#but there are a million and one indie artists writing their own songs that i appreciate more

[angeledeggs]

hellooo, me again, what modern artists/songs do you think the m6/courtiers would like? •3•

OKAY OKAY I LOVE THIS

Asra💜:

Okay I kinda feel like Asra likes like Arabic rap and like some chill lofi.

He definitely listens to like lofi girl comps for sure but like also Wegz and Freek and stuff

Oh also I feel like he kind of likes lots of indie tiktok musicians for some reasons and has a pretty diverse music taste.

Except for country.

He hates country.

Julian🦠:

BLP Kosher DNDUEJEHS NO IM KIDDING

Okay okay but for real though I think he's kind of a jazz and klezmer genre type of guy (im NOT PROJECTING YALL I SWEAR)

Okay so I think some of the main music or artists he would listen to would be like Herbie Hancock, Bill Evans, probs the Jewish Starlight Orchestra (NOT PROJECTING I PROMISE), the Klezmatics, just lots of general jazz and klezmer

I feel like he has like, a personal thing against hip hop, though.

Muriel💙:

I don't really know for him 😰😰😰

NDHDSHDB IM SORRY

I just don't know what to do for him I'm sorry y'all 😭 if any of you have ideas in the comments let me go

Nadia💎:

I just feel like she's like a super big musical fan but like she's SO picky with her musicals

Like her favorite type of musical is Indian musicals but she does have her fair share of other fav musicals (Legally Blonde)

Her favorite musical is totally Ram Leela and no guys it's not because that my favorite musical

She always has an earbud in one ear wherever she goes so she has like a million wireless earbuds and also Spotify premium, apple music, and everything lol

Oh but I kind of feel like she kind of likes mitski idk why

Portia🧡:

Oh my god definitely a mitski stan and IC3PEAK just bcuz I said so JSHSJ

I feel like she also likes plenty of like indie artists

Her favorite genre is definitely indie or maybe Russian music specifically Russian pop since she likes to connect with her culture

She also likes listening to Russian pop just so that she can learn Russian a bit more easier I think

Lucio👑:

IDJDNDN I DINT KNOW FOR HIM EITHER YALL TELL ME IF YALL HAVE ANY IDEAS FOR LUCIO IN THE COMMENTS

Valerius🍷:

Oh my god he is such a total music snob

He is totally like oh you like POP?? How unreFINED of you!!

Is only like someone how listens to CLASSICAL and will like totally judge anyone else who dosent listen to classical

Listens to bach, mozart, all of the classic composers.

Vlastomil🐛:

I feel that Vlastomil is kind of like Valerius in the sense that he likes to listen to classical music but I don't really feel that he's a music type of guy.

He is a super old demon, after all.

Vlastomil is totally the type of guy to own a million records and whatever but NEVER listens to them at all and also won't let anyone touch them

Valdemar💉:

JDJDHDHS A KOVACS FAN

Total KOVACS FAN YALL

Okay I'll admit it I AM projecting right now but I KNOW that in my heart of hearts they would LOVE nandVIBE with Sharon's beautiful music I mean come on JDJSHSB

Just like LISTEN to Child of Sin and TELL ME they wouldn't have a little existential crisis at it like odjdndndbdJDJSJSJSJSHS that song is SO them!!

Volta🍰:

Okay okay hear me out a blue kid fan and a mitski fan

Like you kind of wouldn't expect it with the way she acts but she loves both of them

I also feel like she doesn't HATE country but,, she doesn't LOVE it either? She's kind of in the middle.

But she just HATES Jazz and classical it's not the thing at ALL.

Vulgora⚔️:

Oh my god I just know that they deny listening to music because they don't want to seem weak 😭😭😭

BUT THEY TOTALLY LISTEN TO POST MALONE

I just feel like they do even though it's not like them it all

I kind of also feel like they'd listen to a five hour compilation of workout music when they sleep to help them relax idk why 😭

❀

[musicarenagh]

Inside the Mind of Marc Schuster: Music, Art, and Inspiration Isn't it strange that some musicians have the ability to "paint" your mind's picture with their lyrics? Marc Schuster, as one of those guys, is unquestionably an inspiring figure. Whoa, this guy is truly the behemoth in the creative world; he rips apart singles, throws in beats, and basically defies the laws of creativity with his logic. Marc actually does a million different things: a solo artist of course, group work with e. g. The Star Crumbles or Scoopski, he teaches at college, has his own radio show and he writes his own blog to report on the indie scene. His expertise tracks a wide range from enticing hardware of Elvis Costello to the cinematic mastery of David Lynch films. Marc intertwines and adapts to different genres from pop punk to indie and to so many others in his music that has this rich compositional and lyrical layers to it. Ralph is for sure coordinating with his own bagpipe-playing multi-patterned kilt. Even his latest "Arguably" album which was released on May 1 is, without doubts, a result of the hard work Marc put into it. All the tracks are produced by and performed by him, that is writing and everything obviously. And he did not forget to invite Jim Lorino from the band Scoopski to rhyme on their song titled "Paul Giamatti". Lyrically, Marc has such a gift when it comes to crafting raps that anyone would fall in love with his style. This is not only its faithfulness to the art, but also an album in its truest sense. In this interview, we will explore why and what makes Marc the artist he is now, how he found his way through music as a profession, and of course, his dream in writing and making this song. If you're ready for a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the mind of a real musical multi-purpose agent who doesn't hesitate to act outside the box, grab your headphones and head on over to our interview. Listen to Arguably Arguably by Marc Schuster Follow Marc Schuster on Facebook Twitter Spotify Bandcamp Instagram Where do you find inspiration? I usually find inspiration in the work of other artists—particularly artists who do their own thing and don’t worry about trends or popularity. I love the movies of David Lynch, for example. They’re not for everyone, and that’s the point. I feel the same way about music. A while back, my wife said something to the effect that I like “weird” music, and I took it as a real compliment. But I think I’ve always worn the “weird” label like a badge. Maybe it’s the Gen X-er in me or maybe I’m just antisocial, but if everyone likes something, I tend to shy away. What was the role of music in the early years of your life? Music has always been part of my life. When I was really young, we had the Beatles’ White Album on cassette, and it was always on whenever we’d go out for a drive. I was like five or six, and I knew that album by heart. It was also a bit of an odd album because it’s all over the place, and I think that had an effect on the way I think about music. I didn’t even realize there were four Beatles at the time. I figured there had to be like ten or twelve guys in the band considering all the different types of songs and instruments they were playing. It just sounded so big and sprawling to me. I feel like I’ve always had a sense of musicality, of appreciating the rhythms of certain words and phrases, and that probably goes back to listening to the Beatles on all of those car rides when I was little. What was the first concert that you ever went to and who did you see perform? My first concert was the Monkees. That was in 1987. I think I was about fourteen at the time. I knew that the Monkees were never really four guys who lived in a beach house, but that fantasy is something that probably still informs my thinking about music to this day. I mean, who wouldn’t want to hang out with their buddies all day, making music and going on weird little adventures that get resolved in the space of a half-hour to the tune of your latest song? And their music holds up really well.

Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, and Jones Ltd. is a great album! How could you describe your music? My music is fairly idiosyncratic. It probably goes back to listening to the Beatles’ White Album so much when I was young, and I suppose it’s also a function of listening to all of that “weird” music I’m into. I just love experimenting with different sounds and trying to fit them together like puzzle pieces. It’s poppy in places, a little jazzy, a little funky, mildly cinematic, depending on the song you’re listening to. I draw on a lot of different influences and try to synthesize something new from them. I really like the term “art rock.” I’m not sure it’s what I make, but it’s a label I aspire to. If someone, completely unbidden and unprompted, heard one of my songs and said, “Oh, that’s art rock,” I’d take it as a massive compliment. Who inspired you to be a part of the music industry? That’s an interesting question because I often wonder what it means to be a part of the music industry. I feel like I’m technically part of the music industry by virtue of the fact that I make music and people can listen to it on various streaming services and whatnot—and that I have a radio show and a blog where I interview indie musicians—but I’m pretty far out on the fringes of that industry, which is exactly where I want to be. But to answer the question, I teach at a college with a musician named Mike Kelly. A while back—fifteen years ago or so—he was talking about how people were always asking him how to “break into” the music industry, and that he always told them that the music industry wasn’t something you break into. It’s something you develop a relationship with. That really stuck with me, and as I started thinking about what I wanted to get out of music, I realized that a lot of it had to do with developing relationships with like-minded people. People who like the weird kind of music I like. That distinction between breaking into the music industry and developing a relationship with it changed everything for me. I went from thinking that the music industry was just this massive, foreign, nebulous entity I could never really have anything to do with to realizing it’s just people making music. Some make a lot of money at it. Most are people like me who build up relationships with other musicians and start their own scenes and movements. It’s just a matter of belief, I guess. I’m in the music industry because I believe I am—and because I believe I’m in the industry, I behave like someone in the industry by making music, helping other musicians make and promote music, and being an active member of a community. Who do you see as your main competitor? I try not to view music as a competition. To me it’s better when we all work together and find joy in each other’s accomplishments. This attitude may be a function of my age. If I were younger—and hungrier, I suppose—I’d probably be looking at other artists and wondering why they’re doing better than I am: why they have more followers on social media, for instance, or why they get so many plays on Spotify. But at some point, I just realized that all of my bases are covered. I have a job, I can pay my bills, and I can make the kind of music I like without worrying about all that other stuff. There’s a freedom in that. It’s like being my own patron, my own biggest fan. Which, hey, if I’m not a big fan of my work, why would I expect anyone else to be? Why did you choose Arguably as the title of this project? I was originally going to call it Arguably an Album because I’m always getting into conversations with fellow music lovers about what constitutes an album. Is it just a collection of songs? Do they have to share a theme? Tell a story? Or can they just be a random assortment of tunes recorded in roughly the same period of time? As a result of these kinds of conversations—not to mention my own tendency to overthink everything—I was hesitant to say with 100% certainty that I had recorded an album.

But Arguably an Album felt a little clunky to me, so I switched it to just Arguably, which I liked because then I could write “Arguably Marc Schuster" on the cover, which, again, speaks to my tendency to overthink things. I mean, there’s an argument to be made that this is me, but who am I, and what does it mean to be someone? Maybe it’s all just a construction, my best attempt at assembling an identity at this particular point in my life. https://open.spotify.com/artist/6yHvSo7nxlU27sOBX4XyWA?si=XZ39ySeaSaKUc-k-OBE2mA What musician do you admire most and why? I really admire Elvis Costello and Brian Eno. I’d describe them as restless souls, at least as far as music is concerned. They’re both always exploring new territory and breaking new musical ground, and neither gets hemmed in by genre or expectations. Part of it, I think, is an endless hunger for knowledge, a desire to learn. Both are known for collaborating with other musicians almost as much as they’re known for their own work, and I think a huge part of that interest in collaboration comes from a desire to learn something new from the people they’re working with. It keeps their music fresh, and I think it keeps them from seeing music as a commodity so much as an experience. Do you have any artistic collaboration plans? I always have a few irons in the fire. I play bass in Scoopski, and we’ll be recording a few songs in June. I’ve also been talking to Neither Could Dylan about a potential collaboration. I really just love playing music with other people. There’s no bigger thrill for me than getting an email from someone who wants me to record bass or drums for them—or even to try my hand at mixing a song. It’s incredibly flattering. And one funny thing I realized recently is that while I like playing live, I don’t necessarily like playing my own music live. That’s why playing bass in Scoopski is so perfect for me. I get to scratch that “playing out” itch without having to figure out how to translate my own music from the studio to the stage. What message would you like to give to your fans? More than anything, I just want to say thank you. We live in a world where so much mass-market entertainment is being forced down everyone’s throats all that time that it’s nearly impossible to discover new, independent voices. If you’ve listened to any of my songs—even just once—you probably had to put some work into finding it. No algorithm served it up to you. No one was playing it on the radio. You found it because you’re the kind of person who, like me, is always looking for something new and different. And the fact that you took some time to listen to my music means the world to me!

[morningrainmusic]

Peak Indie Rock: 2008

Vampire Weekend by Vampire Weekend January 29, 2008 / XL “One difficulty for me, in particular, was—I thought it was so fun and funny to have this concept of a preppy band. One rule that we set early on was ‘No t-shirts.’ Because I just looked and around and everybody was wearing t-shirts all the time….we should just wear button-down shirts. Which of course has a long history, but at the time it felt pretty novel, and especially when there were all these great New York bands like The Strokes and Interpol that just wore t-shirts and leather jackets.” -Ezra Koenig on BBC, 2024

The hate for Vampire Weekend when they arrived on the scene was very real. The crux of it centered around the band being comprised of WASP-y Ivy League grads appropriating African music, which garnered them undeserved indie fame. A lot of it also stemmed from their preppy atire. All this quickly became, like the mythologized Bon Iver For Emma backstory, largely inextricable from the group. The term “cultural imperialists” got thrown around. The Village Voice ran two reviews of their debut, one positive, titled “Please Ignore the Embroidered Dog Sweater” and the other negative titled “Please Ignore This Band.” Clearly though, the music was connecting, as the album sold half a million copies and was a critical favorite of 2008. Vampire Weekend was even the first band to be shot for a Spin cover before releasing an album. If it’s true that any press is good press, then Vampire Weekend was the most successful band of 2008. The music itself, of course, is pretty irresistible. Very few bands release debut albums this cohesive, with a distinct, seemingly fully formed sound and aesthetic. The early aughts gave us plenty of gritty, unpolished, straightforward rock groups, many of them also from New York. But man cannot live by bread alone, and Vampire Weekend brought something fresh and exciting to the culture—smart, elegant, and addictive new wave and Afro-pop influenced tunes. Songs like “Oxford Comma,” “The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance,” and “A-Punk” are nothing short of stone-cold indie classics that still stand as some of the best in their exceptional catalogue. Nation of Heat by Joe Pug February 14, 2008 / Self-released I’m admittedly breaking my own rules here, as Nation of Heat is an EP, not a full album, and probably does not fit the label of “indie rock.” And it’s difficult to pinpoint when this was released. According to Bandcamp it came out in 2008. Wikipedia says 2009. One thing there’s not doubt of is that Joe Pug was about as independent as any artist can be in his approach to recording and distributing Nation of Heat. The project started as a play Pug had been writing as theater major at the University of North Carolina. When he realized he didn’t see much value in the education he was receiving, he dropped out, headed to Chicago, and took a crack at applying the unfinished play's themes to songs instead of stage. Nation of Heat paints a kaleidoscopic picture of America in all its crooked glory. There is clearly strong emotion behind each of these songs; Pug wrestles with his purpose as an artist, the unfulfilled promises of the 1960s’ political and cultural movements, and general disillusionment with so many facets of American society. These weighty topics set to guitar and harmonica, explored in opaquely poetic language naturally call to mind Woody Guthrie and especially early Bob Dylan. Most Dylan acolytes (and there have been oh so many) are just cheap imitators—guys with little in the way of songwriting ability and not much more in terms of actual substance. Joe Pug is one of the rare exceptions. Nation of Heat, sixteen odd years later, is a salient reminder that the personal is political, the country is lost, and it’s on each of us individually to never stop searching. Midnight Boom by The Kills March 10, 2008 / Domino

The Kills’ excellent third album is an underrated career highlight that stands up with some of the best work by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and, I’ll say it, The White Stripes. These songs are full of slick electro-rock riffs and just-menacing-enough-to-be-cool-as-hell attitude. Highlights include “Tape Song,” “Last Day of Magic,” and “Night Train.”

Narrow Stairs by Death Cab for Cutie May 12, 2008 / Atlantic Gradually over the past few years people all across this great land of ours have been coming to a simple but important realization: that the second best Death Cab album is Narrow Stairs. No, it is not Plans (2005), the exhale to Transatlanticism’s pining inhale. It is not We Have The Facts and We’re Voting Yes, a common pick from early fans. It’s not The Photo Album, a crucial level-up album, and the one with an all-time great song that got the band its first sync (and namedrop) in The O.C. No, it is Narrow Stairs, the sixth album by Death Cab for Cutie, which Ben Gibbard has described as “a really fearless record.” He’s also said, “So much of the negativity in my life got funneled into [Narrow Stairs]. I realized after that I didn't want to go any darker. I wanted it to be the bottom for this band and my own emotional spectrum in terms of writing. He’s also described funneling much of his life’s negativity.” Could Zoey Deschanel have had anything to do with all this doom and gloom? It’s a natural question to arrive at, and one I cannot answer. In any case, this one has been dogged by the “dark album” label since it was released, and it seems to have been generally considered “good, not great” for a long while. But time has been favorable to Narrow Stairs. There are of course the songs we all knew were terrific back in 2008. “Bixby Canyon Bridge” remains the hardest ripping Death Cab song and is a contender for the band’s best opening track. “I Will Possess Your Heart” with its jammy bass part and stalker dude vibes is their “Creep.” “Grapevine Fires” is still a painterly reflection on mortality, their “Dust in the Wind.” And then there are songs like “Cath…” that we overlooked. It’s a beautiful and heart-wrenching tale of a miserable bride and all her regrets, ending with an expression of understanding and empathy from Gibbard’s narrator. Or how about “You Can Do Better Than Me” and its plainly stated admission of complacency and inadequacy. To top it all off, “The Ice Is Getting Thinner,” (why not?) a metaphor about a dwindling relationship as climate change. Oh I forgot to mention “Pity and Fear.” That one is about fear and…checks notes…pity. This track is also their “Sopranos finale.” So yes, Narrow Stairs is quite dark. And it’s exceptionally good. Second only to Transatlanticism, and that’s saying a lot. Fleet Foxes by Fleet Foxes June 3, 2008 / Sub Pop

Ah, the great Pacific Northwest. Could Fleet Foxes and this transportive powerhouse of a debut come from anywhere else? I don’t want to get hyperbolic here, but I’d say Fleet Foxes in 2008 did for communing with nature what Nevermind in 1991 for anti-authoritarianism. Primary songwriter Robin Pecknold Pecknold wrote most of the songs in a rural log cabin built by his grandfather in the small town of Plain, Washington. Indeed, the whole record sounds like it came out of some remote mountain town, or was composed in a cliffside European monastery by sixteenth century monks. Its outrageously beautiful harmonies and evocative pastoral imagery make it on of the most exciting debut records of the 2000s. The ’59 Sound by The Gaslight Anthem August 19, 2008 / SideOneDummy A fun (highly dependent on your idea of “fun”) drinking game would be to put on The ’59 Sound and drink every time Brian Fallon makes some classic rock reference. You’d be underway about two minutes into the album on “Great Expectations” when he sings “It's funny how the night moves / Humming a song from 1962.” Then again, some may interpret the first word of the first line “Mary, this station is playing every sad song” as an allusion to the Mary of so many Bruce Springsteen songs. It’s not only impossible to write about The Gasinght Anthem without mentioning The Boss, I believe it’s punishable by death. There’s no Gaslight Anthem without Bruce, but that’s not to say this record is all pastiche. It is a genuinely remarkable heartland punk classic that rightfully earned Fallon the respect of his idol and made his dreams come true. To put it more directly, The ’59 Sound is a no-skips classic that fucking rips. Further reading: The Ringer’s Oral History of The ’59 Sound Dear Science by TV on the Radio September 16, 2008 / 4AD For several summers when I was in high school and college I worked as a lifeguard at a country club. I would sometimes get to control the music that played at the front desk and through the pool deck speaker system. It was typically played at a low volume, meant to be largely ignored, as most background music typically is. Club members never mentioned the music, all of it family friendly and unoffensive, except for two or three separate occasions when various middle-aged suburban dads came to the desk to ask me the name of the song playing. Each time, the song in question was “Love Dog,” the eighth track off TV on the Radio’s Dear Science. What does this mean? Nothing, probably. It’s just a beautiful song that, in a pre-Shazam age, happened to be the one that stood out from the pack, eliciting the urge to ask the gangly teenager folding towels what it’s called. Or perhaps it speaks to something deeper. Something darker. Something at the heart of latent loneliness, middle-aged malaise, and suburban sorrow. We’ll never know.

