#the fact that this is the album closer on an album about how fame affects artists is so !!!!

[wenightmareyou]

that’s our lamp, it shines like a big moon

#songs that peel me like a fruit #mitski #mitski lyrics #thats our lamp #laurel hell #mitski edit #lyric edit #lyrics #the fact that this is the album closer on an album about how fame affects artists is so !!!! #losing it <3

[kamotecue]

overthinking thoughts ・❥・g. reiten

pairing: guro reiten x fem!reader

summary: what happens when your lover of almost three years gets a bit insecure about certain things? just something fluff, and it's rewritten. canadian!reader, fleming!reader

you gave the crowd a small smirk, as the cheering had gotten a bit louder. you were simply strumming your electric guitar, playing the last song on the set list, but you gave a cheeky smile at your sister who stood beside her teammates, and your girlfriend. your lover's eyes have never left you, in fact she watched you with a proud grin, as you sang your heart out for the last song.

when the song had ended, you were absolutely breathless as part of your layered hair had covered your eyes, quickly moving them--you had bid goodbye to the crowd as you headed backstage, alex (the drummer) your childhood best friend and quinn (the bassist) a mutual friend you had met in college had followed right behind you.

"excited to see the missus?" the irish had teased, as you chuckled at her words. but she was correct, you are excited to see her again--the months on tour had been restless, and since london was the final stop, you had decided to stay at your sister's place. despite being twins, jessie was still your older sister by a few minutes. but you were the taller one, so it was easy to tease your older sister.

"is it that obvious?" you asked, chuckling as you felt a bit shy at their teasing. maybe it was the way you kept talking about the norwegian, despite being miles apart. the bracelet she had made was currently worn around your left wrist, it's what caught the attention of your fans, but rather than answering them, you'd given them a shy smile as you greeted them before engaging in a small conversation.

"anyone can spot from a mile away that you're hopelessly in love with her." alex teased, his eyes leaving yours as he caught a glimpse of who was the surprise visitors. you felt someone snake their arms around your waist as they pulled you closer, a contented hum had escaped your lips as you turned around--guro gave you a soft yet wide smile, as you gave her a peck on her cheek. regardless of the fame you currently have, you were never one for public affection.

your relationship was the definition of lovers in private, and best friends in public. you had befriended a few chelsea players the moment your sister had signed for them, back in 2020, jessie wanted you to come with as she signed the contract for moral support, she'd say. but you were alright with it, that was how you met guro after all. it was during a chelsea game, you had spent a month in london writing and coming up with lyrics for the album, a confused look was seen on your face throughout the game.

when the game had ended, you were waiting for jessie near the barrier, scrolling through your phone not noticing how she came up to you. it took you a while to notice really, and when you did--you were the shyest person she ever met. jessie had seperated you from the norwegian as she noticed from afar that the two of you were talking, guro was surprised but then your noticable freckles had given it away.

"guro, you don't need to bring y/n to my place. i'm sure she'd like to stay with you." jessie teased as you gave her a shrug, a small chuckle escaped guro's mouth as she hummed.

"i didn't plan on it, fleming." guro said, as jessie raised her eyebrows before shaking her head at the two of you. the two of you bid goodbye, hopping into the backseat of one of the given cars. each bandmate was assigned a car and a driver, but you would share if you were headed together to an event, or etc. it didn't take awhile to settle yourself in your girlfriend's apartment, you wore her pajamas as you used your towel to dry your damped hair.

the norwegian was looking out the balcony window, her eyes were set on the couples walking through the streets, her jaw was a bit clenched--there was something obviously bothering her. you called out, not receving a reply the first three times as you shuffled around the apartment, joining guro on the balcony.

"are you alright, love?" you softly asked, knowing that there was something that was occupying her mind. but she had kept quiet, as you patiently waited.

"i just hate how i can't have you in public, or the other people who would get close to you." guro had commented, as you gave her a soft smile, she's jealous but you understood that--you want to be public about your relationship as well. but you're afraid of the backlash that she might get, rather than being worried about what would happen to you, you're more worried on what would happen to her.

"du vet at de ikke er deg, jeg har bare øynene mine på deg, guro. [you do know that they're not you, i only have my eyes on you, guro.]" her eyes widened as you fluently spoke in her native language, a soft smile appeared on her face, as tears filled her eyes. you had been practicing and learning her language despite your busy schedule.

"jeg føler bare at det er vanskelig å elske meg, jeg er opptatt med karrieren min, og jeg har kanskje ikke tid til deg. [i just feel like it's hard to love me, i'm busy with my career and i may not have time for you.]" you chuckled at her behavior, it's true she'll be more busy as time passes by, but so will you--so a part of you understood her, it may not be the training and games. but it was the constant tours, the vocal training, the busy fanmeets and you were too busy keeping up with your appearance.

"du tar ikke feil, kjærlighet. alle er vanskelige å elske, men husker du da jeg sa at du burde velge din karriere før meg? [you aren't wrong, love. everyone is hard to love, but remember when i said that you should choose your career before me?]" when you first started dating, you made the norwegian promise that you wouldn't be her first prority, that you'd be her fourth or fifth. herself must come first before all, then her family and friends, her career and lastly, you.

"selvfølgelig gjør jeg det. så hvorfor blir du? [of course, i do. then why do you stay?]" guro asked, as you hummed at her words. you gave her a soft smile, before pulling her closer into you, snaking your arm around her--just like she did awhile ago.

"fordi jeg heller vil lære deg enn å miste deg. jeg vil heller gjøre en innsats enn å ikke prøve i det hele tatt, kjærlighet. [because i'd rather learn you than lose you. i'd rather make an effort than not try at all, love.]" a small hum was heard, as she placed a soft kiss on your forehead, it was a gesture that she loves doing.

"jeg elsker deg. [i love you.]" "jeg elsker deg også. [i love you too.]"

｡˚ ✧ ┊┊┊┊ ➶ ❁۪ ｡˚ ✧｡˚ ✧ ┊┊┊┊ ➶ ❁۪ ｡˚ ✧

you know the drill, an instapost.

liked by _jessflem, niamhcharles17, alexstewart, sierrahill, and 3,620,762 others.

tagged greiten.

_jessflem: i guess the cat is out of the bag, well done little sister!

↪ y/nfleming: thanks, big sis.

niamhcharles17: never thought the hard-launch would happen.

↪ y/nfleming: a well known saying, always expect the unexpected, niamhy charles! ;)

greiten: my pretty girl.

comments disabled.

#woso x reader #woso imagine #woso one shot #norwnt x reader #guro reiten #guro reiten x reader #guro reiten imagine

[phoneybeatlemania-bit-the-dust]

Jealous Guy, How Do You Sleep? and Johns dichotomy – an analysis

“I didn't want to hurt you, im just a jealous guy”

I find the fact that both Jealous Guy and How Do You Sleep were included on the same album to be an indicative signal of Johns convoluted psyche. Where in one song he can express profound remorse and recognition of his own wrongs, just tracks later he almost negates this apology, vilifying the same person [Paul] he appeared to be sincerely expressing regret for. I thought it might be interesting to analyse both songs, and then compare, contrast and interpret what we can of the inconsistent nature of John’s feelings for Paul.

Jealous Guy

A lot of people have argued that ‘Jealous Guy’ was a song written for Paul - and whilst I do agree with that interpretation, I also think that the song relates really to a more expansive articulation of Johns struggles with jealousy, and the way in which it has ruined so many meaningful relationships for him (his relationship with Paul notably being one of these).

The evidence for the song being about Paul actually comes from Paul himself, stating in an interview: “He used to say, ‘Everyone is on the McCartney bandwagon.’ He wrote ‘I’m Just a Jealous Guy’, and he said that the song was about me. So I think it was just some kind of jealousy." - Paul McCartney, Playboy (Feb. 1985). Examining the songs lyrics does appear to validate this - though I believe John was downplaying the actual sentiment of jealousy related to the song when he said that to Paul. The initial implication appears to be more so jealousy due to a feeling that Paul was more beloved in the public eye then him; jealousy tightly related to fame. But a closer examination of “everyone is on the McCartney bandwagon”, combined with inferences from the lyrics, suggests to me that this jealousy was never really over fame or fortunes, but instead it was a fundamental feeling of inadequacy that would affect a type of jealousy towards Paul, because Paul had it all: he was likeable, loveable, cared for, appreciated, sociable, confident, intelligent etc. whereas John had nothing and no one. But going even further into this, it appears as well that the jealousy John evokes within the lyrics isn’t just about a grief he felt because Paul had “more” in a sense - but also, its a grievance over the fear that this person does “not love [him] anymore”, and that they were prepared to abandon him now.

I don’t know what John meant exactly when he wrote “I was dreaming of the past”, because I don’t know what former experiences he was strictly relating this “dreaming” to - but id hazard a guess to say he was describing a moment in which he was recalling traumas and tragedies he’d endured throughout his lifetime. Perhaps he was thinking of Julia, perhaps he was recollecting a flippant but cruel comment Mimi had made to him as a child - I can’t really say, but overall I don’t think the specifics of this memory really matter. What matters is that they led to him getting emotional, “[losing] control”, and ultimately trying to purge this emotion by abusing someone he dearly loved.

In the second verse he explains to the subject(s) of the song who he had hurt in that moment of despair, that he was “feeling insecure” because they might not love him anymore. He doesn’t elaborate on any reason why he believed that the subject might have fallen out of love with him, and perhaps there was in fact a specific trigger for this insecurity - but ultimately, in abstaining from specifics John creates the sense that this insecurity was basically just in his own head. It doesn’t appear that any exogenous action had given him a rational reason to feel this insecurity, but it was John himself that “was shivering inside”; it was his own internal conflict.

In the third and final verse, John expresses a sense of rejection, and the way in which he would attempt to smother the hurt this rejection could cause. But this smothering, and lack of communication, would only lead him to hurt his beloved subject. He states: “I was trying to catch your eyes, thought that you was trying to hide. I was swallowing my pain.” The lyric “catch your eyes” has been taken somewhat literally by some, and whilst im not saying that interpretation is wrong, I feel personally that the lyric is invoking more-so the sense that John wanted intimate attention. The watchful eye is a special thing, disclosing a sense of genuine care as well as kinship - he didn’t want the subject to just see him acting out, but he wanted them to care too. It wasn’t just about attention, but about empathy and affinity too - and so when the subject “rejected” this, by allegedly “hiding” what I assume is the true depths of their feelings, John does not communicate his pain but swallows it instead. And this, again, leads to an outpour of upset, uncontrolled emotions and behaviours. Id presume this lyric relates to Paul in the sense that John feared Pauls independence - its been observed by many that Paul was always slightly apart from the group; whilst John wanted them all to live together as a (very) small and tightly knit community on some Greek island, Paul disdained the idea. That doesn’t mean he cared less about John or George and Ringo, but just that he wasn’t codependent and thriving entirely off of his intimates (although I would say he was codependent upon them in a lot of way too, but this codependency differed to Johns).

However, overwhelming all this self-reflection is the apologetic sentiment to the song. John understood his flaws, and even understood the roots and triggers of these flaws: insecurity, self loathing, fear of abandonment etc. But while he does allow himself the opportunity to explain his actions, he still offers a well-deserved and sincere apology to those he had hurt so deeply.

How Do You Sleep?

Whilst its debatable who Jealous Guy was specifically written about (like I said, I personally believe it was about Johns overall experiences with jealousy, though that does largely pertain to its influence in his relationship with Paul), its unequivocal that How Do You Sleep was written about Paul; both John and Paul have discussed the songs meaning and intentions in plenty of interviews, and ill return to this point later. It is debatable however who exactly was involved in the song writing process - as Paul McCartney stated in a 2020 GQ interview: “…you hear the stories from various angles and apparently people who were in the room when John was writing [HDYS], he was getting suggestions for the lyrics off Allan Klein. So, you see the atmosphere of "Let's get Paul. Let's nail him in a song..." And those things were pretty hurtful.” (x) Its probable that Klein, and allegedly Yoko too (x), contributed to the song, and I think that that is something worth accounting for; we can’t credit John entirely for the songs caustic lyrics. But at the same time, that John had people gang up on Paul, in a way appears to be even more indicative of the his contemptuous and resentful feelings he held towards Paul, because John was actively seeking to turn other people against him. Noting this contempt is not to suggest that John didn’t love Paul, but to quote Marya Hornbacher: “Hatred is so much closer to love then indifference”.

Im sure we all know why John wrote the song: it was a response to Pauls 1971 album RAM (x). Arguably, John was always bound to have written a song in the similar vain to HDYS, as evidenced by this interview - “[HDYS] started off in a more abstract form about a year and a half ago…it just sort of formed itself through anger and sadness. It’s really like an outburst…” (x). If John is being accurate in this interview, it means fragments of the song had been written even before Paul had written and released RAM. Certainly RAM upset John, but perhaps it was just the final trigger for John in writing HDYS, rather then the actual root of it.

Continuing the conversation about RAM in fact, some people have argued that tracks like Too Many People matched the same aggression John presented in HDYS. Id disagree with this, as I illustrated in further detail here (x), though I believe TMP was written with the intent to hurt and offend John, I don’t think Paul was trying to shatter him. He was criticising John’s actions and behaviours, and thats fair; he wasn’t criticising Johns very being and entire career and personality. John went for everything about Paul.

In the first verse of HDYS, he writes “You better see right through that mother's eyes; those freaks was right when they said you was dead”. Here John illustrates a resentment he held towards Paul, due to McCartneys “insincere” nature. He alleges that Paul tends to play coy in downplaying his successes, but behind those “eyes” he is apparently a vapid, empty, apathetic being. This lyric perhaps relates to the “I was tryna catch your eyes, thought that you was trying to hide” from Jealous Guy, and Johns frustration in not being able to attain that level of intimacy he wanted from Paul.

In the second verse, there is again a sense of betrayal when John sings, “You live with straights who tell you, you was king. Jump when your momma tell you anything.” Perhaps the underlying sentiment John is invoking here is that he’s betrayed that Paul would pick the high-class “straights” over him. Again, its this idea that Paul is some narcissist who only hangs around people who’ll feed his ego - but John can see straight through his “humble” facade.

To put it all simply, John Lennon was a classic bully. He was putting Paul down because internally, John was “shivering” with insecurity - and this insecurity I suppose muted into an abundance of aggression and frustration, of which he took out on Paul, HDYS exemplifying this.

If we observe however Johns reaction in later interviews concerning HDYS (this (x) for example), its interesting that he seems evasive. And that John seems so evasive and half-hearted in his defence of the song (even trying to nullify the effects of the songs lyrics in favour of suggesting its a musically beautiful song) suggests to me that releasing the song was a choice he ultimately regretted after recognising how much it hurt Paul - see I Know (I Know) as further evidence of this. In a lot of ways he doesn’t want to recognise the innate cruelty behind the intent of HDYS, perhaps because he doesn’t want to recognise his own monstrosity. He evades the reality of the song because he can’t face himself - as he stated in a 1980 interview, HDYS was really just about himself. All the contempt directed at Paul throughout the song is just a product of his own self-loathing, which made him a hateful and bitter person, and resulted in him projecting a lot of this spite onto Paul.

John’s Dichotomy

Where John could write some profound and personal lyrics that cut straight to the bone, like “I was shivering inside” - he could also counter these words with insincere and purposely hurtful words, as demonstrated in How Do You Sleep? This appears to be his dichotomy: that he can love someone (Paul, specifically) so immensely that it resulted in a form of “hate”. He was hurt when this love was seemingly unreturned, and acted out in such a way that was contemptuous, aspiring to drag Paul down to his own level. But behind all his cruel remarks and bullying tactics, was just a lost and lonely guy, looking for attention to quell his insecurity.

HDYS was the classic “leave them before they leave you” strategy, and as per usual, it failed. John never fully left Paul, because we know he was talking about him till he died. But he had still irreparably altered his relationship with Paul. Paul was still there for him, but there was this tear in their relationship, that could never been sewn back together. But if HDYS was Johns cry for attention, then Jealous Guy connotes the puddles of sorrow behind these calls. And Paul always understood that these sorrows existed; there might have been doubt in his mind surrounding Johns affection for him after his death, but id be willing to bet that behind all this confusion, Paul always knew John loved him.

Perhaps John wrote HDYS out of spite, over his perception that Paul “abandoned” him. Perhaps it was a call for attention. Whatever it was, behind every insult was just a Jealous Guy.

#the long and winding post #an anlysis #long posts #jealous guy #song analysis #how do you sleep #beatles #analysis #mclennon #johns psyche #psychology #70s john

[silvyri]

I posted 1,837 times in 2021

53 posts created (3%)

1784 posts reblogged (97%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 33.7 posts.

I added 109 tags in 2021

#dinluke - 22 posts

#silvyri rambles - 18 posts

#fuck - 14 posts

#silvyri answers - 12 posts

#;-; - 10 posts

#omg - 10 posts

#silvyri writes - 9 posts

#hahahaha - 5 posts

#ily - 5 posts

#<3 - 4 posts

Longest Tag: 104 characters

#because he has the attention and affection of a very handsome man who isn't afraid to handle him roughly

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

I would give my kidneys and a good hunk of my liver for a figure skater Luke and ice hockey player Din modern AU dinluke fic

99 notes • Posted 2021-05-06 20:53:01 GMT

#4

Omg I need a grumpy small town detective Din who’s lost all faith in humanity being paired up with literally sunshine embodied newly transferred in green detective Luke

And at first Din is the definition of not enthusiastic but Luke slowly worms into his good graces by somehow knowing his coffee order off the bat and bringing him food when he forgets to eat when they’re on a case and how everyone somehow just *trusts* Luke, even people they’ve literally just arrested and have cuffed in the back of the car

And Luke’s just so enthusiastic and still sees the good in the world and the people in it and Din finds himself just wanting to move closer into Luke’s warmth because it’s been so long since he’s felt anything else but an overwhelming listlessness in his existence and that pisses him off but *god* Luke is just so earnestly lovely without a bad bone in his body that Din cannot stay mad at him

Even when Luke brazenly puts himself in the path of danger again and again and again and gives Din at least three heart attacks a week because holy shit Luke has no self preservation skills and a self sacrificing streak a mile wide

They find an abandoned little boy on a case and when Din picks him up the little boy just reaches out for his nose and giggles and Din is *lost* and then he sees Luke playing with the boy at the station and Luke kisses the boy’s head and looks up at Din, smiling that goddamn dumb, bright *beautiful* smile at him and Din’s lost again

Okay I just want one (1) sunshine twink who carries a gun but never uses it and one (1) little child who doesn’t speak and may be a little green (no one questions it) restoring Din’s faith in humanity and making him realise that he’s worthy of love and happiness again

100 notes • Posted 2021-05-10 10:49:23 GMT

#3

I’m thinking

One (1) dinluke AU with famous Popstar!Luke who’s tired of the spotlight and everything that fame brings and is hiding out in a small town out in the wop wops to record his new studio album and think about what he’s going to do with his life

He runs into hot!dad Din and his son Grogu at the local supermarket. Luke’s wearing his hood pulled up, sunglasses and a mask; Din immediately is suspicious of the stranger in his town until it’s pretty damn clear Luke’s a little blond ball of sunshine who loves kids

Of course, the town is fucking small, so Din sees Luke *everywhere*. It’s only normal that they strike up some kind of friendship- nope, *acquaintance* since Grogu likes the guy so much (yes it’s definitely because your son likes the pretty blond twink Din, no other reason that you’d want to see him around no sir)

And then one day the paparazzi find where Luke is staying and Luke hightails it out of there because fuck that

And the first place he can think of is Din’s little secluded wooden cabin

And it starts to snow

And Din and Luke and Grogu are stuck in a little cozy cabin while a snow storm rages outside

I wonder what could happen

(hinT: THERES ONLY ONE BED)

105 notes • Posted 2021-04-05 11:08:49 GMT

#2

the fact that Din Djarin is 5'11 and probably even a few inches taller from his boots and helmet and Luke Skywalker is a cute lil' 5'6 just really hits me hard you know

109 notes • Posted 2021-05-06 11:04:39 GMT

#1

✨pin-up rebellion boy luke skywalker ✨

938 notes • Posted 2021-04-25 12:35:21 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#my 2021 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

[passionate-reply]

This time on Great Albums, I talk about an album that actually isn’t older than I am for a change! Enter the spooky, haunted forest of The Knife with me, and find out why it was Pitchfork’s Album of the Year in 2006! Full transcript after the break.

