The other day, my mind went idle and naturally did that thing we all hate where it suddenly dwells on some cringy garbage we did a long time ago. This time, it was the Stanford Arts Review, or StAR. It was a perfectly functioning online publication until around our sophomore year, at which point it completely died. Now, stanfordartsreview.com leads to a generic celebrity gossip site with a bunch of posts authored by Indian men who are hoping someone eventually buys the domain.
Emily and I had written a couple of blurbs for Stanford Arts Review during our freshman year; I had some half-baked romantic idea of contributing to the Stanford equivalent of the Nassau Weekly, Princeton’s litmag which has some absolute bangers. But no. The Stanford Arts Review was bad.
Though, they did do this thing that was kinda cute, where they would come up with a playlist vibe every week and ask people to send in songs and short blurbs about the song. Emily and I each sent in a couple, and even though I can’t find them anymore, it’s safe to say that they were probably not good. I think I suggested something off Chance the Rapper’s Christmas album? Can’t remember. Emily wrote about Homeshake.
But I like the idea of a playlist of songs with little blurbs! So here’s some of the stuff I’ve been listening to recently, the first edition of harharhar: the huang arts review, week 7 (the pandemic has felt like a neverending week 7)
And this is definitely not just because I wanted to write a music piece but couldn’t come up with a cohesive theme and thus took everyone’s favorite copout and wrote little fragments instead. Definitely not.
blowback, galimatias
there are some songs that just sound better in the shower. blowback is one of them. the lyrics are mad dumb but in the shower that’s alright; shower songs are more about finding a melody to complement the pitter-patter of water striking porcelain. i feel like in the shower, the different components that make up a song scatter, and the way the barbershop quartet vibe and the reverb dissociate from each other works really well.
the opening of blowback is so good. the vocals and the initial piano chords are buttery and lead into a smooth bass drop, which segues to the best part of this song; not galimatias’ stuff but the oldie it samples, hello stranger by barbara lewis. when phil played blowback on a whim during a lazy afternoon in quogue, as soon as the barbershop quartet sauntered in with it seems like a might looong tiiiiiiiiime, my head shot up, like a meerkat, attention pried away from my still-cooling hot pocket; i remember it like it was yesterday.
hello stranger is the song from the last part of moonlight, the one that kevin plays on the jukebox, the one that reminded him of chiron and the reason why chiron went back to miami. maybe it was a callback to the progression of r&b over time, just like we see the progression of chiron over years and years in moonlight; regardless, it’s so interesting to hear old-school and contemporary r&b coalesce. i remember typing in the notes app it felt like there was a hand around my throat the entire time after i first saw moonlight in theaters. i love hello stranger and moonlight and the role that song played in that movie, so when i listen to blowback the dialogue i imagine is not the subpar lyrics of the actual song but the muted communication between those two.
gang gang schiele, hyukoh
it is a miracle i ever found this song. ada played it and i was pretty drunk and i asked her what it was and wrote down “gang gang chile” and thought to myself that’s weird and tried to add it on spotify the next morning and then nothing came up so i had to ask her again. the song is about saying sorry to an old friend you haven’t seen in a while but that you want to see again, and was written as south korea and north korea were finally starting to reopen communications. the lyrics are simple but powerful, capturing the disorientation of being left (have you seen my old friends? / they told me ‘we're heading somewhere’), emotional constipation in apologizing (so sad i can't say that i'm sad / talk cheap, smoking bitter), and hoping to return to what you had before (just finished to build my wings / see you I'll be there).
i am terrible at keeping in touch, but the pandemic has made me try to be less terrible at it; before the pandemic i wrote about the impending dread of leaving behind friends from college, how i could feel the separation starting even before we graduated and i had any clue that we would be kicked off of campus in a month. i listened to this song a lot as i drove down from long island on father’s day, unsure of when i would see any of my friends from school again.
gang gang schiele is gorgeous. rich. full-bodied. filled with these spontaneous moments where the melody takes an unexpected turn or a snare drum kicks in or some background instrument suddenly swells. the song feels water slowly spiraling down a drain, knowing where it’s going but taking twists and turns to get there. at its core though, it’s a simple two-man show, a persistent acoustic guitar chord progression and soft vocals layered on top of it, and i think that speaks beautifully to what hyukoh had in mind when they wrote the song. there can be all this noise and change, but in good friendship you have something stable and warm, a centralizing motif to return to.
