exorcism of a haunted Playlist
[soundtrack: it started with a mixx by los campesinos!][1]
i've been thinking a lot about an old Playlist of mine.
it started happening in the last couple of weeks, i'm not exactly sure why, i guess i've just been having a tough time lately. too much shitty weather. too much bad news. too many bad customers. too many nights of not sleeping well enough. too many salty reddit threads. in a time where i needed relief, something in that old Playlist called out to me.
do you know what i mean when i say Playlist? i wouldn't blame you if you didn't, since i'm pretty unsure myself. i'm not even sure if that's the right word to use.
i run into this problem during the rare occasions where someone notices me trying to manifest my imagination into something physical and asks me If I Am An Artist. even if i'm literally holding a piece of Art with my own two hands, i usually answer in some way that amounts to a quick and anxious "no." of course i know it's a lie, but it makes me so uncomfortable to share the truth that i'm actually very proud of my hobby of Making Playlists when i'm not even sure i can tell people what i mean without sounding like A Profound Fool.
but honestly, these days, that's not the worst thing to be. so, let me try to explain.
my first instinct to use the term "playlist" just comes from spotify. and look, i know how ridiculous that might sound after yapping about my ongoing internal crisis about enshittified online platforms. believe me, i still would love to migrate away from it for a variety of reasons. but with how common music streaming platforms are these days, it just feels like the term most people are familiar with to describe what's basically just a linked list of music in a digital format.
still, that ubiquity is part of the problem. with so many people able to easily make playlists, the varying intentions behind them collide and overload the meaning of the one word. even if you limit the term to only include human-generated[2] lists of music, people use the same word to describe cataloging music by genre or mood or just bookmarking tracks to come back to later. not like i'm above these things, but i just mean something else when i say Playlist.
the phrase "compliation tape" as presented by john cusack's character in high fidelity is probably the term spiritually closest to what i mean, in the sense that a Playlist is about Using Someone Else's Poetry To Express How You Feel. it feels wrong to use any term implying the use of magnetic tape though, especially since there is certainly drastically less effort required in arranging music like this in the digital era. that's why i also hesitate to use "mixtape", another term that is commonly accepted despite the extra ambiguity added by "mixtape" sometimes basically meaning the same thing as "album." annoyingly, zoë kravitz' character in the Modern Day remake of high fidelity does use the term "playlist", but again, this still feels wrong, even if it's close to the truth.
look, i know i'm overthinking this. semantic blustering like this is why people hate the time they spend in academia, myself included. why need new word when now word do good. but i don't know. there is pain in not having a name for something. and the Playlist is ultimately about getting close to The Truth. so, let me get more personal.
to me, a Playlist is a byproduct of the way i tend to engage with music. i don't talk about my listening habits enough to truly know how strange this makes me, but i often listen to music in an attempt to create some type of soundtrack to accompany my days. and yes, i do mean this in a self-centered solipsistic[3] way of deliberately seeking tracks that mirror my emotions and reflect my state of mind. i also mean it in an ADHD-adjacent way, where the added stimulus of music often pushes me forward through the day, lubricating the passage of time. either way, ever since i was gifted an mp3 player as a kid, music has kept me company like this - sitting beside me on hectic commutes or keeping me company during long hours hunched over a laptop. sometimes it rubs my back, other times it lifts me onto its shoulders, often it lets me lay my head in its lap while it tells me about what else is possible.
still, listening to music like this has its limits. i can only listen to the same tracks so many times before my attention craves something new, or before my emotions shift far enough for me to lose grasp of how to express what i'm feeling with music. Not Knowing What To Listen To then leaves me with the quiet despair of feeling Untethered From The World. a bit intense, i know, but there is pain in not having a name for something. through the years, the solution i've been able to rely on is Making A Playlist.
the starting point for these kinds of emotional-musical gaps are never quite the same. sometimes i'll relisten to an old album and find myself deeply moved by a part of it i would normally skip, then compelled to find out what accrued life experience is the cause. sometimes changing circumstances in my life will create a new part of my daily routine, which i don't have the music to properly back. sometimes i'll find a new song that dazzles me with a novel aesthetic, leading me through the looking glass into a genre i previously knew nothing about. sometimes i'll just find myself listening to the same couple of seemingly unrelated songs over and over, suddenly realizing therein lies a satisfying mystery to solve. and yes, sometimes i find myself so In Love with a Beautiful Person that i'm compelled to share this part of My Inner Life with them, desperate to prove that i am in fact A Real Boy.[4]
and, well... sometimes things just get So Bad that i end up with the kind of Playlist i've been thinking about.
at 4 saves, this one really did numbers.
i don't go back to old Playlists like this very often, compassion for anxiety being one i made in the spring of 2021.[5] sure, i have some older Playlists i've made for specific situations or moods, which i'll pull out of my catalog when appropriate. usually though, i'll just Make A New Playlist if there's some novel emotional-musical gap for me to work through. this might be the first time i've been able to skip that process and arrive at something I've Already Made, which frightens me, considering compassion for anxiety came about during what was so far The Most Difficult Time In My Life.
as you might imagine, it's not easy for me to get into the specifics of what exactly was going on back then. the full details would constitute what i've previously mentioned as My Tragic Backstory, which i did say i was Willing To Get Into. and that's true, to an extent. certainly i've found some catharsis in delivering My Tragic Backstory to a new and trusted person in my life like i'm an elden ring lore youtuber, if only so i can find reassurance that i am still worthy of their company despite the abnormal trajectory of my past. but after a lot of thought, i just don't think i can do the same thing here, since ultimately it just wouldn't be safe or appropriate for myself or the other people involved. maybe that's obvious now that i say it out loud...
