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bettyshoweduptotheparty · 6 months

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Midnights is defined by duality: The story of an unreliable narrator and performance art (Part 1)

One year on, I think I've finally figured out what midnights is about. And it might surprise you.

The midnights album has just celebrated its first anniversary. And having listened to these songs for the last 12 months, staying up late to watch live streams of the Eras tour, and at times being unable to escape news about Taylor on every medium, I finally have an idea that makes all of this make sense: This is Taylor's duality era. And she wants us to notice. Join me on the ride if you want to know more :)

I made a post a few weeks ago about how the Midnights aesthetic has the ‘two Taylors’ duology: Private vs public, which is the lead theme that carries over into the music and most recently also into her public image. Midnights had a mismatched visual to it from the very beginning with the depressed 70s look (announcement photo and vinyl covers) and the glamourous midnight blue (cover image and public appearances).

The two Taylors in the Anti Hero mv really drove home the message for me that this album is about two versions of the same story, and Taylor is the writer and narrator. And while I'm sure that these two versions have existed for a lot longer than the midnights era, they have not previously been so prominently next to each other. In fact, the very point of having the public narrative, is to keep Taylor's private life out of the public eye. She has never shied away from providing the 'stories' that her fans want to see in order to relate to her music, and as the girl that made her fame with songs about heartbreak and fairytale princes, that usually meant being seen with a man that these songs could be attributed to. And she made sure people would make the connection, be it with scarves that change ownership, or foxes on shirts:

(Btw you can't deny how effective this was, with just a few photos she managed to hang an entire album on each of these men!)

So, acting is not new to Taylor. In addition to appearing in a few feature films and TV shows since 2010, she's done this public performance for well over a decade now. And she has been vocal in recent years about her intention to go into filmmaking, so we know she's able to tell stories in multiple ways. She's a storyteller first and foremost, maybe the best of our generation. But is she a reliable narrator?

What does 'unreliable narrator' mean?

A story told by a so-called unreliable narrator, is usually a first person narration, where it turns out that the person telling the story was either lying or in some other way unable to give a truthful account of events (e.g. hallucinating or dreaming). That usually means that the audience is left with having to interpret for themselves what really happened and what was real or not real. Famous examples of this kind of storytelling are the 2010 psycho thriller 'Black Swan' with Natalie Portman, or the YA novel 'We were liars' by E. Lockhart. If you like stories that leave you guessing, check those out ;)

So, why is Taylor an unreliable narrator? For those fans that have paid attention to her lyrics, it has long been evident that her songwriting and public narrative don't match up. The most obvious theme being her 17-year run of writing songs about secret relationships and hiding, while she was parading men around in public to be photographed with. But, as we know, most people ignore it because it's just easier than digging deeper into lyrics. But now with Midnights, I'm starting to think she wants people to notice the duality and start to question her narrative. The sheer number of songs on that album that have strong double meaning or draw attention to lying or distorting the truth is astonishing: Right out the gate with track 1 we have Lavender Haze, a pretty loud song about bearding using the very well established queer reference of lavender. (And maybe she leaned out of the window a little too far with that title, because we all know the gaylor uproar was so loud when the title was revealed, that she had to backpedal and hetsplain it.) Immediately followed by Maroon, the song that has probably singlehandedly turned the most swifties into gaylors since Bettygate of 2020... Then on to Anti Hero, the ultimate duality song that also makes mention of lying and scheming, same as Mastermind. High Infidelity and You're Losing Me join the ranks of songs that look like they are about romantic relationships on the surface, but could also be interpreted to be about Taylor's relationship with fame and her fans. High Infidelity is a play on words of the term High Fidelity or HIFI, which is a 90s sound technology that refers to truthful reproduction of sound. High INfidelity is therefore a genius way of referring to both cheating and unfaithful reproduction of sound, almost like someone who makes music that isn't quite truthful... We also know from Aaron Dessner that this song was written following the 2021 Grammys and in the light of the whole William Bowery grammygate situation... I think there is point to be made about this song drawing attention to lying in a big way.

The timing of the release of You're losing me right around the time that her breakup with Joe made the news also feeds the narrative of a breakup song. But in this very 'breakup song' she says You say, "I don't understand," and I say, "I know you don't" and talks about sending signals that fall on deaf ears. Doesn't that sound an awful lot like 'I gave so many signs'? What does she know the addressee won't understand? Is it that when she finally reveals all her lies 90% of her fans will be shocked to their very core? On the exclusive CD version that has this track on it, it also immediately follows Dear Reader which on the track list looks like this:

Dear Reader You're Losing me (Does that look like a message? I think it does...)

By the time we make it to Dear Reader, she's basically told us 'I'm a liar who hides behind fake lavender relationships who charms everyone like a sleezy congressman, I'm the narcissistic Anti Hero you can't trust who schemes like a criminal and plans out everything like the puppet master I am, just so you like me and therefore you shouldn't look up to me, but I know you still will.' If that doesn't scream 'I want you to question everything I say or do' I don't know what does. Which brings us to performance art.

What is performance art?

Performance art is any kind of visual art that involves a dramatic performance aspect. To explain how this relates to Taylor and who she may have taken inspiration from, I refer to the brilliant Kristina Parro on TikTok:

Ok, groundwork is laid, but this is getting too long. Part 2 will be relating this to upcoming music releases and media coverage but that will have to wait til tomorrow.

As always, thanks for humouring me guys!

#taylor swift #gaylor #eras tour #midnights album #one year of midnights #performance art #unreliable narrator

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onsunnyside · 1 year

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🍁≬ 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞 (𝟏/𝟐)

𝗣𝗮𝗶𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 | photographer!Ari Levinson x reader

𝗪𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 | glimpses of fluff, angst, old flames, childhood friends-to-loves aftermath, ex-boyfriend!Ari, size difference: 6’8!Ari.

𝗦𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘆 | Even the most beautiful love stories are bound to end in tragedy, but you thought you and Ari would be an exception.

𝗪/𝗖 | 3.64K

𝗔/𝗡 | currently in my sad autumn girl era but i know it won’t last long so i wanted to share this with you all. sort of poured my heart into it and wrote most of this in a teary haze last night. Inspired by Taylor Swift’s songs: Sad Beautiful Tragic, Exile, All Too Well, The Last Time. [𝐏𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐁𝐨𝐚𝐫𝐝 | all asks]. All mistakes are my own.

˗ˏˋ𝐌𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭ˎˊ˗ ⋰˚ 𝐂.𝐄. & 𝐂𝐨. 𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

Don’t look, don’t look, you force your eyes on the television mounted above the table, half listening to the chatter of your friends and the hushed music playing from the speakers.

A nudge brings your attention to your redheaded friend, “How have you been? You haven’t answered my texts.”

“Sorry, I’ve been working a lot.” The music shop didn’t get very busy, but Natasha didn’t need to know that you spent the past weeks buried in turmoil, revisiting every decision you’ve ever made that brought you here. “I also applied to the dance studio as an instructor, I’m still waiting for them to get back to me.”

Her green gaze pools with worry. Of course, you’d answer a question about how you were with what you were doing. She hated to pry, but she cared for you like a sister. If you were hurting, she wanted to put a stop to it, or talk about it and try to understand. She couldn’t do that if you refused to open up.

“If you want to leave, that’s fine, I’ll walk you out.”

“I’m okay, Nat. I wouldn’t have come if I couldn’t handle seeing him again.”

The both of you know that’s a bald-faced lie. Especially because you’ve done everything to not peek in his direction.

Natasha is drawn away by one of your other close friends, and they fall into an easy conversation with laughs and bright smiles. Their voices fade into each other, a blissful hum filling the loneliness that has clung to you.

I wouldn’t have come if I couldn’t handle seeing him again.

You spoke too soon.

Ever so slightly, you glance at the bar. Over the heads of the other patrons, his gaze meets yours. Deep blue, unreadable and sharp, piercing heavily through your face.

Seeing him now, he’s different. His hair is longer, his beard is thicker, and he’s dressed in clothes you’ve never seen before—apart from his signature leather jacket that he wore for most of the year.

You wonder if the way he carries himself all the same, with quiet grace and self-assurance, too often falling victim to his insecurities.

You missed him.

You missed his stupidly loud alarm clock, his cute bedhead and how he never failed to keep you warm on winter nights. You missed his endless rants about society, space and the world, past, present and future. His mind stretched into infinity, and you never always understood what he was saying, but you listened nonetheless. Listening was the best thing someone could do.

Your eyes fall on the loose and shaggy fabric around his neck. The cream knit was your first little home project, evident with the frayed threads and stubborn coffee stains. That single scarf took you a week because of your lack of experience. You worked on it everywhere, on the train, at work and the park. Your favourite place to knit was next to him as he hunched over his computer desk and went through hundreds of photographs with his glasses on the tip of his nose.

That was the one thing he didn’t mail back.

He goes around the table, handing out everyone’s selected drinks with greetings. “Sorry, I’m late. I got stuck at the studio with this last-minute family portrait session.”

“At least it wasn’t another self-proclaimed influencer.” Curtis snorts.

“Fuck no, thank goodness for that.” He laughs, almost too gleeful. When he gets to you, he simply sets the drink on the wooden countertop and flashes a tense smile.

It either took one or ten minutes for you to sip the drink before you rushed out the back door with an excuse about fresh air.

The cool, November air welcomes you with open arms as if it knew you wouldn’t last very long. You lean on the railing, distracting yourself with the red, orange and yellow trees across the way. The music and chatter fade into whispers, and the crickets and gentle wind take their place. Down below, the water ripples against the rocks, the wooden poles dark and green from the lake, another victim to time, just like everything else.

The fall season itself was a tale of death. The days got shorter because the sun comes and goes all too quickly and the leaves turn into different shades before falling to the ground. Bidding farewell in warm colour pallets and leave the trees bare, mere skeletons of life, dormant and dull.

Then, they’re reincarnated by spring. Brought back by more sunshine and warmth, blooming hues the world has longed for.

You wondered when your spring would come, or if you’d be trapped in perpetual autumn. Be forced to feel every part of you change into red, yellow or orange and fall until there is nothing left and you're in a barren comatose.

You stare down at your dress, the very one he said was his favourite. The soft blue silk is highlighted by the dim fairy lights hung up on the fence. Memories are woven into the fabric and they’re all good because you stopped wearing this dress when things got worse. With a brush of the lace hem, you’re reminded of him.

“I knew you’d look beautiful in this.”

“You have to stop buying me things, we have bills to pay.”

He scoffs, “bills aren’t going to help my girl realize how beautiful she is.” He takes your hand, pressing his plump lips on your knuckles, “I know it, the world knows it, but she doesn’t. And that isn’t okay with me.”

The door swings open and slams into the wall, making you jump.

“Oh shit, sorry!” His voice rings out, “Didn’t mean to scare you, I thought the door was heavier.”

You quickly wipe your eyes, not caring about your makeup anymore. You tried hard to look your best tonight and embody that healed person you’ve pretended to be for the past few weeks. But he couldn’t say hi or your name. Why couldn’t he say your name?

He tucks away his cigarettes, “You stay, I’ll go out front. You probably want to be alone.”

“No, it’s okay. I’m going to call a cab.”

“You’re leaving?”

