The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Monday, October 7, 2019 — 5A

“You can never publish my love,” Rogue Wave chants, in the 
song that the title of this series riffs on. Maybe that’s true, and we 
can never quite account for our love on paper or in print, but we 
sure can try. That’s what this series is devoted to: publishing our 
love. Us, the Arts section of The Michigan Daily, talking 
about artists and their work, some of the people and things 
we love the most. Perhaps these are futile approximations 
of love for the poet who told us we deserve to be heard, the 
director who changed the way we see the world, the movie 
with the script we’ve memorized. But who ever said futile 
can’t still be beautiful?
In maybe the most vulnerable stage of my life, I had 
clear, simple mantras. Sometimes I embraced the simple 
truth: “I’ve got some issues that nobody can see / And 
all of these emotions are pouring out of me.” When I was 
hopeful, “One day / This will be my world.” When I was 
hopeless, “All along / I guess I’m meant to be alone.”
My pursuit of happiness was spent in the Cudi zone.
Few artists have had a footprint so large on our current 
era of hip hop, or an influence so quick to manifest — 
other sad rappers began following in his footsteps just 
as soon as he’d paved the path. Kanye West’s 808s & 
Heartbreak is often credited with ushering in an era of 
melancholic songwriting over glamorous production. 
However, A Kid Named Cudi came first — and just as 
it began making waves, West brought in Cudi to give 
creative input on the upcoming 808s. The superstardom 

of artists like Drake and Travis Scott were to follow.
The reason I give Kid Cudi the title “Man On The Moon” is 
to make it clear for whom my love is published. Not the 2013 
Cudi releasing the middling Indicud and disappointing my 
14-year-old self when he put on an appalling performance at my 
first-ever concert. Not the 2015 Cudi tweeting “Poopé Fiasco” 
is a dweeb. Not even the 2018 Kid Cudi co-creating KIDS SEE 
GHOSTS with Kanye West, although I do have unpublished love 

for that collaboration. This is about Cudi of A Kid Named Cudi 
mixtape and Man On The Moon album series fame, hip hop’s 
heartfelt superstar in ’08, ’09 and ’10. Kid Cudi, lord of the sad 
and lonely.
When I was in eighth grade, all was doom and gloom. My 
main schtick was bad posture and having no friends. Instead of 
other people, I made eye contact with my sneakers as I walked 
through school, shoulders hunched, memorizing every crease 
and stain. I look back on that time the same way I look at an 
episode of “South Park”: funny to watch and talk about, but 
alarming when you start to think about it. I’m happy now, all 
smiles and surrounded by good people. Still, there was a time 
when Cudi was the only voice I let in.
As a lover of clever rhymes and writing, I am all about the 
roundabout: I could dissect the dual meaning in lyrics from MF 
DOOM or Del the Funky Homosapien forever. I wasn’t always 
like that, though. Being a troubled teenager struggling to make 

sense of the puzzling social dynamics at play, I wished so badly 
for a presence I could understand, someone to understand me. 
Only Kid Cudi could capture my despair and lay it bare on the 
mic. People confused me. Cudi didn’t. I found comfort in his 
clarity. “They all couldn’t see / The little bit of sadness in me” 
spoke to me so lucidly.
Man On The Moon: The End Of Day and Man On The Moon II: 
The Legend Of Mr. Rager were not critically hailed on release, 
and some of the writing has not aged well. “Dudes who 
critique your clothes are most gay” and “I want to kiss 
you on your space below your navel at / The place that 
you keep neat, so moist, like a towelette” were always 
terrible lines. Even so, much of the lyricism on Man On 
The Moon will remain iconic. The direct lyrics envelop 
an intrinsic loneliness. For me, “I’m trapped in my mind, 
baby / I don’t think I’ll ever get out” resonated with my 
sustained sadness. But “They gon’ judge me anyway / 
So whatever” can also touch someone that’s just going 
through a low moment.
Raw lyrics alone are not the key to Cudi’s charm. 
It’s also the work of the production talent surrounding 
him: Emile, Plain Pat and of course Kanye West (among 
others). The glitzy beats backing his voice are a key 
component in conjuring Cudi’s musical mood. But if 
there were a standout element of his sound to credit for 
becoming hip hop’s hero of sadness, it’s Cudi’s voice. 
His humming has been featured on every Kanye project 
since 808s for good reason: Cudi’s voice is an instrument 
no less powerful than a drum or a synth.
Since I’ve grown older, separated by years from my 
eighth-grade affliction, Cudi fell out of rotation for 
me. Listening to his music brings back frightfully vivid 
memories. Tears staining my pillow every night. Staring at my 
phone wishing anyone would text me. The creases and stains 
of my sneakers over the ugly tile of my middle school hallway. 
The thing about mental illness, though, is that once you’ve 
developed one, it becomes a part of you forever — even when 
it’s dormant, the looming risk of relapse remains. It wasn’t until 
I left for college, and that soul-sucking monolith of depression 
began bearing over me once again, that Cudi would return to 
regular listening. “All along / I guess I’m meant to be alone” hit 
me harder the second time around.
Now, feeling better than ever before but barely a year removed 
from my last low phase, listening to Kid Cudi feels like treading in 
dangerous waters. The electrifying Cudi connection clicks back 
nearly instantaneously when I hear “The Prayer” or “Heaven At 
Nite.” I’ll always have love for the Man On The Moon, gratitude 
for the years keeping me company when nobody else did. I’ve 
just accepted that love might best remain at a healthy distance.