Furr by Blitzentrapper September 23, 2008 / Sub Pop Here’s another pretty unfairly overlooked album from 2008. Nothing crazy here, just really well written folk-country tunes with a woodsy, lived-in sound. The title track is the second best lycanthropic song of the decade (#1 is “Wolf Like Me”…#3 is “She Wolf”). Robin Pecknold had nice things to say about Furr’s closing track “Lady on the Water.” Starfucker by Strfkr September 23, 2008 / Baldman Back then they were known as Starfucker, a group of Portland-based dance rock-loving weirdos with a penchant for including samples of Alan Watts’ philosophical ramblings in songs. In the years since, they’ve dropped the vowels and now sit on a discography of seven pretty terrific electro-pop records. They also put out an ambient album in 2020 that’s not too shabby. Starfucker is their first LP though, and an audaciously odd but thoroughly chill entry into the aughts synth-pop canon. You may have heard in “Rawnald Gregory Erickson the Second” in a Target commercial, but don’t miss standouts “German Love” and “Isabella of Castile.”

[aaronafgash]

10 NEW SONGS - 3/8/24

Happy Friday, y’all. It’s been a week. I currently have COVID, so if I write like shit today, let’s just blame it on that!

1. eternal sunshine - Ariana Grande

Say what you will about the woman, but my lord, can she make a catchy ass pop song. Max Martin’s bouncy, colorful production pairs perfectly with Ariana’s falsetto flows - I can’t stop listening to this one. Bonus points for the little chime we get after she sings “you played me like Atari” - I love when a beat plays off of a lyric like that.

2. the boy is mine - Ariana Grande

Pretty much all of the above notes apply to this song as well. Written as a sort of follow up / sequel to her popular “fantasize”, Ariana has called this an elevated version of a “bad girl anthem.” Which is fine, until you realize that this is the “boy” in question. All that being said … song slaps. 

3. bye - Ariana Grande

I have no further Ariana thoughts. This song is also pretty good. This is a rough week for new music outside of this album. See above!

4. Run Your Mouth - The Marías

The Marías make consistently excellent music, and this single continues that tradition. As soon as that bassline kicks in, it’s clear that this is a bop. 

5. Tegami - Mei Semones

I’ve written about Mei Semones before. I will continue to write about Mei Semones. Her voice is so gentle and that jazzy, string-backed production has me hooked - as soon as she comes to a tiny shithole venue in Chicago, my ass is THERE!

6. And U Know It - KYLE

KYLE catches some flak in the hip-hop world but dude just consistently pumps out fun, catchy pop-rap. He sounds great flowing over faster, uptempo beats, and he can hold a good enough melody to carry his own hooks. This song does everything I want from a KYLE song - fast-paced, packed full of energy. I appreciate the inclusion of some brass as well!

7. Neva Beta - KYLE

Almost an interlude-type track, but again catchy as hell. See above as all points apply. I apologize for lamely including multiple songs from the same album but this week is tough!

8. Husk - Hannah Frances

A beautiful, quiet track that slowly grows more and more over the course of 5 minutes, starting with an acoustic guitar and lead vocals and eventually introducing background harmonies, strings, a harp, a piano, and a wall of voices big enough to be a choir. This is gorgeous. I had never heard of Hannah Frances before, but shoutout Steve for the recommendation. She's the type of artist I’d hear as an indie opener and think “oh shit! I need to listen to her music.”

9. Let Love Flow On - Sonya Spence

As stated, I caught the ol’ COVID bug this week and have been consequently lying horizontally while I watch critically acclaimed Oscar-nominated films on my iPad. Immediately after I finished American Fiction, I ran to Spotify to find the song that played during the wedding scene. I’ve listened to this about one million times since Tuesday - pure bliss. I hope it continues to be heard and recognized for the gem that it is as more and more people watch the movie.

10. Crying, Laughing, Loving, Lying - Labi Siffre

I loved a lot of the music from Holdovers as well, and this was a standout. Another older song that I hope gets more recognition now that it’s been used in an excellent movie. 

[farahukblog]

FESTIVAL SEASON WITH FARAH

In the spirit of the festival season, highlights from Glastonbury weekend and the first day of Summer, we caught up with a selection of artists at Neighbourhood Festival and Liverpool Sound City, kitted out in Farah apparel and footwear prior to their live performance.

THE Ks

First up the K's, an underground success story in rock & roll and Neighbourhood Festival main stage opener. With over 90,000 Spotify monthly listeners, streaming in the millions and a sell out recent tour, they shared with us an overview of their recent gigs, known to be a guaranteed riot.

How are you feeling about getting on that stage?

Yeah we're buzzing, we've just finished our tour where every venue sold out. Honestly it was massive, it was quite overwhelming actually with all these big cities. We're from Earlestown us, in the middle of nowhere so yeah.

Looking at the video you did for Chancer, you can see the community you've built and all of those people singing it back. How did you feel when that one went out as the response was absolutely massive?

It was class wasn't it? It was all over the radio, straight after 'Hoping Maybe' which did exactly the same...so we're obviously buzzing. We were close to reaching number 1 on the itunes chart behind Miley Cyrus but she wasn't budging. We were close though, I heard it was close!

THE K's SPOTIFY PROFILE 98,500 monthly listeners

REIGNMAKER

A 5 piece up and coming band Native to Liverpool, known for their Indie sound and energy. We caught up with the band at both Liverpool Sound City and Neighbourhood Festival to find out more about their recent movements.

You guys are carving your own paths with two very strong singles this year with 'Find My Own Way' and 'Stay Behind'. How has it been received?

It seems to be really good in this city especially, everyone seems to be talking about it and saying good things. Reignmaker has been a thing for so long and finally we're not kids playing Oasis in Zanzibar anymore so it's been great.

The Liverpool scene is such a rife place for music. Are there any artists that you cite as influences for you and your music?

'There's loads. Night Cafe, Jamie Webster, Connell Delage, everyone really.'

REIGNMAKER SPOTIFY PROFILE 1659 monthly listeners

MALADY

With such a unique sound, London based band Malady take inspiration from their surroundings, particularly from their debut single back in 2020 ‘London, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down’. Check out their pre-performance interview below describing their inspiration and music approach.

We love the sounds you bring to your music, a little bit of Indie, a little bit of Dubstep and a touch of early 90s rave sprinkled in there. Is it nice to have that between you all and have that mix of genres in there?

Yeah we grew up on Indie and then got into dance more recently and hip hop as well and we each bring different things to the band.

Does that come quite naturally in the writing process when you're together in a room?

I think so. We all listen to a load of different stuff so it's just a case of taking different things in and then it's all going to come out in some way, shape or form. Us, as well as a lot of other people, don't go by genre in terms of what we listen to.

All your tracks take you on a different journey. Do you write and record yourselves or within a studio to lay those beats down?

Most of it starts in my room producing most of it there...all the details, the songs and the electronic elements are done there and then we go to the studio at the end to co-produce the final bits and add the instruments.

Do the tracks ever go in different directions from what you expected?

Yeah, like Black dog for instance was written years and years ago but it's only recently that we've been able to finish it and there's a few other songs that have started off completely different and ended up in a different lane.

MALADY SPOTIFY PROFILE 19,462 monthly listeners

THE COVASSETTES

Manchester based band, The Covasettes, combine a mix of Indie and Rock genres to bring the ultimate performance. Releasing their debut single 'This Feeling' back in 2017, the guys have since accumulated a number of top singles, with their most recent 'Be Mine' reaching over a million streams on Spotify. Upon catching up with the band, they discussed their recent Manchester based gig, consisting of their biggest capacity so far...

You've had a great year already at Gorilla, that sold out for you guys and was a big monumental moment. How did it feel being on stage for that?

It was the best gig ever, wasn't it? It was what we've wanted to do all in one room and the atmosphere was so good. Also what I liked was that there was a whole range of people there. Sometimes I think it's all going to be young people but everyone you can imagine was there, absolutely loving it.

Amongst ourselves we all said that every single one of us has a little bit of a moment wondering are we actually going to cry on stage right now? It was a really emotional gig for us and such a huge moment.

THE COVASETTES SPOTIFY PROFILE 81,967 monthly listeners

RIANNE DOWNEY

Leaving Scotland behind to move to Liverpool, singer / songwriter Rianne Downey's success is growing by the day. Boasting support slots with Paolo Nutini, The Snuts and the Coral using projecting words of reassurance and encouragement to others allows her to effortlessly rise to bigger stages.

You've played Liverpool Sound City a few times haven't you? Yes this is my third year here at Sound City and it's lovely to get to hear everyone else play as well. This venue is proper iconic, bucket list stuff. When you were growing up, what kind of music did you play in your household? What's weird is I didn't grow up around a lot of country music but I loved Johnny Cash when I was growing up, Ring of Fire was the first tune I ever had on my phone. 'Come What May' and 'Beautiful Body Attracts' are such beautiful songs and they seem to have gone down really well. Yes it's been so positive. Everyone seems to have really taken to the songs and got really into them and with every release the fan base is growing as well which is so nice. When I was on tour in March I was looking at a sold out crowd singing your songs back to you, I can't explain that feeling. Your song 'Songbird', the visuals you've got with it and the way it flows is absolutely beautiful. Thank you so much. It's one of those ones where it literally fell out of me in about 10 minutes because it was just pure emotion. I was getting ready for a gig in Manchester running late with 10 minutes before the van was going to be outside and trying to pick an outfit. I then picked up my guitar and wrote the song. It was very much a here and now moment.

RIANNE DOWNEY SPOTIFY PROFILE Rianne Downey - 9,055 monthly listeners

Check out ours SS23 High Summer collection and footwear to get your Festival fit.

[newmusicradionetwork]

Outlaw Pop Artist DEVORA Releases New EP ‘God Is Dead’

With influences that range from Nine Inch Nails to Dolly Parton, and a touch of Lana Del Rey thrown in for good measure – genre bending Outlaw Pop artist DEVORA has released a new EP “God Is Dead” via Tiger Tone Records / . The EP contains four songs, with previously unreleased track “Bonesaw” leading the way. DEVORA says of the ominously enchanting track: “Bonesaw” is about a night in a motel room gone wrong, in a dark direction. It’s a voyeuristic impression of the lines between romance and impulse being heavily blurred. The song opens with seemingly illusive pretty snapshots of an all-American day dream, but progressively turns morose and ends with a bonesaw left in the motel room sink. I used to read a lot of medical textbooks as a hobby and one of the surgical tools from the civil war era, the bonesaw, always intrigued me. I have a couple of vintage ones at home”. The music video was directed by Felicity Jayn Heath. She continues: “A lot of my songs take place in motel rooms. There’s something really macabre and eerily temporary about a motel room where, for essentially 24 hours, you can be whoever you want to be in that room sealed and removed from the outside world… It’s like your own revolving set. What happens in that room stays in that room. A lot of serial killers have set up shop in motel rooms and I know I’ve definitely walked into some gnarly motel rooms where I’ve gotten hit with this feeling – like getting punched in the gut, where I’ve started to put the pieces together that something really messed up must have happened in this room… “Bonesaw” is all of the above”. Track listing: 1). God Is Dead 2). Wild West 3). Pornstar 4). Bonesaw The EP, produced by Alex Aldi (Passion Pit, Holy Ghost!) and Cass Dillon (Goo Goo Dolls, Grey Daze) and mixed by Tony Hoffer (M83, Beck), is a collection of stories Inspired by true events that paint a picture of a modern Wild West culture. The songs are a haunting ode to the dark side of the American Dream. Gone are the days of the white-picket fences and beauty pageant queens; they’ve left long ago and made way for a new form of cultural anarchy, non-conformist beliefs and a generation of outlaws like DEVORA. DEVORA’s debut EP, Outlaw, celebrated life in the fast lane, offering an inner glimpse into a mad world of exile and rebellion, love and lawlessness. It was her first installment of a fierce collective of stories and art that illustrate a perfect portrait of her dark wild west. The EP saw support at radio, peaking top five on the SubModern Commercial Specialty Charts, and press write-ups at places like AltPress, INKED, and Earmilk. DEVORA has amassed more than 3 million cumulative audio streams of her music to date. She has been honing her live show chops with solo dates in the Southern California area, along with direct support dates on a national tour with The Warning in the spring of 2022. Tiger Tone Records was welcomed into the  family in late 2020 and puts them among the company of revered indie labels such as Transgressive, Heavenly Recordings and Bella Union. Tony Hoffer is celebrated for an illustrious career spanning decades working with distinguished artists such as M83, Phoenix, Beck, The Kooks, The Snuts and many more. Connect and Share with Devora: Website / Instagram / TikTok  / Twitter / Facebook / Youtube Channel   Read the full article

[bringinbackpod]

We had the pleasure of interviewing carbae over Zoom video! carobae, the moniker of Nashville writer, artist and producer, Caroline Baker, released her debut album scared to go to sleep, due out now via too drunk for a tuesday records / STEM. Recent single, “he’ll never know” starts off with carobae’s acoustic guitar strumming to her aching ethereal vocals speaking to an old lover about past issues that are of no concern now that she’s in a better place b/w the soft loud chorus to the very dark “stab my back.” “he’ll never know” is completely written and produced by carobae herself. In the simplest form, “he’ll never know” is about freedom from who I’d been in past relationships because now I’ve found someone who doesn’t need me to change who I am or my needs for their own. I wrote and produced this song alone a little over two years ago when I had done a lot of personal growth and realization that I deserved to be with someone who didn’t treat me like an afterthought or burden. I’ve been holding onto this song for a while now, and I’m still with who I wrote it about - he’s eve playing drums on the record. In the past I’ve released a good amount of music about one-sided relationships and not feeling like I’ve been enough, and “he’ll never know” coming out now feels like the perfect follow up to those old stories I’ve told. I think everyone needs to hear that there’s love out there that you don’t have to bend over backwards for and that you deserve simply by just existing. – carobae scared to go to sleep’s tracklist is comprised of the indie pop singer-songwriter confessions from the heart, with candid and colorful songs written and produced solely by carobae as well as songs co-written and co-produced with Brandon Shoop (sophie cates, Quinn XCII), Sean Kennedy (UPSAHL, Role Model, Nessa Barrett), Lauren Mandel (LØLØ, TALK, Maggie Lindemann, MOTHICA), Raziel (Siiickbrain, Poutyface, Slush Puppy) and Megan Redmond (Taylor Edwards, Charlotte Sands, Taela). With this single and prior singles, title track “scared to go to sleep” b/w “if I don’t leave the house, “till the day i ___” b/w “every time i close my eyes,” which was included in Consequence’s “Song of the Week” and “dead ends/happy endings,” carobae released b-sides that complement the tone and theme of each single. With the release of “scared to go to sleep,” carobae launched new merch items, releasing “behind the song” videos on her YouTube showing fans how she produces and writes each song, and giving fans “restless pages” designed as an activity book to be done while one is listening to the new songs. scared to go to sleep is a shift from carobae’s relationship/heartbreak songs fans are familiar with, showing them a new kind of heartbreak sound – heartbreak from the world. carobae first started releasing her own music in 2019 through a handful of EPs starting with songs from 3am, followed by The Longest Year: Part One in 2020 and in 2021 she dropped The Longest Year: Part Two. These early releases earned her raves from NYLON, Ones to Watch and Alternative Press. Along the way, she’s garnered over 40 MILLION streams on Spotify, who featured her on a billboard in downtown Nashville and featured her songs on numerous playlists including New Music Friday, Fresh Finds, Fresh & Chill, Indie Pop, and more. We want to hear from you! Please email Tera@BringinitBackwards.com . www.BringinitBackwards.com #podcast #interview #bringinbackpod #carobae #scaredtogotosleep #idontmissyou #NewMusic Listen & Subscribe to BiB https://www.bringinitbackwards.com/follow/ Follow our podcast on Instagram and Twitter! https://www.facebook.com/groups/bringinbackpod

[ksjade]

Artist Interview: Alligator Daydream

Introduction

Today we’ll be putting a magnifying glass on a very small creator. Alligator Daydream has released one project with a number of instrumental tracks. In a brief interview with him we got to hear about how he started. 

The name you release under is significant?

The story with Alligator Daydream is that the band I was in was called something else, and we realized 'yo this name is kinda stupid' so I'm not going to say it. I was on vacation in like South Carolina and I was walking 

around and stuff and we were talking about it. There's alligators and stuff, in some parts, and they told me to be careful about them. I was thinking 'oh alligator' and then I started daydreaming. So it was like putting the two together. It's a band name. But yea, for a long time we were Alligator Daydream. 

What would you say the genre of music you fall into is? Does your music cater to a specific audience?

That’s a tough question. That’s probably one of the easiest ones to answer all day but, probably I’d say indie with elements of funk and maybe metal elements. Rock music but with asterisks on it. It’s kinda hard to say. I don't think music should cater towards a specific group of people, I'm not writing it for anyone.

Is music a hobby, a dream? What do you hope to achieve? 

I wanna say hobby. But I like to think I take it seriously because obviously listening to my songs I'm like 'oh I could've done this better, I could've done this better.' But it's like I wanna take it seriously but once it stops being fun it stops being for me because I wanna write songs that are for me and if people listen to it people listen to it I don't really care. I don't know what I'd like to achieve. Like I don't really care about playing at a venue with like a million people. I just like making music that I can listen to, that I can put in a playlist with other artists. Not that I can compare myself to other established artists.

