#this whole album. like i’ve never seen the musical but yeah it’s like i was there idk

[merevide]

30 hours to live how shall i spend them…wait. here’s an option that i like. spend these 30 hours gettin’ FREAKAYYYYY YEAH

[thrillered]

"You Know I Mountain Dew It For Ya" | Spencer Agnew x Reader | Pt. 6

Pt. 6: the pod

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You sat at the smosh mouth desk, sipping on a mountain dew kickstart that you stole from Spencer. You figured if you were going to talk about your song you should have mt dew, as fanservice. The crew was finalizing camera settings and waiting for Amanda and Shayne. 

“This kinda sucks” You said, taking another sip of your drink. 

“Ouuu, i’m gonna tell spencer.” Kiana teased. Earning an eye roll from you.

After a few minutes everyone was ready to record. “Hello everyone and welcome back to Smosh Mouth, I’m Shayne.” 

“And I’m Amanda. And today we have a very very special guest, all the way from big hollywood and the desk around the corner from mine, Y/N” 

“Big Hollywood wow” You laughed. 

“You have skyrocketed in fame.” Shayne comments. 

You sighed deeply, “Yeah…” 

“Uh Oh, that doesn’t sound good.” Amanda responds. 

“No no It’s really awesome it’s just been different, I guess.” You began, “I’ve been in the public eye for quite a while now but, obviously, never like this.”

“Let’s rewind a little,” Shayne interjected, “you guys know Y/N, she’s been with Smosh for years now. At this point, dare I say, one of the most loved cast members.”

“Oh stop it.” You giggled.

“Well it’s true, everyone loves you. Especially me.” Amanda jokes.

“I can see the fan edits already. Wait, we need to stare at each other longingly.” You piled on. 

“Anyway,” Shayne laughed, “What a lot of people don’t know, well not anymore, is that you are a musician as well.” 

“Yes, I’ve been writing music my entire life but I started producing my music about a year before I joined Smosh. I got much more serious about it thanks to Josh, shoutout josh.” You explained. “I have a stockpile of songs, I’ve only released a few though.” 

“You have two albums out right?” Amanda asked.

“Yeah I have two albums, three EPs, and three singles, the newest being everyone's favorite Espresso.”

You continued bantering, answering questions and talking about your career. You enjoyed how much both Shayne and Amanda cared about what you had to say, being able to deepdive into some of your music was a lot of fun. You even learned that Shayne listened to your entire discography over the weekend. 

“Let’s get into the juicy stuff” Amanda began, “We sent out a community post where people could ask Y/N questions so let’s get into some of those.” 

“First up is from Gianna L: What was the inspiration behind Espresso?” 

“I really just wanted to make something fun and bright. A lot of my music comes from a very vulnerable place but I’ve just been so happy that this song stems from that. I’ve felt like myself and truly I have smosh to thank for that.” You rambled, “Okay to wrap it up, Espresso was inspired by being confident and loving yourself because it makes you irresistible.”

“I actually love that so much,” Amanda smiles. 

“Yeah that type of thinking is important,” Shayne adds, “I would know, I have a psychology degree.” 

You answered some more questions regarding your creative process and your lyrics. You got to talk about how you make coffee for the whole office almost everyday in regards to the lyric: “That morning coffee brewed it for ya”. Then the inevitable happened.

“The most asked questions are about Spencer.” Shayne began, “For those of you who don’t know, Spencer is the director of the games channel and is often in videos as well.” 

“But most importantly,” You cut Shayne off, “he’s my best friend.” You finished, earning a few ‘awww’s from the room. “Believe me, I have seen the conspiracy theories and comments about “Spenspresso”-- great name by the way. And yes, some of the lyrics were inspired by my dear friend. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without him and since this song is about finding confidence I had to give a nod to my best buddy, one of the people who have always supported me and made me into the best version of myself.” 

You laughed, “I wish I could give a more juicy answer but it’s just a little thank you to my best friend. That doesn’t mean I want the edits to stop, I do love those, and the fan art. Me and Spencer send them to each other constantly.” 

You wrapped up the podcast, hoping confessing your platonic love for Spencer was enough to keep the heat off of you for a while. That is until you stare at Spencer for too long in the next games video and people clip it. 

—

“How was the pod?” Spencer asked, setting his lunch down and sitting in the chair next to you.

“It went well, It was actually so much fun to talk about myself for so long,” You jested. “You’re gonna get an ego boost out of it though.” 

“And why is that?” He asked, quirking an eyebrow and sending you a knowing smirk, the action making the tips of your ears hot. 

“Oh shut up.” You shoved his chair away playfully. He quickly scooted it back to you, even closer than before, your knees bumping each other. 

You both finished your lunches quickly, Spencer opting to head back to his desk to work. You followed him, sitting on a couch near him, scrolling through your phone until you heard a few muffled “fuck fuck fuck”s coming from Spencer. 

You got up and stood behind him looking at his monitor. “What’s wrong?” You asked. 

“Nothing, it’s just an issue with the audio of the last games video, I don’t think it’ll be able to be recovered” He responded, his shoulders tightening as he rubbed a stressed hand over his face. 

You knew Spencer worked really hard on that video, he had been so excited to have the cast play the game and now it seems like it will never see the light of day. 

“I’m sorry Spence,” you said, knowing there wasn’t much you could do to help. Noticing how tense he was you placed your hands on his shoulders and began massaging them, working at the many knots. 

He let out a low groan as you pushed into a particularly nasty spot on his shoulder. As you worked your fingers through his neck and shoulders his groans turned into sighs of relief. 

“That feel any better?” You asked, hoping you could assist your friend. 

He rolled his neck a few times, “Holy fuck, that’s actually so much better. How did you do that?” 

“I took a single massage class in college for a random credit I needed.” you replied, running your fingers through his hair as he tilted his head back to look at you. 

“You’ve gotta do that more often, I feel like I got my damn neck replaced.” He laughed. 

“You just let me know, I learned back, hands, and legs too so..” You trailed off, winking at him, relishing in the pink hue that graced his features. “Lunch is almost over, I gotta go, I’m filming ‘you posted that?’. I’ll see you later, love ya Spency”  You smiled, grabbing his hand and leaving a feather light kiss on his knuckles before walking away. 

“You are so whipped dude.” 

Spencer spun around to the source of the sound, seeing Alex Tran standing on the other side of the desks. 

“God, is it really that obvious?” Spencer questioned. 

“I wish you could’ve seen the googly eyes you were just sending Y/N,” Alex laughed, “Like, the whole office can feel the tension.” 

“It’s not tension if it’s one sided.” Spencer rebutted. 

“One sided my ass, she’s totally into you, has been forever, if I had to guess.”

Spencer thought about Alex’s words. Could you really feel the same way as him? He’s a smart guy, he knows that, so could he really have been so stupid this whole time to think you were just friends? 

[guppybibi]

hii !! can you do akito (shinonome) with a gf who’s OBSESSED with another group? i just thought of this and found it funny

he’s always like “why don’t we go to your place” and reader is like oh no it’s ok haha!! because it’s kind of embarrassing but there’s so much merch it’s impossible to take down

and one day he convinces you to let him stay over and boom. posters everywhere. cds everywhere. binders full of photocards. a whole shelf of albums just sitting there. don’t forget the dvds and polaroids! bonus points if you forgot to turn off your cd player when you answered the door so it’s blasting said group’s music as well 💀

( ++ doesn’t have to be any group in particular but i’m heavy in my enhypen phase right now, so maybe them? that’d make it even more nerdy but 😭 )

𖦹 pairing: Akito Shinonome x fem!reader

𖦹 content: Confused Akito, fluff, kpop stuff, idk..

𖦹 notes: aaaa i love this idea, tysm! for the group i chose enhypen as well but also stray kids because you can never stan too many groups ᵔ ᗜ ᵔ (i had the biggest stray kids phase lollzz, plus idk much abt enhypen:c sorrie) also wrote half of this at school wowie

⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*⋆*･ﾟ⋆*･ﾟ

-Just..so confused?? He doesn't get the thing about collecting photo cards and the terms fans use so you have to explain it to him.

-Once he gets it though he's just mildly concerned, for your sanity and wallet. He does commend your dedication and loyalty to these groups though (silently hopes you do the same with him.) 

-Occasionally asks you if VBS had merch would you buy some, his reaction would vary on your answer. -

-If you say no he’ll just say ‘uh huh’ and walk away. (pancakes are the solution, TRUST.) + he's just playing around, he isn't mad. 

-If you say yes he’ll just smirk smugly and try to talk everyone into making merch. (he fails)

He’s so confused right now, he just doesn't get what's the big deal about it. The ginger knew you absolutely loved these so called K-POP groups and he didn't mind at all, not a tiny bit. To be fair, he was somewhat an idol as well. A street musician to be exact but that was close enough. 

And today was another added episode to the collection of you not letting him go to your home, what exactly were you hiding from him? He stood before you, in all his glory, a skeptical look on his face. “C'mon doll..is yer room messy or somethin’? I’m sure it can't be that bad, trust me–I’ve seen worse.” He said in an attempt to reassure you, intently watching how your lips pressed into a thin line and your eyes darted across the park you two were at. “L..-look! A bunch of people are doing cool skating tricks!” You exclaim, pointing to a bunch of randos doing flips or whatever. Distracting him was worth the shot, no guarantees it’ll work though. 

He almost facepalms himself when he hears your shitty attempt at diverting his attention elsewhere. “Doll I’m not the smartest but I'm not that dumb..” It was honestly offensive that you thought that would work..You couldn't keep hiding forever, you two wouldn't progress if you didn't allow him to do something so simple as coming into your home. And as he said, he's somewhat of an ‘idol’ as well so he probably wouldn't find it too weird. Yeah, think positive! He won't think you're some kind of koreaboo or anything!

“Right..I guess you could come over to my place. But on one condition..” She starts. “Don't find it weird..?” He chuckles in response, shaking his head. “No promises.” 

And that's how he ended up in this rather strange position, sitting on your cozy bed as the posters on your walls stared down at him. “Wow..this is um..a lot.” His mouth formed a crooked smile, glancing at the shelf filled with albums. Where you got the money for all of this was a mystery to him. “So..who are they?” He asks, flopping back onto your bed, full of a bunch of stuffed animals. Your eyes start to sparkle, this was your time to shine, well rather to rant about your unhealthy obsession with these KPOP groups but let's not talk about that right now. 

After your rather lengthy explanation about every basic thing he needs to know, the expression on his gruff face seems unreadable. Was he angry or somehow jealous about it? Or was he simply just not interested in it? That might've been the case, but not right now at least. “Mmh..alright.” He sounded way too casual about it for comfort if you’re being honest. But if he was held captive and needed to be honest, extra–I know, he found this..mildly concerning addiction of yours quite endearing. It’s not like it would cause problems along the way, unless you spent all of your money on merchandise and went broke but he has enough trust in you not to do that..don’t break that by buying some lightstick that costs more than your kidney. 

[puckpocketed]

tag game! pick a song for each letter of your url and tag that many people (if you can)

thank u for the boop @maxkeplers <3 i WILL be flexing my listening range and overdoing the assignment (song blurbs!!!). additionally, all songs link to youtube + collected playlist at the end if anyone would like to listen to them all in one place :3

P - Perfect Blue by Macross 82-99. I used to stream my art years ago and one of my viewers linked some Macross, and I’ve never looked back. this is one of my faves from their discography. I hope that guy is doing okay!!

U - Uh Huh by TrippyThaKid. hehehe weed song . i confess this one’s on my ranked valorant hype playlist for when i need to Lock In <- duelist main (derogatory). the music video by itself is such a wonderful experience but also his flow is bizarrely sick and compelling to me <3

C - Cold Turkey by The Happy Fits. Everyone moved on from 2010s british alt rock but i’m still there and so are THF. theyre still releasing this type of stuff in the year of our lord!! there’s whimsy to them… they have a whistle only section in this song… u will have to pry this music from my cold dead fins…!!!!!!

K - Kiss Me by Sixpence None The Richer. i love rom coms so bad, and every time i listen to this song i am filled with the sweetest nostalgia <3 if you haven’t seen How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. please. it’s a batshit film about two deeply damaged people trying to play relationship chicken whilst torturing each other in an effort to get the other person to leave them. they simply do NOT make films like this anymore !!!

P - Pressure by Abhi The Nomad. he’s an Indian hip hop artist, he raps and sings and has this habit of slotting these gorgeous little electric guitar solos into his songs. there’s a pop twist to his music, and he collabs far and wide. this song is slow and buttery smooth and such a pleasure to listen to.

O - Oh Yeah! by Green Day. they’re still making music and it still fucking slaps and i will nevaaa move past my based punk KINGS.

C - Chocolate by Day6. alright so has anyone ever run into that problem of finding a song from an artist/band and it vibes with you hard and brings you joy and you go to check out their other music and it turns out the song you liked was some experimental B-side track and none of their other stuff is like that. well. this was me with this song except this song was a thing they wrote for the OST of a kdrama. i wish i was joking. </3

K - Karma Bonfire by Diablo Swing Orchestra. ill be real. this is theatre kid music. but its somehow not attached to a musical. it’s also got jazz and swing elements. yeah idk either.

E - Escape by Asta. just one of my faves. nothing smart to say i just love this.

T - The Dreamer by The Vaccines. this is not the first song from this album i’ve recommended. this is my album of the year. it’s about remembering a relationship, the end of it, the never-end of it. my favourite lyrics in this song are from the chorus, “I know the night has got two faces, there’s one that runs and one that chases, but if I caught you in between, then I would wait for you in dreams.”

E - Eternal Groove by Android52. what it says on the tin. i could listen to this on loop for hours. i have done so!

D - Dark Matter by Steve Vai. to round out our instrumental theme… Can we have him on a Hades 2 music dlc. pleek. steve vai i love uou <3 he writes music i would blast if i was condemned to running solo tank on a raid you know what i mean??

Here’s the whole thing on youtube in a handy playlist as promised! it’s not very coherent in terms of genre or vibes at all so caveat emptor BIGLY

tagging: @oensible <- if u find a way to include weezer i would simply perish from laughter. @em-ptynet @sevennone @brocksfaber @chownkie @mkaugust @larsnicklas @wheelsnipecelebrini as always no pressure to play!! and if you see this and would like to join in, consider yourself tagged 🫵💯🔥🔥🔥

[darklydeliciousdesires]

Light on the Darkside - Chapter Nine.

