Tag: 69 Love Songs

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 10/26/25

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

This week: I think you’ve all been getting too comfortable with the lack of Björk in the past month or so…WOE, BJÖRK BE UPON YE

Enjoy this week’s review!

SUNDAY SONGS: 10/26/25

“Anemone” – The Brian Jonestown Massacre

I love a song that just envelops me. “Anemone” is one of those tracks were there’s nothing in the lyrics remotely related to anemones (or even the sea), but it just happens to be the right title, just from the feel of it. The production and instrumentation sound like the lazy swirl of a temperate ocean around you, like footage of Planet Earth with a shot panning over gentle waves making anemones’ tentacles wave in the wind like branches on a tree. “You should be picking me up/Instead you’re dragging me down,” in that frame of mind, feels like being pulled under by a rogue wave and surrendering to the current.

Anton Newcombe’s voice feels like a backup instrument and not the lead vocal, somehow just as ethereal and misty as the faintly distorted rhythm guitar. That’s probably because the lead guitar, also played by Newcombe, is so distinct that it feels more like the voice of the song. From the beginning, it makes intricate loops and twists, like an animation of yarn curling in on itself—or the tendrils of an anemone slowly reaching out to you. It starts off almost uneasy, as if trying not to intrude on the melody, but once it expands, it takes the song from dewy cobwebs to a fully-defined spiderweb of dreamlike sound.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Two Lies of Faven Sythe – Megan E. O’Keefe – a twisty, surreal world of crystals and secrets—befitting of a dreamlike song like this.

“Fame” (David Bowie cover) – Eurhythmics

The other day, a good friend of mine (and one of the only people I know who’s just as obsessed with David Bowie as me, which is really saying something) and I were volleying back and forth about David Bowie covers. I wish I were as open-minded like them, but I think I was just burned by the aftermath of Bowie’s death when every single radio station decided that it was the right time to play nothing but the shittiest Bowie covers known to man. You can’t blame me for being a little suspicious at first. If you have that seismic of an impact on music, you’re bound to spawn a ton of bad covers. Plenty of good ones too, though! (For your perusal, and also the ones I sent said friend: Warpaint’s cover of “Ashes to Ashes,” TV on the Radio’s cover of “Heroes,” Lisa Hannigan’s cover of “Oh! You Pretty Things,” and Karen O and Willie Nelson’s cover of “Under Pressure.”)

But when they said that Eurhythmics had done a cover of “Fame” back in the early ’80s, I knew it was going to be good. (So thank you, said friend!) After all, Annie Lennox did take up the mantle of resident British, orange-haired, androgynous pop star from Bowie after Ziggy Stardust had been put to bed. I knew she was going to be cooking something. Bold, daring covers are few and far between, but if anyone can do it, it’s Eurhythmics. Lennox and Stewart transmuted Bowie’s plastic soul into a wholly different sound. It’s slicker than chrome, and so, so ’80s in the best way. Sped up and dominated by synths that sound like liquid mercury, Lennox’s vocal take on “Fame” turns the meditation into a song that feels like it belongs in a movie montage, walking through a crowded ballroom full of shallow, Hollywood types. Her mocking laugh echoes through the repetition of “Fame” in the chorus, hammering down Bowie’s original message of fame and the mercurial music industry wringing creative talents dry.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Monstrous Misses Mai – Van Hoang – “Fame (fame)/What you like is in the limo/Fame (fame) what you get is no tomorrow/Fame (fame) what you need, you have to borrow…”

“The Sun Goes Down and the World Goes Dancing” – The Magnetic Fields

Dammit…I almost slipped into my usual “I need to set aside 3 hours to listen to 69 Love Songs in its entirety” intro for yet another song from 69 Love Songs. 3 hours? In this economy? With my Instagram-rotted goldfish attention span? Kidding, kidding…only partly. I need to shut up and just listen to the album.