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! Today, I’ll be tackling an album that’s more recent than anything I’ve done on Great Albums before, but it’s still old enough to start being considered a classic: The Knife’s Silent Shout, released in 2006, and hence seeing its fifteenth birthday in 2021. Silent Shout is a bit special to me, insofar as it was an album I loved as a teenager, back when it was still pretty new, and it was probably the first album I really fell in love with that wasn’t significantly older than I was. I was quite surprised when I eventually learned just how beloved Silent Shout is among music aficionados. This album has been lauded in critical circles, recommended as a “patrician” essential, and even considered one of the greatest electronic albums of all time! So, what’s the fuss about?

Before Silent Shout, The Knife were significantly closer to a conventional electronic pop duo. Their biggest claim to fame was the track “Heartbeats,” which scored some exposure after a cover of it was featured in a TV ad.

Music: “Heartbeats”

I like to think that “Heartbeats” contains the seeds of what’s great about Silent Shout, with its grinding synth backing and vocalist Karin Dreijer’s affecting wail. But its indie-pop brightness is something distinctively absent from their follow-up. Contrary to what might’ve been expected from an up-and-coming pop act, the sibling duo hunkered down in the studio and set about making something stranger and more exotic. On the technical front, they stripped the production down to its bare essentials, using just digital rhythms and two synthesisers to achieve everything we hear on the album. Stylistically, they took their sound into moody, atmospheric territory, imbuing it with this eerie, claustrophobic ambiance. It’s the musical equivalent of Frankenstein emerging from Mary Shelley’s mind, while the dreary “Year Without a Summer” had poisoned the world around her.

Music: “Silent Shout”

The title track here is also the opener, and introduces us to the frightful world of Silent Shout without mercy. This track is dominated by a powerful contrast of sound: low, thrumming bass, and these quick, but delicate and meandering synth arpeggios, carrying a distinctively Scandinavian flair. This bewitching synthesis of musical ideas makes sense in light of the diverse influences of the two siblings who made up The Knife: Instrumentalist Olaf Dreijer was strongly influenced by dance styles like house, trance, and progressive techno, as well as ambient electronic music, whereas vocalist Karin Dreijer was interested in guitar-based popular music, as well as the distinctive folk traditions of their native Sweden. Not unlike the Pet Shop Boys, they’ve got a wide gap between their influences, but that only serves to intensify the uniqueness of their work, which strikes listeners in a way the constituent musical parts of its heritage never could. Perhaps the most significant sonic feature of the album, though, is the extreme electronic distortions of Karin Dreijer’s voice.

Music: “One Hit”

If raw and everymannish vocals make music feel more in line with our everyday reality, the shocking and monstrous ones on *Silent Shout* render it a truly otherworldly work of art. While many people are quick to decry the “fakeness” of electronically mediated vocals--despite the fact that all art is, of course, artificial--I think Silent Shout proves, more boldly than anything else, just how uniquely powerful this musical tool can be in the right hands. Once you get past the sheer sonic force of the vocals, and their peculiar, skin-crawling timbres, you’ll find that most of the lyrical subject matter is actually painfully quotidian. “One Hit,” for instance, is told from the perspective of an all-too-normal “monster”: a domestic abuser, extracting and enforcing femininity and domestic servitude through the force of violence, dealing in “one hit, one kiss.” Sex, gender, and exploitation based upon them are among the album’s most central themes, and expressed harrowingly on tracks like “Na Na Na”:

Music: “Na Na Na”

Perhaps moreso than any other track on the album, “Na Na Na” is rendered borderline incomprehensible by vocal treatment--a trait magnified by its obviously meaningless title and chorus. But “Na Na Na” does have real lyrics, which tell the story of a life mediated by reproductive anatomy, defined by the rhythm of menstruation, coming from within, and the constant fear of sexual violence from without. It’s a tale of hidden anxiety, and experiences that go unseen and unspoken despite how common they are, making the haze of inscrutability laid over them all the more poignant. It’s clear that these issues are of high importance to Karin Dreijer, who has publicly described themself as “genderqueer,” despite both members of the band being remarkably sparing with all personal details. In another of the most striking vocal performances on the album, “We Share Our Mother’s Health,” Dreijer even gets to sing a duet with themself, and embody two distinct characters at once.

Music: “We Share Our Mother’s Health”

“We Share Our Mother’s Health” can be read in the light of gender and sex dynamics, as well, particularly if you’re willing to read its twin narrators as representations of masculinity and femininity. Personally, though, I think that’s a bit too easy, and really, a bit too cisnormative. I think the album is more interesting if we embrace the fundamental uncertainty of identity, and the transgressive queerness of it all. That said, I prefer to think of “We Share Our Mother’s Health” as a piece about capitalism--the endless toiling and scrounging for more material comfort and security, and the emptiness left behind when that proves to be no pathway towards true happiness. Besides, it’s not like sexism and the class struggle don’t feed off of each other in the end. This track’s sense of cacophony, with voices nearly battling to drown each other out, shows its more strident, aggressive, and downright angry side, which it delivers as powerfully as it does those moody atmospheres.

Silent Shout is the perfect title for this album, given its emphasis on voicing internal and private laments that go unheard--and voicing them with this terrifying sense of primal scream catharsis. While I initially wasn’t overly fond of the album art, it’s grown on me a bit now that I’ve seen it blown up to a larger size. This central disc shape is certainly evocative of a record or a CD, and its industrial-looking lattice structure, with a mottled, grimey-looking texture, helps conjure the impression of machine-age ennui.

I think a lot of the enduring appeal of Silent Shout is its sense of mystery. A lot of that mystery is deliberately crafted iconoclasm, and part of the art--while promoting the album, The Knife were photographed wearing sinister, elaborate beaked “plague doctor” masks, and their live performances from this period shrouded the band in darkness to obfuscate their appearances. They’ve refused to accept awards for their music or attend award ceremonies, including one memorable incident in which they sent costumed representatives of feminist organisation Guerrilla Girls in their stead. After Silent Shout, the duo created an opera based on Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species in 2009, and released one more studio album in 2013: Shaking the Habitual.

Music: “A Tooth For an Eye”

Shaking the Habitual received mixed reviews, and so far, has proven to be the siblings’ final work together, though they remain active as musicians independently, with Karin Dreijer recording under the moniker “Fever Ray.” Part of the great myth of Silent Shout is the fact that nothing else in their discography really quite approaches its specific sound, and sharp precision of conceptual focus. It’s like the album is tailor made to stand perfectly alone, outside of context, perhaps even outside of genre.

For many of us, this great legend of lightning-in-a-bottle genius is infinitely alluring. But I’ve never really bought into it too thoroughly myself. I obviously adore Silent Shout, and I think it’s a Great Album. But, unlike many people who have showered it with praise, often claiming that they don’t enjoy “electronic music” overall, I’ve always been interested in a lot of heavy, angry, creepy synthesiser-based music, and so I never thought too much of listening to this and liking it. People praise Silent Shout for being unlike anything else, but I think it sounds like a lot of post-industrial dark wave, like Attrition or Chris & Cosey, and its themes of feminist rage feel like a strong parallel to that of more recent stars of noise music such as Pharmakon and Lingua Ignota. But that’s not to devalue what Silent Shout does achieve! I think it *is* a unique album...in the way that a bat is a unique animal. Much as bats are not the only creatures who fly, but stand out for having developed that ability despite their mammalian heritage, Silent Shout doesn’t actually take direct inspiration from the earlier music it sounds the most like. It ended up there through the aforementioned eldritch alchemy, combining trance and folk and Kate Bush to get something new. That’s still something worth celebrating! Silent Shout needn’t be a perfect enigma to be a stirring masterpiece of an album.

My overall top track on Silent Shout, which I bet will be a popular choice, is “Forest Families.” It’s equal parts bleak and strangely anthemic, defined by both the unease of adapting to a plainer and harsher existence, outside the bounds of society, as well as the release that music itself provides to so many of us as we seek comfort. Since music is so important to me, I’m a real sucker for music about the importance of music, and it feels particularly well-placed on an album that’s a cathartic listen in so many ways. That about wraps this one up; thank you for watching!

Music: “Forest Families”

#music #great albums #album review #album reviews #the knife #fever ray #silent shout

[imacrowcawcaw]

Hi I come with a rather silly question, but I was curious, according to your perception how would you describe the personality of every girl in the GVF fandom here at tumblr

That's not a silly question at all, I think it's great and actually quite creative!!!

It seems to me that there are a couple types, which is normal cause there's a lot of us lol. We're not all the same, even if we have some interests in common!

Types of Greta Van Fleet Fans on Tumblr as Observed By Me

Type 1: The Casual Fan

She knows their music, but it's not her favorite. She might reblog a few photos or funny things about the boys on occasion, but her blog is no where near dedicated to Greta and they probably aren't even one of her hyper-obsessions, just another artist in her library. She's more on the outs of the fandom; it's rare that she's tagged or mentioned in anything because not many of us know her. Greta Van Fleet is, most likely, an outlier in her music taste: either heavier than she's used to, or more classic rock when she's a straight up metalhead. All of this is absolutely okay! This girl is generally chill and sweet when she does get to interact, although if she ends up liking GVF more and wants to get "in" on the fandom it can be frustrating to make herself seen.

Type 2: The Die Hard Groupies

I feel kinda bad calling them this but, if given the chance, these chicks would become groupies in an instant. They love the band with their whole heart, and want to live a life of peace, sex, drugs, and rock n roll with their idols. But since they are contained to Tumblr at the moment, these ladies contend themselves with thirst tagging, sending various friends like @satans-helper and @dreams-madeof-strawberrylemonade naughty fanfiction requests and confessions, reblogging pictures of their favorite groupies from rock history, and, of course, listening to Greta Van Fleet (cause they do like the music, I want to make it clear it's not all about sex). It's a toss up whether this girl is open to any and all of the boys, or has a lane she will die in. Jake seems to be the most common.

Type 3: The Accuser

This can girl is much, much more common on Instagram, but I've seen a few here too... The Accuser takes "cancel culture" to the extreme and is canceling a person for something every single day (and encouraging others to do the same) despite the fact that she still likes them apparently (you'll see that she still posts about this person who is "awful")? She thinks the boys are abusing their fame by not promoting social justice very publicly at all times, she has problems with all their girlfriends, she thinks the album is taking too long and that they're being lazy; she goes on rants about symbolism in the songs, makes every conversation about social justice no matter the relevance, and picks fights about the most ridiculous things. (Again, this was on Instagram, but I had two girls fighting over which twin had the larger gay following and things got INTENSE). This girl is quick to anger and accuse, wants everyone to be on her side and thinks even minor disagreements are Literal Death, and still proclaims to love the band despite finding fault in everything they do. High probability she excludes Danny or hates him the most. Yikes.

Note: If you're mad at "The Accuser" one cause, hey, sometimes there are problems that need to be addressed, keep reading.

Type 4: The Defender

While I prefer this girl over The Accuser, she is also... not perfect. The Defender, in contrast to The Accuser (and probably fighting directly against her in a reblog chain no one else bothers to read cause ugh this again), thinks that the GVF boys are literal angels on earth who can do no wrong. She agrees and backs up every decision they and their management make, and always jump to their defense whether it’s music, looks, actions, or online activity being criticized. She is probably a pacifist, heavily dislikes fighting, and wholeheartedly believes in “peace love and unity”. I wouldn’t say that she is naive or irresponsible entirely, but she tends to ignore anything that she dislikes or else immediately jumps to the defense. Think One Direction fangirls circa the early 2010s. 

Type 5: The Happy Hippie Medium

This girl is what I, personally, would consider an enthusiastic yet responsible fan. She generally stays outside of the drama because it has nothing to do with her, she thinks it’s too silly to argue about, or she just values her sanity and peace. She does, occasionally, chime in on matters that she thinks are too important to be ignored, whether it’s the wait time for the album or their social media presence, and she’s always respectful about stating her opinion. She loves Greta and posts quite a bit about them, including original content, but she also has other interests that she blogs about. It could be other bands, aesthetic photos, astrology, artwork, tv shows, activism, it doesn’t really matter, but you’ll find that her blog is an interesting and utterly disorganized haven of herself. Gives great recommendations on all manner of things, and has probably been to a concert and had the time of her life.

Type 6: The Obsession Blog

This is the girl - or, rather, the blog - that is 100% about Greta Van Fleet. Every bit of content that comes in or out is GVF related; she’s the one you go to if you want a certain picture or an ear to hear your fantasies. Even more so if her blog has a specific topic, such as a Sam Kiszka blog! (Or @gretavanfleetconfessions lmao shameless self plug). She probably also has one or more side blogs where she has other content she is interested in, as well as personal information. I am surprised at how often I follow both blogs without knowing it’s the same person!!!

-----

So, I think that those 6 types covers pretty much all the types of fans of GVF on Tumblr, or maybe more accurately their attitudes and content. I admit that I probably walk the line between “Happy Hippie ” and “The Defender”; I try to keep a healthy balance between my obsessions and a healthy amount of affection to GVF, sometimes that means ignoring stuff! 

I have also noticed that there are things that a LOT of GVF fangirls have in common that aren’t band related, but make this fandom more vibrant and close nonetheless. Many of us:

are musicians

are writers 

are artists (plugging @sphoox cause she’s my favorite but seriously all the artists rock)

generally like to be creative, whether it’s crochet or cooking or making moodboards

have other shared bands, such as: Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, Motley Crue, Guns n Roses, Nick Cave, Hanson, Harry Styles, Lana Del Ray, Twenty One Pilots, David Bowie, Pearl Jam, Metallica...

have other shared tv shows and movies, such as: Avatar the Last Airbender, The Witcher, Killing Eve, Mad Men, The Office, Parks and Rec, Labyrinth, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, The Adams Family, Pirates of the Carribean...

are interested in astrology and star signs

are interested in history

are interested in fashion

love to read and learn (not necessarily in school) and have all manner of knowledge

are in the LGBT+ community

are women of color, in and outside the U.S.!

are neurodivergent 

love nature and being active outdoors

love and share various aesthetics, whether it’s cottage core or ‘67 hippy or 80s rocker vibes

I love this fandom community and hope I can remain a part of it for a long time! There are things that diversify us and things that bring us closer together, plus, of course, the four wonderful (and sexy) musicians that brought us all together in the first place. What type of fan do you consider yourself to be? Was I accurate (enough), are there more types? I hope I haven’t wildly offended too many people lol....

#greta van fleet #gvf #lulucrowproductions #my writing #gvf fandom #peaceful army #jake kiszka #josh kiszka #sam kiszka #danny wagner

[justash02]

Bts reaction;

-> to them crying

Warning; some of those may have some depressing content

Find all my k-pop work here -> masterlist

Hope y’all enjoy!

*^*^*

-> Seokjin;

Jin was having a hard time with you being so hard on yourself, when you told him you didn’t think you were pretty enough to even look at him something just broke him.

He felt his heart ache as he stared at you with his glossy eyes, he hates that you thought that about yourself and the fact that he couldn’t do one single thing about it made it even worse.

He covered his eyes with his hands and silently let the tears fall without you knowing, you yourself were on the edge of tears and for too busy worrying about yourself at the moment.

You suddenly heard a sob making you break yourself.

“Why can’t you just see yourself the way that I see you? It’s frustrating me so much to know that I can’t even make you feel good about yourself.”

You felt bad for even saying it to him now, you turned around and instantly wrapped your arms around the man, you softly played with his head as tears ran down your face.

“You make me feel loved, Jin. I’m just so used to hating myself that it’s hard to see myself any other way.”

He looked up before softly cupping your cheek, he leaned down a little before pecking your lips; “you’re beautiful.”

*^*^*

-> Yoongi;

Yoongi knew that he wasn’t going to get rid of it that easy, he felt happy for a while but as soon as things started to go back those thought came back.

He felt like he could do better with his music, he felt like he didn’t deserve all of the fame he worked so hard for. He didn’t think he was as handsome and you claimed him to be.

He felt like he was holding you back from having a good life, with a boyfriend who was happy to show you affection. Someone you truly loved you.

Not that yoongi didn’t love you- no, yoongi loved you too much, he was scared. He was never good with emotions so this hit him quite hard.

He started distancing himself from you at first, that turned into him ignoring the boys and skipping practice to the point where they had to reschedule their new album.

But enough was enough, one day you just went to his place and knocked on the door, as soon as he opened it he wanted to close it.

You put your foot between his door making his eyes widened, “Y/n. Just go away.”

You shook your head and stepped inside, yoongi decided that it wouldn’t do anything if he tried to stop you so he just lets you do your thing.

“Yoongi, listen I don’t know what the hell is going on but I’m worried, I’m so so so worried, baby. You’ve being ignored me and the boys for so long-“

“You’re gonna think it’s a stupid reason anyways, I’m so sick of people telling me that everything will be alright or that they fucking know what the fuck I’m feeling.”

You kept your mouth shut in hope he would talk some more, but from the way his eyes glister in the light you knew there was a lot more that he wasn’t telling me.

“I fucking love you, Y/n. I love you so fucking much and I can’t even say it most of the time because I’m so afraid that I’ll be trying too hard.” Now he was gasping for air as tears ran down his face, you stared at him shocked.

“That’s the fucking reason I’ve been pushing you and the boys away, I’m afraid that if I start to love you too much it will hurt even more when you leave like the rest.”

“Yoongi-“

“Pl-please just hold me.” He whines as he makes grabby hands to you.

You softly smiled as you felt tears coming in your eyes, you vision was blurry and you grabbed his shoulders pulling him into you.

*^*^*

-> Hoseok;

He was practicing for the new dance, the rest of the boys had left to get home a little sooner than that he did. He just couldn’t get one of the dance moves right which rarely happens.

He felt frustrated as he did the move once again wrong, he lets out a loud annoyed sigh and drops to the ground.

Jin called you to tell you that Hoseok probably would be home late tonight, when you asked him if they were all still together and he said no you decided to just go and see him.

From what Jin told you Hoseok was feeling stressed out and frustrated because of that one dance move. Jin said that that dance wasn’t that crucial but- you know Hoseok...

You got into the car and drove to big hit, you got inside of the building and got to the big pratice door that they shared with other groups.

You softly knocked on the door, you opened shortly after seeing a burned out Heoseok. You felt your heart tighened from the state he was in but still got closer.

“Hobi...”

