So, you’re all right—yesterday’s post about that Beyoncé song, the one that attracted comments like “New, on Pod/Vod: Justify Your Writing Career!” (which is actually quite clever), was a total cop-out. It was lazy, and you’re right for calling me out on it.
I do like the song, though. I like singing along to the chorus “You must not know ‘bout me, you must not know ‘bout me” and while I hate the drum machine, I do like the acoustic guitar and the subtle strings. It’s catchy, and unlike all of Beyoncé’s other ballads, the woman isn’t flaunting her pipes by annoyingly belting the tune up and down and all over the place. It’s just really clean, simple, and surprisingly not remarkable. That’s what I like about it—it’s not even trying to be remarkable.
Now, why didn’t I say that yesterday? Why did I just say I like it, refuse to explain, and then offer myself up for persecution? Practically, I needed to throw something up on the blog—it’s my job to do that. It’s my job to write about music, it’s my job to post on Line Out, and c’mon, I’ve posted some okay stuff in the past. I was trying to do my job.
But really, I didn’t want to listen to that Beyoncé song, let alone write about it, because I got dumped right before Valentine’s Day and that fucking sucks.
What do you listen to when you feel like you’ve been duped, when you put everything on the line, trusting someone was right there with ya, only to have that person bail? What do you listen to when you’re told you’re great—really, really great—but just not great enough?
Oh jesus, I’m getting dramatic.
The point is, I can’t find a single song I honestly want to hear right now. Including that Beyoncé song. That’s why I didn’t do a good job writing about it, because I didn’t fucking care about it. So I’m sorry.
I’m nursing a broken heart (goddamn, that’s so emo), and I’m new at it. Everything I listen to doesn’t seem to fit; I can’t stand to listen to music right now, and that makes me feel lost. Cliché, yeah, but music is my life. All those songs about heartbreak, all those songs about feeling like you’re not good enough, all those songs about feeling abandoned… I can’t stand to listen to any of them. They’re cheesy.
I don’t want to cry, so that leaves out the obvious Tom Waits heartbreaking stuff. But I don’t want to listen to absurdly optimistic “You’re amazing and everything will be okay” crap either. I know everything will be okay. But it’s not right now. I’m not looking for sympathy, I just want to know, what should I listen to right now?