“Natasha knows I have an early morning.” You keep it simple and duck away from his gaze, hugging your purse close as some sort of lifesaver that was keeping you from floating into the sky. Truthfully, you wouldn’t mind that abrupt escape after hearing his next words.

“Wait—I mean, I’ll wait with you. It’s too late for you to be outside by yourself.”

Your stride doesn’t slow, you hope he’ll get the hint and just go back inside, but with his mile-long legs, he easily catches up to you. His boots land heavily on the boardwalk and the buckles of his leather jacket chime, filling the strained silence.

“So, did you see that new cinema downtown?”

“Please don’t.”

He raises his arms in defence, a smile audible in his voice, “Sorry, I didn’t realize you hated movies.”

“Ari.” Your shoulders slump and the sorrow gets heavier. You swear the world could cave under your feet. “Don’t try to—” You cut yourself off, knowing if you didn’t get away now, you’d regret it, “I want to be alone right now.”

The pine trees sway in the breeze, surrounding you with their natural scent.

He takes one hesitant step back, nodding slowly. “Right, I’m probably the last person you want to see.”

He couldn’t be more wrong and that only worsened the pain. How could he think that when he was the only person you wanted to see every day for over a decade?

It stretches far back to when you were children and living down the street from each other.

How could he think that when you used to wait out on the porch for him to pass by so you could walk to school together? How could he think that when you’ve spent hundreds of hours writing about his face in your diaries, about how his smile could light up a stadium and how his eyes were endless pools of stories and wishes?

How could he?

“Hey, hey, it’s okay.” Ari’s features grow concerned as the hot tears stream down your cheeks. “It’s okay—” He reaches for you, gently grasping your hand.

“No, it’s not.” You try to shrug him off, not bothering to wipe your face. He knew you were crying out here anyway. He knew you more than he knew himself, so it wouldn’t surprise you if he also knew what you were thinking right now—where did he find the audacity to say it’s okay? “I’m sad—I’m still so sad. And you aren’t.”

Ari stiffens and releases your hand as if he’d been burned. His cerulean eyes are shaded by the night, and darkness bleeds onto his solemn face, “You think I’m not sad?”

You tearily blink, waving towards the bar by the lake. “You seemed pretty happy in there—and you acted like you didn’t even know me.”

Sure, you probably would’ve cried if he spoke to you, but at least he would have acknowledged you. You’d take that glimmer of attention over his silence any day.

“I was—I am heartbroken.” He confesses, his long hair falling over his forehead as he stares down at you, “I didn’t know if you wanted me to talk to you—”

“Yet you followed me out here anyway.”

Even in the moonlight, you can see his cheeks turn cherry red.

“Okay, but I was checking on you. I didn’t mean for this to happen and to make you cry.” He protests, “Am I not allowed to worry about you?”

You close your eyes and shake your head, turning on your heel to continue down the boardwalk. The main street mocks you in the distance, beckoning you with yellow streetlights and the chance to escape, but his fingers wrap around your wrist, holding tightly.

“Wait, please. I’m sorry.”

His touch is warm and familiar, the other end of the double-edged sword. On one end is the busy street, the carefree people living their lives on this fall evening, the cars driving by, and your bittersweet freedom—but also your lonely apartment with your cold, empty bed. The other end, the one entwining with your trembling fingers, is suffocatingly soft and inviting. Enticing you to stay and listen, but at what cost? Would it only bring more suffering draped in so-called closure or more confusion that your heart couldn’t take?

“Muse—”

“Don’t.”

He inhales deeply and you feel his breath on the back of your head. “I’m devastated, I’m alone, I’m stuck in this disordered loop that I don’t know how to get out of.” His grip constricts, once then twice but you force yourself to stay as unresponsive as a corpse. “You were my first for everything, I-I wanted you to be my last.”

You knew that and you wanted the same thing. You’ve discussed it countless nights in your shared bed, whispering about the possibilities that the great big world offered, from tamed to outlandish. Picking up a strange hobby, or travelling the globe, he even mentioned moving to a new country altogether, “think about it. A fresh start, just the two of us and unlimited options.”

“I wouldn’t say unlimited, unfamiliar sounds more accurate.”

“Pick a place, any place and I’ll make it happen.”

“What if I don’t tell you and just take off alone? Soak up all that freshness by myself.”

“Oh, then I’ll find you. I’ll follow you anywhere.”

Experiencing things for the first time together was a big part of your relationship. You were both painstakingly sentimental, which only made it harder to pack your things. Everything reminded you of what was or what could’ve been, you eventually decided to keep what you needed and throw out what carried tender nostalgia.

You never followed through with that, but you do avoid the many boxes stacked in your closet. Full of pictures, gifts, and anything that reminded you of him. That was where you found this dress.

From the seedlings of memorable firsts, it was inevitable that you two gave each other your first heartbreaks too.

The tears come back with vengeance, spilling down your heated cheeks, “You ended things.”

“You walked out!” He rushes to apologize, swerving in front of you before you could take another step. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Just please, listen to me.”

Why? He never listened to you in the end.

Whenever you brought up concerns about weird tension or the growing emptiness, he never listened. He was all about work and brushed off dates for last-minute gigs. You knew he wanted a greater future for the two of you, something better than your crowded apartment with your roommates (now the close friends in the bar), and something brighter than the stars combined.

You tried to understand and a part of you did, but the other part couldn’t take it anymore. The part that missed your boyfriend, missed your mindless conversations and quiet nights at home, and when he picked up that camera and photographed you like a piece of art.

That part of you won. You laid down your weapons and went defenceless into his line of fire, with only your heart in your hands and a rehearsed speech in your head.

You never made it all the way through because you two started arguing, right in front of your friends, spitting accusations fueled by rage and doubt, making each other into the bigger villain when it was always clear who was the culprit.

Even now, although you know it’s him, you wonder if you were an accomplice.

Childhood sweethearts turned college lovers, plenty of people have made it all the way—to whatever was their ideal. Many people have also given up, gotten tired, or fallen out of love.

You thought you and Ari were stronger than that, and you wouldn’t let the pressures of life, work, and school weigh onto your relationship. But in the end, those voices were always right, and your shared dreams were crushed at the hands of breakdowns, lost time, and agonizing lulls.

It was ironic how you’re haunted by voices while Ari rarely used his.

Ari wasn’t loud or interruptive. He was quiet and timid, and as he grew up, he slowly came out of his shell and matured into the tall, confident, and gentle giant in front of you.

When you were kids, he wrote adorably misspelled sentences on sticky notes to drop into your lunchbox, and then in high school, he wrote love letters to slip into your locker. The sweetest part was that he never signed them, yet you always suspected it was him. He pretended to be curious about your newest note from your secret admirer and asked about the contents, all the itty bitty details of the proclamation in black pen.

He was after your heart, and he surely got it.

He showed his love through touch, gestures and gifts, through photographs and love letters that were kept in a special box.

It was beautiful in a way that only broken poets, starved artists and silenced lovers could understand. And you and Ari were all three. The tragedy was in colours no one else could see, the script in an undiscovered language, but to you and all the rest of the heartbroken, it was so vivid and clear. You dipped your fingers into that magic shade and poured your heart onto the white walls of the lonely tower, mourning your knight who would never return.

You made the tragedy your home, wallowed in it, and pitied yourself over every missed opportunity—the fleeted moments where things could have changed, leading you somewhere different from where you were. But you tried to get better, to get clean of him and those noisy, unhelpful thoughts. You wanted to save yourself, to gather the guts to leave that tower and climb down to the lush grass and sparkling rivers below.

In delusions, you are happy and satisfied, sober from the destruction. But right now, that false comfort was cracking beneath your feet. You wished to board up the windows and hide away from the world, from him.

“Will you please listen to me?” He pleads, his voice thick, “just listen, you don’t have to say anything or even stay afterward.”

“Why?” You turn to him, gritting your teeth to keep from sobbing. “Why should I listen to you when you never listened to me? When I told you that were growing apart, you just pushed me further away. Does—” Your voice cracks, “Does that not seem unfair to you?” Did you not deserve the same mercy he was begging for?

It was too late if he wanted to listen this time. It was gone, flatlined, buried under the dirt with overgrown weeds and ivy climbing on the gravestone. Your names were etched into the stone, just another miserable end in the cemetery of the heartbroken, the battered and bruised, the forgotten and silenced.

You’ve been a ghost ever since he mailed back the things you thought he wanted. Transparent and floating through the graveyard, weeping in wonder, and feebly searching for that scarf—the one thing he kept.

“I won’t ask again. This is the last time, Ari. You won’t get another chance.”

He opens and closes his mouth multiple times, rethinking every thought racing in his head, but then he finally settles on shutting his mouth. Those plump lips pressed firmly together, a barrier for everything he should say—and everything you had the right to hear.

Defeated, you release his hand. You didn’t realize you were holding him too, it was all just automatic at this point, unlike this moment which is only a rerun of a film you’ve already seen.

Your gaze traces his face one last time, locking everything to memory from the curve of his dark eyebrows, the shade of his blue eyes, the point of his nose, the blush pink of his lips, and every freckle like they were constellations.

In a flash, you’re staring at him from across the classroom, watching him slowly write on a yellow sticky note, his tongue poking from between his teeth in concentration.

Another flash, and you’re watching him bolt down the hallway, passing lockers and other students with his azure eyes set on you. In his hand is an old polaroid camera and he’s wearing the widest grin, “Let’s go to the park.” He almost crashes into you but grasps your shoulder in excitement, illuminating the dull hallway with his glow.

You laugh, “I have class… and so do you.”

“Yeah, but the weather is so nice today.” He pouts, already tugging you towards one of the exits. “Plus, you look really pretty. Wouldn’t you rather be my model, than sit in some dusty old classroom?”

He kissed you that day, under the biggest willow tree in the park with his hand on your cheek. He blushed a nervous red and asked so sweetly, “Can I—May I please…” He trailed off, profusely blinking at your parted lips, “Will you let me b-be your first kiss? And will you be mine?”

And finally, you’re back in the present. His looming shadow as he towers over your lifeless frame, executed by the quiet and unspoken words. You’d take anything at this point, from shuddering pleas to choked apologies—you’d grovel for a single syllable.

“That’s it.” You scoff in disbelief, “all you can do is look at me?”

Again, silence. His eyes pool with tears, seconds away from streaming down his cheeks and matching your wet trails and ruined makeup. He doesn’t speak, but he’s breaking, cracking at the surface like delicate porcelain holding back a flood.

“You deserve better than me.”

No, he doesn’t get to decide that. He doesn’t get to use that stale statement to dig his own grave, right alongside yours before the final self-deprecating eulogy. It didn’t matter if he thought you deserved better than him, all that should matter was that you wanted him, that you still wanted him even after all of this.

“So, you’re just gonna let me go? After all we’ve been through?” After you’ve given him everything, and showed him every part of you and let him in.

The first tear falls, dripping down his beard and onto the worn knit. Then another, and another until they’re streaming down his cheeks and soaked up by the scarf. “You’re already gone.”

There it is, the last nail in the coffin.

Ari has never been aggressive or forceful, but you wished he’d be brave. You wished he’d fight for you, step into the battlefield with an unrelenting resolve to make things right—to get you back. But he doesn’t, he just looks down at you, chewing on his lip with clenched fists.