besides, even if you had all the details of What Happened, the Plot of My Tragic Backstory is only one dimension of it. you can know that when i made compassion for anxiety i had a six-figure salary, many close r̄̂̕ẽ̱̱̈́ḷ͔̘́ͨ̕a͓̫͖̾ͧ͐́͢ṭ̌̀ͥͩȉ̤͔ò̩̱͍̄̂͐͟n̠͖̰̋̀s͖̻̘̋h̛̭̺͐͐i̟̘ͯ̀ṕ͓̼̃ş̖̣͊ͮ͊, and was living in my childhood home without my parents. you could know that starting My Second Full-Time Job earlier that year was a Beautiful Moment in my life, where it felt like i properly Owned My Future for the first time. you could even know that despite all of that eventually Falling Apart, i've since been able to put back together some type of Stability in my life. but the sum of that knowledge still wouldn't describe what it felt like to live through That Time.
somehow, this Playlist does that.
i suppose that was somewhat intentional. this Playlist came about as part of the work i was doing with a Really Lovely Therapist i was seeing during That Time, who suggested i try to treat the debilitating anxiety i was experiencing with, well, compassion. tragically, this was a revelatory idea. still, it lodged itself into my brain and collided into my pre-existing hobby of making Playlists, resulting in something that could keep me company during those endless days.
now that i find myself returning to it, this musical snapshot of my life has taken on an uncanny significance. so much time has passed Since Then, and yet, this Playlist still feels like it contains so much i Have Not yet remain Desperate To talk about. the latent emotional energy of this Playlist has laid festering[6] inside this ambiguous medium misplaced in time, simultaneously from The Past and yet really only capable of Existing Today, still strong enough to call out to me.
is it so ridiculous to say that it feels haunted?
if horror movies have taught me anything, it's that if specialized equipment or skills aren't an option, Handling A Ghost usually entails confronting it with some level of kindness and empathy. whatever lies within this Playlist should be friendly enough for that to work...
so, without further ado, i'd like to present to you: compassion for anxiety.[7][8]
this song[9] is one of my favorite tracks from the OST of one of my favorite anime called welcome to the n.h.k. the plot of the show is deeply depressing shit about a japanese guy in his early 20s named tatsuhiro sato, who lives as a hikikomori due to crushing social anxiety, depression, and paranoia. the show follows tatsuhiro's attempts to escape his room and his mental illness by participating in various risky endeavors, including receiving unlicensed therapy from a local teenage girl that mysteriously knows way too much about him, making a gal game[10] with his borderline-incel next-door neighbor, and reconnecting with an old flame from high school who turns out to be even more depressed than he is, among other things. i know how this sounds - there's a reason people used to get bullied for liking anime.
anyways, this song probably constitutes the majority of the time i've spent in my life listening to harmonica music. i love starting Playlists with this kind of short but sweet instrumental. i feel like this song is oddly mickey mousey with how the repetitive melody turning into something much more chaotic and melancholy is accurate to what it feels like to slowly go insane from being inside too much. wild to think i related to that feeling so much back then, since this was still before the covid-19 vaccine became publicly available for the first time. "hikikomori" isn't the right word to describe how i was living at the time, but at a glance, it wasn't far off.
despite the gloomy title, this song is still so yummy to me, like a lil' candybar of depressed midwest indie rock pop. i have literally never properly listened to another song by varsity just because of how much this song satisfies me.
the opening lyrics of "SO SAD, SO SAD" were deeply soothing to me when i first heard this song, an enormous relief to find someone willing to be so upfront with their negative emotions. though it still does remind me a little bit too much of crash and the boys.
the last chorus still scratches my brain really well. even though the song is relatively short and simple, the building intensity and desperation of the singer makes the slightly-slower ending repetitions of "I COULD NEVER WALK AWAY, WALK AWAY" blossom into something that untightens my chest. i always imagine that it must feel so good to sing so loud about your unfortunate limitations, especially when the song is about trying So Hard to fit into a life that leaves you feeling just as fragile and helpless. the line "tryna be a perfect circle / neat just like i take my drinks" always stood out to me as especially clever. a good song to set the tone of the rest of the Playlist.
another song that sounds like exactly what it says on the tin. this track is by one of my favorite Soundcloud Rappers, back when that was a novel genre, though this is one of the few songs in atlas' catalog that firmly steps outside of it. i still love the way she uses a bit of vocal fry to emphasize certain words in the chorus:
I'M SO WORRIED
when I SEE you leave
'cause NOBODY knows
IF YOU'LL make it home
i remember this song quickly becoming a favorite of mine when i first heard it in college, partially because i had people that worried me Like This when i saw them leave a party, partially because i think i secretly wanted someone to worry about me Like That. this track made its way onto this Playlist for very similar reasons to so sad, so sad- it is so healing when music can pull a feeling out of you with so much volume and confidence that you don't feel ashamed of it anymore.
the line about puking also reminds me of how bad my anxiety was when i made this. before seeing my Really Lovely Therapist, i had a daily morning routine of coughing and dry heaving over my toilet, my body trying to expel the white hot pressure of feeling Trapped in a life i couldn't imagine letting go of.
honestly, i'm a little lukewarm on this track being on this Playlist, to the extent that i would cut it if i was making this Playlist today. not a bad song by any means, but the lyrics are a little off-theme. less "i'm in a bad mood because of debilitating mental illness" and more "i'm in a bad mood because i'm in the middle of a messy breakup."