Publish Our Love: To Kid Cudi, the Man On The Moon

DYLAN YONO
Daily Arts Writer

PUBLISH OUR LOVE

The cover of Angel Olsen’s newest record 
All Mirrors defines its mythology well: Olsen 
stares at the viewer intently, against a hazy 
grey background swathed in dark fur. She 
looks like she’s about to speak, but is holding 
her words. There’s something in her eyes, but 
it’s hard to tell quite what it is. It’s like we’re 
looking at her through a movie camera, some 
blurred glass of emotion and context that isn’t 
easy to put a finger on. The music of All Mirrors 
is just as pleasantly evasive — cinematic, 
even. Each song seems like you’ve heard it 
before somewhere, as if it was playing in the 
background all along only to be pulled to the 
forefront of the listener’s mind. The album is 
Olsen at her best, capturing the nostalgia of a 
time in the past, all the while looking forward 
into the future. 
For those familiar with Olsen’s music, it’s 
clear she is already a luminary in the indie 
music scene, merging the traditions of her 
genre with a taste for innovative production 
and arrangements. All Mirrors embodies 
these traits at their highest function, bringing 
everything listeners have always loved about 
her to a new level, one that echoes the chaos 
and confusion of our time. She somehow 
makes the deepest sadness beautiful without 
watering down its importance. Olsen is a 
master of emotion in the purest sense. She 
harnesses the power and vulnerability of 
losing a lover, losing your grip and losing 
your mind with thoughtful deliberation, 
never allowing the listener to bask in their 
preoccupations for too long before turning 
onto another path. 
The two lead singles released ahead of the 
record are perfect examples of this attention 
to detail and mood. “All Mirrors,” the album’s 
title track, is a ballad full of phantasm and 
intensity, one that could easily be hummed in 
the darkness of a listener’s room or screamed 
out of a car on the freeway all the same. That 
duality is what makes Olsen’s music so intense 
in the first place; the fact that it captures the 
power of interiority without bringing it all 
the way outside, instead offering that choice 
to the listener themselves. It’s a reclamation 

of emotion as something more than weakness. 
No, emotion isn’t weakness in Olsen’s hands 
— it’s a tool to wield the utmost strength. In 
her eyes, in her music, feeling is the thing that 
makes us powerful, lets us take control of our 
lives and narratives in a way that plain logic 
never could. 
“Lark,” the other single, captures this 
reclamation in plain terms. The accompanying 
video shows Olsen as she leaves a relationship 
only to walk through the night into the sunset, 
a metaphor for renewal and loss all at once. 
With a hushed tone, the songwriter begins 
with an admittance of hope: “To forget you is 
to hide, there’s still so much left to recover.”
If only we could start again, pretending we 
don’t know each other,” she sings, breaking the 
listener’s heart only to build it up again as she 
breaks out into a loud and triumphant chorus. 
“All we’ve done here is blind one another,” 
Olsen offers to a lover no longer there. It’s 
impossible to get through All Mirrors without 
finding lines like this scattered throughout 
each song, to feel her words reach inside you 
and twist your heart with careful hands. 
Both “Lark” and “All Mirrors” show the 
sharp intensity of Olsen’s capabilities, but she 
is also adept at the softer side of expression, 
as seen in one of the record’s closing tracks, 
“Endgame.” This song follows the rest of 
the album like a sneak attack on the already 
vulnerable listener, soothing them with 
Olsen’s soft and classically beautiful voice 
after the exertion of earlier tracks. “I needed 
more, needed more, from you,” she whispers, 
like a lounge singer in an old movie hidden 
behind curtains. 
You can just imagine her on a stage in a 
velvet gown, the strings of her arrangement 
playing in the background with a hazy glow. 
It’s the cinematic quality of each song that 
makes them so special, like her album cover 
and her approach in general. For Olsen, songs 
are not just songs — with each word, each 
lilting string, each blast of synthesized sound, 
she is creating an encapsulated experience for 
her listener. She doesn’t need to make a movie 
to express what she wants to with her music, 
because each track does it for her. Listening 
to All Mirrors is like watching a million little 
films in your head, as each note, heavy with 
meaning, plays on.

