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 |    My primary Writing.com blog. |
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Logocentric (adj). Regarding words and language as a fundamental expression of an external reality (especially applied as a negative term to traditional Western thought by postmodernist critics). Sometimes I just write whatever I feel like. Other times I respond to prompts, many taken from the following places:  "The Soundtrackers Group"  "Invalid Item" "Blogging Circle of Friends " "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" "JAFBG" "Take up Your Cross" Thanks for stopping by!  |
| "The Soundtrack of Your Life" | Day 12 "CHRONICALLY CAUTIOUS" by Braden Bales This is the first of two entries in this year's "The Soundtrack of Your Life" playlist that I think really speak to an entire generation of fans and are honest about their day-to-day struggles. Lyrics like "overloaded serial stresser", "the source of my serotonin is only digital", and "panic on a loop in my head" are such great ways of contextualizing living with anxiety and stress. It's no wonder this song has been so incredibly popular this year, especially among kids on TikTok who play the music behind videos of them living their normal lives, or even just singing along with the lyrics.I don't know a lot else that Braden Bales has done, so it remains to be seen whether he's a one-hit wonder or has some other songs to offer that will really speak with his generation, but this is definitely a song that's been on repeat a lot for me this year, especially when I'm feeling a little down and struggling with life stuff in general. |
| "The Soundtrack of Your Life" | Day 11 "Whisper" by Betty Who Betty Who has featured on my playlists a number of times, and she keeps popping up because I keep discovering new songs of hers that I love. This one appeared on my Spotify recommendations this year, and it's a perfect fit for the synth pop sound that I've come to really appreciate about her. I also think it's really cool that they're enjoying a bit of a career breakthrough. They've been a popular performer in the LGBTQ+ community for years, but started to branch out this year in a lot of ways, including an appearance as Persephone in the Tony-winning musical Hadestown. She also happens to be a classically-trained cellist who is also a self-taught piano and guitar player who wrote her first song at age fourteen. The stage name "Betty Who" comes from the title of a song she wrote when she was sixteen. |
| "The Soundtrack of Your Life" | Day 10 "Stone" by Whiskey Myers This is one of those songs that I think I have an emotional attachment to more for where I first heard it. This was the band playing in the bar during an episode of Yellowstone when Rip and Beth finally had a romantic moment together. I love the bittersweet sound of this song, and actually listened to quite a bit of Whiskey Myers after I discovered the song, although I still think this particular track is the pinnacle of their work for me. Yellowstone is a show I have a bit of mixed feelings about. The first season was amazing, and the second season was pretty good, but I really don't see what the extreme hype is about. The characters are great and the dialogue is pretty compelling, but it feels like every single storyline is about how important the land of the ranch is, almost to the point of fetishizing it. Everyone prizes it and everyone's after it, and people are willing to lie, cheat, steal, and literally murder each other over it. I remember one storyline early on some developer wanted to buy some of the land to building a housing development, and the Dutton family was all furious that anyone would dare try to take their land from them and all I could think was, "This ranch is supposed to be like 750,000 acres and someone wants to pay them millions of dollars to have a small chunk of it for land development? How is that offensive?" I guess I'm more capitalist than cowboy...  |
| "The Soundtrack of Your Life" | Day 9 "You Should Probably Leave" by Chris Stapleton I don't really follow country music that closely, so when I find a new artist (or at least an artist that's new to me), I get really excited. The first time I heard Chris Stapleton was his 2017 single "Broken Halos," which I really loved, but the standout performance that really caught my attention was his duet with P!nk on her 2019 song "Love Me Anyway" from her Hurts 2B Human album. That was such a beautiful song and really highlighted his voice; I got chills the first time I heard it. The same thing happened when I listened to this song, which was the third single off his fourth studio album and released in 2021. The song was originally written in 2014 and can be traced back to Stapleton performing it in Nashville. This song actually won a 2022 Grammy for Best Country Solo Performance, so clearly I'm not the only one that likes it.  |
| "The Soundtrack of Your Life" | Day 8 "Surrender My Heart" by Carly Rae Jepsen Carly Rae Jepsen is an artist that I think keeps getting better as she gets more experience. Her breakthrough song was the smash hit "Call Me Maybe" in 2012, which was a huge hit and very catchy, but kind of a one-dimensional song. Later that year she did a duet with Owl City called "Good Time" which was pretty decent. Then she followed it up with "I Really Like You" in 2015, which became another huge hit. But the song that I really fell in love with was her 2017 release "Cut to the Feeling" which was originally intended for her album Emotion, but ended up being held back and released in connection with the animated feature film Ballerina, for which Jepsen voiced a supporting role. "Surrender My Heart" was a single off The Loneliest Time, which was Jepsen's "quarantine album" and she worked on with Tavish Crowe, the friend and songwriter she originally developed "Call Me Maybe" with. I really like the way her songs still maintain upbeat, catchy melodies, but the complexity and sophistication of her lyrics just keep getting better and better. |