He’s surrendered to the war, abandoning you in the tower of tragedy, but joining you in the cemetery of the heartbroken. He’s signing his name on the death certificate and damning you and your wistful dreams, erasing every ‘what if’ that has plagued the both of you since you were children.

“You couldn’t be more wrong.”

You swallow the lump in your throat and fight the weakness in your knees, but you refuse to do this to yourself again, to give him a chance he won’t take. You turn around and continue down the dock, your arms wrapped tightly around yourself in a form of self-soothing.

Autumn was a story of demise, but it had to be better than the earsplitting silence. You’d take the cruel cold and neverending abyss over the lack of effort. Right now, there was no spring in sight, no rebirth to raise you from the dead but you’d find your own life someday and somehow without him. You had to save yourself, be your own hero and come out victorious—alone, but triumphant.

𝐄𝐧𝐝𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐬: i’ve already started a part two for those of us who want a happy ending, so if you’re an angsty person, feel free to just leave it at this part. i’ll let you all know when i have a date. this is also my second time writing angst on here, and i had a few good cry sessions. i know this isn't the usual filth but i hope you all enjoyed this nonetheless.

𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐞! i love you all very much. pls take this kith 😚🫶

As always, I hope you all enjoyed this and I’d love to hear your thoughts/feedback !! [my inbox] <3 — ☼ 𝐃𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐲 𝐊𝐨-𝐟𝐢 ☼

I don’t do taglists anymore. ˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ 𝐅𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 & 𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧 𝐨𝐧 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐫𝐲: @𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐧𝐧𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐫𝐲

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sekai-no-reita · 6 days

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A letter to Reita... From my heart to yours.

(Under the cut for your sake.)

My dearest れいた,

I know you will not be able to read this letter, but I hope these words still reach you wherever you are; from one soul to another.

I don't even know where to begin... I never thought I would have to write a goodbye letter like this to you. This all feels like a bad dream that I cannot wake up from.

I followed you and your journey with the GazettE for 18 long years.. I grew up with you. It feels like I've lost a dear friend, a family member, if you will. There are no words to describe this grief I'm feeling. Believe me, I have tried...

You guys were with me through everything from my teenage years to this day. If I was happy, you were there. If I was sad, you were there. You were always there. I could always rely on you being by my side when I needed you.

When you came to Finland for the first time in 2007 I queued outside the venue in the cold late October weather all night long, just so I could get a good viewing spot for the gig. It was insane... I was so cold and sleep deprived on the day of the gig, only having slept for like an hour, haha. But when you guys came on stage, none of it mattered. I was so happy. It was a dream come true.

And that's when I fell in love with you, Reita. That was the turning point. I had been listening to your music for a little over a year by then but Ruki was the one who held my heart. But then you.. You captivated me the moment you stepped on that stage. Of course I had always noticed you, your basslines and talent but.. when I saw you play live, it was almost hypnotizing. Especially during RIDE WITH THE ROCKERS. I was so incredibly happy you played it that time. I still remember the way you moved your belly and hips and shoulders when you were standing in the spotlight... Being admired by everyone.

I was fortunate enough to see you guys live two more times; in 2013 and in 2016 during your world tours. Especially in 2016 when I had the VIP wristband and I got to meet you. I still remember how surreal it all felt to me. It was all like a dream. The most wonderful dream. I was supposed to tell you then how much I admired you, how talented you were. But I couldn't get the words out of my mouth. Not with you staring at me with your (one visible) eye. All I managed to do was give you the little gift bag with the bracelet in it with a shaky "douzo". You were a little surprised by the gift and thanked me "Ahh, arigatou". Then you took my hand and we thanked each other again. Now I kick myself... I should've told you exactly how I felt. Now I will never get another chance to do it. Now you will never know...

You were so incredibly kind and sweet and caring...

Writing about you in the past tense breaks my heart. The world has lost something too pure, too beautiful.

Your passion towards the GazettE was a thing to admire. How you cared for your fans.. You never took anything for granted. All the tears you shed after your tour finals.. they were real (even when you in an interview joked that they were cgi *laugh*). That was how much you cared. That was your true strength.

There will never be anyone else like you.

The world will never be the same after losing you.

Your bass defined Gazette's music in a way. Everytime I listen to any of your songs, your bass stands out. It is incredible. I don't think any other band does that; puts the bass in such a spotlight. That's how important you are, ..were.

You are the reason I even own a bass. I wanted to be able to play like you. Sadly I cannot... I was too short-tempered and lost my nerve when I couldn't get my fingers to co-operate *laugh* But my bass is still there, waiting. Reminding me of you. Maybe one day I'll be able to pick it up again and think of you with a smile on my face.

I really do hope you know how loved you were -and still are-; by everyone. The band, the fans... How much you were respected by your peers and other musicians. You defined an era in v-kei. That's how important you were. Are.

There are so many more things I would like to say to you. But maybe another time. Maybe I'll write you another letter. Maybe someday I'll meet you again in the afterlife and I'll be able to tell you face to face everything I haven't been able to so far.

I hope you are now at peace and can rest.

I love and miss you so much.

Thank you for everything you have given me. It is a debt I don't think I'll ever be able to repay you.

Rest in peace, my beautiful angel.

With all my love,

Marisa

#reita #reita the gazette #the gazette #....#now I feel drained #that was the most difficult thing I have ever had to do....#personal

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schismusic · 13 days

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Joy Division, or: how I learned to stop worrying and love New Order, too

Spring is weird as hell because one time you have this glaring sun that powers you up like being plugged into a wall outlet, then not five minutes later clouds begin to gather and you feel like you're going to die if anything goes south. So the most obvious combination to represent two sides of this same coin, emotional and meteorological, is Joy Division and New Order.

Sometimes you need Transmission or Shadowplay for the sunny days — impassioned jolts, sparks flying everywhere. Sometimes The Perfect Kiss hits harder on a cloudy afternoon, coming back home and in need of that extra push to not fall asleep in the train. It's surprising to realize the versatility displayed by both bands, or the same band in two different iterations according to whomever you ask. Peter Hook says, as late as 1993, that the laziest member of New Order is Ian Curtis. Or again this other person, in the comments under the Atmosphere official video on YouTube, who went to see New Order (Hooky-less New Order, which might be a relevant distinction) at the O2 Arena a couple of years ago and they gave an encore, says "Those of us who stayed got the privilege of watching Joy Division perform three of their songs". Interesting outlook on the matter. I personally saw Peter Hook and the Light play both Joy Division records and, I'm pretty sure, an encore comprised of just Love Will Tear Us Apart at the Arti Vive Festival in Soliera, back when it was still free to attend some of the events. I remember being pretty mad that Hooky had stopped to take pics with basically everyone and then left exactly as I was approaching. In retrospect I don't exactly blame the man, it was like midnight anyway. I remember nothing of the back trip home.

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My first contact with Joy Division happened when I was thirteen and very much in my prog era. I was in Rome staying at an aunt of mine's place for my fourteenth birthday and she told me I could get a CD, since I had gotten some money saved up over time. Some Facebook page dedicated to Pink Floyd I'd liked (yeah, Facebook at age thirteen — I literally just wanted to play a fucking Flash game, back when Facebook allowed them, and I ended up getting to be terminally online. Crazy how things turn out) used to share a lot of memes and fanart relating to the Unknown Pleasures album cover, and me being a massive Pink Floyd head at the time I thought "I mean, if these guys are pushing this band so hard, that's gotta mean something". The album cover was pretty striking, admittedly: a far cry from the paisley ass paintings that I had grown to accept as the gold standard for the music I liked, but its simplicity struck a chord closer to The Dark Side of the Moon, or perhaps The Wall. Those were records I liked a lot, probably called them "the best records ever made" to more than one person, not like they aren't but that's a very bold statement to make when your listening experience consists exactly of

Madonna's Confessions on a Dance Floor when I was six;

Daft Punk's complete discography (minus Random Access Memories, which wasn't out yet) when I was twelve;

Pink Floyd's complete discography, courtesy of a CD collection coming out with some Italian newspaper, that same year;

a couple random classic rock records recommended to me by older friends and relatives usually well into their fifties or sixties at the time, random people on Internet forums — which, for clarification, I did not actively attend, preferring to just lurk from time to time — and the OndaRock "milestones" page.

So browsing through the surprisingly expansive CDs section of this electronics shop in Rome, and being mesmerized by a vinyl rack in the days when Music on Vinyl was the final frontier of pretending you could re-analogue the digital ("you mean to tell me these are like CDs, but bigger? Whoever designed these truly lived in the future"), I came across that very same album art that had stricken me so hard. I had listened to the first seconds of the album on YouTube, but that weird drum sound — so echoey, so distant, ultimately not particularly powerful, meaning it didn't really sound like Bonzo: it sounded more like my own band, which at the time didn't even exist yet — I didn't really know what to make of. This store I was in had one of those preview listening machines that would scan the barcode on the CDs and give you a small snippet of the song. I pull the CD up to the scanner, the scanner lights up green, I put on the headphones and the solo from this comes up:

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Clearly they had to be kidding me. I had come to know, sneaking into infinitely many rehearsals with the band from my mother's town, what it sounded like when someone tried to play lead without something else filling up the arrangement (even though I didn't really know all that, or at least lacked the vocabulary to properly express it) and, for Christ's sake, didn't these guys notice rehearsing? It sounded empty, weirdly so, and it wasn't my thing, I thought. I put that CD away and picked up a band I knew I'd like — Genesis, specifically. So Nursery Cryme became the first CD I've ever paid with my own money, the very day I turned fourteen. Not a bad pickup. I remember being very impressed with the fast blurring lead guitar on The Musical Box and digging the sweet pastoral atmospheres of For Absent Friends and Harlequin. I still think of that record more often than one would probably assume looking at this blog, or my most played on Spotify. At the time, that was the best move I could take, really: why beat my head against a record that, as your average prog nerd ballbreaker, simply wasn't speaking to me?

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Then all of a sudden in August of the same year my friend's dad hands me a 16 gigabyte USB drive, full of random music from all eras of rock. A lot of it remains inscrutable to me for a really long time, most notably Tom Waits (see related post), but I spent the whole month reading random folder names, seeing if something catches my eyes, and at one point I come across the Mars Volta. Open the folder up, read the names of their first three records, and my first thought is "Christ, these guys look incomprehensible. I'm about to have some fun". Long story short: I end up having a lot of fun, the Mars Volta turns into my favourite band at the time and finding out that they had previously been called At the Drive-In makes me gain some measure of respect for punk rockers: if they tried hard enough, I must've thought, they could prog as hard as anyone. In the meantime the ghost of Joy Division remains at the back of my head. I feel like I'm missing something, for the first time in my life: it's not them, it's me. Too bad that same realization didn't occur to me when it came to the people in my life until much, much later, but that's being fourteen for you I suppose. Early King Crimson and the Mars Volta were the pinnacle of violence to me, and not even the very few Metallica songs I'd downloaded just to see what would happen scratched that itch. It felt a bit too cauterized for some reason (I would later find out I had been looking in the wrong direction the whole time: the Black Album "sucked", according to my favourite metalhead of the time, who somehow catalyzed my interest from the very second I saw him in the school's courtyard. Hard to imagine why I would imprint on people like puppies do, but what the fuck, not like I've ever outgrown that anyway, I've just gotten better at managing it). But I felt there was more than violence to this, or different forms of violence. When Christmas came around and my relatives tried to get me presents, my mother asked if there was anything specific I was interested in, and I basically told her "look, if they can get me some CDs off of this list, I'm golden". It had some bangers on it, namely Noctourniquet by the Mars Volta — it's one of their best and I will die on this hill, be warned — and The Downward Spiral, which might as well warrant its own post in an ideal world. But the best of them all I think came from a random purchase, once again with the little money I had lying around at the time.

