A continuation of the "Calm the Sh** Out of Me" playlist. I wrote this list because I believe that our generation constantly seeks to relate to somebody else, no matter how unique we want to be, even in the way we hold a fork. Through music, you can get to the core of an emotion that this other person has also stumbled upon, and feel it all in and out, and through, until it pulls you farther.
1. Home With You - FKA Twigs
THIS song, ladies and gentlemen. THIS ONE, RIGHT HERE… is the reason why I was writing the conclusion of an essay about lobbying and PR being a threat to democracy longer than it took me to write my undergrad dissertation. After I kindly asked my best friend to express what she wanted from 2021 using the title of a song, I got a bunch of links to different pieces because she is a spineless melomaniac that slides her body in slimy musical mucus until she forgets to get ready and meet me. And among her suggestions, the title “Home With You” quietly waited for its turn. The sneaky, little bastard knew it didn’t need to rush because I couldn’t get enough of it after listening to it more than enough.
The title gives the impression of a song about finding home with somebody else - whether it will be a family member, or a friend, or a partner, or a chicken that cannot conceive for some reason. What FKA Twigs actually wanted to navigate with this song was the feeling that she was giving so much of herself to others, while failing to be there for FKA Twigs and not really communicating the loneliness within herself, which served as a disappointment to the child she once was, rooted in her inner home.
In my very humble and toned-down opinion, the song is GENIUS. A robotic, artificialised voice to match her pain and growing anger that too many hands have pulled strains of her hair; a prolonged vowel upon confessing that “Mary Magdalene would never let her loved ones down,” which hits a bump into a breathing pause to realize she has been the one allowing her loneliness to spread; and, then, that vast cathedral space, opened for the return of her angelic voice that settles back down into her home, somewhere on the keys of the piano.
Anthony Fantano, sorry man, respect for your opinion and immense knowledge of music, but I don’t agree with you - FKA Twigs has shed all layers of her skin for this song, and she has done justice to herself.
2. Good News - Mac Miller
When I sent Mac Miller’s Good News to my brother, his response was: “I didn’t know you listened to Mac Miller”; mine was: “Well, now I am.” It was 4 am; Anita was bawling her eyes out; she had sent the song to every possible human being that was close to her, and now everybody else but her was asleep. And she just couldn’t stop crying for a musician that she was not only never going to meet because of the distance between a celebrity and the audience listening behind closed windows, but whose art was also completely new to her.
Mac Miller’s album Circles, from which Good News is, was released posthumously, in 2020, four months after Mac’s passing away from an accidental overdose - a synonym of the severe depression that was chronically impacting the way he experienced life. I didn’t know much about him but, after, huh, falling into a trap of viewing an interview after interview, I learned he was very open about his struggles. What people find the most emotional about the piece is that it sounds like he was sensing the end of his physical presence among everybody - those who “need[ed] [him] to stay,” those who “didn’t like [him] when [he] was down,” those who heard him “say sorry.” Whether by “There’s a whole lot more for me waiting on the other side” he meant the afterlife or the side of existence clear of depression, you just can’t help but weep that nobody could save him and hope that he found peace, whatever field he let his soul run through.
One can tell by his voice that he was “so tired of being tired” that he serenely passed from word to word during the song, not even looking for the “good news” himself. At the same time, as much as you stare straight in front of you while absorbing the plucking of the strings, hurt by someone else’s maturation with pain, the song still cradles you, letting you know that there are others who also spend their days in their heads.
Anthony Fantano, I completely agree with you on this one.
3. Nobody - Mac DeMarco
With a little bit more than nothing in terms of production richness, Mac DeMarco seems stuck in an attempt to erase at least part of the image that has stuffed every appearance on stage he has had. In the gorgeously nonchalant “TRRrrrum-turum-tum/TUM-tum-tum/tu-tum” guitar, complemented by light and non-attention-seeking percussions, the what is perceived as a laid-back musician cuts a wound in his identity with a forced smile for the audience.
I wouldn’t call the song a “cry for help.” That’s the thing with most of the songs of the lost and yet to be found - they are mostly written after the moment of confusion has passed well into its culmination phase, and after the individual has partially resigned to it, or has given himself the time to sit with it. As a result, those eulogies are calmly balanced between sadness and acceptance. Nobody seems to me like I-have-not-given-up-but-I-have-accepted-that-I-won’t-have-that-simpler-life-of-being-nobody-back.
