Was there ever really any doubt? Has any other band in the history of rock and roll remained so steadfastly devoted to the guitar/bass/drums vernacular of primal, original rock and roll music?

Those hands in the picture above are my daughter’s hands, and she’s locked in with about 47,000 other people in her devotion to the miracle that is AC/DC in 2026.

I say miracle, because this is a band whose first album came out in 1975. 51 years ago.

While Angus Young certainly looks his age, he neither acts like it nor plays like it. Find me a guitarist working live today who can solo for over 20 minutes straight and still keep an audience enthralled, and I’ll show you … well, Angus Young. Because there is no one else.

There will, of course, be those who say he’s sloppy now and misses notes. What they miss is that he has always been sloppy, and has always missed notes. He’s a blues player. Raw is real.

The set list was full of surprise and delight. While songs like “Back in Black, “Hell’s Bells, “You Shook Me All Night Long,” and “For Those About To Rock” were inevitable, I wouldn’t have guessed in a million years that they’d play “Riff Raff,” “Sin City,” or “Jailbreak.” And opening with “If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It)?” Genius.

Are there question marks about this band? Of course. Brian Johnson isn’t the singer he used to be. But his voice still sounds great, he’s a tremendous performer, and he’s clearly having an absolute ball up there. You have fun, because he’s having fun. And how about nephew Steve Young? Close your eyes, and it’s Malcom up there. 100%. Now, whether we’ll ever get more new songs of the kind only Malcolm could compose, who knows. But live, nephew Stevie’s got it covered. As to Phil Rudd, unfortunately, he couldn’t make the tour — but thankfully, not for the reasons you’d think. He’s actually home caring for a partner with cancer. But it’s him drumming on “Power Up,” the most recent AC/DC album. Live, the band pulled in “Shot in the Dark” and “Demon Fire” from that album, and they worked admirably in the set.

But let’s be honest, it’s about the hits. And good lord, are there a lot of them. In addition to the songs I’ve already mentioned above, we were treated to “Shot Down in Flames,” “Have a Drink on Me,” “Highway to Hell,” “Shoot to Thrill,” “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,” “High Voltage,” “Let There Be Rock, “Whole Lotta Rosie,” and “TNT.” I mean, it was awesome.

Does it matter that all these songs were written decades ago? It does not. A great song is timeless, and to have Angus Young still be the one performing them is a blessing upon us all.

You have to remember, Angus is coming from the blues. You play until you die. Howlin’ Wolf was as dangerous at his last gig as he was at his first. Did the Wolf have to sit down sometimes? He did. Did he need paramedic support backstage? He did. Was he doing dialysis back home in between shows? He was. But was he the baddest man on the planet when he delivered the goods on stage? He was, until almost literally his dying day.

And that’s what rock and roll is actually all about.

I’m going to take a seeming left turn for a moment, and share a quote:

“The United States, in particular, has elevated youth worship and a corresponding death denial to the status of religion, a development inextricable from that of an individualist, image-obsessed, consumerist society ruled by perpetual capital growth.”

That’s from a book review in the New York Times, but it’s pertinent to this argument. Rock and Roll, in its way, started as a “teen” thing. But it was never meant to stay locked in that box, and as “youth culture” matured, so did its music. But with the rise of ever-more virulently exploitive forms of capitalism, it’s become standard fare to first remind people of what they don’t have, and then sell them something they don’t need to try and feel like they do have what they don’t. And youth is, of course, the always available target, because once we don’t have it anymore, we’ll never have it again.

And so, as rock music continues to be swallowed whole by the capitalist maw, we see a forced culting of the young happening all over again.

But for the true rock and rollers who know it’s ultimately about the blues, the real heroes will always be those who last. Those who don’t embrace death, but rather, stare it down. Who greet the grim reaper not with a bottle of whiskey and a needle, but with an SG and a Marshall.

In 1974, the Rolling Stones gave us “It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll (But I Like It)”; a song that’s rightly been canonized as definitive. But don’t forget, it was only a year later that AC/DC came out with “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ’n’ Roll),” and for my money, the latter is by far the better song.

You won’t hear it in concert, of course, because the band, and Brian Johnson in particular, refuse to play it, out of respect for it being Bon Scott’s signature song.

Bon Scott loomed over the proceedings at Levi’s Stadium all the same, with a surprising majority of the set coming from his era as AC/DC’s vocalist. Ultimately, it’s a testament to the band’s sound being bigger than any one person, that the songs carry on even as the line-ups change.

Of course, the Stones still have Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. But, let’s be honest, Keith isn’t doing much anymore. Mick, today, is to the Stones what Angus is to AC/DC, the one constant link to an unimpeachable rock and roll lineage. But while Mick’s otherworldly fitness regimen has kept him vibrant into what is now his 83rd year, and while his voice — while considerably more weathered — is still remarkable, he has matured into a peculiar kind of intimacy where his best performances today are coming in increasingly smaller confines. In other words, he seems to sound best the closer you are to him.

Not so, Angus Young and the rest of the AC/DC boys. They’re still delivering performances that sound huge. Enormous. Earthquake-level rock and roll. Pyrotechnics were minimal at best. A lowered bell for Hell’s Bells. The cannons for the ending of “For Those About To Rock.” And the ubiquitous large screens for the close-ups — mainstays at any modern arena show. But that’s about it. Other than those minimal additions, the band relied on exactly what they’ve always relied on. Great songs delivered with guitar, bass, drums, and voice.

You can be forgiven for feeling a little lost when you survey the current rock and roll landscape. Where are the bands? Where are the songs? Where is that pocket; that rock and roll groove?

I’m here to tell you, it’s all pretty much right where it always was. With AC/DC.

I have seen the future of rock and roll, and it is … AC/DC. was originally published in No Wrong Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This is a different kind of “Dear John” letter.

This one is written to John Hammond Jr.

Dear John,

I already miss you so much. For as long as I’ve been alive, there has been … John Hammond, Jr.

This has been a consoling truth for a very long time.

It’s a little harder to be consoled tonight.

If you were a young white boy in love with the country blues in the mid 1980’s, and you wanted to believe there might be a future in this music for you, you didn’t have a lot of north stars to sight by.

Particularly if you wanted to play slide guitar.

There was Roy Rogers, who put out “Chops not Chaps” in 1985. And there were those solo tracks on the Johnny Winter releases for Alligator. And, of course, John Mooney had put out “Comin’ your Way” in 1979. Good pickins, but slim ones.

But then there was you.

This thing with you for me, with you, was your courage. You didn’t play note-for-note versions like all the “experts” you can find on YouTube today. And you didn’t play clean or pretty. You just played hard as hell, with a kineticism that was so powerful. And you sang your heart out, and it wasn’t note-for-note or clean or pretty either. Your singing was part of your guitar playing, and your guitar playing was part of your singing, and it was all so rhythmic. That was the thing above all else, you just seemed to deeply understand that a National is as much a percussion instrument as it is a guitar. That country blues music is rhythm music. You helped me make sense of Bukka White, Son House, Fred McDowell, and Robert Johnson. You helped me understand that you had to be all the way brave, or nothing at all. There was no alternative: you either went for it with everything you had or you didn’t bother. And you used everything you had, your hands, your feet, your voice, your soul. Watching you play, you were like a marionette getting pulled in all directions at once; just a dervish of energy. It was beautiful, and it gave me hope.

It was really Roy Rogers and John Mooney that led me to Blind Pig Records in the first place. I’ve told that story many times elsewhere, so I won’t retell it here. But that first “Preacher Boy and the Natural Blues” record was really a culmination of so many moments that had brought me to the place where I was able to write songs and make an album for a record label. I didn’t have to prepare it from a listening standpoint; I just had to write and then play.

But for the second album, which would become “Gutters and Pews,” I knew I had a lot of growing to do, and that meant I had a lot of listening to do. That’s when John Hammond Jr. came back into my life in a big way.

You’d helped me through my teenage years, trying to learn a music I had no real rights to learn, trying to find a voice I didn’t know I had, trying to develop a style that brought together everything I loved and wanted to be. And you helped me, through your example, to make it through that difficult sophomore record.

I could have desperately used you in 1998 and 2000, when I was making “Crow” and “The Devil’s Buttermilk,” respectively. Because by that time, I was lost. I didn’t know how to get from where I was musically and creatively to where I needed to be. I’d developed a sound that was starting to zero in on the authenticity I was after, and I’d settled into the one thing my voice seemed suited to do. And I’d written a handful of songs that hinted at something promising. But I wasn’t holding it all together, and I started to lose my ability to hold myself together.

For “Crow,” I made the mistake of moving away from the National, thinking it was constraining me. I was so wrong. So very wrong. But the thing is, I’d let John Hammond Jr. slip too far from my ears, and I suddenly didn’t know any better.

I started to crawl my way back a bit with “The Devil’s Buttermilk”, but while I got more in touch with my guitar again, I was still too far away from the physicality, the kineticism, the raw power that you represented. I was wandering in the desert, falling further and further from the lessons of my gods.

Eagle-Eye Cherry saved me at that point by taking me on tour. I performed in nearly 20 different countries as his support act, in rooms ranging from 700–800 people to 3,000–4,000 people. And I did it all solo acoustic. And you better believe I leaned on John Hammond Jr. hard then, because you have to be a special kind of somebody to hold a huge room with just yourself and a guitar. It was those first lessons, coming back to save me again — give it every single thing you’ve got, or don’t bother.

In 2001, you released “Wicked Grin,” which pretty much buttoned up for me so much of what I’d been trying to do with “The Devil’s Buttermilk,” which was to answer the question that had been driving me since my earliest days: how can I write like Dylan and sound like Willie Johnson? Well, John Hammond singing Tom Waits is pretty damn close, and that album stood as a true proof-of-concept of what I’d been evangelizing for, for a long time — that country blues was a SONGWRITER’S genre; the style wasn’t enough, the sound wasn’t enough, the look wasn’t enough. You had to have the songs. Sleepy John Estes had the songs. Bukka White had the songs. Skip James had the songs. “Wicked Grin” had the songs.

From that point forward, I wasn’t going to make the mistake again of letting John Hammond Jr. get too far out of my hearing. My 2004 album “Demanding to be Next” was pretty much as close to directly emulating you as I’d yet attempted. And that desire to walk that particular road would stay with me for a long ol’ while, even through the years where I stayed away from music to earn an MFA, write poetry, get married, and have a child.

When I came back to music, it was in keeping with that desire that the album I announced my return with was The National Blues. Me and my National, just like you taught me. That album was followed by Country Blues. More of your influence. I even strapped on the ol’ neck rack and played some harmonica. John Hammond Jr. again.

And so now, here I am, and here we are, and it’s 2026, and you have quite literally shuffled off this mortal coil, and I, like everyone I know, feel so bereft.

What I am trying to remember is that the energy that coursed through your body, mind, heart, and soul was never born, and it never dies. It only migrates and transforms. And inside every single one of us who loved your music, there is now a bit more of that energy, that kineticism. And what is left to us now is to keep honoring the music you loved so dearly, and to keep bringing it into the world. Keep listening, keep sharing, keep writing, keep performing.

I know what my marching orders are. Do it with everything I’ve got, or don’t bother.

John Hammond Jr, I will bother.

Deep bows to you, dear John. Thank you for everything, and then some.

