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.

Like most songs I love, it contains a gloomy melancholy, a yearning, the lightest shade of darkness fueling complex emotions.

It’s a blueprint for other art school kids who have noise to make and meaning to share. They remind me that there still is hope, that no matter how hard tech and capitalism try to replace us, we will always find a way.

Tha Crossroads might be the most melodious, upbeat sad song ever written, but it is most definitely a song about grief, about memorial, about the people we’ve lost along the way.

This passing of grief from artist to audience is a gift that not everyone wants to receive, but it’s a gift nonetheless, and within it lives a blueprint for how to move forward no matter how many losses stack up.

I try to remind myself that it’s okay to be sad, to be scared, to search for meaning in the dark hours of night. That it’s okay to be angry, and ranty sometimes. That’s how we resist apathy.

It’s important to consider the VU juxtaposed to our modern moment: they broke barriers and shined a spotlight on alternative lifestyles that were decades away from mainstream representation.

The saddest songs are the ones that welcome me in, a warm embrace. A voice, a lyric, a mood, a rhythm that breaks me down and builds me back up.

“The brainwashing worked and now people think music is free.” — James Blake