One-Track Wonder
- Nok Tayag
- Nov 8, 2020
- 6 min read
Disclaimer: I am in no way saying that I have a superior nor an obscure music taste. I wouldn't also say that it is "patrician" because I believe I'm not quite there yet haha. This is just a personal write-up about my musical journey and my personal picks. Take them with a grain of salt hehe
I think this year marked a change in music I have listened to. It's not that what I listened to before were bad, it's just that music, in its own, is a whole new world to explore, and just as how I love RPG, Adventure-type games, I'd like to see how much music encompasses.
Because of my friends who had diverse music playlists and listening habits (if those make sense), I got to listen to a lot of different genres. Really, this write-up will just be my attempt to share my personal picks so far.
I'll be putting the link for the playlist, and I would just like to point out that the theme of this playlist is that all of the songs in it are just first-track songs of albums. More often than not, we do not have enough time to consume a whole album's worth of song, and so first tracks are a great way to see if we want to explore a certain album.
Link: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1s7YrcOxQBtyNmcgYucPOE?si=hwAWx10cS0e9pBqhEHBkiA
All songs in this album are different in its own regard. While there's a certain story for each, I would like to focus on some songs in this playlist that are personal to me.
Death With Dignity - Sufjan Stevens (from the album "Carrie & Lowell")
At around the time Folklore of Taylor Swift was released, I tried to look for songs or albums that are within the folk genre and its derivatives. I got to listen to Phoebe Bridgers (folk rock), Fleet Foxes (indie folk) and Lana Del Rey's Norman Fucking Rockwell!, which also has elements of folk rock in it. Along with these artists, I also got to listen to Sufjan Stevens.
While Illinoise, his earlier folk work, was a great album, something about this album resonated with me, especially with this song. For me, it is calming yet elegiac. It seems to define a part of my life, which is a phase of quiet suffering. You feel it, and yet it isn't loud enough to be heard outside of you. Both the lyricism and the musicality of this song, and the album by extension, sends you into that "soothing grief" and calming lamentation that not a lot of songs would take you to.
The genre of this album is indie folk and lo-fi, and so if you're interested in songs that are soothing yet would give you the blues, it is a good pick.
Intro: What Am I To You - BTS (from the album "DARK&WILD")
I hope this does not sound like me gatekeeping, but I have been a big fan of BTS ever since their EP "Skool Luv Affair" was released. While not that familiar about the music production aspect, what I loved about their songs is the depth of lyricism it contains, from songs like Whalien 52 to even the most upbeat songs like Anpanman, BTS creates songs with intricate lyrics contained within them.
My bias in BTS is RM. Apart from the fact that we share the same MBTI (ENFP-T), I am amazed with the way he writes songs. Or maybe I'm really just a big fan of Korean rappers (Tablo for one). But this intro song, Intro: What Am I To You, dictated the tone of the album: raw, dark, and wild. His emotion combined with the lyrics gave a whole picture to the album's attempt to illustrate strong feelings that want to be released out in the open. It was a strong start to an even stronger album, with tracks like Cypher Pt. 3: Killer exhibiting the lyricism that they have. I have had the opportunity to watch their last two concerts in the Philippines, Epilogue and Wings, and hearing tracks from this album, especially this song right here, makes me love the rawness and emotion of it all the more.
DARK&WILD had heavier elements of hip-hop than the succeeding albums, and it was the last album that marked the change in their concepts from being raw and edgy to becoming more diverse than that.
Pile! No Pile! Pile! - The Brave Little Abacus (from the album "Just Got Back From The Discomfort — We're Alright")
I guess one silver lining of 2020 is that The Brave Little Abacus released back this album on Spotify. Stumbling upon this album in YouTube, I've seen comments on how it's called "Malcom-in-the-middle core" or "Spongebob-core" because it sounds a lot like SpongeBob singing. But digging deeper into the song, as one commentor put it, it feels as if the whole album dictates "that one summer you can never go back to anymore". This album made me not want to grow up. Well, mainly because it's within the emo genre, and I love it hahaha but more than that, it seems like the album takes you back into that not-too-young-yet-not-old times where there's a lot of unexplained angst and edginess within you that you want to let out. It's called an "emo phase", sure, but we know that it's more than that.
This intro song, Pile! No Pile! Pile!, perfectly captures the theme of the whole album, with all it's rawness, angst, and repressed emotions. While it may sound like someone who's just ranting in a whining manner, the lyrics takes you back to that time where you think you know a lot of stuff, but in reality you're just not that old to understand it. The album, in its entirety, might feel unfinished, but just like our realization that time moves too fast, we have to move on to the future, and this album is just an attempt for us to capture that one part of our life we may never get back to.
This album is not well-known, but it is highly acclaimed by people who are fond of the emo scene, most specifically with Midwestern Emo. If you like songs which are loud and seem messy but contains more emotion than what it originally sound like, then this is a good pick.
Never Meant - American Football (from the album "American Football")
Admittedly, this album did not sit well with me in the first few listens. The music seemed unnatural and off. The lyrics seemed sparse, and the overall song was "weird", which was my first comment about it. Listening to it for a few more times, I started to understand how different it was with other songs I've listened to. While the song is rock, a more specified genre for it is "math rock". It is a style of indie rock that is much more complex and uses atypical structures to create songs. That may be the reason why at first listen, the music sounds unnatural.
In the case of this particular song, the reason why it sounds unnatural at first few listens is that the time signatures that the song uses is frequently changing and overall different than usual structures. It might be "messy" to hear, but the fact that it is different that other listens changes a lot about it. It offers a fresh melody, and is overall an interesting listen.
The album's genre is indie rock, math rock, and post-rock. It is a good genre to listen to if you want to hear songs that are a bit different in terms of musical structure and overall feel. Well, the music might be different, but the emotions are still very much there!
Cutting My Fingers Off - Turnover (from the album "Peripheral Vision")
I might sound biased with this album, because it's my overall #1 album of all time and Cutting My Fingers Off is my overall #1 song of all time. I came across this album in 2017, and there was not a day where I did not listen to it.
I don't know what I loved the most from it — the atmospheric feel it gave me binge listening to it, or the nostalgic lyrics it contains. Listening to Cutting My Fingers Off for the first time was like a monumental journey from remembering a fragment of your memory, to slowly reminiscing it, until it hits that part where you realize that that memory never actually left you — it's still there and it still aches. The song started from a "I found a picture that we took when we brought in the new year", to a "You always said that every thought I had was geometric, I couldn't think outside my own lines.", to a strong bridge of "To make you go, to make you go, I never wanted to make you go." It was a wave of sadness, heartbreak, and nostalgia that felt alright, even if it shouldn't have. That's just the first track. The whole album encapsulates this feeling — atmospheric nostalgia.
The genre of this album is dream pop and indie rock, which is a personal favorite and what I would recommend to a lot of people until the day I die.
There are a LOT more genres included in this playlist, and I wish I could describe them one by one — but I'm not that good at it HAHAHAHA so just enjoy those beats and you can tell me how they are! Have fun exploring!
Comments