In the meantime, I seem to have gathered a stash of assorted songs from 69 Love Songs like a squirrel gathering acorns for the winter and hiding them in the most random places. Yet I do not have the uncanny acorn memory of a squirrel, so I’m fully surprised every time the Magnetic Fields Instagram account soundtracks one of their posts from the 69 Love Songs 25th Anniversary Tour with one of these songs. “The Sun Goes Down and the World Goes Dancing” was a recent favorite from the start. I fully mean this as a compliment, but there’s something about the production that makes the song sound like it’s been played on toy instruments. You can’t tell me that those clacks in the background aren’t plastic. Given the absolute laundry list of instruments listed under Stephin Merrit’s name on the Wikipedia page for 69 Love Songs, it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for him to have thrown some in for fun. Another fun fact: Daniel Handler, a.k.a. Lemony Snicket (yes, that Lemony Snicket) played several instruments on the album and arranged “Asleep and Dreaming.” I feel like it’d take an archaeologist to deconstruct the sheer amount of lore that this album has.

And yet that toylike quality makes the rusty charm of this song, from the thin mandolin strums and the hollow, clinking percussion. It’s uncharacteristically devoid of the usual lovelorn frustrations that Merritt usually displays—it’s nothing but breathless, dizzy joy. “The Sun Goes Down and the World Goes Dancing” is a snapshot in motion of rapidly twirling lovers careening across a dim dancefloor, relishing in the warm glow of the lights. It’s the faint smell of the night air as you squeeze someone’s clammy hand, a leap of faith into someone else’s arms. The beat seems to all but gallop like a trained pony with a collar adorned with jingle bells, brushed to perfection but nothing but happy about it.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Heartstopper, vol. 1 – Alice Oseman – don’t tell me that this song isn’t befitting of some little animated leaves and fireworks.

“Play Dead” – Björk

There’s something so singularly admirable about Björk that makes even her more commercial songs feel so uproariously her. Even a relatively sparse music video, not directed by her and interspersed with clips from the film it was from, The Young Americans, couldn’t tamp down the raw power of her voice. Even when given a formula, Björk played around with it in every way that she could—from all accounts, the opportunity was an experiment for her. On writing “Play Dead,” Björk said that writing the song was “fun because the character in the film was suffering and going through hardcore tough times and at the time I was at my happiest. It was quite liberating to sit down after writing a whole album to write from someone else’s point of view.”

Aided by David Arnold, who composed the film’s score, and Jah Wobble (of Public Image Ltd) contributing the (gloriously slick) bass, “Play Dead” reminds me, at best, of what I like so much about trip-hop. It’s so seductive and slick, and even with the lyrics aching with numbness, it’s so brimming with life. Sure, that’s in no small part due to the cinematic orchestral swells that punctuate the background, but Björk’s voice makes it from a song into a true performance on every listen—even the most melancholy lyrics from her are blood vessels full of life. Nothing could ever suck the energy out of her performances, much less this one.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Red City – Marie Lu – “I belong to here where/No one cares, and no one loves/No light, no air to live in/A place called hate/The city of fear…”

“Overkill” – Colin Hay

[BANGING FIST ON THE TABLE, IN TEARS]

HE JUST LIKE ME FR

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Forever is Now – Mariama J. Lockington – a poignant, honest depiction of a young Black girl dealing with chronic anxiety.

Since this 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!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 11/3/24

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

This week: next stop, Big Feels™️ central…totally haven’t been anxious for the past week and a half, how’d you guess?

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 11/3/24

“Promises of Eternity” – The Magnetic Fields

I had the privilege of seeing The Magnetic Fields a second time last weekend; this year marks the 25th anniversary of an album that (from what I’ve heard) is not so much an album but a great balancing act of music itself: 69 Love Songs, a triple album consisting entirely of songs about love. (Make no mistake, they’re not all romantic. See: “How Fucking Romantic,” “Yeah! Oh, Yeah!” “I Think I Need a New Heart.”) I’ve yet to find the time to set aside a whole three hours and listen to the album in its entirety, but even a glimpse at around half of it over the course of my lifetime leaves me in awe of how Stephin Merritt and company pulled this off. Especially Merritt, as he wrote every single song—his songwriting never falters, but to not sputter out after 69 songs is a feat as awe-inspiring as his vocal range.

