Since I kind of messed up my blogging schedule for this month, I decided that it was more important for this post to go out than the regular monthly playlist. I hope you’re all fine with this arrangement, and don’t worry I’ll include the Spotify link onto next month’s post, okay?
It’s funny, last summer while we were just getting out of our lockdown, the music being released throughout the summer was good, and I remember appreciating the effort to be huge among artists and bands. I mean, it was odd that the majority of the continent was still running through their stay-at-home regiments but were still able to bring out these bangers for everyone to enjoy. And now coming out of this year’s summer, I don’t feel as thrilled and I don’t know why. I think it might have something to do with the full moon and retrograde though so just ignore this whole paragraph!
One thing that I think both made me really happy and surprised the living hell out of me this summer, was how much rock music I was loving this summer! I still had the popular pop tunes , but I was all about rock music and that rarely happens! My TV was mostly glued to Sirius XM’s Octane station, they play a lot of current and 2000’s rock and heavy metal music so I was able to create my own soundtrack than other people. I think it helped that with everybody being allowed to go back on tour again, bands were releasing more and more songs and I literally just absorbed as much as I could in the past seven months because you know I’ve been working on this playlist since the end of April!
Here is my Top 25 songs of the summer! If you want to check out the whole playlist, click here.
Drunk (and I Don’t Want To Go Home) by Elle King featuring Miranda Lambert Girls by Zella Day Peaches by Justin Bieber featuring Usher, Ludacris and Snoop Dogg If You Love Her by Forest Blakk Forget Me Too by Machine Gun Kelly featuring Halsey Summer In June by Ava Muscleville by Kai Wachi Wait A Minute My Girl by Volbeat The Devil by BANKS Only Love Can Save Me Now by The Pretty Reckless Kiss My (Uh Oh) by Anne-Marie featuring Little Mix She’s Fire by Diane Warren featuring G-Eazy and Santana Lil Bit by Nelly featuring Florida Georgia Line Choke by The Warning Justified by Kacey Musgraves Wherever I May Roam by J Balvin and Metallica Hip To Be Scared by Ice Nine Kills featuring Jacoby Shaddix MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name) by Lil Nas X Dark Side by Blind Channel Deal With It by Ashnikko featuring Kelis When Demons Come To Life by Halocene featuring Lauren Babic Arcade by Duncan Laurence Up by Cardi B Cover Me In Sunshine by P!nk and Willow Sage Hart
If you have created your summer anthem playlist, I would love to know what kind of music was fueling you in the last few months. Have you discovered new artists and bands? What are you keeping for later releases? Please put it all in the comments for me. Thank you.
I was really wondering whether or not I would have this post ready for you. Despite knowing how easy it is getting these monthly playlists together, I still didn’t want to half-ass it. For most of the month, I’ve felt foggy about life and the only thing I’ve really enjoyed lately is music.
Now that we’re heading into the summer months and all of these different festivals and tours are setting out dates throughout the country, everything feels different. It is strange how quiet it was at this time in 2020. I am surrounded by happiness on the radio. Our favorite artists and bands didn’t just hang around in quarantine, they worked their asses off making new music for us to enjoy in this moment of freedom. I am very excited to see what goes on this summer!
I hope we start to see even more things as we go into June and eventually July. I know I’m not alone in hoping to see these changes become part of our “normal” again. However, there was a tweet I saw earlier this week, someone had mentioned that since everybody were announcing these concerts again, the measures to make sure they are accessible to everyone–meaning to people who have disabilities like me!–will be far and in between and honestly, that really sucks! I think that’ll definitely be something we will miss the most because these live-streams were our lives during the many lockdowns/quarantines. I do want to say, I only watched one free live-stream show and that was G-Eazy back in late August I think, and I really didn’t care for it. I like the audience just as much as the musicians. I feed off of their enjoyment and expressions too! So, I am hoping that maybe these festivals will live-stream different sets for people who could not go to it because of their disability!
Anyways, let’s get into the actual playlist; here were my Top 20 songs for May! If you want to check out the full list, click here to be transported to the whole Spotify playlist.
Arcade by Duncan Laurence You and I by Leon Lonely No More by Rob Thomas Never Leave This Bed by Maroon 5 The Reason by Zayde Wolf Blooming by Violet Orlandi If I Should Die by Niia featuring Girl Ultra Big Bad Wolf by In This Moment Hex Girl by Dreadlight featuring Maiah Wynne BOMBSHELLEXE by YukoEXE Gravedigger by MXMS Let Me Go by 3 Doors Down I’m Not Sorry by Celeste Buckingham Warrior by League of Legends x 2WEi featuring Edda Hayes Wild Blood by Sam Tinnesz featuring Pep Squard If You Love Her by Forest Blakk Drunk (And I Don’t Wanna Go Home) by Elle King featuring Miranda Lambert Everything I Wanted by First To Eleven Rise Up by J2 featuring Keeley Bumford Anarchy by Lillith Czar
I don’t know how you listen to music on a daily basis, but I’ve noticed lately that I will start with Spotify and after two or three songs in, I will go on YouTube and found a video on The Dodo channel and all of a sudden find ‘my mix’ and start playing whatever I’ve been watching on there nonstop and completely forget about what I was listening on Spotify! For the past week and a half, I’ve had to done it seven times! It doesn’t matter the time of day (or night for that matter!( but it will slip my mind and then of course, I wonder why in my Discover Weekly isn’t fitting right with the aesthetic I’ve listened to that coming Monday.