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Closer appears to be, right away, a bit more concrete, and if there's something inexperienced music fans like is a pretty packaging that conjures a strong emotional response before they've even played the record. Compare a color-inverted graph of pulsar emissions to a literal funerary monument. Opening up the booklet I was shocked to see that Genesis was used as a negative point of comparison (bad omen, I thought) by people close to the band, and I came across much more detailed information about Ian Curtis's untimely demise — at that time, something far too removed from my experience to be faced with the delicacy and attention it deserves. Atrocity Exhibition hits like a ten-ton truck, a reference which at the time I wouldn't have been able to make for obvious reasons, and Isolation exposes all the nerve tissue under the skin. Passover comes in and strips everything even barer, and then A Means to an End turns… danceable, for some reason? Big emotional moment with The Eternal and Decades, which I thought actually took them closer to my usual tastes. And yet at the same time I kept looking at Colony, Heart and Soul and Twenty Four Hours as the most compelling cuts. Geometric assault sounding like sheet metal if it were music; rhythmically driven emptiness that serves as a minimal backdrop for depressed poetry, and finally a rocking ebb-and-flow that would probably inform a lot of my interest in GY!BE-like post-rock in the coming years. Very interesting to think that the same guys who'd done Unknown Pleasures could think of this. To this day, when asked, I still do think that Closer is the best Joy Division record, but what does it even mean when the records are exactly two, compilations notwithstanding?

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It was around this time that it came to my attention that both Joy Division and another band called New Order had a record called Substance out, both published by the same recording company, both coming out within a year of each other. Looking it up, it turns out it's fully intentional, because New Order is simply Joy Division minus Ian Curtis. It would turn out to be a tad bit more complex than that. Anyway, I look New Order up and kind of have to do a double-take. Synthpop? In my Joy Division? More likely than you'd think, considering Isolation exists. But yeah, that sort of seals it — I wouldn't care about this New Order for a million years. Until all of a sudden a couple of years later David Sylvian bursts like a comet in my face, which of course leads me straight to Japan, the same year as I'd come across Berlin-era Bowie, and you can probably guess where this is going, right?

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Well, you'd be wrong. I still don't check out New Order. There's a whole new world open to me — vaporwave and therefore R Plus Seven come to my attention, which leads me to dissect that record like an alien tool of unclear purposes. This of course leads me onto an ambient tangent, taking me back to my Tim Hecker listens of that same year, which has the effect of renewing my interest in "pure" electronic music and the then-rising post-dubstep movement. The sheer experience of sound, the dazzling modernity and innovation, is what's in at the time. I have no time for nostalgia-pandering dimwits: the future awaits. Then all that jazz from the first Godflesh post hits, then God pulls the funniest gag in the history of viral infections to my memory, and I have some time to actually look back, a bit less prejudiced. As it turns out, synthpop is not the devil, as some of you might have surmised by now, and as I relisten to Blue Monday I realized I have never listened to either of the Substance record. I do know some, most perhaps?, of the tracks on the Joy Division one, and I do think the New Order one has the more striking cover art — not to mention I knew, by this time, that this was the one to give Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance its name, and that Your Silent Face soundtracked one of the most memorable moments in Nicolas Winding Refn's Bronson. As the ultimate Hideo Kojima stan, I couldn't let this slide, so I pop the record on and get hit with this:

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Way to go, guys. Holy shit. I knew that Ceremony was a Joy Division cut before they could record it, but what the hell — Bernard got it, too. It wasn't a matter of singing ability with songs like these, it's just getting it, finding the right energy. They had that right energy. And then it hit me just as many times these dudes have made Blue Monday over and over again before actually getting it right, and everytime I look into it it's funnier and funnier to realize just how many different attempts it took them to finally be Kraftwerk, but augmented — with the stellar results we all know. Everything's Gone Green, 5 8 6, Temptation potentially, all lead up to this one moment in the history of dance music where somehow three dudes and a girl hailing from Manchester managed to out-gay the Pet Shop Boys (by their own admission, apparently), to shake the whole world's collective booty, to do whatever it is they were supposed to do in this last comparison that would ideally make the previous one a bit less obnoxious but whatever, it's 3am as usual, you know how it goes by now don't you? But then after Blue Monday the record keeps going, and thank god it does, because it's banger after banger. How do these guys keep doing it?

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So I spend some time with that record, then it fades down, then it comes back up last month, when the weather calls for it and its parent company. Which is when I find myself watching the Control movie for the first time, surprisingly enough seeing as I already enjoyed the work of Anton Corbijn as a photographer. Looking at all that, it is revealed to me that Joy Division never really having died is not a bug, it's a feature. Everyone is gasping, I get it, but please pick your jaws up and check this out: the band has never learned how to play their respective instruments. One might go so far as to argue they play their own stuff their own way, and that's basically it. Nothing could be further from the truth. These guys jammed, a lot; that's how Joy Division wrote songs, that's how New Order wrote songs, even going as far as having Bernard Sumner fucked up on acid so he could find the chorus to Temptation or the whole band bombed out of their minds on X in Ibiza clubs to write, basically, the entirety of Technique — and even then, not really, there's a couple jangly tracks that the X would most likely render unlistenable but what do I really know? Point being: it might now have been sparked by a music teacher or instructor, it might not have been the product of a process comparable to that within Television, which led them to organically seek out better, more "by the book" musicianship, but New Order were incredibly familiar with their instruments, had formed an element of comfort and understanding that counterbalanced the alien-ness to music terminology.

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Peter Hook recently uploaded a Yamaha-sponsored video to his Instagram, which I am pretty sure has a say in running, where he jams on a Yamaha bass and, you know, it sounds like Hooky alright, but it's never a discernible bassline until he kicks into the A major strumming that opens Love Will Tear Us Apart. Before that, he just strolls around the neck, leisurely strumming away at power chords imbued with that thick chorus and reverb combo he became renowned for. I would never, in my wildest dreams, have imagined I'd find myself thinking "okay, awesome, stop talking — I want to hear you jam a bit more" referring to one of the musicians who were part of possibly two of the craziest storiest in the history of contemporary rock'n'roll, also notorious for playing the rockstar whilst carrying the minimum possible baggage of technical knowledge he could. Once again, this is nowhere near a knock to the man — quite the opposite. Ian Curtis asked "persistence, well, what does it matter?", and Hooky (and, of course, the other members of New Order) found a way to constructively answer that question. Moments before Coil, but a bit later than Israel Regardie, they said "persistence is all" and built a brand on finding a way to consistently sound like splendid, eternal, golden children: "like crystal", impassionate, tightly-knit performers with the purity of a child's heart. Ian Curtis had, in certain ways (at least artistically), the purity of a child in his heart, which some might even argue was a distinguishing feature of most of his literary idols — if you think about it, William Burroughs could be your dirty-minded classmate who walked in on his parents sharing an intimate moment in the bedroom (had his parents been gay men, the metaphor would probably fly better, but that most definitely wasn't the case). So the heart of Joy Division remains untouched, if a bit more naked. Heroes of post-punk, sons of the silent age, you can sleep soundly tonight.

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#schismusic #music #musica #long form content #schism writing #joy division #new order #post punk #new wave #Youtube

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randomvarious · 1 month

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Today's compilation:

Monsters of Rock 1998 Hair Metal / Hard Rock / Arena Rock /Heavy Metal / Pop-Metal

Good lord, this had to have been one of the most heavily advertised albums of all time, man. I don't know how much ad money the Razor & Tie label shelled out for all of their 'As Seen on TV' comps back in the day, but the commercials for Monsters of Rock and Monster Ballads were fucking inescapable throughout the late 90s and early 2000s, especially. Like, you'd be watching something on cable, and the commercial for this album would come on, so then you'd change the channel, and the same commercial would be playing on there too! And then you'd just force yourself to sit through it, and eventually, through repetition, the entire sequence of little song snippets that gets played throughout the ad would become a permanently etched medley inside of your goddamn mind, destined to haunt your soul for the rest of eternity:

🎶Cum on feel the noize, girls rock ya boys…my, my, my, I'm once bitten, twice shy, babe…poison!…*synths from Europe's "The Final Countdown"*…round and round, what comes around goes around, I'll tell you why…she's my cherry pie, cool drink of water, such a sweet surprise…we're not gonna take it, no! we ain't gonna take it…she's only seventeen, seventeen…here I go again on my own…I'm no fool, nobody's fool, nobody's fool…so hold on loosely…🎶

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Now, the hair metal era may have been the dumbest and most ridiculous period of mainstream rock that we've ever borne witness to—and it's very difficult for me to think of another commercially successful subgenre in which rank stupidity has been such an inherently defining trait—but thanks to a combination of my own nostalgia for these damn Razor & Tie ads and my sometimes weird and ironic affinity for bad shit, after listening to this album, there is really nothing more that I want to do than hitch a ride back to 1990 so I can live out a super corny fantasy as a badass suburban high school senior who cruises through town in a boxy, red sedan with the windows down as these silly songs blare out of my speakers 😎.

But like I said, I am also under no illusion here; I'm fully cognizant of just how patently absurd so much of this music was. And when it comes to the pinnacle of pure trash, I really don't think anything ever quite managed to top Warrant's signature 1990 anthem, "Cherry Pie," which is obviously on this album. Like, have you heard or thought about this tune recently? It really might be the single-dumbest song that's ever been recorded in human history. And as the single-dumbest song that's ever been recorded in human history, it has thankfully and, I guess quite fittingly, been memorialized in some way, since…*checks notes*…you can currently go see the pizza box that its lyrics were originally transcribed on at the Hard Rock Cafe in Destin, Florida… 😭.

🎶I scream, you scream, we all scream for her Don't even try, 'cuz you can't ignore her!🎶

Also, Winger's "Seventeen." Yikes; you can probably guess what that one's about! Talk about songs that haven't aged well at all 😩:

🎶She's only seventeen (seventeen) Daddy says she's too young, but she's old enough for me🎶

Yeah… This one's catchy and all, but, um…no. 👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎 Really glad we've finally realized as a society that, at the very least, fully-grown adults singing lustily about minors is a very unacceptable thing to do. I mean, it took way too long for us to get here, but at least we've finally made it to this point, right? And I think "Cherry Pie" is probably about a minor too, by the way, but that's also up for debate 😑.

