#anyways me listening to the alchemy on loop when it first came out

[toribookworm22]

Listen. I've had The Tortured Poets Department on loop since it came out. I really really love it and only love it more with each repeat.

So. Here's my First Listen Notes:

Fortnight

What a way to start an album: I was supposed to be sent away. But they forgot to come and get me.

Love the synth rise and the beat drop

Post Malone's voice sounds SO good!

The Tortured Poets Department

Like who uses typewriters anyway 😆

Who else decodes you

No-fucking-body

Oooh the drop... it's so sad and quiet 🥺

My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys

Oooh fun beat

I'm queen of sandcastles he destroys 😲

He saw forever so he smashed it up 😶

Daaaaaamn

Down Bad

Digging this soft music, okay

The chimes!!

THE CHORUS

So fuck you if I can't have us

The bridge instrumentation

OOOOH IT GOES OUT OF TUNE

So Long, London

The choral sound!!!

The ramp up!!!

How much sad did you think I had in me

Oh this is gutwrenching

I'm just mad as hell cause I loved this place

But Daddy I Love Him

No I'm not but you should see your faces 😄

An adult Love Story

It's my own disgrace

I love this

Fresh Out The Slammer

Ooh twangy first beat

Tone shift hello

I did my time 🥺

FLORIDA!!!

THE DRUMS

Ooooh Florence's voice

Somehow it sounds like both of their songs????

Guilty as Sin?

How can I be guilty as sin?

What if the way you hold me actually was holy

Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?

Villain Song! Villain Song!

You don't get to tell me about sad

Sounds old country

If you wanted me dead you should've just said

So I leap from the gallows

WHOS AFRAID OF LITTLE OLD ME (you should be)

What the hell?!?!

Was it a wonder I broke

I was tame I was gentle

Well you should be

The lowering beats!!!

Then I'm fearsome and I'm wretched

I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)

Love the old country open

Almost ghostly

Your good lord doesn't need to lift a finger

I can handle me a dangerous man (no really I can)

Woah maybe I cant!!!

loml

Aww it's just piano

Who's gonna stop us from waltzing into rekindled flames if we know the steps anyway 🥺

I felt a glow like this never before and never since

Still alive and killing time at the cemetery

Holy ghost you told me I'm the love of your life 😭

She's so sad...

What we thought was for all time was momentary

Mr. Steal your girl then make her cry

Talking rings and talking cradles

Something counterfeit's dead

Oh my good god I want to analyze this my goodness

You're the loss of my life 😭 Taylor no!!

I Can Do It With A Broken Heart

It sounds like pool in the background

Very 80s arcade glitch pop

I'm a real tough kid I can handle my shit

He said. He'd love. Me all. His life.

I'm so depressed I act like it's my birthday 🤣

No, not depression pop!

I can hold my breath; I've been doing it since he left

Taylor I've never understood you more 🤦‍♀️

You know you're good when you can even do it with a broken heart

You know you're good! I'm good

Cause I'm miserable

And nobody even knows!

The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived

The exhale no!

Who the fuck was that guy

They just ghosted you now you know what that's like 😲

I don't even want you back I just want to know

🫢

This is the most sadly disappointed jab of a song I've ever heard

WERE YOU SENT BY SOMEONE

IN 50 YEARS WILL THIS ALL BE DECLASSIFIED

AND ILL SAY GOOD RIDDANCE

I WOULDVE DIED FOR YOUR SINS

YOULL SLIDE INTO INBOXES AND BETWEEN BARS

You kicked out the stage lights but you're still performing

And I'll forget you but I'll never forgive

Hot damn.

Claiming this as mine yes please

The Alchemy

But I'm coming back so strong

Honestly who are we to fight the alchemy

But I'm making a comeback to where I belong

He jokes that it's heroin but this time with an e

Where's the trophy he just comes running to me

Clara Bow

Ooh windup

Yes guitar!!! Love this intro!!

This sounds so indie and small I love it

Soft and comforting

Take the glory give everything

The crown is stained but you're the real thing

Oooh some small town lore

Hello something reminiscent of The Lucky One

Character Song Acquired

It's. Hell. On. Earth. To. Be. Heavenly.

You've got edge she never did

What a way to end that song damn

The Black Dog

Sad piano no

You forgot to turn it off

Her voice sounds so fragile

Until it doesn't!

Old habits die SCREAMING!!!

YESSSSSSSS

okay miss back to soft but slowly growing

Her voice is so earnest

Yes the beats are so good!

Six weeks of breathing clean air

Beat change!!!!!!

Screeeeeeeeeaaaaaammmmiiiiing

And I hope you heeeeeeeeeeaaaaaar it

And I hope it's shitty in The Black Dog

Keep the beat going!!! Yes!!!

I adore this so so much

The last screaming is WHISPERED!!!???! what!??!

Top songs. I'm calling it.

imgonnagetyouback

I hear you 1989 energy

And I'll tell you one thing honey delivery stunning

Ooh okay!

Sparkly alright okay!

Instrumentation is so fun

I'm loving the ultimatums 😆

Even if it's handcuffed I'm LEAVING HERE WITH YOU

pick your poison babe I'm poison either way

Cut the music alright!

The Albatross

Ooooh this is so pretty already!

I love the softness contrasted with the short lines

She's the albatross she is here to destroy you

One less temptress one less dagger to sharpen

And they tried to warn you about me

And I tried to warn you about them!

