Erica Wheadon

Tag: music

2020 – Songs that Shaped a Year

This year’s soundtrack didn’t take me long at all. Out of the thousands of songs I listened to in 2020, these were the ones that I obsessed over, etched into my psyche and wrote alongside the most.

In a bid to combat what could have been a treacherous year, depression-wise, I did my best to avoid anything that would potentially kill me (Woodkid, Nick Cave, Anaïs Mitchell etc) (progress), so these songs are stories of my highs, lows, ruminations, triumphs, vindications, decisions. Stories about family, forgiveness, addiction; the songs that would play on repeat in my head at 3am.

My biggest (and potentially most precious) find of the year was Anita Lester. She slays me. What a voice. (Also she is fucking gorgeous. Dear god.) The first song slid into my head, in my thoughts, in my Insta bio. Also, watch the film clip. Fuck.

Forest Blakk fucking destroys me. Find Me was my gateway, but Easy to Lie was an anthem.

A few surprises – a bit of country/folk crept in (thanks Kevin Costner WHAT), a bit of Sofi Tukker (if you don’t have that on your lists after The New Pope, then shame on you). Trevor Hall’s Fire on your House was a 2020 mood.

Led Zeppelin was more of an analogue entry, but since I can’t produce vinyl analytics, I slipped it in.

Hearing Jeff Martin perform Going to California at The Triffid was one of the highlights of what was a very. shitty. July.

No Nathan Chen free-skate song this year (as much as I love Phillip Glass), but Ben Platt doesn’t disappoint, as always.

Honourable mentions to: Placebo – Protect Me From What I Want, Taylor Swift – Mad Woman and Didirri – Formaldehyde (live at the Corner Hotel thank you, Amen).

TRACK LIST.

1. Anita Lester – Man
Can’t stop. Won’t stop.

2. Anita Lester – Again
Please martyr this for us / For I am weak, for I am running from the end. 

3. FINNEAS – I Lost a Friend
How the hell do you lose a friend you never had.

4. Jenny Lewis – Red Bull and Hennessy
Out of my own mind again.

5. Forest Blakk – Easy to Lie
0:43

6. Michel van der Aa feat. Kate Miller-Heidke – What a Dream
Waiting for my father to die.
Again. Again. Again.
And again.

7. Alanis Morissette & Elizabeth Stanley – Smiling
Three Alanis songs fought for supremacy this year, but I stan Jagged Little Pill on Broadway. Special mention goes to Reasons I Drink and Flinch.

8. FM-84 feat. Clive Farrington – Goodbye
Too late for goodbyes.

9. DMA’s – Never Before
New drugs and a modicum of stability.

10. Sofi Tukker – Good Time Girl
Mmmf.

11. Manchester Orchestra – The Silence (live at the Regency Ballroom)
Little girl you are cursed by my ancestry
There is nothing but darkness and agony
I can not only see, but you stopped me from blinking

12. Kevin Costner & Modern West – You Won’t See it Coming
You know what I didn’t see coming? Kevin Costner being this fucking good.

13. Kevin Costner & Modern West ft. Jaida Dreya – Killer
Dark places. Yellowstone.

14. Trevor Hall – Fire on Your House
I did not expect this from Trevor Hall and I DIG it. Also, yes.

15. Jonatha Brooke – Prodigal Daughter
Absolution.

16. Phil Collins – Long Long Way to Go
2020’s scab-picking-song-on-repeat

17. Katie Noonan – Dance Monkey
This cover though.

18. Washington – Catherine Wheel
That hesitation at 0:53. Slit my wrists already.

19. Led Zeppelin – Going to California.
Wandering. Winter.

20. Sam Brookes – Ekarma
Punching clay.

21. Phoebe Bridgers – Savior Complex
Every word every word every word every word.

22. Ben Platt – So Will I
Salvation. Survival.

—–

YouTube playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL24yL0Ku5RchxXF6vIitOE5iDELyx8PHn

Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1JHqdK1OhamHTf1GIMMR46?si=GBQfxFaYQe-QSzf6-d1x9w

2019 – Songs that Shaped a Year.

