Better Days - A week and a half removed from making this playlist to writing this blog, I've come to feel different sentiments toward the overall feel and vibe of this group of songs. As I crafted, what I thought was my most somber, pulling on my heart strings playlist, I wanted to capture the mood I was in last week, a mood that kept on nagging me. "Better Days," a long-lost favorite of mine, with its warm embrace, came back to me in a swift realization and remembrance.
With this Graham Nash hit I take off on a trip that serves to calm me, take me down from the high anxiety world of thoughts inside my mind. The feelings of love lost and not knowing what to do. I look to what Nash instructs of us and I face myself and remember better days.
Like usual, this song is much more than the lyrical content and the subject matter. Yes, those aspects drive the song to hold more meaning, but I believe that you can make a piece of music happy, sad, melancholy, uplifting, fun, and angry without even getting to the words. I'm an instrumental guy through and through and it’s the instrumentation that guides my feelings/my moods to where they want to go. "Better Days" has that rainy day appeal, that overcast feeling that makes me want to wish for the sun to shine down on me while at the same time helping me be okay with basking in my loneliness. Maybe I haven’t done enough letting go in my life and that's why I harbor such intense feelings. Hopefully, with realization, I can work towards a place where I face my struggles head on, feel their weight, and learn, adjust, and heal from them in a healthy way.
Please, enjoy one of my all-time favorite tracks. I'm sure it will make you feel some sort of emotion. Let it out and remember the better days you had. There will be more.
Such A Simple Thing - Piggy backing off the feelings above, I did a little searching for those other tracks that made me feel the same. In the plethora of playlists I've created on Spotify, I came across one filled with exactly these songs, songs I listened to and added there when I went through one of the rough patches in my last relationship.
After fighting to see eye to eye, communicating, in what you thought were effective ways, and struggling to put your finger on what exactly you were feeling, songs like these were always there. Looking back, I don't know if they were doing their job of helping to heal, they were doing a different job of distraction. "Such A Simple Thing" gave me lines, similar sentiments, and a mood I could hold onto for its five minutes, but it didn't help to carry those feelings into an effective solution/compromise. I think I'm realizing now that while I use music to make me feel better, I may be using it as a crutch in certain circumstances.
I wanted to believe that "my heart is like paper, and yours is like a flame" related directly to me. Instead, it's more complicated than that. I have my own faults that contributed towards the instability and I can't continue using these songs to escape to a world where it’s not my fault for five-minute increments and then forget when the music stops. If I keep doing that, I'll be running from myself my entire life.
"I'll get through these changes somehow"
Just My Imagination - Coming in for a smooth landing, "Just My Imagination" fits the feel of this playlist to a tee and was one of the easiest decisions once it came to mind. My love for the Temptations ebbs and flows with the attention I give them and my ability to remember the songs living in my phone rather than on the internet. I guess those songs are like old friends living their lives, happy, successful, but away from my direct contact. They might come back for the holidays or random points of the year and everything goes back to how it was when we last left it.
"Just My Imagination" is a toast to the rare optimistic side of my outlook when in this kind of mood. Don't worry, it turns self-deprecation quick and fits even better into the slots. Temptation's songs are soothing, exciting, and real. This particular track brings out a lot of emotions in me only if I let it though. On the surface it's another wonderfully constructed song with pleasing sounds and harmonies. I'll always gravitate towards the instrumentation first over the lyrics. Here, they are fighting with each other for the attention.
Today - My first impression of "Today" came from a deep dive into YouTube where my love for Woodstock guided me from old videos to new versions of songs thought I loved enough. In a cryptic, seemingly eerie video of Jefferson Airplane performing in a dimly lit room, intimate audience witnessing greatness, the band glide through my first experience with "Today."
I'll get to all the music there ever was eventually, but there are always going to be those songs or artists that slip through the cracks. My teenage obsession with the Woodstock festival guided me towards many artists I had never heard. As for Jefferson Airplane my attention had already been piqued when the hit rock band's top tracks floated around at parties, on the radio, or in movies and shows. Those deep tracks living cozily in the middle of great albums are another story. "Today" was nestled up, hidden away from my open eyes. I found it when I needed to find it and it's found its way into those awfully specific songs, like the one below, that provide a certain embrace that's altogether sad and happy.