He looked up seeing you sad eyes, “Baby- What- how-“

“Jin called me, love, what are doing to yourself?” He looked down avoiding my glance as he felt tears burn his eyes, he blinked a few times and the tears soon came running down.

You sighed and sat behind him, you throw your legs over his and hugged him around his waist.

“Hobi, you’re such a good dance. So what if you make one wrong dance more? You think army is gonna love you less just because of that one dance move.”

He cupped his hands over yours and rubs his eyes roughly trying to get rid of the tears.

“I don’t know what I would do without you, baby.”

*^*^*

-> Namjoon;

Namjoon was feeling down, he felt like he was a burden to the rest of the boys because he always took the lead in English interviews and when he saw jimin playfully roll his eyes he took it serious.

He fell silent immediately and didn’t speak unless spoken too, you saw it all happening in the back room where the live interview was being shown.

You saw the pain in his eyes as he kept looking around the room trying not to cry, when they were done and Namjoon came into the room alone he couldn’t stop himself from crying.

“Joonie..” you whispered as you pulled him onto you on the couch, you softly kissed his forehead as he cried onto your shoulder.

“Joonie, jimin didnt mean it that way, he was just joking around, baby.”

His cries turned into hiccups and soon it was over, he fell asleep onto your shoulder snuggling in your shoulder.

Soon the boys came back in and saw the state their leader was in, “Y/n-ah what happened?” Jimin asked as he sat beside you softly playing with Namjoons hair.

“It’s nothing, jiminie, He’s just a little bit sad.” The younger male nodded and softly smiled.

*^*^*

-> Jimin;

“Did park jimin from bts gain weight once again?”

“Does park jimin not suit korean beauty standards anymore?-“

You turned off the tv as you saw your boyfriend walk down, his eyes burned into the back of your head as he went and stood in front of you.

“Jagi? Did I gain weight?” He asked as he lifted his shirt and softly poked his lean stomach, you shook you.

“Jiminie, you shouldn’t even worry about what those assholes say about you. I think you look even better with a bit flesh on your bones. Fuck- I mean look at that fine ass.”

You kept rumbling on and he didn’t notice the broke hearted boy in front of you, but as soon as you heard a sob coming from you boyfriend your head shot up to look at him.

He didn’t know why he started crying, but it was probably because he has a habit to hide his problems and put them as deep as possible and tries not to think about it too much but eventually he will break and he would be a big mess.

“Jiminie-“ suddenly he lets himself drop onto you wrapping his arms around you body holding you close. You softly rubs his back as whispered sweet nothings into his ear, relaxing him.

*^*^*

Taehyung;

He was missing Tannie so much, he wouldn’t show it he would only “jokingly” tell you how empty the place felt without the doggo.

Tannie was with his family for a few weeks since you two wanted to go to Paris but big hit needed the boys to stay in Korea for the new album.

Tae at first wanted to ask Tan back but you insisted it would be good for the pup to be with other people and not to clench onto Tae if someone wanted to pick him up like he would always do.

You two laid in the bed as you were fast asleep, Tae beside you wasn’t. He was tossing and turning and couldn’t get the idea of tannie not being beside him.

He felt silly to feel that home sick about a dog when he probably didn’t give a second thought on Tae when his family gave him all the cookies he needed.

He felt his heart ache, his eyes started to hurt and a headache started to form from keeping the tears in.

You turned around in your sleep and hugged the boy close, gently laying your head onto his chest. Mindlessly stroking his bare chest.

Tae instantly felt the weight fall off of his shoulder as he stared down at your peaceful state.

He maybe not have tannie with him right now but at least he had you.

*^*^*

Jungkook;

Jungkook had bad home sickness when he moved to Seoul to proceed his dream of becoming a idol, as soon as bts started to get bigger and bigger he eventually forgot about his home sickness as he was surrounded by his chosen family.

But as soon as he moved out into a new apartment the thoughts started coming back, he hated being alone because then he had too much time to think by himself.

He tossed and turned in his king sized bed, he sighed and grabbed onto his phone. 3 am.

He scrolled through his phone and came across yours, you have been his friend Even since he came here and started working for big hit.

He quickly rang your phone as he didn’t put second thought into it, soon he heard your raspy voice; “kookie? Why aren’t you asleep it’s 3..”

“I know but it’s back again, could you maybe come over again?” He heard you sigh before saying yes, you lived in the same complex as him so you didn’t have to get there with a car or anything.

Soon he heard a knock on his door, he made his way over to the door opening it for you, there you were.

A plushie in your arms, hugging it tightly against you as you had a big blanket wrapped around you tiny form. Jungkook smiled softly before wrapping you into a hug. The plushie squeezed against his chest as he did so, he refused to cry with you around because he was afraid you would never like him if he did.

“You promised me you would tell me-“

“Shh, I’m happy your here now.”

*^*^*

If someone has requested pls let me know ;)

#au bts #bts au #bts hoesok #bts jimin #bts jin #bts jungkook #bts namjoon #bts teahyung #bts reactions #bts senarios

[howaminotinthestrokesyet]

Behind The Album: The Downward Spiral

The band’s second studio album was released in March 1994 from Nothing Records and Interscope Records respectively. The release represented a concept album from Trent Reznor detailing a person’s descent into depression and ending in suicide. He would combine the record with qualities of industrial rock, techno, and metal. Much like Broken, this stood in stark contrast to Nine Inch Nails debut Pretty Hate Machine. He first thought of the idea for the record while staying in a European hotel just after the touring Lollapalooza Festival in 1992. Along with the rest of the touring band, the singer had felt this very negative vibe towards their live performances. His original vision for the project was to explore a fictional character with major psychological issues. This fictional character in the end turned out to be Reznor himself as he used this concept to speak on his particular issues at the time in the lyrics. At this time, the Nine Inch Nails front man was at war within the group with Richard Patrick, while at the same time gradually becoming a much harder drinker. Reznor made a conscious decision to distance the sound on this album from the harshness and loudness of Broken. For that reason, he tried to minimize completely any use of guitars and synthesizers, but instead sought an atmosphere on the album of “ texture and space.”

Nine Inch Nails recorded The Downward Spiral at 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles, which stood as the house in which Sharon Tate had been murdered by members of the Manson family. Reznor had first bought the house in 1992 during the recording of Broken. He named the studio that was built there Le Pig After what was scrawled on the wall in blood after the murder. He would later produce Marilyn Manson’s debut album there, Portrait of an American Family. Both the Nine Inch Nails front man and manager John Malm stayed at the house for 18 months while recording Broken and The Downward Spiral. Later in 1993, the sister of Sharon Tate, Patty Tate confronted Reznor about exploiting her sister’s death by recording at her sister’s former home. The encounter did affect him profoundly causing the singer to change his perspective. “For the first time, the whole thing kind of slapped me in the face. I said, 'No, it's just sort of my own interest in American folklore. I'm in this place where a weird part of history occurred.' I guess it never really struck me before, but it did then. She lost her sister from a senseless, ignorant situation that I don't want to support. When she was talking to me, I realized for the first time, 'What if it was my sister?' I thought, 'Fuck Charlie Manson.' I went home and cried that night. It made me see there's another side to things, you know?” Once again, Reznor would collaborate with producer Flood for this record, but it would be their last. They would both have major creative differences moving forward that could not be resolved. One example of these differences came in the song entitled “Just Do It” that did not appear on the finished album. The producer believed Trent had gone too far with that particular track based on the entire concept of the album.

Over the years, the album has been interpreted in a wide variety of ways that make it difficult to pin down. Some of these themes include nihilism, self control, self abuse, depression, and madness. The one interpretation that people did agree on unanimously represented the idea that the entire record is semi autobiographical meaning the fictional protagonist is Trent Reznor. That same person has gradually been going insane through the effects of drugs, alcohol, religion, society, and finally decides to end it all. Some accused Reznor of copying a well traveled theme of angst within grunge music only a few years earlier. The music on The Downward Spiral represented something new, unique, and very unconventional. As noted before, Trent incorporated several seemingly different genres into the record including technical, metal, rock, and electronic. He would regularly utilize distortion and other noises In unstructured ways that listeners were not used to at the time. This meant that the formula of following verse and chorus went out the window with Nine Inch Nails. Another unique trend on the album came with Reznor’s use of new time signatures that were off the standard beat. Another quality found within the music emerged with his singing as it alternated between whispers and screams. He did not rely on too many samples either for The Downward Spiral with the primary ones being one from the George Lucas film THX1138 and an Iggy Pop drumming sample. The singer has noted that the two primary inspirations for the album emerged in David Bowie‘s experimental Low and Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Nine Inch Nails released the tracks “March of the Pigs” and “Closer” as singles, while “Hurt” and “Piggy” did make it on the radio, but not as singles. He was frustrated by the fact that “Closer’s” lyrics were widely misinterpreted as a song about lust, but Reznor intended the lyrics as a theme of self-hatred. The song “Hurt” subsequently released in 1995 made reference to hurting yourself and an addiction to heroin. The track would get worldwide fame a few years later when Johnny Cash covered the song. Reznor would say this about it in interviews. “I wasn’t prepared for what I saw, and it really then, wasn’t my song anymore. Then I got a CD in the post. I listened to it and it was very strange. It was this other person inhabiting my most personal song. Hearing it was like someone kissing your girlfriend. It felt invasive.” As time passed, the singer would make the statement that Johnny Cash covering one of his songs probably meant more to him than winning a Grammy.

The Downward Spiral did suffer from numerous delays from Reznor. He had hoped to finish the album in 1993, but setting up the studio to his liking took longer than expected. At the same time, he was trying to educate himself on how to write songs vastly different from anything he had ever recorded. Another reason for a further delay came in the fact that halfway through the album he suffered a massive attack of writer's block. The record became a massive hit for the band as it debuted at number two on the Billboard charts eventually being certified quadruple platinum by 1998. In the first week alone, The Downward Spiral sold 119,000 copies. Some very early listeners of the record predicted that Reznor had affectively killed the profitability of the band with the release. The singer did not disagree with this assessment as he saw the commercial value of it as quite limited, so the huge sales surprised him quite a bit. Critics almost universally praised the album commenting on its brutal honesty, darkness, and offbeat sound. Robert Christgau of The Village Voice gave it an honorable mention, while the New York Times review found the music to be quite abrasive, but meant as a compliment. Jonathan Gold of Rolling Stone likened the album to cyberpunk fiction popular at the time. Tom Sinclair of Entertainment Weekly had this to say about it. “Reznor's pet topics (sex, power, S&M, hatred, transcendence) are all here, wrapped in hooks that hit your psyche with the force of a blowtorch." In the end, the record would make many best of lists ranked very highly. Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums Ever saw the release as number 122 in 2020. Spin Magazine’s Top 20 albums of the past 25 years gave it the 10 spot. The legacy of The Downward Spiral was felt by both Reznor, his touring band mates, and the rest of the music world. Its success would lead to fame and notoriety that the singer had not envisioned, nor was he prepared for it in a mental health way either. The group had to deal with rumors left and right referencing Reznor‘s depression, possible death, and even a crazy story that he had been friends with Jeffrey Dahmer. The record also led to countless imitators including Motley Crue. Reznor would later say that The Downward Spiral was an album, where the actual truth self-fulfilled itself, meaning all the darkness, depression, and other negative themes came true in his own life.

[zankivich]

The Arrangement: CEO’s Son/Dom!Shawn x Black Sub Reader Chapter 15

a/n: I don’t have much to say. This chapter is short, but necessary. The world is dying. The fandom is gone. I’m not sure if there’s much of a point anymore, but y’all said you wanted it so...here it is.

*y/n’s point of view*

“Why are you here Shawn!”

“Because! I need you to be my manager!”

“Excuse me? Did you stop to smoke crack while you were running from the subway?!” You screeched.

He rolled his eyes up at you. “No ma’am, I did not. Just let me explain okay?”

“Shawn this is completely illogical! You cannot just run pounding on my door at any odd hour of the night with some half baked ass scheme--”

“Y/N!” He screamed silencing you quickly. “Stop yelling. Sit down. I’m going to explain it to you and then we can have a conversation like normal human beings, okay?”

No man, let alone a white one, had ever had the audacity to speak to you in such a manner. It had only been Shawn who seemed to lack an evolutionary response to fear the wrath of a black woman. If only it didn’t cause your back to straighten and your mouth to part. If only you didn’t like it just the slightest little bit. Asshole.

“Fine. But I’m not happy about it.” You huffed marching over to the couch.

He snorted as he got up off the floor.

“Yes, because god forbid you do something you’re not happy about without letting the entire world know, darling.”

You rolled your eyes down at the ground and tried to hide the fact that his pet names still made your heart ache. Sheesh.

He stood in front of you, towering over you for a second in a way that simply had no right to make your mouth water. But it’d been months and you were lonely and you missed him in more ways than one. Then he dropped down to his knees before you and reached for your hands, and the lust immediately melted to a gooey center. Cause beyond everything he was still the softest, kindest human you’d ever met. He still made you calm, made you happy, made you infinitely better than you ever were without him.

“I quit.” He started.

You immediately frowned. “Huh?”

“I quit my job. I walked out on all of it, y/n.”

“....Are you out of your goddamn mind?!”

You went to pull away from his hands, only for him to squeeze tighter and move closer. The fact that he could remain calm in this moment baffled you beyond belief.

“No. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever been clearer.”

“Shawn...The whole entire point was that he was going to give you your masters and your contract. Why in the entire world would you walk out on that opportunity? It’s everything you ever wanted.”

He nodded and his hands tightened around yours.

“Because it wasn’t worth it.” He murmured. “I had something that mattered to me more.”

You immediately shook your head. Your heart was pounding in your chest, and it felt like the walls were closing in. EVerything that you had gone through. All the emotional hoops you had to jump through to let him go. The pain and the heartache and the loss. All for him to squander the bigger picture. Why?

“No. No, you don’t get to do that. You don’t get to choose me over the very thing you’ve wanted since you were fourteen years old, Shawn. I’m not gonna let you.”

You tried to pull away once again but he only held you closer, only looked up at you more directly so that you couldn’t get out of being in that moment with him.

He smiled. “I know. I know now that that’s why you did it. Though I do wish you would’ve just talked to me instead.”

“I knew you’d never do it if I didn’t make you.” You whispered.

“Of course I wouldn’t...What would ever make you think that fame could mean more to me than you?”

“But...But it’s what you always wanted.” You stared in utter confusion. “Music, it’s your pulse. It’s what makes you, you.”

He let go of your hand and reached instead for your cheek, palm warm and large and all consuming.

“All I ever wanted was to be able to create music, and sing, and perform.” He explained. “And you gave that to me y/n. You. You restored anything he ever took from me. I didn’t need more. All I wanted was you.”

You didn’t mean to cry. You really didn’t. But there’s something about him choosing you that shakes you to your very core. It matters. It’s one thing to know your own worth and know what you deserve. It’s another thing entirely to have someone affirm that so fully and so empathetically. Not only had you thought you were making the right decision, you thought it would ultimately be what you wanted. You couldn’t have prepared to be so wrong. You couldn't prepare for him to love you in a way that was more meaningful than music. Because that had to mean that you meant more to him than maybe anything in the world.

“Well….shit.” You sniffled blinking away tears.

He chuckled and reached to press a kiss against your forehead. You closed your eyes and let yourself drink him in. The smell of his cologne. The feel of his curls against your forehead His warmth. He pulled back and looked you in the eye and you felt more at home than you had in weeks. Then he peered down at his watch and was immediately up off the floor.

“Shit, we’re late. Let’s go.” He muttered.

“What?”

“I’ll explain in the car. Let’s go!”

***

*Shawn’s point of view*

His leg won’t stop shaking. He keeps bouncing with his fingers interwined and crossed in front of his face so that they can’t see how fucking teriified he is. It’s a room evenly split down the middle. To one side was him, y/n, and Teddy. The otherside was all music execs at Atlantic. Every song that played seemed to cause a visceral reaction for y/n. Mostly because it couldn’t have been more for her. He kept peering over at her and watching the way she sat in her seat. She couldn’t sit still at certain moments. He knew that ninety percent of all of her expressions came from her hands, and so she sat on them mid-way through. It was a lot to ask of her, and at one point he thought maybe it was too much. Maybe he shouldn’t have gone for the shock and awe and maybe he should have just left her out of it. But then, Fallin’ All In You comes on and her face lights up and he knows that he wouldn’t have it any other way. It was for her. And therefore she needed to be in that room if it was going to be the moment that changed his whole entire life.

The final song comes to a close and there’s a beat of silence where it feels like his heart might explode out of his chest. All these weeks with these songs in his head and his heart, when all he could think, breathe, eat, was about her in someway. All of it now was on a record that might seal his fate, might completely lead him to a new world outside of his dad’s control. Enter Andrew.

“So that is...without a doubt one of the best albums of the year.” He stated.

His eyes widened, heart plummeting into his stomach.

“Seriously?”

He nodded. “Absolutely. So here’s what I’m gonna do for you. I will happily sign you, Mendes Industries be damned. It’s burning a bridge, but the impact that you’re gonna have on the music industry will cover that tenfold. Atlantic is in. We want you. We want this record. Tell me what you need to make that happen.”

His lips parted in shock and he looked to none other than y/n as his brain completely stalled. In his moment of weakness she sprang up like a fucking gazelle and launched straight into a type of professionalism that made him both weak in the knees and frankly hard in the pants.

“I will be representing him in all legal proceedings until a permanent manager has been vetted by both me and the client. I will need the contract with all monetary gains to the record company highlighted and dotted. Either you can do that now or be rest assured that I will. We will not be doing a three-sixty deal. We are only interested in a one year contract contingent on the sales of the album, which you and I both know will come through based off the strategic marketing plan for a face like that. He will retain all final say on singles, album track lists, and production rights on this album as well as future albums though that can be negotiated at a later date with another contract. We will require a minimum of seventy-two hours to review and consult counsel before any negotiations continue. So would you like to email me, or do you have a physical copy ready for me?”

Andrew looked at y/n and then looked at Shawn. And then back to y/n. And then back to Shawn. He just shrugged and nodded back in her direction. His girlfriend had always been a complete and total badass afterall. He was kind of just there to look pretty and sing.

“I will...get that drafted for you right now. One moment.”

Andrew leaves the room and it’s like he can breathe for the first time. And the second enough oxygen gets to his brain he can’t help but remember that the sole reason for this moment is her. The only logical conclusion was to jump into her chair and smother her with love and affection the way that she deserved.

“You are literally a human golden retriever!” She gasped as he crawled into her lap.

His legs spilled out the arm of the chair as he wrapped her arms around her and squeezed. For added measure he licked her cheek to prove her point. She glared at him. Apparently she didn’t like it very much.

“Never. Again.” She wagged her finger at him.

“So this is what true love looks like huh?” Teddy asked from her seat.

Shawn simply looked at y/n and beamed happily.

“Yea.”

She rolled her eyes at him but nodded as well.

“Apparently. Now get off me honkey, I need to remain professional.”

“Yes dear!” He sing-sang climbing out of her seat.

Teddy simply continued to stare at the two of them in utter confusion.

“Oh she means in with love. A love rooted in the reality of a white supremacist country that will always prioritize my life and my worth over hers simply because I’m pale and have a dick. It works to off-set the power imbalance between us.” He explained. “And she’s just incredibly cute.”

Y/n looked over at him and grinned happily.

“That’s my guy.”

***

“So...You’re not signing with your father?” She asked him.

He nodded his head.

“And you quit your job?”

He nodded.