To be clear, though, not every song on this album is embarrassingly dumb and/or skeevy hair metal. I happen to think Living Colour's alt metal classic, "Cult of Personality," is a genuinely great banger. And I also dig the southern rock smoothness of a song like .38 Special's "Hold On Loosely" too; but most of the rest of these are just pure dunderheaded hair metal classics, and a key, overarching feature of this stuff was just how fucking maximally mindless it all was. It's hard to put a finger on what exactly allowed this madness to spread so widely and flourish for nearly a whole-ass decade in the first place, but thank goodness grunge came along when it did and dethroned this stuff from its perch as rock music's top subgenre in the early 90s, because, seriously, this shit was so excessive and outrageous.

All that being said though, and as good and necessary as grunge was back then, I can't help but imagine what a kick-ass time it would probably be to have almost any one of these Monsters of Rock songs come on at the bar while you and everyone else around you are in a highly intoxicated stupor; like, "Black Hole Sun," "Man in the Box," "Interstate Love Song," "Even Flow," etc., might be total jams in and of themselves, but songs like those are probably not gonna do the same trick as something like Alice Cooper's "Poison" can in that type of situation. I mean, when you're fully committed to annihilating some brain cells, it's good to have music that's way ahead of you in order to accompany your experience, right? 😅

Highlights:

Quiet Riot - "Cum On Feel the Noize" Great White - "Once Bitten Twice Shy" Alice Cooper - "Poison" Europe - "The Final Countdown" Ratt - "Round and Round" Warrant - "Cherry Pie" Whitesnake - "Here I Go Again" Winger - "Seventeen" Living Colour - "Cult of Personality" Twisted Sister - "We're Not Gonna Take It" Judas Priest - "You've Got Another Thing Coming" Cinderella - "Nobody's Fool" .38 Special - "Hold On Loosely" Autograph - "Turn Up the Radio"

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thebreakfastgenie · 3 months

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possibly a challenging question, but if i wanted to explore billy joel's discography, where would you recommend i start?

Challenging but you have come to the right place!!!!!

Imo The Stranger album is a great place to start. It was his first commercially successful album and kind of when his signature style coalesced and it's also very very good.

52nd Street was released a year after The Stranger and it's very similar in many ways so if you like The Stranger it's a good next album.

After that maybe Glass Houses, it's a very fun album and also was released next after The Stranger.

I went The Stranger -> 52nd Street -> Glass Houses

An Innocent Man is a good one to do early too, it's very retro because he was homaging a lot of older styles of music and it's very light and fun.

I kind of divide Billy Joel in three eras:

Early Era Cold Spring Harbor Piano Man Streetlife Serenader Turnstiles

Middle Era The Stranger 52nd Street Glass Houses The Nylon Curtain An Innocent Man

Late Era The Bridge Storm Front River of Dreams

The middle era albums were all made with the same producer, Phil Ramone, and they just... go together. I think the other four in that era are better introductory albums, but The Nylon Curtain is really really good, it was kind of his perfectionist project, and you should definitely listen to it at some point.

Of the early era, Turnstiles is definitely the best and has seeds of The Stranger in it (there's a reason; he started working with at least most of his band on Turnstiles) so if you're curious I would start there. In the later era I think River of Dreams is the strongest but I don't think it matters as much what order you listen to them in at that point.

It's also valid to hop around listening to songs, although I'm a big album advocate. Most of the classic Billy Joel hits come from The Stranger, 52nd Street, Glass Houses, and An Innocent Man.

@movietonight do you remember how I told you to do it because whatever I said worked but I forget what I said

I hope this helps!!! If it's too chaotic feel free to let me know!

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allylikethecat · 2 months

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Omg, also a TS fan since debut and I massively took a step back from her personally prior to the reputation era because of her antics and victim complex. The music will always mean so so much to me, her lyrics mean so much to me, but her actions as a person and TS™️ as an entity is just weird and greedy. I think she accrued a lot of fans when she disappeared for a while who've completely constructed a narrative in their heads of who she is and they believe it and are eating up this current era, but those who've been here a long time know how PR and image driven it is. Exhausting.

I apologize in advance I have been having way too many feelings about this whole situation and how it relates to my identity as a 28 year old woman and you are about to get an oversharing novel in response lol

Also, I guess CW: this post is about Taylor Swift and if anyone sends me any kind of hate or whatnot related to my own personal opinions and feelings I will be deleting it because I am NOT playing that game.

My Aunt bought me the Debut album CD at a concert after seeing her open for Rascal Flatts. She was like "I thought that you would like her!" and she was RIGHT Taylor Swift became my entire personality. One of my FAVORITE core memories as a child was the day Fearless came out. For some reason we didn't have school, and my Mom and I watched Taylor on the Ellen show, and then we went to Target and bought the physical CD, we then drove around town so we could listen to it together. My mom hasn't been well and that is one of my favorite memories of us together. It's silly but when you're in middle school that kind of thing is important to you. Then in high school I actually got MADE FUN OF for wearing Taylor merch and being excited about Red. BUT I loved her music and felt like she actually stood for something, so I brushed it off and continued to be a HUGE Swiftie. I had the Taylor Swift dolls, I had the perfumes, I had the LOVE LOVE LOVE bracelet, I had the sundresses from WALMART. I saw her on the Fearless and 1989 tours, I had the fucking 1989 haircut. I was supposed to go to Loverfest.

I was still a HUGE Swiftie during the post 1989-pre Reputation eras, then the Reputation era. I'm a few years younger than her, but I felt like I could relate to the kind of manic panic that she was sharing with us (lol turns out I was just unmedicated and we're doing much better now). It felt (in my probably naive mind) like she was experiencing the same insecurities that I was and reacting accordingly. Was she playing the victim at times? Oh 100% BUT I also fully believe that she thought she was one. (Plus... Kim is my least favorite Kardashian lol)

I LOVED the Lover era even as it was shit on at the for the sunshine rainbow hyper colorful aesthetic. Like, I don't know if new fans realize but when Lover was released? It was NOT as beloved as it is now. Then Folklore and Evermore were absolute genius, it felt like Taylor had grown up, and she got all of these new fans, which was great! She was in an "adult" relationship and her music and publicity choices seemed to reflect that. It was so refreshing to see a celebrity keeping their personal life, personal, and sharing what they wanted to share through music. Midnights broke all kinds of records, again, amazing! Even if it wasn't as strong as say Folklore. I fought for my life and got Eras Tour tickets (opening weekend!!) I had the BEST TIME EVER.

Taylor has always been extremely calculated with her public image. She was over exposed during The 1989 era and the public turned on her, so I truly cannot figure out why she is doing it again 100x in this new era of whatever the fuck this is. I don't know her, maybe she is legitimately happy, or maybe this is a cry for help. But I have been so grossed out by her behavior lately, and how in your face everything is with Kelce. It's no secret that I hate Kelce (and people that know me IRL know that it's not a new Taylor related thing lol) and if she actually loves him, fine, that's great for her, BUT we don't need to see it! Yes she was public when she was dating Calvin but ALSO she was what 25-26? She's a 34 year old woman now with the biggest platform of any celebrity ever. She feels too old (and this is not me age shaming her because I would be grossed out if my friends were doing it, and I would be embarrassed if *I* were to ever do it) to be licking a man's face in public like this. This feels like sorority girl in her first college relationship (I was *in* a sorority for a hot second so this isn't hate on sorority girls either!) and not record breaking Grammy award winning artist. ALSO I feel like she used to come across as so articulate and well spoken? Controversial opinion but I thought she sounded like a fucking idiot in that Time Person of the Year piece.

I think that this whole thing is PR for something, but because it just feels too icky to be real, but I don't know what it's PR for, (trying to bury the Matty situation from May? Because if so that just makes me even more sad for him or trying to get back at Joe? Which if that's the case, I feel bad for him too and she's even more immature than I thought) and now, for the first time, AFTER SIXTEEN YEARS I'm embarrassed to be a fan of her, both because of her own actions and also the actions of her fanbase as a whole.

It feels really weird, and I know I'm being parasocial about it, but when the times got bad I always had her music to fall back on and now I just, I don't know it feels cheapened somehow because the current image that's being crafted doesn't match the one that we originally fell for. And you know what, people change, she's a celebrity, I don't know her, what she does DOES NOT affect me any way, and how I feel does not AFFECT HER in the slightest, and I know it's being parasocial but I feel like a big part of me is in mourning about it. Less because of her changing her image so drastically, and more so because I feel like I'm mourning the loss of childhood and joy that used to be associated with her music for me and I think that's what's making me the most sad.

I have Eras tour tickets for one of the London dates this summer. I'm probably going to still go, because I paid for them, and I also have tickets to see Noah Kahan that same week in London (... and also the Longines tour has ALSO decided that the London stop is that week...) But I don't consider myself a "big fan" anymore. Maybe I will be one day again, but this current image that she's putting out just isn't it for me.

Sorry for the longest Taylor related novel in existence, I have had a lot of bottled up feelings about this that feel ridiculous typing out and sharing out loud BUT I know I will feel better sending them into the interwebs and your ask was the perfect catalyst.

Thank you so much for sending this in and for your continued support! I hope you continue to enjoy my fics and my secret sports hot takes 😂

❤️Ally

#allylikethecat #ask ally #anon ask #keep it kind #i am so sorry this got so long #i just started word vomiting and couldnt stop #then i started crying thinking about my mom #and yeah anyway i am 100% sober just dramatic lol #dont worry i will still be working on you know where the city is #Fictional!2014/2015 taylor has not made me sad lol #and i know it doesnt matter or actually impact me and its super parasocial and probably not healthy that im sad about all of this #BUT i love projecting my feelings and shit onto other things #and why deal with the ~other trauma~ in my life #when i could just... be bummed out about taylor swift turning into a trashy hoe instead of the poet we thought she was #BUT IN IMPORTANT AND EXCITING NEWS #the way i am so hype for this beyonce country album #im not even a beyonce stan #i dont even know if i would go as far as saying im a casual fan #but 16 carriages is so good #and im so excited to see what the rest of the album has in store #also please be nice to me im being vulnerable on the internet #because i am too stubborn to be vulnerable in real life #... there is a 75% chance i am going to panic delete this later but oh well here it is

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5and3nevermind · 4 months

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What do you think about this one interview after bts getting n1 on bbhot100 where Jimin said “he was with Jk when it happened”. But before that there was a live where Suga mentioned “he cried with Jimin”. Do you think someone was lying? Or Suga just meant that he was crying with Jimin on the phone (while Jimin was with Jk)?

Btw not the same anon but I’m interested in your thoughts on 2020-2021 era. Jimin looked a bit sad at that time and I would like to know your opinion on yoonmin dynamic during that period.

Thnx!

No, I don’t think anyone was lying. All of the members are close, so it isn’t surprising that some of them were together that night. Was Jimin with Yoongi or on the phone? I think it is much more likely to “cry all night long” with someone in-person rather than over the phone.

^^ that’s Yoongi speaking in that screenshot

As for 2020-2021, I agree that Jimin was sad at times. All of the members were! Canceling the tour and changing their plans was devastating.

As for yoonmin during that time, I think we start to see more openness beginning in 2020. The radio live where Jimin said he wanted Yoongi to “long for him more actively,” and Yoongi responded by listing some of the times he’s singled Jimin out for special attention and mentioned him in interviews. We also saw during ITS (which was filmed around that same time) that Yoongi sought Jimin out for gaming, invited him into the trailer to listen to the music he’d been working on, etc. It seems to me that Yoongi was making an extra effort. And after that came surgery era, when Yoongi went out of his way on several occasions to mention how supportive Jimin had been.

