We’re consumed with mediocre, unimportant content now, targeted to us by algorithms that aren’t designed to discern quality. And we never know why certain things are sent to us over others. Spotify’s Release Radar is pretty decent, most of the time, but there’s enough what the holy fuck suggestions that make me think even that, which is meant to be based on my listening habits and tastes, is for sale to the “artists” willing to pay for that space.

Looking back at our younger selves can be complicated, a process of reconciling who we are with who we thought we’d become — wondering what happened to that spirit, and energy, that goes missing in so many as we get older. There’s just no song in the modern era that captures the nostalgia for our former selves quite like this one.

Perhaps sometimes the person who caught the actual football missed the point entirely, that the resulting cheerleading and deification created a false sense of success, a misunderstanding that things will always be so good, that the ball will always fall gently into our hands. It's a trope, at this point, that those who rise to the top in high school reach their peak too soon. That's not always true, of course, but in that way I'm glad I wasn't the one who caught the football.

It’s time we blame the real problem: out of touch politicians for accepting big tech lobby money at the expense of common sense regulations, the tech platforms profiting off of art while inhibiting earning potential, and ourselves for buying into the model at all.

I guess that’s what happens as we grow older, more removed from our pasts. We’re not just strangers to our old friends, we become strangers to ourselves. And that’s never more obvious than when we go back to where it all began, when we can see in the mirror of others all the ways in which we’ve changed.

To be queer is to know you can’t fit yourself in the world as it is, that you either mask, hide in safe spaces, withhold your truth in any way you can, or boldly present yourself exactly as you are to a world that might reject you. It feels at times that rousay’s use of Auto-tune plays in this space, a way of distancing or numbing oneself from having to perform as anyone other than yourself.

My favorite art transports me to places and feelings, introduces me to characters I can’t be, conjures meaning to experiences I couldn’t otherwise comprehend, sends me to parts of my mind as foreign and faraway as long-gone cultures.

If an artist was adamant about something never being released, I don't want it. That's not so clear with Russell, who was still creating and recreating right up until his premature death. Perhaps he's different, given his sensibility, that a song was only finished when he was no longer there to edit it.

There's a drag queen buried within every boy, a curiosity to express differently, to feel things, to explore and express and understand things about themselves that have been demonized by a patriarchal culture too afraid to look at itself in the mirror.

The problem with being on top is that it’s all too easy to forget what it feels like when you’re not. It’s been a tough stretch for most people across industries. It seems most of my talented friends are either unemployed, underemployed, or unhappily employed.

Plainsong is a synth-heavy song, and even though it sounds unlike anything on the album, it creates the exact runway the rest of the album requires to take off. What’s more intimate than a conversation that takes place during a storm at the end of the world?

The old flag decal was the original MAGA hat, a virtue signal that you in fact had no virtues, an adhesive way to whine about us stinking woke ass liberal elites.

Can’t believe how strange it is to be anything at all

Sad songs do that to me, they uplift me, a reminder that to feel anything at all is to be alive.

Life is weird that way, the way it recedes as a tide does during a Full Moon, the way nostalgia comes and goes and leaves us wondering how we got from there to here.

Damn, I miss a lot of things in this life, but this party ain’t one of them.

Boredom is dangerous, exhilarating, filled with endless possibilities. I’m certain now there are few things in life more vital than boredom.

Whenever I feel struck by an unhealthy dose of writer’s block, I return to those old bands, to this genre, to refuel me, to get me grooving on the page again.

There’s a light bubblegum pop feel to it until the heavier guitar line takes over and reminds us we’re far from the ’50s.

I fear nature too much to understand it, even though I’m drawn to understanding. I feel the same way about getting to know myself: every layer reveals something foreign.