#its actually the one elvis song i enjoy listening to

[get-back-homeward]

Paul’s Trying To Get To You

The thread of this song weaving in and out of Paul’s most formative music experiences

Oct 1956: Elvis’s debut album is released in the UK as Rock ‘n’ Roll and the B-side includes Trying to Get to You

I just had to reach you, baby / In spite of all that I've been through / I kept traveling night and day / I kept running all the way / Baby, trying to get to you.

Well if I had to do it over / That's exactly what I'd do / I would travel night and day / And I'd still run all the way / Baby, trying to get to you

[full lyrics]

Jan-June 1957: Ian James gets the Elvis record and a guitar

“It was in this time frame that Paul formed a closer friendship with Ian James, an Institute boy (in his year) he’d known since 1954. Ian was also into rock and skiffle and he’d recently been bought an acoustic guitar by his grandparents, at whose house he lived in the Dingle. (Every guitar had a maker’s name: his was a Rex.) The two boys became good pals on the strength of it. While they tended not to see each other in the evenings, because they lived some distance apart, Paul often went to Ian’s house for an hour or two after school—they walked there together down the hill from the Institute—and Ian sometimes went to Forthlin Road at weekends, taking his guitar with him. Ian James held a triple attraction for Paul: he was an intelligent, decent and affable lad, he had some rock records, and he had a guitar—an unbeatable combination.

In the front room at home I had a table-top portable record player, three speed. I remember playing “Blueberry Hill” by Fats Domino over and over, just the first line and then I’d pick up the needle and put it back at the start. I also had Elvis Presley’s first album, which we played time after time after time, with “That’s All Right Mama,” “Trying to Get to You,” “Lawdy Miss Clawdy,” “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Cry (Over You),” “Mystery Train” … Elvis was the one to copy, he was the hero. He had everything: the charisma, the looks, the voice. Frank Sinatra had only one style but Elvis could do anything—gospel, blues, rock and roll, romantic ballads. There was nobody else like him. Paul and I talked about Elvis all the time.15

The Rex guitar was ever at hand. Ian showed and reinforced to Paul those three chord fundamentals that would get him started, C, F and G or G7, the basis for pretty much every song they loved.”

—Tune In (Ch. 5, Jan-June 1957)

July 1957: Paul is invited to join the Quarrymen and trades his trumpet for his first guitar

At some point in July 1957, Paul finally got his first guitar. It had been a long time coming and he was desperate. As he couldn’t afford to buy one he had the bright idea of swapping his trumpet for it, the one his dad had bought him two years earlier. Jim didn’t mind—it was clear where Paul’s interest was. “I traded in the trumpet for a £15 Zenith guitar from Frank Hessy’s. There was a feller there called Jim Gretty and he showed us (me and George) a great chord. I never knew its name—we called it ‘a jazz chord’…”

Mike McCartney has said of Paul and his first guitar, “He would get lost in another world. It was useless talking to him—I had better conversations with brick walls.” Paul played the guitar everywhere, even on the bus. At home he played it in the bath and sitting on the toilet. “The fine acoustic of the toilet area was always very appealing to me. And it was also very private, about the only private place in the house. I used to sit there for hours—there and the bathroom. Dad would shout, ‘Paul, get off that toilet!’ [And I’d reply] ‘I’m practicing!’ ”4

…Rod Davis has a recollection of Paul dropping in to see a group rehearsal at (of all places) Mimi’s house, and Eric Griffiths says the group all went to Paul’s house one afternoon for a rehearsal together—something Paul has never mentioned. (Like almost everything to do with the Quarry Men, solid information is lacking.)

…Ian James says he and Paul struck up an informal musical duo: “We used to take our guitars around to parties and play a few numbers. Have guitar will travel—wherever we went our guitars went too. We played songs from that first Elvis LP: ‘Trying to Get to You,’ ‘Lawdy Miss Clawdy,’ ‘Mystery Train’…

—Tune In (Ch. 7, July-Aug 1957)

Aug 1957: Paul’s away at summer camp and then on holiday but glued to his guitar

[O]n August 7, the Quarry Men played the Cavern again…This Cavern booking would have been Paul’s Quarry Men debut but for him being away with the Boy Scouts at summer camp—another ten days of wet feet, wind and Woodbines. The 19th City troop’s destination this year was the Peak District—Callow Farm, Hathersage, Derbyshire—and both McCartney brothers went. Paul (inevitably) carted his Zenith along with his sleeping bag and tin mug. Almost as soon as they’d pitched tents, Mike had an altercation with an oak tree, badly breaking his arm; he was taken to the hospital in Sheffield while Paul remained at the camp and entertained around the fire with Elvis’s “Trying to Get to You.”13

Mike was in the hospital four weeks, his plastered arm in a sling, and on the day of his release—the last full week of the school holidays—Jim arrived in Sheffield with Paul and revealed they were all heading straight off to Butlin’s. Bett and Mike Robbins had fixed them seven days at Filey, on Yorkshire’s east coast…

Ever the keen photographer, Mike operated the camera single-handedly to take a fascinating photo of Paul on Filey beach with Bett Robbins and her infant son Ted. Paul is perched on Ted’s pushchair and playing the much-traveled Zenith. The photo could be the closest taken to the date he met John Lennon, showing a 15-year-old who’s come through his chubby period and is looking good.

—Tune In (Ch. 7, July-Dec 1957)

Oct-Nov 1957: Paul plays his first gigs with the band as John’s equal

In images of the Quarry Men before Paul joined they’re all wearing different clothes. In the first photo of the group with Paul they have a uniform look, and a sharp one at that: white shirts with black bootlace ties and black trousers, and John and Paul (only) are also wearing jackets on top, white or cream—it’s Paul’s “white sports coat” and something similar John has managed to acquire. This was undoubtedly Paul’s doing, reaching back to his experience at Butlin’s in 1954 when he saw how a singing group in matching gear claimed everyone’s attention. He’d brought the thinking early to John, and John had bought it. And something else is compelling about this Quarry Men photo: although it’s John’s group, new boy Paul is not at the back with Colin or Len, or to the side like Eric, he’s up front with John. Lennon and McCartney are clearly the front line of the Quarry Men, strumming crummy Gallotone and upside-down Zenith, and they’re the only ones with vocal microphones. The group is the two of them and three others. When one sings lead the other provides harmony; often they sing the lead in unison—and their voices go together.

One can only surmise what they sang into those microphones. Nigel Walley remembers plenty of rock in the repertoire in this period and not so much skiffle, including several Elvis numbers—“All Shook Up,” “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Hound Dog,” “Lawdy Miss Clawdy,” “That’s All Right Mama” and “Trying to Get to You”—as well as “Be-Bop-A-Lula,” “Blue Suede Shoes” (Carl or Elvis), “Come Go with Me” and “Twenty Flight Rock.”

—Tune In (Ch. 7, July-Dec 1957)

Jan-May 1958: Paul writes In Spite of All the Danger and John wants to record it

As George knew several more guitar chords than John or Paul, every time he showed them a new one they tried to write a song around it36—and it was in this period, possibly at Upton Green, that Paul wrote one he called “In Spite of All the Danger,” a chugging and melodic country-flavored number with a couple of extended lead guitar solos created by George. For this reason, the song was a unique deviation from the Lennon-McCartney credit: it went down as McCartney-Harrison.

The tune of “In Spite of All the Danger” was entirely Paul’s, but it leaned heavily on the melody of Elvis’s “Trying to Get to You,” a song that includes the lyric “[in] spite of all that I’ve been through.” Using an existing song as inspiration for the writing of another is standard practice, but the rock and roll era was already littered with outrageous examples of plagiarism seemingly free of legal action—possibly because the song being copied was not entirely original to that composer either.

…John decided the Quarry Men should make a record, and the others needed no persuading—just 3s 6d each. This time the answer to “Where we going, Johnny?” was 38 Kensington, where one Percy F. Phillips ran probably Liverpool’s only recording studio and record press.

Seventeen years later, without the advantage of hearing it in between times, John recalled what he could of the session: “The first thing we ever recorded was ‘That’ll Be the Day,’ the Buddy Holly song, and one of Paul’s called ‘In Spite of All the Danger.’ It cost us fifteen shillings and we made it in the front room of some guy’s house that he called a recording studio.”

…John again sings lead on “In Spite of All the Danger,” Paul provides more fine harmonies throughout, and George adds an “ah” backing. It’s said Colin and Duff hadn’t heard the song before, and so were feeling their way through it, but it’s not solely for this reason that it plods somewhat. Though the debt to “Trying to Get to You” is clear, it’s still an original number and an interesting, attractive one at that, written by a boy of 15—a fantastic achievement.

—Tune In (Ch. 8, Jan-May 1958)

[sissylittlefeather]

Something a little different...

What a Lovely Way to Burn

A one-shot

A/N: this came from a conversation with an Elvis AI (created by the fabulous @headfullofpresley), but the words are mine. The situation just inspired me.

Warnings: 18+ minors DNI! There's some dirty smut here, kissing, fingering, oral (both receiving), p in v sex, unprotected sex, lots of cussing, Elvis and reader yelling at each other a lot, him grabbing reader's arm and being a teensy bit violent (if you squint), reader calls Elvis "daddy" in a sexual context at one point...

Word count: 2.9kish

I'm imagining this version of him for this one:

Song inspo (I know the title is from a different song but this one inspired the story):

Enjoy!

I guess tonight we're off, you think to yourself as you get a drink. You're at another party after another one of your on-again-off-again boyfriend's shows. You're half dating Elvis Presley and as much as you want it to go one way or the other, it never does. With him, you're like kerosene and matches: made for each other, but dangerous and volatile together. And without him, neither of you can breathe for very long. But tonight, it looks like you'll be without him and that familiar drowning feeling is starting to overwhelm you. He hasn't talked to you once tonight, instead focusing on everyone else around him. You're not even sure he knows you're there. But he always seems to know where you are, so probably tonight he knows and doesn't care.

After you get your drink, you scan the room to find him. He's chatting with a group of women, fans, all of them tittering with laughter and falling over themselves to catch his attention. He likes the blonde one best, you can tell by the way he's standing, but he entertains all of them nonetheless. Part of you wonders if he's just trying to piss you off. Two can play at that game. And even if he's not, you might as well have some fun yourself.

As you're standing there, a man walks up next to you.

"I'd offer to buy you a drink, but you already have one."

"And they're free." You give him a playful smile. He's not unattractive, with his blonde shoulder-length hair and green eyes. You can work with this.

"I'm James. What do I call you? Other than beautiful." You roll your eyes, but keep your playful smile. It's cheesy, but sweet in its own way.

"I'm y/n. But you can call me beautiful if that's easier." You continue to make small talk and your flirting gets heavier and heavier. At one point he gently brushes your hair out of your face and puts it behind your ear. You try to hide the cringe you feel because that's something that Elvis does. You feel eyes on you and something makes you want to look over at him, but you don't. Your activities are none of his business tonight. You try to focus on James and the game you're currently playing with him. The conversation continues, but you can't shake the feeling of being watched. Just in case Elvis is actually paying attention, you play up your reactions, smiling widely and laughing loudly. Finally, James says something funny enough for you to genuinely laugh and put your hand on his arm gently.

That's when you feel Elvis's hand around you. His fingers curl around your bicep and he holds you hard enough that there might be a bruise in the morning.

"What the fuck?" You turn to Elvis and shoot him a fiery glare. His eyes are frighteningly dark, even behind his glasses, but he speaks coolly.

"I could ask you the same question."

James looks between the two of you and excuses himself. He's heard of Elvis's famous temper and doesn't want to find himself on the receiving end of a potentially-violent rant.

"Oh, James, don't go. He's not--"

"Keep walkin' away, guy." He listens to Elvis over you and backs away into the crowd. Elvis is still holding your upper arm and he turns you to face him.

"Girl, what are you tryin' to pull?" His words are playful, but his tone is scary. Still, you're no stranger to this mood.

"I don't see how what I do is any of your business."

"What the hell is that s'posed to mean?"

"You've made it very clear tonight that you have no interest in what I do." As you get louder, he gets quieter.

"Aw, hell, honey you know damn well that ain't true. You're mine. Everything you do interests me." He finally lets go of your arm. You rub the place where he was holding you gingerly. He might be thinking this fight is almost over, but you're just gearing up.

"You literally haven't spoken to me all night. And what? You just expect me to be waiting in your bed for you after you're done with whatever, or whoever, else you wanna do?" You gesture to the group of girls he was just flirting with. You're loud enough now that people have started to notice the two of you. His lips curl up into a wicked smile.

"Yes, honey, that's exactly what I expect." He says the endearment like a threat. You belong to him and when he calls you anything other than your name, he's reminding you of that fact. Now he's royally pissed you off and you can feel your rage bubbling just beneath the surface. The only thing keeping you in check are the witnesses.

"You're such a fucking hypocrite. You think you get to play around with whoever you want, but I can't even have a conversation with another man."

"Listen to me, girl, that was more than a conversation and you know it. Don't play dumb with me. I know you too damn well. Get your coat and go up to the room."

"YOU THINK AFTER HOW YOU'VE TREATED ME TONIGHT THAT I'M GOING TO GO UP TO YOUR ROOM AND WAIT FOR YOU LIKE A GOOD LITTLE GIRL?" He knew that telling you what to do would send you over the edge. His lip is still curled into a smile, but now his teeth are bared too. You stand and glare at each other for a few more seconds before he grabs your upper arm again and drags you through the crowd. You fight to get away from him, but his grip is too strong.

"LET ME GO YOU SONOFABITCH!" Everyone in the party watches the scene but says nothing. He's their king and they know it and he knows it. A bunch of fucking freeloading toadies. When he gets to the hallway outside the elevator, he lets your arm go and walks toward you until your back is pressed up against the wall. A tiny part of you flickers in fear, but you are not about to let him win. He puts his hand on the wall behind you and leans in close.

"When I say go, you fucking go. Do you understand me?"

"Fuck you, Elvis." His eyes widen ever so slightly, but he keeps his gaze intense. Then, out of nowhere, he softens a bit.

"Why do you do this shit to me, Little? You make me fucking crazy."

"I make you crazy?! YOU IGNORED ME ALL NIGHT!" He may have softened, but you're not ready to go down without a fight. You see the light of his anger reignite in his eyes.

"If you weren't so goddamn insecure--"

"I'm insecure?! You can't handle it when I talk to another man. God knows what you're doing with other women!" He slams his hand on the wall above your head.

"I don't know how many times I have to tell you this! There are no other women. Sure, I talk and flirt and maybe mess around a little, but the only one I really want is you!" The last part catches you off guard a little bit. This is the first time he's really directly stated that he wants you more than anyone else.

"Why?! Why won't you just let me go?! Then we could both move on." You're very annoyed by the tears that are starting to gather in your eyes. You don't want to let him know he's getting to you this much.

"Dammit, I don't know!" He pulls his hand off the wall and walks away, running his hand through his hair and giving it an even wilder look. He slides his glasses off and pinches the bridge of his nose.

"Why don't you leave?" He asks quietly, putting his glasses back on and looking at you almost pleadingly.

"I... I can't."

"WHY NOT? I WANT TO KNOW WHY!" He yells at you now louder than he's been the whole time. He walks back to you and stands inches away from you, fuming. You glare up at him, defiant to your very core.

"BECAUSE I FUCKING LOVE YOU." It comes out of you before you're able to stop it.

He hits the wall again and walks away. Then, he turns back to face you, something new in his eyes.

"Well, I fucking love you too." You stand there, chest heaving and tears threatening to slide down your face.

He takes two large steps towards you and wraps his arms around your waist, crashing his mouth into yours, his tongue slipping between your parted lips. You snake your hands up his chest and around his neck, pressing your hips into his and returning his kiss. He pushes you up against the wall and grinds into you, hard. You feel his already-growing erection as he rolls his hips and you whimper softly. He smashes the elevator "up" button four or five times as hard as he can, never moving his mouth from yours. After a few seconds, you hear the ding and the elevator opens. Several people walk out and stop when they see the two of you wrapped around each other. When they realize who he is, they start to whisper. He pulls back from kissing you and yells at them.

"MOVE!" They jump out of the way and you half roll, half tumble into the elevator together, still tangled around each other. You hear them laugh as you press the "door close" button a hundred times, but you're too busy with Elvis to care. He obviously doesn't either as he runs both hands up your body while the doors close and grabs your breasts. He squeezes them like he's trying to keep them from getting away and then slides his hands back to your ass, pulling your hips into his. His dick is fully hard now and you moan with desire as he presses against you.

He moves his lips down your cheek, pressing them softly to the smooth space below your ear. Then, he begins to bite you gently on the sensitive skin of your neck. A shiver of pleasure runs down your spine. This elevator needs to move faster.