Yours,

Preacher Boy

Dear John Hammond Jr. was originally published in No Wrong Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I have been a mendicant at the altar of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska for a very, very long time, and I was busy preaching the gospel of its 4-track majesty long before it became cool to do so. Long before “Americana” became a programming format. Long before “Alt Country” and “No Depression” sent banjo-playing hipsters into the subway stations of Brooklyn. Long before MTV Unplugged made acoustic music profitable again.

So, on the eve of Nebraska’s biopicification, I have thoughts.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first: The less said about the movie, the better.

Every clip, every leaked scene, every version of the trailer they’ve released — it’s all horrible. Horrible. The whole thing has been so laugh-out-loudedly cliche-addled, it’s genuinely hard to believe it’s not a spoof.

Now, with that out of the way, the truth is that the back-to-back existence of Nebraska and Born in the USA presents us with one of the most insurmountably beguiling and perplexing conundrums in the entire history of popular music.

On one hand, it’s almost impossible to conceive of how fantastic an album Nebraska is. And on the other hand, it’s almost impossible to conceive of how awful an album Born in the USA is.

Now, before I proceed further, I just want to call attention to my word choice for a moment: Nebraska is a fantastic ALBUM. Born in the USA is an awful ALBUM.

When I describe them as fantastic and awful, I’m talking about them as ALBUMS.

Song-wise, it’s actually a bit of another story.

If we’re honest, I think we have to admit that while all the songs on Nebraska are good, they’re not all great. “Used Cars,” “Open All Night,” and “Reason to Believe” all have peak moments, but they’re flawed.

At the same time, while the production aesthetic alone dooms Born in the USA as an album, “Born in the USA,” “Downbound Train,” and “My Hometown” are as great as any songs Springsteen has ever written.

Now, when we’re talking about that production aesthetic, there are three things you have to understand about Bruce Springsteen and his musical world:

1. Max Weinberg is the worst drummer in all of rock and roll. He is a boneyard where grooves go to die. When you watch him play, he looks like he has a cricket bat up his ass. When you hear him play, you realize … he does.
2. Bruce Springsteen has absolutely no taste whatsoever when it comes to keyboard sounds. He has, in fact, the very worst taste in keyboard sounds.
3. Clarence Clemons completely and totally peaked on Born to Run, and then never played anything good ever again.

Unfortunately, Max Weinberg, awful keyboard sounds, and Clarence Clemons all loom large Born in the USA. It’s all so bad that the album is literally unlistenable. Which is remarkable, given that at least 25% of the songs on the album are hall-of-fame-level fantastic.

The easy conclusion to draw here is to say that Springsteen is simply better suited to being a solo artist.

It’s not an all-the-way wrong perspective. Springsteen is a tremendous solo performer, and over the years, some of his best recordings have been either literally solo acoustic, or quite close to it, with examples going all the way back to his debut (“Mary, Queen of Arkansas,” and “The Angel”), and continuing on through Nebraska’s only-slightly-less-impressive younger sibling, 1995’s The Ghost of Tom Joad.

I think the more appropriate perspective, however, has more to do with the band itself. Put bluntly, the long-standing, Born in the USA-era edition of the E Street Band is just a terrible studio band. They’re admittedly pretty great with Bruce in concert. They follow him everywhere he goes, support him with whatever he needs, and they allow him to do his Boss thing as long and as well as he wants. And somehow, their shortcomings aren’t so obvious when they’re playing live.

In the studio, however, it’s another story. They’re just so … boring. Sterile. Wooden. Leaden. Bland. Stiff. Vanilla. Cheesy. Clunky.

To really understand this reality, go back to The Wild, The Innocent, & the E Street Shuffle, and allow yourself the pleasure of hearing Springsteen with a genuinely greasy, funky, sleazy, earthy, atmospheric ensemble. It’s incredible. The ambition and scope of that album remain unrivaled.

Interestingly enough, the beginnings of the E Street Band were already starting to fall in place at that point. And it was actually promising.

And then, it wasn’t.

What happened? Well, for one thing, out went David Sancious and Vini Lopez, and in came Roy Bittan and Max Weinberg. That was pretty much the beginning of the end.

The key turning point from a discography standpoint was Darkness on the Edge of Town. Pound for pound, it’s probably Springsteen’s overall best record — at least insofar as it captures his core concept really well. But it’s also the album where you can hear the E Street “formula” really beginning to take hold. It started to emerge on Born to Run, got stronger on Darkness on the Edge of Town, and then exploded all over the mess that is The River.

Now, it must be said, as with all things Springsteen, The River is not without its high points. The title track, for example, is easily one of Springsteen’s greatest songs. And that’s saying something. And “Independence Day,” “Point Blank,” and “Stolen Car” are also all hall-of-famers. But the rest of the tracks are mostly just embarrassing throwaways; egregious, cringe-inducingly pedestrian expressions of middle-aged-white-guy-bar-band garbage.

And frankly, the E Street Band just sounds lousy. The Weinberg-Tallent rhythm section is hopelessly plodding. Clarence Clemons is, at best, irritating and, at worst … more irritating. And Bittan’s contributions are cheese incarnate. The only members who redeem themselves are Federici and Van Zandt — Federici by virtue of being as odd as he always is, and Van Zandt by essentially just being a non-entity. The only thing missing are the horrible 80s keyboard sounds. Those, of course, would come with Born in the USA.

If I’m being overly harsh on the E Street Band, I should probably qualify my disdain a bit. While their worst moments are truly ghastly, they’ve also collectively contributed to many genuine masterpieces of modern song — ”Thunder Road,” “Born to Run,” “Jungleland,” “Badlands,” “Adam Raised a Cain,” “Racing in the Street,” and “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” to cite just a few that I haven’t yet mentioned. These are staggering works of art, and every one of the contributing musicians deserves deep bows for what they achieved together.

That this fundamentally same ensemble could also give us “Darlington County,” “Working on the Highway,” and “Bobby Jean” pretty much defies logic.

As a side note, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions offers an enticing opportunity to imagine what Springsteen could have been achieving all along with a different band. Imagine what Born in the USA would have sounded like with this group! So maddening and marvelous to dream …

Now, would that version of the album have been a big-ass 80’s arena-rock hit machine? Admittedly, probably not. But would it have been artistically and creatively revelatory? Survey says yes.

Having said all the above, it must now be said that Nebraska isn’t great simply because it lacks the grooveless marshmallowisms of those E Street plod purveyors. Beyond the songs and their raw, intimate delivery, there is something about the album itself that is simply, elusively magical.

In this way, Nebraska takes its place alongside other fully realized, conceptually complete works of genius that run the gamut from Kind of Blue and A Love Supreme to Bringing it all Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited to It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and Fear of a Black Planet — works where it’s not about any one song so much as it is about the collection together. Sure, when you think of Portishead’s Dummy, you think of “Sour Times” and “Glory Box,” but without “It’s a Fire,” “Wandering Star,” and “It Could Be Sweet,” it wouldn’t be the masterwork that it is. The same can be said of everything from Exile on Main Street (Sure, “Tumbling Dice” and “Happy,” but also, “Ventilator Blues” and “Loving Cup”) and Rain Dogs (obviously “Downtown Train” and “Jockey Full of Bourbon,” but also “Clap Hands,” “Gun Street Girl” and “Time”) to London Calling, In the Wee Small Hours, Red-Headed Stranger, and What’s Goin’ On. While each of these albums has standout tracks, they become supernatural by virtue of their wholeness.

In some ways, Nebraska can be understood as marking the end of an era. Not just for Springsteen, but for the album-with-a-capital-A itself. In 1982, when it was released, MTV was one year old. While Spotify wouldn’t launch for another two-and-a-half decades, MTV was the soil from which it grew. And albums would never be quite the same.

Perhaps that’s a part of the appeal of Nebraska? While Born in the USA actively speaks to and about nostalgia (“Glory Days,” most obviously), Nebraska actually makes us nostalgic. Which is very strange, because its characters and narratives are not welcoming, appealing, or particularly admirable. But there’s a kind of moral logic to them that I think we long for in a deep way. At the risk of indulging in nationalist cliché, it feels like kind of an American thing.

While Nebraska’s Steinbeckisms are obvious, Springsteen has also been very upfront about how film noir and the hardboiled traditions of Dashiel Hammet and Raymond Chandler informed his writing, and I think that’s ultimately the emotional core that we most connect to — that combination of idealism and cynicism; that idea of there being honor among both thieves and those that pursue them. This version of morality is both clear-eyed and blurred. Can there really be said to be clear-cut “good” and “bad” characters in, say, The Maltese Falcon? Springsteen confronts us with this very challenge in “Highway Patrolman.” Is Joe Roberts a good guy or a bad guy?

Well if it was any other man
I’d put him straight away
But when it’s your brother
Sometimes you look the other way

When Joe pulls to the side of the road and lets Frankie drive away, it could be the ending of a film noir, but also a war movie, or a western. And we know that we’ve all been both Joe and Frankie a thousand times.

For me, the real beating heart of the album’s greatness is this moral nebulousness. Nebraska asks us to look in the mirror and embrace the fact that we have, within us, the possibilities of all these characters. We’re Charles Starkweather and Johnny 99, embodiments of the meanness in the world. We’re Joe and Frankie, two flawed people on either side of a line we don’t understand. We’re the children of “My Father’s House” and “Mansion on the Hill,” longing to be loved by the people we treasure and admire most. Perhaps, most of all, we’re the narrator of “Atlantic City,” answering all the pain and the sorrow and the confusion of the world with a date with someone we love.

Born in the USA strives to be anthemic, but it depresses rather than uplifts me, because its ungainliness is bound to a time that doesn’t feel timeless. Nebraska, on the other hand, is a psalm book of anti-anthems that daily renews my courage and hope, because the specificity of its fracturing heart is so gloriously, timelessly cathartic.

The contrast between Nebraska and Born in the USA neatly sums up Springsteen himself, who is at once a deeply complex and curious man, and a fist-pumping populist everyman. The two albums back-to-back also offer us a straightforward way to confront the ambitions and failures of our nation — the “what we claim to be” and the “what we are.”

And I guess that’s it in a nutshell. Born in the USA is the USA I don’t want to be — a big capitalist myth built on boredom, beer, and bombs. Whereas Nebraska is the USA I want to believe in — a place where the lost find hope in small moments of quiet reflection and raw beauty.

Born in Nebraska: The Springsteen Complexity was originally published in No Wrong Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Judas Priest has had a long career, with the discography to prove it. And while there have certainly been derails along the way, the meaningful core of the band have been unified and together long enough to have created some two decades worth of incredible music. I speak, of course, of Rob Halford, K.K. Downing, Glen Tipton, and Ian Hill.

As to the albums those four have combined to deliver, they pretty much form the canonical blueprint for the genre we’ve come to call heavy metal.

Rocka Rolla
Sad Wings of Destiny
Sin After Sin
Stained Class
Hell Bent for Leather
British Steel
Point of Entry
Screaming for Vengeance
Defenders of the Faith
Turbo
Ram It Down
Painkiller

Given this track record, how on earth does one choose one album, above all the rest?

