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whats-rambled-rambled · 3 years

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Long Nights - playlist

You can find it on Spotify here.

Eddie Vedder - Long nights

I’ve already talked about it in another post a bit, so--

For the first time, I had a full series figured out even before I started writing. All the arcs, main plot points, even the final conversation! I even had a 3h long playlist with all the songs that would come in handy along the way, but still, none of them was the one (so basically same thing that happened with Smoke series)

I started thinking about the main theme and/or drive for our new Reader, and then it hit me. There already is a story with that vibe, and it has such an amazing soundtrack.

So I opened Spotify and browsed through the album.

And I found it.

The overall mood was not something that was going to be helpful at the beginning of the series, but oh my, those lyrics were it for all the things I had planned.

//Have no fear

For when I'm alone

I'll be better off than I was before//

That’s R, all right. Not afraid to be alone, she prefers it. Nothing can hurt her, unlike when she gets too invested. Commitment issues and whatnot.

//Long nights allow me to feel...

I'm falling...I am falling

The lights go out

Let me feel

I'm falling

I am falling safely to the ground//

Knowing what I was about to put R through, this looks only fitting, don’t you think?

Chapter 1: Sigrid - Don’t kill my vibe

I could see LN!R so clearly. I wanted to explore some of my favourite rogue tropes, and she was perfect for it. In my head, she was definitely younger than the other two from my previous series. A bold type, a joker, but serious when it comes to her craft. Not with the same heavy emotional baggage (not at the start, at least - I felt like, opposed to Smoke!R who was more about distracting herself when she felt too much, our new R would be more about denial, or hiding her issues behind her jokes).

I found this song on some random playlist, and I knew it was her.

//You shut me down, you like the control

You speak to me like I'm a child

Try to hold it down, I know the answer

I can shake it off and you feel threatened by me

I tried to play it nice but

Oh-oh-oh, ooh, ooh

Don't kill my vibe

Oh-oh-oh, ooh, ooh

Don't break my stride//

To me, that was that moment she gets dragged into the car. Not having the obvious lies TP feeds her, definitely finding them all and the stuff they throw at her hilarious, calling them out on their bullshit without thinking twice over it.

//Guess you're surprised I'm the puzzle you can't figure out//

That got me an idea for part 2 and the coffee situation - come on, you know I can’t resist that trope when it comes to Neil, I think it’s an excellent way to get to know the characters a little bit and tell something more about the dynamic.

Tom Grennan - I might

To me, it’s another character introduction song.

//Oh I love, oh I love, love my freedom//

....you already know what I’m getting at, right?

//Don't want no one taking up my time

Staying on my mind, changing up my life

Don't want no one messing up my bed

Fucking with my head, it's no lie//

That’s her. R hates to be manipulated, that’s why she’s mad at Mahir. I didn’t want to put all the angst here, but I knew there was something deeper hidden there, after his comment about her trust issues. I didn’t know what exactly, but I knew it would come in handy later.

There was one spin on the story I was playing with - where she actually lets them all lead her on for a while, a whole elaborate ruse to get her invested and onboard, but that was a lot of drama quite early on, and I wanted this to be a lighter series (oh shush, I am well aware how that played out in the end, I tried, alright? Not my fault I apparently can’t come up with a story without sprinkling it with a shitload of angst)

//But when you look at me like that

I might//

See, this is when I stopped. I didn’t think R would be falling head over heels for Neil right from the start. That’s why the heart beating faster at the end of the chapter was supposed to be about the lock and something finally sparking her curiosity, taking her out of the boredom of everyday life.

Kings of Leon - Find me

That’s more chapter-specific.

//I really wanna know your name

See your face, know who you are, who you are

How did ya find me, how did ya find me?

What are you looking for, are you looking for

How did ya find me how did ya find me

Up in the shadow, picking up my load//

I found it quite fitting the moment R meets Neil again and he drags her to a back alley, and then again, in the car. She isn’t scared, more like fascinated, she finds the whole thing exciting, even.

American Authors - I’m born to run

Oh my god, the vibe of this song! This is that need for freedom and carelessness I needed to tap into.

//I'm gonna live my life like I'm gonna die young

Like it's never enough, like I'm born to run

I'm gonna spend my time like tomorrow won't come

Do whatever I want like I'm born to run

I wanna see Paris, I wanna see Tokyo

I wanna be careless even if I break my bones

I'm gonna live my life like I'm gonna die young

Like it's never enough, like I'm born to run

All these things I've seen and done

I live my life like I'm born to run//

The Pretty Reckless - Prisoner

Another random song I found one day while I was cooking breakfast. I was like “oooh, I dig that!” and then I listened to the lyrics and I knew I needed it for this story.

//You could have my body

But you can't have me

I know I'm a criminal

Don't you tell on me//

That’s it. Her. I knew that would be handy for the moment Neil breaks after all the teasing. And that criminal bit. I mean - come on!

Missy Elliot - Work it

(This is technically part 2 but it was messing with the flow on the playlist and I’m leaving it here)

Okay, this is quite meta and corny, because this is probably one of the oldest jokes you can find for Tenet, and I’ve been battling with myself if I should even put it here, but I referenced it in the chapter, so here we are. I’ve loved this song for years, and when I was trying to think what would R listen to while she tries to clear her head while she works on the bloody inverted lock - that was the only thing that seemed appropriate.

//Come on

Is it worth it? Let me work it

I put my thang down, flip it and reverse it

Ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gnaht ym tup i//

...you see what I mean?

Chapter 2: Praise you

God, okay, this song - when I heard it while I was working on the story, it brought a movie-like montage of scenes in front of my eyes. You know the type, when they try to show you how the time passes, how someone progressively becomes better at something. That was Neil, working on those locks. R giving him tips, then teasing him. The way he loses his cool, only to slowly gain confidence, and then how she ups her game, both of them getting their bits of satisfaction from the whole game.

//We've come a long long way together

Through the hard times and the good

I have to celebrate you baby

I have to praise you like I should//

Have I ever told you when exactly I got the idea for the series? When I was writing that hostage situation fic and the moment R remembers her lockpicking sessions. I thought - what if it was the other way around? What if that was Neil who was about to start learning about picking locks?

It had so much potential for ✨hand content✨ and how could I resist?

...And I knew that R would see what I’m seeing, and she would rather like it. And the image of a very flustered Neil while she teases the hell out of him? Yep, yep, yep.

Sam Fender - Start again

This one definitely starts that montage as well, the repetition of going over and over again. Even if the whole song is definitely heavier than I needed, I decided to keep it, mostly for this part:

//Let's start again

Let's learn to talk

Without the fear of being heard

'Cause everybody's listening to everything and everybody

Let's pull the cord

Move below

Let's start again//

Chapter 3: Billy Raffoul - Difficult

Ah, Billy. And when I found this one, I got goosebumps, because I instantly knew that if I had to choose one song for them, it would probably be this one.

//You never get lost in love, you only get lost in me

You never can get enough of whatever you think you need

No matter how hard I try I never can beat this rush

Ain't nobody get me high, feel lighter when we touch//

This fits them so well, innit? We know how R feels about this whole love thing, she enjoys a good shag, and I had a feeling that after such a build-up, that night together would be something quite amazing, for both of them.

//We never get lost in love, we only get lost in sheets

You'd rather just shut me off whenever we get too deep//

That’s the moment when they have a vibe check in the morning. They had fun. Is it gonna affect their dynamic? They’re attracted to each other, they understand one another. Can they keep it casual? We know that R can, or at least she thinks so, but what about Neil? We know he’s a soft idiot, but I specifically imagined a bit younger version of him for this story - he had to be, if he was just learning about lockpicking. So the whole “no dating, just sex” could be fine with him for a while, but would he catch feelings anyway? Probably, yeah. And sooner than later.

//And now I'm standing in the rain

And your hair, it's falling in your face

And I know we're doing the right thing//

Not the rain, but shower, kinda works too, right? And I already knew that the rain would be a pretty important factor a little bit further into the story.

//But I can't help wondering, who will take my place?//

Ouch.

//On and off, difficult

Too in love to let it go

Now, who's gonna hold me like you do?//

The emotions in this bit, dear lord. It’s this high that takes your breath away, sweeps you off your feet, scorches the reality, and leaves no survivors.

That being said, I don’t think they are really in love at this point. They really care for each other, though, that’s where the softness comes from.

//Hmm who's gonna hold you like I do?//

I literally gasped when I heard that last line. Hits right in the heart, just as I like it.

Rhys Lewis - Waking up without you

There’s something in this song that makes it incredibly sexy. It was great for the morning after vibe, where they don’t really have enough of each other yet.

//Skin on skin

We didn't finish what we started

Heart to heart

I'm missing your love//

Keir - Probably

The way it flows? How powerful the chorus is? It’s heavy, hot, and just makes my heart beat faster.

//Colliding were the walls

And I forget where I began

I wish I could remember love//

Holy fuck. It always makes me think of something awakening deep inside R, definitely not ready to be acknowledged at that moment in the story.

//Probably underneath

There's a remedy

Possibly in the air

In the oxygen I breathe

Probably//

And this part is just mind-blowing. There’s this longing there, and if that feeling isn’t perfect for something more steamy, then I don’t know what is.

Dermot Kennedy - Glory

This one just… expands my heart? I don’t know how else to explain it. Especially the chorus. And then when I think of it in the context of the story, I somehow place it in TP’s office, when Neil gets all protective and doesn’t want to risk taking Reader on a mission where something can so easily go wrong, only because he isn’t prepared enough.

//A set of eyes had pinned him

Became his version of a kingdom

She's everything the devil can't be

When she's singing to me "Glory"//

Maybe that’s when he starts to realize that he cares more than he thought.

Rhys Lewis - Living in The City

If the previous song was Neil’s perspective, we’re back to R. Just look at the lyrics:

//I've been living in the city too long

I've been given everything that I've got

Been a sinner and a saint

Crazy, and sane

I've been living in the city too long//

We’re kinda circling back to part 1, that need to skip town, right?

//There's a part of my soul that wants to let go

Wants to just run away

But the rest of my soul says I should stay

I should stay//

And now we’re back when she can say that the mission is not her problem, she did the best she could, and TP can go fuck himself. Is it just that she feels responsible for her student? Or she likes him enough so she has to make sure he succeeds and comes back? Or she sees a friend in need, something to open, and doesn’t think twice about it?

Chapter 4: Bastille - World gone mad

God, do I love this song.

//So this is where we are

It's not where we had wanted to be

If half the world's gone mad

The other half just don't care, you see

You don't want to fuck with us

British to the very last

When it feels like the world's gone mad

And there's nothing you can do about it

No there's nothing you can do about it//

It felt so accurate for the part when R gets to see all that inverted reality? There’s a slight heaviness of heart there, and it matches the mood when she feels overwhelmed. On the other hand, there’s a bit of hope, the feeling of not being alone in this mad world, and that’s all that matters.

Who’s Molly - Touch the sky

Badass. Pure and simple. It hypes you up, brings a smile to your face, makes you believe everything is possible.

//We can never see beyond that horizon.

And no one knows this road and where it's going to lead.

But there's one thing, one thing that's for certain.

We'll make it through.

If you were here with me.//

That softer bit with inverted guns. And later on, throughout the chapter. They both find comfort in each other’s presence on the mission, after all.

//I wasted so much time trying to find a meaning.

I never looked up, couldn't seem to turn around.

And then you crashed in, and you gave my life a reason.

You pick me up, so high and my feet won't touch the ground, no no no.

Never would have thought I could win this battle.

I was left for dead, every hope in tatters.

We're going to set the world alight tonight.

Cause we can touch the sky!//

That’s the excitement and fun they’re having on the training grounds, not at all stressed about what’s to come.

//Close your eyes, free your soul.

You feel it, don't try it, then you’ll never know.//

Ah, and we’re here at my favourite reference to feeling something, thank you Mr Nolan, sir, so useful.😌

Dermot Kennedy - Young & free

Another one by Dermot Kennedy, and definitely not the last.

//All that she said to me stays with me, never to die

Held me brand new in the silence that went through the pines

Like I said already darling, I don't want you looking back at all the ghosts left behind

Know you'll stay near me so road remains hopeful this time

We were young

We were free, come on now, let it go//

The little whiplash in the mud, where they share a short moment, before they follow with the crackheadery, maybe partly to push back from coming close to something more meaningful. Because it’s there already, kindling, waiting to be spotted and recognized.

James Gillespie - Don’t let me get me

Okay, so - the original song by P!nk was always something that resonated with me, so when Spotify recommended that one, I was like “okay, I’m not sure why but let’s try it.” And then it brought me to that scene in the container.

//I'm a hazard to myself

Don't let me get me

I'm my own worst enemy

It's bad when you annoy yourself

So irritating//

To be honest, I didn’t plan on R to have such a strong case of a mean brain. It was supposed to be a lighter series 🙃. But as you already know, those characters have minds of their own, and it kinda sorta happened. I knew it would be more of a simple panic than full-blown panic attacks that haunted StuckIn!R, topped with pretty loud intrusive thoughts causing her to spiral, especially when she was exhausted.

Ruelle - Oh my my

Listen to that one and tell me you don’t want to go on a sneaky mission, I dare you. I even had it noted as my title song, but then I switched to Bastille.

//I can feel it in my bones, in my bones

Hear it rumble like a drum, like a drum

Like a vapor in the wind, in the wind

You never see us creeping in, creeping in

Oh my my, oh my my

You never stood a chance

...

Ready or not, here we come//

The vibe is just amazing. The low-key hype? Is that a thing? It must be. And those drums! Even quite fitting for a patter of rain, one might argue.

Speaking of rain--

Chapter 5: Dermot Kennedy - After rain

The title alone is perfect for this chapter, but the rest of it - my poor heart. This chapter and the finale have some of the most beautiful and/or heart-wrenching songs I’ve ever heard, and this one is definitely one of them.

//But it's alright because

You cause lanterns to light

And force demons disperse

And if Lucifer may fear the swift drying of tears

Then, for evil, you could not be worse

But I see you now, yeah, I see you

And release me now, kinda like dreams do

And I see you now, was hard to see you

Just don't forget to sing

Remember everything//

So we have Neil storming off from the bathroom because he’s clearly going through something. The immense guilt brewing inside him, overflowing and backfiring, when he can’t cope with seeing her so battered, knowing that she may never fully recover, and just because he hesitated out there. The fear is there, but also other feelings he tries to keep in check now.

I had that image of R asking him to stay, then just breaking down in the darkness. I was aware it would only add to the issues Neil already had, but it would be nothing compared to the fact that she needs him, and he’d be ready to push everything that bothered him away to comfort her.

Humming a lullaby that he promised her in the container. And R recognized it (kind of), because he used parts of it to plead with her to stay with him after the fall, so she could one day hear the whole thing, because she took that rain check and she needed to cash it in, right?

...yeah, I like breaking my own heart, why? (should I write that part one day?)

//If you think just maybe it's her

Then promise me, young man, you're gonna let her know

You won't go lonely, yeah

It'll all be better in the morning

'Cause while you sleep, I'll build a wall//

Aquillo - Six feet over ground

Whenever I hear this song now, my mind goes to that scene in the bathroom.

//Today's the day I found myself alright

When I look ahead, pretend it never came.

I found a way to keep my head above

But the hardest part is to say 'No it's not'

Well I'm okay, and I'm still breathing

I'm still six feet over ground

But you don't need to know now

You don't need to know how I'm doing//

They both hide how they really feel. That they are not okay. They’re both scared, blaming themselves. Reader doesn’t want to worry Neil too much, but she also tries to convince herself that she is fine. And a moment of peace they share shatters as soon as she downplays what happened aloud, and when Neil goes off, she hides behind yet another joke, and then behind a blindfold.

Aquilo - Silhouette

The one for when R tells Neil goodnight and then can’t fall asleep. //Devil's on your shoulder

Strangers in your head

As if you don't remember

As if you can forget

It's only been a moment

It's only been a lifetime

But tonight you're a stranger

Some silhouette //

When he comes to check in on her, and something feels off. She’s lost, yet finds enough strength to ask him to stay.

//Just hold me//

Nathan Ball - Drifting

//I can see in your eyes

When you lie awake at night

You convince yourself you're fine, it's alright

To keep on drifting

With the drugs keeping you high

They catch you falling from the sky

I keep asking myself why

You stand by

And keep on drifting

…

So tell me what you hold inside

Tell the backstreets of your mind

You're still lonely as a child

Teary eyed

Kept on drifting//

Knowing our Reader a bit longer by now, I knew what would happen if she was to be left alone with her thoughts, in pain, and with Neil being weirdly distant.

Have you ever lied in bed, crying silently, trying not to wake up the person next to you but getting absolutely torn apart by the sadness roaring inside you? It’s a different kind of loneliness, not helping in the slightest when you’re biting back sobs. Anyway,--

//So take my hand and hold on

Take my hand don't let go//

That’s something that happened almost organically with these two. Part of their language, hand touches as a sign of support.

I gotta admit, I watched Shadow and Bone already being in the middle of writing the series and seeing how overused the hand-holding flashback was... it there made me slightly cringe every time it came up in the story I was writing later on. On the other hand (hah), it was so them. It had to stay.

Dean Lewis - Need you now - Acoustic

//Cold light wakes me in the morning,

Your side is empty I was calling out to you,

I was calling out to you.//

That’s the next day after R’s breakdown, but check out the next lyrics.

//But I don't need your love,

I just need your

Talking next to me when I wake up, wake up

Talking next to me when I wake up next to you,

When I'm hungover too.

Cause you're the only one who comes when I'm lonely,

You're the only one who comes when I'm lonely for you,

When I'm lonely for you.

All that I need is a sweet escape,

And all that I need is a sweet escape.

...

Cause I don't need your love

But I just need you now

And I don't need your love

I just need you now//

This, y’all, is R, still convinced that it’s not about love, and it’s so perfectly put into words, but the music and the vocals are dripping with longing, making it even more spot-on for the occasion.

RHODES - Breathe

The emotions captured in this… holy shit. They clench my chest and make me struggle for breath. This could have been a song playing in the background when R wakes up from a nap to Neil having a breakdown of his own.

//Mind break in two,

There's a light in the sky, there's a light

And it's all for you

Dawn colors all

Tell me how do you feel?

Tell me how do you need to heal?//

Looking for his hand, only to find a clenched fist. And when she realizes he’s been crying and she hears how broken he is, that’s enough to make her heart shatter, doubly so because he’s agonizing over something she feels responsible for.

//Breathe, release it all

Come on now, I'll keep you warm

Come on!

Breathe, release it all

Come on now, I need your love

Come on now!//

To me, every “come on”, repeated with urgency, is how desperate she is to make him stop spiraling down when she kisses him, and then again, more purposefully, until he gives in and comes back to her.

Circa Waves - Fire that burns - Acoustic

The one for ✨the moment✨.

//Comfort me, oh comfort me

I'm lighting up

To see the day you run for me

You run for me, my love//

Because they both seek comfort in the act, two broken people mending whole in each other’s embrace. Ultimately, finding there something more, whether they are ready to acknowledge it or not.

//But I've been tied up

For days

And I've been thinking of the things that you say

And I've been wound up

Each way

I need to let you know, to let you know today//

Neil already knows how important she is to him. And that’s what he tries to say between the choked-out words, that he thought he’d lost his chance to tell her how much she means to him.

//You call me a liar

You call me so innocent

But you lit the fire

You lit the fire that burns

The fire that burns inside us

I'm not innocent

I lit the fire, the fire, the fire

I lit the fire//

Oh yes, that bit definitely seeped into the chapter.

The XCERTS - Feels like falling in love - alternative version

//Keep yourself safe, keep yourself safe she said

You broke your own heart but there's no need to lose your head

Keep yourself sane, keep yourself sane he said

You gotta give up, give up, give up the dark

To start again//

You can see it, right?

Outlining the whole story, I knew that part 5 would be the part when they fall in love, or realize that they already might be.

//And it feels like falling in, falling in love

Yeah it feels like falling in, falling in, falling in love

Could save me tonight//

The 1975 - Fallingforyou

//According to your heart

My place is not deliberate

Feeling of your arms

I don't want to be your friend, I want to kiss your neck

Don't you see me I

I think I'm falling, I'm falling for you

And don't you need me I

I think I'm falling, I'm falling for you

On this night, and in this light

I think I'm falling (I think I'm falling), I'm falling for you

And maybe you, change your mind//

They’re so vulnerable there. Everything Neil pours into the act sweeps R off her feet and she opens up and to let him feel the extent of how much she cares for him, unaware that it might be shifting into something from the territory she promised herself not to venture into. Because that’s not important then. Nothing else is. Just them. So simple.

Adam French - Weightless

The light and softness in this song remind me of another Weightless I used for the finale of the Smoke series.

That’s the moment after. Softness. Closeness. Bliss.

//I told ya that you were the only weight on my shoulders

You see you're gonna make it alright

How you're gonna make it alright

When you're gonna make it alright, alright, alright

You say your body will

Hold me in the night

...

Only you can make me weightless

...

Closer is all I ever wanted to be

There for ya so you can be confiding in me

There to break the fall

Here for everybody to see

Weightless after all//

Chapter 6: Declan J Donovan - Perfectly imperfect

I had the moment they fall in love. I knew how it was gonna end, the conversation with Mahir and how it goes from there. I thought that we need some calm before the storm that was bound to happen, and what’s better than a little domestic fluff? A time when they can see each other in a different setting, get to know one another even better. Fall even harder.

And my god, this song.

//You live like you're a secret

One that only I could know

'Cause I said

You know what I want and

I know who you are

I know when I hold you and love you

You'll get up and go before you fall apart//

...that last line hits different when you know what’s gonna happen later, right?

//I'll bring you every colour that I find

In your eyes

You wake me up

And it breaks my heart

That you're perfectly imperfect

You're hurting but you're worth it

You don't know why

I would waste my time

But I'm falling and I mean it

I want you like I need it

There's nothing you could try to change my mind

'Cause I'm in love

So call me when you want me and I'll come running

Find me waiting at your door

So tell me if you're lonely and it won't last long

'Cause I'm in love with you (you)//

That light when the song gets to the part about being in love -- there’s so much tenderness there, and it resonated with the story so much. And the perfectly imperfect line, so so good.

Bastille - Survivin’

The way the song swings and the hopeful vibe is just what I needed for this chapter.

//And I'm not gonna lie

Say I've been alright

'Cause it feels like I've been living upside down

What can I say? I'm survivin'

Crawling out these sheets to see another day

What can I say? I'm survivin'

And I'm gonna be fine

I'm gonna be fine

I think I'll be fine//

As much as Reader didn’t want Neil to be there with her for so long, she really enjoys his company, making the boring and still rather painful recovery period easier.

Ella Henderson, Tom Grennan - Let’s go home together - stripped

Ha, this one! The humour when they tease other words always brings a smile to my face. That playfulness just fits our duo’s dynamic so well.

//Maybe you'll like me the way I am//

Crazy concept, right? And with Neil learning to spot the times when she hides behind a joke, and still being there--

//Feels like I know you so well

You could be everything that I've been missing

I'm coming out of my shell

And I never do that

How did you do that?

It's like I've known you my whole life//

That’s exactly how she feels like. She intently doesn’t think about it though, because if she starts overthinking it… we know what happens. She’s allowing herself to be in the moment, however. And happy.

//You seem like someone I could be myself with, no defenses

Maybe you like me the way I am//

That brings me to all Neil’s animated rants, and how much he appreciates that she always listens. He feels accepted, and I don’t know, it melts my heart a little.

//Baby, I'm in love//

🙃

INXS - Need you tonight

I know I used a cover of this song for another playlist, but the vibe was so different, and you just have to bear with me. It’s one of those songs that sparks the ideas and images, and usually, they involve Neil being a tease and having way too much fun. And as I was plotting the chapter, I thought of R missing out on his shenanigans, and how he could make her see what he was doing, and 😳 oh my. I knew the imagination would run wild. (That definitely might have something to do with a certain scene from a certain movie and a conversation I had with M about how Neil would handle it)

//So slide over here and give me a moment

Your moves are so raw, I've got to let you know

I've got to let you know

You're one of my kind

I need you tonight

'Cause I'm not sleepin'

There's somethin' about you, girl

That makes me sweat//

That’s one sexy song, don’t judge me.

Dermot Kennedy - Days like this

Oh, would you look at that, it’s Dermot again! This one is for that scene on the balcony.

That quiet contentment, like everything fell in its place and life is alright.

//When it's not always raining, there'll be days like this

When there's no one complaining, there'll be days like this

When everything falls into place, like the flick of a switch

Oh my mama told me, there'll be days like this

When you don't need to worry, there'll be days like this

When no one's in a hurry, there'll be days like this

When you don't get betrayed by that old Judas kiss

Oh my mama told me, there'll be days like this//

They’re in the moment, comfortable in the relationship that blooms between them. More casual and laid-back throughout the day only to get more soft and intimate in the evenings, when the inner demons’ voices grow louder.

James Bay - Chew on my heart - acoustic

The way the chorus explodes? It makes me beam widely and my heart is about to burst.

//Take your time

I'll be right here

I know no one could ever love me better

Take all night

You're the truth that

Is breaking me and keeping me together

Together

I wanna be in your touch

Sleep is so tough

You're burning up my mind

What would it feel like if you tore me apart?

Come on chew on my heart

...

I'm on fire

I'm a hot mess

I'm thinking things that I might start regretting

So hear me out

I need you now

I'm spiraling

I'm sinking down

Look for me I'm sending up a message

A message//

I think it weirdly fits those times at night when Neil checks the bruises. When their minds wander to that first evening, and they still feel bad about how it ended up, the closeness brings them back to the present and grounds them.

Picture This - Unconditional

This one just makes my heart sing.

//This magic, I don't know what it is but we have it

Even when we're sleepless and damaged

I don't doubt it

We're holding on//

That’s exactly it.

//Baby I wish we could take this feeling

And put it away somewhere safe

'Til we need it

Unconditional

I'm so afraid of losing your love//

They don’t need big words. But they feel it, all right. Whether they are aware of it or not. And they are afraid of losing each other, now that they know how easily that could happen.

