What Was The Worried Thing You Said To Me? - Songs in 2023
This year—2023, or "The Jordan Year" as I have been calling it for the last 12 months, marks a decade since I first started writing about music for Anhedonic Headphones. I will never be able to replicate the amount of content I generated within the first year, nor, at this point, in my life as a writer and as an incredibly depressed individual who is just like trying to keep themselves upright and keep their household running, would I ever want to write that much or about that much.
Like me, as a person, the way I write and the way I think about writing has changed and continued to evolve over the last ten years. Each year, it looks like I am writing less and less, but that is just by looking alone at the amount of pieces that I have posted here—it does not take into consideration if I have written something that was published elsewhere, nor does it take into account just how much time and effort goes into all of this now, and how lengthy (some might argue too lengthy) many of my reviews, or essays, or whatever want to call them, find themselves becoming.
Making these lists, of my "favorite" songs and albums for a calendar year, each year, is both difficult and not. It is not difficult because, like this year, if I do not overthink it, the list itself comes together with relative ease; it is difficult if I do overthink it, and start to second guess the accuracy and tonal balance of the songs selected. Do I have enough pop songs—or songs that are just simply bops?
Have I selected enough brooding, or devastating songs that made me feel some type of way and possibly hurt my feelings the most over the last calendar year?
What are the rules that I set for myself this time around, and how quickly do I feel the need to bend them, or take liberties with the rules of a year end list?
Like last year's list, there are three songs featured here that were far and away my "favorites" of the year—the other songs are, rather than going through the motions of trying to rank arbitrarily, organized alphabetically by song title.
Every year, over the last ten years, this list and how it comes together is different. But every year, over the last ten years, this list and how it comes together is also the same. If that makes sense. It's always a list that is timeless, or songs that I am certain that I will feel compelled to return to, in some way, in the years to come.
It's always a list that is indicative of where I was at that time—those moments that are passing from January to December. Who I was. Where I was. How I was feeling.
The answer to to that last one is almost always "not well." But I am trying. We are always trying.
This list really speaks to that. Not well. But trying.
“Once Upon A Poolside” / “Space Invader” - The National
It opens with a request. Or a demand. One that is not intended to be cruel, or is said without an implication of compassion, somewhere in there, but rather, it is, more than anything else, uttered out of exhaustion or perhaps frustration.
“Don’t make this any harder—everybody’s waiting.”
A lot of songs, in a calendar year, can and often do, resonate or affect me personally—or appeal, in some way, to my more unflattering, or difficult characteristics. And, if I am being honest, and this should not be a surprise to anyone who knows me well, and knows my history with the band, but there are a lot of songs, alone, by The National, that can and often do resonate or affect me personally—appealing to my more unflattering, or difficult characteristic.
Don’t make this any harder.
Everybody’s waiting.
And of all the songs released in a calendar year, and of all the songs by The National released in this calendar year (they did put out two albums, only a few months apart), the song that absolutely made me feel the most seen, and attacked, simultaneously, while appealing directly to my most unflattering and difficult characteristics was “Once Upon A Poolside,” the beautiful, haunting, and emotionally eviscerating opening track from the first album issued by the group in 2023, First Two Pages of Frankenstein.
The National’s frontman and principal lyricist, Matt Berninger, specifically in the last 13 years or so, has written from a place of less claustrophobic, yet vivid ambiguity, as he had in the past, and has trudged further and further into being a little more literal, while still being literate, often penning depictions of domestic scenes, or about his delicate mental health.
And much has been made about the compelling backstory surrounding the creation of both First Two Pages of Frankenstein and Laugh Track—songs that were written and recorded during the same sessions throughout 2022. The backstory where Berninger, struggling more than he had ever in the past with depression, now exacerbated by the pandemic, fell into a writer’s block so long, and terrible, that he wasn’t sure his ability to write lyrics would ever return.
He was, at one point, convinced the band was finished.
His decline and the toll that it took, both personally, as well as on his family and his bandmates, is documented throughout both albums—so well portrayed that it can be rather difficult to hear at times. And, in an effort to set the stage for the songs that follow, “Once Upon A Poolside” is unrelenting in the portrait it paints of someone who has found themselves at what is the lowest, bleakest place—self-aware enough to know how they got there, or at least in part how they got there, but unable to find a way out.
Throughout both albums, there are places where the lyricism is more directly about the impact his slide into depression and writer’s block had on his marriage, or the dynamic within his family, but “Once Upon A Poolside,” while most certainly a reflection on how the other members of the band were effected, is written in such a way—vivid, yet partially fragmented just enough—that there is a larger accessibility to it, and how you can, or at least I could, see so much of myself in it.
Don’t make this any harder.
Everybody’s waiting.
There is a question, and then a need for reassurance that Berninger returns to throughout “Once Upon A Poolside,” which serves as a bit of a chorus—“What was the worried thing you said to me,” he asks. “I thought we could make it through anything.”
And, perhaps, like Bernigner’s slow descent into depression, the further into the song’s three and a half minutes we get, the bleaker his observations become, and the more difficult of a look within himself, and of his surroundings he takes. “I’ll follow you everywhere while you work the room,” he quips, his baritone rumbling above the echoing piano keys. “I don’t know how you do it—tangerine perfume. I’m not doing anyone any kind of favors…watching airplanes land and sink into the pavement."
Structurally, there are, according to how the lyrics to “Once Upon A Poolside” are broken up online, two bridge sections—both of which are where Berninger’s lyrics become the most brutally honest, and emergent, in their depictions. “I can’t keep talking. I can’t stop shaking. I can’t keep track of everything I’m taking,” he sings in a slightly higher register, with there being a loaded, double meaning behind the admission of “everything I’m taking,”
“Everything is different,” he continues before asking, “Why do I feel the same? Am I asking for too much—I can’t hear what you’re saying.”
And there is, ultimately, as “Once Upon A Poolside” continues, a need for assurance, regardless of how fragile everything truly is—or how bad things might seem. An assurance, not disingenuous, but one that, given the state of things, is not a guarantee that things will, over time, feel less horrible.
“This is the closest we’ve ever been. And I have no idea what’s happening,” Berninger explains, nervously, in the secondary bridge. “Is this how this whole thing is gonna end?”
Don’t make this any harder.
Everybody’s waiting.
And the thing that “Once Upon A Poolside” returns to throughout its confessional nature, outside of that need for assurance in the face of something that is both easy, and not, to understand, is the question, “What was the worried thing you said to me?”
A lot of songs in a calendar year can and often do resonate with me personally—appealing, in some way, to my more unflattering or difficult characteristics.
Because how many times in the last few years certainly—this year, alone—have I found myself reflected, starkly, and accurately, in the depiction of the slow decline and within the stranglehold of depression.
How often have I made a horrible and honest and ultimately necessary confession, to a loved one, about just how badly I am doing, or feeling, all of time, and then heard the visceral concern, or fear, in their voice when they respond.
What was the worried thing you said to me?
I have no idea what’s happening.
Don’t make this any harder.
Everybody’s waiting.
*
It was too romantic. It was sad and frantic—a paperback book in a storm drain.