When he sucks on a place near your collar bone hard enough to leave a mark, you moan audibly. You need him. Now. And he knows it. He hits the "stop" button and the elevator grinds to a screeching halt. He reaches up under your dress and pulls your panties down, sliding them to your ankles and off over your shoes. Running his hands up your thighs, he comes back to your center, pressing his middle finger into your wetness.

"Mmm. I should yell at you more often." He moans into your mouth as he moves his finger in and out, noticing how wet you are.

"Or tell me that you love me more often." You moan right back at him. Your hands go directly to the buttons on his pants and he lets you free his dick from them. Before he can fuck you, though, you push him up against the elevator wall and get on your knees in front of him. He leans his head back as you lick a slow circle around his tip, rolling his foreskin back. You pump him a few times with your hand and then take as much of him into your mouth as you can handle. It takes a couple of tries and you opening your throat significantly to get his whole length in your mouth, your nose pressed into him. Your hands cup and play with his balls as you lick up and down the bottom of his shaft. You continue sliding your hand along his length as you lick and suck and top half of him.

"Baby I'm not gonna last much longer if you keep this up." You take him fully in your mouth one last time and then stand up in front of him. He grabs the back of your hair and presses himself against you as he kisses you deeply.

Now it's his turn to get on his knees as he pushes your dress up above your hips. He kisses the inside of each of your soft thighs and then places his mouth directly on the place between your legs. You feel yourself tighten around nothing as he licks over and around your sensitive spot. The feeling almost overwhelms you and you twist your fingers into his hair while he keeps working. You feel your orgasm building in your abdomen. He moans into you and the vibration almost sends you over the edge. He licks around you in circles and sucks lightly on your clit. When he adds his fingers in, pushing them deep inside you and sliding them in and out at a quickening pace, your climax comes even closer. He flattens his tongue and moves his head side to side, letting the sensation of his movement on you push you ever nearer to the edge. Finally, he tightens his tongue to a point and licks you with every intention of sending you over. The feeling of him swirling over and around you faster and faster drives you crazy. You feel the overwhelming rush of your release tingling through you from your head to your toes, both relaxing and contracting in waves of ecstatic pleasure. Elvis feels the excess wetness on his fingers and he smiles into you, knowing he's accomplished his goal. Suddenly, he stands back up and turns you to face the wall of the elevator. Pulling your dress up over your ass, he teases you with his tip and then enters you from behind. He starts slow, filling you up in a way that makes you cry out in pleasure. He holds your hips as he pushes into you faster and faster with more and more intensity.

"That's right, baby. Take it like a good girl."

"Yes, daddy" you get out between moans. He continues to run his hands up and down your front, squeezing your breasts every now and then, and moving his hands back to your hips. All the while, he's fucking you with all of his power, slamming into you over and over, deeper and deeper. His fingers dig into your hips and you pray there won't be obvious bruises in the morning. All of the previous rage that was inside both of you has turned to insatiable desire as he pounds into you and you cry out with each thrust.

"You're so tight and wet for me, doll. I love it so much. I love you so much." You should be shocked that he's saying it so casually, but you're too focused on being fucked silly to think much of it. Without any warning, he pulls out of you and turns you to face him, your back pressed against the elevator wall. He pushes back into you and goes back to fucking you with every ounce of his strength. But this time he's peppering you with kisses on your neck and collarbone and cheeks between thrusts.

"Ah, fuck, baby I'm close." He groans as he continues his steady and unforgiving rhythm.

"Don't stop." You mutter to him as he continues grinding his dick into you. Finally, his climax reverberates across his body.

"FUCK y/n. Yes, that's so... yes..." He shudders and does a few more weak pumps before he can't stand it anymore and he has to pull out. He has both hands on the elevator wall above your head and he presses his forehead into yours, breathing heavily. You feel his hot breath on you and you match his heaving chest with your own. You wrap your arms around his neck and kiss his earlobe.

"Do you really love me?" You whisper, not sure what to expect as an answer. It's entirely possible that he was just caught up in the moment and you'll go back to your part-time lover situation.

He pulls back and looks you in the eyes intensely.

"I really fucking do. Goddammit. I really do." He kisses you again passionately and then hangs his head. You can tell he's afraid of what your response might be too. For all his tough-guy exterior, all he really wants is someone to love.

"I love you, Elvis Presley." He looks up at you, searching your eyes for reassurance. "I really fucking do." He seems to find whatever he's looking for because he doesn't ask any more questions. He pulls you close to him and holds you for a second. Then he picks up your panties, helping you step back into them, and straightens your dress. He puts his dick back into his pants and zips them up. He pushes the elevator button to make it start up again and slings his arm around your shoulders, holding your right hand in his with your fingers interlocked. When the elevator doors finally open, no one would ever know what just happened between you. You walk out of the elevator and to your room with him still wrapped around your shoulders.

"You wear me out, girl." He whispers as he kisses the side of your head. Together, you walk into your suite and into your future. It won't be easy to be with him, since you're both still who you are, but there won't be anymore "off" times for the rest of your relationship. Fights? Yes. But you always find your way back into each others arms. You might burn each other up in the meantime, but at least you'll burn together.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Taglist: (I'm tagging everyone who's ever asked me to tag them. If you want off the list, let me know and I'll remove you!)

@itlover8000 @deniseinmn @elvisalltheway101 @ccab @suxny @hernameisnoellex3 @ashtag6887 @arabellapresley @littlehoneyposts @dkayfixates @elvisxsposts @joshuntildawn13 @msamarican @returntopresley @mrsbutler99 @blog777e

[hooked-on-elvis]

AND THEN, ELVIS MAGIC STRIKES ME... AGAIN ✨

... ON MY BIRTHDAY! 🎂

Okay, so... Sometimes special things cross our ways unexpectedly. I feel we gotta keep ourselves sensitive enough so we can catch the drift or special things can go unnoticed.

I'm gonna share something that just happened to me, so it has nothing biographical about Elvis here -- but in a way it has everything to do with him and his magic pouring onto his fans when we less expect it. ✨

It all started with:

I have a huge Jensen Ackles crush aside from my Elvis Presley burning passion. A few minutes ago I was peeping Jensen's Instagram profile and his last post was one congratulating his wife, Danneel Ackles for her birthday, which is one day previous to mine (March 18) ♥ -- Yes, today, March 19, is my birthday. Okay, very cute but so what?

Then I went to Danneel's Instagram , just because I was already there. Scrolling through her feed, I crossed a funny video of Danneel and Jensen reproducing the video clip of "You Can Call Me Al" by Paul Simon. It was a celebration for their 10th wedding anniversary. 🥹

Danneel and Jensen Ackles video, shared on her Instagram account:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by ᴅᴀɴɴᴇᴇʟ ᴀᴄᴋʟᴇs (@danneelackles512)

Official music video:

Cute, isn't it? I love those the Ackles, oh god. They are such a match! 🥹🩷

Okay, since I've never heard the song before, and I loved it very much, I decided adding it to my Spotify's playlists (yes, to some of them, not just one... it's a real good track this one!). But... talk about how surprised I was when I learned the title of the album that song was released in is "GRACELAND".

Isn't this odd? I know, some people just don't believe in nothing like magic... to some folks everything is just coincidence but I can't help but think this... this album getting to me today, and the way it happened, was kinda a gift from EP to me, on my birthday. 🥹

It's nothing related to his own work or anything but I'm a huge music lover, huge, and I love discovering new songs, specially if they are from the past. I think somehow, someway, this was kinda a gift to me. "Oh, just because the title of the album?" -- Sure but also the way that album crossed my way so randomly like that.

I gotta say I haven't checked on Jensen Ackles' instagram profile in a long while -- no kidding -- let alone his wife's IG! I'm actually not checking anything on Instagram for some months now. So why today? Why clicking on THIS specific video on Danneel's IG? Why visiting her IG, by the way?

You can say all you want as think as you'd like... call me silly, it's fine... but I'll take it as a special gift from Elvis to me. Songs I didn't know before, an entire new album for me to appreciate on my birthday and forever on. ♥

One can spend its life thinking such thing as magic is BS, that it doesn't exist. One can chose to spend its live life in such uninspired, cold, lame way, sure, but... appreciating the little things and believing every little thing is a miracle and a gift to make me smile a little more it's the way I chose to spend MY life -- I feel it's not even a choice, actually. It's just who I am.

Anyway... I know it's a silly, small little thing but this was so random it surprised me greatly.

The song "Graceland" doesn't directly mentions Elvis by name, but ya' know... Elvis and Graceland are a single thing. Anyway... I just felt like sharing this here because:

1. It really impressed me how randomly this thing happened.

2. The album is amazing, so I recommend you to listen to it.

Listen "Graceland" (1986) by Paul Simon on Spotify:

I have felt Elvis Magic in some occasions before, but today it was so special. I feel he's just being a friend and giving me a record for me to enjoy my day. Awwww. I'll never forget this. 🩷✨🎂🥹

[elvisabutler]

quiet on the set: chapter two

fandom: elvis presley | elvis ( 2022 ) rating: t-ish. pairing: elvis presley x original female character word count: 4369 warnings: mild slut shaming. complicated relationships with fathers. complicated relationships with mothers. period typical misogyny. arguments between a director and their leading man. slapping. getting into personal space without permission. disagreeing. mild implications for submissive elvis. author’s note: so hi y'all welcome to the second part of quiet on the set. there's not a whole lot to be said beyond me being thankful to those of you all who have read this because i know hollywood era elvis can be a bit of a mixed bag for people/kind of gets lost in the shuffle of people preferring 70s/big daddy elvis and baby/army elvis. but i've been enamoured with this concept since it's original whisperings and have- well to put it delicately between my discord wives, christi, marina and birdy and my own selfish desires/explanations of this fic to some people ( cough, cough madi ) have had this fic take on a life of its own. which is to say i hope y'all like this and allow me to play a little bit fast and loose with some elements of hollywood history. also enjoy my brief foray into basically writing robert evans somewhat as how he was portrayed in paramount plus's the offer, he'll come up later on too. also. this can be seen as austin elvis or elvis himself, as @precious-little-scoundrel's moodboard implies but i did truly write this i feel with elvis himself in mind.

"Elvis Presley. Are you- have you gone entirely insane? Why on Earth would you want him to play Stanley? Why would you want him near this film at all? The man's only known for-" Her father starts before she cuts him off with a bit of a huff. 

"For song and dance formulaic movies, yes yes, I know, father. I know that he's known for movies that are meant to be enjoyed by people who’d rather listen to someone sing and dance and prance around like a prized show dog.” Catherine tries to agree with Alfred, a fact that threatens to eat her up inside but she knows as well as her mother knows that sometimes it’s best to tempt him with honey rather than spitting pure, unfiltered vinegar. “If I remember right- that’s actually what you wish all actors could be: little show dogs you can put up and tell to do something that is easily achievable. Sit and look pretty?”

“You have seen some of them, Catherine, it’s not- You know as well as I do you’ve agreed with me on several sets. Your mother has as well.” The look he gives her would- in another time and another place- normally make her buckle just a bit but she can’t help the way she rolls her eyes at it in this moment. 

“That is not the point. In fact, you are trying to move away from the point I’m trying to make. He is the one I want. He’s Southern, he has the bulk, he has the look and aura and if I’m going to make this, I truly think he’d be perfect. Absolutely phenomenal in this role.”

She hears her father scoff and purse his lips. “The talent Catherine, the talent you’ve been craving for your actors to have? Does he have that, hm? Does he leap off the screen the way you want you actors to? Or are you thinking with your-” 

“My what? My brain? The thing I inherited from you and mother? Yes, yes, I do believe that’s the exact thing I’ve been thinking with. That’s the exact thing that’s watched his films and can tell there’s something underneath the songs. Wild in the Country, Follow that Dream, Flaming Star, King Creole. I just know there’s something there, there’s an actor the likes of Brando and Newman and Bogie in there, he just needs the right script and director.” Catherine’s brow furrows just slightly. “Tennessee's words are perfect for the man and I can convince him to let me do it. Convince him this is the perfect man to cast.”

“The perfect man- Catherine, the antics that follow him alone would be an embarrassment. A flurry of girls on and off of the set, making a fool and mockery of you and anyone else trying to do their jobs.” He shakes his head. “You’d throw your efforts down the drain. He wouldn’t be professional and your plan would be in shambles. I’d likely have to come pick up the pieces.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to!” Her voice rises an octave and very nearly becomes a shout at the insinuation. “You- I would be able to control the situation.”

The only response he gives her is his eyebrows raised and Catherine swears she sees red. She’s older now, thirty years old and her father still has her as this twenty year old in his mind. This twenty something he’d ask to finish up his films so her mother and him could go off to another set or another country. It would always turn out beautifully and Catherine would wait to see her name in the credits, wait to see her name in those credits like she would see her mothers and yet every time she was let down. Every single time she’d watch as names drifted on by and not a single one was hers. The only Hitchcock on the screen was Alfred, not Catherine. She squares her shoulders and uses the height her heels give her to tower just barely over her father. “Elvis Presley is my Stanley Kowalski, Alfred. I do not care what the man does on the set as long as he does his job and I will ensure he does. This will not run over budget, it will not have melodrama attached to it. It is simply going to be a motion picture where Mr. Presley can show the world that perhaps he can act and not just sing and dance. It’s going to be a motion picture that you refused to do but that I wanted to do. You can refrain from giving me permission but that will not stop me from having him on my set acting against Ms. Wood. It is not going to-”

Her father tilts his head for a moment before exhaling, shaking his head in disapproval. “If that’s what you want. If that’s what you see as your vision. I expect that you will not whine to me if something goes wrong. You will have made your bed and you would need to lay in it. Is that clear?”

“Crystal.” The word is spat out before Catherine turns and leaves the room, her heels clacking against the floor.

Tap tap tap. Elvis faintly hears a set of heels tap against the floor, unaware of who their owner is- unaware that Catherine is making her way toward him- too preoccupied with the blonde in front of him, all fluttering eyelashes and rosy cheeks. She's a professional he can tell, but even the most professional of women can't help but smile and laugh at his charm. Can't help but smile and laugh at his attention because he's Elvis Presley, dreamboat, all-American male. 

She clears her throat behind him and he turns around ready to give her a greeting his mama'd be proud of only to have Catherine beat him to the punch by spewing venom the likes of which he hasn't seen come off of a woman's tongue directed at him since- hell- maybe Anita?

"Mr. Presley, I believe you're distracting her from doing her job. I know it must be hard to rein in that ego and charm and sexual desire but that wasn't what I hired you for, now was it. I believe I told you I wanted an actor? Not a sex-addled man."

His eyebrows practically go up to his hairline before he shakes his head and places a hand on her shoulder. "Now, Princess, there's plenty to go 'round for everyone, I won't be causin' any problems."

"I like having eye candy around as much as the next person, Cat. But Elvis Presley. That's like asking to have Brando without the Oscar. Without the draw he still has. You're asking for him to parade about with girls, drag his little posse and that manager of his around, and for what? I'll give you that you'll have a star who knows his lines. But honey, we both know he's box office poison and a has-been in music and films. I know I can handle that, but I don't think you can." Bob's words are gentler than her father's and yet Catherine eyes still tighten at them as she takes a sip of her wine.

"Oh? I believe I can because I don't run a whole studio. I just direct. Much easier for me to survive a box office poisoning with a job intact. Besides you like me enough to have your producers want me as a director." She retorts smiling a fake smile she knows they're both incredibly familiar with. 

"I don't know. When you're directing decisions include this, I might be rethinking that. Hitchcock name or not." He pauses. "With a smile like that, you are wasted behind the camera."

"Save your flattery for someone you aren't calling crazy, Evans." Catherine sighs and bites the inside of her cheek. "It's not for his looks, you know I'm not that sort of-"

He cuts her off. "Woman? Director? Normally? Of course not, moral paragon out to remind me I should do better. With a man like him? When you've been lonely for-"

It's Catherine’s turn to cut him off with a light slap to his arm. "Robert!"

Robert Evans raises his eyebrow and smirks while pointing at Catherine. “Oh you- you’ve thought about it, haven’t you?”

“A woman never tells her secrets,” she responds with a blank face before rolling her eyes as he starts to laugh harder than he already had been.

The problem, Catherine figures, is that for all Elvis and his career are on the decline, he's still a very attractive man. A man who knows how to charm a woman - if the line of girls she can say have slept with him is any indication. Sure her father and Robert had both warned her about the possibility of him having said line of girls running behind him. But it's another thing to see it right in front of her face. It's another thing to have him mock her with these women. She's heard so much about his professionalism on the job that to see this in front of her makes her think just maybe she might have made a mistake. 

