Digital GardenMP.404

I’d like to start off by mentioning that when it comes to understanding the technicalities within the creation of music, song writing, genres, musical instruments / tools / programs and….. ect. ect. I am not lexically qualified. But I know how music makes me feel, how it makes my body shake and move; and I think that’s what most of us lean on when we choose to play a song over and over again. 

Before I started having my first calendared playdates with male musicians, (excluding the ones with my older brothers growing up) I waited upstairs at my new family’s house in Fort Collins CO, with 3 talented and opinionated musicians. But it wasn’t always just the 3 of us, each of their three bands would additionally circus in and out for practice in our open plan layout / no door concept home. I would hover around (meaning : being in any given room in the house) band practices like the little sister I have always been, piping up when I felt like maybe they could use someone like *me* around! Someone outside their jokes and musical inclination to happily interrupt. Listening to those older boys make jokes, play their deafening instruments, wielding Beethovenianistic claims made me impressed, confused, insecure and as a response to these feelings, disdain at being bold for the presumed sake of air time. So as an ode to the male musicians I have spent my time with for the last 4 years and for the sake of being bold I am going to say what I feel about the new Lily Allen Album, West End Girls, and even though I don’t have any expertise I’m going to tell anyone who disagrees with me that their wrong!

I’ve listened to West End Girls every day since I discovered it about 7 days ago. Often going back for seconds, double dipping with the freedom of going out of track order. I haven’t had this sort of magnetized pull, a compulsive listening since watching La La Land and when I was incessantly reinvigorating my childhood with Phantom of the Opera. (It’s slightly ostracizing when “Think of Me” by Emmy Rossum and Andrew Lloyd Weber is one of your most played songs on your Spotify Wrapped.)  Whatever some might think the through line is between these albums – strong theatrics and sexual fantasies – says about my internal world, has just never met a bisexual scorpio. With the assumption of Lily Allen’s sexual identity, provoked by googleable media coverage of her “scandalous” sex affairs with female hookes, I think maybe she can relate. 

From its first impression, the first song, the title sharing the name of its host, hooked me with its initial strong story line leading to the ambiguous and imaginative conversation. Ending on that cliff hanger, really sets the listener up for the addictive nature of the rest of the story told through its tracks. Leading into the next song I was captivated by my own physical reaction of shock to its second song “Ruminating”; which read symphonically to me the same way the iconic Brat album of Charli XCX did. The repetitive techno beats bring the emotions explicitly discussed in the lyrics to life. The same way Brat shocked the world with this perceived “resurgence” or at the least a reminder of a talented English female artist speaking to her art in an impossible to ignore manner. The delightful surprise of not having known Lily’s discography since the 2000 and somethings hit song “Smile” tickled me to want to read more, see more, know more about where she has been these years. Following through its story line of female rage looking much more hollow and even pettier than sometimes discussed, made me feel as if I was talking to some of the women I’m closest to in my life. The ones who have suffered from their unsuccessful relationships with others and relatably with men. In a delightful way, these women lay it all out on the table. Dropping all the intimate details others (especially men) often dismiss, refusing their vulnerability to admit what their craving for, the juicy details. The album felt like a conversation, one that leads you to instagram stalking, wine drinking and harmonious discontent. 

So I decided to force some men I know, ones that may share the opinion of me being a looming sister meddling her way into a world she was not necessarily asked to be a part of. My eldest brother Collin, my first representation of a musician growing up. I watched him, 10 years older than I, make music because it simply poured out of him. I was curious to hear his point of view and convince him to share mine. I also shared time with Ryan Adams, a graduated Sound Engineer from Berkley. One of the esteemed musicians cartwheeling around the others in my basement, and someone who eventually encouraged me to sit at the recording booth with nothing but irreverent, poetically wrong rap lyrics.