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bloodsoaked-gown · 10 months

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pt 12.2

her pov-

what the fuck what the fuck are you out of mind payu? you hate PDA and you now want to do it?? ''wait are you really thinking I am serious?' WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME, i am too carefree about this all 'calm down im joking, lets go play some other game' I laugh it out and turn around to withdrawn the won tickets. He is still standing silently looking here and there when I get up 'come on' I think I broke his brain or something I turn around to go to another machine but he grabs me by my hand and drags me to a corner behind a machine, 'no one is here.' 'what are you doi-' and his lips are on mine, I forgot where we are, his lips are as always warm, and his kiss is soft, my body has a weird sense of calmness, its like standing on a beach watching the sun drown as breeze hits your face. His hands wrap around my waist, and I pull him closer.

We break apart on suddenly hearing a few giggles, there were kids, probably 10th graders, crossing by, 'don't mind us, lovebirds' a girl says doing a mock salute and they all walk away, Ayan is standing a feet apart and we both are red, shy and smiling looking at each other 'we should go now..' 'yeah' he says while rubbing the back of his neck he is cute.

It's slightly raining, more like a drizzle, and I am driving the car now, to keep my mind straight and away from my mind. At one point I want to un-button that goddamn shirt and feel his skin. What if he finds me unlikable and disgusting for thinking sinful thoughts for him.. Its not like i havent seen his body, but the urge to touch it was always in control of me, but ever since then, I have been loosing my self control. I want to keep feeling his hands on mine, his body beside mine.

on other side I am scared how to tell him about my past. Just the thought of it makes me ache, what if.. what if he looks at me with those eyes that scream I am an ugly monster behind this facade.. what if he leaves me, It wont be a surprise tho.. I see a stall of makai ka bhutta (corn cob) 'hey, see there?' I point towards it, 'let's have some?' 'oh hell yesssssss its the perfect weather for it' 'i know right' I pull up near the stall.

we were standing in the small shed, our shoulders touching. He is smiling, watching the rain as we wait for corns, he always does when it rains, as if he is 5 year old watching rain and being fascinated by it. 'today is nice' he says turning to me 'yep it is'. The seller hands us beautifully roasted Corn-cobs, with their tips all black and soaked in lime juice and rock salt, ugh I love this, everything about this, from the fresh hot corn in my hand and the slight rain on my skin and him beside me, It is perfect. One day we will have a house and we will wait for rain to come and then dance on the roof kissing each other.. what the hell, I shouldn't be daydreaming things. I don't want this to be ruined.. I cannot dream about future.. what if I tell him and.. he leaves.. I know he isn't that kind of person but still.. how can I let hope grow in me? Every time my expectations are broken and I am too messed up to be in love and to be loved. 'what are you thinking?' 'nothing' 'umhmm' 'nothing' he gives me an eyeroll and we let out a laugh.

He starts humming Badde ache lagte hai in between each bite

'ye dharti'

'ye nadiaa'

'ye raina'

'aur?' I ask

'aur tum' he says looking straight at me and smiling

'hum tum itne pass hai, durr hai chand sitare....' we both are humming together as we eat

His pov-

later at her house, 6.08 pm

We are sitting on the sofa thinking of what to watch, more like she is scrolling and searching while I stare at her, how do I explain tell her I just said yes for movies it to spend more time with her, I am such a creepy clingy person.. but we wont get time for next 2 week until the gala ends because of all the work. She puts on some thriller comedy and I am looking at her, they way eyebrows furrow and creases on her forehead, the way she smiles in between and her peeking side glances at me.

'why are you staring at me focus on the movie' she asks me, her eyes still glued to screen. 'Just cause I want to focus on you.' she presses her lips then asks 'so are you just gonna stare me?' 'I want to do more than that.' I don't know why I am so honest right now, but ever since we kissed in Arcade, I just don't want to stop at kiss. I tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear, for clear look at her face and she is silently staring at me. 'more than that.' her eyes are wide open. I nod. 'then why are you still?' 'may I?' 'do it coward' she is smiling wide. 'don't complain about it later' I shift near her and she shifts away while trying to keep her smile contained. I shift again and so does she and now she is at edge. I shift for the last time and hold her hands. 'stop running away Payu.. after pulling on my desperation' She lets out a grin and leans towards my face I am grinning too, we are looking at each other and she plants a kiss on my forehead and re-establishes the eye contact. 'here happy?' I pout at her 'greedy huh?' I nod and give a peck on her lips and my stomach is tingly. 'this is better' and I turn away from her, sitting straight looking at the TV. A guy is chasing someone in night-time or something.

I want her, to be kissing her but what if I ca- She tugs and moves me towards her and leans close, lingering with her lips on mine, touching, but not kissing. My thoughts were all over the place but all I know is her hands on me, her brown eyes staring at me with same need, her rosy cheeks and the way she is breathing, I love her.

her pov-

I tug his shirt and lean close to his face. We are holding our gaze as my lips are slightly brushing on his lips. My insides are going feral, as if I have no thoughts but him, which is true. I want to call him mine, do things to each other and have secrets between us no one will know. My heart beats are audible, I shudder a breathe I need him, fuck it. I pull him by collar and crash my lips on his, my eyes are shut and it was red, everything felt red and burning, I haven't felt this impatient about anyone. I pull away, I don't want to look at him, what if he, he doesn't feel the same. His hands cup around my face and he tilts my face, I open my eyes to find him gazing me, with the same gaze as last sunday night, making me melt in his palms, he is pretty, his hair is kinda messy. His eyes are dark brown, like chocolat- He pulls me in again, our lips are locked with each other.

@pheonix-thefirebird @damnn-dorothea @vellhighbandi @hell-lit011019

#im severely bored so im writing shit #the hyperactivity insect has bit me so here you go #next part they are gonna get fucked in not that sense that sharma wants :D

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sagethegremlin · 8 months

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since leitmotifs is your thing, I would love to see your personal analysis on the evolution of the ringtone "over the horizon" by Samsung. quite frankly, I think it is a very important thing to analyze, as something so trivial as a ringtone has shaped our view of a phone.

/hj and /lh looool

Ok so ringtones are something that most people never really think about in their day-to-day lives. It's a noise we hear all the time, and something that we most often will take for granted with how much it is "overplayed" to us. Personally, I've only ever had an iphone so I am not at all used to Samsung's ringtone, which I feel gives me a unique perspective on the matter.

So without further ado, I'll take this year by year and then analyze my results at the end

2011 (Galaxy S2): This is off to a great start. We have a good theme, and the percussion behind it is perfect. This is the kind of ringtone you want to have in your pocket. The kind that says "we're in a disney summer movie montage and we're living our best life!" Overall, a great start.

2012 (Galaxy S3): This one feels like it's trying to do too much. It still has the core leitmotif from the first ringtone, but gone are the feel good vibes of the percussion. Every note that is rung in here feels like it's trying to personally attack you, and that's not even to mention the drums! Everything here is too sharp, and the violins come completely out of nowhere. This definitely feels more like what you would expect a ringtone to be, rather then something that makes you smile when you hear it.

2013 (Galaxy S4): OH WE'RE SO BACK. This is definitely more aligned to the feel of the first one, but it also did so much more without seeming like it was trying to! This is the first one that really uses the core theme more like a leitmotif, and treats it as "this is the melody that you're used to, as a little treat, but check out this too!" and that's exactly what it should be! All in all, this one's just lovely.

2014 (Galaxy S5): This is pretty much just like the 2013 one but I definitely noticed that the parts where the orchestra crescendoed were much stronger, giving it a much more prideful feel.

2015 (Galaxy S6): Ok I'm not saying this one is bad, but it kinda comes out of nowhere and has this vibe to it like you're either about to get a news report or witness a major moment in a coming of age edited in imovie. It also just kind of abruptly cuts off? There's no musical resolution here and that makes me sad. :(

2016 (Galaxy S7): This one starts off so good. It's got a good beat to it and we're vibing so hard dude. But then, it uh, uh, it kinda struggles? I get that was how it composed but it honestly feels like someone on a marimba is struggling to keep time and it makes me nervous like girl we do not need these eighth and sixteenth rests in here we are perfectly fine without them thank you (still better than 2015 tho).

2017 (Galaxy S8): HELLO??? GIRLIE WHERE DID YOU COME FROM THIS IS THE BEST ONE YET! THE BUM BUM BAAS??? Anyway this one is genuinely so incredibly incredible. It starts off with a good beat that it continues to keep up throughout, it makes good use of the leitmotif, and there's a bunch of guys vocalizing in the background like who's idea was that that's incredible!!! :D

2018 (Galaxy S9): This is literally just the emotional climax of a coming of age story it isn't even a ringtone anymore.

2019 (Galaxy S10): Oh she wants to be the sims 4 character creator theme so bad. Anyway this one also doesn't really feel like a ringtone but not in a bad way! Girlie is going off in the string instrument department and it is paying off this just feels great. And the way they do the original leitmotif in the chimes at the end? Oh I love her.

2020 (Galaxy S20): This one is kinda sweet and chill. It definitely feels like it's being played on either a sitar or a mandolin, and it uses that to create a very chill vibe. There are no background instruments or percussion at all, so that really just further proves that these are straying more and more away from the sound of a typical ringtone (for better or for worse). I will say, this definitely feels like something I would try to fall asleep to, not like something I would use to remind me to pick up the phone.

2021 (Galaxy S21): She's so pretty??? I would say that this also has a similar vibe to the last one but I like it a lot more. The piano is absolutely beautiful and I really really enjoy it. And even though this also doesn't really feel like a ringtone, I'd argue that it's better at being one than the 2020 one.

(We're gonna stop there cuz I feel like it.)

If I were to rank all of these, I would say from best to worst: 2017, 2014, 2021, 2013, 2019, 2011, 2020, 2018, 2016, 2015, 2012

Ultimately, I feel like something like this is very interesting to look at. We can see overtime Samsung trying different strategies with this and how that reflects on their future models for it. For example, we ended up with most of these reflecting what I've been calling the "coming of age story" vibe, and we notice how they strive to create much more of a beautiful song to listen to than something trying to alert you of calls. All in all, an interesting look at such a mundane part of life.

#samsung #im adding that tag #look at my post boy #sagehavingagoodoltime

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burlveneer-music · 5 months

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Maria Elena Silva - Dulce - I did not expect to hear Marc Ribot playing guitar in a dream pop setting!

Pushing past the submissive qualities of her debut, Silva captures a deep and deliberate pop-forward poignancy in her sophomore “Dulce”. Written in the wake of her relocation to Chicago, Silva contemplates new love, a listless fate, sobriety, and maternity all the while retaining the patience of her previous release, “Eros”. Temperate motifs aside, a freer, wilder intensity permeates “Dulce”. Longtime collaborator Scott Dean Taylor has developed a singular vocabulary when playing with Silva and dispenses all manner of obligatory drummer-isms. A sonic ascetic, he plays only what her songs require. Listen to his booming kick drum mimic the sound of a thunderclap three minutes into "Jasper." Hammond organ whiz Carey Frank fills in blanks throughout the spectrum as he trades off with Maria's down-tuned electric guitar for command of the bass frequencies and longtime Lou Reed and kd lang drummer Danny Frankel alternates with Hodges for percussion duties. Silva’s “Dulce” is unapologetic. She brings forth higher than ever before highs, powerful whispers, and a noteworthy knack for teetering between the classical and the senseless. One minute you're hanging on every syllable of Silva's vocals and the next minute you're flying into the clouds on Ribot's guitar and the group’s rhythmic interplay. Maria Elena Silva - acoustic and electric guitars, vocals Carey Frank - Hammond organ Danny Frankel - percussion Stephen Hodges - percussion on “Jasper”, “Love”, “Narrowed” Marc Ribot - acoustic and electric guitars, ukelele, electric sitar Chris Schlarb - acoustic guitars on "Love, If It Is So" Scott Dean Taylor - acoustic drums Produced and Mixed by Chris Schlarb

#Bandcamp #Maria Elena Silva #singer-songwriter #female vocal #marc ribot #2023 #dream pop

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dustedmagazine · 6 months

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Madhuvanti Pal — The Holy Mother: Madhuvanti Pal Plays the Rudra Veena (Sublime Frequencies)

The rudra veena is a South Asian string instrument that differs from the better-known sitar in being historically earlier and in aspects of its construction (e.g., fixed vs. movable frets), but, to the untrained ear, the shimmering tones are similar. In the hands of Madhuvanti Pal, the rudra veena sings, hums, cries and purrs, creating complex layers of sound that evolve slowly and with a kind of inevitability that, for those outside the tradition, makes the listening experience something like hearing a vividly told story in an unknown but wonderfully melodious language.