tangerine, glass animals
my taste in music is very seasonal. r&b in the winter, rap in the spring, pop in the summer, indie in the fall. last fall i listened to a ton of glass animals from their near-perfect album how to be a human being, but tangerine lies more towards the upbeat, pop beats of the summer. it came across my radar at the perfect time, late september, when in virginia it will be 40 degrees one day and 75 the next.
i think how to be a human being is a better, more consistently excellent album than dreamland, but dreamland has bangers that its predecessor could only dream of. tangerine fucking slaps!!! glass animals did not have to go this hard!!
when i first listened to the song, i was fresh off being rejected by my third team of the day during team selection at my job, yet another we really like you, but someone committed an hour before. can i introduce you to the manager of our sister team? i deeply felt the cacophonic, unhinged HA HA HA at the beginning of the song. the beat is fun, the rhythm is wonky and they manage to fit the lyrics in. it feels summery and upbeat and poppy and lively and saccharine but also sufficiently weird and sad enough to be kind of indie. it is a song about hoping that under the bitter peel of a tangerine there is still sweetness (which is honestly how i felt about my whole team selection process. luckily, the next day i was able to find a team i liked and i swooped in and took the spot), which is kind of a cool juxtaposition with the poppy beat, like a sadder song within the peel of a banger.
mary jane (all night long), mary j blige
i hate how much i like this song. i have resisted downloading tiktok because the best tiktoks end up on twitter anyways, and i already have the terrible habit of doomscrolling for hours on end. renegade and that doja cat song were fine, but when i saw the video of doggface (the guy who drank the cranberry juice while skating) doing a tiktok dance to this song, i looked it up immediately.
this song is so good. the tiktok remix is fine, but the original mix by mary j blige is unreal. the snare drum is moseying along and you’re like hm okay and then the bass comes in and your head start bopping a little. and then. the fucking FLUTE comes in and the song TRULY starts. there is so much kinetic energy in all night long and none of it feels manufactured in the way that a lot of pop feels with these roided out basses and overlays; it practically beckons you to start dancing. and yet?? it’s like tender and confused. a friend and i started making a playlist and i asked what the vibe should be and they said “ur in a new city,,, a bit depressed,,, confused,, you love giving head,,, sometimes u put ur hair in pigtails.” this is the first song i thought of.
this song can occupy so many niches. beginning-of-the-pregame-as-people-are-starting-to-trickle-in song. smoking-on-the-balcony song. doing-dishes-after-dinner-and-wine-with-the-homies song. tastefully-h*rny-not-horny-police-worthy song. leisurely-cracking-eggs-for-brunch song. throw-a-little-ass-after-getting-off-work-but-before-dinner song. drive-to-the-beach-with-the-windows-down-while-the-dog-pants-in-the-passenger-seat song. the possibilities are endless. this song fucks.
flou, angèle
a friend once described this song as “french maggie rogers” and i think it’s perfect. it’s the same kind of vibe but less ethereal and more eurotrashy but not eurotrashy enough to give me flashbacks to the awful parisian techno club i went to.
it’s kind of crazy that this song works; it’s suuuper simple. the melody undulates around like, literally three notes and yet everything is so infectious. it’s creative in its plainness, the opposite of the standard pop song formula of orbiting around the same four chords ad nauseam. the parts of the french where she suddenly gets nasally adds another rich texture to the sound.
the song is hot but not seductive, a hotness without intent, it just kind of stands there motionless, like replacing the Vitruvian Man with a young Brad Pitt. i honestly think it’s better that i don’t really know what’s going on with this song. it doesn’t matter; this song is so hot. i would let this song cut off my toes. i would let this song pack me into a barrel and throw me of a cliff. i would buy this song’s bath water.
W.A.P. (Jeopardy Remix), cardi b
i’ll take “bangers” for 2000, alex.
Find some of these and more here, at my pride and joy, “sometimes u put ur hair in pigtails”