#a modern verse where she's in her late 50s is much more interesting to me lmao

[scoopstrooptm]

maybe if i post a to-do list here then i'll actually be productive.jpg

• spring clean my drafts • write up erica's bio • figure out specifics for d&d verses for robin & dustin • write up an apocalyptic au outline for robin & dustin • finish the robin & russian bunker trauma meta i have sitting incomplete in my drafts • modern verse ????? idk where to start with that aside from giving robin her long-awaited middle aged lesbian icon modern verse • starter call ?????? • write ?????????? • profit

[justforbooks]

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet, artist, activist and founder of San Francisco’s famous City Lights Bookstore, who has died aged 101 of interstitial lung disease, was the least “beat” of the Beat Generation. In addition to a political commitment that blended anarchism and ecology – he loathed the motor car, calling it “the infernal combustion engine” – he had an instinctive business sense, founded on the philosophy of small is beautiful. City Lights, which he started in partnership with the magazine editor Peter Martin in the early 1950s, is still among the most welcoming of shops, with its tables and chairs, sheaves of magazines, and signs saying: “Pick a book, sit down, and read.”

Ferlinghetti discouraged interviewers and seekers of personal information. “If I had some biographical questionnaire to answer, I would always make something up,” he once said. Different reference books give different dates of birth, and one published story had it that he wrote his doctoral dissertation on the place of the pissoir in French literature. For many years, he listed his dog, Homer, as City Lights’ publicity and public relations officer. The poet recalled that Homer Ferlinghetti received regular mail, but that his public relations career stalled when he peed against a policeman’s leg. For this act of citizenship, he was immortalised by his master in the poem Dog.

Perhaps the facts made Ferlinghetti uncomfortable. He was born Lawrence Monsanto Ferling in Yonkers, New York, to a French mother, Albertine Mendes-Monsanto, and an Italian father, Carlo Ferlinghetti, an auctioneer, who had shortened the family name to Ferling. His parents were unable to care for him, however (sometimes Ferlinghetti said his father had died before his birth, sometimes after), and he was rescued by an aunt, Emily Monsanto. She took him to France, where they lived for his first six years. Returning to the US, Emily was employed as a governess by a family called Lawrence, a branch of the one that founded Sarah Lawrence College. “Then she left me there,” Ferlinghetti told an interviewer in 1978. “She just disappeared one day, and that family brought me up.”

His education was extensive. In the early 1940s, he attended the University of North Carolina, where a professor introduced him to the vernacular voice in poetry. This was a revelation: you didn’t have to sound like TS Eliot to write a poem. After wartime naval service had taken him back to Europe, Ferlinghetti enrolled at the Sorbonne, studying French literature while translating poets and novelists in his spare time. One day in a restaurant, he noticed that the paper tablecloth had a poem written on it, and that it was signed “Jacques Prévert”. He took the tablecloth with him as he left the restaurant, and some years later translated the poems in Prévert’s Paroles, eventually published, under the original title, by his own City Lights Books.

Back in New York again in 1946, Ferlinghetti went to Columbia University, preparing a thesis on Ruskin and Turner. He just missed meeting Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, who by then had either been banned from (Ginsberg) or had dropped out of (Kerouac) the university. Ferlinghetti did not team up with the Beats until eight years later, in San Francisco.

Drawn to Paris once more at the end of the 1940s, he met George Whitman, proprietor of the English-language bookshop opposite Notre Dame, which was first known as Le Mistral and is now Shakespeare and Company. Ferlinghetti looked to Whitman as an example when he opened City Lights Bookstore in 1953. It was the first all-paperback bookshop in the US, and, as Ferlinghetti said, “Once we opened, we just couldn’t get the doors closed.” He ran the place more in the spirit of public service than for profit, and by the 70s was content to live on his book royalties and plough the takings at the counter back into the shop.

Two years after starting City Lights, Ferlinghetti published his own collection of poems, Pictures of the Gone World, as No 1 in the Pocket Poets series, little four by five-inch, black-and-white paperbacks, which continue to appear today – one of the most popular literary lists of modern times. It was at this stage that he reverted to the original family name, Ferlinghetti. The next two Pocket Poets after Ferlinghetti were Kenneth Rexroth and Kenneth Patchen – as a result, both were drafted as “fathers of the Beat Generation”, somewhat to their displeasure – but it was the fourth in the series that ensured the list’s success. And for that, as Ferlinghetti was quick to point out, they had to thank the San Francisco police department.

The book was Howl and Other Poems, by Allen Ginsberg. Ferlinghetti had heard Ginsberg read the title poem at an event at the Six Gallery, San Francisco, in October 1955. On returning home, he sent the poet a message that consciously echoed the famous letter from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Walt Whitman after Emerson had read Whitman’s Leaves of Grass: “I greet you at the beginning of a great career.” The proprietor of City Lights added: “When do I get the manuscript?”

The book was published the following year, in an edition of 1,000 copies. However, after a failed attempt by the police to prosecute the bookseller for peddling obscene material, the reprints could not come fast enough. Ferlinghetti joked that the police “took over the advertising account and did a much better job”. Howl remains the bedrock of City Lights’ success as a publishing concern. It has now gone through well over 50 reprints, often more than one a year.

Ferlinghetti’s own poetry is irreverent, cajoling, casual and loose-limbed, sometimes excessively so. His models were Whitman and William Carlos Williams. In partnership with Rexroth, he took part in many poetry and jazz events on the West Coast, and the two made a record together. Ferlinghetti later became disillusioned with the poetry and jazz combination – “The poet ended up sounding like he was hawking fish from a street corner,” he said.

His verse on the page, though, suggests a spoken origin, as in his poem Underwear:

Underwear controls everything in the end Take foundation garments for instance They are really fascist forms of underground government ….

In addition to his many collections of verse, including A Coney Island of the Mind (1958), The Secret Meaning of Things (1969) and Endless Life (1981), Ferlinghetti wrote two novels: Love in the Days of Rage (1988), which is set during the student revolt of 1968 in Paris, and Her (1960), a more experimental work, a classic “poet’s novel”.

On one of his transatlantic voyages, Ferlinghetti met Selden Kirby-Smith (known as Kirby), whom he had had a passing acquaintance with at Columbia. They married in 1951 and had two children, Julie and Lorenzo, but were divorced in 1976.

In 1971, Nancy Peters, a former librarian at the Library of Congress, joined the company, and as time went on played a larger part in running the business, leaving Ferlinghetti to his creative work. She served as executive director from 1984 until 2007, and then continued to be involved as a co-owner of the business.

Ferlinghetti also had a serious interest in painting, and in 1990 the University of California mounted a retrospective. Many poems feature the names of painters, or employ a self-consciously “painterly” style, such as Short Story in a Painting of Gustav Klimt or Returning to Paris with Pissarro.

