This Song Changed My Life is an independent music publication featuring weekly essays from people all around the world about the songs that mean the most to them. Created (and illustrated) by Grace Lilly.

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• 5 min read •

In 2015, I moved to Williamsburg after college and began to navigate city nightlife with the vigorous appetites of a burgeoning alcoholic about town. I rapidly developed my own local “hot/not” list and reviled no place more intensely than infamous indie venue turned hook-up bar Union Pool. Maybe it was because drinking with past-their-prime, skinny-jeans-wearing 30-somethings depressed me, maybe it was because I secretly resented that my beautiful and put-together girlfriends were the ones being chatted up and never me, and maybe it was because one time in the bathroom I knocked drugs down the sink and couldn’t fish them out of the drain (ALLEGEDLY!); but I smack-talked and avoided the place with nearly pathological intensity. As fate would have it, it would also become the place where I heard the song that changed my life.

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In the summer of 2021, restaurants, cafés, and theaters were gradually reopening as Covid restrictions rolled back. At the same time, a fog was lifting in my personal life. I had bottomed out and gone sober, moved into my first solo apartment, and started seeing someone. My new boyfriend sent me a flyer to a tribute show: Bridget St. John with guest Steve Gunn playing the songs of the recently departed folk artist Michael Chapman. I had never heard any of these names, I didn’t particularly care about acoustic folk music, and, when I scrolled to the top of the post and saw the account name, I realized the venue was Union Pool. Oof. I guess they were one of the first music venues back in the game, but OOF. However, I hadn’t seen live music since 2019, and I had a shiny new boyfriend to impress, so I just texted “can’t wait!”

We drove my crappy Ford Focus to Williamsburg with the windows down, and my date’s childlike excitement mixed with the drowsy September air was infectious. We breezed through the courtyard to the back room, and I could feel my cold prejudices loosening before the show even began. The moment Steve Gunn walked out, I was mesmerized by his diminutive posture and arresting blue eyes. He didn’t look like every other indie hack I’d seen ooze across that stage.

The hush of rapt listeners was thick and delicious. Steve started to play the first song: a cover of Chapman’s nostalgic ode to youth, “Among the Trees.” His fingers brushed across the neck of the guitar and danced the opening chords.

We clutched each other close and swayed in the dark. Tears came to my eyes; I couldn’t help it. Between the beauty of the song and my lovey optimism, I felt intoxicated. When the final verse closed, I didn’t even stop to applaud, I turned on the heel of my clog and ran to the courtyard to light a cigarette. I sucked in plume after acrid plume — exhaled a smooth wisp — we had a song.

For the next two years I was basically a Steve Gunn groupie. I downloaded all of his music, I went to every show he played — seriously every single show — it’s a miracle I didn’t catch a stalking charge. Over this period, Steve’s stage presence grew (in my eyes) more confident, practically regal. His original music seemed daring, experimental, downright cool. He stepped into his true virtuoso potential and left sweet folksy covers in the dust.

The whole time, I held a glimmer of hope at every show that I’d hear the dancing chord progression and “la la las” of “Among the Trees”. It was a dragon to chase through the ups and downs of relationship tumult, a move out of (and blessedly back into) Manhattan, and relapsing on drugs and alcohol with pretty gnarly consequences. Overtly, I could say I had a new favorite singer and a shared hobby with my — um, mercurial — boyfriend, but internally, I think the song took on a superstitious quality. Hearing it seemed to validate the frenetic roamings of my late 20s, and my well-meaning but ultimately desperate bids to adopt the interests of my partner.

Before the official end of that relationship, I bought tickets to see Steve Gunn at Tubby’s in Kingston. I thought I could manufacture intimacy if we spent the night away from the city and saw “our” favorite act. Inevitably, we broke up before the show, but I couldn’t sell the tickets, so I still went.

The night was miserable, the opener was awful (or I was just in a bad mood, they might have been amazing if I wasn’t heartbroken); plus, I was back on the wagon, relegated to sipping water from the plastic jug on the card table in the corner. What am I even doing here??

Even Steve’s set began chaotically, almost violently. He played, at first, his most “out there” guitar tracks at increasing volume. I was ready to get the hell out. I devoured a final cigarette in the side yard while cursing the very marrow of Upstate New York, then brushed myself off to go grab my coat and flee.

I winced when the door slammed behind me and shuffled through the hushed crowd while Steve finished introducing another song. I finally reached the mess of winter jackets, and as I hunched to search for my own puffer, it started. It only took two notes for me to recognize that it was finally happening. I unfurled my spine hesitantly.

He started to play our — no, now my — song. I retracted my hand from the coat pile and floated to the middle of the crowd. A weight sank through my chest, and I started to sob. Every verse, every chord sliced me, and I wept. I released the past few years. I didn’t even have to vow that I’d never call my ex again, I just let Steve (and all the hip Kingston people who bore witness) play me out of that chapter.

I stepped into the cold and foggy night. My trusty Ford was waiting in the lot, ready to take me home. I didn’t play any music on the drive. I had caught the dragon, and the high was nothing like I had expected. I knew I’d never see them again, neither my former love nor Steve Gunn. It may have been an errant coincidence, but I will always be convinced that he played it, one last time, just for me. ◆

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About Sara

Sara Kamillatos is a historian, consultant, (sometimes) artist, and generally grateful Human Being who splits her time between Los Angeles and Manhattan. She misses that Ford Focus very much…

Instagram @sara_kam4

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• 6 min read •

“The Seed (2.0),” from the album Phrenology, probably wasn’t the first (or even the tenth) song that I discovered and loved completely on my own. It wasn’t the first song that I evangelized to my friends, forcing them to be quiet in the car so they could appreciate it. Still, it feels important to me because it wasn’t given to me, yet I loved it as much or more as any of the “classics” that had been handed down to me.

I didn’t hear it on the radio or see the video on MTV. I had seen the video for “Break You Off,” the first single on Phrenology, and I think it must have inspired me to buy the CD. Many songs that I love, maybe even most songs that I love, don’t immediately appeal to me. Maybe I will think that they are okay, or kind of catchy, but it normally takes some time for me to really think a song is great. “The Seed (2.0)” was one of the exceptions. The first time I heard it, I was immediately all-in. This song was clearly better than the (still-good) “Break You Off.” In fact, was this the best song I had ever heard in my life?

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I think for most of us, a good chorus is enough to make us like a song. There are tons of songs where the verse is nothing special, but the chorus is memorable enough to save the song. “The Seed (2.0)” is not that type of song. The verse, Black Thought rapping over a hypnotic guitar riff, is awesome. The chorus, sung by Cody Chesnutt, is even better, although the lyrics are admittedly a bit perplexing (more on that in a second).

The song instantly became a favorite. It felt a little bit like a discovery, although the Roots were relatively known already in 2002. There are tons of songs I loved from that time, but most of them have fallen out of my rotation. Some of them I’ve completely forgotten about. “The Seed (2.0)” has stuck around for 20 years, and it has been my reflexive answer when someone asks me my favorite song. Part of what draws me to this song is the nostalgia I feel when I hear it, for how it reminds me of high school and music from that time generally. Re-listening to it now reminds me that I like this song apart from nostalgia, too. It is, in my opinion, a perfect song (whatever that means).

The song itself feels mystical to me. I almost always feel that the music is more important than the lyrics of a song, at least at first. I often don’t even know the lyrics until I’ve listened to the song a bunch, and this song was no exception. When I did learn the lyrics, I was confused. Is this song about cheating on your girlfriend and purposely getting someone pregnant? It’s a testament to how good this song is that the weirdness (amorality?) of the lyrics didn’t ruin it for me.

While I was writing this, I read about the song, and I found out the whole thing is (allegedly) symbolic: Cody Chesnutt is cheating on rap music, and his baby will literally be a rock and roll song. I’m not totally sure I buy this explanation, and I’m not totally sure it makes sense as a metaphor, but I don’t think it matters.

I have been thinking a lot about music taste recently. Eight months ago, my wife and I had our first child. I immediately planned how to expose him to all the pop culture I love. I know it is a fool’s errand to try and force your kid to like what you like. Basically the entire history of American popular music in the 20th century suggests that everything I like will be corny to him, and I’ll think everything he likes is dangerous garbage that is rotting his brain.

Still, I had the instinct to teach him about “cool” music, even though it was probably a quixotic endeavor. I began to reflect on how and why I liked what music I did, and how I acquired my likes.

I had two major influences on my life when it comes to music: my dad and my older brother.

My dad, who in many ways is a kind and empathetic person, had very strong, surprisingly hardline opinions about music. His likes and dislikes are typical of a man born in 1959: country rock is great, rap is obnoxious, and most importantly, disco sucks. (He referred to basically all pop/dance music as “disco” for like twenty years longer than was accurate. Boyz II Men was not disco, dad.)

He was not afraid to share his opinion on any song or style of music. The fact that he had already shared that opinion 24 times prior was not, to him, an obstacle. (My wife tells me that in this, I am my father’s son.) If the song was important to him, he usually talked about it biographically, not sonically. He might tell us how his older brother Terry had the album in 1974, but he wouldn’t talk about the drums or the guitar tone or anything. He might, if he was feeling particularly strongly, call something a “classic.”

My older brother, though at first blush radically different from our dad in his approach to music, was ultimately kind of similar. My brother was happy to define himself as diametrically opposed to my dad’s music: he loved rap, and grunge, and industrial metal. However, he was just as quick to categorize everything, and he could be vicious in his approach.

Since he was closer in age, I was more likely to adopt my brother’s opinions without too much pushback. Plus, he had good taste! He subscribed to Rolling Stone and The Source magazine, and had the music snob’s reflexive rejection of most music you might hear on the radio.

He was even more strident in his opinions than my dad, and I often parroted them as if they were my own, even though I generally had no idea what I was talking about. I remember confidently telling a friend that Green Day were sellouts, even though 1) I liked Green Day, 2) I had no idea what they might have done to be sellouts, and 3) I didn’t even know what a sellout was.

Between the two of them, and my general awareness of what music was supposed to be cool or critically acclaimed, I sometimes felt like it was impossible to have an opinion of my own that wasn’t influenced externally. If I liked something that I knew I “shouldn’t,” I would formulate arguments about why it was underrated; I couldn’t engage and enjoy things on their own merits without over-contextualizing them.

Since I found “The Seed (2.0)” on my own, it felt free from any baggage. I had finally gotten old enough to be able to enjoy something without worrying about how it was perceived. The song was cool, but I didn’t like it because it was cool, or it got good reviews, or my brother had told me about it.

I loved it because it felt like something of my own, something no one told me about. Mostly, I think I love this song because of how it sounds, which, entire preceding essay notwithstanding, is really all that matters. ◆

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About Cormac

Cormac Ryan is a lawyer, but he loves to remind people he was a bartender for years before that. He lives in California with his wife Hannah and their son.

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Can you believe it?

We’re THREE years into This Song Changed My Life today (!!!)

I’m truly honored to have you here, whether you’re a brand new subscriber or you’ve been around since day one.