Somehow, “Promises of Eternity” slipped by my notice, but it hasn’t let me go since last weekend. Sung by Merritt on the album and by Anthony Kaczynski live, it immediately stuns. In both mediums, the synths just bowl you over—they don’t play as much as grandly announce their presence with the flourish of the same velvet curtain that the song speaks of. That chest-clutching drama defines the rest of the song—all of the lyrics detail the hypothetical collapse of the world if the narrator’s lover did not love them back: “What if no show ever happened again?/No seven, no eight and a half, no nine and no ten?” Most of Merritt’s singing has a sarcastic current to it that almost makes you question if the guy really believes in true love (though “The Book of Love” disproves that hypothesis quickly), but the way that he belts out “What if the clowns couldn’t be clowns?”, of all lines, gives you the feeling that he’s just fallen to his knees and is begging straight to your face. Apparently, the absence of clowns will signal the end? Who’s to say, really? Along with the circus imagery, the organ sound created by the synth makes “Promises of Eternity” feel like an elaborate, gilded carousel of lovesickness, with instrumentals that wouldn’t be out of place at a fairground, but lyrics fit for Romantic (in the Keats way, not the general way) poetry.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Caraval – Stephanie Garber – circus imagery aplenty, as is the levels of drama being off the charts.

“Surgeon” – St. Vincent

In the age where you can make a synth—and most any instrument, really—make almost any sound you want it to, I shouldn’t be surprised at the staggering achievements that music has made in the simple terms of what noises we can make. What sounds like “the future” feels entirely subjective when we’re talking about anything past the 2010’s—electronic music had exploded, and plus, what sounds futuristic to me might not sound futuristic to you.

My waxing poetic about St. Vincent has mostly been directed to her self-titled 2014 album, which, ostensibly fits that description for me. But with each successive listen to “Surgeon,” I’m blown away at just how much this sounds like the future. This was 2011, and aside from the percussion, most everything on this track sounds utterly alien. Watching the 4AD sessions recording that I linked above was genuinely eye opening—every few minutes, I just found myself going wait, that’s the instrument that’s making that weird noise? The synths are manipulated to the point where they could just as easily be the vocalizations of a children’s choir from another planet. Even the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it trill of a flute turns into a glitch in some kind of code. I can see the threads of Björk—especially Homogenic—throughout, yet it’s so distinctly Annie Clark. By far the most masterful of these manipulations should be obvious: Clark’s guitar solo beginning at 3:36 feels like she’s almost reached the extreme of what the instrument can sound like. It’s hardly even a solo anymore—it doesn’t just sound like a synth, it sounds like some kind of creature whose consciousness has been trapped in a computer and is howling to be freed. If you were to somehow visualize this music, I’d fully believe it if it came out fleshy and trailing with electrodes.

Oh, to spend a day in her mind…

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Freshwater – Akwaeke Emezi – stagnation, grappling with identities beyond the human, and the desire to free that identity with help of a surgeon.

“Oodles of O’s” – De La Soul

Is it possible for De La Soul to have a bad song? Well…okay, I haven’t gotten into their later catalogue, which seems to have a worse reputation (I don’t know, though, “Snoopies” is pretty fantastic), so that’s up for interpretation. But for me, De La Soul are one of those bands where almost every new song of theirs I find feels like digging up buried treasure. At least in the ’90s, their creativity seemed to come to them as easy it is for the average person to breathe. The lyrics? Deadly serious, but still full of whimsical, silly rhymes—nothing but De La Soul. The best part is that every single line ends in an o sound—quite literally oodles of o’s! The samples? That Tom Waits bassline sample is something to behold. This is my kind of hip-hop. Can’t say if their entire catalogue is perfect, but “Oodles of O’s” is. We need to bring back the word oodles. Carry on the spirit.

At the end of the day, it’s beautiful that this got the video that Dave wanted it to have, now around a year and a half after his passing. Maybe it’s not the grittiness he envisioned, but a donut shop more than makes up for it.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Geekerella (Once Upon a Con, #1) – Ashley Poston – admittedly, a much fluffier take on fame, but an exploration of how it reduces you nonetheless.

“Anchor” – Soccer Mommy

With the workload I’ve been swimming through this semester, I’m not sure if I’ll get around to reviewing Evergreen, but rest assured—I LOVED it. After a few listens, Sometimes, Forever remains on top, but Evergreen is special. There’s a matured, bedroom-pop-grown-older familiarity to it, but as with every successive album, Sophie Allison always has something new to offer. Her fourth album is a cartography of grief, detailing the tangled web of loss, healing, and pining after your Stardew Valley wife, as it turns out. As with every one of her albums, it’s her introspection that shines—with every kind of grief that she experiences, it feels like a flag planted in the ground, a recognition of every hill and valley of the harrowing trek she’s been on, but recognition that it’s not the end, no matter how much of it is behind her.

