Okay Kaya drawn by Jessica Ganis, 2022, permission via CC ASA 4.0 license. Cropped to fit this blog post.
Note to readers: this blog contains brief mentions of sex, pedophilia, arson, drug abuse, gun violence, involuntary commitment, and more while discussing music that covers such themes.
Listeners now may not recognize how old the concept of an album as a narrative device is. The history of the concept album is murky, the history of strictly narrative albums with characters, setting, and a climax are murkier. Some say, including literary review writers at the University of Connecticut, that “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” by The Beatles started the idea. Paul McCartney (alongside Boston-based radio station WERS) traces the Beatles’ inspiration to Frank Zappa’s “Freak Out!” released in 1966.
Album cover for “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” by The Beatles.
Fiona Sturges at The Independent goes further, saying that commercially available song collections including a broader narrative may have originated with Woody Guthrie in the 1940s. If you consider musicals or opera as part of this history, you can go back centuries. Even in spite of its unclear origins, the narrative album continues to be a significant and growing part of contemporary music.
Released in March of this year, “Shy at First” by Cootie Catcher is a nostalgic electronic twist on the indie pop formula. This delightful venture into indietronica is overflowing with earnestness. Starting from the name of the album alone, we are greeted with the idea of people figuring out how to be people. The album touches on unspoken things that bother us when trying to navigate our personal relationships and explores these themes with a joyful through line.
Forget-me-not flower clusters. Image by Sophia Dutton-Rodkin
We all have our good and bad days. Some days, you feel like skipping down the street or singing in the shower while others make you feel like the whole world is against you.
Oftentimes when I’m feeling the former, I like to listen to happy and upbeat music. I like to be embraced and supported by similar energies. A good example of this would be “Walking On Sunshine” by Katrina & The Waves.
When it comes to feeling the latter, what should one listen to? If someone is sad and down in the dumps, should they listen to “Washing Machine Heart” by Mitski? Likewise if someone is upset or angry, should they listen to “Bleed the Freak” by Alice in Chains? Would it be better to listen to someone happy and upbeat to facilitate that emotion?
Two classic Russian books, "Dunno on the Moon" and "Alice in Wonderland." Image by Sophia Dutton-Rodkin
Whether English or Spanish or Swahili or Japanese, learning a new language is always going to be a challenge. One of the best ways to help with language learning is to immerse oneself in media content with that language being the primary.
