Special Anniversary Edition
One year of This Song Changed My Life ✨
Celebrate our first anniversary! Become a paid subscriber to help keep the quality content coming (and unlock secret posts)
This Song Changed My Life just turned one year old! 🥳
If you’re reading this, it’s because you’re one of TSCML’s year-one readers, and I want to sincerely thank you for being here. Whether you joined us this week or when we launched last July, you’re an important part of our community 💛
Something to celebrate
As year-one readers, you get the pride of knowing you knew something was cool before everyone else did. You’re quite the trendsetter 💅
It’s taking off
TSCML is growing by the day. This concept is taking off around the world and we’re just getting started…
Readers from:
Writers from:
No matter where you are when you’re reading this, it’s pretty cool to know that someone on the other side of the planet is reading it too.
72 hand-drawn portraits
I can’t thank you enough for all of your kind words about my illustrations ❤️
Over the course of the last year, I’ve dedicated nearly 90 hours to drawing these portraits by hand, a process that I believe infuses each entry with more personality and love.
23 Monday Bites
I’ve been truly blown away by your positive feedback about the Monday Bites series…
Finding out that you have become fans of Jim Croce, Harry Nilsson, Grace Jones, or Otis Redding because of my work, makes me so damn happy 🥰
Researching the entire lives of each of these musicians and boiling it down into a 3 minute bullet-pointed summary is no easy feat, but knowing how much you love it keeps me going.
109 people writing essays
When I started this publication a year ago, I had no idea if I’d receive enough essay submissions to keep up with a weekly publishing schedule.
To my surprise, I was quickly flooded with them!
I have enough raw material now to take us well into year two. But no essay arrives in my inbox as a final product. It takes hours of editing, communicating with writers, illustrating portraits, preparing graphics, updating the website, and actual posting (here and on social media) to get the essays you love in front of you consistently every week.
Let’s do it again
I’ll be frank. I want to keep doing this job.
But it takes countless long hours, late nights, and 6-7 day workweeks to cram this work in between my other responsibilities. Sometimes it means missing events or working holidays; often it means working until 2 a.m.
A little help from you could change my life…
If each of you chips in a little bit
You can truly make a difference in securing a sustainable future for TSCML.
Do you believe in the power of this publication? Don’t want to see it disappear? Please consider becoming a paid subscriber today so that I can afford to keep running it.
What you’re paying for ✨
An ad-free site
Continued production of the free Friday Essays series
Continued production of the free Monday Bites series
Paid Perks ❤️
Secret paid-only posts (monthly)
Secret paid-only playlists (monthly)
Community access
Feel like a philanthropist
Without spending like one
I know what it’s like to live on a budget, so it’s important to me to make paid subscriptions accessible.
An average concert ticket costs $122.84
An annual subscription to TSCML costs less than half of that ($50 to be exact).
And people love it
What people are saying about their paid-subscriber-only content
🍓 “Great great playlist. Honestly you have the best taste.”
🍓 “I so love when you introduce new things to me.”
🍓 “This is my favorite post yet.”
“This post was worth the paid sub alone.”
Paid perk: Step inside my brain and get memorable, meaningful, and sometimes embarrassing secret music stories I don’t share anywhere else 🤫 Read about my first dates in New York, my first tattoo, the crushes that helped me discover my sexuality, see my childhood & teen photos, and more.
Unlock 25+ secret posts when you sign up today.
Zero ads — help keep it that way
I hate annoying ads on websites — and I bet you do too… Imagine how different this site would look with them…
I can’t do it without you
Publications at every scale are struggling to keep the lights on these days. Vice went bankrupt. Pitchfork is folding into GQ. But I think we’re doing something special here.
I don’t have advertisers to please, a skyscraper office to pay for, or investors to deliver returns to. I just have a laptop, some wifi, and the will to keep going as long as I can personally afford to.
If you have the means, I hope you’ll seriously consider chipping in. I guarantee you’ll get an instant hit of warm fuzzy feelings knowing you’re supporting earnest, independent writing 🥰
If you know me personally
And you become a paid subscriber, you’ll have a forever special place in my heart <3 It feels extra special when I see your names pop up :)
If you’re already a paid subscriber
Thank you so much. We have fun, don’t we?
If you’re still reading
Wow. Thank you. I can’t wait to spend another year here with you.