The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Thursday, February 14, 2019 — 5A
Valentine’s Day music for lovers and loners
SHERRY CHEN / DAILY
The day is nigh. Valentine’s day, Saint Valentine’s Day, the
Feast of the Valentine, “Valentimes” Day, V-Day — regardless
of its many iterations, February 14th is both interpersonally
and commercially accepted as the day of love. Unfortunately,
love, in the romanticized context of this holiday we’re
addressing, seems to carry binary implications — you’re either
in it, or you’re out of it. In other words, on this day you could
be feeling wholly in love, embracing the pinks and reds and
boxes of chocolates, or you could be feeling incredibly alone,
torn between your desire for affection and your reasonable
distaste for everything Valentine-related. With these
possibilities in mind, we’ve curated a list of albums you should
listen to if you’re feeling either of these two ways today.
Disclaimer: We realize such a list might inappropriately
categorize and glorify varying sentiments regarding love and
loneliness — forgive us as we submit to the rigid interpretations
of these ideas that Valentine’s Day necessitates.
Mike Watkins — Daily Music Editor
‘The
Essential
Dean
Martin’ — Dean Martin
A
Valentine’s
Day
lineup
without mention of Dean Martin
and his classic hit, “That’s
Amore?”
That would be a crime against
love.
Luckily, such a misstep is
quickly remedied. So, in the name
of “true love,” romance and good
taste, this writer humbly suggests
Dean
Martin’s
2014
album
compilation, The Essential Dean
Martin, as a necessary addition to
any playlist this Valentine’s Day.
And really, who does love
better than Dean Martin? He
even made pizza synonymous
with romance, “When the moon
hits your eye like a big pizza pie /
That’s amore.”
With the unyielding winter
blast
Ann
Arbor
has
been
subjected to of late, Martin’s
light-hearted
forays
through
love will put anyone in the mood
for romance. With songs like
“Tik-A-Tee, Tik-A-Tay,” “That’s
Amore,” and “Volare,” Martin
reminds the world that romance,
and Valentine’s Day, is meant to
be fun. Even at his most serious
in sappy-ballads like “Everybody
Loves Somebody” and “You’re
Nobody Till Somebody Loves
You,”
nothing
feels
heavy
or
overdone.
Every
one
of
Martin’s songs celebrates love
— even heartache — without the
heaviness of many love songs.
Martin’s songs are, at their core,
full of hope and lightness.
The Essential Dean Martin
album has, as the title implies,
some of Martin’s most beloved
hits. And now, decades later,
Martin’s music still maintains its
timeless relevance and beauty.
Valentine’s Day isn’t only about
romantic love — it’s also about the
relationships and connections
between all kinds of people. It
can be a celebration of love as a
whole, beyond a mere consumer
holiday, if you only let it. And no
one captures this sentiment as
well as Martin does in song.
As Dean Martin eloquently
croons in “Everybody Loves
Somebody,”
“Your love made it well worth
waiting / For someone, like you.”
Madeleine Virginia Gannon —
Daily Arts Writer
‘The Miseducation of
Lauryn Hill’ — Lauryn Hill
Whatever your opinion of her
as a person may be, Lauryn Hill
is an undeniable musical genius.
Her work with the neo-soul
group The Fugees cemented this
in the pop sphere, but her 1998
debut album The Miseducation
of Lauryn Hill was the nail in
the coffin that thrust her to true
critical acclaim. It is a record
that fundamentally understands
human nature: the ups and downs
of life, sadness and joy, and, of
course, the inner workings of the
thing we call love. Miseducation
shows the possibilities of what
love can be, in all of its forms. And
for that, I believe that the record
is the perfect Valentine’s Day
soundtrack.
There is a misunderstanding
across the board that truly great
love songs are just about romantic
relationships. Hill challenges this
immediately, singing the praises
of her love for her child (“To
Zion”), for the city in which she
grew up (“Every Ghetto, Every
City”), and to the world in general
(“Everything is Everything”).
These songs are almost more
profound than the traditionally
sappy proclamations of love that
listeners may be used to, but Hill
even gives that format new legs
on tracks like the classic break-
up jam “Ex-Factor” and “Nothing
Even Matters,” a duet which
features similarly talented artist
D’Angelo.
But the thing that really drives
the
genius
of
Miseducation
home is its interludes. The
short vignettes into a classroom
setting show listeners love from
a child’s perspective, as their
teacher asks them questions.