It feels important to be producing and partaking in something so deeply human right now, and every year this feeling grows. Thank you to every reader and every writer for being a part of this project — our sacred Friday ritual <3

Celebrate with us!

• 🔗 Share the link to your favorite essay (and/or your own essay) on social media, and encourage your friends to join us here. It’d give us a meaningful boost!

• ✍️ Submit a piece if you’ve been itching to

• ❤️ Chip in if you can! This project is still very much a labor of love. You can help keep it going for $5/month or $50/year ($4.17/mo). Plus, you’ll get access to 75+ secret posts, playlists, and album recommendations in return. I’m particularly proud of this one, and I’ll link to a few more at the bottom of this page.

Extremely special shout out if you’re already a paid subscriber — every single person reading this has you to thank.

A few highlights from this year

Our contributors regaled us with rich and varied stories of incredible tenacity, teenage antics, new motherhood, new fatherhood, facing uncertainty, familial grief, joining/leaving the military, being the new kid, and so much more.

• We were lucky enough to have skateboarder/filmmaker Rachelle Vinberg write a sweet piece about her brother (and Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven”) back in December

• We published an essay in Spanish for the first time, José Luis Ruiz’s piece on Carole King’s “It’s Too Late,” graciously translated to English by Humberto J. Rocha, who also contributed his own essay on Soda Stereo’s “Persiana Americana”

• And we received a submission all the way from Pakistan, Osman Khan’s piece on Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s “Yeh Jo Halka Halka Saroor”

I’d shout out every essay here if I could, but I have to cut myself off so this email doesn’t get chopped in half. Please dig all the way into the archive and leave lovely comments for our writers to let them know you appreciate them as much as I do!

What’s next?

Cheers to three years! We have lots of stories to share in the coming months, and we’ll be back on Friday with essay ✨ No. 150 ✨ (another milestone)!

More soon,

x Grace

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This Song Changed My Life is an independent music publication featuring weekly essays from people all around the world about the songs that mean the most to them. Created (and illustrated) by Grace Lilly.

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• 4 min read •

A few years ago, I was in a bad place. The pandemic had been a brutal period. In 2020 I was on the receiving end of a surprise breakup with a long-term boyfriend. Not long before that, I’d been diagnosed with OCD, which was in turn exacerbated by the unexpected circumstances of the breakup and the bizarre vacuum of the pandemic. These issues fed on each other for months, instigating painful ruminations that spiraled nearly into self-torture. After the breakup, I moved out of my ex’s condo and formed a COVID bubble with several friends, who were a tremendous source of support. Soon after, I found my own apartment and began to settle, begrudgingly, into my new reality. All this time I was slowly chipping away at my PhD dissertation, a solitary endeavour under the best of circumstances, which was made significantly more isolating by the pandemic. Spending the majority of my time on my own, sometimes my OCD could be all-consuming. I was struggling with the worst self-esteem of my life, which on bad days manifested as a kind of self-loathing I had never known before.

By summer 2021, there were some reasons to feel hopeful: vaccines had finally arrived in Toronto. Restrictions were tentatively starting to lift. I’d been slowly, gingerly healing. Yet I still felt distant from myself, my torn seams somewhat haphazardly sewn up. Dark thoughts were never far away. My parents and a close friend of mine decided to go on a week-long summer getaway together to a lakeside lodge with a few cottages near Sudbury, Ontario. Once there, I was relieved to discover I didn’t have cell service. Loon calls and campfires and hammocks and morning kayaking were a salve over my wounds accumulated throughout the previous year.

My friend and I got there the day after my parents. Once we arrived, my dad excitedly told me about one of the lodge’s staff, a man I’ll call V, who was apparently a talented guitarist and Bob Dylan aficionado. Ever the proud father, my dad had relayed to V that I was a singer and a pianist, and convinced him that we’d have to connect over music. V gave a free weekly concert at the lodge — we’d be hearing him perform in a day or two.

I admit that my dad’s enthusiasm over V, who I hadn’t yet met, didn’t inspire much expectation in me. I was embarrassed by my dad’s innocent delight in advertising my musical abilities to strangers, and, perhaps unfairly, I was a little doubtful of V. Music is a foundational part of my life — core to my identity, my self-expression, my education, even the area of my graduate research. Over the years, I’ve met plenty of members of the category of musicians I’ll call “guitar bros.” Many of them have an unpleasant tendency to mansplain my native art form to me or have a frustratingly narrow view of music (and a low opinion of female musicians, preferring to maintain a sort of boys’ club). My initial suspicion was that V would probably just be another one of them.

To my enormous surprise, meeting V was the inciting incident of a restorative, inspiring chapter of my life.

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V was an exceptional guitar player with a superb ear and an encyclopedic knowledge of Bob Dylan. He was absolutely captivating on stage, and had an uncanny ability to cover Dylan’s singing style, mimicking his subtle performance quirks with a magic that I hadn’t ever encountered in a tribute musician. In fact, it’s a bit of a disservice to refer to V as a tribute artist. V was unlike any musician I’d ever met.

That week at the lodge we started collaborating. Our musical skills dovetailed in a remarkable fashion: I was blown away by V’s ability to remember long, early Dylan ballads with an obscene number of verses. V couldn’t believe that I could easily improvise harmonies to sing along with him. I was a classically trained pianist who’d done some pop-style keyboard improvising over chord charts. V hardly read music but had a knack for picking out classic songs with obscure tunings and unexpected harmonic progressions by ear. Enjoying playing together, we excitedly experimented with songs by a bunch of different artists we loved, from Joni Mitchell to Leonard Cohen to Simon & Garfunkel, but, of course, we stuck mostly to Dylan. I knew some classics by Dylan, but collaborating with V opened me to many unfamiliar (and now-favourite) songs from his enormous catalogue; in effect, V properly introduced me to Dylan.

I joined in on several of V’s performances at the lodge that season (returning there after my family trip had ended). Both based in Toronto, V and I also continued collaborating in the months to follow, as the pandemic situation gradually eased. We rehearsed in my tiny apartment, where I had a piano; I made a few appearances as a back-up singer at V’s shows and our repertoire list kept growing. Nonetheless, adopting the roles of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, we always returned to a classic, one of the earliest songs we worked on when we first met, which became a kind of signature: “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

Retrospectively, I have come to understand my time at the lodge, my collaborations with V, and Bob Dylan’s music as a profound turning point in my life, and as vital to the restoration of my self-love and self-compassion.

In 2023, I finished my PhD and moved to Oslo for a new research position. V and I still keep in touch. ◆

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About Sadie

Sadie Menicanin is based in Oslo, Norway, where she works as a postdoctoral fellow in historical musicology at the University of Oslo. In addition to singing with several ensembles, she is an avid reader, embroidery artist, and sauna-goer.

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Madeline Craig (No. 099)

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Diary 💗 Bob Dylan ten feet away

I had just graduated high school... I’d been saving up for years for “something big.” Seeing Bob Dylan front row was it. Read→

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• 5 min read •

I don’t quite recall where my love, or fascination, with hip-hop started. I grew up in a household with parents who listened to The Beatles, Clapton, and Otis Redding, and a father who idolized Bob Dylan. I love these bands and artists. I still enjoy them to this day; nothing has changed in that regard. At some point, though, something clicked. It might have been “Jump Around” by House of Pain — my father bought the CD because he enjoyed that song. It may have been “Insane in the Membrane.” Hell, I might have been down with O.P.P. I’ll never know.

Fast forward into the early 2000s. The world went through changes. Music went through changes. I was no different. For years I had a hustle of scamming Columbia House and BMG out of a dozen or so CDs for one dollar every year, but when my parents finally caught on, the jig was up. Eventually the internet gave us Napster. Any song (or computer virus) you wanted at your fingertips. Clogging up our house’s landline and feasting on this new technology became an addiction.

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At this point, I had heard of Jurassic 5. Specifically, I had come across a short 45-second segment of a song called “Improvise” on a Funkmaster Flex mixtape. The tune has a catchy Guy Jean “Sitting by the River” hook that grabbed my attention, so I decided the group was worthy of a search on this newfound, illegal music library that I had access to. The first result rendered was none other than “Quality Control.” A click on “download,” an impatient three-minute wait for it to complete, a double-click on Windows Media Player, and my ears were never the same again.

The song starts off with ten bars of the group’s four vocalists giving us a glimpse of what they are capable of: a rhythmic commotion that seems to blend hip-hop with orchestra. This isn’t the chorus or the hook. This is the group delivering on what they promised on an earlier album. “We take four emcees and make ’em sound like one.” The Blowfly samples (from “Outro” and “One Less Dick”) drive the melody in a funk-jazz hybrid. “We can rule the world without Kurtis and still blow.” A Kurtis Blow reference, you say? These cats are killing it just 45 seconds into the song! Did I just say “cats”?

“Soup, you plan on rocking something fierce?” “Oh, am I.” A hypothetical question spun up by the group and answered by Zaakir with Ric Flair-esque confidence sets the tone for what’s to come. “The verbal acupuncture from the dope old schooler.” Boasting and bragging about oneself is hip-hop 101. Most MCs, according to themselves — totally unbiased, of course — are wealthy beyond our wildest dreams, respected or feared in their neighborhoods, and/or experts in all things sexual. When I heard THAT line, I thought, “What the fuck did he just say?” And as the first verse was wrapping up, I thought, “Where have you been all my life?” I now chuckle at the idea of a 17-year-old saying that to himself. You ought to laugh at it, too. It’s laughable, but it’s how I felt and still feel.

I’ll spare you a deep dive into rest of the lyrics. Prior to the internet becoming what it is, we didn’t have every lyric of every song at our disposal. Sometimes guessing or rolling over those lines you weren’t 100% sure of was fine. One of those lines for me was, “Coming verbally Hardison as if my name was Kadeem.” Kadeem Hardison from A Different World? My ears weren’t worthy of such poetry. It was everything that I knew I loved and everything that I was learning to love about hip-hop on a brand new track. I couldn’t wait to hear more. I couldn’t wait to tell anyone who would listen.

In the decades since, I have yet to cross paths with anyone who “doesn’t like” Jurassic 5. Perhaps you’re simply not a fan of hip-hop, which is A-OK. It takes all kinds. But for anyone who enjoys it at even a cursory level, J5 seems to check all the boxes.

In early 2014, J5 announced that they were reuniting for a countrywide tour from July to August. They didn’t officially call it a farewell tour, but fans had a sneaking suspicion that this was it. The tour was accompanied by a new single, “The Way We Do It,” which was produced by the late, great Heavy D. You might remember him from songs like “Now That We Found Love” and “Nuttin’ But Love” (that music video with Rebecca Gayheart and Cynthia Bailey still gives me chills).

When I caught wind of the tour, I noticed the group was going to perform at Baltimore’s Pier Six Pavilion — a lovely, semi-covered, outdoor waterfront venue that holds about 4,500 people. My dilemma? A preplanned, long weekend vacation that same weekend in Dewey Beach, Delaware — one of my favorite beach bum towns in the country. My choices? Go as planned and miss the concert or go to the concert and cut the vacation in half. I put some feelers out to see if anyone would want to join me at Pier Six, but after about 50 inquiries, I struck out. It was like a bad dream; one of those dreams where you need to do something or get somewhere, and for one reason or another just can’t get moving. Car keys are nowhere to be found. Your shoelaces seem impossible to tie. Your dead uncle wants to chat about rotary engines.