//Shivers running down my back with your fingers

The smell of your perfume it lingers

And whispers

What I want you to say

Under your skin, underdressed under covers

We bring out the best in each other

Two lovers finding our way//

The kiss, the touch, the skin on skin contact - some of the most powerful reminders that, for now, they’re safe.

BANNERS - Start a riot

But it’s not always about going all the way, because sometimes you just need to be held. And this song just speaks to me of all that tenderness, all the feelings clenching the heart so much they’re unable to say a word, just want to keep each other as close as they can. Just to make sure they’re really there.

//I will march down an empty street like a ship into the storm

No surrender, no retreat

I will tear down every wall

Just to keep you warm

Just to bring you home

I will burn this city down for a diamond in the dust

I will keep you safe and sound when there's no one left to trust

Will you take my hand?

We can make our stand

If your world falls apart

I'd start a riot

If night falls in your heart

I'd light the fire

In the dark, when you sound the alarm

We'll find each other's arms

For your love, all you are

I'd start a riot//

The lyrics are so beautiful, and there’s so much longing there, and the promise to protect each other, to be there for each other, to face whatever life might throw their way together.

Yeah, it makes me emotional, I absolutely love it. Speaking of emotional--

Chapter 7: Stone Sour - Wicked game - acoustic, live

When Spotify recommended this one to me, I almost skipped it. I’ve heard it a million times in different versions and I thought that there’s nothing to be found there. Oh, was I wrong.

I knew what was going to happen in the chapter - Mahir is about to confront R, surprised by what he sees. And he can clearly recognize that they’re idiots in love, even if they’re trying to lay low in the company. He knows what happened to R, why she’s so cautious and reluctant when it comes to any relationships that are more than simple hookups.

//The world was on fire and no one could save me but you

It's strange what desire will make foolish people do

And I never dreamed that I'd meet somebody like you

And I never dreamed that I'd lose somebody like you//

Because that’s how it started, right? With desire. One could argue that our duo had solid banter before that, respect and understanding, all those things, sure. But ultimately, that was all that sexual tension, sparked by the playful teasing, that pushed them into each other’s arms in the first place.

//No, I don't want to fall in love

With you, with you

What a wicked game to play, to make me feel this way

What a wicked thing to do, to make me dream of you//

And when Reader finally lets the thought in and it dawns on her that she is, in fact, in love - she goes into full panic. Not because she feels it’s unrequited, god, she’s not stupid, nor blind (too soon?). But she’s mad at herself that she allowed this to happen. She’s afraid that she’ll get hurt, and to avoid that, she has to run away. And that’s gonna hurt Neil as well, and she can’t stand that, hates herself for that, but she’s so scared that she can’t think of any other solution.

Before we get to that, however, there’s a bit more softness to be shared.

Lewis Watson - Little light

//And all this shade is, illuminating

And all those love lines, are taking shape

And all my worries, disintegrating

And I've been waiting, I've been waiting

And all my days were young and wasted

When I was waiting, oh for you

And all the plans that I've been chasing are always fading

But ever since I found you

A little light is breaking through//

Gotta admit, I had this one hidden in the playlists of other chapters, because it captures that feeling when your chest is filled with light and you’re simply happy. It ended up here, because it’s this feeling when R is melting a little inside when she looks at Neil, when she’s in his arms. And how Neil feels, too.

X Ambassadors - Renegades

Funny, I had this song for both times the team appears in the story. There’s this sense of camaraderie to it that I wanted to capture, when you’re with a bunch of people who are like family to you. You can tease them all you want, but at the same time you’d go into battle with them, knowing that you can count on them to have your six.

//Long live the pioneers

Rebels and mutineers

Go forth and have no fear

Come close and lend an ear

…

All hail the underdogs

All hail the new kids

All hail the outlaws

Spielbergs and Kubricks

It's our time to make a move

It's our time to make amends

It's our time to break the rules

Let's begin//

I wanted R to have a taste of that. To let her know that she’s appreciated for helping with the mission. To get to know them all better, and to make amends with TP, of sorts.

I didn’t want to make his motivation clear. He wouldn’t tell her that he knows how the story ends. That he can’t help that, deep down, irrationally, he made her responsible for it. Even if she’s not the one to blame. (And I don’t believe he let’s that happen, in the end, because that’s too much angst, even for me - again, fuck you, Mr Nolan, sir)

Corey Taylor, Dave Grohl, Rick Nielsen, Scott Reeder - From can to can’t

Christ almighty, this one is so raw! The emotional progression in here just blows my mind.

//Under the water

It's cold and it's grey

My torrid autumn

Another season decays

Open up the Hollow

And my walls come down

I tell you it's a problem

Just when no one's around

But then

I know what's wrong

God, you complicated everything

I know you're gone, gone, gone

This is where I will draw my line

I will draw my line//

To me, it’s the scene with R having a breakdown in the bathroom, and then somehow finding the solution. She has a plan, and enough strength and determination to pull through, at least for a moment.

Chapter 8: Dan Owen - Hideaway

I found this song by accident, and I almost screamed at how perfect it is for the finale (and then screamed for the second time when my dearest friend @connie-nikas casually sent me this exact song one day saying that it sounds like something I’d enjoy). The intensity just tears your heart out and makes you struggle to draw a breath, there’s something desperate to it, and I knew that it would be my go-to song for the part where R sleeps with Neil, trying one last time to drown all the pain and sorrow in his closeness.

I could just paste all the lyrics, to be honest, because that’s exactly what’s happening in the scene.

//It's a long way down

I keep backing away from the edge

And it's a slow burnout

Like the fires that rage in my head

And it's a slow cry out

When you've got so many tears you could die

And it's a long time to wait

When you take all my tears away//

Oh, she’s on the verge of tears, all right. Knowing quite well that as soon as Neil picks on them, he’s gonna stop to make sure she’s okay. That once he starts asking questions, she’s gonna fall into pieces, unable to lie to him.

//My body is colder

Time is frozen

All these feelings have poisoned my soul

And in silence no I can't stand it

Please break these chains and hell I can

Hideaway//

She’s scared that if she’s left alone with her thoughts, they will break her and make her stay. What she fears most (besides that she’s gonna end up betrayed, alone and heartbroken) is how Neil’s gonna react to her actions. The last thing she wants is to hurt him. She just hopes that maybe if she leaves now, it’s not gonna be as painful as it would be if she stayed a bit longer. That maybe he’s not fallen in too deep.

//You're my one way out

And my tears won't save me now

Save me now

I can't stand it

All this loneliness I feel

I can't do this alone

I need someone to remind my feelings

That I've fallen down by the door

It's a long way down and my tears won't save me now

It's a long way down

I keep backing away from the edge

And it's a slow burnout

Like the fires that rage in my head//

Macy Gray - I try

One of the first songs that came to my mind when I was composing the playlist for the series. It may be a tad too upbeat for my liking, hah, but parts of the lyrics are spot on, and it had to be there.

//I try to say goodbye and I choke (Yeah)

I try to walk away and I stumble

Though I try to hide it, it's clear

My world crumbles when you are not near

Goodbye and I choke (Yeah!)

I try to walk away and I stumble

Though I try to hide it, it's clear

My world crumbles when you are not near//

It makes me think of the time when they’re in the car. She’s going over the plan, kinda skipping the moment she’d have to say goodbye to Neil. That’s the unbearable part. And when he asks an innocent question and touches her, she crumbles and jokes. Partly to distract him from prodding further, but mostly to distract herself. I didn’t plan on them getting all worked up there, it...happened, but I figured it made for a decent ground for what was about to go down in the hotel room.

Belle Mt. - Hollow - acoustic

//She told me she was hollow

That's far from what I see//

That feeling you get when everything is too much and it leaves you hollow because you can’t take it anymore. A safety mechanism of sorts. It kicks in with Reader, and of course, Neil can sense that something is off. He hopes it’s just her being tired, he knows how she feels after spending too much time with people.

//I told her she was special

She almost let me in

But she couldn't bear the thought of digging up the heart that she's been burying//

We already know it. The thing is - Neil doesn’t. They haven’t really talked about it. Well, they did after the first night, but with all the things that happened later… and with how much affection she shows him? He doesn’t have a reason to suspect something this big.

//Lonely is her favourite

If only I could change it

If I could only save her

But sometimes she's lost, sometimes she's broken

Sometimes she's closed, sometimes she's open

Sometimes she's stone-cold, times she's on fire

Mostly she's everything I desire

Lonely is her favourite place to be//

Galleaux - Tether me

I had it on repeat when I was writing that part when R collapses in Neil’s arms when they’re in bed. Did I mention that I didn’t want Reader to be this emotional in the first part of the chapter? I thought she’d be more distant. Numb, even, here and there slipping up but holding it together until the very end. And then she does that. But it was Neil’s reaction that left me all 🥺. Not only me, apparently, because she let out so much there. I think my heart broke a little when she gave me that make love to me/love me/ never let me go part.

//In this space, do I belong?

It's dark out here in my own thoughts

Pull me back, out of my body

I'm tied to my limbs

They're spinning me out of control

Tether me//

And the way the music builds up only to blow up at 3:11, heavens, and those vocals! It just takes my breath away, fits so well there.

Nothing But Thieves - Lover, please stay

There can’t be a series playlist without Nothing But Thieves! And it’s another song Chels sent me. The way it broke me-- bloody hell. It’s that gentle guitar, it’s the raw emotions in the vocals, and those lyrics! It rips my heart out, in the best way possible.

It’s for that part where Neil falls asleep and R breaks down, fully realizing what she is about to do.

//Lover, I know you're weary

Eyes are tired from the night

Lover, come to the kitchen floor

Tiles are cold, so am I//

You bet your ass she’s having flashbacks to those moments on the cold tiles, but in her bathroom.

//Lover, I feel your sorrow pouring out of your skin

And I don't wanna be alone

If I am tonight, I'll always be//

Lonely might be her favourite place to be, but losing Neil by her own decision hurts more than she thought possible.

//So take from me what you want, what you need

Take from me whatever you want, whatever you need

But lover, please stay with me, oh//

You know what’s the worst, though? As if that scene was not heartbreaking enough, my brain decided to remind me how much it parallels part 7 from Stuck in reverse. Yep. ✨Pain.✨

Foo Fighters - Home

When she walks to her apartment. Crying. Broken. Missing him already.

//Wish I were with you

But I couldn't stay

Every direction

Leads me away

Pray for tomorrow

But for today

All I want is to be home//

About to leave for good.

This is the bit that prompted the final conversation. What even is home to her? Living the way she does, it never was something important. I struggled with that idea, I thought it’s too sweet. But Neil, the stubborn ass that he is, didn’t want to give me anything else, so it stayed - and in the end, I’m happy that it did.

BANKS - Someone new

Okay, this one is perfect with its sadness and longing, but it’s a hit and miss when it comes to lyrics. Take a look -

//I can love you desperately

Though your love ain't guaranteed

Oh, I wish you knew the deal

Gotta learn from far away

And I simply needed space

Space for me to be

And I think you need it too

Though I know you call me selfish for assuming

I did this for you too//

This, this, all of this! You see it, right?

//Everything I do, I'm gonna think of you

Don't know what else to do//

Well, one could argue that they could just talk it through without all the drama, but hey, where’s the fun in that? And running away really seems like the best option to R.

//And please don't fall in love with someone new

I promise one day I'll come back for you//

And here it’s off because I don’t think she plans on going back. So she wouldn’t want him to not fall in love with someone else, because why would she? He deserves to be happy.

//Oh, you say you hate me now and you burn me with your words

Calling me a fool

Saying that I've fucked up everything

And you'll never forgive me//

See, I have a few options for what to do when Neil finds her at the riverside. I knew one thing though - it would never be a full-blown argument and accusations. At first (and when I say first I mean before I actually started writing chapter 1, because I already had the last scene plotted out by then), I thought Neil would be calm, with a kind of “I know you love me too, silly, so what on earth are you doing?” vibe to him, to R’s annoyance. Then, the story became heavier, and I knew Neil would be worried. Lost. Confused. But never to the point of losing his temper, not after that one time in the bathroom. And that’s what happens in that scene. He doesn’t know what to do as he tries to make some sense out of it all.

Agnes Obel - Riverside

//Oh my God I see how everything is torn in the river deep

And I don't know why I go the way

Down by the riverside//

As I mentioned, I knew what I wanted for the final confrontation from the start. That’s why I tried to make that river quite important for both of them, weaving it into the story here and there. That’s why they instinctively go there.

Billy Raffoul - Dark four door

There’s this sad acceptance in this song that just breaks my heart. It makes me think about the moment when Neil wakes up and sees that she’s gone. How he doesn’t know what’s going on, and how his mind slowly connects all the things that felt strange, but he’s unwilling to accept it until he checks Reader’s place. And much it costs him to keep it together when he sees that the bag is gone.

//You got up, you felt you should

I keep trying to myself I would've done the same had I could

I never thought that you would//

Chris Cornell - Before we disappear

Whenever I hear this song, I think of Neil standing there with Reader, hurt, trying to understand what went wrong.

//So how hard can it be to share your life with me?

How hard can it be to rise with me each morning?//

Dermot Kennedy - A closeness

The last one by Dermot. If that isn’t their conversation--

//Keeping her bright eyes focused on the coastline, waiting for you

Isn't she all of us pining for that last kiss

A permanent truth, a means to get through//

Why does she stay up for so long in their spot? Does she subconsciously count on him to show up? Unable to let go, once and for all?

//Deep into the night, eyes closing

Heart swollen with my loving for you

A solid embrace, kind face

And then the hurt starts leaving the room, followed by goons

Sometimes it's open wide and lights the road at night

You've got a heart like the moon

Gather courage, if you're doing something, do it

'Cause she got to go soon//

And when Neil sees her, he wants nothing more than to hug her, he’s so relieved. But then she snaps at him, and he can’t believe that she’d actually think that he planted a bug on her to track her. It’s another wound he didn’t expect, but he waits for her to explain her actions before he lets out how much it all affected him.

Ryan McMullan - Outcry

I was close to making this one a title song for the chapter because as Hideaway sounds like it was written for the time they make love, this one is for the time Neil asks why she left.

//You came a long way to see me

So don't you run off, baby stop pretending that you're fine

What's the point that you're making

Tell me what it is that's going 'round inside your mind

If in doubt, don't fake it

I have known you long enough to know that you can't lie

If you're in love don't be ashamed of it

'Cause even angels fall for demons//

God, of course he saw that she wasn’t alright that night, but she seemed so sure about what she needed that moment that he decided not to push her - they had all the time in the world, he could ask her about it in the morning, right?

And Neil knows when she’s hiding behind jokes. That’s why he doesn’t want to play her game when she deflects what he says about the way she was in bed. He wants her to be honest. Especially since he knows what he saw in her eyes, in her actions, when they were together, and he’s sure it all must have meant something to her.

//I've heard stories, but they're jaded

So give me something more

I only know what I've been told

But I can tell that you're frustrated

And I won't ever pry, I'll only be a hand to hold

If you tell me you're hurting

I'm hurting too, yeah

Don't tell me you're fine - unless you're fine

I'll wait for the outcry

Whenever there is something weighing on your mind//

And Neil knows he can’t pressure her, that’s why he just stands with her and waits. Sweeping his mind over and over again for anything that could have prompted this whole mess.

//If you feel like leaving

Then maybe it's for the best

Or if you feel like you've given in

Oh, give yourself a chance

If you feel like crying

Oh please don't hold it in

If you feel like reaching out oh

Let me in//

His heart is aching when he hears her reason why she feels like she has to leave. That’s when he touches her. To pull her back from her head to something real. To remind her that nothing has changed. That he’s there, and not going to let her go that easily. That he loves her, because he needs her to hear it, so she knows for sure. And when she tears up, there’s only one desperate plea in his mind.

Gavin James - Hard to do

One heavy hitter after another, and this is another killer. The longing in Gavin’s voice clenches your chest and you just want to hide in somebody’s arms.

//Oh, I've been thinking that I don't wanna leave

This house isn't home to me

I'm tired of losing everyone I see

Now that you're here, it's a hard thing to do

Trying to hold on//

Does she really want to leave? She feels she has to, but god, if only she knew for sure her heart is safe, she would stay with him forever. The problem with life is - you can never be so sure. And when Neil shows up… it takes everything, even unreasonable anger, to keep her together.

//Maybe I don't believe that I don't wanna run

But two hearts are better than one

You say you'll stick around but I'll be gone

Oh, I'll be gone

It's a hard thing to do, trying to hold on//

Reader knows that it’s gonna be nearly impossible to walk away now. And she’s afraid.

//Oh, but I need you

Far more than I ever want you

It's such an unnatural thing we do

When falling in love's just so hard to do

Hard to do//

She can’t bring herself to look at him after she tells him what’s going on with her. But when Neil touches her and takes her hand, she can’t keep it inside anymore. Then he tells her that he loves her, and everything floods her at once. Fear. Guilt. Love. All that combined with his simple plea is enough to finally make her give in.

Damien Rice - I don’t want to change you

I had it on repeat since the moment Neil touched her. The softness of what happens there, melting the barriers once and for all.

//Wherever you are

You know that I adore you

No matter how far

Well, I can go before you

And if ever you need someone

Well, not that you need helping

But if ever you want someone

Know that I am willing//

He’s there for her. Always has been, always will be.

//Oh, and I don't want to change you

I don't want to change you

I don't want to change your mind//

Here. I think that’s what is really important about them and their relationship.

//I've never been with anyone

In the way I've been with you

But if love is not for fun

Then it's doomed

'Cause water races

Water races down the waterfalls//

Lucy Spraggan - Run

Ha, this kinda feels like an end-credits song, don’t you think?

//I just to run to the end of the world

Just to see if it's possible

I don't care what I've been told

I want to run to the end of the world

I'm going to run,run,run

Bye bye problems

Run 'til the road hits the sea

You better run,run,run

If you want to be free//

Granted, she didn’t run off without Neil, but found a way to run with him instead. There’s that heart-bursting light and freedom in this song, I think it captures that happiness they found, working it all out in the end.

//I wanna feel invincible

One more mile out of principle

I want to see the whole damn world

One cross road can change it all//

Travelling the world. Doing what they like most. Together.

------

Quite a journey that was.

Thank you all for taking it with me.

#long nights #long nights playlist #bts long nights

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octoberobserver · 4 years

Text

“Just To Dream In The Moonlight” - (Eddie Can Sing)

Richie Tozier was on a date.

Eddie Kaspbrak was not.

Instead, he was at home, the home he had been sharing with Richie for five months now, hunched over his laptop at the kitchen table and steadily building up a knot in the base of his spine because he was too fucking old for this shit.

Fuck his life.

He had died, come back, divorced his wife, moved half-way across the country, only to find himself working from home on a Saturday night while his roommate, best friend and, oh yeah, love of his pathetic fucking life, went out to dinner with some handsome, single, ‘Instagram model.’

I mean, what the fuck even is that anyway?

Eddie knew this day would come, of course. Had seen it almost instantly after Richie came out, live on stage.

Richie was a catch. He was funny, smart, and…yeah, he’d admit, handsome. Bev was right. He did ‘grow into his looks.’

So, it didn’t take a genius to realise that him coming out would soon draw the attention of all the eligible men within a hundred mile radius and for them to show their interest. They’d be fools not to.

And you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you, Kaspbrak?

With a groan, Eddie dragged a palm down his face, snapping his laptop shut and pushing it away from him.

He had to cut out this wallowing bullshit. It wasn’t a good look, at all.

Richie was on a date and that was…good.

Right?

Eddie, as a good friend, should think that’s a good thing.

Then again - has Eddie always been a good friend?

With a roll of his eyes, he shut down that line of thinking, knowing it was the blame of the two glasses of wine he had just inhaled while pouring over Teddy’s illegible ‘reports’ while trying to ignore what Richie could possibly be doing right about now.

Or who, his mind added scathingly.

Shaking his head, Eddie mentally-scolded himself for his stupid, jealous streak.

Richie had left just over an hour ago, throwing him a half-hearted wave, muttering a low, “Won’t be long, Eds. Trust me,” and snapping the door shut behind him.

It hardly screamed a guy who intended on having a little Wham, Bam, Thank you, Sam.

Not that there’s anything wrong with a one-night-stand. Richie is a consenting adult, Eddie’s treacherous brain reminded him.

Despite this, Richie had insisted, all this week that it was “practically a business dinner.” Something that his publicist had apparently set up that was more than a little mandatory for some bullshit-Hollywood-reason.

Richie had not seemed too psyched about it either. Lamenting to Eddie more than once that he didn’t have time for “aging-ex-Disney-stars-looking-for-the-ultimate-selfie-or-whatever.”

But that had been before he had seen the picture.

Up-and-coming actor and singer, Dylan Lemass was…hot. Even Eddie could concede that.

And, he was a little more age-appropriate (at 33) than most guys DMing Richie at four in the morning.

Richie hadn’t been quite quick enough at hiding his impressed eyebrow quirk at the picture sent to him by Bev after some googling.

“He looks…nice,” Eddie had ground out through clenched jaw, heart panging as Richie began to nod.

“Uh, yeah. I guess. If…if that’s your type.”

“Richie, that guy is everybody’s type.”

He had looked at Eddie then, something indecipherable on his face.

“I’m not usually into…blonds.”

Usually.

That had been the only word to ring in Eddie’s head.

“Well,” he forced himself to shrug, punching Richie harder than he intended on the shoulder, “just see how it goes. You never know…he might…he might be your Mr Right.”

Fuck, actually, Eddie was a damn good friend, okay? He had encouraged Richie, “Mr Right” and all that shit, and helped him pick between two (admittedly ugly) shirts and everything.

He was friend of the fucking year.

Friend.

Just a friend.

With a sigh, he crossed to the fridge, fully intending to help himself to the leftover cheesecake that Richie had bought them in celebration of four months of Eddie allowing himself dairy again.

“I know you belong to somebody new,” he sang under his breath, the old song he had heard on the radio this morning continuing to be an ear-worm, “but tonight, you belong to me.”

He crossed the kitchen to get a spoon from the drawer, because it was an eating-straight-from-the-container-despite-that-being-gross kinda night, and sticking it directly into the strawberry mousse.

“Although we’re apart, you’re a part of my heart,” he continued, cheesecake in one hand and picking up his half-empty glass with the other, making his way out to the couch.

“But tonight, you belong to—”

“A bit of Eddie Vedder, huh? Eddie squared, I like it.”

He jumped so high that his red wine sloshed dangerously close to the rim of the glass.

“Fuck, Richie! Don’t scare me like that, dipshit!”

The man in question snorted out a laugh from his position at the front door, keys still in hand, jacket half off one shoulder.

“I did say ‘honey I’m home,’ Eds. Not my fault you were too busy crooning to notice.”

Eddie’s face flushed as he collected himself, carefully depositing his glass and cheesecake on the coffee table before straightening up and tilting his head at his friend.

“You’re home early.”

He didn't mean for it to sound as accusatory as it did.

He winced.

“I mean, uh…how’d the date go?”

Richie’s face was pretty expressionless as he shrugged.

“We wined, dined and sixty-nined. Just how I like it.”

Eddie’s mouth dropped open.

“Wha—”

“I’m kidding, Eddie, Jesus,” Richie held up his hands as he kicked off his shoes, leaving them by Eddie’s on the rack by the door and padding over in his socks to the couch, sinking down into it with a loud sigh.

“It went exactly like I thought it would,” he mumbled to the ceiling, slipping his glasses up his forehead to rest in his hair, his eyes falling closed.

Eddie watched him for a moment, unsure what to do, before taking a seat beside him, turning to properly look at him.

He seemed…tired. Weary.

Sad?

Shit.

Time for Eddie to be a good friend.

“Well, fuck that guy, Rich,” he reached out and clasped Richie’s arm. “He’s clearly a dumbass if he can’t see what a fucking catch you are.”

Slowly, those dark eyes that Eddie loved so much blinked open, meeting his with something indistinguishable glimmering in them.

“Thanks, Eddie.”

It was the most sincere Eddie had heard his friend be in a long time.

It made his heart skip a beat.

Quietly, he reached out and picked up the glass and cheesecake, holding it out.

“Wanna watch that new Chris Hansen exposé?”

A small smile crossed Richie’s face, breaking through the weariness like a soothing balm.

“Sounds like a plan, Eds Spagheds.”

Eddie rolled his eyes, throwing the remote at him before standing up.

“I’m opening another bottle. Don’t start without me.”

He crossed the room, into the kitchen and towards the fridge.

“He couldn’t sing for shit either, Eds,” Richie called after him, sounding pained. “He made me suffer through like four YouTube videos of him squawking his way through covers. I wanted to use the steak knife to stab out my own eardrums. It was fucking torture, man. You’re a hell of a lot nicer to listen to.”

Eddie froze, bottle in hand, the soft, unthinking compliment making him blush from head to toe.

“Eddie Vedder is technically a cover too,” he reminded him as he fought (and failed) to keep the grin from his face.

“Yeah, I know but…least it’s not the Patience and Prudence version. Talk about creepy. That’s some Children-of-the-Corn-type shit.”

Eddie snorted out a laugh as he made his way back into the living room, sinking down into the couch, his stomach lurching as his thigh pressed against Richie’s.

Richie held out his cheesecake-topped spoon, dangling it in Eddie’s face and making obnoxious airplane noises.

“Want some before I infect it with my Trashmouth germs, Eds? It’s a one time deal. I know how you feel about double-dipping.”

Eddie leaned forward, closing his mouth around the spoon, eyes gluing to Richie’s as he swallowed the bite and pulled back slowly.

Richie’s eyes were the size of saucers, clearly shocked that Eddie had called his bluff.

“Uh, I…” he cleared his throat, “it’s good?”

Eddie smirked, “Yeah, it’s good.”

“Cool.”

They lapsed into a short silence, Richie shifting to face the TV just as Chris Hansen popped up and launched into his latest case.

“Thanks, Eds. For the uh…cheesecake.”

He nodded, deciding not to comment as Richie kicked his feet up onto the coffee table, his shoulder pressing into his as he slowly, carefully, raised the spoon to his own lips.