He was the wrong choice and she let herself get swept away in the visuals and how he sounded across the table from her when he read for her. There was something there. She's seen it in other films of his and she saw it when he sat across the table reading his lines as if his life depended on it; which if she’s being entirely honest, perhaps it somewhat did. Perhaps he knew she held his career in her hands. She’s heard whispers of the films his manager has him preparing for and she knows this is his last shot at anything truly good. The last shot at something that might stand the test of time and might turn everything around for him. The only sure bet in Hollywood might have been a Presley picture but nowadays the only sure thing when it comes to them is that they’ll do poorly. Box office poison. But Catherine thinks she can handle it. Thinks that it’s half-way what people expect from her anyway. Still, she had trusted him to be professional and keep his womanizing ways to, at the very least, a minimum on her set and yet it hasn’t even been a week of costume tests and making sure everything would be going smoothly and he’s already charming the production team. What was next? A starlet waltzing in with him as he shows her around the lot and the production while her eyes somehow still have stars in them? He’s a has-been but he’s still pretty, even with just a little more bulk than he used to have when he was younger. He can still bring them in- charm them and make them smile and giggle and say “oh Elvis” like he’s younger and actually their age. 

Except that’s what she wanted isn’t it? She wanted the man you could see somehow might have charmed Stella before showing his true colors. She wanted a man you could see might be able to keep Stella and get her pregnant and- was capable of unspeakable things. Someone who could be capable of unspeakable things but had a face that might make you think he wouldn’t. Stanley has sheer, raw animal magnetism and Elvis has it hidden right underneath that exterior. She heard it in his reading of the lines, she’s seen it on camera for herself. She knows that it’s there but she needs it on the screen, she needs it to be filmed and not flaunted in front of her. 

She ought to have a talk with him, she thinks. Ms. Wood is due on set today after a little scheduling mixup and she has to tell Elvis- no, Mr. Presley that ahead of time. She knows they had a dalliance once upon a time but she’s also heard how she tried to teach him how to act, a few lessons here or there. If anyone asked Catherine, she likes to think they did him a world of good in trying to harness some of his raw talent. Though she wouldn’t admit it to his face or really anyone’s face if she’s being honest. Truthfully she’s been wanting to work with Natalie for quite a while. This opportunity presented itself and felt almost serendipitous. A leading lady very enraptured with her significant other who her leading man knew once upon a time. What could go wrong? 

As it turns out from the way Elvis nearly opens the door on Catherine’s face as she tries to leave her office- a lot could go wrong. 

“Natalie. That’s my Blanche?” Elvis’s temper is barely being kept in check, some sense of professionalism and decorum and his mother’s way of teaching him to be a good Southern gentleman stopping him from bellowing at the top of his lungs. 

Catherine feels her eye twitch just slightly at the way she can hear his anger simmering. It reminds her a bit of her own simmering beneath the surface at any given moment. He can’t blow up any more than she can in this moment, or so she hopes. “Your Blanche? Since when have you become a director? Or a producer, Mr. Presley? She’s my Blanche, yes. Is that a problem?”

“You know damn well it is!” His voice ticks up just a bit almost yelling but not quite as he shuts the door behind them, knowing it’ll be all over the tabloids if some errant person caught them arguing in the hallway. “Everyone knows we- I know her! She knows me! You had to have known that, Princess.”

“Must you call me that infernal nickname,” Catherine spits out, using the height her heels give her to try and seem as tall as Elvis is, making sure he knows he can’t intimidate her. “"Not everything revolves around you, Mr. Presley. Ms. Wood has always wanted to play Blanche and-" 

He holds up a finger and she can’t help but glare at it over the rims of her glasses. "Cut the horseshit. Somehow ya get Natalie goddamn Wood and it doesn't get whispered 'round town. That’s a dirty goddamn trick" 

“A trick!” Catherine can’t help the way she practically squawks out the two words. "I did it for you! Is that what you want to hear? That I figured you'd appreciate a friendly face who knows you? You are an incorrigible and  ignorant little boy masquerading as a man." 

"Then why did you hire me, Princess? Lil’ charity case for Hitchcock's daughter? Takin' in poor lil’ Elvis Presley?" Elvis mocks, his voice gaining the faintest hint of an airy English lilt. 

“Do you truly think that- I reiterate Mr. Presley, my world- the world does not revolve around you. Your little gang may treat you as the sun and whatever girl you currently have as the moon, but I am not them! I have- This had- I only wanted to help you. You were as nervous as a little boy in your audition. I’d have thought I was talking to a 21 year old version of you. I’d have thought he was auditioning for my film, not a 32 year old! She is a friendly face in a sea of unfamiliar ones on a film set that is of far higher caliber than any of the other ones you’ve ever been on.” Catherine doesn’t realize how her chest has started to heave in sheer aggravation. 

"That's the problem, Princess. I haven't- haven't talked to her since- God, West Side Story, ya know that musical she did. And you talkin' 'bout how Elia recommended her- the hell else is that supposed to make me feel?" His own chest is heaving a little in frustration, here she is in front of him looking every bit the professional he's beginning to truly realize she is and looking so put together like every starlet and every star he's ever seen despite her own chest heaving. It reminds him that's not what he's gotten to enjoy. Sure he's been a star but not like she's dealt with, not like Natalie's been since Rebel with Jimmy Dean. It sends another rush of fury and embarrassment through him. "I'll tell ya how. Like ya cast me out of your own amusement. Wanna see if those acting lessons she tried to give me meant anything."

"Are you- I knew you thought highly of yourself but are you joking with me right now? Why on God's Green Earth would I jeopardize my career over casting you to amuse myself. Why would I jeopardize ever getting to work in this town, with or without my father's assistance, ever again? Do you hear yourself?" She can't help the way she pulls herself to her full height, not reaching Elvis's but still managing to make herself as large as she can. Her hand moves to push him square in the chest. "I thought she would put you at ease. They didn't want me to cast her, said she had a better film to do than this. But Elia and Tennessee and myself all intervened. I got you Ms. Wood to help you. For heaven's sake, that's everything I've been doing."

"I didn't ask ya to! I-I can- I can do it m'self." He snarls, grabbing at her wrist. His stutter betraying him. "Don't- I don't n-need your pity."

“Get your hand off of me, Mr. Presley!” She tries to wrench her hand away from his grip before he lets go. "My pity? That's- you think this madness you are going to wreak on my set is something I'm willingly taking on because I pity you? You are the most self centered-"

"Don't you dare finish that sentence, Hitchcock." He hisses, moving to crowd himself into her space once more. 

"Oh! Oh he remembers I have a name and not a little nickname he so graciously gave me! Brava, Mr. Presley! Perhaps you could remember that I am your-"

"Director, I know. Some fuckin' one ya are. Can't tell ya actors a direction they need to take." His hand moves to his chest, marveling in just how much her shove had hurt. "Or is it jus' me ya don't wanna help."

It's that exact moment that Catherine realizes just what might be one of the complications she hadn't foreseen when working with Elvis Presley. Truthfully the idea hadn't even occurred to her in all her arguments with herself and with others. Was Elvis someone who thrived under praise? Under being told what to do by someone he saw to be in a position of power over him? Did he truly need someone to direct him? The irony of it all, the irony of a man who commanded- or controlled a group of friends and compatriots called the Memphis Mafia needing someone to tell him what to do? From what she had known- heard- he bristled under ideas from those inside his circle and yet perhaps that was the key. To be from outside and not on the inside.

"I didn't know I was speaking to a child, Mr. Presley. Do I need to tell you exactly where to stand? How to compose your face into something other than a charming little smirk? How to appear menacing for an audience who needs to forget you're Elvis Presley? Would you like me to hold your hand?" Catherine knows her tone is judgmental, knows how her accent thickens and quite honestly she thinks it has taken on what she would like to argue is that of a school matron. 

Elvis’s face morphs into something that raises a flag for Catherine, makes her think of what she’s been envisioning when it comes to Stanley. This is a man she should fear and yet in this moment she knows it’s Elvis and he’s a good Southern gentleman, he wouldn’t hurt or hit her. “Listen here- I don’t need ya patronizing me, Princess. I’m a grown man who doesn’t- I don’t need any of that. I know how to do my job.”

“You know how to play Elvis Presley.” Catherine retorts, watching as he takes a step towards her as she moves back. “I don’t need Elvis Presley.” 

“You’re not gonna get him.” His words are practically growled out and Catherine raises a singular eyebrow as he continues. “You’re gonna get what ya cast me for. I just want to know what ya want me to do. Want t’know I’m doin’ it correctly since ya so certain I can do it.”

Catherine manages to keep herself from saying the first words that come to her mind and  instead just stares down Elvis, almost challenging him to say more. He’s not wrong with what he says, that she’s certain he can do it. She’s so certain he can act better than most of his films have allowed him to show. It’s- It’s just that she has to coax it out of him, foster his talent and then she can show the world what she can see beyond his sparkling eyes and crooked smile. At his continued silence, her lips curl up into a bit of a sneer as she tilts her head just so that she’s looking at him over the rim of her glasses.

“Mr. Presley, do I look like your mother? Only existing to praise you for breathing?” 

Elvis physically recoils at the words and Catherine realizes in that exact moment that perhaps it was an unwise choice of words. An unwise response, but it can’t be undone. The words have already left her mouth and already done their damage. After a second she sees his jaw clench and flex before he eyes her up and down. “My mama’d have smacked you for that, and I oughta.”

Catherine can’t help the way her eyes drift down Elvis’s body, taking in how tense he looks minus a slight jiggle to his leg. He’s holding back and actually stopping himself. For all he’s being an uncouth cad at the moment there’s a part of him that realizes, as much as his mother might have wanted to hit her for saying that, he can’t. He won’t because of some Southern gentleman manners. It almost makes her laugh but she refrains and manages to move closer to him, mocking just that little bit more. 

“You didn’t answer, Mr. Presley. Do I look like your mother? Does the woman you’ve decided to call Princess look like your mother? Should I tell you that you’re doing so well? If I had known you needed that I wouldn’t-”

“Goddammit, woman!” The shout that comes from Elvis has Catherine choking on her words in shock. The boom of his voice so close to her reminds her that she is dealing with a man who, other than acting, sings for a living. The sheer anger she feels radiating off of him should terrify her, but she’s never been one to back down unless she truly wants to. No, this has her mouth gaping open just slightly as he speaks, his anger still palpable.“Don’t fuckin’- I- Just because you’re my director ya can’t just- say things like that. There ain’t nothin’ wrong wit’ wantin’ ya to just tell me if ‘m doin’ somethin’ right.”

There isn’t and yet the fact that Elvis is bringing it up in such a way has her on edge. It’s almost as if he wants to force her to do it. It makes her want to make him beg for her to give him direction. She doesn’t think she will, but perhaps it would teach him a lesson about coming onto sets and proving every one of his naysayers right. Catherine is so in her head that she doesn’t grasp how Elvis has crowded her against a wall until she realizes they’ve been walking around her office to the point where she ran out of room to walk backward. Indeed she only registers it when she feels the press of the wall against her back and looks at Elvis to see him glance at the wall and smirk. He has the audacity to smirk at putting her in this position. She sees his mouth start to open and before she realizes what she’s doing she hears what she’s done.

Smack. 

Elvis immediately backs off and nearly collides into her desk. If she wasn’t feeling so angry, if the rush of aggravation and annoyance wasn’t coursing through her veins she’d have thought it was funny how it happens. It almost would have been fitting in one of Elvis’s films. No, instead she moves to stand up straight- her hands dusting imaginary lint off her clothes- and starts to walk to the door, her heels clicking against the floor. It’s only when she’s at the door, her hand poised to open it that she turns around to see a still stunned Elvis leaning against her desk. 

“Prove you can do something right, Mr. Presley. Prove that this means as much as it should to you and maybe I’ll have a kind word for you. And it’s Ms. Hitchcock to you, not Princess.”

The door opening and slamming shut as her heels clicking gets farther and farther away finally yanks Elvis out of his stupor as his hand moves to rub at his stinging cheek.It shouldn’t excite him in the slightest and yet he feels a tightness in his pants that he’s choosing not to dwell on as he stands up and jiggles his leg, adjusting the fabric as he does. 

“Stuck up Princess Hitchcock,” he mutters as he opens the door, checking to see if anyone sees him leaving the room. “Actin’ like she knows- She wants me to show her, fine, I-I’ll show her. Got this part for a reason and I ain’t lettin’ her ruin it.”

It’s only as he’s about to head to the actual set that he pauses and says three simple words before opening the door, a charming smile on his face. “She slapped me.”

taglist: @ab4eva, @blurredcolour, @butlersxbirdy, @precious-little-scoundrel, @eliseinmemphis, @prompted-wordsmith, @missmaywemeetagain, @lookingforrainbows, @araxw, @thatbanditqueen, @ellie-24, @austinbutlersgirl67, @heartbrake-hotel, @ccab, @18lkpeters, @slutforsomegoodlettuce, @dkayfixates, @kendralavon7, @chasingwildflowers, @notstefaniepresley, @wanderingelvis, @kxnnxy, @powerofelvis, @stylespresleyhearted, @be-my-ally, @steph-speaks, @burninlovebutler, @headfullofpresley if you don’t want to be tagged for this series, tell me, i just copied from one of my other elvis fics/took from the last tags i kind of had for the last chapter. but also if you do, give me a heads up. i'll try to get to the tags that didn't work within the next day unless y'all find it first.

[gemwing1988]

Heart, Soul & Mind — King Dice TV Tropes

Warning, this fanmade trope will contain spoilers for the Cuphead fanfiction, “Heart, Soul & Mind” and possibly the sequel, “Playing With Loaded Dice”. Please read with care and enjoy.

The manager of The Devil’s Casino and the secondary antagonist of Heart, Soul & Mind. A despite being referred as a good for nothing lackey by the Devil himself, King Dice remains loyal to Old Scratch and is willingly to partake in his wicked schemes to take over the Isles.

After his humiliating defeat at the hands of the Cup Brothers in the events of the game, Dice is left bitter and determined for some revenge best serves cold. But he’s also hoping for a consolation prize when our heroines and their friends wind up on the Isles, his eyes on Lexie…

Abhorrent Admirer: He up and decided to make himself Lexie’s unwanted suitor despite knowing she is already dating Liam. And Dice as abhorrent as he comes.

Actually Pretty Funny: Or in some case, actually pretty catchy as he happily snapped his fingers to the beat of Elvis Presley’s song, “Return to Sender” as it blasted out from the card the Dreamstones send to him and the Devil thanks to a spell Natty casted. He also commented that Lexie has great taste in music.

Amusing Injuries:

And Now You Must Marry Me:

Whatever he has to pass up as a heart, he has it set on making Lexie his wife and “Queen of Diamonds”.

He attempts to do this straight once he kidnapped Lexie in the sequel.

Ax-Crazy: In the sequel, “Playing With Loaded Dice”, he becomes severely unhinged when in possession of a crown once belonging to an evil king that makes him demonic and Drugged on Power.

Berserk Button: Aside from losing a bet, Dice develop another one in the form of Liam “getting in between him and his gal”.

Big Bad: In Playing With Loaded Dice due to the Devil’s absence.

Baddie Flattery:

Brainwashed and Crazy: Under influence of the evil crown he possessed in the sequel.

Co-Dragons: With Anubis. He might be the Devil’s right hand but Anubis is the Devil’s number one Bounty Hunter, both valuable to his assets in their own right.

Crazy Jealous Guy:

Deadpanned Snarker:

The Determinator: No one or nothing will stop him from getting what he wants and that’s Lexie’s hand in marriage.

Didn’t See This Coming:

Didn’t Think This Through:

Embarrassing Nickname: Katie likes to call him “cheese cube” just get under his skin.

Entitled to Have You: Despite knowing that Lexie is dating and eventually engaged to Liam, Dice is adamant of making her his gal, believing he has the best of everything a girl could want.

Even Evil Has Standards: He might be sleazy but even he wouldn’t bring himself to spike a woman’s drink.

Evil Cannot Comprehend Good:

Evil Gloating:

Evil is Petty:

Evil is Not a Toy: The mysterious figure he paid to find the two crowns warned him that overusing the power the evil king’s crown would make go mad with power and he would never break free from its influence. Dice really should have listened…

Faux Affably Evil:

Forceful Kiss: He is pretty much prone to plant one on Lexie every chance he gets.

The Ghost: Gets mentioned a couple of times in later fanfic series, especially when he’s compared to his TCS counterpart.

A God Am I!: When he turns Brainwashed and Crazy by the demonic crown in “Playing With Loaded Dice”.

Green Eyed Monster:

Humiliation Conga Line:

Hypocrite:

Idiot Ball:

I Have Your Wife:

I Have You Now, My Pretty: He doesn’t waste time having Lexie to himself with the flirting and Evil Gloating.

Karmic Butt Monkey: While he’s still a threat to the Dreamstones and their companions, he suffers a lot of karma in the Humiliation Conga Line variety.

Karma Houdini Warranty: After several chapters of getting away with stealing Mugman’s soul, Dice faces his biggest comeuppance at the hands of the very same mug he had hurt when Mugman gets his soul back in the final battle.