“And he cut you off entirely?”

Another nod.

“But you’re gonna sign with Atlantic who...according to this contract is going to pay you a premium of a hundred thousand dollars for your album, all to be paid back upon royalties of course. And you’re going to do an optional clause of two additional singles after that album?”

He nodded. “That’s what I hear.”

“And you’re not gonna go after your dad for your masters?”

“Nope. I’ve realized that I’d rather put energy into the now and into my future than to dwell on the past. Also I have a feeling if the album is successful that Atlantic might take him to court once I accidentally let it slip that there’s two hundred songs of material hiding somewhere.”

“And you made this decision...when?”

“Well...My girlfriend left me despite being just as in love with me as I was her.” He paused for dramatic effect and to take in the roll of her eyes that he’d missed so much. “And at first I was just gonna quit entirely. Music. The industry. All of it. But then I realized how much I really did care about it. And I thought that...If I was gonna say fuck it, I might as well go for it ya know? Just so there were no ifs. I’m cut off and my dad will probably never give me another dime so, might as well give the whole singer thing a try, right?”

Y/n stared at him, eyes wide and tired and maybe still a little soft.

“Of all the people in the world.” She sighed to herself. “Let’s get a few things straight. I won’t manage you. I will simply identify the correct path for you to be on and then move you there. I will pay myself a generous fee for this aid, but once we find you a manager I will do no work with you professionally.”

He smiled dumbly up at her. “And why is that, y/n? What could possibly stop you from doing any professional work with me?”

There was a fly on the wall. A building sized elephant in the room if you will. She had followed him into the fire, had held tightly to his hand in the flames, all without admitting that such a notion could only be rooted in love. But he knew. He knew more than anyone the way she’d opened up her heart to him. The way she let him make himself comfortable inside her being and her spirit. He knew that she loved him endlessly in the exact way that he loved her. The only thing left to do was to get her to admit it.

“Don’t make me say it.” She mumbled .

“I’ll say it for you then...You love me my darling. And I love you. And apparently nothing can tear us apart. Not even my dad who is like the cheesiest villain of all time.”

“I mean...Yes. Obviously.”

He chuckled. “Come here.”

She moved slowly into his lap. And for a moment he just held her. Wrapped his arms around her back and hugged her fiercely. He didn’t think that the world hugged enough, and he had this thought that if she let him he’d hug her every day for the rest of forever. Her head rested against his shoulder and her fingers danced in his hair. He was complete in every sense of the word.

“Why is it so scary to admit that you love me?” He asked her honestly. “Would it really be such a terrible thing?”

Her fingers tightened in his hair and she pressed a little closer against him.

“No. No it wouldn’t. It’s just scary to admit that I almost gave up on us for no reason. I can’t believe how naive and how dumb I must have been to believe I could ever be without you.”

He pulled back just enough to look into her eyes with that soft kind of fondness that made his bones feel like jelly.

“Really?”

She nodded. “You have to know that I only did it out of love. I knew you were it for me, and I knew that it would be the most painful thing I’d ever experienced, but I still had to do it. I knew that you loved music more than anything in the world and I just wanted you to have that.”

“Hey, I know. And I’m not angry at you.” He assured her, casually squeezing at her waist. “Just know that...music was the most important thing that’s happened to me in my whole entire life. But that was before I met you. And you don’t get to tell me that I can’t choose you, alright? No one does. You’re it. I’d pick you any second of any day, and I’d be more than happy with that decision. You don’t get to tell me not to love you.”

She bit her lip and stared at him with those big ole’ eyes of hers looking more like a scorned puppy than anyone had the right to.

“You know no one has ever spoken to me like that in all of my days right?”

“Yep. Looks like you were just waiting for me to come around. I promise I’ll make it worth it though.”

“Yea?” She grinned leaning close so that their lips hovered over one another’s.

“Yea. Let me show you.”

And he closed the distance between their lips.

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[filmsunstuck]

Why are artists the only people we encourage to have feelings?

While rewatching the 2009 MGM remake of “Fame” recently (I know, why do I do this to myself, etc), I found myself watching a trope that I feel like I’ve seen a thousand times before, but had yet to be articulated. Malik (Collins Pennie) is sitting in a room while all of his peers face him. He has just finished detailing the death of his sister, when his teacher jumps in and asks him to expand not on the facts of her passing, but on his feelings surrounding the event. “But I wanna know how you felt, and I think you need to know how you felt,” Mr. Dowd tells him, on the spot, in front of 20 other students. Malik blows up and leaves, but not before his superior informs him that “theater is not a place for cowards.” And just like that, the formula has become clear: learning how you feel and expressing that feeling is is the opposite of cowardice, it is bravery.

This specific type of character development is found in other films too: in “Raise Your Voice” (2004), Terri is unable to process the death of her brother until she shakes off her overpowering father and starts pursuing vocal training. In “Brigsby Bear” (2017), James uses film to learn not only the truth about his upbringing, but to come to terms with it as well. Hell, basically the entire premise of the “High School Musical” franchise is Troy learning to be okay with having feelings, while simultaneously exploring his newfound talent in theater. Time and time again, the idea that it is imperative for creatives to listen to their hearts crops up, even sometimes allowing those around them to be enlightened by whatever final performance takes place, usually with lots of lens flares.

Morality themes are often times found in films targeted at children, and I think the examples I listed above are emblematic of that. However, learning to embrace emotion is nearly always presented in the context of a creative field: sing a song, perform a dance, produce an album, deliver a monologue, direct a film, hit the drums REALLY hard. I can’t think of any other genre, kid-centered or not, where the acceptance of one’s internal state is not just tolerated, but required. Did anyone in “Remember the Titans,” “Hoosiers,” or “Rudy” tell a kid that they need to go home and practice until they don’t just know how to do something, but why, and to verbalize that for the people around them? Has anyone in the entire MCU had a publicly therapeutic moment, where their emotions were considered a true necessity for success? I’m talking more than a knowing glance or an offscreen change of heart. These are common moments in theater kid movies, and at best subtleties everywhere else. And that’s kind of worrying to me.

It makes logical sense that if your job is to create things out of thin air, you probably need to keep tabs on your brain. Emotions provide the juice for that motor; they allow your brain the energy to travel off in some strange direction, where hopefully you can make some new connections and get the job done. But most of us will never have to be creative in our day-to-day lives. Sure, we could get fancy with some problem solving skills, maybe buy an adult coloring book or two, but there isn’t much actually encouraging us to keep in touch with our current mental state. Too often, most of us view emotions as things to be handled at best or squashed at worst. Happiness is great, yes, but it can be quickly replaced with much more difficult responses like hurt or frustration or regret. And for those of us who were never taught the value of those things, they morph from quiet internal alerts to being issues in and of themselves. In essence, it becomes too easy to forget to actually feel your feelings.

Despite the gung-ho attitude provided by these films, creatives aren’t immune to this either. When your feelings guide your work, suddenly it can feel like currency. Once relying on creative energy for your livelihood, feelings are wasted if not utilized, but difficult to utilize under so much pressure. And when the tank runs out and the motivation isn’t there, it can be tough to jump start that engine again. There are reasons why so many people experience writer’s block, why so many creators recommend if you’re gonna start a new venture to just start it, don’t wait for any particular spark of motivation. Because you have to learn to grind it out, even if you aren’t feeling it, and you may as well get used to it now. Plus, burnout is almost inevitable; making yourself vulnerable over and over is exhausting, tapping into your psyche all the time can very easily sap you of the energy you need to make that effort worth it, to turn it into a product. There’s a cycle in that mess of emotions, with lots of loops that turn in and around and behind each other, and creatives don’t always come out the other side loving that experience.

I find myself, as usual, in between these two poles. I am not creative as a profession, but I do have responsibilities that require creative energy. I co-run a website where I have to put out weekly content with varying levels of monotony involved, I write and podcast a few times a month for a different website, and I consume and analyze a lot of media in order to prepare myself for those roles. I’ve also been in therapy for a little over a year: long enough to know how much I intellectualize my emotions, but not long enough to have re-learned a healthy way of handling them. So when I heard Mr. Dowd later in the movie tell Malik that harnessing his feelings will not only make him a better person, but a better actor, part of me was ecstatic. “Finally,” I thought to myself, “a character who will learn to prioritize what he feels, who will actually process it.” But the longer I sat with it, the more I realized how untrue that is. Because Malik didn’t learn to forgive himself or become closer with his mother. No, in the next scene, he went onstage and bared his soul in front of the crowd, and they all cheered, and his arc ended. His struggle became his brand, and his own personal cycle began.

Unfortunately folks, if you are keeping score at home, you’ll find that my conclusion here is a bit of a downer. It seems to me that other genres don’t encourage this attitude for precisely the reasons that artists are: in those worlds, it’s not deemed necessary to accomplish a goal, and in the creative world, it is. To these films, it’s not about growing as a person, it’s about growing as a character, and those two things are not synonymous, and that’s a real shame.

To those too young to know this yet: learning to accept who you are, to understand what makes you tick, it doesn’t just affect how good you are at your job, or your love life, or how many friends you have. It affects every single aspect of your existence, it allows you to grow exponentially. It’s perhaps the most important thing you could ever do, if only  because it is the first step you must take. And to those who already understand that: make sure you pass the knowledge along to someone who needs it. Knowledge only finds value when it is shared, and is probably the simplest way to create the highest impact.

Five years ago, I would have benefited greatly from knowing what I have learned about myself and how my brain works. Five years from now, self-reflection and embracing my emotions will allow me to feel more at home in my mind and body than i currently do. Whether I’m a damn creative or not.

#fame #movie analysis #movie review

[bandsanitizer]

So I’m not too clear on why there’s been a sudden increase in Ashton hate or whatever, but I want to say some stuff based on what I know.

Ashton Irwin has an attitude. Nothing wrong with that, it’s just he comes across as a person with a lot of heart, passion, and in turn, some stubbornness. As you can see in the “Before it’s too late” part of the On the Record documentary, Ashton can be quite serious. We often take for granted Ashton’s more serious demeanor when it comes to all the jokes and laughs he’s having. Ashton’s very passionate about music, about the band, and about the art. It’s really important for him to have and do well with. This isn’t to say that Michael, Calum, and Luke, don’t have this same passion and drive, but maturity level wise, it’s a bit different.

Obviously, their age differences are not huge, but a year or two can make a difference. I think it’s just becoming a bit more apparent. It’s like you think 21/22 and it’s just “Wow you’re legal”, but you get closer to 24/25 and it feels a lot more like “Holy shit times passing by”. That’s not specific to them, more of a generalization, and I think, to some degree, it’s showing within the band. Like yeah 5sos just got through a difficult time, but these next years are really going to test their dynamics and relationships.

Thus, Ashton’s seriousness may clash with the other members of the band and the current media. Ashton’s never been the person to “like” superficial question or the endless number of “5 seconds” or “sauce” games that occur. I think most artists would get pretty tired of it. 5sos especially because they’ve been treated as a joke for quite some time. To the rock world, they’ve been seen as just some wanna-be pop-punk group that is really just a boy band. To the pop world, they’ve kind of just been viewed as 1d wanna-bes riding on the coattails of sudden fame. There’s always been this stigma that what 5sos is doing isn’t valid. Ashton seems like the person to be really off out by it, and I think with how important this album is to the band, and how much they’ve matured, it’s difficult to keep facing that sort of criticism. It’s like they’re not good enough and I think Ashton just tired of hearing it. He wants their music and artistry to be recognized and taken seriously, not left as some “Look, another boyband” and not have that respect?

That being said, Ashton isn’t necessarily the best at handling it. Like, I wouldn’t say he’s an asshole, but he can be a bit rude about it.

Easiest example is what he said about Blink being childish. It’s his opinion. It’s valid. But as someone in a band who credits so much inspiration from the group... For someone in a band with roots in pop-punk/pop-rock, it’s not very respectful for Ashton to be saying that. He can say they grew to like different artists or sounds or taste, but word choice is key and calling Blink childish was not a polite move.

Similarly, Ashton is very clear about questions or games or interviews that aren’t entertaining to him or that he finds invalidating of the band. He’s not good at hiding it. Ashton has a certain face he makes when he’s exasperated or fed up, and his body language is clear. He also kind of takes on a tone and will underhandedly make remarks. It’s not necessarily saying he’s an asshole, Ashton’s a good person and he seems kind, but it’s still rude actions. As much as I love him, he isn’t the best at handling the situations in which he’s doesn’t agree with the interviewer. Current culture of what’s entertaining and valuable to the media group (the station or show) doesn’t always align with what artists want to share and what Ashton (like most artists) deem truly important to their career.

Ashton can be rude. He can be impatient and easily fed up with superficial questions. Ashton is clear on his emotions and the rudeness is a result of that, if anything. I get it. I write poetry and excel in math, and it really sucks when questions you get are about “Who inspired the poem?” and “Wow, add 6284737293 with 272947394838”. I’m not saying it’s right, though. He should learn to have a better check and filter on his responses, as much as those questions and games might irritate him. Ashton should be more aware, because sadly the questions aren’t going to change. At the same time, maybe just empathize a little given all the shit 5sos gets. (And by shit I mean the validity as a band stuff, not people educating them when they’re problematic)

Thus, I wouldn’t say Ashton’s a rude or a bad person. He’s quite nice and loving and kind. He’s a good person. Still, Ashton is able to be rude. It’s like if you got into a fight with your friend. You aren’t suddenly terrible friends, but it’s true that friends can be mean to each other a times. Ashton is a good person, but still, he does make rude remarks at times and carry himself a bit rudely in interviews. Again, not a bad guy, just should check his actions and words sometimes.

As for the sexist part of this rudeness... I have an opinion that is merely my opinion and will piss some people off.

Ashton gets shit for seemingly favoring male fans more than female fans. I don’t think this is a correct assumption. Rather, I believe it’s that with the large female fan base, and the shit that 5sos gets for having said fan base, he (or the band in general) might get a little excited when they have a male fan. Given the sexist idea of what music is interesting to the genders, 5sos deals with not being seen as a proper band because of the age and gender of majority of their fans. Ashton, and the rest of the band, are not innocent of sexism. They say things, and yes, Ashton does, at times, comment on the female fanbase as something not all that great. He really needs to watch what he’s saying.

I can, though, sympathize with the fact that 5sos gets a lot of shit outside of that, and to have that also built on top, it can really suck. They don’t need to be girls to experience the negative affects of sexism. Sexism is some of the reason they aren’t taken seriously as a band. And it sucks for them. Sucks for the fans when they make remarks about it as a result. It’s just shitty all around. It doesn’t make Ashton a bad person, but yeah he should watch what he’s says.

Overall, what I’m trying to say is that Ashton can be rude. He does say things and do things that come across as disrespectful and rude. This doesn’t make him a bad person, but they are comments and actions that he should better filter. I love Ashton, I do, and I love the fam. But letting certain comments and behavior go unchecked doesn’t do anyone any good. I think Ashton’s great, a really good guy, but I also think he should be more tactful. Doesn’t change my feelings about the band, their music, or who he is, but it doesn’t mean that the problem isn’t there.

So I respect Ashton and his issues, his problems and struggles, his artistry, but I must say that yes, he can be rude and he should be more careful about what he says and does.

Please take time to understand the people calling out Ashton’s actions and words, and the people defending him. Everyone wants to make it black and white when it’s not. Good people mess up sometimes. It happens. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t wrong, though.

#ashton irwin #5sos #ash #5sos drama

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 27/03/2021 (Justin Bieber’s ‘Justice’, Griff, Lil Tjay/Polo G/Fivio Foreign)

You might think that since I can take time out of my schedule to ramble about charts every week, that I have a lot of time on my hands and this may or may not be true but even I do not have enough time or energy to listen to – or even care about – new releases from both Justin Bieber and Lana Del Rey. So, of course, they make the most impact on the chart this week, even if said impact is still pretty muted. Our #1 is, for a second week, “Wellerman” by Nathan Evans and remixed by 220 KID and Billen Ted, and welcome back to REVIEWING THE CHARTS.

Rundown

It may not make any sense to you that “Anyone” by Justin Bieber has dropped out of the UK Top 75 – which I cover – on the week of the album’s release, but UK chart rules stipulate that only the three best-performing songs from an artist can chart at any time, which is pretty stupid all things considered but I’m not complaining since it gives me less of a workload... or more, I don’t know. With more album tracks from Justin, I’m sure they would cancel at least some of the other, lower new entries out. This isn’t the Hot 100, however, this is the UK Singles Chart, and hence we follow their rules, which means that we also have the notable drop-outs of “Bluuwuu” by Digga D, “Regardless” by RAYE and Rudimental, “Love Not War (The Tampa Beat)” by Jason Derulo and Nuka, “Afterglow” by Ed Sheeran, “Prisoner” by Miley Cyrus featuring Dua Lipa, and finally, “Lemonade” by Internet Money and Gunna featuring Don Toliver and NAV. It seems like this week in particular is pushing out old hits to make way for the new, and that’s a great thing as far as I’m concerned.

In terms of notable fallers, there are a few as expected from having a lot of action at the top, as we have “Get Out My Head” by Shane Codd at #20, “Bringing it Back” by Digga D and AJ Tracey at #41, “Money Talks” by Fredo and Dave at #45, “Best Friend” by Saweetie featuring Doja Cat at #46, “telepatía” by Kali Uchis at #47, “You’re Mines Still” by Yung Bleu featuring Drake on the remix at #57, “Addicted” to Jorja Smith at #61 off of the debut, “DAYWALKER!” by Machine Gun Kelly featuring CORPSE not disappearing fast enough at #63, “Anxious” by AJ Tracey at #65, “34+35” by Ariana Grande at #71, “Good Days” by SZA at #72, “Heat” by Paul Woodford and Digga D at #74 and finally, “Toxic” by Digga D at #75. That’s before we take into account our album impacts from the last few weeks, as well, as for Central Cee, “Commitment Issues” is at #11, “6 for 6” is at #26 and “Day in the Life” is at #56. As for Drake, “What’s Next” is at #32, “Lemon Pepper Freestyle” featuring Rick Ross is at #33 and “Wants and Needs” featuring Lil Baby is at #44.

So, what’s filling in the cracks? Well, our one returning entry is the title track, “Chemtrails Over the Country Club”, from Lana Del Rey’s newest record back at #62. “Tulsa Jesus Freak” did actually chart below the top 75, so this and the debut for “White Dress” later on is all we’ll see from Lana this week. In terms of our notable gains, well, there’s not much to speak of other than the surge for Majestic’s remix of “Rasputin” by Boney M. up to #49 off of the debut, other than “Didn’t Know” by Tom Zanetti at #48, “Medicine” by James Arthur at #43, “Ferrari Horse” by D-Block Europe and RAYE at #30 and the expected album boost for “Hold On” by Justin Bieber up to #10. With all that said, we won’t be hearing from Justin for a while as we get onto our new arrivals for this week, so let’s start from the bottom.