certain bits of lyrics stick out in my mind - "i'm tired of the bullshit" or "hiding from my own emotions" or "trying to maintain composure." even my favorite line - "i'm getting sick of breaking and healing / i'm getting sick of patching myself up" - irks me a bit when i hear it now, striking me as a bit petulant when that's ended up being more or less my experience of Growing Up. but hey, growing to dislike something i previously enjoyed is good proof that i've moved forward in my life, in some way.
i think i mostly included this track since beach bunny was the last artist i saw in concert before the pandemic happened. i remember i was able to get tickets to a sold-out show of theirs in late february of 2020, since a friend of mine had tickets he didn't want anymore. they made a fantastic valentine's day gift since it was a band that s̱ͨ̃̅̃ḩ̗ͧḛ̫́̓̅̒ really liked. was a pretty good show too, in retrospect probably the last time The World and My Place Within It felt normal. i remember tweeting a joke about how i was no longer a Young Front Row Superfan and had become an Old Guy Nodding In The Back. it still surprises me that w̖ͬê̼̖̮ didn't get sick.
i really enjoy the cover art for this EP too, as a younger millenial that has nostalgia for the age of arcades i never got to experience myself.
5) knife in the coffee by car seat headrest
this song still fucking BANGS, probably the highlight of the first half of this Playlist. i enjoy everything about this track - the deliciously low-quality sound of the instruments & vocals, the quiet bridge that leads into a ripping guitar solo, and, of course, the poignant and funny and beautiful lyrics. i wish i could make music like this.
like love sick, this is another song where lots of different bits of lyrics jump out to me, even though i love the song as a complete poem. "he stays awake cause he's a nervous young man" always feels good to hear, not only because of a cheeky reference to the title of the EP, but also because i was also losing an enormous amount of sleep at the time due to being a Nervous Young Man.[11] "i can't drink because the bars are closed" felt like an obvious statement of fact in a pre-covid-vaccine world. "i can't go out cause i don't have nice clothes" reminds me of how stressed i felt whenever i left the house, not only because i was worried about Catching Something, but because between a generous grubhub lunch budget from My Employer and the SSRIs i started taking, i quickly gained enough weight to no longer be able to wear any of The Clothes I Felt Good In. [12] "i'm the only one fighting this war" reminds me of what it felt like to be on the front lines of a battle purely happening inside My Own Head. even now, hearing "get your words out / get your words out / what the hell are you trying to say?" makes me laugh as i've struggled with figuring out exactly what This Post is.
this song is good enough that i have two equally favorite parts. the first is the second half of the second verse. from the official lyric transcription:
my identity's a compromise
my potential has been fetishized
and my soul has been psychedelicized!!!!
it is impossible for me to describe my journey from Gifted Child to Anxious Cyborg in a more succinct way than that.
my second favorite part, my transcription:
IIIIIIIIIIII- BUT I'M HAUNTED EVERY DAY
I TRY TO GROW AND I JUST GET TALLER
I CLEANSE MY SOUL AND IT JUST GETS SMALLER
AND I STOLE EVERY SINGLE SONG THAT I WROTE
FROM MY SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD GHOST
BY ALL THE LYRICS THAT HE THREW AWAY
SO IF THERE'S ONE THING HE FORGOT TO SAY
I HOPE IT WASN'T I LOVE YOU, 'CAUSE I DO
this verse still Profoundly Speaks To Me. it captures the deep frustration of trying to Get Better, but just ending up with different problems. the shame of not only failing the Expectations of Your Former Self but of also not even knowing who Your Current Self is without them. the quiet Desperation of still wanting to care for and be cared for by the people around you, but not knowing if it's still Possible.
if you ever feel like honoring the Nervous Young Person i used to be, or perhaps you used to be, give your own go at singing this part as loud as you can while in the passenger seat of a car being driven by someone you love. if it hurts, then i think you did it right.
6) impostor syndrome (audiotree live version) by sidney gish
this song is one of my favorites from sidney gish, and the last track on an album i deeply love called no dogs allowed. despite that, i picked the audiotree version for this Playlist over the original album version, for a few reasons:
- the stinger at the end of the album version makes it a bit awkward for use in a Playlist, even if it does fit thematically with the way other songs on the album[13] sample spoken word recordings.[14] a big part of what makes a Playlist fun to listen to is how smoothly songs transition between each other, so, just like in writing, sometimes you just have to suck it up and Kill Your Darlings.[15]
- the album version is a little too twee for the tone of this playlist, and i probably would have left it off entirely if it was the only version that existed. the grungier sound of the audiotree version fits a lot better, even if there's relatively less production value. sidney sounds proper angry through a lot of this, which ends up fitting the extremely self-deprecating lyrics just as much as the flippant tone of the album version. there's also an extremely endearing moment about three minutes into the song where you can hear sidney smiling while singing. you can see on the video of the performance that she seems to laugh out of embarassment after she notices the camera catching a grave look on her face.
the comedic horror of Being Perceived.