Ferlinghetti disliked being associated with the Beats, though he benefited from it, and, despite his love of Ginsberg, was apt to lament the commercialisation of the Beat Generation. Ginsberg, he said, “fabricated the whole thing out of his imagination”. But, happily contradicting himself, he could add, as late as 1996, “It’s still the only rebellion around.”

A collection of the correspondence between Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg was published in 2015, under the title I Greet You at the Beginning of a Great Career. At the same time, a selection of his travel journals appeared, Writing Across Landscapes.

Ferlinghetti expressed disappointment in other Beat writers for their unstructured approach to politics. He decided to travel to Cuba to see the Castro regime for himself and later wrote One Thousand Words for Fidel Castro, which ends, “Fidel … I give you my sprig of laurel.” Another political poem evoked a surrealistic scene by Goya, showing “freeways 50 lanes wide”, with “fewer tumbrils / but more maimed citizens / in painted cars”. In 2012 he declined to accept an award from the Hungarian Pen club, in protest at the policies of prime minister Viktor Orbán.

City Lights, open till midnight seven days a week, was Ferlinghetti’s way of infusing the spirit of resistance peacefully into the streets of San Francisco.

With Peters, he wrote a Literary Guide to San Francisco (1980), and in 1988 was responsible for the renaming of 10 streets after writers associated with the city, including Jack Kerouac Alley, partly composed of City Lights’ back wall. In 1994, he himself was similarly honoured by Via Ferlinghetti, the first time a street has been named after a living writer in the history of the city.

He is survived by his children and three grandchildren.

• Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti, poet, artist and bookseller, born 24 March 1919; died 22 February 2021

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[wafflesetc]

Alright so I went down a rabbit hole on Twitter. How I got started on this, I don’t know. I’m typing it all out here for posterity sake and making it one collective post.

So there are a few of my theories and some evidence behind them

To start off, we can assume that the time traveling “gift” is a gene. 

Logic behind this assumption: Claire can travel through the stones- Jamie cannot. Their daughter can travel through the stones. 

Roger Mackenzie is from the lineage of Geillis Duncan. Geillis can travel through the stone and generations later, Roger can.

Brianna and Roger both can travel-thus Jemmy (and spoiler!) Mandy can travel through the stones.These alone prove that somewhere along a gene pool these characters have that marker they can time travel. And it can go from generation to generation because Geillis gave birth to her child in the past- yet Roger is from the 20th century.

SO NOW CLAIRE: 

Where did she get this gift? She has a 50/50 chance of either getting it from her mother or father. In canon, they have both died and Claire was sent to live with her Uncle Lamb who was an archeologist. In my idea, I think Lamb knew Claire had the capacity to travel through time. As an archeologist he had the resources, exposure, and chance to visit and experience different cultures  and customs. He also brought Claire along on those journeys. In some aspect, he made sure-as a woman- she was adaptable to anything that life threw at her. Which does come in handy.

So this begs the question- could Lamb travel? Well, maybe. Like stated above- Claire either got the gene from one or both of her parents. IF Henry was the one who carried the gene, Lamb being his brother, there’s a good chance they both  carried the gene and it was passed on to Claire. 

At the end of chapter 42 in Voyager Claire refers to a picture of her mother and grandmother in a letter she wrote to Brianna. In theory, Julia’s lineage comes from a more modern era where photographs were already invented due to the existence of them when Claire leaves to go back to Jamie the second time. 

So here are some of ideas

Henry and Lamb both knew they could time travel. Did they know it was a “gene” or just that they could, eh it doesn’t make that much of a difference. But again, Lamb being well versed in the world, maybe had run into  Raymond at one point- who has also been hinted at as being a traveler. 

Julia also had the capacity to time travel. Did she know or didn’t she know? Again, based off the picture of Julia and Julia’s mother we can safely assume she had been living and come from the late 1800s to early 1900s. (Though the photograph was invented in 1826 so there is a little bit of room for this theory to be possibly debunked...) But even with Julia having it-  if she did/didn’t know, she still could have passed it down to Claire with or without the knowledge.

Henry time traveled from *some* point in history and somehow Lamb took him under his wing to help him adapt to Henry’s new “future.” Hence how maybe Henry got the Beauchamp name.Then Henry meets Julia, they fall in love, and Henry choses to stay. (Similar to how Claire choses to stay with Jamie) And this is how Lamb might have suspected, if Henry can travel through time, maybe his daughter can. SO when Henry and Julia die and Lamb inherits Claire, he helps train her to be ready, if it were to happen to Claire. 

Plot twist: Julia, Henry, and Lamb could all time travel.  This still allows Claire to inherit the gene. They 3 escaped some point in history and ended up in the “future.” This is an interesting one to me because when Henry and Julia died Claire went to Lamb. She didn’t go to her grandparents on either side- so it begs the question, were her grandparents even in that century? And yes- the photo of her grandmother existed- but it was invented in 1826 which leaves a 90+ year gap between when it was invented to when Claire was born in 1916. Geillis didn’t know how to “control” her traveling- she thought there was a need for blood when there wasn’t.  Claire fell when she did the first time- but the second time she had Jamie pulling her there. Brianna could go to the right time because Claire was there. Roger went to the right time because Brianna was there. It is mildly discussed but if there’s a loved one at a certain point in time, travelers tend to be able to find them. But we see with “Otter Tooth’s” group that they had some problems getting to where they needed too, even though they were a group of travelers. 

Shout out to @happytoobserve who got me going on this rabbit hole and @drunklander for helping me locate the actual canon existence of a mention of  the photographs.

Anyways, these are my quarantined thoughts for the day! Anyone else have any theories?!

(PS- I don’t even think DG has thought about this as much as we have...But I need it.)

[alexsfictionaddiction]

12 of the best feel-good books

I think we could all do with a pick-me-up right now. We’ve been in some level of isolation for over a month and we’re perhaps being forced to accept a new normal. However, we’re still seeing frightening and tragic headlines all day every day (ration your news time, if you’re not doing so already), so of course, fear and hopelessness is going to set in. If you’re not used to spending time alone, loneliness is also a huge possibility but we know that books are a great source of solace in times like this. 

Maybe you want to do your own research and discover how far into the realms of science-fiction we’ve got. For you, I have compiled a list of the best books that pandemic fiction has to offer but if you’re looking for something more light-hearted, I’ve got the perfect tonic. Whether you need a laugh, to be comforted or to simply remember what life used to be like, here are some books that will help you escape the current face of reality. Above all, remember that it’s perfectly natural for your mental health to be suffering at the moment. Do whatever you can to look after yourself and stay safe.

1. The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary

Remember when you could just move in with a stranger without worrying about keeping two metres apart at all times? Tiffy and Leon share a flat and even a bed but due to entirely opposite work schedules, they manage to not even meet for months after Tiffy moves in, only communicating via texts and notes left on the fridge. But Tiffy’s controlling ex-boyfriend and Leon’s innocent prisoner brother ignite a connection that is fuelled by basic human kindness and a touch of romantic attraction, of course! This quirky rom-com has been a bestseller for over a year now and it’s not hard to see why. It’s a celebration of love, friendship and the unexpected happiness that can come from taking calculated risks. Beth O’Leary’s second novel The Switch has also just been released, so there has never been a better time to read her debut!

