Music may be forgotten, but it never leaves us...

One random article and a very long Spotify playlist intersect in my brain

After my first Substack, I’ve been doing some thinking about what would be next. Like I said before, writing is something I need to reacquaint myself with — I can’t just pull a 1200 word essay out of my asshole like I used to. Now things take days of working in fits and starts. Even one of these will take me several days of thinking.

My friend Vanessa, who writes Hey Babe inspired my approach to this little corner of my brain. She wrote recently that she was going to treat her Substack more like a blog (remember those?) and I really like that idea. If you were to look me up, you’d find a series of abandoned blogs I’ve made over the years. I am inconsistent at best, downright negligent at worst. But I like the idea of treating this like a blog where I break it down into different components. This way it keeps it fresh and I can give my brain a break. 

Real Life

“I love you so much, but you are so frustrating,” my partner Beth said to our puppy as he laid next to her on the couch.

“You just described parenting in a nutshell,” I replied, not looking up from my computer.

Let me tell you something folks, I didn’t believe that second child syndrome could be a thing with dogs, because they’re not often born of the same parents. But ohmygod, I’m raising a second child puppy. He is the cutest thing, but he’s really putting us through it. He’s a very smart dog, but he just refuses to be trained beyond what he feels is useful. Yes, we did puppy training last year, but he would just tune out — he doesn’t really vibe well in group settings. One-on-one dog training is expensive, so until we can afford it, we’re just kind of suffering. He’s really lucky he’s cute; I say as he barks at literally nothing. 

My first puppy (who is now 11) was truly the perfect puppy. Sure she chewed holes in my favorite boots, but she was so easy to train. She was paper trained easily, followed a schedule, and didn’t destroy everything. This dog has done none of the above and doesn’t have any interest in doing it either. Someone come get your fur nephew. 

From the Internet

I use Mozilla Firefox and they have something called Pocket that suggests articles to you that may be of interest. It’s kind of cool, even though some of the articles are old. This one came up as a suggestion for me and I was immediately intrigued: “A Decade of Music Is Lost on Your iPod. These Are The Deleted Years. Now Let Us Praise Them.” written by Dave Holmes for Esquire (it’s linked below). It talks about the music from 2003 until 2012, where individual songs were being purchased on iTunes or downloaded from torrent servers like Kazaa and Limewire and burned onto a random CD. 

I remember Dave Holmes from his days at MTV, where his literal job was knowing music. The timing of me finding this article was hilariously serendipitous because I was working on a Spotify playlist called Sai2k that literally consists of nothing but music from this era. We’ve taken to listening to the radio more in the car, and around the holidays the alt rock stations were doing countdowns of best songs of certain decades. When Evanescence came on and I still remembered every word and key change in “Bring Me to Life,” followed by all the words to “Misery Business” by Paramore, Beth was amazed. I told her that this era of music was my golden years. Coming out of my bubblegum pop fueled early adolescence, the latter half of my teen years were a mix of pop rock and angst. I expanded more into singer-songwriter/indie pop rock and scene (pop punk). 

In Dave’s article, he talks about how music from that era is “deleted,” lost to technology that no longer exists. Much of the music from the early part of that era is music I had largely had on CD (I bought physical music until 2009-ish.) If it was an artist or album where I only liked a handful of songs, I definitely downloaded them (sorry to my parents for the amount of viruses I infected our computers with over the years!) because I couldn’t justify spending so much on an album where I was going to listen to three songs and had no interest in listening to more than I already knew. I got my first iPod in college, and I remember ripping album after album into iTunes to be able to carry around my entire music collection at once. It was a game changer for me as a music obsessed youth. Being able to fill my iPod was a welcome challenge, forcing me to reach to the corners of the music industry to find my new favorite artists. 