Eddie blushed like a teenager as he kept his gaze firmly on the TV, trying not to think about the fact that Richie so easily put his mouth somewhere Eddie just had his.

At about the twenty-five minute mark, Eddie felt a soft, familiar pressure close to his neck.

Tilting his head ever so slightly, he saw that Richie had fallen asleep, his cheek pressed into Eddie’s shoulder, his glasses askew.

A small smile spread across his face as Eddie let his own head tip back a little, resting against the couch, the lyrics of that godforsaken song flittering into his brain.

“Wait down by the stream, how sweet it will seem, once more just to dream in the moonlight…”

(Read the entire series here)

#reddie #richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #eddie can sing #my fanfiction #happy birthday to richie tozier #hope in some universe he got his happy ending...in more ways than one

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timeaftertime-chriscornellfanfic · 4 years

Photo

Chapter 41 - Could It Be Eddie Vedder?

North Washington, November 12 1990

(Andi is 20)

ANDI: It was mid morning in early winter with the sun shining surprisingly bright. It had snowed just a little bit the night before and the air was crisp and cool. The boys were working in the studio recording the first few tracks for the album they were putting together and they finally decided on a name last night.

'I want to show you something, like joy inside my heart Seems I been living in the Temple of The Dog'

Andy would definitely approve.

Anyways... Since it was so early, and not to mention some of the boys do have a little bit of a hangover... ehem - Jeff - I figured we could all use some much needed coffee. Right now Eddie is with me, driving Chris's truck to a small town called Lynwood to see if there is a coffee shop or diner of some sort.

I should say, that as much as I thought that I was shy - and trust me I am - Eddie is even more so. So when the two of us get together, it's pretty quiet and awkward for the first little while, since I'm not usually the one to start conversations. With Eddie I seem to have to but I totally understand why. He had just moved here from San Diego only a couple of months ago after he sent a demo tape of a few songs he had written lyrics to back to Jeff Stone and Mike. I guess they had sent out that same tape to look for a singer as they wanted to continue on and knew that Andy would want them to.

Jeff and Stone were so impressed by the way Eddie sounded that they asked him to fly out here for a couple of weeks to see if he would audition and if he wanted to be part of the band. Well, those few weeks turned into a permanent stay once Eddie officially decided to join them and everyone pretty much fell in love with him, especially Chris.

Before the wedding, Chris wanted to make him feel welcome, so he invited him out for a few drinks and they became so close right away. It was sweet how Chris embraced him like a brother. I think Eddie reminds Chris of Andy in some ways with writing. Chris really missed having that with Andy.

"Thanks for driving me," I say and quickly glance at him.

"Sure... you're welcome," He says.

"I mean it's not like I can't drive... I just shouldn't," I say.

"It's ok I don't mind," Eddie smiles at me and glances back out the windshield. I hate it when it's awkward and quiet like this.

"Um... wanna listen to some tunes?" I ask.

"Sure," He smiles at me again. I open up the glovebox of Chris's blue Ford pickup and pull out my new cassette of a band called Pantera. I slide it into the stereo and the first track starts up right away.

"I've been so addicted to this album since I got it," I say as 'Cowboys from Hell' plays through the stereo.

The rest of the entire drive to Lynwood was pretty silent except for the amazing guitar solos that Dime was playing through the speakers. I wish there was a way that we could somehow make it less awkward between us. We then find a small little diner and Eddie parks the truck out front. We both climb out of our seats and head inside, immediately greeted by 1960's décor. I walk up to the counter and place an order for 6 black coffee's with all the stuff on the side and a dozen doughnuts to go while Eddie studies the place, his hand in the pockets of his suede chestnut brown jacket, his messy golden curls everywhere and those bright blue eyes that can make a girl weak in the knees.

Once my order is filled, I hand the girl some cash with a tip, then Eddie helps me carry out the coffee and doughnuts to the truck. Once we get settled, Eddie pulls back out on to the highway, heading back to London Bridge Studios where the boys are recording.

"These coffee's are probably going t be so cold once we get them back to the studio," I say as I balance the tray on my lap.

"Nah, well maybe, but I think there's a microwave in the lounge," He says and glances in the rearview mirror. There was a little bit more silence between us but then Eddie decides to speak.

"So um... time travelling... what's that like?" He asks. I glance back at him surprised by that question but deep down I was expecting it at some point.

"Not as glamorous as you would think," I chuckle and he gives me a little smirk.

"Sorry, you probably get that question a lot huh?" He says.

"Yea but, I'm used to it. I know it's hard to understand for a lot of people so I try to explain it as best I can. Most people don't believe me until it actually happens though,"

"Well I'll admit, I didn't believe you until I saw it happen at your wedding," He glances at me.

"Yea, that definitely was not my intention... wait, you knew?" I ask as my curls fall down across my eyes and I flip them out of my face.

"Yea... you were just a little different during the party. I mean, you were still you, but you seemed a little older... I can't really explain it. But Chris was just all about you of course. He couldn't take his eyes off of you," Eddie explains. I honestly didn't think he would be able to pick up on when I time slip - if it's my future self or past self. It's still all me of course.

"I wish I was there," I say quietly and Eddie raises his eyebrow at me again. "I mean, this me... the present me,"

"Where were you?" He asks.

"I was with Chris... just in the past," I say glancing down, remembering how upset and angry I was with myself that I missed my own wedding.

"Sounds sweet,"

"It can be... fuck, I love him more than anything. He's like the other half of me .. I never thought I would ever meet someone like him and I just really wanted to marry him that day y'know? " I say glancing out my passenger window as the lightly snow covered fields roll by.

"Yea... but you're married now aren't you?" Eddie glances at me.

"Yea, yea... the next morning we went to City Hall and made it official. It was nice but, it wasn't the same," I say looking down at the tattoo on my finger.

"Not what you planned?" Eddie asks.

"No... nothing ever happens the way I plan it. I always seem to find a way to fuck something up someway or somehow," I didn't exactly mean for that to come out that way. I guess I've been holding in a lot of resentment towards myself.

Eddie glances back at me for a few moments and I can tell he's trying to figure me out, but instead I decide to change the subject for a bit.

"So how is Beth? I haven't seen her since the wedding," I ask, pushing my curls behind my ear once again.

"She's good, she's still in San Diego working on a few things before she heads back up here. I finally was able to convince her to move up here with me just a couple of weeks ago so... she's just getting things together. Her band's not taking it well apparently, and I get it but..." He explains.

"You miss her?" I ask glancing at him as he keeps his eyes on the highway.

"Yea... a lot,"

I can just see how much he loves her as he continues to talk more about her and her band. I had only met her once before the wedding and she barely talked if at all. She is a lot more into punk and hardcore in terms of her style as well as her music, but sweet nonetheless. She's a bassist for her band Hovercraft and she just recently graduated from San Diego State University. Her and Eddie have been together since '83 when she was only 16 and he was 19.

"...and since my dad... um passed away - my real dad - she's been the only one who's basically keeping me together," " He adds, still keeping his eyes on the road.

"I'm sorry," I say quietly knowing exactly how he feels.

"It's ok, I mean I only met him once or twice when I was really little... My dad - who I thought was my dad - really wasn't my dad. When he left my mom, I found out that he was really my stepdad and that my real dad who I thought was just a family friend was actually... my dad," He explains.

"Holy shit," I say trying to take everything in.

"Yea I know... it's complicated but... still hurts though..." He trails off thoughtfully then it becomes silent between us for a few moments.

"Sorry," He apologizes, quickly glancing at me then back to the road.

"No, no it's ok... just wow," I exhale as I keep my eyes on him for a moment, then look down at the tray of coffee's in my lap, then I add "When my mom passed, it was so hard to deal with knowing she isn't really here anymore... same with Andy too. It's like this incredible heartbreak that just doesn't ever feel like it's going to go away,"

"It will eventually, with time... At least that's what they say," Eddie says and I glance back at him and give him a small smile while he does the same.

"Were you close with Andy too?" He asks.

"Oh yea, really close... Chris too... well we pretty much all were but I'd say Chris and Andy were like brothers y'know? He was my best friend. I'm an only child so he was always the one I could talk to if I needed someone... If couldn't talk to Chris for whatever reason. He was just... so sweet and like such a good person inside... y'know? If anyone was having a rough day or whatever, he was like the best person to talk to cause he would just make you forget and just..." My voice waivers as I explain and then I quickly look away from him and out the windshield trying my hardest not to cry.

Fuck, I miss him... if only I could've just saved him.

I feel Eddie glance back over at me as I try to get myself together. I definitely do not need to have a break down in front of him, of all people. I take in a deep breath and glance back at Eddie and just by his expression, I could tell that he was doing his best to comfort me.

"Looks like we're almost back at the studio," He says clearing his throat and gesturing to the road sign up ahead.

"Yea," I say quietly and after a little while, we pull up to the large cabin that was London Bridge Studios.

******************************************************************************************

A/N: So I tried to make a play on a title I thought of "Could It Be Any Better?" but I might have failed miserably LMAO. Anyways, I know there wasn't much happening in this part, but I wanted to give a proper introduction to Eddie and so I feel like this is the best way to do so. Let me know what you think.

#time travel #Time After Time #chris cornell #soundgarden #eddie vedder #chris cornell fanfiction #soundgarden fanfiction #pearl jam #eddie vedder fanfiction #alternate universe #fantasy #also on ao3 #also on wattpad

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brianc521 · 5 years

Text

Overheard

Marriage.

They always say the first year is the hardest.

There is a lot of compromising, and learning new things about the other that you might not like very much.

Maybe your wife leaves her wet towel on the bed. Or your husband just kicks his shoes off wherever he is.

In Shawn and Y/n’s case? Things went much deeper than laundry and clutter.

Shawn was on tour for 9 months of their first year. He’s just recently returned home.

Now the long distance thing, him constantly on the move, time zones interfering with facetime dates, it’s nothing new to these newlyweds.

They’ve been together for 4 years now, they’ve survived 2 world tours.

It’s just, when Shawn returned home this time, something was off. For the first few days it was constant; ‘I love you’s and heaps of cuddles. To be truthful, they never really left the bedroom until his third official day when they really needed to get food.

But now it’s been almost 3 weeks since he’s come home, and it’s been 2 weeks of constant fighting. It’s almost become unbearable for them to be in the same room as each other.

With brave faces on they went to Karen and Manny’s for Sunday family dinner. But the tension is high, you could practically cut it with a knife. Shawn didn’t dish up Y/n’s plate, she didn’t offer to get him a drink when she went to get hers, they aren’t all over each other like normal, and what really caught his parents attention is the fact that he hasn’t told her that he loves her since he arrived.

Shawn is a very affectionate person, always has been, always will be. With his job, it takes him away from those he loves most, so when he is around them he makes sure they know that he absolutely adores them. Y/n is the one he tells the most.

It’s very unusual to go longer than an hour with Shawn not telling her that he loves her.

Karen gave her Mom code to Manny, letting him know he’s in charge of speaking to Shawn while she sought out Y/n.

While she helped her in the kitchen, finishing up the dinner dishes Y/n let a shaky breath slip and Karen was on her in a hot minute.

“Let’s go talk.”

“About?”

Karen gave her the Mom look and Y/n sighed, nodding as she reached for her coffee cup.

“Let’s head out to the back porch.”

“Shawn,” Manny spoke up, leaning against the door frame of the old playroom Shawn and Aaliyah shared. “Let’s have a quick chat.”

“About?” Shawn inquired, watching his Dad open the balcony door and step out.

“Just come talk to me.”

Shawn sighed, hanging his head and groaning as he followed his Dad outside.

21, married, and living on his own and he was still getting in trouble with his Dad.

Manny’s just about to take a deep breath to start this conversation when he hears Y/n’s voice.

“What’d you wanna talk about?”

“Oh Honey,” Karen coos.

Shawn’s brows furrow and at the same time both boys lean over the balcony rail to see Y/n and Karen leaning against the porch fence. Karen is rubbing Y/n’s shoulder as she bury’s her face in her hands.

“It’s been so rough since he got home.” She cries. “I don’t know how to fix it. I really don’t know what’s wrong, or what I did to make him so upset with me.”

Shawn’s breath catches in his throat, training his ears to listen intently.

“What do you mean?” Karen asks.

“I don’t know what happened? I mean I’m utterly in love with him. Nothing changed for me. He got home and we were really good for like a week and then everything, I don’t know, everything just shifted.”

“Shifted how?”

“He stopped coming to bed with me at night, and then he stopped coming to bed at all. I’ve woken up and found him asleep on his office couch,” A strained cry choking it’s way through her throat, “He’s even gone as far as the guest room.”

“I didn’t want to wake you.” Shawn mutters.

“He won’t talk to me anymore, we only scream at each other. It’s like we’re roommates and not husband and wife.”

Manny’s shaking his head, looking at his son with a touch of disappointment in his eyes.

Shawn starts to crumble, he can’t believe he’s ever made her feel this way. He brings his left hand to his forehead, rubbing away at the stress. The cold of his ring shocking his skin.

“Have you talked to him about it?” Karen ponders.

“No, she hasn’t.” Shawn answers to himself.

“I try to everyday,” She looks over to her mother-in-law. “But I chicken out every time because I’m so scared.”

“Scared of what?”

“That he’s gonna leave me.” She sobs, breaking Shawn’s heart completely at the sound. “I’m scared that I don’t make him happy anymore. That I’m not enough for him. I warned him that I thought this was gonna happen. That he was going to wake up one morning and realize that he settled for me. That he wasn’t gonna want to do this life anymore, that he was going to want so much more.”

“You are more than enough.” Karen tells her sternly, hates to hear her daughter-in-law speak of herself in such a way.

“Really I’m not Karen.” She shrugs.

“Yes you are!” Shawn tugs at his curls.

“I can’t go on tour with him, or travel at all with him like he wants me to.” She starts explaining the reason why she feels the way she does, and Shawn’s head lolls back because he’s never listened to her reasons. “And I never feel like my feedback is enough when he asks for it. He’ll have me listen to something, and I’ll tell him what I think but all I can hear in the back of my head is that I don’t know the first thing when it comes to creating music, so how the hell am I supposed to help him? He asks my opinion, I give it, and he does the exact opposite of what I’ve just said, so what’s the point in trying?”

“I want your feedback! That’s why I ask! If you don’t like it then it’s not the right fit for me!” Shawn hisses.

“And have you seen him? Like Karen to do you know that you birthed a Greek god?”

Karen snorts, shaking her head a little.

“Compared to me? The poor ratty peasant he picked up on the side of the street?”

“Hey,” Karen says.

Shawn turns around, whipping the balcony door open and stomping down the stairs, grumbling the whole way about how you always say stuff like that and it drives him insane.

He just about rips the back porch door off it’s hinges when he opens it.

Y/n and Karen jump, turning to look at the fuming Shawn coming their way.

“Call yourself the ‘poor ratty peasant’ one more time.” He growls. “I dare you.”

“Shawn,” She sighs, realizing he’s heard everything she’s had to say.

“You are not,” He shakes his head, trying to calm down and gather his thoughts. “You are not just someone I’ve picked up on the side of the street. You are the angel that was sent in my direction to show what it’s like to want to live for something. You’re the calm to my chaos, and the chaos to my calm.”

Karen excuses herself back inside where she meets Manny in the kitchen.

“Shawn,”

“No!” He says, stopping her from interrupting him. “We’ve got things to work on, I know that. We both do. I’m sorry that I’m not that easy to live with, I’m sorry I’m not easy to be married to. But if I ever hear you say that you’re afraid that I’m gonna leave you again I think my heart will physically break in half. I can’t believe that I got us into a place where you were afraid to speak your feelings because you thought I would leave you.”

“Shawn, you’re, what? Not easy to be married to? Marrying you was the easiest thing I’ve ever done, because it was like finding my missing puzzle piece.”

“The night I fell asleep in my office? I honestly fell asleep in my office, I didn’t mean to. You went to bed, I kissed you goodnight when you came to tell me, I told you I’d be in shortly, you were wearing my favorite Eddie Vedder shirt, your hair was in a messy bun and you hadn’t taken your make up off. I remember thinking that you’d probably fall asleep with it on and that I should find your wipes so I could take it off for you.”

She gasps as he recalls the night, “You remember?”

“Of course I do, looking at you in my shirt, with your hair and mess and face sleep swollen I remembered why I married you, and I fell in love all over again.” He smiles sadly, “I was writing my new song, I wanted to get the lyrics right and when I saw you looking like that it was like a light bulb went off, so I got to writing and the next thing I knew you were leaving for work after kissing my forehead goodbye.”

“So you meant to come to bed?”

“Of course I meant to come to bed!”

“Then what about the guest room?”

“That was the night I went out with Brian and Matt, remember, it was guys night, the first one since I had been back from tour. Brian was determined to get shitfaced, and while I didn’t get as wasted as he did, I did get pretty sloshed. When I got home you were already in bed, and I knew you had just washed the sheets that day, and would be so upset with me if I went to bed smelling like a bar. I was so tired, and drunk that I wasn’t in the mood for a shower, so I decided to sleep in the guest room so I wouldn’t make your sheets smell bad. My drunk brain thought it was the greatest idea I’d ever had.”

She smiles at his dumb tactics.

“Quite honestly my sober brain thinks it’s pretty smart as well. You had literally just washed the sheets. I smelt like tequila and cigarettes. What was I supposed to do?”

“You could have told me the next morning so I didn’t spend the next 2 weeks thinking that you didn’t want to sleep next to me anymore.”

His shoulders sag and he reaches out for her.

“I can barely sleep without you next to me.” He mutters into her hair.

“It feels so good to talk to you again.” She sighs.

“I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean for it to seem like I was pushing you away.”

“I’m sorry for yelling at you so much lately, I just, I can’t cope with the thought of not being enough for you.”

“Stop saying that! You’re more than enough. You’re everything and then some.”

“Can you just take me home and hold me tonight?”

“Of course I can Honey, let’s go.”

They walk back inside, where Karen and Manny are sipping their coffee as the couple slips their jackets on.

Shawn looks to his parents and gives them a nod, “Thank you.” He says, arm holding his wife close. “I love you both.”

“We love you.” They murmur together.

“Y/n,” He hums as he walks her to the front door.

“Yeah?”

“I love you so much Baby.”

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drunkenraccoons · 4 years

Text

Top 248 Songs

1. Mary Jane’s Last Dance - Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

2. Cowgirl in the Sand - Neil Young & Crazy Horse

3. Caught in the Hustle - Immortal Technique

4. Hand in My Pocket - Alanis Morissette

5. Pulse - Ani DiFranco

6. Dogs - Pink Floyd

7. When the Music’s Over - The Doors

8. Eet - Regina Spektor

9. Providence - Ani DiFranco

10. Change Your Mind - Neil Young & Crazy Horse

11. It’s Good to Be King [Live Anthology] - Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

12. Tangled Up in Blue - Bob Dylan

13. Pigs - Pink Floyd

14. We R Who We R - Kesha

15. No Title - Ten Years After

16. Ribs - Lorde

17. Guns, Bitches, Brawls & Bottles - GG Allin

18. 2 On - Tinashe

19. The She - The Breeders

20. Raining Blood - Slayer

21. Cortez the Killer - Neil Young & Crazy Horse

22. Since I’ve Been Loving You - Led Zeppelin

23. Like a Hurricane [Weld] - Neil Young & Crazy Horse

24. Angie - The Rolling Stones

25. Darkness Darkness - Robert Plant

26. Nuthin but a ‘G’ Thang - Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg

27. Wake Up Time - Tom Petty

28. Complicated - Avril Lavigne

29. Det som Engang Var - Burzum

30. Ride the Lightning - Metallica

31. Cloud Blood - Ani DiFranco

32. Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright - Bob Dylan

33. The Next Episode - Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg & Nate Dogg

34. Ghost of the Gang - Indigo Girls

35. New Ways to Fly - Garth Brooks

36. Bleed the Freak - Alice In Chains

37. Walls (No. 3) - Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

38. Roadhouse Blues - The Doors

39. Sister Morphine - Rolling Stones

40. Serpentine - Ani DiFranco

41. Oedipus - Regina Spektor

42. LA Woman - The Doors

43. My Journey to the Stars - Burzum

44. Addicted - DJ Clay

45. The Final Cut - Pink Floyd

46. The Wrong Thing to Do - Mudcrutch

47. Soft Shoulder - Ani DiFranco

48. Simple Twist of Fate - Bob Dylan

49. Like an Inca - Neil Young

50. Jesus’ Todd - Burzum

51. Limehouse - The Breeders

52. Untouchable - Taylor Swift

53. Turn it Off - Paramore

54. The Last Supper - Jesus Christ Superstar

55. None Shall Pass - Aesop Rock

56. November Hotel (Live) - Mad Season

57. Signs of Age - Jake Holmes

58. Will to Love - Neil Young

59. Seek & Destroy - Metallica

60. I Can’t Keep From Crying Sometimes [Recorded Live] - Ten Years After

61. Tik Tok (Untold Remix) - Kesha

62. Forever & Always (Piano Version) - Taylor Swift

63. You Don’t Know How it Feels [Mojo 2010] - Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

64. Dilate - Ani DiFranco

65. Rockin’ in the Free World - Neil Young

66. Breakdown [Live Anthology] - Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

67. Two Suns in the Sunset - Pink Floyd

68. What’s Been Going On? - Amos Lee

69. There is a Light that Never Goes Out - Becca Stevens Band

70. Almost Cut my Hair - CSNY

71. What’s Up? - 4 Non Blondes

72. There Was Never a Moment When Evil Was Real - Non

73. Only God Can Judge Me - Tupac

74. Benighted - Opeth

75. Cliff - Lapsley

76. Tired Eyes - Neil Young

77. Forgot About Dre - Dr. Dre & Eminem

78. Time - Pink Floyd

79. Lost on You - LP

80. If it Makes You Happy - Sheryl Crow

81. Hollaback Girl - Gwen Stefani

82. Cause of Death - Immortal Technique

83. Two-Headed Boy pt 2 - Neutral Milk Hotel

84. No Quarter [Song Remains the Same] - Led Zeppelin

85. Rockets - Cat Power

86. Out of Range- Ani DiFranco

87. Dumb - Nirvana

88. Sins of My Youth - Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

89. All Weekend Long - Jack & Jack

90. Break My Body - Pixies

91. Thrasher - Neil Young

92. Closer (R3hab Remix) - The Chainsmokers

93. In the Kingdom Where Everything Dies, The Sky is Mort - Cryptopsy

94. Dead Flowers - Rolling Stones

95. Pavlov’s Daughter - Regina Spektor

96. Morgen Roede - Burzum

97. Suicide Note part 2 - Pantera

98. God Am - Alice In Chains

99. Five to One - The Doors

100. Friends in Low Places - Garth Brooks

101. Careful - Paramore

102. Seasons in the Abyss - Slayer

103. Fearless - Hypocrisy

104. Through My Sails - Neil Young

105. Long Gone Day - Mad Season

106. Dance With the Devil - Immortal Technique

107. The Outside - Taylor Swift

108. Crazy Kids - Kesha

109. Opened - The Breeders

110. We Die Young - Alice In Chains

111. Somedays - Regina Spektor

112. Masters of War - Bob Dylan

113. War - Burzum

114. The Nile Song - Pink Floyd

115. A Woman in Love [Live Anthology] - Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

116. Misfits - Neil Young

117. Down By the River - Low & Dirty Three

118. High Hopes - Pink Floyd

119. Paper Planes - MIA

120. Night Moves - Bob Seger

121. I Took a Pill in Ibiza (Seeb Remix) - Mike Posner

122. No Sleep - Wiz Khalifa

123. Still Don’t Give a Fuck - Eminem

124. Long, Long Time Ago - Javier Navarrete

125. You are Not Bliss, You Are Not Free - Nekrasov

126. Radio Friendly Unit Shifter - Nirvana

127. I’d Swear There Was Somebody Here - David Crosby

128. Party and Bullshit - Notorious B.I.G.

129. Bandit - Neil Young

130. Beast of Burden - Rolling Stones

131. Painter - Lapsley

132. Redemption Song - Bob Marley

133. Shine On You Crazy Diamond part one - Pink Floyd

134. Gotta Serve Somebody - Bob Dylan

135. In the Light [Demo version] - Led Zeppelin

136. Purple Haze - Jimi Hendrix Experience

137. When I Die - GG Allin

138. Pints of Guinness Make You Strong - Against Me!

139. Interstellar Overdrive - Pink Floyd

140. The Old Laughing Lady [Canterburry House] - Neil Young

141. Strength Beyond Strength - Pantera

142. You Know You’re Right - Nirvana

143. Five Years - David Bowie

144. Because the Night - Patti Smith Group

145. Crawling Back to You - Tom Petty

146. Northern Star - Hole

147. Long Live - Taylor Swift

148. Trying to find a Balance - Atmosphere

149. Southern Man - Neil Young

150. Party By Myself - Cooper Phillip

151. Christmas in the Sand - Colbie Callait

152. Cool for the Summer - Demi Lovato

153. Sentimental Tune - Tegan & Sara

154. Jump in the Fire - Metallica

155. Chains - Torres

156. Willing to Fight [Living in Clip] - Ani DiFranco

157. Tuff Ghost - The Unicorns

158. Of a Lifetime - Journey

159. Heaven on Their Minds - Jesus Christ Superstar

160. Obnoxious - Immortal Technique

161. Call Me Maybe - Carly Rae Jepsen

162. Witching Hour - xxyyxx

163. Wolves - Garth Brooks

164. Carry On/Questions - CSNY

165. Levitate Me - Pixies

166. Rotten Apple - Alice In Chains

167. Summer in the City - Regina Spektor

168. It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleedin’) - Bob Dylan

169. King’s Highway [Mojo 2010] - Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

170. Heartbreaker [How the West Was Won] - Led Zeppelin

171. Meet Rhonda - Douglas Pipes

172. Out on the Weekend - Neil Young

173. Near Dark - Burial

174. Aud Layne Sayne - Jimi Hendrix

175. Back of My Hand - Rolling Stones

176. Blank Space - Taylor Swift

177. Cymbaline - Pink Floyd

178. Animal (Billboard Remix) - Kesha

179. 4:41 AM (Sexual Revolution) - Roger Waters

180. Wild Horses [Stripped] - Rolling Stones

181. Like a Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan

182. Have a Cigar - Pink Floyd

183. Cradle and All - Ani DiFranco

184. I Should Have Known It - Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

185. King of Carrot Flowers pt 1 - Neutral Milk Hotel

186. Hard Sun - Eddie Vedder

187. Fuckin’ Up [Weld] - Neil Young & Crazy Horse

188. The River - Bruce Springsteen

189. Maria Maria - Santana

190. Wake Up - Wiz Khalifa

191. Meander - Pedestrian Deposit

192. 4+20 - Stephen Stills

193. Buzzcut Season - Lorde

194. Going to California - Led Zeppelin

195. Rock Music - Pixies

196. Atlantic City - Bruce Springsteen

197. Legalize It - MaZe

198. Warrior - Kesha

199. Never Been - Logic

200. Weakness - Opeth

201. Glass House (Turkey Tamale Remix) - Ani DiFranco

202. Joining You - Alanis Morissette

203. Black Queen [CSNY 1974] - CSNY

204. Falling Short - Lapsley

205. A Better Son/Daughter - Rilo Kiley

206. Mr. Rager - Kid Cudi

207. Drive By - Neil Young & Crazy Horse

208. Holla at Me - Tupac

209. Fossil Record - White Suns

210. Overlap - Ani DiFranco

211. We Multiply - AIDS Wolf

212. Soak up the Sun - Sheryl Crow

213. Heart of the Sunrise - Yes

214. Cowgirl in the Sand [Massey Hall] - Neil Young

215. Wake Up - Mad Season

216. Mr. Tambourine Man - Bob Dylan

217. The Con - Tegan & Sara

218. Teardrops on My Guitar (Pop Mix) - Taylor Swift

219. On the Radio - Regina Spektor

220. Nude as the News - Cat Power

221. The Gunner’s Dream - Pink Floyd

222. Fate to Fatal - Breeders

223. Red Strokes - Garth Brooks

224. Point of no Return - Immortal Technique

225. Break on Through - The Doors

226. I’m Alive - Helloween

227. Blackened - Metallica

228. Immigrant Song [How the West Was Won] - Led Zeppelin

229. Luna - Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

230. Anyday - Ani DiFranco

231. Sweet Virginia - Rolling Stones

232. I Know Places - Ryan Adams

233. Carrionshine - Cryptopsy

234. Money Becomes King - Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

235. Laugh, I Nearly Died - Rolling Stones

236. Keilohesten - Burzum

237. Down by the River - Neil Young & Crazy Horse

238. Revolution is My Name - Pantera

239. D-7 - Nirvana

240. Dead - Pixies

241. Misery Business - Paramore

242. Burden - Opeth

243. Enter Sandman - Metallica

244. Clash With Reality - Pantera

245. Die Young - Kesha

246. Frogs - Alice In Chains

247. The Ghost Song - The Doors

248. Visions of Johanna - Bob Dylan

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stateofloveandnegan · 5 years

Text

Why? - Eddie Vedder

Can you do one where Eddie confronts his girlfriend about her self harm? And they kind of argue a little bit?