2. Wonder by R. J. Palacio

A beautiful story of empathy, kindness and acceptance, Wonder has fast become one of the most popular and widely read contemporary middle-grade novels. Auggie Pullman was born with a facial deformity and he’s attending mainstream school for the first time but of course, kids can be staggeringly cruel to those who are different. Wonder kickstarted a global kindness campaign and spawned a film adaptation, which is one of the best and most faithful I’ve ever seen. It has already given so much to the world and I know you’ll get a lot of joy out of it too.

3. The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Of course, not all sci-fi is doom and gloom. This is the first instalment in Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers series and it’s laugh-out-loud funny. It follows a misfit crew of space travellers and their wonderful smile-inducing relationships. Celebrating the coming together of a variety of races, sexualities and personalities, it features a lot of loveable memorable characters who begin to read like dear loyal friends. If you’re looking for quirky, light-hearted sci-fi in a similar vein to Star Trek and Firefly, you’d be wise to start here.

4. Less by Andrew Sean Greer

Arthur Less is a struggling writer about to turn 50 and the love of his life is engaged to someone else. To say that he’s not feeling too hot right now would be an understatement but he has been invited to a range of literary events around the world, so he does the logical thing and accepts them all. We can’t travel right now but with Arthur, you’ll visit Paris, Berlin, southern India, the Moroccan desert and Japan. You’ll also go on a journey of self-acceptance, learn how to love the life that you have and appreciate the time you have left. 

5. Hot Mess by Lucy Vine

It’s rare that a book makes me guffaw out loud in public but Hot Mess did exactly that, when I read it a couple of years ago. Ellie is a single woman who hates her office job and is absolutely nowhere near having her life together. However, she does have some great friends and a lovely relationship with her dad Alan, whose drafts of a romance novel are truly side-splittingly hilarious. We see Ellie through terrible dates, trauma confrontation and a quest for true happiness that is hugely satisfying. It has been described as a modern-day Bridget Jones but I found it much more relatable and actually quite a lot funnier!

6. The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

It’s the first in a trilogy of novels that explore the trials and tribulations of finding romance when you’re genetics professor Don Tillman. Don likes facts, logic and reason and he applies all of these things to his latest endeavour, The Wife Project. He knows exactly the kind of woman he wants to marry but then he meets Rosie, who ticks none of his boxes and he’s forced to accept that perhaps true love doesn’t always follow the rules. Don and Rosie’s relationship is such a heartwarming, mutually beneficial one that will make you laugh and leave you with a big bag of warm fuzzy feels. 

7. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

There is a huge chance that you will have read The Hobbit but what better time to revisit a funny, charming favourite? Re-embark on the quest to retrieve Smaug’s treasure, take back the Lonely Mountain and make a plethora of fantastic friends along the way. As well as relating to Bilbo’s personal growth throughout the novel, I think the idea of facing epic threat and mortal peril in unknown environments and yet still returning safely home to a quiet comfortable life is the reassurance we need that this too shall pass. Of course, it will also be an intoxicating nostalgia trip, so there’s really no reason to not pick it up again!

8. The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams

I read this over the Valentine’s Day period and was so enchanted by it. Gavin is a top baseball player for the Nashville Legends and he has recently discovered that he has never given his wife Thea a genuine orgasm and it’s threatening the relationship. So he does the logical thing and turns to his team mates, who actually double as a secret romance book club. They suggest taking a leaf out of a smutty Regency paperback to save his marriage -what could possibly go wrong? Funny, heart-warming and touching, it’s a great choice if you’re looking for a rom-com with a difference.

9. My Pear-Shaped Life by Carmel Harrington

If you’ve spent a lot of self-isolation being wholly unproductive and perhaps not looking after yourself too well, you may be feeling that you’re simply not good enough. Especially if your social media is full of happy healthy people doing just about EVERYTHING. Meet Greta, a struggling actress who is used to playing the role of the funny, overweight girl in all areas of her life. That’s ok as long as she laughs with everyone else, right? But things have been pretty rough lately and it’s only when she hits rock bottom that she begins to realise that maybe things need to go a little bit pear-shaped sometimes. With joy and despair in equal measure, this new novel, populated with an array of wonderful characters, will teach you that true happiness comes from simply being you.

10. A Boy Made Of Blocks by Keith Stuart 

Eight-year-old Sam is autistic and struggles to make sense of the world. His dad Alex has also lost himself somewhere along the way and needs to change. Minecraft offers a place where father and son can rediscover their bond and put the family back together, block by block. I reviewed this incredibly moving, uplifting story when it was first released a few years ago. It’s actually inspired by Keith Stuart’s real-life experiences, which I think give it an extra dollop of heart-warmth! 

11. The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta

The entire focus of this fantastically written YA novel is on embracing your own personal uniqueness and on not being afraid to let it out. Michael is a mixed-race gay teen who has grappled with his identity for his entire life. On arriving at university, the idea of becoming a drag artist causes everything to begin to slot into place. Told in verse, The Black Flamingo will show you how your boldest brightest colours can shine through the darkest of times. Highlighting the power of words and challenging all forms of homophobia, whether it be external or internal, this is a book that I’m sure will become a staple of LGBT+ literature in years to come. As for now, it will simply inspire you to live your very best life, regardless of who tries to prevent it.

12. Reasons To Be Cheerful by Nina Stibbe

As the title may suggest, there is plenty to smile about in Reasons To Be Cheerful. It’s chiefly a coming-of-age novel about a young woman called Lizzie living in 1970s Leicestershire. She has just got a job as an assistant to a work-shy, racist dentist who is desperate to join the freemasons. Navigating this new position alongside a relationship with her alcoholic writer mother, a boyfriend who doesn’t seem terribly interested in her and a few unlikely friends, Lizzie’s life makes for some pretty amusing anecdotes. Whether it’s the simple retro setting or small cast of eccentric caricatures, there is something quite other-worldly yet familiar about it. There is a lot of detail that is relevant to the period it’s set in, including the blatant social prejudices that were so rife at the time. I am too young to have experienced 1970s Britain but it certainly feels authentic to what I know. I have no doubt that those that were there will get even more enjoyment and nostalgia from Lizzie’s life than I did. 

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 13/03/2021 (Drake, Silk Sonic, Justin Bieber, AJ Tracey)

Look, there are tons of new arrivals for this week, mostly in the top 50 and a third of them being Drake. Olivia Rodrigo’s “drivers license” is still #1 for a ninth week despite the aforementioned Drake. Let’s just run through this as quickly as is possible. Welcome back to REVIEWING THE CHARTS.

