10 artists who cured my music drought (and 3 songs from each)

chappell roan, olivia rodrigo, arlo parks, julia jacklin, phoebe bridgers, clairo, pj harvey, beabadoobee, lucy dacus, björk (plus an essay: are straight people real?)

Sep 19, 2024

in 2019 i faced a grave challenge:

all the music i listened to was completely stale: the same stuff i had been listening to when i graduated high school in 2006. sure, maybe there were a few artists here or there who had joined my spotify library in those 13 years: but not very many. certainly not enough to leave me feeling the same love for music i had as a teenager.

so i embarked on a deliberate project to discover more music, and i ended up discovering i was queer! this is something i have enjoyed writing about on multiple occasions, but what i am excited to do with this list is simply share 10 of the artists i have embraced since i started my journey in 2019.

these musicians have helped me explore the inner depths of my soul, and i am confident that there are a few — without doubt phoebe bridgers, clairo, lucy dacus, and olivia rodrigo — without whom i might never have found myself.

also, i would love to hear from you!!!

i would love to hear comments about:

💖 additional song recommendations for the artists below
💖 additional artist recommendations
💖 your own experiences with re-discovering music
💖 any personal transformations you yourself have experienced thanks to music
💖 anything else you can think of!!!

also don’t forget to vote in the poll at the bottom!

💖 i hope you to chat with you in the comments!!! 💖

💖 i love to connect over music!!! 💖

more music writing:

clairo, buddhism, nyc, and queerhood (retrospective diary: 2019-2024)

phoebe bridgers and the music that blossomed my queerness (retrospective diary: 2021-2024)

why you should care what taylor swift thinks (10 weekly readings)

5 lucy dacus songs for processing religious trauma

7 clairo songs for processing religious trauma

why my haim crocs are so special to me

💖 presented in an intuitive order 💖

1. olivia rodrigo (and social connection with a girl)

a few years ago i was at a bachelor party with an enormous group of men and… i was paralyzed with social anxiety. i could not even speak.

finally we got back to our airbnb where the girls were. we were listening to olivia rodrigo, her first album, and i announced how much i loved olivia rodrigo. my friend v had recently intoduced me to her, and i was listening nonstop. at this party, my other female friend, c, looked at me and said, “really?! me too!!!” and i told her, “ i just feel like so many of her issues are my issues” and c said, “oh my god!! my too!!!!!”

and i was euphoric.

in so many ways, olivia rodrigo is the inspiration behind this blog:

she spills her guts and i spill mine 💖

co-comparison is killing me slowly
i think, I think too much
'bout kids who don't know me
and I'm so sick of myself
i'd rather be, rather be (oh, oh)
anyone, anyone else (anybody else)
jealousy, jealousy
(“jealousy, jealousy”)

i don't get angry when i'm pissed
i'm the eternal optimist
i scream inside to deal with it
like, "ah"
like, "ah" (oh my fucking God)
all the time
i'm grateful all the time
i'm sexy and i'm kind
i'm pretty when i cry
oh, all the time
i'm grateful all the fucking time
i'm sexy and i'm kind
i'm pretty when i cry
(“all american bitch”)

smart sexy lacy, i'm losing it lately
i feel your compliments like bullets on skin
dazzling starlet, bardot reincarnate
well, aren't you the greatest thing to ever exist?
(“lacy”)

2. arlo parks

arlo parks was one of the earliest artists i discovered on my musical renaissance. i loved running through prospect park listening to “eugene,” fantasizing that i was a girl in a relationship with another girl, a complicated and turbulent one. i would say for sure: arlo parks was an early window for me into my own inner queerness.

beyond that, arlo parks just write great songs exploring complex dynamics in all types of relationships.

additionally arlo parks definitely has a unique sound and vibe among the artists showcased here. definitely check her out!