And I do not think it is a criticism that I have of the latter-day output of The National—specifically of Matt Berninger’s lyricism, but rather just, like, an observation, that while he has become less interested, or less focused on shadowy ambiguity, pushing towards things much more literal and often personal, he can still often pen incredible phrase turns, and even with the literal and personal, is capable of being extremely vivid in what he’s depicting.
What if we’d never met?
It’s one of the questions that is at the center of “Space Invader,” the sprawling, cacophonic centerpiece of the album Laugh Track—at nearly seven minutes in length, the song itself, structurally, operates within two distinct portions, and lyrically, Berninger plays with both the idea of time and memory, with the past and the present dramatically, then explosively, converging in what he is reflecting on.
In part, “Space Invader” details, albeit in fragments, Berninger’s struggle with writer’s block—“It’ will come to me later, like a space invader,” he muses. “And I won’t be able to get it out of my head.” Then, later on in the second verse, he reflects, “It was too romantic. It was sad and frantic—a paperback book in a storm drain,” which is both eerily similar to a number of other metaphors he uses elsewhere on both Laugh Track, and on “This Isn’t Helping,” from First Two Pages of Frankenstein.
And it is vivid—a paperback book, presumably of something earnest or heavy-handed, soaked and ruined, floating amongst the current of rainwater rushing around it.
What if I’d never written the letter?
“Space Invader” was one of the songs that I, unsurprisingly, chose to focus on with my review of Laugh Track—in part because of just how impressive its execution is, how it is a bit of a sonic risk for the band, and how it does ultimately find a way to blur together all of the best elements of their aesthetic across their canonical works, but more than that, I did appreciate just how utterly sentimental the songwriting was, specifically in the chorus.
Weaving through his present state, where he is deep in self-doubt about his ability as a writer, Berninger then walks us back through to the earliest stages of his relationship with his wife Carin Besser—he does something similar on “New Order T-Shirt,” on First Two Pages, but here it is less joyous, or wistful, and is set slightly more to a panicked, or anxious spiral.
What if we’d never met?
In my earnestness, and sentimentality, these kind of “what if” questions are things I do not spend a lot of time on, but enough time that I, too, have asked myself similar things—especially as of late. And in his earnestness, and sentimentality, Berninger asks questions that are evocative of very specific moments, or memories that flood us, as listeners, with fully realized snapshots in time. “What if I’d never written the letter and slipped in the sleeve of the record I gave you,” he wonders as the chorus begins. “What if I’d stayed on the C train and took Layfayette—what if we’d never met? What if I’d just done what you told me and never looked back? What if I’d only ducked away down the hallway and faded to black?”
And the thing about these “what if” questions—these ones that relate to the events, or circumstances, that lead to you meeting someone who ultimately would have an enormous impact on your life, go unanswered—they are ruminations, or passing thoughts, where Berninger perhaps indirectly wonders what his life might be like, or where he might be, if he had not written a letter, or if he had gotten off the train at a different stop so many years ago.
The second part of “Space Invader,” then, takes the song, both lyrically, and musically, in a completely different, and surprisingly disorienting direction. After a brief pause where the first half of the song, rooted firmly in the kind of slow-burning and brooding music The National is perhaps best known for making, accompanied by a sweeping and haunting string arrangement, finds its way to a natural, and unassuming conclusion, “Space Invader” begins to oscillate into a glitchy, skittering synthesizer tone that ripples and pulsates as the band begins to build a torrential wall of noise, propelled forward by thundering percussion.
And underneath it all, Berninger’s baritone rumbles, barely audible underneath the layers and layers piled on top of one another, delivering two more, seemingly mysterious or at least incredibly vague, lyrics to the song: “Quarter after four in the morning—my heart’s software gore,” and then, asks, “Why’d I leave it like that?”
That question, like the “what if”’s that are asked within the first half of the song, is left unanswered, and the idea of Beringer’s “heart’s software gore”—the term, itself, implying software has malfunctioned in a way beyond its normal operation—is not said without context exactly, but the song does ask you to wonder, as the music builds to its dizzying frenzy around him, to wonder if a malfunction of the heart is a good or bad thing, necessarily, and if the line itself is a reflection the past, the present, or something that connects us to both moments within the fabric of the song.
“Space Invader,” outside of the earnest poignancy of Berninger’s songwriting and the kind of delicate, tender way he sings the song’s devastating chorus, is a bold and audacious statement—so enormous and ambitious that it does become the sound of a band that reinvested in itself, and clawed its way back from the brink. And, it, like every song by The National that I have caught glimmers of myself reflected back in, unflattering, or difficult, or otherwise, is so vivid and real that you cannot help but fall right into the world that is created within its confines.
“True Blue” / “Not Strong Enough” - Boygenius
And when I had spent, like, an entire month with Boygenius’ debut full-length LP, The Record, collecting all of my thoughts about it, the thing that I wanted to say, and the thing that I was very close to saying, but ultimately found that I was just not in the place where I could comfortably say it, was adjacent to the slow motion and shimmery Lucy Dacus lead single “True Blue.”
Because that’s how I write about music now—how I have for the last few years, I suppose.
And when I had spent, like, an entire month with Boygenius’ debut full-length—the very end of March until the very end of April, at the time, what I wanted to say about “True Blue,” and how I wanted to say it, appeared like a bridge that I was not yet ready to risk burning.
Or, maybe, just a conversation that would have been rather difficult to have, that I was not ready to find myself needing to engage in.
There is a relationship dynamic—volatile, yes, but also one where there is, ultimately, to an extent, a deep connection—depicted in “True Blue” that I find endlessly fascinating. And in that fascination, the line that I continued to come back to ultimately was not one of the subtly funny ones, like in the first verse when Dacus quietly, and dryly delivers the line, “When you don’t know who you are, you fuck around and find out,” and it was not even any of the very earnest, or sentimental lyrics, like the soaring, heartfelt chorus, but rather, it was a single line Dacus howls at the beginning of the bridge.
“You’ve never done me wrong except for that one time that we don’t talk about.”
That one time we don’t talk about.
For Dacus, joined by her Boygenius bandmates, Phoebe Bridgers and Julian Baker, that one time, and whatever happened, “doesn’t matter anymore.” But what if we, or me, are not as easily forgiving, or forgetful.
What if, regardless of whether we want to or not, we return to that one time, often, or often enough, hoping that there will be an answer, or some kind of clarity, each time
And there is something about the Dacus-lead songs on The Record—“We’re In Love,” arriving within the second half, is one of the most harrowing on the album, as is the outtake “Afraid of Heights,” which, thematically, feels like a continuation of the kind of dynamic that is at the core of the narrative to “True Blue.”
“True Blue” swoons—but unlike other big, sweeping moments from the album, it swoons with something bittersweet surrounding it, rather than something near jubilant or triumphant. It shuffles and swirls around delicately, in the beginning, with the layers of different guitar tones strumming along, but then, when the warmth of the emotionally stirring chorus arrives, there is something grand about the way the rhythm gently, firmly pulsates.