I'm the life you chose and all these terrible dangers

So cross your thoughtless heart

Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus

Simple instrumentation

Oh but I love the title drop

If you wanna break my cold cold heart just say I loved you the way that you were

If you wanna tear my world apart just say you've always wondered

I changed into goddesses villains and fools

Will that make your memory fade from this scarlet maroon

Cause I wonder

Will I always wonder

How Did It End?

Oooh no I'm scared

The piano is scaring me already

No not oh-oh's

We hereby conduct this post-mordem

We must know... how did it end?

Oh-oh oh-ohhhhhhhh

Her backing vocals are so gorgeous

Lot the game of chance what are the chances

Walking in circles like she was lost

Didn't you hear they called it all off

One gasp then how did it end?

Ooh key change oh no

My beloved ghost and me sitting in a tree d-y-i-n-g

But I still don't know how did it end?

I didnt understand until I did hot damn

So High School

Ooooh the instrumentation sounds so 2000s!!!!

That just soft pop rock energy

Bittersweet 16 suddenly

I love the contrast between her soft airy vocals and her gritty lows

Are you gonna marry kiss or kill me

You know how to bottle I know Aristotle

I feel... like laughing

And in the blink of a crinkling eye

Such a sweet grinning song

Sounds like she's really recapturing something teenage

I Hate It Here

Quick quick (lyrics before music what??)

Tell me something awful like you are a poet

When I was a precocious child

Small town fears

Cause I hate it here

Everyone would look down cause it wasn't fun now seems like it was never even fun back then

Only the gentle survived

I'm made most of the year

This is really really pretty

A fun I was a quietly angry child song

This place made me feel worthless

She sounds timeless

This could actually be a kids movie song with this lullaby like instrumentation

thanK you aIMee

(Her first play on capitalization?)

And I forget the way you made me feel

Screaming fuck you Aimee

Ooh I like the build

Nice build!!! Oooh so fun!

But she used to say she wished you were dead 🫢

I built a legacy that you can't undo

That there wouldn't be this if there hadn't been you

Miss Taylor did you write a whole new bully song for me??? A la Mean???

I don't think you've changed much do I changed your name

Only us two are gonna know is about you

Soft and powerful

Like every kid who came out of bullying with a kinder heart

I Look In People's Windows

Ooh fun instru- wait wait what? That glitch of a noise? Hello?

I'm afflicted by the not knowing

Backing vocals! Fun noise!

The music is sounding a little more strangled okay!

I'm addicted to the if only

Music leaves her isolated when she calls herself weird hmmm subtext there

The Prophecy

Country sings again with the indie guitar

I got cursed like eve got bitten

A lesser of a woman would've lost hope a greater woman would've begged

Ooh the begging is so pretty

Sounds a prayer for real

Feeling like the very last drops of an ink pen

Gathered with a coven round

But even statues crumble if they're made to wait

Spending my last coins so someone will tell me it'll be okay

And said *please*

Cassandra

Oooh follow piano notes

Build some strings okay

When it's burn the bitch they're shrieking

When the truth comes out it's quiet

So they killed Cassandra first

So they killed my cell with snakes I regret to say do you believe me now

What happens if it becomes who you are

So they set my life in flames I'm scared to say do you believe me now

Bloods thick but nothing like a payroll

It's so sad but still powerful like Greek mythology I guess

Ooh but the gravel on "heard"

I think I hear static like fire in the background at the end

Peter

Oooh okay some powerful piano notes alright

Love this instrumentation

Is it something I did

I thought it was just goodbye for now

Said you were gonna grow up then you were gonna come find me

Such a simple melody I love it

We said it was just goodbye for now

And I won't confess that I waited

Cause loves never lost when perspective is earned

Lost to the lost boys chapter of your life

But the woman who waits by the window has turned out the light

The Bolter

Oooooh

Okay I'm here for this alright

Storytelling like folklore!!!

Behind her back her best friends laughed

It's cheery but so devastating my goodness

All her fucking lives passed before her eyes

Oooh ramp up a little with some subtle beats

She's been many places

Yes ramp up

Chariots are waiting

There's a scape in escaping

But she's got the best story

Robin

(In here for all the names okay)

No sad piano!!!

Long note no!!!

You are bloodthirsty (ethereal version)

This is so pretty

The softest battle cry

It's nostalgic power?

We all vowed to keep it from you in sweetness

Is this like you did a good job being sweet now be angry?

You have no room in your dreams for regret

You'll learn to bounce back like you trampoline

This is such a be whatever kind of kid you wanna be

The Manuscript

One note and I'm crying

Love the isolated notes Oh my gosh

Love this end already

Now and then she rereads the manuscript

In the age of him she wished she was 30

Afterwards she only ate kids cereal

She wasn't sure

Okay some growing notes yes! Grow power

The professor said to write what you know

Looking backwards may be the only way to move forward

And at last she knew what the agony had been for

The only that's left is the manuscript

But the story isn't mine anymore

That is a... okay, wait... that's a really really good way to end this album... I need time to digest that actually... hold on...

[fullmetalscullyy]

the way it was - chapter 14

summary:  what if riza never went to war?  riza hawkeye has just married the man she loves. six months into their marriage, an unexpected surprise stops her from following roy to the military. a canon divergence au that explores what might have happened had riza been unable to join the military. there will be plenty of family fluff, angst, and royai.

rated: m | warnings: no archive warning apply

chapter 13 | read on ao3

1914 

anywhere the sun shines

anywhere your love goes

you will find me

“Moving to Central?” Riza asked in surprise. Roy had mentioned the move before but that seemed like a far-off thing – something not happening until the end of the year, or in the new one.