In contrast to the largely acoustic (or at least traditionally guitar-driven) landscape of Evergreen, “Anchor” instantly singles itself out as the black sheep of the bunch. Though it covers some of the same ground as the rest of the album, the production doesn’t jump out at you so much as it pounces on you like some creature going after your ankles in the dead of night. I should’ve expected that Allison would retain some of the sound from Sometimes, Forever, but with how the rest of Evergreen sounded, it was a surprise—and a 100% welcome one. With synths and bells that wouldn’t sound out of place in a Chelsea Wolfe track, it has a jaggedness and fear that the rest of the album lacks. In a song about feeling so unmoored in the face of loss, it’s one of the most creative stylistic choices on Evergreen to me. In the same way that a simple object or scent or song can trigger a domino effect of memories that takes days or weeks to recover from, “Anchor” comes out of nowhere with its instrumentation. It has the static and crunch of watching yourself bolting through the woods through the lens of a trail cam, and that’s how grief can make you feel—cornered and in the dark.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Hell Followed With Us – Andrew Joseph White – “When we left the harbor/I was certain of my path/There’s no turning back/Now I long for something that/Could stop me in my tracks/An anchor to cast…”

“Remember My Name” – Mitski

Knowing that “Remember My Name” was released so close to the time that she almost quit music (back in 2019) really puts this song in perspective. Mitski’s still battling being in the spotlight, but this song presents the other side that’s been waging that war; deep down, she harbors a desire to be musically immortal, even at the steep cost: “I gave too much of my heart tonight/Can you come to where I’m staying/And make some extra love?/That I can save ’til tomorrow’s show.” With its crunching guitar riff that’s begging to be sampled and the way that the chorus consumes you in the same way that watching an approaching tornado on the horizon does, there’s so much urgency and volatility packed into just over two minutes. The best of Mitski speaks to that part of me that is so easily overcome by emotion and gives itself over to its throes—sometimes, whatever the situation, you do feel like you need something bigger than the sky. What works so well is that Mitski is dead serious—every song is an explosive, cathartic release. Of course, again, that’s probably what attracts so many parasocial weirdos to her shows, but I at least have the tact to not yell “MOMMY” at her, much less anybody else. That’s exactly the price of the fame she speaks of—she places her heart on a platter, people tear it to shreds, and the process repeats itself every day. I’m just glad that after The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We, she’s repaired that volatile relationship with music, or at least started to. Much as I love a good Mitski explosion, her best music comes when she’s healed, or at least processing it.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Shadow and Bone – Leigh Bardugo – “I need something bigger than the sky/Hold it in my arms and know it’s mine/Just how many stars will I need to hang around me/To finally call it Heaven?”

Since this week’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!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (10/29/24) – The Book That Wouldn’t Burn

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

The ranting hour is upon us…yet I didn’t hate the book I’m reviewing today. It’s not abject hatred, more just frustration. Maybe I am a good-for-nothing Gen Z-er with no attention span, but I feel like if you don’t get into much concrete worldbuilding until the halfway point of a nearly 600-page book, that’s a real crime in your writing. Unfortunately, The Book That Wouldn’t Burn is guilty.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn – Mark Lawrence

At a young age, Livira was kidnapped, then rescued and delivered to a sprawling city. Within that city was The Library, a building with layers upon layers inside, containing an archive that spans thousands of years. Now focusing on the education she never had, Livira will discover secrets that will change her world forever.

Evar has lived his entire life trapped inside of the bowels of The Library. Hunted by monsters, he was orphaned at a young age, and his siblings have slowly been picked off as well. With no escape in sight, he spends his days desperately looking for a way out—and he cannot see one until he finds a lost girl named Livira.

TW/CW: kidnapping, loss of loved ones, blood, violence

DNF at 44%.

I know I often gripe about long fantasy novels taking eons to get to the point, but this pushed it to the extreme. All of the rave reviews kept swearing that there was some massive payoff to the excruciating trek that was this book, but the intangible promise of something wasn’t enough to keep me going. The Book That Wouldn’t Burn felt stuffed to the brim with plot lines of no substance or development, and it’s not like the book was too short to be cut down. 571 pages. There were absolutely some chapters that had no business being there.