Well, to get started, we can certainly trim some albums out right now; namely, the first two, and the last four, which leaves us with:

Sin After Sin
Stained Class
Hell Bent for Leather
British Steel
Point of Entry
Screaming for Vengeance

We can do this, because with Rocka Rolla and Sad Wings of Destiny, the fully realized Judas Priest sound just isn’t there yet. And as to the final four, while they do have some high points, they also mark the beginning of an unfortunate slide into 80s excess and a certain degree of self-parody.

Which leaves six to choose from. Time to start trimming again. First to go, Sin After Sin. It’s a strong record, and at least three of the performances are genuine classics, including their outstanding cover of “Diamonds and Rust.” But pound for pound, it just doesn’t hold up to as much scrutiny as some of the other offerings on our shortlist.

Next to go? Point of Entry. It’s better than some people think, but the common criticisms are still valid—it’s just trying too hard to have hits. Frankly, some of it is just plain cheesy. Oddly enough, my favorite track on the album is one of the softer and more commercial offerings: “Desert Plains.”

My next excision is going to drag this article into controversial territory, but I’m voting to drop Hell Bent for Leather. I know, I know. It’s a remarkable album. Sonically, it may be as good as Priest has ever been. And the good tracks are incredible. In addition to the title track, other standouts include “Delivering the Goods” and another brilliant cover: “The Green Manalishi (With the Two-Pronged Crown).” But it just doesn’t have the songs across the full span.

So where does that leave us? Only three albums left:

Stained Class
British Steel
Screaming for Vengeance

At this point, I’m going to just skip ahead to the finish line. The best Judas Priest album is … Stained Class.

Here’s why:

The vocals. This is Rob Halford at his soaring, searing best. And while he uses every aspect of his enviable range to the full measure of its power, it’s the high notes that elevate these performances to the truly legendary. There has simply never been another voice that can command this much authority at those ranges.

The guitars. K.K. Downing and Glen Tipton hit the sweet spot on this album, no longer as clean and locked into 60's-era British-blues dryness as their earlier efforts, but not yet fuzzed out and lost to the compression-addled 80s. Their twin attack has never been more original, more evocative, or more rocking.

The drums. Les Binks always was and always will be the best Judas Priest drummer. He just had a certain touch and sophistication that no one else has ever quite matched. Like Bill Ward, Binks is defined by his imagination, and it can be heard to perfect effect on this masterpiece.

The production. The album is devoid of tricks. That’s it. It’s just fat, and clean, and rich, and it never gets in the way of the performances or the songs. It’s perfect.

The songs. Finally, and most importantly, it’s all about the songs. On Stained Class, there’s not a miss among all the tracks, and the best ones are as good as anything the genre has ever produced. “Exciter,” “Stained Class,” “Invader,” “Saints in Hell,” and “Savage” are 5 of the best heavy metal songs ever committed to record. Even the two slightly weaker tracks—”White Heat, Red Hot” and “Heroes End”—are still phenomenal. There’s a cover here as well, and it’s impeccable: “Better by You, Better than Me,” originally by Spooky Tooth. Now, if you’ve noticed that I’ve yet to mention one of the tracks, you’re right. I’ve saved it for last. “Beyond the Realms of Death." It’s entirely likely this is the best Judas Priest song ever—which makes it one of the best songs ever, period. The sophistication of the lyric, with its rotating perspectives, is unparalled. The juxtoposition of beauty and savagery as the song moves from acoustic to electric sections heightens the drama to heartbreaking levels. Halford’s voice positively scorches throughout, and the respective guitar solos are clinics on the ying-yang styles that Tipton and Downing bring to the table.

So there you have it. That’s my 100% irrefutably flawless argument for why Stained Class is the best Judas Priest album!

The Best Judas Priest Album was originally published in No Wrong Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I first heard “The Stand” by The Alarm in the early 80s, right when it first came out. I was mesmerized immediately.

It had so much of everything that meant everything to me in those fraught teenage years. It had the pointed social commentary of Billy Bragg, the raw urgency and poetic brilliance of The Clash, and the accelerated folk-punk of The Pogues, all at once.

I was mesmerized.

They looked as if Jesus and Mary Chain and The Birthday Party and just fallen off a train and landed in Texas. They wrote song-stories of near-biblical significance like The Call. They were musical and political outlaws in a punk rock spaghetti western.

It wouldn’t be until much later that I came to deeply appreciate just how very Welsh they were.

That would only come as I began to understand my own connection to Wales and what it meant to be Welsh-American.

Here is Mike Peters, singer and principal songwriter of the Alarm, from a 1989 interview:

“In Wales there is a dramatic loss of cultural identity. The language is being spoken less and less. And in the communities where it is spoken heavily, it is being diluted by the relocation of the workforce being thrust on the working man of the UK. The emergence of the New Europe will give Wales a chance to step forward because of the lessening emphasis of London as the hub. The political forces of Wales can leapfrog over London and deal directly with Europe. We did some benefits with the Welsh Language Society to put pressure on the UK to recognize Welsh as the national language of our people. With this age of communication and easy travel and the intermingling of many cultures, it encourages people to become more interested in their own culture.”

I don’t pretend to operate on his level of experience and insight, but I do know I have thought long and hard about these issues, albeit from far across the pond. My recently published poetry collection Famished opens with this poem:

Emigrant Song

In the old country
our name was everywhere,
strewn amongst the poor

like chicken feed.
We brought none of the hill magic
with us when we came,

only soot.
Here we’ve burnt like coke in great engines,
our name becoming rare

as our bodies disappear.
Mine is a last name reserved for poets
and the religious.

In the old country
we had enormous hands
and long, beautiful stories.

Mike Peters told long, beautiful stories in short, powerful songs, and he did so with rarefied intensity, humanity, and integrity.

The world of money, power, and colonialism battled him as he fought, and he never ceded an inch.

Cancer was a different kind of battle. Mike fought it with the same love, hope, and strength that defined everything about him. But on April 28, 2025, after thirty years at the fight, cancer finally won.

We are the poorer for not having him in our mortal world any longer, but we are so very much richer for having had him for the years we did.

I bow my head. I weep. I thank Mike Peters for making the stand he made, and I thank his maker for making him.

May we always remember you when the rain falls in the summertime. May we always take a stand in your spirit.

Farewell Mike Peters. May we always take a stand in your spirit. was originally published in No Wrong Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

From A Tribe Called Quest, ABBA, and A-Ha to Youth Lagoon, Yumi Zouma, and Zachary Cale (and all points in between), it’s been quite a year for the 2024 edition of the #365Songs project.

We started back on January 1 with “Slippery People” by Talking Heads, and we ended on December 31 with “Three Little Birds” by Bob Marley.

Below you’ll find a list of all 365 songs, and below the list you’ll find a link to the entire playlist on Spotify—all 27 hours and 49 minutes of it!

