there's so much bad in the world but there's also people who lift up and carry an elderly bat around every day so he can pretend he's flying again, and that's the part of the world I think is worth fighting for
"Brick" is a STRONG contender in March Sadness '90s, and Cicily Bennion more than does it justice. The beginning of her essay (the iPod!) is grand. Then she goes deeper about trauma and kids and forgiveness, especially forgiving oneself for what doesn't need forgiving. marchxness.com#/1stround-fo...
What a fun and interesting approach to the essay by @amygcb.bsky.social for @marchxness.bsky.social - the song as soundtrack, the reminiscing, the odd mom-behavior. Also, Amy is basically modeling my church wardrobe from that time. Never again will I wear a peach-colored garment.
This is a weirdly fascinating and endearing thread. One of my grandpas was a WWII paratrooper and steel mill rail maker. The other worked for the CCC, CAA (met my grandma over the teletype) and then as an air traffic controller and ran a small machine/electrics shop with one of my uncles.
I already had this song in my bracket, but the preacher’s kid in me loved this essay (sermon?) as interpretation of the story of Thomas and through it all of us.
Fun also to see your name pop up after I was just talking about TOMBOYLAND with a friend a week or so ago! This essay will stick with me …
to my sister’s high school graduation where I would see my broken dad for the first time in a couple years, and that and the essay made me cry, so there we are.
And yet it’s up against a real stunner of an essay by @mlfaliveno.bsky.social about “Round Here,” featuring fog and actual crows and a house illuminated on a hill, and I know every word of this song and remember it helping me stay awake while I drove a borrowed VW bug 8 hours through the mountains
@emelkrishnan.bsky.social ‘s beautiful essay about Savage Garden is much further back in the rankings than it deserves to be, when it so beautifully demonstrates that being 13 is universal. Also check out the interesting structure with the lineages paragraphs.
They’re both wonderful essays, and I thought Liz too, but Bennett’s really pierced me.
It is indeed! Oof.
I'm so glad @erindorney.bsky.social dug into what I hadn't been able to put my finger on FOR YEARS about that Paula Cole song--it's performing heteronormativity and THE SADNESS FOR THE LIFE SHE SINGS ABOUT "WANTING" is also performative, therefore, which is so damn brilliant
“…an intimation I did not yet have the serenity or the courage or the wisdom to understand or act upon, a fleeting comprehension that, while I could not yet see the light at the far end, I could at least recognize, maybe for the first time ever, the presence of a tunnel.”
I really thought this one would go to “Lonely Talk,” but @jamcharlesworth.bsky.social helped me find my own collective soul. Such intricate musing on the song, the artist, provincialism, stagnation, alcohol and its (mis) uses, artistry, hope.
?? What reference am I missing? As a Soul Coughing fan, I didn’t catch that in this Collective Soul essay.
I loved your essay! Thank you.
On Gill bringing in another singer or two, on multiple versions and occasions: “This was always a song that needed other voices because that was always its point: shared memory, shared love, shared burden. I hadn’t heard it in that way before, but I will never hear it differently.”
This one was an easy vote for @mossyair.bsky.social ‘s crystalline take on family, grief, and the reason thoughtfully constructed country music is the music of the people.
And @chrisdaley.bsky.social writes tongue in cheek so well: “Suddenly, here was Liz Phair, not only boldly declaring she was remaking the Stones’ Exile on Main Street but complaining about roommates, getting her heart broken, and talking openly about fucking. Representation matters.”
Oof — great songs, great essays from Jeremy Bennett and Chris Daley. Bennett’s understated sad sad story sent an arrow through my heart.
OK, after just seeing the standings, I voted my heart: Roads. 🤘
Man, both of these essays and songs are so good! And sad! I loved how @dellegeller.bsky.social structured hers, plus I’m a former fast driver in a 1976 Monte Carlo. But Casey Powaga beautifully captures not just the song but Raitt’s performance of it. Maybe I'll have to flip a coin.
“A bot inside a data center sucking water from the Colorado River cannot stand at the bus stop in awe listening to a phrase, the way it exerts a force while hanging in mid-air.” Excellent @marchxness.bsky.social essay by @leahmensch.bsky.social
This is a tough one, and the live scores reflect that.
I was admittedly biased toward Tom Waits because I think he’s brilliant and sad, and I live with a Waits-a-Holocaust, and I’m too old for a full understanding of Backstreet Boys, but @paleoctopi.bsky.social won me over with his meticulous exploration of “Hold On” ✅ marchxness.com#/1stround-ba...
Grab that March Xness feed and treat yourself to some beautiful essays and sad fuckin songs. Follow @marchxness.bsky.social for all the updates too.
We'll stand ready to answer the call!
Of course they did. He played out all their fantasies about how they could behave when they were big strong grownups too! Sincerely, the klutzy kid picked last
FINAL SCORES DAY 1:
Celine Dion 178, Silver Jews 83
Neutral Milk Hotel 164, Annie Lennox 61
Bush 158, Fiona Apple 77
Ani Difranco 153, Wallflowers 79
Congrats to the winners, and we salute the defeated. Shout out to Samuel Rafael Barber, @ronhogan.bsky.social, Drew Krewer, and Kimberly Nelson
Oooh, China Crisis ... now I'll have "The Arizona Sky" in my head. And a friend texted me about my essay this morning and mentioned how she loved hearing the first "No More I Love Yous," which she didn't know.