NEW ARRIVALS

#68 – “Track Star” – Mooski

Produced by Woodpecker

Okay, so this is a song from last year from complete nobody rapper Mooski that got big in the US on TikTok a couple months ago so, no surprise, we get it sometime later. Well, at least this Mooski guy seems to at least want to tell a story here, as the song doesn’t stray far away from the topic of a woman with commitment issues who doesn’t stay with him when times get hard. For what it’s worth, content-wise, at least it’s a narrative, even if lyrics like, “Leave a trail of heartbreak and heartache like, it’s cool” sound closer to emo-rap whining than he probably intended. Not that it needed a narrative, because barely any songs can actually affectively tell them, but there’s got to be sometimes to distract from this squeaky, strained vocal loop and all of the janky melodies surrounding it, not to mention the downright awful 808s and percussion that reminds me more of the Afroswing we got on the charts back in 2018 than any trap-rap. Mooski himself is a complete non-presence, especially when he starts stuttering on the bridge, to the point where I can’t distinguish whether it’s totally embarrassing or subtly endearing. Either way, I can’t see myself listening to this like... ever outside of the context of this episode, especially considering how undeservedly long it is for a song like this.

#66 – “Beautiful Mistakes” – Maroon 5 featuring Megan Thee Stallion

Produced by Andrew Goldstein and blackbear

Adam Levine recently said that he misses the “bands” in pop music – you know, people who play all of their instruments and stuff like that. Then he continued to release a song under the name of his band where he swaps out more than half of his band with blackbear and Megan Thee Stallion. Of course. Well, you can tell it’s written by blackbear since Adam Levine directly imitates his staccato, monotonous flow in the first verse and the generally very awkward writing throughout... which is fine, I guess, because at least Levine isn’t stretching himself out into his falsetto much here, and Megan on auto-pilot can still carry her verse off of charisma alone, and her singing in the bridge sounds better than it ever has, so I’m not going to complain about her part here. The main issue in this song, I feel, is just lack of detail. The song’s about the lengths Adam and Megan would go for their significant others but I feel like only Megan attempts to describe what’s going on in these relationships as Adam plays word association with the concept. Adam, you can time-travel back to the Kara’s Flowers era any time now. Pop-punk is making a comeback, and I know you’d hate to not be a part of that, especially if you’re longing for new bands in pop music.

#59 – “Know You” – wewaintwraiths

Produced by Oath

I mean, I suppose I’ve heard worse names than “wewantwraiths” although after he buys a new car with the check his label gives him for the chart success of this song, he might want to change it. Maybe “nowwegotawraith”. That’s besides the point, though, as just as you’d expect, we have another week and hence another UK drill track that leaves little to no impact. This guy actually kind of makes himself out like a British Mooski, with his longing, Auto-Tuned flow that I don’t think he even tried to make sound good, especially considering how janky and unstructured the whole thing is. This drill beat is pretty worthless too, as whilst I don’t mind the mesh of vocal samples and the 808 slides, I cannot stand how this is mixed so that the hi-hats are louder than Mr. Wraiths himself. I don’t mind the content, to be honest, as it depicts him finding a girl and the eventual breakup in a lot of detail. By the end, he’s harmonising with the background vocals and there are a couple of cool synth riffs, but it’s way too little, too late to start caring about detail, especially if for the majority of the song, the percussion and vocals sound this bad.

#58 – “Dimension” – JAE5 featuring Skepta and Rema

Produced by JAE5

If you know JAE5, you probably know him for his production as for years, he has been blending genres for some of the most interesting and best British rap, most notably in how he fuses drill, R&B and Afrobeats as J Hus’ primary beat-maker. He also produced songs for Dave, Shakka and Burna Boy, which got him a Grammy win, as well as “Options” by NSG, one of the biggest ever British rap songs and still one of the most infectious. Now he’s embarking on a solo career less like a DJ Khaled and more like a Metro Boomin, bringing along legendary British rapper Skepta along for the ride, as well as an appearance from Nigerian singer Rema, whose wonderful nasal tone really stands out alongside all of the synth ambiance in this production, as well as the stuttering hi-hats and those gorgeous falsetto vocal samples. Skepta sounds pretty checked-out over a beat probably too smooth for him, which shifts over to some staccato piano, as well as some intricacies in this production that sound great, especially the jazzier touches that accentuate the already great groove with some Latin-flavoured guitar and strings. Oh, yeah and the subtle brass on Rema’s verse is excellent, even if Rema isn’t saying much of anything – in fact, content-wise is probably the only place where this song kind of flounders, as Skeppy zig-zags from socially conscious lyrics about Pan-Africanism and the plight that many Africans on and outside of the continent in day to day life, to “Girls sellin’ the coochie for Gucci”. Ah, well, ultimately, the song sounds incredible and I really should check out more of Rema’s stuff if it’s at this same level of detail. I’m pretty excited for that JAE5 album now, whenever that’s coming.

#51 – “White Dress” – Lana Del Rey

Produced by Lana Del Rey and Jack Antonoff

And from Afropop to the whitest singer currently charting this side of Taylor Swift, here’s what I suppose is the next single push from that Lana Del Rey that I practically avoided entirely. I understand that a lot of people are loving this but frankly, I’ve never been a fan so I’ve given up trying. If Norman Fricking Rockwell! couldn’t convert me, I don’t think her subsequent releases will, in fact, I can place a bet that listening to this whole album will make her music sour on me even more. Well, this song is about... being disillusioned with the music industry and public fame. I see. The implications that come with that aside, I have no reason to care about Lana once again breathily cooing over an ambiance that refuses to effectively create an atmosphere that really clicks with the nostalgia tone Lana’s lyrics take here, instead just meandering through this snooze of piano-based blend, only elevating itself through clashing percussion that ends up fading itself out of view way too quickly. Also, shouting out Kings of Leon feels both completely in character and unintentionally hilarious. At least as far as I’m aware, neither they nor the White Stripes, also name-dropped in the song, are blatantly racist on social media... I hope, at least.

#40 – “Headshot” – Lil Tjay, Polo G and Fivio Foreign

Produced by Bordeaux, Non Native, TnTXD, Tahj Money, Dmac and 101 Slide

So this really needs six producers, huh? For a song that’s barely two minutes? Okay, well, after the success of “Calling My Phone”, it only makes sense that Lil Tjay will follow up an R&B crooner with a harder rap cut, and here it is, and it kicks a lot of ass – or at least as much ass that can be kicked with the nasal, unconvincing tones all of these guys have. The main loop of the intimidating strings here, accentuated by that staccato piano melody, is the perfect backing for a hard-hitting trap beat that I almost wish had some more bombast outside of its badly-mastered 808 bass. That said, Polo G kills it regardless, with some of the most energy he’s ever given and the most lyrical detail out of any of the guys on the song, as his fast-paced flow is genuinely menacing... and now I understand why the song needs six producers, because as smoothly as possible, that cacophonous Pop Smoke-esque gunshot percussion comes in and it soon becomes an intense New York drill track more befitting for Fivio Foreign’s verse, who may not have any of the lyrical dexterity but he fills in the blanks with his ad-libs and still carrying the drill beat pretty well, before Lil Tjay comes in as intense as he ever has on a beat that reverts to the trap knock again, very smoothly. I do find it pretty odd that of all people here, Fivio has the longest verse, but I guess his verse is more of a bridge to act as a gap between two overwhelmingly gun-fire verses, both of which have content that can pretty much be summed up as gunplay and flexing, but with some of the bluntest, most deathly lyrics I’ve heard in rap, especially when Lil Tjay just pretty explicitly says he kills anyone he even dares to disrespect them. I’m now thinking I should delete the episode where I gave “Calling My Phone” Worst of the Week. Speaking of that song, this song is so much better it’s almost confusing. Maybe this high-energy gangsta-rap stuff is somehow a more convincing lane for an auto-crooner like Lil Tjay than alternative R&B.

#39 – “Black Hole” – Griff

Produced by LOSTBOY

Again, in stark contrast, Disney pop. Okay, maybe calling it Disney pop is misleading but the main reason Griff is succeeding now is that Disney Christmas advert, which gave her “Love is a Compass”, her first charting song – and a pretty bad one at that. This single, released this January, is a lot more upbeat than that drone of a ballad and hence fits Griff’s limited vocal capabilities a lot better, as she does a good Selena Gomez impression – almost good enough to forget that she’s now whispering over reggaeton so Griff will basically be her replacement in the UK – over some pretty indie-pop that decides to produce itself out of common sense... if that makes sense. The quirky strings and bass start the song before the percussion comes in and it makes sense as it rises pretty regularly, until this one dissonant, chamber-echo bassline comes in and morphs the entire song, only for it to disappear for the first chorus, but given how anti-climactic that first chorus is, there’s no build-up that makes that cathartic, at all... before it comes back in just to disturb the peace for the second chorus and verse. Not that the song’s mixed badly, particularly, I mean, “DAYWALKER!” had a similar discrepancy last week and did it much worse. In fact, I think this production being so awkward makes the song a lot more endearing as it just represent that “black hole” in the content that’s being left where Griff’s heart used to be – because, of course. I wish that chorus made a lot more of an impact though because as is, it feels very much lacking in stakes, both sonically and lyrically, especially since the song doesn’t really go into any detail about how she tries to fill the gap, which I think would be a lot more interesting. As is, I mean, it’s listenable but I don’t know for how long before this becomes grating. Regardless, it’s looking to become a hit so we’ll see how this goes. Maybe mindless bubblegum-indie-pop is what the nation needs right now. Who knows?

#24 – “As I Am” – Justin Bieber featuring Khalid

Produced by Skrillex, Ido Zmishiany, Josh Gudwin and The Monsters & Strangerz

Now we here. These two tracks that debuted are basically the most I’m hearing from this Justice record past the singles, so I was kind of hoping the tracks with Skrillex and Lil Uzi Vert would chart out of morbid curiosity, but it’s seemingly the more R&B-adjacent cuts that are debuting the highest, as Bieber teams up with Khalid for a piano ballad, as Bieber talk-sings over some overly processed instrumental that pretty much goes off the rails as soon as the guitars come in and suddenly, it’s not so much of a ballad as much as it is a janky EDM track. In fact, everything about this is janky, from the non-build-up that leads to a really ugly, almost future bass-like drop that’s just kind of funny in how those distorted synths career in the mix like accordions. Then Khalid comes in pretending to be British as always, and despite his worst efforts, he can’t really harmonise with someone as digitally processed as Bieber when he’s a genuinely soulful and damn good singer. At some point, Bieber just goes insane in the bridge and Khalid’s there to bring him back down to Earth, doing so by forcefully stripping the future bass away and rescuing themselves both back to the safety of a clipping piano instrumental. Yeah, this is ridiculously bad – almost in the way that it makes me want to hear the rest of the album – but I wouldn’t go as far to say it’s so bad it’s good, mostly because I’m pretty aware it’s a fluke in an album that’s otherwise pretty boring, at least going by the singles. Of course, speak of the Devil...

#3 – “Peaches” – Justin Bieber featuring Daniel Caesar and Giveon

Produced by Shndo and HARV

Finally, electroclash legend Peaches released her comeback single and it debuted at #3 on the UK Singles Chart – or, in reality, Justin Bieber’s milquetoast R&B imitation with two genuinely pretty good alternative R&B singers Justin coasts off of the skill and talent of, debuts at #3 because we’ve got nothing else to do as a country but sit, complain and stream sea shanties. I watched the video for this when it came out, again mostly out of morbid curiosity, and it’s kind of a comedic gem as Justin’s clearly the only one trying (because he doesn’t understand the concept of smooth, low-key R&B), making him feel so out of place when stuck between Caesar and Giveon. It’s like Hailey Bieber knew Justin was going to be lonely on his birthday so she paid the coolest kids in school to humour him for a couple minutes. In fact, that’s pretty much the song as they all croon pretty effortlessly over a smooth, pretty organic drum groove as well as this subtle synth blend... except Justin Bieber, of course, who tries his best to be a presence on a track where he’s literally supposed to be in the background. Thankfully, that’s not necessarily a complaint as this is Bieber’s best vocal performance in years, maybe ever, even if he’s immediately outshined by Caesar harmonising pretty excellently with his own multi-tracking, channelling the kind of neo-soul that people like Tyler, The Creator and Kali Uchis were making together half a decade ago. Giveon is here, also, but I’m not sure if he fits as well as synth-funk as he does on the moodier stuff. I know for damn sure that Sampha wouldn’t feature on a Bieber track, even if this is the most respectable Bieber’s been in forever. Admittedly, by the final chorus, it’s absolutely infectious – even if the lyrics are beyond stupid. The verses are about intimacy with their respective significant others, written in the most inoffensive, lovey-dovey way possible, but the chorus is about getting peaches from Georgia, weed from California, and bringing them alongside your wife to Canada to see the Northern Lights. Sure. If that final synth solo in the outro proves anything, it’s that this song should be great and just kind of falls flat due to lack of focus. That’s not to say the song isn’t good though, because I’ll be singing that chorus quietly to myself without realising it for the next week or so. Good job, Bieber.

Conclusion

Best of the Week is actually going to Justin Bieber for “Peaches” featuring Daniel Caesar and Giveon, if only to balance out the fact that he also gets Worst of the Week for “As I Am” featuring Khalid, what a trainwreck. Honourable Mention in that case pretty easily goes to “Headshot” by Lil Tjay, Polo G and Fivio Foreign, but even in a mixed bag week like this, Dishonourable Mention is kind of tough. There’s not a lot to outright dislike here, but I’ll give it to Mooski’s “Track Star” by default. With that said, here’s our top 10:

I can’t really make much prediction for next week other than the drowning out of all of this, although I can see “Peaches” absolutely having some legs. I can safely say Taylor Swift and Demi Lovato will end up here but I’m not as 100% on songs from 24kGoldn or Rod Wave’s albums landing. If the United Kingdom, currently collapsing under our feet, decides to make AJR’s new album chart, I say the Prime Minister gives permission for Scotland to leave while it’s still safe. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next week.

[postguiltypleasures]

The Magicians Page vs Screen

I recently finished the audio book version of Lev Grossman’s The Magicians trilogy while anticipating the third season of SyFy’s adaptation. I have some thoughts to share, in no particular order.

I should first mention that, in addition to having watched the first two seasons of the TV show, my expectations of the books were colored by reading some reviews, in particular that Emily VanDerWerff whose interpretation of changing perspectives of the narrator’s focus representing growing up and becoming more aware is true in the abstract, but also kind of misleading. The books increase the number of perspectives, but they are still primarily that of Quentin Coldwater. I was under the impression that every chapter in The Magician King would alternate between Quentin and Julia, but it was really more like three chapters from Quentin’s perspective for every one from Julia’s. (I’m going to struggle with my thoughts about Julia’s changing narrative status from page to screen. In general I think the TV show improves things for her.  Nothing in the books is as pleasing as her friendship with Kady, she gets her shade back and in general having more time for her point of view is an improvement.) Also in her review she states that the books have very little plot, but that’s only true of the first book in the trilogy. The subsequent ones are tightly paced thrillers.

Around the first season and (not accidentally) the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Vox also published an article about the annoying cliche in sci-if and fantasy fiction in which a male protagonist is helped by a more talented female character who is never allowed to be the protagonist. I tweeted the article and a fan got defensive about how the Quentin/Alice relationship doesn’t fall into the same pattern as that of  Luke/Leia, Neo/Trinity, or Harry/Hermione. At the time, I admitted that I had yet to watch or read the full series, but agreed with the larger thesis. This did not assauge the person in my Mentions, but now I want to say, Quentin/Alice is a much stranger, more fraught relationship than the others are allowed to be. (And I love it.)

Also, one thing that appealed to me about the show, is that I caught the start of the second episode after an episode of Lost Girl. It starts with a sequence set to “Intro” by The XX’s from their first album. I had owned the album for years but could never get into it until I saw this sequence. I really like it when one art form brings another to life like this.

Using the audio book version makes the experience time-conscious in a way that reading silently does not. This really struck me with regards to the difference between book and TV Fillory. In the books the clock trees are a very prominent part of Fillory in a way they aren’t in the TV show. TV, as a medium, is already self conscious of time, which made me wonder if the clock trees are a tool to make the reader think of time, which would be redundant in TV. (This is broadcast TV, streaming TV, with it’s less tight running times is an exception, perhaps to its detriment.)

The TV show gave me a sense that the Fillory and Further series-within-the-series was basically The Magicians’s version of Narnia. So I was surprised that in the books we get so much more detail about the plot of the series-within-the-series and resembles a cross between Narnia and Oz. The backstory of the writing also reflects this. I think that in the TV show, the Chatwin kids are in the country due to Operation Peter Pan in World War Two, just as in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. But in the Books, it’s World War One and the kids are in the country because their father is in the war and their mother is indisposed. Between the time change and having the novels within the novel’s author, Christopher Plover be an American expatriate in the English countryside the books feel like they are explicitly placing Fillory as a midpoint between Oz and Narnia.

Incidentally, the name Christopher Plover is reminiscent of Winnie the Pooh’s Christopher Robin who reportedly felt miserable and exploited by his father’s writings.  TV series Plover is English and played by Charles Shaughnessy of The Nanny fame, which feels like calculated way of enhancing the affect of his abuse of Martin Chatwin.

The TV series Fillory may lose some of the direct links to Oz, but its attitude about growing up is closer to Oz than Narnia.

There was a lot of criticism about how the TV show’s pilot was overstuffed and muddled, so I was surprised that so much of the information that had to be communicated in the pilot is exposed early in the first book.

On the other hand, The Beast’s first appearance and Alice’s backstory with her brother are brought up much faster in the TV show. In the case of Alice, her story definitely has more impact and pathos in the way it’s brought up in the book, so that’s a loss on TV. But I do really like bringing the threat of the Beast up so quickly.

One of the most surprising differences between the Books and TV series is that in the Books, the first trip to Fillory is made just because they can (and because they need something to shake themselves out of their post-graduation lethargy).  On the TV show it’s because the Beast is regularly threatening them. TV really isn’t a great medium for portraying lethargy, it isn’t intimate in the way reading is. Quentin isn’t sympathetic in the events leading up to the trip to Fillory in the books, but you’re in his head, so you’re with him. Then the key act of Quentin cheating on Alice in a threesome with Eliot and Janet/Margot comes off very differently in the two media. In the Books it’s a personal nadir and a major betrayal. It’s compounded by the fact that Quentin was thinking about Janet while feeling frustrated with Alice. On the Show, it mostly feels like a case of bad timing rather than a personal choice.  They had literally bottled up their feelings to practice Battle Magic, when they retrieved the feelings back they’re confused and stronger.  They also self medicate.  As group falling into bed feels inevitable and it’s just bad luck that Alice isn’t there to be a part of it.

Both Book and TV versions of Quentin are more emotionally attached to Eliot than to Janet/Margot. After the threesome, Book Quentin obsesses over how stupid he was to betray Alice with Janet, but he can barely acknowledge that he was also with Eliot. In the TV fandom, there is a lot more focus on the Quentin/Eliot coupling than on the Quentin/Margot one. The schism reminds me of Crime and Punishment (of all things) where Raskolnikov obsesses over one of his victims, and the detective focuses on the other. Considering that a major theme of The Magicians is crossing over from fan to participant/creator, it feels appropriate that fandom would be part of a literary parallel (and impossible to plan.)

TV Margot is much more of a character than Book Janet, but we don’t yet know if they share backstory or if that’s as different as their names. Show and Book Penny also have little besides a name in common, Kady and Asmadeus have even less.

The Beast’s design on the show kind of reminds me of the cover of La Oreja de Van Gogh’s “El planeta imaginario”. Seeing it this way kind of undercut how unnerving he could be, and made the album cover scarier than I think was intended. I was surprised that the Book’s description is so different, just a man with a tree branch in front of his face. I get why they’d want to redesign that for the camera, but I like how René Magritte-like that description is.