My FOMO got the better of me, and I opted to go to the beach instead of braving the concert as a loner. I still regret it. I don’t have too many vivid memories from that vacation, but one sticks as a consolation prize for missing the only opportunity I’ll ever have to see one of my favorite groups live. My best friend’s younger brother, a J5 fan as well, joined us at the beach. What we didn’t know at the time is that he would only be with us for another five years, as he passed far too young in 2019. He was introduced to J5 by yours truly. Sun shining on our backs, a calm wind on our skin, and cold beers in hand, a battery-powered speaker played some J5 tunes as a soundtrack.

It was as lovely as it sounds. ◆

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About Wes

Wes Fox is a lifelong Marylander currently living in Baltimore. He produces and hosts a podcast titled The Middle Classholes.

Instagram @middleclassholes

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• 3 min read •

Not too long ago, someone I loved introduced me to South African jazz and I immediately became a disciple. It stopped me in my tracks. I didn’t listen to anything else for months, maybe even a year. I would bring it up in conversations that had nothing to do with music, with people who didn’t ask and usually didn’t care. But I couldn’t help it. I had landed on something beautiful, and I couldn’t understand why everyone else was so blasé about it. To be honest, I still don’t.

At the top of my carefully curated playlist (the only playlist I don’t listen to on shuffle) is Zim Ngqawana’s “Four Part Suite: (Opus #20) Baby Angelina” from his album Zimology. I won’t regale you with the histories of Zim or of jazz in South Africa because I can’t, other than that he died way too young and influenced a lot of folks that came after him.

Looking back, I think what was so urgent to me about this song was how it managed to connect everything I had ever known, experienced, felt, feared, loved, or longed for. There is a sense of cosmic wonder that arises when time and space collapse in front of you like that. I thought I was too old and cynical to have those revelations anymore, but I was wrong. Within the span of a few minutes, the song moved me through meditation, joy, anticipation, sorrow, and hope. I was listening alongside my ancestors to chords that my soul already knew and my heart ached for.

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It wasn’t anything I’ve experienced before or since. The song is a hymn. And, unlike the hymns of my childhood, it is free of shame. It is measured and miraculously, I trust it. That is likely why I am writing about it now. I barely trust anything these days. But this song holds a wisdom that I believe in. It feels like truth over doctrine, like eking out a form by drawing a cloud of the shape it makes, rather than by defining its contour.

I’ve been going through a blend of midlife and existential crises this year. I can’t blame it on a specific event or action, it’s more like the cumulative effect of paying attention. Also my mom died last year which, frankly, sucks. All of that to say, I’ve spent most of my daily listening hours on news and podcasts, and substantially less on music. But I know, even in this dissociated drift, I can still turn to Zim (and Abdullah Ibrahim and Kyle Shepherd…). Years after the initial spell was cast, they still soothe and heal me, grounding me in my body in a way that feels like coming home.

I will return to this music for the rest of my life. Sometimes I think about how random it was for it to arrive when it did, and how unlikely it was that someone would open an entirely new world to me, especially so late in the game. It’s possible we met only so they could share this music. And if that were true, it would be enough. ◆

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About Melissa

Melissa Joseph is a New York based artist. Her work considers themes of memory, family history, and the politics of how we occupy spaces. She intentionally alludes to the labors of women as well as experiences as a second generation American and the unique juxtapositions of diasporic life. Her exhibition Heft is on view at Sim Smith in London through July 18, 2026 and her first solo exhibition at Charles Moffett Gallery, Casserole Culture, opens this September.

Instagram @melissajoseph_art

Website melissajoseph.net

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Diary 💗 10 Artists of Summer 2026

From mellow, laid-back afternoons to upbeat, dance-heavy nights… Ten artists to keep an eye on this summer. Read→

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• 3 min read •

I often think of The Egyptian.

My dad told me about a guy he met once in the U.S. He was sixty, and had been living in America for four decades; happily settled and proudly American.

One day, at the age of sixty, he woke up and Googled some of the Egyptian music from his childhood. Then he started watching Egyptian films. He started thinking about Egypt, his old friends. He got melancholy. Soon, he was making plans to somehow shift his life back. It was like one of those viruses that can lie dormant for decades before waking up because you took the wrong pill or fell funny.

I grew up in Lahore, Pakistan. From 2017 till 2025 I studied and worked in America. The whole time, I kept wondering whether, if I stayed, I’d have my Egyptian moment. If one day the life I’d built would suddenly feel like someone else’s.

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As time went on, a part of me started to believe it wouldn’t happen. I needed to believe it, since, with every passing year, back home felt more and more distant, more alien. I was changing, as everyone who goes to college does, but my changes felt so much higher-stakes, so much more important. I started to hope that the story of The Egyptian was a tall tale.

To make a long story short, the ennui of America and my 20s got to me. And my Egyptian moment came.

I found myself sitting on the New York City subway sick to death of the entire vast world of music I had access to. None of it felt right. It was all people talking about things that never happened to me. Beers and teenage driver’s licenses and finding yourself. I’d never even seen a beer till college. And I knew exactly where my self could be found. Americans can never quite figure out who they are, that’s their problem. Pakistanis know exactly who they are and they can’t forget it, that’s our problem.

Desperate, I searched for Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and recognized one of his songs. He’s a huge deal back home, a Sufi music giant who put our music on the map. Even an Urdu music philistine like me vaguely knew “Halka Halka Saroor.” It’s a song about being in a daze, feeling drunk off of love, or devotion, undulating about through your life. It felt like how I felt about America, about the people I loved there, about that time in my life.

Over the next few months, my listening to that song and my decision to go home increased in tandem; it’s still hard to say which came first.

It was like that song had been waiting for me to come home. I knew more of the lyrics than I realized, recognized more of the Ustad’s other songs than I thought I would. I found an interview where they asked him why so many people at his North American concerts suffered ecstatic episodes. He said simply, “The violence of the ecstasy depends on each person’s pain of separation from his homeland.” Huh.

The Egyptian’s path home started with music. So did mine. A lot of people have a song that taught them how to rebel, how to get out of Dodge, how to find their new self. My song brought me home.

I hope if you’re reading this you have a song that brings you back to what matters. If not, think on it. I’m sure there’s one just waiting for you to take it up again. ◆

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About Osman

Osman Rahim Khan lives in Lahore, Pakistan. He recently moved home after several years studying and working as a statistician at Dartmouth College and the Wall Street Journal. He now works in the corn seed business.

Instagram @osmanoftheppl

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Diary 💗 American Pie, Jeff, and root beer 🥧

Core memories of singing together in the mountains. Read→

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🏆 A top-read post

Summertime is music time

Warm weather has music playing. It’s peak concert season, sprinkled with music festivals and new albums every few days. A music-lover’s dream.

Without fail and without meaning to, I listen to a different set of musicians each summer. The summer before eighth grade, it was Phoenix and MIKA. The summer after I graduated college, it was Bombay Bicycle Club and the Mamas and the Papas.

Their music soundtracks my memories. Whenever I hear “Girlfriend” by Phoenix, suddenly I’m thirteen, sunbathing on our back porch, trying and failing to get a tan like Paris Hilton. And when I hear “Snowqueen of Texas” by the Mamas and the Papas, I’m twenty-three and riding the subway, eating Welch’s fruit snacks (real ones know), trying to distract myself from the New York City heat.

Balmy and sweaty, yes, but good memories.

So to celebrate the start of summer, I thought I’d do another round-up like the 10 Artists to watch in 2026 I wrote back in January. This time, summer specific 😎

Below are ten artists to keep an eye on this season. From mellow, laid-back afternoons to upbeat, dance-heavy nights, there’s music for every type of summer memory. Enjoy!

Don’t miss the playlist featuring these artists at the bottom of this post 🎧

x Grace

p.s. These musicians are all touring & performing at festivals over the next few months, so be sure to see them live if you get the chance!

Alternative Pop

1. Chanpan

If you like:

❤️ Björk

❤️ Gorillaz

❤️ Blur

❤️ PinkPantheress

❤️ LCD Soundsystem

About Chanpan:

• New York-based Asian-American trio: Grace Dumdaw and identical twins Lance and Matthew Tran

• A “very cool New York band” (Vogue); first got attention as a band busking on the streets of Chinatown

• Highly creative resampling; started with limited access to instruments

• Futuristic sound, themes of anti-imperialism, Asian liberation, and cultural resilience

• Inspired by family histories as refugees & immigrants; debut single “Jungle” is a political commentary on U.S. bombings in Vietnam and the civil war in Myanmar

Spotify Chanpan
Instagram @chanpanmusic

Songs to check out: “jungle” • “confessions part iii” • “buzzin” • “striking vipers”

R&B

2. Khamari

If you like:

❤️ Frank Ocean

❤️ Daniel Caesar

❤️ SZA

❤️ Miguel

❤️ Khalid

About Khamari:

• Boston native, attended Berklee College of Music

• Blends hip-hop, soul, jazz, and indie-pop; nostalgic and fresh at once

• Frequently compared to and mistaken for Frank Ocean

• Writes highly personal, reflective lyrics about relationships, growth, inner peace, and purpose

• A lover of film, his songs have a cinematic emotional depth and vulnerability

Spotify Khamari
Instagram @khamari

Songs to check out: “Lonely in the Jungle” • “Doctor, My Eyes” • “Head in a Jar” • “I Love Lucy”

Punk

3. Amyl and The Sniffers

If you like:

❤️ Bikini Kill

❤️ Wet Leg

❤️ Courtney Barnett

❤️ Hole

❤️ Die Spitz

About Amyl and The Sniffers:

• Australian pub rock and punk band based in Melbourne

• Vocalist Amy Taylor, drummer Bryce Wilson, guitarist Declan Mehrtens, and bassist Gus Romer

• Chaotic, aggressive, high-voltage, surprisingly danceable

• Compared to The Ramones and Iggy and the Stooges; heavily influenced by 1970s garage rock

• Rapid, raw guitar riffs blend with charismatic, in-your-face vocals

Spotify Amyl and The Sniffers
Instagram @amylandthesniffers

Songs to check out: “Tiny Bikini” • “Big Dreams” • “Jerkin’” • “Guided by Angels”

Dance

4. Confidence Man

If you like:

❤️ Deee-Lite

❤️ Donna Summer

❤️ Kylie Minogue

❤️ Yaeji

❤️ Aqua

About Confidence Man:

• Critically acclaimed Australian electronic-pop and dance group

• Fronted by duo “Janet Planet” and “Sugar Bones” on vocals

• Widely considered one of the most fun live bands in the world

• Known for their satirical, high-energy sound, reminiscent of Scissor Sisters and Tom Tom Club

• Heavily inspired by 90s Eurodance, 2000s alt-disco, and UK rave culture

• Feel good music, campy, addictive club anthems

Spotify Confidence Man
Instagram @confidenceman

Songs to check out: “Holiday” • “The Right” • “JANET” • “I CAN’T LOSE YOU”

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This Song Changed My Life is an independent music publication featuring weekly essays from people all around the world about the songs that mean the most to them. Created (and illustrated) by Grace Lilly.

