Sunday Songs: 8/20/23

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles!

Here we are near the end of August, and I’ve got a color scheme adjacent to the aesthetic of my 10th birthday party. It may not be my favorite color anymore, but I still hold that pink is an underrated color. And it’s fitting, since my actual birthday is coming in a few days from now! August is apparently the most common birthday month, so I guess I’m not that special, but I love August simply because of that. Now that I’ve gotten to the point in my life where my birthday doesn’t land a week into the school year anymore, it’s a lot nicer. And it’s not on my first day of college either, like it was last year, so it’s a nice change this year. So let’s all settle down, eat some cake, and come to grips with the fact that we are all Kenough.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 8/20/23

“I’m Just Ken” (from Barbie) – Ryan Gosling

Here we are, a month removed from Barbenheimer, and this song remains stuck in my head. Everybody’s saying it, but it’s true: Barbie really is a masterpiece. It summed up modern womanhood more than any other film that I can think of. It’s whimsical, it’s clever, it’s incredibly funny, and for a movie populated by plastic dolls, it’s deeply human. My mom and I cried together so many times during the movie. Ah, womanhood. And anybody who says that this movie is “anti-man” is delusional—it’s just as empowering for men as it is for women. What’s “anti-man” about Ken realizing that his self-worth doesn’t have to hinge on romantic pursuit or material possessions?

If there’s anything that men—and anybody—can take away from this movie, it’s as the song says: “I’m just Ken, and I’m enough/And I’m great at doing stuff.” Look within. You are Kenough. What else is there to say about this song? Ryan Gosling stole the show. Feel the Kenergy.

“You Wouldn’t Like Me” – Tegan and Sara

And here’s today’s report on “why yes, I did blow through season 2 of Heartstopper last week, why do you ask?”

Tegan and Sara have been names that have been on the very edges of my radar for years; they’ve popped up alongside other artists that I listened to for years, and recently, the great Tillie Walden (!!!) illustrated a graphic memoir about their childhoods. But the snippets I heard of their music faded away—until last week, when this song was featured at the end of the second episode of season 2 of Heartstopper. (Both seasons always have a few gems on their soundtracks—Lucy Dacus and Wolf Alice in the same episode? We are truly blessed…) And as the backdrop to queer teen angst, “You Wouldn’t Like Me” meshes perfectly. It’s the perfect acoustic earworm, all at once gentle and soaring. The harmonies of twin sisters Tegan and Sara Quin intertwine as seamlessly as you would think twin sisters would, blending into each other and branching out once more with smooth, warm ease. As the two Quins sing of “…a war inside of me/Do I cause new heartbreak to write/A new broken song?” their voices command a gentle acoustic strumming—again, I can’t think of a more perfect fit for Heartstopper. Again, I’m very new to Tegan and Sara, but this version feels like a vast gulf from the original, which takes a far more pop-rock direction. (Still Jealous, where this version is from, is an acoustic reworking of their album So Jealous.) I like the guitars on the original, but…how are their voices so nasally and grating there? It just feels so forced compared to how gorgeous their voices—and their story—sounds on this version. Needless to say, I’m far more partial to this acoustic version.

“Taking What’s Not Yours” – TV Girl

I never expected that a TV Girl song would ever end up on one of these posts, but life is nothing if not full of surprises. I’ve felt fairly lukewarm about most of their music that I’ve been exposed to; songs like “Blue Hair” and “Lover’s Rock” seem to have been everywhere after experiencing TikTok fame in the past few years, but they never really caught my eye. They were catchy, but not something that I would find myself listening to regularly.