How long have you been making your own music? 

In terms of making stuff I only really started late 2019, my junior year of high school. But I've been playing for 2 ish years before that. Some friends asked me to start a band and we saw we can make stuff and write our own songs instead of just covering other songs. 

Have you ever thought of putting vocals or lyrics in your tracks? Have you ever written lyrics? 

So, yes. Short answer yes, long answer is it's complicated. I would love to have vocals on them but my singing is... bad. It's objectively horrific. I write lyrics constantly. But the way I write lyrics is not to fit an instrumental. I want to be able to write lyrics to fit into a song but I can only write a song around lyrics. A lot of the lyrics are like rap, as corny as that sounds. Like MF Doom, my favorite artist of all time, him and a bunch of other rappers are all like constantly in my head. 

What originally got you in music? 

Getting into music, there’s like two ways you can take that. There’s listening music and playing (making) music. What got me into listening to music was listening to Foo Fighters for the first time. Like old Foo Fighters, not really their newer stuff I’m not much a fan of. But listening to them for the first time it was like ‘wow music can be more than the pop music I hear on the radio all the time, or the contemporary Christian music my mom listens to all the time.’ But what got me into playing it’s a weird story. I’ve always known people that could play guitar and stuff so growing up I always wanted to learn. But my mom, she told me I had to play piano first. I didn’t want to learn piano, I thought it was lame. I was a stupid 8 year old who doesn’t know how cool piano is. But on a whim I just decided to go to guitar lessons.

Do you play any instruments? How many? 

I also play bass and know the basic fundamentals for piano and midi type 808 stuff. So for the project pretty much all that’s on it is me other than a couple tracks guitar and bass parts.

What inspired you? 

I make music similar to Foo Fighters but they weren’t what pushed me to make music. I think the types of bands I was listening to at the time were more like Kanye, Tyler the Creator, and, this is pretty out of left field but, Pink Floyd. Those  three were like I wanna make music now.

Conclusion 

It’s clear to see that Alligator Daydream makes and releases what he enjoys and isn’t really in it for any type of fame or money. It’s nice to see someone make music ‘just because’ or because it’s a fun hobby. It’s a nice contrast. Although his tracks aren’t something I’d usually listen to, it was a nice change of pace compared to my usual playlists. In the future I’d like to see if vocals are ever released in his tracks and how much he may grow.

[damonalbarn]

Hey I was wondering if you knew the article that Justine spoke about suzi in?!

It was in The Guardian in 2000. Here you go:

Sweet revenge

In the mid 90s, Justine Frischmann and Damon Albarn were the First Couple of Britpop. Then he used a Blur album to rake over their break-up, while she languished in obscurity amid rumours of heroin addiction. Now she's back with a new album, and it's her turn to exorcise her demons.

Caroline Sullivan

Friday March 24, 2000

As Alison Moyet once said, it's hard to write a decent song when you're happy. Rock bands thrive on romantic turmoil in their private lives, without which they would be reduced to padding out lyrics with football scores and the weather.

Thus it was for Blur's Damon Albarn in mid-1998 when he sat down to write what would become the 13 album. His eight-year relationship with Justine Frischmann of the chart-topping Elastica, whom he once described as **"the only person who's ever been completely necessary to me" **had just ended, at her instigation. Pained and humiliated, he decided to exact revenge by exposing their most intimate details to public scrutiny.

The outcome? Embarrassment for Frischmann, a number one album for Blur and a bit of a result for Albarn.

Break-up albums are by definition both embittered and yearning - in the case of Marvin Gaye's vindictive Here, My Dear, they're just plain nasty - but 13 got more up-close and personal than could be considered gentlemanly. Albarn portrayed his former partner as neurotic, even slipping apparent drug references into the single Tender: "Tender is the ghost, the ghost I love the most/Hiding from the sun, waiting for the night to come". Frischmann was the ghost, supposedly, who was on the verge of being consumed by what one music paper euphemistically called "the darkness at the heart of Elastica".

Frischmann's response can be found on a song called The Way I Like It, which appears on Elastica's first album in five years, The Menace (out next month): "Well, I'm living all right and I'm doing okay/Had a lover who was made of sand, and the wind blew him away".

This is unlikely to be her last word on the subject. As she ambivalently begins her first round of interviews since 1996, she's finding that everyone has the same three questions. Why did Elastica nearly sabotage a promising career by taking so long to follow up their million-selling debut? Had Frischmann taken leave of her senses when she walked out on Mr Britpop? And what about the drug rumours?

"One journalist said to me, 'Dahling, I heard you were on heroin - Mahvelous!' " she says with some amusement. "Drugs are around, but I'm not that interested and never have been, although there have been elements of party animal in my band. The rumours are a lot to do with rock'n'roll mythology, where people want to believe you're having a more exciting time than you are."

The only drugs on her person today, as she perches on the edge of an armchair in her publicist's north London living room, are Marlboro Lights. Her other indulgences are two cups of herbal tea and a Cadbury's Flake cupcake, which she nibbles with well-bred pleasure. Her dark eyes are clear, and her long, tanned body is a testament to the virtues of a daily swim in a pool near her Notting Hill home. Only Elastica know whether they really succumbed to heroin and hedonism after their self-titled debut made them more famous than they'd ever expected to be, but if they did, Frischmann, 30, seems little the worse for it.

Given the current predominance of damnable boy bands, the Britpop mid-90s are beginning to seem like a halcyon period for English music. It was a time when the underground went overground, and a self-described "little punk band" like Elastica could sell 80,000 albums in a week.

More than a few loser guitar groups saw Britpop as a licence to print money, but Elastica, led with cool elan by the androgynous Frischmann, were one of its gems. The Blur connection was a marketing godsend (Frischmann and Albarn met on the London indie circuit, she as guitarist in an early line-up of Suede and girlfriend of frontman Brett Anderson, he as a cherubic baggy hopeful), yet the spiky-haired Elastica LP embodied that euphoric time like nothing else.

Frischmann, guitarist Donna Matthews, drummer Justin Welch and bassist Annie Holland were unprepared for the album soaring to number one in its first week. When they signed their record deal, Frischmann, whose great-grandfather was a conductor of the Tsar's orchestra at the Summer Palace in Byelorussia, was five years into an architecture degree at London University. A liberal north London Jewish upbringing - her engineer father built the Oxford Street landmark Centrepoint - had instilled expectations of success, but the reality of being photographed in the supermarket and having her rubbish stolen was a shock. Fiercely independent, she also resented her unsought role as half of Britpop's First Couple.

There was more. Two of Frischmann's musical heroes, The Stranglers and Wire, decided that two Elastica songs were suspiciously similar to two of their own tracks, and won royalties. Meanwhile, there were malicious rumours that Albarn had done much of the work on the record. He hadn't, but he did find Justine's success in America, where she was substantially out-selling Blur, hard to endure.

"It was very hard for him to deal with and he's very confrontational," she says, with the flattering openness of someone who prefers interviews to be more like conversations. She admits she often says too much, but in an era of image control and spin, her honesty makes her a one-off. Not that she's likely to land herself in it too badly - she possesses the intellectual ammunition to look after herself, which must have been instrumental in attracting two of rock's more articulate stars, Albarn and Anderson.

She's been accused of being a professional rock girlfriend, though it was probably they who were lucky to get her. She spent the cab ride over reading the Sylvia Plath letters in Monday's Guardian, and muses on the irony of the poet's subjugating herself to Ted Hughes when she was the more gifted. (Her new boyfriend, by the way, is an unknown photographer, "though that'll probably change, because men seem to get famous when I go out with them".)

"I reacted the way a lot of women do, by being passive," she continues. "He put a lot of pressure on me to give up Elastica. He said, 'You don't want to be in a band, you want to settle down and have kids.' " In so many words? "In so many words. He kept putting on pressure till I started to believe him." She adds bemusedly: "I've met his new girlfriend, and one of the first things she said was that he wanted her to give up travelling with her work to stay home with the baby [Missy, born last autumn]. I'm surprised he's got away with being thought of as a nice person for so long."

After 18 months, during which they did seven American and three Japanese tours, Elastica came off the road to record company demands for an immediate second album. Annie Holland's response was to quit the group, while Donna Matthews became renowned for hard partying on the nocturnal west London scene. They lethargically recorded some demos, but their heart wasn't in it. By 1997, when a second album should have been ready to go, Frischmann and Matthews were barely speaking, and there was nothing useable down on tape.

Holland's replacement, Sheila Chipperfield (of the circus Chipperfields), was deemed not good enough and left by mutual consent. By 1998, their continued lack of productivity was being likened to the Stone Roses' lengthy and ultimately self-destructive holiday between their first and second LPs.

"I didn't think Elastica were going to continue at that point, and we did kinda split up," she says, absently stroking her publicist's cat. Frischmann is a cat person; she's owned a tabby called Benjamin since she was 10. "Unconditional love," she coos. The pet's place in her life is so assured that prospective boyfriends are subjected to his feline scrutiny before she'll go out with them.

On top of everything else, in early 1998 her relationship with Albarn was in trouble. Frischmann retains enough of the indie ethic to detest the phenomenon of celebrity couples, and was dismayed when they became one. "I really hated the tabloid interest, and I went out of my way not to be photographed with him. Only about three pictures of us together exist, I think. In many ways, I think the media interest broke us up, because it made me feel the relationship was quite ugly, and I had to get away from it. There were other factors, too, obviously, because we were together for eight years, and I finally felt it was better the devil you didn't know, really."

Albarn's ego seems to have been severely undermined by having a girlfriend who was nearly as successful as he was, and something of a sex symbol to boot. Despite adopting a resolutely boyish T-shirt-and-jeans uniform, she's thoroughly feminine, a mix that got her voted fifth most fanciable woman in a lesbian magazine.

"I'm completely heterosexual, so I didn't know how to take that. It scares the shit out of me, the idea of being with a girl. I'm glad I've narrowed it down to half the people in the world."

She seems to view Albarn with indulgent exasperation these days, simultaneously praising his intelligence ("The Gallaghers just couldn't compete") and ticking off his flaws. "Damon adores being in the press, and sees all press as good press. He orchestrated that rivalry thing with Oasis. He really wanted kids, and I didn't feel our relationship was stable enough. He was a naughty boy, and he wasn't the right person to have kids with. I had this cathartic moment..."

At which point they split up. Albarn wrote 13 and then met Suzi Winstanley, an artist. "She was pregnant within three months," Justine observes wickedly.

Of the acclaimed 13, she's tactful, describing several songs as "really lovely". She studies her cigarette for a while before adding, "but I'm cynical about selling a record on the back of our relationship". But you're doing the same now. "It's true, but at the time I had no right of reply."

Elastica finally pulled themselves together last year, just as the music industry was about to write them off (their American label had already "very kindly let us go", as she puts it). Holland rejoined, Matthews went to Wales to sort out her life and the band banged out an EP and played the Reading Festival. Things came together quickly after that. They spent the last £10,000 of the recording budget on re-recording a dozen tracks, finishing the album, after years of procrastinating, in six weeks. They've called it The Menace "because that's what it was like to make".

It's dark and resolutely uncommercial - all wrong for 2000's pop-oriented climate. It's unlikely to match the success of the first one, which is fine with them. Call it (though Justine doesn't) their White Album. Its 70s punk aesthetic brings to mind angry girls such as the Slits and the Au Pairs, although the defining mood isn't anger so much as catharsis. None of the songs is specifically about Albarn, she claims. "The dark feeling is due to the sense of isolation, tasting success and getting frightened by it. I was questioning whether I wanted to be in a band any more, and there was no one I could ask for advice. Getting success and everything you ever dreamed about is hard to handle, and makes you question everything."

She's better prepared for success, if it comes again, this time. Already the privacy-preserving barriers are in place. The next interview of the day is with Time Out magazine, which wants a list of her favourite restaurants. "I'm not telling them where I eat," she says reflexively. "I'm gonna lie."

[talkfastromance4]

Indigo--Calum Hood [one]

A/N: I can’t believe it’s finally arrived! Thank you all for being so patient while it took me literally two months to write this fic. It’s my first ever slow burn and the longest fic to date (word wise). This means so much to me and I really put my heart and soul into this. This is also written in Calum’s perspective!

Word count: 12.2k (36k total)

Warnings: themes of emotional infidelity but really all internal with no actions,  confusing emotions and thoughts, nudity, slight mention of body image issues, casual drinking, jealousy, sexual situations

Masterlist

Indigo playlist--really just songs that helped inspire this piece so give it a listen if you’d like!

Feedback is always welcome and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this! 

This is split in three parts because Tumblr's new post limit I can't fit it all in one post. So I'll be posting them all at once!

Enjoy!

***

Calum agreed to help out Sarah and Andy with their latest project. He wasn’t quite sure what it was exactly but anything they create is phenomenal and he’s ecstatic to be a part of it. He’d just texted Bianca, his girlfriend, that he’ll be gone for a better part of the afternoon when he arrives at Sarah and Andy’s place. Pebbles greets him at the door, her whole body wiggling with excitement by his presence.

“There’s our man!” Sarah chirps from the table, her camera and other gadgets placed on the table.

“We aren’t shooting here?” Calum asks bending down to pet Pebbles.

“No, there’s this meadow that gets the sun’s rays perfectly at this time,” Andy informs walking in with his own camera bag. “We’re meeting someone else there, too so we should get going.”

“Someone else?”

☆°•.¸☆¸.•°☆

The sun is beating down on Calum’s back as he walks through the tall grass behind Sarah and Andy. They’re a good distance away from the road and he hopes they won’t go too much further and land in the fate of a 90’s horror film. Andy and Sarah are talking quietly with each other and Calum checks his phone, no new messages from Bianca.

“All right, we’ll start setting up and you just sit and relax until she gets here,” Andy directs to Calum when they stop at a fallen tree that has moss growing on it and its roots extending to the sky.

“Who is ‘she’?” Calum asks, taking a seat on the tree. He wipes at the back of his neck, it’s sticky with sweat. His lips are starting to get chapped and he wishes he brought his water bottle.

Andy and Sarah exchange a look.

“She’d prefer to be anonymous so I can’t tell you,” She responds ominously and unzips her camera bag.

“Anonymous?” Calum is baffled. Andy and Sarah make a point to avoid the topic as they continue to gather their equipment.

In about ten minutes there was another figure walking through the grass and Calum peered at her trying to get a good look. Her hair was blowing in the slight breeze and bangs framed her face. Calum was intrigued when she was first mentioned.

Watching her walk towards them made him think of those snapshots in your life that sticks with you. Something inside of him told him this would be one of those moments.

She was short, which was the first thing he noticed when she stopped in front of him.

“Hey guys, sorry I’m late. Traffic, y’know,” she smiles at Andy and Sarah.

He notices there’s a hint of purple in her hair.

She’s short and has purple hair.

“No problem, sweetie. We were just getting things ready. This is Calum,” Sarah nods towards him and the mystery girl turns in his direction too.

“Hi Calum, thanks for helping,” she smiles.

“No problem, Anonymous,” he grins standing from his tree and holds out his hand.

“Oh, right,” she snickers, stepping forward to take his hand. “You can call me Indie.”

She’s short, has purple hair, and likes to be called Indie.

“Nice to meet you Indie.”

☆°•.¸☆¸.•°☆

Andy and Sarah first have Calum and Indie sit next to each other on the tree while they take some sample shots. This way Calum and Indie can get to know each other a little better. Calum notices the ink on her wrists, arms, and a nose piercing. She asked about his music and what inspires him. He asked what she does and she very offhandedly said with a shrug,

“Social media stuff.”

And that was the end of that. She didn’t add anything more and Calum wasn’t sure if he should ask for her to clarify but her statement had a tone of finality to it.

She definitely intrigues Calum.

“Okay, Indie, can you swing your leg over the tree like you’re riding a horse and lean on Calum’s shoulder?” Sarah asks.

“Yeah.”

Indie does as she’s directed then rests her arm on Calum’s shoulder, her head dropping on top of her arm.

“Both of you look at me...good, now Cal, look down at Indie...good, good. Okay, now I want you to put your leg over his...close your eyes for me, babe. That’s it! Beautiful.”

They continue with different poses on the tree and each touch Indie gives to Calum makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. His body becomes attuned to her touch until Sarah tells Indie to undo her shirt and lay her head on Calum’s lap.

Calum swallows thickly and watches Indie undo the buttons. He looks away quickly wanting to give her privacy and instead looks towards the direction of the road hoping they’re far enough away from peering eyes.

“Now lie across his lap and let the shirt fall over his legs. Yup, Cal... Calum!”

“Huh?” Cal whips his head forward and feels the weight of Indie’s head on his knees. He’s forcing himself to not look down but his body is aware of her weight on him.

He knows this is all a form of art, but he just met the girl and he was unaware this is how the shoot was going to go. He’s posed shirtless for Andy and Sarah multiple times but never with someone else. And never with a girl with purple hair, a gentle voice, and a pen name.

“Lay your arm over her chest.”

“What? Is that okay?” he looks down to Indie’s eyes, they’re a striking deep blue. Like the deepest part of the ocean and he gets a little lost in them. “Is that okay that I do that?” he asks her this time.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” she nods with a smile. “Thank you for asking.”

Calum carefully places his arm across Indie’s exposed chest; he notices how warm her skin already is from the sun but also feels the small poke of her nipples on the softest part of his arm.

“Cover her nipples a bit, Cal, she’s going to post these on her Instagram and you know their dumbass guidelines about breasts,” Sarah rolls her eyes adjusting her camera.

Calum adjusts his arm which means he has to look where her nipples are. He knows the human body is art in its natural form, and he admires the female body so why is he nervous? Is it because they literally just met and her top is open?

He curses himself. It’s not like they’re making an adult film or anything, this is an artistic moment. Shit, why did he think of an adult film because now a million different scenarios flash in his mind. While he places his arm across her chest, he sees some more ink below her breasts but he can’t quite make out the design.

“Indie, put your hands on his arm, spread your fingers…”

Calum hears the rapid shutter speed of her camera as she captures the intimate moment between strangers. Calum wonders why he was chosen to do this. Obviously, Michael wasn’t at the top of the list because he and Crystal are married, and Luke and Sierra just announced their engagement. KayKay is no novice in front of the camera, but maybe they wanted a girl and guy? Usually, Ashton is up for anything involving the human body.

“Cal, you have your thinking face on, man. Relax,” Andy says.

“Don’t be nervous,” Indie whispers gazing up at him.

Those damn blue eyes again. The purple in her hair really makes them pop and he notices a small freckle at the corner of her eye.