It seems odd that last year’s playlist was only a few posts ago, but stupidly that was the only entry that survived the blogpocalypse.

Every year I create a playlist – a kind of soundtrack to the year if you will. It’s not just the songs I listened to most (although often they are on high rotation) – each is attached to a specific memory, acting as a conduit of sorts. Often once I finish the list I often can’t listen to it, but that there’s a kind of catharsis that happens via creation.

So. Here was my 2019 in song form.

TRACK LIST.

1. Anaïs Mitchell – Anyway the Wind Blows
Prologue.

2. The 1975 – Love it If We Made it
Fresh hope. New plans. Which were just like the old plans but better.

3. Dido – Give You Up
Tearing up the new plans. Barefoot in midnight gutters, heart decimated. Not breathing. Raze it all to ground.

4. Florence and the Machine – Moderation
Rinse, repeat, replace. Invincibility rising. In four months time, I will come to know this as hypomania.

5. Sara Bareilles – Fire
No sleep. Cutting my feet on shells. Adrienne. Writing about wolves. Wondering how I ended up so far from home. Rites of passage.

6. Dermot Kennedy – Heartless
Regret. Rumination. Ground falling away. Rubber band snap. It hurts as long as you show up for it.

7. Kasey Chambers – You Ain’t Worth Suffering For
Uproot it, toss it on the pile. Wear your anger like a shield.

8. Anaïs Mitchell – Flowers (Eurydice’s Song)
No more colour. Descent into hell.

9. Hadestown Cast – Wait for Me
Keep on walking and you don’t look back / ‘Til you get to the bottomland
Anxiety. Side effects. Crossed wires. Stop running. Look it in the eye. Look at it.

10. Sara Bareilles – Orpheus
Hold me in the dark / and when the day appears
We’ll say / we did not give up on love today

11. Taron Egerton – Rocket Man
Childhood reimagined. And in December, Nathan Chen’s free skate. (Why does that always make this list?)

12. Josh Ritter – Dreams
Starting therapy. Words that keep coming and coming. Telling the story without stopping. If I breathe I’ll lose my nerve.

13. The Highwomen – The Chain
Diagnosis. Lithium. Surrender. Acceptance. Sleep.
—–
14. Bat for Lashes – The Hunger
Redefining normalcy. Missing fire, hunger, light.
—–
15. Angel City Chorale – A Thousand Beautiful Things
When in doubt, sing. Maybe it’s not too late.

16. Mama Kin Spender – Cold Rooftop
Nambour Civic Centre. Time stopped. Transcendent. Blue light. Vibrating; feeling every note as it left my body.
—–
17. Mama Kin Spender – What’s Wrong with Me
Backstage, nausea, these lyrics, fuck. FUCK. Back in a January street, heart in hands, heart in mouth. Leave. Don’t leave. In her arms, can you feel what’s wrong with me.

18. Taylor Swift – The Archer
I jump from the train / I ride off alone.

19. Nakhane – You Will Not Die
Doubt. Minimisation. Pinprick light from the bottom of the ocean. Numb is the new black. Purgatory.

20. Michael Kinawuka – Piano Joint (This Kind of Love)
Time distortion. Waking in mid-air. Play it over (and over) again.

21. Francesca de Valence – The Seine
Rewriting Paris.

22. Ben Howard – Oats in the Water
Melancholy as a default state.

23. U2 – Love Rescue Me
In the arms of salvation. Learning harmonies for U2 gig. Fortifying. Learning to take the place I have denied myself for too long.

