It’s been awhile, I am known to say, neglecting the things that make me whole is another sliver of proof that I’m losing myself again. Change is addicting, but terrifying, and though I often long for it, I find myself dreading it lately. Lack of control has never been comfortable to me. Trauma residue, response, or whatever the therapy-term is this year. I know why I feel this way, I know where the bodies are buried, and which drawer holds all the skeletons, all the ghosts. Still I am haunted. Still I am lost. Still I am tripping and falling, making a mess of all of it. Making a mess of me.
Today’s mess is soundtracked by these five songs:
GIVE ME FIVE…JUNE 18, 2022
Available to listen on Spotify and YouTube
SONG 1: “STREET YOU LIVE ON” (LIVE) BY REMI WOLF
“I avoid the street that you live on.
You’re a magnet pulling my feet and my head off.
And I scramble my brain,
wasting away,
looking for ways that I can avoid you –
to pull the weeds,
suck the venom.”
Remi is one of my favorite artist discovery of 2022. I’ve fallen harder for her voice, her songwriting, and her unique song-style ever since seeing her as one of Liz Phair’s openers at the GENX show a few months back. I’ve been teaching my younger daughter to drive this week, and for most early morning lessons we’ve been listening to the deluxe version of Remi’s album, Juno. This live, acoustic-y version of “Street You Live On” is one of my current can’t get enough of favorites.
Remi’s lyrics are some of my favorites, but also, the personality that comes through here songs. Funky, quirky (though I kind of despise that “manic pixie dream” word), relatable, real, fun, and I don’t know, someone you’d like to kick back and watch a bad horror movie with while snacking on red vine licorice – but in a song.
To hear more of Remi Wolf, and support her music, click HERE.
SONG 2: “CHOREOMANIA” BY FLORENCE + THE MACHINE
“You said that rock and roll is dead,
but is that just because it has not been resurrected in your image?
Like if Jesus came back,
but in a beautiful dress,
and all the evangelicals were like, “Oh, yes””
The lyrics above hit deep in me, under my bones and skin, inside the interior of my soul, or self, or core of who I am. Music is an ever-evolving art that is never dead to me. I’m never done discovering new music, new sounds, genres, feelings, all of it. I’m always hungry for more. And Jesus, in a beautiful dress, like Cinderella, or a Gothic Ball Queen, yes, oh yes, my gender-fluid heart says “oh, yes”.
I’ve loved Florence since “Dog Days are Over”. I remember vividly seeing her play with crutches at a KROQ summer show. Her songs “Ship to Wreck” and “Hunger” felt so relatable they brought me to tears the first time I heard them (they both still do). And this song, from her latest release, it is already becoming part of me.
For more Florence, dance on over HERE.
SONG 3: “THE WOMAN I AM” (ACOUSTIC) BY AURORA
“I spend a lot of time wondering why there’s I owe you in you and I.
With innocent devotion to the fiction living up in the sky.
The woman who I am is taken back to nothing.
The woman I am is taken back to nothing.”
That first line, the I owe you in you and I, stings to sing-a-long to. It harkens on things I’m tangling with in therapy, and in my self-recovery. The line between someone else’s needs and my own are foggier than a January morning in Liverpool. I feel like I’m tearing apart layers and layers of unhappiness, exposing raw vulnerable want in the process, but something stops me. Covers me. A duvet of owing, of right things, of obligation in love. I can’t put my finger on it, not exactly what I’m trying to see, feel, understand. But, something about this song pokes at it, leaves scratches, and stings my throat as I sing.
To hear more from AURORA, and not just the stinging parts of a song, go HERE.
SONG 4: “killer” by FKA twigs
“I don’t wanna die for love,
but a holy love,
that one and only love –
my life is worthy of.”
Cupid and Psyche in reverse. Death by love, murderous passion, killer lovers. Fiction is full of them, isn’t it? Think on the romantic tragedies, the musical love stories that leave you sobbing in the end. Satine and Christian, Juliet and Romeo, Christine and her Phantom. I love FKA’s voice, the fantasy in it, the myth, the drama, the beauty. It feels like falling in a lethal kind of love, this song does, to me.
I’m so obsessed with this new single.
For more FKA twigs, spin on over HERE.
SONG 5: “EVENING STAR” BY CANNONS
“I wanna take you high,
into the night.
Like the stars in the sky,
we could live out our lives.”
My dear friend/solstice-soul brother sent me a link to a new playlist he made, and this was the opening song. I’d been wrapped up in the post-shock of being laid off from a job that I’d started out loving, but had turned toxic, and within that sorrow greyness I’d caught a strong case of writer’s block. Music block, too. I had pulled away from music, and from creating, even distancing myself from my TikTok song-a-day I’d started. But this song, from my magical soul brother gifted me back music, and woke my voice back up. So yes, this had to be part of my five songs for today.
I wonder what the rest of the playlist of songs will open up to me?
Cannons are a new discovery. They have a new wave/new romantic feel to them. Something akin to dancing at Hot Lava in Hollywood in 1989, and all the magic – dark and light – that came from those nights.
To hear more from Cannons press HERE and hear more.
