everything, etc.

This song, for me, was a time machine to junior year bumping to Hip-Hop circa 2000. A golden age.

Back then, one of the best parts of the CD-R/Napster/Limewire days, was just searching for one rapper, and finding a ton of files where they did a collab with another rapper. Often you’d find a ton of songs that had like 9 guys rapping over the same beat on it. I don’t remember when that died off, but fuck did we lose that exchange!

When I heard this song, I was instantly transported back to being 17, in my room, in veritable metropolis Redford, NY, bumping Hip Hop loud and annoying my parents.

The sweet delivery of A$AP Rocky in this first verse hits hardest for me in the verse that starts with:

“Bag made of Goyard…

Cheff’in like I’m Boyar, Dee… Hehe.

I just love that subway train beat throughout that all these guys rap over. It’s the closet this 42 yr old Redford, NY redneck will get to the “STREETS”. The beat is grimy. Like all that collected dirt and STUFF around train tracks in the NYC subway. Like…FILTHY. That’s what this beat somehow gets across, right?!

It’s a great example of the best collaboration tracks from almost 25 years?! ago. (DEAR LORD). Such an awesome sensory experience to be taken on a tour of these artists different styles and swagger. Changing cadence in the middle of lines? It’s ridiculous.

Enjoy it for what it is…an reverent ode to an eon past. They don’t make them like this anymore…unless A$AP Rocky and Co. are on the track.

Have a fantastic fuckin’ day. Love you.

Slow and soft beats building to big crashes and drops. You love to hear it.

So, we don’t come to this party for deep lyrics or complicated guitar picking. This is an amusement park ride of dance energy. Starting off slow and building, building, building, DROP. Gets me every time.

So today, I just want you to take 4 minutes out of your day, go into whatever room you can play this loudest, and just MOVE for 4 minutes. Like, LET SHIT OUT. I mean like interpretive dance!

Make it work for you. Love you lots. Be good, do good.

Hello again, Zach!

This song hooked me from the “if you need a tourniquet, or if you wanna turn and quit, know that I’ll be by your side”. Such a great lyric. I know it’s silly to say this, because they are literally made to match, but I feel like there’s something special between the lyrics of this song, and the song itself. We run through such a gamut of emotions with the instruments. This is a REALLY good song to listen to in that way I described before where you listen to one specific instrument the whole playthrough.

“There’s delays on the planes out of Eastern Montana, where you told me you were leavin’ from, you’ve been stabbed in the back and the rest of your body, won’t you tell me where you’re bleedin’ from?, if you need a tourniquet or if you wanna turn and quit, know that I’ll be by your side, you bled your whole soul into things you can’t control, in a world you’ll never satisfy”

I don’t get sick of this song, and I think it’s because of the smart writing and the beautiful instrumentation of it all. From that delicate piano in the beginning to the electric guitar towards the end. It’s all just so perfectly done in my opinion.

Enjoy this song, take care of one-another, and have a great day.

300 to go! Thanks for reading.

I didn’t listen to blink much back in the day. Whatever was on the radio but I didn’t really seek them out. Other than Adam’s Song probably being the seed planted in mind that grew into my life’s mission of making everyone I come into contact with feel seen.

I lucked across this song in a exploratory jaunt through Spotify last year, and was struck by a Hoppus’ verse.

“Just a fucked-up kid with a skateboard, a cheap guitar, and Nintendo 64, trying to figure out what I stand for, fast-forward 20 years and I’m not sure, some people lock themselves in a black box, some people like to drown their sorrows in a laptop, I’m the kind of guy who walks down my street, bottling feelings deep inside me.

I felt that first lyric. I used to be the guy in the last one.

It’s relatable. For a lot of us, I’m sure.

This song, though, turns out to be a rally-cry.

“Ay, ay, I just wanna hear you say, say, that I’ma make it out someday, day, I just had to find my way, I just had to find my – , I’m trying to the this, person I never reach it, this time I admit it, denial fix my sickness”

It’s growth, and much needed. The realization that everything you’ve been through mentally to this point is a victory in itself. You’ve survived, and if that’s all you’ve been doing, it’s ok.