These visions into the minds of
children show the way that our
views of love change throughout
our lives, shifting from a feeling
to a choice and back again. In
their young voices, the listener
is able to hear what it’s like to
have never been in love, to have
never been wronged or confused
by it. Their perspectives balance
Hill’s in a perfect combination
of innocence and understanding,
one that brings Miseducation
to an emotional peak. In this
interplay between the two sides
of love, the record proves that it
is, at its foundation, anything you
want it to be.
Clara Scott — Senior Arts Editor
‘Foxy Shazam’ — Foxy
Shazam
Foxy Shazam is an unlikely
anthem for the not-lonely.
If you were to read the lyrics
and guess what this album
sounded like, you think of
“dark,” “depressing” or even
“lonely.” But just a few minutes
into the record and it’s clear
those words couldn’t be further
from the truth. Foxy Shazam
is oozing with excitement, and
vocalist Eric Nally delivers his
insecure lyrics with unmatched
confidence.
There’s a paradox in the social
landscape of young people today:
We are attracted to confidence,
but find comfort in a shared sense
of anxiety. We are socialites that
constantly over-share our daily
lives, but the foundation of our
humor is self-deprecation. We
feel lonely, but that loneliness
brings us together. Foxy Shazam
is the musical manifestation of
this paradox. It’s a bundle of
worry and fear dressed in passion
and charisma — a dress that life
demands we wear when we feel
worried and afraid. Foxy Shazam
wears it well, with orchestral
flair that might be the musical
equivalent to makeup and high
heels.
Relatability unites listeners
on this album, making it a record
best enjoyed with company.
“Count Me Out” is lyrically a
dreary outlook on love, but the
chorus — “If this is what love is
all about / You can count me out”
— is not meant to be sang alone.
Nor is the rebellious chant, “We
are unstoppable / No, we can’t
be defeated,” on “Unstoppable.”
“Wanna-Be Angel” might be the
album’s most relatable track,
admitting the different faces
we put on for others are in fact
just masks. The album’s themes
strike close to home for many.
There are songs for everyone
on Foxy Shazam, and by that I
mean this album is literally for
everyone. It’s an album for the
people, a grandiose celebration
of
our
insecurity.
So
this
Valentine’s Day, whether you and
your Tinder date both had self-
deprecating jokes in your bios, or
you and your single friends just
need to jam, do it to the tune of
Foxy Shazam.
Dylan Yono — Daily Arts Writer
‘Modal Soul’ — Nujabes
If you are lucky enough to not
be lonely this Valentine’s Day, you
might be looking for some music to
soundtrack your experience. If so,
Modal Soul, an album of jazz-hop,
dreamy dance music, and soulful
soundscapes, is for you. Released
in 2005 by the late Nujabes, it
manages to not sound dated in
the slightest after almost 15 years.
His ability to make the artificial
feel even more real and profound
than the natural is matched only
by J Dilla: “Reflection Eternal”
possesses this quality, fractured but
smooth and organic. “Luv Sic Pt. 3”
is a nonpareil hip-hop masterpiece,
capturing the highs and lows of
love in a way that has the genre has
yet to match.
Nujabes
is
the
producer,
relying upon a collection of guests
to deliver verses over the non-
instrumental tracks. The guest
verses, while varying in quality, feel
like a collection of vignettes; they
are all the more impactful for their
slightly-amateurish feeling.
When you listen to Modal Soul,
you cannot help but be reminded of
the hidden beauty in our world that
is all too easy to overlook. It is an
album for appreciating where you
are in life — right here, right now.
It is profoundly soulful, somehow
colored in a way that makes it feel
like its own universe. It carries the
same feeling of being out-of-place,
the feeling that there is nothing
that could possibly more important
than your current experience,
brought by being with someone you
care deeply about.
Jonah Mendelson — Daily Arts
Writer
‘I Want You’ — Marvin
Gaye
There are albums about sex and
then there’s Marvin Gaye’s I Want
You. Ripe with provocation as jazz
interludes slowly drip down the
back of smoothly upbeat melodies,
Gaye’s voice is sticky sweet on top
of it all — the album is commonly
referred to as the “Janis” record,
a testament to all the passion
Gaye had for his wife. It is nearly
impossible to listen to this album
and not feel its heat. “I can’t wait
to touch you / Give you that feeling
/ Eat you up my dear,” he says in
“Soon I’ll Be Loving You Again”
with an unabashed yearning that
burns.
I Want You was the first project
recorded in Gaye’s personally
designed studio space, and its
creation was a largely social
affair. Surrounded by important
memorabilia and family members
who would drop in and out,
the recording process became
as intimate as the album itself,
personability and warmth infusing
themselves into the notes. I Want
You isn’t meant to be listened to
when one feels especially lonely.