| "The Soundtrack of Your Life" | Day 7 "Vertigo" by Griff I can't remember if I've featured Griff on a previous Soundtrackers activity or not, but I've really grown to appreciate her music in the past year or so. She's got a great voice and I like the way the electronic beats complement her vocals. She's been really popular as an opening act on a number of popular tours, including for Dua Lipa, Ed Sheeran, and Coldplay. This song also got a huge boost in popularity when Taylor Swift promoted it on Instagram and said she loved the song. I actually also really like the alternative version that she recorded in Los Angeles.She has two quotes that I really like. On the topic of why she chose the stage name "Griff" (as opposed to her birth name of Sarah Faith Griffiths), she is quoted as saying, "Sarah Griffiths isn't that glamorous. I sound like I have a mortgage and four kids." And, on the topic of growing up with evangelical Christian parents, she's quoted as saying "If you grow up with Christian parents, you get to a point where you ask yourself if you actually believe if you're just going through the motions. And from a young age I felt like it was something I actually do believe and so it’s always been something that I’ve owned." Which I think is really insightful from someone who's only in her early twenties. |
| "The Soundtrack of Your Life" | Day 6 "Pretty Girl" by Ice Spice (feat. Rema) I had never heard of Ice Spice before she featured on a Taylor Swift song ("Karma" off her most recent new album, Midnights). Ice Spice was then the musical guest on an episode of Saturday Night Live where Taylor Swift did a surprise introduction, which my wife wanted to watch, and this was the song that she ended up introducing. I immediately fell in love with the soulful, Caribbean-type beats of this track, and Rema's voice is a perfect complement to Ice Spice's rapping. I've listened to a few other Ice Spice songs since and I can't say that I'm a huge fan of her as an individual artist, but something about this song really clicks. Looking at my tentative playlist for this year, there's actually very few hip-hop artists and rappers this year. I usually have at least a couple, but this might be the only one... unless I suddenly call an audible and change my mind in the middle of the activity (which has been known to happen). |
| "The Soundtrack of Your Life" | Day 5 "Missing You" by Chase Wright This is the other country song that I probably listened to the most over the past year. Like "Love You A Little Bit" , it just has a certain energy to it that I found really easy to listen to on repeat for long periods of time. One of the things I'm learning about myself as a consumer of music is that I tend to look for songs that - regardless of genre - hit a certain emotion I'm looking for (energetic, melancholy, soulful, etc.) and then when I'm in the mood for that kind of emotion I'll just play the heck out of a small number of songs on repeat while I'm in that mood. That's probably why I have such an eclectic playlist every year, but where some songs are played literally dozens and sometimes hundreds of times over the course of several months.I'm also realizing that I tend to gravitate toward country songs with a lot of pop and rock influences. I'm not so big on the more traditional country subgenres like bluegrass or folk or honky-tonk. There's definitely the occasional song or two that I like from those genres but, as mentioned above, it's rare that one of those songs hits the exact right emotion I'm looking for... at least not in a more satisfying way than some songs in other genres, so I tend not to listen to classic country too much. Music like this, though, and Tanner Adell and some others, I'm definitely into. |
| "The Soundtrack of Your Life" | Day 4 "Love You A Little Bit" by Tanner Adell I'm really bummed that the only video I can find for the original version of this song is a fan-made video compilation of the artist's social media posts. She has a couple of good acoustic versions of this song on her own YouTube channel, but not even a lyric video or audio for the original.  I found this song during an extended country music phase this past year (which you'll see more of later in this activity), and it's probably one of the country songs I ended up listening to the most in 2023. It has the perfect blend of energy, catchy lyrics, and catchy beat; I found it really easy to just let it play on repeat while I was driving around town or trying to get some work done. One of the cool things I noticed in listening to Tanner and doing a bit of research is that there's apparently a big push for "black girl" country artists now. Country artists are overwhelmingly white and male for the most part, and while women have made huge strides in the genre in recent years, they're almost exclusively white as well. There's a massive appetite for diversity in country music artists, and I hope it happens because one of the reasons that I'm not a huge country fan normally is because I find so much of it homogenous. Some new perspectives would be a great way to refresh the genre and attract new fans. |
| "The Soundtrack of Your Life" | Day 3 "Before You" by David J This song reminds me of my trip to Nashville several years ago. My wife and I had never been and we went on a whim, to visit some relatives who had recently moved there. We were amazed at just how many music venues there were (some places downtown literally had buildings with multiple floors that had a different bar (and stage to perform on) on every level. We spent several days just wandering in and out of different bars listening to the people who were performing. And while we had planned on seeing some very specific performers, we were even more pleasantly surprised to discover local artists we'd never heard of before. David J kind of reminds me of those artists. His stage name is totally generic, and he looks like a college frat bro... but he happens to have a decent voice and he wrote a catchy song. I initially found this song on Spotify through the "Discover Weekly" playlist that recommends new songs every week based on your listening habits, but this is totally the kind of song I could imagine stumbling upon in some random bar in Nashville and suddenly becoming a fan. At the very least, it definitely makes me want to visit Nashville again and discover some new music. |
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