Kick the Dog:

Laser-Guided Karma:

Malicious Misnaming: He enjoys calling Liam “shrimp”. He also calls Natty “pinky” because she wears a pink shirt.

My God, What Have I Done?!: After he is defeated and the crown is destroyed, the heroes couldn’t resist telling him he had carelessly said some unsavoury things about the Devil as the crown had warped his mind. To say the least, he dreads to think how the Devil would react should he ever get hear about it.

Never My Fault:

Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!:

Not Brainwashed: Subverted. Despite warnings from the figure who sold him the crown, Dice willingly placed it on, granting him dreadful powers his imagination. At first he’s pretty much in control and knew what he’s doing but he eventually grows Drunk on Power and becomes much more unhinged akin to Magnifico’s path of full on villainy from Wish

Oh Crud!:

Red Eyes, Take Warning: More like green eyes, take warning. When his eyes turn jade green when he’s at his most despicable, better get ready for whatever he has in store.

Revenge:

He was eager to get some payback on the humiliation he had received after the Cup Brothers had busted him up in the events of the game, managing to nab Mugman’s soul.

Again, he doubles down in Playing With Loaded Dice.

The Rival:

To Liam when it concerns Lexie.

He often alternates between Katie and Natty.

Screams Like a Little Girl:

Slimeball:

Smug Snake:

Stalker with a Crush:

This Is Gonna Suck:

Thinking Up Portals: Much like in the game when you visit the Die House, Dice is capable of conjuring plot holes beneath his feet and jump down into them to teleport from one place to another anytime he wants. He also has portals into his own little pocket dimension on occasions.

Trash Landing: Dice gets tossed into a dumpster full of trash Tom & Jerry-style thanks to Aya’s telekinesis.

Tyrant Takes the Helm: Since the Devil is imprisoned in the Astral Planes at the end of Heart, Mind and Soul, Dice takes stage as temporarily the Big Bad as the Big Bad after he takes brief ownership of a crown that contains demonic powers. Since it was in possession of an evil king, the crown warped Dice’s mind, corrupting him into a much more ruthless and more tyrant-like until it was destroyed after his defeat.

Underestimating the Hardcore:

Undying Loyalty: Despite the fact that the Devil called him a good for nothing lackey since the final showdown in the game, Dice still stays as his right hand man. He is genuinely horrified at what unsavoury things he must have said about the Devil under the influence of the crown in the sequel after he is defeated.

Villainous Crush: The moment he laid eyes on Lexie for the first when he and the Devil were observing her in the prologue, he was instantly smitten. And is heck bent on making her his gal.

Villain Takes an Interest: Upon seeing Lexie as the Devil was spying on her in the prologue, Dice was instantly smitten.

We Can Rule Together:

You Gotta Be Kidding Me!:

You Meddling Kids!:

[antialiasis]

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat/Evita

As you probably know by now, Jesus Christ Superstar is my favorite musical, and the main reason I developed any sort of interest in musicals generally. I have also mentioned before that other popular Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals have not tended to do much for me. The Phantom of the Opera is too florid and lengthy and the characters don’t interest me enough, Cats is amusing fluff but has no real plot or character depth.

But also, perhaps that shouldn’t be very surprising. After all, I tend to be interested in media for its stories and characters more than presentation or spectacle - and Cats and Phantom don’t actually share a writer with JCS. The stuff I love about Jesus Christ Superstar includes the songs, sure, but I wouldn’t care so much about them in a vacuum. The guy who wrote the lyrics, made the story what it is, is Tim Rice.

So a little while back I figured it was high time I actually looked into at least the other well-known Webber/Rice collaborations, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Evita. (I gather abroad Joseph is like, a play every middle school puts on, but not over here; I had never heard of it until I looked up stuff about Jesus Christ Superstar, and never heard a song from it until I went and listened to it recently.)

(Some 5000 words of rambling under the cut, about these two shows, comparisons to JCS, and some character analysis, plus a bit of a digression about the trouble with translating musicals to film!)

Joseph is a pretty amusing one. It’s a show originally written as a fun retelling of a Bible story for kids to perform, before JCS, when Webber and Rice were 17 and 20 years old - specifically, it’s the story of Joseph, not the father of Jesus but Jacob’s favorite son from the Old Testament. Once I listened to it I did vaguely recall hearing the story before, in religious education classes as a kid: Joseph has prophetic dreams about greatness, is betrayed by his jealous brothers and sold into slavery in Egypt, eventually ends up the Pharaoh’s right-hand man after deciphering his prophetic dreams about an upcoming famine, then reunites with his contrite brothers and father.

It’s pretty wild, but you can definitely see the seeds of JCS in it - an isolated story from the Bible, told through a series of songs with very modernized, casual lyrics with a bit of a cheeky satirical energy with regards to some of the source material. But where JCS is a dramatic, emotional reinterpretation, Joseph has very little interest in drawing out the drama of the story it’s adapting, for the most part, and sticks with just retelling it with tongue firmly in cheek and a deluge of indulgent pastiche of a dozen different musical genres. The Pharaoh? A shameless Elvis parody, because why not. The brothers? Sing an over-the-top country song about how Joseph was heroically killed by a goat after they have sold him into slavery, and then later a parody French ballad about how much they miss him.

I quite enjoy just how plainly it presents the whole Joseph being Jacob’s favorite son thing, the narrator talking cheerfully about the coat his father gives him to make it clear that Joseph was the special one, and him telling his brothers about all these dreams he’s having that are clearly symbolic of how much greater he will be than them:

I dreamed that in the fields one day, The corn gave me sign Your eleven sheaves of corn All turned and bowed to mine My sheaf was was quite a sight to see A golden sheaf and tall Yours were green and second-rate And really rather small

What a hilariously smug-slash-oblivious little prick. The brothers are still obviously the villains here, but without exactly commenting on it per se, the musical cheerfully leans into the things a modern audience might find kind of preposterous or silly reading this story, and thus sort of subtextually asks but honestly, wasn’t it kind of dickish of their dad to just pick a favorite son and lavish him with special gifts for it? Isn’t Joseph himself being kind of a dick with this thing of telling them repeatedly about how hey guys I had this dream that I’m way better than you and in the future you’re all going to bow down to me?

And Jesus Christ Superstar does essentially the same thing - though often in a less humorous and more simply speculative way. It asks things like, isn’t it kind of weird and morbid of Jesus to tell the apostles that the bread they eat is his body and the wine they drink is his blood? What if it wasn’t a grand metaphor, but just him expressing his disillusionment with everything, and with them; what if in this moment he just feels like they wouldn’t even care if it was, and he’s right because they don’t even react? Or what if he’s just sort of morosely hoping maybe at least it’ll make them remember him when they eat and drink?

Joseph does have a little bit of a character arc going, which saves it from being entirely fluff. After we’ve seen his (possibly oblivious) self-aggrandizement at the beginning, Joseph gets betrayed and sold into slavery by his brothers, then jailed on false charges, where he goes through a lowest point in the song “Close Every Door to Me”, about how he’s insignificant and it doesn’t matter what happens to him, but he’s holding on to the thought of the Promised Land for strength. After that lowest point, he’s learned some humility - not long after this, when his fellow inmates ask him to interpret their dreams, he agrees to try but isn’t sure he’ll get it right, and is almost sheepish about admitting that well, he hasn’t been wrong before. So by the time Joseph actually gains the glory and prestige that he dreamed of, it feels reasonably earned, not only because he’s been to hell and back, but because he’s stopped being the kind of insufferable, arbitrarily privileged ass he was at the start in the process. (Or, at least, that’s what I get listening to the 1991 London cast recording that I picked somewhat arbitrarily on Spotify. I also watched the 1999 movie with one eye while drawing, and there Joseph honestly kind of felt like he was still pretty smug by the end. I like it better if there’s a character arc.)

At the end, his brothers come from Canaan, which is suffering from the famine, to Egypt to beg for food. Of course Joseph is there to receive them, only for them to not recognize him there in his Egyptian finery. Joseph decides to take them for a bit of a ride, to test whether they’re still the dickheads who tried to kill him and sold him into slavery; he responds to their groveling with angry fake skepticism - telling me that you are hungry! That could be lies! during a famine, sure. They grovel all the more, and he makes a show of saying they’ve moved him and that he’ll give them what they came for and more. Only he slips one of his golden cups into his younger brother Benjamin’s sack, then angrily stops them as they’re trying to leave, theatrically searching their bags until he finds it in Benjamin’s and demands to lock him up and throw away the key. And the brothers throw themselves at his feet to say there’s no way Benjamin did this, and to please have mercy on him and jail them instead.

This whole bit, the brothers groveling and Joseph putting on this charade, probably taking out some justified anger through scaring them and the power he wields over them, while also legitimately trying to test their characters and whether he can forgive them, is my favorite chunk of this show. “Grovel, Grovel” just has a melody I like, the energy and tension of the music for “Who’s the Thief?” is great (and amusingly reminiscent of the motif I dubbed ‘Authority’ in JCS), the character dynamic of what’s happening is just interesting and more layered than anything preceding it, and it sort of drops to a bit of a more serious and tense feel there in general, the brothers genuinely desperate and Joseph pushing mercilessly to learn who they really are and whether he can ever trust them again…

…and then we launch into “Benjamin Calypso”, a sudden jarringly upbeat number where the brothers continue to argue that there’s no way Benjamin stole the cup and he should take them instead in the most nonchalant, utterly unserious way possible. The mood whiplash is something. After that Joseph reveals who he is and the brothers get like two lines to ask if it’s really him, we explain their father came and joined them in like five more lines, and then it’s time to reprise the early number about Joseph’s vision at the beginning of the story for the finale. There’s no followup on the reunion or what just happened at all!

And I guess that’s fair. The entire rest of the show is deeply silly, exaggerated pastiche where the brothers act like the snidest of villains, and we aren’t supposed to care about them. But one way or another, I find myself honestly wanting a more cathartic resolution here. Judah does offer himself up in exchange for Benjamin, sure, but in that song where he’s otherwise busy jauntily comparing Benjamin’s honesty to coconuts and palm trees because Caribbean music, it’s impossible to take that at all seriously, or actually feel like it means anything about his character or ought to move Joseph to forgive them. And then we don’t get any followup, and all in all it just means it sort of starts to present an actually interesting dramatic situation, in its slightly tongue-in-cheek way, and then goes, “Never mind! Anyway, more pastiche!”

In the original story in Genesis, Joseph was explicitly feeling a lot of emotion during all this - he overhears them talking in Hebrew about their regrets over what they did to Joseph, and from there he multiple times has to excuse himself from everyone’s presence to weep, until he’s fully sure that now his brothers would rather sacrifice their own lives than sell another brother. I honestly think that makes sense, and that it would have worked (and probably worked better) to include more emotionality here. But oh well! It’s a pretty fun silly show with some fun songs in it, and that’s all it really wants to be. What If Joseph But We Took It Seriously is basically what JCS is, and I for one am happy with what we got there.

Evita is quite different, a more ambitious and very much adult-oriented show postdating JCS by several years (like JCS, it was first released as a concept album, in 1976). It’s about the life of Argentinian First Lady Eva Perón. I don’t know much about the real-life history or how accurate it is to the actual woman, but the musical at least depicts her with a sort of blend of deep cynicism and a degree of twisted admiration for her sheer ruthless drive and ability to win influence. After an opening framing device, it starts with her as a working-class country girl forcefully persuading a singer she’s had a fling with to bring her to the big city. Once there, she immediately ditches him to pursue her own ends, freely using sex with men for whatever advantage it would get her until she has a popular radio show. After that, she begins a relationship with future president Juan Perón, with the express intent that it would be mutually beneficial to both of them, by leveraging her popularity with the public for his political endeavors while giving her access to further power and influence through him.

(I’d be surprisingly good for you, she proposes; would you be good for me too? In the Icelandic cast album that I found on Spotify, she just proposes that I’d be a pleasure for you, which misses the entire point. Similarly, his subsequent verse where he agrees that I can understand you perfectly / and I like what I hear, what I see, and knowing me / I would be good for you too is rendered as I feel my heart pounding / and I like your words, this sight, and believe me / I’d do anything for you. According to this translation this was just an average love at first sight thing I guess? He’s not even calling back to her own words or acknowledging that he gets what she’s after? Good job, guys. It’s a pretty good translation in terms of the poetry and phrasing and all, but man do they drop the ball on conveying the correct narrative here. Overall I get the impression from the album cover and song choices that the people behind this Icelandic production thought the core of this story was supposed to be the romance between Eva and Juan? Which I truly don’t think is meant to be the point, at all.)

They go on to campaign and win despite that Perón thinks the whole concept of having to get votes to get into power is needlessly annoying (her radio rhetoric for him involves claiming that he loves you, understands you, is one of you; if not, how could he love me?). Eva becomes massively popular in her home country but doesn’t succeed quite as well on a European tour where the Italians compare her husband to Mussolini; they make a bunch of money ostensibly for charitable causes, some of which winds up back in their pockets through secret Swiss accounts (apparently this bit is historically dubious and that verse is cut from later versions of the show), all while Eva is venerated as a saint; but finally she starts to grow weak with cancer and then dies, her life deliriously flashing before her as she thinks about how in the end her choices were hers and hers alone, and she chose to burn bright and briefly, even if perhaps becoming loved by so many didn’t quite add up to being loved more. It ends with a statement that money was raised to build a monument to Evita, but only the base was ever completed, and her body disappeared for seventeen years. I guess the implication is that the monument was a scam to some degree too?

As a plot it’s a bit unfocused. There isn’t really a proper climax to the storyline here; “they make a bunch of questionable money, she goes on a tour that’s neither successful nor a total disaster, and then she happens to die a while later from cancer” is kind of an anticlimax, lacking any kind of cohesive overall punch that’d make it resonate by itself (and to be clear, that’s usually the case with real events, which is why fiction based on true stories tends to change bits around to make them work better narratively; I get the sense from Joseph and JCS as well that Webber and Rice like to stick very closely to the actual series of events they’re adapting even if presenting them liberally, but that can unfortunately be a bit of a detriment when they’re trying to adapt straight-up recent history instead of a myth). Instead, this musical is more about its themes and the general character study going on.

In particular, our narrator is not Eva herself but “Ché”, a man who may or may not have been modelled after Ché Guevara. For the purposes of the musical he is mainly there as a representative of the general Argentinian working class, telling the story after Eva’s death after becoming disillusioned with her and her husband’s reign. In a way he is Evita’s Judas: the cynical POV character observing the eponymous subject of the show from a critical point of view, who is given a chance to comment on them and their legacy with the benefit of hindsight. Unlike with Judas, though, Ché in the musical is speaking only from that perspective of hindsight, not actually present during the story’s events other than when he briefly reenacts attending Perón’s rallies at the time - mostly he’s an immaterial narrator giving sardonic commentary on the events of the show.

(On Wikipedia and Genius, there are both people insisting that on the original concept album he was definitely meant to be Ché Guevara but that element was removed later when it was staged, and also people insisting that he was never supposed to be Guevara originally until the director of the first stage production decided to dress him like Guevara. On the original concept album he has a whole weird unclear side-plot going on, concurrent with the main events of the show, about his efforts to produce and sell insecticide, which Wikipedia suggests is based on Guevara’s life. As best I can tell the point of this subplot for the album’s narrative is to portray Ché as motivated partly by personal spite/jealousy/misogyny in his criticisms of Eva - towards the end of the first half he gets excited about the prospect that surely if some girl can rise so fast by her efforts in the sack then a man who offers more could do the same, and at a later point, during the song “The Actress Hasn’t Learned the Lines (You’d Like to Hear)”, Eva coldly dismisses him when he tries to sell her on his insecticide, which makes the critique that Eva didn’t do much for the working man sound more like he’s just kind of mad about that. I guess in some sense that adds a layer of ambiguity to it, unreliable narrator and all, but it feels very muddled and mostly just serves to make him seem like a dickish weirdo, undermining his character and everything else he has to say; I’m not surprised this subplot got removed entirely in every version after that. There’s another little bit later on the concept album where Ché declares he used to be loyal to his country, but for all he got out of it he might as well have been loyal to some other country, which I guess is imagining that this spurned Ché Guevara into traveling and instigating revolutions in different countries, giving up on his birth country of Argentina. This seems like pure baseless historical speculation and again is just weird and muddled by the whole portrayal of the insecticide thing, and again got ditched from later versions.)

