to you” “let me inside, i wanna get to know you / wish i could get to know you” “i was just tongue-tied / i’m still tongue-tied.” “i’ve got your face / hung up high in the gallery” again shows adoration; with cherry’s “does he take you walking through his parents’ gallery?” it could be interpreted as, are his parents showing you off like i do? a big note about it: “hung up high in the gallery / out of this shade” in the light! this is major.

canyon moon shows yellow in “the world’s happy waiting / doors yellow, broken, blue” -- happy, first of all. the doors are portals that they’ve taken, will take, or could take; some are happy, some deceitful, some sad. i find it very interesting that in she “the man drops his kid off at school” and in this one jenny tells her husband to “go get the kids from school.” “two weeks and i’ll be home” loud loud loud. paris and rome are both romantic cities. “[she -- jenny?] pretends not to know the words” again shows some pretending, perhaps to show that we all pretend about things in life, even mundane activites... just a fun song about being away and missing each other like right now.

treat people with kindness is the only song outside of side b that does not have yellow. i think that is because, though this is a happy song, it’s jus a cover up -- he’s burying his grief in the music and drugs/drinks. “and it’s just another day / and if our friends all pass away / it’s okay.” “feeling good in my skin / i just keep on dancing” shows the other effect of numbing all the insecurities and fears he normally carries.

side d: settling. the first sign fine line is a track to be paid attention to is that it’s the titular the track. the second push is giving it its own side on the record.

fine line is another side of she, for which i liked this eloquent explanation. it’s a drastic shift in mood from tpwk to fine line; harry truly shows how vulnerable he is. he’s divided -- “you sunshine, you temptress”; god, when i read/heard that i cried. so beautiful, so appeasing, but it looks like such a distant dream. unachievable. furthermore i think making this song about a relationship, or anyone other than harry and harry’s inner demons is belittling it; belittling his internal struggles to reach the so desired fine line...

#*#mel.txt #lyric analysis #hs2

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thesinglesjukebox · 4 years

Video

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DIXIE CHICKS - GASLIGHTER

[7.67]

Well, we're ready to make nice...

Jessica Doyle: I made the mistake of reading some of the hell-hath-no-fury-like-Natalie-Maines-on-vocals early publicity, and ended up expecting something a lot less jaunty. If you played "Gaslighter" for a non-English speaker, I'm not sure they'd hear the angry breakup from the music and vocals alone. That stray "Look out you little--" heading into the chorus at 2:05 sounds downright affectionate. This makes for a less emotionally clean song, and the video feels like overcompensation (was the "Daisy" ad really necessary?). But it makes a certain sense. This isn't a fictional story à la "Before He Cheats"; the Chicks chose to eschew the luxury of marinating in two-dimensional righteousness. Adrian Pasdar, as much as he will now forever be known as That Guy Who Did Something on Natalie Maines's Boat, is also presumably tied up irrevocably with Maines's two sons and a couple decades' worth of her memories; she's allowed to refrain from hating him straightforwardly. "Gaslighter" is less cathartic than it could have been -- it might get bellowed into karaoke mics less often than it could have been -- but truer. [6]

Katie Gill: Someone please just tell me what Adrian Pasdar did! I suspect that part of my love of this song is sheer nostalgia. I adore the Dixie Chicks and I'm so happy to see them make a comeback now, even if I worry that, with the current state of country music, it won't go anywhere. And I am here for the big divorce energy this single has. It's wonderful to see that the Dixie Chicks can summon up the beautiful cathartic anger that made their last album, Taking the Long Way, so good even over ten years later. And that anger is matched with gorgeous harmonies (that, granted, are a little bit too hidden by the arrangement), a cathartic chorus, and a brief moment of wonderful vulnerability from Maines near the end. Top that off with one of the best lyrics in 2020 in "you're sorry but where's my apology" and, look, I just can't wait for this dang album to come out already. [8]

Alex Clifton: "Gaslighter, you broke me/You're sorry, but where's my apology?" has rung in my ears for nearly two weeks. I wrote a boatload of bad poetry for years around that sentiment, and the Dixie Chicks sing ten words what I couldn't do in a thousand, and I love them for it. [10]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: "You're sorry, but where's my apology?" So many lines in "Gaslighter" speak truth to my experience of being emotionally and psychologically manipulated, but every time I hear this one in particular, several things happen. First, my blood starts to boil and race and I feel my hands get clammy. Then, I instinctively clench my teeth and get the urge to pump my fists in the air. Finally, I remind myself that if the Dixie Chicks can get through the past decades, I can too -- and my anger dissipates like air from a balloon. That's the argument the Dixie Chicks are making here: winning the argument means not letting anyone else's actions consume your emotional state. [7]

Tobi Tella: "Repeating all of the mistakes of your father" cuts like a knife, the harmonies are tight, and the lightness of the production makes it clear that they can still do fun. If there's any justice in this world, this would be a hit on country radio. [7]