Angel O.’s latest dream

CLARA SCOTT
Senior Arts Editor

ALBUM REVIEW

There’s a scene early on in the pilot for “Almost 
Family” where Julia Bechley (Brittany Snow, 
“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”) meets up with some 
random from a dating app. The date isn’t going so 
well. She has to think quick. She just goes for it. She 
tells him she wants to have sex. It works and they 
do. Later on in the episode, she finds out he might 
actually be her brother. 
So, she hooks up with him 
again. That’s kind of all 
you need to know about 
how the pilot went.
The 
premise 
of 
“Almost Family” is both 
serious 
and 
unsettling. 
Overworked 
lawyer 
Edie 
Palmer 
(Megalyn 
Echikunwoke, “House of 
Lies”) is having marriage 
problems. Former child-
athlete 
superstar 
Roxy 
Doyle 
(Emily 
Osment, 
“Young & Hungry”) has anger problems. Julia 
is the ignored assistant to her father, the world-
renowned fertility doctor, Dr. Leon Bechley 
(Timothy Hutton, “Leverage”). But all of those 
problems pale in comparison when it’s discovered 
that Dr. Bechley fathered hundreds of children 
by secretly using his own sperm to impregnate 
patients. At least they should. But somehow they 
don’t, which only makes the basis for “Almost 
Family” that much more disgusting.
Once 
Dr. 
Bechley 
gets 
confronted, 
he 
conveniently has a heart attack and is put in the 
hospital. As her father’s assistant, Julia hands out 
hundreds of DNA test kits to calm the scandal 
down. Edie and Roxy both come in to get one. 
They quickly realize that they’re probably sisters. 
What’s strange is that this isn’t explicitly said, 
but implied. It’s as if the show forgot to confirm 
that the three women are sisters. Which is even 
more bizarre, because that’s half the plot of the 
show. None of the women really engage with this 

information. It isn’t talked about except in one 
scene and is bypassed quickly.
What makes “Almost Family” most difficult to 
watch is that it seems to want to be a character-
driven show. This is a huge problem because the 
premise is so compelling. What Dr. Bechely does is 
so heinous and awful that the characters ought to 
be more furious. But when the news breaks, Julia 
dismisses it as media gossip. Edie is more confused 
than angry when she finds out. Roxy’s parents 
don’t seem to be too concerned about their familial 
situation, 
but 
instead 
hire a lawyer to ensure 
they’ll be compensated. 
The 
characters 
aren’t 
even 
very 
interesting. 
Despite having a talented 
cast, each character feels 
archetypal and flat.
The 
biggest 
problem 
the show runs into is that 
it’s premise is horribly 
revolting. A man violated 
the privacy of hundreds 
of 
women. 
He 
ruined 
families. It’s a very big 
deal. But the show doesn’t seem to want to engage 
with the problem very much. I can’t tell if it 
wants to be a comedy or a drama — or if it’s just 
a very poorly executed dramedy — but the show 
demonstrates a clear lack of consideration given 
the severity of its premise. The way the fertility 
scandal takes a backseat to unfulfilled character 
development makes me question how dedicated the 
show is to its plot. If the show is not committed to 
this plot, they probably shouldn’t be trying it at all.
Each step of the way, “Almost Family” is 
conventional and predictable. Yet it still manages 
to fall short of meeting the most basic expectations. 
It can’t even seem to follow through on the promise 
of its plot. Ultimately, the show is weighed down 
by uninteresting characters and a confused sense 
of self. If the show were more self-aware — or 
even more organized — there may be something 
slavagable here. However, there’s no “almost” about 
any of this. “Almost Family” is most definitely off 
to a confounding and disappointing start.

‘Almost Family’ is banal and
unfulfilling and also strange

MAXWELL SCHWARZ
Daily Arts Writer

TV REVIEW

FOX

Almost Family

Pilot

Fox

Wednesdays @ 9:00 p.m.

Now, feeling better than ever before 
but barely a year removed from my 
last low phase, listening to Kid Cudi 
feels like treading in dangerous 
waters

All Mirrors

Angel Olsen

Jagjaguwar

DESIGN BY ROSEANNE CHAO