In a review earlier this year of a recording by the Hindustani artist Debashish Bhattacharya, I acknowledged that I have no understanding of the place of the music in South Asian culture and that my assessment of it is entirely aesthetic, and I repeat that caveat here. Sublime Frequencies is marketing The Holy Mother to English speakers in this country, so the people who write for and read Dusted and, like me, are ignorant of the cultural context, are presumably among the target audience. And it is for them (rather than those who know the culture) that this review is intended.

This recording consists of two compositions of 40 to 50 minutes in length. Each is divided into two parts, which is a necessity for the vinyl, but the fade in and out is a bit distracting for the digital version. In any case, the scope of the compositions allows for the long-range development of musical ideas. I say “compositions” with some caution since the liner notes do not indicate how much improvisation is involved or how traditional Pal’s approach is.

The first composition, “Todi,” begins, as might be expected, with a drone, specifically, a mid-range drone. Around it, higher- and lower-pitched tones emerge and fade. The nature of the instrument is such that there is no truly empty space, but, as on many stringed instruments, various voices are identifiable. The notes are often extended, as if with a slide, though the images of her show Pal playing with only her fingers. The tempo is fairly slow and deliberate until around the halfway point (for which reason the fade in and out is especially unfortunate), when the pace and intricacy of the phrasing increase, making for a thrilling moment. The tempo then abates a bit until the last five minutes, when the lower-pitched voice becomes increasingly insistent only to yield to the higher-pitched voice before all fades away but the drone.

The mood and feeling of “Bhairavi” are similar to “Todi,” but the lower-pitched voice remains dominant through most of the first half, and the higher-pitched voice seems sweeter. Again, there is a notable quickening of the pace near the midpoint and a transitional moment about three-quarters of the way through. This time, the higher-pitched voice comes to dominate in effortless displays of great dexterity by Pal as single notes combine and contrast with stabbing strums. Once more, resolution arrives in the final minutes as the voices switch off, and the ending delivers the dynamics of an anthem.

Pal takes listeners willing to devote their attention to her playing on two thrilling journeys here, though I suppose the music would also make for a pleasant background. Notably, she is a music educator and builder of instruments and, apparently, a pioneer in terms of being a woman performer on the instrument. Those of us on the outside looking in will have no doubt of her mastery of the rudra veena, and, though the relationship of the music to the Holy Mother remains undefined, its spiritual power seems to transcend cultural boundaries.

Jim Marks

#dusted magazine #albumreview #madhuvanti pal #the holy mother: madhuvanti pal plays the rudra veena #sublime frequencies #jim marks #india #rudra veena

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svaranjali-practice-log · 8 months

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Friday September 15th This is my journal entry #1 basically it’s my 3rd week learning to play the sitar and today after class I took it upon myself to come to the practice room and commit to muscle memory both the normal scale (SRGMPDNS) and Raag Yaman (I'm not sure of the scale notation of this because I’m not ear trained literally at all... Future note to learn how to notate Raag Yaman..) as you can see it’s been okay! I’m slightly affirmed on my ability to commit to memory the raag as I had trouble grasping how it’s played on the sitar at first... it’s minor notes are always surprising when i hear them, and i couldn’t seem to remember where in the scale they’re placed and which frets correspond to those notes but i have it now i think. A critique i have of myself though both in terms of playing and form (watching this back i realized how awful the form is Lol...) is to figure out how to let notes ring..? when i hear my professor play the notes draw out without a silence inbetween.... How Do you Do That. I'm making a note to ask. Also i need to keep my fingers more together on my playing hand. I also need to keep in mind not looking over the neck at the frets and strings, It’s getting better but i still notice myself doing it.

A hope i have for the near future is to improve the smoothness of the scales, and also increase my understanding by any amount of how sitar composition works (how other strings are incorporated, timings conventions, etc. etc.). and also to understand what to expect of myself by the time of the performance.

My finger hurts too much to practice anymore, so I’m ending the practice session after ~1 hr... which is neat amount of time according to Me.

#Entry

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srbachchan · 3 years

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DAY 4948

Jalsa, Mumbai Sept 13/14, 2021 Mon/Tue 12:59 AM

Birthday - EF Sudeep Satyaranjan Roy ; Ef Manish Jain Rajnandgaon .. September 14 .. greetings and affection on this day for you .. love from the Ef family

.. there is no precise reason to be jumping with joy .. but even if there wasn’t, what harm ..

because life has the method to put you in the spirits of joy and the reverse in moments of time .. not that this is what is happening here , but how wondeful to be able to say so ...

each moment of the day passes by in the reason and apprehension of what next .. this is over what next .. its never nothing to be next but it does not spread out in this manner ..

.. so the policy is never to be in expectation .. never to be apprehending what next .. never hoping or thinking out the modalities of the next, but to live the present and rejoice in its abstractness .. for who knows many a modern day invention or thought came from the most unsecured, un remitted love ..

.. better to be frank and up front .. to be understood .. to be given that chance or moment .. and if not to ‘jump the wall and procure it’ .. as I heard somewhere .. ‘ if you are desperate to get something you shall have to take it away from him that has it ‘

.. came across in the midst of several other acts .. and before it lost its path typed it down on the utensil of everyday life - the mobile .. the saviour , the informer, the connector, the everything ever .. or perhaps that is what the makers in the other direction aim to achieve in notation on what ever instrument they may be using ..

.. life and existence travel in your pocket .. and that is not even metaphorically stated .. it is indeed there in its existence ..

.. and pocket may be far too convenient for words .. palm is better .. the palm .. there is where it resides for most of the waking day for all .. planning plotting and guiding planning for us all the while ..

.. but no planning can ever surpass the planning of the unknown .. and that shall remain so .. so why worry .. or be in some informative jargon for the jargon of the benefit of society, that were working in the right temperament for the betterment all around ..

why why why .. why do I move even before the stationary has been established .. stationary , still , unmoved .. why ..

perhaps this may have answers ..

.. or this ..

.. cannot really tell ..

best to leave it .. in dismay rather than be of some search to discover reason .. at times it proves futile ..

SO .. the after work work out was in conjunction with the grandson .. he be there before so the ambiance be set by him for the workout .. to be inspired in the working .. and it was such a delight to find that the ol’ timers music was superseding the present GEN ..

it was ‘i wanna hold you hand ...’ beatles ; ‘i can get no satisfaction ..’ and ‘truti frutie bomba lootie .. bappoapa loobba ba tootie fruitee ‘ .. and the old guard of the early 60′s late 50′s finding attention now .. and when they hear me sing along the words , which have remained with me through time .. they are in shock .. how do you know all this ? 😯 ..

.. haha .. buddy .. we are the older GEN .. we went through a very impressive stage of life .. the best of both ..

.. but what times they were ...

.. the fervour of the Beatles unmatched by any such fever ever before or after .. each new record taking its time to reach Indian shores but when it did the excitement was immense ..

.. the sing along times .. at parties at restaurants at every possible music outlet .. the Sunday jam sessions at the afternoons .. and when the sitar of ‘norwegian wood ‘ came out it was as if they had migrated into our very Indian personal world ..

aah .. this were the days my friend .. 🎶🎶

love you all .. deeply ..

Amitabh Bachchan

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imaginethreehouses · 3 years

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Hello! Can I request headcanons for Claude and Dimitri with a female reader that has a huge talent for music? Like, she is amazing at playing piano, singing, playing violin, all that! And she just likes to practice alone because she is shy about it?🥺 Thank you so much!!!

I had a lot of fun writing these, Anon! I will admit for your entertainment that I don’t know the next thing about music, so I almost referred to Claude’s sitar as a ‘scyther’ before realising I was thinking of the pokemon 💙

Dimitri:

I can picture Dimitri hearing a violin in the distance and being intrigued enough to get closer.

Then he would see you, playing as you stand on a lonely terrace with your hair gently blowing in the wind, and would be completely smitten.

Noticing you are no longer alone, you would stop and turn around, the both of you completely freezing when you lock eyes with each other.

“M-My apologies! I should not have been staring. But I must say, your skills are impressive! I don’t think I’ve ever heard music this pleasant here at the monastery.”

You want to run away but he’s blocking the only exit. You mumble something and shyly point in his direction, the confidence you showed while playing now completely gone.

When he realises what you mean, he awkwardly steps aside, apologising again as you quickly fast-walk past.

That night, he visits your room to give back something that you dropped in your escape and apologise again.

He’s surprised to see you have a piano in there as well. You do love music, so a conversation eventually sparks, and you slowly begin to open up to him.

Dimitri confesses that all his music teachers gave up on him as a child, as he was completely useless with anything needing him to have fine motor control of his fingers.

You highlight that you have heard him sing in the choir, and he admits that he does put a lot of effort in his singing, even if only to make up for his lack of other talents.

Suddenly, you are overcome with the need to know what he sounds like on his own. He is embarrassed, but he agrees to sing for you, if you will play the piano.

You are both stiff and nervous at first, but soon enough, the music starts flowing well and the melody you make together is beautiful.

When you finish, Dimitri is so overcome by emotion that he has to give a quick apology and make a quick escape out of your room.

That night, for once, his dreams are not plagued by nightmares, but full of beautiful music instead.

Claude:

Claude is musically gifted as well, and he’s not really shy about it, but he’d rather not reveal much about himself if he can help it, so not a lot of people would know.

He’s a little mischievous, so if your rooms shared a wall and he could hear your voice and music through it... he would not let you know.

He would love laying in bed to hear you sing, or doing his homework to the calming sound of your piano playing in the background.

One day, however, the hour comes and he can’t hear a thing. Worried, he would knock on your door with an excuse.

He notices right away that today must be a rough day for you. He points at your piano and pretends he has not seen one before.

Confused, you try to explain that it’s a very common musical instrument in Fódlan, and find that talking about music starts to lift your spirits a little just as he had planned.

“Sounds interesting. Can I give it a try?”

It’s not the best idea to let a complete beginner have a go at your finely tuned precious instrument, but Claude is incredibly charming, and you really need some distraction today.

When he sits down at the piano, he lays a finger on a key and turns to you in mock surprise, as if he didn’t expect it to make that sound at all.

Seeing it gets a chuckle out of you, he goes on with his skit, until you finally break into laughter.

“You do know how to play piano!”

Claude laughs too and admits to his crime, although he does note that he’s much better with a sitar.

By the time you’ve finished playing and singing together, the worries that haunted you earlier that day feel like a distant echo of the past.

#dimitri alexandre blaiddyd #claude von riegan #dimitri x reader #claude x reader #dimitri imagine #dimitri headcanons #claude imagine #claude headcanons #dimitri x you #claude x you #fe3h #fe3h x reader #fe3h x you

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your-lips-are-very-red · 3 years

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St. Vincent x Emma Madden Interview

This is the text from the St. Vincent interview that Emma Madden was asked to not use. Since Miss Madden has decided to take it down, I wanted it to be available somewhere online - in case she manages to get all the cached versions taken down, too.

SOURCE: https://archive.is/wFkLN

About a fortnight ago I was commissioned to interview St. Vincent, an artist I have been inspired by, impressed by, turned on by, compelled by, curious of, in awe of, occasionally suspicious of—for the better half of a decade. I try not to think about other journalists too much, but St. Vincent has developed a reputation for intimidating us. For her last press cycle, she made her interviewers crawl into a pink box; she would play a pre-recorded message on a tape recorder if a question bored or irked her. I found that quite funny—irresistibly imperious—but I considered it an act of degradation rather than an interesting switch of power. I love famous people but I also find them quite silly, like a Schnauzer wearing a bowtie.

I didn’t know why, but for around two hours after our call ended, I was reeling with nervous energy. I was vocalising it and trying to get to the other side of it, the way I sing songs when I’m walking through a haunted house. I woke up the next morning with a voice message from the editor who assigned this piece. I am fond of this person and I will not name them. MBC, the team in charge of St. Vincent’s publicity (which is helmed by Barbara Charone, who also works for Madonna, and is considered one of the more powerful and intimidating publicists in the industry) had been on the phone to this editor, demanding the piece be pulled. My editor’s words: “They said she’s terrified of this interview coming out.” The publication didn’t have a leg to stand on.