maybe if you took a breath (ooh)
you would hear me when i talk to you
threw her necklace in his face
eyes so bright with disappointment
i saw something inside her break
everybody knows the feeling
suddenly he started screaming
(“caroline”)

seein' you with him burns
i feel it deep in my throat
you put your hands in his shirt
you play him records I showed you
read him sylvia plath
i thought that that was our thing
you know I like you like that
i hate that son of a bitch
(“eugene”)

blue jewels 'round your neck
you cool my distress
loose cherries, hard breath
i'm overwhelmed
i spun 'round and screamed, "i feel elated when you hold me"
and you got shy and beamed, "i think it's special that you told me"
i think you're special 'cause you told me
i think you're special 'cause you told me
i think you're special 'cause you told me
(“pegasus”)

3. pj harvey

these three songs come from 1992, 1998, and 2023: each shows a different side to pj harvey. what i love most about pj harvey is the sheer diversity of her music: she has gone through all types of stages, from hard rock to soothing rock to a much softer vibe today. for whatever reason i like her early stuff the best, especially dry. the first song below, “dress,” is from that first album.

put on that dress
i'm going out dancing
starting off red
clean and sparkling, he'll see me
music playing, make it dreamy for dancing
must be a way that i can dress to please him
it's hard to walk in the dress, it's not easy
i'm spilling over like a heavy loaded fruit tree
(“dress”)

she dreamt of children's voices
and torture on the wheel
patron-saint of nothing
a woman of the hills
she once was a lady
of pleasure, and high-born
a lady of the city
but now she sits and moans
and listens to the wind blow
listen to the wind blow
(“the wind”)

i ascend, three steps to hell
the school bus heaves up the hill
the sloey spears on witches mead
cussed, cussed, come lean on these
(“autumn term”)

4. beabadoobee

“everest” was one of the first “sad girl” songs i ever heard after i first began expanding beyond phoebe, and i was swept off my feet: the fundamentally girly sound of this song, and the fundamentally girly sound of beabadoobee’s voice, made me feel like i was doing something bad, something forbidden.

even just listening to her in private at all felt like something i shouldn’t be admitting to men. like, this is the music almost no “grown man” would be caught dead listening to. i remember when i sent “everest” to W, with whom i often shared music: “nahh,” he said, “too girly.” he couldn’t get past the first 30 seconds!

so i texted my female friend M instead.

but soon i gave no shits. i went to two of her shoes. in all honesty the crowd was a little… well, literally almost every single person was just holding their phone up recording through entire songs. so, that wasn’t great, but the music was!

love songs of all forms simply flow out of beabadoobee: beautiful and complicated, simple and enrapturing, often sad but still finding something happy in the heartbreak.

you're alright, you're still breathing
even though you feel dead sometimes
you'll be fine, you're still eating
even though it doesn't last sometimes
'cause even if your eyes are black
your bones are always gold
'cause they've climbed up every mountain
that no story's every told
'cause even if your bags are packed
you'll never leave your home
'cause you're scared of all the monsters
that are waiting to unfold
(“everest”)

know it's been raining, i swear, i'm not lonely
always complaining that you never see me
call in the morning when you wake
maybe tomorrow, we're okay
when it's a sunny day
i'll keep you posted, i promise I'm better
with the sun, we'll leave my house, i'm sorry for yesterday
you know i don't mean it, i promise i'm better
with the sun, we'll leave my house, i'm sorry for yesterday
(“sunny day”)

spinning out on what to say or what to do
finding reasons for my constant change in mood
said i'll see it to believe it, but who knows the actual truth?
'cause i'm sure now, i'm sure
'cause days blend to one when i'm on the right beaches
and the walls painted white, they tell me all the secrets
don't wait for the tide just to dip both your feet in
'cause i'm sure now, i'm sure
(“beaches”)