Rundown

We have quite a few notable dropouts from the chart here, particularly the UK Top 75 which I cover, including “Siberia” by Headie One featuring Burna Boy, “Apricots” by Bicep, “Afterglow” by Wilkinson off of the return, same with “ROCKSTAR” by DaBaby featuring Roddy Ricch and then some pretty massive dropouts, some of which might return, most will not. These include “willow” by Taylor Swift, “What You Know Bout Love” by the late Pop Smoke, “Take You Dancing” by Jason Derulo, “Looking for Me” by Diplo, Paul Woolford and Kareen Lomax and finally, “Watermelon Sugar” by Harry Styles. I’m surprised there weren’t any Drake songs dropping out because he debuted three tracks, the most he could possibly debut, but apparently there weren’t any Drake songs on the chart in the first place. Naturally, as it’s a busy week, we had quite a few notable fallers for songs already on the chart, like “Get Out My Head” by Shane Codd at #16, “Streets” by Doja Cat at #19, “Up” by Cardi B at #21, “Anyone” by Justin Bieber at #23, “Afterglow” by Ed Sheeran at #27, “Bringing it Back” by Digga D and AJ Tracey at #31, “Blinding Lights” by the Weeknd at #33, “Head & Heart” by Joel Corry and MNEK at #36, “Arcade” by Duncan Laurence at #37, “Money Talks” by Fredo and Dave at #38, “We’re Good” by Dua Lipa at #39... okay, maybe “quite a few” was an understatement. Regardless, we still have more fallers outside of the top 40, like our biggest fall for “Bluuwuu” by Digga D at #42, “Levitating” by Dua Lipa and remixed by DaBaby at #43, “Love Not War (The Tampa Beat)” by Jason Derulo and Nuka at #45, “Sweet Melody” by Little Mix at #46, “Toxic” by Digga D at #47 and “34+35” by Ariana Grande at #48... as well as “Ready” by Fredo featuring Summer Walker at #50, “Mood” by 24kGoldn and iann dior at #51, “Good Days” by SZA at #52, “Someone You Loved” by Lewis Capaldi at #53, “You’re Mines Still” by Yung Bleu and remixed by Drake – apparently that doesn’t count as Drake – at #54, “Dance Monkey” by Tones and I at #55, “you broke me first” by Tate McRae at #56, “Regardless” by RAYE and Rudimental at #57, “Whoopty” by CJ at #58, “Pierre” by Ryn Weaver off of the debut to #63, “Be the One” by Rudimental, MORGAN, TIKE and Digga D at #65, “Midnight Sky” by Miley Cyrus at #66, “Mixed Emotions” by Abra Cadabra at #67, “Lemonade” by Internet Money and Gunna featuring Don Toliver and NAV at #68, “Roses” by SAINt JHN and remixed by Imanbek at #69, “positions” by Ariana Grande at #71 and finally, “Didn’t Know” by Tom Zanetti at #73. You’d think it was Christmas with all of this, except in this case there aren’t returning entries or even many gains other than “SugarCrash!” by ElyOtto up to #59. That’s literally it for any notable gains, so apparently only hyperpop can withstand Drake. God help us.

NEW ARRIVALS

#75 – “Don’t You Worry About Me” – Bad Boy Chiller Crew

Produced by Tatics

The “Bad Boy Chiller Crew” sounds exactly like a 2000s UK garage collective from London, and thankfully, I’m pretty much right, except these guys were actually formed in 2018 and see themselves more of a “bassline” group, even if they were formed a decade after the fact. Bassline was big in Yorkshire in the mid-2000s, and I guess the BBCC – subtle – are here to bring it back? I mean, I’d rather it go this way than having rappers lazily sample bassline classics like a couple weeks back so, what have the Bad Boy Chiller Crew got to say? Well, not much clearly, but they’ve never had to. UK garage groups weren’t ever hardcore rap collectives in reality, at least in the mainstream, and their primary purpose was to make bouncy music for the clubs and, yes, it worked. Does this work? Well, no, because it’s not really UK garage or bassline, going for a sampled piano-house chorus and percussion that never really goes full on with the “bassline” or has that much of a breakbeat. These rappers are definitely a presence and whilst I may not know what they’re saying because Genius.com gave up two lines through, at least they’re not more boring, just settling for mildly obnoxious in how everything sounds like double-tracked gang vocals. I can definitely see the mid-2000s influence in some of these synth patterns and absolutely the vocal tone on the chorus, which, by the way, is an incredible chorus that deserves a more subtle rap presence. Hell, I think KSI did a similar track like this with Nathan Dawe... he could have worked here. When I’m saying I’d prefer KSI over your own song and your own beat, you’ve got a problem. As it is, this is a really promising bassline-adjacent song with some really nice string flourishes and an infectious chorus, that falls flat in its attempts to keep me interested when the chorus isn’t playing because it serves more to repulse during instead of keeping its momentum. I’m praying for a remix that takes these guys off, honestly. AJ Tracey? Please?

#74 – “The Bandit” – Kings of Leon

Produced by Markus Drays

Ah, Kings of Leon, that indie rock band who hasn’t made anything good ever. Okay, maybe that’s a blunt, over-the-top statement but as little as I care about modern mainstream indie rock in the first place, I care even less about Kings of Leon, who I’ve yet to hear anything worthwhile from in singles. Regardless, they have a new album, which meant their lead single could finally chart, and I don’t know what a non-fungible token is and I’m not doing research for an album that my friend’s dad – read: Kings of Leon’s main demographic – thought was boring, so how’s this new single? Well, there’s an acoustic guitar strum I swear I’ve heard before, followed by a riff that admittedly sounds okay, a steady drum beat you can see replicated in rock songs of this tempo... the vocalist here is covered by everything in the mix, it feels, and even when I can hear him clearly, the lyrics feel overly cryptic to the point where nothing really sticks, and the guy’s delivery at least used to be commanding. Here, he’s fully checked out and I’m convinced everyone in the band stopped bothering. Whoever does the left-channel electric guitar wankery feels like he’d be more fit on a slower, lo-fi indie rock project and he’d really work in that context. Here, I couldn’t care less about this nothing of a song that just does not move. It chugs along through odd mixing and a “get this over with” guitar solo, and just chugs and chugs for four minutes. I honestly do not see a reason to seek this out, let alone an entire album... but it still went #1. That’s sales for you.