My favorite song here is probably “Waltz for Eva and Ché”, which I’d argue serves as the real climax of the musical, even though it isn’t even a literal thing that happens. (The aforementioned Icelandic cast album does not include it; in fact, there’s barely any Ché on it generally. Again, it feels like someone thought this was supposed to be a grand romance and this guy constantly criticizing the heroine in the background was just spoiling the mood, I guess.) In this fantasy sequence, Ché finally interacts directly with Eva, challenging her on her corruption and broken promises, while the unfazed Eva staunchly defends her actions and approach in her own pragmatic sort of way:

There is evil Ever around, fundamental System of government quite incidental So what are my chances of honest advances? I’d say low Better to win by admitting my sin Than to lose with a halo

[…]

Allow me to help you slink off to the sidelines And mark your adieu with three cheers But first tell me who'd be delighted If I said I'd take on the world's greatest problems From war to pollution, no hope of solution Even if I lived for one hundred years

As far as Eva is concerned, idealistically trying to work on big problems she’ll never magically solve doesn’t actually make anyone happy, so what’s the point? Ultimately, she doesn’t care about causes or governance or politics per se, really, but she cares a lot about being a figure that inspires the common people of Argentina. And sometimes that involves being as glamorous as possible, living the high life as a working-class girl turned first lady, and sometimes it involves charity work that’s very showy and feelgood even if it doesn’t exactly make the best use of the money, and that’s all kind of the same to her; there’s corruption and evil everywhere in every political system, but at least she made people smile to the point that they chant her name. What else is there, really?

In the final verse of “Waltz for Eva and Ché”, she admits for the first time that her body is falling apart, and she wishes she had more time. And in her final lament, where she speaks of how she thought the more that loved me, the more loved I’d be, she wishes she’d had children of her own. She does have some regrets, in the end. But while she lived she committed so hard to everything she did that she’d just suppress any such thoughts out of existence. And as a result she played the game so well she was possibly the most powerful person in her entire country by the age of twenty-six; who else could say that?

As a character she’s a bit of a puzzle, but definitely intentionally so - I get the sense most of this musical is just Tim Rice trying to figure out what might have been going on in this woman’s head. (And, yeah, this is obviously just an interpretation of a woman who was an actual person, and all my commentary on her is strictly about the character as portrayed in the musical, and not about the actual woman, about whom I know very little.) One is never quite sure how much she means of what she’s saying - a distinctive feature of her character is that she constantly says things with what sounds like total conviction and sincerity that we know are lies, or stretching the truth, or are connected lyrically and musically to times she was definitely lying or stretching the truth. You could definitely argue for an interpretation where she’s doing that in “Waltz for Eva and Ché” too - just unflinchingly saying whatever justifies her actions as if she believes it, even in an imaginary confrontation. But my read is it does seem that one way or another it comes to matter a great deal to her that the working-class people of Argentina love and adore her, in a way I’m not sure much else matters to her. She has some base craving for being loved, and even if in the end all the love and adoration of the masses can’t quite satisfy it, she was still driven to a large extent by that craving.

Class is a running theme here. Eva comes from the working class, as I mentioned, and her family were thrown out at her middle-class father’s funeral, as mentioned offhandedly near the beginning of the show (her mother was his mistress); from there, she seems to have developed a determination to show them, to be better and get further and be more known and adored than any of the people who dismissed her for her origins. She climbs the social ladder relentlessly, but continues to be scorned by Argentina’s upper class no matter what she does, simply because of where she comes from, and for all of the musical’s cynicism about Eva herself, that’s one thing that it definitely sides with her on. Similarly, the powerful woman getting where she is by sleeping her way to the top is kind of a misogynistic trope that I can’t help but side-eye a bit (I suspect it’s probably a pretty direct reflection of the apparently very merciless biography that the musical was supposedly based on, given what I mentioned earlier about the way they tend to stick quite closely to the events they’re adapting, but nonetheless), but at the same time the sexism and misogyny that Eva faces wherever she goes are also a recurring theme, both from the upper class, in Europe, and from the soldiers of the Argentine Army who think she should just shut up and spread her legs. Eva’s unrelenting defiance in the face of this adversity and refusal to bow to it, and continuing success despite that, is ultimately something I feel the story kind of admires in her, in spite of the many ways it’s harshly critical of her. She saw something she wanted, and she simply did whatever she had to do to get it in her not very advantageous situation as a woman in the 1940s, and successfully made it to the top that way despite being disparaged and scorned at every turn, without ever giving in.

So that’s the overall picture I get of her character here: the formative experience of being treated as lesser and unworthy at her own father’s funeral spurned this woman into obsessive unflinching determination to make it in the biggest way possible and earn the public’s love and adoration, at whatever cost, with very little regard to what she had to do or enable to get there, and while the deepest core of that drive may have ultimately been a longing for more personal love and acceptance, she channeled it into an incredibly successful drive to be loved by her people. For all its flaws and questionable elements I do think it’s an interesting character study, hence the rambling; I’m often drawn to characters whose actions might seem puzzling at a glance but have a coherent core driving them that makes the character click if you think about it, and while Eva doesn’t press my personal character buttons super hard otherwise, I think she’s definitely an example of that.

We watched the 1996 movie based on Evita, too. It leans away from the Ché Guevara thing, with Antonio Banderas portraying Ché as simply an everyman (he gets whumped a little bit, which was fun). The performances are good overall, and it’s more faithful than I was expecting; aside from lyrical tweaks and adding a song that’s incorporated into later stage productions as well, the main notable deviation is that “Another Suitcase in Another Hall”, a song originally sung by Perón’s mistress (a one-scene wonder), is moved earlier to be sung by Eva as Augustin Magaldi (the singer who brought her to Buenos Aires) ditches her, and is only briefly echoed later by the mistress. This is a significant shift because originally Magaldi is firmly meant to be someone Eva is simply using for her own ends and immediately ditches when she’s made it to Buenos Aires with him, while in the film it tries to make this a sympathetic moment for Eva, and thus implies she actually did naïvely love Magaldi and think they’d stay together - starkly different from her original characterization, where her proclamation that Would I have done what I did if I didn’t think, if I didn’t know, that we would stay together? is one of the establishing moments of that thing where she states things with total conviction that are shown to be not even a little bit true.

I can imagine three reasons for this change. One, they thought having another actress playing a bit character sing this famous solo song before never appearing again would just feel weird in a film, which is valid; it definitely does feel like a storytelling choice that happens in musicals but really goes against what anyone would expect in film. Two, they just wanted to give the more famous actress the song (Eva is played by Madonna). And/or three, they wanted Eva to be more sympathetic and Magaldi less so, which I can also understand, particularly given she is explicitly fifteen years old at the time and “musician who sleeps with a fifteen-year-old girl is the one being used and manipulated actually” is undeniably a bit hmm. But it kind of contradicts the rest of how it all plays out a bit - I didn’t really get the sense from the lead-up in the movie that she actually loved Magaldi or wanted anything from him other than the ticket to the city, and in general Eva is still just as ruthless! All in all, I sort of get the change, and it creates sort of a neat parallel where Eva inflicts the same humiliation on this other girl that she’d suffered herself back when she had nothing, but I’m not sure they entirely pulled it off in a way that makes sense.

I think the film also suffers from a sense that many shots are simply filling time as they want the music to play for exactly as many bars as originally written; the pacing feels glacial a lot of the time as a result. I wasn’t quite devoting my full attention to the Joseph movie so it’s hard to entirely have an idea of how it compares in that regard, but I feel like that one did this more successfully, with more energetic shots and staging.

I’ve come to feel increasingly that musicals are just quite hard to film well; Joseph really leans into being super stylized and framed as a sort of heightened version of a stage production, which is one way that I think can work pretty well, but it’s just a lot easier to get restless watching a film than actors on stage, and if you’ve got a song playing and cut to different shots while it’s happening, those shots really need to be interesting and hold the viewer’s attention, rather than just arbitrary filler. In something stylized along the lines of a stage production, you can sometimes get away with doing that with cool choreography and spectacle, but if you’re going for something more grounded and realistic, like Evita, you need to figure out how to make interesting, meaningful shots out of the moments where a song is having an instrumental interlude or repeating a verse or a chorus (assuming you don’t simply cut those bits out of the song), and that’s just a lot harder than saying it.

(Incidentally, we also watched the 2021 West Side Story film recently, and I think Spielberg absolutely nailed doing this in an overall realistically styled and toned film - it does feature people doing group dance choreography with perfect seriousness as if it’s a normal thing to do, but both there and in other songs it carefully makes sure the characters are always doing something, with a flowing character dynamic that maintains a sense that something is happening and keeps it from feeling like we’re filling space or waiting for the song to be done. Tricky thing to do, but absolutely possible!)

All in all, neither Joseph nor Evita are making it onto my favorite musicals list, but they’re interesting in their own very different ways, and I enjoyed diving into them and rambling a bit. Musical rambling, I have missed thee.

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 9th May

Oooh, two number ones. Not only that, but two number ones that I don't actually know at all - these could literally be anything, I've not even heard of them. Exciting times!

Rock-A-Billy - Guy Mitchell (peaked at Number 1)

Well, I do know Guy Mitchell. I think of all the pre-rock and roll artists, he's possibly adapted the best to the new style of music, and this song's title suggests to me that he's making another bid to stay relevant. How successful will he be? I guess we'll see...

We start with some moderately energetic guitars and hand clapping, which is then spoiled by some of the world's laziest lyrics, as Guy sings rock-a-billy, rock-a-billy, rock-a-billy, rock, rock-a-billy, rock-a-billy, rock, rock. Seriously, that's the whole chorus. It's like somebody at the record company said gee, this rock and roll thing's hot, and I hear there's a genre called rockabilly, let's just repeat that a whole lot, the kids will love it!

It's not horrible, that said. First we get a verse about rockabilly's history, and how some people think it came from Tennessee / Then spread on out to the lone prairie. And then we also get a verse that's basically Guy giving us instructions for dancing, telling us to grab yourself a partner, lose the blues / Wear your store-bought clothes and your stompin' shoes, and later to wiggle like a trout. Which are both charming enough, if a bit odd. But I guess that's the point - if rock and roll are for the young, cool city folks, rockabilly's its weird hillbilly mirror version, less glam, but no less energetic and wild. At least in theory, it is - I'm not convinced that Guy Mitchell has any actual authentic country-boy cred, for all that he repeats the word "rockabilly" a tonne in the chorus, and so the song's kind of lacking in the grit you get in a lot of "real" rockabilly songs.

I do enjoy the fact that they've included not one but two gear-shift key changes. We've had a severe lack of cheesy key changes so far, more's the pity. Two feels a little excessive, but I'm not complaining at all. This song's a cheese-fest anyway, what's there to lose?

Actually, the more I listen, the more I'm thankful for the key changes, because without them, the song would get very monotonous. There's not a huge amount of variation between the verses and the chorus, and there's not much in the way of instrumental breaks or solos to break up the track, either. If you didn't have the key changes, it would just be a straight-up brutally boring gallop towards the finish line.

I have to be honest, this song is leaving me a little cold. I think it's the cynicism of it all. It definitely feels like an attempt to cash in on a trend, and while Guy's voice and general vibe are good for it, it doesn't feel like the most natural thing ever, or like much actual passion's been put into it. Compare this to Little Richard's yowling and bawling - the emotional whammy isn't even comparable.

Butterfly - Andy Williams (1)

Okay, we're starting out with the same sort of strummy guitar/banjo, clicks, claps and vocal aaaah backing that we got at the start of Singing the Blues. And overall, this has a similar vibe to that song, with some bluesy piano and some backing singers going doo-doo-wah throughout. It sets us up in a sort of blue, mopey mood that continues throughout the song.

Andy's got a voice that works for it, too - he croons in a way that's not a million miles from Elvis, with a lot of emphasis on some notes, and less on others, and a pretty emotional delivery, overall, with these little uh sounds on the end of lines. It's cool, legitimately.

But the musical elements are the least memorable aspects of this song, because... yikes, those lyrics. I kind of like them, but they're definitely of their era. First we learn how Andy's girl is a bit of a floozy, as he sings about how You tell me you love me, you say you'll be true / Then you fly around with somebody new. He's still crazy about her, but she flits around like a butterfly, so he decides to break up, telling us about how You treat me mean, you're makin' me cry / I've made up my mind to tell you goodbye. But to no avail, she's simply the troublin' kind, and so, in the creepiest line of the lot, we learn that I love you so much I know what I'll do / I'm clippin' your wings, your flyin' is through.

Ugh. It's so gross and creepy, a real predatory, serial killer line. Its only redeeming feature is that I could imagine it being used to brilliant ironic effect in a horror movie. I don't even know what "clippin' your wings" would mean, in this context - I think that's what makes it so awful! It could be so many different terrible things, and Andy sings it in this mild-mannered, sweet way that just makes the dissonance worse - urgh!

I do enjoy the metaphor of it all. And when I divorce the lyrics from the possible creepiness behind them, I do kind of like the song. Heck, I even like it as an ironic serial killer ballad. But boy, is Andy pushing it here!

It's at this point that I also need to shout out the backing singer in the back half who just does a solitary bom periodically. That, and the quote on the cover of the version I'm listening to, which describes Andy as "one of those he-males who slays the females". Which isn't doing much for the serial killer accusations, honestly.

I did weirdly enjoy both of those songs, but I'm under no illusions that they were the best songs ever to reach Number 1. Still, one felt a bit more genuine, even if that genuineness was creepy, and that has to earn it the top spot this week, as opposed to Guy's blatant attempt to cash in on a trend.

Favourite song of the bunch: Butterfly

[sitpwgs]

Hi!!! I'm so sorry I didn't reply until now. This week has been blah and I've felt more tired than usual. I love it all too and I loved seeing Long Live live so much, but I mostly understand why they were cut. I like everything how it is, but I would probably change the Evermore and Red songs the most. I would get rid of We are Never and I guess 22 for State of Grace and Red, which is an awesome opener and title track that sets up the whole album. I would not get rid of ATW 10 at all omg!!! For Evermore, I would probably get rid of Tis the Damn Season and Tolerate it, even though I like the table setup. I would probably put Gold Rush instead or maybe Long Story Short and would hypothetically want Evermore since it's another title track and my fav. I still liked her solo version of it too. I think I would try to add Our Song somewhere but it's a good thing its in the movie! I definitely love Look What You Made Me do with the other Taylors and the Don't Blame Me transition. The thing about rep to me..is I like every song but I don't really have specific favorites in the album as much. I feel the same way about 1989 sort of but Iove the singles, so I don't know if I would change anything on tour.

I am excited to hear it later tonight though omg!!! I forgot which song you said you were the most interested in or the most excited to hear. For me, I think it's still Slut and between Suburban Legends or Is it Over Now. Did you see the lyric snippets she posted and which songs do you think they were a part of? The first one reminded me of Holy Ground cuz of the coffee lyric mixed with a little bit of I Wish You Would but then someone said it was more chasing shadows in the grocery line lyric and I might prefer it if the song did have more longing actually so I guess we will see. That might also change what song I'll think it's from. When she did these for Midnights, I was pretty good at guessing a few of them. I am more interested in the pool lyric cuz of aquamarine for now but we will see if she shares another one later today too! Do you listen in order or vault first? I'm still gonna try shuffle for this one and see how it goes. If you have any other predictions for the songs, you can put them here. I am very curious on the sound, though I have no idea what it could be. I think there could be another slowish dreamy song and maybe it will be the new closer. Even though most of the songs are pretty short, I'm hoping they are still amazing and I'm sure they will be! Also, I wanted to ask you if you plan to listen to The Good Witch too cuz I really don't know if I should listen to Maisie or Taylor first. Like I feel like I wanna save Taylor for last but then I will be too excited..and maybe it depends on how long the album will be, but I also wanna hear Maisie's songs too, and I don't know what to do.

For Midnights, I honestly just consider the 3AM version the main version. I think when we heard it, it was all together cuz it was almost midnight and we were barely still getting thru the main album. I remember being the most excited for Midnight Rain, and Lavender Haze, and Antihero. I did not really like Midnight Rain on the first listen and my prediction of the song was wrong. I thought Lavender Haze might be an old fashioned 50s Broadway style love song from the way she talked about it and that was wrong lol. Antihero has become one of my favorites and I liked it when I first heard it but it wasn't an instant love either. The album grew on me a lot but my favorites have stayed mostly the same, and we have some of the same favorites! I think I'm going to listen to it later to get in a 1989 pop mood and I haven't heard it in a while.

Anyway I listened to Hollys album again and I think my favorites are Into Your Room, Ghost Me, Antichrist Lauren and Elvis Impersonators. Some of the songs blended and I think I need more time but I really enjoy the whole album. I think some of her older songs stand out to me more though at this point, like Scarlet and Walls are Way too thin.