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• 4 min read •

How do you discover new music? Likely some combination of Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, Shazam, YouTube, digital radio, and cable TV.

Now imagine a dark, dystopian place where none of these existed. THERE WAS NO INTERNET. It was the 1980s. An era where the amount of music at our disposal was extremely limited. In the UK, there were four national radio stations and a handful of music-based TV shows, many buried late at night.

I grew up in a mundane town just outside of London; a lot of us did. When the book Britain’s Crappest Towns came out, so many people complained about their exclusion that they had to produce Volume Two. There was no live music scene. We were largely feeding off the scraps of whatever made it to the charts, the “Top 40.” The musical hegemony at my overwhelmingly white school was guitar-based mainstream music. The soundtrack to house parties was British Indie and US rock/metal. I was at those parties — there was beer and girls — but there wasn’t much dancing, and I was heading down a different musical path.

One thing hasn’t changed: the home is a great source of discovery. My mum and her brothers all leaned, as a lot of white kids growing up in the ’60s in the UK did, towards Motown and Black music. Helping my uncle strip wallpaper to Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions was a revelation, and a Barry White cassette was borrowed, possibly without his knowledge, from another uncle.

The first time music changed my life was when I heard “The Payback Mix,” not really a song, but a mash-up of old songs. In 1988, it reached the UK charts and I was introduced to the real James Brown. “Living in America” had come out three years before, but it was a Hollywood-soundtrack, sanitized version of the Godfather of Soul. This was the real James Brown. “Get Up Offa That Thing” rolled into “Super Bad” and then into “Get on the Good Foot.” This was my sound, it was “on the one.”

Technology was evolving and with it came heightened discovery. Nascent satellite television brought Yo! MTV Raps and VHS tapes were soon filled with songs like Digital Underground’s “Humpty Dance” and Das EFX’s “They Want EFX” with their samples of Brown, Sly Stone, and George Clinton. I thought I was deep into Hip-Hop, but I was deep into funk.

New radio stations popped up, including London’s Kiss FM. As a teen, when spending a minute with your parents was 60 seconds wasted, I camped out in my bedroom listening to the station. I recorded the weekly shows of DJs Patrick Forge and Gilles Peterson onto cassette, re-listened to them, and added the best tracks to a color-coded master mixtape.

Then one Sunday night it hit me.

1, 2, 3, ugh…

Followed by the hardest bass line I’d ever heard.

“Heavy rhythm,” said a Nigerian-accented man, and then for the next 17 minutes I was smashed around the head by a cavalcade of African percussion, keyboards, horns, and bass guitar.

This was James Brown on steroids.

This was “It’s No Possible” by Fela Kuti.

The Oscar-winning documentary When We Were Kings illustrated James Brown’s popularity in Africa. He toured Nigeria and was a big influence on Fela Kuti. Fela, who had musical training in England and spent time in the US, distilled the essence of Brown’s funk, drew on traditional Yoruba and Juju music, and created an entirely new sound — Afrobeat.

A sound, by definition, is difficult to describe in words, especially for someone whose instrumental acumen extends as far as playing the triangle, but the tl;dr is Fela’s legendary drummer Tony Allen took the structure of American funk beats and made them more polyrhythmic.

Nearly all of Fela’s work follows a formula where Allen creates the foundation with these complex rhythmic patterns. On “It’s No Possible,” at least 10 minutes of instrumental freewheeling is layered on top before Kuti eventually sings in Pidgin English with highly politicized lyrics aimed at the government institutions of Nigeria in the 1970s.

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I craved more details about this mind-blowing record immediately upon hearing it, but as it faded out, Peterson casually said, “Fela,” and moved on to the next track. Now, where I came from, “Fella” was just slang for a man or boy. I had just heard the greatest song of my life and all I could put down on my mixtape was “Fella.”

Fortunately, a bunch of Kuti albums were being re-released on CD at the time, and soon I was able to put a surname on the mixtape. Analog research via a record shop’s monthly catalogue unearthed more of his work.

I went to college not long after, and my mum was given the arduous task of cassette operator. Twice a month a Jiffy bag of C120 cassettes arrived ready for mixtape consideration. CDs were £14.95, nearly half my weekly rent at the time, but I wanted as much Fela as I could find — ironically one of my favorite albums is entitled Expensive Shit.

Brown, Stone, and Clinton remained omnipresent in my listening habits, but as Hip-Hop shifted, I was increasingly drawn to other music coming out of Africa in that period. Digital discovery took me to Cameroon and Manu Dibango, the huge scene in Ghana, and Ethio-Groove. There are tracks from Benin, DR Congo, Burkina Faso, South Africa, and Mali in my iTunes library, and your life will never quite be the same after you’ve heard 1970s Moroccan funk artist Fadoul.

One song had begun a passage that unlocked an entire continent’s music. ◆

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About Lee

Lee Walker has worked in digital sports for 30 years and relocated from London to Hoboken, New Jersey four years ago. He shares his home with his partner Anita, their triple passport owning sons Cillian and Cormac, his golf clubs, and his skis.

Instagram @leewalk498

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Dance Funk Playlist

A playlist for getting down. Listen→

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This Song Changed My Life is an independent music publication featuring weekly essays from people all around the world about the songs that mean the most to them. Created (and illustrated) by Grace Lilly.

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• 6 min read •

Mom was always humming and bustling when we were growing up. Snippets of “Morning Has Broken” while chopping turnips, stuff like that, with random la-la-la’s in place of the lyrics. I ended up associating many folk tunes with house chores because of this. I think it’s also why it took me so long to realize that I had indeed heard many Taiwanese and Mandarin pop songs before — just many of them wordless and in the form of my mother doing laundry.

I was much more mentally open to receiving these hums as a child, but growing older and deciding to go to music school also meant being hellbent on listening to as much flute and classical music as possible. I had to listen to learn my pieces and play them well, but for some reason it was a zero-sum issue in my head, as if time spent listening to anything else would impede my musical growth. It was about the music, but it was also a bit about being the best in those days.

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So, when I inevitably burnt out the autumn after college graduation, I started trying to breathe again with my heart instead of only my diaphragm. This also happened to be 2019, which is how I ended up focusing on relearning Mandarin and rediscovering T- and Mandopop during lockdown rather than remaining fixated on classical music.

Being curious and wanting to connect to Taiwan in some way, I enrolled in an online class through the Taiwanese government’s Overseas Community Affairs Council. One day my teacher happened to mention Teresa Teng, one of the most famous East Asian pop stars of the 20th century, and after class I felt a pull to track down her top hits.

As soon as I heard the first fifteen seconds of “Yue liang dai biao wo de xin” (月亮代表我的心 or “The Moon Represents My Heart”), something twisted inside me and tears sprang to my eyes. Holy crap, yeah — I had heard this before. I felt like I was seven years old in my parents’ kitchen again, Mom in my periphery sporting her tiny red apron and stirring a pot of good-smelling stuff while singing random syllables — dee dahh doh dohh, doo dooo dah dehhh — the melody of a gooey Taiwanese love song. It had been the soundtrack to my childhood, and I had had no idea. And chances are, if you’ve attended any Taiwanese or Chinese house parties or events, you’ve likely heard Teresa Teng’s angelic croon floating underneath the chatter.

⁂

A year later, my mom called me in the night. My waipo, my Chinese grandmother, had died of Covid in a hospital bed in Taipei. She had died alone. We decided that we would leave for Taiwan in five days.

I made my way to Jersey. Mom kept it inside but I could tell she was processing a million complicated feelings. Who wouldn’t be, losing a parent across the world? She had just spent the last three years returning to Taiwan for months at a time to help care for her mother, splitting the time up with her three older sisters. Waipo had been in her nineties, exact age unknown. She’d been sick for a long time, and by the end, she hadn’t known who any of us were — even her four daughters.

And so my mom, my sister, and I flew to Taipei. We stayed with my aunts and uncles in the small family apartment in the district of Neihu. The hospital-style rolling bed that my grandmother had spent most of her last years on was still there. We all tried to ignore it.

One of the mornings before the service, Mom and I were taking an early stroll around the nearby Lake Bihu. We fell into the kind of comfortable silence that exists between two people dear to each other. Bihu was shining in the sun, its waters brushing up against the raised, latticed white walkways over the lake as we traversed the well-worn path. Out of the blue, I said, “Hey, Mom, you ever listen to Teresa Teng?”

She looked at me incredulously. “Teresa Teng?” Turning back to the lake, she smiled to herself. “很有名啊！一定聽過了很多次。Hen you ming a! Yi ding ting guo le hen duo ci.” So famous! Listened to her so many times.

I laughed. “So you know that song? ‘Yue liang dai biao wo de xin’?” I paused, embarrassed about being so late to the party. “I kind of just started listening to her.”

She chuckled in her quiet way. “Well, of course!” in English. She started singing, “你問我愛你有多深 ni wen wo ai ni you duo shen…” I joined in unashamedly, butchering half-remembered lyrics: “…我愛你有 wo ai ni you… uh... ji fei…” You ask me how deep my love is… We only managed a couple more lines before we started laughing at ourselves and at each other, eventually wandering back home to Waipo’s tiny apartment.

My mom and Teresa, I learned, had a lot in common. They were both part of a wave of Taiwan-born Chinese, born nine years apart in neighboring counties off the west coast of Taiwan, and they both grew up in military villages in two of many Kuomintang families with several children and little means. Teresa showed talent from a young age and grew up to become one of the most famous Taiwanese singers of the century, recording albums in at least five different languages; yet somehow, with all that worldliness, her sweet and clear voice retains a feeling of intimacy. You feel like she’s singing only to you.

Two days later, we went up into the mountains outside of the city of Taipei and said goodbye to my waipo. I still remember my aunts, uncles, and cousins standing silently in the fog. It was the first time in my adult memory I had seen these strong women cry. My mom burst into tears and then quickly stopped herself. I patted her on the shoulder. The attendants lowered Waipo’s coffin, and then she was gone.

⁂

That was November 2022. When I sat down to begin writing this, I realized that it had been exactly three years since that strange week in Taipei.

I’m still listening to Teresa Teng these days. In fact, I returned to Taipei this past September and chanced upon some new musician friends to busk with. It was the first time I had done such a thing over there. A growth moment.

We set up on the sidewalk. We were riffing on different tunes, throwing out ideas ranging from centuries-old Chinese folk songs to Ed Sheeran (ah, western hegemony). You can probably guess where this is going — at a certain point, Cassie, my friend who plays sheng (an ancient Chinese reed instrument), said, “How about ‘Yue liang’?”

Oh, man. YES. Yes, of course.

Many people see “The Moon Represents My Heart” as a pivotal song of the 20th century because it managed to reach a diverse audience of mainland Chinese, Taiwanese, and Hong Kong citizens at the height of political and social tensions, including the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution in China and martial law in Taiwan. Despite government censorship, it is touted as the song that revived pop culture in China after decades of patriotic music broadcasts. Across the strait, and across the sea, many were listening to the same love song.