The relationship depicted in “True Blue” is one where there is ultimately love, or a deep affection for one another, at its center, but love at the center doesn’t always mean one, or the other, person is easy to get along with; and it doesn’t mean that one person isn’t going to feel hurt, at times, or perhaps like they are, for reasons still unclear, being slowly pushed away, with that connection, then, quickly becoming stagnant.
“When you moved to Chicago, you were spinning’ out,” Dacus recalls of the off-stage antagonist within the song. “When you don’t know who you are, you fuck around and find out,” she sings, without a trace of a smirk on her face. “When you called me from the train, water freezin’ in your eyes, you were happy, and I wasn’t surprised.”
And there is something that I have found, in pop music, within the last few years—a kind of feeling, or sensation, that is conveyed if all the elements, within the song, tumble together in a very specific way, and if this feeling, or sensation is, in fact, what the artist, I think, really wants to get across, whether it is unspoken or not.
That feeling, sensation, or whatever you want to call it —indicative of something larger, or stakes that are a lot higher than you might realize at first, is present within the way the chorus soars, and resonates emotionally, within “True Blue.”
“But it feels good to be known so well,” Dacus confesses, as things swell around her. “I can’t hide from you like I hide from myself.”
And there is something that I have found, in pop music—a kind of feeling or sensation. And maybe you understand what I am talking about, or, once I describe it, you will maybe hear it, or at, the very least, humor me, when I say that one of the reasons that “True Blue” works so well is that in its depiction of both Dacus, as protagonist, and the unnamed “you” whom she is addressing, are both attempting to outrun themselves, while also running headfirst within themselves.
It’s a difficult kind of emotional juxtaposition to explain, I think—the kind of inability to truly escape yourself, no matter how fast you think you might be, and it is even harder to convey something like that—a feeling, an idea, whatever, in a pop song. Here, it is done incredibly well.
“You’ve never done me wrong except for that one time that we don’t talk about.”
That one time we don’t talk about.
For Dacus, that one time, and whatever happened, “doesn’t matter anymore.” But what if we, or me, are not as easily forgiving, or forgetful.
What if, regardless of whether we want to or not, we return to that one time, often, or often enough, hoping that there will be an answer, or some kind of clarity.
And I had spent, like, an entire month with Boygenius’ debut full-length, and at the time, what I wanted to say about “True Blue,” and how I wanted to say it, and a story that I have only told once, appeared like a bridge that I was not yet ready to risk burning. Or, maybe, just a conversation that would have been rather difficult to have, that I was not ready to find myself needing to engage in.
“True Blue” fades out, slowly, with the voices of Baker, Bridgers, and Dacus, harmonizing over the word “Blue,” and within that fade out, as the music soars just a little bit higher, there is another feeling, or sensation, that is conveyed—a kind of optimism, and a kind of hope to reach the point where you can let go of that one time, and it will truly not matter anymore.
A kind of hope that I have been trying to cling to.
*
I don’t know why I am the way I am.
The thing that worked so well, and was so impressive five years ago, when Boygenius released their debut EP, was that, yes, it was very clear when there was a song where one of the specific members maybe had slightly more of a hand in the lyricism, or in how it ultimately sounded, but there are also the songs where it is more apparent when those duties are split, or shared, and the song in question feels much more like a group effort, rather than an opportunity for someone to temporarily have the spotlight.
And the thing that works—well, one of the things that works, and is so impressive, about “Not Strong Enough,” is how each member of the group, in taking a verse, writes from the places that they know, or are perhaps most comfortable as a writer—with the three, then, coming together for both the ascendant, shout a long chorus, and the cathartic hypnosis of the bridge.
“Black hole opened in the kitchen,” Phoebe Bridgers begins in her verse—the first verse, with just a little bit of a snarl in her voice as she, as one might anticipate, works through in just three lines, with great detail, a terribly depressive state. “Every clock’s a different time. It would only take the energy to fix it,” she continues before delivering the line that effortlessly slides into the beautiful, gossamer chorus.
Baker’s verse does the same thing, and what she does, and does so well, and so beautifully, is writes about a terrible kind of violence. “Drag racing through the canyon,” she begins, her voice low and confident. “Singing ‘Boys Don’t Cry,’ she continues, before steering something that sounds very freeing, or liberating, into the darker territory she thrives in. “Do you see us getting scraped up off the pavement,” Baker asks, before she, like Bridgers before, guides the song into its second chorus, where two things converge in a breathtaking moment.
“I don’t know why I am the way I am not strong enough to be your man,” all three members of the group sing, playing with the idea of both gender roles, and, in a sense, answering a question that was asked by Sheryl Crow upwards of 30 years ago, before Bridgers and Baker, respectively, add a line that thematically continues their verse: “I tried, I can’t stop staring at the ceiling fan—spinning out about things that haven’t happened yet,” then, in the second chorus: “I lied, I am just lowering your expectations—half a mind that keeps the other second-guessing.”
The real triumph, though, and absolute jubilance in “Not Strong Enough,” arrives in the bridge.
The song, itself, doesn’t attempt to disguise what it has been planning the whole time, and where it’s taking you—and with how much it soars during the chorus, treading a line between triumph and something bittersweet, you know exactly what is going to happen when it arrives at the bridge, you and you hear Dacus, in her low, warm register, say, for the first time—the first of a dozen times, “Always an angel, never a god.”
And if we, as listeners, know exactly what is going to happen, the song itself also knows very well what it is doing, as it continues to build, and build, to an explosive crescendo, with all three members of the group eventually joining into the hypnotic chant. “Always an angel, never a god,” until it reaches the peak, which brings us back into the song—an epilogue of sorts, where Dacus delivers the final, and surprisingly somber few lines that seamlessly blend vivid imagery of spirituality and a terrible, lingering loneliness.
And of all the lyrics that I have heard in 2023—analyzed or over-analyzed for reasons w/r/t music writing, or simply for myself, because I am ultimately unable to turn off that part of my brain, one of the phrases, or moments, within a song that I have returned to over and over is absolute deliverance that comes from the detonative nature of, “Always and angel, never a god,” and all that it means, and could mean.
Because within the song’s context, there are implications that it is a reflection on simply just not being enough. There are large implications, sure, about the ideas of angels and god, or a god, and the patriarchal nature of quite literally everything that Bridgers, Baker, and Dacus have been kicking against since forming and launching this project in 2018, but because there is so much self-effacing reflection that does occur throughout “Not Strong Enough”—and, look at the title of the song, alone, that this moment that comes as a beautiful collision of exuberance and sadness, it can be taken to mean “almost.”
Like, we,—you, me, whoever—is almost there. Almost good enough. Almost strong enough.
But not quite.
Because regardless of what someone else might think about us, or how they may perceive us—as a good person, for example, there are always the shortcomings we see, or feel, within ourselves that are much more apparent, and emergent, than anything good.
Always an angel. Never a god.
“Baby Teeth” - Haley Blais
Do you remember losing your first tooth?
And what I am uncertain of if this was, in fact, the very first tooth I lost, or just the first tooth I have a memory of losing—wiggly, in my mouth, distracting me enough during my kindergarten class that, when my mother came to retrieve me from school for the day, my teacher pulled her aside, and insisted the tooth needed to be removed, from my five-year-old mouth, the moment I got home.
