Music Blog

Here are some songs that I like listening to, and what they mean to me.

Je T'aime - Lara Fabian

So when I was around eleven or twelve, I was looking for an online boyfriend. And thankfully what I found instead was a very sweet gay young man who sent me cute youtube videos, made me feel seen, and happily filled my time so I didn't mistakenly put my trust in someone who would have hurt me. Despite having no interest in me whatsoever, he wanted to show me what 'good boyfriend behavior' looked like. This is the first love song anyone ever sent me! Sometimes I listen to and feel so grateful that there were people in my internet circles who were looking out for me, and trying to keep me from harms way. I still think about you arzetlam.

This performance of Je T'aime is special because the audience is singing "on t'aime" which means WE love you. The audience is singing for her.

Like a wolf, like a king, like the man that I am not - I love you like that.

Viking Death March

Billy Talent is like, the realest. My partner showed me this album shortly after we started dating, to help me get in touch with my rage. This is some good protest music.

Crosses still burn, axes still fall. And down on your knees, you just don't look so tall.

Numb - Oh Land

So, when I was in high school I had a touch of graphomania. I would get stressed out and just start writing for the sake of keeping my hands busy. It really matter what, it could be gibberish or movie quotes. Sometimes I just chose words/sentences that had letters I liked writing in cursive, like the letter s. One of my favorites was the first lines of this song.

she is shaking she is shy she is shaking she is shy she is shaking she is shy

Over and over, in notebooks and margins and sometimes just on loose leaf sheets.

she is shaking she is shy she is shaking she is shy she is shaking she is shy

Anyway one summer, one of my parents snooped through all my papers and journals and stuff. I might have been angry, but all I could think about was my stepmom finding those words written over and over like the shining. And that was...kinda funny lol.

Goldmine - I Draw Slow

This song is such a mood. Like, some dude comes along and serenades you precisely once, doesn't call you beautiful on your goddamned wedding day, begs you to quit your job and do sex work full time, spends all the extra money on booze and whataburger, cheats on your with a teenager, and then tells everyone the reason he divorced you is because you're a whore. Don't you hate it when that happens?

The first time I heard this song, it actually freaked me out how close it was to my own life. I could probably say more, but I'm out of edibles and frankly I should be in bed right now.

I'm never gonnna know for sure you won't leave my side for a girl who's 'pure.'

But for an old time song in an old time key, you spent my money foolishly.

Hoist That Rag - Tom Waits

This was part of the anti-Bush wave of music in the early 2000s. It's visceral, hopeless, even disgusting. We listened to it in my high school creative writing class to talk about 'show don't tell.' I love that the musical phrase is teased but never finished/resolved till 2mins.

We dig our fingers in the ground, heave and turn the world around. Smoke is blacking out the sun, at night I'll pray and clean my gun. The cracked bell rings, the ghost bird sings, the gods go begging here. So just open fire when you hit the shore - all is fair in love and war.

City - Hollywood Undead

Me and my friends, Meeks and Brady, we used to listen to a lot of Hollywood Undead while we drove around our little Christian podunk town. You know the kind of night I'm talking about, right? Gotta manually roll those windows down, gotta crank the music up loud so you can hear it over the friggin cicadas.

Billions of people die for a lost cause - so now I pray to my nation destroyed under God.

They say 'take the pill! in god we trust! go and kill! god loves us! as in life, as in death, breathing till there is no breath!'

I will not die in the night, but in the light of the sun with the ashes of this world in my lungs.