A Year Of Shutting Up

I started this because my therapist told me Not Liking Things is not a personality. She makes a good point. It’s been a year, and that’s cool and strange.

I think what I’ve learned most is that my music taste is even narrower than I thought—almost half the songs I featured come from 2009-2015. Non-fiction is not my genre; I much prefer to make shit up. Making thoughts coherent, interesting, and not totally repetitive week-to-week is even harder than my journalist friends promised. Shout out to music journalists—none of you are paid enough.

As a conversation starter with my friends, though, the newsletter does it’s job well enough. Love to make a joke about early 2000s emo or Em*rs*n C*llege that I know will elicit within 48-hours one to three friendly text messages to the effect of “shut the fuck up lmaooo.”

I’ve compiled the year’s worth of song’s into a playlist here. It’s got semi-spoiled vibes, but could accompany a minor 3 hour road trip.

I think the lifecycle of such niche newsletter content probably taps out around this point, so I’m going to do these less frequently. Probably monthly? I’m going to try and pay a few more people to write because that part has been the most fun.

This year I had the absolute pleasure of featuring some of my favorite writers.

Matt Mitchell meditated on The Wonder Years.

Mandy Seiner sang Samia’s praises.

Bradley Trumpfheller introduced me to the magical Arthur Russell.

Cara DuBois discussed the thorny life of a Front Bottoms fan.

Jackson Maxwell essayed on Lou Reed’s farewell.

And Brynn Callahan got disinvited from appearing again by covering Rick Astley.

For my own edification, I’ve looked back at the year of posts and made a few observations that may interest.

The longest song we covered, at 19 minutes and 28 seconds, was unsurprisingly the Lou Reed/Metallica crossover episode “Junior Dad”.

The shortest song featured was “Keep The Customer Satisfied” by Simon & Garfunkel, at a mere 2 minutes 35 seconds.

The most popular song (according to Spotify streams) was exactly the one you think, and the least was underground artist’s Bea Troxel’s.

The most popular essay was on Sum 41’s “Some Say” to which I’m going to credit the dweeby picture of me with my high school band.

The least popular was my 95-theses about Sonic the Hedgehog band Crush 40. At 1,800 words this was also the longest piece I published. lol & lmao.

Genuinely thanks for reading. I like this. I like you.