I wasn’t going to talk about this. I didn’t want to be another echo in a steady line of chatter, but I have realized two things about this Coronavirus madness. If this panedemic has taught us anything, it is that we truly are as human beings are only concerned about ourselves and the cliche phrase “history repeats itself” rings true to our new reality.
Before I get too far, I should mention that I hardly watch the news. Honestly, I don’t have to, social media is doing its best that it is plastered in every newsfeed, tweet, and vlog. I understand the panic and worry over your financials; I may be a disabled, but I’m not an idiot! I feel for every person who is sick in the hospital forced away from their families and the ones who are upset about the fact that everything is being cancelled.
For the past two days, I have been going through our DVR watching documentaries that I had piled up for a number of weeks. The two I want to talk to you were broadcast on PBS and a part of it’s American Experience program.
The first was about the outbreak of Influenza in 1918-19. I knew from the time it started it was an older episode because of the quality of color on the screen. It was talking to people who were infected or had members of their own family and possibly friends that were diagnosed with it and died.
It featured a lot of elderly people talk about their childhoods before and after the sickness creped into their cities and towns. What really pulled me in was when the narrator explained that it didn’t start with children and their weak immune systems. Instead it was the soldiers in the army camps that were being taken out first. You have to remember that at the time, World War I was going on and the need for young and healthy men were desperately needed to help fight the cause overseas.
Unfortunately, the war wasn’t the only killing machine out there. When Influenza appeared in the spring of 1918, there is a possibility that 500 million people worldwide came down with the deadly virus. Once the war was over, the men who came home were “healthy” to the naked eye but the disease lingered in their bodies to spread into their families and friends who were happy as clams to have their loved one back. All of a sudden the happiness was shattered when more and more people were being knocked down by the symptoms of the virus. The world was put on pause, and businesses and whole families were put on lockdown.
At this time, radio was the only way people could have contact with the outside. There was no TV for young children who were either bored or sick in their beds. They got by with doing chores, schoolwork, and played with their siblings in their rooms. To me, it is a surprise the stock market didn’t crash when the virus showed up because nobody would go anywhere. They were too afraid to!
Even though mainstream medicine was popular in the homes of American people, some could be superstitious and say that God was punishing them for their sins. Satan was there to claim every single person affected with the influenza. However, like with most sicknesses, as quickly as it came in, it disappeared! It had ended just in time as World War I was over and soldiers stationed in Europe were allowed to return to their homes again. Everyone was back to their old selves like nothing ever happened.
The next morning I woke up, had breakfast and started watching my second documentary, this time it was about polio. Since this epidemic happened in the 1950’s, the talk about it was discussed a little bit more compared to the influenza outbreak. I heard it through both sides of my grandparents when I was younger. I never heard much talk about it while I was a teen and honestly neither one were discussed in school. You would hear someone talk about a fraction of what happened and that was pretty much it.
So, when I saw American Experience was going to re-air the episode about polio or infantile paralysis I knew it would keep me entertained for the lack of a better word.
Where the influenza had been affecting anyone from the ages to 20 to under 50, polio began to infect children the most. Adults were also struck with it too, such as future President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt or FDR for short. He was the one that everyone talked about in my family. I think it was to possibly show me that at one time we had a disabled President.
Anyways, the program was focused more on the relationship with FDR and his friend Basil O’Connor. He was put in charge of running the President’s fund and resort for more research done on polio. As influenza came and went fairly quickly, polio dragged on and on, infecting as many people as it could at various ages. Polio was known for headaches, dizziness, and eventually the loss of movement, which explains the technical term ‘infantile paralysis’.
If you have ever watched the episode of The Waltons, where their mother becomes diagnosed with polio. In the beginning you see this strong young woman become affected by a dark shadow one day. She could no longer control her arms or legs. She could no longer go outside by herself because it made her unable to walk or do anything by herself. This was common to everyone who had it. They could be permanent paralyzed and at the mercy of their families for support. Although for Mrs. Walton regained the usage of her body at the end of the show.
After Basil O’Connor met Jonas Salk, he began to look into the science behind this nasty curse. In 1953, it was announced that Dr. Salk had discovered the source of the problem and gave treatment on a number of people to test it. A year later it was said that the vaccine had worked and they moved to have it be given to everyone in America. Forty-four years later, it was said that polio had became extinct
Yet here we are again, in our own crisis, dealing with a brand new illness with really no end in sight.
History will continue to repeat itself over and over, to show us what we need to see again. When each sickness rolled into town, people seemed to be kind and stayed at home. They followed quarantine rules and religiously practiced social distancing, so to not affect anybody else with the virus. So, as we keep modern day Americans, Italians, English, etc keep gathering together for fun, we are only making everything worse.
I know you’re bored. I live at home, and rarely get to go out when the air is clear. It’s been over two weeks since I have seen my sister, brother-in-law and little nephew. Yes, I have seen and talked to them on FaceTime, but I love being face-to-face with people. So I ask you to please do everything you can to help eradicate this new virus, so we can go back to our normal lives and forget about it just like our ancestors did before us.
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