Suspense and worldbuilding are story elements that normally aren’t confused, but it seems that Lawrence got them mixed up in the construction of The Book That Wouldn’t Burn. It’s one thing to have a crucial element of your world be a secret—that was what the novel hinges on, and from the looks of it, understandably so. This technique is mainly for elements that will change the way the reader and the characters perceive the world. Lawrence’s problem was that he applied that to almost all of the worldbuilding. We get a brief glimpse of the outside world, but not much is known save for the divisions between humans and sabbers (a hostile, dog-like species), and that there’s a Vaguely Medieval Epic Fantasy Town™️ outside of The Library. I get that the focus is on The Library, so what’s the point of establishing any of it if it’s not going to be of any consequence later on in the book? Granted, I didn’t finish it, but the way it was written was so hasty. I did get some semblance of how The Library works, but it was too little too late. If you dangle some reveal over the reader’s head the entire time, you should at least have some information about the world to scaffold why you should care. To some extent, I can see that since all of this was foreign to Livira, but that’s not an excuse to barely describe anything!

I wanted to like Evar, but in the end, his situation was more compelling than who he was as a person. That’s because he’s a walking case study in why tragic backstories don’t automatically make a character fleshed-out. We know all about how he’s been trying to claw his way out of the catacombs of The Library and has been hunted by monsters who have killed his parents and many of his siblings…but we know nothing else other than that. Aside from an implied resilience on the virtue of him being able to survive being trapped in a monster-filled maze beneath a library, I know nothing about this kid. We are given exactly zero hints about his personality. I felt pity for him because of his circumstances, but I put down this book knowing nothing about what makes him tick, other than a vague semblance of revenge. I don’t know why he speaks the way he does, I don’t know his habits, I don’t know how he interacts with the world. I wanted to know him! His relationships were solely defined by their proximity to other people (many of whom were dead). By the time he finally met Livira, I couldn’t care less about how they would interact—mostly because Livira got sucked into some Library portal right before anything of significance could happen. 250 pages, about a third of which were devoted to Evar, and I just could not care less.

Now, for why I picked up The Book That Wouldn’t Burn in the first place…The Library. Again, this could be a consequence of me not reading enough of the book, but I think there’s merit in saying that there’s not nearly enough focus on what’s actually interesting about it for the first half of the novel. After the initial revelations that a) Livira now has access to a library the size of a city with archives spanning thousands of years and b) that there are people trapped in a monster-filled maze beneath it, we get…nothing else. There’s much more focus on Livira’s education in The Library, mainly because when she comes there, she does not know how to read or write. That wouldn’t be a bad thing if it weren’t for the fact that these scenes are repetitive to a fault. Remember what I said about this book potentially benefitting from some hedge trimming? This is precisely where I would slim down the page count. I don’t ascribe to the belief that every little thing has to advance the plot, but you’ve got to have something to keep the reader’s interest—it felt like the same cycle of Livira reading, writing, and getting teased by the apprentices. Rinse and repeat for approximately 100 pages. Now do you see why I quit?

The lesson of The Book That Wouldn’t Burn is that you can’t hold a book afloat on a concept alone. I wanted to like the premise so much—what’s not to like about a massive, age-old library that’s larger than a city and holds unknowable horrors beneath it? But the scaffolding necessary to keep me interested was flimsy at best. Lawrence’s writing had moments of being clever, but that, along with the shaky bits of information about the library, were not enough to hold my interest. 1.5 stars, because it wasn’t all bad, but I was so painfully bored by a book with a fascinating premise, which is truly a crime.

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn is the first novel in The Library trilogy, followed by The Book That Broke the World and The Book That Held Her Heart. Mark Lawrence is also the author of several fantasy series, including The Broken Empire trilogy (Prince of Thorns, King of Thorns, and Emperor of Thorns), The Red Queen’s War trilogy (Prince of Fools, The Liar’s Key, and The Wheel of Osheim), and many more.

Today’s song:

saw the magnetic fields for the 69 Love Songs anniversary tour over the weekend—what an incredible show!!