Sometimes I listen and imagine Mom, fifteen in Taipei, hearing it for the first time on the radio. ◆

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About Kathleen

Kathleen Barnes is a musician and visual artist currently living in Brooklyn, New York. She loves to read, eat dessert, climb tall mountains, and see/partake in weird puppet theater.

Instagram @awildkath

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Diary 💗 Car CDs: ABBA Gold

Dancing in traffic, Y2K music infomercials, and choosing to have a good day. Read→

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Join 1,000+ music lovers to get a new essay in your inbox every Friday 😊

Edición especial: Today’s essay was originally written in Spanish by José Luis Ruiz and translated to English by Humberto J. Rocha. Scroll down to read in English, or click the button to read in Spanish.

Leer en español

• 6 min read •

I remember it well, I was barely 13 years old when I was able to save the seven pesos I needed to buy the 45 RPM record, the equivalent to 45 cents today. I ran, literally, to the supermarket known as “Giant,” the first self-service store that opened its doors in Mexico towards the end of the 1970s. Seven pesos was a fortune to me, as it was for most of the kids my age who belonged to the emerging lower-middle urban class. It was Carole King’s record, the one that included “It’s Too Late.” It was the first record that I would gift to a girl in my class, a special someone for whom I first felt something different, indescribable, from the first day that I saw her enter the classroom.

That morning, I can’t remember precisely what day, the teacher introduced her and assigned her a seat in the last row, which, luckily for me, was close by since I sat in the back, where they placed all the incorrigible and none-too-bright students. I was part of that club, despite my mother’s reprimands. Of course, I don’t remember what we talked about that day, or even if we talked, but, just as if it were yesterday, I can’t forget how I blushed at feeling her presence nearby, right next to me.

Naturally, a few days later she was already seated in the first row of our seventh grade class, Group B. She was a good student and, logically, it made sense to separate her from the bad kids in the group, that group of ill repute that I belonged to. Even so, without trying, the flame of empathy started burning between us.

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A few weeks after her arrival, her mother organized a class get-together in the small apartment where her family lived. She had three sisters and one brother, all of them very serious, with baby faces. They wore glasses and were well put together, in stark contrast to me. That day, her father was in charge of the music and his taste was, of course, purely ’70s. It was very clear that he enjoyed ruling over the record player and browsing his record collection, which included many of the singers that I liked listening to at home. His collection contained all types of bands, like Chicago, Blood Sweat & Tears, Steely Dan, Tommy James, Santana, Malo, and Fleetwood Mac, among many others, plus singers like Al Green, Marvin Gaye, James Taylor, Billy Joel, and James Brown.

They were all already in my musical universe, which kept growing thanks to my father’s musical influence, who, at any moment, and mostly when we were with him in the car, would tune into Radio Capital or Radio Mundo, to hear the song of the moment, and the one which he identified with not through its lyrics, which were in English, a language he couldn’t understand, but through its beat and rhythms. “Music is felt, enjoyed,” he’d say to my brothers and me with such frequency that this phrase of his stayed in our memories. Of course, he loved boleros from Mexican composers who took over the world, for example those of Consuelito Velazquez and her song “Besame Mucho” that was translated into various languages and covered by the greats from that era and today. But he also enjoyed TROVA and Cuban sound, from the rhythms of Caribbean music to salsa, as well as Frank Sinatra, Charles Aznavour, Tom Jones, Tony Bennett, Sammy Davis Jr., Nat King Cole, and an endless list of mythical singers from all over the world.

And then there was the day of that kiss, the first kiss, in that class get-together, which was nothing more than the union between her lips and mine, furtively, rushed, by the bathroom door, both of us so excited and nervous. And just at that moment, by complete randomness, her father put on the record with the song “It’s Too Late” by Carole King, whose lyrics I didn’t understand but that united us forever through this immaculate memory. Its significance to us wasn’t that it was “Too Late,” but that it was just the now, the moment, with its implicit message, that of hope.

There’ll be good times again for me and you,

But we just can’t stay together, don’t you feel it too?

Still I’m glad for what we had, and how I once loved you

However I could, I gathered the seven pesos needed to buy the record, the one that she kept safe in her bedroom’s wardrobe, she confessed to me years later. This revelation left me in a divine limbo. I couldn’t believe that something as simple as a 45-cent record could be of such importance to her. Since then, I’ve also appreciated those small details that life occasionally gives you.

I continue to enjoy the music of that time and the memory of that girl who, after some years, I never saw again. Without a doubt, “It’s Too Late” was a watershed in my life, my formation — not only musically, but existentially.

I still remember the cover of the full 1971 album Tapestry, in which Carole King sits at the sill of a grand window inside her Los Angeles home, accompanied by her beloved cat, Telemaco. It’s a record that in time I was able to buy, not because I could, but because of a magnanimous and infinite endearment.

I was born in 1960, the year in which many significant changes began to take form across the world, transformations that are still like lightning today on the horizon, and which profoundly marked me in my coming of age. I’m privileged to be part of a generation that has witnessed such diverse social phenomena, and of the accelerated evolution of technology that in my childhood and teenage years seemed so far away that it was almost utopian.

I followed on TV the landing of a man on the moon in 1969 (there is still the controversy over whether this really happened), in a black and white transmission, and now the journey of Artemis II to our beloved natural satellite, 57 years later. Of course, both of these events continue to amaze me and confirm to me that the human being continues to be an inexhaustible fountain of creativity.

Music is a living example of this, and it’s still there accompanying changes, refreshing the world. In the 1970s, it was Marvin Gaye’s iconic song, “What’s Going On,” that most resounded during those convulsive years. Today, it’s Bad Bunny’s unique phrasing that releases passions in the intrepid era of cultural, political, and social networks.

When I hear music from the 1970s I reflect over its social legacy, in all of its ways, and I don’t think that anyone can scratch that era’s contribution to a neverending form of human expression.

I’ve always felt a sense of loss, and even though I certainly was not conscious of how important it was to have someone by your side, I knew that what this girl and I had made us happy. For me, music became a sort of banner and “It’s Too Late” became a hymn that has accompanied me through time; a hymn that, curiously, I listened to in the solitude of the house following the departure of someone who is still very important in my life.

Today, I still listen to Carole King’s song, along with many others from that great artist, and I still shudder from the memories that it evokes, memories which take me on a journey of illusion and fantasy towards those earlier years that are now so far from my life.

Although it’s true that the lyrics of the song talk about how late it can be to fix something, they’re also a window of opportunity that opens up towards hope. This song will always live within me because I know that it’s never too late for love nor for reconciliation. ◆

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About José Luis

José Luis Ruiz lives in Mexico City, where he encounters something new and surprising every day. He is a journalist by training, but above all, by conviction. Communication is now his field of action. He enjoys music, cinema, baseball, and literature. His list of favorite authors is long and varied. He is a wanderer and an avid reader.

X @jlruiz10

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• 3 min read •

When I was twenty, I would leave my apartment at 10:30 p.m. every night to take an hour-long walk around my college campus and through the surrounding neighborhood. Each night, my route would be different, but I had my favorite landmarks to walk by like the rose garden, the church, and the tennis courts where stray cats would sleep. October was the best month to take these walks, followed second by May. In October, nights were cool and damp, and the leaves were starting to turn. In May, you could feel the heat of the day radiating off the pavement and fighting with the cooler night breeze. It had to be late at night because the air was different and fewer people were out, which made me feel like I owned all the roads I was walking on.

These walks gave me a lot of time to listen to music. I credit this period of my life with defining my taste in a way that I doubt I will ever be able to escape. I think my ears are permanently tuned to this time, and it was then that I discovered “2021” by A.G. Cook. I hate to admit it, but my Spotify algorithm made the introduction. I had found a few songs I liked on a playlist, and from there A.G. Cook, her frequent collaborator, was a logical next step.

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Hearing “2021” for the first time was like being shown a photo and not being able to make any sense of what is in it. The song is short and addictive, with layered and simple lyrics, sparkling synths, and a heavy beat. I had never really listened to much electronic music before, so listening to “2021” and truly loving it felt completely new.

What surprised me the most as I listened to the song more and more is how sweet it really is. Despite the big beat and repetitive structure, it makes me feel so light. The vocals feel childish in a nostalgic way, and the melody almost feels like a nursery rhyme. My favorite part is the synths that sound like bells, and are exactly what child me imagined twinkling stars sound like.

I would listen to “2021” on my nightly walks and allow myself to see my life differently. The soft side of the song spoke to my younger self still within me. It reminded me of the sparkly Disney pop songs I would dance to in my bedroom with a fake microphone, pretending I was performing. Remembering my younger self each night brought her to the forefront of my thoughts. Suddenly, I was thinking about her and what she wanted every single day. What would younger me want to wear? What have I never done that she always wanted to do?

My nightly walks became like visits to a psychic. I would set out from my apartment thinking about a decision I needed to make or something that was bothering me, start listening to “2021,” and picture my child self dancing. It was like looking into a crystal ball of my desires, my dreams, and who I wanted to be. Job struggles, housing struggles, friendship and relationship struggles, they all made a little more sense after visiting my younger self each night.

Being twenty, for me, was awkward. I could feel that I was growing out of my child self, while at the same time feeling too young to have a clear sense of direction. But letting my younger self be a cornerstone of building my voice and path was exactly where I needed to start.

I recently stumbled upon a remix of “2021” by the artist umru. This new yet familiar version feels like a gift — a new way of listening to a song I have etched deep into my consciousness.

As the lyrics go, “Everything you do, it’s been done, done, done before. Everything you say, yeah, you said that yesterday.” I take these words to mean that everything in my life, I know the answer to, I just have to listen to myself. I find this beyond comforting. ◆

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About Juliane

Juliane Pautrot is a writer and aspiring songwriter living in Brooklyn.

Instagram @juliane.ptrt

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Diary 💗 Chappell, Charli, and the joy of being wrong

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• 4 min read •

Upon my weary heart was showered smiles, plaudits, and flowers. But beyond them, I saw thorns and troubles innumerable.

I’ve come to believe that a work of art finds you when you need it to. Or perhaps, when it needs you. If you’re exceedingly lucky, it stays with you, even returning again. It builds an enduring relevance that only in hindsight feels like foreshadowing. And as in all tragedies, the message is heard too late.

Autumn of 2010. A lonely, booze-soaked, miserable season spent on the rock-ridden beach of the Puget Sound. There, the rain never really stops, so we thought it best to be wet inside and out: another Evan Williams, another Olde English. Sick with problems all of my own making, at my own insistence, while the rain poured, equally persistent and indifferent.

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And the sound of drone, of tape loops, of guitar feedback. Cavernous and opaque. And then a distant voice, fragile as glass on the stone shore.

Nothing means anything, anymore.

That year Titus Andronicus released their sophomore masterpiece: The Monitor, a staggering opus utilizing the imagery and literary thematics of the U.S. Civil War as a prism to refract the eternal problem of having to exist with others. In my opinion, The Last Great American Rock Album.