I remember the sharp, awkward pain from when my mother—always my mother, put her hands in my open mouth, her fingers trying to pull the loose tooth out from my gums.
I remember the blood, and the small space that would form in between the teeth that were still in my mouth—the small gap that I would flick, and tease, with my tongue.
The small little pouch made out of plastic canvas and multi-colored yarn that I would put the tooth in, at night, under my pillow, and would wake up the next day to find money instead—a quarter or two; then, as I got older, a dollar bill, crisp and folded neatly.
I remember that, at some point, in the spice cabinet in the house I grew up in, before my parents divorced, and the house was sold, there was a small, faded, yellow plastic container where my mother had kept all of my baby teeth.
If I think about it, I can still hear the sound of all of them—hardened and shriveled, rattling against one another in the cup.
I was first introduced to the Canadian singer and songwriter Haley Blais in the spring of 2022 when I came across the single—at the time, just a stand-alone single, “Coolest Fucking Bitch in Town.” One of the most memorable, and certainly one of my favorite songs from last year, it eventually found a home on her second full-length album, Wisecrack, which also includes the slow-burning, pensive, and scathingly sardonic “Baby Teeth.”
Structurally, “Baby Teeth” is based around two short verses, and leans heavily into both an infectious, evocative chorus, and a stark, reflective bridge—and it finds Blais painting enough of a self-portrait that you get an idea of what, exactly, she is wrestling with regularly and internally, but it’s still written in such a fragmented, ambiguous way that leaves a lot of things to the imagination, or the kind of ruminated analysis that stays with you long after the song has come to an end.
“Got a friend out in Los Angeles—smoke breaks out in the car,” Blais begins, quietly over the sound of the strummed acoustic guitar. “I used to think that I could live out there and be the next big fucking star. But when I smoke, I don’t get paranoid—I go Full Metal Jacket,” she continues, before arriving at one of the lines that she returns to, again, later on in the song.
“When I die, I know I won’t freak out until I’m in the casket.”
And the thing about “Baby Teeth,” and I suppose the thing about “Coolest Fucking Bitch,” or any of Blais’ other songs that are the most successful in how they are executed is that if helps, or perhaps it lends itself well to enjoying them more if you have a similar sense of humor to hers—sardonic, wry, and deprecating—all of which she directs the song’s lyricism further and further into when she arrives in the second verse.
“And when you asked me to diffuse the bomb,” she confesses, “I’ll tell you deployed it. It’s so hard to keep a family—I guess I’ll just destroy it.”
The introspection comes in both “Baby Teeth”’s bridge, and chorus, which is where Blais’ writing remains partially under a cloak of humor, perhaps as a defense mechanism, but it is within these two places where she also, surprisingly, is the most honest—not with herself, exactly, specifically in the bridge; but rather, about herself.
“Come to find I’m the one cog in the machine that won’t grind,” she observes through some chilly, robotic distortion on her voice as the music swells slightly around her. “But if the machine is fine—can’t help but take it as some kind of sign.”
Dressed up, or at least disguised enough, through the affected vocals, and a brief moment where the music swells slightly around her, the gravity of this kind of observation of the self is easy to miss, at first—I missed it, anyway, on my earliest listens of “Baby Teeth,” and the truth of the line—that the problem, is in fact, her, and maybe that has always been the case, is both something that is not lingered on, for reasons that should, I think, be obvious, but it also is the kind of line within a song that is so surprising in how it does hold up a mirror, asking you to confront, albeit briefly, the most unflattering parts of yourself.
There is something graphic, or at least unsettling, about the way the idea of “baby teeth” is handled within the chorus, but that is, of course, the point—the discomfort as another means of distraction from the larger conceit, which, among other things, is passing reflection on time, the lives we’ve grown into, the lives we could have grown into instead, and mortality.
“I want my baby teeth back,” Blais pleads in the chorus. “Stare in the mirror and do my best late-night show wisecrack. I wanna know what it’s like—pull out my front ones on my own time.”
Do you remember losing your first tooth?
My best friend often gives me a little bit of a hard time because it seems so unlikely that I am, at the age I am now, able to recall these brief, bright flashes from my childhood. They remain, somehow. I remember the layout of the house I grew up in and the size of the bathroom—it, truthfully, was probably nowhere near as big as it seemed when I was young.
But I remember the feeling of a wiggly tooth in my gums, and the weird, squeamish joy of pressing my tongue to the back of it, moving it around. And I remember standing in that bathroom, my mother—always my mother, hunched over, with her hands in my open mouth, pulling out the tooth with her fingers.
I remember the blood.
I remember the rattling sound that the small pile of shriveled, hardened baby teeth made from the yellow plastic container my mother kept them in, hidden away in the spice cabinet.
I remember the life that I have grown into, but I also, especially as of late, think about the lives that I could have grown into instead, if even just one thing had been different.
* * * * * *
“Dance The Night” - Dua Lipa
“Do you guys ever think about dying?”
And even though it is something you are expecting to happen, moments before the line is actually delivered, it still, at least for me, resonated. A laugh. Sure. Because that is part of the point—the shock of the unexpected. The absurdity within the context of the world of the film.
It resonates, though, because the answer is yes.
Within the film, the song that Robbie interrupts with her question, is “Dance The Night.”
Sometimes I think about how, during the very early weeks, and months, of the pandemic, during the spring of 2020, Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia was such an important album for me because it offered a form of escapism. The escapism that, yes, is inherent to the up-tempo, glossy pop music found within the album, but the escapism it offered in the form of a reprieve, however fleeting, from just how uncertain and how bad things were around me.
As Lipa readies whatever is coming next—her new single, “Houdini,” was released in November, with the implication that an album will arrive in 2024, you could say that the “album cycle” for Future Nostalgia is over, but you could also make a strong case that the last, joyous, raucous breath for that aesthetic was in the form of “Dance The Night.”
Co-written by Lipa and Caroline Ailin, along with Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt, both of whom were involved in the production of the film’s soundtrack, “Dance The Night” shares myriad similarities, honestly, with Lipa’s “Levitating,” in terms of its structure, melody, and overall feeling—and this is not necessarily a bad thing, or an element that takes away from the song.
Instead, it creates a very welcoming feeling of familiarity that is practically blinding in how it shimmers, as Lipa grabs our hands and leads us out onto the dance floor as the glossy, disco-inspired rhythm and arranging swells and swirls around us.
“Dance The Night,” and as it should be, is unrelenting—not even three minutes in length, Lipa has no time to waste as the lush strings sweep back and forth, with the thick bass line that is tucked in underneath all the layers, along with the crisp production of the drum programming, keep propelling the song’s momentum forward, rarely if ever looking back.
At first glance, and perhaps at first listen, even, “Dance The Night” can be seen as a pop song—big, bold, fun—or, a song written for a movie. And not just any movie. A huge summer blockbuster that is based on an iconic intellectual property. And I will admit that, during the summer months, when I would hear this song played on the radio, my initial thought would be, “Oh, hell yeah,” because it is so fun, does compel you to move, and to mouth the words along with Lipa as she announces she’s going to dance the night away.