As for 2021, again, they seem fine to me and seem to seek each other out for emotional support, like sitting next to each other during the post-Grammy live when they were all so tired and disappointed. We also see them in the background so often. If you have to squint to see them, then it certainly isn’t fanservice! So…if two people are continually seeking each other out, I think that’s a sign they are quite close.

So, long story, short (too late), I think the pandemic was a really difficult time for all of the members. The fact that yoonmin stayed close during that time and emerged from that period being more connected than ever? Wow, that says a lot!

#yoonmin #ask #emotional support #2020 #2021

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emmaswanned · 1 month

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@cleoselene tagged me several days ago to share 9 of my favorite albums! sorry it took me so long to respond but I did still want to make the post!

I've been bad lately about listening to full albums as opposed to individual songs but i'm trying to be better about this because i think listening to full albums is a better way to find new artists. anyway, in no particular order:

matchbox twenty: yourself or someone like you - i think i am perhaps a little young to love matchbox twenty as much as i do (this album came out when i was 4 years old LOL) but they were very much a soundtrack to my growing up. it was actually hard for me to choose between this album and mad season, but ultimately i thought you just can't go wrong with the album that features "real world", "3AM", and "push", just to name a few. (and hey, by the way, not to be that guy, but i loved "push" long before ryan gosling ever touched it!)

taylor swift: red - i chose the original album art to post here rather than the new version because RED has been my favorite album of hers ever since it came out in 2012. i have vivid memories of being a 20-year-old film student listening to the album on the train i took to get to school and thinking wow, this album really tells a story from beginning to end!

sara bareilles: the blessed unrest - this was another hard one because i wanted to choose just one album per artists and it was a tough choice between the blessed unrest and kaleidoscope heart. ultimately went with this one because of songs like "chasing the sun" and "december." sara bareilles has always (at least in her first 3 albums) conveyed a sense of unrest and uncertainty that i've found both relatable and comforting and i think in this album she finds her stability, or at least a hope that she can find it.

maisie peters: the good witch - idk what i can say about this one that others haven't already said - i think it's the newest album on my list, certainly, but it's also just, like, the ultimate breakup album. and the way maisie frames her songwriting as a way for her to take control of her own narrative is very interesting to me and very taylor swiftian.

rob thomas: cradlesong - kind of cheating here to choose a rob thomas album when he's the lead singer of matchbox twenty but i feel i cannot ignore him because he, too, was the soundtrack of my high school years. i had an obsession in 2009 that i cannot explain nor do i apologize for.

halsey: badlands - my least favorite thing about halsey is she put out this, the perfect album, on her first try and everything else has left me disappointed. i'm heading straight for the castle. they wanna make me their queen. it cannot be topped.

fun.: aim and ignite - fun. is just the perfect band for me and every day i am sad that they're not making music anymore

noah kahan: stick season - this album is very sad and heavy, and a lot of the songs sound quite similar, which are two things that are hard for me to get past when listening to music, but ultimately this album is too good to pass up. somehow makes you horribly homesick at the same time it makes you want to run screaming from your hometown and never look back.

of monsters and men: my head is an animal - i think a lot of my taste in music can be traced back to the era of of monsters and men and mumford and sons and the like. it's the thread that leads me to noah kahan now. my head is an animal is almost a no-skip album if we're being honest.

#cleoselene #text post #about me #long post

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multiverse-imagines · 1 year

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I think about if I was vash travel buddy I would probably annoy him(or be entertaining) cause we just be walking In the desert and he’s like 🚶‍♂️and I’m like 💃 behind him cause I listening to 2000s pop music on an old iPhone that still miraculously works, just dancing to Beyoncé and one direction. Or tell him old mythological stories of gods and beasts and hero’s by the campfire. I probably be good entertainment for him.

A/N: Okay, I'm dying at this concept! I'm totally gonna make it a 160GB ipod Classic tho. It has a screen for video, and soooo much more space than a dinky old iPhone xD durable af too. I miss mine ;-; I'll probably increase the era of songs as well, because I'd be right there with you doing the same damn thing!

Lost Melodies

"Gonna make a move to a town that's right for me!" Vash watched you dance alongside him to the music playing through the headphones of your family's iPod, which had been passed down since before the space fahring age. You sang little "doots" to the electronic melody as the town you left behind disappeared from the horizon.

"Town to keep me movin' keep me groovin with some energy" the smile on Vash's face widened as you raised your hands up to chest height, "Well I talk about it, talk about it, talk about it, talk about it." You opened and closed your hands as if they were talking, "talk about, talk about, talk about mo-ooovin'!" You grooved, "Gotta move on!" You had shared this music with Vash before, as the two of you had taken turns listening to music on your iPod, and Vash's Walkman.

"A-Won't you take me to… FUNKY TOOOOOWN!" You belted out into the vastness of the desert. Vash loved it when you got lost in the music when your little group had to travel on foot through the desert. Granted, this caused you to drink more water than without the additional singing, but you had bought a second canteen so you had enough water to stay hydrated.

Wolfwood and Milly also found your little concerts entertaining, Meryl…. She had her limits. She was more interested in the Audiobooks of various Mythology the little iPod contained. Vash recalled a night where the five of you relaxed around a campfire, an Audio book of Norwegian Mythology playing through a speaker through the audio jack. It told stories of Gods that were long forgotten to Gunsmoke.

"Fair enough,” said Thor. “What’s the price?” “Freya’s hand in marriage.” “He just wants her hand?” asked Thor hopefully. She had two hands, after all, and might be persuaded to give up one of them without too much of an argument. Tyr had, after all. “All of her,” said Loki. “He wants to marry her.” “Oh,” said Thor. “She won't like that."

They listened to the story of the fortification of Asgard. He remembered the look of horror on Wolfwood and Meryl's face when the origin of Slepnir was mentioned. He remembered the cackle that erupted from your lips, knowing another mind was ruined by the fact that The All Father, Odin, rode his own nephew into battle.

"Your arms are my castle, your heart is my sky. They wipe away tears that I cry…" he tuned in long enough to hear you'd changed songs, and he caught your glance towards him at the lyrics. The blush on your face made you stutter the next lyrics, but he smiled sweetly towards you.

It was late In the evening when the two of you entered Warrens City. Vash needed another tune up from Mr. Marlon. Thankfully, your journey had been smooth sailing, and you two were soon cuddled up in their shared bed, sharing the earbuds as they watched a movie on the tiny screen.

"What do you have hidden in your pocket, Sophie?" The blonde man on the screen asked. The old woman, Sophie took a red piece of paper out of her pocket, and handed it to Howl. As the paper met with his fingertips, the paper caught fire, burning a carving into the table.

"Woah, scorch marks! Howl, can you read them?" Markle, the apprentice, asked.

"This is ancient sorcery." He mused while he caressed the table outside of the scorch marks.

"You who swallowed a falling star, O' heartless man, your heart shall soon be mine. That can't be good for the table." He shook his head.

"Ugh, this movie is so pretty." You mused, and you let your head rest on Vash's shoulder.

"It really is. I wish we had more than just this movie from that animation studio." Vash leaned his head against yours, a sweet smile across his face.

One night after Vash had gotten his gun back, You, Vash and Frank went for a drink at the bar. Frank insisted on a single drink, and Vash of course went overboard.

"Hey! Vash tells me you play the guitar. Why don't you play something for open mic night?" Frank gentured over to the little stage in the corner. An acoustic guitar sat in a stand, the bar's logo painted on the front.

After some thought, you agreed, and went over to the stage. You picked up the guitar, checking to see if it was tuned, and adjusting the microphone so you could be heard while sitting on a barstool. You strummed the guitar, as you sang the opening pitches before faking a throat clear,

"Hey baby won't you look my way? I can be your new addiction. Hey baby whatcha gotta say, all you're giving me is fiction." You sang, getting the attention of the bar,

"I'm a sorry sucker and this happens all the time, but I find out that everybody talks, everybody talks, everybody talks." You glanced over to Vash who was already enamored by your performance, pausing mid-chat with the newly arrived insurance girls,

"it started with a whispeerrrrr, and that was when I kissed herrrrrr. And then she made my lips huuuurrt. I could hear the chit chaaaaaat. Take me to your love shaaaack. Mama's always gotta back traaaaack , when everybody talks baaack!" Your voice gave a lovely vibrato to every long note.

You concentrated on singing for Vash, something you always did when you got nervous about singing around other people. Once your brain believed it was just the two of you, you could sway to the beat, and really let loose on your vocals. You loved spreading the power of music to the people of Gunsmoke, since you held such a rare and precious outer of music long gone.

It often made you wonder about the songs that didn't make it into this device. What genre were they? What did they sound like? You guessed unless you got a time machine that you would never know. You were thankful for what you did have, because you didn't know how the people of Gunsmoke lived without it.

End~

Songs used:

Funky town- Lipps Inc.

Every time we touch- Cascada

Everybody talks- Neon Trees

Audio books:

Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

Movie:

Howl's Moving Castle

#trigun #vash the stampede #trigun brain rot #vash x reader #music fic

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chnldivr · 1 year

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Omicron Complex

Hello, I wanted to post this so people can find this in nearly every location possible, please share. (...I know this may seem like a very odd post to y'all hypno lullaby fans but I helped find this so I'm sorry for the out of place post LOL)

This was previously lost media in the Halley Labs/Lapfox Trax/Vulpvibe community. The owner of the CD reached out to me and uploaded it, and I took the time to organize it, upload it, & put it on the wiki as a download.

So here it is, the 15 years in the waiting, Omicron Complex CD rip in WAV & MP3.

Here's a youtube link for the mobile users who wanna listen to it. :b

Here also, is a note Vix (the owner of the CD) wrote for all of y'all to read.

"This is the CD rip of Omicron Complex. This CD was originally bought on Cafepress for about $10 in June of 2008.

--> I bought Omicron Complex, I Prefer The Sky, and an "Eat Me" shirt all from Cafepress. I still own all of them. All of the above items were bought with my first paycheck ever totalling to about $35. It was the whole 2 week paycheck and I spent it on Vulpvibe Records. These items are VERY sentimental. I still remember the first time listening to all of the tracks in my mom's truck going to a fair. Mom was not a fan. (lol)

I initially was going to release everything in 2009 when I uploaded the initial videos, but I had multiple people requesting I download X and Y software for higher and higher quality rips. It just seemed they were not in it for the music.

I became an evil villain for years. Way too many years.

Recently I found an arcade dumper that had a piece of hardware I used to own. They are refusing to dump it. Saying they will dump it in 10 years to never. It put me into perspective that this is just me with this CD. I didn't create this music, but I did pay for it and don't have to share it. Similar to this arcade dumper. However, there are furries that like Vulpvibe and later eras as much as I did that were out of the loop or too young to buy this music. Why punish them for liking this great music?