In order to fully understand
the album’s impact, one has to
embrace
the
love
manifested
in every honeyed croon and in
every languid melody. One has to
imagine serenading the person
they love most as Gaye oftentimes
did, turning to sing lyrics directly
to Janis, both of them oftentimes
running to the apartment complex
resting above the studio in order to
“express some of the passion [Gaye]
was putting down on the record in
real time.”
Shima Sadaghiyani — Daily Arts
Writer
SHERRY CHEN / DAILY
‘Lovely Little Lonely’ —
The Maine
I’m going to be blunt here:
The Maine deserve so, so much
better. The 1975 are out here
writing bullshit pseudo-romantic
reflections
about
the
fucking
internet netting them headlining
positions on festivals, while The
Maine, albeit still selling out decent
sized rooms, maybe receive half
the recognition. It’s infuriating
because The Maine released a
record in 2017 that is an absolutely
(and
objectively!)
flawless
examination of love and loneliness.
That record is Lovely Little Lonely,
a perfect balancing of the lovely
and the lonely in relationships.
On opener “Don’t Come Down,”
the band expertly sets the album’s
tone with a pre-chorus declaring,
“To the lows and every high /
The hellos and the goodbyes /
In this moment, I could die with
you.” The highs are here, intricate
portraits of intimacy, but the lows
are bitingly universal. “Do You
Remember? (The Other Half of
23)” almost sneaks by as one of the
highs before you first hear vocalist
John O’Callaghan declare, “We
said forever / forever ago / Do you
remember?” Ouch.
Because this is an album
largely focused on nostalgia, I
figured Lovely Little Lonely leans
a little more into the “lonely”
category here, but if anything, it’s
an album about love. Love in all
of its forms — intimacy, perfect
memories, a failure of words to
even accurately capture love. Most
of all, The Maine have captured
the uncertainty of love, constantly
questioning our emotions, but
always asserting their validity:
“To all the dearly depressed and
broken hearted / The in-betweens
and all the torn ones too / You’re
not alone in how you’re feeling / I
wonder why nobody is asking you.”
What a perfectly lovely and
perfectly lonely mess we’ve gotten
ourselves into by being human.
Dominic Polsinelli — Daily Arts
Writer
‘Donuts’ — J Dilla
Hip
hop
typically
isn’t
considered a solitary genre. On
any given song, a rapper might
work with a number of other
rappers, producers and engineers.
The process takes an entire team
to manufacture radio smash-hits
and underground classics, so it is
unique when artists create entire
albums by themselves. J Dilla was
one of these unique artists.
J Dilla, the man behind songs
like “Runnin” by The Pharcyde and
“Stakes is High” by De La Soul, was
a prolific producer (and occasional
rapper), claimed by many to be
the most influential producers of
all time. Dilla beats have a certain
air about them. It’s almost like
they have a soul, like they live and
breathe to fit each listener.
In an interview with Amoeba
Records, The Red Hot Chili
Peppers’s Flea said J Dilla’s Ruff
Draft brought tears to his eyes when
he listened to the album walking
through Big Sur by himself. This
is noteworthy because Ruff Draft,
typically considered to be buoyant,
almost goofy album, affected Flea
in such a way that he was reduced
to tears. This same sentiment could
be applied to any of Dilla’s albums
because J Dilla was able to give his
music a sound that was uniquely
his, a sound that all listeners could
appreciate in their own way.
During the creation of Donuts,
Dilla was on his deathbed. He was
alone in the sense that only he knew
the struggles he was enduring.
While he was in the hospital, all
he had was his sampler, record
player and himself. He translated
his solitary struggle into an album,
something that everyone could
understand.
Because the entire album is
looped, listeners can begin at
any song and have their own
experience with Donuts, based on
how they prefer to listen to it. By
the time the album is complete,
they will be right back where
they started, having heard the
beauty that came from the tragedy
of Dilla’s struggle. This is why
Donuts, Ruff Draft and all of Dilla’s
work should be listened to alone.
Without a team, J Dilla had the
freedom to put exactly what he
envisioned into practice. His songs
were crafted by him alone and
made for people to listen to alone,
so they may experience the same
catharsis he did.
Jim Wilson — Daily Arts Writer
‘Geidi Primes’ — Grimes
I spent a lot of winter break
driving. At the time, my parents had
just moved to a small city right off
the edge of the freeway. In the gray
monochrome of late-December
Michigan skies, the unfinished
neighborhoods
and
gnarled,
marshy terrain surrounding my
new home were sacred and ghostly
things. They were unfamiliar to
me, and I to them, so I found myself
behind the wheel more days than
not, alone and letting my mind
wander, in order to try to establish
some kind of recognition with the
streets around me. The only album
that seemed appropriate to listen
to in those quiet moments of self-
reflection in my car, as landmarks
I didn’t acknowledge flickered by,
was Grimes’s debut album, Geidi
Primes.