And there is, though—and it is subtle, a sadness, or something that Lipa, in the song’s narrative, is attempting to evade, as she is able, which is something that did come as a bit of a surprise to me, as it is implied that the diamonds she sings of, both on her face and under her eyes, are an eloquent way to describe lingering tears.
The conceit, then, of “Dance The Night” is, fittingly enough, the dance floor as a means of escapism from whatever Lipa is trying to outrun, and if not outrun, just ignore for a little bit longer. “When the night’s here, I don’t do tears,” she attests midway through the song. “Baby, no chance.”
She continues to use the darkness of the dance floor as a cloak to try and hide from her true emotions the further along into the song we are pulled. “With me dance—dance the night away,” she exclaims in the absolutely voluminous chorus. “My heart could be burnin’, but you won’t see it on my face.”
Lipa, though, even in her efforts to evade a form of sorrow, or sadness—a temporary moment or something that will last much longer—sings her intention to remain strong, regardless, which, in the way she puts it, is extremely admirable. “I’ve been moving’ closer to the edge—still be lookin’ my best,” she declares in the second verse. “I stay on beat, you can count on me—I ain’t missing’ no steps.”
“Do you guys ever think about dying?,” Margot Robbie asks, an enormous grin on her face while she moves in time to the music. And the answer, as difficult as it might be to hear, is yes. Of course. But like Robbie’s portray of the titular Barbie, we can, even temporarily, stay a few steps ahead of those intrusive thoughts by allowing ourselves to be lured out into the darkness and heat of the dance floor, and, for a moment, feel like we can let go of everything in some kind of ferocious beauty.
“Fake Happy” - Hannah Georgas
We’ll laugh, but it’s not as funny anymore.
A few weeks ago, my best friend sent me an Instagram post from writer Jess Janz. It’s a poem called “Intimacy These Days,” and in the caption, Janz describes a phone conversation with a friend who proceeded to tell her a somewhat sprawling account of his trip to the grocery store.
“‘Oh god, this is the most boring story in the world—basically what I am saying is I didn’t have a smoothie today because I forgot to get almond milk at the store. The end!’ We had a laugh, and then I said, ‘I love you, so I care about everything about you!… I want to know about the almond milk for your smoothie.’”
The poem itself is beautiful, and striking, and vivid, in how it accurately depicts an idea of intense, quiet intimacy between two people, but it is truly Janz’s caption, and the sentiment of why my friend Alyssa sent it to me, that has kept me thinking about it since the middle of November.
“We show each other we love each other by reaching out, talking about the angst, not talking about the angst. Sharing a dog video. Asking for an opinion on a mascara that’s been sitting in an online shopping cart for two weeks.”
“Intimacy is knowing about the almond milk.”
I told Alyssa that last line—Intimacy is knowing about the almond milk, made me very emotional, when I was thanking her for sending the post to me.
She, endlessly gracious and patient with how sentimental I can be, knew I would become emotional, and earnest after reading it, and gently reminded me it wasn't something she had written.
But I understood the reason why she sent it to me.
Alyssa and I talk literally every day—some of the time, if one of us is busier than the other, it is just a few quick exchanges; other times, as needed, it is a formal and professional conversation about the podcast she and developed and host together—so professional and formal that I send out an agenda in advance.
But more often than not, we have lengthy conversations where we talk about, among other things, our daily minutiae.
Intimacy is knowing about the almond milk.
At some point, in the last calendar year, in a conversation, Alyssa told me, “The more you talk to someone, the more you have to talk about.”
And she is right.
Because the less you talk with someone, or the less you begin to feel connected to a person, you would think that, when you both make the time to “catch up,” either on the phone, or in person, that you would have more to say. Or a lot to say.
But when you find yourself drifting, through no fault of your own, further and further away from someone you, at one time, had a strong connection with, if, and when, you are able to talk again, what do you say? How much do you say?
When they, on the other end of the line, innocently, out of habit, ask, “How’s it going?,” what do you say in response?
How do you respond? How is it actually going? And if it is going poorly, how do you say that?
What kind of updates, if any, do they want? And what updates, if any, do you feel capable of providing?
“Friends grow apart, right?,” singer and songwriter Hannah Georgas asks, tentatively, near the end of the second verse in “Fake Happy,” a stark meditation, and observation, on the slow fade of a friendship, and how large of a role declining mental health and feeling that you can no longer be honest has, perhaps, played in that slow fade.
And I do find myself, again, as I have found myself in the past, writing about the things we let go of. But, unlike the instances, last year, and even just a few months ago, when I found myself writing about this, now, at year’s end, I think I have a little bit better of an understanding as to why we do, in fact, have to let go.
For the longest time, at least when I first was sitting down with the promotional copy of Georgas’ fifth full-length, I’d Be Lying If I Said I Didn’t Care, I thought that “Fake Happy” was the opening track—a month prior to the album’s release, I had put the files I had been sent by her PR team, so that I could spend enough time with it to write a thoughtful review for an outlet other than my own, onto the dilapidated, hand-me-down iPod I have, to listen to in the car. And what I had not realized, though, was that the files had not been tagged so that they would arrive onto an iPod, or into my computer, in the order with which they were sequenced for the album.
For the longest time, I thought that “Fake Happy” was the opening track—and during one of my earliest listens, in not paying as close of attention to the lyrics as I should have been, I only caught the titular phrase, within the chorus, but it was enough to send me reeling: “I don’t want to be sad, but I can’t be fake happy,” Georgas sings, her voice quiet, and somber.
For the longest time, I thought that “Fake Happy was the opening track, and the longer I sat with that song, specifically, and really coming to realize what it was about, and how much of myself I saw in her depiction of the slow fade on a friendship, I wondered why would Hannah Georgas do this to me. To me. Specifically. Why would she put this as the opening track on the album.
It is not the opening track—it arrives at the halfway mark on I’d Be Lying, bringing the first part of the record to an inherently melancholic close before ushering in the second side with the jittery and dreamy “Home.”
The more you talk to someone, the more you have to talk about.
Friends grow apart, right?
The thing that I am not sure I noticed when writing about “Fake Happy” when I was working on a piece about the album, as a whole, but that I noticed now, is how unrelenting it is. The description, yes, often associated with an intensity, or a kind of manic energy, is not what I mean here, though. For a song that, at least as it begins, is relatively sparse and unassuming, with its gently fumbled guitar strums, and Georgas’ reserved, sullen, breathy delivery of the lyrics, she does not leave a lot of room to move around—the first words of the pointed opening line are out of her mouth within the first second, and no space is left between the first verse, the subsequent chorus, and the verse that follows.
It is unrelenting in the sense that even with as unassuming and reserved it comes across at first, there is a terrible and palpable urgency, and Georgas needs to get these words out.
The more you talk to someone, the more you have to talk about.
Somebody who was, at one time, both a co-worker, and a very close friend, moved away from the immediate area around a year ago. And I get into this, and it becomes one of the things that, through a literary device that I certainly overuse, is repeated within the piece I wrote about I’d Be Lying as a whole—it wasn’t a move out of state, or across the country. Just separated, now, by a few hours.