“They liked how I handled the Scar situation so much that they promoted me.”

“A promotion too?”

“Don’t act like it was so unlikely,” he grinned cheekily.

“No, I’m just… This is great for you.” Her expression softened, her lips curving upwards as he grinned at her. “Well done. I’m proud of you, and this is a step in the right direction.”

Roy’s arms looped around her body, locking together on the small of her back. “It’s all thanks to you.”

Riza snorted lightly in disbelief. “I doubt that.”

“No, it is,” Roy urged as she tried to pull away. His grip tightened and Roy held her in place. “You’ve pushed me to keep going. Plus, now we have baby number two on the way, we have to get a bigger place, so this is the perfect excuse,” he winked. Roy chuckled as Riza swatted his arm, making him loosen his hold on her waist.

“What happened with Scar, by the way?” she enquired.

“He’s still on the loose. He’s far too fast for us to catch but at the moment, the threat has passed.”

“Just be careful, okay?”

“Always am,” he reassured her with a grin. Riza promptly rolled her eyes at him. Says the man that fell off her roof while trying to impress her.

But still… Riza bit her lip. She knew Scar was an Ishvalan man. Roy had expressed his strong desire not to use alchemy against him, not after what he did. Riza reasoned that he had to protect himself. He had a whole country depending on him. Once Roy started making moves with the changes he wanted to see in the world, the Amestrian people would need him. He couldn’t get himself killed with the first step he took.

“Did you use your alchemy against him?”

There was a pause which caused Riza to glance at him. Roy’s gaze was off to the side as he answered.

“No.”

Riza felt relief wash over her. “How come?”

“It was raining all day.”

Riza blinked at him, then burst out laughing. She couldn’t help it. A memory from their past came to her mind unbidden, and it always amused her thoroughly. It involved smug Roy trying to show off and some petrol. He’d been trying to get the old barbeque they had going in the damp, wet air. It wasn’t working, so Genius Roy, with all of his fifteen years of wisdom, thought that pouring a few drops of petrol on the barbeque would get it going. It did. The inferno claimed his eyebrows. Riza had to draw them on for days after so her father wouldn’t find out.

She’d never laughed so much in her childhood before.

“It’s not funny,” he glared.

“I’m sorry, dear. I wasn’t laughing at that,” she giggled, trying to calm herself down. 

Roy moved to sulk on the couch instead. He placed his face on two closed fists, his elbows resting on his knees. Mia was lost in her own world as she played with her toys on the rug in front of them.

“Okay,” she admitted. “I was.”

“Before you say it,” Roy interrupted her. “I’m not useless,” he spat out, the word obviously leaving a bad taste in his mouth.

“I bet you didn’t even realise it was raining that day, did you?” Riza grinned from behind the couch. She perched on the back of it, running her hand through his hair. There was a soft sigh from Roy, and it made Riza’s smile grow.

“No,” he muttered sullenly. “Listen,” he jumped in, his spine straightening. “When you’re faced with a serial killer, you’d have bigger things to worry about than the weather, all right?”

“Not when it affects my ability to use alchemy, the only way to defend myself,” Riza retorted. His defensive argument was a strong one, however he could have been killed when fighting Scar that day. That was the reality of it. Riza tried to let it go. She exhaled slowly and quietly, letting that anxious energy drain out of her. He was fine. He was alive. He was still breathing, and his heart was still beating.

He was okay.

Roy huffed, returning to his sulk. “Yeah, yeah,” he muttered.

“Daddy?” Mia asked, not looking up from playing with her toys. Her brow was furrowed as she still played, confused about something.

“Yes, Mia?” he asked. His mood perked up as soon as their daughter called him. It made the smile return to Riza’s face.

“What’s a serial killer?”

Riza snickered as Roy stiffened underneath her hand. She patted his head twice then bent at the waist to whisper in his ear. “I’ll let you deal with this one,” she stated, oh so kindly. Their daughter had quite the inquisitive streak and was a sponge – she picked up everything.

“Gee, thanks,” he deadpanned.

“Dinner will be ready shortly Mia, okay?” Riza called during her retreat to their kitchen.

“Okay Mummy,” she called as she clambered up onto her father’s lap.

“Make sure all your toys are tidied up, okay?”

“Yes Mummy,” she replied dutifully.

“Thank you, Mia.”

Riza smiled and left the two of them to their lesson, snickering at the thought of Roy explaining to their five-year-old what a serial killer was. In all honesty, she shouldn’t know, but Mia would never let things go. If they put it off, she’d just ask again and again until she got her answer. Or worse, she’d ask someone else, stating she heard her parents talking about it. That had happened before, and it was an awkward conversation with the adult afterwards.

Ten minutes after their impromptu lesson began, Roy entered the kitchen alone and kissed her cheek in greeting.

“As I was saying, before I was rudely interrupted.”

“Are you talking about me, or our child?” Riza asked dryly. “Choose wisely.”

“Um… None?” he squeaked with a forced grin. Riza rolled her eyes, and the forced smile on Roy’s face fell, leaving a real one in its place. “Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that it was you who saved me with Scar.”

Riza scoffed. “Hardly.”