Huge thanks to my little audience for your continued readership! ILY :)

Previous chapters - One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight

Tag list - In the comments. Please DM to be added/removed.

Words - 3,933

Warnings - 18+ throughout. Topics cover depression, suicide and eating disorders. Minors DNI!

“James, come in, come in,” Michael welcomed him with, opening the door to his office, which truly didn’t look very much like one at all. While there was a desk present over by the window, the space was dominated by a large, comfortable looking sofa, an armchair and a coffee table. Plants were dotted around, bookcases lining the walls, a huge collection of CD’s and a stereo present, even an acoustic guitar in the corner, too. It was so warm and hospitable, so far removed from what he knew. “Tea or coffee?” 

“Erm, tea, please,” he replied, still coming to terms with the distinct lack of formality. Dr. Beaumont had never offered him a drink during a therapy session. 

“You get yourself comfortable on the sofa and I’ll be with you in a jiff. Milk and sugar?” 

“Black, two sugars, thanks.” Sitting down, his head turned to the shelf behind him, taking in all of the CD titles. Aerosmith, Dio, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Ozzy Osbourne, Journey, Yes, Jimi Hendrix, Free, Lynard Skynard and a whole host of other artists he recognised.  

Michael passed him a mug, sitting down at the opposite end of the sofa. “Kick off your boots if you want to put your feet up, get a bit more comfortable. There are only two rules within my office. No shoes on the sofa and if you want to smoke, go over by the window, because I still struggle being around a lit fag. My darling wife made me quit a year ago and I begrudge her every day for it!”  

Kicking his boots off, he did just that, crossing his long legs beneath him, still baffled at the ease he was being treated with. It was worlds apart from Moor Acres, and he got the distinct impression already that it was going to benefit him hugely.  

“Led Zeppelin, hmm?” Michael then stated, pointing to his t shirt. “I saw them at the forum in LA in nineteen seventy. Phenomenal, they were. Arguably their best show ever.” 

James’s eyes widened. “Seriously, you saw the forum gig? Woah. That’s top grade cool!” 

“I’m pleased you agree. Have you ever seen them live?” 

“Nah,” he lamented, scratching his goatee. “Always been doing something else, innit. Bad timing, man, especially since they don’t really tour no more.” 

“Yes, it's sad that a lot of the greats aren't around any longer, or if they are, they aren’t touring. I even got to see Sabbath while Ozzy was still with them. I mean, I admire the work they did with Ronnie James Dio and Tony Martin, but Ozzy was the heart of that band. I’ve got tickets to see them in December at the NEC. It’ll be great, with Bill back in the fold again, too.” 

“Yeah! I sat on the bleedin’ phone for about an hour to get ours when they came on sale, innit.” Bleedin’. An Ella-ism. His heart panged a little. 

Michael grinned, raising his coffee cup. “I’ll see you there then, young man!” Taking a big swig, he then reached for the shelf above, pulling out a Black Sabbath album. Volume 4. Ahh, what a choice, James smiling as he thought of Mary. He got up, putting the CD into the player, turning the volume up a fraction so it was loud enough to enjoy, but not impede their talking. 

For that first half an hour, they sat and chatted about music, James revealing all about his band, their first proper tour around Europe, their being signed to a prominent label, Michael drinking it all in. He’d make notes later. While with a patient, listening to them was his sole focus.  

“I must ask, James. You speak of your love of music with such zeal and passion. How can you reconcile that to this meaninglessness you speak of that I read in your patient file? Your life has a lot of meaning from where I’m sitting,” Michael began carefully, reaching for his mug from the table beside them.  

“This void you talk about within, I do have to wonder the root cause of it. Not to downplay the fact that you are very obviously under the duress of mental illness, but you do appear for all intents and purposes to be a young man with much ambition about his person. Is that void which causes this anguish perhaps something that needs to be filled by further accomplishment as well as medication and therapy, searching for something you are yet to find?” 

Nobody had put it to him like that before. He sat there looking stunned for a few moments, something in his head finally clicking into place. An unmedicated brain plus an unfulfilled drive... was it really that simple to figure out that this was what brought on his periods of bleakness? It would certainly explain why he’d felt better after starting the band for a while. It also explained why through meeting Ella, he’d felt that void close up a little.  

Ella. Jesus, how he missed her to his very bones, and he’d only been parted from her for five hours. 

“I appear to have given you some food for thought there, young man.” 

That was one way to put it. “Yeah, shitting hell. You really have, Michael. Sorry if I’m just sat here stunned, it’s just I ain’t used to therapy sessions like this. Less than an hour and I feel like you’ve helped me already. I had almost five months with Dr. Beaumont and I didn’t feel like I got much from her methods.” 

“Ahh yes. I know Clarice professionally. She’s wonderful at her job, but quite dry and impersonable in her approach. That simply doesn’t work for everyone. I like to offer therapy in a relaxed way, get to know my patient as a person, who they are beyond their disorders. You learn a lot more about them when you look past their illness.”  

God, this man. He truly was a tonic. “I don’t feel like a lab rat in here, either. Like, I know you’re still doing your job, but you’re doing it in a way that makes me feel listened to.” 

Michael grinned, sipping his coffee as he tapped his fingers to the drum beat of the song currently playing. “Listening is vital, as is tailoring the balance of drugs to therapies as well. Now, I’ve taken a look at your medication and your progress, but I’m not one hundred percent happy with what you’re currently being administered. I want to discuss it more with our doctor, see if we might do a little tinkering there. I cannot do this alone, of course being a psychologist and not a psychiatrist, I’m not medically licensed myself, but I do have a good understanding over the role drugs play. 

“Tentatively, I do not feel that you need to be on the Lorazepam any longer, so I think we should begin weaning your doses down, and the Celexa seems to be working well. I’ve found excellent results in patients who take that long term, but I would like to see if we can lower your dose a fraction. You’ve had no serious side effects to note there, other than a few little ones like dry mouth and reduced appetite. How are those for you now?” 

“Still get dry mouth on occasion, but I eat well,” he confirmed, Michael nodding. 

“No reduced sexual desires or anything like that? That’s a common one to look out for, and as a young man in the prime of his life, you probably don’t want to suffer that!” he laughed, James beginning to grin, remembering that one time beneath the tree with Ella. 

“Nah, ain’t put a dampener on my spark.” 

“Well, jolly good! Alright, James, our hour is up. I’ll see you again on Thursday.” 

Leaving that office, he truly did look forward to his next therapy session. It was a first, but one he very much welcomed. As the days passed into weeks, he found himself becoming clearer, able to manage his thoughts with Michael’s advice, never feeling anything other than at ease there in the comfort of his office. He even let him sit and play guitar during their sessions, too. 

With Dr. Beaumont, he’d always felt little more than something to be studied, having clinical jargon he didn’t truly understand spouted at him. Her endless questions frustrated him, because he never really felt like she was helping him reach any kind of conclusions.  

With Michael, the path he was on to finding them was very much walked with the kind man he found himself settled around right by his side, rather than being watched from afar. He gave him answers and clarity. He treated him like a human being, not a mental patient. His personable, friendly nature set him at ease and in doing so, finally gave him all the answers he’d been looking for, with practical advice on how to understand his illness and go forward in managing it. 

He also got right to the root of one of his biggest problems as well. 

“I think we can definitely track some of your issues with authority and your anger to your relationship with your mother,” Michael began during a session three weeks into James’s stay, watching as his patient snorted. 

“Ain’t that all a bit cliche, though? Like what the German fella said, what was his name?” he spoke, clicking his fingers as he tried to remember the name. 

“Freud, and he was Austrian. Also, he was the founding father of psychoanalysis as we know it, so no, not cliched. Valid. Very valid. I read the notes you made about her, and I have to say I can see why you’d find her brand of mothering quite stifling. She seems to be very antagonistic for one thing. Also controlling, perhaps borne of a fear of what a loss of control would mean for her. I do not want to analyse your mother, though. It’s you I’m here to help. 

“I can tell you this much though, James. Expecting her to change is redundant. If she does not seek it for herself, then she never will. What you can change, though, is the way you react to her.”  

Clink. Another piece of the disassembled puzzle that was his mental health fell effortlessly into place.  

“And how should I do that, like?” he asked, strumming the guitar he held. 

“Set a boundary with her. When she is escalating and seeking conflict, or becoming overbearing, simply remind her that while you appreciate her concern, you are a grown man now, capable of making his own decisions, and do not snap to any bait she’s likely to dangle before you. You mention she enjoys getting a rise out of people. Do not feed that desire within her. This could be all that is needed to assist there. In the end, though, if she doesn’t listen, there is nothing more you can do but calmly remove yourself from the situation.”  

Clink. 

The pieces kept on falling into place, too, until one day in the office, James heard the news he’d been waiting on. 

“I think it’s time, James. I’m confident enough in your progress to officially discharge you, on the condition of weekly therapy sessions going forward. I run my own clinic outside of the unit from my home on Thursday’s and Friday’s. I understand it’s a little far to travel, so if you’d prefer, I can refer you to a therapist in the Warwickshire area?” 

“Nah, I’m fine travelling. Steve and I share a car so I’ll just drive myself down. Don’t wanna see nobody else. You get me, and that’s top grade important, innit?”  

“I’m pleased to hear that, young man. I’ll make sure the details are given to you prior to your discharge. Well bloody done. You’ve made absolutely marvellous progress.”  

"Ahh, nice one.” he spoke, actually able to take a little pride in that, Michael pleased that he had a part in handing it to him. James expected another handshake as he stood, but instead, Michael opened his arms, giving him a big hug and hearty slap on the back.  

Finally. He could get back out there to his life.  

Knowing that of course his mother would overbear on him, Carole having made noises about him returning to the family home after his release, he lied and told her the wrong date of when he’d be coming out. The only person who knew was the one who drove down to Birmingham to pick him up, making a nuisance of himself in the visitor car park by blasting music by the band Enslaved at high volume from the beaten-up Peugeot 206 he drove. 

“You’re free, you fucking massive goth bastard!” Steve roared as James climbed into the passenger seat after throwing his bag in the back. “Mate, I’m thrilled to fucking pieces for ya!” 

He grinned, being shaken by the hand that gripped his shoulder, Steve leaning over to grasp his head and kiss his forehead. “Longest six fucking months of my life, innit. Right, you got credit on your phone? I need to call the old man and tell him I’m out. The duchess thinks it’s happening on Friday, so I’ve gotta tell him she’s been deceived somewhat. He’ll be in the White Swan on his break, though. Wanna go for a pint?” 

“Do I fucking ever, mate!”  

Lighting up two cigarettes, he passed one to Steve as they pulled out onto the road, roaring away from the unit. “Oh, did Ella phone yet? Meant to ask you that.” 

He snickered a little, indicating left at the traffic lights. “Like you ain’t been asking that very question every time I’ve spoken to you on the phone. Nah, mate. Not yet.” 

That information gave him a little pit in his stomach, realising that she was still there at Moor Acres. He put it to the back of his mind, though, choosing instead to enjoy his freedom now that he finally had it. 

While Steve negotiated them through the streets of Erdington back to the motorway, he rang his father, who was beyond elated to hear he was out. When they walked into the White Swan just under an hour later, though, Alan couldn’t keep his joy in.  

“There’s me lad!” he roared from the bar, turning to wrap his eldest in a massive hug, beyond thrilled to see the smile he was met with. Truly, he looked better than he had in months. He looked alive again, happy. Exactly what any father wanted. “How are ya, kidda?” 

“I’ll be better when I get a pint in my hand,” he confessed, Alan turning to the bar. 

“Already got a round in, mate.” He passed them over, a Stella for his son and a Guinness for Steve. “Cheers!” 

“Cheers, dad!” With that, he lifted the glass to his mouth, taking his first sip of cold beer in what felt like forever. He kept on sipping, too, half of it drank back at rapid speed. Jesus, how he’d missed it. 

“Easy now, dickhead!” Steve chirped. “Ain’t you gotta watch it with your medication?” 

“Kinda,” he spoke, licking foam from his top lip, “but it mainly affects you if the meds already make you tired, and they don’t. I can’t get wankered, though, or it’ll stop ‘em working as well. Gotta find a balance, so Michael tells me.” 

Alan nodded at the half empty glass. “And I see you’ve started that, eh, mate?” 

“Oh yeah.” he grinned, taking another sip. God, it was about the best beer he’d ever had in his life. Freedom beer. He’d definitely drink to that. While James was enjoying life on the outside, ten miles across the county, Ella was about to step on the scales for the first time that week, ready to have her weight recorded. 

In the five weeks she’d been without James, she’d swung between determination in her recovery and all-out despair through pining for him. It had been a lonely time for her, since Andrea had finally gone home just two weeks after James’s departure, Ella not really bonding with anyone else.  

“Okay, pet,” Mary spoke, tinkering with the settings on the large scales. “Up you pop for us.” At least she still had Mary, of which she was thankful for. Standing on the scales, she waited, Mary adjusting again before nodding. “Eee, look at that, eh? Seven stone twelve pounds! You’ve just two pounds to go and bingo! It’s home time, my love!” 

Ella sighed a little, looking down at herself. Her body appeared so different now, having fuller hips, her breasts back to a B cup and her bum definitely rounder. It made her feel a little insecure, but they were all what Dr. Beaumont coined as definitive markers of health. Also, her periods had stated again as of four weeks ago, another positive on her road to recovery.  

“Ya’s could look a bit prouder of yaself, pet!”  

“Sorry,” she spoke, pulling herself from her thoughts. “Yeah, yeah I am. I’m just... it still feels weird to me that I’m like, not so small any longer.” 

“Ella, you’re in size eight clothes, sweetheart. That’s still small,” Mary staunchly reminded her. “And we don’t think in size, do we? We think in health. Bum is health. Hips are health. Boobies are health. And what’s more, that lovely fella of yours is out there right now hopefully, ready and waiting to give ‘em all a good squeeze!” 

She couldn’t help herself snort laughing at that statement, knowing that yes, James would definitely be exploring her curves with a lot of enthusiasm when she finally saw him again. There was her extra push, she supposed, knowing that – as Mary had said – he'd hopefully be out of the until he’d been transferred to by that point, waiting for her to call and tell him the same.  