- s̛͉̽h̭̣̼̆͟ḛ̢̀̀ͯ was really into audiotree at the time, mainly for the emo & math rock bands that were often doing live performances their youtube channel. i remember being pleasantly surprised to find one of my favorite artists on there too.
this is probably the only song on this Playlist that touches on The Reason why i was feeling so much anxiety, especially in the context of My Second Full-Time Job. it was by far the most lucrative and demanding work i had ever done, which, combined with the feeling that i had Lucked Into Something that i didn't really deserve, made it next to impossible for me to ever relax while Logged On. this, of course, made it harder to Actually Do Good Work, which then made it even harder to relax, and so and so on until i eventually had to admit to myself i really just Couldn't Handle It. the chorus really sums up that day to day experience:
every other day i’m wondering every other day i’m wondering
what’s a human being gotta be like
what’s a way to just be competent
these sweet instincts ruin my life
was it a mistake to try and define
what i’m certain’s mad incompetence
these sweet instincts ruin my life
imposter syndrome is a great example of the glorious mix of humor and honesty that always makes sidney's songwriting stand out to me. i love the extended metaphor of being your own fur companion, a great way to describe the unsettling feeling of inhumanity that such deep anxiety can inflict on you. the line "nobody outs behavioral frankenstein" makes a lot more sense to me now that i have a greater understanding of masking, since this is so deeply neurodivergent-coded that it's almost embarassing how revealing it is to say that i Relate To It.
my favorite line - "these sweet instincts ruin my life" - is a bit of a motif in this album, first appearing in an earlier track called i eat salads now.[16][17] the ambiguity of what this line means exactly has always bothered me, as the contexts of the two songs it appears in are different enough to imply more than one meaning. but, i suppose there is more than one way innocent intentions can ruin your life.
a track from another classic album of my college days.
i wouldn't say i'm a huge mac demarco fan, but i can't say i ever got tired of listening to salad days. i'd occasionally loop this album for hours at a time while cranking away at some programming problem set in the basement of the central university library, my anxiety often hitting a fever-pitch whenever i heard the harsh falsetto mac delivers in the last half of this song.
i can see now that it was kinda fucked up of me to have opted into that feeling so often. in a weird way, that kind of anxiety was my main source of motivation for getting work done at the time - the inherent value of Learning New Things taking a back seat to extinguishing the full-body burning sensation of the Eminent Threat Of Failure. the tragic part is that It Kinda Worked until It Definitely Didn't. by then, i really was no better off living my life than dreaming at night.
i can also see now that it was somewhat masochistic of me to want to replicate that experience by including brother here, especially since i remember looping this Playlist while cranking away on jira tickets for My Second Full-Time Job. i guess being able to recognize this now is another good sign of the amount of progress i've made in managing my anxiety Since Then, but it really would have been easier if i had just taken mac's advice.[18]
8) small poppies by courtney barnett
yet another song from an album i listened to a lot in college, that being the gloriously-named sometimes i sit and think, and sometimes i just sit. i didn't realize until now how much of this Playlist was connected to what i was listening to during my undergrad years. i suppose i shouldn't be surprised, considering how much the Overwhelming Stress of my time as a university student, caused by working more than one part-time job while taking multiple classes at a school using the goddamn quarter system, became the bedrock for how i operated as An Adult.
small poppies is structured like so many songs on this half of the Playlist, starting off fantastically gloomy before slowly building to a satisfying guitar solo with lyrics that are as loud as they are angry. at seven minutes long this song certainly takes its fucking time getting to that point, more so than the others, which i intended to serve as a climax to this section of the Playlist. i'd like to think i set up so many songs that start innocuously and end overwhelmingly as some kind of metaphor for my experience of anxiety, but honestly i'm not sure how intentional that was.
this song isn't really about anxiety specifically - i always read it being more about the growing pains of fame that came with courtney's previous EPs becoming more mainstream.[19] i latched onto the sentiment of the chorus despite that, since it felt like i was also in a painful period of self-discovery fueled by Making Mistakes. i think i also included this song since i wanted to believe that i also no longer Hated Myself and did in fact think I Was Alright. that is definitely more true now than it was Back Then.
9) also sprach brooks by shoji meguro
finally, the halfway point. i like using instrumental tracks like this on Playlists as landmarks to help orient the listener, or to signal tone shifts for an upcoming section. this song does a bit of both - i wanted it to ease a transition between the two thematic halves of this Playlist, the first being About Anxiety and the second meant to Comfort Anxiety. maybe i wouldn't need to do this if these Playlists weren't so damn long...
this song is my favorite track from the OST of the video game catherine, another piece of japanese media dear to my heart about the pain of being A Complete Fuck Up.[20] the game is about vincent brooks, an early-30s computer programmer who enters both an existential and literal nightmare after cheating on his childhood-friend-turned-girlfriend katherine with a sexy but unstable girl who is eponymously and ironically named catherine.
the game is split into two distinct halves, different both in tone and genre. one half is a horror puzzle game that represents the nightmares vincent suddenly finds himself plagued with every night, where he joins a flock of sheep doomed to climb an impossibly high tower of shifting blocks to avoid falling to his death.[21] the other half is essentually a visual novel that represents vincent's waking life, where he struggles to both hide his infidelity from katherine and emotionally process it with his friends while spending each night drinking at his favorite bar, the aptly named stray sheep. the game takes place over a single week, each day alternating between the two halves of the game as you follow vincent's journey of Figuring Out What The Fuck He Should Do With His Life.
also sprach brooks[22] is the theme that loops throughout the time that you spend in the stray sheep,[23] a jazzy lo-fi masterpiece from the legendary video game composer shoji meguro.[24] this song perfectly captures the bittersweet feeling of spending time at the stray sheep, the lilting piano melody over a heavy relentless drumbeat sounding just what it feels like to be somewhere that would be A Great Time if it weren't for Everything Else On Your Mind.