“No, you did. Honestly. I don’t know what I’d ever do without you.” He stopped for a moment, tilted his head then smiled softly. “Watching out for me even when you’re not by my side,” Roy grinned. “I knew I married you for a reason.”

“To stop you from inadvertently getting yourself killed?” Riza asked, raising one eyebrow.

“Something like that,” Roy smiled, angling his head to kiss her temple.

“I believe Maes calls your ability to still find yourself alive “sheer dumb luck”. Emphasis on the dumb.”

“Well, Maes is always talking out of his ass.”

“Daddy?” Mia piped up suddenly, appearing in the doorway. “What’s an ass –”

“Oh! Mia!” Riza announced quickly and loudly, distracting their daughter with her food. “Dinner is ready! Daddy will help you into your chair.”

Mia grinned and ran over to him, holding her arms up in the air, signalling she wanted up. It was like she was two years old again.

Riza shot him a pointed look that said, “no more swearing in front of the kid.” The last thing Riza needed was for her to repeat that. Hopefully, she’d caught it early enough that Mia had already forgotten all about it.

“So… Central?” Riza stated as they retired to the living room for the night.

“Are you all right with that?” he asked, an undercurrent of uncertainty in her tone.

Riza nodded. “Of course.”

“I just knew it meant you’d be able to pursue your career and Central would give you so many more opportunities to do that than being here does.” From his tone it was clear he’d already built up a case to try and persuade her, but there was no need. She was already ready to go. It was the packing up of all Mia’s toys that would be the nightmare part of it.

“Roy, I’m ready. This is a step in the right direction for you.”

“But it’s your life too,” he stressed, turning to face her. “I can’t just assume you’ll uproot your life just for me.”

Riza smiled and cupped his cheek. “You’re sweet. But don’t worry. I already told you I had something lined up in Central for this year and you’re also my husband,” she stated, as if it were obvious. “I’d follow you anywhere.”

That seemed to settle some of his fears and his nervousness. His shoulders sagged in relief.

Riza wondered if he was like this every day at work. He seemed to be calm, cool, and collected in front of his colleagues at the ball, but when it came to her he was always uncertain and sure she was going to turn and run away from him at a moment’s notice. It may not be intentional, but that was the vibe he gave off to her. Riza wasn’t worried about it, per se, but she’d married him, and loved him with all her heart. He owned it completely. What else could she do to prove that she wasn’t going anywhere?

“There’s nothing to worry about on my part. And Central will be good for us. Plus, Maes and Gracia are there too, so we’ll be able to see them more often.”

“Oh no.”

“What?” His tone was filled with dread, and worry began to pool in Riza’s chest.

“I won’t just get phone calls about his kid and Gracia, I’ll have to deal with it in person.”

Riza rolled her eyes. “Drama queen.”

“It’s a real problem I suffer with here. I would think as my wife you’d be supportive,” he frowned.

“You’re on your own there, dear,” she smiled sweetly, patting his knee. Before she could remove it, Roy snagged it in his hand. “Okay, so now we need to think about moving,” Riza stated, already planning and making a list of things to do in her head. “We’ll need boxes. I threw out all the ones we brought here with us. I’ve no schoolwork tomorrow and was planning on going to the market with Mia anyway, so I’ll pick something up then.”

“Tell me about it,” Roy requested, immediately after she’d finished her train of thought.

“Excuse me?” she asked, confused by his request. “Tell you about cardboard boxes?”

“Tell me about your typical day. About what you have planned for tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Riza stated after a pause, wracking her brain for what she’d decided to do tomorrow. “Tomorrow the market is on in the square from nine o’clock until noon, so I’ll go there with Mia to collect some fresh vegetables for dinner. Then, we’ll probably go to the park and she’ll play on the swings.” Roy grinned. They made that trip a few times a month on the weekends and Mia would be on those swings for hours if they let her. “Then, I’ll nip into town and get a cup of coffee –”

“Where about?” he inquired.

“Robertson’s.”

“The old haunt.” Roy quipped.

“They do a soup that Mia really likes so we’ll have some of that for lunch then head back. At home she’ll play while I look over my schoolwork, then we play until you come home. Except…” She cocked her head in thought. “We’ll nip back to the market as it closes to see if we can get some cardboard boxes from some of the stalls.”

“That sounds genuinely wonderful. I wish I could join you,” he murmured.

“One day,” she smiled. “Or we’ll do it more often when you’ve got the day off.”

“In a perfect world I like to think we’d do that every day.”

“Oh yeah? What do you imagine our lives being like?”

Roy took a deep breath then let it out in a rush, tilting his head to look up at the ceiling. “If I never joined the military… I picture us in a house out in the country. Not your father’s one, but something new that we bought ourselves with our own money. We’d have chickens, we’d have a cow and a goat.”

“Just one of each?”

Roy nodded. “Yep. Just one is all we need. There would be a little vegetable plot in the back garden where we’d grow our own… It would be perfect.”

Riza hummed and leaned her head against his shoulder. “That does sound wonderful.”

“However.” He heaved a sigh. “This was the path I chose, so I must follow through with it.”

Riza patted the hand on his thigh. “I’ll be right behind you.”

“How about beside me?” he asked, rubbing his hand up and down her arm. “I don’t like the idea of you being behind me.”

“I’m supposed to watch your back, Roy,” she smiled dryly. “I can’t do that from beside you.”