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

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 6/11/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

Just a note—I’ll probably be radio silent for the next week (save for liking all your wonderful posts 🫡) because I’ll be on vacation! I’m heading up to Olympic National Park, so I’m pretty excited. But for now, have a nice, blue-gray color scheme and some silly goofy music while I’m gone. And of course, we’ve got Phoebe Bridgers, The Magnetic Fields, and Ernie and Bert for pride month.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 6/11/23

“Excuse Me” – Peter Gabriel

So…here I am. Finally got around to listening to Peter Gabriel 1: Car the other day. Fantastic album, but if I had to describe it in one word, that one word would be whiplash. I already knew I was in for a ride knowing that the album started out with the absolute proto-Danny Elfman insanity of “Moribund the Burgermeister” and the album’s classic radio hit “Solsbury Hill” one after the other (as much as I love the latter, it’s a crime that it’s all this album is typically remembered for…doesn’t surprise me, though), but even that couldn’t have prepared me for the full experience.

But if there’s any song off of this album that characterizes said whiplash, it’s this one. I went in expecting it to be weird, but the pure shock of this one just sent me into the nth dimension of musical weirdness. I’m not even exaggerating. This one starts out with a barbershop quartet. It’s just nuts. And I love it. It’s like Peter Gabriel was just unleashing every ounce of the pent-up goofiness within. It’s kooky. It’s whimsical. It’s silly. I’d unironically call this one of the best tracks on the album, just because he just goes all in on the silliness. However, I go back and forth on whether or not the incoherence of this album is a pro or a con—I’ve tentatively decided that it’s more pro than con, but some of it didn’t work for me. Coherence is not a quality that an album needs to have to be enjoyable, but you can do an album where every song has a different feel, genre, etc. from the next and still have it feel cohesive and joyfully carefree at the same time (see Super Furry Animals’ Rings Around the World). But on the other hand, the antici……pation of having no clue of what comes next was such fun to experience. There were some songs on Car that were genuine misses for me (sorry, “Down the Dolce Vita”), but albums that are pure chaos, like this one, are a special experience. Go crazy, Peter.

“Waiting Room” – Phoebe Bridgers

This one’s now on Bandcamp—all proceeds go to Music Will!

(are we all still okay, bisexuals? nope? I thought so)

Now, here we are with something of a legend amongst Phoebe Bridgers’ catalogue. Famously written when she was only 16, it’s hidden in the shadows despite being a fan favorite, existing only in older video performances and a brief stint on Spotify as part of the Lost Ark Studio collection, before being mysteriously taken down. And now that it’s on Bandcamp, more of us can lose ourselves in it!

The fact that Bridgers wrote this at 16 is still incredibly impressive, but with all due respect, it…makes sense. It’s 6 and a half minutes of pure angst—she hadn’t quite nailed the lyrical flow and subtleties that came with experience yet. There’s nothing subtle about “If you were a waiting room/I would never see a doctor/I’d just sit there with my first aid kit and bleed.” But the point of this song was never to be subtle—it’s a time capsule, capturing young, unrequited love at the epicenter of its emotion. If Bridgers hadn’t nailed her lyrical style just yet, she had already nailed her innate ability to conjure engrossing emotion. There’s something about the lines “Wanna make you fall in love as hard as my poor parents’ teenage daughter/She’ll be the best you’ve ever had, if you let her” that always get me. Aww, little Phoebe…

And it all comes to a head in the iconic refrain of “Know it’s for the better,” repeated for the last half of the song. The instrumentals rise in intensity along with Bridgers’ voice until it all crashes down in a tidal wave of guitars. It really is a song to lose yourself in—the last part of the song really does make it feel like everything else has ceased to exist around you. And even though this song has gone through several iterations over the years, it’s still a feat to achieve so young. If anything, I’m just glad to exist in a world with Phoebe Bridgers in it. I know it’s for the better.

“La La La La Lemon” (Sesame Street cover) – The Barenaked Ladies

Alright, here’s a childhood nostalgia pick-me-up after Phoebe Bridgers’ sea of teen angst. I wouldn’t blame you if you needed a palate cleanser.

This one was a last minute addition, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t include it in this. I haven’t thought about this song in a solid 15 years, but the other night, I had a dream—I can’t even remember what the dream was even about, but whatever the case, it dredged this song up from the dark recesses of my mind. And I’m not complaining! There’s nothing like the joy of uncovering a forgotten childhood song, like digging through dusty old boxes of mementoes in the attic. Or, at least, that’s how I imagine it. I don’t have an attic. I digress. It’s moments like this where I really appreciate the incomprehensible eccentricities of the human brain—which neuron fired and made me remember this all of the sudden?