#70 – “What Other People Say” – Sam Fischer and Demi Lovato

Produced by Rykeyz

This song was released last month and hasn’t reached any chart in the US outside of the Bubbling Under yet, even with a video, which is just concerning for Demi, but I know she’s been struggling to reach any kind of further success recently, which is unfortunate as she always came off as one of the most interesting singers to come out of that late-2000s Disney star cast. To be fair, she did collaborate with professional nobody Sam Fischer, so I guess it’s partially her fault. That said, I like this song quite a lot, actually. Lyrically, it focuses on how both singers feel like they’ve left behind your individuality as a result of becoming famous and ending up distancing themselves from people they actually love and care for, with it being heavily implied in Demi’s verse that this is a result of not wanting people like her mother to see where she is now: taking the same drugs she was taught to say no to, with that pre-chorus of her realising she felt she was “better than” all of the people that she mirrors to. You can tell this comes from a real place from Demi, and it’s kind of heartwrenching, even if this instrumental is mostly piano-ballad fluff that does work for such a lyrically heavy song by casting off all attention away from the weak acoustic guitars and the finger-snaps that add more of a soul or gospel element to this production, which is pretty apt for some of the references to separating yourself from the religious practices you grew up on in the chorus. Demi’s vocals are pretty powerful here, and there are some really interesting backing vocals and ad-libs in that last chorus from both of them... oh, yeah, Sam Fischer is on this song too, but he’s such a lack of presence in comparison, even lyrically, that it probably doesn’t matter. Regardless, this is a good song and I hope it becomes a hit past the chaos of this week.

#60 – “Heartbreak Anniversary” – Giveon

Produced by Maneesh and Sevn Thomas

I figured this guy would finally chart here in the UK eventually, “Chicago Freestyle” notwithstanding, which was a top 10 hit for him and – guess who? – Drake. Anyway, this guy’s from California yet he totally sounds British sometimes, but that’s all I’ve really paid attention up until this point, and, yeah, I like this quite a bit too. Giveon has a really unique voice and the intro with those distorted vocal samples is a real Kanye touch to the whole song. The song is about Giveon finding it really hard to cope with a break-up of a relationship he thought had a lot of potential, through the odd and janky metaphor of “heartbreak anniversary”. The really cavernous mixing does accentuate how the percussion feels very stunted and the song as a whole feels kind of rough around the edges, but the desperate tone in Giveon’s voice and those pretty excellent backing vocals in the post-chorus sound pretty excellent, especially over these subtle pianos, and there are certain moments in the song that, like all good R&B, you remember for the vocal run or the harmonies, really rather than the chorus, so, yeah, this is good and I hope it sticks around. Huh, maybe sleeping a lot does make you more of a positive person... or maybe the music’s just good for once.

#49 – “Ferrari Horses” – D-Block Europe featuring RAYE

Produced by Da Beatfreakz

Ah, “Ferrari Horses”, from the same album as such gems as “Mr. Mysterious”, “Only Fans”, “Gulag” and my personal favourite, “Perkosex”. Maybe I’m just happy whenever I know a D-Block Europe song’s debuting because these guys are very rarely all that great but just consistently hilarious... and this one’s no different. It starts with reverb-drenched Auto-Tuned moaning from both RAYE and Young Adz that reminds me of Charli XCX if anything, because... sure, before it’s drowned out by acoustic guitar loops and a drill-adjacent trap beat... and, yeah, it’s really badly-mixed, especially the bass mastering, but, it’s a really satisfying drop, I’m not going to lie. The chorus’ melody is way too infectious for its own good, and you’d be surprised with the chemistry that Adz and RAYE seem to have, as she shares a verse with Adz where they bounce off of each other’s flow quite smoothly, both going into pretty funny falsettos – one that genuinely made me laugh out loud when I heard Adz’ attempt – but she really sells the melodic trap angle, I’m really surprised. Why is she still doing EDM? The double-tracking on her last few lines is beautiful, and I love how she comes in when it’s unexpected to awkwardly interrupt either Adz’s chorus or where Dirtbike LB’s verse would be... until he does actually come in and he kind of kills it, not as much as RAYE of course, but I think his delivery here is pretty great, especially when he slides in his Auto-Tuned flow from the more fast-paced cadence to the melodic drawl afterwards where I’m convinced he interpolates Weezer. Sure, the mixing is still bad, with the reverb percussion in the last chorus being really unnecessary, and the sequencing generally being off, and the content is really nothing interesting at all, except with a couple fun lines from RAYE, like when she says how she feels like she’s in Prince’s house because there’s purple all around her (we can infer what that “purple” is) or how she’s “so lit” that she can see two Young Adz, before realising it’s actually Dirtbike LB. I don’t think either member of D-Block Europe realises the layers to that line, but it’s probably best to keep them in the shadows, especially if it’s as unintentional as it sounds. Yeah, this is genuinely really great, and whilst I doubt it’ll last, I’m honestly shocked to the quality of this. Maybe D-Block Europe are just... good? Okay, I won’t go that far, but check this out.

#41 – “Medicine” – James Arthur

Produced by Red Triangle and Matt Rad

British daytime television and news rarely cover the Top 40, but at some point Lorraine Kelly did bring up new music releases expected to smash the charts, those being this song, Justin Bieber’s new track and that Joel Corry song we discussed last week. They did not mention the three new Drake songs or even the new track with Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak, both of which out-charted this guy intensely. Regardless, this has the foundation of a good song somewhere. It starts with a really nice-sounding pop-punk guitar riff that James Arthur could really sound good on. The song’s about being overly dependent on a woman who really helps with maintaining his mental health... but then instead of being a rock song, it goes straight into a generic, boring trap ballad with too much in its cluttered mix for its own good. The lyrics feel increasingly lacking in self-awareness, asking the woman to not let him “spiral” when he becomes suicidal, which seems like an obligation the woman does not need to take up unless she really cares enough. In the second verse, he starts rapping, full-on triplet flow, and I realise that this is James Arthur trying to do emo-rap and lose all hope. Then he says, “Everything gonna be Gucci today”, and the hope goes into negative numbers. If we’re going to bring back some essence of rock on the charts, please don’t let it be whatever the hell this is.

#34 – “Anxious” – AJ Tracey

Produced by Remedee

I guess he heard my pleading a couple songs ago. Anyway, it’s pretty bad that I could vision how this song goes by looking at the lyrics... and I was pretty accurate, but that’s partially because of how he uses Drake flows all over this song, directly referencing his songs “Life is Good” and “POPSTAR”. Regardless, this song is pretty alright, actually, especially with that bassy ambiance that serves the drill-adjacent trap beat with a lot of tension, perfect for his checked-out delivery about gunplay and flexing. It’s a British trap-rap song that does what it does in very little interesting fashion, but has good production and a vaguely charismatic vocalist. It also sounds a lot less fun than the lyrics will make you think, but it does have some energy in this fast-paced beat and by the second verse, AJ Tracey is saying some funny stuff, like how he’s “recession proof” and seems to know his exact UK Singles Chart statistics. Please, just do my job, I think people would be genuinely interested in reading what AJ Tracey thinks of Kings of Leon. I never really like AJ Tracey when he’s on a dark vibe, anyway, I think he really shines on more sugary production, but I think that’s just my preference when it comes to trap anyway. The song’s fine, but I can’t say it’s anything more.