The narrative (loose as the format requires) follows Our Hero from his desolate home of New Jersey to his search for greener pastures in Boston, Massachusetts. The song, “A Pot In Which To Piss,” begins in a phantom numbness, before crescendoing by way of table-pounding rhythms and blood rousing lamentations, and finds Our Hero face to face with an intractable problem. A nihilism that comes from no longer knowing one’s self, and thus not really being able to know anyone else. I found myself likewise. I am, to quote the Willem Dafoe meme, something of a fucking idiot myself, and with my newly, barely earned high school diploma from a lovely but suffocating small town, thought I’d strike out for a bright future in that pearl of the Pacific Northwest, that bastion of thriving ambition, that hub of fame and fortune: Olympia, Washington.

In “A Pot In Which To Piss,” and really the entire album it belongs to, I’d found the companion I wanted most, a braggadocious drinking buddy and philosopher wrapped into one. Perhaps Our Hero needed me too — to bear witness, to actualize him. We who could recognize the same pain of self-imposed exile. I’d washed up on this cold shore untrusting and unknowing of myself, and so unable to trust or know anyone else. So I drank, I philandered, I treaded water and convinced myself it was momentum. Hearing the strings and crushing guitars, the shredded vocal cords and vivacious piano, I felt as though I could own my loneliness, even be proud of it. In the searing, unflagging rallying cries, I heard what I wanted: hail the victorious wretch.

Let them see you struggle and they’re gonna tear you apart.

Titus Androncius has followed me all over this great land, coast to coast, for 15 years now.

But in a painful irony, I first heard “A Pot In Which To Piss” at the perfect time to drown merrily in its monumental defeatism, and too early to heed its forbearing. It wears the wounds of failure one cannot really know without age, when the tally sheet is longer and you see just how many more losses than wins you’ve booked. My time in Olympia came to a close, but it’d be amateur hour in comparison with fleeing to New York.

This move came in the disguise of a professional advancement, but in reality, I was out of places to go. I’d worn out every relationship I had, whittled them down with my inherent mistrust of anyone close to me. Drinking my weight in whiskey as a fig leaf, hiding myself behind blackouts. So what did I do? More of the same, of course. But this time when it counted, when I had people and opportunities requiring courage and focus, neither of which I’d developed. Thus, the old familiar failures piled up again. Missed shots, humiliations, exile.

In my first rapture with the song, I’d missed the point. It wasn’t about clinging to misery, it was about understanding it. I wouldn’t mistake this again. In the midst of these various indignities, I sobered up, clung to friends who wouldn’t allow my collapse. I married a woman whose effortless grace made me want to be worthy of her presence, let alone her love.

Yet still, I find it painful, excruciating, to know others and be known. Because it requires something I, and Our Hero, seem unable to grant or accept: forgiveness. The notion itself awakens in me a grinding enmity, a bellow from somewhere hollowed out inside screaming “not good enough,” or, to quote from elsewhere in the album, “You will always be a loser.” A faint scream that never leaves.

“A Pot In Which To Piss” asks: when stripped of all dignity, all disguise, what is left of me? Can I allow myself to be known by anyone, one atrocious failure after another? Is there any camaraderie to be found? And it reminds me of the necessity of forgiveness as an end to torment. ◆

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About Connor

Connor Zaft is an artist in New York. In the winter, he stagehands around the city. In the summer he fights wildfire in the western states. In between, he writes music and photographs. When he can, he directs plays. You can spy on him via Instagram.

Instagram @cwzaft

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After Dark Playlist 🌚

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• 4 min read •

The summer before 7th grade, my family moved to a small town in West Virginia. While the towns I had previously lived in were by no means huge cities, they were university towns with a lot going on.

Our new house was half a mile up a hill with 70 feet of vertical gain (in a word, steep) and we were further separated from town by 3 miles on a four-lane highway. I would not be riding my bike to school, nor to the movies, nor to the local pet store to purchase crickets for my pet lizard (RIP Cornelius!) anytime soon. At 13, I found myself with less autonomy than I had at 11. While I think I understood objectively that this was due to the authority of geography rather than societal or parental rules, 13 isn’t a great age to surrender freedom for any reason.

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I was also at an age where you discover that being a smart girl can be a social liability. One of my new friends stole my straight-A report card out of the book where I had stashed it and showed it to everyone, evidence that I thought I was smarter than the rest of them. They all seemed to agree that I was a show-off and a snob, despite the fact that she was the one flashing the report card around while I was clearly trying to grab it back.

After an alienating school year, with hours spent waiting to do anything (for the school bus, for rides from parents to go anywhere or do anything) the summer rolled around and I went back to camp for two weeks. Camp can be a refuge for many kids and I was ready to go. My best friend and I were doing the High Low Adventure program, so in addition to the usual water-based activities, we were doing trips away from the base, for spelunking, rock climbing, and a high-ropes course.

On one trip from the camp, we realized the standard issue big white van didn’t have enough seatbelts for everyone. One camper would need to go with the two other counselors in their personal car, while everyone else rode in the van. The car-driving counselors chose me to tag along. The backseat of the small, ’80s-make Toyota sedan was littered with indie magazines, sketchbooks, and other effects of liberal arts college kids. Not in so many words, the counselors let me know that of all the annoying kids present, I had been selected as least annoying. Specifically, our sole male counselor was also riding in the car and I could be trusted not to be weird about it.

Whatever the reason, I had arrived. Windows down, mix tape on, I listened to them discuss the other counselors and their friends at school — who was dating who, what really happened to the Counselor in Training who was not invited back (failed the lifeguard training). They let it slip that I was not alone in finding a certain fellow camper extremely irritating; I was delighted to learn that my judgement in this was sound. They even laughed at a joke I made.

The tape was like nothing I had ever heard before but I’m sure it was pretty standard ’90s college radio fare. The song that stands out most in memory was “Add it Up” by the Violent Femmes, because of the curse words, obviously. As it suddenly dawned on these 19-year-olds that playing the actual lyrics of the song might get them in trouble with the camp director, they lunged for the volume knob. Not quite in time. Although the song makes it very clear where it’s heading, they didn’t make the connection until the first “screw” of the second verse. Strict vigilance was maintained until the F-bombs stopped dropping in verse three. At the end of the trip, I was sworn to secrecy about what I had heard, both on the tape and in the car.

There were other songs on the tape but “Add it Up” is the one that burned into my memory, with its manic energy, propulsive beats, and of course, forbidden lyrics. The song was a window into a future where I would be interesting, cool enough to hang, where I wouldn’t have to pretend to be someone else in order to make and keep friends. Listening to the song, I felt like these camp counselors saw something in me no one else saw, not other adults, and certainly not my peers in my new hometown. After an incredibly isolating year, this affirmation could not have come at a better time. ◆

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About Constance

Constance Brichford is a river guide and freelance copywriter out of Moab, Utah.

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• 4 min read •

Content warning - this post briefly mentions suicidal ideation

There was no greater scam at my high school than being a TA.

For seniors with a free period and no interest in beefing up their college applications with extracurriculars, the school offered the chance to be a teacher’s assistant. The thing is, while public school teachers are wildly overworked and in desperate need of assistance, they’re not looking to get it from the school’s least ambitious 17-year-olds. So a TA’s main job was to sit alone at a computer connected to the internet and not cause trouble.

That’s how I spent every second period of my senior year — sitting in the back of Mr. Neville’s biology class, surrounded by boxes of teaching materials, listening to Pandora Radio on his desktop computer.

At the time, my musical taste was emerging from several years of classic rock — perfunctory to all young white men — and veering hard into the indie rock and indie pop of the day. Arcade Fire. Death Cab for Cutie. Band of Horses. The damn Garden State soundtrack.

Though I wouldn’t say I loved any of it, I certainly liked a lot of it. I was a sensitive kid with inclinations toward hipsterdom. For the moment, I was happily following the herd, trying on new identities, waiting for one to fit.

Then, I heard “Love Love Love” by The Mountain Goats playing from the mediocre computer speakers at the back of Mr. Neville’s classroom.

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My first thought was a slightly incredulous, “What is this?” Maybe it was the metallic clicking of the strummed guitar, louder than the chords themselves. Maybe it was John Darnielle’s reedy voice, trailing off at the end of each verse, like he’s singing to himself in his kitchen. Maybe it was the unabashedly earnest lyrics, riddled with literary references that I felt smarter for understanding — references to Crime and Punishment, which I had read in English class, and the phrase “a mirror dimly,” an oblique reference to a Bible verse that I only knew because of A Scanner Darkly.

Or maybe it was the tone of self-aware self-destruction that I would soon learn pervades so much of The Mountain Goats canon.

It would still be a few years before I contemplated suicide for the first time. A few years before I learned that those extended periods of spiritual numbness I felt had a clinical name. But even at 17, I was subconsciously drawn to whatever it is that John Darnielle taps into with his music. That sense of knowing yourself and feeling betrayed by that knowing. That urge to steer into the skid in the hopes that someone else will grab the wheel, while admitting you’d never let them if they tried. And isn’t the world too good anyway? Too bright and too good.

I felt this song in my chest and in my guts. I wanted more.

In the nascent days of algorithm-driven media curation, Pandora was king. All you had to do was enter the name of a song or artist into its beautifully clunky, mid-2000s interface and in an instant you were delivered a “radio station” populated by similar artists. But unlike the feedback-heavy algorithms of today that let users scroll through long playlists or infinitely swipe their way to a desired output, Pandora users lived behind a veil of ignorance.

All you were given was the name, artist, and album of the song you were currently listening to. Your only manipulative tools were a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” button, and the more powerful “skip,” which you could use three times before it was grayed out. You didn’t know what song was coming next. You weren’t even allowed to go back and relisten to a song you particularly liked.

But in this case, I was determined.

I started a new “Mountain Goats Radio” station and began giving a thumbs down to anything that wasn’t The Mountain Goats. I aggressively used my skips and even tried deleting the cookies off of the web browser to get more skips. Slowly but surely, I bent the simple algorithm to my will, until nearly every song that came up was from John Darnielle’s vast oeuvre, of which I had barely scratched the surface.

The Sunset Tree. Tallahassee. We Shall All Be Healed. All Hail West Texas and a handful of early, lo-fi tapes that had made their way into Pandora’s library. I scrounged, coveted, and devoured it all.

And really, it’s how I found the song that changed me.

In the years that followed, discovering music became my obsession. First through Pandora, later Spotify and other tunable recommendation algorithms. Through blogs and review sites. Through dusty record crates in brick-and-mortar shops. The hunt became the thing.

Not only to indulge that early hipster superiority complex that comes with finding something before your friends. But to uncover those songs that stop me in my tracks. Songs that surprise me and make me ask, “What is this?” Songs that I can feel in my chest and in my guts.

Songs that last forever, and flare out with love, love, love. ◆

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About Dan

Dan Neilan is a writer living in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and unbelievably cute daughter — who has single-handedly destroyed his Spotify algorithm.

Website danneilan.com

Instagram @DanfordAndSon

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• 6 min read •

The summer I turned fifteen was a chrysalis.