“Then how am I supposed to watch yours, with you behind me?” he queried. “No, beside sounds a lot better, because we’re equals. We look out for each other, and no one is getting put to the back or left behind,” he stated firmly. Riza smiled at his explanation and felt her chest blossom with warmth at his words, along with a little flutter in her stomach.

“That sounds lovely, Roy,” she hummed in agreement.

Silence settled over them, and Riza turned her vision to the future, thinking about how everything was all falling into place conveniently for them. She was loath to damper on the moment for herself, but this seemed too easy. Letting go of her insecurities was easier said than done, but she gave herself a shake anyway. No, she wouldn’t let those fears ruin this lovely moment for herself.

“So, Central, huh?”

“I know,” Roy stated.

“This is a big move.”

Roy nodded. “It will be good for us.”

Riza agreed with him. “Definitely. I’m sure we’ll have lots of fun in the big city,” she joked. “Plus, we’ll be closer to Chris, so she’ll get to see Mia more often.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good thing,” Roy stated dryly.

“She’s great with Mia,” Riza said, eyeing him like he was crazy. “What are you talking about?”

“I meant for Mia. Poor kid must put up with her. At the best of times, it wasn’t fun,” he joked, mock fear on his face.

“She must have done an all right job because you turned out okay,” Riza retorted.

“Just okay?” Roy asked, quirking an eyebrow.

Riza felt a mischievous streak overtake her. “Yes. Just “okay”. Below average, but a passing grade.”

Something flashed in his eyes and Riza began to laugh as Roy tickled her mercilessly as a punishment.

“Stop it,” Riza gasped. “You’ll wake Mia up!”

“No, you will wake her up,” he grinned, continuing his torture.

“Roy!”

She was silenced with lips pressed hard against her own. Her laughs and gasps turned into moans as Roy’s hands stayed on her body, but began to stroke it instead, lighting a spark within Riza that only he could put out. She moaned his name as he moved down to her neck. 

“That’s a better volume,” he quipped.

Riza pulled at his hair gently, guiding him back up to her lips. “Much better,” she agreed.

*          *          *

The move to Central happened in a blur. Two days after Roy announced it, and was officially told himself, they were expected to move out of their apartment within the week and head to Central. The military had already allocated Roy a new home in the city, so they were expected to be ready to go.

Talk about military efficiency, Riza had thought sourly, exhausted after cramming her packing time into two days, rather than the weeks she thought she would have. Luckily, they let Roy off work so he could prepare too, so she didn’t have to do it all by herself. It made the hectic and stressful time in her life easier to deal with while he was helping.

Now in Central, Riza barely remembered what happened. The move was over that quick. One morning she woke up in their apartment in East City to a fall asleep in a different one.

Except this wasn’t an apartment. It was a house. Roy had specifically put in a request for them to have a house.

“I wanted to save the trouble of moving again, since the family is growing.” He’d shrugged, like it was no big deal. Riza had been touched that he’d been so thoughtful. “I don’t want to drag Mia through all that chaos again.”

Their five-year-old was surprisingly calm throughout it all. Maybe she could sense how stressed her mother was and kept quiet. Of course, the military expected Roy to check in at Central Headquarters the day they arrived, leaving Riza to unpack. He’d been assured it would only be an hour or so, however four hours later, Riza was worrying about where he’d gotten to. When Roy did eventually return, he was extremely apologetic and had even stopped off at a bakery to pick up a coffee and a pastry for her.

“I promise, I’ll make this up to you,” he’d assured her. He didn’t have to, but Roy was adamant. The look in his eye told her that the “making up” wouldn’t be coming until after they’d retired to bed.

She wasn’t annoyed at him. Her sourness was directed more at the military, which was happening more frequently these days. It didn’t mean that the making up for his prolonged absence wasn’t welcome. Far from it. He’d become more affectionate recently, and Riza accepted it wholeheartedly. She enjoyed every second of it. It made her feel so loved, which she was eternally grateful for every time. Roy had that effect on her.

She couldn’t wait to see what their future held in Central. Despite being exhausted from their move she was thoroughly excited. Their home was perfect. It was large, spacious, and had room for them to grow within its walls. It was military owned, but far from what Riza had expected it would be. In her mind it would be beige walls everywhere, with no character or warmth. Instead, it was an old townhouse that had been taken over for military accommodation, which still harboured the old wood panelling in the hallway and plush carpet throughout the ground floor. It was warm and welcoming, just what she’d always wanted in a home.

 Mia adored the large back garden and the first day, she’d stood with her face pressed against the glass of the patio doors, mind boggling at the sight of the expanse of grass before her.

Roy had regaled her with his plans for the space. “We can get a swing,” he had explained, casting his hand over the old oak tree at the corner. “We can tie it around the tree branches and Mia can swing from there. When the little one is old enough, they can join her,” he grinned. “In that corner,” he gestured over to the opposite side of the garden. “I can build a small vegetable patch and we can grow our own.”

Riza glanced up at him and noticed the sparkle in his eyes as he spoke about all of this. She remembered the conversation they’d had about their ideal lives, and how Roy said he wanted a vegetable garden. She smiled up at him, catching the bug for his excitement and turned her attention back to the garden as he showed off the space.

Yeah. Riza couldn’t wait.

[thesinglesjukebox]

LIL NAS X - OLD TOWN ROAD

[6.73]

We're gonna bluuuurb til we can't no more...