New Slang - A song I have a distant friend like relationship with, "New Slang" pops up ever so often and everything goes right back to normal. The Shins have held an important spot in my heart many times throughout the years. I know they'll forever be there. Categorized as an iTunes band - that just means they live on my phone rather than on my Spotify app. I do not have to pay to listen to their music and that makes for a deeper connection, I think.
It'll take me a couple tries usually, but whenever this track shows face again, I break out the acoustic and start strumming along. I love the intro to this song, the fast-changing chords, the progression. It's pure beauty to the ear.
I guess I added this one to the playlist because it came up, because much like some of my relationships, it was there, and presence is apparently what does it for me. Pretty low standards. But there's another reason, closely related to my relationship status and the overwhelming feeling of loneliness, in that I enjoy it because it has those happy/sad qualities. I love music for the way it speaks to me and makes my body feel. "New Slang" comforts me while making me sad and is one of those songs I'll throw on when I'm feeling down.
Ultimately, it's similar to Elliot Smith songs that have the same effect. You're not really listening to "New Slang" or Elliot Smith to cheer you up, but the overall sadness and melancholy nature of them kind of make you feel comforted. It's a good thing I didn't think of Elliot Smith before making this week's list. Could have been a little sadder in a worse direction.
One Inch Punch - "Hey Alexa, play artist Arc De Soleil." "I'm sorry, I couldn't find that here's so music along the lines of" blah blah blah. Two times in, two pronunciations, and two wildly different genres later we sat around the kitchen table with odd stares and laughs to go along. I wanted some nice background music while we prepared dinner at my brother's house. I was to make the garlic bread as my brother looked after the lasagna and my father cut the tension with dad jokes.
What I ended up getting out of Alexa was an interesting, to the say the least, sub-genre of metal and some delightful Mexican music. Two things we weren't looking for, but that provided a nice comedic segue to the day. Turns out asking Alexa to play a more specific song by Arc De Soleil would do the trick. She was reluctant to give me yet another Arc track to put on the next playlist. Her plan backfired and succeeded in the best way. In the end we have now been introduced to one hell of a badass titled song - "One Inch Punch."
The moment this track graced us with its groove, its funk, my brother and I looked up, found each other's eyes and gave subtle head nods. This is the kind of shit I've been living for and I know I can always count on my big bro to get down with me when we discover a tasty new track full of flavor. Yin Yin got us moving and with a little bit of black brandy on my lips the evening was taking off. It turned into a party, turned into a dinner party, turned into a drinking party. I wish I could say we listened to this track on repeat for the rest of the night, but that wouldn't be too believable. I wouldn't put it past us though... Come on over and let's have a one song party. Could be fun. We'll play it at every possible volume integer. Two thumbs up over here.
"Travelin' Blues" found its way onto the playlist through good ole uncertainty. Much like previous weeks, I've fallen into a pattern of incompletion when crafting these groups of songs. There was an open spot and without wanting to continue on the same trajectory I was faced with the dilemma of contrasting what I had previously started days before. My mood had shifted, I allowed too many days to pass before I filled the final spot and I no longer wanted to continue on with the melancholy feel of the songs I had already chosen.
A Spotify track that surfaces here and there, but never given too much attention aside from when I first heard it, "Travelin' Blues" is a groovy rocker and rides a wavy train down the tracks towards more uncertainty. It's a different kind of despair, but it’s a refreshing change from the previous tracks. The blues comes in all shapes and sizes and although its music for the troubled soul, it can be sung about anything under the sun that brings you down. Maybe this one spoke to the nomad in me. With my desire to get out and see new things this is an anthem that mirrors the sentiments I feel towards getting out. I don't want to be stuck at home anymore. I want to get out and see the world, meet new people. My travelin' blues are haunting me every day.
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