Finding out that the Beast is Martin Chatwin is such a great twist that I wished I could be shocked by it when I experienced it in another medium. (I’m having kind of the opposite experience with Game of Thrones, I’m not eagerly anticipating those twists.) It was distracting in trying to stay involved in the book’s version of the plot. TV’s Beast has much more on-screen time, there are more than two confrontations with him, and our protagonists seek him out as an enemy, all of which is very different in the books. But, otherwise it feels like Martin and his tragedy really saturated the Books’ story in a way that hasn’t really happened in the series. The TV series characters have to deal with the physical damage the Beast leaves in Fillory, the way he abuses its resources, something the Books don’t really address. But the books are more interested in the psychological damage he leaves behind. His family never recovers from his defection. The TV series only really focuses on how that affects Jane, and how their interaction is a lot more direct here than in the Books. I don’t know if the TV series is ever going to do anything with Rupert Chatwin, but his book-within-The Magician’s Land was beautiful and poignant. Nothing in the TV series quite matches it.

That said, the lessening of The Beast’s presence allows Reynard to be the Big Bad for most of the second season. This gives greater value to Julia’s experience. Also, his comeuppance and Julia’s experience of finally meeting Our Lady of the Underground are more satisfying on the show. I had no idea how much I appreciated that Our Lady restores Julia’s Shade until I found out that she doesn’t do so in the Book. (She just transforms Julia into a Dryad after which Julia disappears for most of the third book.) I was also surprised and a little disappointed to realize that the “Julia was rejected from Breakbill’s because of the timeline experiments on how to best defeat the Beast” is not in the Book. Good job, Show in creating that plot.

(Another Game of Thrones comparison: George R R Martin famously said that one of his goals in his series was to go where fantasy series generally don’t and get into the process of governing. The Magicians books really aren’t interested in that. Ruling Fillory is treated as a whim, even though the decision to collect taxes is one of the events that kickstarts the plot of The Magician King. The show, however, is interested in what it means to run Fillory.)

I like the continuous contact with characters that the medium of TV demands. I like that we see Penny joining The Order of Librarians, rather than having him disappear for hundreds of pages and then showing up as a member of The Order.

In general, the books are more sympathetically sensual and the TV show replaces the sensuality with crassness. That may sound more critical of the show than I intend.  I really like the show and think it improves upon some aspects of the plot significantly. (For example I’m much more invested in Julia and Free Trade Beowulf’s quest to meet our Lady of the Underground and in it’s tragic aftermath in the TV Show than the Books. In fact, I’m kind of annoyed that it’s mostly a B-plot in the Books when the TV show gives it the time and weight it deserves.) I think the best illustration of this difference would be the wealth of details the book provides in exploring how it feels to be transformed into a different animal.  The characters on the show are much more preoccupied by their bodily functions than in the books. Think how much of the second season’s plot was about how the god Ember, defecating in the well that was a source of magic messes things up for everyone. This is what I mean by crass.

The gods of Fillory, Ember and Umber, are surprisingly different after transitioning from page to screen. Some of the changes are predictable, such as changing their physiques from pure ram to humanoid with ram features. But they also forgo the idea that Umber is Ember’s shadow and they’re really one aspect of the same god in the Book.  On TV they’re separate gods one of chaos and one of order. A major themes in The Magician’s Land is the evolution from being a fan to a creator and then letting go of the creation so that new fans can go through that process. Storytelling is a combination of setting rules and creating chaos. Quentin killing Umber happens under very different circumstances and earlier in the narrative in the TV Series. I’m not sure where the letting-go-so-you’re-fans-can-do-their-thing part comes in for the show.

I like that the TV version has musical numbers.

#The Magicians #Lev Grossman #fillory #Narnia #Oz #Ember and Umber #Quentin Coldwater #julia wicker #alice quinn #penny adiyodi #eliot waugh #margo hanson #kady orloff diaz #Martin Chatwin #The Beast #reynard the fox #Our Lady of the Underground #the magician king #the magician's land #Jane Chatwin #Rupert Chatwin #la oreja de van gogh #rene magritte #emily vanderwerff

[awayouts]

Nights With You

pairing: thatchkerr (mike kerr/ben thatcher) word count: 5.5k i am so sorry genres: fluff, smut description: ben’s always wanted to spend his nights with mike, but tonight, when mike falls asleep on the sofa and ben decides to carry him to bed, this particular night becomes much sweeter than either of them could have imagined. 

(AKA THAT PROMPT WHERE YOU KISS YOUR BEST FRIEND ON THE FOREHEAD 'CAUSE YOU ASSUMED THEY WERE ASLEEP, BUT BITCH, YOU THOUGHT)

a/n [please read]: so uh, here it is. a bit of thatchkerr to hopefully brighten your day. this is based on ‘nights with you’ by mø, which is technically about friendship but so many people have said it’s kinda gay. so i guess it’s quite fitting for this lol. also i haven’t written mxm in a while so i’m really sorry if it’s bad! i tried! and i have this habit where everything has to be ~profound~ and they have to talk about their feelings so, yeah. there’s that too (i kinda based some of it off the kerrang interview where mike’s talking about ‘nowness’) ANYWAY i’m rambling. so enjoy and please let me know if you have any requests for other fics!!!! also, HUGE THANK YOU to kal and julie for inspiring and encouraging me during this, ily *cuddles* ♡

/////

Mike has fallen asleep again.

Ben returns from the kitchen with a fresh bottle of beer and instantly knows that something’s astray. His bandmate’s body is slumped on the sofa, twisted away from the television; his mouth is hanging slightly open, his pink, pouted lips slick with drool. He’s still dressed in the clothes he’s been wearing all day, usual attire of a striped t-shirt and skinny black jeans which hug his hips, his legs long and slightly bent. Needless to say, he looks fucking adorable.

Ben frowns, annoyed by this fact. When Mike looks cute - which is all the time, really; something he’s grown to accept over the years is that Mike Kerr is a stupidly cute person, and it cannot be helped - Ben finds it even harder to forget that he has a giant, hopeless, unrequited crush on him.

It’s always been there, the crush. When they first met, all those years ago, there was something so warm about Mike, something that made Ben want to spend his entire day smiling. Their senses of humour matched perfectly, too, and Ben always liked how music seemed to pump through Mike’s veins, meaning they could have jam sessions together and share album recommendations over cups of coffee and trips to the local record store. But it was always just simmering under the surface, and Ben figured maybe it was admiration, instead. Maybe he just thought Mike was really cool. He didn’t want to kiss Mike, did he? Or touch him? He just loved being around him. At least, that’s what he convinced himself.

Only when they formed Royal Blood, and started spending even more time together than before, did Ben realise that maybe it was more than just that, and decide that actually, he did want to kiss Mike, and not only that, but also become his boyfriend. He blames the touring. They were thrust together in a tiny bus with nothing but each other to entertain themselves with, and Ben can’t count the amount of times he’s caught himself imagining the two of them lazily making out, just to pass the time. Not to mention the fact that Mike looks so good onstage, his voice like liquid gold as it pours from his lips and reverberates across arenas and festival crowds, his mouth carving into a cocky smirk as the cheers hit his ears the way Ben hits his drums, the younger’s fingers working quickly and deftly across four bass strings. Also, the fact that Mike stands with his back to Ben, broad shoulders and butt in clear undisrupted view while Ben struggles to remember what the fuck he’s meant to be doing, is not exactly helpful.

But it’s not just the way he looks or the way he plays. It’s the way he is. Mike is funny and caring and endlessly cool without even trying; he’s a thunderstorm and the gentle pitter-pattering of raindrops all at once, his personality shifting effortlessly from excitable and approached to quiet, laid-back, reserved. Mike knows exactly how to act around Ben - they get each other - and Mike always knows how to cheer Ben up, even if it’s just with a shot of tequila and a hearty slap on the back. Ben’s no poet - Mike’s their lyricist, after all - but he feels like he could write a thousand poems just about the way Mike’s laughter wraps itself around his heart, how it fills his lungs with the sweetest air.

There’s no saving Ben now. As they shot to fame, climbing charts and festival bills alike, his crush rose too, and the fact that the Mike is straight, and has only ever seen Ben as his goofy best friend, is really not good for Ben’s mental health. Nevertheless, he’s tried not to let it get to him. He makes out with other dudes and shags the women he meets in random bars and writes silly lyrics in his notebook that he’d never dare pitch to Mike; he looks away and closes his eyes and pushes intrusive thoughts to the back of his mind, and it’s overwhelming, and it’s a lot, but it’s okay. Kind of.

Thankfully, there are times like these. When it’s quiet and there’s no one else around, and he’s a couple beers down, he can allow himself to think, just for a moment, about how desperately he wants Mike to be his. It’s difficult, having to look at his friend curled up like this, like a lovely overgrown baby or something, but it’s nice too; the best kind of pain. The room is silent and dark — it’s nine pm, and they’d been watching a film together (Ben had only gone to grab a beer from the fridge and pop to the toilet and he’d come back to this. Typical) - but squinting through the low light, he lets himself stare at Mike for a long, long time. Even though Mike is a lot taller than Ben (not to mention he’s a fully-grown man, face full of stubble and all), he looks so small – vulnerable, even.

A dull ache throbs in the confines of his chest, not just for selfish reasons but because of the genuine sympathy he feels for his knackered friend. The sight of Mike passed out hasn’t surprised Ben. He’s been watching the younger struggle to keep his eyes open all evening, eyelids drooping and head lolling helplessly forward before he realises what’s happening and wakes himself up, blinking. It would be hilarious if Ben didn’t feel so bad about it: Mike is always affected the worst by touring, the jet-lag taking its toll and reducing him to nothing but bleary-eyed smiles and frequent yawns, pre-show naps whenever possible. Ben knows Mike loves the thrill of being on the road, but sometimes, he’s like a sixty year old man - he likes his rest, that’s all.

Ben Thatcher is a man of simple desires. Sometimes all he wants is to simply spend his nights with Mike, not even in a sexual way, just to lie down next to him and listen to him breathing and wake up to sunshine pouring through the windows, and Mike’s long-lashed, sleepy eyes. The fact that they say goodnight then skulk off to their separate bedrooms is a cruel injustice. Something about it just doesn’t seem right.

This is the thought that ricochets into Ben’s next thought, which hits him with such force that he mindlessly reaches for the remote, flicking off the television as he toys around with it in his mind. He is struck, inexplicably, with the sudden and overwhelming urge to tuck Mike into bed. He feels guilty that he’s always forcing Mike to stay up with him, when really Mike needs all the rest he can get; there’s a tiny selfish part of him that yearns to hog Mike’s attention, to keep the younger awake and alert as much as possible so they can talk or write music together or watch movies or just drink beer. But watching him now, listening to the tiny snores he’s just begun to emit… Ben makes his decision. He’s not going to wake Mike up this time.

He knows Mike won’t get a comfortable night’s sleep on their old lumpy sofa, so he stands there frozen for a minute, considering something. Mike may seem small, but he’s really not – he’s tall and lean, and he’s been working out recently (whenever he decides he’s going to do shirtless sit-ups on the tour bus or in the living room of the flat they share, Ben has to immediately depart. He doesn’t think he can bear visions of Mike’s sweaty naked torso swimming around his mind all day). But to the point, Mike is going to be heavy. Picking him up will be no easy feat.

Luckily, ambitious Ben is never one to back down from a challenge.

And maybe he’s more selfish than he thinks, because he finds himself aching to hold Mike, even if it’s in the most platonic sense imaginable – he longs for the young man in his arms, to cuddle him and feel his warmth, maybe even nestle Mike’s head underneath his chin so that he can feel Mike’s brunette curls brush against his skin. Just the smell of him would be more than enough. Taking a deep breath, he bends down and scoops an arm underneath Mike’s shoulder blades, then another underneath his knees. He does it swiftly so that he can’t talk himself out of it, then suddenly he’s got his arms hooked under Mike and they’re closer than they’ve been in a while.

“Okay,” Ben hisses to himself, and he can’t help but chuckle as Mike’s head lolls back over the crook of Ben’s elbow, his mouth gaping open widely. Ben bites his lip, and with a suppressed groan, lifts Mike off the sofa. He was right, Mike is heavy – but Ben is strong, (all those bicep curls at the gym have paid off) and surprisingly, he straightens up with ease. He stands there cradling his best friend tightly, peering down at his closed eyelids. God, those eyelashes - they’re incredible. If Ben didn’t know him better, he’d think Mike was an avid mascara-wearer.

Mike stirs a little due to the movement and closes his mouth, which Ben stares at while Mike settles down again, head rolling comfortably against Ben’s chest. It’s such a pretty mouth, so pink and lavish - he’s always had a fascination with the shape of Mike’s mouth, and has pretty much etched it to his memory by now - and Ben realises that if he wanted to, he could lean down and kiss him. He could slot their lips together and Mike would never even realise. Just once, to ease his raging mind. Ben shakes away the thought.

He takes it slow, walking with care not just because he doesn’t want Mike to wake up, but because he doesn’t want to drop Mike - god, imagine that: dropping Mike Kerr on the floor and watching in horror as he realises that you've literally just been holding him and, even worse, are so weak and weedy that you couldn't even maintain holding him. Ben cringes at the thought, his grip instinctively tightening on Mike's legs. Besides, he doesn't mind that it takes time. He could stay like this forever, Mike so warm, his gorgeous familiar scent making Ben's head go dizzy, his heart and skin and lips so close. Even his jeans feel nice, kind of rough against Ben’s fingertips. It’s like electricity.

He enters Mike's bedroom - a rare occurrence, because Mike always keeps his door closed and is generally a private person, although Ben likes to think he's broken down some of Mike's barriers over the years - and rests his bandmate down on the bed, reaching either side of him to pull down the duvet slowly and carefully. He tugs it all the way down past Mike's bare feet, but just before he pulls it up over him, he just stops and stares for a second, sinking down onto the edge of the mattress beside his sleeping friend.

There have been moments, sure. Moments where Ben could kid himself that they belonged together, that Mike felt the same way about him. Sometimes, it’s just a glance - other times, it’s as much as Mike hugging him a fraction longer than usual, or dropping his gaze to Ben’s lips mid-conversation, or drunkenly admitting - quite recently - that Ben was the greatest person he’d “ever fucking met”, all with an arm slung around his shoulder, clutching the elder tight. But these are all just silly little insignificant moments: they’re nothing important, like a kiss in the dark or a confession of undying love.

Up until a few months back, Ben thought that maybe it was inevitable that something would happen between them. They belonged together, didn’t they? Mike looked at him like he was made of pure gold, didn’t he? They were best mates and bandmates and it was just bound to happen… wasn’t it? He just had to wait. Their time would come - destiny would make it so.

But then Ben grew tired of waiting, and at the end of last year, he gave himself an ultimatum. If they were destined to be together, they would be - but it would have to happen before, or on, New Year’s Eve. If Mike kissed him under the fireworks as the clock struck midnight, then he’d be right. But if not, he had to stop kidding himself, and just get the fuck over it. Maybe 2017 would be the year of finally finding someone other than Mike to fixate on, someone who actually liked him back.

Seeing Mike kiss that random girl, his arms wrapped around her like she was all he’d ever cared about, was one of the most painful experiences of Ben’s life.

“Fuck you, Michael,” Ben finds himself whispering now, reaching again for the duvet, his fingers wobbling as he takes it in his grasp. It travels up Mike’s body, over his feet, up his shins and thighs and tummy and chest, every perfectly-crafted part of him. As Ben leans over, tucking the soft duvet under Mike’s armpits, he keeps his gaze locked to his peaceful, unmoving face. He truly is gorgeous. It should be illegal for someone to be that gorgeous.

Ben glances around the room at Mike’s various band posters - the dork - then settles his gaze on a full-length mirror. It’s dark in here, but moonlight falls through the blinds in shafts and Ben sees himself clearly, staring wearily back at himself. How could he ever have thought Mike would like him the way he likes Mike? Mike is a walking work of art, sculpted by angels and sent to earth from the heavens above, and Ben… he looks away from the mirror. He doesn’t want to list all the reasons Mike wouldn’t settle for someone like him, because it would only make him feel a thousand times worse.

So he looks back at Mike and focuses on the man beneath him. “You have such a fucking hold on me, it’s ridiculous,” Ben sighs, convinced by the younger’s consistent snuffles that he’s still unconscious. Ben can pretty much say anything he likes, and the words come spilling out. “You know that, right? You fucking beauty. Look at you. Fucking dickhead.” He shakes his head and snorts, and suddenly realises that, in all the humour of it all, his hand had reached out and is brushing mindlessly against Mike’s cheek. He hadn’t even noticed he was doing it, but now he’s fully aware of their contacted skin, the roughness of Mike’s face, Ben’s fingers dancing across stubble. Ben’s never been one to talk much, but the words come spilling out; he supposes he only talks when it’s important, or maybe he’s just had more beers than he thought. “Remember on your birthday last year, where we had that pool party and we were all hammered on tequila and we jumped in the pool? You came up from under the water and looked at me like you wanted me, and I thought we were going to kiss or something, your hair all wet and water dripping down your skin. But then you just grinned that goofy grin and splashed me. I should’ve told you then, I…” He feels the stubble underneath his fingertips and sighs, carefully retracting his hand. “I should’ve just told you and got it over and done with. If only you fucking knew.”

There’s a long silence. Mike has stopped snuffling and is lying there like an angel, so serene.  The same uncontrollable urge that compelled him to tuck Mike into bed has now overwhelmed him once more, but it’s to do something a little more risky. “Fuck it,” Ben hisses, abiding, and before he can stop himself, he leans in and pushes Mike’s hair back, then plants a kiss to his forehead.

That’s when he feels Mike’s fingers tighten around his arm.

Too shocked to properly function, he pulls his face away, horrified. Mike’s eyes are half-open, and he’s staring up at Ben, his hand having reached up to find Ben’s arm in the dark.  Ben remains silent, all the oxygen sucked from his body. He hovers over Mike, his body twisted, his muscles frozen - even his bloodstream seems to be slowing down. He’s gripping the sheets at either side of Mike’s shoulders, their eyes locked, and it’s all so overwhelming and mortifying that he doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t have to ask if Mike felt the kiss, because he knows he did - he can see the confusion swimming in Mike’s eyes, and something else… something like… want?

He leans in, and without thinking about it, without stopping to wonder if this will ruin their friendship and their band and eventually their career, if it will end everything they’ve ever worked hard to build — he moves his face closer and kisses Mike softly, their lips coming together in the darkness.

It lasts about two seconds and it feels amazing - tentative yet assured at the same time, shy and assertive all at once - yet it’s so quick, and over so soon that Ben finds himself yearning to do it again. And he does: he pushes his lips against Mike’s once more, their mouths pressing gently together for a second time before he pulls away, his breath dancing across Mike’s skin and his lips moving to the corner of Mike’s mouth. Ben kisses him on the cheek, once, twice, then down to his jawline; he peppers tentative kisses all across his face, wanting to appreciate all the parts of Mike’s body he finds beautiful. He wants Mike to feel all the love he deserves, because he’s been screwed around in the past and it’s so unfair. Mike deserves the world, and Ben wants to give it to him.