Renard shaped my childhood. Introducing me to all of the music in Mungyodance, the music making process, using samples, identifying samples... (I recommended the ShaLaLa Vengaboy sample in "Go to the Party". Staying up to 3a-4a on Youtube pays off. <3). Mungyodance 1&2 was in an ITG2 cabinet I went to as a kid and introduced me to Fur Affinity & FURRIES through Renard's FA account. Literally Renard completely changed my life. I am still a HUGE fan of Mungyodance 15 years after its death.

Keeping this CD "lost" meant that people were still interested in the era that meant so much in my life. It's really immature of me to think that way, but here we are 15 years after release.

I apologize to everyone including Renard/Emma. Here is the release. Better late than never.

Just promise me that you will remember the old stuff and play a game of Mungyodance.

-Vix"

#lapfox #album #halley labs #omicron complex #vulpvibe #idk what else to tag so feel free to reblog with more tags i want people to see this lol #text post #lost media #found media

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louisupdates · 9 months

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Louis Tomlinson’s Top 10 Songs Ranked

21 July 2023 | 10:00 am | Skylar Flowers

The UK heartthrob has just announced a massive tour of Australia and to celebrate the Vodafone presale starting today, we’ve ranked Louis’ biggest and best songs.

Earlier this week, one-man pop powerhouse Louis Tomlinson announced his imminent return to stages Down Under and if you’re a Vodafone customer (and believe us, you should be), you’ll be able to get your hands on the very first tickets this morning (July 21). An exclusive Vodafone presale will kick off at 10am AEST, running for 72 hours until the same time on Monday (July 24).

You can head here for more info on how to take advantage of that presale.

Come January, he’ll deliver his mind-bending blend of bubblegum, Britpop and rock to his biggest crowds yet in Naarm/Melbourne, Meanjin/Brisbane and Eora/Sydney. The run comes in support of Tomlinson’s stellar second album, Faith In The Future, and although this tour will be his biggest on local soil, we’re expecting tickets to fly right out the gates.

To get the hype train chugging at full steam, we’ve crafted the ultimate playlist to soundtrack your ticket-scoring endeavours: a meticulous, indisputable* ranking of Tomlinson’s ten best solo releases.

10. Just Hold On (with Steve Aoki) [2016]

We’ll happily admit that Tomlinson’s first solo outing followed a fairly safe formula – squeaky clean, harmonic vocals (supplemented with plenty of “woah-ohs”) flowing over the unique kind of pseudo-clubby bubblegum pop beat Steve Aoki is a certified master at – but for what it is, Just Hold On is exactly what it should be. Back in ye olden times (2016), it proved to us that Tomlinson had the chops to carry a pop banger on his own, lapping up every lumen of the spotlight. And listeners seemed to agree: the song went Platinum in five territories (including Australia), came just one spot shy of topping the UK charts, and still pops up in Tomlinson’s live sets from time to time.

9. Back To You (featuring Bebe Rexha and Digital Farm Animals) [2017]

Tomlinson’s second track as the headline act landed some 16 months after Just Hold On, making for one of the most brutal waits we’ve endured between a debut single and its follow-up. But it’s without a doubt that Back To You was worth the wait, shining with an equally cool and catchy beat, and an impassioned vocal performance (carried by emotive lyrics tailored for maximum swoonability) that made it undeniably clear: Tomlinson was always the biggest heartthrob in One Direction, and goddammit, he’s still their biggest heartthrob in his solo era.

Bebe Rexha’s vocals add so much colour to the tune, too, as her smoky swagger gels with the sweetness in Tomlinson’s own delivery. Us here Down Under were especially stoked on Back To You – racking up three Platinum certificates and a peak at #11 on the ARIA Charts, it remains Tomlinson’s biggest single as a solo artist.

8. Two Of Us (2019)

Though it came out a solid 15 months after lead single Miss You, it was Two Of Us that really kickstarted the cycle for Tomlinson’s debut solo album, Walls (which arrived in January of 2020). It was a bold choice for that role, too, as a deeply emotive ballad steered by haunting grand piano chords and widescreen orchestration. But it was a power move: the song itself is striking and cuts deep with authentic pangs of grief, Tomlinson’s vocals swelling from lowkey and melancholic to intensely poignant as the music builds. Thematically, too, it’s one of his most important efforts – a touching ode to his late mum.

7. Walls (2020)

The title track from Walls is another ballad, but this one stands out a little more with its ear-pricking instrumentation, channelling the greats of ‘90s Britpop with its coolly strummed acoustic guitars, droning pianos and atmospheric string- and synth-work. Released as the album’s fifth and final single, it offered a fantastic summary of everything we’d heard thus far, from the searing pain he poured out in Two Of Us to the energised pop-rock of Kill My Mind.

Then there’s the lyrics – some of Tomlinson’s most gripping and evocative – with the chorus in particular standing out for its motivational punch. He sings: “These high walls, they came up short / Now I stand taller than them all / These high walls never broke my soul / And I, I watched them all come fallin' down / I watched them all come fallin' down for you.”

6. Bigger Than Me (2022)

Tomlinson’s newest era began last September, when he dropped the lead single from Faith In The Future: a rousing slow-burner called Bigger Than Me. It’s the perfect song to bridge the gap between his first and second albums, starting off as a lowkey acoustic number and growing into a big, bold pop anthem you could scream along to at the top of your lungs. It swells into a peak around three minutes in, where Tomlinson is virtually howling to contest with the operatic strings, spirited drums and scene-stealing synths. When we first heard Bigger Than Me, it felt like a proper reintroduction to Louis Tomlinson – and goddamn, were we keen to learn more about this new version of him.

5. Just Like You (2017)

After launching his solo career with two collaborative tracks, Just Like You marked the very first time we heard Tomlinson without a guest singer or heavyweight producer. Released standalone in October of 2017 – about a month and a half before Miss You kicked off the Walls era – this airy pop gem serves as somewhat of a theme song, very on-the-nose as Tomlinson literally opens it with a verse about how he’s “the guy from the one band” with the “whole world in [his] right hand”, prone to racking up “headlines that [he] can't stand” with his lavish escapades (“Night out and it's ten grand”)... Before explaining that as his fans, we “only get half of the story” when we see Tomlinson revel in all “the cash and the cars and the glory”.

Is it self-indulgent? Yeah, absolutely. But does it absolutely slap nonetheless? Yeah, absolutely.

4. Miss You (2017)

It makes sense that the music video for Miss You takes place at a party: accented by tasteful juts of an electric guitar and a thumping drum beat, the song feels triumphant and energising – the kind of song you’d blast in your room to hype yourself up while you get ready for an actual party. Following on from Just Like You in December of 2017, this was also the first time we heard Tomlinson shine on a track driven primarily by electric guitars, something we’d hear a lot more of on Faith In The Future, but felt like a special treat on Walls.

3. Kill My Mind (2019)

Remember how we noted that Walls (the song) saw Tomlinson channel an ambiguous ‘90s Britpop flavour? We can be a little more straight-up with Kill My Mind – this song is Oasis as fuck. But we say that as nothing but a compliment: charging forward with brisk strumming and animated drums, the artist’s vocals soar overhead, his thick Yorkshire accent gripping as he sings passionately: “You kill my mind / Raise my body back to life / And I don't know what I'd do without you now.” Honestly, I don’t know what I’d do without this absolute banger in my morning playlist.

2. Written All Over Your Face (2022)

Walls was a stellar album, no doubt about it – this list features three songs from it, after all – but it’s with Faith In The Future that Tomlinson has really come into his own as a solo artist. The headstrong rock’n’roll energy weaved throughout it peaks on Written All Over Your Face, clear from the outset as, over a punchy drum beat and rollicking bassline, the artist embraces his heartthrob personality, seeped in sensuality as he quips, “Hey babe / It’s written all over your face.” You’re telling us this is the same man that once sang on What Makes You Beautiful!? Sheer insanity.

1. Out Of My System (2022)

The latest single from Faith In The Future – a post-release pick that made impact earlier this year – is a punk-laced belter that stands out with ripping guitars and a downright explosive chorus. It feels like an almost oddly natural fit for Tomlinson, too, as he smashes through the more intense vocal delivery with stunning aplomb – he’s a bonafide rocker, and Out Of My System shows he’s much better suited to reign in this world than in bubblegum pop.

On his upcoming Australian tour, Tomlinson will play three of the biggest and most renowned venues in the country – two in the open air (sorry, Sydney) – and this is the exact kind of song those venues were built for: a rip-roaring anthem-in-the-making that no sane human could stand still (or, God forbid, sit) for.

LOUIS TOMLINSON 2024 AUSTRALIAN TOUR

Sunday January 28 – Naarm/Melbourne, Sidney Myer Music Bowl

Tuesday January 30 – Meanjin/Brisbane, Riverstage

Friday February 2 – Eora/Sydney, Qudos Bank Arena

Presale: vodafone.com.au/ticket

Tickets: livenation.com.au

#the music au #louis press #louis tomlinson #21.7.2023 #they’ve only ranked the singles btw

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phenomenologically · 21 days

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As "Ameriican Requiem" opens with gospel-inspired elegance, the melody will quickly switch into -- what will become -- Cowboy Carter's signature acoustic twang. As the melody turns with synth sparkle, you realize Beyoncé has provided us her new 'pledge of allegiance': "For things to stay the same, they need to change again." Amen!

The gospel -- in terms of scripture, rather than musicality -- captures my attention here. Perhaps I've been listening to too much old-school blues, but Cowboy Carter's biblical references provide through-lines to the heart of Southern Black country and blues music. This isn't to say that this is Beyoncé's first time bringing God into her lyrics; but rather, the spiritual exclamations and jubilations of Cowboy Carter seem more fully realized when married with the sounds of blues' forebearers like Blind Joe Taggart ("God's Gonna Separate the Wheat from the Tares); Sister Rosetta Tharpe ("Precious Lord, Take My Hand"); and Arizona Dranes ("My Soul is a Witness"). These parallels can be drawn through acoustics, through the embellished runs Beyoncé uses to emphasize milestones within her songs' narratives (think of the octave change on "early age" in verse one and the bridge of "16 Carriages").

The prose-like approach to personal narrative throughout the album also serves the connection to late-1800s/early-1900s emerging blues, "negro spirituals," and country songs from Black artists of the era. While Beyoncé has drawn her life experiences plainly into her discography prior to Cowboy Carter, the styling of the album feels particularly attuned to imparting heartfelt, genuine lived experience.

In "Protector," Beyoncé soothes her children (in the song, Rumi's voice is sampled) with promises of protection, projection, and "Liftin' you up, so you will be raised." The content here reminded me, by contrast, of the well-loved blues anthem "(Sometimes I Feel Like A) Motherless Child" covered by icons like Sister Rosetta Tharpe, multi-hyphenate Paul Robeson, and folk-revivalist Odetta. While the singer of "Motherless Child" laments their lonesomeness, their isolation "a long ways from home," Cowboy Carter subverts this relationship and ensures that she will "lead you down that road if you lose your way." This points to another relationship between the album and its possible early blues-inspirations: "For things to stay the same, they need to change again."

Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter seeks to establish a new dialogue between Southern Black parent and child; husband and wife; community and individual. "Texas Hold 'Em" clarifies my point. Here, Beyoncé invites her muse to "lay your cards down," a phrase relevant to cardgames, yes, but one that's also used figuratively to indicate succumbing to vulnerability. In the pre-chorus after verse one she says, "I can't read your mind," indicating that while her partner may be connecting with her physically (on "the floor"), he still needs to "lay [his] cards down" so they can "work [their problems] in the middle," rather than side-stepping and dancing around them.

