Welcome to FRONTSEAT! This newsletter is an ongoing commentary on pop music, pop culture, and, oftentimes, a real-time unraveling of my own psyche. If you find yourself enjoying this, I would love it if you sent it to someone you think would, too!
LORDE-Y LORDE
I do not care about the negative reviews, and sorry, but I do not care if you wanted another Melodrama. I love Solar Power!!! Which makes me not like other girls.
I listened for the first time on my commute to the office today, and boy, what an exquisite album to dissociate to on the train. Well, I have to say it was more like daydreaming (I have three Pisces placements in my chart after all). But it was so pleasant! It’s not anxiety music, it’s not music to listen to when you want to wallow in your ugliest emotions or soar with the adrenaline of a major pivotal life moment. It’s for coasting along, wrapped up in your own vibe (lmfao jk not vibe, wrapped up in your own essence), a dazed soft smile painted on your face.
I have no idea what any of the lyrics are yet so I can’t really speak to what she’s singing about, other than it seems to be an album about enjoying the fuckin’ beach while the world burns. And like, good vibes, et al.
My favorites are: ‘Mood Ring,’ ‘Oceanic Feeling’, ‘California,’ ‘Stoned at the Nail Salon’ and ‘Secrets from a Girl (Who’s Seen It All).’ The airline-voiceover outro to Secrets from a Girl is SOOOO delightful.
I will say that there is an annoying ass part of the album and I will use my own tweet to explain further:
I WENT THRU MY ENTIRE FOLLOWING LIST ON IG
It’s so easy to follow people online. And it’s fun, by golly. Tap, click, push. Whether it’s a new acquaintance, a boy from a dating app, a pop star I want to get into, someone I do not know but they seem really cool and maybe one day we’ll become friends… it’s fun to introduce new people to my Instagram feed.
Of course, there’s a threshold that, when crossed, leads to inundation territory. I’ve definitely long surpassed that, my feed cluttered with odds and ends that my algorithm can’t even keep track of. It was time for some late summer cleaning.
This week, I went through all of the 1,293 accounts I followed on Instagram, sorting it from the earliest to the most recent follow date. (I was able to get it down to just under 1,200, so, please clap.)
The experience was… so odd.
The first several hundred people I followed were from 2011-2012 ish — high school classmates, fellow swimmers, some family members. My initial social nucleus.
As I slowly scrolled through, occasionally clicking the follow button to free myself of some random person who I haven’t talked to in five business years, it felt a little bit like I was reliving my life through the lens of who I chose to associate with on Instagram. Who I followed, when scrolling through in chronological order, quickly jogged my memory, and I found myself able to pinpoint the year, if not the month or even week, that that person came into my life.
Next, I realized it was late 2014, because the names started to become Wesleyan people — first my swim teammates, who were my first friends in college, and then other students I met as I began to branch out more into 2015.
I could show you exactly where late August 2016 was, the fateful month that my first boyfriend tried to get back together with me by texting me an entire essay where he (finally) admitted to all of the shitty things he’d done when we were dating. The text message was so long that I had to click to open it into a PDF. (For the record, we are friends now, I also have admitted to him the shitty things I did to him, this is not a spiteful newsletter, lol).
Anyways, I knew it was late August 2016 at that point in my list because I got that text the night before I left for study abroad in Stockholm, and there on my list were 20-something accounts in a row with names of people in my program.
In 2018 there were more names; the friends I made in the waning hours of senior spring, King Princess, then the friends of the guy I had a weekend fling with that summer when I was visiting NYC before I moved. One of his friends put me onto King Princess when we were riding the subway to some party, and her first EP (the one with ‘1950’ and ‘Talia,’ you know the one) had just come out.
Just seeing these little pockets of names, oftentimes all coming from one night of meeting new people all at once brought back these visceral memories of how things were at that point in time. (News flash: things were very different and I was so young and afraid and silly!!! And now I’m slightly less of those things.) The way that King Princess EP is mentally imprinted on me, mixing with like three sporadic memories of that summer, memories of that boy I had a fling with, and the insane thrill of moving to NYC after graduating…! Music/memory/social media are interlinked in such a sick and twisted way, but I’m amazed at their power.
There I was in late 2018 and into 2019, as I scrolled past more new follows; lots of pop stars as I realized my growing passion for music, more Wesleyan people as I tried to figure out my social life in the city, friends of friends who I didn’t realize at the time would turn into some of my best friends now (Anisha, looking @ you).
In 2020 I started following news accounts and anything that would provide insight and clarity during a year that was absolutely devastating, painful and apocalyptic. I kept scrolling, seeing names of comedians whose Zoom or IG Live shows I’d attended last year, more pop stars. Very few new friends in 2020 and early 2021, if any.