A few hours is enough, though. The distance, figurative and literal, taking a toll almost immediately.
“We’ve grown out of each other, and I’ve slowly watched it happen,” Georgas begins in the sobering opening line. “I know it’s for the better,” she continues, her voice allowing the words to tumble into the gentle bed below made by the strums of the acoustic guitar. “We all manage and lose touch, right? Bonds aren’t as tight?,” she asks, with the same hesitancy, and hurt, that you can hear in her voice near the end of the second verse.
Somebody who was, at one time, both a co-worker, and a very close friend, moved away from the immediate area around a year ago. And I am not naive enough to think that it would not change the dynamic of our friendship—and what I was afraid of was that the distance would eventually, feel like a lot more than just a few hours. The conversations on a Saturday, or Sunday, on the phone, becoming more challenging for there to be a commitment to.
The distance eventually feels like a lot more than just a few hours.
The distance, then, echoed in how stiff or forced the conversations were becoming, if and when the conversations happened at all.
The distance, then, felt in the small silences, when I was just simply uncertain what to say next.
When they ask, “How’s it going?,” what do you say in response?
How is it actually going? And if it is going poorly, how do you say that?
The more you talk to someone, the more you have to talk about.
“I get low—is that a crime?,” Georgas inquires, bitingly, at the beginning of the second verse. “I think it’s something that I’m born with,” she observes, then adds, “But I can’t tell you what’s on my mind.”
And it is the chorus that does, really, get right to the point of the song, or at least finds Georgas more willing to describe, in unflinching detail, what it is like to be on the receiving end of the slow fade. “I’ll call you, but it feels like a chore. We’ll laugh,” she observes, “But it’s not as funny anymore. I’ll be sad, and I can’t tell you how I feel. I can’t reach out—and even if I want to, it’s weird.”
“I don’t want to be sad, but I can’t be fake happy.”
And perhaps it is indicative of a situation, or circumstances like this—the slow, often unspoken fade, that there are no answers for Georgas, easy or otherwise, or any kind of actual resolve within “Fake Happy.” And musically, this open-mindedness is indicated shortly after the song reaches its halfway point, which, initially feels like a logical ending to the song before it casually drifts off into the ether, and then chaotically returns with a noisy, tonal switch, as the song is pulled into a near-psychedelic stumble towards its actual conclusion.
“Friends grow apart, right?,” Georgas tentatively asks within the second verse of “Fake Happy. And I do find myself, again, as I have found myself in the past, writing about the things we let go of.
But, unlike the instances last year, and just a few months ago, when I found myself writing about this, now, at year’s end, I think I have a little bit better of an understanding as to why we do, in fact, have to let go.
The more you talk to someone, the more you have to talk about.
Intimacy is knowing about the almond milk.
But what if, you reach the point when you are not even sure that you feel like you can, or are comfortable, talking about the almond milk.
What if, you reach the point when you are not even sure if they care to hear about the almond milk anymore.
I went almost a calendar year without seeing someone who, at one time, was both a co-worker, and a very close friend. And after seeing one another, briefly, we have not had an exchange of any sort of importance—like, an actual conversation, of any kind, in over two months.
Friends grow apart, right?
And in the space that has formed—the distance in those weeks and months and in the small, awkward silences on the telephone that begin to grow louder each time you fell into them, what you inevitably must let go of is the illusion that the distance, figuratively, wasn’t already, always there to begin with, and that as reluctant as you might be to understand this, that it was, ultimately, the literal distance that revealed this.
“The Greater Wings” - Julie Byrne
I drank the air to be nearer to you.
It is the opening track off of the album of the same name—and “The Greater Wing” is not the most “Julie Byrne” sounding song on The Greater Wings, but it is also not the least “Julie Byrne” sounding song within the haunting, gorgeous, and heartbreaking set of 10.
And what I mean by that is Byrne, as a singer and songwriter, has a specific sound, or aesthetic, that she has carried with her over the last decade-plus of performing—she has certainly grown as a writer, and musician, since the days of her cassette released EPs in the early 2010s, but regardless of how robust or intricate her material has become over time, it is still, mostly, rooted in a folk kind of tradition.
“The Greater Wings” is somewhere in the middle of those two extremes—it is gentle, and is structured, primarily around the methodical plucking of the guitar strings, but it is also surprisingly, and intentionally, sweeping and dramatic, thanks to the extraordinarily lush string arrangement that is slowly introduced around 40 seconds in, just before the arrival of the song’s stirring, ascendant chorus.
The song both sets a tone, and does not, for what follows on The Greater Wings—there is nothing else this undeniably gorgeous on the album, though there are other moments of absolutely striking and thought-provoking beauty, but within her lyricism, it is literally and figuratively just the beginning of where she will guide us throughout the album.
The song, then, musically, allowing Byrne to remain within what is, inherently, her “sound,” while still making it clear, as the other elements around her grow, and swirl delicately, that she is yearning for something more.
The Greater Wings, as an album, is a cycle of songs about love, loss, and the place where those things ultimately converge, though it offers no easy answer to how one processes that convergence. And even though Byrne cannot offer us any answers, for she, also, is searching for one, what she does offer is a poignant reflection—often bittersweet, through her fragmented, regularly ambiguous, poetic songwriting.
And “The Greater Wings,” as a mission statement, for the album, does fine Byrne standing within the center of that convergence, looking at both the way the love toward, and loss, of a specific person (her friend, at times roommate, and regular collaborator Eric Littmann) as effected her—what it means to grieve, and what it means to long for a kind of joy in remembrance during these moments where we are grief-stricken.
“I drank the air to be nearer to you,” she sings in the song’s delicate opening line—extraordinary in just how literate and sentimental it is, and what it vividly conveys; then, later in the second verse, she sings a line that is as memorable, or weighty, if not more so—“For these are not ordinary moments, but the circle that I’ve traced in the palm of my hand.”
And perhaps what is most impressive, or lingering, about “The Greater Wing” is the melody from within the chorus—the moment when the song, as a whole, begins to climb gradually, gracefully, and beautifully, carried up by the string arrangement, as well as the surprisingly catchy (and it does feel weird to use the word catchy, here, in a song like this) melody that Byrne sings the chorus in. “Name my grief to let it sing,” she utters, before allowing her voice to open up slightly into a higher range, letting it soar. “To carry you up on the greater wings.”
“The Greater Wing,” as a song, is about remembrance—moments of joy, colliding with the sorrow that comes with loss. And even within the gravity of the song, and everything it conveys about who we love, how we love them, and how we ultimately are called to grieve them, Byrne has created an astounding statement of beauty that does, rather surprisingly, welcome us with its warmth, and offers us a kind of comfort.
“Loveher” - Romy
It’s just some things are for us.
The first thing you hear, outside of the instantaneously unrelenting beat, the hint of a jittery cymbal clatter, and the twinkling of airy piano chords, is Romy Madley Croft asking for the track to be turned up just a “little more” in her headphones, as she then warms up her voice briefly, before settling into the smoldering range that she delivers the song’s vivid opening line with.