It was 1992, which was 34 years and an entirely different world ago. It’s difficult to convey now how truly bored you could be as a teenager in a time before smartphones and Google and social media. If you were lucky, you spent your time waiting for something specific to happen, and the rest of the time you were waiting for just anything to happen. No quick answers or instantaneous communication. There was plenty of time to wonder and ruminate, and while that sounds like a luxury now, at 15 it could feel like a prison. I spent most nights that summer lying on my bed, my portable stereo next to my head, defacing a Lands’ End catalog that came in the mail with a ballpoint pen while listening to the radio.

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In 1992, all I had was the radio, and songs taped off the radio. I owned some cassettes and cassingles, but it wouldn’t be until the end of the summer that I would save up enough money working at the neighborhood pool to buy myself a CD player, a 5-disc player that I couldn’t afford to fill with 5 discs until that Christmas. Until then, it was me and the radio, and even that wasn’t satisfying. I would constantly scroll up and down the airwaves, from the ’50s/’60s oldies station my mom liked to the ’70s rock station my dad played in the car to the top 40 pop hits station I had outgrown two summers before, none of it scratching my itch. Until late one night, when my scroll caught a few notes of a song that was totally foreign to me, from a new college radio show that only transmitted between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m., and sometimes only came in clear if I physically kept my finger on the dial.

The fact that I had found a local station that played these unfamiliar but obviously cool songs blew the doors clean off my brain. I started staying up even later just to capture these precious, strange songs on my blank tape. Some nights I couldn’t hack it and would just put the tape in, press record, and fall asleep, then wake up like Christmas morning to sift through any new treasures I’d caught. And the brightest treasure in my net that summer was Tori Amos singing “Silent All These Years.”

Excuse me but can I be you for a while?

My dog won’t bite if you sit real still

I got the Antichrist in the kitchen yellin’ at me again

Yeah, I can hear that

I was aware of alternative music before this, mostly from movie soundtracks or other people’s older siblings, but I had no idea how to source it on my own. And even then, I was only aware of the Pixies, or the Smiths, or the Violent Femmes; cool weird dudes singing cool weird things. But to hear a cool weird GIRL singing cool weird things made me sit up straight and shoot light straight from my fingertips. Who WAS this and how could I somehow consume her?

I bought Little Earthquakes from Musicland on my next trip to the mall. I played that tape until I knew every single word, every single pause. I would play it while watching myself sing along in the mirror. I was hard at work remaking myself in this image — not exactly the image of Tori Amos, but the idea of Different. Tori Amos’s voice saying ‘Cause what if I’m a mermaid/In these jeans of his/With her name still on it? was a key that turned in my brain and unlocked the idea of If You Don’t Have to Listen to Top 40 Radio, What Else Do You Not Have to Do?

The answer, to 15-year-old me, was as basic as, “What if instead of getting jeans from the Gap, I bought… Levi’s?!” But in early-90s Tulsa, Oklahoma, this felt revelatory. I felt freed from trying to force myself into so many cookie-cutter situations. I could try to be weird and cool instead of trying unsuccessfully to be cute and popular! I could like what I liked and stop trying to please everyone! Yes, I probably would have come to this conclusion eventually on my own or by some other trigger, because that’s what adolescence is, but what a heady treat to come about it this way. I consumed Little Earthquakes and I became insufferable.

I started drawing an intricate yin-yang/sunburst tattoo on my ankle every morning with my mother’s brown Almay liquid eyeliner. I quit hanging out with some of my friends because they seemed way too normal to the new, alternative me. Instead, I would take my stereo down to the front porch in the evenings, where I would read Tom Robbins novels while hoping the older, private school kids down the block might notice me. (They did invite me to drink a can of Coors Light with them on the Fourth of July, but it was not the cultured hang I’d envisioned.)

I got in big trouble for writing the lyrics to Led Zeppelin’s “Hey Hey What Can I Do” on our foyer wall while it was stripped of wallpaper before being painted. (“I got a woman wanna BALL ALL DAY?!” my mother’s eyes bugging larger with every word.) I got grounded when, after my mother said there was no way in hell I could have dreadlocks, I decided to just stop brushing my hair for a week. This festered into a Sunday morning pre-church fight where I yelled the word “fuck” and my little brother cried. I had never felt so alive.

I did all these things through Tori who empowered me, until the day I flew too close to the sun. At my job at the pool concession stand, I had a very un-alternative crush on a blond lifeguard that predated my Tori renaissance and was proving hard to shake. Because I still had no idea how human beings signaled feelings, I decided the best way to woo him would be to causally leave Tori Amos lyrics and my yin-yang tattoo design all over the pool office — on the whiteboard, on our timecard station, on my concession stand receipt notepad. And it worked: it definitely got his attention. Only my still-forming brain didn’t clock the actual meaning of the lyrics

So you found a girl

Who thinks really deep thoughts

What’s so amazing about really deep thoughts?

Boy, you best pray that I bleed real soon

How’s that thought for you?

until the moment I watched this boy read them. He raised his eyebrows, crushed his paper snow-cone cup into the trash, and never looked at me again.

School started, and the hand-frayed hem of my Levi’s didn’t make quite the splash I’d expected, but I felt more at peace knowing I now had the fortitude to like what I liked. I bought Under the Pink and Boys for Pele, but they never hit the same as Little Earthquakes.

I saw Tori perform live when I was in college, and I remember feeling annoyed by the presence of her glittery, fairy-winged fan base — I would have preferred Tori sing directly to me in a dark theater, the way she felt in my brain back in 1992. It was a whole room full of sweet weirdos, each one of us certain that we were secretly the weirdest.

I’m so thankful to have found “Silent All These Years.” As much as the lyrics spoke to me, I needed the feeling of discovering it all by myself, not from a movie or a friend, but on my own late-night journey across the radio waves, alone in my dark teenage bedroom. Tori Amos’s croons and howls were the primordial goo my personality started blooming in. Her cool weirdness emboldened my not-cool weirdness long enough for me to learn to rein it in a little, and realize you could wear whatever jeans you wanted so long as you’d found the right song to sing in your head. ◆

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About Sarah

Sarah Brown used to document her life online, back when the internet was still one cooling, giant continent full of oversharing weirdos, and it didn’t matter yet what anyone’s kitchen looked like. She now lives a more private existence but writes about fancy candles and lip balm on her Instagram account, @affluentdetritus.

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• 4 min read •

In 1987, I was a bookish but irreverent high school senior in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with predictable music tastes: the Beatles; college rock; some jazz and classical. This being the peak of “new age” music, Michael Hedges and George Winston also made the mix, and one day, I bought a record that looked to come from that soothing realm: Rounder’s New Acoustic Music Sampler. The tracks were indeed acoustic, but earthier than the Windham Hill stuff — less candlelight; more campfire. My favorite, the burbling “Intro,” came from 1982’s Fluxedo, by dobroist Jerry Douglas.

At college that fall, on my maiden pilgrimage to Philadelphia’s Tower Records (a total wonderland — it had a freaking escalator), I found Fluxedo. I loved it, and while I still mostly listened to the Feelies, New Order, Replacements, etc., I kept exploring Douglas’s catalog. His new album, Changing Channels, was gauzy and boring. But 1979’s Fluxology had the refined twang of Fluxedo alongside bluegrass standards like “Wheel Hoss.” It burbled, but it also ripped.

After graduation, I moved back to Winston. I fell in love and got my heart broken, badly. I felt dissolved, nullified — I couldn’t compute, could barely speak.

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One late winter day, a letter came from a college friend, written on the back of a flyer for the Merle Watson Memorial Festival, happening in Wilkesboro, just an hour up the road. Amid the sprawling lineup, he had circled one name: Jerry Douglas. Three-day student tickets were $18, so I xeroxed my ID and sent a check for $36, and on the last weekend in April 1992, my high school buddy Andrew and I headed to Wilkesboro.

Douglas’s set was sweet indeed, but just a morsel within a weekend-long feast of mind-blowing chops, impossibly tight vocal harmonies, and sheer exuberance. No mumbling slackers disavowing their entertainer status; uncomplicated, unabashed entertainment was the point. Riders in the Sky’s corny-clever cowboy schtick included fucking lasso tricks.

Imbuing everything was host Doc Watson, manifesting kindly country cool, albeit with a poignant cast, having lost Merle, his musical partner and son, just seven years earlier. Watson, blind since childhood, was led onstage over and over to sit in with Ricky Skaggs or Peter Rowan, or to play a set of his own — cuing solos with a quick “Pick it, Ricky!” “Tell ‘em about it, Jack!” And whenever he said “Lemme get one,” he tore it up.

The crowd utterly adored Doc. I adored Doc. And I adored the crowd — everyone radiated pure pleasure, and the joy was infectious. When virtuosic freak Mark O’Connor steered a solo fiddle piece into a blazing cyclical riff resembling Terry Riley, the guy in front of Andrew and me leaned towards his friend and drawled, “Bill, I think we lost ‘im.” We cracked up, and he turned, grinning, pleased as punch. While the audience was as racially homogeneous as you might suspect, a palpable kinship united good ol’ boys and soccer moms, barefoot farm kids and barefoot preppy-hippies — NASCAR and NARAL, living in harmony.

The communal ethos extended to practical matters: when the gates opened each morning, folks spread out their blankets and camp chairs in front of the stage. But it was understood that when they broke to have lunch or wade in the nearby creek, you could borrow their spot, even sit in their chairs, until they returned. Andrew and I perched a lot that weekend, and on Sunday afternoon, as the crowd started heading home for good, we moved way up front, sitting next to a couple young dudes who had driven from Canada — from, like, Manitoba. This wasn’t their first fest, and while I was excited about the band setting up — which included Tony Rice, Bela Fleck, Sam Bush, Mark O’Connor, Jerry Douglas, and Mark Schatz, all of whom I knew from the Rounder compilation — they were ecstatic, immediately yelling “‘Whitewater’! Play ‘Whitewater’!” explaining that it was a ripper off Fleck’s album Drive that featured most of the players onstage. We watched in wonder as these six wizards took turns picking songs and singing lead, playing 100% off the dome at 100 miles an hour. About three tunes in, Tony Rice pointed at the crowd and said “Somebody out there yelled ‘Whitewater.’” And they destroyed it. Holy sheep shit.

I felt transformed by the festival — by the music, yes, but even more by the sense of communion, of a great society. I didn’t give up the Velvet Underground, but for the next five years, I went deep into bluegrass history, hosted a bluegrass radio show, hit more festivals. Bluegrass fans talk about their conversion experiences, and the 1992 Merle Watson Memorial Festival was undoubtedly mine, born of a seed planted five years earlier, a song with a prophetic title. ◆

Postscript: The videos are available by pure serendipity; North Carolina Public Television had filmed the festival, subsequently airing a series of performances and eventually compiling a two-hour movie called Pickin’ for Merle.

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About Nick

Nick Rubin lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. He runs a tutoring company; co-hosts a community radio show; plays music; and wages war with creeping Charlie and Japanese stiltgrass.