the stray sheep is probably my favorite Rest Area in any video game. i love the way the mechanics of the game really flesh out the physicality of the space, as certain actions are only available at specific times or in specific areas (i.e. some lewd texts are only viewable of the privacy of the bathroom stall, vincent only takes phone calls near the front doors, specific characters have their favorite places to sit, etc.). i love the way the conversations vincent has with his friends are written, how they call him out on his shit but are still willing to hear him out.[25] i love the pleasingly retro aesthetic of vincent's phone, which you use to handle both diagetic elements, like drafting and sending texts to (k/c)atherine, and non-diagetic elements, like saving your game. i even love the completely extraneous alcohol trivia the game offers you whenever you finish a drink, delivered by the deeply comforting voice of jamieson price,[26] which adds such an air of sophistication to your virtual alcoholism.
aside from how much comfort i find in my memories of the stray sheep, the inclusion of this track goes to show how much i was craving a third place during the pandemic. even now, i can't help but think about how blissful it would be to spend my nights drinking away my worries with my friends at a cozy bar like this.
10) the district sleeps alone tonight by the postal service
another track i'd probably cut from this Playlist if i was remaking it today. again, nothing against this song, but it doesn't really fit with this Playlist, aside from the general self-loathing vibe of the lyrics.
i could argue that it offers a bit of worldbuilding for this Playlist, if you want to think about the story of compassion for anxiety in terms of a character and setting described only by the songs themselves. in that case, the title of this track itself establishes the setting as Night, which could play into a motif of Sleep and Restlessness hinted at by the cover art and other songs throughout the Playlist. it's not quite fleshed out enough to definitively claim as an intentional part of the experience, or at least as a part i Executed Well. even if the song does do a good job of setting a gentler tone for this half of the Playlist, i still can't help but feel like it's just a bit of a filler pick.
i do still have some nostalgia for the album this song is from, give up, since i remember it was one of the few albums i had loaded onto the ipod nano i owned in middle school. i've probably listened to such great heights enough in my life to feel content with the idea of never hearing it again. one of those albums i just grew out of.
11) too dark by frankie cosmos
i love frankie cosmos' voice on this album, even though i know it can come off as grating to some p̦͔ͮͤḙ͈̀̂ò̧͍̱̄p̣̀ͮl̙̝̋̂e̱͎̚. regardless, i find the defeated way frankie sings this song to be surprisingly refreshing. again, so many bits of lyrics were such a relief the first time i heard them for how much i related to them - phrases like "i wish i had some control..." or "i feel low, low low" or even just her repeating "do I belong? do i Belong? Do i belong? no..."
the lyrics overall have a sort of meandering structure, the main feeling of progress coming from the long pauses frankie takes between some lines. my favorite bit:
if your love was strong as my shame
i'd marry you and take your name
but it's not, you'll never get it
so i guess i'll just forget it
too dark
i love the exasperated honesty of this track, as it really is easy to get into a headspace that's a little Too Dark if you ruminate on how better things Could Have Been if you just had a little more control.
this track builds up to a loud(er) climax in the same way as the tracks on the first half of this Playlist, but i guess the fact that she isn't really raising her voice makes my brain read this song as more Relaxing than Cathartic. either way, i can't blame frankie for needing to take her time while singing this.
12) don't forget about me by noname
no idea why the title of this song is missing the word "me" on bandcamp. whatever...
noname has been one of my favorite rappers ever since i first heard her on acid rap. her first mixtape, telefone, was one i remember loving in college, something that i could put on at any house party with ṃ̩͊̄̆̆y̻̫ͧ̂̈ f̝͔r̠̄̃̂̔͟i̧ͦ́͜͢ę͓̦̭͌͋̎̿n̡͉̗͋ͦͮͭd͕̘̼ͬ̀ṡ̗̫ without worry. i remember really enjoying her first tiny desk concert too, even though performances like that are probably what lead to her being so frustrated with her fanbase later on.
don't forget about me is a track with such a distinct vibe to it, softspoken bars over a slow orchestral beat creating an sparse atmosphere that let the lyrics take up all the space they need. the lyrics are always the standout aspect of noname songs, even if i need to pull up the genius page to figure out what she's saying most of the time.[27] i hardly ever mind though. i tend to find abstract lyrics more impactful, if only for the inspiration it gives me to write however the hell i want.
the first verse alone is the kind of lyrical genius i wish i could reach. reoccurring words (like "secret") or phrases (like "it saves lives") create a thematic thread that stitch together seemingly disparate lines into a single emotional tapestry. joking about her mom having cancer - "feelin' fishy, finding chemo, smokin' seaweed for calm / these disney movies too close" - leads into pushing away the praise that fans give her for her previous music because she's "actually broken," presumably because she "tried to raise a healin', kneelin' at the edge of the ocean" for her mother and failed. she goes on to wonder who's doing the same for her - "who pray me back to englewood?" - before talking about the pressure to Give to the people she cares about - "i'm the prayer, the hope, the bank account, wishin' bone for my loved ones" - and how she's buckling under it - "tell 'em noname still don't got no money / tell 'em noname almost passed out drinkin'." hearing her say "secret is, she really thinks it saves lives" reads to me as a tragic confession of the way she justifies coping with her mother's illness, as, after all, the music she makes as a broken person is what gives her the means to take care of her loved ones.
even if i'm completely wrong in my interpretation, it's almost overwhelming how much is packed into this one verse. i can see why she feels the need to cut the tension with a joke about invoking d'angelo.