Still though, she couldn’t help be plagued by the occasional dark thought there. What if he wasn’t waiting? What if he’d gotten out, met another girl and quickly forgotten all about her? At several points, she found herself loitering by the pay phones just outside of the common room, wanting to call him to see if he had arrived home yet, but had chickened out without fail every time.  

It was a further week and a half until her stepping onto the scales revealed her to be at her target weight, just a fraction over, in fact, Ella weighing in at eight stone and one pound, receiving the biggest cheer and warmest hug from Mary. Finally, she was free. Her release was set for that coming Monday morning, her mother April sadly unable to get the time away from work, so sending somebody else to ferry her youngest home again. 

Ella was over the moon to see her sister running across the carpark to her, dropping her bags and being bundled up into a massive hug. “Baby sis! Look at you! Wow, you look bloody amazing! Got little curves, and your hair is all glossy and pretty!” 

“Yeah, except for the bleedin’ roots! Look at them! Not cool beans, Jane. Big time mess,” she exclaimed, Jane reaching to pick up two of her bags, leaving Ella with the remaining one.  

“Aha, I might have a little surprise for you there!” She was whisked across the Warwickshire countryside, Jane taking her to Nuneaton town centre, their first stop the hairdressers both women frequented often. 

“Aww, this is so kind of you!” Ella cried, turning to hug her sister fondly, Jane beaming.  

“All part of the big sis service! Besides, I need a freshen. My split ends, sis. Look at them!” Shaking a handful of purple hair at her, Jane then ducked down to receive the cape draped around her by one of the hair washing girls, both transported to the back of the salon to have their locks freshly shampooed. An hour and a half later, and the sisters left the salon with topped up hair colour, Ella’s dark blonde roots now resorted to their paler pearl blonde glory and a fresh cut making her feel truly restored.  

“So, how are you feeling in yourself, then?” Jane asked as they walked down the high street, arms linked, Ella lighting herself a cigarette. 

“Healthy, which is what's keeping me going the most,” she began, exhaling a plume of smoke down her nose. “Back when I was at my smallest, I felt like death every day. It's nice to have some energy back, and all the work I did with my doctor in therapy really helped me adjust my mental picture too. I still have some of those anorexia hangups, though. Like, I’ll look down and feel uncomfortable that I can’t really see my hipbones any longer, and none of my old tops fit me.” 

“I’ll remind you here that all of those tops were catered towards ten-year-old girls, Ella,” Jane spoke, clicking her tongue piercing against her teeth as she often did.  

“I know. It’s bloody shocking when I look at them again. Mary, one of the nurses there, she showed me a picture they took of me when I was first admitted. I like, cried for about ten minutes because although I’m not a hundred percent confident in my body, I finally saw it. I was so, so frail and poorly. Sunken cheeks, ribs and hips jutting out, my spine protruding. I looked like a skeleton.”  

Smiling, Jane tightened her squeeze on her arm. “Mary’s lovely from what I saw when we visited. She really looked after you, didn’t she?” 

Ella nodded, thinking that for a couple of months, at least, so had another. She was reminded of him from the blare of rock music coming from The Gallows, a local alternative bar come club there at the end of the high street, about to walk right past it when a poster in the window caught her attention. James, it seemed, was no longer institutionalised. 

“Oh, Nocturnal Descent are playing next Saturday,” she mused, Jane frowning with puzzlement. 

“And what do you know of them?”  

“A fair bit, you know. Their lead guitarist was in Moor Acres with me for a while,” she spoke, Jane cutting in. 

“Oh my god, so the rumours are true! Shit, I’d heard something about him not being well, blimey! Oh wow, I can’t believe you know him!” 

A little smug smile curved her lips. “Yeah, erm. I know him quite well, actually. I don’t know how to say what it is, but we’re, I dunno. We had a thing.”  

Jane’s eyes all but fell out onto the floor. “Woah, woah. Stop. Excuse me? You and War? You had a thing with War?”  

“Yep. I don’t know if we still do. There’s a story there. Bleedin’ hell, is there a story,” she spoke, raising her eyebrows as she chewed her lip. 

“I swear to god, that man is a babe! First time I saw him without the corpse paint on, my chin, sis. Clonk!” She gestured to her chin hitting the floor, Ella giggling as she continued. “Oh, oh I am burning with jealousy! Right, we’re going. The plan has been formed! We’re going in for a quick drink, buy ourselves some tickets and then you can tell me all about this story you have with him.” 

He was out, and playing a gig in eleven days’ from then. Ella couldn’t help feel nerves as her heart began to flutter at the thought of seeing him again. 

[cocainegirlsnblunts]

Smoothies In 1991

Jack Harlow - Officially meeting Jack

Interviewer: So can you two tell us where you first met and what were your first impressions on each other.

you started cracking up thinking about that day.

10/27/21.

After 2019 you weren’t so much in the spotlight, only because you chose too. You liked to be as private as possible and your work already got the recognition it deserved. Plus you’ve already done a few interviews here and there.

You were struggling with a lot at the time and the only option you had was to take a break from your career. You stayed lowkey, stopped posting, and anytime you were in a picture or anything it was RARE.

But anyway, 2021 you started to plan your comeback and so your friend Cole posted you on your Birthday

@colebennett ✓⃝

liked by madisonbeer, chanteljeffries, mariahthescientist and 238,595 others

colebennett happy 22nd birthday twin

And Cole has worked with many people, including Jack Harlow. Who you didn’t even know really but Cole had the amazing idea to take him to the Birthday Party your lovely Best Friend, Kali Uchis was throwing you.

Your Birthday is in late October so you always have a Costume Party. This year it was a Jazz Club/Old Hollywood themed.

Many people that you’ve worked with or have a bond with came. Here are some of the people who attended.

As you’re talking with friends, Cole approaches you with some people you’ve never met and didn’t really recognize.

“Yo Arlette” he yells.

“Cole Hey!!” you say noticing there’s some people behind him.

“Look I just wanted to introduce you to my boys here, you might know some of em, this is Jack, Jack Harlow.”

the world stopped spinning when you looked into his eyes, and you damn near lost your breath when he reached for handshake.

“Happy Birthday.” he says

“nice to meet you☺️☺️” omfg. LIKE WHO IS THIS???!??? you were screaming on the inside, last person you were geeking over was Jordan. (playboicarti)

“And then this is Urban and Druski” Cole continues to introduce you.

you greet them all with a smile and a nice to meet you, because like we mentioned earlier we aren’t so aware of the people poppin at the moment😬 but some knew you

“Hey I really love your work dude, New Choppa was insane” - Urban says

“Thank you so muchhh!” you say with a smile.

Fast forward the night, you took some pictures with your friends and everyone, including Jack because Cole insisted.

Cole posted it on his story and everyone was going crazy because this was your first appearance since 2019. (yk how we freak out when we see frank ocean, this is how everyone was reacting to you)

You: So yeah to break it all down, I wanted Jacks fine ass since the day I met him.

Jack’s Pov

At the time I was on the rise of my Career. The song I was featured on with Lil Nas X was the #1 song in the world. Got Nominated for hella stuff, got hella awards. I was really accomplishing my dreams.

My friend Cole Bennett, creator of Lyrical Lemonde, fucking legend. I’ve worked with him for the music video of What’s Poppin my first hit ever.

He had this friend, and I had known of Arlette because she was a big help in the artistic side of this industry and uh, Urban has mentioned her name to me before when he’d show me some album covers, or a music video but, i never knew the face behind all that was arlette’s beautiful self.

So it’s October, all these halloween parties are happening and Cole had hit me up and said, “Yo I have this friend, Arlette Viotto she works in the same category as me. I don’t know if you’ve heard of her but, she’s having a birthday party today at 9 PM they’re always really sick, i’d love for you to meet her man.

And me like I said I never even seen what she looked like, but I looked her up on google and I was sent to a whole different dimension looking at how beautiful she was. I was also appalled reading everything she was behind like damn I never knew. But I hit Cole back I said I am going to that party, we invited more of our friends and walking into this lil jazz club, they were playing that techno shit, it got turnt.

And I’m walking around I see hella people here, some people are coming to greet me ya know telling me congrats on being number one all that. Cole brings me to go meet this Arlette Viotto. And man was she even prettier in person.

Meanwhile Urban was over here fangirling, i remember. That shit was hilarious, but yeah I used my skills of eye contact and smooth talking. It was love at first sight.

okay first of all sorry for taking forever on this. I have gotten so unmotivated on like everything i been wanting to write about but here is what i have of this Jack Harlow series im attempting to do. I hope you love it and there’s more coming, trust and believe!!

[imadeoutwithmikeywayonwarpedtour]

transcript for the marina toybina interview

if you haven’t seen it already, gerard’s costume designer for the us leg of the tour, marina toybina recently did an interview for the john campea show. i saw some people looking for a transcript and i didn’t see that someone already made one so i did one!

here’s the link, the interview starts around 22:06

transcript under cut :)

INT (Robert Meyer Burnett): Well, now you just finished working with My Chemical Romance, which is a band that I dig. Gerard Way, is also a comic book writer and artist, created the Umbrella Academy.

MARINA TOYBINA: Yeah. 

INT: So first of all: how did you get that job, because there’s a design, there’s a design—the look of that band and what they like to do and what they’re influenced by, they’re not just your typical rock band. So what was it like, how did you get that job? And you designed the whole tour, right?

M: Um, I collaborated with the lead singer, yes, with Gerard. Um, okay. Everything kind of has its place in time.

M: 15 years ago, 15-20 years ago, I was a huge fan. I am a rock girl at heart. Back then, a lot of their music was like, music to my soul. It got me through some of the harder times, a lot of my friends were musicians, and I-I never saw them live, never could afford tickets to their shows, but knew one day that in my heart, I’m like, there probably will be an opportunity one day. They were like my top five favourite bands and he was just already an artist I’ve always wanted to work with. And, this past summer when I was designing So You Think you Can Dance, I just happened to turn on their music—nope, let me rewind, I’m so sorry.

M: So a year ago, I was reading a release that they’re coming back together on tour and they’re playing LA on my birthday. And I look at my team and I was like, I’m gonna be at that show, we’re gonna go to the show, we’re all gonna go together and I just jokingly said I’m like, “I’ll probably dress them.”

M: And a lot of things in my career have happened to manifestation, like I’m a huge believer in that. And I think my intentions were so clear into the universe and I believed in it so much that that happened a year ago, and then this past summer, I was driving to work, I was listening to their music, and I just happened to text my agent and I’m like, you know I really wanna get back into music. It’s what I used to do, I used to do a lot of live performances, I used to do a lot of music videos. I need to feel that again. Even though I’m surrounded by music all the time, and I’m doing all these shows. But there’s some—there was a disconnect in my career where it’s like, I love live entertainment.

M: And she’s like “Who do you want, like are we going after pop stars?” And I’m like no, I’ve done all that. I want to go back to my roots, like I want Incubus or My Chemical Romance—

INT: Nice!

M: Red Hot Chili Peppers, I’m like, get me back to rock and roll. 

M: And she was like, “Well, they’re touring but, let’s just put it out there.” 

M: And then, within two weeks I get an email from her and be like “Hey, their managers want to meet with you, he wants to meet with you.” And one of the biggest things about their aesthetic is—probably one of my top 3 costume designers is Colleen Atwood, [and she] did their Black Parade album, and it was so incredible and I, back then, I was always a step behind. It’s like, they did the Black Parade, and then I met the photographer later, then I worked on a project with him. So it was always like, some better late than never I guess. And I’m like, I’m gonna work with him someday, I love her work, I’ve been told by many people we’re a lot alike, you know? And I’m like, why not.

M: And so, we get this email that he would like to take a meeting, see what we can do. And I never expected to do the tour. I just wanted to open this door of opportunity to just collaborate, maybe do one thing together.

M: And he just showed up in my studio, and it was just, an amazing artistic, like-

INT: Were you starstruck? I mean Gerard Way is like, one of your-

M: I was trying to hold it together! I mean, before they came in, I can’t tell you how much I paced. And usually there’s like, 15-20 people at my studio, and this was the time, the day that I was alone, you know. I didn’t know what to do. And of course, my expectations were just to do like, present myself, and see if I would be a good asset to them, or something, because I love their music. I love what he’s about, and it’s also like, it’s not just the frontman for me. I think he’s a brilliant artist.

M: So there were a lot of things, I just wanted our worlds to merge somehow. And within the first five minutes of a conversation, I’m like “Oh, I get his brain.”

M: And I told him my story, I told him that this is like, 20 years in the making, and probably sound like a crazy fan costume designer. We shared ideas, he kind of walked me through the concepts of things he wants to do on this particular tour. They haven’t started doing the US leg of the tour, I didn’t know if they had a designer, and he did mention Colleen was doing something for him. And I was like, okay, how can this-can this be a triangle? [laughs] Can I come in on the picture?

M: It was just a beautiful collaboration. It was like, a genuine artist to artist conversation. Like. “Let’s do something interesting.” He walked me through his concepts, his ideas. And I’m like. alright, let me come up with some creatives, see if we’re on the same page. Again, as much as I wanted to be like, “Hey, we’re doing this tomorrow.” I also felt like it’s important, now, in my career and possibly in his, to make sure the relationship is good, you know? Like this is the right artistic match to one another. And it worked.

M: From there it was just like, amazing fittings, amazing collaboration, and some iconic things that went viral.

INT: I love hearing this from you, because this is like, the joyous experience when, “Oh my God, I’ve dreamt of working with somebody.” And you finally get to do it. 

INT: But I want to take you back to that, because I’m curious. How would that process even begin?

M: Right.

INT: You’re working with somebody that, you already know their music, you already know his vibe. And Colleen Atwood, who I’ve interviewed on the show by the way, she’s incredible. Our interview, she was in the middle of the work day so it was a short interview. But, how does a collaboration like that work with somebody like Gerard Way? How do you guys start working together? How is that process?

M: It was just like, an initial conversation, you know? I introduced myself, my work. They already did some background, kind of checking out to see where I stand, what my aesthetic was like. And I felt like, in a place in my life right now, in my career, I was able to bring something new. And that’s where my confidence, I think, came from. At the same time, I didn’t want to change the artist that’s in front of me. I think that’s always so important when working with music. You’re dealing with a fanbase and a reputation, an aesthetic approach that’s far beyond any artistic reach of anybody coming in.