“You’re not?” his voice is hushed so Andy and Sarah don’t hear.

“Of course, I am, this is way out of my comfort zone. But this is art, and I want to explore it,” she shrugs.

It eased him that she was nervous as well. He took a deep breath and fixed her bangs in her face.

“That’s good, that’s really good, act natural,” Sarah advises.

“I like the purple,” he compliments, “it really comes out in the sun and makes your eyes stand out.”

“Thank you. I can’t really see your face because of the sun,” she squints up at him and giggles. Calum smiles at the sound.

The session continues and eventually Calum removes his shirt as well which he’s thankful for because he was starting to sweat. He told himself it was because the sun is at its hottest spot in the sky, not because of some cute girl with purple hair and tattoos with her shirt open.

He leans forward on his knees with Indie standing behind him and the tree, her chest pressed to his back and her hands locked under his neck. He wonders if she can hear how loud his heart is beating.

Another pose has him sitting in the grass with her legs hanging over his shoulders. Calum tickles her toes and she squeals out in laughter and Calum knows those will be great shots.

“Hey! Tickling is forbidden!” she laughs. “I will kick you and it will be your fault.”

“You won’t kick me,” he shakes his head but stops tickling her then notices another tattoo on the outside of her ankle. He looks to his right and sees a small red train on the inside of that ankle. “You have a lot of tattoos. What does this one mean?”

His finger traces the red outline of the train and the small speckle of stars shooting from the chimney.

“I loved Thomas the train engine.”

Calum looks up at her not believing her for a second. From this angle he forgets what his smart-ass remark was going to be because her naked midriff distracted him greatly. The ends of her hair tickled over her nipples, her bangs framing her face perfectly.

She gives him a radiant smile that he can’t deny by returning one of his own.

“All right, that’s it for this spot. Ready to head out Indie?” Sarah asks, pulling them from their small moment of connection.

“Yeah, I’m starved,” Indie buttons up her top.

“Want to come, Cal? We’re getting pizza at Marco’s,” Andy says.

“Uh, let me check my phone quickly, hang on,” he pulls out his phone then slips his shirt back on over his head. One notification from Bianca and she just gave his text to her a thumbs up. “Yeah, pizza sounds great.”

He walks next to Indie back to their cars.

☆°•.¸☆¸.•°☆

“How would you guys feel about doing a night shoot back at our place? The city lights in the skyline would be perfect,” Sarah says when she finishes off the last piece of pizza.

“I’m down for that. Can it be partially nude?” Indie asks, sucking up the last of her root beer from the vintage red cup.

“Absolutely,” Sarah nods.

“What do you say, Calum?” Indie looks up to Calum and he feels like she’s challenging him.

“I’m in,” he nods. He’s always up for a challenge.

The night shoot is out on Sarah and Andy’s balcony. Calum watches Sarah and Indie first from the doorway. Indie has her top open again leaning against the railing. She stretches her arms up above her head, extending her torso and Calum can get a better glimpse of that tattoo below her breasts.

It looks like celestial with moons and stars. As the photos progress, she slips it all the way off and leans over the railing. She does a profile view then reaches her hand out to Sarah’s camera for a close up of her fingers. The two women are giggling and Calum won’t deny how natural and confident Indie is in front of the camera even though she admitted to being nervous to him earlier.

Was she telling him the truth or was she just doing that to keep up this anonymous persona?

“Sarah has a way of making people feel comfortable in front of the camera. It’s her loving nature,” Andy explains as if reading Calum’s mind. “This is all Indie’s idea by the way, the shoot. She wants to do a body positivity session.”

“That’s…” Calum watches with wide eyes as Indie drops her shorts and panties then he sees her cute little bare ass. “Nice.” He clears his throat since she’s completely bare. Andy chuckles and nudges him in the ribs.

Calum is suddenly in the need of a cigarette; his fingers begin to twitch.

He watches her as she and Sarah continue to interact. Indie keeps her backside facing Sarah and Calum spots yet another tattoo on the back of her shoulder. Why’d she choose him to be a part of it? Or was it Andy and Sarah who chose him?

Calum opens his mouth to ask when Sarah calls him over.

“Get your ass out here, Hood, it’s your turn. Sit in the chair,” Sarah commands, pulling up said chair right in front of Indie.

Calum keeps his gaze on Indie’s face when he sits in the chair in front of her, his head seems a bit clearer now without her naked body in front of him.

“Shirt off?” he jokes, trying to ease his own tension.

“Please,” Sarah grins and he peels it off again. Of course, she’d say yes. “Baby, can you get the lights for me?”

The outside lights shut off by Andy and replaced by color changing string lights hanging in the rafters. Calum stares up above as they transition from green to yellow to orange and finally to some sort of purple/blue hybrid. Indie’s face comes into view over his shoulder, her fingers dance on his shoulders, her eyes are shining, and her hair is more purple with the added hue.

“Magical,” Sarah comments.

Indie smiles at him and he couldn’t agree more with Sarah’s statement and a few notes of a soft melody sprout in his head.

☆°•.¸☆¸.•°☆

Calum stayed up all night going through Indie’s Instagram. He thought it would show her real name and he’ll deny to his dying breath that he did NOT spend an hour trying to find her profile. Turns out, her social media persona is displayed as Indie too and he wonders why.

Her posts are all about body positivity which include photos of her body that look professionally done in his opinion. Each pose is perfectly posed so you can’t really see everything but know that she’s fully naked. He tries to make out the tattoos he couldn’t see from the night before, but it’s hard with how her body twists and the way they’re edited.

He reads through some of the comments, agreeing with the ones telling how hot and gorgeous she is. He wanted to tell off the creeps and defend her because her message was about loving your body.

Her photos and posts are real and authentic. She talks about her own insecurities, how learning to love her body seems to be an ongoing lesson. He admires her rawness and understands seeing something different when you look in the mirror but when he sees her...he wonders how she can see flaws.

His phone rings right after he hits ‘follow’ and the noise scares him. His heart plummeted when he saw it was Bianca.

“Hey, babe,” he greets and she immediately rattles off about her day.

Calum puts her on speaker so he can continue to scroll through the photos of him and Indie she posted from their shoot. There are comments from some fans inquiring if he and Bianca broke up.

Bianca didn’t really say anything about his photoshoot, but she doesn’t really say much about what he does anyway.

☆°•.¸☆¸.•°☆

The guys are taking a little creative break after bouncing back chords, verses, and beats that they’ve been working on since six in the morning. Ashton was complaining about needing his fifth cup of iced coffee and Michael was starving so the two of them left to pick up lunch and coffee.

Luke and Calum remained behind like always. Luke never stopped working and Calum always kept him company, enjoying the sounds of his soft guitar playing. Ashton’s lava lamp changes to purple and Calum is reminded of Indie so he pulls out his phone and goes to her Instagram.

She’s made a few new posts within the last several days. The first one is of her standing in front of her bathroom mirror with a towel wrapped around her. Her eyes are wide and bright, her hair is in wet strands and the steam frames her reflection. The next one is darker with the towel dropped; two small black hearts are placed on her breasts.

She captioned it: “conversations with myself about loving me are the hardest conversations I have. Sometimes they’re serious and other times goofy, but that’s with the aid of rum. Being gentle with yourself seems so easy until you come face to face.”

The second most recent post is of her and another guy at some sort of festival. They both have on circular sunglasses and the photos are a little blurry. One is a close up of the guy but he’s out of focus and eating a corn dog. The next one is of the two of them standing in front of a funhouse mirror; she has her fingers up in a peace sign. There’s one of them eating cotton candy and the last is of them on the Ferris wheel.

She just captions it as ‘memories.’

The last one she posted was from several hours ago and it was another photo shoot. She was posed with the same guy from the festival only this time she was topless and his arms were around her in front of a mirror. Another one has her lying on a bed with her head hanging off the edge and she’s upside down. The guy is resting his head on her stomach, both of them are looking at the camera and he’s shirtless too. The last one is of her twisted on the bed under the sheets, her ass peeking out and she’s spread across the guy. His hand is very low on her back.

Calum feels a pang in his chest. The pictures are great and all but why is he feeling this sharp pain and warmth in his cheeks?

“Woah, are you on OnlyFans right now?” Luke snorts and Calum jumps from the sound of his voice.

“What?”

“Pretty raunchy, don’t ya think?” Luke grins and then something clicks within Calum.

Could Indie have an OnlyFans account? Is that what she meant by “social media stuff”? He knows it’s one of the most popular adult content websites right now and that pay is really good if you post a lot. Is Indie her...sex name? Is that what that’s called?

“D’you think she has an OnlyFans?”

“I dunno. Who is she?” Luke stops his guitar playing to look at Calum.

“I...I uh did a shoot with her, Andy, and Sarah a few weeks ago.”

“Really? What did you do?”

Calum brings up the session he and Indie did together, handing his phone over to Luke. He suddenly feels very self-conscious and almost wants to snatch his phone back so Luke doesn’t see Indie bare chested. But she posted it on her public Instagram so anyone can see it.

“Wow, you really did a nude shoot?”

“We had our pants on,” Calum scoffs, trying to take his phone back but Luke stretches his arm out of his grasp.

“She doesn’t in these next ones.”

“Give me my phone!” Calum scrambles over Luke’s broad frame to get his phone back. He settles back on the couch in a huff. “Don’t look at those.”

“You showed it to me! Who is she anyway?”

“I don’t really know. She goes by the name Indie but I don’t think that’s her real name.”

“What do you mean?”

“When we arrived at the meadow for the shoot, Andy said we were meeting someone else there and when I asked who it was; Sarah said she wanted to be anonymous. She posts a lot about body positivity and I asked what she does for a living and all she said was social media stuff.”

“OnlyFans is social media. What did Bianca have to say about these photos?”

“Not much,” Calum shrugs and he gets a Twitter notification from her. Does she have a sixth sense to post or call when he’s talking about her?

He opens up the notification and she’s talking about him but very vaguely by only calling him ‘boyfriend’ with a photo attached of him looking down at his phone while they were out to dinner the other night. She brags about him online but hardly does anything with him when they are together. He’s starting to forget why he’s dating her in the first place.

“She had nothing to say about you posing topless with another woman?” Luke’s guitar playing stops and his eyebrows are raised.

“Nope,” Calum sighs and likes Bianca’s post anyway. Their relationship seems to only be about ‘liking’ each other’s posts lately.

“That’s...odd. So, why’re you looking at this girl Indie’s insta anyway?”

“I like what she posts. It’s real and true and a lot of people relate to it. It’s nice,” Calum shrugs. “And she was cool to hang out with at the photo session.”

“Ah, I see. You’re jealous you aren’t in those photos with her.”

“What? No, I’m not.”

“Yeah you are, and you didn’t want me to see her naked bum.”

“How would Sierra feel about that?”

“She’d look with me,” Luke shrugs, “you know that. See if she tagged the guy and find out who he is. If he has an OnlyFans then there’s a possibility she might have one, too.”

“How does that make sense?” Calum asks but clicks on the tagged name anyway because he’s not thinking properly and his curiosity is getting the best of him.

“They promote new content with whoever they did it with.”

“How the hell do you know that?”

“Saw it on TikTok, and there was that rumor that Ash has an OnlyFans so I Googled about it.”

“That’s a weird thing to Google.”

“Please, you’ve Googled worse. So, who is the bloke?” Luke peers over his best friend’s hand to look at his phone screen.

Calum looks back down at his phone on the new profile. He has quite a massive following and a small bio.

“His name is Ian, he’s a model and an extra in TV shows. There’s a link under his name but he posted photos with her, too.”

Calum taps on the post to see it’s of them in that damn bed again. Indie is straddling him but she has on some sort of lace outfit and Ian’s hands are on her waist. They’re both laughing and facing the camera.

“He wrote ‘always a blast doing sessions with you.’ Does that mean photo sessions or OnlyFans stuff?”

“How am I supposed to know? Why does it concern you anyway?”

That stops Calum short. Why does it concern him? His mind is spiraling with his conflicting emotions and the desire to search for more information about this Ian guy. He tosses his phone on the opposite end of the couch.

“It doesn’t concern me. I was curious and now I know you and Sierra subscribe to OnlyFans.”

“What? I didn’t say that at all!” Luke squeaks then narrows his eyes. “Don’t change the subject. Why does it matter if she has one or not?”

“I want to understand her, she didn’t tell me much about her and I’m not sure why.”

“She probably wants to keep her life private. Does she have a big following for what she posts?”

“Yeah.”

“Then maybe she doesn’t want people knowing her business. You can understand that, can’t you?”

“Of course, I can, I--she intrigues me, that’s all. I want to know more about her.”

“Why do you want to know more about her?”

“I don’t know! She...her purple hair and nose ring and tattoos...and her eyes are so damn blue. I don’t understand it.”

Luke is silent for several moments staring at Calum, his blue eyes imploring his friend to tell more. Luke‘s looking at Calum as if he knows something.

Calum is lost in his confusion. Luke moves from the couch and picks up Calum’s notebook and his favorite type of pen. He holds them out to Calum.

“Write about it. Figure it out.”

☆°•.¸☆¸.•°☆

Calum tried to write about it and figure it out and he was a little ashamed of himself for searching for Indie on OnlyFans a few days later after talking with Luke. It made him feel pervy, and even though he didn’t find her, it wouldn’t have changed his outlook on her at all if she did have an account. It only makes him want to learn more about her and not the small number of half-truths he received.

It’s been a month since he saw her and he’s at a party with Roy and Bianca. Bianca was off with her friends so Calum and Roy were left to their own devices which were perfectly fine for Calum. He’s always up for a good time but only when it’s with his close friends who are more like family, not a hundred people who sneak photos of him when they walk by.

He’s scanning the crowd--people watching is his favorite thing to do--when he spots someone with purple hair walk by.

“Indie! Hey!” Roy literally took the words right from Calum’s mouth.

Roy knows Indie?

Indie turns at the sound of her name waiting for her friend to pass and she smiles upon seeing Roy then shows her teeth in a radiant smile when she sees Calum right next to him. She’s got on some overall shorts with one of the straps unbuttoned and a tight black shirt that stops at her midriff. There’s some glitter on her face and Calum is mystified once more.

“Hey Cal, fancy seeing you here. Hey Roy,” she smiles at him and Roy pulls her into a hug. Calum feels a twinge of jealousy that he didn’t receive a hug.

“You two know each other?” Calum asks, eyebrows raised.

“Yeah, Indie comes to my meditation sessions once in a while. It’s been too long since the last one, missy.”

“I’ve been working!” she giggles shoving his shoulder playfully. “I’m in need of a good meditation zone, though. Oh, this is my friend, Travis.”

“Nice to meet you guys,” Travis shakes Calum and Roy’s hands.

Calum eyes him up but before he can say anything else, Travis mentioned something about finding their group of friends.

“I’ll send you details on the next mediation,” Roy tells her before she heads out.

“I look forward to it. Have a nice time,” she smiles at them both and lets Travis guide her through the crowd.

Calum is a bit upset he didn’t really get to talk to her as he watches her disappear into the sea of people. He continues listening to Roy and his latest idea for a new album and what it will be based around. He hums and comments in the spaces he’s supposed to but his mind is off on someone else.

And then he wonders where the hell Bianca got off to.

“What’s wrong with you, man? Your mind is out of this world right now,” Roy comments.

“Nothing, nothing,” Calum shakes his head gruffly and then Bianca appears handing Calum a drink.

“You look parched,” she kisses his cheek and he feels the sticky residue of her lip gloss on his skin.

Calum continues to search for Indie as the night goes on, wanting to discuss how her body positivity project is going. He smiles and poses in the photos with Bianca; he knows both of their smiles are fake. Whenever she touches him, he doesn’t get that same feeling he did when Indie touched him in the meadow.

It’s a little after midnight as he exits the bathroom and bumps into someone.

“Oops, sorry, my faul--Indie! Hey!” he grins down at her.

“Oh! Hi again. Having a good time?” she asks brightly.

“It’s all right, how about you?”

“Not really in the mood to party tonight,” she shrugs, “but my friend Travis from earlier likes a guy here so I’m his wing woman.”

“What a good friend you are,” he smiles. “Have they met up?”

“I got a text from him with the tongue emoji, the fire emoji, and the drooling emoji,” she counts off on her fingers. “I’ve walked around this place twice so I’m assuming he’s all good,” she chuckles.

“So, you’re here all alone?”

“Yeah. I was just about to order an Uber--”

“I can take you home if you’d like. You shouldn’t take an Uber alone.”

“You don’t have to do that. I don’t mind--”

“Hey baby, some of the girls want to go to the club. I’ll see you later,” Bianca appears and gives Calum a very fleeting kiss on the cheek.

“Okay, before you go, this is Indie; remember how I did that photoshoot a month ago?”

Bianca glances at Indie who gives her a bright smile.

“Hi, it’s nice to meet--”

“Oh, yeah! Where you were both half naked! Very hot. I’ll call you tomorrow,” she says offhandedly to Calum then runs off to her friends.

“Nice to meet you, too!” Indie finishes in a half-shout and Calum laughs. “She’s a woman on a mission, huh?”

“Yeah, always has to be where the party's at. How about that drive home?”

☆°•.¸☆¸.•°☆

Once in his car, Indie connects her phone to his Bluetooth and puts on her playlist along with the address of her apartment. Calum watches her scroll through her phone until she selects the first song; its vibe is very chill, fitting the mood of the blue color of his car’s interior lighting. He keeps glancing over to her; the blue really brings out the purple in her hair. She then pulls her hair back and up behind her head in a makeshift ponytail, fanning herself with the other hand.

“Hot?” he asks while pressing the button for the AC. she lets out a yelp of surprise when the cool air blows on her neck from the headrest of her seat.

“I need my seats to have this feature,” she sighs then lets her hair drop over her shoulder. “Thank you for taking me home. Will you meet up with...oh my God, what’s your girlfriend’s name?” she presses her hands to her face, eyes widening in horror. “She left before you could introduce her.”

“Her name’s Bianca, and no, I’ll probably go home. Club life isn’t really my style.”

“Are you hungry?” she asks.

“For what?” He peers at her curiously.

“Have you ever had insomnia cupcakes?”

When they arrive at the small cupcake shop they read over the flavors listed on the bulbous glass display case. The cupcakes are the size of muffins and each time Indie nudges closer to him, he can smell her perfume. It’s citrus with a hint of something else he can’t place but she smells wonderful.

Indie ends up getting a strawberry cupcake with white frosting and pink sprinkles and Calum gets a confetti one which she teases him about.

“What’s wrong with confetti?!” he laughs following her outside and sits at one of the round metal tables.

“It’s like the second most vanilla flavor you could get. Live on the edge!” she swipes off a bit of frosting and sucks it off with a low satisfied moan.

