SOLIDARITY MY FRIENDS
It’s been a rough time recently. Things are hard and I think a lot of the music I’ve been listening to reflects that. I deeply adore the connections I find in music to emotions, thoughts, feelings I have in my life. It’s very beautiful and vast.
Below are some of the things I’ve been listening to lately with some musings about why I like them and what they mean to me.
My Emo Playlist
It just hits so hard. I was emo when I was a teenager and I absolutely love returning to this music. It’s energetic, punchy, fun and what I love to listen to when I feel particularly angry about landlords or genocide. It’s fun to get my guitar out, bring up the chords on ultimate guitar and play along whilst I sing with my headphones on. It’s out of tune and out of time but it’s been a lot of fun to do that. I’m working on perfecting my Billie Joe-Armstrong impression and trying not to give myself tinnitus.
I love emo music because it reminds me of some of the good times I had when I was younger. There was a lot of pain and a lot of confusion, a lot of feeling left out and outcast and not really knowing why. But I felt somewhat connected to something when I listened to this music, connected to emo communities online (which had their fair share of problems) connected to the bands and the music and connected to the few other emo friends I had at school. I felt a part of something! I definitely listen to this with the bittersweetness and mis-remembering of nostalgia, but I still enjoy the energy of it all.
Jazz UK Spotify Playlist
Mmmm I like this one. This playlist has a lot of UK jazz artists and is great to listen to when I’m in the mood for something that is new but grounded in things I like (that being jazz ensembles, jazz voices, fun rhythms and confusing tonalities). From this playlist I’ve found a lot of tracks and artists that are slowly entering my regular rotation which is great! There is some really inspiring stuff in here that I can be like mm I want to use that idea or create something that sounds similar to this.
There is so much cool music happening in the UK, especially in London. I want to find more, listen to more, know more. The jazz scene is always changing and I love the playfulness of jazz, how varied it can be depending on the artists and the instruments.
Songs and Tracks
I absolutely love this song. I love the sound of the drums and the sound of the bass beneath the moving piano. The rhythms really drive the song forward. The song feels cohesive, colourful and complex in its simplicity. The repetition of the melodies feel like they grow and change and it doesn’t bore me or annoy me which sometimes I feel with the use of repetition in music. I found I liked a lot of GoGo Penguin’s music after listening to a bit more of them and I really enjoy the sound they have found together.
This song does something to me. It makes me want to move. It’s driving and powerful and catchy. I always dance whenever I listen to this. I am bias to anything that has a deep sound and moving rhythm. It has such an iconic feeling to it, it doesn’t feel like a lot of other music I’ve listened to before but it also feels very familiar. I love the range of instruments and sounds used throughout it. UGH it’s so good. The rest of this album is just as unique and powerful.
There’s a lot of funky, powerful, angry music on here which is telling of how I’ve been feeling lately. This song however makes me feel so sad, and it’s gorgeous. I’ve definitely been indulging myself in songs and sounds that break my heart. This track takes its time to build up, as with other Black Country, New Road songs, especially The Place Where He Inserted The Blade as an honourable mention. I just adore this whole album to be honest. It’s so full of sadness, home, and grief for me. The instruments, the lyrics, their overall sound. I tend to get quite lost in music that I can feel some semblance of pain and grief with, sometimes it’s the only thing that I relate to and identify big, painful, difficult feelings with. I’m very grateful for music with pain in it.
Another sad one!!! Because of course. Because everything hurts and I want to cry my eyes out whilst listening to Phoebe Bridgers’ repetition at the end of this song. The chords are simple and tug in my stomach and always make me bawl my eyes out. It also makes me feel like it’s music that I can write too and that inspires me. Phoebe Bridgers is one of those artists who I just feel, I don’t even know how to describe it, it’s not parasocial as such but I see myself in her music. Her violent and hard hitting US small town lyrics crystallise some of the awfulness I feel. This song is so special to me. This is where the repetition, the harmonies, the emotion in the voice, the swelling all pull in me close the loss inside me. Other Phoebe Bridgers songs that do similar things for me include Georgia, I Know The End and The Gold.
I couldn’t put some Phoebe Bridgers on here and not put some Big Thief too. This one hurts. You can hear it in their voices, you can hear it in the dissonance, you can hear it in the straining. It tells a story that I feel I know so deeply. It reminds me of love that makes me feel like I’m dying. I feel so much yearning and and hurt in this song. It’s so dizzying, uncomfortable and fucking real man.
I’ve had this one on repeat a lot. I’m down BAD for Fiona Apple. This is one of my favourite songs to sing at the moment because of the lyrics and the jazz feeling of it all. When I sing this song (and other Fiona Apple songs) it makes me feel like I can actually sing lol. I love the runs and the rhythms she does when she sings and it is really fun to sing along to. She also has a very similar range to me so it feels like a good balance between comfortable and challenging. Fucking love Fiona Apple. She’s just too good.
Okay two songs here because I love listening to them one after the other. I was listening to these songs a lot last summer when big things were changing with leaving uni, falling for someone who couldn’t fall for me back and working and then losing a job that wasn’t very good for me. They’re still high up in my rotation (probably because of how much I’ve listened to them since I found them) and also because I feel heartbreak and confusion and pain in them. These songs feel like sadness and London to me. It’s a city that feels big enough for these feelings, but can’t really hold them. It reminds me of painful love and wanting it even though I know it doesn’t do me any good, wanting desperately to be wanted. This one feels quite indulgent in the hurt and the heatwave of summer 2023.
I cry every time I hear this song. Again, more of the crystallising of hurt and grief and loss etc. But fucking hell does it do that. It’s a very moving song and I mean it literally has lyrics of things I’ve felt from the breakup and it feels important to give those things space and let them breathe. I lost a lot in the breakup. Hozier encapsulates some of the desperation I’ve felt recently. When I first found this song I started learning the melody on my sax and it felt really really good to improvise around that over the song. It was kind of cathartic because of how much you’re connected to your breath and your body with an instrument like the sax. I think that makes it a good vessel for emotion.
The Waterboys are probably one of my favourite bands. I don’t particularly know why but they make me feel like how the good things about London make me feel - possibility, people, love, food, art. This song does hit me hard though. It’s a painful dive into relationships that don’t or can’t work. The strings on this song feel so full of emotion to me. I like listening to this because I relate to the overall sound, the intensity of the track, the lyrics. It’s a good one for when things feel pretty damn intense and I’m feeling inconsolable. Other (and I guess more fun) songs I love from The Waterboys are The Pan Within, Fisherman’s Blues and You In The Sky.
Going to finish this section with a fun memory with this song. So I finished reading a Marauders’ fanfiction called All The Young Dudes a few months ago and the writer references a lot of music in it, so someone made a playlist of all the songs mentioned in the fic. When I was deep into playing Assassin’s Creed Odyssey around the same time, I would put that playlist on in the background and this was one of the songs that I just loved playing the game to. It was a very good time. It brings me back to reading the longest fanfic I’ve ever read in my life and playing my first proper pro gamer big boy video game.
Some Honourable Mentions
Thank you for reading my musical musings! This was very fun, interesting and pretty emotional to write. Music holds so much power and can do so much for someone and I absolutely love it when someone shows me music they are passionate about, I get really curious about why and what it means, it can offer another way of getting to know someone that is so personal and unique.
Music is power, emotion, activism and connection. I hope for better days, more fight and more peace.
Free Palestine.
Solidarity.
Frankie