5. phoebe bridgers (and the void inside me)

jesus christ, i’m so blue all the time
and that's just how i feel
always have and i always will
i always have and always will
(phoebe bridgers, “funeral”)

from phoebe bridgers and the music that blossomed my queerness (retrospective diary: 2021-2024):

whenever i hear this line as i walk through the snow, i face the reality of my past: i have always been depressed and i have routinely contemplated suicide. i have this sense that no matter what i do, i will always be sad. sadness seems intrinsic to my being. what am i sad about? there is this emptiness inside of me, this sense i am not me: but why? i actually hate myself even more for not simply appreciating what i have.
i have this sense i will never find fulfillment, and i hate that, because i love the people in my life, i love the things i have done in my life, i love the books i read and the music i listen to: there is so much in my life that so often makes me happy: yet even then i feel empty, like i’m nothing, and the emptiness is filled with sadness.

that doesn’t sum it up! but that’s how it started lol!

seriously though: i have phoebe’s art to thank for helping me overcoming so many of my mental health issues. phoebe’s music helped me see into my own soul in a way that enabled me to navigate and understand my own sadness; this was so important.

and you
you must've been lookin' for me
sendin' smoke signals
pelicans circling
burnin' trash out on the beach
mm-mm
i buried a hatchet, it's comin' up lavender
the future's unwritten, the past is a corridor
i'm at the exit, lookin' back through the hall
you are anonymous, i am a concrete wall
(“smoke signals”)

call me when you land
i'll drive around again
one hand on the wheel, one in your mouth
turn me on and turn me down
baby, you're a vampire
you want blood and i promised
i'm a bad liar
with a savior complex
all the skeletons you hide
show me yours, and I'll show you mine
all the bad dreams that you hide
show me yours
(“savior complex”)

and when broken bodies are washed ashore
who am I to ask for more, more, more?
but you're breathing in my open mouth
you're the gun in my lips that will blow my brains out
i wanna make you drive all night just because i said, "maybe you should come over"
wanna make you fall in love as hard as my poor parents' teenage daughter
she'll be the best you ever had if you let her
(“waiting room”)

6. lucy dacus (and the religious trauma she helps me with)

from 5 lucy dacus songs for processing religious trauma:

from the start, “christine” echoes my experiences growing up as an evangelical. constantly i was reminded that i was inherently evil. my body was evil, my mind was evil, my thoughts and feelings were evil, and if it weren’t for jesus dying in my place, i would certainly burn in hell forever, not because god is cruel but because he is just.
throughout the song, the nature of the attraction between lucy and the friend falling asleep on her shoulder is undefined, though we know it to be a powerful one that complicates friendship. lucy sings to christine that she was trying to “imagine what you’re dreaming” in the car as she slept: there’s a restrained intimacy here i think. there’s some part of christine’s mind that is gated off not only to lucy but to christine herself, and it’s likely to remain so, despite lucy’s longing to truly know her friend: these are girls being lectured to believe they are evil, and that belief places an inhibition on our comfort with sharing feelings.

lucy’s evangelical background and the way she explores this in her music has always attracted me to her songs. but she her art covers a far broader range of topics i also find so relatable and compelling: nostalgia for childhood & teenage memories (“home video”), the trauma of an absentee father (“thumbs”), and the intricacies of all types of relationships ranging from friends to lovers to something in between. i mean, face the facts, lucy is a fucking poet: just dive in and listen to her lyrics.

you're falling asleep on my shoulder
in the back of your boyfriend's car
we're coming home from a sermon
saying how bent and evil we are
i try to imagine what you're dreaming
you're muttering nonsense between steady breathing
i have to wake you up to get out
your man waves from the end of the drive 'til I'm in the house
(“christine”)

and i'll get old and i'll get tired
and i won't run into the water
you gotta let me go down
will you remember me as i am now?
and i know you're strong
i know you're a man-made fortress
but we're alone
and i'm so willing to be proven wrong
(“timefighter”)

and then the water came
and washed it all away
it left me with nothing to say
could not believe my eyes
i could not recognize
your face in the rubble
without you, I am surely the last of our kind
without you, I am surely the last of my kind
(“dream state”)

7. clairo (and mid-life reincarnation)

from clairo, buddhism, nyc, and queerhood (retrospective diary: 2019-2024):

when charm releases i am listening to a girl giggling in the background of “second nature.” the moment i hear that laugh, the moment i hear her laughing alongside the soft sounds of “da-dum, da-da-da-da-da-dum”, well:
that is the moment when i see myself, for the first time, fully.
the man who haunted me as i walked with B is gone forever.
the chains have disintegrated: clairo has obliterated him in a single instant.
i am arising.

okay so yes clairo is a very important artist for me. i mean literally: somehow clairo’s new album was the final push i needed to come out. and not in an intellectual sense: in an emotional and spiritual sense.

charm hit me like a divine revelation into my own being.

that’s the fucking power of music.

and we fall back in routine
it can't be over
and i remember everything
you used to know her
i could trace it all the way back
i could trace it all the way back
(“slow dance”)

i don't even try
i don't have to think
with you, there's no pretending
you know me, you know me
and i just might know you too, know you
come to me ready
go dancing
(you make me wanna) try on feminine
(you make me wanna) go buy a new dress
(you make me wanna) slip off a new dress
(“juna”)

if i could wait for a time to be sad about it, sad about it
i'd choose a day when you've gone away
and i'm all alone upstate, all the way upstate
do you miss my hands hanging on the back of your neck?
it's just somethin' i'm into
do you miss my name, said it in between your breath
i remember when i see the moon
(“add up all my love”)

8. chappell roan (and the non-existence of straight people)

the best part about listening to chappell roan, at least for me personally, is just celebrating open queerness and sexuality. i mean, chappell roan does not give two shits: she’s letting it all out, and i take that as an inspiration for my own writing.

i feel like for me, “pink pony club” is just like a personal anthem at this point.

like i literally just want to stay at the pink pony club.

i don’t want to be absorbed into cis-heteronormative society for the rest of my life with all of its arbitrary standards, as my old friend B from my clairo post recently pointed out to me when it comes to the many criticisms of my writing:

texts with B

for me, this is what it means to stay in the pink pony club:

permanent freedom from the cis-heteronormative “moralistic sexual paradigm.”

there is not actually such a binary as this, but for the purposes of my own imagination:

to be outside the pink pony club is to be inside the cis-heternormative world, and to be inside the cis-heternormative world is to be trapped by an ever-tightening web of rules, restrictions, mandates, and arbitrary moral principles which all collude toward at least three functions:

the suppression of feelings;
the suppression of connection;
the obliteration of the self in the name of conformity.

the straight person, from the perspective of the queer person, seems to constantly be analyzing whether certain modes of emotional expression & interpersonal connection are appropriate/inappropriate; mature/immature; crossing lines/not crossing lines; adult/childish; manly/girly; sanctified/not sanctified; can/can’t; must/must not; “i am x, therefore y.” of course agreed-upon codes of conduct and behavior are an important component of any healthy relationship:

but seldom do straight people seem to openly communicate about these things.

why?

because they generally accept a pre-packaged list of directions.

and everyone is expected to implicitly accept these directions.

from the perspective of the queer person, the ultimate straight person is never quite himself: because he is always struggling to follow the directions.

it is in this sense that i mean:

the straight person is not real.

i do not mean the straight person is not real in the sense of there being no such thing as a person who identifies with their assigned gender and is primarily attracted to their own sex. of course, these straight people are real. and of course, these straight people can be okay, can communicate, can be in healthy relationships.

but is there not a shallower kind of straight person?

a straight person who is so restricted by the emotional and interpersonal restrictions of cis-heteronormative society that he is unable to connect with other beings on an emotional level — not because he is isolated but because he obliterates himself in the name of adherence to socially constructed cultural norms?

to me this is the ultimate straight person. the ultimate straight person seems to be frightened of feelings, perhaps especially his own, and i do believe he is everywhere.

since the straight person is constantly repressing his feelings, or ensuring that he is only expressing his feelings according to long lists of rules, he has a problem:

once he does let his feelings out, he is unable to let them out in a productive way.

this is what is meant when people say, “straight people are not okay."

but is the straight person real?

like, if you stripped all this socially constructed stuff away and you were just left with the raw being, would you have an innately ultimate straight person?

the thought is not a pleasant one.

i’ll be at the pink pony club 💖

won't make my mama proud, it's gonna cause a scene
she sees her baby girl, I know she's gonna scream
god, what have you done?
you're a pink pony girl
and you dance at the club
oh mama, i'm just having fun
on the stage in my heels
it's where i belong down at the
pink pony club
(“pink pony club”)

baby, why don't you come over?
red wine supernova, falling into me
(let's pick it up now)
i don't care that you're a stoner
red wine supernova, fall right into me
i like (i like) what you like (what you like)
long hair (no bra) that's my type (that's right)
you just told me, want me to fuck you
baby, i will 'cause i really want to
(“red wine supernova”)

new crush, high school love again
the rush of slumber party kissing
don't touch, i'll never cross the line
so i pushed you down a million times
i'd love if you knew you were on my mind
constant like cicadas in the summertime
boys suck and girls I've never tried
and we both know we're getting drunk tonight
touch me, baby, put your lips on mine
could go to hell, but we'll probably be fine
(“naked in manhattan”)

9. björk (and a declaration of independence)

“venus as a boy”: i used to listen to that song and just think, maybe that could be me! but honestly, it wasn’t enough. i don’t want to be “venus as a boy.” i want to be the ocean manifesting as a mermaid who goes by “she.”

even so, i love björk: a friend and i were talking about growing up and sort of just thinking, “oh right, björk, that weird icelandic lady,” and that is probably about what i thought of her back in 2003 when i was 15.

but lately i’ve been getting into björk!! what i love about björk is the same spirit that my 15-year-old mind identified as “that weird icelandic lady”:

björk is asking you to declare your independence.

start your own currency
make your own stamp
protect your language
(justice)
declare independence
don't let them do that to you
declare independence
don't let them do that to you
(“declare your independence”)

his wicked sense of humor
suggests exciting sex
his fingers, they focus on her and touches
he's venus as a boy
(“venus as a boy”)

and if you complain once more
you'll meet an army of me
and if you complain once more
you'll meet an army of me
(“army of me”)

10. julia jacklin (totally fucking fearless)

in all honesty i have to end with julia jaclin because in the same way that i consider olivia rodrigo to be an inspiration for my own writing, i consider julia jacklin’s raw and unfiltered approach to songwriting as a muse for my own pursuits.

in her willingness to be authentically vulnerably, julia jacklin is fucking fearless.

i will never forget seeing her live in brooklyn: that was the first show i ever went to alone. she is just so in it when she’s performing: julia jacklin is a powerful artist.

i remembered early days
when you took my camera
turned to me, twenty-three
naked on your bed
looking straight at you
do you still have that photograph?
would you use it to hurt me?
well, i guess it's just my life
and it's just my body
(“body”)

i wanna watch you, i wanna stay here like this
i wanna feel it all every time that we kiss
i want your mother to stay friends with mine
i want this feeling to pass in time
but you know my body now and i know yours
we put so many things between these walls
and every gift you buy me, i know what's inside
what do i do now?
there's nothing left to find
don't know how to keep loving you
now that i know you so well
(“don’t know how to keep loving you”)

pulled off the highway
found a place to sit
he took my hand, said i see a bright future
i'm just not sure that you're in it
it's a lot to ask of me
to believe in you
when i don't know if you'll ever love me
the way i want you to
so please just turn me down
oh please just turn me down
(“turn me down”)