the chorus made me cry the first time i heard it:
i know everyone goes someday
i know my body's fragile, know it's made from clay
but if i have to go, i pray my soul is still eternal
and my mama don't forget about me
i pray my mama don't forget about me
i pray my granny don't forget about me
i remember being so disraught hearing this for the first time and considering that, even if There Is An Afterlife, my mom might not remember me if i find her there. even as a non-religious person, it was surprisingly grounding to pray for and acknowledge the enormous value of the love in my life whenever i sang along to this chorus. considering this song helped me endure the times my anxiety made it difficult for me to find the joy in being alive, maybe it really does save lives.
jesus fucking christ does this track make me feel old. pomplamoose[28] is probably one of the first bands i remember discovering and becoming a fan of All By Myself, and one of the first things i remember bonding with zia over back when we were in high school. i remember both of us being very charmed by nataly dawn's piercing gaze in these videos, as well as the obvious chemistry she has with jack conte. it's no surprise they ended up getting married. i remember seeing them live for the first time the week before i went off to college. i still have a poster from that show, signed by the both of them.
be still is from a glorious era of both youtube where a single subscription could get you high-quality bedroom pop like this completely for free. obviously not a very sustainable model, but that's something they were able to figure out early enough for jack conte to become the co-founder of patreon. even if they're maybe just plain 'ol too rich nowadays to hold onto the indie clout they once had, this era of their video songs will always be Classic to me.
i remember listening to be still during sleepless teenage nights where my ipod nano was really all i had to cope with anxiety. i listened to this song back then in a sort of self-indulgent way, fantasizing about how cool it would be if a Pretty Art Girl serenaded me with a song that had such kind lyrics. now that i'm a fucking skeleton, i can appreciate the herculean empathy behind the words of the person singing this song:
i know you have your dreams but i need to say that i love you
and i don't want to take them from you
it makes you want to scream
and i'm not helping when i hold you
and that i always will
i need to lay and behold you
so darling won't you be still
darling don't you be still
even though the lyrics here are meant to be nothing but comforting and gentle, listening to them makes me feel ashamed about how difficult it must have been for the p̢͈̖̼̋ė̱̀̉ó̧̦̒p̢̙̂̀l̟̣͊̃ë̡̖̐ around me to deal with My Issues when even i didn't know what i needed to make them better. this is without even considering how much other shit eͥ̕v̑̅ẹ̰͖̃̏ṟ͊͂̎̚y̧̲͔̣͆̀o͉̖ͫ́̂ͤn̞̦͉̣̈̈̅͂eͫ͜ was dealing with back then too. i guess that wider perspective is one benefit of getting older...
14) cotton by the mountain goats
you know i was having a Bad Time for me to unironically include john darnielle on this Playlist. this is the man who wrote no children.
i'm a bit of a fake mountain goats fan, mainly because my enjoyment of their music was always a byproduct of being a fan of john green's books and videos. i remember hearing a mountain goats song for the first time in a vlogbrothers video posted in two thousand fucking seven.[29]
i look at this and hear The Reaper laughing.
anyways, it's a relief to listen to a song like cotton that is so straightforward about what it's trying to do. the song has suprisingly buddhist thematic flavor, as john sings about hopeless circumstances and past regrets before inviting you to "let it all go." simple, but a good solution for a suprising amount of problems.
the standout verse that lead to me including this song on this Playlist comes near the end:
i wanna sing one for the cars i saw you waiting by the roadside
that are right now headed silent down the highway
and it's dark and there is nobody driving
and something has got to give
you didn't know that i was watching
now you know
let it all go
i love the way john inserts both you and himself into the song at the same time, placing you as a lonely hitchhiker and himself as some sort of benevolent all-seeing narrator. sometimes all you can do is find comfort in the knowledge that your suffering isn't invisible. though, i wouldn't blame you if this verse comes off sounding a bit creepy.
15) invisible gem by jim guthrie
this track was an easy inclusion, and still has at least a 50% chance of making me cry if i sing along to it.
honestly, i don't know much about jim guthrie, even if i really enjoyed his music in indie game: the movie and sword & sworcery.[30] i love this track in a way that is as simple as its lyrics:
when there's work to be done
and everything is said and done
you know there'll be time for some fun
you'll see
i appreciate the way jim points out the glimmer of hope inside you when he asserts that You Know there Will Be time for some fun. every time in my life i've been faced with a mountain of work, it turns out he was right.
16) not the night wind by nana grizol
ah, the big finale.
nana grizol is one of My Favorite Bands. their music has reached me at the right time in the right way at multiple points in my life, to the extent that it's hard to imagine who i would be if i hadn't heard these songs while growing up. i really don't know why they aren't more popular.[31]
not the night wind is the kind of song that i love to end Playlists with, where everything the Playlist is about just gets Summed Up. the first verse is my favorite, and i relate so much to the experience of anxiety theo describes that i could honestly believe this song was somehow written About Me. funny how often art that is so specific can have the most potential to make you feel connected.
the first line of the first verse also does a lot to signal the end of this Playlist, both in describing the end of whatever sleepless night the person In This Playlist is experiencing, but also in expressing how i hope you would feel getting to this point:
morning breeze comes blowing in as pressure starts to fade
me i wake up early now, i know it's a cliche
oh, but you'll never find me sleeping at the end of any day
it's far too much to find my primed imagination
it wanders through the night despite my petty protestation
but you'll never know, i won't disclose the worried state i'm in
i do so value my composure, it's unclear where to begin
between the headlines read and endless dread or anxious moments when
i just interpret with the best faith that i can
but uncertainty unwelcome always comes to foil my carefullest laid plans
i really do so value my composure...