24. Jamie McDell – God is a Woman
Welcome to forty.

24. Adam Lambert – Ready to Run
Doubling down. Self-defence as self-care.

26. Taylor Swift – I Forgot that You Existed
It isn’t love, it isn’t hate, it’s just indifference.

27. Ben Platt – Ease My Mind
For the man who reads my drafts, and collects my dirty cups, reminds me to wear my glasses, lets me empty the contents of my restless mind and helps me put the pieces into piles.

For the man who let me go, and then let me come back.
For the man saw who I was, and stayed.

28. Anais Mitchell & Kate Stables – Woyaya
Old songs that become new songs.

Listen here.

Slowing

Ever since I began this M.A I have fallen into the habit of scanning texts – obsessively flicking pages, scribbling notes – so much so that I often forget the simple joys of slow reading. I have about ten books on the go at the moment. Count them. That’s not a completely uncommon practice for anyone who studies writing, anyone who writes and edits for a living, or is a compulsive bookworm, but this frenzied desire to consume and conquer is frankly what landed me in front of a therapist to begin with.

One of these is Oranges are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson. I feel a little ashamed to be admitting that because it’s a memoir staple – but I’m late to just about every party I’m invited to, so here we are.

“There’s no such thing as autobiography,” Jeanette famously wrote once. “There’s only art and lies.” That line stays with me. I obsess over it as I spend my summer picking through stories – truths, untruths and everything in-between, which is of course what interests me the most. The liminality between what we can and cannot articulate, wrestling with Lejeune’s pact (which is kind of like the picture on the front of a macaroni box: a serving suggestion. In reality, you can cook it any way you want, as long as you don’t serve it up and call it prawn hargow).

That’s a terrible analogy. Also, I’m hungry.

Yesterday we bought ourselves a coffee machine. I asked Stephen if he wanted to wrap it and put it under the tree, so we’d have something to open Christmas morning. He looked at me, kind of mock-appalled, at the thought of not having coffee for the next 9 days. And so we spent a few hours wasting some half-decent Lavazza beans (hey we’re entry-level), adjusting the grind, the tamp, and obsessively watching the pressure rise as if we were checking the temperature of a newborn with a fever. The machine takes 20 minutes to heat up, which is sacrifice I never thought I’d have to make (what do I DO in that time?). Nespresso has ruined me.

But, it made me realise how much I need to learn how to spend my time wisely. Slower coffee, slower reading, slower writing. Slower creating. Which means giving up the habits which sap my time. I’ve already started to back away from social media in preparation of my final trimester. I’m working on learning a new guitar chord, every time I feel the impulse to check something. So far I know six by name, and another four which kind of sound right, but are probably just random string groupings. If I’d not sold my piano in a fit of depression last year, then I could have checked. Mind you, if I hadn’t sold my piano, I wouldn’t be playing anything at all. It would just sit there as a constant reminder of what I gave up.

I guess that’s why I’m writing here too. If I spend 30 minutes writing a blog post, then that’s 30 minutes I’m not around a news feed that screams at me first thing in the morning. It’s probably time to admit that I’m in an abusive relationship with Facebook. It’s a bit of a hard habit to break when no-one is around to stop you.

I had a fridge magnet once that read: ‘What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?’ I was told recently that it was time to deploy some innocence. That I don’t have time to let inadequacy consume me. Maybe it’s not inadequacy. Maybe it’s a fear of naivete. Maybe they’re the same thing.

Marie

My two best friends are swinging side by side, slightly out of unison. It will be my turn soon, they assure me and I shrug like I don’t care. I’d locked my arms around the playground poles, looping my body around in circles, my hands smelling of dust and metal. Earlier, we had skipped to the park singing Listen to Your Heart, agreeing that Marie was really pretty – even with short hair – debating whether she and Per were “together” together or just “band” together. T had her theories. She said that she read in a magazine that they used to be an item. She just knew Per was secretly in love with Marie, based on his lyrics – had we even listened to the words to It Must Have Been Love? We argue how to pronounce Per’s name in Swedish. T is insistent. She is confident and sophisticated in her pronunciation and I stop questioning her. By the time they jump off, there is no time for me to swing.