Michael Hong: "Gaslighter" is the Dixie Chicks' first single in fourteen years, and by virtue of being that, is interwoven with each thread its own narrative: 1) the story of the Dixie Chicks -- the rise, the fall, the good, the bad, all of it always culminating in the idea that the women had something to prove. 2) Jack Antonoff on writing and production, straying into bold country territory, furthering his influence in modern music. 3) The rampant use, and in some cases, overuse, of the term "gaslighting," and how it's already led to thinkpieces on whether or not Natalie Maines was actually gaslit. And finally, 4) the politicization of the Dixie Chicks, broadcasting the political as a mirror of the personal. All of these narratives matter, and yet, none are necessary to understand "Gaslighter." The track is compact in all the right ways, with tight harmonies on top of fiddle and banjo arrangements and verses that pick up right where the chorus lets off. The Dixie Chicks package the gleeful realization of the truth into a chorus so jovial you can't help but sing along. All that's to say, even divorced from every narrative that you can throw at "Gaslighter," "Gaslighter" still demands you turn the volume up when you hear it through your car stereo. [7]

Alfred Soto: The inevitable emphasis on the dropped hook is purest Jack Antonoff, not Dixie Chicks, but the best of their tunes relied on outside help anyway. "Gaslighter" squeaks by on chutzpah, skill, and nostalgia from the silent minority of lib country listeners. But Antonoff's infatuation with percussion gives the Chicks the gaslighting urgency necessary to sell the songs in Labelle, Lynchburg, and Mena. They're still not ready to make nice -- except with Taylor Swift's producer's platinum cred. [7]

Joshua Lu: Jack Antonoff is perhaps the last producer I'd expect or want to produce a Dixie Chicks comeback song, largely because his limited palette of plinky pianos and muted synths isn't something I'd think I'd like to hear in country music. To Jack's credit, though, "Gaslighter" is a veritable romp, even in spite of how unfulfilled some of the instruments are and how the chorus sounds like it's coming from a couple of rooms over. The real charm, though, is in the lyrics, so full of the charm and wit that really signify that this is a Dixie Chicks song -- "you know exactly what you did on my boat" alone makes the song a perfect addition to the sizable "My Partner Cheated on Me and Now I Must Destroy the World" section of the country music canon. Fourteen years might've been a long wait, but at least it was worth it. [8]

Jackie Powell: So while 2020 has absolutely been an abysmal year, here's it's one redeeming quality: it set up an absolute glorious return for the Dixie Chicks. Their new single "Gaslighter" comes in at the right place at the right time. So do we have Taylor Swift to thank for this? Is it fair to assume that their vocals on "Soon You'll Get Better" (which might be the most beautiful song on Lover) were an introduction to Jack Antonoff? His signature drums on the second chorus and beyond provide the track with the train that will entice stans of Spacey Kacey Musgraves. A divorce anthem that is also reflexive to frustration with the world in 2020 is so on brand I want to cry. But tears of joy this time. The Dixie Chicks were some of the original victims of cancel culture. But really they were gaslit by their entire genre. Tomato-gate didn't happen until 2015, but the sexism the Dixie Chicks faced preceded the incident. What's fascinating about their return is they won't be in this fight with their genre and the country music establishment alone. Since the Dixie Chicks' hiatus, Musgraves, Maren Morris, The Highwomen and others have taken a spot on the no bullshit mantel next to the trio. It's refreshing. In classic Natalie Maines fashion, she regrets nothing, calling the repercussions of "Not Ready to Make Nice" a "blessing." But really, in 2020, we are the ones who are really truly blessed. [8]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: "Gaslighter" is triumphant both in its specificity ("you know exactly what you did on my boat"!!!) and its broadness (the harmonies, Jack Antonoff's shiny-as-hell production.) Despite that glory, though, "Gaslighter" feels a little empty at its core. It's the rush of the breakup without the consideration of the fallout, the thrill without any crash. [8]

Edward Okulicz: On first listen, this sounded too small, too restrained, too modest for its concept. These aren't things that you would expect from the big ambitions and big voices of the Dixie Chicks. But when the chorus comes in a second time with the drumbeat, it works as a mantra for a protagonist no more ready to forgive than she is to forget. And, as if you needed to be told, their voices still sound gorgeous together. [8]

Oliver Maier: A tumbling boulder of rage for a chorus and Jack Antonoff graciously refraining from turning "Gaslighter" into a big echoey 80s-inflected synth pop confection. "We moved to California and we followed your dreams" is such a great opening line for the verse, charging the events of the song with a mythological, Dust Bowl-era resonance and signalling the relationship's disintegration before it even occurs, like something out of a Steinbeck novel. Maines rattles off each charge against her ex just vividly enough to get the raw emotional beats across, without fixating long enough to stall the song's momentum. A relationship is cremated and catharsis is achieved; no need for an autopsy when there's no ambiguity left. [8]

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