Slippery People (Live) — 2023 Remaster — Talking Heads
Do The Dance — Sid Sriram
Drink Before the War — Sinéad O’Connor
Paint The Town Red — Doja Cat
Within (Drumless Edition) — Daft Punk
Blue Factory Flame — Songs: Ohia,Jason Molina
2 + 2 = 5 — Radiohead
Silver Joy — Damien Jurado
You Haven’t Done Nothin’ — Stevie Wonder
He Was A Friend Of Mine — Dave Van Ronk
Ventilator Blues — The Rolling Stones
Lady Day and John Coltrane — Gil Scott-Heron
Rear View Mirror — Joan Jett & the Blackhearts
Oh Well, Pt. 1–2013 Remaster — Fleetwood Mac
American Jesus — Bad Religion
Anything Lost (Can Be Found Again) — DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ
Oleo — Phineas Newborn Jr.
The Place I Live — Mount Eerie
Downtown Venus — P.M. Dawn
I Want You Back — Remaster 2005 — Hoodoo Gurus
Insistor — Tapes ‘n Tapes
Not — Big Thief
Gatti rossi — Alternate Take (Long Version) — Bruno Nicolai
L’ours — Version acoustique — Christophe Maé,Youssou N’Dour
Revelator — Phosphorescent
Right Back to It — Waxahatchee,MJ Lenderman
Prove It To You — Brittany Howard
I’m Going Slow (Live) — Robert Pete Williams
Waiting on a Ghost to Haunt You — The Reds, Pinks and Purples
United In Grief — Kendrick Lamar
What Does It Mean To Be Free — Thomas Azier
Watercooler — Grandaddy
Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms — Flatt & Scruggs
Ruthie Lingle — 16 Horsepower
A Real Mother For Ya — Johnny Guitar Watson
Future / Now — MC5
Future Blues — Willie Brown
Baby Can I Hold You — Tracy Chapman
One Eyed Bastard — Green Day
From Your Mouth — God Lives Underwater
Old Folks — A
Here’s Where The Story Ends — The Sundays
Hey Dude — Kula Shaker
You Can’t Play with My Yo-Yo (feat. Ice Cube) — Yo-Yo,Ice Cube
Halcyon and On and On — Orbital
Carnival — The Cardigans
Where Did You Come From? — The American Analog Set
Gibson Girl — Ethel Cain
my mind (now) — Paris Paloma
San Francisco is a Lonely Town — Remastered 2022 — Linda Martell
Revelator — Gillian Welch
The Well — Bill Callahan
Big Sky — The Reverend Horton Heat
Life Is — Jessica Pratt
Mean Town Blues — 2004 Digital Remaster — Johnny Winter
The Man in the Iron Mask — Billy Bragg
Kitty’s Back — Bruce Springsteen
Black Steel — Tricky,Martina Topley-Bird
Hope the High Road — Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
Seether — Veruca Salt
Dollar Bill Blues — Townes Van Zandt
Sunshine Smile — Adorable
Cool For A Second — Yumi Zouma
Raunchy — Bill Justis
I Got The… — 2006 Remaster — Labi Siffre
Out Of The Blue — Roxy Music
Talulah Gosh — Talulah Gosh
Psychedelic Sally — Remastered — Horace Silver
Loading — James Blake
Funeral Song — Laura Gibson
Candy Says — The Velvet Underground
Shatterstar — Zachary Cale
Dark Parts — Perfume Genius
Tha Crossroads — Bone Thugs-N-Harmony
Mudroom — Tiny Habits
More Brother Rides — Palace Music
New Fang — Them Crooked Vultures
Óró Sé Do Bheatha Bhaile — Pauline Scanlon
Masters of War — Bob Dylan
The Moon & the Scarecrow — Brother Dege
Red Dirt Girl — Emmylou Harris
Miss Otis Regrets (She’s Unable To Lunch Today) — Ella Fitzgerald
The Train From Kansas City — The Shangri-Las
You Look Like Rain — Morphine
Howling Around My Happy Home — Daniel Norgren
Friendly Advice — Luna
Loro — Pinback
Shhh / Peaceful — Miles Davis
Natural One — The Folk Implosion
Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood — Elvis Costello
damn — Ada Lea
Bloodbuzz Ohio — The National
Postcards from Italy — Beirut
The Promise — When In Rome
La Dolce Vita — Finale — Dino Verde,Nino Rota
The Man I Love — Enrico Rava,Stefano Bollani,Paul Motian
Gloria — Umberto Tozzi
Reptile — The Church
Child Of The Moon — The Rolling Stones
Fade Away — Lotte Kestner
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea — Neutral Milk Hotel
Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You into Heaven Anymore — John Prine
Plainsong — 2010 Remaster — The Cure
The Ride — Afternoon Bike Ride
Boys Keep Swinging — 2017 Remaster — David Bowie
The Platform On The Ocean — Arthur Russell
Death or Glory — The Clash
Stay Free — Remastered — The Clash
The Call Up — Remastered — The Clash
Are You Red..Y — The Clash
I’m so Bored with the U.S.A. — Remastered — The Clash
Ghetto Defendant — Remastered — The Clash
Bankrobber — The Clash
Hotel Supramonte — Fabrizio De André
High speed calm air tonight — ML Buch
Venice Bitch — Lana Del Rey
Buona Sera — Remastered 2002 — Louis Prima,Keely Smith,Sam Butera & The Witnesses
Mack The Knife — Bing Crosby
Simon Says — Pharoahe Monch
Swamp Thing — The Chameleons
Raat Ki Rani — Arooj Aftab
it could be anything — claire rousay
Maggot Brain — Funkadelic
The Hardest Part — Washed Out
Football — Youth Lagoon
Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl — Broken Social Scene
Oh My Aching Heart — Heartless Bastards
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? (with Lenny Hayton & His Orchestra) — Bing Crosby,Lenny Hayton & His Orchestra
Mouth Breather — The Jesus Lizard
Relaxin’ At Camarillo — Charlie Parker
Gonna Back Up Baby — Gene Vincent & His Blue Caps
Star Spangled Banner — Live at The Woodstock Music & Art Fair, August 18, 1969 — Jimi Hendrix
Electric Funeral — 2012 — Remaster — Black Sabbath
Nothing To Fear (But Fear Itself) — Oingo Boingo
Mother Mother — Tracy Bonham
Come a Little Bit Closer — Fleetwood Mac
Banditos — The Refreshments
I’ve Got You Under My Skin — Live At The Sands Hotel And Casino/1966 — Frank Sinatra
Walking On A Thin Line — Huey Lewis & The News
Ain’t No Future In Yo’ Frontin’ — MC Breed,DFC
So Cruel — U2
Hail To Whatever You Found In The Sunlight That Surrounds You — Rilo Kiley
Riding Around In The Dark — Florist
99 Luftballons — Nena
Nights That Won’t Happen — Purple Mountains
After the Gold Rush — Neil Young
Everyday Is Like Sunday — 2011 Remaster — Morrissey
Zombie — The Cranberries
Abattoir Blues — Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Everyday People — Sly & The Family Stone
Message From A Black Man — The Temptations
C.I.A. — The Beatnigs
A House Is Not a Motel — 2015 Remaster — Love
E Pluribus Unum — The Last Poets
Move on Up — Extended Version — Curtis Mayfield
Revolution — Arrested Development
Lady Magnolia — Piero Umiliani
Satisfy — NERO
Halo — Depeche Mode
Axel F — Harold Faltermeyer
Take on Me — a-ha
Carry On, Turn Me On — Space
Chameleon — Herbie Hancock
Favor — Julien Baker
Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond Of Each Other — Willie Nelson
It Must Change — ANOHNI,Antony and the Johnsons
Bad Religion — Frank Ocean
Body And Soul — Take 2 — Wes Montgomery
Claw Machine — Sloppy Jane,Phoebe Bridgers
It’ll All Work Out — Pedro The Lion
Better Than Me — Blood Orange
I Never Cared For You — Willie Nelson
Baby Please Don’t Go — Bukka White
Stray Cat Strut — Stray Cats
Telephone Call From Istanbul — Tom Waits
Twenty Years — Dwight Yoakam
Soul Man — Sam & Dave
Contort Yourself — James White And The Blacks
Rhymin & Stealin — Beastie Boys
Make Way For A Panther — Paris
Phantom — Justice
Excursions — A Tribe Called Quest
Challenger Part 2 — A Swan Song — We Lost The Sea
Them Changes — Thundercat
My Father’s House — Bruce Springsteen
Fake Empire — The National
Fight The Power — Public Enemy
I’d Love to Change the World — 2004 Remaster — Ten Years After
My City Was Gone — Pretenders
Up on the Roof — The Nylons
Strange Boat — 2006 Remaster — The Waterboys
Back Home in Derry — Christy Moore
Helpless — Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Born and Raised In Compton — DJ Quik
Avalon Blues — Mississippi John Hurt
Model Trains — Rye LaChance
I Ain’t Got No Home in This World Anymore — Woody Guthrie
Slow Down — Poolside
Tokyo Moon — Windmill
My Ideal — Kenny Dorham
Empty Hearted Town — Warren Zevon
A Hard Road — John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers
Johny Hit and Run Paulene — X
Reach Out I’ll Be There — Four Tops
Anthem — Leonard Cohen
Red Paper Lanterns — Maybeshewill
Feels Like Summer — Childish Gambino
Misunderstood — Wilco
Blue Line Swinger — Yo La Tengo
Caring Is Creepy — 2021 Remaster — The Shins
The Ghost of Tom Joad — Rage Against The Machine
Baltimore — Nina Simone
Over There — George M. Cohan,Arthur Fields
La Marseillaise — Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle,Garde Républicaine — Roger Boutry — Choeur De L’Armée Française — Mireille Mathieu,Roger Boutry
America The Beautiful — Ray Charles
America — Motörhead
America — From The Jazz Singer Soundtrack — Neil Diamond
South African National Anthem — Bala Brothers
We’re a Happy Family — 2017 Remaster — Ramones
Blowin’ in the Wind — Bob Dylan
Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t (My Baby) — Louis Jordan
Noah — Jubalaires
Know Me — Toad The Wet Sprocket
Waiting — Doctors Of Madness
Four Out Of Five — Arctic Monkeys
Damascus — Original Long Version — Richard Strange,The Engine Room
Cruel to Be Kind — Nick Lowe
古い日記 — Akiko Wada
Backyard Lover — Merce Lemon
The Dead Flag Blues — Godspeed You! Black Emperor
The Last Great Washington State — Damien Jurado
Your Hand In Mine — Remastered — Explosions In The Sky
So Tonight That I Might See — Mazzy Star
Helplessness Blues — Fleet Foxes
Father’s Child — Michael Kiwanuka
Sucks To Be You — Prozzak
Driver’s Seat — Sniff ’n’ The Tears
The Night the Lights Went out in Georgia — Vicki Lawrence
Rock On — David Essex
Brimful Of Asha — Norman Cook Remix Single Version — Cornershop
Icky Thump — The White Stripes
How You Like Me Now — The Heavy
Dancing in the Moonlight — King Harvest
Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic — Isaac Hayes
For the Love of Money — The O’Jays
Stacked Actors — Foo Fighters
Freedom (feat. Kendrick Lamar) — Beyoncé,Kendrick Lamar
Lapdance — N.E.R.D,Vita,Lee Harvey
Live And Let Die — Guns N’ Roses
Mais Que Nada — Sergio Mendes & Brasil ‘66
Make America Great Again — Pussy Riot
Bioluminescence — Goth Babe
Romeo Had Juliette — Lou Reed
You’re So Vain — Carly Simon
Karma — Taylor Swift
For Sure — Ethel Cain
Time Of No Reply — Nick Drake
Citizen Ship — Patti Smith
Pink Moon — Nick Drake
Way To Blue — Nick Drake
Tow The Line — Nick Drake
At The Chime Of A City Clock — Nick Drake
Black Eyed Dog — Nick Drake
River Man — Nick Drake
Secret Service — Souls Of Mischief
Got It Bad Y’All — King Tee,Tha Alkaholiks
Blue Flowers — Dr. Octagon
Elektrobank — The Chemical Brothers
Jazz Thing — Gang Starr
Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck) (feat. Zack De La Rocha) — Run The Jewels,Zack De La Rocha
Losing Out (feat. Royce Da 5'9) — Black Milk,Royce Da 5'9
Alone — The Cure
Just A Western — Nilüfer Yanya
For the Good Times — Kris Kristofferson
Ghost — Honeyglaze
Bastards of Young — 2008 Remaster — The Replacements
Wristwatch — MJ Lenderman
The Museum — Half Waif
I Don’t Wanna Hear It — Minor Threat
Old Timer — Willie Nelson
שואה — Holocausts
Supertouch/Shitfit — Bad Brains
Chaos From Within — Bad Religion
Terrorist — Heavens To Betsy
Nausea — X
Donkey Shot — ManLiftingBanner
Happiness Will Ruin This Place — San Fermin
The Modern Leper — Frightened Rabbit
Run for Cover — Lee Scratch Perry
Bring It on Home to Me — Live at the Harlem Square Club, Miami, FL — January 1963 — Sam Cooke
I Don’t Like Mondays — The Boomtown Rats
Knowing Me, Knowing You — ABBA
We Will All Go Together When We Go (Stereo Mix) — Tom Lehrer
Lost My Job — Alex Chilton
Ohio (’24) — Damien Jurado
Smalltown Boy — Bronski Beat
Farewell Transmission — Songs: Ohia,Jason Molina
Young Lion — Sade
Idioteque — Radiohead
I’m So Tired — Fugazi
Nazi Punks Fuck Off — Dead Kennedys
(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang — Remastered 2006 — Heaven 17
Drunk with Power — Discharge
I’m Afraid of Americans — David Bowie
Living On The 110 — Prophets Of Rage
People Have the Power — Patti Smith
Youth Against Fascism — Sonic Youth
La colombe — Jacques Brel
Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ — Michael Jackson
For Doz That Slept — Black Sheep
Afterlife — Sharon Van Etten
The Hatenaughts of Melancholy Wall — Bonus Track — Pinback
Stroll On (From Blow Up) — 2015 Remaster — The Yardbirds
Clair de Lune — Kamasi Washington
A Little Respect — Erasure
Head Like A Hole — Nine Inch Nails
Ship of Fools — World Party,Anthony Thistlethwaite
Leper Messiah (Remastered) — Metallica
Yesternow (feat. Bennie Maupin, John McLaughlin, Sonny Sharrock, Chick Corea, Dave Holland & Jack DeJohnette) — Miles Davis,Bennie Maupin,John McLaughlin,Sonny Sharrock,Chick Corea,Dave Holland,Jack DeJohnette
You’re No Good — Linda Ronstadt
Like The End — James Blake
can’t calm down — Hand Habits
Master & A Hound — Gregory Alan Isakov
Vital — Grouper
Windows — Angel Olsen
luther (with sza) — Kendrick Lamar,SZA
Point of Disgust — Perfume Genius,Alan Sparhawk
Italian Ufology Today — King Cobb Steelie
Sorry — The Easybeats
Nardis — Bill Evans
Dogs — Pink Floyd
Fuzzy Bird Sonata: I. Run, Bird — Takashi Yoshimatsu,Rob Buckland,Peter Lawson
Holy, Holy — Geordie Greep
Dream police — Mk.gee
Nothing Would Change — The Linda Lindas
Archbishop Harold Holmes — Jack White
on brand — Ekko Astral
Snallygaster — The Jon Dryden Trio
Wolf’s Sun — The BellRays
BLACK DOG / WHITE HORSE — BIG SPECIAL
Aryan Embarrassment — Ministry
Que Sera Sera — Pixies
Dance Me to the End of Love — Leonard Cohen
Johnny 99 — Bruce Springsteen
Deep Red Bells — Neko Case
The Message — Grandmaster Flash,The Furious Five,The Sugarhill Gang
Never Again — Thomas Azier
Wasteland of the Free — Iris DeMent
Sweet Freedom — Michael McDonald
I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man — 2020 Remaster — Prince
Song To The Siren — Remastered — This Mortal Coil
Another Body Murdered — Faith No More,Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E.
So Flute — St Germain
Like a Prayer — Madonna
Sullen Girl — Fiona Apple
If We Make It Through December — Merle Haggard
Do You Know How Christmas Trees Are Grown — From “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” Soundtrack / Remastered 2003 — Nina Van Pallandt
Fairytale of New York (feat. Kirsty MacColl) — The Pogues,Kirsty MacColl
Losing My Religion — R.E.M.
Doppelgänger — The Antlers
Medusa — Clan of Xymox
Welcome to The Internet — Bo Burnham
Much Ado About Nothing — Waxahatchee
So What (feat. John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley & Bill Evans) — Miles Davis,John Coltrane,Cannonball Adderley,Bill Evans
Three Little Birds — Bob Marley & The Wailers

365Songs: The Complete List was originally published in No Wrong Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A citizenry ripe for being preyed upon. Dulled into submission. Not only unable to recognize the evil in its midst, but actively celebrating wickedness as honorable.

