Your husband died two years ago. If anybody is in denial right now…

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“Say what you wish. Fight with everything you have. Struggle, kick, bite, none of it matters. He wants you and you will come to him. You will dedicate yourself to him, and when that moment comes, you will beg to bring him your mother’s head on a silver platter. You will weep tears of gratitude when he devours her eyes.”

when two musicians sing into the same microphone and lean in very close to each other... like omg are you guys gonna kiss now to relieve the homoerotic tension?😳

THIS IS NOT ABOUT ONE DIRECTION I DON'T KNOW WHO THIS "HARRY" PERSON IS GO WATCH BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND CLARENCE CLEMONS KISS ON STAGE RIGHT NOW

op is the only valid person i’ve ever met. everyone else needs to come to the light

Okay, but this is really important: Bruce Springsteen occupied this really weird place in music history. His songs were all from this pessimistic, nihilistic view of an America that had let him down:

Just like the anti-Vietnam War protest songs that we associate with the 1960s, or the early nihilism that spawned punk music in the 1970s. But he didn't *sound* like a punk anarchist; he sounded like a country rock singer. When he released Born in the U.S.A. people completely misinterpreted (or possibly ignored) the lyrics in favor of the tone of the music.

Politicians used his music to promote their 'Murica Yes! brand, and he had to literally explain that that was not what he was about. He's over here asking when we're going to have jobs and heathcare, not stanning the politicians who weren't helping the people.

It was also kind of a big deal that he had an integrated band, because even as late as the 1980s music was still kind of segregated and MTV was straight up racist. They refused to play and promote black artists and then claimed that were no black artists in the first place. Michael Jackson's record company had to threaten a boycott of their white artists to get MTV to play his Thriller video.

Plus, the first black/white interracial kiss on TV was in 1968 (OG Star Trek). Also it took us until the 70s to get sympathetic gay characters on screen, and the 90s to get gay characters to kiss onscreen. And all of those firsts were met with outrage.

So keep that in mind when you see Bruce Springsteen not just playing with an interracial band, but engaging in an interracial, gay kiss on stage repeatedly.

Passages from American Popular Music by Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021) - 1.02 - The Star Spangled Man

a very tired witcher

Ahsha Hayes/Taylour Paige Signature High Kick

club jams are the best music for the zombie apocalypse: a serious position i actually have, and can totally defend thanks to being friends with an english major

so here is a thing you may already know about club jams: they are our generation’s carpe diem poetry.

i don’t mean this in an ironic, ‘oho let’s get a well-regarded middle-aged male dramatic actor to read these kesha lyrics with a straight face, won’t that be hilarious’ kind of way. i mean it with all my heart.

here is a summary of roughly half of all modern club jams:

(source: x, x, x, x, x, x, etc)

if this sounds facetious, go back and reread famous 17th century carpe diem poem ‘to his coy mistress’ by andrew marvell. sum it up in bullet points. exact same fucking thesis. (actually most club jams handle it more delicately; like andrew marvell did you really just try to get a lady in the mood by reminding her that if she stays chaste, ultimately maggots will despoil her virgin corpse? fuckin’ gross, andrew marvell. go listen to some nicki or some pitbull and see how it’s done.)

when i was a teenager i found this a little appalling. (both club jams and ‘to his coy mistress’ to be honest.) like, there’s a level on which these words straight-up glorify making poor choices. but on another level, we will all die someday, and, without condoning really stupid decisions, sometimes there is something to be said for tearing our pleasures with rough strife through the iron gates of life, and/or grabbing someone sexy and telling them ‘hey give me everything tonight.’ (so to speak.)

nothing against tom waits. nothing against the melancholy, ambivalent indie rock that i tend to actually listen to while playing zr, along with the ‘last of us’ soundtrack for the sake of mood. nothing against ‘sleep the clock around’ by belle and sebastian, which i’ve always headcanoned as runner 4′s favorite jogging tune, for some reason.

but club music was created for pumping you up. and in a post-apocalyptic, actual life-or-death situation, where morale and energy and on-the-spot courage are everything, suddenly all the metaphors go literal. if you are sprinting through undead-infested wastes, you aren’t thinking about your retirement plan. you probably aren’t thinking about next week. you don’t have the promise of next week. you don’t have the promise of tomorrow.

what you have is the beat, the moment, and the knowledge that every remaining second of your life is yours, to live as brightly as you can.

…put your hands up [optional]