"Terrified"? That word didn't seem to square. I thought I had done a not-so-good job the night before. I ended the call thinking I hadn’t asked the right questions. St. Vincent and I didn’t feel like a good match in conversation (or at least not in this conversational setup set-up, for which I was given thirty minutes, and continual reminders from the person on St. Vincent’s team, who remained on the call with us, that we’d need to wrap up well in time for St. Vincent’s Instagram Live session with Paul McCartney, which directly followed our interview.) St. Vincent tended to interpret my questions in bad faith. I assumed she believed me to be a Bad Reader; presumptuous, judgemental, simple, anti-curious—all qualities that her latest album ‘Daddy’s Home’, which I’ve interpreted as a counter to the folly, inadequacy and meretriciousness of moral purity—counters. Anyway, she read me wrong. I love Lana Del Rey.

I got a call from MBC later that morning by a man who sounded quite nervous. I told him I was confused, I asked him what the matter seemed to be. He wasn't totally sure, he said, "she found the interview aggressive." Aggressive? I complimented her and cowed to her and laughed at her jokes. "Well, the message has been passed down a line of many messengers, she might not have actually said that." The man on the phone said that this—one of his artists demanding an interview to be pulled—had never happened to him before. It hadn't happened to me either. I felt annoyed by how easy it was for St. Vincent to kill something I had researched and expected money for. But the interview started to seem valuable to me after I was told that she didn't want it out in the world. "Can we draw a line under this and just kill the piece here?" said the man on the phone.

Below is the full transcript of my interview with St. Vincent (save for a short and-forth about Tool which didn’t make sense when turned into text). My questions are in bold, her responses are in italics.

**for the sake of this post, Madden’s questions are bold and Annie’s answers are not** Hi, how are you? Good how’s it going?

Not too bad. What’s your mood for today? My mood for today, well it’s good, I’m getting on an Instagram Live chat with Paul McCartney in a couple minutes so my mood is a little bit nervous but good.

I’m excited to talk about this album, I think it has a sick sense of humor that I appreciate a lot. I’ve had a really fun time listening to it.

Oh I’m glad, thank you.

I’m sensing there’s kind of a 70s trend at the moment in terms of fashion and the ways some other bands are presenting themselves. Is that something you were anticipating, is that something you feel you belong to, or was it just kind of accidental?

Accidental.

Do you feel bummed about that? No I don’t, I always just kind of do my own thing.

Do you think there’s a reason why people might be inspired by the 70s today? Do you see an analog with our world today and with the 70s? I guess this album is based in 1973, right?

Between ‘71 and ‘76, so post flower children idealism, post the Summer of Love hangover, but pre escapism of gay disco and pre nihilism of punk. Life was bad but music was good, kind of vibe.

Kind of when the trash aesthetic was taking hold, especially by Andy Warhol. Does trash inspire you? Um like literal rubbish?

No like the trash aesthetic, I guess in the PR you call it sleazy, grimy. Yeah but the difference with sleazy is that sleazy tries to present as glamorous but there’s something off, trash is just trash. I don’t know if trash pretends to be anything other.

Can you have glamour without sleaze? Sure, absolutely. I mean, like the 20s Greta Garbo way, I would say Golden Era Hollywood, I mean behind the scenes it was probably a nightmare but you look at it and it is very genuinely shiny and beautiful.

I love the sitar on this album especially on ‘Down’, the riff is so sick. How did you get to the sitar? Well it’s not a sitar per se, it’s a choral electric sitar guitar and so it was I think George Harrison made them kind of popular in the ‘60s, I think the one I have is from ’67 and it plays like a guitar but it has a resonating body on it so it sounds sitar-esque. It was made very famous in the Steely Dan Do it Again solo.

I guess the main PR bulletin point of this album is about your dad coming out of jail. Why did you want that to be the main way that people might read this album? More like an entry point, the title Daddy’s Home to me I mean one, it is literal but also it’s funny and cringy and pervy and also I think more than anything kind of refers to my own transformation into Daddy as it were. Yeah it’s probably not anything I would’ve really thrown out there except that it was made public without my consent but I didn’t really get to tell that side of the story and I don’t bring it up for sympathy. It simply is my story, it’s not intended to be indicative of necessarily anything, it’s just my story and I was gonna tell it with humor and compassion, all of that.

Did you anticipate a lack of sympathy for your dad’s crimes and the subject matter of this album and did that factor into how you shaped this record? That’s the tail wagging the dog my dear. No, no. A lack of sympathy, well, which crime would be the most sympathetic? I didn’t do anything, I’m simply writing about something that I think on some level everyone who’s ever had a parent can understand in the sense of you’re often going “How much of you am I?” and we kind of do identity projection through all these things so no, it’s again, it’s not really there for anything other than my own anecdotal story.

At what point did you transform into this daddy character? For how much of your adult life have you been the daddy? Oh I would just say over the past few years, I’ve just been quite a bit more leaned back and shoulder shrug and say let’s just sit down in the old beat up leather armchair and have a tequila and chat it out you know. Life is complicated, human beings are complicated and I wanted to just write stories about flawed people. There’s a whole lot of judgement going around and not a whole lot of understanding. And judgement is anti-curious. There are some people, perhaps the more sanctimonious and morally pure, who might not be interested in an artist’s reflection on their father’s white collar crimes. Do you have much sympathy for those kinds of people? I mean I think I can get sympathy for all people. If that is the reason why they decide not to spend 46 minutes with my work then I’m sure there’s plenty of other work out there for them that they can enjoy that is morally pure. They should find pure work from pure people and enjoy it.

I guess last year’s riots brought abolition towards the mainstream, during the time you were making this record, which is partially about your father’s time in prison. How did that square with your thoughts on prison and the US carceral system? Well I have plenty of thoughts on it, I’m not totally sure how it’s relevant to this.

Well I was wondering if you have a standpoint on it or if you’d rather just be ambiguous? I have so many thoughts and opinions, I don’t presume that my thoughts and opinions are relevant on every subject though. I don’t have that much hubris.

I understand. I was wondering about the Candy Darling inspiration, how does she come into the fold? Oh I just, Candy Darling to me is such a beautiful heroine in that she came from Queens and went not geographically far but worlds away to Manhattan and became her true self and in that particular kind of combination of glamour and toughness, where you feel like her name should be on the marquee and yet she could stick you with a shiv if you said the wrong thing. And I just find her inspiring and really beautiful, and I didn’t know but I found out a friend of mine was close with her and was at her bedside when she died so I was just picturing Candy Darling’s ascent to heaven as taking the final uptown train.

Wow. Did you feel like you were embodying her on this album or presenting as her? No not as such, but definitely taking inspiration from some of her energy for sure. I do hear a bit of her voice on the title track, I was wondering if you were kind of modeling your voice after her? On Daddy’s Home? Oh, no.

I love the sultriness of that song, even though it’s just about signing autographs in prison. I found it really funny. Yeah it’s definitely again, I’m writing about my own story with humor and compassion and self-effacement, all that.

Do you see this album as a movement, does it have a narrative? Yeah. It’s a full story, it’s a full collection of short stories. It has a shape and everything.

That’s just how I listened to this album, as a series of short stories. I was wondering how they interlink in your mind? I guess you have the person on Broadway, you have your dad, you have the person who’s maybe thinking of having a baby or not having a baby. I just could write stories of flawed people doing their best to get by because I’ve been most of the people on this album at one point of my life or another. And again I could write about them without condemnation and judgement just, here we are.

Are you a nostalgic person? No not generally.

Not even during the creation of this album? I’m thinking of the humming tracks, your mum cooking in the kitchen. Not exactly, I think that this particular kind of music with its sophistication and some of the jazz language in the harmony and its sense of time, it was a kind of music that I’d loved for so long but never really dipped into myself, and I think we kind of learn things a lot of times when we’re ready to, and I think I was kind of ready to learn some of the lessons that this kind of music had to teach me.

Do you think about shame a lot? Um, I think that shame is the reason why most people do the violence that they do. I think violence is an expression of impotence.

What was it about the post-idealist era in particular that you were drawn to, why not go through the flower power utopia sort of 60s route? I think that there’s an intellectual orthodoxy that is involved in utopian thinking and a lot of times it doesn’t allow for either a complex set of incentives or it doesn’t allow for the totality of human nature in its equation, and then it fails and because the structure of any kind of power is really complicated so I think in general the desire… and I understand that we’re living in, in some ways, I think just with the internet part of it, in some ways unprecedented times. And I understand people’s desire for certainty in times economic strife, cultural upheaval, all this stuff. I completely understand the desire for certainty. But I don’t think it’s as simple as demanding moral purity and punishing anyone who doesn’t fix the orthodox criteria. I understand the desire but I’m not sure it’s gonna get to where I think we want to be, which is just general more equality, whether it’s wealth equality, wealth disparity, all that kind of stuff I just think the matrices of power are really complicated.

You were saying earlier about Daddy and how you were thinking about your dad and the overlap between you two and how we all possibly become our parents. I was wondering how you consolidate the influences of your parents? I don’t know anything about them obviously but I know that your mum was a social worker, your dad was an entrepreneur, and those seem like two totally opposing worlds. Yes, my mother is a social worker and she instilled in all of us I think the idea that the work we do should be meaningful and she’s definitely really humanistic and that kind of thinking I think, that had an impression on me. My dad wasn’t an entrepreneur, my dad was a stock broker I think? But I grew up with my mom and my stepdad and my stepdad was a very different kind of guy, just was an army brat and grew up really poor, and was just coming from a different mindset and they’re just very different kinds of people. Not a judgement thing, just very different. Yeah my mom definitely errs on the very humble side. And yeah, my dad is a complicated, charismatic person who’s also very intelligent, and who went down a path that was full of consequence. Yeah they’re really, really different people so it’s funny to kind of square who was who.

What does your dad think of this album? Oh he loves it!

Yay, that’s good to know. Did you ever rebel against your dad’s lifestyle growing up as a teenager? I didn’t grow up with him, and he was in Tulsa Oklahoma. I don’t know what lifestyle you’re necessarily presuming but..

No I’m not presuming, just wanted a little background on your relationship with him I guess. So he wasn’t in your life that much where you were younger? I would go and we would spend summers there and Christmas, but I grew up in Dallas for the most part with my mom and my stepdad.

Was this album in any way an opportunity to get closer to your dad? Not in any way consciously, no.

But are you finding with age and with time you’re getting closer to him? Well him being out of prison helps in terms of just proximity. Yeah, here’s what I’m finding. I’m finding that we live by the stories that we tell ourselves and that sometimes we realize that the story we’ve been telling ourselves for a long time was either wrong or lacked a certain amount of information, and then we have the choice of whether to reject the new information because it’s too painful to rethink the story that we’ve been telling ourselves, or assimilate the new information and go, wow life is complicated, this is an interesting wrinkle. I choose to do the latter.

Yeah, it’s very easy to bullshit yourself, right? Yeah, it's true in all kind of ways you know?

This story, the story of your dad, it almost seems redemptive. I mean I would say so, and that’s not in any way what I intended and you know, a lot of times when you’re making something, I mean you’re a writer you know, you have the compulsion to make it but you’re not necessarily sure where it’s coming from or why or any of those kind of questions, but I think there is the possibility of redemption, I do, I think there is the possibility of people to change and I think there is a possibility of things like forgiveness and growth. And if I didn’t think that there was a possibility for human beings to change, to grow, to take in new information and then continue to write their story, then I don’t know what we’d really be doing, you know? And that’s not really the world I want to live in, we’re a moving picture we’re not a still photograph.