Surges of dopamine at every affirmation of resentment, each digested virtual delusion another needle in the arm, shattering yet more neural pathways like bombs under bridges.

Everything that was built is in tatters, razed beneath the delirious, narcotic thrill of negative unity. Unity in servility. An unhinged coming out of the closet for the angry, the stupid, the afraid. A people furious at that which makes them feel ignorant, victorious in their triumphant burning of the books.

You can feel it in the very air, the mad rush of blood to the collective head as the mob tastes its own shared blood. The nauseating smugness of those that feel vindicated. The sanctimonious, self-righteous, drool-weighted grins of the wrong who finally feel right.

77 million disparate voices coming into sync with one another, a foaming forming chant pounding in the ears like a drum — a beat calling the hordes forward in perfect plodding rhythm to arrive in a senseless orgy of insurrectionist idiocy.

We have torn at the sky, and pocketed the vigorish even as the sun burns our eyes.

We have poisoned the water and placed our bets, forgetting entirely that the house always wins in the end.

We have cut out the very flesh of the earth with our ever sharper knives, peeling its fascia away like strips from a bog, cheering as the acids begin their work on our bones.

We are a biblical nation racing toward revelation, each citizen certain they are to be among the saved, never to realize until it is too late that we are all going to sear in the fire.

And who, or what, will save us?

Millions flock to sequels and remakes, the light of curiosity and imagination growing dimmer in their eyes.

Millions acquiesce to algorithms, trading away surprise and delight for predictability and formula.

Technology has given us the ability to connect almost instantly with virtually anyone in the world at any time, to discover the undiscoverable, reveal the unrevealable, traverse the untraversable. And we use this awesome power to do what? To watch the most idiotic, the most predictable, the most banal entertainment ever devised. Netflix alone is responsible for 15% of all global internet traffic. And the two most-watched shows on Netflix at this very moment? Football games.

This is a nation drugging itself into submission. Into apathy. Into idiocy. A citizenry that will very soon be nearly helpless. Incapable of resistance of any kind. Prey.

Who, or what, will save us?

Certainly not three writers who have spent the last 365 days of the year pouring their hearts and souls into essays extolling the power and magic of something so silly as songs.

And yet, we wrote. We wrote even as it felt like the world of creativity, of dreams, of imagination, was slipping through our fingers, slipping through the fingers of the nation like so much trickling sand.

Like three little birds, we smiled anew at each rising sun, smiling as we came to the doorstep of the world to share another melody, another rhythm, another lyric, another message.

It was meant to be fun. It became survival.

As the days wore on, the effort of daily writing took on an unexpected urgency. I felt it in myself, and in the work of my fellow writers. There was a kind of desperation creeping in, a kicking against the encroachment of the darkness.

For what is art, ultimately, but a rage against the dying of the light? What is creativity? Only our very ability to exist, that’s all.

For we have survived by virtue of our being a creative species. We are without wings, and so flightless. Without gills, and so unable to survive in water. Without fur, and so unable to survive the bitter cold. We are so small, so vulnerable, so weak. And yet, we survive. Our brains, our beautiful brains! Our remarkable brains, from which emerge the most incredible visions and ideas and songs and poems and stories, stories, stories!

We are a race of storytellers! Truth-sayers, dreamweavers, world-builders!

We have taken ourselves into the skies, the heavens, uplifted with the gift of flight. But how? Because we dreamed it!

From the tops of mountains to the depths of the deep sea, we have traveled, fueled by the power of story.

Creativity is a power that transcends time. It is not an exchange of value with the world, and you do not redeem your chips in a single lifetime.

Van Gogh at his death believed himself a failure! To think what we would have lost had he ceased to paint because he thought his creativity didn’t matter. From Nick Drake and Robert Johnson to Charles Ives and even Bach himself (known only as an organist, not a composer), imagine what the world would lack if they had not created their masterworks — despite no signals from the world that they mattered? Franz Kafka, barely recognized in his lifetime. Emily Dickinson, barely published at all while alive. And poor Sylvia Plath, who won the Pulitzer, but only 19 years after her suicide.

I don’t claim that we three little birds of this 365 songs project are operating on those levels. But what I will say in our defense is that we have acted with the highest of intentions, believing to the very core of our beings that listening to and honoring music is fundamental to the salvation of our species, and that writing as an expression of our humanity is as critical to life as breathing. No, we have not been Van Gogh, Robert Johnson, or Franz Kafka. But we believe with the very same fervor that we must create to live.

January of 2024 seems so very long ago now, but already, in those early days, my fellow writers were delivering extraordinary prose of a power I feel so deeply honored to have witnessed.

“In silence, we discover. In rest, we reset. But where is the time for such a thing when the world keeps coming, when expectations mount, when debts wait without patience?

Perspective lives in silent moments, when we resist our restlessness and recognize the need within us. For so many of us, the pandemic was the first time we’d stopped moving because moving is all we know. And now that the pandemic is over we’re all being asked to move again, too fast, away from the silence.

For now at least until I forget again and get drawn back into the chaos, I’m committed to taking that extra deep breath, to noticing a flower I’ve never seen before, to listening for sounds that remind me that few things are more important than peace.”

Silver Joy — Damien Jurado

The emotional range of my fellow authors on this project has dazzled me no end, and in reading back at the work they’ve produced this year, I am staggered by how wise they are and have been, but also how funny, how sad, how snarky, how clever, how sweet, and how beautiful they are as well. In short, how very human:

“Halfway through ‘Serenade to Soul Sister’ I forgot why I was shaking my fist at the sky in the first place. I sat back down in my chair and wrote well for the first time today — maybe this week — and in doing so, I cultivated my garden. I can’t cure willful stupidity or blind ignorance or end foreign wars or combat multiple idiots turning interpretations of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein into a political statement about “wokeness.”

I can only write.

(And teach my kids how not to be assholes. That’s also important.)”

Psychedelic Sally — The Horace Silver Quintet

Their writing took me to places, at their most personal invitation, that delivered me into the glory of a world seen through their magical eyes:

“A haze of melancholy clouded my words with regret, maybe lament. We’d leave this place tomorrow, probably forever, but none of us know for certain what travels belong to the future. I needed to get that disappointment of my system.

As I wrote, I recognized that I also loved Venice and all of its eccentric dedication to its past. I loved the Venice on the far side of St. Mark’s. The sleepy, aimless, wandering side with curious cafes and toy shops filled with old world trinkets and Lego sets. Cured meats hanging inside windows. The side that smells like fish, the side without gondolas. The specter of the city’s disappearing foundation made every dark corner haunted and beautifully weathered. Boat docks falling into the sea. A single plant sitting in a window overlooking a canal.”

Buona Sera — Louis Prima

Their writing opened my eyes to deeper truths about who they are, how they feel, what it means for them to be in the world:

“I think about this a lot these days: with whom, and where, am I safe to be myself. And how to stop caring when those most unaccepting of me are disappointed in my absence — even when they’re “family.” I haven’t always been good about staying out of spaces that drain me, that ask me to show up as some version of myself that pleases them at my own expense. But I’m also at odds with myself: to show up as Frank Ocean does is to create representation, to force others to recognize non-normies as still human, still interesting, still family; and yet, to show up is more often than not to feel their unwillingness to accept anything beyond what’s already comfortable, and to ask of those of us who are “different” to reframe ourselves around their narrow worldview. It’s a lose lose, more often than not, and for now, at least, I’d rather slip into the shadows and out of the spotlight.”

Bad Religion—Frank Ocean

In times of hope, their writing gave voice to the richest veins of optimism within me:

“For everyone that TFG has been demonized, from immigrants to minorities to women to truth speakers to the LGBTQ community… for everyone that has suffered… for everyone that has experienced anxiety at the sound of his voice… for everyone knocking on doors on behalf of the Harris campaign and suffering the rebukes of petulent man-children… for everyone who has lost family and friends to the MAGA cult… for everyone who fears for their own safety when they see a swastika or white hood… for everyone, top to bottom, left to right, north and south who’s just had fucking enough… I dedicate this song to Donald Fucking Trump, the twice-impeached 34-time felon, adjudicated rapist, and all around terrible fucking excuse for a human.

Today we vote. Tomorrow you fuck off.”

For Doz Dat Slept — The Black Sheep

And when our dreams shattered into shards, their writing was the voice of my rage and heartbreak:

“There are millions of us out there right now, struggling, seething. As hard as it is to admit, we need each other. We need community and togetherness on a local face-to-face level. We need to improve ourselves, partake in subtle and daily acts of resistance, and eventually heal.

Our lives are filled with befores and afters, time markers like chapter stops on a DVD menu. When we reach these moments, we push through to the other side, we’re changed. Sometimes for the better.

Sometimes for the worse.

It’s not the moment that’s necessarily important — that’s just the marker; it’s how we go on. We are alive and in this moment.

So what can we change? We reassure those close to us that we will survive this. Tell your family that you love them. That you’re in this imperfect world together. Engage in those daily acts of resistance. Keep being kind and protecting the vulnerable in our communities. Live to fight another day.

Yesterday was the before. This is the after. What matters now is that we vigilantly face the future with open eyes and await our next before and after.”

Afterlife — Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory

Perhaps most remarkable of all is that they never let up. They have sustained levels of emotional integrity and intensity that have seemed to me to be truly Herculean. It is the end of December now, a mere few hours from the New Year here in California where I am writing this, and as recently as but a few days ago, their passionate fires were still burning ever hotter:

“2025 is shaping up to be a dystopian disaster, filled with fake news and gaslighting, with aggressive algorithms fueling more hatred and mental demise, with shapeshifters and truth-deniers, with criminals and sociopaths leading the charge, but if Naomi Klein has taught us anything it’s that knowledge itself is our best weapon. When you know it’s coming, you can at least prepare your next move. Hurry up, though, we’re running out of time.

The only way we can survive is to recontextualize ourselves for the postmodern world by dissecting our own pasts and the role we each play in how we got here. The only way out is forward, and the only way forward is not repeating our past mistakes. Again.”

Doppelgänger — The Antlers

I don’t know what this next year will give us, but I fear there will be much pain and heartbreak.

We as a people are being forcibly reduced, and we are losing our ability to resist.