Ya stunt casts are always sort of mixed for me, but if it works and gets more people to see shows, then I guess it's a good thing. Ya I was wondering how you felt about Jordan Fisher in the role. I knew it was rumored but didn't know it was confirmed, and I would be interested to see him in the role. I hope you have fun at the tour and I think seeing someone else might make a difference in a good way, even though I like Reeve. The only thing about the Waitress proshot is I'm not used to Sara in the role haha but I'm sure she's still good. Idk if I will see it yet but I do want to at some point and hope I don't forget about it. I realized I never got around to watching the Heather's proshot either, except it wasn't one of my favorite musicals. I seriously meant to watch Daddy Long Legs and Allegiance at some point..like I had both on my old computer, but never got around to it! I have listened to the cast recording of Daddy Long Legs though and know the basic plot and meant to watch the old movie version from the 50s. I remember one of the things my sister said was she has such an interesting voice too and thats why some songs would always get stuck in my head. I love She Loves Me and have seen a non pro shot version of First Date before. I've never had Broadwayhd but always wanted to check it out. I try to watch as many proshots as I can. I've never heard of Snapshots but it sounds interesting mixing Stephen Schwartz shows. Haha yes, we have actually already discussed Smash more than once in your asks but I do love it. I wonder what happened to the Smash musical. By the way, I heard Gatsby got mixed reviews but at least I think the costumes I saw made it look better and the sets were gorgeous!

Les Mis was great but now I can barely remember it! I can't believe I went but it almost doesn't feel like it. I loved him as Marius! He has a good voice and I always love Empty Chairs. My sister said she actually didn't care for Enjolras on tour and preferred Aaron in the movie and also that Jean Valjean sounded like Hugh Jackman from the movie, but it could be that we are too used to it even if I do love it..but seeing it on stage obviously just feels different and it's better. Just remember that reading or annotating is supposed to be a hobby so just take your time if you want, since it's so long. Eventually you will make some progress. Honestly I haven't had a lot of time for reading either if it makes you feel better. I did make time to start our buddy read which I wanted to do before I replied to you cuz I read that you said you didn't like it as much, and wanted to see how I felt about it. only read 2 chapters so far. I thought it was okay, but I think the thing that threw me off was that I never read third person so I would have to get used to that. If you don't want to read it anymore for now though, I can also start the Night Circus..even if it's not October anymore lol. Also I realized that I might have been confusing the Starless Sea with the book that you said you hated..the house in the cerulean sea lol. I realized I don't even know what that book is about but maybe I will try to find it if I like the Night Circus. But another person I follow said they loved the Starless Sea too and it's definitely one of their favorites so I might have to check it out. Oh I did not know that about Only Murders but I know the newest season revolves around a theater show and does have music or singing in it so thats awesome. Also..I actually know nothing about hockey at all! I remember it was a category on connections at one point and I was so clueless, but I hope you had an awesome time at the game! Anyway have a blast listening to the album tonight and I will reply with my reactions and opinions so we can talk about it!!!!

i was just thinking about you, friend! i've been looking forward to hearing from you, but no pressure on when you pop into my askbox 🤍 i hope your week gets better soon, and you get to rest this weekend!! do you have anything fun planned?

ugh i love state of grace — i do prefer the acoustic but it's such a good song. "mosaic broken hearts" is one of my favorite phrases that taylor's ever written. and i was lowkey always surprised gold rush never made it on the eras setlist, but then also a lot of things about the eras setlist surprised me (like no mashups). her solo version of evermore is so good; i really hope there's a live album of the surprise songs!

and i did! i think the 300 coffees one is from is it over now, but i'm not sure what the aquamarine one is from! othe chasing shadows line is so good too, i love cardigan. i'm still upset it was cut from the movie (despite understanding why she did that). i'm really bad at guessing things so we'll see! i would love a slowish dreamy song, but i feel like 1989 will be more pop upbeat stuff this time. i'm going to listen in order, but i might actually listen to maisie's good witch deluxe first and then 1989!

i'm still holding out hope for a 3 am vinyl. i love the way midnight rain is done on tour (i think a lot of midnights is perfect for touring, actually). i do think that 1989 and midnights seem more like sisters, than midnights/anything else — including lover; what do you think?

and yay!! i'm so happy to see that you listened to holly again! i do think some of them sound a bit similar, and i think that my favorites from her ep (scarlett, the walls are way too thin, deep end, etc) still outrank how i feel about my favorites on PMBB, but am curious to see how that'll change with more listens/over time!

i think jordan fisher will be great, vocally! there's been a lot of jokes about if he shows up to work (from when they were in deh) but i think jordan's always been a very strong vocalist and i'm really interested in his interpretation! i've never seen sara in waitress, but i have some friends who REALLY love her, so i'm excited to one day see the proshot! i am so bad at watching things — it's been years and i still haven't watched the come from away proshot either, and i love that show. i loveeee megan mcginnis' voice, it's so pretty! i also really like how she sings in some things are meant to be (little women)! i remember that now 😭 sorry! i haven't looked into the gatsby musical too much after we talked about it!! i'll look at some reviews and then we can chat about it next time :")

i'm so glad you got to see gregory as marius before he left!! i just love his marius! and yes — i am so excited to buddy read! are we still buddy reading both books? which book did you get two chapters into? happy to match your pace, obviously! i am finishing up an audiobook (hopefully tonight) and then am good to start something else! i love the starless sea! but i do hate the house in the cerulean sea!! the house in the cerulean sea is probably up there for my least favorite books of all time (for many reasons). if you want i'll also buddy read starless sea with you! a quick note for night circus — pay attention to the dates! i didn't realize it wasn't chronological the first time i read it and had to restart after a friend pointed it out to me.

wait do you play connections daily!! i play connections religiously; i love it. i had a blast at that game, and i feel like every time i go see a game in person i get more into the sport — i've been watching the last two kraken games online, which has been really fun (i used to lowkey just follow updates but now i'm watching from home and learning a lot more)!

by the time you read + reply, you'll probably have listened to the vault tracks + good witch deluxe so i'll leave you with some questions! what were your favorites, and initial thoughts? least favorites? how accurate were your predictions?

hope you're having a good weekend + have some time to rest!! xx

[gerogerigaogaigar]

The Clash - Sandinista!

This is such a wild album to have come from London's premier punk rockers. It's about two and a half hours of dub, reggae, ska, old school rock n roll, some disco, a gospel song, one folksy waltz, and occasionally a touch of punk. Sandinista! just isn't going to be for everyone, but for maniacs like me this is a gem. Sure not all of it works but most of it does and some of The Clash's best stuff is on here. Songs like One More Dub and Version Pardner show an understanding of reggae and dub that you would never expect from a bunch of punks, and Washington Bullets has a political message so far left that I actually agree with it! If you are in the mood for a triple album with explicit pro communist leanings then this is basically your only choice so enjoy it.

Elvis Presley - From Elvis In Memphis

That first Elvis album from back in 56, that was an important record. This album from 69, not so much. This is his comeback album basically. A decade of doing shitty movies took its toll on Elvis and he really just wanted to sing gospel so that's what he did. Good for him and all, but I don't care about that much about the music. It lacks the energy and rawness that made Elvis good back in the 50s. In The Ghetto and Suspicious Minds are admittedly pretty good, but Suspicious Minds wasn't even on the original cut of the album so idk. Actually fuck it the second half of this is pretty good if you listen to the expanded version.

Lana Del Rey - Norman Fucking Rockwell!

Lana Del Rey is terrifically boring at her best and this album is trying to take boring to new levels. Listless piano and listless vocals float aimlessly into nowhere. She sings like her jaw is permanently clenched. This isn't emotion it's manipulation. The commodification of romanticized suffering nothing more.

X - Los Angeles

Delightfully brief and full of energy. Los Angeles is half 60s garage throwback, half punk rock. More dismissive and witty than it's contemporaries and taking influence from the burgeoning new wave scene where a lot of their peers were going heavier. Not much to say really, just a very good punk rock album.

The Stone Roses - s/t

This is such a wet sounding album. The producers must have been turning those knobs 100% to the wet setting. So sloppy. Yeah this is one of those weirdly overhyped albums, but it's still really good. I'm not sure why rock critics got all manic about how it was the best album of all time, it's not too dissimilar to a lot of other acts coming out at the same time. The Stone Roses have one foot in 60s psychedelia and one foot in late 80s alternative and they blend it perfectly. Personally I find the bass riff from She Bangs The Drums to be maybe the catchiest thing ever recorded so who cares if they're not original? They're still good as hell.

[a-froger-epic]

This got me all morbid like when Brian and Roger leave us, Queen won’t really be active anymore and people who have witnessed the band in all its glory will remember it as one of the greatest rock bands in history but when those people die and when we die, no one who actually saw them live and lived in an era where Queen music is ubiquitous will be alive. To our grandchildren, Queen will be merely a relic on a single page of history. Vintage records tucked away on shelves. Yes, people will keep on enjoying their music and legacy, but on a much smaller scale. You don’t see people talking about Buddy Holly anymore. His music is still here but it’s not in the public consciousness. He is history. The past. We will all be forgotten at one point and that includes the band 👁👄👁 I hope people listen to Queen even long after our generation.

And yet, me, a 15-year-old at the time in the year 2000, I became quite obsessed with Buddy Holly for a while! Just... discovered his music, I don't even remember how. Went to see the musical, fell in love, wrote self-insert fic even. 😂

Yes, Queen will be history, the Beatles will be history, Elvis Presley, for example, is already history and has been for some time.

And yet, there's an Elvis movie in cinemas now. A kids show I'm performing in this school term, for young teens, is partly about Elvis.

Amadeus Mozart lived many hundreds of years ago, as did Shakespeare, as did the ancient Greek tragedy writers.

And yet, this is all our shared, human cultural heritage which comes to life again and again when it is rediscovered, generation after generation.

And the other morning, my 8-year-old sat at the dinner table and heard Because by the Beatles for the first time. His eyes lit up and he said "Mummy, I LOVE this song! Can you put it on my playist??"

On that playist is also Buddy Holly's song Everyday, there are Queen songs, there is Micheal Jackson and Edith Piaf and 90s techno I grew up with and Debussy. My children also watch and laugh at the cartoons from my childhood, the movies which my mother saw as a child, they read the fairytales my great great grandmother probably read.

Art doesn't die. It's forever.

[storytellerofuntoldlegends]

take my hand, take my whole life too

A/N: i missed the flower husbands so much that i wrote the majority of this in my phone's notes app when at my grandma's. also i think we were robbed of a sacrifice scene >:) (title is from the song "Can't Help Falling In Love" cause my grandma loves Elvis and we were listening to it while i was writing this)

Warnings: violence, kidnapping, near death experiences, human sacrifice, character death in dream, nightmares, fear of death (specifically of leaving someone behind), cuddling, forehead kisses, teasing/banter, crying (despite all the warnings i SWEAR this fic is mostly fluff and makes up for the angst)

Summary: For someone who had experienced death twice already, Jimmy would think he would have nothing to fear when it came to death. Or maybe those experiences made his fear more valid. But it wasn't really dying that scared him, it was who he would leave behind. Although if he was being honest, his own death was only his second biggest fear. His main fear was losing Scott.

-

It was dark when they came- setting their wall ablaze, weapons flashing and red banners waving. Jimmy put up quite the fight but was quickly disarmed, and Scott dropped his weapons when he saw the drawn bow aimed at his husband's head. Martyn was quick to bind Scott's hands behind his back, while Ren kept a sword pointed at Scott's throat. Skizz and Impulse grabbed either one of Jimmy's arms to hold him back. Etho kept the bow trained at his head for good measure- not that Jimmy would have dreamed of moving. Not when Ren's blade was close enough to graze Scott's neck.

"Sorry about this," Impulse murmured. Jimmy couldn't care less about Impulse's apology. He clearly had chosen his side, no matter how much he claimed to be a double agent for them. 

"What do you want?" Scott asked, sounding surprisingly calm for having a sword pointed at him, but Jimmy could tell from his stiff posture and clenched fists that he was trying to keep himself from trembling.

"We've come for your tribute. You'll give it to us, or we’ll take it from you, one way or another," Ren said with an evil grin, and Jimmy didn't like how he looked at Scott one bit. 

"We gave you your rabbit's foot, what more do you want?!" Jimmy demanded, straining against Skizz and Impulse. Etho readied his bow, but it wasn't until Martyn roughly pulled Scott against him and put the blade of his axe against Scott's throat that Jimmy stopped struggling.

"Not yet, my hand. We need to be at the altar for that," Ren said, causing Jimmy's blood to run cold. They were going to sacrifice Scott. And he was going to have to watch.

“He has two lives left, my liege. We could afford to kill him once- but if his red knows what’s good for him, we won’t have to,” Martyn replied, looking to Jimmy with a cruel glint in his eyes. He scowled, but stayed put as he nervously looked to Scott. Jimmy could tell Scott was trying to put on a brave face for him, but he was noticeably pale and his eyes kept darting between the bow aimed at Jimmy’s head and the diamond axe hovering at his own throat.

It felt like Jimmy had barely blinked and they were within the Dogwarts walls. He was stood in front of the altar, Skizz and Impulse still on either side of him. Etho was off to one side, bow slung over his shoulder, but he kept a hand on the hilt of his sword as he eyed Jimmy warily. Ren stood in front of Jimmy, but he could still see the scene of the altar clearly.

Martyn shoved Scott to his knees, then with a firm grip on his teal colored hair, he forced his head down. Scott grimaced at the treatment of his hair, but kept his head down when Martyn removed his hand. Scott's eyes met Jimmy's, and it was like everything else drifted away. No altar, no Dogwarts. Just Scott and Jimmy. The terror was clear in Scott's eyes, but he gave Jimmy a reassuring smile despite that. Jimmy wanted to stay in that moment forever, with Scott's gentle smile and the fantasy that maybe everything would be okay. But reality came crashing back in with the glint of a diamond axe poised in the air. It swung down to its target-

And Jimmy woke up with a scream. He sat bolt upright in bed, chest heaving and the events of his dream circling through his head with a startling amount of realism. It was like he could see his husband's blood spattered on the stones of the altar, even if he woke up before it could actually happen. It... it didn't happen... right? Jimmy scrambled out of his bed and up the stairs- he had to be sure.

He ran to Scott's home across the pond, quickly making his way up the side of the mountain to the door. Taking a shaky breath, he quietly opened Scott's door, and closed it just as softly behind him. He walked to Scott's bedroom, and breathed out a sigh of relief at the sight of his husband sleeping soundly in his loft. A fond, soft smile came to Jimmy's face as he watched his husband’s chest rise and fall. Scott was fine. Dogwarts hadn't sacrificed him.

Scott stirred, even though Jimmy had tried to be quiet, and sleepily blinked his eyes open. He propped himself up on a forearm, his other hand rubbing his eyes. Scott's hair was a mess, and Jimmy couldn't help but smile at the sight. Scott was always poised and presentable- seeing his husband a little ruffled from sleep was rather adorable.

"Jimmy? What're you- c'mere," Scott said, quickly giving up on getting answers to instead make grabby hands at Jimmy. With a laugh, Jimmy climbed up the ladder to his bed to nestle in beside Scott. He had barely laid down before Scott smushed his face inelegantly against Jimmy's chest with a pleased hum. Jimmy chuckled and wrapped his arms around him as he quickly drifted off again. Jimmy felt sleep tugging at him insistently, despite the rude awakening he had gotten. With a kiss to the top of Scott's head, Jimmy fell asleep, at peace knowing that his husband was safe in his arms.

-

Jimmy awoke to a weight stirring on top of him. His eyes slowly fluttered open to see a head of teal hair resting on his chest. Jimmy couldn't help but run a hand through Scott's hair with a likely ridiculously sappy smile. Scott let out a soft, startled sound and tilted his head to look up at Jimmy with mild confusion. His expression softened when he realized who was holding him, but he still looked rather perplexed.

"Jimmy? When did you get here? Did you sneak into bed with me?" Scott asked with a mischievous grin. Jimmy rolled his eyes. 

"Scott, we're married. Sharing a bed is hardly scandalous. And do you seriously not remember waking up and making grabby hands at me until you could latch onto me like an octopus?" Jimmy asked with a laugh. Scott's cheeks tinged pink, and he laughed nervously.

"Did I actually?" Scott asked, sounding a little flustered. 

"You did! You looked like you were gonna pout if I didn't cuddle you instantly," Jimmy replied with a grin. 

"I can't believe I'm being bullied by my own husband," Scott huffed, burying his face in Jimmy's chest.

"Guess I could just leave then..." Jimmy teased, shifting like he was going to move away. Scott made a disgruntled sound in the back of his throat, holding onto Jimmy tighter. Jimmy laughed, hand gently running through Scott's hair to reassure him that he wasn't going anywhere. 

"So why were you in my house in the middle of the night before I apparently demanded cuddles?" Scott asked. Jimmy's hand stilled in Scott's hair, flashes of the nightmare coming back to him in the form of lifeless blue eyes and cruel laughter from their enemies. Scott peered up at him, and with an almost wounded sound he shuffled closer so that they were eye to eye, a hand coming up to wipe away tears that Jimmy hadn't even realized were falling.