Do you want to try and change the world, do you feel like you have that power, do you feel hopeful that there can be a better future? Sorry for the cheesy language. No, I mean I don’t think that many people would accuse me of being an optimist in a lot of ways, and I don’t think in terms of my “power to change the world” I mean I think all I can do is try to study the human condition and write about the human condition in some way that resonates and then maybe people will hear that and that will resonate with them and I think that ultimately the best case scenario for music is empathy because it’s like psychologically this is why we like to listen to stories or this is why we like to watch movies is so we can go down the empathy exercise and you can see yourself as that person in the film, see someone who isn’t like you in any way, shape or form from a just box ticking kind of way, but then realize oh, we’re very similar in some ways or what would I do if I was in that situation, we do all these things and we live by these stories and I think those stories well-told can encourage empathy and empathy can go out into the world and have a kind of transformative experience. I don’t really think about, I mean I think once I make a thing and then it’s out in the world and it’s for other people to assimilate or enjoy or not, whatever, however they take it, is absolutely fine by me. But it’s for them, it’s not my place in any way to say how people should or should not enjoy it or assimilate it.

Yeah the reason I brought up prison abolition earlier is because that might be how some people contextualize this album. I would say that that’s one lens. That to me would not be the main lens.

[I’m told to wrap it up]

Yeah let’s wrap up. So Tool cover album next? No, I wish.

Someday I’m hoping. I love Tool.

I feel your Paul McCartney nerves Yeah, I’m gonna go shower.

That’s always a good idea. Okay take care, thank you again for you time Thanks, bye.

#st vincent #emma madden #interview #daddys home

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guiltypleasurefandomface · 3 years

Text

Me: I hate high school AUs

Me: They never make any sense

Me: ...

So anyway i've just been hit with an idea for Freddie and Brian to be 6th Form Chaperones for the year 9's museum/art gallery trip. Roger is in year 9. And so is John, who should be in year 8 but is that clever he is more advanced than even top sets in his subject and fast track maths, that he's been moved up during the half term and is struggling to make friends.

So Freddie and Brian are told to generally keep an eye on the whole group as an extra pair of eyes and to help any who get stuck with the tasks they're set, but especially make sure nobody's making fun of John.

What nobody expected was for Roger to stick with John for the whole day like they were best friends, and actually do the tasks. The questions he asks are sincere and clever, and some comments cut through the patronising attitudes of the actual art gallery workers - who try to explain something like Van Gogh's depression with flowery language like "He was a bit sad" or "He was a tortored soul", Roger's like "Latest evidence says he was depressed with rapid cycling bipolar. They didn't have the words for that back then, but when the researchers looked over the evidence, they said the signs were all there."

And, I don't know, there's an exhibition on musical instruments, and there's sitars and dilruba's and Freddie over hears him say to John "Goerge Harrison appreciated the indian culture, I bet he talked with more respect about the instruments than these do."

Curator of another exhibit: And here we have a replica of what we believe the very first snare drum looked like, created in 1300 AD. Rhymic music has existed long before this thouh. Historians believe that human beings used to beat on objects and bodies or stomped on the ground to produce musical sounds. Producing sound was useful for both communications and as an accompaniment for dancing

Roger: He says that like we don't do the exact same things today. John: What do you mean? Roger: You never seen anyone line dancing? The mods jumping at their gigs? Your drunken uncle slappng his belly along to the radio on christmas day? John: Oh I see what you mean Roger: Then there's morse code, sirens, and I don't know about you, but my phone makes a trilling noise when someone rings it John: Mine too.

Roger: Do you play any instruments? John: Guitar, but I'm thinking of taking up bass Roger: I play guitar too. Prefer the drums though John Oh. You played long? Roger: Yeah. I think I was 6? We should get together and jam sometimes John: I'd like that

Freddie: THESE ARE THE MOST PRECIOUS OF YOUNG ONES. BRIAN, WE MUST ADOPT THEM

Brian: They're only 3 years younger than us

Freddie: And your point is?

Brian: I don't think it's allowed.

Roger: Oi, curly!

Brian: You were saying? Yes, Taylor, what can I help you with?

Roger: My mate John here says you were the one who got the music teacher to open up the music room so people could play in there after school, and even borrow instruments with a sign out sheet.

Brian: Oh. Um. Yes?

Roger: Well I just wanted to say thanks! I'm not always allowed to practice at home so even though you didn't know it, you did me a big favour

Brian: Oh. Um. You're welcome

Roger: Cheers!

Brian: what a precious wee bean... ahem as my mum would say... Freddie: See!

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shefanispeculator · 3 years

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Blake Shelton has 28 career No. 1 songs on the Billboard Country Airplay chart, and another seven that have reached the Top 10. It'd be easy just to stick with the singles in making a list of his best songs, but who likes easy?

Find plenty of deep cuts on this list of Shelton's 50 best songs, including his spiritual songs. Those are sprinkled all over the playlist — The Voice coach is a rare singer who can sing about drinking and heartache with as much conviction as his relationship with God. Fans will find a new one called "Bible Verses" on his Body Language album. It does well on this staff and reader partnership.

Songs with ex-wife Miranda Lambert and fiancee Gwen Stefani make the list as well, but the Top 10 Blake Shelton songs are all solo efforts ... with one exception. Is it strange that his most convincing bedroom ballad was a collaboration with a different "Gwen"? Cover songs by George Jones and Conway Twitty, collaborations with RaeLynn and Trace Adkins, and a co-write with Earl Thomas Conley all make this list of Shelton's top songs. Which is your No. 1?

Top Blake Songs: His Greatest Hits + Best Deep Cuts

Taste of Country staff opinion, and the commercial success of tracks from Shelton's 12 studio albums were certainly considered in making this list of the top songs. More than anything, we sought fan input, via sales and direct input. What's your favorite Blake Shelton song, and does it agree with our No. 1?

Below are the The Voice coach's 50 best songs. Lyrical integrity and production were also considered in this ranking. Really it's hard to argue against any of the Top 5, but we understand if there's a debate about placement. Heck, we encourage it!

Warner Music Nashville

No. 50: "She's Got a Way With Words"

Songwriters Andy Albert, Marc Beeson and Wyatt Earp wrote a clever country lyric, but the problem is, it felt too personal from Blake Shelton in 2016. This is the song that stopped Shelton's impressive streak of No. 1 singles. Sonically, very few songs from this era stand apart from one another.

No. 49: "Gonna"

" isn't a bad song — a strong case could be made that it's better than some of the singles ranked ahead of it on this list of the top 50 Blake Shelton songs, actually — the love story from 2014 just isn't memorable in any way. Think about it: At best you said, "I remember that song" but more likely thought, "which one is that?"

No. 48: "The Wave"

" is a unique metaphor for how a good love can wash away all of your troubles. Blake Shelton's song from Texoma Shore is another fan favorite. The mid-tempo track displays his voice nicely.

No. 47: "When the Wine Wears Off"

," an album track from Texoma Shore that could have been a single. The song's structure and flow is very similar to so many hits from this era of Blake Shelton.

No. 46: "Anyone Else"

When asked which deep cut they like most, Blake Shelton fans chose "

," an album cut from Bringing Back the Sunshine. This ballad shows a bitterness that's rare across the singer's discography, and certainly this list of 50 songs. It's packaged in a fairly unoffensive arrangement, but his lyrics really sting.

No. 45: "Over"

Blake Shelton gives a great vocal performance of a fairly ordinary song during "

," his fourth straight No. 1 single from the Red River Blue album.

No. 44: "I'll Just Hold On"

Shelton relied on a sitar to make this song stand out. It only worked to get him a Top 10 hit. The remainder of "

" is arranged more conventionally, making the outsider instrument something of a gimmick.

No. 43: "All Over Me"

" will always hold a special place for Shelton, as he co-wrote it with an idol, Earl Thomas Conley. The piano-led ballad finds the singer doing something truly unique: Showcasing a timid falsetto during the chorus of this poignant, pure country single. Lyrically it's difficult to keep up with, but sonically it's bold, like so many of his early hits.

No. 42: "Every Time I Hear That Song"

In retrospect, very few songs from Shelton's post-divorce album stack up against his earliest and most recent singles and deep cuts. "

" relies on a vocal hook, but the performance lacks urgency. Still, it hit No. 1 easily.

No. 41: "Sure Be Cool If You Did"

Shelton's Based on a True Story ... album started with "

," but every single that followed is far better and more engaging. This love ballad doesn't hurt for warmth, but the arrangement is milquetoast at best.

Rick Diamond, Getty Images

No. 40: "Drink on It"

Real life couple Jessi Alexander and Jon Randall joined Rodney Clawson for this track from Shelton's Red River Blue album. While still a No. 1 hit, "

" gets a little lost among other more dynamic performances and arrangements on this list of his 50 best songs.

No. 39: "I'll Name the Dogs"

" cast Blake Shelton as a husband in waiting, something his fans and the world in general were hoping for in his real life. The No. 1 hit from 2017 went Platinum on the strength of a pop-rock chorus and a charming lyrical hook.

No. 38: "Happy Anywhere"

" — the second of two straight single collaborations with Gwen Stefani — hit No. 1 and is a total earworm. It's hard to criticize the feel-good jam, but we'll say "Nobody But You" is a superior duet for the country couple.

No. 37: "Neon Light"

In a vacuum, "Neon Light" — a No. 1 hit, released in 2014 — is a funky, country and hip fusion that works. Across Blake Shelton's full catalog of hits and album cuts, however, it tries to do too many things that this singer does better elsewhere. For that reason, this track rates a bit low on this list of Shelton's best songs.

No. 36: "Granddaddy's Gun"

Aaron Lewis' version of this same song was more convincing, but Blake Shelton's "

" wasn't trying to act tough. The more sensitive singer's rendition was more sensitive and polished. The two men were targeting different country audiences.

No. 35: "A Guy With a Girl"

Blake Shelton celebrates his woman during "

" a No. 1 hit from If I'm Honest. The song is a sweet gesture, made atop a radio-ready arrangement.

No. 34: "Nobody But You"

The first of two straight, Gwen Stefani duets to country radio finds the couple trading lines as they tell a love story that can only be described as genuine. The No. 1 hit reached a very pleasing one million downloads quickly. "

" should not be confused with another song on this list. It's a progressive, pop-friendly ballad that truly simmers.

No. 33: "When Somebody Knows You That Well"

Of all of Blake Shelton's official singles, "

" faired the worst. It barely cracked the Top 40, possibly due to an outdated, string heavy arrangement. But it's not a bad little song. Harley Allen co-wrote this ballad and Shelton does OK in finding the right perspective. 'A' for effort, big fella.

No. 32: "Doin' What She Likes"

This charming No. 1 hit is best remembered for a music video in which a bumbling Blake Shelton burns the house down trying to cook a romantic dinner for Miranda Lambert, who makes a vocal cameo early. Sans video, "

" is a warm love song that's fit for a squeeze.

No. 31: "Just South of Heaven"

Another fan favorite from deep in Shelton's catalog, "

" finds the singer relying on a familiar mood over a welcome acoustic guitar and fiddle combination.

No. 30: "Came Here to Forget"

If you expected Blake Shelton's post-divorce album to include some heartache, you were right. "

is a dark country lyric atop an R&B-infused guitar line. His twang keeps it country, but the song is among his most progressive No. 1 hits. Often when he stretches the genre, it's done with a wink — not this time.

No. 29: "Sangria"

Few songs on this list of Blake Shelton's best smolder like "

." The love song rides a warm melody that covers for a barely-there hook. This 2015 hit was one in a string of No. 1 hits for Shelton, most of which went Gold or Platinum.

No. 28: "Jesus Got a Tight Grip"

When Blake Shelton does sit down to write, what comes out is often spiritual. Deep love songs and reflections on a higher power make up his short songwriting catalog. Jessi Alexander helped him with "

," a plucky country-rocker from 2019.

No. 27 Draggin' the River

" tells a dark story of two lovers escaping together, and in that way, it's very Miranda. Shelton's polished vocals and a sweetened production make this track from the All About Tonight EP very Blake, however. While not a single, it was a fan favorite back when they were a couple. We still dig it.

No. 26: "Minimum Wage"

Blake Shelton's blue-collar love song is no "Friends in Low Places" but the spirit of this song still hits today. There's not a lot of love-conquers-all messaging across his catalog, at least not as much as that of storytellers like

" is a mainstream effort that did its job of introducing a new album, but it's hard to put it high on this list of Shelton's 50 best at this point.

No. 25: "Footloose"

Blake Shelton didn't deviate much from Kenny Loggins' original version. The country "

" wasn't a radio hit, but it went Gold and introduced the country singer to an all-genre audience that was just beginning to learn of him via The Voice.