Her eyes close relishing then taste and Calum gets momentarily distracted by her reaction to the cupcake.

“Well, isn’t that vanilla frosting? Not too on the edge yourself, are ya?”

“It’s not vanilla. Here,” she holds her cupcake in front of him, her eyes testing him. “Try a taste.”

He swipes her frosting off, eyes still on hers and he pops his finger in his mouth. His tongue is full of a very zesty lemon flavor, it’s sugary and sweet but light enough where it’s not too overbearing.

“Shit, that’s good.”

“Told you! Now you enjoy your plain confetti over there,” she wiggles in her chair taking her cupcake back. She swipes up more frosting.

“You eat the frosting first?” he asks, unfolding the paper from his cupcake.

“Mhm, the cake is the best part.”

He watches her in wonder as she continues to eat before taking a very large bite of his own treat. Frosting gets on his nose and she loses it when he wipes it off.

“Did I get it all?” he asks, sucking off the frosting from his thumb.

“You missed a spot...right here!”

Somehow she snuck some frosting on her pinky finger and rubbed it onto his cheek and nose. Calum was dumbfounded then when he saw her practically rolling in her chair from laughing, he joined her and wiped it off on her own.

“Thanks for that,” he laughs, licking off the lemon frosting.

“I’m sorry, I had to,” she shrugs and licks off the rest of her frosting from her cupcake.

“I’m going to get you back for that, Indie. Mark my words.”

“I’m trembling in my overalls,” she mocks with a smile.

“You should be,” he teases and takes another large bite of his cupcake.

When their cupcakes are finished they’re back in his car and her music fills the air with sound. He makes note of the band on his screen, Linus Young, so he can look them up later. He turns it down on the song titled ‘Crystal Ball.’

“How’s your latest project coming along?” he asks then moves into the middle lane.

“Pretty good, I guess. I want to do a couple more shots before I do a post. Sarah said she’d help me with it, we just have to find the time.”

“Do you need a partner?” he grins.

“Not for these shots,” she giggles, “but you’re more than welcome to come if you’d like. I’m always open to other artists' creative eyes.”

“Yeah, I’d love to. Do you have an idea on what your next project will be?”

“Um, I don’t know. It’s always centered on self-love and body positivity. I might try something with body paint or shadows. There’s a--”

“Do you have an OnlyFans?” he blurts out then immediately wants the earth to swallow him up whole.

Where the hell did that come from? He wanted to try and ease into it casually but how do you casually bring up a website like that? And now he just blurted it out like an imbecile. He keeps his eyes on the road anticipating a well-deserved slap across his cheek or for Indie to demand he take the next exit and drop her off.

Instead, she laughs. It’s a full-on cackle with a trail of giggles gasping for breath. Indie doesn’t stop until he looks over at her in alarm and with an apologetic grimace.

“Oh, you’re serious?” she squeaks wiping at the corners of her eyes. She takes a deep breath, still chuckling. “Why do you think that?”

“I was showing my friend Luke the shoot we did and when I went to your Instagram he saw your other photos and asked if I was on OnlyFans and he said creators usually post photos like that with a partner they collaborated with or something and you said your job is social media stuff and that’s social media and I’m--I’m an asshole for blurting it out like that. I’m sorry. It’s none of my business but even if you are, that’s great, y’know? No shame or judgment from me whatsoever. And I feel stupid for even trying to search you--”

“You tried searching for me?” she asks but Calum’s on a ranting rampage. “Wow. I’m fl--”

“This makes me sound like a grade A creep. You--”

“Calum!” she laughs resting her hand on his forearm. The hair on his neck stands up at her touch just like in the meadow. “As entertaining as it is to see you stumble over your words and talk this much, stop. I’m flattered you would even think that in the first place, but no, I don’t have an account.”

He risks a glance at her; she gives him a warm smile.

“Do you have an account?” She asks in a hushed whisper.

“What?!” he swerves a little in his lane but thankfully he needs to change over for the exit. His GPS says Indie’s place is only a few more minutes away. “No, no I don’t have one.”

She giggles again but doesn’t say another word.

They’re silent for the remainder of the drive, the music playing softly in the background. He wishes he never said anything and that Luke didn’t bring it up in the first place. Calum makes the few turns indicated on his screen and then parks in front of a duplex. Indie unbuckles her seatbelt, angling herself towards him.

“Would you subscribe if I did?”

He jerks his head in her direction, did he hear her right? He opens his mouth to answer then narrows his eyes, she does the same and they have a narrow-eyed contest until they’re laughing.

“Would you subscribe if I did?” he counters.

“I asked you first.”

He unbuckles himself as well so he can stretch in his seat and run his fingers through his hair. “I’m not going to answer that. Can we pretend I never asked that and this conversation never happened?” He drops his hands to the steering wheel; he needs to have a firm handle on something because clearly his tongue is acting wild.

“What did you ask?”

“What?”

“What conversation are you talking about?”

Calum stares at her, then looks outside as if there’s a hidden camera and he’s being punk’d right now. Is Ashton Kutcher hiding in that trailer?

“We were talking about OnlyFans.”

“Calum! I was playing along! You didn’t ask me anything and we didn’t have a conversation about that unasked question,” she gives him a perky smile.

“You are something else, you know that?” he rubs at his face out of embarrassment and feeling like such an idiot.

“That’s what I’m told,” she sighs.

He feels there’s a story or two there but he’s already invaded her privacy enough tonight. And it’s only the second time actually meeting her.

“Can I ask you something?” She asks.

“Yes. Please do.”

“Why do you want to know what I do?”

Calum rests his head on his seat, turning his head towards her with his hands still on the wheel. She’s situated herself in her seat so that one leg is pulled to her chest and resting against the center console. Her round cheek is cupped in her hand, her eyes wide and captivating.

“I want to know more about you, that’s all.”

“Why do you want to know about me, Cal?”

That question again. The answer is staring him right in the face, it’s on the tip of his tongue, but he just can’t bring himself to say it out loud. So, he alters his answer because he’s already rambled enough for one night.

“You have this ‘I don’t give a fuck’ attitude and a free spirit. You’re sure of yourself and not a lot of people are like that.”

“I definitely do give a fuck about a lot of things. Maybe too much,” she shrugs, removing her hand and leans forward. “You’re sure that’s all?”

She doesn’t ask it in fishing for compliments type of way, it’s more like she knows he’s hiding something, like she knows he sugar-coated his answer. Indie’s eyes have him captured, he’s like a fly caught in a black widow’s web that’s made up of his own lies.

“Ye-es…” he responds slowly.

“You promise?”

Her eyes are steady on his, he squeezes the wheel, arms tightening, knuckles whitening, and the smallest flick of her eyebrow causes him to let out a large exhale. Calum drops his hands in defeat.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” he shakes his head.

She’s looking at him like Luke was looking at him back in the studio.

“You’re…” he licks his lips and swallows down his nerves. “You’re unlike anyone I’ve ever met, Indie. I’ve never been this lost in my head on finding the proper words to say what I want to say. But I can tell you that my intentions are only to get to know you, which I’m certain of.”

“Get to know me as a friend?”

“Friend, photoshoot partner, whatever it is,” he shrugs. “All I know is I can’t stop thinking about you.”

She gives him a small smile with an even smaller nod then takes a deep breath. Her hands rub at her temples as she lets out a frustrated groan covering her eyes with her hands.

“Are you okay?”

“You know that’s the truest thing you’ve said this whole time, Cal? I’d be glad to be your friend but I can’t lie about how I’ve been thinking about you, too.”

“So... what do we do about that?”

Indie removes her hands, her eyes the size of planets holding the same secrecy of the galaxy. He wants to explore every part, every hidden crevice.

“I want to know you, too. But we have to promise--” she holds out her pinky “--that we are friends first and foremost. I don’t trust people easily; I only tell what I think they should know. But my intuition is telling me to trust you and it’s never wrong. Can you do that?”

Calum mulls over her words. He reaches over the console so their faces are closer. He can see the glitter on her cheeks and how they resemble constellations. He cups her cheek; his fingers locking in her hair and captures her lips in a fevered kiss without a thought of the repercussions that will follow.

The kiss is full of sparks, desire, and an innate need. Indie kisses him back with equal hurriedness and soon they’re scrambling to the backseat. Lips still connected, her fingers claw at his shirt and--

“Cal?”

Calum blinks. He’s pulled back to the present, his fantasy betraying him in the worst possible way from the reality of Indie still holding her pinky out for him.

The kiss was all in his head. Going against his selfish desires, he hooks his pinky with hers and Indie’s face turns serious.

“We promise to always stay friends, no matter what. Promise?”

“I promise.”

“We promise that no matter what comes from the darkness, what secrets will surface, or whatever urges may arise, we are friends first and won’t let those things change that. Promise?”

“I promise,” he nods, tilting his head to the side in amusement as she continues.

“And above all else...we won’t leave or abandon one another. Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Good. I promise, too,” she stares at their joined pinkies.

“You okay?” he asks, feeling the shift within her.

“Yeah...it’s a little...I’m giving you all my trust. It’s a little scary.”

He squeezes her pinky then covers their joined hands with the palm of his other hand. He cocks his head lower until she looks at him with shining, vulnerable eyes.

“I promise I won’t break it, Indie.”

He wonders if she catches the double entendre to his promise because while he said it about her trust, he could tell she’s wearing her heart on her sleeve. He doesn’t want to break that either.

☆°•.¸☆¸.•°☆

Calum has been walking on air ever since that night with Indie a few weeks ago promising to be friends. Is he attracted to her? Absolutely. That at least is something he can admit even if it is in his own head. Will he act on those thoughts? No, because he has respect for Indie and his relationship with Bianca.

Things between him and Bianca have gotten a little better; they go out more and she’s asked him about his music. When he’s mentioned he has this tune stuck in his head that he can’t figure out she doesn’t say too much about it and quickly transitions to her next appearance promoting a new line of liquor.

Calum’s confident he can push his attraction for Indie to the side and make their friendship a priority. He’s never had a female best friend before but it’s an easy transition with her.

After that night they exchanged numbers and were quick to start sending funny memes and TikTok videos. Calum downloaded the app solely because of her and when he discovered she had a few videos of her own, he watched the four videos relentlessly.

“You’re a very talented lip syncer, you should go pro,” he’d told her one day over FaceTime while he was making breakfast.

“There’s no such thing as a pro lip syncer,” she snorted back. She was applying makeup in her bathroom sitting cross legged on the counter with her feet in the sink.

“Yeah there’s that show on MTV or some shit where you dress up and put on a whole performance.”

“I would literally die if I had to perform in front of people. No thank you.”

Calum laughed then watched her apply her eyeliner with careful strokes and perfect precision. Whenever she did her makeup she had her hair pulled back in a loose ponytail and her bangs clipped up so she wouldn’t get makeup on them. Seeing her whole face for the first time filled him with even more intrigue and he thought she was even more beautiful.

“Why do you do that on the sink?” he asked, flipping his egg on his toast.

“So I can get closer to the mirror. It’s a girl thing. Doesn’t Bianca do it?”

“Dunno, I’ve never seen her put her makeup on before.”

He would send her photos and videos of Duke and each time she’d comment on how adorable he is and that she would steal him one day.

“You’ll have to get through me first,” he grinned.

“I can take you. It’s one of my superpowers.”

“What superpower is that exactly?”

“If I tell you then my cover’s blown, duh.”

“Why don’t you show me then?” he teased with a slight hint of flirtation.

“Cal…” she warned but couldn’t help her giggle.

“All right, all right,” he smiled, scratching at his head. “Sorry.”

There would be some innocent slip-ups like that throughout their conversations. Calum just felt so at ease with Indie and when she asked him to help her with a photoshoot of hers he was more than excited to accept.

When he arrived at her place, there was music playing from down the hall and he heard voices followed by Indie’s laugh. He follows the sound right into her bathroom where she is with another girl while the bathtub was running water, bubbles rising.

“Did you finally get your own dog?” he asks and the two girls turn at his voice.

“No, it’s for the photos,” Indie smiles. “Cal, this is Inka, she’s going to be in the photos with me and helping you take them.”

“Nice to finally meet you, Calum,” Inka smiles.

Inka’s a little taller than Indie with flowing ink black hair, wide set eyes and brown skin. She has a septum piercing and is also very good looking.

“Nice to meet you,” he nods, and then turns fearfully to Indie. “I’m taking the photos? Shouldn’t you ask Sarah, she’s a professional.”

“I don’t want them to look professionally done. Inka’s big on water photography so she’ll help you. And we need someone to take photos of us together.”

“All right, so…” he glances at the tub that Inka is now bent over testing the water. “What’s with the bubble bath?”

“That’s where we’ll be,” Indie grins, removing her shorts.

Calum is so caught off guard by being the photographer that his eyes watch her step out of them, but finds she has on swimsuit bottoms. At least he won’t be distracted this time like in the meadow or at Andy and Sarah’s when she was completely naked.

“Are you alright with us being topless, Cal?” Inka asks removing her own shorts. He spots some ink on her skin as well, he wonders if they got tattoos together at one point. The styles are pretty similar.

“I’m fine if you guys are,” he shrugs then eyes up the Polaroid sitting on the counter. “I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable with me here; I respect the artistry of the naked body.”

“All I needed to hear,” Inka says with a sigh. “The water’s perfect, Indsy. I’ll put on music that helps me get in the zone.”

“Is this the camera I’ll be using?” Calum asks, pointing to the Polaroid as Inka changes the music on her phone to something with a bit of soul to it. The voice echoes very softly within the bathroom.

“Yeah, it’s Inka’s. She’ll show you how to use it while I’m in there. Thanks for helping with this, everyone couldn’t or thought it was weird when I asked them.”

“Glad to be of assistance,” he smiles down at her, noticing she doesn’t have makeup on. “You look nice by the way.”

“Thank you. I’m going to take my top off now,” she touches his arm as if in assurance, her eyes widening slightly. “Will you be okay?”

He knows she’s teasing but he links his pinky with hers that’s on his arm.

“Promise. Now get in there,” he jerks his head towards her bath.

“Sheesh, you’re a demanding assistant.”

She backs away and he examines the camera with curiosity. When Inka and Indie converse behind him, he lifts his eyes to their reflection in the mirror just as Indie is pulling her t-shirt off. Her eyes meet his as she tosses it to the floor and it’s as if the moment slows before she’s stepping into the water.

“Inka! This is too hot!” she squeals, pulling her foot out.

“No, it’s not! Calum, come feel the water.”

He turns and stands next to Indie; he bends to the floor pressing his hand through a mountain of bubbles. It’s pretty warm but he’s come to realize that Indie doesn’t like hot things.

“I think it’s fine but it is too hot for her,” he agrees with Indie.

“Well, you’ll get used to it and if your cheeks get a little red or your chest, then it will make the pictures better.”

Indie sighs; she puts her hand on Calum’s shoulder for extra support and puts her foot in the water again. She lets out a hiss and stands there for a couple seconds. Calum grabs her hand and holds her fingers when she places her other foot in the tub as well. He watches her scrunch her face at the temperature, he can see a red splotch blooming on her chest already and she’s not even fully in yet.

“Darling, it’s really not that bad,” Inka sighs rubbing at Indie’s shoulder. “Is it?”

“I just need to let myself get used to it,” Indie replies and drops a knee, her fingers’ holding onto Calum’s tightly.

“I can get a cold washcloth for you,” he offers but Indie shakes her head and drops her other knee.

“I’ll be okay. Can you get me a bottled water from my fridge?”

“Yeah, I’ll be right back,” he nods and he releases her fingers.

When he returns, Indie is fully in the bath, her hair cascading over her back like a dark purple curtain. Her knees are drawn up to her chest and Inka is on the floor with her camera pointed at Indie. Indie’s head is on her knees, her body curving forward, eyes big and her lips pouting slightly.

Calum doesn’t like how she looks sad even if he knows it’s for the aesthetics of it all. Indie looks up at him then stretches a now bubbly arm towards him for the water.

“Wait, stay like that for a minute!” Inka instructs Indie's pose and the camera clicks. “Okay, you can take it.”

Calum sits against the cabinets next to Inka, paying attention to the buttons on the camera before she takes a picture. Indie leans back with her head tilted back and eyes closed, her breasts pointing out. Then she rested her arms on the edge of the tub, her cheek falling perfectly in the crook of her elbows and she eyed up the camera and Inka. When she looked at Calum, he forgot how to swallow.

“Okay, ready for me?” Inka asks, standing up from her place on the floor.

“You’re going to complain about the water though,” Indie rolls her eyes playfully and turns the tap back on. She shifts to the opposite end so she doesn’t feel the hot water.

“Just take photos you think would be good as candid’s,” Inka instructs handing Calum the camera.

He’s nervous now. He doesn’t want to mess up their vision and he runs over what Inka told him in his head as she takes off her tank top and climbs in with Indie.

“This is so tepid!” Inka shrieks and Indie laughs.

“It’s perfect!”

“You’re such a little weirdo,” Inka drops into the water and pushes the running water towards Indie. Indie sticks her tongue out.

While the water continues to run, Calum takes some practice shots and Inka starts to pull her hair up in a very messy bun with loose strands kissing her cheeks and forehead. She looks very good, actually. Inka has a natural beauty to her, much like Indie does. Calum took photos of that process, Inka is confident in herself like Indie is; it’s all in her posture.

“Remember the first time we were in the bath together?” Indie asks, leaning against the wall.

“Yeah, you were drunk and thought your tub was a whirlpool. But you turned the shower on instead and I thought you were drowning,” Inka laughs.

Calum captures their smiles. He remains silent as they place bubbles on each other’s noses or blow them at each other from their hands. He tries to take as many of those as he can because he thinks they’re charming.

He discovers they’ve been friends ever since Indie moved to L.A and have gone through tough things with each other like bad relationships, loss of jobs, and fallouts from a whole group of friends they were involved in. The more they talked, the closer they got in the tub.

“Here, turn around, I want to get some shots like this,” Indie tells Inka.

They’re in a fit of giggles and laughter as Inka maneuvers in the water, some of the bubbles are rolling down the sides of the tub. Once they’re situated, Indie scoots closer until she’s pressed against Inka’s back. Calum’s reminded of feeling her pressed against his back at Andy and Sarah’s.

“Look at Cal,” Indie says and they both turn to Calum.

He snaps the photo.

“How are you doing over there Mr. Camera Man?” Inka asks leaning against Indie.

“Great. How’re you guys?” he asks.

“Hungry. I want some pizza,” Indie sighs. She presses her cheek to Inka’s neck and wraps her arms around her stomach.

“We’ll order some afterwards,” Inka lifts her hand and pats at Indie’s head affectionately. “Does Calum know you need to be fed every few hours?”