You got this. I love you. Be good, do good.

To recover from yesterday’s stumble where WordPress ate my post, we’re going to drop a song here today that just makes us want to move and forget about the BS!

This song has an infectious beat and a dazzlingly fun mélange of sounds. There’s funk, there’s a cool constant guitar chord structure, and there’s some captivating vocals from Jain herself.

I probably discovered this song from Tik Tok if I’m remembering right. But the story behind it is pretty cool! Miriam Makeba was a singer and songwriter, nicknamed Mama Africa, is referenced in the song with reverence. Here story is actually pretty awesome:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miriam_Makeba

The result of this song is an essentially an ode to an African Goddess of song and dance. When you listen to the song with the background that Makeba was South African and a fighter of apartheid, it makes the song even more of a call-out to the influence and character of Makeba.

“Ooohe, Makeba, Makeba ma que bella, can I get a “oohe” Makeba, makes my body dance for you”

PLEASE set aside time to dance to this song today, because I am bouncing in my computer chair writing it. TURN IT UP.

Be good, do good. Love y’all.

I am heartbroken to hear and see that my 450 word post either never saved, disappeared somehow, etc.

But, we’ll get back to business tomorrow. Please enjoy a great song from Twenty One Pilots.

Be good, do good. Much love.

Angie! It’s been a while!

“My bedroom is a disaster, my dog has got kidney failure, failure, I’ve been sitting at the bar too much, kissin’ people in my head, and saying rubbish things I should not have said, and they’re building things outside my window, everywhere I look there’s signposts, signposts, I just sit in my house making noise for fun, and I’m not moving much or proving much to anyone”

This song reminds me of those little fuzzies you see floating in the air when the bright sunlight shines through a window. That’s the vibe. A carpeted floor. Maybe some smoke in the air from a cigarette.

“How am I simultaneously on top of someone’s pedestal and also underneath someone else’s shoe, oh isn’t it a shame about the view, can anybody climb aboard this structure I have made to wrap myself around the promise that there is room? oh isn’t it a shame about the view?”

When the guitar kicks in with that lyric above and we dance-rage (which I definitely think is very different from rage-dance) until the ending outro…cathartic.

Angie does an amazing job of synthesizing relationship angst and the mental health fallout that comes with it, but also I think the blue skies that are ahead.

No matter the weather today…remember the blue skies. Even when it’s cloudy, the skies are still there behind the clouds waiting for us.

Be good, do good. Love!

This a bit of an embarrassing admission for the list. I really “discovered” Pearl Jam last year.

I’d obviously HEARD the songs before, I was like 11 when this song came out, and really did have the radio tuned to stations that played their catalog in obvious “rebellion” to my country/bluegrass/gospel upbringing.

But I didn’t…consume…Pearl Jam until last year…and this song put me on my ass. Stunned me. What a performance. What songwriting. Top-shelf.

If I had consumed this song then, do you know what kind of badass 11 year old I would be? So wizened beyond my years and so many ways. Seeing through time and space. It would’ve been amazing.

But pea-brain (essentially given how I feel like my brain just matured at 42) Jesse then didn’t have the life experiences to draw upon that I do, right? So no crazy super-powers, just an overwhelming appreciate for a song that is so purely ART.

“Sheets of empty canvas, untouched sheets of clay, were laid spread out before me, as her body once did, all five horizons revolved around her soul as the Earth to the Sun, now the air I tasted and breathe has taken a turn”

“And now my bitter hands chafe beneath the clouds, of what was everything, all the pictures had all been washed in black, tattooed everything”

…and quite possibly, in my opinion, the greatest verse of song ever written (containing the most heartbreaking set of lyrics I’ve ever encountered, experienced, endured?, etc.:

“I take a walk outside, I’m surrounded by some kids at play, I can feel their laughter, so why do I sear?, mmm, and twisted thoughts that spin, ’round my head, I’m spinning, oh-oh, I’m spinning, how quick the Sun can drop away?, and now my bitter hands cradle broken glass, of what was everything, all the pictures have all been washed in black, tattooed everything, all the love gone bad turned my world to black, tattooed all I see, all that I am, all I’ll be, yeah-yeah, oh-oh, oh-oh, ooh, I know someday you’ll have a beautiful life, I know you’ll be a star in somebody else’s sky, but why, why, why can’t it be, oh, can’t it be mine?