He lifts up his arm to rest it against the pillow alongside Mike’s head and leans in for better access, their chests meeting. He’s kissed more girls than guys in his time and had almost forgotten what this felt like, a flat expanse where breasts usually are, but he soaks it up. He’s raking his hand through Mike’s hair, hungry for it now, lips meeting Mike’s earlobe and neck, kissing his best friend’s skin with all the passion he has because any minute now Mike could tell him to stop and it would all be over, and he needs this - he needs it to last. Only when Mike lets out a tiny whimper does Ben pull away, feeling instantly guilty as he stares at the younger, but then Mike’s eyes flit between Ben’s and his lifts his head up off the pillow, connecting their lips together once more.

Because for Mike, this feels so right - like, he hadn’t remembered falling asleep, and he’d woken up to Ben mumbling quietly above him, which was weird to say the least - but when Ben had kissed him, it hadn’t felt surprising. Not one bit. His entire body had become charged with electricity, and it was like a shift in the atmosphere had occurred, but it was a good shift. He opens his eyes while kissing, sees Ben’s own closed ones then lets his own  flutter shut, feeling Ben’s strength and heat transferring between their bodies. He hadn’t expected, when he’d slipped into unconsciousness on the sofa while watching that shitty film, that he’d wake up to this.

Their mouths melt into one another, settling into an eager rhythm. Kissing Ben Thatcher in the half-light of his bedroom, while half-asleep and with fading dreams still dancing in his head, makes Mike feel like he’s high; he wonders whether this is all actually happening or if he’s just having the nicest dream of his life. He goes from sleepy to horny in about three seconds, breath hitching helplessly in his throat; every nerve in his body ignites, his fingertips aware of every atom as he brings them to the back of his best friend’s neck. Ben is a good kisser, applying just the right amount of pressure, no excess saliva or washing-machine syndrome despite all the tension and desperation, the releasing frustration and aggression of it all. Mike blinks away what remains of his sleepiness, gripping Ben tight. It’s overwhelming and utterly insane, and he’s going to appreciate this moment with everything, everything he’s got.

They fumble in the darkness, kisses starting gentle but becoming more intense as the seconds pass, fuelled by passion. Ben slots his leg in between Mike’s, but the duvet gets in the way and they part for a second while Ben carelessly tosses it aside - they’re getting warmer now anyway, so they don’t need it. Ben straddles Mike, his fingers finding their way to Mike’s hips and pressing firmly into the flat bones there, but then he wants to touch Mike’s hair again - he can’t settle on one place - and so he cups the younger’s chin before threading his fingers through his curls, tugging him closer and kissing him hungrily. They’re so close, every inch of their bodies touching, the friction of denim on denim and skin on skin as Mike juts his hips upwards. Mike grips Ben sturdily, digging his fingernails into Ben’s arms, and rolls them both over so that he's on top before proceeding to push fiery kisses against Ben's mouth.

“M-Mike—” Ben begins, but Mike captures his words in his lips, sliding in his tongue to shut Ben up at once. The feeling of Mike’s tongue inside his mouth sends a jolt through Ben’s core and as their bodies rub together, they feel their jeans getting tight, their lower stomachs becoming heated. But Ben knows how Mike gets sometimes, how sexual of a person he is, how sometimes he just wants a cheap meaningless shag, and Ben has to make sure that this isn’t one of those times. “Mike,” he gasps, pushing his forehead against his friend’s. He can feel the sweat, taste it in the air. “Are you going to fuck me and chuck me?”

Mike pulls away, blinking. He can’t stop himself from chuckling at Ben’s abrupt wording, his dry Southeast accent making his words sound almost like a wisecrack, and Mike’s resulting smile is so adorable that Ben almost kisses him again. He manages to stop himself, though.

Anyway, Mike just finds it all so funny, because he’s pretty certain that Ben was the one who kissed him. “You think I’m gonna hump you and dump you?” he smirks, his eyes lit up even in this low light. “Toss you off and…” He raises an eyebrow. “…toss you away?”

Ben snorts, then takes a moment to regain his composure. Nothing is ever serious with them, but tonight it has to be, because so many things are different now. “I’m being serious,” Ben huffs. He gazes up at Mike, wishing they could just keep kissing but needing clarification, first. Mike obliges and sits up, then climbs off Ben and sits in front of him. Ben sits up too.  They both sit there for a moment, panting.

“Well?” Ben prompts, pulling his knees up to his chest to hide his growing erection. There’s times on tour he’s gotten carried away thinking about getting off with Mike, and has had to hide it in a similar way - this feels just as embarrassing as those times, even in the current circumstance.

“Ben, I… we don’t have to explain it. If it feels right, we should just… do it.” Mike avoids eye contact, looking down at his hands. Ben looks down too. He’s always loved Mike’s fingers, the way they move across a bass like they were built to play. But now they’re fumbling together. Mike rarely shows that he’s anxious, but the way he fidgets with his hands is always clear tell.

“Do what,” Ben murmurs. “Fuck?”

“No, just… whatever feels right.” Mike shrugs, then scoots closer and wraps his arms around Ben. Ben feels warm in his embrace, their t-shirts glued to their skin by sweat, faces red as they get their breath back. Relenting, Ben relaxes into the hug, wrapping his arms around Mike. Mike nuzzles into Ben’s shoulder, adoring how solid and strong he feels, breathing in his masculine scent. For a moment, they stay like this, enjoying the moment. “It’s just really hard at the moment,” Mike murmurs.

Ben cracks up, gaze dropping pointedly to Mike’s crotch. “Oh, is it? Good to know.” He wriggles his eyebrows cheekily and, catching onto the crude joke, Mike snatches a nearby pillow and smacks him hard across the head. But then they come together once more, fitting together like they always knew they would. Their laughter dies down, replaced by silence.

“I mean, I never know what I want,” says Mike, shrugging. “I think that’s why I love songwriting. I can spill out all these feelings and sometimes it doesn’t even have to make sense, because for someone it will… for someone it’ll resonate so strongly that it’s like I wrote it for them. Doesn’t matter that I’m confused about my feelings most of the time.”

Ben nods in understanding. He always knew that if something did happen between the two of them, it would never be simple - Mike has shit he needs to figure out, and that’s completely understandable. “But…” Mike says. “When I’m confused, I like to think about animals and how they have no sense of time. They live in a timeless world, and that’s why they’re so happy. They’re not sitting around all day fearing for the future, being guilty about the past… and that’s what we have to achieve. Nowness.” He’s half-smiling now, stuck between happy and wistful. “And the best way to achieve nowness is by maybe not talking about it all the time.”

Ben smiles. Mike can be quite profound sometimes - it’s one of the things Ben loves about him. “Can I just ask one thing?”

Mike nods.

“Are you happy right now, with me? Doing… this?” He gestures vaguely between them.

Again Mike nods, embrace tightening around his friend. “You know, as a great lyricist once said…” Mike pushes his mouth sloppily against Ben’s and mutters his next words into Ben’s lips, breath skating along their smooth surface. Mike tastes of beer and smoke and him, something indescribable and magnificent. “You want me, you got me.”

Ben takes that as a very definitive yes.

Despite the fact that Mike’s words, and the sultry tone he says them with, send shivers racing down his spine, Ben pulls away again, unable to refrain from rolling his eyes at the fact that Mike has literally resorted to quoting his own lyrics, now. Neither of them are very sappy people and he’s torn between pulling Mike in and kissing him with all his might, and slapping him for being such a dork. In the end, he just says: “You’re an idiot.”

“Dunno who it was, but that man was a genius,” Mike continues. A grin skirts around his lips, and within seconds he’s snorting so hard with laughter that he can barely get his words out. “He’s such a— a musical talent.”

“Oh my god,” Ben says dryly, but Mike can see that his eyes are glittering with amusement. “I can’t believe I had a crush on you three seconds ago.”

Mike stops laughing and stares at him. “Can we just…” He trails off and they’re kissing again, slow and soft then passionate and heated, Ben being the one to deepen the kiss this time; their tongues slide alongside each other and their mouths are wet and warm and god, it’s so good. Neither of them could have imagined that they’d find themselves making out this fine evening, but neither of them is going to complain about it: for Ben, this is all he's ever wanted, and for Mike, this is something that maybe he didn’t realise he wanted, but now that it’s happening, he never wants it to stop.

Because he’s realised it now. All the looks, the shy glances, the times he’s let his gaze flutter upon  Ben’s lips and wondered what if, or drunkenly longed to pin Ben’s hips to his then discarded the thought, blaming it on the vodka, or even just laughed so hard at one of Ben’s jokes it made him wonder if he’d ever meet anyone funnier, or whom he enjoyed spending time with more, or who he even wanted to spend time with. But now, lips moulding into each other like they were created to do this, their bodies becoming one and their hearts racing as their hips roll together, he knows that it was meant to happen. And Ben is so beautiful. He’s so fucking beautiful, even though he doesn’t think he is, and he’s funny and kind-hearted and he always brings the life to every party, wandering around pouring champagne for everyone,  and he’s such a nerd sometimes, and he loves music with every fibre of his being and rhythm is worked into his bones, and he turns into a god when he plays that drumkit, and he has such a cool fashion sense and such a fascinating personality, and he lives life to the fullest and brings out the best in Mike and… Mike loves him. He loves him.

This sudden burning realisation makes Mike’s skin hot and his heart threaten to burst from his chest, but he rolls with it. Nowness, he thinks. “I always knew you liked me,” mumbles Mike with heated breath, kissing Ben’s ear. Usually Ben cringes when people kiss him like that, but god, with Mike, it’s exhilarating. There have been times Mike’s mouth has pushed against a microphone while singing and Ben has almost lost it, watching him and wishing that he were a microphone. “Fucking knew it.”

“Then why didn’t you say anything,” breathes Ben, his body aching to be touched all over by Mike, goosebumps prickling his skin. They are a mess of chaos and pleasure; fingernails dug into skin, hands racing all over each other, not enough oxygen in their lungs. It’s crazy how quickly he’s succumbed to Mike, allowing the younger man to do whatever he likes as Ben sinks father into the mattress, relishing every second. His entire body is on fire, Mike’s tongue like flames licking his skin.

“‘Cause I didn’t know I liked you back,” winks Mike, before tugging Ben’s shirt down a little so he can pepper kisses along his collarbone. He likes the way Ben’s skin tastes under his mouth. Then he swiftly moves his hands underneath Ben’s shirt, feeling the smoothness of his waist. “You’re so…” He starts, meeting Ben’s lips again, adoring their plump poutiness, how he can feel Ben’s tongue desperately pushing past his. He doesn’t finish his sentence, instead saying, “I heard what you said. The pool party.”

Ben pulls away and looks at him.

“You should’ve kissed me,” Mike finishes, and there’s something so sincere and genuine about the way he’s maintaining eye contact that knocks the breath from Ben’s body. They stare into each other’s eyes, and Mike finishes, calmly and clearly, “I would’ve kissed you too.”

“But, you—” Mike sure is an asshole sometimes; Ben wouldn’t have it any other way. “Why didn’t you-”

Mike smirks cheekily, teasing him; he pushes a calloused finger up against Ben’s lips. “That’s enough questions.” He kisses him once. “Nowness, Benjamin. Nowness.”

But now is more than enough. After a while they find themselves tangled in the sheets, and their kissing slowing down again, the two of them feeling lazy now, sleepily beaming at each other through the darkness. Before long they’re simply staring at each other, sharing the same pillow. Ben looks deeply into Mike’s eyes, usually light but darkened with want, and realises that he adores this man with all his heart. He always just thought it was a crush, a stupid, juvenile thing that would be too dumb to mention out loud, but now he’s wishing he’d said - or done - something sooner. If he’d known all it took was a tiny forehead kiss, he would have done it ages ago. Because as they thread their fingers together, he realises that him and Mike are destined to be together, and he wasn’t stupid to assume so. He’s so blissfully happy that he could cry, or write a song about it. Maybe he will. Maybe this will be the start of Ben Thatcher’s great songwriting career.

As they lie together amongst the bedsheets, he thinks about what Mike said about nowness, and living in the moment. Life is uncertain - you never know what’s going to come tomorrow, but for now, they are sure of a number of things: they’re going to spend the night together, legs tangled together like vines, gazing at each other in the dark, touching and giggling like schoolchildren before drifting softly into dream-filled slumber. And maybe this will happen again tomorrow, and again and again and again. They’ll kiss and they’ll laugh and it’ll all work out - it was always inevitable - and this is what Ben wanted, isn’t it? To spend his nights with Mike.

As for all the rest? Well, they’ll figure it out tomorrow.

#a...... thing #I JUST WANTED TO WRITE THEM KISSING SHUT UP DON'T JUDGE ME #THIS IS HORRIBLE #BUT I HOPE YOU ENJOY NONETHELESS #ily #thank u pls dont hate on me ill cry #mine #thatchkerr #royal blood #ben thatcher #mike kerr #that figure it out reference at the end though........ hehehehe #fanfiction #fanfic #fluff #smut #my writing

[piquira]

Shakira: “What rules in the music industry is the law of the jungle”

Shakira’s interview with Spanish magazine PAPEL

Q:It’s curious because I’ve read that when you started you were very rigid and that you were scared to show your legs even… What has made you be more open minded throughout the years and demonstrate a more sensual side?

S: My legs? Well, I’ve always preferred jeans but I think not … (laughs). It’s been a long process. A poet named Ovidio once said that a woman is an interesting being, attractive and sexual after turning 35 years old, after seven decades. And sorry, I think you’re younger than 35, but I really like this phrase. It’s from ‘The art of loving’. I guess that as time passes we start to feel more comfortable in our own skin. But i’m still a bit shy when it comes to showing my body though.

Q: So do you still have trouble filming certain music videos?

S: No, I don’t have anything against sensuality. I just wouldn’t feel comfortable doing something explicit. Being explicit can come out a bit vulgar, but sensuality is always… poetic right?

S: I think we all have to be political. If you look up the definition for the word 'politics’ it has to do with the active participation in the destiny of all nations. We all have to participate and be global citizens because it’s like the butterfly effect: there’s nothing that happens in one part of the world that doesn’t affect us in one way or another.

Q: As a Hispanic woman who took active participation in the fight for a dignified education for Latino’s in the U.S., how do you live the current moment the U.S. is going through with Donald Trump as the president?

S: I think a bit like the rest of the world that sees it from a distance as well as many Americans as well. I ask myself why they conduct psychology exams on pilots before they let them fly but don’t do so with presidents as well. I believe that political leaders should be psychologically tested as well.

Q: You mentioned how we all should be politically conscious. Your husband, Gerard Pique, has pronounced himself on various occasions about the Catalan Independence process. Do you have an opinion formulated about that topic?

S: Look, the only story I can tell about that right now that can really synthesize a response to that is that my son Milan has a jersey that is half Colombian and half Spanish and that’s what he wears. He feels as much Colombian as he does Spanish, and so does Sasha. That’s how we live at home, that is our reality.

S: When I made Pies Descalzoz, I had just come from writing two prior albums called Magia and Peligro. This in a musical scene like Colombia where pop music was practically nonexistent. All the efforts from the labels always focused on the tropical side. When I showed up with my music, I was inexpert and listened to what others would tell me. Only when making my third album [Pies Descalzos] did I start to take control of my production.

Q: Now your music is closer to latin and tropical sounds. In Colombia there recently was a campaign created against reggaeton. Do you think that the influence of this music can be bad for teenagers?

S: I think it’s cost us a lot to get to this point where we’re able to express ourselves freely and for everybody to be able to make and listen to whatever music they want. If we’re going to start filtering music, it’s never going to finish. But the truth is that I had no idea about that campaign so I can’t really express my opinion. I just know that reggaeton is a universal rhythm that exists since… well, I can’t tell you exactly when because I don’t know nut it’s more ancient than the yuca, as we say in Colombia and that’s why it’s so contagious. I don’t think anybody can stop reggaeton.

Q: In these years have you felt that you were losing control of your career at some point?

S: My relationship with fame started at a very young age and has been gradual. I think that little by little I’ve developed thick skin for all that I’ve had to live. Although right before starting the process for this album I did go through a bit of a conflict. The same one that a painter could find himself in after finding himself in front of a blank paper. I did experience a little bit of stage fright right before starting El Dorado.

Q: In fact in some of the songs you talk about going through ups and downs as well as talking about being a complicated woman…. You’ve even discussed going to therapy before. Do you think it helps to find yourself while being in the process of creating?

S: Well, I’m not one of those people that go lay down to go see a shrink every week, although if I could I would because I think the topic of psychoanalysis is very interesting and at some point I wanted a career in that…. Well, maybe not as a psychologist but at some point I did. I like to have a space for myself, to talk and reflect on my things relating to work and my personal life, everything that passes through my head basically. I think it’s a very healthy exercise and I’ve always been an advocate for that. And if i’m complicated? Well, i’m not easy but I do have my positive things [laughs].

Q: Is fame just like you’d imagine it to be when you dreamt about it as a kid?

S: No obviously it’s much more beautiful looking it from the outside. Fame could be a place that’s very solitaire if you’re not surrounded by love from real friends. It’s very deceitful but I can’t complain. There are always plenty of obstacles to overcome to become a human being living out to it’s fullest. And it’s given me a platform to be able to use my voice in a relevant manner to create an impact.

Q: It’s my understanding that you define yourself as a tiger mom…

S: The concept of being a tiger mom is like the concept of the mother that’s always looking after her kids but that always feels the pressure as well. There’s a huge pressure now a days to be great mothers and for kids to be excellent in everything. I think we need to calm down a bit and let kids grow happy and fulfilled.

Q: You’ve mentioned that at some point you contemplated retiring from music and that it was Gerard Pique who cheered you on to continue with your career.

S: Yes well, it was one night. It was a thought that looking back at it now doesn’t make a lot of sense but that day, I may have needed to hear it from somebody that I was just being delusional. And that person was him. He told me that I would be able to do so when I didn’t have anymore to say but that I still had a lot to say.

Q: the song Me Enamore is inspired by him…

S: That song like many more of this album have been inspired by him. He was like my muse. The song talks about everything I felt and lived when I fell in love.

Q: He also participates in the video as well…

S: I asked him if he wanted to participate and he obviously told me that I could do whatever I wanted. He even joked saying that he had multiple uses because he ended up filming, taking care of the lighting, using the camera… everything

Q: A couple of years ago you said that he let you do music videos with other men. Did that influence your choice?

S: I said that? No!

Q: That he was a bit territorial because he was Spanish…

S: Well… but not when it comes to my music videos. Never. He’s always been super supportive. He’s always the one that’s pushing me to keep on going in my career, just like I do with him. That’s what all couples are there for right, to help and support each other.

Q: Victoria and David Beckham made the super star/ football player combo popular and successful. They’ve become a brand becoming almost like a team that inseparable. Do you see certain parallels between you two?

S: [makes a confused face while laughing] Well we’re a team at home.

Q: A while back in an interview we published with the second trainer of Atletico de Madrid, Mono Burgos, he commented that if he wouldn’t a football player he would have liked to be the partner of one. How do you assume the stereotype that’s associated here in Spain with what it is to be a the partner of a football player? 

S: [laughs] One thing that I remember saying to myself many times and i’m sure somebody heard me saying it as well was : I’ll never, ever be with a football player’. And look at me now: 'by the mouth the fish dies’. That’s my sweet punishment.

Q: Shakira, where are the theives today?

S: They’re in powerful positions, as always.