INT: Right.

M: So for me it was, you know. Having a conversation, understanding what characters he wanted to bring forward. This was a very playful tour. This wasn’t about dressing up the whole band. This was about him being in this world of iconic characters and, how can we bring this to life, and what can we do that’s very recognizable to his fans, at the same time, a little bit of a shock value, you know.

M: But at the same time, I wanted him to be him. And he was in this beautiful place in his life and career right now, where he felt great, felt confident, and I just wanted to uplift that. We went through the creative decks, went through the conversations, which characters we wanted to go with. These are the shows that he had, I knew which city we kind of wanted to play off, like where was the right time, like Halloween was right around the corner, what do we do. 

M: So it was like, very strategic conversations, but at the same time, room to play and be creative. So I had just gathered the top 10 characters that we had discussed, and kind of started doing my own thing, and keeping him and the music in mind, and had an amazing fitting.

M: And I’ve never worked with an artist that’s so clear. Not just like, directional and very precise and very distinct on his own style, but it was just even clear for me when we were doing fittings that this is somebody that knows his body. This is somebody who knows his aesthetic on stage. This is somebody that knows how they’re going to perform. It just made it so much easier for me to be able to fall into his world. And do the fittings to where: Is this going to come off, is this piece staying on, are we going to do options, you know, is the character going to evolve on stage, is the character going to come down on stage. All those conversations happen in our fittings and then I just packed it all up with distinct notes, and sent them off, and then kept checking in making sure everything was okay, and yeah.

INT: So would you, when you had a direction for the characters, were you doing sketches first?

M: No, not at all! This was something that I kind of felt like, needed to have the research? It wasn’t just about designing something on paper.

INT: Right, okay.

M: When he mentioned to me, “I want to be a vintage cheerleader.” I’m like, okay what era are we in? 50s, 60s, 70s, you know, 40s? And then he was like, “Find me something that’s within, possibly, this color scheme.”

INT: Okay.

M: And for me it was like, the image that went viral when he did wear the cheer uniform. It was probably like 10 different vintage stores that we went to. And I’m like, okay everything’s size zero, or like, what am I gonna do, you know? This stuff doesn’t exist anymore, if I get it from Etsy it’s not gonna come in on time. There was so much.

M: And it happened to be as we were leaving one of the stores I look on the sale rack. And I find this damaged, weird, like, vintage cheer dress that had no zipper, that had no hem, and I was like. I love this. 

M: I love this because I can reconstruct it, I can go and get the fabrics we need to still keep it original and authentic. And that’s how we start working. I build out a dress size, I had a mannequin his size at my studio. Put it on, we reshaped it, took the whole thing apart, reconstructed it to be his measurements, and still kept it authentic.

M: And after he wore it, the pattern I think for the actual thing was sold out.

INT: Wow.

M: His fans loved it so much that we were getting notifications that people actually found the original pattern of this 1940s uniform and were buying it out.

INT: That’s crazy!

M: Oh it’s amazing. I think, to me, it’s like that’s when things are just meant to be. Not only did my work translate into something beautiful on stage, but then he becomes this incredible persona on stage that then delivers the character and plays it off. We did that throughout every single look, every single look went like, became a fan favourite, or crazy yeah.

INT: in terms of time, what was the process when you first got the gig and then to the first show that was performed using your work? What was the time-frame?

M: I think I had about a month to get it all together.

INT: Wow, so that’s not much.

M: At the same time, I had another huge project in the works. So it was going back in forth, but. I could not tell you, like, I’ve had difficult projects in the past. And I’ve had difficult times with artists, you know, finding our own language, how to execute some things. This was so easy, that time didn’t matter to me.

M: It was such a great collaboration and so it flowed, like Bruce Lee would say, like water. It just made sense. No matter how difficult my other project was, or what was going on at the same time, it was like, the universe showing me: this is how it’s supposed to be. This is what’s inspiring me. 

M: And at the end of the day, the one thing I told Gerard, “You made me fall in love with music again. You came into my life as an artist that I’ve admired and wanted to work with for almost 20 years.” And there was a big part of my beginning, that just made me look back at this now and be like oh. That was that feeling that I had when I was 16, 20.

INT: Well that’s amazing. Congratulations on that. 

M: Thank you.

INT: What an exciting project! That you did so quickly.

M: Yeah, it was amazing.

[adrianicsea]

what's ur fave fob song + album and why!! 🥰

EEP thank you for the ask!!! honestly i’m going to pop this under a read more bc i fear you’ve activated my autism blast.

my favorite album, to the surprise of approximately nobody, is folie a deux, and my favorite song is [coffee’s for closers] from that same album.

as for WHY folie is my favorite album, it’s taken me a long time to figure out how to verbalize it. it wasn’t the first album of theirs i bought/heard (that was infinity on high), nor was it the first album cycle that i was actively a fan and participant in (THAT was save rock and roll).

i started listening to fob during their hiatus, and for quite awhile there, it REALLY seemed like the hiatus was going to just… be a breakup. and so, folie WAS, for a long time, their swan song album. it still feels that way, in a lot of ways— in particular, What A Catch, Donnie feels like a celebration AND a funeral for the band. it’s their most complex and ambitious album made up to that point, in terms of the different sounds and instruments being used. it feels like it’s their most autobiographical album, but it also feels like it’s the one that was most made and written For You, The Listener.

“i’m half-doomed and you’re semi-sweet.” “i’m the one who charmed the one who gave up on you.” “i’m a mascot for what you’ve become.” “oh darling, i know what you’re going through.”

it’s INCREDIBLY personal, and a lot of the lyrics are from the perspective of a person who’s at a CAVERNOUS low, but… even still, there’s hope, or a shadow of it, that even if it won’t get better, at least we won’t be alone. a lot has been made of the album title and the art of the two bears representing p*te and patrick —which, yeah, it probably is that— but i think it can also refer to the band as a whole, as a symbol, and the listener. and that whole idea of facing it together, even if it’s not going to improve and you’re doomed either way… i really needed to hear that when i was a teenager. and even now that i’m older and stabler and happier and safe, listening to folie still feels like a long hug or a good conversation with an old friend.

now, why coffee’s for closers specifically? on a musical level ALONE, i think it’s a perfect song from beginning to end. that bombastic drum beat commands your attention from the start, almost like a pulse, and those gorgeous strings help to drive the song forward and carry patrick’s vocals even higher and stronger during that SOARING sweep of a chorus. it never lets up or loses its insistent rhythm, and even after it declares its finale with a horn section, the strings come back to provide a waltz, one last jubilant outro before What A Catch comes in with the emotional steel chair.

but like… those LYRICS, man!! “i want everything to change and stay the same, oh time doesn’t care about anyone or anything!!” “oh baby, when they made me, they broke the mold!” “we will never believe again! kick drum beating in my chest again!” the lyrics in the verses are all SO emotionally evocative, and the “we will never believe again” chant is so beautifully cathartic to sing along to the drum beat.

the peak of coffee’s lyrics though, for me, are the chorus. as fob choruses go, it’s surprisingly simple, relying more on a catchy melody than complex lyrics:

“i will never believe in anything again, i will never believe in anything again! though change will come, oh, change WILL come, but i will never believe in anything again!”

now, i have a LOT of trouble dealing with any kind of change in life, even positive change, and so there’s a lot of personal catharsis and Being Seen in this chorus for me that applies to my greater life. but more than that… to me, this chorus IS what fob is. no matter how old i get, no matter how much my life grows or changes, no matter the other bands and artists i’ve found and enjoyed, no matter my disillusionment and dislike of p*te… it’s starting to look pretty likely that fob is forever for me.

i will never believe in anything again. not the way i believed in fall out boy when i was a sad, scared teenager.

[sheisobvious]

some old stuff I found on pinterest (and below interesting things) - Part 1

Picture 1 

“One minute Taylor is busting out lyrics and being adorable in front of the camera, and the next she is like high-fashion model” 

Q: What type of music are you into right now? 

TS: A Late’80s pop. One of my favorite songs is “She Drives Me Crazy”, by Fine Young Cannibals.It was so ahead of its time.  

App she loves – 8MM vintage camera  

TS: “It lets you put a cool, 1960s-style filter on iPhone videos and gives clips a moody grain” 

Picture 2 

COSMOGIRL 2009 

TS: "My newest hobby is going to wal-mart and putting my CD in front of others in the rack. I have no shame in it!" 

Picture 3 

Seventeen Magazine (2008) 

Q: Do you think that he ( the guy from “Should’ve Said No”) secretly likes being named in your songs? TS: Yeah, probably. Those kinds of guys like getting attention – because I mean, what else is he doing? He’s probably with six different girls who don’t know that they’re being played. 

Q: Has he (Drew from “Teardrops on My Guitar”)  contacted you?  

TS: Actually, he showed up in my driveway a couple of months ago, and it was like in the movies where at the end the guy shows up in your driveway, and you have this awesome kiss – except it’s three years too late. I’m like, Why didn’t you do this years ago ?!? He was stranger by then, so I felt like I didn’t know him anymore. 

Q: Do you ever write songs about anyone other than yourself? 

TS: “Tied Together With a Smile” is about a girl I knew my freshman year. She was absolutely Miss Popular, a pageaant girl, and she looked perfect every day! Always had the cutest outfits, always looked teh best at prom. But sometimes when you get a litle closer to people who look that perfect, you realize that they don’t feel perfect.They feel they’re ugly. And that’s what happened with this girl- I became closer friends with her, and one day she confessed that she was bulimic. 

Q: How did that make you feel? 

TS: It was really hard for me to take. But I never want to make someone feel horrible. do not deserve to be treated like that. I try to reason with  them and be calm about it. After a while, I was just like, "You don't need to do that anymore." So I played that song for her, and I said, "Who do you think that's about?" And honestly, I don't think she ever did it after that. 

Q: Have you ever felt bad about the way you look? 

TS: Everybody does! Everybody looks in the mirror and is like, I wonder why her eyes are huge and mine are smaller. But I realized that if you’re lucky enough to be different from everybody else, don’t change. 

Q: Do you ever wonder what it would be like to be someone eise? 

TS: Oh, my gosh, if I were a different person and I could start all over, I would want to be Hayley Williams from Paramore! I think she’s awesome, and their music is amazing. But you know, I love country music more than anything  in the world – I would never change what I do. 

Picture 4 

“I’ve seen a lot of you get new cars”, she joke to those who worked on the album (Fearless)  

Picture 5 

YOU (2009) 

FAVORITE BOOK – Who Will Cry When You Die? By Robin S. Sharma. It’s a self-help but It’s na easy read. Every page has a new thing you can do to show the people you love that they matter to you. It makes you appreciate what you have. I have a lot more good days now that I’ve read that. 

STYLE ICON – Cahrlize Theron. Thank you for saying I look a bit like her – taht makes my whole week. 

BEAUTY PRODUCTS – My favourite lip colour is Dragon Girl by Nars;l realy like Armani make-up and there's a perfume that l get when ľ'm in the UK called Midnight Rain by La Prairie. And I love Jo Malone candles. 

I: As ever, she sounds too good to be true . It might be one reason why. If we're being honest what eveyone realy wants to see is Taylor Swit being a litte bit naughty. Surely the teetotal Pollyanna façade must have cracks? Anyway, wouldn’t a bit of teenage rebellion be healthy? 

TS: “I've been given the freedom to do whatever I want. I'm 19 –if want to storm out of the house and go to a club and get drunk and take my clothes off and run naked through Nashville, I can do that. I just really would rather not. I's as simple as that. It's not like I’ve been beaten down by some corporation that's forcing me to always behave myself - l just naturally do. Sometimes people are fascinated by the fact that I don't care about partying. almost to the point where they think it's weird.l think when we get to the point where it's strange for you to not be stumbing around high on something at 19, t's a warped world.” 

Picture 6 

PEOPLE, 2009 

Q: You just gave a $250,000 donation to schools you had previously attended or worked with. Why schools? 

TS: The schools that I went to and the amazing people I got to learn from relly turned me into who I am, and I wanted to give back. 

Q:If you’ve done all this by the time you turned 20, what do you want to do bu the time you turn 30? 

TS:I think I’d like to have made a couple more albums that I’m really proud of. I’d like to have a house. I’m not the kid the girl who makes a goal for herself of getting married or starting a family. I’ve never really put a timeline on those sorts of things. So I don’t have any personal goals by the time I’m 30. 

(midnight rain vibe)

Picture 7 

Q: What would you say is your biggest love “don’t” ? 

TS: No one wants to be with someone who desperately needs them. You should want the other person and love him, but you shouldn’t need him. If you depend on him for your happiness, that’s not good ,because what will you do when it ends? 

Picture 8 

TIGER BEAT  

I CALLED THIS ALBUM RED BECAUSE.. “all the different emotions written about on this album, they’re all about the tumultuous, crazy, insane, intense, semitoxic relationships that I’ve experienced in the last two years. In my mind, all of those emotions are red.” 

(I think this is the first time I see her referring to this relationship as toxic before 2022)

Picture 9 

BOP 2012 

Taylor Swift looks down at the floor as she talks about the songs on her new album, Red (it comes out October 22). "They're sad, if I'm being honest,"she confesses. Tay's big blue eyes get a little teary as she thinks about her life right now.In the last two years. Tay says she's felt "all of those emotions, travels around spanning from intense love,intense the workd with frustration, jealousy and confusion." She also admits. "There's been this earth-shattering. not recent, but absolute crash-and-bum neartbreak." 

(in this interview they are weird about her parents divorce)

[nessa007]

The reviews for TTPD makes me want to pour acid on my eyes. They are not even reviewing the music, the songs, the whole album but taking shots at her as a person and complaining about she's doing too much. I'm like it's her fucking job? do yall want her to quit her job or what??

i honestly never even read reviews but, if it makes you feel any better, taylor has posted some really great reviews of the album. i’ve seen some wild takes on the album on twitter but i don’t really think anything of them because i love the album and haven’t stopped listening to it since friday.

but i will say it really is ridiculous that people will be biased with their opinions on taylor and let that cloud their judgement of her music and yeah, she’s a artist/songwriter and can put out as much music as she wants. she can’t help it if she’s never stuck on coming up with new ideas lol. also if you don’t like taylor, you literally do not have to listen to her stuff if you don’t want to. why are some people acting like they’re being forced to listen??? 🙃🙃🙃🙃

i like when i see people on youtube who aren’t even a fan of taylor in general but will give her credit where its due and praise her if they end up really liking something from her work.