“You make me sound like a baby,” Indie laughs. “Does Calum know?” She directs the question to him in third person, looking at him expectantly.

“Yes, I discovered she gets very feisty when she’s hungry,” Calum laughs.

“He’s a good egg,” Indie says and kisses Inka’s neck.

“Wait, do that again,” Calum says and Indie presses her lips to Inka’s neck. He snaps the picture and he grins. “That’s a good one.”

“Stay professional over there, sir,” Inka warns, narrowing her eyes.

“I am! It’s a sweet moment that’s all. You guys are close and have been through a lot. There aren’t too many friendships like that.”

“I always tell her she’s my soulmate,” Inka pats Indie's cheek then spins around again in the water.

“My friend Ash and I say the same thing.”

“You two take baths together, too?” Inka asks and Indie laughs.

“No,” he laughs. “We wouldn’t fit.”

That gets them both laughing and he snaps a picture of it, the pure joy and amusement on their faces. He notices goosebumps are on Indie’s arms.

“You’re getting cold, Indie,” he comments.

“Yeah, we should get out soon. Did you get some good photos?” she asks, sitting up a little straighter, her hands on the edge of the tub.

“Wait, Cal get one more picture,” Inka stops Indie from standing.

He poises the camera to his eye again and watches as Inka leans in and gives Indie a soft kiss on the lips. She holds the kiss so he can take the picture and he keeps snapping when they pull away and smile at each other.

They both rise from the tub with more water sloshing over the sides; all the bubbles are gone now. Calum stands handing them each a towel; he’s trying to wrap his head around that kiss. He kisses his friends too, but to see Indie be kissed by a girl made that pang form in his chest again like when she hugged Roy and not him.

He shouldn’t be jealous; they’re just friends and he pinky promised.

“I’ll order some pizza and upload these so we can look at them,” Inka says, wrapping the towel around her. She folds it over so it’s held to her body like a strapless dress. “Time to put your camera skills to the test.”

The photos ended up looking really well. He could tell the differences between his and Inka’s, hers were angled in different ways to make the focal point look cool. His photos were straighter on but Inka was impressed by some of his close-up shots of their laughter.

The three of them watched a movie as they ate their pizza, laughing at the scenes and more memories that came about for Indie and Inka. Calum really liked Inka and she gave him a hug when she left, promising she’ll contact him if she needs his help for her own photos.

“You have her approval by the way,” Indie says, moving back to the couch pulling her blanket over her legs.

“Approval?” He joins her resting his arm over the back of her couch.

“Of being my guy best friend. This was sort of a test of hers by having you deal with our shenanigans and being half naked in the tub.”

“Elaborate, please?” he chuckles. “Did she think I’d be weird about it?”

“She’s a little protective over me. We’re best friends but…” Indie looks at her hands in her lap; she starts to play with the edge of the blanket.

“But…?” he prompts and she bites her lip. “I feel like this is a pinky promise moment.”

“It is.”

He holds out his pinky waiting for her to link their fingers. She takes in a deep breath and hooks her pinky around his but she doesn’t let it go when she speaks. Her eyes are trained on their pinkies.

“Inka and I dated actually, for a short time. It was right when I moved out here and we got super close super-fast, I felt the most comfortable with her in the friend group I fell into. She’s the first one I voiced my attraction to women about and she said she was the same. We both don’t like labels. And... Yeah, we dated for a couple months but both agreed our friendship was more important than if we broke up badly.”

“So, you’re attracted to men and women or just women?” he asks softly.

“Both,” she says, her eyes still on their pinkies. “Inka’s the only woman I’ve dated and have been with but I’ve had other crushes. They just never went anywhere.”

“Hey, look at me,” he tugs on her pinky lightly until her eyes meet his. “Why do you seem scared?”

“When I tell other guys about it they get all weird and ask for threesomes or they get freaked out like I'm going to cheat on them with her or something. I’m attracted to girls but it’s more than attraction, too.”

“I get it,” he nods, “you don’t have to explain to me. You care for people for who they are. I’m sorry if you felt cautious to tell me. You can tell me anything, Indie.”

“It’s just nerve wracking, that’s all,” she lets out a shaky laugh. “I knew you wouldn’t be creepy with the photos but while we were doing them I figured this would be a good time to tell you.”

“Thank you for telling me, it helps me get to know you better,” he smiles. She gives him one back then pulls her pinky away so she can give him a hug.

He holds her tightly, feeling how fast her heart is beating. They didn't let go until her heart slowed down and matched his.

☆°•.¸☆¸.•°☆

Every day at the studio, Luke would pester Calum asking when they would finally get to meet Indie. Not long after, Ashton and Michael would chime in as well about wanting to meet her and Calum would do his best to ignore them. But he knows his brothers and they’re persistent to the point where it will make you go mad if you don’t agree.

Today was more of a chill day tossing random lyrics and notes around trying to make it into a song. While the other three were goofing off, Calum was at the piano trying to work out the notes that have been swimming in his head for the last couple months. He has the first and last notes down pat but what is in the middle? He can’t figure it out.

“Hey, Cal,” Luke calls, “you should have a party tonight.”

“What for?”

“So, we can all hang out, drink, eat, meet Indie…”

Calum’s hands fall away from the keys and he twists around on the bench to see Luke smiling with all his teeth. He looks like that emoji with his teeth bared.

“Why do you want to meet her so badly?”

“She’s friends with you, we want to be friends with her as well,” Luke shrugs.

“Roy knows her, why can’t we?” Ashton adds.

“Yeah, is she even real at this point?” Michael chortles.

“Yes, she’s real,” Calum rolls his eyes. “How—”

His phone buzzes on the table.

“It’s Indie!” Luke exclaims trying to snatch up the phone.

Calum darts forward grabbing his phone before they can. Thankfully, it was just a text because he knew if he picked up the phone one of them would have found a way to speak with Indie and say something ridiculous.

“Stop acting like we’re twelve,” Calum shakes his head. “Two of you are married.”

“I’m engaged, actually,” Luke corrects, leaning back on the couch. He crosses his converse covered feet at the ankles. “What’d she want?”

Against his better judgment, Calum opens the message to see three photos and a text. They’re all the same photos just taken in different positions. It’s her naked body, from just below her breasts to the tops of her thighs. She’s poised in a way that you can’t see anything and it ranges from black and white, sepia, and the original photo.

‘Which one should I post?’ was the text sent.

“She sent me photos asking for help on which ones to pick for a post,” Calum says already typing away about how she should do all of them. Then he asks how her day’s going. He looks up at his friends and they’re giving him the same look of expectation. “Ugh, fine! If I invite her over you can’t be weird as shit like you are right now.”

They whoop and holler at that news.

“Finally, we get to meet the infamous Indie,” Luke sighs, resting his head on his hands. Calum throws a pillow right at his face.

☆°•.¸☆¸.•°☆

All of Calum’s friends are mingling in the backyard and kitchen area, conversation and laughter is heard over the low sound of the music playing. He’s ordered pizza and wings for everyone to enjoy and they should be delivered in about forty-five minutes. He’s been anxiously waiting for Indie to arrive but is also nervous about how the guys will act around her.

Bianca is out of town so she couldn’t make it and Calum wasn’t too sure what his feelings are about her not being here. She told him to have fun and not get too rowdy, so he appreciates that small sentiment.

Indie was excited to meet everyone else when he called her and when she asked if she could bring a friend, he assumed it was Inka so he of course said yes.

Boy was he ever wrong.

He was popping open another white claw when Andy and Sarah announced her name. He looks up in excitement to see her hugging Sarah but then it falters when he sees it’s not Inka that’s next to her. It’s that guy Ian from her Instagram posts that she posed with. The pang in his chest is back when Ian places his arm over Indie’s bare shoulders and shakes Andy and Sarah’s hand.

Calum takes notice of her outfit; she has on a dark blue top with the sleeves that only go to the tops of her arms and black jean shorts with some black boots. Her dark purple hair is pulled back behind her head in a sort of braid.

“Hey isn’t that—”

“Indie?” Calum finishes Luke’s sentence and takes a long drink of his white claw. “Yeah, let’s go introduce you.”

Ashton and Michael met them by Indie and she gave Calum a big smile.

“Hey! How’re you?” she asks rising on her tiptoes to give him a hug. Ian and Calum’s eyes meet briefly before Indie pulls away.

“I’m good, glad you could come,” Calum forces a smile. “Uh, these are the guys. It’s about time you all met. This is Luke, Ashton, and Michael. Guys, this is Indie.”

“So, you are a real person,” Ashton nods, shaking her hand.

“As opposed to what? A blow-up doll?” Indie teases and Michael chokes on his own drink.

Calum grins because he knows she’ll be able to handle herself around them. He just hopes they don’t say anything about him that would raise questions.

“I like you,” Ashton smiles. “Who’s this you brought along?”

“Oh! Right, sorry. This is Ian,” she introduces.

Calum eyes him up while he shakes his friends’ hands. He’s about the same height as Calum with short brown hair that kind of sticks up in the front. He’s got tan skin, an arm of tattoos, and has a lean muscular build.

“And this is Calum,” Indie introduces him last.

Calum notices she didn’t say ‘my friend’ or ‘my boyfriend’ when introducing Ian, so what is he exactly?

“Good to finally meet you, man,” Ian holds out his hand.

“Likewise,” Calum makes sure his grip is tight, but so is Ian’s. “Help yourselves to drinks from the coolers and kitchen. Pizza and wings should be coming soon.”

The pang in Calum’s chest only grows as the night progresses. He’s not quite sure what to make of Ian except that he and Indie are very comfortable with each other. When Calum is in ear shot they’re always flirting and touching each other.

“Sooo…” Luke drawls sidling next to Calum. “He’s that guy from her Instagram, right?”

“Yup.”

“Are he and Indie dating?”

“No idea,” Calum’s voice is clipped. He takes a drink of his white claw. The pang keeps getting sharper, his fingers are twitching for a cigarette and now he really wants some weed.

“Are you all right?”

Calum watches Ian come up behind Indie with another drink for her and he smacks her ass then proceeds to rub her back. Indie smiles up at him taking the cup.

“Yeah, I’m all right. We’re just friends,” Calum sighs.

When the party dwindled down, it was only Ashton, Michael, Luke, Andy, Sarah,Indie and Ian left sitting around the firepit. The conversation transitions from topic to topic that are mainly centered on Indie and finding out more about her. Just as Calum suspected, she’s very cryptic in her responses and that makes him smile. Calum’s sitting across the way from her and her legs are resting on Ian’s lap. Ian’s hands are rubbing at her calves.

Calum tells himself it doesn’t bother him.

Somehow the conversation turned to sex, which isn’t all that uncommon for their group but Calum was shooting daggers at Ashton because he didn’t want Indie to feel uncomfortable. As always, she surprised him and she was asking her own questions. Everyone answered her question of what their first time was like and they were all great stories of embarrassing moments.

When it came for her to answer, Calum sat up a little straighter in his chair.

“I was nineteen, wasn’t expecting it to happen at all. And you’re always told ‘oh, it’s this magical moment! You’ll be changed forever!’ but it literally lasted two or three minutes and I was like, ‘that’s it?’” she giggles. “I didn’t feel changed at all.”

“Two minutes?” Michael laughs. “Was it his first time too?”

“Hey, in my defense I’ve wanted to do it with her for a long time and when it finally happened…I lost control,” Ian smiles. “That tends to happen with Indie.”

Calum’s ears feel hot and it’s not from the fire. He ignores Luke’s quick glance to him from the bit of information that Ian was the first guy Indie had sex with.

“And we were also in your parent’s living room,” Indie giggles some more.

“All right, so now the next question…most rounds in one night?” Ashton asks lighting up another joint.

Calum wants to strangle him.

“What the hell is with all the sex talk, mate?” he finally asks trying to play it off as nonchalant, but the way Luke and Michael fidget, he knows it didn’t sound that way. No one else seems to notice, if Indie did he doesn’t know because he doesn’t dare look at her now.

“It’s a beautiful thing. It brings people closer by being open about it,” Ashton rests his ankle on his knee.

Calum snorts and shakes his head crossing his arms. He shakes his leg in annoyance.

Everyone says one or two rounds with little stories with each one. Michael made everyone laugh when he said one and a half.

“I was super drunk and it finally caught up with me and…yeah, I fell asleep,” Michael chortles. His eyes are heavy from drinking.

“That poor girl,” Andy says.

“I married her, so you know she’s the one,” Michael smiles.

“Where are Crystal and Sierra? I was looking forward to meeting them, too,” Indie says.

“They’re both at some fashion expo,” Luke explains. “We’ll all get together; they want to meet you too.”

Then fashion is the next topic of conversation until Ashton opens his mouth again. The weed must have set him off in a very inquisitive buzz.

“Indie, you didn’t answer the round's question.”

“I don’t want to be judged,” she holds up her hands in defense.

“This is a judgment free zone, this is a safe space, c’mon,” Ashton smiles lazily.

Indie looks at each person individually, except Calum before she answers.

“Three times,” she sighs, staring into the fire.

There’s a collective ‘woah’ around the group and sounds of approval. She tries to hide her smile but fails and ends up covering her face.

“Damn, that dude’s got stamina,” Michael says.

“It was a fun night,” Ian smirks while taking a drink of his beer. Indie smacks him in the shoulder and that earns even more of a reaction from the group.

They all want to know details and context, but Calum is seething. He really wants to get up and leave because he doesn’t want to hear anymore, but he knows that will cause more questions.

He remains silent for the rest of the night thinking about everything and questioning everything. He wants to know if Indie and Ian are dating and he wants to know why it matters to him so much. It really shouldn’t and that just makes him angrier.

He’s glad his friends are getting along with Indie, but he wishes it weren’t in this type of context.

When everyone had left, Calum was stuffing plates and cups in a large trash bag then he was going to light up a joint in hopes that would help calm his mind and rid his thoughts of seeing Ian and Indie together. He doesn’t even want to think about what they’re doing right now.

☆°•.¸☆¸.•°☆

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[thoughts-on-bangtan]

Hi! I hope you’ll answer this question bc it bothers me quite a lot.. https://www.quora.com/What-does-it-mean-now-that-BTS-are-partial-owners-of-Big-Hit-Entertainment do you think it is true what the second person (Christine Herman) said? After reading this, i started to wonder…what if BTS does really have only profit in mind while doing new projects these days? Maybe they don’t really care anymore about creative and meaningful lyrics and sound? With Butter and PTD…all this generic music sung in English. Of course they say “we wanted to make fans feel good”, “butter and ptd represent who we are” and all these things fans want to hear but.. do you really think it’s true? moreover, don’t get me wrong, i don’t find product placement in their reality shows as something terrible, i believe this is a normal thing, however, nowadays the members really film ads and do marketing a lot. so yeah, for some reason i began to question their integrity dhsjjss i hope you will understand from where my concerns come from and won’t find this ask stupid sjdjjdjd

After reading that persons answer I can immediately tell you that I basically don't agree with an overwhelming majority of what she said (even more so since a lot of it just makes her sound like a manti that hates the company and basically would want them to make music for free or something). Generally I don’t agree with most of the opinions this person holds, and also Quora really isn’t a good source for info or good opinions, most of it is written by mantis, haters, and toxic shippers with an agenda so most ARMY will tell you to stay as far away from that website as possible.

Anyway, her focus in that answer was on money, since BTS are shareholders (and how that’s a conflict of interest despite other artists doing the exact thing but no one really cares or ever thinks about it), but what she failed to consider and note was that Big Hit Music, so BTS' label, isn't part of HYBE in the sense that shareholding has no baring on it since BHM is private. So while BTS profit off of HYBE doing well, and have a small percentage of a voice as shareholders, that has nothing to do with BHM in the classical sense, even if BHM's earnings reflect well on HYBE numbers and the shareholder money. 

BHM was made private to ensure their artistry would remain untouched, that was the whole point of that.

Even if they weren't HYBE shareholders, take Namjoon as example. He has more than 170 KOMCA credits, is among the top 3 Korean artists with the most credits and is also the youngest of them all. It is said that his earnings from that alone can sustain his family for 3 generations over. Look at Hobi and Chicken Noodle Soup, that song was a hit and he paid the original creator of that song 2 million dollars upfront and earned a lot back due to how successful it was. Same goes for Hope World which, again, was and is still immensely successful. Look at Yoongi and his work both as prod. SUGA, featuring artist SUGA, and as Agust D, as well as the credits he holds for his work on BTS songs (giving him as well a total of over 100 KOMCA credits, just like Hobi). Bangtan have worked and continue to work extremely hard for their music, put their heart and souls into it, and it shows even if their style changed as they grew older and more mature.

Yes, money is a major motivator, but looking at the above paragraph, do you really peg the members as these corrupt money hungry sellouts with no music related integrity? Who would need to sign major deals and would throw away their passion to just release empty shells of music for the sole reason of money? Am I naive enough to believe that they don't care about money? Of course not, we live in a capitalist society and even if BTS wouldn't care about money anymore at this point, HYBE very much does, and yet still I can't find it in me to agree with any of what was said in that answer that person wrote.

More below the cut:

And that point about how Hyundai cars were sold out because of BTS, isn't that the point why literally any company ever hires celebrities to advertise and endorse their product? And sure, again, I'm certain they earned a lot on these deals, they aren't the first or last or only ones in the history of ever to do so. Besides, look at JK and what he's done for small companies, or Tae who wore a brooch made my a small creator at the airport which catapulted that creator into the eyes of millions of ARMYs enough so that they could move to a proper studio and earn money with their work. Or the modern hanboks JK wore which led to the brand being able to move into actual stores in malls because of their sudden new popularity and demand. Or him wearing a bracelet that helps whales with a percentage of the money from the sales of said bracelet. And for all of that JK and Tae didn't earn any money at all. JK himself said that he's more conscious of the brand he wears now because he wants to help smaller businesses in these trying times, not because they pay him to do so (especially since they would never be able to afford that), but because he's aware of the influence he has and how he can use it to help others. Sound very much like a capitalistic villain, right?

As for the product placement bit, have you been on YouTube recently? Have you noticed that many, if not most, YouTube videos by “bigger” creators (and by that I mean even people who are around the 100k subscriber mark) begin with them thanking whoever sponsored that particular video and give you a scripted minute to two minute long ad before getting into the actual topic of the video? And In The SOOP featuring Chilsung Cider, FILA clothes and the random mention of how good Samsung phones are isn’t much different from it, though really, if you’re not someone interested in fashion much, would you really notice or care that they wore FILA? It’s just...clothes? If it weren’t a BTS related show, would you even notice it much? And it’s not even like they mentioned those brands every five minutes or anything, just a few times, which sure sounded a bit out of place at times, but personally I thought it was easy to look past. That’s just how things work nowadays and it’s odd for people to behave like somehow BTS are the first and only ones to use product placements despite literally every movie and show doing it in subtle and less so manners.

