Johanna

Accidentally, the first CD I ever bought was the karaoke version of Taylor Swift’s Fearless . It’s kind of hard not to hate, or at the least be irritated, with 2018 Taylor Swift. She engages in petty drama with her peers, wears $900 tourist sweatshirts, and makes purely boring, conventional pop music. She was someone that remained great even when she was in the spotlight in a major way, but the bright lights seemed to have worn her down with time. Somehow at 28 she seems to be acting too old for her age which is one of the universal signals of a soon-to-be irrelevant popstar. So, before she dies out completely, here are some of my thoughts on Taylor Swift on when she was good and doing what she was best at. I remember ordering a small Taylor Swift unofficial biography from a school book order when I was probably around 8 and my dad pointed out his surprise to me over the fact that she wrote her own songs. He told me most artists, especially pop musicians, have people th...

My lips are chewed raw as an effect of my intense apprehension while watching Boot’s Riley’s Sorry To Bother You . It’s difficult to look away from this beautiful trainwreck: a struggling man joins a telemarketing agency in hopes to provide for himself and his fiance. He quickly works his way to the top by stripping away his black identity, before finding the levels of corruption were far more evil and outrageous than his coked-out mind could ever comprehend. Sorry To Bother You is an absurdist magical realist film that comments on our society’s abuse through corporate capitalism by the exploitation of the working class, specifically those that are people of color. It’s impossible, for me at least, to write a good or even proper review of Sorry To Bother You after only one viewing under my belt. Trying to put my thoughts into words over this movie is proving quite useless, so I’m leaving you with a few observations that I hope somewhat make sense. The comments on corruption, ident...

Not only is it possibly the most sweetest love song I’ve ever heard, but it tugs at an impossible sense of internal yearning beginning at the first breathless syllables of the word “dream”. To be fair there is a completely traceable reason for this tortured desire that the track instantly brews within me. I made the mistake of stumbling upon the song after connecting with a boy I had been head over heels for for previous years. Listening to this song with that giddy, teenage glee is the equivalent to crack cocaine, I’m sure. It’s dangerous. It was played in the car, on my computer, on my phone, in a record player, in my earbuds for a week straight. My dad took note of my relentless insertion of The Everly Brothers’ Greatest Hits’ and noted on what had ever gotten into me, which I felt couldn’t have been anymore obvious. There is no better representation than the chorus of this song for this ignorant and adorable fleeting trance I was in and for that, I will always feel the song jab...

Nobody nobody nobody nobody nobody..... Mitski released a new single by the name of “Nobody” Monday, June 26, in anticipation of her upcoming fifth album, Be the Cowboy. This is the second single Mitski has released, following “Geyser,” all under the record label Dead Oceans. These two songs couldn’t be more unlike one another in terms of both subject matter and their musical composition, creating much more anticipation for how the full album sounds, expected to come out August 17, 2018.   “Nobody” opens with rapid sixteenth drum notes before Mitski utters the first line that encompasses her entire tone on the track: “My God I’m so lonely.” The song is a complete ode to romantic isolation but pulls it off an a spectacular way, transforming the wallowing despair into a celebration of heartache. The words and sound of the single exist in juxtaposition. The lyrics are an endless cycle of pleading for a partner, even just in temporary form, in a way that is overall hopeless...