Enter this song. I forger where I heard it first, but either way, it hooked me like no other song of theirs ever has. It all feels so carefree in its composition, and all of the sampling and the way it’s cobbled together is clear proof that somebody’s been taking some pages out of the De La Soul/Beastie Boys book. “Taking What’s Not Yours” gives it a more indie pop spin. The samples are just delightfully goofy, but so clever at the same time. The main sample comes from, of all things, a rap included in the video “Don’t Copy That Floppy.” (“That’s thieving/stealing, taking what’s not yours!”) I doubt it can get a whole lot sillier than that. And as Brad Petering talks about all of the things that he’s taken and left at various girlfriends’ places (sorry, “various apartments and domiciles”) over the years, what should get sampled but Richard Nixon’s infamous declaration of “I am not a crook” as the chorus starts over? It all seems so random, but the way all of these wild samples are tied back to the narrative is undeniably clever. I’m still not the biggest fan of the blasé, nasally drone of Petering’s voice, but it almost works as he rambles on about leftovers, jewelry and records left in the wake of his relationships. Fitting that the album that “Taking What’s Not Yours” is on is called Who Really Cares—it certainly fits Petering’s laid-back affect.

“Unpeeled” – Naked Giants

Here’s a pandemic memory that, for once, isn’t painful to recall! Thanks, Naked Giants. Weird name, but I’ll take it.

Naked Giants’ great album The Shadow also came out right around my birthday—it turns three years old tomorrow, as it happens! I was originally introduced to them when they opened for and performed with Car Seat Headrest, but they’re just as fantastic performing with them as they are solo, even if their brands of indie rock are more than a little different. (some of it definitely rubbed off on “Hollywood,” but I digress.) The Shadow, with propulsive tracks like “(God Damn) What I Am” and “Take a Chance” soundtracked that late August heat and cloudless skies, endlessly hooky and head-noddable. I can’t think of a single bad track on that album, but a few inevitably got a bit lost in the dust, as is what generally tends to happen when I love an album, but love a handful of songs just that much more. But that just means that it feels that much more joyous when you rediscover something else from that album. That’s where “Unpeeled” comes in. Although it’s slower and more droning than the previous tracks that I mentioned, the power it holds is unmistakable; with its hints of punk, psychedelia, and pure, guitar-driven rock all rolled into one, there’s never a moment where “Unpeeled” loses its touch. Like a great machine, it puffs along in a smoky, delirious haze, a different brand of their usually jangly 60’s influences. Even the harmonies on the chorus (“it’s unpeeling again”) sound off-kilter enough to sound like it belongs on the trippier side of Yellow Submarine. But nothing brings me more joy than the grinding, 13-era Graham Coxon-esque guitar chords that chug in at the 2:21 mark, cutting through the veil of smoke. It’s a truly hypnotic song in every way I can think of.

“Big in the World” – Shakey Graves

Another exciting song coming out of Movie of the Week, and with a great music video to match! Made me think of…I think it was a National Geographic Kids article about what they actually do to food in commercials to make it look appetizing. You can see a lot of it in the video, but that article was where I learned that glue is used as a substitute for milk for cereal in commercials so that the bits of cereal stick to the surface. The more you know.

True to form, all of what we see in the music video perfectly reflects the ethos of the song. As we see a man painstakingly pinning blueberries to the top of a stack of pancakes and painting a bowl of strawberries with red nail polish, Alejandro Rose-Garcia laments on “why I’ve gotta be somebody’s enemy/to be big in the world?” Something so curated and manufactured, like those nail-polished strawberries, is what Shakey Graves—or, at any rate, the protagonist of his imaginary movie—is musing on: the nature of how the media rewards drama instead of sincerity, only boosting fame if there’s a sensational story to be churned from it. In short: you’re only appetizing if you’re covered in shiny, fake crap. And even though that message comes through loud and clear, the musical drama of this song is what really sells it. Rose-Garcia’s rasping howl comes in at full force in the chorus, ringing out through almost Beatles-esque pianos and an ever-shifting atmosphere that really does feel like the fuzzy light edges around the multitude of screens on the album cover. It’s a lot more smoothly produced than most other Shakey Graves songs that I can think of off the top of my head, but it fits the feel of the direction that Movie of the Week seems to be going; it was conceived as the soundtrack to an imaginary film, and “Big In The World” has that cinematic touch in spades.

Since today’s post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!