And I have, in the past, when writing about the idea of a “love song,” have come to understand that it is a somewhat broad descriptor. There are love songs, but there are also what I would call “songs about love”—and both ultimately detail the state of being, in myriad ways.
Her debut album as a solo artist, Mid Air, gives Madely Croft the opportunity to write both—there are a number of songs on the album that are inherently love songs. And there are songs that are about love—like, the different and often complicated elements that come with the state of being.
And there are the places where those two similar yet distinct things converge—the similarities and differences blurring into one, which is where Madley Croft finds herself on the album’s number of songs that are about love.
And there are love songs, sure, and there is a place where those two similar things with minor distinctions converge, but there are also places where they differ. And on the album’s shimmering, kaleidoscopic, and dizzying opening track, fittingly titled “Loveher” (stylized as one word), she is operating from that convergence.
It is a love song, because of its sentiments, looking at it without going into greater detail. But it is also a song about love, because of the kind of love—specifically the kind of feelings, and part of loving someone—it depicts so well.
And she does it throughout a majority of the songs included on Mid Air, but one of the things that is so impressive about “Loveher” is the tension and release of melancholy and lust that Madley Croft effortlessly finds, as she allows the song, and those dueling sentiments, to gradually build, and then ascend to dazzling heights.
“Loveher”’s opening line isn’t sung in a whisper, but there is an intentional hushed sense of intimacy in how her voice arrives over the song’s vibrant arranging. “Dance with me shoulder to shoulder,” she coos. “Never in the world have two others been closer—closer than us.”
And it is a bold declaration—“Loveher,” as a song, serving as a thesis statement for the songs that will follow, and all that they will explore in terms of the balance of melancholy and lust, and where those things might collide, or overlap, and what, then, forms within the center.
“Hold my hand under the table. It’s not that I’m not proud in the company of strangers,” she assures this off-stage character. “It’s just some things are for us.”
Something that I have tried to have more of an appreciation for, lately, w/r/t listening to pop music, is the enjoyment of a “vibe-based” song—and the understanding that not every song includes lyrics that must be analyzed. Some pop songs are just here to have fun—and the song, then, wants you to have fun while listening.
Madley Croft, on “Loveher,” again, as she found the space between tension and release with the right amount of lust and melancholy, the song itself walks the line between what it demands of the listener: to move along in time with the rhythm, or to pour over the emotionally evocative sentiments in the short verse, and chorus, that are repeated throughout.
As the song continues to build, toward the moment when Madley Croft lets it go and sends it out spiraling and shimmering onto the dance floor, if there was any hesitation, or if her sentiments seemed tentative within the first few lines of the song, it is within the chorus when she opens herself up more. “Lover, you know when they ask me, I’ll tell them,” she assures. “Won’t be ashamed—no, I can’t sit to tell them. Lover, I love her, I love her…”
And it is within the chorus, when she blurs the lines of convergence between a tender, or sweet kind of affection, and a hazy lust—“See in her eyes that she’s lost in the moment,” Madley Croft observes of her partner. “Holding on tight‚—and all that I know is lover, I love her…”
Like the album it is pulled from, which is an absolute joy from beginning to end, “Loveher,” is a marvel sonically—a flawless homage to the house-oriented club sound of the early 1990s, as well as how, with ease, Madley Croft manages to honestly and earnestly write about two extremes of a similar emotion, and doing so with a soft kind of melancholy draped over it all, creating something that, even in how slickly produced and structured it is musically, is extraordinarily human.
“Shy Boy” - Carly Rae Jepsen
I admit that I was waiting for you…
Something that I have found fascinating about Carly Rae Jepsen for upwards of a decade now is how much material she writes, and records, when she is working on an album. And there is a mythology, I think, of sorts, around this—around the amount of material that makes the final cut for an album; the material that she saves and, now, has made a habit of releasing as companion piece around a year later; and the material that may never see the light of day, but is often discussed or speculated on, amongst her fans, on the internet.
And the thing about writing, regardless of whether it is songwriting, fiction, essays, or creative non-fiction—whatever, really, but the thing is that, if you write something that you become attached to, you should feel empowered to use it, or elements of it, elsewhere, as you are able, and if you are able.
These early drafts, or iterations of the song, are well documented amongst Jepsen’s fanbase, and leaked recordings of the songs are relatively easy to find online, and this final version of “Shy Boy” finds Jepsen moving away from the bright, 80s-inspired pop she had embraced on Emotion, and heading further toward a hazy, slithering, post-disco sound.
I have, in the past, and perhaps erroneously, referred to some of Jepsen’s output as “wholesome.” And what I mean by that is, yes, she does often write about desire, or the want of another, but she has done so in a way that remains relatively coy and flirtatious—her lyrics are often suggestive, leaving enough to the imagination of the listener. Maybe wholesome is the wrong word, but she, comparatively, is not as outwardly ribald as other performers operating within the genre.
And there is a very sultry, flirtatious, and playful nature to “Shy Boy,” not coming on too strong because, as the title suggests, this boy is, apparently, quite shy—but coming on just strong enough to make her intentions known.
The part of “Shy Boy” that has been carried over, in terms of lyrics, from words Jepsen penned in practically another lifetime, are the two lines that arrive in the portion right before the chorus—“It’s like this—I put you on the list. So come downtown if you’re around,” which, at the time, was a narrative she had created after meeting someone who she had invited to come to one of her pub shows in Vancouver.
No longer as obviously structured around a performance in a tiny venue, “Shy Boy” takes place presumably in a dance club—“You’re pretty, we’re drinking, so I say what I’m thinking,” Jepsen begins toward the object of her desire within the first line. “‘How come everybody’s dancing but you?’,” she asks.
Musically, “Shy Boy” is built around a smolder, before it builds, and then explodes in the dazzling chorus, and that is where she, perhaps, as it is implied, moves out of her oscillation in flirtation and desire, and, in time with the borderline scuzzy, synth-heavy instrumentation, pulsates and slinks into a place that is, surprisingly much more forward and lusty.
“Shy boy, stir me up,” Jepsen exclaims as the chorus hits. “I get a little something from your morning cup.” Then, just a few lines later, “You didn’t even know you got the Midas touch.”
“Shy Boy” ends, more or less, with Jepsen making the command, “You can touch my body,” which, like the very forward nature of the chorus, is a bit of a surprise. And, like a bulk of Jepsen’s canonical work, which operates from within what has been called “The Kingdom of Desire,” where she brings you right up to the moment that something seems like it is going to happen, but rarely, if ever, do we learn what occurs at the moment that follows—here, we never know if this request is followed through on.
For her sake, though, I hope it was.
“Tantrum” - Madeline The Person
I’ve never been this lonely, so maybe we should kiss—I don’t even have to tell my therapist…
Something that I have known for a while, I think, about pop music, but have only recently really been able to clearly articulate, and specifically articulate why it is something I like so much, or think it is a genuinely interesting and often clever songwriting device, is the ability to juxtapose lyrics that are inherently bleak, or dark, and then gently place them on top of an arrangement, or a melody that is bright or dazzling—or, at the very least, is wildly infectious.