Nobody wants to be nobody, until they lose sight of what used to be less but still made them happy.
4. Shine - Muse (acoustic version)
This was probably the Pandora’s Box of sad songs for me; the culprit of addiction to minor melodies and broken existentialism. I remember going to middle school and discovering Muse’s Shine, which felt almost like a revelation of some sort. Ask me what kind of revelation, and I will tell you fuck all - the song is about losing ones innocence through the inevitability of growing up and seeing shit (to put it in poetic terms). With lines like...
“Remember when we used to shine,
And had no fear or sense of time?”
...it is obvious that the song’s meaning is one that reverberates through the years for those who have to compromise with childhood ideals in favour of a grounded vision of the world. At the age of 12, 12 I repeat, I had absolutely no fear or sense of time, and it was that period in life when I pretty much had nothing else to do but shine. But even baby me could tell that the protagonist in Shine wanted to find a way back to the time when the truth was simple to have and to hold, everybody could relate and empathise with everybody, and it seemed like the present had never been a future, or would never transform into the past.
The electric version gives way to the more pissed off Matt Bellamy, while, I think, the acoustic version, which follows the same pattern of placid, unpassionate vocals and strumming for a couple of verse/chorus progressions, only to peak with desperate begging in the third chorus: “Please, don’t break my ideals,” expresses the desire to shine again more justifiably. He is not seeking vengeance, he is not pointing fingers, but he will go quietly crazy if he doesn’t let it break through his chest. Ooft… Always gives me goosebumps.
Tip: Listen to ⅔ of the song at medium volume, to get all that flowing water gurgling in your brain, and, then, just before it gets really nastily, in-your-face sorrowful at around 3:19, turn the volume up to the maximum, ignore your phone’s warning that such edgy actions might damage your ears, and GET THE GEESE BUMPING ON YOUR SKIN.
5. Tear - Red Hot Chili Peppers
In Tear Anthony Kiedis sings: “This is my time,” and I bet my clavicles he didn’t mean “This is my time to have my 18-year-old song reviewed by Anita I-Cannot-Even-Read-Her-Surname.” Well, Anthony, let me tell you something. It took me the time between 2010 and 2013 to finally remember whether you are KIEdIs, or KEIdIs, or KEdEIs, or another resemblance to a Greek deity’s name.
But I’m not gonna fight you on this song; just gonna give John Frusciante a big hug, or a pat on the back if he prefers, for giving the whole By the Way album soft undertones for us to find a way to being burdeningly carefree and a bit too much for the clouds.
With Tear, there is again that lyrical balance of acceptance of “every rise and fall” but, this time, the appreciation of both good and bad supersedes the traces of regret. Gather all you keyboards, guitars, drums, trumpets for this song that celebrates the meritocracy of a human’s life - you reward yourself for being capable and for getting up with bruises but never dropping the sun from your hand (LIKE IT’S HOT), not only for the predisposed, tangible success. A mental image appears in my mind here - mum once told me how, when she was a teenager, she had a Walkman, and she fell on the stairs, got blood everywhere but, during the short few seconds of the fall, she did everything she could to extend her arm and save the Walkman. Do that with the sun, I guess.
6. Sense - Tom Odell
Oh, me-mo-my first year of uni - Tom Odell, Ben Howard, Jake Bugg and I had some pretty late late-night foursomes while I was trying to memorize the names and years of paintings for my visual test exams. It was a weird time - the first months of uni, - when I wanted to be the most me, without really having the desire to show it to somebody. The quiet first two months I owe to being extremely homesick and failing to push myself to go out and meet more people. In reality, I knew I wanted to just be myself, which was enough, but I was purposefully hiding that authenticity away from socialising.
In Sense, Tom Odell sings about knowing that there are ways to potentially take yourself out of a spiral of sameness, and choke that sensation of being smaller than you actually are. Nonetheless, he uses the words “maybe” and “if” before every expectation, which, unfortunately, doesn’t demonstrate a high degree of certainty and, for that matter, even motivation to fulfill those expectations. Maybe it would make sense, if I do this - hardly a statement to convince you to do it; barely a belief that it would make sense in the end.
The song is the sobering morning of a drunk, whose ambition to change something fades into the speechless piano at the end.
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