[moody4world]

Real rider

A/N(?): i am !!NOT!! a writer, everything i write and post is simply for fun and not to be taken seriously

equestrian y/n teaching jack the basics of horse riding for churchill downs mv

this is fluff

Jack had just dropped his brand new album called home the kids miss you. He had already recorded a music video for first class but he was mostly excited to film his music video for churchill downs with THE drake himself.

He had proposed his idea of what he’d want to include in the music video to his directors and one of those scenes included jack riding a horse. Only problem with that was that Jack had never ridden a horse in his life. But he was dead set on having this in his music video.

“Come on Neelam there’s gotta be someone you know that can teach me, I mean how hard can it be right?” “Oh you’d be surprised, I do know someone and it’s definitely not as easy as you think Jack, you want to learn how to ride a horse at a high speed in the span of a few days when you’ve never even sat on a horse before, be for real.”

Jack stared at Neelam looking very offended but he knew she had a point. A really good one at that. But the last thing he was going to do is give up. “Okay okay that’s true but if they’re such a professional i can at least learn the basics right? I just really want this to look cool as fuck.”

“Fine i’ll give her a call later and see what I can do for you.”

“This is exactly why I never fired you.”

“Jack what the hell?”

“I’m kidding i’m kidding…wait did you say she?”

“Uh…yeah is that a problem?”

“No of course not I just thought it’d be a guy”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’ve just never seen you hang out with a horse girl before.”

“Oh god please don’t call her that or she’ll flip her shit. She hates it when people call her that.”

“Gee thanks for the heads up.”

Later that day you were watching a random movie that was recommended to you by a friend on netflix when your phone started ringing. You picked it up to see it was Neelam and you accepted the call. “Hey Neelam what’s up?” You said while stuffing your face with popcorn. “Hi y/n! just work and more work, you know how it is.” “Yeah that’s literally all you do, why’d you call though? is everything okay?”

“Yeah yeah everything is great..but”

“Uh oh what is it?”

“It’s nothing bad but I just need you to do me this one favor for the next two weeks and I promise i’ll pay you and everything just please help me out or this boy won’t leave me alone.” Neelam rambled

“You had me at the word pay but what do I have to do for the next two weeks? thats a lot of days.”

“Can you teach Jack how to ride a horse for his music video?”

You paused your movie at the mention of Jack’s name and put your bowl of popcorn on the coffee table in front of you.

“Uhm yeah..yeah sure that’s fine I can do that. When do we start?”

“Are you available this friday?”

“Yeah that’s perfect, i’m sure you remember where the ranch is so i’ll see you then.”

“Thank you so so much y/n i’ll text you a time and more details later okay?”

“Okay byee”

You let out a heavy sigh after you both hung up. “I haven’t seen Jack in person in years…will he even recognize me? okay he probably will you haven’t changed THAT much y/n come on. Yeah that’s true…ugh i really hope he’s nicer now cause that dumpling joke was so annoying….it was kinda cute tho. Girl snap out of it. I’m literally having a whole dialogue with myself about this and I haven’t even started teaching him yet jesus christ.”

Everyone talks to themselves….I just happen to do it a lot more than usual and there’s nothing wrong with that. I knew Jack since middle school, we always had the same classes and he would sit near my lunch table and our friends usually hung out together. He never bullied me or anything like that cause i’d refuse to let a young jb look alike who raps to bully me. He just always pointed out things that made me feel slightly embarrassed. Like that one time he called my kermit and mrs. piggy socks cute which made his friends laugh about it. He apologized afterwards and said he really meant it but I mean who knows.

Friday comes around and I made sure I got to the ranch early to set everything up. I got the horses ready and even had enough time left to have a quick snack. A few minutes after I was done, I saw Neelam walking in with Jack. I walked over, meeting them half way. Neelam gives me a tight hug swaying us side to side as we always did when we see each other. “y/n!!!! hiiii” “It’s been way too long Nee” “I knooow this guy keeps me way too busy.” She says pointing towards Jack who’s standing there all awkward with his hands behind his back. He puts his hand forward and I do the same shaking his hand “Jack” “y/n” there’s an awkward silence between the three of us until Neelam clears her throat and breaks the silence “Oh..kay uh i’m gonna go and leave you two to it then. y/n good luck with this one.” “I think i’m gonna need it so thanks” “I’m standing right here…you guys realize that right?”Neelam laughs and walks towards the exit of the ranch. Once Neelam was out of earshot Jack turns to me and goes. “Long time no see y/n l/n” ugh here he goes with the last name. For some reason he could never just say my first name like everyone else. “Yeah long time no see…clearly not much has changed.” “I don’t see why that’s a bad thing dumpling.”

There it is..that old nickname. I didn’t want to have feelings for this guy but the butterflies were unavoidable at this point. He’s taller now, he has a nice beard, his hair is curlier, his voice is also deeper but his cute goofy smile is still the same and clearly the nicknames too. “I was hoping you’d forget about that name.” I said awkwardly. “I did until I saw your chubby cheeks again.” “Stop pointing it out” I said defensively but in a joking way, he laughs and puts his hands up in defense “I’ll stop…no promises.”

“Okay enough talking let’s get started or we’ll never get you to ride a horse in time for your music video.” “Okay let’s go”

Getting Jack to even get on a horse was harder than you expected.

“Pay attention to what I do so you can do it after me.” I get on the horse making sure to do it at a pace that he can follow and once i’m seated i turn to him and tell him to do what I did. Since he’s tall you would think its much easier but nope. This guy took like 5 minutes to even get on the horse, to be fair I didn’t pick our nicest horse for him either but he got on eventually. I got a good laugh out of seeing him struggle with something that was so easy to me though, no regrets so far.

After we did a little bit of trotting we took the horses for short walk before calling it a day. “So..how do you know Neelam?” he asked me out of no where “Uh…we met through a mutual friend” “Why are you lying?” “Who says i’m lying?” I was definitely lying, but how did he know that??? did Neelam tell him how we met?

No probably not cause he didn’t even know I was his instructor. “You did that awkward smile you used to do when you lie….so how did you guys really meet?”How does he even remember that?! i’m feeling those stupid butterflies again too get it together y/n. “Okay fine, I used to date her cousin a few years back and we got really close.” “Used to?” I don’t remember Jack being this nosey damn “You sure are nosey Jackman.” he shrugged.

“Not nosey just curious. I’d hate to be your ex, I know he feels stupid.” “You don’t even know what caused the break up.” “By your body language i can tell he’s the one that fucked up though.” “Yeah he did but i’ve been over it for a while now.” “Any new dudes in your life?” “No, just enjoying life as it comes these days. How about you mister rapper? new groupie every night or what?” “Who’s the nosey one now huh?” he says with a smirk. I know he did not just flip the script on me. “You asked a bunch of questions and all I asked is one and now i’m the nosey one?” “I’m just messing with you. But no i’m not like that… not anymore at least.” “Oh wow” He looked offended at my reply but can you blame me? he’s so popular now.

“What do you mean by oh wow? do I look like a manwhore to you?” I give him the look of “do you really want me to answer that?” “Okay don’t answer that” and we both started laughing. “Do you wanna do a small race to the stalls?” he looked at me as if i had grown two heads “ A race?!? are you trying to kill me? I thought we were getting along.” “You’re so dramatic it’s like 7 feet away” “Are you forgetting that you’re the real rider here and not me? I’m just an intern” “Okay prospect, no race this time. You’re such a party pooper.” “If you’re a good teacher and I get the hang of this by the end of these two weeks i’ll race you. Deal?” “Deal” We shook on it and continued our way to the stalls. Unlike getting on the horse, Jack had no issues getting off of it and he was quick to offer me his hand to help me get down.

Of course I didn’t need it but I decided to entertain him and accepted the help anyway. For whatever reason my horse, Talula felt like it was good moment to push me off and of course it had to be like one of those cliché rom coms. You know the ones where the girl falls into the guys chest and their faces are so close they’re almost breathing the same air and they look into each other’s eyes like its the prettiest thing they’ve ever seen?

Well that’s exactly what was happening between Jack and I. Until Talula decided to push me again and we both snapped out of it. His right arm was still around my waist and his other hand was still holding mine. I frantically pushed him away and stepped back brushing my clothes off from the invisible dust and possible horse fur.

“Sorry about that.” Jack apologized “No no it’s fine.” I started nervously laughing.He started walking backwards towards the exit “Tomorrow same time?” “Yeah, same time” “Alright, see you tomorrow dumpling.” He turned around now walking to the exit with his back towards me. “Stop calling me that.” “Not a chance dumpling.” He glanced at me over his shoulder with a smug grin on his face. I rolled my eyes but I couldn’t hold back my smile. After a full day of teaching Jack some of the basics and catching up a little bit I can say that he’s definitely the same goofy Jack that he was when I first met him in middle school. Maybe these next two weeks won’t be so bad after all.

[strayzband]

The camera focuses on the brick wall outside of a photo studio. Standing against the wall is a large man in two jackets and a snapback - Russel Hobbs, Strayz drummer. The last one left before the big one, the group interview. He seems to be looking down (hard to tell, what with his eyes being so black), and he hasn’t said a word. He doesn’t until I start.

Nice to finally speak to you, isn’t it?

He looks up.

Yeah.

I get going.

So, Russel, what was your introduction to music? How’d you get into it?

Been drumming since I was a kid. My folks were in it too.

Really?

Really.

I nod and move to the next question.

Anything you can tell me about the upcoming album? Your bandmates haven’t given me much to work with on that front.

What’dya wanna know?

Oh, I don’t know… could I get a genre? I asked Noodle, but she wouldn’t tell me. I get it, though! She wants it to be a surprise…

I don’t know why, but something about Russel makes me talk more than usual. I suppose he isn’t exactly filling the silences. Russel doesn’t react, or really move at all before speaking. He’s very different to his bandmates in that sense. It’s almost refreshing.

Country.

I pause.

Country?

Yep.

Why? You’ve never done country before.

Russel sticks his hands in his pockets.

Muds comes from the country. Farmer’s son.

I have no idea if he’s telling the truth. It doesn’t feel true, but I don’t think he has any reason to lie, so I move on without saying anything.

Farmer’s son. Got it. So, uh… what’s it been like, getting famous so suddenly?

‘shappened before.

I pause.

It has?

It has.

…Care to elaborate?

Nope.

There’s silence for a few moments. Then I decide to test something - just because I have to get my bearings on this whole thing.

I was just wondering, where are you from?

Kentucky.

He doesn’t hesitate. I try again.

What sort of music do you like?

Christian pop.

How’s Britain treating you?

I’ve never been.

I swallow. Well, doesn’t that just confirm it? I don’t want to accuse anyone of anything, but I’ve never seen a more obvious liar in my life.

Why are you lying to me?

I’m not sure if I’m seeing it properly. After all, it’s dark as all hell out here, and he’s real subtle about it, but his lip quirks up, just slightly. It’s the least intimidating thing any of these musicians have done since I got here, and it makes me smile back.

I’m not lyin’.

Well, I was expecting him to start telling the truth then.

You are! I mean, I’ve seen people say things they don’t really think in interviews - you’ve all done it, I can tell - but you’re lying about things that don’t matter at all. Basic facts, not your opinions or your plans or anything like that. You must know that I know you’re in Britain right now.

Russel doesn’t say anything at all. Then, it clicks, and I’ll admit I feel stupid for not getting his angle sooner.

…You’re not trying to trick me. You just want me to know you won’t answer me.

He smiles properly.

I think we’re done here.

Despite the fact that he clearly isn’t a fan of me, I think this might be the most pleasant interview of the lot. Though, to be fair, Stuart would hold that title easily if only I was less sensitive to second hand smoke.

Yes, probably. I’ll be seeing you in a moment.

I start to turn the camera off. Then I stop, because I might as well get an idea of what the next half-hour of my life is going to be. It’s pointing down at the ground,

What’s your name?

Del.

I’m sure you can hear my laughter as I turn the camera off. I can’t help it. I’ve never spoken to someone quite so bizarre.

[avida-heidia-5]

I was tagged by @twinkodium. This was a lot of fun! Thanks for the tag! 😊

Star Sign:

Aries. 🐏 (I don’t believe in zodiac signs and their supposed meanings. I just know I’m an Aries as I was born on 22nd March. 🤷🏻‍♀️)

Favourite Holiday:

Easter! 🐰🥚🌸 Because chocolate. I’m ADDICTED to the stuff! 🍫 Also, Spring is one of my favourite seasons. I just love seeing nature come back to life and seeing more wildlife more often after a long winter period. It brings me so much joy every single time. 😌

Last Meal:

I’ve just eaten homemade toad-in-the-hole for linner (dinner at lunchtime). It was deeeeelicious! 🤤😋

Current Favourite Musician:

Depeche Mode. I fell in love with them ever since they released their latest album Memento Mori (2023). I pretty much binged the whole of their discography on Spotify last year out of sheer curiosity and I’ve now become strangely obsessed with them as a result. I’ve recently learned that fans of DM are called “Devotees”, soooo yeah. I’m a Devotee now! Whoopsie! 🌹🎹

Last Music Listened To:

Meet Me In The Woods by Lord Huron. I like me a good folk rock song to keep me going. This song was just so pleasant to listen to. Plus, it’s very catchy. I couldn’t get it out of my head after listening to it.

Last Movie Watched:

I watched The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) with my parents on Netflix a couple of weeks ago. For those who don’t know, it’s an anthology film of sorts containing many different stories centred around the Wild West. My dad recommended it to me as he likes watching films made by the Coen Brothers. I don’t have a lot to say about it other than I really enjoyed it. I’m a film buff and I usually have a lot to say about the films I’ve just seen, so having that happen to me was really odd. 🤔

Last TV Show Watched:

I don’t watch a lot of TV and I don’t keep up to date with any shows, so I don’t know if what I’ve put down counts.

I recently finished watching the Fernando (2020–) docuseries on Amazon Prime and I loved it. 🤩 It’s mainly about Fernando Alonso and the many adventures he got up to during his 2-year retirement from F1. It’s really interesting!