Katie Gill: The problem with "Old Town Road" is that it's more interesting as a thinkpiece than an actual song. The song charting, then being excluded, from the Billboard Country Music charts opens so many questions that can't be answered in one sitting. Is this a further example of the well-documented racism in country music? Or is this just a freak accident hick-hop song that vaulted it's way out of the depths of subgenre hell? Is a twangy voice and references to horses enough to make a song "country"? Does the presence of Billy Ray Cyrus in a remix that dropped on Friday legitimize the song's credentials or just make them worse? Where was all this controversy when "Meant To Be," an honest-to-god pop song, was holding steady on the charts? There are so many questions and so many points of conversation that spring out from this song, that it's a pity "Old Town Road" itself is just okay. Everything about it screams "filler track for the SoundCloud page," from the length to the trap beats to the aggressively mediocre lyrics. The song didn't even chart on it's own merits: it charted because it's used in a TikTok meme! This is like if "We Are Number One" or "No Mercy" made their way to the top of the iTunes charts and people decided to have a conversation about the limits of genre based on those charting. I'm a little annoyed, because the conversation around "Old Town Road" is something that country music should be having... but just not around "Old Town Road." [5]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: There are essays upon essays to be written about "Old Town Road" as a prism for the racial divides that have served as undergirding for the modern American genre system since the 1930s division between "hillbilly" and "race" records. It's the perfect hunk of think-piece fodder: a simple core question -- is it country? -- that can spiral out to all corners of culture until the song itself is obscured. So let's focus on the song, instead. Because beyond all world-historical significance, "Old Town Road" fucking bangs. It's all in the bait and switch of that intro -- banjos and horns plunking away until Lil Nas X's triumphant "YEAAAH" (second this decade only to Fetty Wap) drops and the beat comes in. It's a joke until it's not -- maybe you came in from the Red Dead Redemption 2 video, or from a friend of yours talking about the hilarious country trap song, or from the artist's own Twitter, which is more Meech On Mars than Meek Mill, but no matter the source, you'll find that "Old Town Road" has its way of looping into your brain, all drawls and boasts and banjos. It's meme rap, but much like prior iterations of this joke ("Like a Farmer"), Lil Nas X fully and deeply commits -- he doesn't drop the pretense for a single line, keeping the track short enough to not outlive its welcome while still exploring its weird conceit to its fullest. Yet even in its jokey vibe there's some actual pathos -- no matter how put on, the lonesome cowboy sorrow of Lil Nas X's declaration that he'll "ride till [he] can't no more" feels genuine. "Old Town Road" is everything at once, the implosion of late teens culture into one undeniable moment. [10]

David Moore: So here's a true gem of a novelty song -- a phrase I use with both intention and respect; I grew up in a Dementoid household -- that could launch a thousand thinkpieces about hip-hop, country, class, the object and subject of jokes, whether to call something a joke at all, you name it. But what I keep returning to is the economy of it, its simplicity, how there is so much in so little, the way that someone on the outside can grok things inaccessible to the insiders, maybe by accident or by studious observation and a fresh perspective, the way music can be a multiverse, characters from one world complicating or clarifying or confusing the limits of another in a mutually provocative way. I'm not a backstory guy, which is to say I'm not a research guy, which is to say I'm either intuitive or lazy or both, so I don't have any clue where this came from, but I know magic when I hear it, I know what it sounds like when you discover, or simply stumble into by accident, the path beyond the bounds of territory you presumed exhausted, territory that can always get bigger, always invite whole new parties to the party. It's a real party party; you can get in. [10]

Katherine St Asaph: "Old Town Road" is the "Starships" of 2019: a song that objectively is not great, but will be called great for the understandable reason that liking or disliking it now unavoidably entails choosing the right or wrong side. This tends to lead to hand-waving freakoutery about critics not talking about the music, man, but once The Discourse is out in the world, it becomes a real and critical part of the song's existence; not talking about Billboard punting "Old Town Road" would be like talking about "Not Ready to Make Nice" as an workaday country song. The problem is not quite as simple as "the Billboard charts don't want black artists," an argument with historical precedent but now doomed to fail: clearly, people like Kane Brown and Darius Rucker and Mickey Guyton (who's left off lists like this, somehow) have hits. It's more about respectability politics. Traditionalists hate the idea of memes, social media, and perceived line-cutting, all of which means they'll hate a song born not of the Nashville and former-fraternity-bro scene, but via TikTok and stan Twitter. But what they really, really hate is rap and anything that sounds like a gateway to rap; like if they tolerate this Cardi B will be next. Country radio, for the past decade or two, has been pop radio with all the blatant rap signifiers removed; its songs aren't about cowboys or horses but suburban WASP life. Of course, double standards abound. Talking about lean is out; talking about bingeing beer is fine. "Bull riding and boobies" isn't OK because it's from a guy called Lil Nas X -- I honestly think people would whine less if this exact song was credited to "Montero Hill" -- but "I got a girl, her name's Sheila, she goes batshit on tequila" is OK because it's from a guy called Jake Owen, and "Look What God Gave Her" is OK because it hides its ogling of boobies behind plausibly deniable God talk. Fortunately "Old Town Road" is better than "Starships" -- the NIN sample is inspired, and the hook is evocative and sticky. (It fucks with authenticity politics, too -- Lil Nas X wrote his own song, but the big corporate country artists often don't.) Its main problem is that it's slight: a meme that doesn't overstay past the punchline, a song that never quite gets to song size. [5]

