This summer, I’m going to make playlists and write about them. Here is the final post about a series of tracks of I’m calling “Lovestuck.” If you’d like to read the posts in order of how the songs appear on the playlist, start here. Hope you enjoy.
“Great Day,” Paul McCartney
You’ve probably picked up by now that I’m interested in the playlist as a rhetorical exercise. Playlist as balm, playlist as advocate, playlist as stimulant. A sunset with Willie Nelson’s “Buddy” in the background is a different sunset than one soundtracked by Bjork’s “Lionsong.” Some combinations of songs fit a moment, others sour it. (Not that Bjork would sour a sunset.) I guess I’m making it a hobby to write about why. But why why? Why am I so compelled to pick apart my own inventions? Have I over-sentimentalized a process that Spotify has perfected?
The other day I was listening to a design podcast called 99% Invisible, which specializes in short inquiries about the origins of design. Architecture, toothbrush handles, parks: all are intentional constructs we can trace back to the decisions meant to ease or influence the human animal. One episode that particularly caught my ear was about an app called RjDj that uses the sensory tools of your phone (camera, mic, GPS, etc) to read your environment and cater music specifically for your surroundings. Because of the nature of “reactive music” projects this developer has worked on, the music you would hear in the app was more likely an ambient reaction to a space rather than a thematic one, i.e. as you stand next to a river, you would hear flowing, watery sounds rather than Tina Turner’s “Proud Mary.” This strikes me as an effort to mirror and highlight the very act of listening itself; exaggerating the features of a soundscape, or any mood’s associative noises, in order to foreground what had previously melted into the backdrop. It’s like the sonic equivalent to zooming in on the wood patterns of your cabinets.
The app didn’t work out (at least not in its intended form) but it made me realize all the human complexity present in the act of soundtracking our lives—perhaps it’s not merely formulaic or reflective. While RjDj’s immersion in sound alters one’s perception, it (probably intentionally) avoids one of the main reasons why people listen to music as they drive or walk or socialize: to place themselves inside cultural narratives. Now, of course, we’re constantly receiving invitations from streaming behemoths like Spotify to occupy the sonic spaces they have built through data mapping. They offer playlists for moods, for seasons, for situations. Their sophisticated algorithms make judgments based on our listening habits, making recommendations and creating personalized collections. It’s beautiful, what Spotify does. Very sleek and quick.
And yet. I don’t think it can yet do for us what we can do for ourselves. It doesn’t have the reactive power we have (and RjDj tried to have). We have to tell it who we are, where we are, and what we want to hear. We tell the algorithm what kind of impression we want to form, and it can merely reflect that impression back to us. And Spotify doesn’t have a direct interface; the world is harvested first by smell, sight, touch. The art of the playlist reflects the functions of the body: reacting, processing, choosing one thing and not the other. Even now, after most of us have graduated from recording songs off the radio onto cassette tapes, making playlists is still a physical act. Typing search terms, listening for a moment for the perfect sound, clicking through to a different one, moving tracks up and down to find the right order. A playlist is about consumption, but it’s not passive. It’s collage, but it’s about reshaping reality rather than fragmenting it. It’s art using other’s art, recontextualizing, projecting, making connections across time and category, creating conversations between artists who never thought to speak to each other. I’m obsessed. I’m grateful to artificial intelligence for the help, but I could never give up this task wholly.
The idea to make a shelter-in-place playlist was spurred by this song, “Great Day.” Sometimes, when I am overwhelmed by emotions—positive or negative—I think about my freshman year of high school, when I was so saturated by feeling I could barely eat. I was starting a new school, I had just started to browse beyond the young adult section in the library, and I was deeply infatuated with a sixteen-year-old who kept lending me CDs. People often describe children as sponges, but they rarely recall what it’s like when you are aware of your spongeness. My skull was cracked open to the wind, my skin felt porous. Sometimes—and I’m ashamed to say it—I would literally start trembling when this kid would talk to me. It wasn’t just him in relation to me, it was also him as a doorway, all these new portals he was opening for me to music and books and film. And when we “broke up” (reader, we went to Dairy Queen three times over the span of six weeks), I knew I couldn’t go back into my own smaller world. I had to keep going, to keep exploring, or else he would know how hurt I was.
I didn’t know why then, but among all of those new discoveries (David Bowie, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen), I was very into Flaming Pie, a 1993 album by Paul McCartney that received middling reviews. Looking back, I suspect this more contemporary album represented a small step forward from my Beatles and Oldies 95 ouvre, but still allowed me to find solace in the familiarity of Paul McCartney’s voice. The song is so simple, too, with just one repeating verse, and a chorus of one line. It turns out McCartney wrote it from the comfort of his home, describing it now as “an acoustic number that he and [his late wife] Linda used to perform ‘sitting around the kitchen or when the children were dancing’,” and they even have memories of singing it together by candlelight as a hurricane raged off the coast of Long Island. Beyond the warm image of Paul strumming to keep out the wild night, there’s something very cute yet profound about the limitations of its lyrics.
“While you’re standing there,” McCartney requests, “get up and grab a chair.” Logistically, this is nonsense. If the person to whom he is singing is standing, there’s no need for them to “get up.” But the message is clear cut: have a seat. Nothing makes sense, so sit on down. It might be a while. “It won’t be long,” the chorus repeats, never evolving into any more certainty than that. There’s no answer to what will come after this period of waiting or not waiting.
I remember putting Flaming Pie into my little off-brand player with tinny speakers. I remember zipping up my Catholic uniform and looking at myself in the mirror, trying to see myself as everyone else saw me, and always failing. I remember the nostril-cut of the acidic perfume I put on to make myself seem older. As everything outside my window was shifting like a storm with my perception—new knowledge revealing cracks in its facade, new landscapes, dark corners and sensations—I was stuffing my backpack, humming along to the sweet, protective lie of “Great Day.” Now I’m in my thirties, moving across the country by myself during a pandemic.
Somehow its message wasn’t lost as I carried on at fourteen, scared and sad, punch-drunk on the strangeness of growing up, and I hope that’s still the case. Songs stay with you, especially the hummed ones, even as you step outside to find the world changed.