I am reposting this because Tumblr deleted it???? do you see any fuckin nipples? anyways, I am not familiar with self harm and I do not wish any of you to harm yourselves, so I apologise if this triggers something, it is not my intention.

Requested by: anon

Warning(s): self harm, bit of angst

It had been a while since I hurt myself, but after hearing about my father's death, I couldn't help it. I started harming myself again and I haven't stopped doing it ever since. Feeling like I need to punish myself for not being there for my father when he needed me the most.

My father always said he really wanted to visit me, but it never happened. He got sick and a couple of months later he died. I never thought it was so serious, so I never really saved money to go visit him and I blame myself for not fulfilling his wish of seeing me one last time.

I've never told my boyfriend, Eddie, about my self-harm. It's just something he doesn't need to know about. He has things he keeps to himself, so have I, my self-harm being one of them.

I love Eddie with all my heart and I wouldn't know what to do without him, but there are things I like to keep to myself. I think everyone has something personal you don't even share with your closest friend, right?

"Hey, love." Eddie says while walking up to me. I turn and smile at him, hiding the immense pain shooting through my arm when he reaches for me to hug him. "Hey Ed, how was practice?"

He moves back, "It went pretty good, actually. We came up with some new tunes, so that's something." he says with a smile.

I smile back at him, "I'm happy for you and the guys."

Eddie walks back into the hall and grabs his stuff, "I'm gonna bring this upstairs and take a shower."

"Alright, love. I'll make dinner, it won't be long before it's done, so make it quick." I tell him while he's already making his way upstairs and in response I get a 'sure thing, captain!'

I smile to myself at his goofiness, where did I manage to find someone like him? What did I ever do to deserve his love? I quickly push that last thought aside before I start to feel unsure of myself again.

"Eddie, dinner's ready!" I yell, standing at the foot of the stairs. I hear a faint 'I'm coming' and I walk back into the kitchen to put the food on the plates. I place the plates on the table in our dining room and not much later Eddie enters the room, wearing some sweatpants and a 'The Who' shirt. I smile to myself at the sight of him, but when his gaze meets mine my smile drops; he looks confused and... angry? Why would he be angry?

"What's wrong?" I ask him and I feel my heart sinking deeply when I see what he's holding in his hand.

He slowly looks up at me, "Could you please tell me why, on earth, there was a bloodied razorblade in the sink?" he says, his voice trembling and very cold.

I feel myself lost for words so I simply give him an apologetic look. "Show me your arms, please." he says while stepping closer to me.

Shaking my head, I say 'no'. But Eddie ignores it and firmly, yet carefully, grabs ahold of my wrist. I try to remove myself from his grip, but he's too strong. He moves his other hand to my sleeve and moves it up, only to reveal a row of fresh cuts on my arm.

Eddie drops the razorblade, which he was still holding carefully, in shock and snaps his head up, "Why, (Y/N)? Why would you do this to yourself?"

Now that Eddie's distracted I yank my hand from his grip and move back to the dining table. "Just sit down, Ed. The food's getting cold." I say in a small voice.

"No!" Eddie almost screams, "Tell me! Why are you hurting yourself?" I can hear the desperate tone in his voice, but decide to ignore it and simply take a seat.

"I don't know about you, but I'm gonna start eating." I say, trying to act as if nothing just happened.

Eddie scoffs and takes the seat across from me, "Are you gonna tell me about it after dinner, then?" he asks, not only sounding desperate, but actually angry.

His voice is the drop. I break into tears, "Why would I tell you?" I yell at him. "You do nothing but act angry towards me, this is the exact reason why I didn't tell you!"

Eddie's expression goes from angry to baffled. He is about to speak up, but I'm not done talking, yet. "You always act like everything's alright, but things aren't always alright, Eddie! Life is not always perfect. Like sucks sometimes!" I yell, now completely drowning in my own tears.

"You know very well that I know life isn't always perfect." Eddie says through gritted teeth. "I just don't understand why you would hurt yourself! Does it make you feel any better?!" Eddie's screaming as well, now.

I say nothing, 'cause honestly: it never really made me feel better. It was always the idea that hurting myself would be a good punishment, but after doing it, I never seem to feel better. The next day, I feel the exact same and I want to do it all over again.

"That's what I thought." Eddie says, his voice back to a normal volume.

I'm still crying, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean that.." I sniffle, indeed knowing fully well that Eddie's hasn't had the easiest and happiest life either.

He looks up, still a bit angry, but his face drops when he sees how tearstained my face is, "I know. I'm sorry, too. I shouldn't have yelled at you." He stands up and walks over to me, taking me out of my seat and hugging my tightly. "I love you, (Y/N). I just don't want you to be hurt and I can't handle knowing you're cutting yourself open when I'm not here."

I sob into his shirt, "I'm sorry." I whisper, "I just, I feel like shit lately.."

"Then please, just talk to me about it, maybe it'll help. But please stop hurting yourself." he begs and I nod into him, "I will try." I say as I move my head back and up to face him. "It's just- my dad.. he keeps running through my mind.."

Eddie moves his hand to my cheek and wipes away the tears, "I understand, but it wasn't your fault, (Y/N). You couldn't have known about his passing so quickly. It was a shock for everyone. I know your father wouldn't want you to hurt yourself, I'm positive about it. So please stop doing it and come to me if there's something on your mind."

I should've known Eddie was so supportive, I just never really gave it any thought. I should've known he's here for me when I need him, he's always been there for me. "I love you, Ed, so fucking much. I'm sorry for not saying anything."

"Don't be. Just don't hurt yourself anymore, alright?" he says, softly cupping my face.

"I won't."

"I love you so much, (Y/N). You're my whole world."

"And you're mine."

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pjbehindthesun · 6 years

Text

chapter 23: an hour and a half from now

Saturday, November 3rd, 1990

What does it say about me, that this is the most at home I’ve felt in this city since I’ve moved here? Leaning on a cold metal pole in the back of a shithole music venue by myself with nobody to talk to, just watching the people in the crowd who have no idea they’re being watched. Shit, I don’t mean it to sound all creepy like that, it’s just one of my favorite things to do: pay attention to people when they think they’re being ignored. That whole “dance while no one’s watching” idea? Makes for a solid evening of entertainment all by itself. Unless, like tonight, everyone seems to be here on a goddamn date. For the first half of the set, it’s just felt nice, the way no one’s bothered me all night, but it’s like a light switch flicked in my head and now all I can see is that everyone’s here with someone. Fucking great. Can’t even enjoy a show without reverting into a self-pitying, morose fucker. Maybe if I find a different spot in the club, I can try to force my attention back on the band. At least no one’s hassling me about shouldering my way forward. In a small enough place like the Off Ramp, no one really gives a shit.

Yeah, okay, this is better. The only people I can see are the handful of people directly in front of me and the band. They’re pretty fucking great, I never saw ‘em before… Jesus Lizard, I wanna say? Supposed to be out of Chicago, so we probably know a lot of the same people, although Beth was always way more into the noise rock scene than me…

Fuck. Stop it, Vedder. I hate this whole fucking break-up thing. Whose idea was it, anyway, not mine… I hate how everything reminds me of her. Or, I guess, I want to hate it. Truthfully, those painful little stabs of memory are all I have of her anymore, so I guess I should be grateful for them. I have a habit of hoarding them, like a collector, turning them over and over like cherished trinkets. How fucked up is that? Wait a minute… that’s not her, is it? There, the little brunette, up on the rail, in the white t-shirt that’s too big for her frame... fuck, it looks just like her from this angle, it’s got to be her… what the fuck is she doing here? She wouldn’t have come all the way up here, would she? For what reason? To tell me she wants to get back together? I shove between a couple of guys who are probably gonna murder me in an alleyway later, but it doesn’t matter, my hand’s on her shoulder, she whips around, and…

“M’sorry, thought you were someone else,” I mutter as the girl turns back to the music with a justified look of disgust, although there’s no way she heard my apology and definitely no way she cared. Of course it wasn’t her. What the fuck would she be doing in Seattle? What sense would that make? So fucking stupid. Doesn’t matter how many times I think I spot her in a crowd, it’s only wishful thinking. Stupid, invasive, immature dreams of her coming to find me, to tell me we’d made a horrible mistake. Just dreams. I can’t get myself outside the club fast enough. There’s a stack of the local circular on the counter by the door, so I grab one on my way out, hoping I’ll find something in there that’s actually worth thinking about, and shiver when I hit the damp outside air after escaping the stuffy club.

Maybe I should have gone out with Jeff and Mike after all, seen whatever show they wanted to see. Maybe I would have had a different set of distractions with them, done a better job keeping my mind off of Beth. Then again, seems like every time I go out with the guys, we end up hanging out with like a dozen of their closest friends in the music scene. Normally that’d be great, but I can’t shake the feeling that their buddies are always making fun of me somehow. I don’t blame ‘em, I’m probably fucking hilarious to them, a surfer in Seattle, a terrified frontman, the absolute antithesis of everything the guys had going on before, with Andy, just a…

...just a self-absorbed knucklehead whose problems aren’t shit compared to what I can see a little ways down the road from me. There’s a person, a woman, maybe, looks like she’s about my mom’s age, and she’s settling in for the night underneath the highway overpass. Okay, there’s one way I can quit being a mopey sack of shit and do something positive.

After giving her all the change in my wallet, the newspaper I wasn’t really reading anyway, the flannel under my coat, and the cut-off gloves I’d forgotten I had stashed in my pocket, I start back in the direction of home. Or Jeff’s apartment, I should say. Home’s a long way away. But I don’t get very far past the door of the Off-Ramp.

“Eddie?”

The door opens, carrying with it a wall of club noise and a familiar, mellow voice that makes me turn around.

“Oh, uh, hey Chris,” I greet him as he materializes out on the street, looming in all black. “You been here long? I didn’t see you, I woulda said hi.”

“No, you wouldn’t have,” he smiles, “but it’s cool, I probably wouldn’t have either. It’s just one of those nights. You probably know how that is. I figured you’d be over at Squid Row with Jeff and Cready.”

“Oh, uh, you know, I was just…”

“Hey, like I said, it’s one of those nights. I’m being an antisocial shit too,” his grin widens. “We could team up, you know? Twice the brooding.”

“The more the moodier,” I’m chuckling in spite of myself. Chris seems to do that -- put people at ease. If he wants to. I’m glad I ran into him.

“Where were you headed?”

“There’s this footpath over at Discovery Park, and it’s usually pretty kinda quiet this time of night. My wife, she’s a big fan of these ridiculous little dogs. You ever seen a Pomeranian?”

I squint, racking my brain. “Those the Chinese ones, the little ones that look like mops?”

“No, no, that’s a Pekingese,” he laughs at the characterization. “Poms are even less dignified, they’re literally just pom poms with googly eyes glued on. Anyway, Susan’s all about ‘em, and we just got one. Well, a new one, I should say, we already had one, so now they’re a dynamic duo. Kinda funny to watch them try and keep up with my shepherd in the mud,” he mimes short legs flailing and a tongue panting, and his long hair looks for all the world like a pair of poodle ears as it sways along, “so I go out there by myself with a bunch of shitty beer and watch ‘em run around until they’re too tired and I have to carry ‘em back, one under each arm. It’s really fucking therapeutic, you should try it.”

Is this guy serious? I know I’m new to Seattle, but you’d have to live under a rock to miss how big Soundgarden is around here. And this notorious rockstar spends his weekends roaming through forests like a lonely ghost with a pack of ridiculous hounds? That’s officially the coolest fucking thing I’ve ever heard another human being say.

“Well? You in?”

I bob my head once in agreement, trying not to smile like too much of a fucking maniac, and another easy smile spreads across his face.

“Yes! My car’s that one, the Galaxie. Fuckin’ radio’s stuck on a religious station right now, though, hope you’re feeling the right combination of gullible and guilty.” He points at something parked behind him on the corner before turning on his heels to head in that direction. A massive, battered, late ‘60s Ford land yacht. I don’t think I could feel more heartfelt and instant love for an inanimate object if I tried.

“Hey, if you’re into hiking, we oughta go tomorrow too, there’s that trail Cora and I were telling you about a while back, I don’t think she’d be too mad if we went without her… although on second thought, I don’t want her to kill either one of us, so maybe we should probably check and see if she wants in... ” he trails off as I break into a jog to try and keep up.

***

Sunday, November 4th, 1990

“Where are you off to at this hour?”

In the quiet and darkened apartment, Alex’s voice makes me bounce into the air from my seat on the couch where I’d been tying my shoe.

“JESUS! You scared the shit out of me!”

He watches me with a rueful twist of his lips. “It’s my apartment too, ya know. You got too used to it being empty while I was gone, huh?”

“No, it’s not like that…” ...except it’s exactly like that, I mutter to myself as I try to stop my heart from racing like a cornered bunny's… “I just didn’t think you were awake yet and I didn’t want to be the one to wake you. I figured you’re probably still tired. From your trip.”

“Nah,” he groans through a stretch, “wide awake. My body’s still on mountain time.”

“Hmm.” I return my attention to my laces in the absence of anything else to say to him.

“You didn’t answer my question, though.”

“Your…?”

“Where are you off to?”

“So long, Mom, I’m off to drop the Bomb...” I singsong absently while I finish tying the other sneaker’s laces. When I straighten up, Alex is looking utterly lost and more than a little annoyed.

“Come again?”

“Little bit of pre-nostalgia for World War III, that’s all.”

I bite my lip to shut myself up. Weapons of mass destruction and nuclear holocaust are maybe slightly less funny when we’re actually keeping so many secrets from one another.

“You’re so fucking weird.” Alex shakes his head in dismissal, not showing any signs of having gotten the joke. Stone would have thought it was funny. UGH, god damn it, speak of the devil. Why am I thinking about Stone? Stop thinking about Stone! Stop it! Quick, change the subject…

“Well, I was going to go for a run, if that helps answer your question.”

Alex nods and I breathe a sigh of relief. It’s the only excuse I can find for getting out of the house long enough to clear my head and sort through some of the chaos of the last 48 hours. Making sense of what Lucy was trying to tell me the other day. Deciding what to do about this gift Alex sent Patch. Figuring out what the hell I actually think of Stone now. It’s gonna need to be a long run.

“Can I come with you?”

“Are you feeling okay?” I frown as he circles his arms around me, my body staying stiff as he tries to coax me to relax.

“Better than ever. So can I?”

“You want to come with me.”

“Mmm.” He kisses the tip of my nose, and it's a struggle not to wrinkle it in response.

“Outside.”

“Unless you just want me to chase you around the apartment, I figured as much.”

“Run-ning,” I stretch my word out, unsure whether I've lost my mind or he has.

His bottom lip pokes out. “Don’t sound so shocked, you might hurt my feelings.”

“Sorry, I’m sorry, it’s just… I don’t think you’ve ever…”

“Who says I can’t start now?”

“No one, but…”

“But what?”

“I can’t guarantee there will be any bears or murderers chasing us, Alex, and I’ve never heard you say anything nice about weirdos like me who run for fun.”

“Are you impugning my athletic ability?” He laughs, grabbing my ass and making me contort away from him yet again. At the look of confusion on his face, it occurs to me that I'm being a colossal asshole.

“You really want to come running with me?”

“Mmhmm.”

“But… why?”

“Why what?”

“Alex. You hate running. And hiking. And being outside. And, like, nature in general.”

He shrugs and says, very simply, “yeah, but I love you.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh,” he grabs my ass again, and it’s all I can do not to grimace, “I missed you, okay? I kinda want to spend time with you.”

Well, it’s official, if I blow him off right now, I’m a sub-human. So much for my grand plan to figure out how in the world I'm supposed to tell him I don't really love him anymore.

“Yeah… okay. Let me, uh, let me get some stuff together and we’ll go?”

He lets go of me with a smirk and heads towards the kitchen, but pauses a few paces away and groans as he claps his hand over his eyes.

“Pull a muscle?” I ask, trying not to sound too hopeful.

“I don't even think I have running shoes.” He faces me with a sheepish look, pulling his hand back to ruffle his hair. That always used to make me melt, when he’d do that. Used to. Now it just seems like a juvenile gesture he drops whenever he’s trying to get out of trouble. I never used to understand how falling out of love with someone was possible. I dimly remember thinking Stone sounded like a total asshole when he explained having gone through it. But right now, he’s the only person I want to talk to about it. Which is deeply inconvenient when I’m supposed to be hating his guts. Stupid Stone. But on the bright side, now I have an easy excuse to go on that solitary run.

“Oh, well, that solves th --”

“I’ll call Brian, he runs, I bet he has a pair I can steal!”

Before I can finish my objection, he’s got the phone to his ear and has already dialed his friend. I sink back against the lip of the kitchen table while he and his friend haggle over a pair of stinky running shoes, his friend who he’s never introduced me to, his friend who suddenly symbolizes how thoroughly we established completely different lives the moment we moved to Seattle. Why did it take me so long to figure this out? Lucy’s been trying to tell me, even Patch tried to tell me… damn it, I should really call Patch.

“Okay, don’t move a muscle, I’ll be right back!”

Alex plants a slightly-too-rough kiss on my cheek before flinging on his coat and bolting out the door. I numbly make my way over to the couch to curl up and stare at the phone. This is as good a time as ever to call Patch, right? See what he really thinks about Alex’s $500 stunt? Make sure he isn’t going to hate me if I go through with breaking up with Alex? God, they’ve always been such good friends, how on earth do you break up with someone who’s become a part of your family?

But instead of picking up the phone, I pick at a loose piece of rubber on the sole of my shoe. I want to hear my brother’s voice, but I’m terrified that maybe, possibly, there’s a slim chance he’ll tell me exactly what I want to hear and then I’ll have nothing left to do but act. And anyway, as much as I need his affirmation, I’m afraid of hearing yet again how I’m making all the wrong choices. It’s not his problem to solve, any more than it’s Lucy’s. I can hear how exasperated they’re both getting with me. So instead of calling my brother, and bothering him with my bullshit and hearing his predictable answers, I sit in a giant pile of mope and pick at my shoes while I wait for Alex to come back.

A heavy pair of footsteps slows down as it approaches my door. That must be Alex. I don’t even look up. Until the owner of the footsteps knocks. Alex wouldn’t knock.

“Uh, it’s open?” I call from the couch.

When Chris cracks the door and leans to peer inside, his hair precedes him, cracking me up and shaking me out of my mopey idiocy.

“Smokey! Can I come in?”

“Always. What are you doing in this neck of the woods?”

“Funny you mention woods,” he smiles, bounding over to the couch. He hesitates for a moment at the pile of laundry I haven’t folded yet, which is occupying the entire cushion next to me, but after I shrug at him, he scoops it up and dumps it unceremoniously on the floor. One item, my favorite navy blue bra, stays hooked to the afghan, and I cringe as I watch him gently untangle it and set it down on top of the rest of my clothes, looking totally unfazed. He joins me on the couch, staring at the toes of my shoes and stretching his arm along the back of the cushion. “I’m heading out for a hike, just gotta pick up my date first.”

He reaches over and shoves my arm with his fingertips.

“Nuh uh, no can do.”

“Smokeyyyyy,” he whines.

“I have to study! And, uh, I’m waiting for Alex to get back so we can go for a run?” I wish I could have kept my voice from turning my statement into a question, because there’s a glint of understanding in Chris’s eyes that I don’t particularly like. But his voice is mild enough when he speaks. I like him for that.

“Sure, sure.”

“Okay, fine, I kinda don’t feel like being around people today, are you happy?”

“Hardly ever,” his mouth twists, “but I know the feeling. Kinda why we’re friends in the first place, right?”

The corners of my mouth tug up just as his have as I stare at him and reflect on how much he’s brought into my life since I scolded him on a mountaintop on a day when we both needed to escape into the woods. This friendship that has never demanded much at all, but always been easy to settle into again after a lapse. The reassurance that there’s always someone with whom I have this maladjusted ghosting habit in common. And the Mookie guys. I have him to thank for that too. I swallow the peculiar lump rising in my throat.

“So, what’s new with you?”

“Yeah, I miss you too. Not much. Just working on Temple stuff now that we’re home for the rest of the year.”

“Ah, right. How’s that going?”

“Excellent,” he enthuses. “Shouldn’t even call it working. Never quite done anything like it. Have you heard any of it yet?”

“No, not that I can think of.” I haven’t heard the guys play in a while, but I’m not about to go into that. “You guys have that show coming up?”

He nods. “Couple weeks. You’ll be there, right?”

I let out a sigh that I feel like I’ve been holding in for days and resume torturing my shoe. “Uhm, I don’t know, I’ll have to see, I might be working that night. What day is it?”

“The 13th,” his voice drops about an octave, “and just what the fuck do you mean, you don’t know? Stoney’s gonna shit a brick if you if you miss it.”

“Yeah, maybe.” I glance back up at him and flinch at his menacing expression. “I don’t know. Things are just... weird… there... right now.”

“You and Stone? Seemed pretty okay a few nights ago.”

I cringe in immediate regret of how publicly cozy Stone and I had gotten on Halloween. And if that’s all Chris knows, then he doesn’t know the half of it…

“Yeah, well, I don’t know, it’s weird now.”

“When was the last time you talked to him?” Chris presses, shifting his posture to face me more directly and still glowering at me.

“The other day, before he went home with the flu or whatever, Jesus,” I pat the arm of the couch, “is this a witness stand or something?”

“Okay, okay,” his demeanor relaxes. “Just be there, okay? This whole thing, I mean, the vibe of working on it has been really overwhelmingly positive, but it’s the kind of thing that’s still… I don’t know, it’s just important to me that you’re there, I feel like you’d get something out of it. And whatever’s going on with Stone, I’m pretty sure it’s important to him too.”

“Okay,” I mumble, fighting back the lump again, “I’ll see what I can do.”

Chris bobs his head. “Flu, huh?”

“What? Oh, right. I don’t know, he just looked like death warmed over and I’m pretty sure he went home right after we talked.” Another twinge of regret twists my insides, this time because it hasn’t even occurred to me in all my anger to check in on Stone and see how he’s feeling. He looked really, really terrible. Fight or no fight, he’s still my friend, and if I were the one to contract whatever bubonic plague is going around, I know he would be the first one to make sure I was okay. Especially since I think his parents are still out of town, which leaves him all by himself trying to take care of that dog and house. Shit, I should probably go over there.

Chris doesn’t point any of that out, though, thankfully. Instead, he silently looks around my apartment with interest, seeming very much all of a sudden like a cocker spaniel with a very short attention span. For everything this friendship means, it’s kind of weirdly emblematic that he’s never even seen my place before.

“Chris?”

“Mm?” he responds, not looking away from the bookcase in the opposite direction.

“You didn’t come all the way over here just to see if I wanted to go hiking, did you?”

“Nah, I’m actually here to pick up Eddie, he said he’d go. I think I finally sold him on our mountain.”

“Judas!!”

I aim a kick square at his hip, laughing as he intercepts my foot and disarms it by yanking off my shoe and throwing it across the room where it thuds against the opening door, missing Eddie’s face by inches.