Armed with warped melodies
and spectral falsettos, Geidi Primes
exudes an almost otherworldly air
of menace. Take opener “Caladan,”
piano chords rippling out like an
unstoppable flood into the airy
manifestation of the lyrics: “We all
haunt in the sky at night.” It reads
as a premonition for the rest of the
album, as stark and transcendental
as the surface of the moon.
There is not a single component
of Geidi Primes that doesn’t
embody some type of loneliness.
Guitar
chords
carefully
pick
their way through a mist of of
disembodied string melodies like
long-legged cranes. Synths splay
out like stars in the night sky,
hundreds upon hundreds of light
years away. Vocals are as formless
and as distant as the clouds that
etch themselves across the sky
at sundown. “Where are you
my darling?” she asks in “Venus
in Fleurs,” voice as solemn as a
funeral procession, layered chords
rattling bare like tree branches
standing with stooped shoulders
against roads that will never be
familiar enough.
Shima Sadaghiyani — Daily Arts
Writer
‘Blonde’ — Frank Ocean
Frank Ocean curated Blonde
in a hefty bout of self-exile,
his response to a public that
demanded more following Channel
Orange. This is fitting; the album
encapsulates a variety of emotions
across time, never consistently
content
or
misanthropic,
not
even in-between. It defies genre
classification as a seamless blend of
bare instrumentals, wispy techno-
touched vocals and fragmented
commentary. It finds cohesion
in such deconstructive energies.
This is down to the very title of
the album, Blonde, appearing
as “Blond” on the album cover,
eschewing any specifications of
gender or sexuuality. The helium-
infused intro track “Nikes” echoes
such a sentiment, Ocean hinting “I
got two versions” before the vocals
deepen for the outro.
Thematically, this album is
about social isolation. It follows
heartbreak, set backs, failure and
confusion with an inscrutable,
shaky
lens,
never
distinctly
melancholic or wistful. Blonde is
an effortless confusion where one
can finally recognize their failed
interactions with others. You’re
seen “like a UFO,” and feel that
“it’s quite alright to hate me now.”
During “Nights,” the heart of the
album, a beat switch-up at the
midpoint of the album’s runtime
reinforces the theme of duality;
Ocean is notably more melancholic
here, more straightforward. He’ll
tell people “shut the fuck up I
don’t want your conversation”
and that he’s unapologetically “so
low” and “dancing by myself.” But
he’s still confused with aspects of
his life — whether he’ll settle into
expectations of bisexual erasure
as discussed in “Seigfried,” or how
the bond between him and a lover
will unfold once it’s over in “White
Ferrari.”
Blonde soundtracks loneliness
in its self-awareness, its ability
to dig into the complexity of
feeling lonely beyond the desire
to connect with others. It tears
down the barriers we create for
ourselves by delving into a zone
of self exploration rather than
forcing classifications or blaming
anyone or anything.
Diana Yassin — Daily Arts
Writer
‘Sgt.
Pepper’s
Lonely
Hearts Club Band’ — The
Beatles
It’s admittedly very difficult
to write about what is widely
considered the greatest album of
all time, but I’m going to attempt
to do so anyway. The Beatles’
magnum opus Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely
Hearts Club Band is precisely
what you’d expect from its title
— a strange, carefree adventure
orchestrated
by
a
fantastical
version of the most popular group
of best friends ever. What better
cure for loneliness than a great set
of friends?
While only three tracks on the
album are principley tied to this
Lonely Hearts gimmick, the band
members still manage to curate
a magical landscape through
which they grant you a tour: John
brings you to an acid-ridden circus
act on “Being For The Benefit
of Mr. Kite!” George invites
you to embrace introspection
and the divine on “Within You
Without You” and Paul brings it
all back down to earth with the
lighthearted “When I’m Sixty-
Four.”
The album strikes the perfect
balance between goofy, relatable,
intellectual and self-aware —
characteristics that would make
for a group of friends primed to
make the lonelies disappear. When
the final chord of “A Day In The
Life” strikes, a strange feeling of
comfort and disbelief settles in, as
if you’d just touched down in reality
after a magnificent adventure
through the other-wordly and
magical realm of the Beatles at
their most complementary and
psychedelic.
Mike Watkins — Daily Music
Editor
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