pop music is saving my life, and no, I don't mean that literally
i don't need your judgement you're doing the exact same thing i'm just brave enough to admit it
We have quite a few headlines to chat about this week, y’all. Here are my favs:
If any of you saw Chris Pratt’s Instagram post (unfortunately, we all did), and you were a big Parks and Recreation fan, I think you’d begin to feel like you’re going through an identity crisis; I very much am. How is the Chris Pratt from Parks and Rec the same Chris Pratt that thanked his Kennedy wife for cutting his toenails and in return says that he opens pickle jars for her? How many pickle jars is he opening? How often is she needing the pickle jars opened? Does he open other jars for her? I need more answers. Also, calling his daughter that he had with her “gorgeous” and “healthy” and “a female Benjamin Button*” when comedy queen Anna Faris has been vocal about the developmental issues she and Pratt have had with their son is … really fucked up. I’d like to think that the only thing he has to help himself after a dumb-ass post like that is his Christian music he so strongly has faith in, but he’s just gonna get booked for another Marvel movie. What a dummy.
*this final quote is in fact false, but it is not as insane as him letting us know he loves his wife because his daughter is healthy
Perhaps the most important news of the year. It has been CONFIRMED that a third Sister Act movie is being made and will be on Disney+. If you haven’t seen the first two, Sister Act and Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, you haven’t seen true cinema. These movies inspired some of the greats to create their Oscar winners. People like Scorcese, Tarantino, Fincher, Hitchcock — all of these people are directors. You can quote me on that. The soon-to-be Sister Act trilogy will surpass all other films about nuns. And if you don’t believe me, you’re going to hell. Whoopi and Kathy Najimy are back at it again????? Sign me up for absolutely anything they do ever. I found a VHS of the first Sister Act yesterday and bought it immediately. Do I have a VCR? No, what is that? I’m a Gen-Z cusper. I’m not allowed to know what that is.
New data shows that young people hate old people.
COP26 (2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference) began this past week in Glasgow. This is when billionaires who flew to the conference on private jets tell us that we need to start learning to live with less. People like Jeff Bezos, who said in his speech that he realized the Earth’s atmosphere was so thin once he used a bunch of fossil fuels to shoot up into space for literally no reason at all. Just stuff like that. This climate summit is supposed to be our “last option” to tell people (corporations) that we don’t have any other choices but to stop polluting. But first, let’s all fly there in our company planes and eat meals that are almost all meat and dairy the entire conferences and drink champagne with Prince William. We’re here to party, everyone! There’s not much time left!
For some reason, I told myself before college that I was no longer going to listen to pop music. I know, shut up, I sound super annoying, whatever. But it wasn’t for me. Everything sounded the same, the lyrics were shit, and nothing seemed special. I didn’t feel anything listening to it. So I listened to other music: Big Thief, Carole King, David Bowie, Japanese Breakfast, Nina Simone, Wilco — more “technical” music, some would say. And I loved all of that. But there was also music that I felt like I was supposed to be listening to, and all of that was too weird or complicated to enjoy. There was so much music to listen to and not enough of a connection.
This has been a really emotional year for me, and I’ve been trying to find music that will not only help distract me but help me feel the emotions I’ve been bottling up even more. Nothing was working. Either Way by Wilco was close, but no cigar (something my dad says a lot I don’t know what it means can someone let me know?). Earlier in the year, I started listening to Dua Lipa, which was so much fun. I couldn’t believe it: good pop music! Okay, relax, everyone. If you keep reading you will see that I’m not actually annoying about pop music I’m just maKiNg a pOiNt. Dua Lipa’s record got me back into pop music. It was so good and so much fun to dance to. It sounded like why people sing Whitney Houston at karaoke. Midnight Nostalgia by Dua Lipa did not help me feel all of my bottled-up emotions; if anything, it helped me dance and jump around and continue to ignore them. Nothing against that record I really do love it. Still not the music I was looking for, but I did start diving DEEP, baby. Justin Bieber was back in my daily mix.
I kept trying to remember what pop singers I loved in high school. Who did I go see at Lollapalooza? What songs did I YouTube convert when I didn’t have any money for an iTunes gift card? I couldn’t remember. THEN all of a fricken sudden, I did something out of the ordinary: I scrolled through TikTok. Don’t even talk to me about it. But it ended up helping. Some video popped up with a song playing over it. I couldn’t even tell you what the video was. What got me was the song. It was Still Falling For You by Ellie Goulding. I had never heard the song before. But I immediately loved it. And then I remembered the pop singer I saw at Lollapalooza, the songs by the pop singer that I YouTube converted: Ellie Goulding! I forgot about how incredible her music was when I was 16. It was pop music that sounded like no one else. And the lyrics! The lyrics were fun and heartbreaking and everything you look for in a pop song. When I was figuring this all out and heard Still Falling For You, it reminded me of a song that gets memed a lot now but also has heartbreaking lyrics: Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler. The famous line, Once upon a time I was falling in love, now I’m only falling apart, is a lyric that makes me put my hand on my heart. It’s the type of lyric we all look for in a pop song. Ellie Goulding does this with everything she creates. She puts those agonizing lyrics to gorgeous melodies, and then I listen to Still Falling For You and hear the lyrics in that chorus with that melody and cry. Like actual crying. That chorus is so strong that it took something out of me and made me listen to it 27 times in a row. And then I went back and listened to her entire discography. I listened to her 2020 record Brightest Blue, which I had never heard before, and went back to Halcyon Days, which was one of the main albums I’d put on in high school. And I realized how important different kinds of music can be for different times of your life. And the funniest part of this is that Still Falling For You was written for Bridget Jones’ Baby. That’s just super funny to me.
I’m reading They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib, which is a book of essays about music and how hearing it at certain times can mean more than hearing it when you think you’re supposed to. In one of the essays, Brief Notes On Staying // No One Is Making Their Best Work When They Want To Die, Hanif writes about how sometimes there’s only one type of music that’s going to get you through a hard time, and it’s not going to be the music you thought it would be. He goes on to say, “What I’m mostly saying, friends, is that I am sad today. I am sad today, and I may be sad tomorrow. But I watched a video where rappers hung out of the roof of a car and threw money in slow motion, and it made me briefly consider another type of freedom.” I’m not comparing Ellie Goulding to people throwing money out of a car window, but I definitely didn’t know that her music was going to be what I needed at this moment — a moment where I needed huge choruses and a unique voice and a few lines that make me understand why pop music is always in the Billboard charts. It’s the music we need to feel freedom, freedom from the emotions that wouldn’t allow us to open up. Ellie Goulding did that for me this past week. My Spotify Wrapped is completely fucked. But I’m so happy about it.
My friends are all very shocked I’m writing about pop music changing my life. I will no longer be commenting on this matter. You can all see yourselves out.
I haven’t been posting photos I’ve taken recently, so here are a few!
I think I might be entitled to, like, $1.06 of Danny’s Sister Act fund.