Last Book/Fic Finished:

The last book I read was The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum and the last fic I read was a Chalex fic called I Can Feel The Sun On You by mintchocolatechip97.

Last Book/Fic Abandoned:

The book I abandoned quite swiftly was a Dave Grohl autobiography my uncle and auntie got me for Christmas. I was never a Foo Fighters listener and I’m not a Foo Fighters fan. I still have no idea why they thought I’d like it. Sorry to the people who like them, they’re just not for me. 🙁

Currently Reading:

A Pocketful Of Happiness by Richard E. Grant. It’s such a sweet, tender, and heartbreaking autobiography that highlights how he got into acting and how he met and fell in love with his acting coach Joan Washington. ❤️

Last Thing Researched for Writing/Art/Hyperfixation:

“sebastian vettel mark webber 2010 monaco”. Just seeing pictures of these two smiling and hugging each other makes me smile. 🥰 I was also psyching myself up for this week’s F1 Watch Party on Discord, which, funnily enough, will be streaming the 2010 Monaco Grand Prix this Sunday. I can’t wait!!!! 🏎️💨🏁

Favourite Fandom Online Memory:

I love making friends through their interests in the fandom. The F1 community is massive, so it was easy for me to make friends online and in person as a result. I can feel comfortable being weird around them and in turn they can feel comfortable being weird around me. 🥰🥰🥰

Favourite Old Fandom You Wish Would Drag You Back In/Have A Resurgence:

I used to love the Merlin fandom when it was popular. I still do, but not as strongly as I used to.

Favourite Thing You Enjoy That Never Had an Active or Big “Fandom” But You Wish It Did:

Hmmm, this is a tough question. I’m not fussed with how popular my fandom choices are. If I had to choose one though, I’d say The Beatles. I think a lot of RPFs about certain bands and singers don’t get as much attention as, say, Formula 1 or Super Mario or Supernatural do.

Tempting Project You’re Trying To Rein In/Don’t Have Time For:

I really want to post some more fanfics on AO3, make some more banners on InShot, and do some video editing and gif making on CapCut, but I’m incredibly slow at doing all of them because college work keeps getting in the way of my plans. 😵‍💫 I hardly have enough free time to do any of them. Don’t worry though, I haven’t abandoned them altogether. I will get them done eventually! 🤞🏻

I tag the following peeps: @kaossbells, @hurricane-heatt, @racingliners, @formulaes5, and @wanderingblindly. Feel free to participate if you’d like to. No pressure obviously. 😊

[bisluthq]

this is an unpopular opinion but i never really understand why people say that taylor and joe were super unhealthy and that the relationship was deteriorating throughout the entire folklore/evermore era. I actually believe they got very close during that time which is why there are literally love songs for him on both albums and they extended their connection by writing music together - which is literally taylor’s most sacred art form. i think the whole thing with them is that they thrived when they were alone and connected on a personal and romantic level when they didn’t have the noise of the outside world breaking their bubble which is literally what the pandemic was, very similar to rep era. so yeah i just don’t see the unhealthy signs that everyone else does. like you say not everuthing taylor writes is connected to a man or relationship, like is she’s depressed asf because of the fucking pandemic then maybe it’s bc people are dying or individual mental health and not because she hates her romantic situation/partner?? idk i just feel like i’ve seen so many people say that now they look back and see the relationship being toxic since folklore and I just don’t see that, they seemed pretty close and happy to me and taylor was having creative breakthroughs that have nothing to do with joe so

I agree with you very wholeheartedly. I was saying this in the pandemic too - who the fuck was NOT a bit depressed at that point? Taylor and Joe’s relationship appears to have started to tank at the tail end of the pandemic and then over the course of her blowing up (again and bigger than before) and him not wanting major changes to their established lifestyle and not prioritizing the relationship (choosing Stars at Noon over RED TV week and her birthday for an obvious example). And yes like she says she was lonely when she was writing folkmore and I’m sure she was lol because she only saw her staff, Joe and then the folkmore collaborators who moved in. For an extroverted girlie that obviously sucked balls.

[manesalex]

nothing starts without you (we become the stories we’ve always wanted): chapter 3/3

When Alex’s former bandmate, Rosa Ortecho, asks him to write a song to help kickstart her solo career, Alex finds himself struggling to write anything at all. Until, that is, he meets Michael Guerin. Or, a loose Music and Lyrics AU. for @alex-guerin @malexsanta​

Warnings for suggestive comments, references to past abuse, and references to addiction. Not Maria Deluca friendly.

***

“I love it!” Rosa responds immediately after hearing the part of the song that Michael and Alex have finished. She turns to Michael, “You’re sure you’re okay with me singing it? I mean, you’ll be getting royalties and everything for it, but I know that some writers can have an issue with someone else being the face of their material.”

Alex is so grateful Rosa understands without him having had to say anything about it. He had always been relieved to have her be the face of his songs, to be able to distance himself publicly from his own experiences, but he’s so glad she realizes that Michael may not feel the same way.

“No one wants to hear me sing,” Michael laughs. “As long as you’re crediting me, I’d love to get my work out there.”

“I think a lot of artists will be calling you up and asking you to write for them once this one gets out,” Rosa grins. “Thank you.”

Michael is about to speak when his phone rings. He quickly excuses himself.

And Alex really shouldn’t be surprised with how quickly Rosa takes advantage of the opening, like she’s been itching for the opportunity to interfere in his personal life. “He’s hot,” she says, elbowing Alex.

“I didn’t think he was your type,” Alex replies, being deliberately obtuse. He knows she can read his feelings all over his face. He may be able to hide them from Michael, but Rosa has known him since he was a child and has witnessed every crush he’s ever had.

“You should ask him out,” Rosa ignores the comment.

“I’m pretty sure he’s straight,” Alex admits. “And he used to date Maria Deluca. I’m pretty sure that, even if he were into guys, she put him off of musicians.”

Rosa frowns, takes a moment before saying, “You deserve to be happy, Alex. If anyone deserves to be loved, it’s you. I think you should see if he’d be interested. But, even if he isn’t, I really wish you’d let someone in.”

Alex is about to object when Michael returns. He turns to Alex immediately, saying, “My sister wanted me to invite you to dinner. Tonight. Assuming you’re free?” He almost sounds hopeful.

“I’ve got plans with Kyle,” Alex responds, tone apologetic. “Or I would.” He may have spent the entire day with Michael, but that isn’t nearly enough. Not for him. Alex may have just met him, but he’s pretty sure he’d happily spend the rest of his life with Michael.

“I’m sure Isobel would be happy to have him join us too,” Michael replies. He looks down before meeting Alex’s eyes, “She’s kind of been a fan since your first album. I’m pretty sure she won’t forgive me if she misses her chance to meet you.”

And that explains it. Michael is just a good brother who is trying to make his sister happy. Of course that’s all this is. “Yeah, I think I can talk Kyle into that.”

“Good,” Michael grins at him. Alex feels his heart swell in spite of himself. He’s so screwed.

***

Michael isn’t sure whether his sister was flirting more with Alex or Kyle during dinner. So, when he gets her alone in the kitchen, he says, “You know he’s gay, right?”

“Kyle too?” Isobel sounds disappointed. “I mean, I’d be happy to think about those two hooking up because, wow. There has to be something in the water in this town. They’re both way too hot. And those cheekbones!”

“No, Alex. I’ve known Kyle about as long as you have.”

“Of course I know Alex is gay. And I wouldn’t pursue someone you’re making actual hearteyes at anyway.”

“I’m not-”

Isobel cuts him off, “Michael, I’ve known you my whole life. And I’ve never seen you look at someone like that. Like you’re imagining your wedding to him.”

“He’s way out of my league, Isobel,” Michael argues.

“Did he say that?” Isobel asks, sounding like she already knows the answer. “Look, I know Maria did a number on you, but that man has been returning your adoring looks all night and it would actually be kinda sickening if I didn’t have Kyle here to look at instead.”

“You really think he’d be interested in me?” Michael asks. He knows it’s not a good idea and is sure he wouldn’t survive Alex realizing that Michael isn’t good enough for him, but he can’t help but want it anyway.

“Yes, Michael. He’s obviously interested in you. And I think you should go for it. Tonight, ideally. Leave me alone with the sexy doctor.” Isobel’s grin is positively evil. And, in spite of himself, Michael really wants to take her advice.

***

“Drive you home?” Michael offers in little over a whisper. And Alex wants this to be more than it is, just the friendly offer from the man who drove them both here.

“You do know I’ve been staying with Kyle, right?” Alex asks, giving Michael the option to rescind the polite offer.

“Yeah, I know,” Michael replies, perfectly calmly. “Did you want to wait to get a ride home with him or would you rather let me drive you home?”

Alex is pretty sure he takes far too long to respond. “Let me get my jacket.”

Michael just holds it out to him and waits as Alex puts it on, offering his hand to Alex to help him up.

Alex considers for a moment, but takes it. And then, to his surprise, Michael doesn’t let go, simply leads him toward the front door, shouting, “See you tomorrow, Is!”

“Have fun!” she shouts back. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

“Is there anything you wouldn’t do?” Michael shouts at her.

They’re out the door before Isobel can reply.

Before they reach his truck, Michael stops them in the middle of the sidewalk, hand still holding Alex’s. He looks like he’s about to speak and Alex is absolutely certain that, whatever he says, it will kill the fragile bit of hope that’s building inside of him. The hope that, just maybe, Michael might want him after all.

And, suddenly, Michael’s lips are pressed against his and it feels like time stops, like nothing exists outside of the man in front of him, the way his lips are parting, the way his free hand presses against Alex’s lower back, pulling him closer, kissing Alex like he’s precious, like he cares about him more than anyone ever has.

Michael pulls away a couple of inches and Alex opens his eyes to see Michael’s already focused on his own eyes.

And then Michael smiles at him like he’s feeling everything Alex is feeling, like he’s jumped off the edge of a cliff only to start to fly.

***

The last week has been the best week of Michael’s life, waking up next to Alex, getting to kiss him awake, to spend hours in bed, kissing and talking and exploring each others’ bodies. They’ve been taking time to write together as well and, really, every moment Michael spends with Alex, no matter what they’re doing, makes Michael feel happier than he’s ever felt before.

Sadly, he hasn’t been working on Alex’s cabin, but he spends every hour he’s at work counting down to the moment he can be with Alex again.

Tonight, however, he’s going to Rosa’s concert. Alex has some kind of surprise for him and he can’t wait to see whatever it is. Some small part of him hopes he’s going to see Alex get onstage with Rosa to play their song.

He and Isobel get to their seats in the front row, but, to his surprise, Isobel isn’t even looking up from her phone to tease him about how he’d disappeared for the last week.

“Who’s got you so distracted?” he finally asks.

“Kyle,” Isobel admits. Michael is pretty sure she’s actually blushing. “He’s really hot. And a surprisingly generous lover. He went down on me for-”

“Isobel! I don’t want to hear about your sex life!” he objects quickly.

“Your loss,” she shrugs. “You could learn some things.”

“Nothing I’d want to learn,” he replies.

“What about you?” she asks. “Been too busy in Alex Manes’s bed to give me the details?”

“He’s amazing,” Michael smiles. “He’s so kind and smart and-”

“Those aren’t the details I’m looking for,” Isobel tells him.

“I’m not describing his dick to you,” Michael shakes his head.

“You’re no fun!” she pouts for a moment before breaking into a smile. “Seriously though. I’m glad you’re happy. You deserve someone who treats you well.”

“Thanks. So do you.”

He’s incredibly grateful that the house lights lower, preventing Isobel from sharing more unsolicited details about her sex life.

Rosa walks out onstage, grabbing the mic, waiting until the cheers die down. And then she speaks. “I know you were expecting to just see me tonight, but I have a friend here and he’s going to sing a song he wrote first, if you’re all okay with that.”

The crowd cheers, but Michael’s heart drops. A song Alex wrote. Not that they wrote together. He had really thought Alex was so much better than that, so much kinder, that he could trust him. He can’t believe he opened his heart up, that he finally took a chance on someone, only for this to happen again.

He stumbles up the aisle, desperate to get out, to get away from the crowd.

Everything sounds like he’s underwater and he’s pretty sure he’s crying. Until Alex’s voice breaks through all of it.

It’s not the song they’d written. He stops still, turns around to see Alex sitting with his guitar, strumming it and singing into the mic. Singing something Michael has never heard before.

It’s raw and lovely and more vulnerable than anything Michael had heard from him or Rosa before. It’s the most beautiful song Michael has ever heard in his life.

He’s still crying, but no longer tears from a broken heart. The crowd fades away and it’s like it’s just Alex singing directly to him, letting him know about all of his insecurities and fears and hopes.

And, yeah, Michael is definitely in love with this man.

Alex’s eyes find him and he smiles hopefully at Michael and all Michael can do is nod in response.

Alex’s responding grin is brighter than the sun.

Michael’s eyes don’t leave Alex until he’s done with the song and off the stage entirely. And then Michael rushes toward the door, flashing the backstage pass Alex had given him at the guard, desperate to see Alex.

He finds Alex standing backstage in a dressing room, looking like he’s worrying about something.

Michael wants to reassure him, to let him know that there’s no reason for concern. “That was amazing.”

“You really think so?” Alex asks. “It wasn’t too much?” It almost sounds to Michael like he’s asking if he’s too much, if all the vulnerabilities he shared in his song are too much for Michael.

“Yeah. You’re amazing.” He wishes he could show Alex what he sees when he looks at him, how truly gorgeous he is, how amazed Michael is that his heart is still so beautiful after everything he’s gone through. “When did you find the time to write that?”

Alex blushes, looking at the floor, “When you were working.”

Michael steps right in front of him, hand on his jaw, tilting it up so he’s looking Michael in the eye. And all he can do is tell Alex exactly how he feels, even if it’s too soon. “I love you.”

Alex takes a moment to respond, looks like he can’t quite believe his ears. And then he’s smiling and saying, “I love you too.”

They’re both quiet for a moment before Alex realizes, “You’re going to miss Rosa singing your song.”

Michael just shrugs, “Doesn’t matter. I’d rather be here with you.” And it’s true. Before he met Alex, Michael had so desperately wanted to hear his songs sung for crowds of people who all knew he wrote them. But now he’s happy just to be here with Alex.