Thomas Inskeep: Sampling Nine Inch Nails' "34 Ghosts IV" to (help) create a western motif is hands-down brilliant, so huge thumbs-up for that. Lyrically, this is pretty empty, a bunch of western clichés strung together -- but then again, the same can be said of plenty of Big & Rich songs. Split the score down the middle, accordingly. [5]

Scott Mildenhall: But surely this is how country music should sound? Lil Nas X has performed alchemy in combining two generic styles into something inspiring, flipping the meaning of "pony and trap" on its head. The mechanical sound of trap is rusted into the mechanical sound of fixing a combine, or at least pretending that is something you might do, and such performance is fun for all the family. Well, unless you're an American farming family tired of stereotypes anyway. [7]

Stephen Eisermann: Non country (trap) beat with subtle country instrumentation? Sounds like much of country radio, only way better! [7]

Nortey Dowuona: A burning, humming bass girds under sticklike banjos as Lil Nas X rides into town to water his horse and head back out onto the open road. [5]

Alex Clifton: I spent the weekend re-enacting this scene from Easy A with this song, so it's safe to say I like it. I especially love the "horse"/"Porsche" line, which is unexpected and amazing. [7]

Alfred Soto: The usual genre conversations threaten to smother analysis. If Lil Nas X can use trap drums, then why can't Sam Hunt use loops? Silly. (Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes: "The Constitution is what the judges say it is"). The Kanye allusion ("Y'all can't tell me nuthin'") works extra-diagetically. An assemblage of modest, discrete charms held together by a solid performance at its center -- nothing more. I await the Future-Frank Liddell collab. [5]

Edward Okulicz: It's affectionate and actually quite deferential in its treatment of its parent genres. Crossovers like this have been hinted at, and gestured towards in the other direction quite a bit of late (country artists affecting hip-hop, less so the latter), and the two genres have more in common than the caricatures of the sorts of people who are supposed to listen to them do. Of course, I mean those genres as they exist today, and not in the warped imaginations of purists. You can see why kids have latched on, and it's easy to snarl at Big Chart for sticking their oar in. The kids are right; artists control the means of production and radio and chart compilers can accept that they aren't the tastemakers, and attempts to force their tastes down other people's throats will lead to a backlash. This is not a brilliant song but it's a picture of one of many potential musical futures and, at two minutes, the perfect length too. The right response is to smile, and "Old Town Road" makes it easy to smile -- it's an earworm. Sure, it doesn't give me the same immediate feeling of fuck!!! this is the best that I got when I first heard that version of Bubba Sparxxx's "Comin' Round" but country music survived "Honey, I'm Good" and it will survive this. It might well thrive. [6]

Joshua Copperman: I recently found out that I have a moderate Vitamin D deficiency, but looking up the song everyone was talking about and hearing this basically confirmed that I should go outside more often. There are definitely things to talk about: it's the logical conclusion to "I listen to everything except country and rap" jokes when the inverse has taken over the Hot 100, and it's a song that's set to hit number one because everyone is incredulous that it exists at all -- with a Billy Ray Cyrus remix to boot. The conversations about what makes a song "country" are all fascinating, but it's hard to fully enjoy pieces about something that, as an actual song, is so fundamentally empty. The Nine Inch Nails sample is interesting, but like everything else, more intriguing in theory than execution. This will wind up on every site's "best of 2019" lists, and then in ten years people will snark on how a song with "My life is a movie/Bullridin' and boobies" was so critically acclaimed. As a meme/discourse lightning rod, it's an [8], as a how-to guide for late-2010s fame, it's a [10], but there's little appeal in a vacuum. Adding a bonus point, because music has never existed in a vacuum anyway. [5]

Taylor Alatorre: Remember when the internet was still described as a realm of lawless and limitless potential, when open source could be touted as revolutionary praxis and "free flow of information" was a sacred utterance? Now one of the key political questions is whether private companies should be doing more to banish online rulebreakers or whether the federal government should step in to delimit what those rules are. Whichever side ends up winning, it's clear that the wide open spaces of the Frontier Internet are rapidly facing enclosure. Montero Hill learned this the hard way when his @nasmaraj account was suspended by Twitter as part of its crackdown against spam-based virality. While Tweetdeckers are nobody's martyrs, it's a minor tragedy every time an account with that many followers and that much influence gets shunted off to the broken-link stacks of the Wayback Machine. Rules must be laid down, but their enforcement always entails loss -- the bittersweet triumph of civilization over nature that forms the backbone of every classic Western. Maybe Hill/nasmaraj/Lil Nas X had this loss in mind when writing the jauntily defiant lyrics of "Old Town Road." Maybe he was just riding the microtrends of the moment like he was before. Still, this particular microtrend -- the reappropriation of cowboy imagery by non-white Americans -- feels too weighty to be reduced to mere aesthetics. Turner's Frontier Thesis may have been racially blinkered to the extreme, but the myths and yearnings it spawned can never die; they just get democratized. So it makes sense that young Americans, even those who don't know who John Wayne is, would subconsciously reach out for the rural, the rustic, the rugged and free, just as we feel the global frontiers closing all around us. Our foreign policy elites hold endless panel talks about "maintaining power projection" and "winning the AI race," but most normal people don't care about that stuff. We're all secretly waiting for China to take over like in our cyberpunk stories, so we can drop all the pressures of being the Indispensable Nation and just feast off our legacy like post-imperial Britain. And what is that legacy? It's rock, it's country, it's hip hop, it's "Wrangler on my booty," it's all the vulgar mongrelisms that force our post-ironic white nationalists to adopt Old Europe as their lodestar. In short, it's "Old Town Road." We're gonna ride this horse 'til we can't no more, we're gonna reify these myths 'til we can't no more, because when the empire is gone, the myths are all we have. (Oh, and the Billy Ray remix is a [10]. Obviously.) [9]

