I’ve recently had a bit of a dry spell with music. I wasn’t writing much at all, struggled to finish playlists, and found myself listening to the same songs over and over again. I had little interest in new releases, found that they captured me briefly and lost all appeal in a matter of days. Nothing was exciting the way usually everything is.
The first thing to shine through the haze was Rosie Tucker’s single “Barbara Ann.” The song is named for their grandmother, a farmer, and centers on “her life and all of the systems that impacted it.” It explores the political issues that affect agriculture workers and interrogates what it means to be of and from a place. They reflect on their grandmother’s drive, her seemingly endless propensity to work. The lyrics, a la Phoebe Bridgers, are hauntingly specific:
Well, it bleeds like steak but it isn't steak
I'm dying for a taste of the genuine fake
There ain't nothing you can't shape
From corn and soybeans
Blue eyed Jesus, billboard babies
Their third record Sucker Supreme (2021) is chock full of similar revelations. In “Habanero” they sing:
Wouldn't we be perfect together
If we wanted exactly the same thing?
Their lyrics are witty and poignant, tying in themes of mortality, transformation, disappointment, ancestry. They said in an interview that for them, coming of age has manifested as realization and acceptance. They explained, “I have gotten adequate at living while impatiently waiting for the smarter, kinder, better looking version of myself to come along, lead me out back, and put me out of my misery.”
Rosie Tucker’s articulation of this cultural plague speaks to something I think about often: in a society so obsessed with self improvement, it’s easy to forego living in the name of anticipation. I don’t want to know how many hours and brain cells I’ve lost to wishing I were different, someone else, someone better. These songs present an admirable alternative to that self-inflicted torture.
WILLOW is another paragon of self-acceptance. As the daughter of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, she’s been in the public eye since she was born. She made her musical debut with “Whip My Hair,” which went platinum and was inescapable in 2011. It became a club anthem for self-determination, and at the tender age of eleven Willow Smith became an icon of empowerment. She had another hit in 2015 with “Wait a Minute!” as the youngest artist signed to Jay-Z’s label Roc Nation. She’s on the multi-generational talk show Red Table Talk, which she hosts with her mom and grandmother. She has four studio albums to her name. Needless to say, she’s been busy.
“t r a n s p a r e n t s o u l” is her first foray into pop-punk. She often posts clips of herself practicing metal riffs on her electronic guitar, distortion turned all the way up. She posted an inspiration playlist for this new era of her sound which features blink-182 and Avril Lavigne as well as Hiatus Kaiyote and Jimi Hendrix. It would seem that WILLOW’s music is going to continue being eclectic and entirely original, the product of many years of exposure to just about everything the world has to offer.
I just finished reading Crying in H Mart (2021), Michelle Zauner’s memoir about grief, forgiveness, and death. It centers on her relationship with her mother, who at the beginning of the book receives a cancer diagnosis, and the cultural ties to Korea that came with it. Zauner explores thoughts and emotions regarding her faltering early years of musicianship and reflection on her childhood. It’s beautifully written and sad beyond words.
Near the end of the book, she addresses her other identity: Japanese Breakfast. Before returning to her hometown to care for her mother, she basically called it quits on music entirely. She wrote her first solo record, Psychopomp (2016), about her grief following her mother’s death and didn’t expect it to receive any attention at all. She wrote it for herself, not for commercial success or for a fanbase; the lyrics are clearly personal:
The dog's confused
She just paces around all day
She's sniffing at your empty room
This book was hard to read. Psychopomp is more painful to hear now that I know the context of its conception. It’s strange to ruminate so much on the banality of death, how little we can protect the people we love, how the best case scenario still ends in an eventual decline. I will have to miss so many people, or they will have to miss me. And despite all that, we go forth everyday with belief that investment in our relationships matters.
But Michelle Zauner knows, as anyone who has lost someone knows, that this practice—loving people, inherently ephemeral—is the most important thing we do, ever. Her music is a good reminder.