Month: February 2024

I adore Billie. I’ve seen no evidence to change the fact that I think she’s one of the most authentic famous people out there. Interviews, interactions with fans, talking about her struggle with her body, coming out, everything. She’s incredible. I can’t believe she’s 22. Like, what?

“I don’t wanna talk right now, I just wanna watch TV, I’ll stay in the pool and drown, so I don’t have to watch you leave, I put on “Survivor” just to watch somebody suffer, maybe I should get some sleep, sinking in the sofa while they all betray each other, what’s the point of anything?

The guitar here is gorgeous and the song-writing is amazing. 

“Don’t know where you are right now, did you see me on TV?, I’ll try not to starve myself, just because you’re mad at me, and I’ll be in denial for at least a little while, what about the plans we made? The internet’s gone wild watching movie stars on trial, while they’re overturning Roe v Wade”

Past this point things are just a bit heartbreaking. Some hard self-reflecting going on. 

What I LOVE about this song is the ending though. Heartbreaking as it is to think of it as just Billie singing it, it becomes a chorus of voices chanting:

“maybe I, maybe I, maybe I’m the problem”.

In my opinion, that stylistic choice is a nod that a ton of people experience these feelings and they aren’t unique to us. In my mind, that’s talking about mental health in such an important way…publicly. We go right back to that idea of that we are all going through shit, sometimes the same shit, and it’s silly that we don’t talk about the shared shit more. 

If you’ve got shit you need to talk about, feel free to drop a line. 

Jesse@everything-etc.com

Love you! Don’t let the song get you down. :D Have a great day!

We’re now beyond 10% done with this project. That simultaneously made me feel like we had a lot of road to travel and surprised at the amount of road we’ve already traveled…which then made me think of how fast a 1/10 of this year has gone…food for thought.

Pell is one of my favorite Hip Hop discoveries from last year. Pell”s style is more Electro-Hop. Whatever you wanna label it as, Pell’s delivery stands out from a modern Hip Hop scene that feels like mumble-rap and Drake sometimes. I’m always eager to find new artists to jam to.

The intro reminds me of old-school video gaming…and/or Stranger Things.  Maybe that’s where our title comes from? Did I solve the Rubik’s Cube?

The lyrics have themes of growth…not surprisingly a familiar theme on the list. I also like though that’s it’s a little…cocky or arrogant? I think we all need to have a slight view of ourselves in that light if only for the “I got this” element. Celebrate yourself. You’re a big deal.

“Tomorrow ain’t promised I’ll live my life honest with no interruptions, fuck repercussions I’m living and learnin’, workin’ and earnin’ and sharin’ my sermon, and brothers feel threatened but that don’t concern me, I’m way too high up for them birds to deter me, fuck repercussions I’m livin’ and learnin’, New Orleans dreamin’ while sippin’ on bourbon, it’s tasty but don’t abuse it you heard me, wish I could go back but the future look perfect”

I hope you enjoy this song by Pell. We’ll see him again. 

The goal for today is to sent an intention to be overtly nice today. Not OVERLY nice. Overtly. Eye-contact, smile, holding doors, the whole shebang. Report back. Love you.

I think this song is probably right up the ballpark of what my friend Mike may have identified as one of my musical “tells”, or patterns emerging in my list. I think female vocals over any sort of electronic beat rates very high on the popularity list for me. 

BANKS seems to have this pull-no-punches grittiness to her vocals and lyrics. They are raw and honest. This one is an anthem for anyone that’s ever been hurt by another though.

“Tell me what you want from me, I think you need a weaker girl, Kind of like the girl I used to be, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah (that’s 7 yeahs, if you’re wondering), I’ma let you do what you wanna do, I’ma let you say what you wanna say, ’cause I’ma need a bad motherfucker like me”

“I’ma need a bad motherfucker like me” implies a lot of amazing things in the situation, most notably being that whoever hurt you is NOT a bad motherfucker. Immediately outclassing them, nice. 

Second, it implies that we’re finally standing up for ourselves, right? We’ve discovered something about ourselves…that we’ve just about had it with this bullshit. DEFCON1, NUCLEAR WAR IMMINENT.

There’s something cathartic about that massive explosion too. The releasing of that negative energy that’s been stewing inside you. Expelling that leads to one of the deepest exhales you’ve felt in a long time. 

Thirdly, it implies we have raised our standards. We’ve figured out our own worth and now won’t accept anything below it. Instant win. 

It’s a process necessary for growth in those situations. It’s almost like you manifest super-human powers after this growth. Once you’ve gotten out from under the yoke of a bad situation, you’re much less likely to end up in that bad situation again. Smarter. Stronger. Evolved.

“I let you go, you can tell ’em something ’bout the way you moved on, I let you go, tell ’em you were made about the way I grew strong, oh, nah nah”

Go be a bad motherfucker today! Thanks for reading. Enjoy BANKS!

Another example of how it’s really hard to shoehorn this band into a genre. Every song, if you listen close to try and decern each part that makes the whole, you know, shift your focus from one part to another as you listen. I know, yes, you can do this for every song, but there’s something about the amalgamation that RKS creates that is super special and impressive to me. 

Coupled with the amazingly varied vocal talents of lead sing Ela Melo, and we just have a great mix honestly. It’s a delicious sound salad. 

“High as hell, feeling fine, nothing bad but nothing kind, not a word from me, at least nothing you would mind, in my head, in my head, I get lonely sometimes.”

Here’s another great set of lyrics, over what is my favorite part of the song:

“I’m nothing more than a page unwritten blowing on the pavement, blowing in the wind, you win a lot, and lose just a little bit more than you gained in the end, but God, I wish that I, was better than I am, but no luck, no love, no Gospel I could understand, I’m nothing that you ever wanted to lean on, yeah, but even then…”

There’s a high level of poetic writing present in RKS songs. Super narrative and descriptive. Honestly one of my favorite parts of them. Smart lyrics go far with me as we’ve seen with our Hip Hop entries.