I remember most of the artists Dave mentions: sheDaisy was like a Disney era country trio (I don’t think I had any of their music!) and me and my friend Rachel were obsessed with The Click Five. I had both of their albums, even though the second isn’t as good. They have a song called “Pop Princess” that I swore was written for me specifically. I’m pretty sure we saw them in concert even. I had their song “Just the Girl” as a ringtone and maybe even a ring back tone (remember those?) KT Tunstall’s “Black Horse and a Cherry Tree” and Corinne Bailey Rae’s “Put Your Records On” are songs I can still sing along with like no time has passed. Corinne Bailey Rae had two other songs I loved: “Like a Star,” and her cover of Coldplay’s “The Scientist.” 

I liked Nick Lachey’s post divorce song, “What’s Left of Me.” Christina Aguilera’s album Back to Basics was fun. Paris Hilton’s “Stars Are Blind” is a mid-aughts classic that is still a bop more than 15 years later. Maroon 5 songs like “Misery,” “Wake Up Call” and “If I Never See Your Face Again” may be forgotten, but they shouldn’t be. American Idol was still churning out talented artists who didn’t necessarily get the same fanfare as early winners, and The Voice was in its infancy and making a solid showing on its own. Javier Colon, who won the first season in 2011, was ridiculously talented and totally overlooked, which still makes me mad.

Looking up the songs for that playlist was really fun, because it was reminding me of songs I may have forgotten over the years. But as soon as I heard them, the lyrics came right back to me. (I still remember the lyrics to a song called “Girl Next Door” by a band called Saving Jane, but I can’t remember what day it is most of the time.) These songs paint such a picture of the young adult I was, and it’s true — they deserve way more reverence than they’ve gotten. They may live in the recesses of our minds, but some of them are so largely formative. “Chasing Cars” reminds me of my first true love, “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” was my theme song, “”Pieces of Me” was the soundtrack to the summer before college. Remember Jason Mraz? I do! Music may be forgotten, but it never leaves us. 

*If you’re curious about the Sai2k playlist, I’m happy to share it with you! It’s 450 songs, so I will never make it public because I don’t want people to know I’m crazy, lol.

What I’m Reading

As I mentioned, I preordered Prince Harry’s book Spare, and I’m working my way through it. I have a tendency to read a passage or two then stop to read the good bits to Beth, so it may take me a while to get through it. I really appreciate him being so open, even when it’s not the most comfortable. Also, fuck William (who Harry calls “Willy,” which gives me the giggles every time). He has never been a good brother to Harry, and I hope this will shut people up about how Meghan caused all the tension between the brothers. William literally told Harry to pretend he didn’t know him once Harry started at Eton. FUCK THAT GUY.

What I’m Watching

We always have a bunch of shows that we want to watch, so we decided to start watching Welcome to Chippendales on Hulu. It’s a fucking wild ride, but the acting is superb. Kumail Nanjiani is fantastic, as is Murray Bartlett, Annaleigh Ashford and Juliette Lewis. Kumail Nanjiani better be nominated for an Emmy this year. There is a companion docuseries on A&E that you can also watch on Hulu that gives you a more real life set up for the show. Just search “Chippendales,” because if I tell you the title, it’s a HUGE spoiler for the show. 

I also watched Harlem, which is on Prime Video. It’s a contemporary friend show that focuses on four Black women in their early 30s as they navigate life in Harlem, NY. It’s a super cute and fun show, and Beth and I binged it in a couple days. I got to watch the new season in advance thanks to my work at Autostraddle. Season one is currently streaming on Prime Video, and season two drops on February 3rd!

Things To Read

16 of the Gayest Musical Theatre Songs That Aren’t Actually Queer by me!

At 36, I Left a Long Career in Construction To Become a Writer by Niko Stratis (subscribe to her Substack because she’s a beautiful writer!)

A Decade of Music Is Lost on Your iPod. These Are The Deleted Years. Now Let Us Praise Them. by Dave Holmes

How Happy Could I Make These Disney Villains? By Christina Tucker

I Say “Hello, Nice To Meet You” to Stuffed Animals In Case Someone’s Soul Is Trapped Inside by Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya