REID #34

May 25, 2021

SHORT

This week has been emotionally exhausting even though I haven’t really done anything.

I actually thought I was doing ok, but then I almost tried the “Vegan Curry Goat” option that a restaurant near me sells.

So that’s where we’re at… (“we” being the famous comedy duo- me & my brain).

MEDIUM

I have been listening to Jesus Take The Wheel, Temporary Home, and Concrete Angel.

Nobody knows why.

I guess I am nostalgic for the time when country artists wrote songs about foster children, car crashes, and kids who died too early.

Why was that a genre?

I’m going to write a hilarious song called “Flapjack Angels” about a family who gets flattened by a semi truck and now they’re all flapjack angels.

Carrie Underwood will be jealous of me and my awesome song.

I’ve been cracking myself up a lot by saying “life is a winding c*nt” (instead of life is a winding road).

Does anyone else find this absolutely hilarious?

Maybe that will be another song on my inevitable country album.

LONG

I was waiting in line for a breakfast burrito at a famous place in Brooklyn. It was 90 degrees, and someone was singing “Take On Me” at a volume too loud for a 90 degree day.

I immediately found myself thrust into the past, thinking about the first time someone tried to sing…

If I was a cave-person, sitting on a rock, and the person next to me was suddenly like “AHhhhHHHAHHHhhhhhhLALALALAOOoeeeeOOeeeezapdababdoo”

I would be like…

“Is this person ok? This person seems UNWELL. Maybe I should go get the neanderthal doctor (or whatever they had back then).”

To be fair, I have the same response today to anyone who sings near me or around me.

Simply put, if you sing? You are mentally ill.

I can say this, I did a cappella for six years.

Which leads us to the next topic of discussion: The Olivia Rodrigo Album.

On May 21st, Olivia Rodrigo released her debut album: SOUR. On May 20th, my 25 year old friends and I scoured the internet looking for “the leak”, because despite having lived for 25 years on this planet we call earth, we could not wait 24 extra hours for a damn album written by a 17 year old to come out.

How did we get here?

It all started with the show High School Musical The Musical: The Series. One dark day last year (honestly couldn’t tell you the month or season), I decided to “peruse options” on my friend’s Disney Plus account. Two seconds into logging on, I was bombarded with an ad for HSMTMTS.

As a child of the early 2000s, HSM was obviously huge for me, and as a child who lived with a sister who had the entire HSM 2 soundtrack on her mini karaoke machine, the music was a particularly large part of my life (and the whole family’s whether we liked it or not).

So I pressed play, hoping the show would take me back to the days of childhood joy, wonder, and screaming over whether my sister or I got to sing the famous (and, in hindsight, culturally insensitive) Sharpay bonus track: Humuhumunukunukuapua'a.

I’m not going to spoil the show. But I would like to use this platform to say that the actress who plays Big Red’s mother is doing incredible work. I went through her entire IMDB and got verklempt because she has seemingly been doing such important Disney mom/ supporting character acting for years. Amy Tolsky, (if this isn’t too creepy), I love you.

Anyway, Olivia’s in the show and she is fantastic and that’s how I found out about her and her new album is now out and amazing and her SNL performances were insane (I literally dare anyone to try and sing Good 4 U in the comfort of their own home without panting like a dog, let alone onstage in Studio 8H).

The album is a mix of riot girl music and Taylor Swift drag with nods to Lorde and Billie Eilish. People have been criticizing it saying, “she’s just copying people” and that “she doesn’t know who she is”, but I disagree. I think the album is a self-conscious collage of her influences.

Much like the stickers all over her face on the record cover, it’s a stylistic cobbling of different musical influences and reference points. IT IS PASTICHE! (shoutout to my liberal arts undergrad degree in semiotics). To quote Lady Gaga in this video, Olivia is “unafraid to reference or not reference”. It’s a Zine of sorts. Very on-brand with the young riot-girl aesthetic.

Ultimately, Olivia is young and has a huge career ahead of her and idk why all of a sudden I’m so obsessed with Disney and young people culture (you KNOW I will be watching all of Love Victor Season 2 which drops soon). But it’s really fun to participate in.

The shows are bad, but because of that, they’re good?

They’re blunderbuss-y.

I don’t know if I used that right, but, as one of Olivia’s favorite artists Jack White says, “I've always loved the word blunderbuss. I've always thought that it was a beautiful word and that it could mean several different things.”

Preach, Jack!

I urge you to explore many of Jack’s incredible quotes here.

I also think it is strange that Taylor and Olivia are close now and Taylor is sampled on the album but she didn’t post anything about Olivia. Many of my friends thinks this means that Olivia is going to open for Taylor on tour. Or just that Taylor wants to let Olivia have her moment. I don’t know what I think, I am new to the world of caring about this kind of stuff.

I am going to end this now, because it’s getting out of control, but, until next time……………………….. hope ur ok*.

*a reference to the last song on Olivia’s album that she wrote about… gay people? I used to hate it so much but now randomly love it because of the bridge and bridge alone

Gr8 tweet from my gf: