This week is our year in review week at Not a Sound and we wanted to try celebrating a few things that don’t get celebrated enough. Both of our editors are musicians and/or songwriters outside of the blog and are passionate about the creative craft that goes into making good music. With that in mind, we thought it would be fun to do a pair of columns celebrating the craft of music rather than just the whole finished product. In this article we basically just wanted to geek out about a few of our favorite lyrics from releases in 2018, we hope you enjoy these songs as much as we do!
“Ghost Town”- Kanye West feat. PARTYNEXTDOOR, Kid Cudi, and 070 Shake
070 Shake: “Oh once again I am a child / I let go of everything that I know / and nothing hurts anymore / I feel kind of free / we’re still the kids we used to be.”
“Ghost Towns” is the climax of Kanye West’s self-titled ye, in which 070 Shake leads the second half. Her child-like vocals soar over electric-guitar riffing, and when the instrumental cuts out at “I feel kind of free” leaving only her voice on the beat, it makes for one of the most triumphant, emotionally satisfying lyrical moments of 2018.
“Stay Down” – boygenius
Julien Baker: “I look at you and you look at a screen / I’m in the backseat of my body / I’m just steering my life in a video game / similar acts in a different name”
The Julien Baker-led boygenius track “Stay Down” perfectly and simply describes the loneliness of life in 2018.
“2009” – Mac Miller
“I don’t need to lie no more / nowadays all I do is shine, take a breath and ease my mind / and she don’t cry no more / she tells me that I get her high ‘cause an angel’s s’posed to fly / and I ain’t asking “why?” no more / oh no I take it if it’s mine, I don’t stay inside the lines / it ain’t 2009 no more / yeah I know what’s behind the door”
Released weeks before his untimely death, the penultimate track on Mac Miller’s final album is basically a perfect song, lyrically and sonically. In an album chronicling pain and rejection, “2009” looks beyond it all, accepting the past with a resolve to move forward. It is a true shame that he would not live to see this fully carried out.
“Lavender Burning” – Half Waif
“I miss New York, but I don’t wanna think about leaving / I’m out on the road and it’s losing all of its meaning / Just tryin’ to fill this hole that once held my whole being / Is this all there is?”
The opening track to Half Waif’s critically acclaimed album “Lavender” is a stunning reflection on self and place. Invoking her grandmother’s practice of burning lavender as an image of home and identity, lyricist Nandi Rose Plunkett reflects on her life on the road and all that she left behind; those things that shaped her into who she is that she now feels distant from.
“With You” – Noname
“I’m almost just as empty as you think I am, a penny for your thoughts / A witty pear of happiness, a pretty Ricky Ross / A maid black music, I woke up in my sympathy, became black Judas / All my everythings for sale / All my secondhand discoveries, Dungarees faded pale / All my halfway hallelujahs that tippy-toed in the mail / All the fluctuations on scales / And the missing therapy sessions of bullets treating me well”
It’s hard to pick just one lyric from Noname’s “Room 25”, an album that is packed with incredible lines from the moment it opens with “Self” to the moment it fades out with “no name.” I decided to go with the penultimate track “With You”, where Noname wrestles with her growing fame and influence and what it’s like to essentially sell your life experiences as art. This perpetual mental battle is one that all confessional writers face to one degree or another, and Noname nails the feeling with a lyrical precision and openness unique to her.
“Why” – Animal Flag
“When your parents met, it was a lonely night / They figured yeah, who cares? People get married all the time / Then they made you up, and they brought you home / And they laid you down and said “God, what have we done? / What have we done?”
“Now you’re a speck of dust on a floating rock / You’re the fastest hand on the smallest clock / You’re a vapor bird in a body cage / And when you break out, it’ll leave everyone in pain /Oh, in pain”
“Why” deals with the ever looming existential question, “why are any of us even here?” in a way that is both artful and somewhat humorous. It opens with a lackadaisical, irreverent stanza about a married couple bringing a new child into the world before shifting into a stanza detailing the existential dread of being human in the most snide possible way. In what is perhaps it’s most clever line, Animal Flag describe the human essence, or soul as “a vapor bird in a body cage” before revealing the irony of death, that freeing that bird from it’s cage will leave everyone else in pain. What a drag.
Enjoy these songs in the playlist below.
Not a Sound 