“Whoa-oh,” he calls as he flinches, but his dimples dawn as a smile draws on his mouth, “who the hell throws a fuckin shoe?”

Chris grins back, yanking off my other one to lob it at Ed’s face, but it’s caught easily. Eddie throws them both back to me in a pair of gentle underhand tosses.

“So you coming with us or what, Cora?”

“Nah, leave her for dead, she’s a lost cause,” Chris chuckles as he stands up.

“Gee golly, mister, can’t imagine why I wouldn’t want to go hiking with you,” I drawl. Eddie’s eyes bounce back and forth keenly.

“Well, uh, too bad, maybe another time?” he says softly as plaintive wrinkles appear on his forehead.

“You bet. Just, you know, the boyfriend’s on his way home and we’re gonna go running, so it’s not a great time.”

“Oh, alright,” Eddie nods, but the wrinkles deepen in a way that tells me he’s about as believing of my excuses as Chris.

“No Jeff?” Chris asks as they head for my front door.

“No, he said it sounded cool but he said he’s gonna help Lucy do some stuff around the apartment today.”

“I bet he is.”

“Okay, you pigs, get out,” I shove Chris in the back toward the door, throwing all my weight against him, although he digs in his heels and I have no hope of moving him unless he wants to be moved. “You kill any more fucking time and you’re gonna lose the light, you know.”

“She’s got a very good point,” Eddie agrees, and Chris unlocks his knees, laughing as I stumble to keep my footing.

I’ve just shooed the two of them out the door when Alex comes home, carrying borrowed running shoes and still exuding the same smothering, sycophantic energy as when he left. I’m feeling extraordinarily stupid for not calling Patch to sort this shit out when I had the chance. Maybe after the run. On the bright side, Alex is in terrible shape for such a beanpole, and I’m confident I can outrun him, or at least make him wheeze enough not to have to worry about making conversation.

***

My head swims from the fumes as I take another deep breath and force myself to steady the paint brush, even though my arm is starting to ache from reaching so high, and my knees are getting sore from balancing on the sink basin. Whose bright idea was it to repaint a room with so much trim all by herself with no ladder? Oh right, that would be me. The white noise of the bathroom fan blocks out everything except the exertion of doing the work properly and the joy of seeing a new color stain a primed surface. Even if I’m not sure about the color just yet. I’m not really a blue sort of person. But this feels like a direction I wanted to follow. Any of the weird “improvements” I’ve done to this place, I’ve done by following that urge. I accepted a long time ago that I wasn’t getting my security deposit back. It’s fine. I’m not good at coloring in the lines or making up my mind. Let me make my messes and see what happens. It usually cleans up okay.

I crawl off the sink, hastily wiping the smear of bright teal paint off the porcelain with the damp rag tucked into the waist of my shorts, and look around. It’s… very blue. But the cabinet’s dark stain doesn’t look so dingy next to it, and I’ve got plans for the mirror that should warm the room up a little more. I’m refilling the tray when I hear the apartment door open and close, the sound of hightops being nudged off, and the familiar beat of heavy footprints padding down the hall to find me. Just the sound of him in my apartment has always made the place feel brighter.

“Whoa,” Jeff’s rasp reverberates off the walls, “you weren’t kidding, that’s… that’s fuckin BLUE.”

“Too much?” I spin around to study his face as he studies the walls.

“Nah, it’s cool. Vivid. It’s very you.”

“Ooh, your stock is falling, Jeffrey, I was just thinking to myself that it might have been the wrong color.”

“Why?” he pulls the headband out of my hair and begins to kiss my temple, the outside edge of my ear, and down along my neck to my shoulder. It’s a struggle not to wrap myself up in him, but my hands are still covered in paint. I manage to resist that temptation, but talking remains a challenge.

“Blue’s, uhm, it’s kind of a bummer…”

“No, no way, it’s so… like… sensitive, and strong, and… okay, I’m babbling, but can you blame me…”

“Yeah… but… like… the trim’s kind of glaring now, I don’t know what to do about it…”

Time to abandon any pretense of thinking straight, now that he’s got his nose in my collarbone like this. Maybe he won’t mind a little paint on his jersey...

“So this is you staying close to home, huh?”

“What?”

“Cora, all that shit. You bailed on all my ideas for plans, remember? Wanted to stay close to home?”

I frown at him, wondering where he’s going with this. There’s that neediness again. It’s not like him at all. So far, we’ve always been able to strike the right balance naturally, without putting any thought into it. We’re together when we want to be, we have space when we want it. And lately, Jeff’s been throwing all that out of balance. I wish he’d just tell me what the fuck’s going on… I wish he’d stop kissing my ear like that, or I’d remember to ask him about it…

“I still do… I think that’s for the best. But, uh, there’s a lot we can do at home, though, right?”

“I have some ideas…”

Before I can respond with some cute, pithy bullshit, he’s spun me around like I weigh nothing at all and pinned me against the wall, seemingly oblivious to the fact that it’s still dripping with wet turquoise paint. But I don’t give a shit either. I manage to reach my bare foot out behind him and nudge the paint tray out of our reach, ease him over so we’re both standing on the dropcloth, and give in to the full force of his kiss, trying to plant my feet as much as I can because my back’s slipping sideways in the paint. But my effort is unnecessary, because I’m not going anywhere in his grip. His hand lands flat on the wall next to my head before raking blue paint through my hair and dragging blue fingerprints across my throat, and it’s a race to see who can get undressed enough, fast enough…

Winded, and thoroughly slathered in turquoise, we splay out on the soaked dropcloth in a blissful, painted pile.

“Well, at least now I know what to do about the fucking trim color,” I nod at the formerly crisp, white door frame, which is now coated in Smurfy fingerprints from our failed efforts to keep our balance.

“I dunno, it’s a nice artistic statement when paired with your vertebrae sliding down the wall,” his fingers point out the trajectory of my body.

“I think I’ll just do the trim and walls and ceiling all the same color. You know. Very Masque of the Red Death.”

“Gothic, I like it.” He sighs, letting his head fall back and his eyes close. I squelch a little closer, remembering that we still have unfinished business.

“Jeff.”

“Present,” he sighs, not opening his eyes.

“Just checking.” Somehow, I still can’t bring myself to spit it out. “Uhm, you still willing to help me finish painting?”

“What else am I gonna do,” he muses with a contended smile.

After a farcical attempt at cleaning ourselves up, we continue to paint, halfway dressed, until the entire room is saturated in turquoise. My every pore and mucous membrane sympathizes.

“Anyone ever told you you’re a disaster with a paint brush?” he teases, watching me try to wash the paint from deep under my fingernails in the sink.

“Oh, yeah, it’s on my resume, actually.”

“Smartass,” he reaches out with a menacing blue paw, attempting to smear the arm I’ve just washed off, but I manage to dodge him.

“Missed me, missed me, now you gotta kiss me,” I taunt, feinting left and then right.

“Ugh, work work work,” he gives a gravelly laugh and abandons all pretense of not being able to catch me, wrapping me up once again and finding my mouth with his. But that annoying thought that there’s something we’re not saying still won’t leave me alone.

“Hey, hey, Jeff?” I kiss him back lightly but maintain my ground, until he finally quits and looks at me in confusion. “Why… uh, why don’t you just fucking say it?”

His grip on me lightens and his jaw falls slack, confirming that I was right to press the issue, that it wasn’t just my issue. I persist, “I know you’re all pissed about not making plans this weekend, I know you’ve got something you want to say to me, there’s some occasion you’re trying to manufacture, and either you’re really terrible at breaking up with me or it’s something I really want to hear, so either way, can you just spit it out already?”

Jeff’s shocked stare makes me wish immediately that I hadn’t said anything, damn it Lucy, things were fine, why did you have to put him on edge, here we go, the other shoe’s bound to drop, he’s gonna break up with me, come on, let’s just get it over with…

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” he starts to pull himself together, making my stomach lurch and my shoulders tighten as I brace for the bad news. “Uh, I just… I really fucking love you. A lot.”

Now it’s my turn to gape like a fucking idiot.

“You what?”

“Yeah, Luce, I love you, and I’ve been thinking it, like, forever, and I just… I don’t know why I didn’t say it already, maybe I just assumed you already knew or something, because we’ve been so good at like, not needing to say the obvious thing… but I’m kinda tired of not saying the obvious thing, because we’re not promised anything, and I’m tired of taking it for granted, so... I love you, and I don’t want to spend my time with anyone else, and I don’t want to have to walk downstairs to see you in the morning, it’s just too fucking far, okay?”

My mind is full of stammering thoughts as I turn over the logistics of what he’s just said, but all that I can manage to say out loud through the grin splitting my face is, “I love you too,” as I pull him into a still-not-quite pigment-free kiss.

***

This. This is what dying feels like. I’m sure of it. Oh, yuck, I’m pretty certain the color coming out of my lungs does not occur in nature. Dark. Why is it so dark in here? What the hell time is it? Jesus, I slept the entire fucking day, that's just grand...

At least there's no one around to witness how pathetic I probably look right now. This whole flu thing's not very big on dignity. Although, who am I kidding, I'd wear a robe and slippers everywhere if it was socially acceptable, and I’d kill for someone to bring me a cup of tea so I don’t have to slither out of this bed and get it myself. My fever finally broke this morning, in a disgusting, sweaty miracle, which is a mixed blessing because it's nice not to feel like a shivery rag doll anymore, but now my sheets smell like gross fever sweat and not the much more pleasant smell left behind on my pillow by Cora the other night. I wish her hair didn't smell so damn good all the time. It's really fucking inconvenient.

Ow. Crap. Dehydration headache. One of the downfalls of attempted hibernation. With a chorus of my most pathetic whines, I manage to get myself out of bed and over to the kitchen to nuke a cup of water for some tea. Just as I’m steeping the bag, though, there’s a knock on my door. Fucking great. I wasn’t serious about actually wanting someone around… unless it’s…

“Hello?” I croak, wincing at my sore throat.

“Stoney! You live!”

“Cornell?”

“You gonna let me in or what?”

“I don’t know, how’s your immune system?”

“Strong, like ox.”

Laughing and coughing, I open the door to let Chris in. He shoves a box of tissues into my chest and blows past me to set a quart container of some kind of murky liquid, which I eye suspiciously.

“Hot and sour soup, from Grand Palace. Foolproof cold remedy, I’m pretty convinced this shit cures cancer, or at least ebola or something. Cora told me you looked like death warmed over. Girl doesn’t lie.”

“Oh, uh, you… you talked to Cora?” I pick up the soup and inspect it more closely.

“Yeah, I, uh, talked to Cora.”

“Hmm.”

“Dude, eat something, it’s not gonna kill you.”

“Doubtful.”

“Pansy.”

“Pusher.”

My laughter dissolves into a choked cough again as Chris saunters over to the cabinet like he owns the place and grabs a couple of bowls.

“Hey, let’s sit out on the steps, it’ll help the black lung.” He hands me a bowl of soup and, in no position to argue, I snag the blanket from the back of my couch to wrap around my shoulders as I follow him onto the landing outside my front door where we sit and dangle our feet over the edge, like little kids. I’m feeling too rundown to admit it, but he’s right -- my chest feels better within seconds.

“Eat, man, eat, you’re looking so thin you’re gonna blow away out here.”

“Who died and made you my grandma?”

“I prefer the philanthropic, mysterious stranger vibe, but have it your way.”

I try a bit of the soup, which sticks in my gullet after a day of not eating or drinking, and I sputter into another full-body coughing fit.

“Gahh, why’s it so… viscous??”

“It’s the viscosity,” Chris beams, slurping up another spoonful. “Coats the throat, or something.”

“Yeah, I bet you say that to all the girls,” I choke, but the soup’s actually pretty good and not too heavy, so I have some more. We sit in silence for a while, which is one of the things I’ve always appreciated about Chris, before I pipe up against my better judgement.

“So,” I have to clear my throat again, “uh, how’s, how’s Cora?”

“She’ll be alright, I think. Seems pretty unhappy with you.”

“That makes it a day that ends in -y.”

“But she’s fine. Tried to get her to go hiking today, but she was going running with that Alex guy.”

“You don’t say.” Alex and physical exertion? What the fuck? Is this a fever dream, still?

“Seemed weird, I mean, he doesn’t really come along for a lot, she does a lot on her own. And she didn’t seem too excited about the idea of him tagging along, I dunno.”

“Would you be excited about trying to outrun a wart on your ass?”

“Ouch. So, you hate him, yeah?”

“It’s not that I hate the guy, necessarily…” Chris’s eyebrows shoot up as I continue, “...just… you know… kinda always wanted to buy him a toaster for his bathtub.”

He tosses me a pity laugh. “Yeah, well, she’s not an idiot, don’t think she hasn’t picked up on that. Whatever the hell’s going on with you two, you can’t ignore him.”

“You’re telling me.” I hold up my hand to shush him when I hear the phone ring, and we both listen as the garbled sound of my answering machine comes through the door, but there’s no message.

“Stoney, what the hell happened, anyway?”

I squint at his face for a moment, torn between not wanting to drag everyone into this little drama that’s been playing out with Cora and actually wanting to talk to a friend about it. Jeff and Cready were zero help, but Chris has always been a better listener for the heavy stuff.

“We… kinda… I mean, she stayed over the other night, and…”

Chris’s eyes widen and his jaw drops, although he can barely contain the laughter that accompanies his surprise. “Oh!” he exclaims with glee. “You’re idiots!”

“Okay, (a), thanks man, good talk, real supportive. And (b), why are we idiots, exactly?”

“You slept with her even though you knew it was a bad idea! That's not like you. That's like something Mike would do. Or me. You’ve always got all the angles figured out. And Cora, she's like, got her shit together more than any of the rest of us. She should have known better.” He frowns, drumming his empty spoon on his kneecap.

“Yeah, well, she's sorta… new at this. And anyway we didn’t actually sleep together, alright, I mean, we slept together but not like you’re thinking.”

“Reeeeal convincing, Stone,” he teases. “Whaddya mean she’s new at this? Haven’t she and that guy been together since, like the dawn of time?”

“Yeah, but like, that’s it, that’s her whole story, and I think… I think she and I have something really good, and I think she knows that, but it probably really freaks her out to think about ending anything that’s been, you know, such a fixture for so long. I don’t know, I’m probably not making any sense.”

“More than you know. Just give her time, man. She thinks the world of you, and it really pisses her off to admit it. That’s a good thing, it’ll still be there after she figures out the whole ‘first love’ thing.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I whine, which devolves into more coughing, which cycles back into even more whining.

“On the bright side, you’ve really perfected that Tibetan throat-singing technique,” Chris cracks as he stands up. “You’d better get back inside. Anything I can do to help while I’m here?”

“Nah, thanks, the toxic sludge seems to be working, I’m feeling a little better already.”

Chris claps me on the back, betrays the slightest slip of a smile, and starts down the staircase without another word. I let myself back inside, free to moan and groan as much as I like in the absence of anyone to make fun of me for it, and shuffle my way over to the answering machine. The first message is pure auditory chaos, but through the cacophony, I gather that Mudhoney’s on a tour stop in Tijuana and that my answering machine tape should probably be burned after I listen to the message so as not to implicate anyone in a felony. The usual. That’s got to have been from earlier today and not just now -- Chris and I would have heard that excitement through the door for sure, but I wouldn’t put it past myself to have slept through it this afternoon. Whatever. I delete their message and listen to the second, much quieter one.

“Hey, Stone? uh…” Cora’s hushed voice is interrupted by Alex calling her name in the background. I hear her give a sharp inhale, followed by a click, and that’s all.

#hey. does anyone still read this thing?#here's a thing i wrote. it's not great but after two months i give you what i can #chapter 23 #behind the sun #fanfiction #fanfic #eddie vedder #chris cornell #jeff ament #stone gossard #pearl jam

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aclusterofstuff · 6 years

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Frenemies (Eddie Vedder fanfiction)

Chapter 4

"Hey" A deep voice called out to a sleeping Sabrina.

He was met with no reply so he decided to speak once again. "I said hello! Would you wake up already you stupid cockroach?" The voice said more rashly this time, causing Sabrina to stir around.

She didn't have to open up her eyes to know who it was. "Leave me alone short stuff" Sabrina mumbled sleepily.

"I'm going to give you about five seconds before I get out a cold glass of water that would compliment your hair very nicely" Eddie warned her with his arms crossed.

Sabrina's lips turned upwards slightly. "Aww are you trying to sweet talk me hobo?" She teased him.

"Five"

"Four"

"Three"

"Two-" He was cut off by Sabrina raising her hand to lightly punch him in his stomach.

The blow was soft but enough for him to stumble back a little bit, that's when Sabrina decided to sit up. "Don't tell me what to do, ever" Sabrina warned him before standing up off the couch and brushing past him, bumping into his shoulder.

Eddie's eyebrows furrowed and his mouth stayed at the same amused stance as before. "Don't sleep on the couch some of us would like to relax there and we can't do that if you are taking the whole thing up" Eddie huffed out. looking over his shoulder to look at her.

"A fat joke? That's a low blow even for you" Sabrina replied nonchalantly as she was walking into the kitchen.

Eddie crossed his arms then turned to look at her. "That's not what I meant and you know that"

Sabrina got a spare lighter out of the junk drawer in the kitchen then dug into her pocket to get out what was Eddie's past pack of cigarette's before he 'gave them to her'. Sabrina got out one single cigarette and then poured a glass of juice before lightening up the white stick.

She alternated between smoking and drinking from the plastic cup. Sabrina took another puff of her cigarette before her eyes widened as big as saucers. "What time is it?" Sabrina asked worriedly.

Eddie shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know do I look like a personal clock to you?" Eddie fired back, sticking his hands into his jean pockets.

Sabrina set down the drink and threw her cigarette into the sink. "I'm fuckin serious asshole" Sabrina huffed out to the brunette boy.

"I'll go check" Eddie murmured before walking off to find any sort of clock around there, which he found in the living room above the tv.

He memorized the time before coming back to the panicked girl, who's heart was beating in her chest harshly, anxiety filling her veins. "It's nine o'five " Eddie told her.

Sabrina put her head into her hands and let out a groan. "Are you kidding me? I have to be at work in twenty minutes! What am I even still doing here!" Sabrina exclaimed, completely mad at herself.

She grabbed her keys from the rack above the door and slipped on her shoes as she walked outside. She almost fell while doing it, but she got it done. Eddie watched the girl with a straight face, not in any way happy that she was clearly upset by this. He in some way felt like he should say something, but he didn't have enough time to because she was out the door in the blink of an eye. Sabrina opened the car door and practically hopped inside before shoving the key into the ignition.

As she turned it she expected to be met with the loud roaring of her muffler, but was met with short huffs before it died out completely. Sabrina's jaw dropped and she let out a scream. "Right fucking now? Now of all fucking times?" Sabrina yelled out to her car, throwing her hands up in the air before she slammed them on her wheel.

She attempted to start the car up again, only to be met with the same little muffles that died out after three seconds. Sabrina couldn't believe her luck, it's like everything goes so well for a couple months before it all goes back to crap. "You piece of shit!" Sabrina barked to her car, slamming her hand on the dashboard.

A couple knocks on her window made her head jerk up from her steering wheel. Her new found enemy said something but it was muffled by the thick glass, so she opened up her car door to hear what he had to say. "Yelling isn't going to fix it you know" Eddie sighed out to her, his eyes not giving her the usual death glares she had become used to.

"I don't want to hear it right now" Sabrina weakly replied, feeling tears well up in her eyes.

There was no way she was gonna let him see her like this so she tried to think of anything else to make the feeling go away. Everything is going bad, can't one thing go right? There's abso-fuckin-lutely no way I will have the money to get this fixed.

Sabrina's shoulders were slumped and her head hung low as she basked in the thought of having to pay for fixing the car, along with the real life fear of getting fired from her job for missing yet another day. "Where do you need to go?" Eddie asked seriously.

"I don't want a ride from you, I hate you" Sabrina responded quietly, not bothering to put back up her rude facade.

Eddie looked at her with sad eyes. "I hate you just as much but I can't watch another human being look as hopeless as you without feeling at least a little bad. You know assuming that you are actually human and not a demon"

"I think I'm somewhere in between" Sabrina countered gaining back a bit of confidence, making Eddie hold back a sigh of relief that she wasn't going to cry.

He nodded his head over to his car that was parked in front of the house. "Come on. You sulking is just gonna waste more time" Eddie told her, before he dangled his car keys in front of her face .

Sabrina licked her lips and stood up from her crappy car, sticking the keys into her pocket as she did so. Before she walked away from the car she kicked the drivers door with her foot harshly, needing to get out that last bit of anger at the car. "I don't even have my uniform, I haven't brushed my teeth or combed my hair" Sabrina complained as he lead her to the car.

"I'll stop at your house. You do have to tell me where it is though and be fast. I need to get home before Stone does so I can still have the spot in front of the house" Eddie said to her before he got into the drivers seat.

Sabrina got into the passengers seat and gave him directions quietly and he followed suit. The drive was only a few minutes and Sabrina bolted into her house as fast as lightening to get ready quickly, throwing on her uniform and putting her hair up into a ponytail all while trying to brush her teeth at the same time.

Four minutes flat and she was back in his car, slightly out of breath after rushing so hard. "Where do you work?" Eddie asked her, starting up his car once again.

She told him the exact directions and he did them perfectly. "Who knew that short men were good at driving? I would think their legs would be to short to reach the peddles and it would slow them down but here you are proving me wrong this morning" Sabrina teased.

Eddie rolled his eyes at her. "I didn't know cockroaches had morning breath but I was also proven wrong about that this morning. You learn something new everyday" Eddie shot back easily before purposefully making the next turn sloppy so she would jerk in her seat, which she did and almost banged her head on the glass window.

"There it is! Right there!" Sabrina told Eddie urgently, pointing to the brick building that was the bakery.

Eddie slid into the parking lot in a rush, before he slammed down on the breaks. "Get out, demon. I expect my cigarettes back later on today." Eddie told her.

"Go ahead there's only two left. I would thank you but I didn't ask you to do this in the first place, you decided to take me to work, therefore I owe you nothing." Sabrina answered opening up the car door with a grin on her face.

Eddie didn't think he was going to get a thank you anyways so he wasn't annoyed by it at all. "Well I hope your day at work is absolutely awful, now get out my car" Eddie said with the same grin.

The look on their faces and what they were saying didn't match up, there was almost an unspoken moment of kindness although their words said otherwise. Both of them knew in that moment their words were only just that, just words. Not holding any meaning.

"I hope your tire pops" Sabrina countered before she hopped out of his car and walked away.

Before Eddie drove away he called out to her. "Oh and find your own ride home because there is no way I'm going to do it!" Eddie yelled out to her.

Sabrina laughed lightly and looked back at him, throwing away his harsh words. "I get off at five thirty"

Eddie said nothing and drove away as she opened the door to the bakery, getting ready for the long day of work a head of her.

And at five thirty, he was there in front of her bakery once again, neither one of them speaking of the nice act as he dropped her off in front of her small apartment. The only words being spoken were small teases and directions.

-----///-------

A/N: The end of this chapter! Hope you don't think their banter gets too harsh sometimes, sometimes I'm doubtful of what I should add in. Thank you for reading!!!!!!!!

#eddie vedder #eddie vedder fanfiction #Chapter 4 #grunge #grunge fanfiction

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glorifiedgpjfic · 6 years

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Glorified G- Chapter 30

“I love him!” Jo shouted sitting bolt upright in bed, a smile crept onto her face and she turned over to face Eddie to tell him about her revelation only to realise that she was sleeping alone, the smile faded as she looked at her alarm clock- it was time to get up anyway. After getting showered and dressed Jo threw on her usual monochrome work clothes, she left her hair down and didn’t bother putting any makeup on- normally as she put on her boots Eddie would hand her some toast of some sort of food, Jo let out a sigh at how much she’d fucked up.

Jo drove straight to the hospital to see Jonny who should now be awake and ready to talk. Jo marched up three flights of stairs until she reached the ICU where she found Jonny’s room, Maude sat sleeping beside Jonny holding his hand- Jo entered the room and sat opposite Maude and beside Jonny, he was slowly waking up Jo saw the shock register as he realised he was alive his heart monitor began beeping rapidly, Jo gently placed a hand on his arm,

“Calm down Jonny, breathe, just breathe.” She cooed and the monitor’s beeping slowed, “You’re lucky to be alive Jonny, can we have a chat?” Jo kept her voice down to avoid waking Maude who was quietly snoring,

“We don’t wanna talk to you.” He hissed, which caused Maude to wake up her eyes locked onto Jo before she began telling her to leave,

“Get the hell out of here! You nearly killed my boy! Get out!” Maude’s voice alerted a few nurses who came rushing into the room to escort Jo out, instead of fighting it and demanding to stay and question Jonny she left, without a word.

Eddie had arrived at Potatohead a half hour late, the rest of the band eyed him cautiously as he took a seat far from them and began scribbling in his notepad, he didn’t say a word to them. Stone and Jeff shared an almost knowing glance before focusing their attention to Mike and Dave who were working on a fast-paced tune, Jeff picked up his bass and began playing in the background- Stone observed for a few moments before grabbing his guitar and playing a few chords, they played for around thirty seconds where the music was good and then Mike missed a note and the piece seemed to fall apart, the four members bursting out laughing. Completely oblivious to the musical genius of his bandmates Eddie was lost in his thoughts, trying to wrap his head around the brutal rejection he had faced the previous night.

Had he said it too soon? Was he wanting more commitment than Jo? Did he spook her? The questions swirled around in his mind on an endless repeat, he hadn’t slept at all- it felt alien to be sleeping in a bed without the warmth of Joanne nuzzled against him, without her legs tangled around his and her arm slung over him, holding him close to her. All he could think about during the night was whether Jo missed his presence as much as he missed hers. He had concluded that if she had missed him, he would’ve had a call from her, or she would’ve shown up at the studio, but she didn’t.