No. 24: "Some Beach"

One could make a case for "

" as Shelton's most important song, as it saved a career that was spiraling after a trio of Top 40 country airplay hits. This is the first time fans got to witness his sense of humor and sarcasm — remember, there was no Twitter in 2004. A pre

Rory Feek co-wrote "Some Beach," showing how wide the singer reached for great songs early in his career.

No. 23: "Bible Verses"

" is the faith song on Blake Shelton's 2021 album Body Language, and it's truly a highlight on the project. The singer approaches the topic with genuine humility that feels as honest as any love or drinking song he has recorded. A great play on a phrase pushes the song higher up on this Top 50 list.

No. 22: "Hillbilly Bone" with Trace Adkins

Blake Shelton proved he's a dynamic duet partner with this partnership with Trace

" is among his most well-known songs, even if it's not a Top 10 song on our list. Amid a catalog of songs with sexy, delicate women, this rocker with tough guy Adkins stands up and demands you pay attention. Even the haters have to smile!

No. 21: "Nobody But Me"

Did you even know that Shelton has a hit song called "Nobody But You" and "

"? The former is his most recent hit with Gwen Stefani, but the 2005 love ballad is the one that deserves a celebration. A jazzy piano carries the country singer atop this pleading love song. It's both memorable and effective.

No. 20: "Savior's Shadow"

Jessi Alexander returns to this list of the best Blake Shelton songs to offer a gentle message about faith and peace. "

" is Shelton's only Hot Christian Songs hit, reaching No. 14 in 2016. He's rarely, if ever, performs the song live.

No. 19: "The More I Drink"

," a Top 10 hit for Blake Shelton in 2007. The singer's early rompers are unmistakably genuine. In his later years, a certain polish would change the raw messaging, but that doesn't exist in this Brent Rowan production.

No. 18: "Playboys of the Southwestern World"

This is a song about best friends. "

" is a critic's pick for this list because we can recall him playing it live. The song is largely shelved now, but it still cooks. As a storyteller, few artists do better than Shelton, as some of the highest ranked songs on this list will prove. Playboys (No. 24 in 2003) is a different kind of story.

No. 17: "Lonely Tonight"

Give Shelton credit: At a time when few solo females could break in country music, he was doing what he could to celebrate talent.

is just one example of the hitmaker looking past stars who would have furthered his career to support Nashville's best. This dark ballad about a one night stand is a provocative conversation that just burned in 2014, a time where Blake Shelton was king. During "

No. 16: "Turnin' Me On"

Blake Shelton hasn't written very many of the songs found on this list of his 50 best. "

" is a rare case where he set out to write a song that became a hit, albeit a minor one. The simmering love song only reached the Top 10 after its 2018 release, but charts aren't everything. Years later it really stands apart from the rest of the songs he released to radio. You can feel his passion as he sings a song that he clearly had girlfriend Gwen Stefani in mind for.

No. 15: "I Lived It"

This Top 5 hit for Blake Shelton seemed to come and go, but we wish it would have stuck around as a catalog cut for the singer. "

" is among his best late model songs as it treads into new, nostalgic territory for a singer who is so often singing of love and love lost.

No. 14: "The Baby"

Blake Shelton cemented himself as one of country music's most promising young storytellers with three of his first four singles, including "

." The heartbreaking mother-son story is a gut punch for older country music fans. Melodically, the chorus gives it wings. This song from The Dreamer would become his second No. 1 hit.

No. 13: "All About Tonight"

" for Blake Shelton, and it's a song that will forever hold a place in his live show. It's kind of the theme song for any country concert, isn't it? In truth, Shelton hasn't released too many all-out jams like this one in the last decade, so it stands out a decade later.

No. 12: "Boys 'Round Here" With Pistol Annies and RaeLynn

Every once in awhile Blake Shelton drops a song that reminds you he doesn't take himself too seriously. It's critical to his artistry and an integral part of his longevity. "

" was his early 2010s version of that song. It's a sort of hip-hop-inspired redneck stomp with callback lyrics and his then-wife's supergroup supporting him. The song is just so much fun to bop along with, even a decade later.

No. 11: "God Gave Me You"

Blake Shelton took Dave Barnes' "

God Gave Me You

" and turned it into a Grammy-nominated, chart-topping country song. But that's just part of the story. The emotive love ballad is also what gave the singer the kick in the pants he needed to propose marriage to then-girlfriend Miranda Lambert. This is a tremendous vocal performance and certainly worthy of a high placement on the singer's best songs list.

No. 10: "My Eyes"

Blake Shelton and

Gwen Sebastian

kept a brother-sister kind of relationship after her time on The Voice. She even joined his band. That changed with "

," a true bed burner that beckons, "Come a little closer, come a little closer / Come a little closer, love the way you look tonight / My eyes are the only thing I don't wanna take off of you."

"My Eyes" was the last of a trio of great male/female collaborations that truly put new female artists on a pedestal. RaeLynn and Pistol Annies joined him for "Boys 'Round Here," Ashley Monroe jumped in for "Lonely Tonight" and Sebastian for "My Eyes." This was a time when women struggled mightily at country radio, but the singer did what he could to help introduce new talent.

Warner Music Nashville

No. 9: "Home"

You see a real change in Blake Shelton's commercial success beginning with his cover of "

" in 2008. One could argue this is his most important radio release, and his vocals stand up to anything else he's put out. Prior to his version of the Michel Bublé song, Top 20 was where he lived. After that, he rattled off a string of No. 1 hits as long as anyone ever: Nineteen of Shelton's next 20 singles hit No. 1.

Warner Music Nashville

No. 8: "Goodbye Time"

There is more than one famous cover among Blake Shelton's 50 best songs. "

" was a

Conway Twitty

hit in 1988, and the younger singer did it justice with a piano-led arrangement that showcased him as a premier vocalist. This song also exemplifies why he was hit-and-miss at radio in the mid 2000s. It followed the chart-topping "Some Beach," which followed a Top 40 song called "When Somebody Knows You That Well." It's good to go back and forth between good times and heartache, but with Shelton, the pendulum swung too far every time. It was hard to figure out who he was for most of a decade.

No. 7: "Ol' Red"

" is not Blake Shelton's best song, but it's his signature song. He can't play a live show without telling this story of a prisoner, a dog and a warden who gets fooled. Early in his career, Shelton wasn't shy about covering other artists, including Conway Twitty and (in this case) George Jones. His tie to the past has loosened in recent years, which is a bummer because songs like this are far more interesting than anything on the radio today.

Warner Music Nashville

No. 6: "Honey Bee"

There's not an easier song in Blake Shelton's catalog to enjoy than "

," his slightly saccharine, but still grinning love song from 2011. The track went triple-Platinum and is perhaps his most recognizable song worldwide today.

No. 5: "Who Are You When I'm Not Looking"

Joe Nichols

cut this song several years before Shelton would make it his best love song. Both versions are exemplary. It starts with the songwriting. Lyrically, "

" is more sensitive and poetic than anything else on this list. Each line is phrased as a question, and each question is one any woman can relate to. The magic is in this hitmaker's personal delivery. His range isn't needed for a subtle romancer that the greats would be proud of. Few country women will resist a warm smile when this No. 1 hit begins.

Warner Music Nashville

No. 4: "God's Country"

God's Country

" rejuvenated Blake Shelton's career. The country-rock song paints a vivid picture but it works so well because everyone who touched the song went for it 100 percent. The chart-topping hit is arguably his best of the last half-decade and an easy pick for Top 10 on this list of his greatest songs.

No. 3: "She Wouldn't Be Gone"

There's no song in Blake Shelton's catalog that paints a breathtaking picture with the same ease of "

She Wouldn't Be Gone

," his No. 1 song from 2008. He begins with, "Red roadside wild flower if I'd only picked you / Took you home set you on the counter" before his second metered stanza that goes, "Yellow sunset slowly dipping down in the rear view / Oh, how she'd love to sit and watch you / I could have done that a whole lot more."

The chorus of this song is where the tension lies, however. Shelton has told great stories before and delivered strong vocal performances plenty of times, but few songs find him so recklessly emotional as this ballad. It's almost unnerving to listen to.

No. 2: "Mine Would Be You"

" is a Top 5 Blake Shelton song because of the twist at the end that just crushes your heart. It's a love song, until suddenly it isn't. Jessi Alexander and company wrote it, but it's the singer's energy that makes the song special. As with "She Wouldn't Be Gone," there's a sense of panic so rare on the radio today. Shelton seems like such a cool character most of the time, but moments like this remind us of his gifts.

No. 1: "Austin"

Fans have, and will continue to, make a case for "

" as Blake Shelton's best song. It's certainly an all-time great debut single — one that would work in any era of country music. Early in his career, the Oklahoma native relied on veteran songwriters and producers like Bobby Braddock to shape his sound. These days everything comes with a little more polish, which is fine and probably even necessary.

You can't compare 20-year-old tracks like "Austin" with modern songs like "I'll Name the Dogs." Lyrically, his newest material lacks depth when held up against the rich tapestry of these early hits. So many songs from Shelton's first two albums make the Top 10 or even Top 20 of this list for this reason. "Austin" at No. 1? It's tempting to select another for the sake of being bold, but doing so would just be dishonest.

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goldenwilliamson · 4 years

Note

well after that showering headcanon i think it's only fair you give us a full imagine of shower time with george

pairing: george harrison x reader

summary: you and george enjoy a shower together after a stressful week

warnings: fluffy fluff fluff fluff

a/n: you ask and you shall receive x

word count: 930

This week has easily felt like one of the longest weeks of your life. You’d been so overwhelmed with your job in the office and to make matters worse, you had barely spent any time with George since they’ve been recording over the last few weeks.

You make yourself a cup of tea and settle into the comfort of your couch, letting a record play, The Mamas & The Papas new album. The smooth harmonies and melodies of the band are medicine to your overwhelmed mind. You’re also comforted by the knowledge that tonight you and George will actually get to spend some time together since they’re finishing up early in the studio tonight.

The time on the clock reads 8:45 and so you’re expecting George home any minute now since it was about a 50 minute drive from London to where the two of you lived in Esher. He said they should be finished around 8 o’clock tonight, which is early for the boys. Usually they’re in the studio on Abbey Road until the early hours of the morning when the birds start singing.

Standing from your comfortable place in the couch after finishing your tea, you place your mug in the sink and got to run yourself a warm shower. Pulling away your stockings and dress, you immediately feel a bit better removing the remnants of the stressful week. As the steamy water runs over your skin when you step under it, you mindfully think of it as washing away any pent-up stress.

After about a minute, the bathroom door creaks open and you’re met with the face of your love through the steam filled room.

“Hi,” you speak over the noise of the water and George smiles, pulling away his chocolate brown suit jacket and swiftly removing each article of clothing.

“Hello,” he replies, stepping under the comfort of the warm water with you.

He places his hands gently on either side of your face and leans down to give you a quick kiss hello. Showering with George had to be one of your most cherished things to do together. There was something so intimate about being in your most vulnerable state together, and you and George both agreed that people are most vulnerable during sex, when sleeping and when taking a shower.

George can immediately sense that this has been a stressful week for you and he feels bad he hasn’t been home much either. He expresses his guilt about not being there for you as emotional support through his tender movements. he turns you around so your back is close to his chest and he takes the bar of soap, running it smoothly over your back, down your arms and legs.

He guides the water over your body making sure to rinse away the suds. You repay his soft gesture by squirting some shampoo in your hand and running it through his full head of hair, massaging into his scalp. You can understand how much this motion comforts George by the way he closes his eyes and his lips turn upwards when you do so.

Not trying to waste water, after rinsing out George’s shampoo and letting him wash his own body while you hold him from behind by his waist, you turn off the water and step out into the fresh air.

The two of you still operate in silence as you grab your towels and begin to pat yourselves dry. You smile to yourself at how peaceful you feel now, the stress of the week prior a thought of the past.

You walk out of the bathroom first, over to your room and into the wardrobe to pull on a fresh set of pyjamas and George follows not a minute later, doing the same.

“How was your day?” You ask George, breaking the comfortable silence you’d fallen into.

“It wasn’t bad. We got a few songs finalised, I played the sitar on that one I wrote,” he explains.

“Oh great, I can’t wait to hear it,” you tell him excitedly.

“You should come to the studio next week,” he invites you.

“I wouldn’t want to get in your way-,” you start.