the chorus of this song is deeply soothing to me as well. the heavy reverb on the guitar that hits on the same beat as the vocals feels like a sip of hot tea spreading through my chest:
there are things we didn't ever used to talk about
the excitement in the evening just before the stars came out
like the rustling in the shadows in the park
like how we wandered off alone to find what we feel in the dark
like how it doesn't just get easy 'cause you start
i find these lines to be unexpectedly effective at coaxing you into some level of mindfulness, inviting you to take time to acknowledge the gentle comforts of the natural world as well as the strength it takes to discuss what you Couldn't before.
one last instrumental to wrap things up.
this song comes from the OST for a short hike, a very peaceful little indie game that's essentially a 3D platformer set on an island straight out of animal crossing. this song plays during the end credits of the game, and to me represents the calm joy of getting some long overdue rest.
so ends compassion for anxiety. i hope you liked it.
despite, and perhaps because of, how difficult it was for me to spend so much time going through each of these songs and remembering what i was feeling during That Time of my life, it's now easy for me to see the shape of the ghost haunting this Playlist. it takes the form of this question:
for so long, i figured that simply surviving through That Time is all that i really needed to do to answer this question. after all, the person i Wanted To Be feels So Close to the person i was when i made compassion for anxiety, that being someone with enough opportunity in their life to feel like they have Actual Control over the direction of their future. i hoped i could get back to That Place after becoming strong enough to actually be able to hold onto That Life, but five years later, it just hasn't worked out like that.
while i've still made So Much Progress since then, the path i used to be on has closed off in a profound way.[32] with all the years that have ticked by, it is So Easy to be So Frustrated with myself for losing That Chance for seemingly no other reason than my own incapacity. it's just as easy to fantasize about how much better the last half of my twenties would have been if i was just able to hold onto That Life.
i remember saying something like this to the same Really Lovely Therapist that inspired me to make this Playlist in the first place, back in the brief window of time after Things Got Worse because of my anxiety but i before i lost the health insurance that let me see her on a weekly basis. her response was to point out that Blaming Myself for all that happened was, in a weird way, a method to comfort myself. after all, if you're At Fault, that implies that you had Control Over The Outcome, which protects you against the Greater And Crueler Truth that nobody ever really has control over their life. it is easier to Hate Yourself than it is to feel Untethered From Causality.
i suppose that's the emotional-musical gap i needed to fill when i made compassion for anxiety. if it wasn't sustainable to find comfort in Hating Myself, then i would need to find comfort in something else, even if i didn't have the words or the strength to describe what i needed.
somehow, all these songs had what i needed to hear. that it's okay to feel dread when you notice the sun setting on another wasted day. that it's okay to feel weak even when you're trying to be perfect. that you're not alone in worrying yourself sick, or hating having to patch yourself up over and over again. you're not alone in being plagued by nightmares, or feeling like an imposter, or hating your job, or even hating yourself. that it's normal to feel lost and confused when thinking about how to navigate past the blocks in your life, and to drown yourself in vices in the meantime. that when you're spending another night alone and things are too dark, you can still find hope and comfort in the love other people have for you. you can let go of the things you can't change, you can still find ways to have fun, you can even figure out how to talk about the things you couldn't find a name for before. and yes, you can even eventually get some goddamn sleep.
five years ago, i Blamed Myself for being a person that couldn't keep their own anxiety in check. now, i Blame Myself for being a person that squandered what seems like the last good chance they had at Becoming The Person They Wanted To Be. ultimately, the only way for things to have turned out how i hoped for is to have been a completely different person living in a completely different world, in which case, what does any of this regret really matter? if it's all a Big Fucking Joke, can't We be the ones laughing?
in the end, i think it turns out that ghosts aren't real just because you feel haunted. in any case, i haven't died yet, and there is still Beautiful Music to make Playlists with.