#25 – “Hold On” – Justin Bieber

Produced by Louis Bell and watt

I’m pretty sure Bieber is still pushing “Anyone” and in the US, “Holy” is still doing pretty well to my knowledge, so I guess it makes sense to drop an album but not really another single before it, especially since now it seems to start underperforming. Regardless, I’m a bit more willing to enjoy this one because of that washed-out acoustic guitar pick-up and a definite groove in the bass and percussion during that chorus. I mean, Justin Bieber still isn’t interesting at all, but I like the guitars in the chorus and I guess that’s something. The content? Condescendingly holding his hand out to a woman he only vaguely describes, whilst pushing out the “we all make mistakes” narrative he wants to continue from “Lonely”. By the time the guy has any genuine rock energy he’d need for this song, it ends, so I’m just going to say that this is mid-tier Maroon 5 and move on.

#20 – “Leave the Door Open” – Silk Sonic, Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak

Produced by D’Mile and Bruno Mars

When Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak revealed a collaborative album was to release soon under the band name “Silk Sonic” – an incredible name by the way, how did no-one in the 70s copyright that? – I was immediately overjoyed and excited. Not only would this probably be a great album but it would be that one last boost that pushes .Paak into a mainstream context and for the record, he’s one of my favourite artists working today. His last three albums are all great and he’s made some of my favourite music ever, and has never been able to get that final reach into the charts until now, where riding on the coattails of Bruno Mars – who, by the way, is a fantastic artist in his own right nowadays – they’ve made a massive retro-soul cut that debuts at... #20. Okay, well, I know this style is bigger in the US but I did expect a top 10 debut here. Huh, well, that doesn’t take away from the fact that this song is absolutely incredible from the moments it starts with that drum fill and that distorted bass flowered by the jingling keyboards, with .Paak delivering some angelic intro vocals, and that’s before the first verse, where .Paak trades off with Bruno Mars really smoothly about simply picking up a girl yet making it sound like the most wonderful thing in the world. Bruno Mars almost sounds like he’s imitating .Paak at times, especially when he says that he just shaved and is “smooth like a newborn” in a really funny harmony. You could call Mars’ chorus cheesy but it’s just as cheesy as 70s funk was back in its day, and the way the instrumental builds up the tension with the rising pianos and smashing percussion just to cool down for the perfect pay-off in the chorus proves that even a song trying its best to imitate a live, jam-band recording and doing it very well can sound this intricate and perfectly crafted. .Paak’s second verse – he handles all of the verses here, probably because he’s ostensibly a rapper – has even more of a smooth, comedic charm as he offers the girl weed before also offering her filets, whilst also referencing some classic, iconic songs by three artists, namely Jimi Hendrix, Michael Jackson and... Anderson .Paak himself, and somehow it does not seem either forced or too unsubtle of a flex. The harmonisation in the background vocals in the chorus convince me that angels have been dropped down from Heaven and are currently living in Bruno Mars’ recording studio. Even at points where Bruno Mars is serenading you with “la-la-la’s”, its ridiculousness is undercut with .Paak’s ad-libs, and each chorus is so different that it never feels like Bruno is meandering or repeating himself... until the outro, which just of fades out because it goes nowhere. Honestly, I would rather prefer to see how the song really ends, and I think we will when the album comes out, but as a single, it definitely still works, and hell, a lot of those 70s soul and funk cuts faded out on the single edit anyway. I don’t think I’ve been this excited for a project in ages so, yeah, I have high hopes for Silk Sonic and this song alone keeps me fed well enough. Also, .Paak isn’t just a vocalist here, he’s on the drums too. Just saying.

#10 – “Wants and Needs” – Drake featuring Lil Baby

Produced by Cardo, Dez Wright and 40

At this point, after I’ve mentioned Drake a couple times and said he had three debuts this week, you’re probably wondering where they all are. The answer to that is that every single song from his triple-barrelled single release, Scary Hours 2, debuted in the top 10, with this being – to my surprise – the lowest, only hitting #10, which is still nothing to scoff at. Even for Drake, this is doing really well, which I imagine is because of how he had to delay his album so people are really craving for some new Drake that isn’t “Laugh Now Cry Later”. Now, I for one am not, and honestly I’m probably craving for less Drake if anything. That’s just my personal bias, though – I didn’t really like this project and haven’t liked much of Drake since 2015 or even earlier, but I still think the guy’s talented. I’m just pretty sick of the formula at this point. This particular single-EP thing doesn’t stray that far away from it either, with one song for the clubs, for the radios and for the fan. This one I think is for the clubs, even though they’re not even open so it’s really just for anyone to stream, and hence, we have Lil Baby on his third song with Mr. Graham. I wasn’t a fan of Baby until recently, and I’m not sure being a “fan” is really all that sincere as it’s really just hope and good will, but he absolutely kills his verse here and is the only reason could possibly be worth for me to revisit. The beat has vague squelchy synths and a boring trap pattern, heavy bass and some admittedly cool strings in the background that are cut out and drowned out by Drake being pretty blatantly off-beat. The chorus is monotonous and just stalling time until we get a brief escape from Drake for around 50 seconds of Lil Baby ranting rapidly in his typical frog-throat delivery and it left me kind of astonished on first listen because of how unexpected it was, and it’s still a great verse, even if the content is just flexing. “I’m not a GOAT, but I fit the description” is a bar, and I like the reference to betting his Ferrari off in a Las Vegas casino, which I hope he did not actually do. Hey, it’s more interesting than Drake wasting time with Kanye subliminals that aren’t even subliminals anymore, and a reference to how people grow on his albums, which I don’t think is even true, at least for his recent work. Ah, well, it could be worse. For example:

#6 – “Lemon Pepper Freestyle” – Drake featuring Rick Ross

Produced by Austin Powers, FnZ, Keanu Beats and Boi-1da

I refuse to believe this many people listened to Drake ramble for six and a half minutes. I refuse to believe there was a need for four people to make this lazy, unchanging beat that can’t even mix its sample correctly. I refuse to believe Rick Ross washed Drake on his own song for... you know, being vaguely clever and not a waste of time? Maybe I just love that “M-M-Maybach Music” tag, who knows? I definitely like it more than Drake, who handles the last five or so minutes with his monotone delivery and taking breaks to let the beat play because apparently, he can’t think of a flow that means he wastes less of the listener’s time. I’m sick of Drake’s more lyrical tracks nowadays where he goes on and on about how everything goes wrong for him despite him being so rich and famous and that’s the plot of this verse. It does not make you likeable or “real”, Drake, it makes you much more distanced and honestly just coming off as boring and kind of a dick. He starts his verse on a melancholy boom-bap beat by flexing that he’s a war hero – even though the last “war” he was in, he thoroughly lost – whilst also saying he’s doing all this expensive stuff in foreign countries when really, he should be staying in Canada or wherever he is during a pandemic. He then says, “These days, fame is disconnected from excellence”, which first of all, has always been the case and second of all sounds rich as hell coming from Aubrey Drake Graham, the most famous rapper, singer and musician currently alive, and far from the most “excellent”. That’s before he does his typical click-bait female-name-dropping and brags about his child whilst also side-eyeing the child’s mother for no reason, saying he had brunch with the judge he’s appearing before in court for child custody – you know, bribery – and that he doesn’t like how when he pays child support, she sends her the heart emoji in response. What else do you want, Drake? She’s the one raising this child, you have no right in telling her what emojis to use when you brag about sending child support to her, and then in your song which gets millions of plays. I’m not going to make assumptions about the mother here but it sounds like a really bad move, especially when you continue to talk about how the mothers at parent-teacher meetings flirt with you and ask if you know celebrities, whilst also bringing Secret Service-level security to the humble French school in Toronto your kid goes to. Something feels really icky about putting so much pressure on your son and their mother through rap lyrics, not even giving them much of a limelight other than through condescending references in a snoozefest of a single. Oh, yeah, and then he boasts about being friends with the corrupt, human-rights-violating royal family of Dubai, before mixing lines about how his house looks bigger through his son’s eyes with how his penis looks bigger when the woman is drunk. Yeah, no, you can’t really redeem this especially when the beat is unchanging and dull. I’m not a fan, and honestly, Drake’s pushing into his late 30s and yet I still think it’s applicable to tell him to grow up. I can’t say as much for this next track, however.

#3 – “What’s Next” – Drake

Produced by Maneesh and Supah Mario

Okay, for our final Drake track, we have the only solo cut and surprisingly easily my favourite of the three, and the reasons why are pretty subtle. The trap beat relies on a really bassy trap knock over a chiptune-sounding beat that goes really hard, and even if Drake’s vocals are mixed... just straight-up incorrectly, being so far in the left channel for no reason and that being kind of inexcusable for a big artist, he still has a lot more energy here than he does on any given Drake track. His flow is faster-paced, and he references a lot of his older work through pretty slick lines, mostly based on delivery, and there are really subtle counter-melodies in the beat that creep into the mix and sound really great. Drake himself actually brings one of his best verses in the second verse, which is probably his best flow in years and some pretty nice bars, none I can quote here because of how long that stream of bars goes for. The sequencing is somewhat off and Drake’s vocals seem to cut off really abruptly a lot of the time but for Drake, this is as good as it gets in 2021, and I’m pretty happy to have a genuinely good Drake song on the chart. Hopefully, it won’t be eclipsed by those two other tracks as time goes on, but we’ll see.

Conclusion

It may sound odd after dunking on Drake for a while at the tail-end of this episode but this is a damn good week all things considered. I think I only dislike the Worst of the Week here, going to “Lemon Pepper Freestyle” by Drake featuring Rick Ross, with a Dishonourable Mention for Kings of Leon’s “The Bandit”, though it’s not really that bad of a song, just pales in comparison to some of the absolute gems we have this week, particularly Best of the Week, which obviously goes to “Leave the Door Open” by Silk Sonic, whilst Honourable Mention is a bit more of a toss-up. I’d give a tied Honourable Mention to both “Ferrari Horses” by D-Block Europe featuring RAYE and “What Other People Say” by Demi Lovato and Sam Fischer. Sorry, Giveon, it was really close. Here’s our top 10 for the week:

Thank you for reading. You can follow my Twitter @cactusinthebank but I’ve actually been permanently locked out of that, so I probably wouldn’t bother. Regardless, next week, in the words of Drake, we’ll see what’s ‘bout to happen next. See you then!

[dinamicus]

Thursday’s Child https://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/thursdays-child/

One summer day some ten years ago, I was helping to paint a house. On the boombox was Best of Bowie: a long, chronological march from the beachhead of “Space Oddity,” with most songs met by indifference and occasional hums. The caressing synthesizers of “Thursday’s Child” began, and as Bowie started crooning, a fellow painter stopped mid-swipe and looked over at the CD player.

“What happened to that guy?” he said.

We’d made it through “Dancing In the Street” with a few chuckles and “Under the God” without comment. But “Thursday’s Child,” on that hot afternoon, sounded awful: treacly, gaspy, wan; the limp expiration of a career. When heard as the close of a sequence that runs through “Rebel Rebel,” “Ashes to Ashes,” “Modern Love” and “The Hearts Filthy Lesson,” “Thursday’s Child” sounds like a man falling down in the street, a hasty end scene tacked onto an overlong Act V. “I’m done with the future: here’s a song for your grandmother.” Dies, borne off stage right.

Sure, any slow, fragile-sounding number could’ve gotten a raspberry that day from our collection of young and recently-young NYC snobs. It’s not as if “Thursday’s Child” is an ill-constructed or poorly-sung track: if anything, it’s one of the few Bowie compositions of the period sturdy enough to withstand being a cover, whether a trumpet solo or a busker’s guitar piece (solo electric guitar interpretation by Jake Reichbart here). Its verse melody, a dance of mild leaps and modest falls, suits a lyric crafted for common use. In the verses, an older man regrets the paths he’s taken; in the choruses, he dares to hope a new love can give his life meaning. It’s Bowie’s “September Song.”

But “Thursday’s Child” wasn’t hip; it didn’t offer any pretense that it was—it sat in a comfortable present tense and stewed on the past. It felt genteel and a bit shabby. After a few years of running across stages in his bottle imp incarnation, after his stabs at industrial and jungle, after all the interviews about Damien Hirst and body scarifications and Millennial doom and Internet-as-cultural-dynamite, Bowie suddenly turned up as the sad clown again. He’d dusted off his Buster Keaton suit and reclaimed the shadow bloodline of his “rock” one: the Bowie of “When I Live My Dream” and “As The World Falls Down,” the cabaret and mime Bowie, the “light entertainment” regional thespian, the bedsit saddo, the Mod who worshiped Judy Garland and Eartha Kitt (see below).

The singer of “Thursday’s Child” is another of the Pierrots he’d played since the Sixties: a perpetual loser at love, like the glum figure of his “Be My Wife” promo. Take the Mr. Pitiful tone of the opening verse—

All of my life I’ve tried so hard doing the best with what I had: nothing much happened all the same…

—with its most desperate emphases (“best,” “hope”) cued to gloomy B minor chords, while the verse’s circular structure strands the singer back where he started, on an augmented E major (“breaking my life in two”). You can take the song as a straight-faced lament, as a quietly over-the-top spoof of the same, or both (it is Bowie, after all).

And while the chorus offers a hope of release from the cycle, its alternation of F# majors (“falling”) and F# minors (“really got,” “my past”) suggest the hope’s rather thin. The repetitions of “throw me tomorrow” start to feel desperate; Bowie’s “everything’s falling into place!” is someone trying to hypnotize himself. It’s as if Bowie’s answering Joni Mitchell:

It’s got me hoping for the future And worrying about the past

Ours was the most exciting show that had hit London since the war…I was glad that I was born in a part of the world that had been so well protected, but I was also ashamed of my protection. I carried guilt inside for being a privileged character when the rest of the world was being destroyed.