The answer by that person you sent also mentioned the Hyundai song for their car IONIQ and, unsurprisingly, that person wrote it off as just some commercial jingle but I’d actually disagree with that. Not to sound like a Hyundai and Samsung stan, which I am neither of, but I actually think those two knew best how to utilize the artist they have spent millions on signing a deal with. Hyundai didn’t just write them off as pretty faces with a millions strong fan army behind them and that’s it, they remembered that they are musicians so they gave them a song and made a whole music video for it as well. And say what you will, it is a good song. Then, just a few days ago, Samsung stepped up their game and we were given Over The Horizon Prod by SUGA of BTS. For those who aren’t Samsung users, Over The Horizon is their signature ringtone and basically their company sound, and over the years different artists were asked to make their own version of it. And this time they reached out to Yoongi and asked if he’d like to do it as well. It’s kind of a big deal. Sure, Butter is used in one of their commercials much the way Dynamite was last year, but that’s beside the point. Would that person make the same claim about Imagine Dragons whose song Believer is also part of the ads for the new Samsung phones? I have my doubts.

Furthermore, and I don't want this to come across as mean toward you but, I think it is uncalled for to question their artistic integrity based on a total of 3 (three) English songs when last year alone we received 50+ songs, most of which were in Korean, among them the entirety of BE which was, according to the members, the album they were most involved in ever when it comes to both music and everything around it.

You can dislike their English songs, that’s more than fine, they have a very extensive discography you can listen to instead, but questioning their integrity based on them doing something that most, if not every, artist on their level does (as in sign ad deals with brands etc) is a bit much if you ask me. Does that mean indie artists whose songs get picked up for commercials (or for Netflix shows or movies) and thus it catapults them into the mainstream are also just money hungry people with no integrity and ones who don’t care about their music? Or is that, again, just a standard Bangtan is held to (as in that their integrity is questioned based on everything, even the most trivial/normal things) that only applies to them and no one else?

In the recent Weverse Magazine article about how Permission to Dance came to be there is a lot of talk about not only that song but also Butter and Dynamite, among the things being discussed and talked about they mentioned how the original lyrics for Butter were much more materialistic but that the members didn't like that so they asked for that to be changed. Likewise the original lyrics for Permission to Dance, as you'd expect from the penmanship of Ed Sheeran, were much more romantic, almost proposal like, which wasn't what the members wanted either so it was, again, adjusted in a way that would fit what they, as well as the A&R team, wanted. While you may not like these songs, they still had a say in them to a certain degree, could say yes or no and ask for adjustments. Why else would PTD take eight months?

While they might outsource their English songs, their main focus, so their Korean (as well as Japanese) discography is still centered around them, their lyrics, their songs, their sound. Of course you’ll also find outside producers and some lyricists on those as well, because that’s how music works these days, as in collaboratively, that doesn’t change anything at large. Their integrity is still very much there, their hearts are still in it, what other reason would any of them have to say that they want to continue for a long time, for Yoongi to say they want to figure out how to make their career last as long as possible, for JK to say that he wants to sing forever?

Admin 2 also wanted me to add that in their opinion, to a certain degree (though not fully of course), their English songs are like a way to laugh at and expose how shallow the English-centric music industry is. As in, while they made music in Korean with deep and meaningful lyrics, the US industry didn’t care but once they switched to easy to listen to sound with easy to understand English lyrics, they suddenly paid attention, are played on the radio, and even received a Grammy nomination which they wouldn’t have gotten for a Korean song ( A1: regardless how much Black Swan or Spring Day really would’ve deserved it...). 

[dailytomlinson]

While many artists would jump at the chance to tell you how lockdown has been a fruitful opportunity for self-improvement, full of pseudo self-help books and pompous podcasts, former One Directioner Louis Tomlinson is adamant that he has done, well, nothing.

“I’ve just watched loads of s___ TV,” he says after a long pause. “The Undoing is decent, isn’t it?”

Twenty-eight--year-old Tomlinson from Doncaster was always the down-to-earth Directioner, frequently describing himself as fringe member who spent more time analysing the band’s contracts than singing solos, known for chain-smoking his way through several packs of cigarettes a day and swearing like a trooper. A rarity, these days, among millennials who’d rather suck on a stem of kale and tweet about their #blessings.

He's getting ready to rehearse an exciting one-off gig that will be live-streamed from a secret London location on December 12, announced today exclusively via the Telegraph. The proceeds of the night will be split across four charities: The Stagehand Covid-19 Crew Relief Fund and Crew Nation, Bluebell Wood Children’s Hospice and Marcus Rashford’s charity FareShare, to help end child poverty.

The gig means a great deal to Tomlinson, whose first ever tour as a solo artist, to promote his debut solo album WALLS, was cut short back in March after just two concerts in Spain and Mexico. It was an album he’d spent five years working on: a guitar-led project that ruptured with the preppy pop anthems of One Direction, inspired instead by Tomlinson’s love for Britpop.

No doubt he was anxious to get it right following a decade “grown in test tubes”, as Harry Styles once described the band’s formation on the X Factor, where they came third before going on to make a reported $280,000 a day as the most successful band in the world. The pressure, too, was intense: all four bandmates had already released their own solo debuts.

Was he left reeling, I ask, unable to perform at such a crucial moment?

“The thing that I always enjoyed the most about One Direction was playing the shows, so my master plan, when I realised I was going to do a solo career, was always my first tour. It’s something I’ve been looking forward to for the best part of five years now. I got so close, I got a taste for it, and it’s affected me like everyone else, but I’m forever an optimist,” he says down the phone, with what I can only imagine to be a rather phlegmatic shrug.

Sure, I say, but the last year can’t have been easy. Didn’t he feel like his purpose had popped?

“You know what,” he says, reflecting, “maybe because I’ve had real dark moments in my life, they’ve given me scope for optimism. In the grand scheme of things, of what I’ve experienced, these everyday problems...they don’t seem so bad.”

Tomlinson is referring to losing his 43-year-old mother, a midwife, to leukemia in 2016, and his 18-year-old sister Felicite, a model, to an accidental drug overdose in 2018. The double tragedy is something he has been open about on his own terms, dedicating his single, Two of Us, from WALLS, to his mother Johannah, while often checking in with fans who have lost members of their own family.

It’s not unusual for Tomlinson to ask his 34.9 million followers if they’re doing alright, receiving hundreds of thousands of personal replies. It’s not something he will discuss in interviews, however, after he slammed BBC Breakfast for shamelessly probing his trauma in February this year. “Never going back there again,” he tweeted after coming off the show.

“Social media is a ruthless, toxic place, so I don’t like to spend much time there,” says Tomlinson, “but because of experiencing such light and shade all while I was famous, I have a very deep connection with my fans. They’ve always been there for me.”

In return, Tomlinson is good to them. Last month he even promised some new music, saying that he’d written four songs in four days. Does this mean that a second album is on the way?

“Yeah, definitely,” he says. “I’m very, very excited. I had basically penciled down a plan before corona took over our lives. And now it's kind of given me a little bit of time to really get into what I want to say and what I want things to sound like. Because, you know, I was really proud of my first record, but there were moments that I felt were truer to me than others. I think that there were some songs where I took slightly more risk and owned what I love, saying, ‘This is who I want to be’. So I want to take a leaf out of their book.”

Fans might think he’s referring to writing more heartfelt autobiographical content such as Two of Us, but in fact, he’s referring specifically to rock-inspired Kill My Mind, he says, the first song on WALLS. “There’s a certain energy in that song, in its delivery, in its attitude, that I want to recreate. People are struggling at the moment, so I want to create a raucous, exciting atmosphere in my live show, not a somber, thoughtful one.”

He sighs, trying to articulate something that’s clearly been playing on his mind for a while. “You know, because of my story, my album was a little heavy at times and a little somber. And as I'm sure you're aware, from talking to me, now, that isn't who I am.”

It must be draining, I say, the weight of expectation in both the media and across his fanbase, to be a spokesperson for grief and hardship. To have tragedy prelude everything he does and says.

“Honestly, it’s part of being from Doncaster as well, I don’t like people feeling sorry for me. That’s the last thing I want.”

Too many incredible memories to mention but not a day goes by that I don't think about how amazing it was. @NiallOfficial @Harry_Styles @LiamPayne @zaynmalik . So proud of you all individually.

The problem is, says Tomlinson, he doesn’t have the best imagination. “I have interesting things to say musically, but what’s challenging from a writing perspective is that I write from the heart, and I can’t really get into someone else’s story. And right now, being stuck at home, you have so little experience to draw from. It’s actually quite hard to write these positive, uplifting songs, because actually, the experiences that you're going through on a day to day basis, you know, you they don't have that same flavour.”

There is something that’s helping, though: a secret spot near Los Angeles, where he divides his time. “It’s remote and kind of weird, and I’m going to go there for three days and write. I don’t know why I’m so drawn to it. I found it via a YouTube video. It’s got some very interesting locals who live there, it’s sort of backwards when it comes to technology. It feels like you’re going back in time when you’re there. But I don’t want to give it away.”

Another source of inspiration for his second album is the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ back catalogue. “I grew up on their album Bytheway. And during lockdown I've been knee deep in their stuff. I’ve watched every documentary, every video. And I find their lead guitarist John Frusciante just fascinating.”

Has he spoken to Frusicante?

“I f______ wish,” snorts Tomlinson.

Surely someone as well-known as Tomlinson could easily get in touch?

“No, honestly, I think he’s too cool for that. He’s not into that kind of thing.”

Tomlinson’s passion for all things rock is also spurring on a side hustle he picked up as a judge on the X Factor in 2018: managing an all-female rock band via his own imprint on Simon Cowell’s Syco label. While the group disbanded before releasing their first single, and Tomlinson split from Syco earlier this year, the singer is keen to nurture some more talent.

“I'm not gonna lie, my process with my imprint through Syco, it became challenging and it became frustrating at times,” Tomlinson says a little wearily. “The kind of artists that I was interested in developing – because I genuinely feel through my experience in One Direction, you know, one of the biggest f______ bands, I feel like I've learned a lot about the industry – they weren’t ready-made. So I had lots of artists that I took through the door that were rough and ready, but major labels want to see something that works straight away. I found that a little bit demotivating. I love her and she's an incredible artist, but not everyone is a Taylor Swift.”

Tomlinson spends much of his free time scouting new talent either on YouTube, Reddit or BBC Introducing – he’s currently a huge fan of indie Brighton band, Fickle Friends. His dream is to manage an all-female band playing instruments. “Because there's no one in that space. And I know eventually if I don't do it, someone else will!”

Before he drives off to rehearsals, we chatter about how much he's been practising his guitar playing, and how he can't wait to take the whole team working at his favourite grassroots venue, The Dome in Doncaster, out ice-skating after he performs there on his rescheduled tour. “Because I've got skills,” he says, and I can hear his chest puff.

And then I ask the question every retired member of One Direction has been batting off ever since they broke up in 2015, after Zayn Malik quit. Rumours that his bandmates saw him as a Judas went wild after some eagle eyes fans noticed they’d unfollowed him on Instagram. Payne, Tomlinson, Horan and Styles have barely mentioned him since. Recently, however, they re-followed him, and Payne has teased that a One Direction reunion is on the cards.

So: might 2021 be the year of resurrection?

“I thought you were going to ask something juicier!” say Tomlinson witheringly. “Look, I f______ love One Direction. I'm sure we're going to come back together one day, and I'll be doing a couple of One Direction songs in my gig. I always do that, so that's not alluding to any reunion or anything. But, I mean, look, I'm sure one day we'll get back together, because, you know, we were f______ great.”

[leng-m]

(Short) OPM Masterpost

I just heard someone say SB19 is all they know about OPM (Original Pilipino Music), and I died a little inside. (I've got nothing against SB19, but to condense all of OPM to just them is a tragedy). And as someone who credits Tagalog OPM as one of the reasons I'm still fluent in the language, I decided to make a list to help out those who want to dip their toes in Filipino music.

(Note: this is a very, very short list of even the ones I know of, since Tumblr apparently has a 100-link limit to their posts. I kept to those who have released something in the last several years, while trying to find a balanced mix of mainstream artists and lesser known ones.)

Pop IV of Spades (x) (x) Morrissette Amon (x) (x) Mark Carpio (x) (x) Shanne Dandan (x) (x) Sarah Geronimo (x) (x) Juan Karlos Labajo (x) (x) Jeric Medina (x) (x) TJ Monterde (x) (x) Inigo Pascual (x) (x) Quest (x) (x) Angeline Quinto (x) (x) Nica Del Rosario (x) (x) Unique Salonga (x) (x) KZ Tandingan (x) (x) Moira dela Torre (x) (x) Thyro & Yumi (x) (x)

Acoustic (Soft-rock/folk-rock/pop-rock -- not sure how to describe this genre, but this is what I would actually consider the "signature" OPM sound.) Agsunta (x) (x) Autotelic (x) (x) Ben & Ben (x) (x) Callalily (x) (x) Yeng Constantino (x) (x) December Avenue (x) (x) Ebe Dancel (x) (x) I Belong to the Zoo (x) (x) Magnus Haven (x) (x) Silent Sanctuary (x) (x) SUD (x) (x) The Juans (x) (x) This Band (x) (x)

Indie Hans Dimayuga (x) (x) Arthur Nery (x) (x) Syd Hartha (x) (x) UDD (x) (x)

Rap / Hiphop / R&B Allmo$t (x) (x) Alisson Shore (x) (x) Because (x) (x) Ex-Battalion (x) (x) Gloc-9 (x) (x) Karencitta (x) (x) Shantidope (x) (x)

Vispop (Visayan) Karencitta (see above) Kurt Fick (x) (x) Jacky Chang (x) (x) TJ Monterde (see above) Meunnie (x) (x) Like I said, this is a really short list. It doesn't include 90s and '00s megastars that really made their mark in the industry like Regine Velasquez, MYMP, Gary V., Aegis, etc.

Please don't expect Filipino music to be like western pop or east Asian pop, that happens to be in a different language. While some artists and their songs do have that "international" flavour, Philippine music in general has a different vibe. Yes, even when the song is in English. Don't expect multi-million dollar production budgets. OPM is characterized first and foremost by hugot (that feeling of tugging on your heartstrings), not flashiness. Also important are vocal ability and creative wordplay. Most of our singers write their own songs.

I also suggest digging past the mainstream pop idols, who tend to recycle old hits and cover other songs. There are a lot of indie gems in OPM, the ones who are really producing music with spirit and strength and good messages. Social media has allowed these artists to reach a mass audience, so they're not difficult to find. We're in a great era in OPM, where more and more songs in other regional languages are being written and produced. There are pop songs now in Kapampangan, Bikol, Tausug, etc.

Also, while many of the musicians on this list are people I genuinely enjoy listening to and support, there are some I've included to show the wide breadth of music in the country, but whom I do not particularly endorse. Like many people in the entertainment industry, some individuals/bands featured here are embroiled in controversy, and I don't necessarily condone their actions.

Feel free to add more!

[seasurfacefullofclouds1]

Do you think Louis will ever get mainstream popular? Or get on the radio? Cus I know a lot of pop fans think his music is average, but literally every alternative fan I’ve met said they like it and even loved some songs. I do think it’s a poor idea to put songs like copyx3 on the next album because all the critics yelled at him for having too much oasis influence, but even if he does I think many rock fans would love his songs… I just think he needs some sort of promo.

Hey anon,

First of all, fuck the critics. Artists should do what they want. Some of the sycophantic shit published in mainstream media is honestly embarrassing. Louis isn’t a newbie. He’s been writing and performing music for ten years. He listens to everything, and he has certain likes and dislikes. Because Sony threw him to the sharks, mainstream critics smelled blood in the water and knew there would be no repercussions to being dicks to Louis. So why expect them to be nice? They won’t be. Louis should do what his heart desires.

Second, the measure of success varies for different artists. If Louis can sell the performance spaces he wants to, and get his album heard by live audiences, he can (to some extent) create his own demand. I still feel that live music is ready for a revolution, with artists directly connecting with their fans through digital formats (livestreams, blockchain), bypassing streaming and radio. This can happen in every digital domain— at gyms, in cars, on mobile devices. Spotify better get ready for a revolution. Live Nation is already structuring to take over this market (monopolies tend to think monopolistically).

The details have to be worked out, but trust me, it’s coming. Louis should concentrate on the blockchain revolution in terms of digital music rather than on video game art … I know it all looks tempting, especially when Steve Aoki is selling $3 million in NFTs at the drop of a hat, but I see it only as a temporary fad. For music, venue tickets, livestreams, shows, memorabilia, merch, integrative things like music videos and movie soundtracks— the market is way bigger and can move faster than it is right now.

Now, putting all these possibilities aside, I think that we see Louis as not a mainstream artist when compared to Harry or Adele or Ed, for example. But we have a slightly warped perception because of 1D’s numbers, and because of stan Twitter craziness. Louis is a big, international artist. His next album is highly anticipated, and when it comes, it will have big numbers, much bigger than Walls. The tour will help. As Louis always says, he has to earn it. In addition to his existing fanbase, his presence in the English indie scene has earned it for him; he is legit.

Yes, having an effective team would help. Having different PR would help a lot, but lamentably, he can’t get rid of SJPR for whatever reason. It’s one of the tragedies of Louis’ career that his team destroys the opportunities that fandom hands to them on a silver platter; LTHQ is WORSE than neutral. It’s like watching a train crash in slow mo. So… what can we do.

[howdon-aldi-death-queue]

NEW SAM FENDER INTERVIEW FOR NME

THE BIG READ

Sam Fender: “This album is probably the best thing I’ve done in my life”

The hometown hero has distanced himself from the ‘Geordie Springsteen’ tag, but there’s no shortage of rites-of-passage yarns and colossal tunes on the upcoming ‘Seventeen Going Under’

“You can see the ghost of Thatcherism over there…” says Sam Fender, pointing across the water to a vacant shipyard, where once the shipbuilding industry was so healthy that vessels towered higher than the rows of houses on the shore. We’re on the waterfront in North Shields, just outside Newcastle, and our photographer is snapping away for Sam’s first NME cover shoot.

The singer-songwriter stares stonily into the lens as wafts of seaweed and fishing trawlers are carried by the northern coastal breeze. He’s already been stopped for a few pictures with fans, but remains eager to point out the impact that Tory leadership has had on his working-class town over the last few decades. “It’s been closed since the ’80s, from the ghost wasteland of the shipyards. You’ve got all the scars of Thatcherism from The Tyne all over to the pit villages in Durham.”