Then in April 2021, as names began to feel very recent, I scrolled past a lot of the new connections I’ve made as things have opened up again. I’d smile seeing people I met after pushing past my social anxiety to go out with new friends, meeting men from online (who does that?) ((me, and some others))), finally taking stock of the advances I’ve made in my social life since 2019. I’ve come a considerable way!
Ultimately, it was nostalgic and also very weird to think about how much memory is logged on my brain’s hard drive purely from Instagram. Every IG user has this chronological inventory of who we’ve met, and for me, a digital hoarder, these people with whom I have even the loosest ties tend to just stick around in my following list.
I kept scrolling past people who I truly have nothing in common with and haven’t talked to since sliced bread was invented, and then would feel a rush of guilt and panic as I considered unfollowing them. Like, obviously it’s not mean to unfollow someone you barely know, but I’d see that they still followed me and I was like… this is actually communist of me to maintain these bonds, in a cool way.
Except, sorry, but if I barely know you and I follow both you AND your pet’s Instagram accounts, I’m unfollowing one of them. And I won’t say which.
JAPANESE BREAKFAST IS BAE MATERIAL
I hate the word ‘bae’ but I am too lazy to find another word that fits here! Deal wiv it. Last night, I went to the 92nd Street YMCA to attend a Q&A between Michelle Zauner (Japanese Breakfast) and E. Alex Jung of New York Magazine, and it was so endearing.
I have become a JBrekkie stan only in the last few months, and I’m kind of astounded at her versatility. I knew her first as this indie rock-pop artist, then realized about a month ago that she has a critically acclaimed book out, which I’m about halfway through (I cried three times before the end of the first chapter). She writes quite beautifully about parent-child relationships, grief, loss and all of the nasty, heavy-as-granite, tormenting feelings that bubble up inside of us when life is going wrong. I admire her the most for her honesty about her grossest feelings — the ones that feel most shameful to admit and own up to.
What’s an instance in your life where you felt heavy, horrible, negative feelings and you were too afraid to tell someone about them? Don’t answer that, I’m not your therapist. (Yet.)
Anyways, their conversation felt authentic and genuine, and Michelle carries herself so well. I’m sure they talked before the Q&A (I began to wonder — do well-known culture writers get a sort of impromptu, on-the-low dinner or drinks with an artist before they do a Q&A in public? Like, what pre-production goes into it? Does the writer know that he should probably connect with the artist before they have a vulnerable conversation in front of a ticketed audience? Does he set this up with her PR, or does the PR lead and suggest they meet to chat about topics to be covered? Is there a rulebook, and might I purchase it, for I am curious about these affairs?) but Michelle was just so crisp with her delivery.
I loved listening to her speak, reminding myself that all of our favorite artists are also people. They’re people who adjust in their seats to get comfortable, wring their hands when speaking in public, occasionally gaze off at a chair in the auditorium before remembering where they are and why. We’re all blobs of flesh, baby! (Except I’m really tight and hot and tight and have a body like a back road.)
We learned in the talk that she is optioning Crying in H Mart for a MOVIE! HELLO!? She said she wants a Korean actress to play her mother, and that she’s already feeling a bit stumped by trying to find a Korean-American 25-year-old to play her. I think she will find someone who is relatively unknown and it’ll be that person’s big break, which is fun. But wow — an acclaimed recording artist, memoir-writer, and soon-to-be autobiographical screenwriter? She’s the whole package.
WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME ABOUT THE NON-SINGLES ON 1989
Okay, the one-two punch on Taylor Swift’s 1989 of ‘Clean’ and ‘Wonderland’ is simply nuts. They are SO GOOD!? Nobody ever told me there were other songs on that album that were good besides the ones everyone knows. I’m tired of my “friends” and “family” keeping me in the dark in this way. It just goes to show that the only person really looking out for you is YOU.
Anyways, the “got” in the chorus of ‘Wonderland’ was a paid actor. When she’s like ‘you and I gawwwwt lost in it,’ I am tickled. I don’t know why she is pronouncing “got” like that but I’m grateful. It sounds good in my ears and that? Is sometimes all that matters.
Also, everyone in my life FAILED to alert me to the fact that Imogen Heap co-wrote ‘Clean?’ Even worse — and maybe this is just on me for being an actual freak idiot — I didn’t know that Imogen Heap made ‘Goodnight and Go’ in 2005, which Ariana Grande then sampled for ‘goodnight n go’ on Sweetener. Literally, I waltzed through my life a fool for the last three years not knowing that Ariana fully sampled that song’s chorus, and other parts of it even. (Yes I am also someone who initially believed ‘Whatcha Say’ by Jason Derulo was a fully original song.)
TWO SONGS IN A GENRE I WILL CALL: SUGAR-CRACK FIZZY TRAP-POP
Peachy Keen - L Devine
Pretty - Terror Jr