Jonathan Bradley: People suppose that genre exists to delineate a set of sounds, and while it does do that, it depends even more on its ability to build, define, and speak for communities. The question of whether "Old Town Road" is a country song or not is in some ways easily resolved: country music showed no interest in Lil Nas X -- or at least not until Billy Ray Cyrus noticed an opportune moment to complicate expectations and grab headlines -- and so Lil Nas X's song was not country. Even taking into account its sound and subject matter, his hit is best understood as a burlesque on country music, one that parodies and exaggerates the genre's motifs and themes for heightened effect. The kids on TikTok, who turned the long-gone lonesome blues of the song's tumbleweed hook into viral content, understand this intuitively: they use the incongruity that clarifies at the beat drop as an opportunity to engage in caricature and costume. And while Lil Nas X, a huckster and a trendspotter before he was a pop star, has been happy to embrace the yee-haw mantle that has been bestowed upon him, his song is a familiar rap exercise in play and extended metaphor. The Shop Boyz did much the same thing with "Party Like a Rock Star" and it would be obtuse to suppose that was a rock song. And yet, as the country historian Bill C. Malone has written, country since its inception has attracted fans "because of its presumed Southern traits, whether romantically or negatively expressed"; there has always been a bit of schtick to this sound. I wondered when we reviewed Trixie Mattel whether country is, on some level, intrinsically camp, and it's tough to declare definitively that Lil Nas X's bold hick strokes are that much more stylized than Jake Owen's performance of small town ordinariness. And just as a country music based on cohesive community rather than sound has found itself broad enough to encompass northern hair metal, Auto-Tuned club stomps, and Ludacris, the gate-keeping involved in keeping Lil Nas X out begins to look suspicious. After all, the first song to debut on Billboard's Most Played Juke Box Folk Records chart, the predecessor to today's Hot Country Songs, was "Pistol Packin' Mama," a hillbilly goof by the decidedly uncountry combination of Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters. As Malone has written, "While the commercial fraternity thought mainly of profits, the recording men, radio executives, publicists, promoters, ad men, sponsors, and booking agents who dealt with folk music also readily manipulated public perceptions in order to sell their products." One of the ways they did that was to tap into already mythological figures of American individualism like the cowboy, who is, after all, a creature of the west and not the South. "The respective visions of cowboy and western life drew far more from popular culture and myth ... than they did from reality," Malone writes of the early country singers who embraced cowboy personae; in some ways Lil Nas X's purloining of meme interest in that same culture places him within a rich country heritage. After all, when in popular entertainment has shameless self-promotion not been part of the aspirant's trade? It does matter how cultural communities react to the music made in their name, but when certain people are adjudicated not fit for club membership, it is worth asking why. Country's culture, I said recently, is "one that's implicitly but not definitely Southern, implicitly but not definitely rural, and implicitly but not definitely white," and it's easy to see how Lil Nas X doesn't fit into that. Country music's racism isn't unique to the genre -- the historical hegemonies of punk and indie rock are at least as determinedly white -- but it is particularly visible. Country is racist like the South is racist like America is racist. Lil Nas X disrupts that settlement, helping us imagine a country music that genuinely encompasses the music of the American South -- a genre that has space for "This is How We Roll" and Miranda Lambert, Lil Boosie and Young Thug, "Formation" and Juvenile, and perhaps even Norteño and banda sounds. That would be, however, not only a far different country music to what we know today, but the music of a far different America. [7]

Iris Xie: Yeet haw! Aside from the great pleasure I've had in showing this to my friends, (Me, two weeks ago: "Have you heard this country trap song???" My friends, this week: "Iris, that song you're talking about now has Billy Ray Cyrus on it??") and either slinging back and forth memey references, engaging in discussions on the state of white supremacy in the music industry while also debating about the song's merit, or hearing my friends start singing "can't nobody tell me nothing..." very quietly at any moment and I can't help but join in -- it's all been very fun. Aside from making plans to play "Old Town Road" on my next country road drive to Costco, something that's occurred to me is that this is a song boosted by the status and calamity of its metanarrative. We could always use more discussions of the double standards that Black and POC artists face in the industry when it comes to genres and participating in it, and I'm honestly glad Lil Nas X just made something that was fun and made sense to him, even if "Old Town Road" doesn't stray too much from the conventions of both trap and country, resulting in a well-balanced mashup that sounds more safe than surprising to me, but is serene in its confidence nevertheless. On the flipside of that genre-mashing, Miley wishes and is probably very jealous of her father now for hopping onto this train, lest we forget about all of her cultural appropriation attempts. But for the song itself, those long, relaxed drawls and the imagery of riding a horse to the trap beat -- why not? We live in weird times now, Black people's contributions to country music were erased, and it's kind of a relaxing song. Also, I'm a fan of the "Can't nobody tell me nothing" lyric, which has become an unintentionally defiant line in the face of all the backlash, resulting in a message to rally around. Now excuse me, as I text my friends that "I'm gonna take my horse down to the old town road." [8]

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