what's stuck in your head?

[watermoon]

i honestly don't know why antihoney's cover of let it be fucks me up so much… maybe because it's like she's struggling to be heard while the music threatens to swallow her whole, maybe because i learned of her story recently and she, she kinda was…

[sinku]

gbv songs have been on my mind a lot lately. i was humming this one today: when she turns 50.

[watermoon]

for some reason i've been thinking about scott miller again. he's always been a figure who i've wanted to love more than i actually could. he's smart and trying to be smart, clever and trying to be clever, but all in a way where the end result comes off not as obnoxious but as, um, inscrutable. he contorts his melodies until they sound like the equivalent of when you rewrite a joke so many times that it's only funny if you remember the previous iterations, he writes lyrics that seem more designed to be dissected for years afterward than sung along to, he's trying so hard to make art out of rock music about girls and that's admirable and relatable.

this is the closer on his double album that's only a little bit about him moping over giving his life to the music industry and not getting the return on investment that he expected. and even though there are more bombastic and "produced" songs on here, this might be my favorite. the guitar that sounds like it was ran through a leslie, the way his airy voice hangs over the already-thin mix, the melodic line of the chorus that breaks my brain… it's all so gorgeous.

(lyrically he's kinda writing his own death one album, a band change, a career change, and a published book before the real one happened, but i think that's just a common temptation for a certain kind of artist)

[maru]

I've had this 90s TMBG song in my head for a while. >_<

[sinku]

maru put this TMBG song in my head

[watermoon]

i might be slightly losing my shit here…



as for the track itself, tongai moyo seems to have an unusual approach to song structure where melodic lines arrive, get fixated on, and then leave to perhaps return later. it's easy to vibe along with, even if it's harder to then piece the song back together in your head, and with a lot of the songs lasting for over ten minutes i'm guessing that's the point. to me, this means that i tend to like these songs based on whether there's a part in them that's worth looking forward to, and this song's refrain of naye! that comes out of nowhere halfway through to punch you in the chest is the part that sticks in my head most.

but what really confounds me is that almost every upload of this track seems to cut off a minute before the end… even the ones uploaded by the record label! most of the streaming sites seem to only have the cut-off version; it's listed twice on spotify and only one of the two is the correct length; it has a music video on dailymotion with some incredible green-screen work, and the music video cuts off a minute before the end! at least this youtube video i happened upon while writing this up doesn't, though.

i can't help but wonder how this even happened on the production side, especially since this affects the uploads for all the songs on this album. did anyone check the files on this album to make sure they uploaded correctly? and i'd have a hard time believing that they only uploaded truncated versions as a quasi-sample to encourage buying the full track, since a) 90% of the track is hardly a sample-y size, and b) i have no goddamn clue how to buy any of his work short of flying to zimbabwe and hoping for the best.

[watermoon]

i'm done with posting good songs. now it's time for songs that have embedded themselves in my vocabulary.

Yip Yip Coyote – Pioneer Girl



"yee-hawr and off we gō" into this song about the american frontier, sung by a cowgirl who has a hard time masking her very-british accent. really the whole album is like this, and it gives off an extremely ameriboo feeling throughout, all drenched in the sort of unabashed kitsch that only '80s new wave can deliver.

i really don't know how i feel about this song though! like, i think it's good for what it is – i think it accomplishes what it sets out to do. but that doesn't keep me from feeling deep embarrassment whenever i listen to it… which means that it must be especially effective at what it sets out to do.

Sonic's Survival Team – They Call Me Sonic



chloe tipped me off to this one because her big brother used to own the cd and so she used to listen to it by proxy. it's from ostensibly a sonic remix album yet none of the songs actually sound like the ones from the games they reference, so maybe it's more accurate to say that's an album inspired by sonic. it also might be europe-exclusive, which i find a little fascinating what with how iffy those games' pal conversions are.

the last line sounds a lot like "with incredible speed, i move with my feet" and waow! he moves with his feet!! that's the deep sonic lore that only europe was deemed privileged to receive. i wonder if even cybershell knows that sonic moves with his feet…

it's unfortunate that this isn't the actual line, because if it was then it would've become one of the lyrics of all time, right up there with "i'm in the house like carpet" and "my lifestyle determines my deathstyle." but alas, it doesn't get to rise to those levels of prestige, and instead is forced to remain as one of those phrases that watermoon keeps repeating to annoy the ones who currently love her.

i still think it's a fun song though, but i'm a sucker for '90s dance cheese.

– in the house like cory,

[maru]

Lately it's been Touch by Daft Punk which is ... not something I've even listened to that often. It's been a while. But sometimes I get so engrossed by how weird it is, like an alien intelligence, that I end up singing to myself while cooking.

it's unfortunate that this isn't the actual line, because if it was then it would've become one of the lyrics of all time, right up there with "i'm in the house like carpet" and "my lifestyle determines my deathstyle." but alas, it doesn't get to rise to those levels of prestige, and instead is forced to remain as one of those phrases that watermoon keeps repeating to annoy the ones who currently love her.

I was trying to find out what those lines were from ... it's from Persona? Really? I thought it would be like, Western rap but no. Because it kind of makes sense, like you're already in the house. You belong in the house.

All I know for the latter is TMBG riffing on it...