How about that driving drum beat and haunting vocals starting with “when you find an old picture of us…”? Just incredible energy. I find this song both regretful and rebellious, which isn’t really a combo you get very often and I think that’s describes RKS’s sound to a tee. They are a kaleidoscope of sound that you don’t hear very often.

Hope you’re rocking your day today. If not, remember, we control the weather in our immediate vicinity! Love you, be good, do good. Thanks for reading.

Sometimes songs come to you in a special way. This particular bop came to me from a random after-midnight text from my amazing niece, Ava. If you know me at all, you know that Ava and her brother Jack are pretty near the center of my universe. When this song arrived via text with “I feel like you’d like this…” I am pretty sure my heart grew two sizes Grinch-style. When you are so passionate about sharing new music with others, when someone does it to you, it means an awful lot. Make it someone as important to me as Ava, and it really did make my month.

Ava hit it out the park.

“It’s a light relief from a bad habit, it’s my mother’s cooking when I can’t have it, it’s the last train home from a day trippin’, it’s the place I’ll go when I start slippin’, darling, won’t you bring me home.”

This is the only song these guys have on Spotify. 2.6 million listens…I’m at least 20 of them. :)

We all have that place or places that embodies the concept of “home” for us. The places where we exhale and let the weight slide off of our shoulders a little bit. It might not even be your home, could just be a room in it. Could be somewhere outside of it. I think one of mine is a shaded hammock in the backyard with a book in the summer. 

Sometimes home is a person. Sometimes it’s an animal. Sometimes it’s an activity. 

We need to pay more attention to the things that let us exhale. The things that loosen that knot in our chest a little. Those are the things we need to LEAN INTO. To me, it’s a signal that something is authentic to you. When you end up in that flow state because you were “home”. 

I love that this song is a celebration of that. Comfort, at the micro everyday level I think is a good thing. Comfort though at the macro level can be dangerous. 

“Comfort is a slow death.”

It’s a balance of seeking experiences that take us outside our comfort zone, and retreating to it when we need it. Actively search for new things and experiences. Get the special. Join that class. Talk to that person. Everything we experience is a lesson. Always be learning. Like Ted Lasso says though, “be curious…not judgmental.”

A big big thank you goes out to my Ava-Bean for sending me this song. I definitely feel like you and I are kindred spirits. Looking forward to the rest of my days with you in them!

Thanks for reading everyone. Enjoy the jam. BE BRAVE TODAY.

This Swedish girl’s voice is as beautiful as Sweden itself. You aren’t ready for her beautiful high notes because I was not either. It’s birdsong. She sings the titular word as delicately as porcelain actually is.

“What if I dropped, dropped the steerin’ wheel, closed my eyes, drove, drove faster, I’m like porcelain, when I love you, I, I know it, just about a million ways to harm you, all the things I shouldn’t say, are the things that when I wanna make you happy, only comes out of me, we have got the power of destruction, you can always let it fall, but when we try to work on something solid, it’s too goddamn hard”

Also, this album art…

To me this song is about having a relationship with someone you can’t stop love/hating. Things aren’t really healthy. Half the time you’re fighting. She says herself that she’s porcelain. Fragile. On the cusp of breaking. We’ve all been there, right? One stray spark is all it takes to ignite. 

“We have got the power of destruction, you can always let it fall, but when we try to work on something solid, it’s too goddamn hard”

I went back to this lyric specifically because it really just struck me as so truthful and somewhat interesting. In healthy relationships, we are all aware of the things that can hurt our Other the most. We’ve seen them be hurt by them. Could be actions, could be words, whatever. We’ve seen what weakens them.

At any time we are capable of weaponizing those nuclear weapons. In unhealthy relationships, these are the wounds that assholes know how to stick their fingers in, right?

It honestly reminds me of the detente (how’s that for a school social studies vocabulary word!) that exists between nations with nuclear weapons. We hold that power of destruction for our Other. Why am I capitalizing Other? 

I hope you enjoyed this song. It really is a beautiful and kind of haunting performance to me. 

Phoebe is absolutely one of my favorites. There’s something about that melancholy voice of hers that just stops me cold. So imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon her cover of Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters.

Both of these performances are fantastic. Obviously the Metallica/James Hetfield version has their/his sinister sound to it. Phoebe’s a more ethereal version. Yet they both share that pang, right? I think the Bridgers version is faithful to the original. It’s part of what I love about music really. You can take one song and turn it on it’s head musically, yet still convey those same emotions as the original. Pretty magical, if you ask me.

“Never opened myself this way, life is ours, we live it our way, all these words I don’t just say, and nothing else matters, trust I seek and I find in you, every day for us something new, open mind for a different view, and nothing else matters”

The lyrics are very poetic for what I would normally expect from my brain’s understanding of Metallica. Really beautiful stuff. I also love those cascading strings that appear as we transition into the latter 1/3 of the song.

“So close, no matter how far, couldn’t be much more from the heart, forever trusting who we are, and nothing else matters”

Given how popular the song is on Spotify for Metallica (over 1-billion listens…they made like $100 from that!), I really think I need to dive into their stuff soon. I have a noobian level knowledge of their catalog. I was just never into the harder rock stuff growing up. Looking forward to dipping a toe in those waters for sure.

I hope you enjoy the juxtaposition of these two performances but also the commonality that exists between them! Wish society was more like that. Have a great day/afternoon/night whenever you’re reading this! Thanks again for going on this journey with me!