“Y/n, you most definitely would not be in the way. We all love having you around, the boys always ask when they’ll get to see you next,” George explains and you smile.

“Well in that case, I’d love to come,” you tell him, not bothering to hide the grin on your face as you pull him into a hug.

George guides you over towards your bed and the two of you fall back into the sheets, holding onto each other. You sigh into his chest as he runs his fingers through your damp hair.

“Been a stressful week darling?” George asks knowingly.

“Very. But it’s better now,” you tell him.

“Sorry,” George says simply. Although he didn’t come out and say it, you can understand what he’s apologising for. He’s always caught up on the fact that he isn’t around enough, but you don’t mind. You know he’s yours and you are his and that’s enough.

“It’s not your fault,” you attempt to ease his mind, but he only sighs.

“I love you, you know that?” You tell him, leaning up to look him in the eyes.

“Well I’d bloody hope so because I am madly in love with you, my dear,” he jokes.

The rest of your night is spent curled up in bed with the warmth and comfort of George by your side, exactly the way it’s supposed to be.

#george harrison #george harrison x reader #george harrison imagine #beatles imagines

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jackidy · 4 years

Text

Requiem

Rating: G Pairing: Demyx/Zexion

A vent fic mostly, depression took the driving reigns recently and i just need to rid myself or at least some of it.

---

It’s not been the same since he left.

He rises earlier now, bones creak and joints crack in the cold morning air, autumnal rains hitting against the windows and Demyx wonders, briefly, if the weather is simply just trying to match his mood. Floorboards are cool against his feet, no longer sparing a glance to the other side of the bed as if he’d still be there, as if the last traces of him in the bed hadn’t been washed out with the sheets three days ago. If any had even still remained, that is.

The lopsided bookshelf still remains filled with his books, all of them pressing against the lower side of the unit, a fond memory of his love saying it was perfect, the heated but brief discussion on how it was fine how it was with one of his dads. They still come round, they still check on him, none of them really chatty but, then, neither was he most days now.

Three months and he still walks into the kitchen expecting him there, if not cooking then pouring himself over a book with that ridiculous mug of tea in his hands, reading glasses on and utterly oblivious to the world around him. Demyx misses it, craves it, the half-read book called Treasure Planet, a tea stained mug shaped like an owl and his reading glasses.

‘you know owls are incredibly stupid right? If they don’t learn it within so many weeks of hatching, they never learn it at all. I don’t know why they’re such visions of wisdom.’

He hears it whenever he sees the mug, a painful feeling in his gut as he remembers how Zexion had horded the mug away from him when he offered to get him another one, a tease of ‘no, it reminds me of you’ hanging on his lips. Demyx can’t move them, much like how he can’t move the teapot or throw away the cupboard shelf of teas he never knew existed before Zexion fell into his life.

They’re mementos, reminders of his love now past.

It’s like he’s on autopilot as he moves, bread in the toaster, the only hesitation when he grabs a butter knife before putting it back. Used the last of the butter yesterday morning, forgot to pick up more as his brain once again tricked him into believing Zexion would grab some on the way home from work. He didn’t. He’s not coming back after all.

The living room has the most memories of him, the constellation blanket draped over one arm of the sofa, yet another bookshelf containing more books than it could carry. His cactus that never seemed to die, even under Demyx’s careless hands. Is it more painful to keep it out or to hide it away? Demyx has no idea and little want to test the theory.

Music was his usual comfort but there had been no appeal, his sitar standing proud despite her abandonment in the corner, dusty and probably out of tune, he’s not sure why he reaches for her. There’s no motivation to play, at least none that he’s yet to comprehend, fine tuning her strings as he mumbles apologies to her dusty body. Neglected both his instrument and himself, what else had he neglected he wonders as fingers being to familiarise themselves with he tones once more.

The tune is nothing praise worthy, hesitant and stilted, often out of time, becoming more coherent the more he played. Music is a good way to release your soul, someone had once told him, a way to project your feelings when conversation was not an available option. Maybe he should remember their name and thank them, words bubbling in his throat as a song began to form, not holding a care to if he woke his neighbours at seven am.

“Take me back to the night we met.”

#vent fic #demyx #zexion #zemyx #kingdom hearts #short fic #angst #probably best to ignore this lmao #G #i'm just fucking depressed as shit right now ignore me

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skimaskkass · 4 years

Text

Pre - Jeri (album review) (breakbit music/ROFLTRAX classics #1) (re-formated)

https://jeri.bandcamp.com/album/pre A long time ago (2014ish) I slightly helped or maybe tried to help a label called Breakbit Music. I am no Breakbit Music master but maybe I will be one day. In the meantime I can reminisce about albums that are dear (or not) to my life as a music fan and other things. One of these albums is Pre by Jeri. I had heard someone I’m in contact with make a track similar to one of the tracks on this album, though not exactly. I wondered if she knew this album and she didn’t. I mention this because I am very proud of her because this album is not just dear to my heart but makes me realize more than 99% of music I listen to how special life and musical ability is.

The opening “Seq1″ is musical chaos to me. But it is not nonsense. It sounds like nothing else I’ve ever heard. I’ve heard some orangy (an alias Jeri had used earlier) tracks before and maybe this is a distillation of that. Jeri was a king of sampling and using them at the right moments. Every time that “woo!” plays you don’t know what to do and when it jumps out of the middle of a spaced out bar. It gets sandwiched by FM sounding percussion arpeggios with even more staccato drums and snares that without intentionally listening for a pattern doesn’t seem like there is one. It’s such a free track that somehow has order sonically is face melting. Musicians should take note how to create textures with the same sounds by placing them at different spaces like they are in this track. But remember this is just the intro. The next track “Toxic People” has this Nintendo 64 sounding echoing guitar over this seasick portable game system synth. It draws you in and the drums come in. The hi-hats sound like they could be on a high quality Amon Tobin track in their modulating pitches. The drums once again phase through different pitches, sounding irregular, FM sounding. Then this really low fidelity, reamped industrial drumming runs into the mix and the song’s baseline comes in (but it’s the kind of overwhelming thing that you hear in dubstep or grime tracks that just bubbles and soaks the mix (which is also somehow trombone that seems to have the suggestion of higher frequencies which maybe is why it coats the ears in ear candy)). The drums have sped up and become isolated. It sounds like industrial influenced ‘post-techno’ or something along those lines. Before you can make that thought the drums are run through a flanger. There’s a proper bassline that comes in that would fit a Nintendo 64 game (I will bring it up a lot). It’s wild. There’s reverb slowly being filled in the mix from the seasick synth. There’s some ring-mod sounding vocal cries and the track ends. “*SHOT*”: is playing and brace yourself for a lot of notes on this track. There is this percussive kind of 8-bit/bit crushed melody that sounds has the effect of dramatic fast horror movie-like piano playing. This track also has a sea sick synth. It sounds like howling ghosts now. The bass drums come in and are replaced with a bassline and then there is a ghost acid bassline and these ghost drums that are going at a fast tempo (ghost in this instance meaning low volume). It is at this point of the album where I say if you’ve ever been a fan of madness combat’s music. Listen to this album. It’s just bassline and the drums with some cuts of high pitched spooky sounds. There are these portamento woodblock sounds in the fast drums that might have echoing delay and/or vocoder on them but regardless they are an excellent detail. The 8-bit/bit crushed sound gets panned around and sounds ring modulated now. Every loop there are two slight notes that adds to the techno spinning inferno music, yeah it is quite tribal at this point. At 1:25 a great transition sound and more vocode-y drums and then this melody that I can’t describe the sound of. It’s like a synth lunatic singing as this synth squeal keeps pitching down. The piano stuff I was suggesting now completely reveals itself at a nickelodeon-fast speed...The track just keeps changing and changing and changing a bunch of distorted sounds come in over it and the after the bass kicks up and the sounds are being swiss-cheesed by distortion. The song falls into a loop where the drums change into that fm squeak and a formant camera-shutter with light melodies taken from sounds from before and it goes back to the consistent sound it started with. Except I notice a high pitched sound in the background now. The bassline bumps back and the percussion ghosts play in the background over a synth hi hat. The track ends. “Computer”: IDM crackling drums and deep town ball bounces over quiet strings. Insane synth 1 and 2 start descending both. Then gabber kicks and noise snare that are quiet play a hell-decent march over fm pads and synths that make creature-screams. Crackle and ball bounces come back and the synths. And back to the gabber hell-on-display.“Synop”: starts with a synthesized brass sound. A quiet high pitched pinging over absolutely beautiful resonant filter sweeping snares and expected character rich kicks. Then a really long melody starts playing that sounds like it’s for a Nintendo 64 game for robots. Then this high pitched club music melody comes in that I absolutely love. And a wandering synth robot starts to sing. It sounds like abstract vocoded vocals and high pitched hotel service bell sounds. There’s a high pitched sine wave sound that tells the robot to stop. Sometimes there’s some distortion in the robot’s singing. The music stops to focus on this part. It’s tremolo and then has a finish. There’s a lot relistening this track deserves. “Kesanspor”: starts with a formant synth for alien salsa over two notes of synth strings and a winding sound that’s revving up. Then a distorted roar. This complicated pad sound that sounds like 50 laser sounds suggesting a choir and an electronic church refrain synth ‘yeah’ are added. A strange orchestral hit is added to the dead space between string sounds. This arcade sound that is loud but distant plays. There’s some hi-hats that come by to say hello. “Opalei”: Drums start: Kick drums that don’t sound like any kick drums I’ve ever heard personally. Noise snare and a synth-y but somehow metallic sound that’s almost a ‘hyuck’. At 0:05-00:6 there is a stutter in the drums that you gotta love the glitchiness of which is in the loop. Reverb-spaced out (a processed square-wave?) synth that suggests a string section come out. There’s harmonies of this sound and a pianoish, watery synth melody dripping nice through the mix. The melody loops and the drums switch up and then the melody goes to church organ mode and also formant squeals I’ve never heard before except maybe in a Rustie track. You now notice the side-chaining bass drum that is humble but starts rocking out to the magic. This is what bedroom producer synth-rock heaven sounds like. The synths go all filtery and flittery between high and mid tones. They start to take on a liquid quality as time slips. The string section comes back with a variation on the original melody, listen to that detail at the end of the sequence. It is a beautiful gated sound. Then a strange sound sneaks in that sounds like sitar and there are strumming sounds. “M0d”: A murderous string sound and a mid-range fm synth that’s like an electric guitar riff from DOOM over a kind of timpani drum beat. You’re getting ready to murder people to this song as wood block and congas add a playful touch to the track. There’s a slight high pitched triangle (the percussion instrument) sound there. Bursts of echo-y wavy synths start to add the melody to the track. The drums are now rock drums. There’s a turntablism sound at the end of the sequence. There is a slight variation to the sequence then a major one where it scales back and adds beautiful conga sounds and blatant triangle sounding noises with dynamic sound effect rustling noises. There is a cute synth doing a little boat toy whistle (it has an almost old video game / emulating-that-sound quality) after the echo-y wavy synths get more animated, excited and dramatic. I start to notice the bottle whistle sound. This sound starts to pan through the mix when more dramatic sounds are stripped back. Then the song switches up. The synth bludgeons that were echo-y and wavy go transform into searing hot jabs. N64-sounding acid bassline comes in. The bottle whistle transforms into an ore of noise. “Smoke Gogol”: Drums pan left and right. Acid like you’ve never heard it. Melodramatic portamento synths like cartoon character swoons. A sound like someone tapping on a stage mic to test it. Phone/Ringtone sounding synths and snares pan. It gets replaced with a resampled crossfaded type sound bobbing up and down from a low tone. The drums stand out more and variations abound including the phone sound pitched down. I noticed a synth pad that was behind the portamento synths when they came back. The structure is like poetry. First it goes A B A B then C D C D and loops back again. “Thez”: It sounds like a re-amped chop of When The Levee Breaks. Re-amped to make it sound just so beautiful. There’s that odd resampled sounding synth sound that seems to be speaking and singing to us. But that’s because there is a vocal sample in the background that’s grunting in an alien language. The synth goes up and now it really is singing. There is that constant note hammering way in the background that I love to hear in things in popular music. It gets isolated and moves up and down the scale with the drums. And then a N64 guitar comes in and acid nudges panned past you like you were driving past them. The guitar goes full wonky then the resampled sounding synth comes back. It is so unique. The resampled sound isolates and I notice the string sound that has been in the background maybe awhile. And in that isolating the sound shows you how wild it is. The track regains some layers and fades out like a dying candle. “Porta”: It sounds like a fm synth became a sad siren coming to retrieve a body. The snares are like snipps. The base drum sounds like a heavy object dropping on a metal plate. There’s another guitar-y sound. The track sounds like 5th gen video game music for a bad dream. There’s formant synths that harmonize with the siren. There’s a descending sound at the end you can hear at 1:30. It sounds like percussion of some kind. “Holtz IV”: Acid bassline that has an emulated sound quality to it which makes me think of it in a 5th gen gaming console. It’s on it’s own. Then this reggae melody string instrument comes in. More re-amped drums. More video-gamey sounds, this time an organ replaces the reggae melody. The organ comes back sounding more epic, perhaps it’s been layered multiple times. You gotta love it when it stutters. This is building up to the best part of the album for me. It’s not the medieval video game melody that comes in or the marching band beat that comes after it. Or the sick bass drum that comes in the second medieval melody starts. The drums flit around shortly as tastefully as any track of druqks. The glassy synth comes in (triangle wave I believe). And it’s one final surprise. There’s a bouncy club bass drum, I suppose it’s an 808. The squelching organ comes in to dance with the glassy arpeggio. Reverb at the end of the track. I didn’t know Jeri. We never talked. I knew a fair amount of the people on Breakbit Music though. He did a live set during the record label’s virtual music festival, ‘Bit Mania’. A pioneering thing for the early 2010s for sure. I remember the label’s founder mrSimon saying when the song Toxic People played something along the lines: “This is [jeri]? This sounds too good to be him”. Just a joke and Jeri said something in response. I know that being in that chatroom together was a privilege even though I never reached out to him like a fair amount of the people on the label. I didn’t really listen to the other albums under the name Jeri or too much of the Orangy stuff (which was too good to listen to imo). When I saw the cover for Pre I was entranced. It is beautiful and the album is... I view the outstanding musical genius of this album as a distant goal of what I want or imagine others to achieve as an artist. Anyone who can approach this kind of music should feel wonderful at their ability. People who know Jeri or are fans of him know that he passed away in 2014. I know his music will live on because of its power. But only if the effort is made to share it with the world.