Yet, everyday, every single day, there is the miracle of another new glimpse of the sun, and the opportunity to smile. Everyday, every single day, there is another melody, pure and true, to deliver us a message of hope, strength, and optimism.

Together, we three little birds have laughed, cried, danced, and despaired for 365 days. We have celebrated and mourned. We have screamed aloud for the world to listen, and we have retreated to the silence to regather the strengths we have spent. We have been read by thousands, yes. But we have failed to reach thousands more. We have, at best, been merely the pitch of three little birds at your doorstep, trying to spread a message about creativity, about soul, about story, about humanity.

Bob Marley told us not to worry about a thing. We can’t do that. We have not done that. We have worred about everything.

But there is one thing we can all agree on. Everything is indeed going to be alright.

Because as long as there is music, there is hope.

If there is one thing and one thing only that we pray you’ve taken away from reading our writing this year, I hope it’s this: music matters. Because you matter. Because we all matter.

This is our message to you.

Epilogue

At 8:55 pm in California, it was 11:55 pm in New York City.

My missus, my daughter, and myself were on our couch, with coupe glasses full to the brim with sparkling cider, and we were listening to Mickey Guyton sing “Imagine.” And while hers was a perfectly serviceable version and her voice conventionally appealing, I was nonetheless thinking again what an absolutely horrible song “Imagine” is.

So, as a last and final salvo fired from the bow of the good ship that is our 365 Songs project in 2024, we say, let’s do away with “Imagine” once and for all, and replace it with “Three Little Birds” by Bob Marley.

So that we might — instead of imagining the nihilist fever dreams of a nasty rich man who didn’t care a whit for anyone but himself — sing instead of everything being alright, for everyone.

Because, as we enter this new year, we face a reckoning. An inflection point. And we are going to have to make very difficult choices if we are going to preserve our humanity. We are going to have to do the hard work of empathy and compromise. We are going to have to think. Take risks. Be brave. It will not be easy, but nothing less than the soul of our nation is at stake.

When you wake tomorrow, it will be a new year.

Go into it with a smile. Greet the rising sun, and listen for the sound of a melody pure and true. Know that as long as we can sing together, listen together, dance together, that everything WILL be alright.

This is our message to you.

~

You can listen to all 365 songs on our playlist, which concludes with today’s addition: “Three Little Birds” by Bob Marley.

The final song of the year. was originally published in No Wrong Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We just got back from a week in New York. The last time we were there was over 16 years ago. We weren’t married then, only engaged. And we didn’t have a daughter yet. But my missus was pregnant. That’s why we left.

There are many reasons to leave New York. We certainly had a good one.

We were pretty close to broke, didn’t have a place to live anymore, were out of work, and had a baby on the way. Meanwhile, in California, we had four living parents—still hearty, hale, and happily married—who couldn’t wait to get their hands on a little only child. So off we went.

Our daughter was born on December 22, 2008. The anniversary of the day Joe Strummer died. I like to believe a little part of his beautiful soul ended up in my baby girl. She was born very early in the morning—just enough into December 22nd to be a Capricorn, per (we would find out) my mother’s wishes, who is also a Capricorn.

We always wanted to take our daughter to see New York, but we were never quite able to pull it off. When she was young, she just wouldn’t sleep, and the little traveling we did do with her was brutal. And we never had any money anyhow. And once we realized what a bright, engaged, intense child she was going to be—and what a foodie!—we told ourselves it was better anyhow to wait until she was old enough to remember the adventures.

Well, the years went by, and by the time she was old enough, I was busy trying to pull off a career pivot into full-time writing, and while it eventually worked out, at that time, we were broker than ever. And by the time we’d gotten on our feet financially again, COVID hit. Whoops, there went those three years.

And so, a few weeks ago, as we were approaching our daughter’s sweet 16 birthday, it hit us—we weren’t going to have many more opportunities with her before she’d be out of the house. So we decided to do it. We finally took her to New York, and the whole trip was a dream come true.

We just got back this morning, The only hitch the entire trip was that our flight home got cancelled and we had to spend the night in … Newark. We got about two hours of sleep, and then had to shoot back to the airport for a 5am flight. But we’re home now, safe and sound. Both my missus and our daughter are asleep now. Poor things, they’re both exhausted. And I’m just sitting up writing. Reflecting on it all.

I got to thinking about that night again—the night she was born. Or, the morning, rather. (Thanks Grandma!) December 22, 2008.

KKUP is one of our favorite local indie radio stations, and as I was sitting here getting ready to write this article, and trying to figure out what song I wanted to write about, it occurred to me to look up what was playing on KKUP that morning.

Well, as it turns out, the first show to hit the air that morning was a show called Blue Monday, and the very first song that the DJ played on his program was “So What” by Miles Davis, from Kind of Blue. One of my favorite songs from one of my favorite albums.

So I started looking into the history of the song. I knew it had been recorded at Columbia’s studios in Manhattan, but I couldn’t remember where the studio was located. It turns out it was housed at 207 East 30th Street, between Second and Third Avenues. There’s not much there today. It’s an apartment building called The Wilshire. The last night of our trip with our daughter, we actually ate at an Irish pub just about 10 blocks north of there.

“So What” was recorded on March 2, 1959. Why the title? No one seems to know for sure, though the most commonly circulated story seems to be one from Dennis Hopper, who claimed it was a phrase he would deploy during verbal (and physical—they used to box together) sparring sessions with Davis.

It’s certainly a dismissive phrase, a show of bravado and superiority. Or perhaps even desperation—a kind of devil-may-care freedom expressed in the face of impending disaster.

It’s hard to square that with the vibe of the song, however. The song is sinuous, moody, with a smoky swing that conjures up a laid-back confidence and ease—a far cry from bravado or desperation.

It’s tempting to think of it as Davis’s sly and smooth answer to the times.

Throughout the 1940s, bebop—born at Minton’s—became the main thing. So much so, that by the end of the decade, Birdland was opening; a club named after bop’s most important creator. Bebop had gone almost mainstream.

The 50’s were accordingly a strange time for jazz. Thelonious Monk—another cofounder of the bop sound—lost his cabaret card in 1950 due to a drug bust, and was out of the clubs for the next six years. Dizzy had to disband his big band. Charlie Parker died. White artists hit big: Chet Baker. Dave Brubeck. Shelly Manne. Jimmy Stewart even starred in The Glenn Miller Story. At the same time, bop itself began to morph, as drummer Max Roach and Art Blakey helped to usher in a “hard bop” sound. Mingus got experimental with Pithecanthropus Erectus. Jazz also got political. In 1958, Sonny Rollins recorded “Freedom Suite” with Oscar Pettiford and Max Roach. Jazz also went more broadly international, opening doors for new stars like Antonio Carlos Jobim, the king of bossa nova. In short, jazz was all over the place, getting wilder, bolder, more exploratory. Then, in 1959, Ornette Coleman arrived to take jazz all the way “out.”

Miles Davis, meanwhile, took a big look at it all and responded with a very quiet but very serious “so what.”

Of the musicians who recorded “So What” in New York back in 1959 (Miles Davis, Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb), only pianist Wynton Kelly actually grew up as a New Yorker. He was raised in Brooklyn, which happens to be where my missus and I lived.

The second-to-last-day of our New York trip, we took our daughter out to Brooklyn. It was pouring rain, and we took the L train out to the Metropolitan stop. I wanted to see if Pete’s Candy Store was still there. Thankfully, it was. We pulled into a little cafe and got coffees, and then later, hit a donut shop. You could see signs of the gentrification everywhere, but at the same time, it still looked an awful lot like the Brooklyn of old. I was happy about that.

The last morning we were in New York, we went down to Little Italy. It’s actually doing better than it had been back when. It was kind of dying on the vine back then, but it seems to be making a comeback. I was happy about that as well. New York’s Little Italy never managed to have a jazz scene like North Beach in San Francisco did, but it’s a lovely neighborhood all the same.

North Beach’s jazz scene was dynamite, and it happened to be the setting from one of Miles Davis’s greatest live recordings: In Person Friday Night at the Blackhawk, San Francisco, Volumes 1 and 2. The performances happened in 1961, just two years after Kind of Blue. Kelly, Chambers, and Cobb were still in the band, but in place of Adderley and Coltrane was Hank Mobley. The band delivered a 12+ minute version of “So What” that—despite its length—is actually taken at a pretty hot-footin’ tempo. Totally different in feel, but brilliant all the same.

As with the Columbia recording studios, the Blackhawk isn’t there anymore. Today, it’s just a parking lot. Back when my missus and I lived in San Francisco, the last apartment we were in before moving to Ireland was just a flew blocks from where the Blackhawk had once stood.

I’m generally not much for nostalgia, and outside of waxing about music from decades ago, I generally don’t spend much time worrying about the past.

But that’s changed in recent weeks.

Certainly the feeling has been acute in the wake of traveling back to New York after all these years and showing our daughter all our old haunts.

But there’s something else going on as well. There is a deep sense of loss deep within me. A deep sense, of a big loss. The loss of civility, of humanity, of empathy. Of understanding, of care, of thoughtfulness. Of decency for decency’s sake. Of doing the right thing simply because it’s the right thing. Of finding value in things regardless of their price tag. Of things mattering whether they’re good for the stockholders or not.

Somehow, Jimmy Carter’s passing has just instantly emerged as perfectly, bittersweetly emblematic of everything we’ve sold off to the noxious blood gold of this horrid new chapter in this country’s increasingly mortifying story. A decent man, gone. And instead, waiting in the wings, a deplorable, detestable man, with literally no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

January 20, 2009. That was the day Barack Obama was inaugurated. We were living in a tiny, mold-infested duplex. We didn’t have a couch, just some folding chairs. We didn’t have a TV. Just a laptop. But my missus and I sat together on those chairs, watching the inauguration on the laptop, holding our baby daughter on our lap, and crying our eyes out with joy that the world was changing in real time, and that our beautiful little girl was going to be born into this new and better world.

That’s all so long ago now. All that hope. All that optimism. Gone.

In just the span of our daughter’s lifetime, we’ve fallen so far.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not happy about the Obama years. His administration wasn’t at all what we thought it was going to be, and it hurt hard to face up to that sad fact as it was happening. But compared to abyss we’re staring into now, those years seem like a lost paradise.

But all is not lost. I truly believe this. I believe in our daughter. I believe in her friends and her peers. I believe in her generation.

Next election, they’ll be voting, and I know it won’t go like this again.

Real change can happen real fast. 2008 changed my missus and I on a personal level more than anything else that has ever happened to either of us in our lives. And the economic recession that happened during that same time was proof that even the most formidable giants can topple. General Motors had been one of the most successful companies ever for decades. Then, almost overnight, the giant was bankrupt. Serves them right.

Kind of Blue was recorded approximately 50 years before my daughter was born. Come the next presidential election in 2028, the album will be 70 years old. When it was recorded, Eisenhower was president. He was, in fact, the first president to be constitutionally prevented from running for a third term. That’s thanks to the 22nd Amendment.

Keep a close eye on the 22nd in the coming weeks, months, and years. I promise you, Trump and his people will try to repeal it. Personally, I don’t care if he succeeds or not. I know my daughter’s generation won’t vote him in, even if he is allowed to run.