Joanne had sent Eleanor to try and talk to Jonny hoping that Maude wouldn’t kick her out, and upon arriving at the office Jo decided that now was a good time to go and have a chat to Jane about everything that had happened since her last session. She told Jane about the situation with Eddie and how she was still in shock and trying to process it, and about how Jonny had shot himself she’d felt the need to vent about it as the images were replaying everytime she closed her eyes. Jane had essentially told her she to talk to Eddie, advice which Joanne knew was good - but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She wanted to be absolutely positive of her feelings towards him before she went over confessing a false love to him, she knew that he deserved the world and so to say ‘i love you too’ because it was something he wanted to hear felt like it was a huge disservice to him. William had provided Jo with a small mountain of paperwork to go through, while Eleanor was questioning Jonny, hopefully digging deeper into his mind and getting them closer to the answers they craved.

Filling out paperwork was a pleasure for Jo, it was something she could do while thinking about a number of other things, it’s how she got through university, she’d write an essay while making a mental list of all the things she had to pay for, she was a ‘pro-multitasker’ so while she was filling out numerous forms in autopilot she allowed her mind to wander to Eddie; what was he doing? What was he thinking about? Was he okay?

The answers to those questions were simple; he was doing nothing, thinking about Jo, and he was most definitely not okay. Half of him wanted to go to Jo’s apartment and tell her he didn’t mean it and then they could go back to how they were and it would be normal again, but he didn’t want to lie about his feelings and Jo deals with liars at work every day so she would see straight through him. He was feeling so lost, he wanted to be angry at her- but he knew he would’ve reacted in the same way, it was out of the blue so she was bound to be shocked, but was it not a mutual feeling? Had he painted this magical picture in his head where he and Jo were madly in love and they were going to have a house with two or three kids and Jo would be the most supportive mum, she’d adapt and be this domestic goddess and he would teach the kids how to play the guitar. And it would be a simple life, their kids would grow up in a loving house it would be the opposite to how Eddie and Jo grew up, they’d never feel as lonely as their parents had. Was he really that delusional? Had he forgotten about the fact that Jo is practically superwoman who saves people every single day, had he forgotten that without Joanne and the people like her more people would be killed and the cases would run cold, had he forgotten that Jo wouldn’t just quit her job to be a mother, she wouldn’t even quit her job for her fiance so why would she for him?

The crash of a symbol snapped Eddie back to reality, his daydream of being a father abruptly ended, and he glanced around the studio in a daze. His bandmates were looking at him almost disapprovingly, Dave was the one to break the silence,

“What’s going on man?” The others nodded offering Eddie sympathetic stares,

“Nuthin’ just trying to get some lyrics down.” Stone let out a sigh,

“You sure that’s it?” Eddie nodded and shot them a glance that told them to drop it, and they did, soon enough the sounds of broken riffs and not quite right beats filled the air, allowing Eddie to get back to his fantasy land.

Eleanor returned to the office armed with new information that Joanne was dying to hear, Jonny had been given a psych consult at the hospital and they believed he was suffering from multiple personality disorder, they were going to monitor him and then assess whether or not he would need admitting to a psychiatric facility- this diagnosis, of course, meant that should charges be pressed against Jonny, he would be able to plead insanity and just be sent to a psychiatric facility, which is where he is already likely to end up.

After a long day of daydreaming and paperwork Joanne went home to an empty apartment, she grabbed her copy of Ten and put it on her record player before making a cup of coffee and sitting at the kitchen table listening to Eddie’s powerful voice and the incredible musical skills of; Stone, Dave, Jeff, and Mike. She let out a sigh and rested her head on the table letting Eddie’s voice lull her to sleep.

Joanne awoke a few hours later with an achy back and neck, the record had stopped playing and the only sound in the apartment was the crackling sound of the vinyl. With a small wince, she stretched her back and neck, before waddling to her bed, where she face planted drifting straight back off to sleep. Her sleep didn’t last long at all, she soon woke up again with a burning urge to call Eddie, in her half-asleep state she staggered to the kitchen table and grabbed a notepad and pen from her bag, she began planning what she was going to say to Eddie.

‘Hey, it’s me Jo, also known as the biggest bitch in Seattle. I hope you’re okay, just calling to tell you I think the feeling is mutual.’

Nope. that sounded full of sarcasm, try again.

‘Hey Eddie, I want you to know I love you too- I think.’

Nope.

‘Eddie Vedder, love of my life oh won’t thou call me? You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.’

As she began quoting Jane Austen Jo let out a laugh, that’d make him laugh- or maybe he wouldn’t get the reference and think she’d been smoking something illegal. Sitting alone at the kitchen table at four in the morning was not going to help, all of the things she wanted to say were lost her brain could not and would not put her feelings into words, it was a tiring thing, trying to string together your emotions when you don’t truly know what they are.

Jo sat for a few more minutes scribbling her thoughts down, then without thinking she dialled Eddie and Chris’ landline of course there was no answer- then she was left with the choice, to leave a message or to hang up, before she’d made said choice there was a beep in her ear, it was too late now,

“This message is for Eddie, so Chris my dear you need to stop listening now. Hey Eddie, yeah- um no- this isn’t gonna work for me, I’m not leaving you a message about something so important. I’ll see you around, I guess- I’m sorry. Fuckin hell this is a trainwreck- sorry again good night, or good morning depends when you are listening. Bye for now.” Jo hung up and let out a sigh, she cringed at everything she had just said, why couldn’t she just write something down and stick to a damn script.

Eddie was wide awake and made a beeline to the phone when he heard it ring, he paused at it waiting to hear who was calling when Jo’s voice flooded through the room he frowned. He listened to her ramble to herself and had to fight off a small smile that tugged on his lips, his smile was soon replaced with the frown again and he deleted the message without a second thought.

A/N Hey guys sorry about the long break between chapters, I haven't edited or proofread this but I was determined to get this out tonight, so here it is I’ll probably edit it tomorrow and get rid of any inevitable typos

#eddie vedder #Eddie Vedder Fanfic #eddie vedder fanfiction #Pearl Jam #pearl jam fanfic #pearl jam fanfiction #grunge fanfiction #grunge fanfic #jeff ament #stone gossard #mike mccready #dave abbruzzese

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shultzing · 6 years

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7/29/2018: did i already say how much of an angel this guy is

8/13/2018: i’m so mad that i’m dating someone so much cuter than me. i never intended for this to happen. my type is usually men who are just above average looking, which I was happy with. now, i have to constantly think about how i look bc I know everyone around us has GOT to be thinking like, wtf is that beautiful man doing w/ that scrubby looking twig in the ancient clothes?? and like... he HAS to know. idc so much if other people are wondering how i got w/ him as long as HE isn’t like... damn, i could be doing so much better... anyways kill me, he is too fucking handsome and this birth control is making my skin break out really bad.

8/22/2018: this whole thing about being in a casual relationship is weird and tbh i’m less and less a fan. maybe i need to grow tf up but like, here’s an example. I’m going to a show friday night that’s literally 5 minutes from his house, and i know he’s free friday, and yet i won’t invite him bc i don’t want to see him there bc i don’t want him to be part of my local music world bc then he’ll mean that much more to me and it will be that much harder to feel and act casual. so that feels shitty. and like, i could totally skip the show and just go hang out w/ him, but I know he’s not planning his life around me, so I don’t want to get myself into a frame of mind where i’m sacrificing my stuff to be w/ him, so i make a point to not plan around him and not cancel plans for him. But getting to a point where i actively don’t want him to come to things w/ me is like some kind of accomplishment but also feels like a battle i don’t want to win? like i’m getting too good at it. at first i was like... struggling w/ it and he could probably tell? esp by how much i texted him and what kinds of texts i sent. but now i’m like, i’ve got a handle on it. i’m good. and it makes me sad. like what is the point of a casual relationship? what’s the point of a relationship you barely care about?

8/26/2018: conflict resolution like bosses >:) i know it’s just a beginning but we didn’t ever even get to a point of real conflict, although we were both approaching the subject at hand from wildly different perspectives and pretty high stakes. no insults or even criticisms, just explaining ourselves, being honest, and both quick to apologize. He definitely gets flustered and then gets a lot less precise about what he’s saying but then he’ll circle back to it when he’s had a minute to process/calm down and can fix whatever he mis-explained previously. It’s good to be back to good.

8/28/2018: first use of a pet name: drunk text -- “Goodnight cutie. Sweet dreams and I’ll talk to you tomorrow <3″

8/31/2018: the way he reacted when i got suddenly skittish/stressed out was a startling moment in a really good way. He stayed so calm/supportive/reassuring. Who knew that was possible?

9/1/2018: i think we’re becoming friends :’) meeting someone on a dating app, everything is backward bc the romance and skin comes before the friendship/knowing the person/etc so whenever we hang out for long enough to have time to get into decently long conversations and learn about each other or fight over whether william carlos williams is a good poet or not... it’s nice, and more special. Like, oh! that’s who you are?

9/8/2018: the way that relationships evolve is strange. like, a couple of weeks ago, just getting a text from M or not getting a text from him could change my mood and ability to focus so much bc everything was so new and uncertain and both exciting and stressful. now it’s okay either way. we’ve been dating for a little more than 2 months and things are getting to be sort of familiar and comfortable and less of a constant heart attack. the newness is still strange, there’s always some surprise. The other night he came over w/ his hair down and I was like ???? since when do you have hair like a young eddie vedder?? what is this?? but he was just like... yeah, that’s how it is right after i shower. i had no idea. it’s nice to literally get to watch someone slowly learn to trust you. he doesn’t act shy but it’s also easy to tell that he always has his walls up, I definitely have never seen them down yet, and that is okay. but the more comfortable he gets, the warmer he gets, and that’s really sweet. i’m frequently surprised by how competent of a person he is. he goes to the gym, he eats healthy, he’s a good boss, he’s a good student, he’s a good dog-parent etc. he asks questions like, “reading anything good lately?” and also corrected me instantly when I said KDC died in 93. he communicates clearly/gently/honestly. i’m getting to know some of his flaws, too. anyways i was out w/ a friend (allison c.) last night and we were talking about how shitty men are. i told her that the reason i’m w/ M is mainly just to get a chance to date someone who seems like he can prove that men can actually be really good. told her a story about how M reacted whenever i was having a bad moment and she was like, “I literally have goosebumps rn.” it was cute. reminded me not to take him for granted while he’s in my life. hope i’m not.

9/11/2018: M’s coming over tomorrow and i can’t waittttt. We try to see each other twice a week but sometimes it doesn’t happen and then it feels like forever. But now it’s less than 24 hours until i can hold his hands and kiss his face and i’m so ready.

9/13/2018: If this relationship is going to stick for a while... i can’t wait for the stage to come where i actually know him well enough that i’m not always overanalyzing/overreacting to every little cue. like there’s so much i don’t know that i can learn little things and be like WAIT WHAT? and get really stressed about it and i can’t wait for that to be over. how long til there’s an underlying level of trust/knowledge/comfort?

9/23/2018: Okay so for the most part this relationship is starting to feel normal. It still doesn’t always feel real just because he is so segregated from the rest of my life. No mutual friends. no school to share, no work to share, no volunteering or show circuit. No one else has met him or even really knows what he looks like bc of a lack of recent pictures. I’m slowly getting more confident and comfortable within it, even though i do still second guess myself a lot more than i usually do. I guess i’m used to being fussed over and spoiled. But this isn’t like that at all. We’re both a) adults and b) busy and c) on opposite sides of the city and he’s still pretty reserved so I know I’m like, low-ish on his priorities list. Like i’m ON the list, but somewhere beneath going to the gym and getting a haircut, and about 10 miles below his dog. It’s fine, it’s only been like 3 months. Less than that. ANYWAY we’ve finally graduated out of the just-casual-relationship category and into the normal relationship category. Or, he said he thought we did a month ago, but I didn’t realize that’s what he was saying. So now I can stop filtering everything I say and do through that ever-present, “is this too serious?” lens and just do what makes sense/comes naturally. or something. I’m super excited about that bc that was getting really tiring and unromantic.

9/30/2018: Uhhh, we went back into a weird “unlabeled” category where like we’re monogamous but nothing else is defined? Which I think is really lame but I also am trying to be patient and not pressure him and stuff. But I still think it’s silly and juvenile and kind of embarrassing. I mean I know he has his reasons and he needs to work through them on his own and at his own pace but for ME, it’s silly. Anyways. Still feels like there’s so much I don’t know about him or how he works or thinks or feels. But he still is always surprising me by just sheer level of sweetness. I feel like that’s always how I walk away, like, idk that guy but he sure has a kind heart.

10/4/2018: Ok the back and forth stalling on what we’re even doing and all the associated casual dynamics have kinda killed the romance for me. like it’s cool and all but i’m done obsessing over the relationship and probably won’t be updating this anymore bc i really don’t care and continuing to write about it is just trying to make it a bigger deal to me than it really is.

10/19/2018: Nearly 4 months in and it’s still such a roller coaster, my perspective, optimism/pessimism and level of happiness change like every 48 hours. Sometimes i think we’re on the verge of breaking up because we’re too different or because we overworked the dynamics of our relationship too much. Sometimes i think we’re on the verge of stepping closer because our good days really are good. I’m always surprised by how complicated every little thing is, questioning where my feelings are coming from and whether i’m either getting carried away on good days or paranoid and trust-issues-y on bad days. And there is definitely also a background kind of darkness/heaviness surrounding the fact that the more time goes by, the more i understand that i’m really not even close to being over R. But on Wednesday he and I went to Red Emma’s and then took his dog for a walk and then watched princess bride (both of our favorite childhood movie) and ended up staying up til 5-something in the morning just lying next to each other talking about bullshit. Like it wasn’t staying up all night to work out something serious or anything. I don’t even remember what we were talking about. I remember at some point he started trying to recite post malone lyrics and could not stop laughing for so long. I remember on 9/8 I wrote that i know i’ve never seen him w/ his guard down and i still usually feel like that, but then sometimes lately i think it comes down for a second and it’s always really nice and makes me think it’s worth working/waiting for. It’s understandable that he’d still have a lot of walls up when our relationship has been so rocky and it’s still in the baby stages anyways. I know he must be feeling more and more sure of us bc the way his sister treats me changed distinctly this weekend. Like she was always super nice, but now she treats me like she expects me to be around/expects to and wants to make friends, which is so nice. He’s still incredible when I get triggered. Sometimes I just suddenly can’t anymore and he’s never even hinted at the slightest inkling of being frustrated by that.

11/4/2018: “do you love me?” “yes. i do love you. its been screaming in my head to say it every time I look at you.” “then why didn’t you get me a seltzer water?”

11/30/2018: “I’m breaking up with you, and I want to marry you, and I love you.”

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update: this is going to be a running/updated post for all bullshit things i think about M but should be telling no one and should absolutely not be posting on the internet.

#personal

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arplis · 3 years

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Arplis - News: The 50 Best Alt-Rock Love Song