It’s as good an introduction as any to the outspoken musician, whose 2019 debut album ‘Hypersonic Missiles’ was a record for his sleepy hometown to be proud of – tackling themes that range from male suicide (the heartbreaking ‘Dead Boys’) to world tensions (and the “kids in Gaza” he eulogised on its soaring title track). He set weighty topics against blisteringly well-executed Americana with the fist-in-the-air euphoria of Bruce Springsteen’s colossal choruses and sax solos. Much like his hero, Sam smartly weaves his own political standpoint and personal circumstance into gripping anthems of a generation, which earned him the ‘Geordie Springsteen’ tag.

“I can’t exactly bat off those comparisons, can I?” he says back in his cosy recording studio nearby. “At the same time, I don’t feel worthy of that tag. The first time I heard it, I was like, ‘That’s fucking sick’, but you don’t want to be riding off the coattails of The Boss for the rest of your life. I can write my own songs, they’re different and my voice doesn’t sound anything like Springsteen’s. I don’t have his growl; I’m a little fairy when I sing.”

He may have toned down the Springsteen vibes slightly on his highly anticipated second album ‘Seventeen Going Under’, due later this year, but there are still plenty of chest-pounding anthems capable of making your hairs stand on end: “I much prefer Americana to the music we have in our country at the moment. I love the leftfield indie stuff like Fontaines D.C, Squid and Black Midi, but I love a chorus and melodic songs. I think the American alternative scene has that down with Pinegrove, Big Thief, The War On Drugs.”

‘Hypersonic Missiles’ thrummed with a small town frustration almost that every suburban teenager could surely relate to. This was most notable on ‘Leave Fast’, where he sang about the “boarded up windows on the promenade / The shells of old nightclubs” and “intoxicated people battling on the regular in a lazy Low Lights bar”, a reference to his beloved local. But album two sees him fully embrace North Shields, an ever-present backdrop to cherished memories and harrowing life events of his youth and surroundings.

It’s no coincidence that the 27-year-old has turned inwards and penned a record about his hometown while being stuck at home like the rest of the country: “I didn’t have anything to point at and I didn’t want to talk about the pandemic because nobody wants that – I never want to hear about it again. It was such a stagnant time that I had to go inwards and find something, because I was so uninspired by the lifetime we we’re living in.

“I’ve made my coming-of-age record and that was important for me – as I get older, these stories keep appearing; I’ve got so much to talk about. I wrote about growing up here. It’s about mental health and how things that happen as a child impact your self-esteem in later life. On the first record, I was pointing at stuff angrily, but the further I’ve gotten into my 20s, the more I’ve realised how little I know about anything. When you hit 25, you’re like: ‘I’m fucking clueless! I know nothing about the world.’ It was a humbling experience, growing up.”

Early last year, before the pandemic hit, Sam was set to jet off to New York pre-pandemic to record in the city’s infamous Electric Lady studios founded by Jimi Hendrix. “Looking back, I’m thankful that it happened,” he says. “If I went off to New York and did my second album there… it wouldn’t have been the same record. I will go and do the third one in NYC, come hell or high water – I’m fucking out of here!

“The forced return home really informed the direction [of the record]. I was on the crest of this insane wave; we’d sold out 84,000 tickets for the [‘Hypersonic Missiles] arena tour that we still haven’t played yet. I’m still waiting to hear when it’s going to be rescheduled. It’s incredibly frustrating; I’ve got loads of frustrated fans. That was all cancelled on the day of the lockdown. I thought it was only going to be a couple of months and that it would be another swine flu thing, but fool me – I was stuck in the house like everybody else.”

It’s not the first setback that Sam has dealt with in his career. In the summer of 2019, he was ready to make his Glastonbury Festival debut with a Friday afternoon set on the legendary John Peel Stage, a rite of passage for any emerging artist, but had to pull out due to a serious health issue with his vocal chords. The mood in the room shifts dramatically at the mention of this devastating period: “I don’t want to focus on that, to be honest, because it’s just negative news and it’s in the past.”

“The further I’ve gotten into my 20s, the more I’ve realised how little I know”

Looking back now, he says, it was a tough decision, but ultimately the right thing to do: “We were doing so much at the time and I just burnt out. If you damage your vocal cords, you can’t take it lightly. If something happens like that and you keep going, you’ll fucking lose your career forever. I never want to end up behind the knife; I just refuse to put myself in that situation.”

The fact that his 2019 breakthrough ground to a halt again in COVID-decimated 2020 “was frustrating as fuck”, he says, “but I took solace in the fact that everyone was stopped in their tracks that time; it wasn’t just me.” This was in stark contrast to the singer’s experience of pulling the biggest moment of his music career in order to rest his vocal cords: “I didn’t talk for three weeks; I had to be silent and just watch Glastonbury on the TV, going, ‘This is completely dogshit’. But you can’t even say that out loud – you’re just saying it over in your head like a psycho. I’d take a pandemic over that any day.”

There was a brief flash of light when he headlined the opening night at the world’s first socially distanced arena, Newcastle’s Virgin Money Unity venue, to an audience of 2,500. Yet Sam’s not in the mood to wax lyrical about that, either. “It was amazing,” he says, “but it didn’t happen again.” A local lockdown in the North East brought the following shows – which would have featured Kaiser Chiefs and Declan McKenna – to a premature end in September: “It was another false start. We thought everything was going to get moving again but then we were just sat around [again].”

As for this reaction to the Government’s handling of the pandemic? It perhaps says it all that he’s selling face masks emblazoned with the words ‘2020 Shit Show’ and ‘Dystopian Nightmare Festival’ on his website. “I think everyone has said enough haven’t they?” Sam suggests. “I never want to see Boris Johnson’s or Matt Hancock’s face ever again. As soon as they come on the TV, I just turn it off.”

Political tension bubbles through ‘Seventeen Going Under’. Its second half boasts tracks such as ‘Long Way Off’, a brooding but colossal festival anthem brimming with angst and unease. “Standing on the side I never was the silent type,” Fender roars, “I heard a hundred million voices / sound the same both left and right / we’re still alone we are.” It’s gripping stuff; a Gallagher-level anthem ripe for pyro and pints held aloft.

Sam says the song is about feeling stranded amid political divisiveness here and in the US, epitomised when Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington back in January: “You’ve either got right-wing, racist idiots or you’ve got this elitist, upper-middle-class section of the left-wing, which completely alienates people like myself and people from my hometown.”

“The polarity between the left and the right has me feeling like I have no identity”

Closer to home, the last UK election, in 2019, saw the so-called ‘Red Wall’ crumble as working-class voters in the north defected from Labour to Tory. “The polarity between the left and the right has me feeling like I have no identity,” Sam says. “I’m obviously left-wing, but you lose hope don’t you? Left-wing politics has lost its main votership; it doesn’t look after working-class people the way that it used to. Blyth Valley voted Tory just north of here. Now, that is saying something! We’re in dire straits when a fucking shipbuilding town is voting for the Tories – it’s like foxes voting for the hunter.”

He’s even seen his own working-class friends peel to the blue side: “I’m like, ‘What the fuck is going on?’ I understand it, though. I’d never vote for the bastards because I fucking hate them and I know what they’re up to, but I get why people don’t feel any alliegiance to left-wing politics when they’re working-class.”

As ever though, Sam isn’t masquerading as an expert: “I’m not fucking Noam Chomsky, you know what I mean? I’m not going to dissect the whole political agenda of the Tories and figure it all out because I can’t. All I see is a big fucking shit sandwich – every day through my news feed – and it’s just, ‘Well: that’s what your dealing with.”

The singer is fond of describing North Shields as “a drinking town with a fishing problem”. Today he adds: “That’s been the backdrop of my life: all of these displaced working-class people. It’s a town that’s resilient that still has a strong sense of community. In a lot of big cities that’s dead. In London everything changes from postcode to postcode, but everything is quite uniform up here.”

When NME was awaiting Sam’s arrival outside the studio before the interview, a passerby clocked our photographer’s gear and asked, “Oh aye – are you waiting for Sam? We all know Sam – a good lad; very accommodating with nae airs or graces about him.” Another pointed to The Low Lights Tavern down the road, where Fender used to pull pints on the weekends: “He was a terrible barman, and he’ll be the first to tell you that. I think he got sacked about six times during his time there.”

Sam (who confesses of his bartending know-how: “He’s totally right!”) hit the local to celebrate when ‘Hypersonic Missiles’ won him a Critics’ Choice gong at the BRIT Awards in 2019, placing the trophy on the bar. “I owed The Low Lights one for being such a shit barman,” he says. “I wanted them to be proud of us because they fucking certainly wasn’t proud of us when I was around working there!”

“Celebrity stuff freaks me out. I’d rather just live my life”

He’s clearly a key member of the local community, then. How did he see the pandemic impact on his family and friends – especially when the North East faced the toughest Tier Four lockdown restrictions last December? Sam pauses before bluntly saying: “I lost more mates; there was suicides again. Mental health was the biggest thing. We lost friends who had drunk too much.”

A track on the new record, ‘The Dying Light‘, is an epic sequel to ‘Dead Boys’, with the poignant last line of the album ringing out “for all the ones who didn’t make the night”. Sam, unable to truly distance himself from The Boss after all, explains: “It’s very Springsteen. It’s my ‘Jungleland’ or ‘Thunder Road’ – it’s got that ‘Born To Run’ feel; there’s strings and brass [and] it’s fucking massive. It’s a celebration. It’s a triumph over adversity.”

He stresses that it was vital for him to be in regular contact with his friendship circle through that traumatic time: “It becomes important when you lose friends to suicide… You realise it’s always the unlikely folks. We lost a friend to suicide at the beginning of last year and it was someone you’d never expect. It really hits home; it’s important to check in on your mates.”

Sam has alluded in previous interviews to a health condition that he’s not yet ready to fully disclose, and tells NME that he spent three months shielding at the beginning of the pandemic: “I was alone for three months and that was very tough… When you’re completely alone and isolated, it’s impossible. I spent a lot of time drinking and not really looking after myself and eating shit food, but I wrote a lot of good lyrics.”

There’s a certain resulting bleakness to some of his new songs, but Sam also wanted light to shine through. “It’s a darker record, but it’s a celebration of surviving and coming out the other end,” he explains. “It’s upbeat but the lyrics can be quite honest. It’s the most honest thing I’ve done.”

You might expect a young hometown hero to rail at having been denied the chance to capitalise on his burgeoning fame in the last year or so, but Sam insists, “I still have imposter syndrome,” adding: “I don’t feel like it’s happened… I’m walking around the street and people ask for photos and it just feels bizarre. I’m like, really? I feel like I haven’t come out of my shell yet.”

Sam has rarely been one to court celebrity, and revealed in 2019 that he’d turned down the chance to appear in an Ariana Grande video. “It was an honour but I would have just been known as that guy in the video,” he tells NME. “All of my mates would have been flipping their heads off, but I don’t think she would really want an out-of-shape, pale Geordie. I’d rather just live my life, because all of this celebrity stuff freaks [me] out, you know?”

He might have to get used to it: things can only get bigger with the arrival of the new album. “As a record I think this one is leagues ahead [of ‘Hypersonic Missiles’],” he says, “I’m more proud of this than anything I’ve ever done. It’s probably the best thing I’ve done in my life. I just hope people love it as much as I do. With the first album, a lot of those songs were written when I was 19, so I was over half of it [by the time it was released]. Whereas this one is where I’m at now.”

“This is a dark record, but it’s a celebration of surviving and coming out the other end”

Still, he adds: “At the same time, this record is probably going to piss a lot of people off.” He’s referring to a line in one of the more political tracks, ‘Aye’, where he returns to his most enduring bugbear, divisiveness, and claims that “the woke kids are just dickheads”. Sam’s no less forthcoming in person: “They fucking are, though! Some 22-year-old kid from Goldsmiths University sitting on his fucking high horse arguing with some working-class person on some comments section calling them an ‘idiot’ and a ‘bigot’? Nobody engages each other in a normal discussion [online] without calling each other a ‘thick cunt’.”

He’s eager to make this statement, though, come what may: “I don’t fucking care any more. I’m not really sure how the reaction is going to be. People used to say things online about me and I used to get quite hurt about it, but now I’m like, ‘Well, they’re not coming to my house’… [But] I get so angry. In Newcastle we say ‘pet’ and someone was trying to tell me that was fucking offensive towards women. You’re not going to delete my fucking colloquial identity. It’s not even gender-specific; we say it to men and women. My Grandma calls me ‘pet’! That brand of liberalism is fucking destroying the country. We could be getting Boris Johnson and all them pricks out of office if we stopped sweating over shit like that”.

Sam might be outspoken, but he’s self-aware, too. When we were talking politics earlier, he said: “I didn’t want to start on ‘cancel culture’ because I don’t want to sound like Piers Morgan [and] I fucking hate that cunt. But there is a degree of it which lacks redemption; people fuck up. Everyone is a flawed character. If you’re not admitting that you have flaws, then you’re a fucking psychopath. The left-wing seem to be that way and the right-wing are fucking worse than they’ve ever been. Politically I have just lost my shit.”

In all of this uncertainty, though, it seems a sure thing that Sam Fender will take his rightful crown – as soon as the world lets him – with the colossal ‘Seventeen Going Under’. “It’s going to be a hell of a return,” he insists. “I know the fans are still there, you know? So I’m not really worried – I’m ready to go out there and do my thing. Finally!”

[hadtochangemyurlquick]

do you have any headcanons for the unsinkable 8?

sure do!

dot gets a “world’s best dad” mug as a joke gift from the gang on her birthday and she immediately gets into dad jokes. one of her fave is pronouncing kind like the kind in “goodkind” whenever she’s talking to Shelby, and to sneak it into the conversation as much as possible. it is quite literally sooooooo dumb.

Dot: it takes all kinds, thank you kindly, that is so kind of you, ect.

Shelby: get a hobby

Nora doesn’t stop counting days. she keeps track of them in a notebook and has a “days since the island” count that the girl’s periodically ask her about. but she also has a “days since I’ve last been kissed” and a “days since leah got out of rehab” and a “days since toni’s mom last used” and a “days since fatin played the cello” and a “days since Dot had a panic attack” and a “days since Rachel had a bad food day” and too many others to name. most of the ones the girls know about but sometimes in conversation they’ll offhandedly mention something and Nora will input a highly specific number that makes everyone realize how tight she’s keeping track of things

Rachel has perfect pitch. she doesn’t realize she does, doesn’t really care that she does, but Fatin finds out and starts demanding she help with the cello which is when they learn Rachel can sing. like, sing intensely amazingly. she doesn’t really care enough to pursue a music career but sometimes she’ll post a jam session with shelby or something on insta, and get tons of support. there’s a running gag that they should release an ep and while everyone in the eight is very musical and artistic, it’s all in entirely different ways. Fatin really is classically trained, Shelby is partial to country, Toni loves rap while Dot loves heavy metal. Martha and Rachel both love pop but have wildly different opinions regarding it and Nora listens to a ton of indie by artists no one has heard of before. once they tried to put a song together just for shits and giggles and it entirely collapsed within five minutes

Shelby and Toni don’t want to settle down and they don’t want to conform to capitalism and while the island sucked in every way it sucked they also don’t want to live as separated from nature as Shelby was forced to for most of her life. they end up buying a van and living out of their car, just driving around Texas. they visit the girls a lot, but they enjoy the freedom of not having to go anywhere or do anything but having the only responsibility be to themselves. Toni gets pretty into nature photography, which brings in some income, and Shelby starts learning other instruments just for fun: guitar, flute, violin, sort of whatever she happens to run into. she asks Fatin to teach her the cello and gets a flat and very understandable “no way in hell i’d rather get trapped on an island again” in response

Martha starts a little animal rescue and falls in love with the the boy who runs the cafe across the street and it’s like a gross rom com. he’s stupid, though not a himbo bc he’s kinda mean at first, more of a womanizer than anything. it’s this frustrating enemies to lovers where Martha cannot stand him and his perfect abs and his passion for cooking and his attention to detail. whenever there’s a new development the entire gang has to hear about it individually on a phone call from her. his meanness comes from a place of insecurity, pushing her away so that he never has to put himself out there bc he doesn’t think he’s good enough bc he’s mean bc the insecurity (vicious cycle, you get it), and once he’s kinda forced to bc c’mon, it’s Martha, if any of us met her we’d all instantly fall in love, he transforms into a himbo, stupid pretty and also stupid. they adopt four dogs, six cats, three guinea pigs, a chinchilla, two hamsters, an aquarium filled with fish, five birds, and so on and so on. once Martha asked Toni to pet sit and Toni faked her death for seven weeks. they also end up having like a stupid amount of kids. like so many kids. it’s a zoo it really is. and they still have that animal rescue and cafe right across from one another. sometimes they’ll send their employees to pass notes to each other and when Rachel found out she stopped talking to Martha for nine days bc it was soooo gross.

Fatin’s approach to life is very very strange. she makes a decision and she goes for it. like once she decided she was gonna summit Mount Kilimanjaro, and she trained for it and did it and then was like “okay great never climbing a mountain again, i no longer care.” she got elected to congress and she stayed there for a single term, she got a doctorate in musical theory then gave up music, got a million subscribers on youtube then gave up social media, just running through things like she’s running through a bucket list. she learned to speak five languages, (one of those martha’s language, can’t remember the name of it, typing too quick to look it up) then stopped. successfully campaigned for an area to be named a natural park so it would stay protected and gave up activism. like, she just runs around on side quests doing shit. she got her boating license, her pilots license, a real estate license, a license to practice law, and a license to kill. sometimes one of the girls would come with her on her grand crusade (Dot climbed the mountain with her, Toni and Shelby learned the language with her, Rachel helped her in her music classes, Leah helped with the activism) but like sometimes she’d just be doing stuff on her own. and she was learning to be okay with that.

Leah starts collecting really old books. and it’s not really a big deal at first it’s just her at a garage sale or a used book store picking up a title that feels nice against her fingers or that she recognizes the author of, until suddenly it is a big deal. until she has people calling her asking her to pick up a box or else they’ll get thrown away. entirely on accident she becomes well versed in book preservation and restoration, building a library and releasing it to the public, keeping copies of books that went out of print ages ago with signatures by authors who’s hands have rotted away in their graves. it’s a lot of little work, a lot of careful focused work so her brain can’t run away from her, and a lot of isolated work too. some days she wakes up and realizes she hasn’t talked to the other girls for weeks and it’s tangible, the missing them. the books stack up higher and higher in her shelves. when she’s dead and gone someone will write a biography describing all of the incredible work she did for the preservation of history and writing. the island will be a footnote.