It’s now 11pm, December 30, 2024. Tomorrow is the last day of what’s been a pretty miserable year in pretty many ways. And things are only going to get worse. But I think that’s probably okay. If we can’t stave off the apocolypse, we might as well race towards it. 77 million people asked for it, and now they’re gonna get it, right where it hurts. And there’s going to be a lot of pain to spread around. But we’re going to get through it. And at the end of it all, my daughter’s generation is going to take control, and we’re going to run these bastards out of here.

Until then, we vamp.

~

Start following the #365Songs playlist today, and listen to each new song with each new article!

So What—Miles Davis was originally published in No Wrong Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Much Ado About Nothing — Waxahatchee

#365Songs: December 29th, 2024

I’ve been compiling my favorite songs at the end of each year since 2005. It’s a lot of work, but the final playlist marks time beautifully. When I hit play, it’s instant nostalgia. No year is all bitter, or all sweet, some are darker and others light, but no matter what’s happening music is always playing across all of my days, soundtracking the chaos and calm of my life.

It’s been a year of transitions, from beginning to end. There was a constant roar underneath everything, a blanket of anxiety, that feeling of unsettle about life and politics and the future of everything. And yet, there was music, always music, to remind me that beauty and hope, meaning and purpose were always one moment away.

I promised an optimistic essay for weeks, months, and the thing is, despite all the warnings about what sits on the other side of the calendar flip, I feel more hopeful for next year than I did a year ago. There will always be darkness, and there will always be light if you let it in.

Maybe that’s what this year taught us: in an age of artificial everything, we need real human connection more than ever. More music, more books, more conversations, more of everything tangible, all the things that make us feel, remind us of our humanity.

“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.” — Maya Angelou

Next year will bring new challenges, anxieties, and corporatized attempts to commodify our attention. But as long as artists keep making honest music about this mess we’re in, we’ll have something real to hold onto, something that keeps us moving forward, and, of course, the full range of emotions at our disposal.

Just think of all the things you can do for the next 13 hours while listening to this playlist: run an ultramarathon, drive 1000 miles, play a game of Risk, write a short story, or just close your eyes and dream away the day.

“I feel as if I’m always on the verge of waking up.” ― Fernando Pessoa

I’m not particularly good at stack ranking my favorite things — books, songs, films, memories. This playlist is in no particular order, but I suppose I’ll lead with the ten songs I listened to on repeat all year.

1. Right Back to It — Waxahatchee, MJ Lenderman
2. Alone — The Cure
3. Ghost — Honeyglaze
4. Sadness As a Gift — Adrianne Lenker
5. Backyard Lover — Merce Lemon
6. One Last Dance — Baby Rose, BADBADNOTGOOD
7. Revelator — Phosphorescent
8. Like I Say (i runaway) — Nilüfer Yanya
9. Life the End — James Blake
10. Riding Around In The Dark — Florist
11. Football — Youth Lagoon
12. :) — The Japanese House
13. 20th & Mississippi — Winter Aid
14. 4AM Ascension Day — Låpsley
15. After Hours — Christian Lee Huston
16. Afterlife — Sharon Van Etten
17. Air Drumming Fix You — Wild Pink
18. Look Me in the Eyes (feat. James Blake) — Rex Orange County, James Blake
19. Side By Side — Crumb
20. Another Love — Gemma Hayes, Paul Noonan
21. April — Local Natives
22. Babylon — Tamino
23. Midnight — James Blake, Lil Yachty
24. Matter — Talos, Atli Örvarsson
25. Beautiful Boyz — CocoRosie
26. I Said What I Said — The Softies
27. words fell out — Goat Girl
28. Between Waves — The Album Leaf
29. Bikini — Nick León, Erika de Casier
30. Devil Swim (OurVinyl Sessions) — Billie Marten, OurVinyl
31. Bleach — Palace
32. Feed the Flames — Gemma Hayes
33. Boyfriend — Teenage Dads
34. Free Treasure — Adrianne Lenker
35. My Day Off — Kacy Hill, Nourished By Time
36. Burial At Sea — Tucker Zimmerman, Big Thief, lji, Twain
37. Capricorn — Vampire Weekend
38. Hell of a Ride — Nourished by Time
39. Cigarettes & Wine (feat. Holly Humberstone) — Del Water Gap, Holly Humberstone
40. Come Fine Me — Caribou
41. The Conflict of the Mind — AURORA
42. Crash Course — Joseph Noah
43. Crow — Merce Lemon
44. Crystals (feat. Benjamin Gibbard) — Sea Lemon, Benjamin Gibbard
45. Cry Without End — Equiknoxx Remix, pt 1 — SAM MORTON, Equiknoxx
46. Bodies Laughing — The Smile
47. There’s No Space — Ghostly Kisses
48. Dear Someone — Haley Hansen
49. Perfection (feat. Tiny Habits) — Kacey Musgraves, Tiny Habits
50. Deer Teeth — Sega Bodega
51. Dollar Slice — Bloomsday
52. Don’t Get Me Started — The Smile
53. Girl (feat. KAYTRANADA) — The Internet, KAYTRANADA
54. Empty And Silent (feat. King Krule) — Mount Kimble, King Krule
55. End of The World — Searows
56. Eusexua — FKA twigs
57. Sorry I Am Late — Evernew, Coloray, Baril
58. Come out tonight — Tyler Burkhart
59. Dramamine — Middle Kids
60. Fatal Attraction — Katie Malco, Laura Stevenson
61. Flowers in My Hair — Abigail Lapell, Great Lake Swimmers, Miniscule
62. For Sure — Ethel Cain
63. Lovers Rock — TV Girl
64. Raining on Your Pillow — DIIV
65. Get Careful Darker — R. Missing
66. Darlin’ — Jean Dawson
67. luther (with sza) — Kendrick Lamar, SZA
68. Golden — Wezn
69. Good Stuff — Bnny
70. GREY RUBBLE -GREEN SHOOTS — Godspeed You! Black Emperor
71. Halfway Down — Hayley Richman
72. The Hardest Part — Washed Out
73. Hey — The Hard Quartet
74. Heaven — Toro y Moi, Kevin Abstract, Lev
75. HIGHJACK — A&AP Rocky, Jessica Pratt
76. BIRDS OF A FEATHER — Billie Eilish
77. Hollowed Out — Ducks Ltd.
78. Home is a Photograph — Barzin
79. honeymoon — Outpost Drive
80. I made my baby cry — Becky and the Birds
81. The Impossible — The Drums
82. I Promise — Lila Dupont
83. Taper — Maria BC
84. Claw Machine — Sloppy Jane, Phoebe Bridgers
85. Jane Four — R. Missing
86. Just a Western — Nilüfer Yanya
87. KISSES MAKE SURE — Strick, James Blake, Young Thug
88. Let’s Go Back — Jungle
89. Let’s Walk in The Night — SAM MORTON, Alabaster DePlume
90. Life Is — Jessica Pratt
91. Who You Are — Francis of Delirium
92. Tell Me Who You Are Today — Beth Gibbons
93. Bioluminescence — Goth Baby
94. Long as I’m Not the One — Grandaddy
95. Sleepwalking — Camera Obscura
96. The lost note — miciah
97. Love Affair — J.Views, Rhye
98. Loved — Four Tet
99. Lucky — Erika de Casier
100. Lucy Takes a Picture — Youth Lagoon
101. Lullaby — Britti
102. M — Soccer Mommy
103. Maine — hey, nothing
104. Lightness Out of Darkness — The Boxer Rebellion
105. Wristwatch — MJ Lenderman
106. Mars — Audrey Mathilde
107. Me Before You — Bleachers
108. If the World Was a House — The Secret Sisters
109. Mudroom — Tiny Habit
110. The Museum — Half Waif
111. Wave by Wave — Harmonia, Vittoria Maccbruni, Michael Rother
112. My House Is Not A Home — d4vd
113. Only One — Cassandra Jenkins
114. my mind (now) — Paris Paloma
115. Never Again — Thomas Azier
116. Never Arriving — Allegra Krieger
117. Never Need Me — Rachel Chinouriri
118. Next Time — Sydney Ross Mitchell
119. Dark Sun — h. pruz
120. Over You — Vacations
121. Nostalgia — Yot Club
122. Nothing To Declare — MGMT
123. Oh, Sweet Honey — Andrea Bejar
124. Soccer Practice — Lizzy McAlpine
125. Old Fashioned Parade — Bianca Steck
126. OMG — Suki Waterhouse
127. To Love — Suki Waterhouse
128. Paradise — Henry Morris
129. Corner of My Eye — Future Islands
130. I Just Want To Wake Up With You — Helado Negro
131. I Think I Found a Way — The Amazing
132. Pink Skies — Zach Bryan
133. Please Don’t Fall in Love With Me — Khalid
134. Pleasure delayer — BETWEEN FRIENDS
135. Point of Disgust — Perfume Genius, Alan Sparhawk
136. Pollyanna Cowgirl — Jacqueline Hackett
137. Bubba — Hovvdy
138. If Our Love Is Dead — Royel Otis
139. Beautiful Boy — The Last Dinner Party
140. Set Me Free — PROM
141. Prove It To You — Brittany Howard
142. Put Down Your Phone — Mïrändä
143. Raat Ki Rani — Arooj Aftab
144. Keep Some Steady Friends Around — Bill Callahan
145. Fencers — Phosphorescent
146. The Ride — Afternoon Bike Ride
147. Sundowner — Fontaines D.C.
148. Run Your Mouth — The Marias
149. Only Yesterday — Pedro The Lion
150. it could be anything — claire rousay
151. Sexy to Someone — Clairo
152. She La La — Winnetka Bowling League
153. Shatterstar — Zachary Cale
154. House of Self-Undoing — Chelsea Wolfe
155. Shudder — Jelani Aryeh
156. Silencio — Patrick Watson, November Ultra
157. Small Changes — Michael Kiwanuka
158. Some Kind of Angel — Georgia Gets By
159. Endsong — The Cure
160. Low Sun — Hermanos Gutiérrez
161. S P E Y S I D E — Bon Iver
162. Standard Tuning — bdrmm
163. Starling — Sara Kinsley
164. stay for the night — Rxseboy, Fenne Lily
165. Style — Field Guide
166. The Sun Still Rises — Aisha Badru
167. Artificial Genuine — Jane Penny
168. take yr time — dad sports
169. Tennessee (feat. Lil Nas X) — Kevin Abstract, Lil Nas X
170. Terrible News — Middle Kids
171. These Days — Ocie Elliott
172. Mastermind Specialism — English Teacher
173. This Was A Gift — Florist
174. Those Eyes (Spend Up)(feat. Zeph) — New West, Zeph
175. Much Ado About Nothing — Waxahatchee
176. Time Is Forever — Holly Macve
177. Do 2 Me — KAYTRANADA, Anderson .Paak, SiR
178. Time to Walk Home — Alice Boman, Irya Gmeyner
179. Good Luck, Babe! — Chappell Roan
180. Too Much — girl in red
181. Mark My Words — Hundred Waters
182. Young Lion — Sade
183. Alesis — Mk.gee
184. Under the Tree — Victoria Bigelow
185. I Want It All — Katie Gavin
186. Where Did You Come From? — The American Analog Set
187. Love Gone Wrong — Lula Wiles
188. When We Die (Can We Still Get High?) — YUNGBLUD, Lil Yachty
189. Where We’ve Been — Friko
190. Infinite Health — Vocal Edit — Tycho, Cautious Clay
191. Widows of Normandy — Rye LaChance
192. Oh My Aching Heart — Heartless Bastards
193. Wishes — Tiny Habits
194. Farfisa Song — Angela Olsen
195. What We Had — Gillian Welch, David Rawlings
196. Workin On Me — Russ, 6LACK
197. Baby Blue Movie — Cigarettes After Sex
198. You (feat: Hermanos Gutiérrez) — RY X, Hermanos Gutiérrez
199. You Don’t Know Me — Third Brother
200. Your Worst Song is Your Greatest Hit — The Reds, Pinks and Purples

Much Ado About Nothing — Waxahatchee was originally published in No Wrong Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

#365Songs: December 28th, 2024

Welcome to the internet
Have a look around
Anything that brain of yours can think of can be found
We’ve got mountains of content
Some better, some worse
If none of it’s of interest to you, you’d be the first

Welcome to the internet
Come and take a seat
Would you like to see the news or any famous women’s feet?
There’s no need to panic
This isn’t a test, haha
Just nod or shake your head and we’ll do the rest

The blank page doesn’t scare me anymore. What was once daunting is now exciting, an unencumbered ‘anything is possible’ feeling that opens me up to explore whatever’s on my mind.