#album #album review #jeri #orangy #breakbit #breakbit music #rofltrax #bbrtc #electronic music #synth music

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chroniccombustion · 4 years

Text

River Stones, Volcanic Glass

Genre: implied romance, friendship, angst Rated: K+ Characters: Demyx, Axel, Organization XIII Warnings: implied Nobody death Status: oneshot, complete

(Written for the Missed Connections: KH Rarepair Zine)

Axel is assigned to be your trainer, for lack of a better term. He takes you on missions with him, has you follow him around as he instructs you how to summon your weapon on command, how to control the lesser Nobodies, and all the while he watches you with an appraising eye. You know that he’s assessing you, know that he’s both teaching you how to fight and also reporting back to Saix about your progress. You have no doubt you'll be disposed of should you turn out to be a waste of time, so you listen closely to what Axel tells you and make sure he has something favorable to say about you at the end of the day.

You join Organization XIII with surprisingly little fanfare. With as dramatic as the apparent leader seems to be, you were honestly expecting an uncomfortably invasive amount of attention directed at you. Thankfully this isn’t the case.

Instead it’s almost the opposite. There's a small measure of interest paid upon your initial introduction, but from what you can gather at a glance the entire group – eight, now nine with the inclusion of yourself – seems too focused on their own daily routines to give you much more than a few moments of interaction. You file away what information you can and stay quiet, still unsure how to act around your new coworkers. Better to play it safe, to pretend you’re still disoriented from your sudden transformation from human to Nobody, and form your outward personality accordingly once you know more.

A few of the other members seem friendly enough; the ones called Lexaeus and Zexion are quiet and a little stony, but cordial when they do speak, so you suppose it’s just in their nature to observe rather than interact. You like that, you think.

Then there’s Xigbar, who is handsier than you’d expected and it tinges on unpleasant. You think maybe, had you been given the chance to acclimate a bit more, the over-familiarity might not be so bad. As it stands, you can’t help but tense whenever Number II slaps you on the back in greeting.

The rest of the Organization doesn't interact with you much. Xaldin is… interesting. He has a hidden flair for the melodramatic but, again, he’s relatively personable when he isn’t busy. Vexen is about as arrogant as you’d have expected and you'd been hoping maybe there’d be more to pick apart, but no; he really is as boring as he seems. Xemnas is like a ghost that doesn’t entirely recognize his surroundings, or that there are even other people around him at all. Honestly though, that’s fine, because if he barely pays anyone any attention then it just makes you easier to overlook. You’re perfectly happy staying under the leader’s radar until you know more about what your situation.

It’s Saix, though, that you learn you need to watch out for. He's cold, monotone, and constantly glaring indifferently at whomever is in his vicinity. If there was anyone in the Organization capable of tearing out someone’s throat with their teeth, you’d bet munny it’d be him.

(You decide to stay out of Saix’s line of sight as much as possible, and respond in nods and single-word answers when he speaks to you directly.)

The last member of the Organization, the one that claims the number directly before yours, you don’t even properly meet until about two weeks after you arrive. They come striding into the common room in a whirl of shadows and ash, darkness trailing off their shoulders like the smoke you can smell all over them, combined with the frigid scent of the Dark Corridors. You’ve taken to watching everyone’s movements when they walk, when they gesture; it’s how you’ve managed to identify them all with their hoods up. You memorized each and every body shape within days of arriving, so when an unfamiliar figure in a too-familiar coat appears in the corner of the room, you tick your eyes over to watch in wary interest.

You observe them silently, taking in as many details as you can before you have to play dumb; a tall build with thin limbs and a skinny torso means they’re probably not a purely physical fighter. Their coat is different, too, with tapered sleeves instead of the usual bell shape – they likely use a weapon that could get caught on loose fabric, or maybe a power that requires more dexterous use of their hands. The bonfire scent hanging around them means they’ve either just come from someplace that’s been burning, or they themself are cloaked in cinders. Fire magic? you wonder briefly, and given that you’ve seen just about every other type of element in this place, it wouldn’t be much of a reach.

The figure stretches their lanky arms over their head, rolling their broad shoulders until you can hear a deep ‘pop’. You stay quiet on the couch and keep your head down as if you’re busy tuning the sitar lying across your lap.

“Ahhh,” the stranger drawls, and the voice is masculine, a nasally tenor, and you’re momentarily caught off guard by how young they sound. Even Zexion, youngest of the group so far, has a way of speaking that makes him seem older. The rest are all older than you are, from what you can tell, but the voice currently huffing out a low sound of amusement seems… almost exactly your age. Then again, none of you are human anymore, you’ve been told, so you’re still trying to figure out how age works in this liminal, lifeless city.

The figure steps closer, rounding the couch opposite you and planting a hand on a cocked hip. He seems to study you for a moment, head tilting, and you look up with your expression perfectly blank. You don’t know him yet – best not to give him anything to work with.

“I heard we were getting a new guy,” he says, and there is clearly a smile in his tone. You don’t know if you like the sound of it, unable to see what sort of smile it really is.

He reaches up with long fingers and finally pulls back the hood still covering his face. You’re greeted by a set of acid-green eyes, framed by hair the color of fire and fresh blood, with inverted teardrops, purple like old bruises, sitting just below his eerily vibrant gaze. He smiles at you, and it’s far too sharp for a smile that isn’t showing any teeth.

“I’m Axel,” he says, with tiny pinpoints of yellow and orange crackling at the edges of his lips like dying sparks. “A-X-E-L. Got it memorized?”

You don’t have a title yet, but you slowly tell him your name is apparently Demyx now, and Axel’s smile widens into a wolfish grin.

---

You also make it a point to watch him as much as he watches you, though you keep your observations to yourself unless they’re mission-related, and keep up the act that you’re more naive than you really are. You watch the way he fights, how he moves, his facial expressions as he talks; at first glance he seems friendly, but you don’t yet trust anyone, let alone someone obviously tasked with making sure you’re worth keeping around. You can’t be sure how deep in Saix’s pocket he is, either, and that’s the part that worries you most.

As you observe him you start to notice just how like a chameleon your new field partner really is. In the Castle, Axel is easy-going, languid, all snarky comments and lazy grins. His body language is relaxed and his dialogue bordering on flippant and you wonder just how he manages to get away with it around someone as severe as Saix.

On your missions together, Axel is brighter, more vibrant in his movements and speech. He’s beautiful in battle, as fierce as his fire is hot, and you don't miss the gleam in his venomous eyes as he burns his enemies to dust. The first few times you go up against a handful of Heartless, Axel annihilates most of them with a flourish, leaving the rest for you to practice on. “Show me what you’ve got,” he says.

So you do. You barely have to strum your sitar’s strings for the water that flows through your music to slam into their wriggling, yellow-eyed bodies and rip them apart. You could do more, but you don’t; you keep your real strength hidden. You even pretend not to notice one of the larger Heartless behind you, letting it get almost too close just to make it seem like you’re not as aware as you are. You feign surprise when it swipes at you from the side, flinch appropriately when a flaming chakram comes flying past and slices the Heartless in half. Axel gives you an odd look afterwards and you wonder if you’ve made the wrong move after all.

(During the next few missions he lets you fight them all on your own, never once stepping in to help, and while you don’t pull the same stunt a second time, you do let the battle drag on for longer than you really need to, just to keep up the illusion. You look to Axel for approval once the Heartless are dead; he gives you a quirked brow and a slow, strange grin in return.)

It’s not until about a month into your missions with Axel that you get to see an entirely different version of him altogether – and for all of your careful observations, you’re entirely unprepared.

The mission is a simple one this time. Some of the more intelligent Heartless had been stockpiling items in the train tunnels beneath the world called Twilight Town and you'd both been charged with flushing them out and collecting whatever useful things they'd left behind. You actually find a decent amount of stuff you can take back to the Castle, too, though it doesn't escape your notice that Axel seems more interested in you than the mountain of potions tucked away in a shadowy corner. He lets you stuff everything into a backpack, just watching, until you finish and turn silently to face him.

He smirks. “Come on,” he says, gesturing with his chin back towards the way you'd entered. “I wanna show you something.”

Wary, you follow him up out of the dank tunnels where all the world's rainwater seems to collect, and down the winding streets to the center of town. He approaches the vender in a small shop while you hang back; minutes later, he's reappearing with two blue bars in his gloved hands.

“One more stop,” he says.

You're left with little choice but to keep following.

He takes you up to the top of the massive clock tower that shadows the streets below. From way up near the horizon, almost touching the sky itself, you look down at the ground and see nothing but rooftops shrouded by haze. But it's when you look out and above, over the rooftops and the stretching edge of the world, that you see it. You lose your breath at the sight of the sunset, glowing every shade of warmth and summer that you can name, with vibrant splashes of gold and scarlet painted across the clouds.

“It's beautiful, isn't it?”

You look over. Axel has taken a seat beside you on the rim of the tower, one foot propped up on the ledge with his elbow resting on a bent knee. You frown. It seems entirely unsafe.

He grins up at you and gestures for you to join him. Tentatively, acutely aware that he could easily shove you off and to your probable doom if he chooses, you lower yourself to the ground and sit beside him. He doesn't push you off. Instead, he reaches over and holds out one of the blue bars from earlier.

Taking it, you stare at him in confusion.

“It's ice cream,” he says with an amused chuckle.

You narrow your eyes. “I know what it is.”

His head tilts, catlike, and those green eyes that see far too much stare directly into you. You stare back just as intently, trying to read him the same way he seems to be reading you. He smiles, which unnerves you a little bit because it's a much different kind of smile than you're used to and for a moment you wonder if maybe you've already screwed up, if maybe you've somehow played right into a trap. Because that smile is not one of his usual smirks, nor is it any kind of friendly; it's knowing.

“Do you now?” he drawls.

You feel the hair on the back of your neck stand on end.

Axel chuckles again, leaning back on his hand and finally looking away out across the horizon. “You know a lot, I think. More than you let on.” He takes a huge bite out of his own ice cream and glances back over at you, chewing through his renewed smirk.

You stay silent, stunned.

