Today is my first dedicated Writing Day since we got back to Germany. Anyone could have predicted this, but this substack has immediately become an avenue of procrastination for me. This morning I’m thinking a lot about two things other writers have said.
The first is Caroline Calloway saying on the rehash podcast that instagram captions can be just as insightful and moving as a novel and should be treated with the same level of seriousness and acclaim. A concept that outrages me, except when I need to write and can’t, at which point it becomes a benediction. Just one good sentence! That’s basically the same as a whole good book!
The second is my friend Yael, who said in Melbourne that returning to writing after a break is the same as trying to run a 5k with no training. You can’t expect to fall right into the rhythm; you will find yourself at the end of the street, hunched over out of breath with your hands on your knees.
Anyway, my goal today is to write 1000 words, be they crap or not, and I’m panicking. I spent longer than necessary curating this playlist and now I’ve gone immediately into the write-up without even opening a doc for the actual work. I’m going to open cold turkey, get this on shuffle repeat, and I’m only allowed to finish this substack once those 1000 are on the page.
I did it. 1000 awful words down, and I owe it all to Addison Rae. Switched on Pop recently did a pretty good episode on Addison Rae’s four new singles, each of which are bizarre and charming in their own specific ways. I have been trying to put together my own explanation for why her music appeals to me so much. Eric Torres puts it well:
“it helps immensely that her featherlight music doubles as a smooth-brain release from the anhedonia of day-to-day life.”
Those breathy vocals, the understated synths, the throwback aesthetic which does not demand any knowledge of musical history in order to delight in its nostalgia. Her music is like cherry melatonin. I could compare Addison Rae to my previous take on Role Model, two popstars who seem algorithmically designed to appeal, but I think Addison is taking more risks and demonstrating more personality and so it seems unfair to lump them together. Headphones On has been on repeat ever since it came out. I’ve been unable to escape from that lazy beat, and while I was a big fan of Diet Pepsi’s campy, whimsical sexiness I actually think Headphones On is the more seductive of the two. A lot has been made of the vulnerability of these lyrics, especially the second verse (wish my mom and dad could have been in love) but my favorite moment is probably the whisper-talk-singing bridge, an instagram-caption-esque affirmation that almost validates Caroline Calloway’s point.
Anyway, I threw Addison Rae on this playlist to calm myself down enough to write, and then decided to pursue that theme. Vagabon is not necessarily a chill out artist but I have kept Water Me Down on my chill out roster for several years now. I love plinky synths and I love a clean, crisp, picked out beat, and every time her voice extends out of its clean register to draw out a note. It’s a song that feels completely in control of itself. Spiritually it has a lot in common with Indigo de Souza’s Boys, though I think de Souza gives up a little more control. Boys is rambly and switches gears a few times throughout, a song that feels very much like drifting down a winding road with your hand dangling out the window. Every so often you bang your wrist on the side of the door. I was supposed to go and see her play live in Berlin last year and ended up flaking out, which I still regret now. Come back to Berlin Indigo I promise I’ll show up.
I was on LSD when I saved that family, and I was on LSD at all the talk shows after.
Probably one of the reasons I like The Front Bottoms so much is that their lyrics are so nonsensical. I would say maybe 40% of their songs have a coherent story-line, if I’m being generous. I remember watching an interview with Brian Sella once where he’s just going through his notebooks, pages and pages of random lyric ideas and statements, and he admits quite cheerfully that he does whatever he likes with them in the songs. There’s no need to be clear about what you mean. This is great, because it makes it very easy for me to project whatever meaning I like onto their songs. Tie Dye Dragon is, at its most basic level, a song about being a loser. Being a depressed loser. Being a depressed lost loser. Being a depressed lost old loser. And getting stoned. It’s such a dumb song with such a dumb opening line and yet sometimes when we hit the bridge I’m like, maybe this is actually a work of tortured genius. Guided by confused light, I am guided by confused light.
I’m going to go and try to write another 1000 words now. I haven’t said much about what I’m actually writing this time because I don’t want to: it’s a secret. I will say that for the rest of the week I’m going to keep listening to Ryan Hurd’s new Divorced Guy Opus, Midwest Rock and Roll. He’s really the king of sad dude breakup songs, and Funerals fit best onto this deliberately lowkey playlist, but really his over dramatic anguish is the reason I keep coming back. I’ve often thought if I could request one cover by one artist for free it would be to hear Taylor Swift do a version of Tab With My Name On It.
I’m signing off by admitting that I discovered the song by Zhou Xun via this extremely horny Vogue short film that came out in 2020 and that has been sitting in the back of my mind ever since. It was so cruel of them to drop this during lockdown. An age gap jazz bar doomed fingertips romance pretty boy lipstick lady soft lighting longing glances masterpiece: we were powerless. I still really love this song, especially the bubbling piano and her impossible voice, hoarse and smooth all in one. It tastes like a cocktail at the end of the day.