Until now, a day when I’ve demanded of myself a hopeful essay about the next year.

“Do not obey in advance.” — Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny

I guess I’ll start here: I deactivated all but Substack and LinkedIn on the night of the election — and I’ve only kept the latter because it’s theoretically a place to network and find freelance work, though even that’s gotten toxic, political, and ineffective. What began as a way to connect, share photos, and inspire one another became algorithmic, exploitative ad platforms meant to reshape how we see ourselves in order to fit within profit models. But I knew that long ago, and I stayed anyway.

No, it’s deeper than that. I’ve also spent most of the past 15 years working within tech companies, a cog in the “we’re changing the world” machine — even as I, too, turned my eyes away from what was really going, even as I shut down my own inherent skepticism of capitalism. And we certainly changed the world, for the benefit of a few at the expense of all. Never has that been more clear than now.

But again, it’s even deeper than that. Despite all its flaws, even the most nefarious tech companies were once populated with some values-minded employees, and cultures were built to sustain open dialogue. At least for a while. That changed over time. I’ve never been quiet, whether on the inside or outside, about asking the tougher questions: what are the unintended consequences, is this decision aligned to the suggested company values, etc… During the first Trump years, I worked for a company that resisted his worst policies. Even before that, at Facebook, a weekly Q&A with Zuckerberg established an open forum where employees could challenge his decisions — for every nefarious initiative there was a vocal counterculture. Speaking up was seen as caring, not as disloyalty worthy of termination. They often didn’t listen, and did it anyway, but there was a sense that resistance was possible.

That was the first change I noticed, and experienced firsthand. Speak up and you’ll lose your job, thus burning down the ‘town square’ spirit that kept tech from delivering their most damaging ideas. Not to say that horrible decisions weren’t made during those more open culture days: Facebook and Instagram allowed viral misformation during the 2016 election, mishandled the pandemic, and ignored dire Instagram data about a teenage mental health crisis that they didn’t just create, but exploited — even as hundreds of employees pushed back in those same open sessions.

Then, the biggest red flag: tech founders began funding Trump’s campaign to serve their own interests, asking for deregulation in return, ensuring that all those terrifying but immensely profitable ideas come to life. And the apolitical founders, like Bezos and Zuckerberg, started throwing their own weight around — limiting the spread of real news in favor of viral falsehood, and halted meaningful endorsements to please the master. In the past month, they’ve all visited Mar a Lago, even promised money for the inaugural celebration.

And finally, when you dig into the numbers in cities like New York and San Francisco, you’ll see a sharp several-point turn towards Trump. Finance and tech hubs, filled with talent who’ll trade your rights for more pay.

And now there’s nobody left to resist.

Welcome to the internet
What would you prefer?
Would you like to fight for civil rights or tweet a racial slur?
Be happy
Be horny
Be bursting with rage
We got a million different ways to engage

Welcome to the internet
Put your cares aside
Here’s a tip for straining pasta
Here’s a nine-year-old who died
We got movies, and doctors, and fantasy sports
And a bunch of colored pencil drawings
Of all the different characters in Harry Potter fucking each other
Welcome to the internet

So you’re probably wondering where the hope lives in all of this… Yeah, I don’t know either, but I have a theory that an implosion is on the way. Here’s how.

1. Cognitive exhaustion. As soon as Trump is inaugurated, your feeds will be filled with chaos and backlash, and those first few mornings when the bad news floods one tweet, story, and post at time, boom boom boom, our collective PTSD will kick in, the “I can’t do this again” instincts will (hopefully) create a mass fleeing. Social media is meant to be a distraction, after all — from work, monotony, boredom, life — not a deeper dive into the doom spiral.

Trump, Musk, and his cronies want attention. When you don’t give it to them, they melt down. So it’s easy: tune them out.

2. Shark attacks. Trump’s mistake, this time, is that he filled his little pond with too many sharks. Narcissists can’t tolerate other narcissists, as there’s only so much oxygen in the room to steal. There’s already signs of a Musk / Trump implosion, and any sign that their questionable governing starts to impact quarterly earnings, the same tech leaders who just masturbated Trump’s campaign will turn on him so fast and create an all-out billionaire shark attack.

3. Reality. MAGA voters are already up in arms about Elon’s turn of phrase around immigration, that it’s okay to bring in “foreigners” for engineering jobs. Trump ran on an Americans-only message, and he’ll learn real fast that our entire food system, and manufacturing economy, is held up by the very people he proclaims to deport. The promise of tariffs, if realized, will raise inflation, lower the stock market, and make everything more expensive — which leads us back to the “Shark attacks” after the first earnings reports hit those billionaire bank accounts. And, when they roll back social programs that the poorest Americans (read: MAGA voters) rely on, whether they know it or not, and billionaires get even richer, they’ll begin asking the right questions for the first time in their lives. (Ok ok, I don’t buy that one, either.)

4. Violence. This is a dark point, and while I certainly hope it doesn’t happen, there are so many signs right now that Trump will, in fact, prosecute his enemies. That’ll likely lead to upheaval in the streets, which will lead Trump to honor his other promise: sending the military, and his militias, into cities. This will test some loyalties amongst Trump’s “he’s all talk, he’ll never do that” voters, particularly those who either live, or have family, in those cities. He’s also threatening takeovers of Panama, Greenland, and, uh, Canada, and he’ll put the most loyal military generals to the test. How far will they be willing? We’ll find out.

Hold on to your socks
’Cause a random guy just kindly sent you photos of his cock
They are grainy and off-putting
He just sent you more
Don’t act surprised, you know you like it, you whore

See a man beheaded
Get offended, see a shrink
Show us pictures of your children
Tell us every thought you think
Start a rumor, buy a broom
Or send a death threat to a boomer
Or DM a girl and groom her
Do a Zoom or find a tumor in your
Here’s a healthy breakfast option
You should kill your mom
Here’s why women never fuck you
Here’s how you can build a bomb
Which Power Ranger are you?
Take this quirky quiz
Obama sent the immigrants to vaccinate your kids

Resistance and counter-movements work in actual democracies, but become a whole lot bloodier and more dangerous under Facism or Dictatorial administrations. The Women’s Marches and Black Lives Matter rallies of the first Trump term won’t be possible this time, sadly. Peaceful organization is an echo chamber, and those who need to hear it most won’t hear the echo. And resistance messages on social media sites won’t be heard, because algorithms are approved by the same leaders who put their money on Trump.

And that leaves us with silence — though don’t mistake that for complicity.

I’ve never been an advocate for apathy, but I think the best resistance against Trump is to give him all the space he needs to blow himself up. He will go too far, many times, and his voters will feel the pain of their own vote. And it will be very, very painful, predominantly for the most vulnerable populations. That’s not to say we don’t create safe spaces, the best we can. But this isn’t 2017 or 2020, and this is not the same Donald Trump. The damage was done the moment he wasn’t prosecuted for insurrection, the moment he was allowed to run again, the moment 53% of Americans voted him back in. The pain is coming no matter what we do, but if we can find our safe spaces and hide away for a while, and Trump just does what Trump will inevitably do, he’ll find new and innovative ways to do what he does best: bankrupt himself at our expense.

And there will be art, lots and lots of art, and new leaders will rise from the ashes, somehow, and, if we allow Trump to be Trump, his great grift will finally be revealed: that of course he never gave a shit about his supporters, who he doesn’t need ever again. Those voters have nothing on Trump, and therefore Trump has no reason to give them anything at all. But the billionaires don’t hand out money for free, and when OUR quiet protests start losing THEM money, Trump will have no choice but to cater to them at the expense of everyone else.

Apathy’s a tragedy
And boredom is a crime
Anything and everything
All of the time
Could I interest you in everything?
All of the time?
A little bit of everything
All of the time

Apathy’s a tragedy
And boredom is a crime
Anything and everything
All of the time

You know, it wasn’t always like this

Ok, ok, ok. I’m a fiction writer who has spent the past year preparing for America’s decline into Fascism. You can’t expect me to suddenly have hope three weeks before a Fascist takes office. Do I think this scenario is possible, and that it’s enough, to save us from a free fall? Sure, but it’s unlikely. I suspect it’ll be a whole, whole lot worse. But hope lives within the plans you make for how you handle it, for who you rally around, for the actions you take to counter it, for the more vulnerable communities you support, for the art you make. That won’t happen on social media, but it’ll happen in bookstores and bars and homes and campuses and diners and wherever you choose to go. It’ll happen by choosing wisely where you spend your money, and your time, ensuring that those on the wrong side feel your resistance in the way they care most: corporate profits.

During his first presidency, everything was a surprise. This time, anything is possible. Last time, we had some power, the checks and balances were still in place, and civil disobedience was still a realistic way to resist. We burned that all down when we lost the Supreme Court, and again when we became the minority voter.

All I’ll say, if I’ve learned anything from my time in tech and the past two months living a more analog life: hope isn’t online, it’s offline, with real people in actual communities. I may sound old, but damn, life sure was better before the Internet.

Could I interest you in everything?
All of the time?
A little bit of everything
All of the time

Not very long ago
Just before your time
Right before the towers fell, circa ‘99
This was catalogs
Travel blogs
A chat room or two
We set our sights and spent our nights
Waiting
For you, you, insatiable you
Mommy let you use her iPad
You were barely two
And it did all the things
We designed it to do

Now look at you, oh

Look at you, you, you
Unstoppable, watchable
Your time is now
Your inside’s out
Honey, how you grew
And if we stick together
Who knows what we’ll do
It was always the plan
To put the world in your hand

Hahaha
Could I interest you in everything?
All of the time
A bit of everything
All of the time
Apathy’s a tragedy
And boredom is a crime
Anything and everything
All of the time
Could I interest you in everything?
All of the time

A little bit of everything
All of the time
Apathy’s a tragedy
And boredom is a crime
Anything and everything
And anything and everything
And anything and everything
And all of the time

~

Start following the #365Songs playlist today, and listen to each new song with each new article!

Follow me on Substack: https://thefogandthefury.substack.com/

Welcome to The Internet—Bo Burnham was originally published in No Wrong Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.