Six Picks: August
happy august! six picks has returned - here's a refresher:
Music is a key part of healing and self-soothing for me.
I'm like a musical encyclopedia sometimes. I love reading and watching interviews from artists sharing how they created their art. I’ll try to mix up some different genres to fit all of your tastes, but keep an open mind. ;) welcome to my musical brain!
here are this month’s six picks.
it is what
it is
- jenna raine
“It's not the end of the world, there's always light where it burns. Just remember the words, and it goes like this:
It is what it is, what it is, what it is, what it is!”
Hey! Lemons make lemonade! Okay, only sometimes - but if that idea resonates with you, then this song is yours.
Sometimes our struggles can be so soul-sucking that we need to take a beat and just surrender. If you’re ready to surrender to the chaos, you can join Jenna! And she gets it, she’ s only 19!
why is this resonating with me right now?
I’m not in the kind of place to make lemonade every single day, but sometimes I really do need this upbeat, fun reminder that I’m not alone in what I’m struggling with - and that I can surrender even more. It is what it is!
I know, in my heart, that I try my best within my own locus of control, to be good and do good. I can’t control the crap storm that still hits! I can only do so much, before I’ve gotta let it go.
jealous of my friends
- bea miller
“I know you’re not supposed to say it, and honestly I hate it, but I get jealous of my friends, sometimes.”
I’ve always deeply appreciated Bea’s brutal honesty (see: THAT BITCH by Bea Miller for an extremely necessary, ice-cold shower). Especially with this song, it feels like she’s taking a very vulnerable experience that causes people a lot of shame - and turning that discomfort into a conversation.
We all compare ourselves to others, but what happens when we envy the people we love? Bea asks us a rhetorical question, but we should really reflect on it: “Is it just me?”
I think not!
why is this resonating with me right now?
I’m in a massive transition in my life: my summer job is wrapping up and I’ve completed my undergrad. I have so many questions about who I am, and it’s easy to see other people who have already lined up jobs or other “next steps” in their lives. I’ve done more rewriting of my life in the past year than I ever anticipated.
I think I just need this song’s normalization of the way we’re socialized to compare (especially for women), rather than trusting the process or celebrating where we are! Plus, I love a good alt-pop-rock moment.
wendy
- maisie peters
“We could live off of magic & maybes, but I know the girl that you want and it scares me. Behind every lost boy - there’s always a Wendy.”
This song is a beautiful cautionary tale.
Sometimes we get ourselves stuck in patterns, and often they’re patterns that we have seen or witnessed in other people around us. For this song, Maisie calls out her pattern of chasing “happy ever after” with a lost boy, through a familiar Peter Pan story.
“In life, you have all these different paths, right? And it’s not as simple as ‘that’s the right one and that’s the wrong one. And sometimes, you look at a path and you think, like, I could take that and it could make me happy. But this song is about having the tiniest amount of wisdom and the tiniest amount of fortitude to know that whilst you could take it, you shouldn’t… [it’s about] how awfully easy it is to sleepwalk into a life that shouldn’t be yours.”
why is this resonating with me right now?
Well… sobbing and screaming “WHAT ABOUT MY WINGS! WHAT ABOUT WENDY!!” with a massive crowd of people in Toronto was incredibly healing, I’ve gotta say. And all I’ll add to that, is that I’m tired of my own pattern of chasing lost boys. Wendy is tired.
the hype
- sigrid
“I know why you wanna talk, cause you only call me when I’ve done something extraordinary.”
“We’ve all been there, when you wonder if you’ve lived up to the expectations. I thought about the term Hype, in love and at work, and the questions you ask yourself of did you really live up to the hype.” Umm, can I at least * pretend * like I don’t relate?
“I’ve probably brought that into my private life, and all those things is what Hype is about. We’ve wrapped it in ethereal melodies and bass, synth and drum-heavy production, but I love how there’s so much strength in my vocals – there’s power in being vulnerable!”
There’s power in my vocals when I’m screaming this in my car, too. Twinsies!
why is this resonating with me right now?
I don’t think we talk about how long it can take to recover from being put on a pedestal by someone. I’ve experienced it in different areas of my life, and while I was grateful that these people saw something special in me - I felt like I couldn’t mess up or be truly vulnerable. To not have the answers.
I haven’t had the answers for over a year now, and the people who can still hold space for me and love me are now my priority. They stick around when you don’t have it all figured out. We all deserve that kind of love.
gardens
- parisalexia, mistadc
“Feels like I'm not confined to limitations like space and time. I've been expanding my bandwidth to something immeasurable. Take nothing for granted and watch your life become pleasurable.”
Let’s have a STUNNING r&b/soul moment, friends!
The vocals in this song are stunning, but the messaging is incredibly ethereal, too. I don’t know much about the background of these artists, except that I now love them both, and will be keeping my eye out for other gems like this one.
Honestly, there’s nothing more to say here except you’re welcome for providing your new groovy-vibes-dance-party-in-the-kitchen song.
Why is this resonating with me right now?
Music like this song is so critical to calming my nervous system and self-soothing. Just as I type this, a barista near by keeps aggressively grabbing a pile of forks and the noise is making me cringe. But I can’t help but notice that I’ve been less bothered by that noise while typing this paragraph and listening to this song than I was when listening to these other Six Picks songs. Music is POWERFUL!
going yet!
- maris
“I'm standing on the broken edge in between of what I want and what I need. Can't see the road ahead - I don't know where I'm going yet.”
OHHH BOY! The grand finale that I’ve been waiting for. Think Whitney Houston and “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” - but with the theme of having no idea what you’re doing with your life!
And does the universe need this kind of message, or what? None of us know what the heck we’re doing! And there are no right choices, truly, there are just choices. But naturally, we spend a lot of time thinking about what other choices could have been made, and how that would have made a difference in our lives.
And, as for the future, most of us have no idea where we’re going. Might as well dance our way there?
why is this resonating with me right now?
I spent several months, last fall, calling my parents from my student apartment “with nothing new to say” (see song lyrics), because I was so uncomfortable in my own company. I have evolved so much since then, but there’s still a lot of work to do. And life definitely could do me a solid and give me some momentum soon!
So, yep - I DON’T KNOW WHERE I’M GOING YET! And until this song came out, I truly wasn’t feeling very joyful about that. I play this song at least once a day, right now, as a reminder that I can, indeed, romanticize and enjoy this transition time in my life.
…Or, at least, try!