I watch this memory like a time-traveller. I want to gently tell my eleven-year-old self that she would always be the third wheel and to not let it bother her so much and also that she should let her friends go to the shop without her, so she could swing for hours uninterrupted. I want to tell her she was right, his name wasn’t pronounced “Pierre” and that even though it felt unfair that T’s parents were letting her skip primary school graduation to go to the Roxette concert – she would finally get her chance twenty years later. Marie would have been battling cancer for ten years by that time, refusing to cancel a single show. Per would do all of the heavy lifting on stage – watching her with barely-disguised concern. Marie would sit on a stool with a microphone, and let him take the lead.

I want to add that she will look at T’s empty seat beside her – that they both will try to be friends as adults, but that night, she will finally accept their differences. Finally I want to tell her that Marie would die on her husband’s 39th birthday and that she will be late for work because she played Listen to Your Heart and it spun in her head on repeat, taking the world as she knew it down, down with her.

2018 – Songs that Shaped a Year.

Every year I create a soundtrack that sums up the year – and after many weeks of tweaking and deliberation – here’s 2018’s. I’ve included a few brief words on each track – mostly for my own benefit – but if you’re interested, this is a gigantic piece of my heart, in song form.

TRACK LIST.

1. Something for Kate – Survival Expert
Theme. Variations. Trapped air. Those fucking lyrics. Play it again.

2. Coldplay – We All Fall In Love Sometimes (Elton John cover)
Helpless. Gravity. Circles. Stay down.

3. This Pale Fire – Virago
Masters. Write like a motherfucker. Soundtrack to Semester one.

4. Wildwood Kin – The Author.
Train rhythms. Shell Cove to Sydney three nights a week. Uncovering, rewriting, bursting open.

5. Tina Dico – True North
Compass. Grounded. Central Station intersection: Facing Denmark. Docs. Purpose. Fuck you.

6. Sleeping At Last – Atlantic
Library. Clock tower. Head down and write. Now.

7. James Crabb – Oblivion
Caught off guard. Aching for Granada. Falling apart in a foyer. Late for class. Metamorphosis. Tango rising.

8. Sarah Blasko – A Shot
Dawning. Don’t look at it. Don’t look at it. Don’t look at it.
Tear yourself in two. Bleed out.

9. Steven Wilson – Pariah
Kick yourself. Harder. Again. Again.

10. Bear’s Den – When You Break
Concentric circles. Tighter orbit. No more light.

11. Years & Years – Sanctify
My love for spec. fic and 90’s pop music emeshed. Obsessed.

12. Missy Higgins – Hallucinate
You know your own mind. Listen. Closer.

13. The Kite String Tangle – The Heights of Trees
Go to. Play. Poetry and rhythm. Story. Feels like an old friend.

14. The Band’s Visit (Broadway Cast) – Omar Sharif
Cups crammed into newspapers. Yearning. Calling. Two worlds pulling at my sleeve.

15. Missy Higgins – Don’t Look Down
Goodbye cliffs. Goodbye ocean. Goodbye train. Goodbye dream.

16. Hozier – Nina Cried Power
Rise. No more complacency. Fight.

17. Dessa – 5 out of 6
Drip fed strength. Believe women. Believe in women. Believe yourself.

18. Trevor Hall – Sagittarius
You and me. Me and you. Remember.

19. Lady Gaga/Bradley Cooper – Shallow
Turning point. Push back. Fog lifting. Enough.

20. Stone Temple Pilots – The Art of Letting Go
Threads fraying faster than I can snip them.

21. Woodkid – Land of All
Waiting for my father to die. Third hit. Crushed under the weight of my own family tree. Nathan Chen’s free skate. When all else fails, make art.

22. Nas/Dave East/Lin Manuel Miranda – Wrote My Way Out
Intention. Boundaries. Clarity. Absolution.

[ playlist  link ]