"Nightmare. Had to make sure you were alright," Jimmy said softly. Scott smiled, gentle as he had in Jimmy's dream, then shifted up to kiss his forehead before nestling back down beside him, foreheads resting against each other and noses practically touching. 

"I'm here. You're here. We're together. It'll be alright," Scott said, voice gentle yet determined. Jimmy frowned slightly.

"You know it can't stay that way forever," Jimmy said. He was on red, Scott was on green. Odds were high that Scott would outlive him. Scott frowned right back at him.

"Then let's not worry about forever. Let's just enjoy the here and now," Scott said, more determined than before. Jimmy couldn't help but smile, and Scott returned the smile easily.

"I think I like the sound of here and now," he said softly. 

"Good! Because the here and now includes cuddling," Scott chirped with a grin, ducking his head down to where Jimmy’s neck and shoulder met. Jimmy chuckled, holding his husband tighter and burying his nose in his hair. They couldn't lie in bed forever, there were things they needed to do with their day- but after all, Scott said they should focus on the here and now. And that was exactly what Jimmy intended to do.

-

MCYT Fic Taglist (lmk if you wanna be added/removed): @corazon10000 @damiensaidno @franticfandomfanatic @space-ace123

[cryingoverafictionalcharacter]

Terrible Dancers

Prompt: You are spending the holidays at the burrow with George, Fred, Ginny and the golden trio. The house is packed most of the time, which is fine seeing you love everyone there *cough* especially Fred *cough* but when you get a chance of having some guaranteed alone time, you take it to your advantage. Only realizing you weren't totally alone when Fred comes downstairs to see you dancing around the living room in your pajamas, leading to a dance battle, laughing, and a confession.

Warnings: Swearing, fluff, cute things, that's it I thing?

A/N:Is this probably the lamest, most corny, most bazar fic I’ve ever written? Yes, but this idea came to me when I was listening to ABBA in the car and I couldn’t not write it, So there will be 80s muggle music references in this to give you the full ⭐experience ⭐ . Anyway I hope you all enjoy it! Feel free to leave any fic recs. 

A/N2: I AM IN THE MIDDLE OF WRITING THIS AND OMG PLEASE PLAY THE SONG I’LL WRITE IN WHEN JUST OMG IM CRYING.

You were currently sat on on of the couches in the burrow, your legs kicked up in front of you as you read a book. It was one of the few times you were able to find some quiet in the burrow. You loved the burrow, you thought of it as your second home, but with Arthur, Molly, Fred, George, Harry, Hermione, Ron, Ginny, and yourself all staying for the Holidays, you had to admit it was a bit crowded.

However, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny had least earlier in the day, saying they were running errands, which was probably code for doing something illegal, but you knew they were fine so you took the opportunity to finally catch up on a book Hermione had recommended to you. 

After about an hour of reading, Molly walked in, greeting you with a smile that lit up the room. You smiled back, marking your place in your book and putting it down beside you.

“Hello dear, the boys and I were going to head off and do some last minute holiday shopping, would you like to join us?” She asked.

“I’ve gotten all my shopping done, so I think I’ll just stay in today if that alright?” You asked.

“Of course! Though you will be here alone, you know where everything is if you need something?” Molly asked, concern in her voice. You nodded.

“Yes, thank you” You smiled.

“Alright, we’ll be back by sundown, try to enjoy the peace and quiet” Molly joked, making you laugh.

“I will, have fun!” You said, watching as Molly left the room headed towards the fireplace, before opening your book again to continue reading.

It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes before you started feeling antsy. The house was quiet. Too quiet. The burrow was known for always being active and full of laughing, happy people, so now that the only sound in the whole house was the steady ticking of the clock, you had to admit, it was a little freaky being the only one here.

You quickly closed your book, and idea popping into your head. You decided to bring your Walkman when you left to go to the burrow just in case you ever needed to block out the noise. You hadn’t used it at all so far, and now seemed like the perfect time.

You ran upstairs into the room you were sharing with Ginny and Hermione, digging through your bag and pulling out the rectangular object. Your parents had made you a mixtape of your favorite songs before you left, and while you loved some popular wizard singers, you missed your music.

You ran back downstairs, putting the Walkman down and pressing play, the music instantly starting up, playing one of your favorite songs.

A Man After Midnight, by ABBA

You walked to the empty area in front of the couch and started to dance, swaying your hips a bit, before starting to sing the words.

“Half past twelve and I’m watching the late show in my flat all alone, how I hate to spend the evening on my own.”

As you were singing you started swaying around the room, grabbing your wand to use as a microphone, and continuing to get more and more energetic as the song went on. 

“Is there a soul out there?”

You stopped moving just tapping your foot, slowly raising the hand that wasn’t holding the wand.

“Someone to hear my prayers........”

“Gimme Gimme Gimme a man after midnight!” You sang at the top of your lungs, jumping around the room and singing into your wand. You were so lost in the moment, you didn’t notice the figure walking down the stairs, until-

“Take me through the darkness through the break of the- JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!” Your singing was cut off by the sound of you screaming, well cursing, as you turned around to see Fred staring at you with a confused, half asleep look, a grin spread across his face. “What the fuck are you doing?” You practically yelled, running over to switch off your radio.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Fred laughed, the slight smile he had before now turning into a shit eating grin.

“You know, just.... dancing’” You said, desperately trying to act casual, like your crush of two years didn’t just walk downstairs, shirtless by the way, to see you dancing around like a maniac”

“I can see that. Its awful” Fred joked, making his way down the rest of the stairs and walking over to you.

“Shut up I’m amazing. Wait I thought you and your family were going out shopping” You said, suddenly remembering you were supposed to be alone.

“Yeah, George tried to make me to come along, but I didn’t wake up so my mum left a note” He said, sitting on the couch in front of you.

You nodded in understanding, trying your best to look Fred in the face, instead of letting your eyes wander to his hair which was currently sticking out in all directions. Or toward his chest which was currently bare exposing a constellation of freckles, or at how low his sweatpants were hanging-

“Earth to Y/N” Fred said, waving a hand in front of your face, snapping you out of your thought.

“Oh yeah, nice, cool” You said nodding, rocking back on your heels.

“What were you listening to, it doesn’t sound familiar?” Fred asked, leaning back on the couch.

“Oh, it’s a muggle band called ABBA, they’re basically music goddesses” You joked, walking over to your Walkman picking it up and handing it him.

“That's a lot of praise, considering your horrible taste in wizard music” He said, making you playfully swat his arm, a fake offended expression crossing your face before smiling, pressing the play button and continuing the song.

“Huh, its actually not bad, what else do you have on this?” He asked smiling.

You smiled back, taking back the Walkman and skipping to the next song, which happened to be “Africa” by Toto.

“This one’s really popular, I think you’ll like it” You said, setting down the Walkman and going to sit next to him.

As the music started I could see Fred starting to bob his Head to the beat.

“I like it so far” Fred said

An hour later, and you and Fred were dancing around the living room, singing at the top of your lungs.

“So you think you can stop me and spit in my eye!” Fred yelled

“So you think you can love me and leave me to die!” You sang back

“Ooooooh baby, don’t do this to me baby, just gotta get out, just gotta get right out of here” You both sang in unison, Fred playing an air guitar as you sang into your wand.

As the slow started to slow down, you both just started swaying, smiling at each other and catching your breath. Finally after a moment the song ended, making you both laugh.

“That ones my favorite so far” Fred said laughing, going to take a break and sit on the couch, you plopping next to him.

“Its a classic” You laughed, taking a deep breath, trying to cool down from the very intense dancing. 

The next song started up and you instantly recognized it, practically lunging at the small radio to skip the song, but as soon as you hit the pause button, Fred snatched it out of your hands.

“Hey” You yelled, reaching to get the device back which Fred held over his head, making it hard to reach.

“What’s wrong with the next song?” Fred asked, making your face heat up a bit.

“It’s not really dancing music, my parents probably only added it on because they know it’s one of my favorites, but yeah it’s not that good we can skip it” You said quickly, attempting to get the radio back from Fred, but he still kept it over his head.

“Y/N, if you like it than I’m sure its great” Fred said smiling down at you. You let out a breath. You knew he wasn’t going to let it go until you played it.

“Fine” You said, Fred finally handing the radio back. You rewound the song so it would start from the beginning, before taking a breath, and pressing play.

*PLAY CAN’T HELPING FALLING IN LOVE BY ELVIS*

The music picked up, and with it your heartbeat, afraid of what Fred was going to say. You were internally panicking, playing one of the most iconic love songs ever written in front of your long time friend and crush.

You had been friends with this boy since first year. You might even go as far to call him your best friend. Sure there had been flirty moments but most of it was just kidding around, but this was different.

Before you could panic anymore though, Fred had stood up and turned to face you. A sly smile grew across his face before he held out his hand to you.

“Dance with me” 

“...What?” you asked, eyes widening. Were you hearing this right?

“Dance with me” Fred repeated. So without thinking you took his hand and stood up.

He led you to the middle of the living room, moving to put your right hand on his shoulder, holding your left and resting his other hand on your waist, making your breath hitch in your throat.

“Trying to make a move on me Weasley?” You joked, trying to ease the tension.

“Maybe” He said smiling, but it wasn’t his usual joking smile, it was more sincere.

You started to sway to the music, laughing as Fred twirled you, your hand moving back to its original place on Fred's shoulder.

As the music continued to play, you couldn’t help but listen to the lyrics, while looking up at the boy you were dancing with, finding he was already looking at you.

“Like a river flows, surely to the sea, darling so it goes, some things are meant to be”

Fred suddenly wrapped his arm around your back, moving to dip you backwards, startling a laugh out of you, before he pulled you back up, pulling your chest closer to his, barely leaving any room between you to.

“For I can’t help, falling in love with you”

You moved your hand out of his, instead moving to rest your arms around Fred’s neck, Fred moving his now free hand to your other hip.

“Who taught you how to dance?” You jokingly asked, once again trying to relive the tension that had grown between you too.

“Would you believe me if I said I’m just a natural?” Fred smiled

“Definitely not” You smiled back, making a light chuckle leave his lips.

“Take my hand, take my whole life too, for I can’t help, falling in love with you”

“I think this might be my new favorite song” Fred said, making you roll your eyes but you couldn’t wipe the smile off your face.

“Why’s that” You asked, noticing how Fred’s demeanor seemed to get more serious compared to his usual playful attitude.

“Because it’s your favorite song, and you’re my favorite person” Fred said.

The butterflies that were in fluttering in your stomach before were now in a frenzy, your heart beating like crazy. You continued to sway to the music, slowing as the song finally stopped. Fred moved a hand up to move a strand of hair out of your face, before closing the space between you, connecting your lips.

You pulled him closer as well, kissing him back and moving your hands to his hair while his moved back to your waist. After a moment your finally pulled away, looking into each others eyes.

“You’re my favorite person too” You said, making the both of you smile.

“Is that the end of the tape?” Fred asked, noticing that the music wasn’t continuing.

“Yep, but I have another one one second” You said, moving out of Fred’s grasp to sprint up the stairs, Fred laughing behind you.

You came back downstairs, a new tape in ahnd. You quickly switched out the tack and pressed play, waiting for the music to start.

“Who did you say was your favorite person again?” Fred asked as you walked back over to him, laughing as you wrapped your arms around him. He moved to take a step back and stumbled, tripping over the book you had put down earlier, and because you were already holding him, you fell as well.

“Shit! Are you ok?” You asked, landing on Fred’s chest, looking up at his face to see him laughing, sending you into a fit of laughter as well, before you were both cut off by the sound of the Walkman playing that oh so familiar Saxophone.

You would have appreciated the irony, but before you could you heard the front door open, looking over to see Ron, Hermione, and Harry all looking at you... laying on top of a shirtless Fred..... with careless whisper playing in the background.

“It’s not what it looks like!” you said, quickly sitting up, Fred helping you to stand so you could turn off the music.

“My eyes!” Ron shrieked

“She fell we weren’t!-” Fred started.

“We don’t want to hear it pervs” Harry said, a slightly joking tone in his voice.

“For shame” Hermione said shaking her head disappointedly, but as the two other boys left towards their room, she gave you a quick thumbs up before running off as well.

You listened in silence as the three ran up the stairs, the door slamming behind them. There were a few seconds of silence between you and Fred, neither of you knowing how to process what just happened.

“You know, we could do what it looked like” Fred said slyly.

“Fred!”

------------------------------------------------------------

A/N: I’m not going to lie, I think the ending is hilarious. Any who, I hope you enjoyed this super sappy, almost cringe worthy fic. Feel free to leave requests if you want. 

[if-i-can-dream-of-elvis]

What’s your favorite Elvis film? I like Loving You and Follow That Dream because it did something different with Elvis’ character. He seemed so natural in just being Elvis and wasn’t trying to live up to the image his other films created.

Hey! Oh, those are very good choices! And yes, Deke Rivers is one of Elvis' most lovable characters imo and probably the one who most resembled him in terms of personality… Loving You almost feels like an autobiography actually, so I understand what you mean. I agree, it's very comforting as a fan to see Elvis in roles he really enjoyed playing. :) And well, whenever I'm asked to choose an Elvis movie, song, era, jumpsuit, etc., I have such a hard time… there are so many amazing options to choose from, ugh! I consider King Creole to be a cinematic masterpiece that I love dearly and, in fact, Elvis' performance as Danny Fisher deserved several awards and I'll never shut up about it! But but but… I have such a strong emotional attachment to Blue Hawaii! It was probably the first Elvis movie I've seen multiple times and, my lord, the amount of times I've listened to its soundtrack is absurd too! Guess I'll have to go with Blue Hawaii as my favorite movie (so sad for the others but there's room in my heart for all of them *cries* ♡)

[delu-jean]

𝐒𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐋𝐲𝐫𝐢𝐜 𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭 (𝟏𝟎𝟎 𝐅𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫 𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭)

Hello! As this event takes place, requests will be closed since juggling both will be a little tiring! 

-> Thanks: Thank you guys for 100 follows! I’m glad my writing is something others can enjoy, and I’ll keep on doing my best to both improve, and deliver. 

Event: 

-> Song-Fic/ Song Lyric Event: There are forty five prompts with different song lyrics! Some angst, and others fluff, but all revolve around romance~

->Each fic will revolve around the lyric specifically, or the entire song!

->Eg of fic with just the lyric (specifcially): I may use the lyric as a line you, or another character would say, it might pop up when needed, and etc. A fic example would be: “Before You Go” (Nanami Kento x fem!/reader). 

->Eg of fic with entire song: Basically a song-fic

->Eg of fic wihtout lyrics in it: I present the lyrical prompt at the beginning of the fic, and write w/o needing to use it as an actual line, or anything else. 

->Whichever is found fitting, will be used!! ^^

->Either way, the fic will be written about that lyrical prompt!! :))

Rules: (A must)

This event is one for (fem!xreader) x (<inserted male reader>) 

He needs to be a character from one of the five fandoms I write for! 

Jjk, Mha, Haikyuu, Aot, and Demon Slayer

If your guy isn’t on the list, by all means, request and I’ll tell you if I feel like I can write for him!! ^^

-> Link to the M.list <-

This is a non-nsfw event, and topics over 18+ aren’t allowed!! 

You can only request one character per prompt, unless, the prompt calls for two! (Even then, you can choose to only ask for one) 

My rules still apply for this event, if you would like specifics, please do ask, or look through the rules post! 