Eartha Kitt, Thursday’s Child, 1956.

This song, I might point out, is not actually about Eartha Kitt.

Bowie, 1999.

He’d taken the song’s title from Eartha Kitt, Bowie said upon introducing “Thursday’s Child” on VH1 Storytellers. Writing the song, he’d recalled the paperback cover of her first autobiography (“it just kind of bubbled up the other month”). It had been an erotic memory of his youth (that and D.H. Lawrence, he said).* Using Kitt as a starting point suited Hours’ theme of a middle-aged assessment of lost youth, a 50-year-old flipping through a box of mold-speckled records shipped from his childhood home (Ray Charles’ “Lucky Old Sun” —a man stuck in the middle of life and envying death—also gets a nod).

The title also plays with an old prediction rhyme—“Thursday’s child has far to go” (another variant is “Thursday’s child is merry and glad”)—that had come out of the ground somewhere in medieval England. The rhyme was a popular corruption of court astrology: Thursday was considered a day of great fortune as it was under the sway of Jupiter, kingpin of gods. The Book of Knowledge, by one Erra Pater (1745), notes a “child born on Thursday shall arrive to Great Honour and Dignity” (By contrast, David Robert Jones was born on a Wednesday “full of woe”).**

So the refrain of “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday born, I was Thursday’s Child” was Bowie spading up his old occult interests, presenting them in anodyne forms: the little boxes tucked away on a newspaper’s comics page: horoscopes, birth stones, fortunes, lucky numbers (see “Seven”). It’s the “secret histories” of the Sixties reduced to syndicated copy; it’s another diminishing of unearthly power into ordinary life.

It’s also a clever way to cloud the lyric. What to make of the chorus kicker: “only for you I don’t regret/that I was Thursday’s child“? It’s at odds with the picture the singer’s painted so far: that he’s someone for whom little’s worked out, someone who’s estranged from everyday life yet firmly stuck within it (“He’s a teethgrinding, I’ll-get-this-job-done guy,” Bowie said of the narrator). (It’s also possible that, as Nicholas Pegg noted, Bowie’s referencing the VU’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties“: “For Thursday’s child is Sunday’s clown.“) But a Thursday’s child would be a lucky child: someone with pull, some who had far to go: a Kitt, or a Bowie.

Go back to Eartha Kitt for a moment. Born in South Carolina, she’d reinvented herself in the early Fifties as a nightclub goddess who’d seemingly flown in from the Continent; she played the seductress, the gold-digger with taste (“Santa Baby”) who captured men with her boxful of languages. She’d be cast in that role for the rest of her days: a life spent forever vamping. But what a role! As her biographer John L. Williams wrote of her performance of “Monotonous” in the film New Faces: Eartha is playing a character that’s almost unimaginable in reality [in 1954]: a black American woman who’s tasted all of the world’s delicacies and found them lacking…we wonder, who on earth is this woman? And how can she seem to be so indifferent to the laws and mores of her time? A question that could have been asked, with a gender change, about another performer in 1973.

So maybe the singer is someone like Kitt: not some teeth-grinding anonymous drone but a bright public figure, someone whose name everyone knows, someone to whom things seem have come easily. Doing the best with what I had becomes a modest boast; shuffling days and lonely nights are those of a stage life. Or maybe even the common life of an office drone is a stage life. Bowie had called himself “the Actor,” but in a way, we’re all actors.

Composed in Bermuda in late 1998, “Thursday’s Child” appears to have been mainly Bowie’s work, written on acoustic guitar. It was earmarked as a potential single, with a prominent role for backing singers. The question of who those should be became a bit contentious once Bowie and Gabrels were back in New York.

After toying with having Mark Plati’s six-year-old daughter sing the “Inchworm”-inspired “Monday, Tuesday..” line (she turned Bowie down! “she said she’d rather sing with her friends than with grown-ups,” Plati told David Buckley), Bowie thought of contacting the trio TLC. In 1999, they were arguably the premier female R&B vocal group of the decade. But they were tottering. Rife with personality and financial squabbles and having taken five years to cut their follow-up LP, they were about to be dethroned by Destiny’s Child.

Using TLC sat poorly with Gabrels, who thought it stunk of Bowie’s “New Jack Swing” moves in 1992: “Thursday’s Child” could be another potential Al B. Sure! fiasco. Gabrels had positioned himself as the house purist: some faint analogue in the Bowie camp to Steve Albini. He’d met Bowie during the nadir of Never Let Me Down and he saw it as his charge to keep Bowie honest and weird, to stop him from embarrassing himself by chasing trends after their sell-by date. During the making of ‘Hours’ Gabrels came to feel that his time with Bowie was over (we’ll get into this more in next week’s entry); his veto of TLC would be his last strategic win.

His alternative proposal had a touch of self-interest: he recommended a Boston friend, Holly Palmer, who Bowie auditioned via speakerphone (“let’s hear it with more vibrato now”). You could argue that Palmer’s vocals were just as time-stamped as any TLC vocals would have been: the Liz Fraser-inspired vocalese, the coffee-shop ambiance (a slightly edgier Dido). But Bowie liked what he heard and Palmer joined his touring band in 1999-2001.**

Another question was how far to take the production. David Buckley argued that the song was “crying out for strings,” and the various synthesizer fill-ins for woodwinds, strings and brass can make the song seem stuck in an embryonic state. Had Bowie held “Thursday’s Child” back for what he was calling the “Visconti album,” slated for 2000, it likely would’ve had a much grander production. Perhaps what kept “Thursday’s Child” from being a monstrous hit was that it hedged its bets too much.

The last piece was Walter Stern’s video. “Bowie,” with little makeup to mask his plus-fifty face, and his partner prepare for bed. They brush their teeth, she takes out her contacts (verrry slooowly). There’s a naturalist feel to counter the tasteful Wiliams Sonoma bedroom set: you hear Bowie cough, mumble and half-sing over the recorded track (taken from Elvis Costello’s “I Wanna Be Loved” video), and the plash of water in the sink. He looks in the mirror, transfixed by his aged but still beautiful face; he’s a veteran Narcissist. A twist of the glass and he sees younger versions of himself and his partner.

The mirror pair have the easy, arrogant confidence of youth; they stare at the older couple with the cold pity of  what Bowie once called “the coming race.” They seem like beautiful wraiths. Bowie, seemingly infatuated with his younger self, does the Marx Brothers Duck Soup mirror game with him. The double plays along for a while, then stops, bored and disgusted with his older self. We passed upon the stair, Bowie had sung long ago, upon meeting another double. He’d been on his way up then, his life still mostly potential. This is the other end of the staircase: a man realizing that time has changed him, that the majority share of his life lies behind him now, that his younger self would’ve regarded the current him like some threadbare costume. Perhaps that was the right question to ask after all: What happened to that guy? He kisses his wife in his imagination, and so to bed....