Infectious to the point that, yes, parts of the song work their way into your head and stay there—there is a good chance that is what the song, at least in part, is supposed to do; but also infectious to the point that it does take a few listens for the heart of the song—whatever sadness, or bleakness, is buried within, to be revealed.
There is a startling amount of desperation that Madeline Holste is trying to outrun found within the fabric of “Tantrum,” but within that desperation, often visceral and seething, the further into the song she pulls you, those feelings are offset by an atmosphere of gentle whimsy—something that helps soften the sharp edges of her spiraling.
Holste has been releasing music under the moniker Madeline The Person since the beginning of 2020, and signed with Warner Brothers the following year when she began issuing a series of EPs—Chapter 4: The End, her most recent, includes “Tantrum” tucked in as the closing track.
In her very early 20s, as a performer, Holste leans into a kind of kaleidoscopic, youthful exuberance—her appearance is often bold, exaggerated, and cartoonish both on stage, as well as on the artwork for the three other EPs she has issued. And that exuberance, and exaggerated persona do find their way into her material at times —there is something inherently “cutesy” about “Tantrum” in both how it quietly bounces along early on, and within the melody that it finds by the time it grows into something much, much larger that absolutely shimmers with pure pop perfection.
And there is, of course, something comforting, and alluring, about the very idea of throwing a tantrum—of raising your voice. Of causing a scene. Of screaming. Whatever the reason—frustration, anger, sadness. All of the above.
I think about how young children, uncertain how to handle, or process, their feelings, can begin to howl and cry without warning. And I think about how, after a certain age, a sudden onset of howling, or crying, or throwing a tantrum, is socially unacceptable, despite the fact, that, more than likely, that feeling to just let our emotions blind us, and take over in a moment where we give in to the noise.
“I want to throw a tantrum, I know it’s bad behavior, but it’s the only thing I haven’t tried yet,” Holste begins over the sound of muted, plucked acoustic guitar strings. “You don’t know me, and I don’t think you want to—but would you take my brain out and rinse it in soapy water?,” she continues, asking an off-stage character—not an antagonist per se, but someone who, within in this moment, she identifies as the object of her affection. Or, at least, someone who will meet her where she is, and follow her down the further she may end up.
The real delight in “Tantrum” comes in the lead-up to the chorus and the way Holste carries a single word from one line to another as the song takes off into its catchy, bold, delicate shimmer, even as her desperation for connection and seemingly escape herself, grows. “I’ve never been this lonely, so maybe we should kiss—I don’t even have to tell my therapist,” she sings with a smirk before adding, “I wanna fuck my life up. I wanna fuck yours too. So let’s do all the things we know we shouldn’t do.”
And it is the “do,” then, that she lifts over from one part of the song, to the next, to begin the chorus. “Do you wanna run away and steal a hot air balloon?,” she asks, before contrasting the implied fantastical nature of stealing a hot air balloon as a method of transportation, with the following line: “Travel into the sky and fall to Earth far too soon.”
It’s in the second verse where Holste encourages this other person to throw a tantrum similar to hers—“I think it would be gorgeous,” she observes. “I wonder if it’s something that you’ve tried yet,” she continues, before walking the line between coy and unhinged—“I don’t know you, but I think I want to. You seem like the kind of person who would flee the country.”
“Tantrum” does not run the risk of overstaying its welcome—never ceasing its forward and tumbling momentum, and running a spry two and a half minutes before Holste reaches the conclusion. And in the conclusion of the song, there is no clear resolution for her, the object of her affection, the desperation to feel something, and the need for escape they are both trying to grasp. She admits, though maybe would prefer not to fully acknowledge, that these attempts to escape, or grasp for something more, are not the smartest.
But in that admission, Holste oscillates, as we, the listener, perhaps do too, between the morality of seeing a choice we’ve made as poor, or a decision as not then best, with giving in to a desire, or an urge, or a moment that is uncharacteristic, and lifts us temporarily out of our place of comfort—“I’ve never felt more alive,” she sings in the last line of the bridge, and at the end of each chorus, after rattling off all of the things one could lose within the effort to outrun one’s self (time, money, mind), she makes the quiet aside that keeps her, and perhaps us, as listeners too, returning to that giving into an impulse—“That would be kinda nice.”
That would be kinda nice.
“Window Washer Blues” - Hayden
We’re always outside, looking through
And I think this would have been around two years ago—maybe more, truthfully, but it would have been around two years ago when I was finally able to put a name to, or articulate a feeling, a little better than I had in the past.
Recently, though, in a conversation with my closest friend where this did come up, I told her that I often feel like I am just fading away.
Fading away within rooms where my in-laws have gathered; fading away when I run into someone I perhaps once worked with; fading away when I try to reconnect with someone who I have not done the best job of remaining in touch with regularly.
We’re always outside, looking through.
Slowly slowly fading further and further away.
I’ve followed Hayden Desser’s career, as best as I have been able to, for upward of 27 years, when I was first introduced to him through the song he co-wrote and recorded for the Steve Buscemi film Trees Lounge—and his 1998 album, The Closer I Get, remains one of my favorite records of all time.
The moody centerpiece of Are We Good, his first album in nearly a decade, Desser has never recorded anything as haunting, as devastating, and poignant in its simple, observational beauty as “Window Washer Blues.” The album itself, the culmination of living through the pandemic, and caring for a child who has developmental disabilities, finds Desser writing about a number of different domestic scenes—perhaps the album’s titular question, when asked in song, is the one with the most weight attached to it, but it is “Window Washer Blues” that was the most emotionally devastating for me as effortlessly he paints a vivid portrait of a terrible sense of isolation, putting into words what I had found such difficulty doing for so long.
Less than three minutes in length, the silences that hang in between the notes are just as important or integral to the feeling that the song is trying to convey as the sound of Desser’s fingers pressing down on the piano key. Recorded in such a way that you can hear every creak from the bench he is sitting on, Desser plays a somber, gorgeous melody out on a cavernous, ancient-sounding piano, and is joined by a slow-moving, warm, and sorrowful string accompaniment that gradually slides in just underneath his weathered, comforting voice.
The writing within “Window Washer Blues” occurs like snapshots—brief, but very eloquently described moments in time, that are intended to create, within the world of the song, a larger but unspoken picture. “One day, work lent you a drone,” he begins, his voice heavy with introspection. “I took the kids out to the lawn. It lifted off, and went up high, but disappeared into the sky.”
And it is in the chorus of the song where Desser does say so much with so few words. “We got the window washer blues,” he explains. “We’re on the outside looking through…looking in is all we do.”
There is no resolution at the end of “Window Washer Blues,” but perhaps there is nothing to truly resolve—it doesn’t implicitly ask a question, but it does ask something of us, as listeners, to think, or to put ourselves in this kind of experience, whether it is one we are unfamiliar with, or, if you are like me, one we find ourselves in regularly.
Slowly slowly fading further and further away.
We’re always on the outside, looking through—with something just out of reach that, inevitably, is preventing us from a connection.
As thoughtful and compelling as it is emotionally eviscerating, “Window Washer Blues” gives a name, or some kind of defining characteristic, to an absolutely terrible and chilling kind of loneliness.
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