Alex grabs his hand and Michael smiles in response, intertwining their fingers and squeezing Alex’s hand. And then Alex leads Michael to the stage, right outside of the audience’s view. “Now you can have both,” he says so quietly that only Michael can hear his voice. “You shouldn’t miss this.”

Rosa is standing there in front of the crowd, “This next song was written by Alex and a man named Michael Guerin. I think you’re going to hear a lot of his work in the years to come. Maybe you’re already familiar with some of his stuff.”

Alex seems to anticipate Michael’s question, because, when Michael turns to him for answers, he says, “You’re talented. And you have a very distinctive voice. Rosa figured it out on her own.” And Michael finds himself relieved by that answer, by the knowledge that maybe Maria hasn’t fully gotten away with stealing his work, that maybe people will figure out the truth on their own, without him needing to prove a thing.

Alex gave him that. And so much more than he ever knew he wanted.

Michael turns back toward the stage, watching Rosa sing the song he wrote with Alex, the song that brought the man beside him into his life. He’s not sure if he’s ready for the attention that Rosa implied he’ll be receiving soon, but he knows he’ll be able to handle it, as long as Alex is here at his side.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

So, I was thinking today of how annoying it is that I recently re-listened to what used to be one of my favourite songs and found it’s chock full of racist dogwhistles. I loved this one as a teenager and in my early twenties – I think I vaguely knew at the time that it was a bit edgy, that in order to enjoy it I had to overlook some less-than-ideal undertones, but only vaguely. I heard it recently, and… yeah, it’s pretty much a Confederate anthem. That’s the whole message.

(Look, I don’t want to link to the song or anything, but I do want to clarify that the dogwhistles I missed were things like the lines “It’s a certain kind of living, it’s a certain kind of style”, put too close to the line “This one’s for the South”. Not… really explicitly racist stuff. I wasn’t listening to the Toby Keith song that describes lynchings and then says they’re a good thing or anything, I promise I have always hated Toby Keith.)

Most of the music I like best is country and/or folk. Musically, those are very similar. There is so much overlap that there are lots of songs that can’t be categorized easily as one or the other, and just get labelled as “country/folk”. There are debates every year about whether certain bands that get invited to folk festivals belong there – ie. rock acts that might have a vaguely hippie-ish feel, and may or may not therefore cross over with folk enough to justify their invitation. But I have never seen anyone suggest that any country band – even the most purely country band, that isn’t country/folk but is just country – doesn’t belong at a folk festival. They’re crossover genres, country and folk. They both belong where the other does.

Most of my folk music is Canadian, and most of my country music is American (many exceptions, of course, if you think all country music is American then please look up great Canadians like Ian Tyson, Corb Lund, The Divorcees, and Fred Eaglesmith). Folk is a leftie genre; it can pretty well always be assumed to be left-wing, unless proven otherwise in some strange exception to the rule. Folk music has its roots among the hippies and the activists. Country music, on the other hand, needs to be assumed to be right-wing until proven otherwise. Sometimes I forget this, because I’m so used to so much of my music coming from hippie folk festivals, so when I get into something new, I forget to stop and check if it might be, for example, a thinly veiled Confederate anthem (it’s Not Everybody Likes Us by Hank III, grandson of Hank Williams Sr., that’s the song I used to really like, it’s pretty bad).

So, thinking about that got me thinking of my favourite country artists/albums/songs that clearly break this mold. Not just ones that might be all right, but ones that are explicitly left-wing. And not just vaguely country-like folk songs, but ones that are very clearly and specifically in the country genre. So I’ve made a list.

Top Five Favourite Left-Wing Country Music Albums:

James McMurtry – Just Us Kids (2008)

Okay, this album isn’t entirely political. But enough of it is to count, I think. There’s a song called The Governor, about the importance of boating regulations, and I respect anyone who gets that specific in their political protest songs. I’m making it sound worse than it is – it’s also about a fisherman who died due to unenforced regulations and the way bribery in the justice system let rich people get away with it.

Fire Line Road is about having compassion for addicts. Ruins of the Realm is pretty well what it sounds like, about America falling apart and the pro-Confederacy movement destroying everything.

I think my favourite explicitly political song on there is Cheney’s Toy, partly because it’s just a really good song, but also because I have a soft spot for specifically anti-George Bush protest stuff. It seemed like such a simpler time back then, when that was the prevailing political movement in America. And I don’t want to get too nostalgic for it; I hate when people say having Trump for comparison has made it clear that really, George Bush was no problem, he’s just a silly old man who paints pictures. That sort of framing seems rather disrespectful to the many, many Americans, Iraqis, and people of other nationalities who died in Bush’s war. But still. It did feel simpler. Being a pacifist at the beginning of the Iraq war felt like such a clear, sensible, coherent, political position, as compared to today, when the only reasonable political stance is “Fucking hell it’s all fucked and we need to burn it all down!” I genuinely don’t know how much of this sense I have is because I was a teenager then, watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report every night, seeing the world through younger and clearer eyes; versus how much is because the world is genuinely more fucked up now than it was then. I suspect it’s a bit of both.

Anyway, I do like a political song that gets specific instead of just a general “good things are good, bad things are bad” message. And a song with the lyrics: “Come on, show them what you’re made of/You’re no longer daddy’s boy/You’re the man that they’re all afraid of/But you’re only Cheney’s Toy” is really quite specific. I think it’s quite clear what they think about George Bush, specifically, as a person.

Having said all that, my favourite song off this album is You’d A Thought (Leonard Cohen Must Die), which can only be considered political in the vaguest possible terms. It’s still good, though. “It’s not that I’m not threatened/It’s just that I’m not surprised/Good for the gander/Said the old folks but they lied” are lyrics that stay stuck in my head all day after I hear them. And those lines certainly can’t be called apolitical, even if they’re not as explicitly political as some.

Two Cow Garage – Brand New Flag (2016)

2016/2017 were big years for American political albums, for extremely obvious reasons. Two Cow Garage let everyone know where they stand with this one. This Little Light is a song about a man realizing he’d been lied to by religion (invoking the song This Little Light of Mine that I sang in Sunday school as a child) when he was robbed at gunpoint and came away with PTSD. I’d argue that this one is an explicitly political song, because religion is so deeply and inherently political. Taking lines from a Sunday school song and using them in a horror-genre song about near-murder definitely counts as a political act.

They do get more overtly political than that, though. Let the Boys Be Girls is a song about taxpayer-funded farm subsidies. Just kidding, it’s about the struggle to exercise our inalienable right to be who we want even in an oppressive system. For some reason it just struck me as hilarious to imagine as song titled “Let the Boys Be Girls” that’s about farm subsidies. My music collection does actually contain multiple songs about farm subsidies, it’s rather common topic in country music, but none of them are on this album.

Anyway, as I wrote this post I realized I hadn’t Let the Boys Be Girls in a while so maybe it’s not as clearly political as I’m remembering. So I’ve just played the song, heard the lines, “And then we found out God was a knock knock joke/And when we answered the door, there was nobody home/Aren’t you glad I didn’t tell you the nonsense they fed me, all about forbidden fruit?/And then they sent us off to schools, and factories, and wars/Teach us it’s okay to die, as long as we’re poor/And then you tell me not to tread on you/In the land of the free and the home of the depraved” – and yep, I think it’s fair to call this one political. Maybe a tiny bit teenage rebel-style edgelord-y, but with an entirely sound message of unlearning bullshit you were taught in your youth. Sometimes, the world could use a few more anti-oppressive teenage rebel-style edgelords. It’s better than the other kind of edgelord.

A few other songs on this album cover political stuff. A Lullaby of Sorts is about the failures of the mental health treatment system for people with severe problems. The title track Brand New Flag is another one for people who are left out by the rhetoric around patriotism and religion.

My favourite explicitly political song on this album is History Now. A song for the Greta Tunebergs, about not ignoring crises because they’re hard to tackle. Not just about the environment, though; they namecheck school shootings and a few other things. “Every single song on your radio, playing soft and low/Says baby, don’t you worry about the things you can’t control/But I am fucking worried/Because we were all left in control/And we are all that is in control/What if it is up to us?/I know it’s difficult to think about it now/What if it is up to us to figure out how the future all turns out?/It’s history now.” The world could always use more songs like that.

 Drive-By Truckers – American Band (2016)

This is the first purely political album on this list, nearly every song on it is explicitly political. The album art is an American flag lowered to half mast. The release date is September 30th, 2016. That still gets to me. They wrote this album to try to capture the darkness they felt their country was falling into, and they wrote it at a time when most people were still pretty sure Donald Trump would lose the general election. Things were this bad even before Donald Trump won. This album is so fucking dark, and just after it came out everything got wildly worse.

The opening track is called Ramon Casiano, which is the name of a Mexican teenager who was shot to death in 1931 by a man who wasn’t held accountable for it, and that man went on to be significantly involved with the NRA. They wrote that story into their song, and tied it to modern racism, how many people in today’s America still believe shooting people in general, especially if they’re Mexican teenagers, is acceptable (“Killing’s been the bullet’s business/Since back in 1931/Someone killed Ramon Casiano/And Ramon still ain’t dead enough”).

Next up is Darkened Flags on the Cusp of Dawn, a protest song about the way the state of South Carolina left their Confederate flag up at the top of the mast, even while every other flag went to half mast after the white supremacist shooting in a black church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015. That is a fucking horrifying collection of words that I’ve just written, and Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers wrote a song that tried to capture just a little of that horror.

Surrender Under Protest is an old Confederate slogan, as well as the title of the next song. Drive-By Truckers used this right-wing cry in their song to support the people who protest against white supremacist violence, which was on the rise in the Southern United States. This song was specifically in support of the activists who fought to remove Confederate flags from state buildings.

The next song, Guns of Umpqua, is about the 2015 mass shooting at Umpqua Community College. The view of the artist is that he’s not in favour of it.

Filthy and Fried is a brief break from the extreme darkness, though not exactly light. It’s about the way racial and gender roles have changed since the artist was a kid. It supports the general idea that progress is a good thing, but also has compassion for people who struggle to keep up with it. It also has some of my favourite lyrics of the album: “Everyone claims that the times are a changin’ as theirs pass them by/And everyone’s right.”

Next up is Sun Don’t Shine, which is why I had to say that only “nearly” every song on this album is explicitly political. This one is about being sad after what was presumably a breakup, and walking in the rain about it. It’s unusually simple subject matter for Drive-By Truckers, but I really like this song anyway.

Next is Kinky Hypocrite, another fun one that’s a break from the darkness of most of the album, even though it’s also not exactly a positive subject. It’s about how often when “family values” right-wing politicians try to curtail everyone else’s right to have fun in their personal lives, they end up getting caught in sex and/or drug scandals themselves. “It’s a tricky navigation from the wanting to the having/All the needs of a kinky hypocrite/The greatest separators of fools from their money/Party harder than they’d like to admit.”

Ever South gets serious again, but not quite as dark, there’s a surprising amount of hope in this one. It’s a protest song about the massive anti-immigration sentiment and rhetoric sweeping across America, but it’s more of a celebration of immigration than a focus on the hatred for it. It’s about how the singer’s own ancestors came to America with nothing from Ireland ages ago, and were able to make a good life there, even though there was anti-Irish prejudice. It connects that to people who are against immigration in America today.

I realize it’s not ideal when white people compare some historic prejudice against white immigrants to racism today. Irish people have absolutely been the victims of racism and horrifying oppression, but that doesn’t justify that scene in Bend it Like Beckham in which the brown girl told her coach he was too white to understand what it’s like to be called [racial slur that’s an abbreviation of “Pakistani”], and he replied that he does know what it’s like, because he’s Irish. That’s not a great thing to say, and the concept from the song Ever South could have slipped into saying something along those lines, but I think it was executed in a way that did not actually do that.

This song says that so many American white supremacists justify their ideology by claiming they’re fighting the battles of their forefathers, like those who support the Confederacy because it’s their “heritage”. They might do well to remember, Patterson Hood says, that many of those forefathers were also immigrants, and the battles they fought were against people who didn’t want immigrants in America. So you being anti-immigration does not mean your ancestors would be proud of you.

Underlying all of it, though, this song has compassion for everyone who’s struggling to make a life somewhere. They have other songs that clearly condemn the racists and their views, but this one does try to understand them, at least a bit. And to appeal to the part of them that’s struggling to do right by their history, and to ask them to understand that hating newer immigrants than themselves isn’t he way to do it. The reference to graveyards always gets to me, the idea that those ancestors everyone’s trying to honour are right below the ground where they’re fighting, and everyone’s getting it wrong.

“And my Christian Southern brethren will tell you all what for/To keep your heathen ways up in you, and your shoes outside the door/Take your stand for noble causes ‘til you just can’t stand no more/And surrender to some saviour, praise the Lord/But despite our best intentions, it pains me to report/We keep swinging for the fences, coming up a little short/We sure can get it wrong, for someone so devout/I hear you whistling past the graveyard, looking down/Ever Southern in my carriage, ever Southern in my stance/In the Irish of my complexion, in the Scottish in my dance/In the way I bang my head against my daily circumstance/Let this blue-eyed Southern devil take you out upon the prowl/With decadence and charm we’ll take it into town/Tell you stories of our fathers and the glories of our house/Always told a little slower, ever south.”

Next song is What It Means, and that’s the flagship song of the album. It’s about the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager who was murdered by a cop. That cop shot him in the back while he was running away, in Fergeson, Missouri, in 2014. I remember this happening. I know how massively ignorant it is for me to say this, given that I was 23 years old at the time, but it was the first time that I became aware of the horrifying epidemic of police violence against black people in the States (and then I quickly learned that Canada likes to call it an American problem, but it happens here all the time too). Shootings like this happened long before this one, but this one was the first one in my lifetime that ignited mass protests, first in Fergeson and then in solidarity across the States and into Canada. It was huge, entire cities were shut down by rightfully furious protesters.

At this point, I should mention that the band Drive-By Truckers is made up of people from both Georgia and Alabama. A huge proportion of their fans are from there too. They are white male country singers from the Southern United States, singing mainly for audience of white male country music fans from the Southern United States, and before this album, they didn’t make much political music.