#interview #long but I enjoyed it tbh #shakira #gerard pique

[sinceileftyoublog]

Pitchfork Music Festival 2019: 7/19-7/21

Stereolab

BY JORDAN MAINZER 

You’ve heard it by now: The weather was mostly shit. Triple-digit-feeling temperatures for a day and a half, a torrential downpour that had half of the security guards incorrectly telling people the fest was cancelled for the rest of the day when it was only Kurt Vile for the 50th time. Those who came back were rewarded with Stereolab, those who left hopefully came back for a beautiful day on Sunday that was also unexpectedly the best day for music. After all these years, Pitchfork is still full of surprises. Here are some of the sets that surprised us.

Great Black Music Ensemble

Part of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), the Great Black Music Ensemble were a bold choice for the festival to choose as the kick-off performance. In the past, equally far out acts like Sun Ra’s Arkestra and Irreversible Entanglements have at least played early on the third day of their respective years. But this year’s group started out undoubtedly captivating, starting chanting backstage before entering, continuing to chant while filling up the stage, their backs turned to the audience. When they turned to face us, saxophonist Ernest Dawkins, the animated maestro, led the band with finger-pointing and swooping direction through grooves and scatty jazz, backing off for percussion solos and swells of horn. As hot as it was, it was an invigorating set to start the day.

MIKE

Whether or not you were familiar with New York-based MC MIKE, it was easy to be swept up in his infectious energy and positive vibes. For one, before he rapped any words, he humbly shouted out the Great Black Music Ensemble that had just finished, along with future performers that day Standing on the Corner, Rico Nasty, Valee, and Earl Sweatshirt. Then, with family members in attendance, he delivered a lyrically dexterous, no-bullshit set that nonetheless left room for him to show his appreciation to the crowd. “Y’all ready for bars?” he asked before showing off his spit skills. “Make some noise for yourselves,” he repeatedly demanded of the crowd; when he spelled out the first three letters of his name and the crowd responded with a loud “E!!”, he laughed, “Y’all could have said anything...but you said ‘E!!’” The bouncy beats got the crowd in the mood to move and yell even as the weather continued to scorch.

Standing on the Corner

Like their jazz brethren Great Black Music Ensemble, Brooklyn-based experimental collective Standing on the Corner consisted of a bevy of musicians, orchestrated by a leader, Gio Escobar. Unlike the soulfulness of GBME, SOTC were noisy, their jazz venturing as much into surf punk and neo-classical music as it did hip hop. In the quieter moments, you could hear Rico Nasty booming across the park, but for the most part, the genre-bending crew held their own, never descending into chaos. Collaborator Earl Sweatshirt, standing on the side of the stage, looked impressed.

Valee

If you’re gonna wait this long to appear on stage and pump up the crowd for minutes, you better as hell bring it. About the only thing Valee brought on stage was his dyed red Chihuahua. Whether “I’ve Got Whatever”, “Juice & Gin”, “Extra”, or “Miami”, the local rapper’s set embodied the most disappointing of what rap sets can be: lazy and overdependent on the backing track disguised as some semblance of “chillness.” (See Earl Sweatshirt below for how to do that well.) By the time he played his beloved banger “Womp Womp”, you wished he had pulled an ILoveMakonnen and played it twice instead of something else.

Sky Ferreira

In a career filled with missteps, Sky Ferreira has managed to release just enough brilliance to not just stick around but become an anticipated artist. Friday’s set was that quintessential mix of misstep and perfection. Her follow-up to 2013′s Night Time, My Time has been in the works for the better part of the 2010′s but has only yielded one comeback track: “Downhill Lullaby”. She didn’t perform that song on Friday (it was sound-checked); in fact, she didn’t perform many songs at all. Teasing the crowd with audio of untouchable classics like Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams”, Talking Heads’ “Naive Melody (This Must Be The Place)”, and David Bowie’s “Fame”, Ferreira walked out late. By that time, her band members had already been on stage taking pictures of the crowd and each other. With a deadpan “Hi”, she launched into “24 Hours”, “Boys”, “Ain’t Your Right”, and the powerhouse “I Blame Myself”. Unfortunately, that’s when the technical issues started. Backing tracks of her voice started prematurely playing, inadvertently revealing her cover of choice, an otherwise flawless rendition of Til Tuesday’s “Voices Carry”. “Everything that’s gone wrong has,” she told the crowd, unable to hear herself sing, the band trying to start the shoegazey new song “Descending” multiple times before she just decided to do “Everything Is Embarrassing”. She and her band were eventually abruptly cut off by an impatient Earl Sweatshirt, leaving her set in the same thematic category as The Avalanches: Legendary performances that never were.

Earl Sweatshirt

As I was saying: This is how you use the crippling heat to your advantage. The slow, cloudy, warbling production of all of Earl Sweatshirt’s songs is as perfect for barely swaying and slightly nodding as it is hands-up palm pumping. Starting off with the gentle surf-and-horn tones of Some Rap Songs’ “Riot!” and getting the one sexually aggressive remnant of his pre-I Don’t Like Shit days out of the way (Doris’ “Molasses”), Earl delivered standouts with no fanfare: “Grief”, “December 24″, non-album tracks like “Wind In My Sails”. And while he began the set with Some Rap Songs’ closer, he finished it with his latest masterpiece’s opener, the soulful “Shattered Dreams”, as if to emphasize that his music puts you in such a haze, that it becomes cyclical, never-ending, never-beginning. It just always was, and that’s not sun poisoning.

Pusha T

The excellence of Daytona aside, a Pusha T greatest hits set--solo standouts, features, Clipse--was always going to be the best festival move. He delivered, and then some. Barging onto the stage with full force, speedily spitting the entire first verse of “If You Know You Know” sans backing track, Pusha relentlessly burned through song after song of dragon fire. My Name Is My Name highlight “Nosetalgia” and banger “Numbers on the Boards” and King Push’s hard-nosed “F.I.F.A.” proved to be the show-ready hits we always knew they would be. It’s hard to believe that My Name is technically Pusha’s solo debut, since his rapping often dominated both features and Clipse, so when he dedicated a string of songs to those who had “been with him since the beginning,” I did sort of a double-take. What he meant was his verses on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’s “So Appalled” and “Runaway” as well as--wait for it--Clipse’s immortal “Grindin’”. By the time he got to the original Drake diss track, you didn’t even care whether he would follow it up with “The Story Of Adidon”. You were already out of breath and in awe.

Mavis Staples

If you had told me that a singer’s new album contained the line, “All that we are is the living ghost of our youth,” Mavis Staples would have been my last guess as to who that singer was. Then again, the reflective, often somber nature of her latest great album We Get By makes sense: her sister Yvonne passed away last year, and she’s only six years removed from the death of her other sister, Cleotha. As such, she’s mourning again the absence of both of those women and her father, Pops. Combine that with the current political climate, one that Staples has spent her entire life fighting, and you start to become surprised that the album’s not straight-up dour. But Staples doesn’t do depressing: She finds beauty in the darkest moments, using them to raise up both herself and others. It was this spirit that pervaded her Friday evening set. “I’m a fighter, I’m a lover, there is no other way,” she admitted on “Anytime”, “Could be one or the other on any given day.” The ambiguity of the title track, meanwhile, paying tribute to the power of a relationship that could be a lover or a friend--really anyone--meant that the difference between the Ben Harper-featuring album version (he wrote and produced the album) and vocal presence of one of her singers was negligible. It was the emotion that counted.

But what made her set brilliant was that in the context of her new album, the songs chosen outside of the album fit its��themes of political urgency and self-improvement. “I’m working on me,” Staple sang on “Take Us Back”, her voice as gravely and powerful as ever. The necessity of change detailed on “Build a Bridge” mirrored that on the first track of We Get By where she asks, “What good is freedom if we haven’t learned to be free?” To Staples, freedom means the constant improvement of society, a sentiment as far-reaching back as The Staples Singers’ “Touch a Hand, Make a Friend”. She could have performed more from We Get By--album closer “One More Change” is Staples’ promise to do everything she can to get us out of this current shitstorm--but a quick sign-off of “No Time For Crying” is just as effective. Staples’ set was the rare one that made her new album AND old albums even more affecting.

Album score: 8.5/10

Lala Lala

Mid-day heat was not enough to offset the whispery voice of Lala Lala’s Lillie West combined with the dreamy instrumentation of her band of Chicago all-stars, which included V.V. Lightbody’s Vivian McConnell, Nnamdi Ogbonnaya, and Sen Morimoto. West and company played largely from last year’s breakout album The Lamb, but the true standouts were “Siren 042″, her collaborative track with WHY?, the band’s sweeping, blistering cover of Perfume Genius’ “Slip Away”, and statement of identity “Lala Song”. “Do you guys like screaming?” West asked the crowd, sure of the answer. The propulsive, saxophone-filled dirge consisted of wordless harmonies and the increasingly loud repeated mantras of “I’m not even listening / You’re not even nothing,” an anthem if there ever was one. Oh, and unlimited props to the band for donating all merch proceeds that day to RAICES.

Ric Wilson

Like MIKE on Friday, Ric Wilson brought the type of set you could walk into with no prior knowledge and leave a huge fan, almost entirely due to his charisma. It’s not just that he knows how to make a crowd feel good. He knows how to make a crowd feel good about themselves without sacrificing what makes him unique. Sure, on the surface, leading off with a song called “We Love Us” could cause some curmudgeons to walk away for a beer. But Wilson came to play not for those people but to pay back to the crowd of the first music festival he ever attended, delivering a positive mix of hip hop and soul: “Black art, not bad art,” he proudly declares on “Banba”. As such, he brought out Kweku Collins and the Lane Tech Marching Band and led what his band claimed was the world record for the largest soul train, jumping in the crowd to dance during it. He channeled D’Angelo on the funk of new song “Yellowbrick”. Oh, and nothing to bring a crowd together like rapping about traffic on the Dan Ryan, right?

CHAI

The Japanese quartet CHAI believes you can be Kawaii while still subverting standard definitions of beauty and femininity. Or really, they argue that there’s no such thing as the “standard.” They exist somewhere between individualism--arguing that you’re a “Fashionista” as long as you’re dressing the way you dress--and collectivism, donning a band uniform of an orange top and pink pants with white stripes, tightly harmonizing and chanting with equal pitch. That dichotomy in and of itself is unique, especially in Japanese culture. They call it PUNK, their terrific second album. From freedom anthem “CHOOSE GO!” to the propulsive beats of “THIS IS CHAI”, the band’s instrumental variation (the funk of “FAMILY MEMBER”, banging dance of “Curly Adventure”) is always tied together by the four women and the spirit each of them brings to the performance combined with the sum of parts that the band CHAI represents. And their radicalism is present in songs like “GREAT JOB”, a reclamation of housework as therapeutic, but it’s never so strong as when they shout their simple proclamation: “We are CHAI!”

Album score: 8.1/10

Cate Le Bon

“It has got to be hot in that long purple dress,” I thought looking up at Cate Le Bon. A few songs later, she admitted it. Thankfully, many of her songs are low-energy, and a set comprised entirely of Reward and Crab Day material suited the weather. She started with the first few songs of Reward, showed off her immaculate guitar tones on “Love Is Not Love”, extended a jam on “Mother’s Mother’s Magainzes”, and ended with the krautrock of “What’s Not Mine”. Perhaps she would have been ideal at the shadier, notoriously more chill Blue Stage, but Le Bon made the most of her time and location.

Parquet Courts

Entering to The Skatt Brothers’ “Walk The Night” seemed appropriate for the new version of Parquet Courts that released the funky, Danger Mouse-produced Wide Awake! last year. Yet, the band played a (storm-shortened) set full of songs that reminded you why you fell in love with them in the first place: the classic one-two punch of “Master of My Craft” and “Borrowed Time”, “Donuts Only”, “Dust”, and “She’s Rolling”. The songs they did play from their latest record for the most part were ones that could have fit on past records: “Total Football”, “Almost Had To Start A Fight / In And Out of Patience”, and “Freebird II”. The standouts, then, were the ones whose style is unique to Wide Awake!, the political “Before the Water Gets Too High” and the dance-punk of the new album’s cowbell-laden title track, a perfect party before the park was evacuated due to oncoming storms.

Stereolab

"This is French Disko,” is never a sentence I thought I’d hear Laetitia Sadier say. Not because I didn’t expect to ever see Stereolab live; rather, the nonchalance with which she introduced one of the band’s most beloved songs was striking. I don’t blame her: Since the band’s 1st North American festival appearance in 10 years to be rain-shortened, she wanted to play as many songs as possible. It was everything I wanted it to be: Emperor Tomato Ketchup hits “Metronomic Underground” and “Percolator”, “Miss Modular”, “Lo Boob Oscillator”, fucking “Infinity Girl”!!! Besides occasional guitar issues preventing Tim Gaine from shredding into oblivion, the band sounded perfect. Spotted at the side of the stage enjoying it: the Savage brothers from Parquet Courts, Jay Som’s Melina Duterte, and a stoked Kurt Vile who didn’t seem to care at all that his set was cancelled.

Belle and Sebastian

For one of the trademark albums of 90′s indie rock, Belle and Sebastian’s If You’re Feeling Sinister is generally pretty quiet, which made their grand, orchestrated performance of it Saturday night even more impressive. From the start of “The Stars of Track and Field”, it was apparent that even non-fans or even detractors would appreciate the band’s live presence. The chaotic harmonica playing of usual set closer “Me and the Major”, bouncy pop of “Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying”, and climactic “Judy and the Dream of Horses” offset the preciousness of songs like “The Fox in the Snow” and the title track. They played the record so fast that they actually had time for an encore: Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance’s “The Party Line”, which saw Stuart Murdoch enter and dance in the crowd, and Chicago-appropriate “The Blues Are Still Blue”.

The Isley Brothers

Are The Isley Brothers still good? Yes. Do they belong headlining a festival that prides itself on alternative music? I’m not convinced. Maybe Pitchfork isn’t that anymore, but seriously--you can see these guys play at casinos all across the country, and that’s exactly what the set felt like. Sure, it was immediately full of classics, many of which have gained second life as primary samples for famous hip hop songs, like “That Lady”, “Between the Sheets”, and “Footsteps in the Dark”. The Isley Brothers stay new actually by embracing that, having band members rap a verse or two from the contemporary songs, or Ronald Isley singing, “I love it when you call me Big Poppa.” Their choice of covers, including Bob Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay”, “Twist and Shout”, Stephen Stills’ “Love the One You’re With”, and Todd Rundgren’s “Hello, It’s Me”, showed their versatility. But Ronald’s voice couldn’t hold its own compared to Ernie’s scratchy funk guitar riffing, and the dancers and backup singers changing outfits every other song was more distracting to the actual music than adding to it. I’d have loved to see The Isley Brothers as an earlier set, but as headliners, their bravado failed to make up for their lack of dynamism.

Black Midi

Another band who met at BRIT school who learned to play guitar from Franz Ferdinand? Yeah, but Black Midi transcend even the hype they deserve. The very fact that hours of jamming contributed to a few bars of songs on their instant classic debut album Schlagenheim is already legendary, and the band covers territory from noise punk to jazz to surf rock to Slint-esque post-rock to chaotically played and sung math rock and...I’m out of breath. “We won’t build to this code,” Geordie Greep sang on “Speedway”, a standout from Schlagenheim, the band’s statement of purpose denoting that they’re truly trying to do something new with all of the above. Album and set “953″ is as good of an offering as any of their palate, starting immediately with complex time signatures, morphing into straight-up grunge, giving way to circular riffs and rhythms as Greep sounds like a coked-up Daniel Rossen, ultimately ending with fast punk.

Out of context, a song like “Of Schlagenheim” might seem the only one on the album a product of men the age of the band members (19 and 20). In it, Greep acts like realizing the ideal woman doesn’t exist is depressing rather than a statement of righteous feminism. Its live performance was likewise the most masculine and primal. But in context of “bmbmbm”, you realize it’s an act. On that song, he impersonates an uncontrollable creep obsessed with a woman, and Black Midi are too smart to fall prey to the cognitive dissonance that would come with both songs being genuine statements.

The band didn’t play everything from Schlagenheim. The gorgeous, 8-minute “Western” wouldn’t have fit the energy of their set, though the blistering “Years Ago” would have. Still, since the album is perhaps the best debut of the year, Black Midi gave arguably the best set at Pitchfork. Yeah, better than Stereolab.

Album score: 9.0/10

JPEGMAFIA

The most energetic set at the festival? That belonged to Barrington DeVaughn Hendricks. Performing from his album Veteran, inspired by his stint in the military and growing up experiencing racism in the South, JPEGMAFIA didn’t rap so much as screamed to the point of coughing fits, especially notable over his off-kilter, slow beats. He’s also as much of a troll as Vince Staples, repeatedly referring to the fest as the Condé Nast Pitchfork Music Festival, and performing a song he purportedly had retired in the U.S.: “I Can’t Fucking Wait Until Morrissey Dies”. He jumped in the crowd so much that he rewarded himself at the end of the set: “I’m about to get high,” Hendricks declared in victory as he left the stage.

Amen Dunes

When we first saw Amen Dunes touring Love back in 2015, he probably wouldn’t have garnered a set at the Blue Stage so late in the day. This set was a victory lap for his most acclaimed album to date, Freedom, and apart from a cover of Tim Buckley’s “Song To The Siren” and Love standout “Splits Are Parted”, he stayed faithful to the album that got him here. The title track, “Blue Rose”, “Calling Paul the Suffering”, “Miki Dora”--they all sounded immaculate, Damon McMahon’s trademark sneer rising above his excellent band, which included Delicate Steve on guitar.

Neneh Cherry

“I’m an old bitch,” joked legendary singer-songwriter and rapper Neneh Cherry. It’s funny, but most of her set was her strong most recent album Broken Politics, “Shot Gun Shack”, “Deep Vein Thrombosis”, and “Synchronised Devotion”. The two best songs performed, though? The noisy Blank Project title track, and of course, her immortal first single, “Buffalo Stance”.

Charli XCX

Midway through her set, Charli XCX proclaimed herself to be one of the top 15 pop stars in the world. It seemed dubious; after all, this is someone whose biggest hits are merely songs she wrote or on which she was featured secondarily. Plus, what would that make headliner Robyn?!? Well, with a performance like the one she gave--alone onstage, save for two giant orange cubes, and one CupcakKe guest appearance--she made the case that she should have been the headliner. Opening with “Track 10″ from her best yet Pop 2, Charli delivered banger after banger, slowing down only for the undeniable “Boys”. “Gone”, from her upcoming Charli, held its own without Christine and the Queens’ Héloïse Letissier. Charli even made time for a little Spice Girls tribute. In a perfect world, she’d be as popular as they were.

Robyn

Perhaps the most anticipated set of the festival after Stereolab, Robyn finally answered the question everyone was thinking: What would Union Park look like filled with thousands dancing on their own? It was blissful, followed by “Missing U” and “Call Your Girlfriend”. But honestly? Before that, the set was...fine. Her vocals were turned far too down. The songs were good, the stage set and dancing artful, but it slowed down the festival experience, the party atmosphere everyone hoped the final headliner would finally deliver. The ending three, plus an encore of “With Every Heartbeat”, were worth it, but Robyn’s set capped yet another Pitchfork where the headliners were really not the main event.

#pitchfork music festival #live music #great black music ensemble #mike #standing on the corner #valee #sky ferreira #earl sweatshirt #pusha t #album review #mavis staples #lala lala #rick wilson #chai #cate le bon #parquet courts #stereolab #belle and sebastian #the isley brothers #black midi #jpegmafia #amen dunes #neneh cherry #charli xcx #robyn #ernest dawkins #gio escobar #lillie west #vivian mcconnell #laetitia sadier