Rat Music aka music for rats aka music for me aka music I've been listening to that's all I'm trying to say

Layoffs. No other word is as scary to a corporate rat just trying to make it in this world. That and PIP. I think statistically, everyone is fired/laid off at some point in their lives. It's one of those great equalizers--beast and man, we all walk out with a cardboard box at some point.

Anyways, they happened again. Layoffs. They seem to come around every few months, about once a year we'll get hit by some heavy ones. But they're a bit like a hail storm, you kind of bunker down, focus on your hands gripping the steering wheel, and before you know it, it's passed. You drive home observing the damage in a kind of touristy shock, but you're happy you're safe and home.

Casting elongated similes aside, we had layoffs today. I wasn't affected, in the sense that my things can stay at my desk. But everyone I like at the office was affected. It's almost like if I had any joy at seeing them, corporate put a black mark on their name and gave them the axe. Some even go beyond the chains of coworkers and became my friends, real life friends. All gone.

I'm pretty low on the totem pole of problems in this, I'll admit that. Oh wah, at least you have a job. But I feel very deeply for my friends and coworkers, and I cry for them. It's tragic. I saw them/spoke to them five days a week for the past three and (almost) a half years. Tomorrow, this rat will swipe her badge and scurry into the office and all the desks around her will be empty. I expect their stuff will still be there like some kind of ghoulish living memorial. There's a part of me that feels sad that I will have no one to talk to anymore, but the larger part is sad for them.

This corporate world will chew you up, use you up, and spit you out. The great layoff hammer will surely descend on me one day.

Anyways, here's the music I've been listening to on repeat lately.

"Ice In My OJ" by Hayley Williams

Ms. Williams is so fucking cool. I feel like she's made her money, she doesn't really need to try that hard anymore, and I want to believe that she makes music for the love of making music. She's certainly still got a lot to say, some of which on her most recent solo album is actually a bit shocking or illuminating, like her songs "True Believer" on her thoughts on religion and "Mirtazapine", named after her medication.

"Ice In My OJ" is short but ear-catching, especially for its chorus of her screaming "I'm in a band! I'm in a band!" over and over that seems more in place in a screamo song. Her delivery of the rest is almost a bit gentle, a bit thoughtful, which contrasts the sudden energy of the screaming well. It's two minutes long, what have you got to lose?

"Ur Mum" & "Piece of Shit" by Wet Leg

Wet Leg has been my four wet legs during my difficult past two weeks or so. Idk if that makes sense, trying to say they've supported me through some tough rat times. I've listened to their two albums a few times over, I could recommend any songs here because they are truly nearly all so strong and fun.

Wet Leg has this kind of casual vibe to their songs, as if it doesn't matter to them if anybody hears it or not. And their lyrical choices are really strange sometimes, in a cute, poetic way. And when they're mad, the lyrics become biting. "Piece of Shit", "Ur Mum", "mangetout" all give this kind of "fuck you, man" energy. It's like if your friends younger sister had the fucking coolest garage band you've ever heard in your life. I love them, it really feels like they don't give a shit what I or anyone else thinks.

"party 4 u" by Charli xcx

You know "party 4 u". Your mom knows "party 4 u". Your dog knows "party 4 u" and has seen the music video too. If you didn't know "party 4 u", I'd shit in my hand.

I used to only hear it in Instagram reels, the sad ones about like unrequited love, and at the time I didn't really get it. And I didn't get Charli xcx. A bit weird, I thought.

It's so unique though, the vibe of it is simultaneously electronic dance but with lyrics as sad and soulful as a classic country song (imagine if the kids that did "The Spark" took a crack at Brooks & Dunn's "Neon Moon"). Everyone has felt this way at some point, that feeling of making an effort for someone and wanting so badly for them to show up for you, to do the bare minimum ("Hey, maybe attend this whole fucking party I threw for you") and having them not show up. There's a few songs that will play and they'll just pick up my brain like a claw in a claw machine and take it away for 4 minutes 56 seconds and I'll enter this daze of just feeling it so hard. Like musical drugs. This song is one of those.

"Liz" by Remi Wolf

"Shoo, shut up... Shoo, shut up... Shoo, shut up" is such a good little doo-wop type vocalization to open the song with. Remi Wolf for me feels like almost a bit of a dark horse, she has this chaotic energy that is hard to pin down. Partially because she has these energetic, electronic-tinged songs like "Photo ID" or "wyd", the type of songs that have you dancing; then she has these songs at a slightly slower bpm like "Toro" and "Anthony Kiedis" that have you humming; and then bam, she hands you fucking "Liz".

"Liz" feels pretty different from her other songs, like I'm not sure I could put it in a box with those. It's a bit soulful, and if you try to sing along to it you'll feel like a dumbass because Miss Wolf sings her fucking heart out. She's really trying to get that voice up to the rafters, and at the end of it, it feels like we all know Liz a little bit better. 

"Beggin'" by Maneskin

I think this song really blew up a few years ago. Did you know it has like 2 billion listens on Spotify? Because I did not. So yeah, you know "Beggin'", your mom knows "Beggin'", dog, etc. all that.

But it got big for a reason, because it's fucking good.

 

"Doing Really Well Thanks" by Ellie Bleach

I love "Doing Really Well Thanks" because you know what it's about, you don't have to look up the meaning or anything. It's like that feeling of watching a movie where the pure character falls from grace and you are holding this anxiety in your stomach, but in a 4 minute 43 second long song.

The song walks a tightrope of begging you and judging you, "please don't tell them how I am" but also "I've done awful things for money but you've all done worse for free". I love that you can hear the distress and panic in the singer's voice, but at the end she still strongly sticks by the stance of not needing help, saying "I do not need ya help, thanks, I'm doing really well, thanks". This song is a simulation of trying to talk to someone and help them on something they simply do not want to discuss with you. Is it going to end well for them? Probably not. But it's their choice and you just have to listen to them dissolve into more insistent objections. (If you listen to it on repeat, the manic laughter at the beginning takes on a creepier feel.)

"After Last Night" by Silk Sonic

Silk Sonic is the rare band that can claim to have all hits. Granted, they only have ten songs, but ALL HITS. I've gone through my "Leave the Door Open" era. I've gone through my "Skate" era. My "Smokin Out The Window", my "Fly As Me" eras. In the book of An Evening With Silk Sonic, that leaves me square in my "After Last Night" era.

Words will probably fail to capture how fucking good this and all other listed songs are. You will have to chain yourself down to keep from dancing and grooving. Silk Sonic is like that music video from Mars Argo where their music makes the test subjects uncontrollably dance, which might be a bad example because I have never felt the urge to uncontrollably dance to "Using You" by Mars Argo. (It's a good song but not really dance song imo)

"あぶく" by Yorushika

I haven't seen Liar Game, I know nothing about it, but I'm pretty pissed at it for fumbling such a good OP as this song could deliver. It's perfect for an energetic, high tempo anime intro. Don't look it up, it will only hurt you...

"あぶく" (or "Bubble") tells a story. A story you can't understand because you don't understand Japanese (presumably; perhaps I'm speaking more for myself here). It lays some almost subtly jazzy groundwork with the first few lines, then explodes into an untouchable energy, layering instruments over instruments that aren't afraid to fade into near-silence to build that tension up all over again.

The song? Phenomenal. The music video? Indescribable. Honestly makes you a little mad for the music videos that are just artists mouthing along to the words of the song, because the music video tells a story, one that you probably can understand because the visuals aren't in Japanese.

It's pretty cool.