When they released the song What It Means, there was a huge backlash, of people who’d loved them for years accusing them of being anti-cop, anti-white racists. They lost a huge number of fans – this wasn’t some controversy that Drive-By Truckers manufactured so they could benefit from the attention. They didn’t get nearly enough mainstream attention to make up for how much of their core fanbase they lost, and they must have known that would happen. They wrote and released this song anyway.

I remember at the time that there was a lot of “both sides” rhetoric, because in some cases the protests were violent (justifiably, in my opinion, but I also know it’s easy for me to say that because no one burned or looted anything in my city), they shut things down, they caused problems. So even people who weren’t straight-up Confederate sympathizers said things like of course racism and violence in policing is a problem, but so are these protests, so both sides just need to listen to each other and come to and understanding. Which is, of course, bullshit, given that one side has been dominating the conversation for centuries, and the other side had to burn shit down just to be heard.

Anyway, the first couple of verses of What It Means suggests that this song might be going in the direction, encouraging “healthy dialogue” on “both sides” to find points where they agree and come to a peaceful resolution: “He was running down the street when they shot him in his tracks/About the only thing agreed upon is he ain’t coming back/There won’t be any trial so the air it won't be cleared/There’s just two sides calling names out of anger, out of fear.” It sounds like it might be saying that. And then they hit you with the next lines: “If you say it wasn’t racial when they shot him in his tracks/I guess that means that you ain’t black, it means that you ain’t black/I mean Barack Obama won, and you can choose where to eat/But you don’t see too many white kids lying bleeding on the street.” And that would be the part where huge swaths of their white Southern fans lost their minds. Because they make it very fucking clear that they are putting the blame on one side and not the other.

They continue to make this chillingly clear throughout the song: “In some town in Missouri/But it could be anywhere/It could be right here on Ruth Street/In fact, it's happened here/And it happened where you're sitting/Wherever that might be/And it happened last weekend/And it will happen again next week.”

They then get into straight-up racial sociological theory, a level of it that one doesn’t normally see in a country song: “Then I guess there was protesting, and some looting in some stores/And someone was reminded that they ain’t called colored folks no more/I mean we try to be politically correct when we call names/But what's the point of post-racial/When old prejudice remains?” The guy who wrote that line has read some books on this subject.

They then call out George Zimmerman, who murdered black teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012, and not only was not convicted due to Florida’s horrific Stand Your Ground law, but wasn’t even put on any sort of registry that stopped him from buying more guns, which he bragged about on social media after he did legally buy a gun, and was then arrested for domestic violence: “And that guy who killed that kid, down in Florida, standing ground/Is free to beat up on his girlfriend, and wave his brand-new gun around/While some kid is dead and buried, and laying in the ground/With a pocket full of skittles.”

I’ve already quoted most of the song anyway, so I may as well quote my favourite part, which is the ending, that always sends chills down my spine: “And we’re standing on the precipice of prejudice and fear/We trust science just as long as it tells us what we want to hear/We want our truths all fair and balanced as long as our notions lie within it/There’s no sunlight in our asses and our heads are stuck up in it/And our heroes may be rapists who watch us while we dream/But don’t look to me for answers ‘cause I don't know what it means.” My instinct is to make a joke about this because it’s so sincere, but I am going to resist that, and say that’s genuinely powerful. One time in 2017, I stood in an arena and watched a guy who’s sexually assaulted multiple teenage girls receive an award for his outstanding contributions to our sport, and it was so wrong that I didn’t even have the energy to be angry, I just felt helpless and confused, and the words “Our heroes may be rapists, who watch us while we dream, but don’t look to me for answers ‘cause I don’t know what it means” echoed in my head, and they could not have captured that sentiment better.

Okay, only a couple more songs on this album. Once They Banned Imagine is about the American domestic reaction to 9/11. It compares it to McCarthyism, saying that America had been a relatively free country since the Red Scare days, until 9/11 happened, and then they were right back to those levels of oppression. They cracked down on free speech and on all kinds of autonomy, justifying it by saying these measures were needed to protect the country from terrorism. The example Drive-By Truckers used to symbolize all this was that the government banned radio stations from playing John Lennon’s song Imagine, with the idea that the song would stoke anti-war sentiment and undermine public support for the invasion of Afghanistan.

Again, Drive-By Truckers invoked a slogan from the “other side”. There’s that famous question that people got asked during the McCarthyism era: “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party of the United States?” This song’s lyrics turned that into: “Are you now or have you ever been in cahoots with the notion that people can change?/When history happens again if you do or you did you'll be blamed/From baseless inquiry to no knocking entry becoming the law of the land/To half cocked excuses for bullet abuse regarding anything browner than tan/‘Cause once they banned Imagine it became the same old war it’s always been/Once they banned Imagine it became the war it was when we were kids.”

And finally, the last song on the album is called Baggage, which is about Robin Williams’ suicide. Quite an apolitical song compared to most of this album, even though obviously it’s partly about the way society fails people with mental health problems, and that’s very much a political issue.

“Some asswipe on TV said that you should be ashamed, for your cowardice in facing down your flaws/I’m not sure what makes me sadder: all that talent up in flames, or the lack of understanding that it wrought/Tossing off the baggage that is pulling down on me, toss it in the river and be free/Move so close together, only inches separate you from all the darkness in me/I’m not seeking explanations for this thing that you did, a thin line separates the laughter from despair/And I’ve had my own depression since I was just a kid, but been blessed with the means to repair.”

Drive-By Truckers – The Unraveling (2020)

Normally when I do album lists, I try not to have more than one by the same artist. But both of these Drive-By Truckers albums were so good that I couldn’t leave one out. This was the next album they made after American Band, and it’s pretty much a continuation.

The liner notes for this album are: “21st Century USA, tanks rolling through the streets of Washington DC as our utopian dreams give way to a dystopian now. Nearly a generation since the towers fell and the shit came down. William Gibson’s dark visions have come to pass, everyone is connected and more disconnected than ever. Our children have lock-down drills.” The track titles for this album are: Rosemary with a Bible and a Gun, Armageddon’s Back in Town, Slow Ride Argument, Thoughts and Prayers, 21st Century USA, Heroin Again, Babies in Cages, Grievance Merchants, Awaiting Resurrection. I don’t think that collection of words could possibly be anything but an explicitly political album about Donald Trump’s America.

Okay, I won’t go through every song this time. Most of the are about what you’d expect. Babies in Cages, for example, is about farm subsidies. Just kidding. It’s about babies in cages, and the view of the artist, controversially, is that he’s not in favour of it. Genuinely though, it has some of the most viscerally angry lyrics I’ve ever heard: “I’m sorry to my children, I’m sorry what they see/I’m sorry for the world that they/ll inherit from me/Babies in cages/And are we so divided that we can’t at least agree/This ain’t the country that our granddads fought for us to be/Babies in cages/Surf’s up in the cities where the next wars will be fought/I’m sorry we've forgotten every word that we’ve been taught/Babies in cages/I bang my head against it, smash guitars, and scream and shout/Standing on the beach, watching the tide go out/Babies in cages.” So anti, then. He is definitely anti-babies in cages.

21st Century USA is about people working shitty jobs for not enough money in a society that doesn’t care about them, and justifying their misery with the idea that it will all be rewarded by God someday: “They say we have to hang on just a little bit longer, and a savior will come our way/We’ll know him by the neon sign, and the opulence he maintains/If Amazon can deliver salvation, I’ll order it up on my phone/With Big Brother a-watching me always, why must I always feel so alone?/Men working hard for not enough at best/Women working just as hard for less/They get together late at night at bars/And bang each other like crashing cars.”

Grievance Merchants is one of the only two songs written by Mike Cooley on this album, with the others written by Patterson Hood. And you can see that change reflected in its style, slower and slightly more musically experimental and thematically ambitious. It’s about the way white supremacy and misogyny are sold to young white men by powerful groups that make huge amounts of money off that game. It would be so easy to go wrong when writing a song that’s basically sympathetic to incels and neo-Nazis, but I think Mike Cooley can do it right if anyone can. I think he did.

“When money and respect seemed to elude him, being white alone don't make the ladies swoon/There’s no shortage when it comes to hearing voices, telling him it’s him that’s done unto/Say his trouble with the ladies can’t be his fault, after all he’s what it’s natural they should want/There’s just outside voices turning them against him, a conspiracy to water down his blood.”

There is an essential sympathy for the individual boys who get caught by this, referring to them as “marks” by grifters. But Mike Cooley balances out that sympathy by placing the blame squarely on those grifters and expressing amazement that they can sleep at night: “Giving boys targets for their grievance, and then mocking those who bear the pain they cause/It takes a certain special kind of someone to cash the check it brings and sleep at all/The demonizing of the troubled mind, with all the usual suspects on the scene/Merchants selling young men reclamation, merchants selling old men back their dreams.” The end gets echo-y in a sort of experimental way, fantasizing about retribution for the grievance merchants: “May the price of freedom finally be their own/May our thoughts and prayers keep them company/As they wallow in their helplessness alone.” I think the song needed to end that way, making it clear that despite the sympathy, this is where it should be going. I really love this song.

Thoughts and Prayers is also what it sounds like. It tells the story of a school shooting in horrifying detail, mentioning the smell of the gun powder, children lined up on a playground with their hands in the air. I love some of the lyrics in this one, fantasizing about a day when all the people who let this happen will finally be held to account: “The Flat Earthist realized, as he flew through the skies, the curve of the horizon as he fell/He saw the world was round just before he hit the ground, and gravity called out to close the deal/When my children’s eyes look at me and they ask me to explain, it hurts me that I have to look away/The powers that be are in for shame and comeuppance, when Generation Lockdown has their day/They’ll throw the bums all out, and drain the swamp for real/Perp walk them down the Capitol steps and show them how it feels/Tramp the dirt down, Jesus, you can pray the rod they’ll spare/Stick it up your ass with your useless thoughts and prayers.” This album was released in January 2020, when Generation Lockdown meant kids who grew up doing lockdown drills in preparation for school shooters, and not anything else.

Awaiting Resurrection closes the album so perfectly that it threads it into being a concept album, combining themes of the earlier songs, about the USA being full of people ignoring all the horrors around them because they’re convinced that their God will come back and reward them for it. “Guns and ammunition, babies in the cage/They say nothing can be done, but they tell us how they prayed/In the end we’re just standing, watching greatness fade/Into darkness, awaiting resurrection.”

I think my favourite song on the album is Armageddon’s Back in Town, which is more personal than most songs on this album, even though it has underlying political meanings too. It’s just about figuring things out and getting through life even when it’s hard, and taking responsibility when you have to. It’s just a really good song, I love all of it. Every bit’s a good bit.

Jason Isbell – The Nashville Sound (2017)

Jason Isbell used to be a singer in Drive-By Truckers, but he left them years ago and has had an excellent solo career ever since. Like Drive-By Truckers, he didn’t do a lot of political music before 2016 (a fair bit of Drive-By Truckers’ pre-2016 apolitical music was done with Jason Isbell). But like his former band members, he looked at America in 2016, and decided he needed to at least mention it. I mean, you can’t just not mention it. If you enjoy an artist who makes mainly apolitical art, and you’d like to know what their political views are, check out whatever they made in 2016/2017/2018. Everyone made something at least a bit political at that time, no one could just ignore it.

This whole album isn’t political, as most of Jason Isbell’s music isn’t, but a few songs definitely are. There’s one called White Man’s World, which is what it sounds like (not about farm subsidies). It’s about the blood of racial minorities on which America was built, and how he had to confront his own white privilege in the context of that. Ends on a surprisingly hopeful note, though: “There’s no such thing as someone else’s war/Your creature comforts aren’t the only things worth fighting for/You’re still breathing, it’s not too late/We're all carrying one big burden, sharing one fate/I’m a white man living in a white man’s nation/I think the man upstairs must’a took a vacation/I still have faith, but I don't know why/Maybe it’s the fire in my little girl’s eyes.”

My favourite song off the album is Hope the High Road, and it’s one of my favourite songs in general. It was written in support of the anti-Trump protesters, about how horrifically demoralizing it must be for them to feel like they’re in the minority when they see all the hatred around them, so people need to tell them that we’re on their side and we think their battle is worth fighting.

“Last year was a son of a bitch, for nearly everyone we know/But I ain’t fighting with you down in a ditch, I’ll meet you up here on the road/I know you’re tired, and you ain’t sleeping well/Uninspired, and likely mad as hell/But wherever you are, I hope the high road leads you home again/To a world you want to live in/We’ll ride the ship down, dumping buckets overboard/There can’t be more of them than us, there can't be more.”

Well, there you go. That’s five albums. But because two of them were by the same band and one was by a former singer in that band, I want to add at least one more. Special mention goes to Jesus Was a Capricorn (1972) by Kris Kristofferson, greatest country music singer/songwriter of all time, best of The Highwaymen because he was the one who wrote many of the songs that got famous when sung by other Highwaymen (Sunday Morning Coming Down, Me and Bobby McGee), and hero to many American conservative Christians, who wrote the words: “Jesus was a Capricorn, he ate organic foods/He believed in love and peace, and never wore no shoes/Long hair, beard, and sandals, and a funky bunch of friends/I reckon if he came back now they’d nail him up again/’Cause everybody’s got to have somebody to look down on/Who they can feel better than at any time they please/Someone doing something dirty decent folks can frown on/If you can’t find nobody else, then help yourself to me.” If any country music fans are protesting drag events in the name of Christianity this weekend, just know that Kris Kristofferson hates you.

Now. I have spent a lot of time writing this, because I am really, really desperate for a distraction this weekend. But now that I have written it, I would very much like to never hear another word about how country music is just a bunch of uneducated rednecks singing about their tailgate parties and having sex in corn fields while praising the Lord. First of all, most of the people who sing that sort of thing aren’t rednecks, they’re multi-millionaires in plastic cowboy hats. Secondly, I’m sorry that that’s all over the radio, but most music genres are not best represented by the shit that’s on the radio. Some of the lyrics I’ve transcribed here are genuine poetry. I’m also sorry about that one song I liked that turned out to be basically an ode to the neo-Confederacy movement, sometimes you do stumble over those in the country genre, I will check for them more thoroughly in the future.

By the way, Corb Lund has a good song called Cows Around, about the difficulty of running a dairy farm in a failing economy, and the importance of the government offering farm subsidies to offset that.