Her continual request to "pour some sugar on me," while immediately recognizable as a possible allegory of Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me," the line reminds me more of "the Empress of Blues" Bessie Smith's "Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl." In the song, Bessie pleads for "some good man to tell my troubles to," -- laying her cards on the table. Interestingly, both Bessie Smith's "Need a Little Sugar," and Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar," carry a... frisky, let's say, subtext. I would be remiss to say that "Texas Hold 'Em," is entirely about breaking down emotional barriers between partners, without recognizing there's a lot of physical barriers Beyoncé tangles with as well. However, ultimately "Texas Hold 'Em" helps to elucidate that larger theme of the album: starting hard conversations among partners and families, and reasserting love and forgiveness above all.

The empassioned declarations of love and support -- to daughters, to husbands, to mothers and fathers -- are peppered throughout the album. "Bodyguard," "My Rose," "Alligator Tears," and "II Hands II Heaven," provide Beyoncé the platform to express these wishes singularly; while duets like "II Most Wanted" with Miley Cyrus more explicitly illustrate how important unhindered commitment in partnership is to Beyoncé. And, once again, these themes between romantic/sexual/lifelong partners mirrors much of the content of early blues, particularly (to me) the work of Sippie Wallace: the inspiration of blues/rock artist Bonnie Rait.

For instance, Sippie's biggest hit, "I'm a Mighty Tight Woman," recounts her wishes for a good man who will make her happy, "and I will make him happy too." She describes herself as a "jack of all trades," able to support her "pretty papa" in any wish or struggle -- mirroring some of the promises Beyoncé extends in "Bodyguard," for example. Much of Sippie's discography presents cynical (but wise, perhaps) views on marriage. Her song "Women Be Wise" advises married women, "don't advertise your man," as desperate women will come looking for him: a similar case as Cowboy Carter's "Jolene." Yet, once again, Beyoncé reaffirms her pledge of change by telling Jolene, "I'ma stand by him, he gon' stand by me." She doesn't relent to the "inevitability" of female competition, of unfaithfulness. She reaffirms wholeheartedly the trust in her partnership, and the value they add to one another. This is an evolution on Sippie's narrative, in which "Women Be Wise," ends with her own admission of guilt: "Lord honey, I just might sneek up and try to make him mine." Rather than committing to a partnership, she too moves on to the next.

I would be remiss to publish this review without addressing "Ya Ya." Here, Beyoncé partners with a soulful chorus to opine on American realities: sex, God, and shady insurance companies. The narrative retelling of these moments intercut with a toe-tapping "ya ya ya" chorus brought to mind lawyer, professional football player, activist, singer and actor (that's what I meant by multi-hyphenate) Paul Robeson. His famous rendition of "Joe Hill," details the 1914 murder of union organizer and communist Joe Hill. Parallel to the repetition of "ya-ya" and "la-la" through Cowboy Carter, Robeson returns again and again to Joe Hill's empowering response to questions of his death: "'I never died,' says he." And similar to Beyoncé's questioning of "workin' time and a half for half the pay," so too is "Joe Hill" questioning the working class: if your leader dies, does your cause die? Does your need for change die? No, "they organized." For this, Beyoncé prays "that he don't crash," but similarly, that her hardworking man "gotta keep the faith." Now -- "Ya Ya" is not a call to union organization and worker's empowerment as "Joe Hill," was. But, it's an important touchstone onto my earlier point: that Cowboy Carter is calling not only for changes within partnership and family, but larger communities and perhaps, American society at-large. To recognize the shared struggle, faith, and love of delicious cheesy grits that has always connected working-class Americans -- rather than superficial categories pre-determined by melanation -- despite a bloody "History that can't be erased."

I could unpack many, many more connections between Cowboy Carter and the blues genre, but I'll end on the poignant necessity of "Amen." Here, Beyoncé returns to the hook of "Ameriican Requiem,": Can you see her point? Can you hear her history? "Looker-there, looker there now," she croons in the opening track. "Have mercy on me," she belts at the close. "Amen," brings us visions of the present South; meticulously upkept plantation homes "built with blood and bone," though the homes of the enslaved Americans who built them have "crumbled." Civil War and Colonial-era monuments standing above struggling neighborhoods, beautifying the "lies of stone."

"For things to stay the same, they need to change again." For freedom to remain intact, to remain the foundation of "country," it must evolve to new heights, new communities, new dialogues. To "purify our Father's sins," requires not only a reckoning with the self, but a reckoning with the greater culture. It means not only shamelessly extending love and support to those closest to you, but recognizing the opportunities to spark love with those farthest from -- or most dissimilar to -- you.

Favorite Tracks:

"16 Carriages"

"Alligator Tears"

"Ya Ya"

#too long to post on musicboard rn so lemme throw it here #Beyoncé #cowboy carter #album drop #album analysis #blues #text

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moonchild-in-blue · 4 months

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Hello!! 8D I'm new to the Sleep Token fandom; I saw like 2 concert videos on my TikTok feed yesterday morning and proceeded to complete the fastest casual to full blown fan speedrun of my life in a single day XD And I don't really have anyone I can yell about them to, not even the person who originally introduced me to their music, so :P I'm still working my way through listening to their full discography, but I wanted to say a MAJOR part of how fast I got into them I feel is because of the Wembley show from this past weekend?? It says so much about Vessel that he handled the whole thing the way that he did, and the more footage I see from that specific show the more my heart is FULL for this man <3 That on top of the cool and intriguing lore, AMAZING aesthetics, and of course the music (which I was already into before but even moreso now XD), and it was a RECIPE for a hyperfixation :3 I also wanted to say as a newbie that I love the new masks?? Especially Vessel's; the red edgings are SO cool and put even more emphasis on his TEETH :P His whole look is Iconic (though I wonder if that cloak must be heavy to wear??), I love that the other members of the band are developing their own distinctive looks too?? And it's super cool to see how their look evolves as they become more and more successful, just from what I've seen so far <3 I also just REALLY love how more and more music artists are embracing the innately religious experience that comes with a live concert?? As you can probably tell I'm a Swiftie so I had the same thought about the Eras tour XD but also with other punk-rock/metal artists like Ghost :P So calling their shows a "Ritual" or a "Worship" is metal as hell, I think :3 Plus just as a somewhat personal note, lately I've been running out of podcast episodes that I feel comfortable falling asleep to, and I already want Vessel's voice just PUMPED DIRECTLY INTO MY VEINS, so the natural progression I think is using ST to fall asleep to as well?? Which I mean, given their lore and everything, worshipping the eldritch god of sleep, feels appropriate XD Last thing -- so far my fave song of theirs is The Love You Want, I can't stop listening to it :3 I originally got into them through The Summoning, of course, and now I also love Alkaline cause it was in one of the videos I mentioned XD I started downloading more and more individual songs that I saw mentioned by name on here until I just caved and basically downloaded their entire discography, it was gonna happen anyway at this rate XD But I'd love to know what your faves are, too!! <3 (and bless you for reading this long-ass message from a total stranger lol XD)

Hello there! Wow, that's quite the achievement!! I totally understand though, once you get sucked into their tar trap (hehe) it's pretty much impossible to leave (not that I have ever wanted to).

Welcome to the family!! I hope you enjoy your stay here - there are warm beverages and snacks on the table, take as much as you want and get cosy. 💙🍵🍪 You are more than welcome to scream about our beloved cryptics - we shall all join you, like a pack of feral wolves howling at the moon Sleep 🐺🌕

I have recently gotten an ask from another lovely new member of this weird little community, and did an introductory post of sorts. I will link it here - it's a nice read, and there is a very good post linked there with some more background on the band - how did they start, album evolution, some important lore info, etc etc, by our lovely local archivist and knowledge keeper hehe. It's an incredibly thorough and comprehensive read - 100% reccomend!

So, about Wembley. Yeah, I think we're all still collectively recovering from it. There was A LOT of expection for it, being their last Ritual of the year, and the biggest headline to date, and even more things happening (New masks, iii's return, and of course Vessel's unfortunate situation). Vessel, the band and choir, and every single crew member involved did a fantastic, admirable job under the circumstances.

I won't dwell too much on it, as I've already shared my thoughts on another post, as so did many others, but yes - the fact that Vessel chose to perform at all given his condition, and somewhat stil managed to blow everyone away, is nothing short of an indicative of how sweet and beautiful, and loving that man is. I have nothing but respect for him and the guys - it must've been pretty hard on them as well to perform in such sad circumstances. The show was incredible, and my heart is still so so full with it 💙

The masks are pretty amazing!! I'm personally still attached to the old black ones, and in mourning of iii's victorian child look, but I do loooove the new costumes (they got me feeling some type of way, but I won't be weird here. Just Thinking Things)! Very yummy 😚 The new Choir outfits are INCREDIBLE aaaaaa (you will see me fangirl about them a lot).

Vessel's mask in not new per-se - he's had this one since May or June I believe (around the time TMBTE came out). His mask (and shoulder piece) is AMAZING, I am so in love with it still. It was done by Hysteria Machine - the same artists who did the new Espera (my lovely choir ladies) masks (debuted in the first German Ritual of December). His cloak is actually super lightweight, and the shirtless look helps to keep him cool during his adorable zoomies hehe (not sure about the fur on the back - but he seems to be okay with it, for the ~aesthetic~. My love is a nerd lol)

Yeah, the religious vibes are definitely there, even if just for the lore. I'm not a fan of neither Taylor Swift nor Ghost, so I can't really comment on that, but concerts to have a very transcedent feel to it. "Worship" is kind of a tagline for the band and fans, while Rituals are the actual shows!

I have lost count to how many night's I've fallen asleep to Vessel's voice lmao. As someone with severe insomnia issues, their music is nothing short of divine. 💙

I too was a victim of The Summoning - I suppose it really worked! TLYW funnily enough was my least favourite from that album during the first 2 or 3 listens. Then I watched the live performance for it and OMG. Now it occupies a very special place in my heart - even more after iii's brief absence!

My favourite song is Atlantic - it will forever and always have my heart. Very closely followed by Chokehold / The Apparition / Drag Me Under. Special kiss with tongue to Fields of Elation and Jaws (among others)! Do not sleep (hehe) on their eps/singles!!!! They are fenomenal!!! I always reccomend you listen to the albums in full, at least at first, to really get the full experience. But of course, you do you hun!

If you like the lore aspect of the band, I'd definitely recommend you scroll through the ST lore tag. There are so many amazing posts with lyric analysis, lore headcanons, among others. Also thought the fanart tag!!! The amount of talent and care in this fandom is insane. Everyone is so kind and loving and sweet here - I'm sure you'll have a good time! Don't be shy, go full unhinged if you so wish, and feel free to drop by anytime with any thoughts, questions, or anything else 💙

#fellas we got one more!! the cult is growing hehehe #(it feels so weird to be on this side of the fandom now. 6 months ago I was the one making questions and discovering st)#(and now I get to help?? Wack. Spreading Sleep's message as intended - Vessel where's my kiss)#darya answers #sleep token

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