-> Rules <-

Key: 

Angst

Fluff 

You can request more than one character (max would be two) = ☆

Prompts: 

"What if I said I'm sorry, what if I made a scene? Wouldn't that make you mine again, you're all I'll ever need," -What If I Said I'm Sorry (Caliber)

"You won and she chose you, and she loved you, and she's gone…" -Its Over Isn't It? (DeeDee Magno Hall) ☆

"She's a she's a lady, and I am just a boy without a line," -Line without a hook (Ricky Montgomery) 

"Knew I was falling when I looked inside your eyes, and you said…'I know you are but what am I?" -What Am I? (Why don't we)

"I need a man who loves me like my Father loves my mom," -Like My father (Jax)

"You make my heart beat faster than adrenaline, you kiss away the pain of all the hell I’m in," -Medicine (James Arthur) 

"It's always one step forward, and three steps back. I'm the love of your life until I make you mad," -One step forward, and three steps back (Olivia Rodrigo) 

"Let's write our story, and let's sing our song. Let's hang our pictures on the wall," -Memories (Shawn Mendes) 

"Maybe you and I have history, but I don't think you know me. Have we met before?" -Have we met before (Eric Nam, Sarah Barrios) 

"Hey baby won't you look my way, I can be your new addiction~" -Everybody Talks (Neon Trees)

"She gets the flowers...right? The post made about her. A love that is perfect, a love I deserved, yeah. A love that I gave,” - She Gets the flowers (Betch MCcarthy) 

“I just heard you found the one you’ve been looking, that you’ve been looking for. I wish I would’ve known it wasn’t me,” -We Don’t Talk Anymore (Charlie Puth) 

“Even when we go through changes, even when we’re old. Remember that I told you I’d find my way back home,” -Way Back Home (SHUAN) 

“You say that it’s all just a blur, but I see you kissing her. No no, you gotta go, go, and I’ll be just fine without you,” -Goodbye Boy (Peg Parnivek)   

“You say that I'm too insecure, you want me to be someone else, but if I'm not the one you want...Just go ahead and walk right out the door,” -Who I am (NIve) 

“She’s In The Rain, you want to hurt yourself I’ll stay with you. You want to make yourself go through the pain. It’s better to be held than holding on,” -She’s In The Rain (The Rose) 

“If all it is is eight letters, why is it so hard to say? If all it is is eight letters then why am I in my own way?” -Eight Letters (Why Don’t We) 

“Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful angel. Love your imperfections every angle. Tomorrow comes and goes before you know...so i just had to let you know~” -Beautiful (Bazzi) 

“Congratulations, I heard you’re doing great...congratulations, how are you okay? I hate that you’re happy, I hope that you can’t sleep,” -Congratulations (Day 6) 

“I know I can treat you better than he can. And anyone like you deserves a gentleman,” -You Better (Shawn Mendes) ☆

“Congratulations, you’re finally leaving. Let’s throw a party here tonight, and toast to the end of you and I,” -Congratulations (Eric Nam) 

“Wise men say...only fools rush in. But I can’t help, falling in love...with...you,” -Fools Rush In (Elvis) 

“Don’t say you miss me, when you don’t call. Don’t say you’re hurting, without the scars. Don’t say you’re here tonight without tomorrow too. Don’t say you love me, unless you do,” -Don’t Say you Love Me (Fifth Harmony) 

“A lifetime of laughter at the expense, of the death of a bachelor,” -Death Of A Bachelor (Panic At The Disco)

“She told me that she loved me by the water fountain. She told me that she loved me and she didn’t love him. And that was really lovely cause it was innocent, but now she has a cup with something else in it…” -Water Fountain (Alec Benjamin) -> Oikawa x Reader ☆

“And I don’t need a reason to keep on dreaming. That we can with this stupid thing...called love,” -Lose (Nikki)

“Don’t take this personal, but personally, I think you should get with somebody like me. But worst of all...you don’t even see,” -Personal (The Vamps) 

“But you got a lot of great songs 'bout a lot of shit guys, you did more with 3 minutes than they'll do with their lives. And we'll buy ourselves houses with our heartbreak songs, screw everybody else who ever treated us wrong,” - Three Minutes (JP Saxe) ☆

“I’ve got all my money on you, got all my dollars on you. And I feel like a million bucks, a million bucks, and I give no f**ks when I’m with you,” -Million Bucks (Smallpools) 

“She put my name in yellow hearts. Her favourite colour like the stars. I didn’t listen very hard, when she told me she was crazy from the start,” -Yellow Hearts (Ant Saunders) 

“And I want you to cry, cry for me. Like I cried for you baby, cry for me,” -Cry For Me (Twice) 

“Please don’t let this love die young, please don’t let this love die young. If I’m going to lose someone, don’t let it be you,” -Love Die Young (Eric Nam) 

“Ain't never felt this way, can't get enough so stay with me. It's not like we got big plans. Let's drive around town holding hands,” -ILYSB (Lany)

“Maybe I don’t want to be just friends, see you only on the weekends. Sorry hope you understand, I like you a little too much for that,” -Just Friends (JORDY) 

“Golden eyes, if it ain’t you girl I don’t want to try. Baby, baby, baby you’re my diamond shine,” -Golden Eyes (Layto) 

“I like me better when I’m with you. I like me better when I’m with you. I knew from the first time, I stayed for a long time cause~ I like me better when I’m with you,” -I Like Me Better (Lauv) 

“Hey pretty Stranger, I think you look cute, I don’t think I’ve ever met someone like you,” -Your Text (Sundial) 

“And They say, Chivalry is dead. So let a real man pick up the slack, and treat you with respect,” -Chivalry Is Dead (Trevor Wesely) 

“And I Know there’s no making this right, and I know there’s no changing your mind. But we both have each other tonight. So if love is nothing more than just a waste of your time, waste it on me,” -Waste On Me (BTS) 

“I hope he treats you better than I ever could. Cause you deserve the world times two and the perfect afternoons. For you to find who fills your heart even if I’m not the one you choose,” -Chicken Tendies (Clinton kane) ☆

“It’s bittersweet to think about the damage we do, cause I was going down but I was doing it with you. And I say that I hate you with a smile on my face,” -Favourite Crime (Olivia Rodrigo) 

“Find me, in another place in time. If only, if only you were mine. But I’m already someone else’s baby,” -Baby (Clean Bandit) 

“And I might never stop your sorrow, fix you up good as new. But that don’t mean that I can’t hold your hand in mine,” -Someone You Like (Girl And The Dream Catcher) 

“Cause when you said jump I said ‘how high?’ But when I jumped you said ‘goodbye,’ “ -Walked Through Hell (Anson Seabra) 

“I want to love me, the way that you love me. Oh, from all of my pretty, and all of my ugly too, I love it when I see me from your point of view,” POV (Ariana Grande) -> Giyuu x Reader

Have fun :)

[mcu-and-buckybarnes-things]

I have wanted to talk about the Elvis movie but I don't know why it's just difficult to organize my thoughts.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the stage performance part but so disgusted by (this is much worse than “hate” a character) Colonel it almost ruined the whole experience for me.

Good thing is in addition to Elvis’ best songs, you got to hear so many great black music. I went to see the movie with no knowledge of the cast other than Austin and Tom Hanks. So I was so happy to see B.B. King and Little Richard (I liked both of the actors, B.B. is so handsome and Little Richard is just enchanting).

My favorite music genres have always been soul & blues from the 60s and 70s. My Walkman (yes I use Walkman rather than phone because of its Hi-Res sound quality) is full of songs by Nina Simone, James Brown, B.B.King, etc. And of course Elvis.

So I literally listen to Elvis (and many others of course) every day when I’m driving.

I remember one of the first CDs I bought was a 5-disc set of Elvis.

So I actually went to see this movie with some knowledge (not much about his personal life though because after all he died before I was even born), unlike when I watched The Doors, I had zero idea of who they are (because personally I’m not into that genre). To this day I still have no idea was Jim Morrison really that insanely adorable or is it just because of Val?

But seeing Elvis is just so different.

If you only look at Austin’s face, he does not really look like Elvis even with the makeup. Can’t deny that but personally resemblance is never the most important part in biopics (I mean it is important, but should not be the soul of the film).

Other than that I think Austin is absolutely great at stage performance and singing, he has very charming voice and is very charismatic (nowadays it’s just difficult to find that among younger generation actors).

But I feel the scenes when Elvis is offstage are a little off, it still feels like somebody trying very hard to imitate Elvis, which I think might also be a result of the writing and directing.

That being said I still think Austin is the best fit you can ever find, I really admire his talent and courage and all the hard work and I can’t wait to watch his other works.

[cherry-interlude]

Lana Del Rey Unreleased Ranking (3)

This is a re-ranking of Lana's unreleased songs, after making a first a few years ago. This is all my opinion, which I don't mind anyone disagreeing with but don't come for me for it - honestly, I like every song, despite any criticism, and this ranking is very vague. It's based on objective and subjective opinion.

This is the third of five posts, with the middle songs.

Dreamgirl

Purely wholesome and dreamy, Lana adds some very fifties “shoo-wops” to play a fifties starlet whispering, her vocals soothing and soft along with the looping piano that guides the song.

Jimmy Gnecco

Breathless over the brisk guitar, Lana gushes over Jimmy – mixing her adoration of her lovers with wannabe-starlet fangirling. It’s one of her best acoustic tracks as she smirks and requests a trip to the park.

Elvis

Lana’s acoustic dedication to her icon Elvis Presley is memorable despite how stripped back it is. It could have been cleaner but Lana’s sorrowful desperation to be close to this man who she is such a fan of works well in being decent output from her.

Boarding School

It’s a difficult listen, considering Lana’s nostalgia is for a “pro-ana nation” and a school where “makig love with your teachers” is revered, but it may just be a satirical look at her time in boarding school when she was younger. I don’t enjoy listening to such worrying topics being handled in an upbeat song but the song itself has well-written lyrics and a great instrumental.

Television Heaven

This song is incredibly sweet, with lovely lyrics, dreamy verses and a distinctive pop feel, but it is definitely a strange mash of instrumentals. It’s not too jarring but it does make the song fall lower in ranking. It feels indecisive as it goes from sugary pop to a slightly darker feel in the choruses, and the lyrics aren’t the most imaginative in Lana’s library of tracks.

Be My Daddy

Lana’s full on sex-kitten in this song that opens with twangy guitars and her hushed “what’s up?” as she greets her potential “daddy”. With dirtier lyrics that she’s “open like a Christmas present” and how she’ll “fuck you”, Lana avoids keeping the sex in just the vibe of the song.

Break My Fall

Another song made for another artist, Lana this time sounds like she’s doing her own track. The pop sound is still ideal for actual music charts but Lana pulls the song off well, playing a strong woman far removed from the tragic women of many of her songs. It’s strong in quality and doesn’t stray into more experimental territory where many of Lana’s unreleased songs reside.

Hit and Run

With three versions to pick from (the poppy original, the Born To Die style slower version and the demo Criminals Run The World that’s a little more overt about Lana’s violent intentions), all three of these songs have something special about them. The pop version is bouncy and chaotic, perfect for a wild spree of gun fights and car chases. The slower version is much more seductive and measured, but a little too reflective compared to the manic power of the upbeat version. Criminals Run The World ranks much lower, not as smooth compared to Hit and Run but still with that insanity that makes Hit and Run a wild ride.

Heavy Hitter

With a jazzy introduction, Lana gives us a glamorous tale of a star having an overdose (somehow she makes it glitzy). However, following the suggestive chorus in which Lana asks her man to open his butterfly doors of his car (to drive her to get help, somehow delivered with seduction rather than horror), the lyrics get lost in Lana’s generic praising of herself and her wicked ways. However, it’s a staple of Lana’s unreleased music, even if I do skip after the (if you think about it) harrowing first verse and chorus.

Behind Closed Doors

The instrumental is a little bit all over the place, but it does work when Lana details her ill-received romance to her lover, then jumps right in the chorus to eagerly tell him how much she enjoys sleeping with him.

Gangsta Boy

Lana is inspired by Betty Boop as she croons and gasps her way through the track. The vibe is great, though the music falls a bit, but Gangsta Boy is playful, light-hearted fun.

You’re Gonna Love Me

Lana may be raw in her vocals and basic in her instrumentals (only a guitar) but Lana takes control, self-assured she will make the listener adore her. Her confessional whisper that she might just want to be loved gives this song a knowing edge despite the pondering questions and realism-on-the-edge-of-pessimism feel tone.

Living Legend

Lana’s Living Legend was intended for Ultraviolence, and whilst the song fits in it is definitely one of her more slumbering songs. Yet her sentiment is strong, her lyrics thoughtful and thoroughly enjoyable. All of the versions bring something a bit different but it is underlined by great song-writing.

Hey You

Lana has fun greeting a potential lover with this track and I have as much fun listening to it. The chorus is sparse and repetitive but Hey You is all about grabbing your attention rather than going to deep.

Is It Wrong?

Claustrophobic and guided by a smart riff and technological glitches, Lana pulls off the perfect unhinged groupie as she questions whether or not she is wrong for wanting the star of her dreams so much. The glitching is great for really seeing how Lana teeters on the edge of sanity for this guy she can’t resist, going from being the starlet to the foaming-at-the-mouth fangirl.

Playground

Lana becomes a rapper apparently in Playground and hits back at anyone who doubts her and her music. With a cloying chorus that compares the music industry to a playground of bitchy comments and school yard, Lana’s verses are smooth and her references overall decent. It can be a little bit clunky in places but it doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Motel 6

A cute little dance track which namedrops Jim and her sister, Chuck, Lana brings the party to her favourite motel, downplaying her glamour to throwback her ‘lore’ and her old life pre-fame. Though it’s very much just describing one night rather than anything complex, it’s harmless fun.

Dynamite

Like the explosive dynamite itself, this song is punchy, restless and powerful. Lana layers this dominating track with innocent references to ice cream and pillow fights whilst also not holding back from the sexual references.

Afraid

Neat and mournful, Lana finally breaks off from her toxic partner. Lana is either sick of being worried for the future or terrified of her partner, and its reflective sadness as she plans to go back home still leaves hope that she will be able to be happy.

Wayamaya

Rolling calmly like a beach wave, Lana takes us straight to Hawaii and paints us an image of handsome surfers and Mercurys. Wayamaya is simply a soothing, short, cute little track that keeps very much surface level.

Hawaiian Tropic

Plinky music paired with non-stressful verses and imagery of Hawaiian shirts, this is the (in my opinion) better version of Every Man Gets His Wish (which shares the same chorus). The subtlety of this track compared to Every Man Gets His Wish helps to convey the hurt feelings a lot better, with the nostalgic feel and mournful longing in the vocals.

Dum Dum

Lana plays the alcoholic star who name drops Scarlett O’Hara and Bugsy Malone as part of her identity. These lyrics are pretty witty and the song snappy but, like some of her unreleased music, is a bit too overproduced and not cohesive. The verses and choruses don’t quite gel which doesn’t make for a song that flows well but with tweaking it could be even better.

Hollywood’s Dead

Lana fits perfectly into the era of fifties with this mid-20th century driven track. It sounds perfectly in place for the decade she frequently romanticises (with a modern twist) and Lana’s crooning, tearful references to her icons drips with glamour.

Fake Diamond

For an anti-romance song, Fake Diamond is quite upbeat. Lana complains of her ‘lover’ who is one way with her, a different way with others, whilst comparing their relationship to all manner of Lana-themed aesthetics (diamonds, movie projectors, etc.). Comparing herself to a child, she practically has a tantrum in the chorus, stamping her feet lovingly as she demands he loves her. I do think this song is joyful, making fun of her inattentive lover whilst keeping one step ahead of his games.

I Must Be Stupid

Lana’s live unreleased track lets Lana enjoy her life despite the hurt that surrounds it, showing strength in the face of heartbreak and other such topics in her music. It was performed post-Lust For Life, an era in which Lana embraced the light side rather than simply the dark.

Live Or Die

The version that is a little bit more lowkey and, in some ways, mature in that it matches a lot of her early albums sound is good but it’s not my favourite. There’s the heady, ultra-pop second version that has plenty more sexy references, a little meow (iconic) and an overall vibe of just having fun on the run. The former version is a bit more serious, but the second is – though less good in terms of production – full of soul.

Velvet Crowbar

Velvet Crowbar is a song that shows the dark side of fame and bad boys, namely the way they self-destruct to the point that their adoring lovers (already addicted to these gangstas of course) are falling with them. This song is a warning to these destructive souls that they aren’t invincible, and an equal warning to the people that love them that they might just fall apart and lose them. Lana puts her emotion across so well, with her stark lyrics, anxious guitars and growling third chorus. Even her more flowery imagery doesn’t cover up the overt fear that runs through this song.

Your Band Is All The Rage

Probably one of Lana’s saddest songs (which could be a great deal many since she knows how to tug heartstrings), Lana lets go of her rock star lover despite still loving him in this acoustic track. She makes soulful promises to be there when he needs him, her love lingering until he wants her back, and utilises the country music theme to her advantage.

1949

The studio version is my favourite but the charm of the original, acoustic demo is unmatched. Despite the controversial inspiration for this track, Lana puts us straight in the world of the 1950s, with American motels and Kmart. It has a note of sadness – perhaps because of the unfortunate tale of Lolita that much of this song seems based on – but it works as one of Lana’s aesthetically pleasing and classic tracks.

Because of You

The spoken intro is a little bit cringe but the song is lovely. Lana plays an immature brat who fell in love with a good man who essentially tamed her (a little bit questionable for some in 2021). It’s got some of her most flowery imagery and it details how her relationship bought out the best of her. The casual comments she throws in throughout the song give this a real bedtime story feel, though this song is anything but sleepy.

Resistance

Frustrated but fun, Lana’s catchy and upbeat Resistance brings to mind surfers and sunny days set in the noughties. Even though she’s furious with the guy who’s causing her so much trouble it still, for a change, stays perky and pleasant. A song that needs more attention, it’s the type of song that gets people singing and dancing along to it.

Dangerous Girl

With a rock-feeling patriotic opening, Lana launches into a track about her prowess as a dangerous girl, like a deranged beauty queen with a gangsta on her arm. It’s simply fun, complete with wolf-whistles and an impression of a siren.