That’s where the bar is set people, and I don’t know if there are a set of words that can capture that feeling in such a pure way outside of what Vedder used. It is All-Time.

Enjoy this song a few times in a row. That’s how I like to do it. 😀

Be good, do good. Love.

Happy Leap Day! I wish I had a happier song to share, but, alas, I do not.

The soundscape created in this song is so…wow. The beat, the guitar, the vocals, it really felt like I was hearing something different the first time Nicolette showed it to me.

“Today I looked over my shoulder, hoping you’d be sitting there, I almost feel like I can see you, can you see me? Been trying to get life without you in it, I just can’t make no fucking sense of it, I swear a whole chunk of my body, went numb and stopped responding”

Just an amazingly poignant song about longing, right? I think MARO does a great job of making us feel what the song is about, and maybe that has to do with how the music itself is constructed. I feel like it’s been a while since I’ve used the word “authentic” to describe something (after using it a little too frequently, ha!) but there’s an authentic performance here that just drips from MARO’s delivery.

“I’m aware you had to leave someday, but I didn’t know it would be this freezing, I mean I lost all reason, and every night now, I take forever to let go, fall asleep, then I see you in my dreams, oh, they’re all the same, you come around then disappear, no”

My favorite part is probably the bridge because it feels so authentic like I mentioned but also just so succinctly summarizes the feelings that come with this kind of relationship (or ex-relationship).

“Feel anxious, feel nervous, I’m nauseous, I’m broken, I’m scared I’ll always feel this way, no, I can’t have you far away, feel empty so empty, I’m tired, I’m caving in, (I’m caving in), you took a heavy part of me, how am I supposed to live and live and live?”

When it fades back into the chorus it is such a beautifully painful transition.

It’s hard to say “please enjoy this song” when it is pretty depressing, but I bet you can see the beauty and catharsis of getting those words out of your mind and onto paper when you’re writing it. If you don’t journal, we should both start doing it. Don’t hold things in, don’t bury them. Let them out or they will fester.

I wish you well! Be good, do good. As always, thank you for taking the time out to read my ramblings. It truly means a lot and I’m having a ton of fun with this project. Looking forward to 306 more posts!

Oooooooooo, we have been so due for some guitar and some singer/songwriter vibe, haven’t we? Hit me as soon as I heard that first chord in this song. What a beautiful, beautiful song. Some of the best lyrics on the list I think!

“I sought you out, pleaded for a word, but all I hear is my heart beating, that’s all I need, all I need from you, to know that you are here with me, and I’ll sing my soul, your voice like violins, resonates within, and I’ll sing my soul, your voice like violins, pours out of my lips”

The guitar is so beautiful throughout. Definitely added this to my “want to learn” playlist. Is this the best acoustic guitar on the list so far? Who cares. Let’s enjoy it!

I don’t think we pay enough attention to our souls day to day. It seems like we tend to forget they exist or to nurture them. Everything affects this…work, relationships, weather, daily interactions, etc. My advice is to find something that speaks to you and lean into it. I’ve found a bit of that with my painting. I start off with a blank or canvas board I’ve pre-colored and just….play. Maybe that’s the secret to connecting with our souls…by doing it through play.

Don’t label yourself. “I’m not a painter”. If you paint, you’re a painter. If you sing, you’re a singer. If you dance, you’re a dancer. Hmm…I just labeled you. Maybe what I mean is don’t exclude yourself from something just because you haven’t done it before. I wasn’t a sky-diver until I jumped out of the plane, you know?

Whatever “singing your soul” looks like, I hope you can tap into it and find that which resonates with you. Maybe it starts with listening to more from the Many Rooms catalog! I hope you enjoyed this song, and the thoughts it brings, as much as I do. Just because it seems to be talking about a relationship doesn’t mean the lesson isn’t transferrable elsewhere.

Be good, do good. Love you lots.