He turns away once more. “It's alright,” he says with a shrug, the motion, awkward due to the way he's leaning on his one free hand. “Your secret's safe with me.”

You don't trust that. Eyes narrowing further, you drop enough of your act to square your shoulders out of the usual slouch and peer at him with open suspicion on your face. “What do you want?” you ask flatly.

Axel just gives another shrug. “You know, normally I would probably try and blackmail you, but now? Eh. Not really interested.” Another sidelong smirk in your direction. “Why? You got something you wanna offer?”

You scowl at him and he laughs out loud. “No, but in all seriousness, I don't want anything.”

You find that hard to believe; you tell him so.

“Fair,” he replies. “I honestly wouldn't trust me either.”

“Then what are you doing?”

This seems to stall him. He looks out over the town below your dangling feet and nibbles at his ice cream in apparent thought. A full minute passes in silence before he speaks again. “You're like me.”

He pops the rest of his ice cream into his mouth and scrutinizes the wooden stick. Sighing through his nose, he tosses the stick off somewhere behind him before flopping backwards and staring straight up at the sky with his hands folded behind his back. You wait, and your quietude is rewarded when he heaves another sigh.

“How so?” you dare to press.

Axel hums. “You and me? We're both really good at pretending.” Green eyes close. “I'm the Organization's assassin,” he admits quietly. “Everybody has a role to play here, if you don't fulfill it then they cut you out. That's just the way it is. My role is to kill stuff, get things done...” He cracks one eye open and peers at you with a quirked brow. “...Training the newbies, apparently. My point is, all they need me to be is my assigned role. That's it. I get too smart or too good then they can just pile on the workload until I'm too much of a liability to keep around. Gotta find that balance there, walk the line between juuuuust useful enough and nothing more. So I pretend.”

He turns his head to look at you fully, gaze too green and too sharp. You don't know how to react.

It's unnerving, how succinct he is; you never would have expected this from him with the kind of facade he usually wears. But then again you suppose that's the point. Axel has you pegged because he, too, likes to observe, likes to play at being something to underestimate. You can't believe you went and fell for the same trick you've been trying to pull the entire time you've been here.

As if sensing your disturbance, Axel hefts himself back up into a sitting position and nods at the ice cream still untouched in your left hand. “You should hurry up and eat that.”

You blink down at it, having pretty much forgotten its existence, and make a face. “I don't really want it.”

He shrugs yet again – apparently a favorite gesture of his – and holds out his hand. You pass it to him without hesitation.

“Suit yourself,” he says, and proceeds to run his tongue over it to keep it from dripping all over his fingers.

You turn away and find yourself watching the sinking of the sun, red like the heart you’ve lost. As you process Axel's words you realize that, while you should be tensing with fight or flight instincts right about now, you're strangely not. You're wary, yes, and certainly caught off guard, but there's something about the way Axel had said what he did about playing pretend that... sticks in your head. Would it be so bad, you wonder, if there was another member you could relax around? If only just a little. Admittedly, the last few months have left you with a proverbial crick in your neck from constantly being on edge, holding yourself in check so that no one figures you out before you can do the same to them. It's exhausting.

“Alright,” you tell him, still looking ahead. “I'll bite, what are you proposing here?”

Axel full-on grins. “Knew you were smart,” he breathes. “I like you. Well,” he huffs, the sound more sardonic than actually amused; “as much as a Nobody can like anything.” He waves a hand. “Point is, I think you and I are gonna get along, yeah? And I don't particularly feel like being the one getting stuck executing you if you turn out to be something they can't exploit, so! We're gonna find you a role to fill.” He grins wider, and it's nearly feral in its intensity.

“Oh?” you say, because that's all you really can.

Axel nods. “You're observant. You're clever, too, and yeah, you can fight but why waste you on battle missions when they've already got a ton of us to do that anyway?”

“...Like you?”

He scoffs, a bitter, hollow kind of laugh. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Like me. Don't need another one of me around, I can tell you that. Anywaaaaay...”

White teeth flash as he bites off the last of the ice cream bar – once more taking a moment to inspect the stick – and you let yourself pick the action apart. It's casual, almost deliberately so; like he's still playing, still pretending. You realize that he must not trust you either, despite having said everything he has. He could blackmail you probably, but what would be the point of that if it meant throwing himself under the bus as well? And that, that is what makes everything click in your brain about what Axel is up to.

He's tossing himself onto the tracks alongside you – willing to risk personal injury because you know he can hurt you back if you try anything funny. Oh, you think. Well played.

For the first time since your arrival you feel your face twist into a wide, amused smile. “You need a recon agent?” you ask, allowing your voice to come out unhindered, no longer stifled and purposefully monotoned. “I look, you shoot?”

Axel laughs. “Oh hell yeah.” He reaches out a leather-clad hand towards you, grin stretching impossibly wider, growing more real as you clasp his hand in your own and shake. “Stick close to me,” he says, “and I'll make sure you stay alive, okay, Demyx?”

Something about the sound of your new name on his tongue makes you shiver. All you can do is nod.

---

He keeps his promise.

Time crawls slowly in the World That Never Was; days and months and years becoming completely indistinguishable from each other in a place without seasons. You think maybe it's been a while, but you can't be sure; you can only mark the passage of, well, anything by the way the sky looks on other worlds.

Twilight Town, though, is liminal in another way. Instead of constant, stagnant darkness, there's an eternal dusk – that sort of heavy amber glow that hangs like a veil over the whole city but is still better than the moonlit void outside the windows of the Castle. It's another place where time seems to stand still, but instead of stifling... Well. You're not sure you can name what it makes you feel.

Because you do feel, no matter what Xemnas has decided or what Axel seems to believe of himself.

And what you feel in the shadowy, goldenrod light up on the highest rooftops and the longest alleyways of that town, when you sit together after a mission or hide from your duties in the shade of the clocktower for just a little longer, is something good. Time suspended in the Castle is suffocating; time suspended in Twilight Town, with Axel's red hair like fire in the sunset, is something closer to hope, to quietude. It feels like the kind of day that can last forever, a little bubble of something just for the two of you that you never have to give up, never have to leave. Even if you know you only have so long before you have to blink away the dream and report in.

But it isn't the town that makes you feel this, you slowly come to realize over weeks and months of countless extra hours stolen away after missions while you're still pretending to be inept. It's not the sunsets or the quiet moments, it's Axel. Axel, who treats you like a person despite being convinced that none of you are anymore. Axel, who doesn't see you as lazy or stupid, doesn't mock you but teases you with a smirk that sparks a flutter in your supposedly empty chest.

And you think he might possibly think the same, because there are moments when you can't tell if your mind is playing tricks on you or if you really do see him watching you out of the corner of your eye. It's not the same as his original calculating stares; it's softer, almost fond, and maybe it's because he's comfortable enough around you to be like this, but you'd like to believe it's also something more. You can't help but hope – so hope, you do.

Despite the hope, however, you cannot shake the underlying current of anxiety and sorrow. For all the horrible things Axel's done throughout his time in the Castle, (which he slowly confesses as trust between you builds) there is good beneath it. It's obvious that he thinks there isn't, but you fervently disagree. He's seen through your act and knows just how capable you really are; he helps you hide it so that you don't get exploited like he's been.

You don't like what they've made him into. An assassin, a killer, something you with your uncanny observance can see wears him down like river water over stones. It eats at him, chips away at that harlequin smile until the edges are crumbling and you hate, hate, hate the emptiness behind those glass-green eyes every time he comes back from a mission you're not allowed to join him on. And the worst part is that you can tell that he believes it all. Axel believes that he's a monster, that he's inhuman, that the only way to ever be real again is to do what they tell him to, no matter how much it destroys him. You wonder what kind of person he was before this, mourn them as dead inside the Organization's No. VIII, smothered and murdered by Xemnas' hands.

You try to tell him that it isn't true, that he's still redeemable without the Organization, that you both could leave and start over, be anyone you wanted to be, even your old selves.

He just smiles at you with a deep, deep sorrow he claims he cannot feel, and reminds you that he's been sent to annihilate others that had similar thoughts of running. “You're not the first No. IX,” he admits, choking on the words like they're poison. “And I doubt I'm valuable enough to bring back alive.”

You hold your tongue after that – almost as tightly as you hold his shaking hand.

---

One by one by one, your comrades are destroyed. They're beaten, scattered, silenced, until you have no idea where anyone is or who is even left alive to return once their missions end. It's only a matter of time before Xemnas runs out of fighters; only a matter of time before you're deployed as a last resort.

You miss Axel. You miss the whispered conversations, the feel of his gloveless fingers laced with yours. You miss the time spent talking in your room after you'd both come back from separate worlds, now no longer paired together like you once were in days long passed. You miss him, but Axel is gone.

Saix calls him a traitor, though you know that Axel wouldn't run the way they said he has; you know because you've been trying to get him to run away with you for years. No, Axel hasn't run. Instead, he's gone to find the one that did. It's Roxas that's fled, that's turned against the Organization and disappeared. Axel left to bring him back, desperate to keep the boy alive, to never again have to cover his hands in the proverbial blood of a teammate.

(Axel told you what he'd done in Castle Oblivion, and though he'd claimed it had been easy for him you can see the hairline cracks below the surface as he speaks. More scars on his volcanic-glass heart.)

You cling to the hope – it's all you have now – that Axel is still alive somehow, that Roxas' Somebody hasn't found him and torn him apart. You wish he'd taken you with him, wish you could find him, wish that there were more members left for Xemnas to focus on so that you could get away to actually search.

But you can't. And by the time you're finally sent out to play the good soldier, you've nearly succumbed to the reality of never seeing your friend again in this lifetime.

I'll find you again, you tell him in your heart, praying he can hear you though you know he likely can't.

You kept your promise, now I'll keep mine. I'll find you.

It’s that thought that keeps you going as Sora stares you down.

---

You wake up face down in a back alley of Twilight Town, chest aching. You don’t know how you got there or how long it’s been since you died, but you’re not really too invested in finding out. What matters is the weight you can feel behind your ribs, the stuttering, physical beat of a brand new heart where only a phantom one used to be - still capable of emotion but intangible and therefore the perfect collateral to be used against you. But not anymore.

It’s with a feral grin and a hand to your sternum that you stumble your way out into the amber-lit city that holds your best memories, not as Demyx, but as you. The Organization took your life from you for a decade, you name, your identity. Never again.

On instinct you turn over your shoulder to grin at Axel…

only to startle when he isn’t there.

Suddenly your resurrection isn’t quite so joyous. You’re used to the feeling of hollowness, of the dullness inside your chest as your heart grew back in, but this is somehow deeper, stronger. You don’t like it; it hurts in a way you didn’t think possible. It takes you an embarrassingly long time to pinpoint the sensation as grief.

Fear comes next, along with desperation as you scour the streets, the tunnels, the woods, everywhere, and still cannot find him. It's not long before panic sets in as well, because once it's obvious that Axel isn't anywhere in Twilight Town you realize that you have absolutely no idea where else to even begin looking. You also realize you don't know which is a worse thought: that he's possibly been destroyed and not reconstructed, or that he isn't destroyed and is still under the Organization's thumb. What do you do then?

You don’t know - and that’s the truly scary part.

You allow yourself a minor breakdown on top of the clocktower, arms wrapped around your knees like you’ve seen him sit a thousand times before. Tears stream hot and salty down your face, the first in a very long time, and as you stare out at the gold-and-red horizon you let out everything that’s been building up inside you for a decade, for a day. You’re exhausted by the time you’re done, but beyond the headache and the stuffy nose you feel a determined sense of calm.

For the past ten years you’ve survived under the guise of incompetence, of naivety - at this point it would be like second nature to you. No one would notice. If anything is left of Organization XIII, who’s to say you couldn’t infiltrate them? Use their resources? Find a way to hack back into one of their computers, track someone down?

You were a Nobody for a long time. What’s a little longer in the black leather coat?

Besides, you think as you stand on surprisingly steady legs; what good is having your heart back if the one you gave it to forever ago isn’t there to give you his?

Wait for me, Axel, you tell him, reaching out with the steady rhythm in your chest as you summon a Dark Corridor and step into it, bound for what remains of the World That Never Was.

I’ll be there soon. I promise.

#kingdom hearts #Demyx #Axel #akudem #akudemy #kh3 #kh2 #fanfic #fanfiction #kh rarepair zine

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