[soundtrack: halfway where? (live version) by pearl & the oysters][33]
i really do think it always will. ↩︎
i use the word "human" here instead of "user" not only to discount the types of algorithmically-generated lists of music used by music platforms for engagement, but also to exclude the goddamn AI-generated music compliations that try to pass themselves off as being made by a real musician. even when i find a bunch of music made by a single seemingly-unknown person that explicitly states that They Are Real and Did Not Use AI To Make Their Music, the cynic in me still can't trust it. such is the world we live in. 🤮 ↩︎
my high school AP literature teacher once said that solipsism is the most important idea in All Of Literature. this is literally the first time i have used this word since then. ↩︎
the amount of Romantic Playlists i have made in my life is what causes me to feel a deep dread whenever i watch high fidelity, because in the back of my mind i know that the reason i detest rob gordon is because i fear i am exactly like him. ↩︎
Five Years Ago still somehow feels like both One Thousand Years Ago and also Just Yesterday. ↩︎
the cover art for this Playlist is a shitty edit of the first page of chapter 2 of scott pilgrim's precious little life, when scott wakes up from seeing manic-pixie-dream-girl icon ramona flowers skate through his dreams for the first time. i often found myself waking up like this when i made this Playlist, though i wish it was because i was dreaming of mary elizabeth winstead. 😩 this is another piece of media where i hate the main character because i fear i am exactly like him. we do have the same birthday, funnily enough. ↩︎
also i don't know why in the Playlist description i used "friggin" instead of "fuckin," like i would now. probably says something about how uncomfortable i was expressing myself at the time. ↩︎
the romanized title of this song is kyo wa yuhi-yaro. i wasn't able to find an official translation, though both google translate and a bilingual friend would translate it as "Today, I'm A Sunset Guy." not the cleanest, but i see the vision. some bootleg youtube uploads refer to this song as some variation of "Damn It... Another Sunset," which i think also fits. ↩︎
the words of wikipe-tan deeply speak to me. i want to be the kind of guy who keeps the internet alive. ↩︎
though will toledo was apparently younger than me when making this entire EP, even when i first listened to it... ↩︎
i have a Beautiful Memory of driving to kohl's with h̗̪ͩ̆ͤë̳̀ṛ̾ͯ̐ to buy new and bigger clothes for me to wear when My Second Full-Time Job asked me to return to work in a physical office. buying New Clothes used to be one of my most hated things in the entire world, since being in a changing room with a stack of jeans i wasn't sure were going to fit felt like i was about to fail a test i didn't know i was supposed to be studying for. i remember sitting in the passenger seat, singing this line out loud at the same moment s͇̘̉ͪh̺͓̠͖̄̀̚ȩ̨̱͍ͨ finished parking, and ẃ͖͈͜e̬̗ͭͥ laughed out loud, realizing that it suddenly described me perfectly. ↩︎
sin triangle is another sidney gish banger that really ought to make it onto a Playlist of mine sometime. even though the chorus is tons of fun, the spoken word sample over the guitar solo bridge is probably my favorite part. ↩︎
what Do we mean when we talk about Personality? what is Your personality? it is the way you Get Along with Other People Around You and with your Changing Environment. you Want certain things from Other People and Your Environment. the way you go about Getting those things Reveals Your Personality. for example, did you ever want to go one place, but The Gang wanted to go somewhere else? what did you Do? how Pleasant was your personality? did you ever want So Much to make a Good Impression on someone? what did You do? how Effective was your personality? did you ever feel Alone or Out Of Place when you wanted Very Much to be Part Of The Group? what did you Do? ↩︎
i have a Beautiful Memory of, again, being in a car with h̛͉̽ḙ̣̼̆͟r̢̰̀̀ͯ on the way to our first concert after being vaccinated, excited to get Fucked Up but anxious about Maybe Still Getting Sick, laughing about how perfect the lyrics of this song were for describing that feeling. ↩︎
the line "i'm 20, washed up already" cracks me the FUCK up, partially because of how the official lyrics transcription confirms it's a reference to a frankie cosmos song, but also because it is hilarious that i remember listening to this while being 20 and genuinely feeling the same thing. what would he think of me now... ↩︎
funny how much this reminds me of the loading screen icon from persona 5. i have a tattoo of that text on my left forearm now to remind me to take things slowly, brother. ↩︎
the best example i have of this is avant gardner being played during the last scene of season 2 of bojack horseman, which was broadcast not too long after sometimes i sit and think, and sometimes i just sit came out. avant gardner was the first song i remember hearing from her, and i was instantly charmed by her lovely accent and hilarious lyrics. crazy that this video has 10 million views, when i remember hearing it played over the shitty speakers of one of the student-run cafes at my college. a tall poppy indeed. ↩︎
it is not lost to me how many times throughout this post i have mentioned deeply enjoying media featuring a sympathetic boyfailure. takes one to know one, i suppose. ↩︎
it's outside the scope of this post, but i'm understating how fun this part of the game is. the greatest endorsement i can think of is the fact that there at one point existed a competitive scene for the multiplayer mode. ↩︎
the name of this song is in german, loosely translating to "thus spoke brooks", apparently an allusion to thus spoke zarathustra. even if nietzche was in the scope of this post, all i know about that book comes from the wikipedia article for it, so i can't speak on how deep this reference goes. ↩︎
the bar does have a jukebox where you can change the music that plays, though in the times i have played through catherine i think i've only messed with it for the novelty of hearing songs from other atlus published games. ↩︎
shoji meguro also did the sublime soundtrack for persona 5. in a lot of ways, it's easy to see catherine as a sort of proof-of-concept for persona 5, both in terms of the way both games explore their themes in a Real Versus Metaphysical World setting and in combining two distinct game genres. meguro's music drastically elevates them both, and probably is my favorite part of both games, alongside the writing. ↩︎
this doesn't happen at the stray sheep, but lately i've been haunted by orlando's first line in this animated cutscene. it makes me anxious to think about how much the success of your life can be determined by sheer luck, and the possibility of that luck running out. like i should be taking anything this motherfucker in a plaid fedora says seriously... ↩︎
who also voices sojiro sakura, one of my favorite characters from persona 5, actually. i'd love to end up as a grumpy-but-refined old man like him. ↩︎
this is also probably because of some neurodivergent audio processing issues, but that's for another post lmao. ↩︎
a goofy misspelling of the french word for grapefruit. ↩︎
so fucking wild that john green got away with just fully uploading an entire mountain goats song back then. simpler times. ↩︎
a weird ported title from the nascent era of mobile games. a hard recommend, but i agree with this review. (i'm the one that gave it the Beautiful award, for the record.) ↩︎
i wouldn't be surprised if it's as simple as this band having sort of a weird name. i honestly still have no earthly idea where it comes from. not like it's A Bad Name or anything, but part of me wishes it was at least like 10% more marketable, just so people would know about them. ↩︎
for posterity, here is a much slower archive.org link for this thread. also, yes, this guy is being kind of a dick, but his crashout deeply speaks to me. ↩︎
if you are seeing this, the curse is lifted. have a good day. ↩︎