a perfect 10 no skips. first cassette tape I ever bought. then the first cd I bought. still play it in my car all the time. so many moments, lines, and phrases from this album form my consciousness. I love how she pronounces words and letters, like how does anyone sing like this? it's wild. and her lyrics! matched only by Joni Mitchell, Fiona Apple, Lucinda Williams, and Joanna Newsom.
2d ago
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the way i could write a world-changing 33 1/3 about this album!!! oh my goodness. (this is the kind of album you write after achieving meteoric pop success if you are a serious person, in case any inescapably famous singer-songwriters are taking notes.)
but for real -- this album is at once a perfectly-preserved late 90s time capsule (neurotic, stylish, a hint of a sneer, but real hope underwriting it all) and also secretly about us, right now, in the year of our lord 2024. it's fierce and smart and darkly hilarious. it's about going to therapy and getting your dad to go to therapy, and then feeling weird imagining the kind of dark shit your dad must be working through in therapy. it’s about trying to search for the divine while watching a bunch of idiot rich people get influenced into paying $2000 for like past life regression readings or whatever and feeling weird about the idea that they’re searching for the same divine you are, because if they’re looking for it too then it can’t possibly be the real thing, can it? it’s about being the bright young thing who wrote jagged little pill and suddenly finding all of your interpersonal relationships totally unworkable because everybody is too blinded by the brightness of the young thing who wrote jagged little pill to let you also be a human being. it’s about feeling so old already at 24 and looking back on your teenage self at a tender distance as if those days were a lifetime ago, as if you’re actually any wiser now. it’s about wondering if anything you will ever do is ever, ever going to be good enough. alanis’s lyrics here are biting and precocious and the songs are just so chatty (witness “front row” in which she layers four entire extra verses behind the chorus, effectively writing a whole bonus song because the situation is just too complicated to explain in four minutes) and they’re talking about all the same things we talk about now, in the same way we talk about them now, except without all the self-serious posturing so many of our contemporary songwriters fall prey to. (“the couch” is somehow both the most earnest and the least corny song anybody has ever written about therapy.) i know this album must have hit properly when it came out because it was the only thing my mom played in our house for the entire calendar year of 1999, but it feels so preternaturally tailor-made for the moment we’re in now that i can’t believe it hasn’t had one of those improbable tiktok renaissances or whatever that seem to keep happening. highly recommend a revisit or a first acquaintance if you haven’t made one.
Feb 6, 2024
i love joni mitchell and i love this album. bought it for $1 at an atlanta goodwill when i was like 15 and it changed my life, especially "Harry's House / Centerpiece" <3 if you like steely dan / chemtrails-era lana / jazzy domesticity / 70s los angeles you should listen to this record fyi..............
Jan 26, 2024
Let the choir sing in rejoice, Joni Mitchell is back on Spotify folks. And while some music heads might be tripping over themselves to stream the legendaric Blue 1971 album, you can catch me at the sonic jazz bar that is Both Sides Now. You might be familiar with this re-recorded track and album from the iconic Emma Thompson scene in 2001’s Christmas cult classic Love Actually but this album is so much more. If you’re a jazz enjoyer, or maybe not so into Americana folk, and wanna know what all the Joni-craze is about: this is the album for you.
I recommend listening no earlier than dusk and maybe after a little bit of a hard day.
Mar 24, 2024
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I can legitimately say I would not be the same person I am now if I had never seen Amelie. there's this episode of This American Life called "Spark Bird" - the bird that first sparks someone's interest in/obsession with birding - well I like to refer to "spark movies" and Amelie was it for me. it showed me what cinema could do. I had never seen a movie that encapsulated my worldview but also how I wanted the world to be and look. seeing it as a teenager probably had a lot to do with it - the longing, the quirkiness - but the visual/artist part of me realized movies could do and express things I never thought possible and never had words or images for. it was like a floodgate opened, it was my gateway drug to more movies, art, music, and the way I experienced myself in the world. it was so formative for me it's like my brain soaked it up and I can't help that it's always there permeating everything with more whimsy, flair, and color ✨
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