Instagram, X, Bsky @nickvrubin

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• 4 min read •

Content warning - this post briefly mentions self-harm

I was 12 years old when I first heard this song on TV. The music video was the last one to play on a music video show I watched at the time (the channel was some offshoot of Fuse that DirecTV offered back then, and for the life of me I can’t find evidence of its existence). I remember the fascination I felt when watching. The fantastical elements and 2D animation caught my eye, as well as ratty-looking Bert McCracken singing in fancy costume with the rest of the band. Later, I went on YouTube to listen to more of The Used’s In Love and Death album and proceeded to spend the rest of the night downloading their entire discography on LimeWire.

“All That I’ve Got” hit a nerve for me. I felt very isolated at the time, but I couldn’t find the words for it until I heard Bert yelling “I’m far from lonely and it’s all that I’ve got” during the chorus. It was true then, and is frankly still true now. I had some confidence that my family would be there for me no matter what, yet I was aware that they were all that I had at the time, and I felt guilty for wanting more.

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I didn’t have friends in school, and the one girl who did hang out with me eventually made it clear she was barely tolerating me. I was abandoned midyear for a group of louder, funnier girls, and my new routine was to head straight home after school and into the bathroom. I had a pair of nail scissors that I’d press onto some hidden part of my skin until it left a mark, but didn’t draw any blood. I didn’t have the stomach for that, and although I felt like a jackass for not even fully committing to self-harm, I feared my parents’ discovery too much to go any further. In due time I met my best friend, and despite the jubilance of finally having someone I could actually talk to, I never brought up my scissors to her.

Fast forward to the beginning of 2020. By the time the first Covid-19 wave hit, I found myself feeling isolated again. I had broken up with my partner of less than a year, convinced I was stupid for thinking there was even a chance that someone so beautiful could actually fully desire me. But I managed to coast through this isolation period via Zoom calls with my college friends — until one late night in October when I returned to my middle school playlists and relistened to “All That I’ve Got.”

By the time the chorus repeated for a second time, I was bawling my eyes out. I experienced a full-on breakdown. My entire life’s insecurity and hurt was being sung and shouted at me in those four minutes, and I felt so stripped and raw by the end that I didn’t even have the energy to hate myself for feeling that way.

For years I believed that every small mistake and social faux pas I made warranted cruelty to my being. I thought I shouldn’t have anything to complain about because I had it all: loving friends and family, a roof over my head, food in my stomach. Yet something was terribly wrong. It wasn’t until that moment, crying at my desk in front of my laptop, that I understood that punishing myself would never help me heal. I realized that my pain deserves to be acknowledged; that I am allowed to fully grieve things like the death of a friend, and all the times I’ve been physically and emotionally violated. And my grief can be unabashedly sad and angry.

When I looked out my window and saw the sunrise, I knew this wouldn’t be the last time I’d have a moment like this. But it was the first time a moment like this forced me to begin accepting my suffering. I still have a lot of work ahead of me; I have to continually remember to allow myself to hope for better and accept the care my loved ones offer. I have to believe that the people I love do love me back.

It took me over a year to finally start seeing a therapist. It took even longer to reach out to old friends and muster the courage to tell the love of my life just how much I missed and needed them, how scared I was to let them know that back in 2020. I’ve had a variety of highs and lows since then. However, I know now that I’m not alone in this hodgepodge of feelings, and I never was.

There’s more to life than uncertainty about the future and the weight of old hurts.

No matter how unlikely it’ll seem sometimes, I’ll be more than “just fine.” ◆

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About Daysi

Daysi Sanchez is a graduate student, a manager at a corporate cafeteria, and a writer. You can expect her to be doing the following outside of work: haunting Troutman Street, petting her dog Johnny, or writing in her journal while hunched over in a shrimp-like manner.

Instagram @si.como.la.flor

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• 4 min read •

I’ve been a metalhead for as long as I can remember. One of my first memories of childhood was listening to “Electric Funeral” by Black Sabbath in the front passenger seat of my dad’s Corvette when I was probably two or three (it was the early ’80s, safety regulations certainly weren’t what they are today). I remember grasping the handle above the glove compartment and banging my head to “Paranoid” and my proud father smiling ear to ear. I still remember that feeling of excitement in my chest and electricity in my brain. That’s the drug I’ve been chasing for over 40 years now.

My parents were very young when they had me. They were 20 and were just a couple of kids raising me in Aurora, a suburb of Denver, Colorado. But it was because they were so young (and incredibly cool and liberal) that I was exposed to all the same stuff they liked and were still discovering as young adults. R-rated movies, hard rock and metal music, jokes and comedy specials that were very adult — anything short of actual porn wasn’t off-limits for me. They treated me like a little adult. My mom used to love saying, “We want to raise you to be an adult.” So, I took on the responsibility of discussing what I was seeing and hearing with them, and they made sure I was able to understand and process it (and that I wasn’t going to grow up to be some weirdo serial killer).

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In my household there were a few bands and artists that absolutely stood above everyone else. First, it was the Beatles. My mom was a Beatles fanatic. She still is. My dad was into stuff that was a bit heavier; he loved Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath and all the great rock bands of the 1970s. Growing up I was exposed to music from the ’50s all the way up through the modern stuff of the day. Music was a huge part of our family. The three of us always sang along in the car (poorly) and I really treasure those moments.

Being a very young (but surprisingly hip) little kid, I watched MTV the night it premiered with my parents. It was revolutionary. It literally changed my entire world overnight. Ozzy Osbourne liked to say that the first time he heard the Beatles, it was like he was living in a black and white world that suddenly turned to color. Nothing resonated with me more than that the first time I heard it said that way.

One summer day in August I was watching MTV, and I saw the band and heard the song that changed my life forever: Judas Priest’s “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’.” The world didn’t just turn to color; it was full of raging guitars and soaring vocals too.

The video for “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’” felt like it was specifically made for me. I couldn’t explain it then and I have trouble explaining it now. But it is, without a doubt, still my favorite song still to this day. It was strong, powerful, and so damned inspiring too. It spoke of taking advantage of your life, it told me to make the most of opportunities and to create opportunities for myself. For my three-year-old brain, this was like a lightning bolt hitting me square in the face. It was great music, but for me it was really about empowerment.

Seeing these guys in black, studded leather with lasers shooting off around them as they played this loud, aggressive, but still somehow hooky and digestible music with those incredible vocals from Rob Halford reshaped the entire world for me. I sat there in front of the massive TV in our den and was just stunned. This was EVERYTHING.

I went to my mom and said that I needed the tape… now. She giggled when I told her I wanted a Judas Priest record; I can only imagine what she was thinking in her head. The rule was that I needed to earn the money, so I “did chores,” which consisted of helping to put groceries away and cleaning my room. I was only three, so the tasks she made me do were simple, but she wanted to instill a life lesson.

Soon, my parents took me down the street to Budget Tapes & Records and we walked into what was a very familiar place for me. I can still remember the joy I had going in there. I looked at my mom and expected her to speak for me, but she looked at me and said, “You’re the one buying the tape, you need to ask for it.” This was a big moment for me. I looked the clerk right in the eye and said, “I’d like Screaming for Vengeance by Judas Priest, please.”

The guy was probably no older than 25, and his face lit up with the biggest grin. He walked me over to the wall with the tapes, pulled it out for me, and led me back to the register. I had a $10 bill in my pocket, and he reached over the counter to get it from me and to give me my change. I felt like an adult. I felt so accomplished. This is what the song was talking about!

We got in my mom’s baby blue 280ZX and I asked if we could listen to my tape. My parents couldn’t wipe the beaming smiles from their faces. Those first riffs from “The Hellion” filled the air as we made our drive back home, where I proceeded to listen to that tape (and especially “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’”) for months and years to come. ◆

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About Sean

Sean McNally is a progressive-minded guy living in Jacksonville, Florida and works in financial services. He’s been happily married for 21 years to his incredible and beautiful wife, Sherri. He likes music, movies, watching sports, collecting comic books, and cooking.

Instagram @ankhenaten91

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• 3 min read •

Anyone who knows me knows I love Lady Gaga. From the moment I first saw her music video for “Just Dance” on VH1’s Jump Start while getting ready for school, to the present day, traveling the country and abroad to the beaches of Rio de Janeiro to see her, my identity has been heavily shaped by Lady Gaga. But I want to take you back to a very specific moment.

Picture it: it’s the spring of 2011, and the world is a very different place. Covid-19 is nonexistent, eggs aren’t expensive, and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has just been repealed. Then there’s me. A fresh 17-year-old finishing up his junior year of high school, still trying to understand, acknowledge, and accept himself at a time when being gay is becoming less taboo and a progressive liberation is underway. Lady Gaga’s Born This Way album explodes upon its global release, filled with chart-topping anthems, club-defining hits, and rebellious meaning. It quickly becomes the soundtrack of my life. One song, however, stands out.

When I first heard “Hair,” I was immediately pulled in. While it’s sonically a timeless marvel that blends Euro-pop club beats with melodies influenced by classic rock, its lyrics convey something more profound.

For years, I struggled to accept my sexuality. It was a long ordeal that even involved religious consultations with a pastor from my childhood. I had already experienced (and enjoyed) relations with men, however, a lingering fear of rejection and disappointment fueled my ongoing confusion and heartache. I longed for a sense of peace. I feared spiraling as the burden of shame, depression, and lack of self-worth became crippling. How could I help myself without feeling judgment or guilt?

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I remember hitting repeat on “Hair” like I was chasing a high. It became a daily mantra. I found comfort in the messages of individuality and freedom of expression. The rebellious and intuitive way Gaga expressed herself through her hair, a feature so many of us either underestimate or take for granted, was representative of her — and my — yearning for freedom from societal norms. It was awe-inspiring. As a teenager continuing to navigate who I was, “Hair” brought clarity.

Hearing that electrifying chorus…

I’ve had enough, this is my prayer

That I’ll die living just as free as my hair

I’ve had enough, I’m not a freak

I just keep fightin’ to stay cool on these streets

I’ve had enough, enough, enough

And this is my prayer, I swear

I’m as free as my hair

I’m as free as my hair

I am my hair

I am my hair

It did more than change me.

It saved me.

To this day, I credit “Hair” for pulling me back from a place that I may not have been able to return from on my own. It provided light in my life, especially in moments of darkness. It brought me understanding, acceptance, and peace.

Though my world has changed a thousand times in the 15 years since “Hair” was released, there is still a sense of peace that comes to me with every listen.

(And yes, I do recognize the irony given that I barely have any hair myself these days. Thank you, genetics!)

The fact that I have the opportunity to reflect on how I have been able to grow, and how I’m exactly who I’m supposed to be — how I have been able to enjoy such beautiful moments at her concerts and build relationships with some of the most amazing people I know — speaks volumes about the impact of not just the song, but the artist behind it. She knows how to extend her hand and pull us “Little Monsters” out.

While, at times, months can pass between listens, I still hold “Hair” close to my heart and know that it will always be there for me. ◆

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About Aaron

Aaron Stewart was born and raised in Virginia. While he is a devout Little Monster (Lady Gaga fan), he admires music that spans multiple genres and generations. His other passions include traveling, food, and his cats.

Instagram @aarontstewart

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