s Not all love songs are romantic. Not all love songs are even happy. It all depends on your definition of the term. For every “My Girl” or “Your Song,” there’s at least one track with a nuanced take on the darker, more complicated sides of love — the drama of a long-term relationship, the fear of losing a partner, the void left in love’s wake. Many of those songs fall under the admittedly broad umbrella of “alt-rock.” So to mark Valentine’s Day, we decided to gather 50 of our favorite “love songs” in the genre — both conventional and otherwise. Throughout this list, you’ll find lines about blooming romance and marital bliss. You’ll also find nods to drug addiction and car crashes. There’s something for everyone. – Ryan Reed 50. that dog. – “I’m Gonna See You” You take the good, you take the bad. You settle in for the longest haul, one that’s meant to end whenever one partner or the other passes away. Sunny, glossy and droll, “I’m Gonna See You” fairly tingles the spine; there’s an underlying optimism about marriage and domestic life here that’s leavened by level-headedness and firm realism. that dog. set the controls firmly to mid-tempo, as placid frontwoman Anna Waronker serenades an unknown subject who might as well murmur every verse and chorus right back at her: “I’m gonna see you in the morning / I’m gonna see you when you’re uptight / I’m gonna see you when you’re boring / I’m gonna see you every night.” – Raymond Cummings 49. PJ Harvey (featuring Thom Yorke) – “This Mess We’re In” PJ Harvey didn’t need Radiohead’s enigmatic frontman to sell this bleakly beautiful 2000 duet. But it’s chilling — and slightly dislocating — to hear these worlds collide, resulting in a hall-of-fame-caliber swirl of romantic misery. “I’d long been interested in the idea of somebody else singing a whole song on a record of mine, to have a very different dimension brought in by somebody else’s voice,” Harvey told the Los Angeles Times. “It adds so much dynamic within the record to have this other character coming in.” And while it’s still hilarious to hear Yorke, master of the abstract, sing lines this nakedly sensual (“I dream of making love to you now, baby”), he inhabits that character with ease, his falsetto offering a ghostly counterpoint to Harvey’s measured spoken word. – Ryan Reed 48. Yellowcard – “Ocean Avenue” There’s love, sure, but “Ocean Avenue” is also an anthem of youth, recklessness and pop-punk. Something about the chugging riffs, infectious chorus and cliche lyrics made it an instant classic destined to soundtrack every Emo Nite. The highlight is, of course, the sentiment that’s as predictable as everything else: “If I could find you now things would get better / We could leave this town and run forever.” Just like Boys Like Girls’ later pop-punk gem “The Great Escape,” “Ocean Avenue” is built on one of rock’s most reliably romantic images: running away with a vague lover from a dreary hometown into life’s endless possibilities. – Danielle Chelosky Credit: Capitol 47. Future Islands – “Walking Through That Door” This is Future Islands in the key of “I Want to Break Free.” Of all the underdog anthems the synth-pop trio churn out, this gem — from 2010’s overlooked In Evening Air — is their most pure. The beauty lies in Gerrit Welmers’ quivering keys, which sound like they landed on Earth from a ’50s sci-fi flick. They spiral higher and faster, as singer Samuel T. Herring absolves us of the shadows we cling to; all the lonely nights that “fall oh-so-slow.” “I want to be the one to help you find those dreams,” Herring sings, eerily calm, like a mountaintop shaman who’s become enlightened in the rugged terrain. “Walking Through That Door” has a mystical vibe that takes whatever’s in your heart and makes you believe in it harder. – Sarah Grant 46. Liz Phair – “Supernova” Liz Phair is in devotion mode, packing more similes into one rock love song than an entire book of Shakespeare sonnets. “Your eyelashes sparkle like gilded grass,” she sings, “and your lips are sweet and slippery like a cherub’s bare, wet ass.” That’s just the first verse. “Supernova” was Phair’s rollicking first single from Whip-Smart, the follow-up to her murky masterpiece Exile in Guyville. With its trampolining guitars and Phair’s heart wide open, it signaled a whole new Liz dimension — her romantic period — where we could pour out our hearts with fists held high, shouting “and you fuck like a volcano, and you’re everything to me.” A declaration that would only occur to an ineffably cool 27-year-old in 1994. – S.G. Credit: Matador / Atlantic 45. The Stranglers – “Golden Brown” The stately, baroque-pop jangle of “Golden Brown” diverged from the English band’s core sound: prototypical pub-punkers stumbling into the electronics section of the local music store. The Stranglers slowly matured into the New Wave outfit of their pinnacle — but, in this case, take a deviant direction. A harpsichord plays the central melody as a luminous phased synth corresponds: dropping and rising in octaves, overall creating an enthralling quasi-waltz (with periodic bars in 7/8 time). It’s a ballad to his beatific (and lyrically ambiguous) “golden brown,” a finer temptress arranged in a seamless weaving of verse into bridge into the chorus — all executed in a timbre echoing John Lennon. Such a gorgeous song from a band with such a contrary name. – Logan Blake 44. Nine Inch Nails – “The Perfect Drug” The doomed romance of Trent Reznor’s lyrics can often make love sound like a desperate chemical dependency — or make actual drug addiction sound like an irresistible seduction. “The Perfect Drug,” written for David Lynch’s 1997 film, Lost Highway, muddies the waters even more than usual, particularly with Mark Romanek’s absinthe-themed video. Reznor has performed the song live sparingly and reportedly admitted in 2005 that it “probably wouldn’t be in the top hundred” of the tracks he’s written. Still, it’s hard not to get caught up in the adrenaline rush of one of the fastest, most drum’n’bass-influenced songs in the Nine Inch Nails catalog. – Al Shipley Credit: Nothing 43. Pulp – “Something Changed” “Something Changed” is a prayer for those of us whose love language is canceling plans. Over rolling guitars and heavenly synths, Jarvis Cocker sings about the precious, random decisions that we make every day, having no idea of what’s at stake. “I could have stayed at home and gone to bed … you might have changed your mind and seen your friend.” In a Melody Maker interview, Cocker said that the song’s retrospective lyrics came from trying to remember why he wrote this song in the first place back in 1984 — years before releasing it as a single in 1996. Twenty-five years later, amid the doldrums of quarantine, “Something Changed” is like a redemption song for those of us who took the outside world for granted. As Jarve wisely said: “The worst thing about having a schedule and a timetable is that there’s less chance for unexpected things to happen.” – S.G. Credit: Island 42. Buzzcocks – “Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)” If the answer to the question posed in the song title is “no,” check your pulse. You’re not alive. Or perhaps you’re extremely lucky. Just wait — as Robert Plant once sang, “Your Time Is Gonna Come.” The gist of the lyrics: “You spurn my natural emotions / You make me feel like dirt and I’m hurt” is as plainspoken as the song itself, written in 1978 by Buzzcocks’ Pete Shelley. Flaunting a perfect, dysfunctional lyrical kicker (“And if I start a commotion / I run the risk of losing you, and that’s worse”), “Ever Fallen in Love” becomes a hooky package of pop-punk energy and precise, pithy lyrics. This “pansexual punk anthem” (as one critic coined it) was the Buzzcocks’ biggest hit, and very rightly so. – Katherine Turman Credit: United Artists 41. Morphine – “In Spite of Me” Boston trio Morphine was known for the low, sonorous sounds of Mark Sandman’s two-string slide bass and Dana Colley’s baritone sax. But Sandman would occasionally throw in a spare acoustic track like “In Spite of Me,” the side one closer to their 1993 magnum opus, Cure For Pain, featuring beautifully fluttering mandolin by Jimmy Ryan. “In Spite of Me” is a bittersweet paean to someone who left the narrator behind long ago, but Sandman’s half-whispered vocal radiates with the fond memories of a shared history: “Last night I told a stranger all about you / They smiled patiently with disbelief.” – A.S. 40. The Breeders – “Do You Love Me Now” “Does love ever end?” That’s the central question of “Do You Love Me Now,” Kim and Kelly Deal’s meditation on the often open-ended nature of past romance. Just when you think you’re finally over a relationship and have completely moved on, those familiar feelings slowly sidle back up to you like Josephine Wiggs’ slinking bass line. Pretty soon you might find yourself reaching for your phone, scrolling through photos and wondering what your old flame is doing right about now. If that happens, don’t worry — it’s perfectly natural. Here’s a helpful piece of advice from your friends at SPIN: Don’t text your ex. – John Paul Bullock 39. Pearl Jam – “Last Kiss” By 1998, Pearl Jam had left radio behind. Sure, “Given to Fly” was a hit and Yield ended up one of their best albums, but the mainstream was mostly in the rearview mirror until this throwaway cover. During a Seattle show that May, Eddie Vedder told the crowd that he found an old single for $.99 the previous day and stayed up listening to it all night. Then the band debuted their take on “Last Kiss,” the Wayne Cochran ballad popularized by J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers in 1964. The song is so breezy and catchy, many fans are still oblivious to the sad lyrics, which chronicle a car accident that kills the narrator’s girlfriend (“Oh where, oh where can my baby be? / The Lord took her away from me”). Pearl Jam recorded a version during soundcheck before a Maryland gig, releasing it for Ten Club members. But that recording spread like wildfire and eventually peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. Strangely, this left-field cover wound up the biggest hit of Pearl Jam’s career. – Daniel Kohn Credit: Epic 38. Bloc Party – “Blue Light” “I still feel you in the taste of cigarettes,” sings Kele Okereke over divine splatters of guitar reverb and the heartbeat click-clack of a snare rim and kick drum. Bits of this person — seemingly a former lover — linger in the minute sensory details of everyday life. Reminders are everywhere: “You’ll find it hiding in shadows / You’ll find it hiding in cupboards.” The emotional centerpiece of Bloc Party’s debut LP, 2005’s Silent Alarm, “Blue Light” conjures the feeling of being fully adrift in sadness — you’ve become so accustomed to melancholy, it’s now your home. Just as Okereke croons about a mysterious “gentlest feeling,” the song ironically becomes un-gentle, guitars and drums spiraling upward into a sonic and emotional crescendo. – R.R. 37. Lifehouse – “Hanging By a Moment” Lots of love songs have a spiritual component: Peter Gabriel was inspired to write “In Your Eyes” — perhaps the greatest slice of pop romance ever written, but not really “alt-rock” enough for this list — to reflect that common ambiguity in African music. With Lifehouse’s “Hanging By a Moment,” frontman Jason Wade landed at a similar duality. “I knew at the end of it that it was a love song, and I kind of come from that world, so it can be interpreted as a spiritual song or a love song,” he told Billboard in 2017. “I feel like people have just been taking it for whatever they want it to be through the years.” Both interpretations hold water: The narrator is “starving for truth,” perhaps in a religious sense. But on the chorus, they’re “standing here until you make me move” — an image that, coincidentally, calls to mind the “In Your Eyes” boombox scene from Say Anything. Either way, it’s a tearjerker. – R.R. Credit: DreamWorks 36. Alabama Shakes – “Gimme All Your Love” Lyrically, this one’s as cut and dried as it comes: Brittany Howard, the powerhouse singer of Alabama Shakes, wants the full relationship experience — no emotional shortcuts. “So much is going on / But you can always come around,” she sings gently, her voice somewhat muffled amid the glitchy drums and gleaming keys. “Why don’t you sit with me for just a little while? / Tell me, what’s wrong.” Then on the chorus, she sounds enraptured in contrast, screaming the titular phrase between some “woo”s that sound like a soulful Ric Flair. Is complete commitment so much to ask? – R.R. 35. A Flock of Seagulls – “Space Age Love Song” New Wave music, particularly synthpop, tended to be lyrically cold, detached and unsentimental — more concerned with pessimism than romance. But “Space Age Love Song,” A Flock of Seagulls’ 1982 hit, is one of those unique exceptions. Amid Mike Score’s wistful singing and atmospheric synths and Paul Reynolds’ soaring guitar, the lyrics are direct and tender rather than aloof, accompanied by its recognizable melodic refrain: “I was falling in love.” In a 2018 PopMatters interview, Score said the song was about intimacy: “When you meet somebody there is an instant eye contact if the chemistry is right. If everything is right, you catch their eye…that whole ‘across the crowded room/caught your eye’ thing. The lyrics explain that: ‘I saw your eyes and you made me smile.'” Sci-fi and love never sounded so good together. – David Chiu Credit: Jive 34. The Pretenders – “Talk of the Town” “I had in mind this kid who used to stand outside the soundchecks on our first tour, and I never spoke to him,” Chrissie Hynde once recalled, detailing this Beatles-y New Wave anthem from 1980. “And I remember the last time I saw him, I just left him standing in the snow. I never had anything to say to him. And I kinda wrote this for him.” That backstory adds more intrigue to her already-fascinating lyrics, which seem to channel youthful longing for a person outside one’s grasp. “I watch you still from a distance then go / Back to my room,” she quivers over the bright guitar changes. “You never know I want you.” – R.R. 33. Incubus – “Dig” Few alt-rock frontmen have embraced heartthrob status more naturally than Incubus singer Brandon Boyd, who helped transform the California nü-metal band into multi-platinum crossover stars with his washboard abs and a propensity to flirtatiously ad-lib the word “girl” like an R&B singer. But there’s always been a philosophical bent to Boyd’s most romantic songs, and “Dig,” as he explained in the band bio for 2006’s Light Grenades, “speaks to the importance of forgiveness and compassion.” But the song’s headier lyrics don’t get in the way of the lighter-waving catharsis of Boyd belting out, “We’ll always have each other when everything else is gone.” - A.S. 32. Beach House – “Lazuli” If “Harvest Moon” had an alien twin from Baltimore, it might sound something like “Lazuli” — Beach House’s most romantic song, which highlights their 2012 album, Bloom. Alex Scally begins with a loping arpeggio and spray of synth as the story unfurls. “In the blue of this life, where it ends in the night / When you couldn’t see, you would come for me,” Victoria Legrand bellows, sounding warm, wise and oddly reminiscent of Nat King Cole. The lyrics float in and out of abstraction, like twisting a kaleidoscope. The synths form little ripples around her voice. In this vein, “Lazuli,” feels like an ode to communing with nature; a testament to every tiny particle that we can’t see. Who knows? Being in a perpetual state of wonder is the Beach House way, and it’s the true magic of this song. As Legrand reminds us in her dreamy warble, “you can’t be replaced.” – S.G. 31. Weezer – “Perfect Situation” From the dramatic intro — which this Fearless-era Taylor Swift song oddly resembles — it’s clear what this one is about. Then again, it’s usually what Weezer songs are about: desperation, longing, love gone wrong. “Perfect Situation,” though, is less lyrically specific than many of the band’s tracks — they keep the words simple and carefully chosen here, with Rivers Cuomo just enunciating “Singing oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh” on the chorus. The instruments do most of the talking, and the most Cuomo reveals is on the kind-of-hot lines: “Get your hands off the girl / Can’t you see that she belongs to me?” – Danielle Chelosky 30. The Temper Trap – “Sweet Disposition” First off, who gives a fuck that the echoing guitar sounds like the Edge’s best unused riff? And so what if the song itself is still a go-to for dumb TV ads and rom-coms? It’s easy to poke fun at this Australian quartet because they unashamedly swing for a grand slam with almost every at-bat, but “Sweet Disposition” is the kind of heart-tugging big-chorus rock song only the most jaded among us can brush aside. Part of it’s the expressive delivery of frontman Dougy Mandagi, who wrangles maximum earnestness from each falsetto swoop and hint of vibrato. And the words are perfectly bare and unpretentious. “Just stay there / ‘Cause I’ll be coming over,” he sings. “While our blood’s still young / It’s so young, it runs / Won’t stop ’til it’s over.” – R.R. Credit: TIME 29. Band of Horses – “No One’s Gonna Love You” Few “love songs” open with the image of a mutilated body part: “It’s looking like a limb torn off / Or altogether just taken apart,” Ben Bridwell yelps over rippling electric guitars. “No One’s Gonna Love You” feels romantic — the atmospheric arrangement, the pained way Bridwell sings throughout. And certain lyrics, like the titular phrase, sound deceptively sweet. But this one’s complicated: The narrator seems to be still helplessly in love (“And anything to make you smile”), even with the relationship “tumbling” through an “endless fall.” Play this one for your “first dance” wedding song and scan the crowd for puzzled faces. – R.R. Credit: Sub Pop 28. The White Stripes – “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself” Can we trust a love-lost song from a man who pretended his one-time wife was his sister? Why is said sister-wife, Meg White, crying on the cover of 2003’s Elephant? And why is Kate Moss pole-dancing in the video? No matter the answer to these rhetorical questions, ”I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself” is a great song, and as sung by Jack White, the definitive version. (It was written by Burt Bacharach and lyricist Hal David — and previously, most notably covered by Dusty Springfield, Dionne Warwick and Issac Hayes, who drew it out to seven minutes.) White’s spare, angsty voice and guitar reflects the song’s desperate, edgy feeling of painful limbo as two are wrenched into one lonely leftover. The tune was written in 1962, but it’s still timeless — and especially gut-wrenching when White delivers it with all the (hurt) feels. – K.T. Credit: XL 27. My Morning Jacket – “Steam Engine” Jim James digs deeper than superficial attraction on this dreamy, seven-minute ballad from It Still Moves. “So I do believe / None of this is physical / At least not to me,” he sings, his voice bathed in barn reverb. He is human, admitting later on, “Your skin looks good in moonlight.” But like the band’s slow-building sway, his definition of love is still admirably cosmic. “It’s about falling in love with someone because of the way they make you feel, as opposed to them wearing tight jeans and being hot,” he told Nude as the News in 2003. “I’m just trying to escape from the fuckin’ constant, physically driven fashion show that the world has become.” – R.R. 26. R.E.M. – “At My Most Beautiful” Gently affectionate, direct and indelible, the standout third single from R.E.M.’s first post-Bill Berry LP revels in romantic mundanity. A sigh calibrated to elicit endless sighs, “At My Most Beautiful” adopts orchestral-era Beach Boys as its guiding muse, with guitar, piano, organ and cello forming a warm, pastel whorl. The sincere tenderness in Michael Stipe’s vocal scribbles extra feelings between the lines of his actual lyrics, which adore but stop short of the saccharine. “You always say your name,” he purrs, “Like I wouldn’t know it’s you, at your most beautiful.” – R.C. Credit: Warner Bros. 25. Siouxsie & the Banshees – “The Last Beat of My Heart” Siouxsie Sioux sings nature metaphors (“In the sharp gust of love, my memory stirred / When time wreathed a rose, a garland of shame”) over a slow-climbing swell of accordion and muted tom-tom thump. A perfect marriage of words and atmosphere, each drawing out romance from the other. “It’s one of my favorite Siouxsie and the Banshees songs, and [DeVotchKa] covered it very well,” the Decemberists’ Colin Meloy told Pitchfork in 2006.”It kind of bums me out that they got to that cover before I did. Very smart choice.” – R.R. Credit: Wonderland / Polydor 24. Blink-182 – “All the Small Things” For Valentine’s Day 2000, there had to be at least one guy in a Hurley T-shirt and Dickies who wrote this in a card to his high school girlfriend, thinking it was so sick: “Keep your lips still, I’ll be your thrill, the night will go on, my little windmill.” Blink’s biggest hit has its goofy, sappy moments: “She left me roses by the stairs, surprises let me know she cares.” But there’s some uncertainty there too: Tom DeLonge knows this girl will be at his show, watching and waiting, but also…commiserating. Did she feel pity for him? Maybe we shouldn’t think too much about “All The Small Things,” considering DeLonge wrote it specifically to be played on the radio, with all those Ramones-y “na-na-na’s” filled in so he wouldn’t need to write more lyrics. – Bobby Olivier Credit: MCA 23. Arcade Fire – “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)” Here’s something I’ve never understood: So…Win Butler is singing about digging a tunnel between his and his lover’s homes — underground romance, adorable — but then he wails, “You climb out of the chimney and meet me in the middle, the middle of the town.” Why dig the fucking tunnel when she’s just gonna use the chimney to meet up? And another thing! When he sings, “Then our skin gets thicker from living out in the snow” — couldn’t they have sought shelter in the tunnel during inclement weather? Listen, I know it’s the band’s debut single and revered as one of the greatest indie-rock songs of the last 20 years, blah blah. It’s a sweeping, bouncy tune, sure, but I need answers, damn it! – B.O. 22. Smashing Pumpkins – “Luna” In the liner notes of the 2011 Siamese Dream reissue, Billy Corgan writes that this blissful dream-pop ballad chronicles his love for “someone [who] doesn’t love me.” He doesn’t directly specify this person, but he did famously date Courtney Love, who once claimed that almost all of the album was written about her. We’re not going to draw any conclusions. “I sing a love song in an empty room,” Corgan continued, detailing how he wrote the tune. “It is for the moon. It can never be for the one you love.” Regardless, “love song for the moon” just sounds cooler. – R.R. 21. Mazzy Star – “Fade Into You” During the mid-’90s alt boom, a bunch of bands on the peripheral had their moments of mainstream success. Mazzy Star’s biggest song, the moody and melodic “Fade Into You,” blends dream-pop and alt-country twang, led by Hope Sandoval’s luscious vocals. The singer’s lyrics, a touchstone of peak Gen X, seem to document a relationship with a narcissistic person who can’t be reached. And that dichotomy between romantic longing and melancholy is what makes “Fade Into You” so relatable. – D.K. Credit: Capitol 20. The Cardigans – “Lovefool” You likely know the hook by heart from incessant radio airplay. Released in the mid-’90s, it’s one of those songs that summons its zeitgeist, and it’s since remained one of the most timeless (and bittersweet) pop-rock palliatives. Lead singer Nina Persson both coquettishly and wistfully begs for her love to be requited. It’s all voluptuous rouge lips and batting cat eyes, soft around the edges with sharp guitar chops and velvety synth concords. It’s the marriage of a cold, haphazard lament in a catchy pop structure with a New Wave undercurrent all held together in kitschy saturation. Nothing comes closer to the platonic ideal of pop. – L.B. Credit: Stockholm 19. Jeff Buckley – “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over” “Maybe I’m too young to keep good love from going wrong,” Jeff Buckley sings with understated drama on the first verse of “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over,” before patiently building to a climactic falsetto showcase. Buckley wrote the smoldering, seven-minute ballad after the end of his relationship with musician Rebecca Moore, and he opens the epic version on his only proper studio album, 1994’s Grace, with a gorgeous harmonium instrumental that sounds like an otherworldly funeral organ. It became the most widely covered song Buckley wrote in his brief career, but nobody can possibly sing it like him. – A.S. 18. Elliott Smith – “Say Yes” Smith clears his throat and begins the acoustic-strummed ballad to a girl who made his world a vicarious idyll, the one “who’s still around the morning after.” An electric guitar glitters the track with sprightly, jazzy chords, letting out a melodic melancholy solo and syncing with Smith’s sotto voce singing as he sulks over their month-ago breakup. Now he longs for her to come back, optimistically musing that maybe he’d be “an exception to the rule.” Smith once told SPIN he penned the offhandedly beautiful song in five minutes while watching a muted episode of Xena: Warrior Princess. Whether a moving palliative for others mourning a love lost too soon or a heartrending tale of post-breakup realism, it utterly impales you. – L.B. 17. Roxy Music – “Avalon” Across eight albums in 10 years, Roxy Music evolved from an avant-garde glam-rock band to a sophisticated pop group. Avalon, the group’s swan song, was their most commercially successful record and indelibly romantic. Along with “More Than This,” the album’s title song — with its tropical and reggae-like rhythms — has become one of Roxy’s most popular songs. Its lyrics evoke the magic of love at first sight: “When you bossa nova, there’s no holding / But you have me dancing, out of nowhere.” Ferry’s debonair crooning is seductive and sincere, complemented by backing vocalist Yanick Étienne. The “Avalon” video is equally elegant, with a white tuxedo-clad Ferry dancing with his paramour. Almost 40 years later, this song — like the whole Avalon album — remains one of the definitive Valentine’s Day soundtracks. – David Chiu Credit: EG / Polydor 16. Tegan and Sara – “Nineteen” Some of the best rock tunes swim simultaneously in streams of “love song” and “breakup song,” welling up your eyes until everything blurs. “Nineteen,” a devastating anthem from Tegan and Sara’s fifth LP, The Con, is one such moment — entangling sex, heartbreak, romance and butterflies-in-your-gut angst into a compact, three-minute blast. It opens with a jarring admission: “I felt you in my legs before I even met you / And when I laid beside you for the first time, I told you / I feel you in my heart.” We don’t get all the details, but the relationship quickly sours, resulting in a bummed-out plane trip home — but also glimmers of hope. “I was 19,” the duo sing over the distorted downstroke riffs. “Call me.” – R.R. 15. Paramore – “Still Into You” A power-pop ode to everlasting love, “Still Into You” should surge in popularity around 2063 by soundtracking all those scene kids’ 50th wedding anniversary parties. In terms of Paramore lore (Para-lore?), “Still Into You” introduced the band’s departure from pure pop-punk — more charm, less angst. Written about Hayley Williams’ then-solid relationship with New Found Glory guitarist Chad Gilbert, it offers some great lines about making love work: “It’s not a walk in the park to love each other / But when our fingers interlock, can’t deny, can’t deny, you’re worth it.” And it’s such a sweet sentiment, reminding your S.O. that after all their bullshit and the stupid Netflix shows they make you watch, you’re still into them. Unfortunately for Williams, “still” didn’t mean forever — she and Gilbert split in 2017. – B.O. Credit: Fueled By Ramen 14. Stone Temple Pilots – “Interstate Love Song” Only Stone Temple Pilots could write a “love song” that explores lying about heroin use. In his 2011 memoir, Not Dead & Not For Sale, Scott Weiland said he wrote “Interstate Love Song” partly from the perspective of his girlfriend: “She’d ask how I was doing, and I’d lie, say I was doing fine. Chances are I had just fixed before calling her. I imagined what was going through her mind…” But there’s poetry in these dark images, as Weiland taps into relationship matters of trust and deception. The music only amplifies the song’s windows-down grandeur, from Weiland’s booming vocals to Dean DeLeo’s signature, twangy guitar riff. It remains STP’s finest hour. – D.K. and R.R. Credit: Atlantic 13. Patti Smith Group – “Because the Night” A highlight from her 1978 LP, Easter, “Because the Night” has become the punk poet laureate’s most well-known track — and also one of the most recognizable love songs of all time. After modest piano notes form a calm before the storm, Patti Smith bursts into her signature mode of elated, operatic singing — roleplaying the besotted lover in this impassioned hit co-written by Bruce Springsteen. Although the vocal delivery propels the song beyond itself, the lyrics detail the wanton desire just before the flight of the erotic at sundown “…because the night belongs to lovers.” Unlike most other subtler love songs, this is an unabashed entreaty. No more foreplay. On second thought, it’d be more apt to call it a “lust song.” – L.B. Credit: Arista 12. Coldplay – “Yellow” Who would have thought that a poor Neil Young imitation would spark Coldplay’s breakthrough hit? That’s what happened with their signature tune, “Yellow,” which focuses on an emotional devotion to…someone or something. Singer Chris Martin found the initial chords and lyrics during a live soundcheck, and he immediately started channeling the Godfather of Grunge with the lyric “look at the stars.” Then came the title word, which gives the song a slight element of mystery: “The word ‘yellow’ came out, and I was like, ‘No one’s gonna know what that means,’” he told Howard Stern in 2011. “It was a feeling more than a meaning.” But that feeling led to an entire career. – D.K. and R.R. Credit: Parlophone 11. Say Anything – “Alive With the Glory of Love” You can’t leave out “Alive” from any conversation about essential emo love songs. What opening lines are more gripping than “When I watch you, want to do you, right where you’re standing, yeah”? Then the chorus is irresistibly endearing and seemingly sincere: “No, I won’t let them take you / Won’t let them take you / Hell no, no!” Even if you start out listening as a joke, you gradually fall into its surprisingly romantic arms. But the song reveals a deeper meaning as it plays: The line “Should they catch us and dispatch us those separate work camps, yeah,” reminds us that “Love” is based on the story of Max Bemis’ grandparents, who are Holocaust survivors. So yeah…there’s a lot to unpack. – Danielle Chelosky Credit: J Records / Red Ink 10. Radiohead – “All I Need” “I’m an animal trapped in your hot car,” Thom Yorke croons during this divine meditation on romantic fixation. Aw, how sweet! Radiohead never write conventional love songs — but when they do explore the subject, few do so with such intensity. “All I Need” spends most of its run time at a low simmer, Yorke spitting out similar images (“I am a moth who just wants to share your light”) over Phil Selway’s trip-hop-y drum groove and a booming synth-bass. But the song’s climax, lyrically and musically, crashes in at full volume: “It’s all wrong!” Yorke yelps. “It’s all right!” – R.R. 9. Talking Heads – “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” David Byrne famously wrote a lot of songs about “buildings and food,” so his first real “love song” doesn’t, um, sound a lot like the others. “I try to write about small things: paper, animals, a house,” he noted in the Stop Making Sense bonus interview. “Love is kinda big. I have written a love song, though. In this film, I sing it to a lamp.” That song is “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody),” on which Byrne embraces romantic matters with surreal wordplay and, seemingly, confusion. “I guess I must be having fun,” he sings over the clanging percussion and woozy synths. But few songwriters tackle love with such zen, understanding that relationships are living organisms. “The less we say about it the better,” he yelps. “Make it up as we go along.” – R.R. Credit: Sire 8. The Cure – “Friday I’m in Love” Robert Smith doesn’t exactly do warm and fuzzy in his lyrics, and that’s exactly why “Friday I’m in Love” is one of the Cure’s signature hits. The song’s peppy, melodic jangle perfectly matches Smith’s innocent words about falling in love — he told this very publication that it’s a “dumb pop song” and “very optimistic and really out there in happy land.” Discounting Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, the song also captures the wide-eyed joy of that Friday feeling, with the possibilities of the weekend ahead. “Friday I’m in Love” ended up being the Cure’s last Top 40 hit — what a way to go off the charts swinging. – D.K. Credit: Fiction 7. Joy Division – “Love Will Tear Us Apart” The intro is a tease, seemingly previewing a forgettable song. Then it debouches into one of the most iconic, nostalgic riffs ever architected, launching an ‘80s anthem from year zero of that halcyon decade. Weirdly, it’s the most identifiable (yet least representative) of an eerie discography mostly inaccessible to casual listeners — and not only instrumentally. The post-punk dignitaries conjured a dark sound around themes of mental illness and hopelessness. And they didn’t totally sacrifice that dark aura in “Love Will Tear Us Apart” — it just underwent aesthetic osmosis. They saw the thorns of the rose, where the rest saw only the bud. – L.B. Credit: Factory 6. Tears for Fears – “Head Over Heels” Before their breakthrough LP, Songs From the Big Chair, Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith weren’t known for love — let alone happy — songs. Their debut, 1983’s The Hurting, was an emotionally turbulent record inspired by the work of American psychologist Arthur Janov. The mood lightened up somewhat on Songs From the Big Chair, especially with the majestic “Head Over Heels,” distinguished for its relatively upbeat lyrics and ecstatic Beatles-like “la-la-la-la-la” chorus towards the end. Adding to the romantic atmosphere is a humorous music video that depicts Orzabal trying to catch the eye of a bookish librarian. “Head Over Heels” is probably the closest we’ll ever get to a love song,” Orzabal remarked for the 2014 Big Chair reissue. “It’s a love song that kind of goes a bit perverse at the end.” – David Chiu Credit: Mercury 5. Oasis – “Wonderwall” The Gallagher brothers tug at our heartstrings with their signature hit “Wonderwall” — even as we question what they’re actually singing about. Most fans can belt all the words, starting with the opening lines: “Today is gonna be the day that they’re gonna throw it back to you / By now you should’ve somehow realized what you gotta do / I don’t believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now.” But we don’t hear that mysterious titular word until the fourth stanza. So what exactly is a wonderwall? In 1996, Noel Gallagher reportedly told NME he wrote the song for his then-girlfriend, Meg Matthews. Six years later he switched gears, telling the BBC, “The meaning of that song was taken away from me by the media who jumped on it, and how do you tell your Mrs. it’s not about her once she’s read it is?” Sooooo… “It’s a song about an imaginary friend who’s gonna come and save you from yourself,” he explained. Your wonderwall can be whatever you want it to mean, for whomever you love. Just hope the recipient understands your word choice. – Jason Stahl Credit: Creation 4. Foo Fighters – “Everlong” That initial rush of romantic ecstasy never lasts as long as we want it to. The strongest relationships persist in spite of this. On 1997’s “Everlong,” Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl can’t live in the magic moment. The future hasn’t even happened yet, and already, it’s haunting him: “And I wonder / When I sing along with you / If everything could ever feel this real forever / If anything could ever be this real again?” By the time of The Colour and the Shape, he was rocking with a band instead of accompanying himself in studio pastiche — and “Everlong” reflects that energy, a ballad-qua-anthem where the sting of recent divorce is flipped into innocent, emotional longing. – R.C. Credit: Roswell / Capitol 3. The Flaming Lips – “Do You Realize??” “Whenever I analyze the scientific realities of what it means to be living here on Earth — in this galaxy … spinning around the sun … flying through space — a terror shock seizes me!!!” Wayne Coyne once wrote of the Flaming Lips’ symphonic-sized staple. “I’m reminded once again of how precarious our whole existence is…” Existential dread is an…unusual…starting point for a “love song.” And you might argue that “Do You Realize??”, the centerpiece from 2002’s Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, falls outside even the vast umbrella of our list. The harsh realization here, after all, is that “everyone you know some day will die.” But there’s hope in that epiphany! As Coyne tells us, every glimpse of death is a reminder to live: “Instead of saying all of your goodbyes,” he sings over Steven Drozd’s cartoonishly massive arrangement, “Let them know you realize that life goes fast / It’s hard to make the good things last.” Really, “Do You Realize??” is a love song to the entire universe. – R.R. Credit: Warner 2. The Smiths – “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” The Smiths’ “angry young man” anthem perfectly captures the confusion and drama of teenage lust: Johnny Marr’s timeless, jangling guitar has given rise to countless solemn YouTube covers. Morrissey’s hyper-literate lyrics were influenced by Karel Reisz’s 1960 film, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, written by Alan Sillitoe, whose short story “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner” inspired everyone from Iron Maiden to Belle & Sebastian. “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” makes an excellent choice for any road trip playlist — just watch out for those double-decker buses. – J.P.B. Credit: Rough Trade / Virgin 1. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Maps” “Wait, they don’t love you like I love you” is such a perfect line, especially from one fawned-over musician to another — in this case, Karen O to Liars frontman and then-boyfriend Angus Andrew. Bittersweet desperation runs throughout the beloved track, as Karen O tries to play it cool, keeping her voice to a measured warble, even though she’s essentially begging her partner to return her affection. “My kind’s your kind,” she sings, another heartrending dagger-like “Dude, I see you! See me, too!” Almost 20 years later, this song resonates even more thanks to numerous covers and interpolations, most notably Beyonce using the hook for her Lemonade cut “Hold Up” in 2016. If Beyonce samples you, you’re doing something right. – B.O. Credit: Polydor Listen to all of the songs below: #Oasis #TheFlamingLips #TheBreeders #TheCardigans #Weezer

Arplis - News source https://arplis.com/blogs/news/the-50-best-alt-rock-love-song

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louder-than-love · 7 years

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1-100 pls 🙈

HOLY FUCKING SHIT I DIDNT EXPECT THIS but thanks for all the interest though lmao :D

1 - Who was the last person you texted?

if tumblr messages count then it was my sweet friend @way-beyond-wildest-imaginations :)

2 - When is your birthday?

10th of October

3 - Who do you want to be with right now?

a friend

4 - What sports do you play?

N O N E BECAUSE I’M L A Z Y

5 - Who is the first person in your contacts?

a friend called Ahsen

6 - What is your favorite song as of the moment?

Sappy by Nirvana or Wo die wilden Maden graben by Casper

7 - If you were stranded on an island, who do you wish to be with?

someone who can help me get out of there as fast as possible

8 - What do you feel right now?

joy because I’m finally listening to the new Foo Fighters album and it’s amazing

9 - What chocolate is your favorite?

milk chocolate

10 - How many boyfriends/girlfriends did you have?

0,00

11 - Why did you create a Tumblr account?

end of January 2017, I don’t know the exact date right now sorry

12 - Who is your favorite blogger?

well, @rearviewmirror10 @rock-basstard @coolbuttmetal @wellwelldroogieboy post some quality stuff so I’d say they are my favourite bloggers? idk though

13 - Where do you want to be right now?

at a concert

14 - What do you want to be in the future?

happy and satisfied with myself :)

15 - When was the last time you cried? Why?

like 1 minute ago because Dave Grohl is perfect (yes I’m an ultimate fangirl)

16 - Are you happy?

sometimes more, sometimes less

17 - Who do you miss?

being thin lmao

18 - If you were given a chance, would you like to have a different life?

why not

19 - What was the best thing you were given?

my grandma bought me a so called “Lira”, which is a Turkish coin made out of gold and many Albanian girls get some of them when they get married, anyways she bought one for me before she died so I can wear it on a necklace or smth if I should ever get married and this is just one of the most precious things I ever received from someone.

20 - Who was the last person who called you?

my father’s friend haha

21 - What is your favorite dish?

pizza, lasagna, those Asian noodles... there’s a lot of stuff

22 - Who is your bestfriend?

on tumblr? @rearviewmirror10 @inside-a-break @wellwelldroogieboy @iowainc @way-beyond-wildest-imaginations they’re all really cool people and I like them a lot and it’s a pity that they’re all living like 1898873249874832km away from me

23 - What is your biggest regret?