Even though they have the worst possible band name to have included on a kid’s album (which they did—not just this, but the classic Snacktime!), The Barenaked Ladies really do have a talent for making nostalgic, clever kid’s songs. This one is technically a cover, but for once, I’ll defer to them instead of Sesame Street; in any other circumstance, I’d immediately call blasphemy, but in this case, their take on “La La La La Lemon” surpasses the original for me. No disrespect to Ernie and Bert, the original gay TV couple. This is the only exception. They reign supreme in all else. Nothing tops the Rubber Ducky song.

The slower, more subdued Sesame Street version fits when you consider that our crotchety friend Bert is singing half of it. But The Barenaked Ladies gave this song an infectious energy—just by picking up the speed, the song gains a far more carefree, loose, and altogether more joyous feel. Maybe my preference is the nostalgia talking, but I swear that this version manages to turn the kookiness up to the perfect level—the level that made me giggle as a kid and still makes me smile now, when I’m somehow an adult with a job. Man, how’d that happen…

Either way, the main takeaway is that comedy peaked at at “La la la la, linoleum!”

“I Don’t Want to Get Over You” – The Magnetic Fields

I’m entirely serious when I say that the only thing keeping me from listening to 69 Love Songs right this second is because of…said 69 songs. I will, eventually, but it’s gonna require a nice, long, uninterrupted stretch of…[checks notes] almost three hours, Jesus. But you’re not gonna catch me complaining about nearly three hours of Stephin Merritt and company.

In the meantime, it seems like almost every song I hear on its own from this album rearranges my brain chemistry for a solid three days before I can snap out of it. Case in point: this one. The minute the buzzy background synths and deeply distorted…well, everything kicks in, I lost myself. Again. With his signature, dry witticism, Merritt pens another two-and-a-half minute bite of love gone sour, cloaking the thought of “[taking] a sleeping pill and sleep at will/and not have to go through what I go through” in a web of tinny distortion. I always come back to the tongue-in-cheek lines of “Or I could career of being blue/I cold dress in black and read Camus,” because…I mean, he did kind of make a career out of that? Almost? Aside from a few songs, most of The Magnetic Fields that I can think of is about love left to get moldy after a few weeks in the fridge. But here’s the thing—it never feels like Merritt is spinning a broken record—each time, has has something new to bring to the table, whether it’s the drowning melancholy of “I Don’t Believe in the Sun” or the confessional nature of “Born on a Train.” He always finds something inspired to spin out of love lost or gone the way of spoiled milk, and every time, it’s a rush of inventiveness to the head.

“World of Ammonites” (from Prehistoric Planet 2) – Anže Rozman & Kara Talve

Here’s my PSA for today: if you haven’t watched both seasons of Prehistoric Planet on Apple TV+ …respectfully, what are you even doing? If David Attenborough’s part in it isn’t convincing enough by itself, will a masterfully-animated, nature-show style documentary about Cretaceous dinosaurs and other prehistoric life entice you? The animation puts almost everything else of its kind to shame—so much so that it looks too real to be animated, which adds to the nature show feel. Plus, it acts like a good nature show should, not focusing all on “DINOSAUR FIGHT!!!!!1!!! RAAAAAAH THEY ARE ANNIHILATING EACH OTHER RAAAAAH!!1” and giving a speculative insight into many aspects of these extinct creatures’ lifestyles. It’s a beautiful show, whether or now you’re interested in prehistoric life. You will be, after watching this.

Even though the animation obviously steals the show (as it should), I couldn’t help but notice parts of the artfully crafted soundtrack as well. The ammonite section of season 2’s ocean episode wasn’t just my favorite moment of the season because of the tiny prehistoric cephalopods—the paired track, “World of Ammonites,” made it all the more gorgeous. Nothing fits the image of thousands of funky little guys with weird shells bobbing about in a prehistoric sea than a mixture of low woodwind, violins, and synths tinny enough to fit into a sci-fi B-movie from the fifties. The synths especially capture the audio representation of the likeness of these bizarre animals; fitting these very spacey sounds with such alien-looking creatures feels like an obvious choice, but it’s a genius one. Prehistoric Planet has consistently been a joy to watch, but nothing quite gave me the rush of joy that the ammonites—and this track—did. Love me a good cephalopod.

Since this 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!