I basically wasted my whole youth and I experienced like almost nothing and I feel like I’m going to regret this a lot later

24 - Have you ever cheated on your partner?

which partner?

25 - Who do you spend crazy moments with?

my brother

26 - Name someone pretty

Stone Gossard

27 - Who was the last person you hugged?

I don’t remember, probably my friend

28 - What kind of music do you listen to?

mostly rock, metal and grunge. But also some hip-hop/rap idk I like a lot of stuff but that’s like what I listen to the most

29 - Are you over your past?

I think so?

30 - Who is the last person in your contacts?

my neighbour called Vivian

31 - What kind of person do you want to date?

someone who is nice and humourous, with a good heart and a kind soul, someone who I feel comfortable around and most importantly: someone who likes me back (good joke huh)

32 - Do you have troubles sleeping at night?

most of the time

33 - From whom was the last text message you received?

my father

34 - What do you prefer, jeans or skirt?

JEANS hell no I don’t wear skirts

35 - How’s your heart?

idk? my physical heart ist fine I hope?

36 - Did you ever have a girlfriend/boyfriend whose name starts with a “J”?

37 - Do you like someone as of the moment?

I like Josh Klinghoffer :)

38 - What would you want to say to your latest ex-boyfriend/ex-girlfriend?

i never had one

39 - Do you have any phobias?

not that I know

40 - Did you try to change for a person?

yes

41 - What’s the nicest thing have you given to someone?

Well, a few friends and I bought a concert ticket for a friend for her 18th birthday earlier this year and she really really enjoyed it so that was probably it? But idk, I’m that type of person who rather gives smaller gifts

42 - Would you go back to your previous relationship?

never have been in one so

43 - Are you in a good or bad mood?

In a neutral one tending towards happy because the new Foo Fighters album is so good

44 - Name someone you can’t live without.

my brother, I don’t know what I would do without him, life wouldn’t be the slightest bit enjoyable without him (I know this is cringey but it’s true)

45 - Describe your dream date.

watching tv shows, eating pizza and listening to music together? I’m not that much of a fancy person

46 - Describe your dream wedding

it would be perfect if John Frusciante was performing there and it would be even more perfect if I was marrying him lmaoooooo

47 - How many roses did you receive last Valentine’s?

0,00

48 - Have you ever been kissed?

romantically? no. I’ve only had those little kisses you do with friends, nothing special

49 - How long is your longest relationship?

never been in one

50 - Do you regret your past?

some aspects of it

51 - Can you do something stupid for someone else?

yes

52 - Have you ever cried over someone?

yes

53 - Do you have a grudge against anyone?

no I don’t really hold grudges

54 - Are you a crybaby?

sometimes

55 - Do people praise you for your looks?

people only praise my shit hair and my flannel shirts because everything else on me is ugly

56 - Did you fall for someone you shouldn’t?

yes

57 - Have you ever done something bad but you don’t regret?

yes

58 - Do you like getting hurt?

who the hell likes to get hurt lmao?

59 - Does anyone hate you?

probably

60 - Did you slap anyone whose name starts with an “R”?

no, I don’t slap people because violence doesn’t lead to anything

61 - What hair color do you prefer?

all of them, I’d like to have black or red hair though

62 - If you can change anything about yourself, what is it?

my appearance, my demotivation, my low self-esteem, I also wish I was less of a hypocrite because I tend to hide a lot of shit to not hurt anyone. I also wish I could be able to express what I honestly think of a situation/people/anything else without being afraid to do so, that shit only leads to a lot of bottled up anger and it sucks

63 - Do you love someone as of the moment?

I love John Frusciante and Chris Cornell an Eddie Vedder

64 - Have you ever thought of killing yourself?

who hasn’t?

65 - Do you have issues with somebody in your school?

I’m not at school anymore heheh

66 - Can you live without internet?

NO like my whole social life is taking place on the internet at the moment

67 - What’s the song that remind you of your special someone?

Porch by Pearl Jam would remind me of my special someone IF I HAD ONE

68 - Are you good at holding back your tears?

depends but not really

69 - Are you a crybaby?

sometimes

70 - Have you ever experienced being hysterical?

yes many many times

71 - Are you a KPOP fan?

72 - Do you study hard?

not at all

73 - Have you ever sacrificed something important to you for someone you love?

not yet but I would do this at any time

74 - Did you ever had a kiss under the moonlight?

I wish

75 - Have you ever ridden a boat?

yes

76 - Did you have an accident last year?

luckily no

77 - What kind of person are you?

a person who is obsessed with music I guess

78 - Have you ever thought of killing someone?

yeah but I would NEVER do it

79 - Have you ever been jealous?

yeah

80 - How can you prove your love to someone?

by trusting them fully because I can’t trust anyone fully lmao

81 - What are you thinking right now?

“stop oversharing your stupid shit on tumblr bitch no one cares”

82 - Who is the 6th person in your contacts?

my cousin Ajlin

83 - Do you have any memories you want to erase?

yeah

84 - Have you been hurt so bad that you can’t find words to explain how you feel?

i don’t know

85 - Did you ever badmouth someone?

many many times

86 - Have you ever had an argument with someone?

not really because I give in too fast in order to avoid conflicts

87 - Do you have trust issues?

kind of

88 - Are you broken-hearted?

not really

89 - Who’s the person who first comes to your mind when someone mentions “love”?

Courtney Love because Love is her last name and I wish it was mine too

90 - Do you think all the pain is worth it?

91 - Do you believe in the phrase “If it’s meant to be, it will be”?

when I have an optimistic moment, then I do

92 - Who do you want to marry?

John Frusciante

93 - Do you believe in destiny?

not really

94 - Have you ever thought “I already found my soulmate”?

yeah but I’m probably not right

95 - How do you look right now?

shitty as always lmao, but if you mean outfit then: I’m wearing a white baseball shirt with long grey sleeves and blue skinny jeans

96 - Do you believe that first true love never dies?

not sure...

97 - Have you found your true love?

does John Frusciante count?

98 - What should you be doing right now?

sleeping

99 - Name one of your ex-boyfriends/ex-girlfriends.

Doesn’t Exist

100 - Did you ever feel like you’re not good enough?

yes

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fmdtaeyongarchive · 7 years

Photo

[ spotify link ]

i. weight of living, pt. ii - bastille | “it all crept up on you. in the night, it got you and plagued your mind. it plagues your mind. every day that passes, faster than the last did, and you'll be old soon, you'll be old. do you like the person you've become under the weight of living?” ii. alone - halsey | “but if you ask why i'm distant, oh, i'm runnin' away. you know, everywhere i go, i got a million different people tryna kick it, but i’m still alone in my mind.” iii. unbroken - birdy | “sometimes the tears we cry are more than any heart can take. we hurt, just keep it inside. small wonder that it starts to break.“ iv. long nights - eddie vedder | “long nights allow me to feel i’m falling, i am falling. the lights go out, let me feel i’m falling, i am falling safely to the ground.” v. what do i know - ed sheeran | “we could change this whole world with a piano, add a bass, some guitar, grab a beat and away we go […] i’ll be sitting here with a song that i wrote, sayin’ love could change the world in a moment, but what do i know?” vi. we all want love - rihanna |“i can pretend that i'm not lonely, but i'll be constantly fooling myself. i can pretend that it don't matter, but i'll be sitting here lying to myself. and some say love ain't worth the buck, but i'll give my last dime to have what i've only been dreaming about.” vii. the cure - lady gaga | “so baby tell me yes and i will give you everything. i will be right by your side. if i can’t find the cure, i’ll, i'll fix you with my love. no matter what you know, i’ll, i’ll fix you with my love. and if you say you’re okay, i’m gonna heal you anyway. promise i’ll always be there, promise i’ll be the cure.” viii. low - lauren aquilina | “been shut down one too many times, i’m embedded in the ground. these critics don’t know how to lie. i just wish i could mute all their mouths.” ix. eraser - ed sheeran | “i used to think that nothing could be better than touring the world with my songs. i chased the picture perfect life; i think they painted it wrong. i think that money is the root of all evil, and fame is hell. relationships and hearts you fixed, they break as well. and ain’t nobody wanna see you down in the dumps, because you’re living your dream, man, this shit should be fun. please know that i'm not trying to preach like i'm reverend run. i beg you, don't be disappointed with the man i've become.”

#&& bring color to my skies | character development #the part two no one asked for !!#also yes between the two playlists there's three songs from divide bye #this has been in my drafts for almost a month lol

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ssfoc · 7 years

Text

10 ALBUMS

I was tagged by @twopoppies. The prompt was to list 10 albums that influenced me as a teen, and helped make me who I am today.

This is funny because if I actually listed the ten albums I listened to most as a teenager, no one but classical music nerds (pianists especially) would know what I was talking about. Okay, and a few drama nerds, because MUSICALS.

So I’m going to cheat a little bit and list some albums that changed me as a young person, before I became the barnacle-encrusted mummified saint I am today.

You can only choose one album per artist.

1. Saturday Night Fever, original movie soundtrack, 1977. If I Can’t Have You. How Deep is Your Love. Staying Alive. Night Fever. This is how parties went down in the late 1970′s: white suits, bell bottoms, Farrah Fawcett hair, glittering shoulders, a sexy dip, tight pants. I wasn’t a teen then (was only a petal), but man, what an education.

2. Thriller. Michael Jackson, 1984. Beat It. Wanna Be Starting Something. Human Nature. MJ is the ultimate entertainer. The voice. The face. The charm. The dance moves. Legend for over 40 years. For young seasurfacefullofclouds, MJ was an adorable enfant terrible.

3. Rumours. Fleetwood Mac, 1976. Harry’s favorite album. Sexy. Complicated. Sad. Stevie Nicks had a voice made of wind, whiskey, and regret. Everything you need to learn about heartbreak is here.

4. Blood on the Tracks. Bob Dylan, 1975. Opened my eyes to Dylan, the 1970′s, the blues, the backhanded poetry that tells huge tales in small sentences. Fucking brilliant. The cover design compares Dylan to Mozart and it’s pretty accurate.

5. Ten. Pearl Jam, 1991. Came out in the nick of time for seasurfacefullofcloud’s angry young man period (except with ovaries). Even Flow. Alive. Jeremy. Fight the Man with every wild instinct, is what Eddie Vedder says. And his voice– God, that sexy growl. They still tour and make new music. Met One Direction, too. A good role model.

6. Design of a Decade, 1986-1996. Janet Jackson 1996. Janet has the same charisma as Michael, the same vulnerable and sexy voice. I wanted to be Janet in her head scarf and crop top, so badly. Runaway, What Have You Done for Me Lately, Nasty, Escapade, Miss You Much, Rhythm Nation.

7. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Wilco, 2002. Believe it or not, seasurfacefullofclouds was already a fully formed blastula by this time. The album is a tour de force of hi fi recording. Listen to the first track, I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, and be blown away by a cold, wistful kind of love song, full of random, added noise that happens to add to the bizarre, disorienting feeling of having to break up.

8. Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? The Cranberries, 1993. I already loved Dolores O’Riordan’s siren voice, but then I saw Wong Kar Wai’s movie, Chungking Express. The movie uses the song Dreams from this album as the background music for a scene where a woman (the gorgeous Faye Wong) sneaks into a policeman’s apartment (she has a crush on him), and cleans it top to bottom in order to rid the apartment of any trace of the other woman. It’s sung in Cantonese. Faye has sung with the Cocteau Twins. Tarantino points this out as a favorite scene. It’s just glorious.

9. Wings Over America. Paul McCartney and Wings, 1976. Maybe I’m Amazed, My Love, Listen to What the Man Said, Let ‘Em In, Silly Love Songs, Band on the Run. Maybe not the best McCartney album, but for seasurfacefullofclouds, the one that brings back memories of summer evenings in the backyard, playing football, eating barbecue with other kids, talking trash.

10. Stop Making Sense. Talking Heads, 1984. Once in a Lifetime. Girlfriend is Better. Seasufacefullofclouds was in a love triangle during this album– very exciting times. Big suits. RISD esthetics. All very se prendre pour le nombril du monde.

I tag @old1ddude, @pezzles17, @mcqdj

@gettingaphdinlarry

#10 albums #@twopoppies #@old1ddude #@pezzles17 #@mcqdj #about me #@gettingaphdinlarry

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kellynkane · 7 years

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The Story...from a Bride’s POV

So I created this blog because I wanted to share the WHOLE story from start to finish for whoever was interested. Our love story wasn’t all hearts and rainbows! There were A LOT of rain and stormclouds throughout our (almost) 8 years of being together. So please, continue on if you dare!

***When I mention song titles during the wedding portion of this, please listen...to set the mood.

I’m going to keep the background pretty minimal, considering i’m sure a lot of you already know how we got to this point. This will be MAINLY the wedding day! (We didn’t have a videographer so I wanted to share from my point of view- THE DAY) feel free to scroll down to the wedding chapter if this begins to be drawn out. Look, i’ve never blogged before so cut me some slack!

So take it back about 7 years and 8 months ago...

(One of our first pics on those old flip phones that had to be turned around and taken in a mirror so you could see...)

We met through friends. I had gone to my neighbor’s house to hang and long story short Adam was there, we hung out, and the rest is history. When they say “head over heels for eachother”, that was what we were. I can’t even begin to explain the love I felt for this kid. (I say kid because that's exactly what we were...two young kids.) We were inseparable. I knew I loved him from the moment we introduced ourselves to each other. Crazy right?

A short year later we had a baby. Mason Robert Kane. And this my friends is where things ‘got real’. You think you have your crap together? Add a baby to the mix and watch what happens...So basically the next 2 years or so were very rocky. Lots of ups and downs. This was what people would call the breaking point. But our point never ‘broke’. We certainly were pushed to our limits and maybe at times pushed OVER our limits but there was something that just never went away- our love for one another. It wasn’t having a baby guys, I know, I know...you would think this was a big part but it wasn’t JUST that. There was a much deeper connection that even to this day we question as to what exactly it is/was. It’s just something. Something that kept us hanging on, stringing us along all these years.

Between year 2-5 I would say were the hardest part of our relationship. To our friends who were around, THEY KNOW. But hey, we’re humans. We were young kids when we met. Going through your early 20′s are the years where you actually grow up. They’re the years where you question who you are and who you will be as a human. You question your relationships with not just your significant other but friends and family as well. There are A LOT of ‘what ifs’ and ‘I don't knows’ during these growing up years. BUT these are the years that make EVERYTHING worth it in the end.

So this puts us at about year 5 and a half. Just when we thought we were through the woods...After getting through some of the toughest years of my young 20 something life, we had ANOTHER baby. (Yes, we questioned our sanity as well.) He WAS an accident. Surprise, surprise. *insert crying laughing face. Or maybe just crying face* No, really Hunter Matthew Kane has added joy to our family we never thought was needed. Very difficult at times, but that’s for another blog post. Like I mentioned before: ADDING A BABY TO THE MIX DOES NOT MAKE ANYTHING EASIER. I REPEAT: “SHIT GETS TOUGHER!” but we made it work. You can’t run away from life. Choosing to have our children and continue on this journey of life together, was what we wanted to do. Did we fight? YES. Did we cry and question things? YES. But again, being able to persevere through all of that and come out on top...well, THAT’S what makes it worth it people!

So (not-intended) long story short, fast forward to:

Sunday, June 18th 2017

The day we said “I Do.”

Those hard times we went through are what made our wedding day, the best day of my life. It sounds cliche but it truly was the best day of my life. I married my best friend, guys. The man I grew up (into an adult) with. The man I cried and fought for years with. The man I shared so many laughs and joyous memories with. The man who is the other half to my two beautiful boys. I married him. And he’s now mine, mine, mine. *Immature editing there.*

If you’re still reading this, this is where I want to lay out the day for you. Because in my eyes (and hopefully others as well) it was a freakin’ AMAZING day.

Early Sunday morning I arrived at the venue with my girls. (Bless every single one of them because if it weren’t for them, we may not have actually made it to ‘I Do”.) We began setting up the venue and getting hair and makeup done.

While I’m getting ready this is what was going on with my other half:

So now, it’s time...

It’s time to put on the dress and do the damn thang.

The music begins:

***Jason Mraz- I Won’t Give Up

I’m watching from up in the bridal suite all the groomsmen take their places. Then Adam. My heart begins to pound. I watch my girls one by one begin to walk down to the pond. Then, my oldest Ring Bearer Mason and flower girl Gia begin to walk. Mason & Gia begin arguing (as usual) as SOON as it was time to walk. Mason is basically dragging Gia saying “COME ON, GIA!” while she is trying her hardest to throw petals saying “HOLD ON, MASON!” It was one of the funniest things to watch!

Then, my Grandfather (who is so extremely important to me. He helped raise me from birth. I love that man with everything in me) pulls the wagon which has my littlest ring bearer- Hunter, and littlest flower girl- Renzi. Hunter holding a sign “Here comes the bride!”

Now music changes:

***The Piano Guys- A Thousand Years

I look up at my Father- a man who I can honestly say, I have NEVER seen cry and I say “You ready?” and with that, he breaks. He begins to tear up and says “I’m sorry, i’m going to get emotional”. Well jeeze Dad, now i’m going to cry! We have to get it together! So after all the tears we begin to walk.

At this point right here ^, this is what I see:

The man that I am 20 feet away from marrying, in tears. Full fledged ugly crying- tears. And that’s what makes me lose it...Hopefully he was crying tears of happiness and not “now I’m stuck with this crazy woman for the rest of my life” tears. I’m going to go with the first one just for my own sake!

Here we stand hand in hand (which from the photo up top, I held his hands the wrong way (the manly way) and I’ve been obsessing on it since last week...but whatevs) Jason (who is actually the Godfather of our children and very close friend of the family which makes it even more sentimental to have him marry us...) begins his spiel and then it gets to the part where we exchange our vows. Let me break this down for you- I HATE BEING IN FRONT OF PEOPLE. I literally contemplated dropping out of college when I heard I HAD to take speech 101...So you already know i’ve been freaking out about this part since I got engaged. BUT I can honestly say, (without being mushy gushy) as soon as I was up there with Adam, I felt like it was just him that I was speaking to. I felt SO at ease...So we said our vows and then we get to the exchanging of rings. Good Lord, I would be the one who messes that part up. It took me two tries AND reading off of Jason’s paper to get it right.

After rings, Jason says the all too familiar saying: “You May Now Kiss The Bride!”

With that he announces us as the NEW Mr. & Mrs. Kane!

Music begins (Mind you EVERY song I mention has specific meaning to it. Our music playlist was IN DEPTH. Thanks, Scott Cash for doing a fantastic job!)

***Eddie Vedder- Hard Sun

I take Adam’s arm and Mason’s hand. And Adam picks up Hunter and we walk down the aisle together. As a WHOLE family. Not just the Bride and Groom but as a whole family unit. Because that is what we are. We aren’t JUST a husband and a wife. We are parents. And more importantly we were parents BEFORE marriage. So it was important for us to include our babies when leaving the main stage.

(Yes, Mase was crying. He’s an emotional little dude, just like his Dad. And I say little in regards to both Mase AND Adam.)

Click, Click.

Time to do what I know I do best- BE A MODEL! (I’m totally just kidding...I absolutely hate having my picture taken, I can selfie it up all day but when I have to pose without seeing myself, totally weird...)

NOW IT’S TIME TO PARTAAAY!

Music begins:

***Beyonce- Crazy In Love

Our bridal party including parents and grandparents get introduced!

And because I love sidenotes: Adam and I LEGIT got in a HUUUUUGE argument during wedding planning because I wanted Nelly- Hot in Hurr for the entrance song and he was NOT ABOUT THAT life...so that didn’t happen (even though I think it would have been fantastic) but BEYONCE DID HAPPEN! I had to put my foot down for my guuurl.

THEN:

Music CHANGES:

***Rusko Remix- Jahova

I gave the DJ STRICT orders to wait until EXACTLY 30 seconds before he announces us in. THEN at 40 seconds (when the beat drops) we walk in!!!

I know, I know...we’re lame. But like I mentioned earlier, the playlist for the evening is based around songs that represent US! Back in the day 8 years ago when we thought we were so cool going to raves, that song was THE SONG that we loved. So THAT is why we chose it...just a little FYI.

(See that up there ^, that’s Adam doing his little rave dance signiture move. Me on the other hand, i’m just waving it left and right because I have no rhythm...)

Okay if you’ve made it this far God bless you AWESOME THANK YOU! I’ve realized I have reeeeally strung this along so i’ll try and speed things up a bit!

FIRST DANCE:

***Chris Stapleton- Tennessee Whiskey

FATHER/ DAUGHTER DANCE:

***Fleetwood Mac- Landslide

Quick sidenote: My Dad had probably a little more booze than he needed before this point so long story short...he was trying to dirty dance with me during our father/daughter dance. Oh well, it makes for a good story to tell!

I mentioned earlier about my Grandfather being a very important person in my life, so I knew it was only fitting to give him a little dancing action. He said “I don’t dance” When I leaned over to him mid-dance with my Dad. So I grabbed his hand and made him stand up with me. As we danced he tells me the story of when he first met my Grandmother (who passed away a few years ago) and how he asked her to dance and she told him he danced like a chicken so he never has danced since. After that, he begins to get emotional and tells me how he wishes she was here. Then we both begin to ugly cry together. It was beautiful.

MOTHER/ SON DANCE:

***Van Morrison- Days Like This

FOOD:

Now it’s time to GRUB! Look they don’t call me Big Mama Kel for nothin’! I love me some food.To set this scene, we (as in MY DAD) had a whole roasted pig. Kind of gross...I was against it, BUT my Dad wanted it. He paid. End of story. It actually was pretty good!

Speeches:

Carley or should I say Carlaaay & Zack (Our best man and maid of honor) KILLED it on the speeches. Some of the most heartfelt words were said by both of them. They have seen Adam and I both at our best AND worst. So thank you guys. They honestly both wrote such amazing speeches, I was seriously impressed...BUT I have to say, the SURPRISE speech from MASON, was what took the show! He got up there with the mic and basically said how much he loved us and was so happy. Thanks for the added tears Mase!

*Insert mic drop*

Lots of booze and lots of dancing AND lots of trips to the photobooth

Who in the world did I think I was?...

Beyonce...ALWAYS Beyonce.

Oh and lots of cooling off in the bathroom because it was so hot...hey, I’m really as modest as they come but a brides got to do what a brides got to do. That dress was freakin’ heavy and hot!

(No booze for the kids obv. Just added for cuteness factor! Well, and because they’re my kids duh!)

But can we just pause and take a second for this:

Oh and these too:

(He spent probably the most time in that photo booth!)

Probably saying “YAAAAASSSS I’m married!” But then again, who knows. I had one too many at this point...

And last but surely not least- My Mermaid-of-honor. My best friend. Carley is the sister that I never had. So thank you for being my right hand lady through this entire wedding experience. I love you.

CAKE CAKE CAKE

***Aerosmith- Sweet Emotion

This song had no meaning. They just say “sweeeeeeet emooooooootion” so figured it went with the whole cake cutting thing...

Thanks for smashing cake all over me...but hey, that’s what you’re suppose to do right?

And a little bit of this:

Song Choice: ***Bad Company- Feel Like Making Love

Look at my Dad sitting back there...so proud to have been front row for such a wonderful experience...(This is high level sarcasm here)

Garter toss & Bouquet toss-

Song choices were:

Garter Toss: ***Jay-Z- Big Pimpin’

Bouquet Toss: ***Beyonce- Single Ladies (of course)

And with that guys, that’s pretty much it.

OH we played flip cup too, you know...keeping the wedding EXTRA classy! So with that...

THE END!

For our Sparkler Send-Off song at the end of the night:

***Led Zeppelin- Over The Hills And Far. Of course we waited until 1:28 seconds (because i’m that type of bride, if you couldn’t already tell...) to run through, what should have been a tunnel but turned out to be a circle, of sparklers!

"Hey lady--you got the love I need. Maybe more than enough.

Oh Darling... walk a while with me. You've got so much... "

ADVICE:

I know I have a TON of soon-to-be bride’s that I am friends with, so if I could give ANY advice at all through this whole process, it would be to JUST breathe! And don’t sweat the small stuff! Seriously…people aren’t going to notice how one flower arrangement isn’t set the way it should or that your ONE piece of hair isn’t laying right (and I can guarantee your significant other won’t notice either!)

Oh who am I kidding? I was sweating every small detail that was out of place and I probably would again if I had to do everything over. But if I could give ANY solid advice it would be to try and sneak away for a few minutes with the one you JUST married and look over your wedding and take EVERYTHING in. They aren't lying when they say your wedding day GOES BY FAST so try to enjoy it! Haha but other than that, just have fun and let loose with your Lovie. It’s YOUR time to shine lady!

Hopefully you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Re-living this day is amazing.

Love you all!

I would like to thank ALL vendors who were involved in making this day as special as it was. Please feel free to check them out!

Lead Photographer: Summer Mae Photography www.summermaephoto.com

Photographer: Charlie Peacher Photography

Venue & Catering: Pond View Farm www.pondviewfarm.com

Props & Floral: Vintage Prop House www.vintageprophouse.com

DJ & Photobooth: Scott Cash www.scottcashphotobooth.com

Makeup: K. Marie Styling Studio www.kmariestylingstudio.com

Hair: Kimberly Guercio

Baker: Hollie Watts

*AND*

A BIG thank you to my Dad for making my dream wedding a reality! I know we argued a lot the past year, but you did good champ Dad! I love you. Also, a BIG thank you to Adam’s parents- Suzi & Jeff for paying for flowers and the rehearsal din-din! AND I COULDN'T FORGET: a big thank you to my Mama Bear for running around entertaining the littlest of the Kane clan- Hunter during the wedding. He sure does love his Mom-Mom and Adam & I both love you too, Mom.

Now we’re off to Cabo!

Toodles,

#lovestory love brideandgroom bride groom mrandmrs wedding weddingday family myfamily mylovestory happiness justmarried

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