albums i listened to all the way through

posted this week and every week (29)

Aug 31, 2025

What’s the most embarrassing music mix-up you’ve ever made?

I’ll go first.

Back in 2018, when Mac Miller tragically passed away, I wasn’t what you would call an active listener. (Actually, I’d never even heard of him.) While all my zillennial college friends mourned the loss with parasocial authenticity, I silently lectured myself for not being on the forefront of popular music, particularly rap and hip-hop.

I made the truly egregious mistake of tweeting “RIP Mac DeMarco” in the spirit of trying to be included. A very good friend of mine from high school gently corrected me in a DM. I was mortified and deleted the tweet immediately.

This story flooded my brain this week as I listened to Mac DeMarco’s newest release, Guitar.

The only other true connection I have to Mac DeMarco is through a break up. I love him and his sound but tend to avoid his work on the whole. It’s wrapped up so tightly in my early adult mistakes and heartbreaks. I just wasn’t ready to confront it.

Guitar was a perfect album for me to dip my toes back in ever so slightly.

DeMarco’s warm acoustic sound is like a lullaby, reminding me always of 2018 and my late adolescent yearnings. The bass line flows through every track like a pulsing heartbeat, steady and energized. I listened to it more than a couple of times, letting the music wash over me in waves. It was a nice, passive revisit.

I’ve shied away from the bedroom pop of my college days in the last few years. Where I once listened to Rex Orange County, Clairo, Girlpool, Her’s, and Michael Seyer religiously, I’ve come to associate this music with the brokenness of that time in my life. My painful insecurities and insurmountable grief often kept me from fully enjoying myself or trusting the words of my mentors, professors, and parents that everything was going to be okay.

In doing research for this newsletter, I came across this post in the r/zillennials subreddit:

Anyone remember the bedroom pop “Indie” Era 2017-2019?

My God, yes.

How is this formative time in my life now considered an era of musical study? It’s almost unbelievable.

We could argue all day about which artists count as “lofi” or “bedroom pop,” but it still shocks me to my very core that enough time has passed that we’re (current 26-29-year-olds) no longer those thrifted 80s windbreaker-wearing, mom jeans-clad college kids getting cross-faded at music and theatre major parties.

I remember it all so vividly—the cuffed, light wash jeans, the dirty white sneakers, and every single house show filled to the brim with people cooler, smarter, and more relaxed than me. The bass undulating through the hardwood floors and plaster walls of the single family homes nestled on College Hill. Students coming and going on Tate Street all through the night. The beloved 90s-bred coffee shop that employed a few of my friends, keeping us fed with breakfast sandwiches and awake with caffeine.

2017-2019 bedroom pop hours, feat. chore coats and windbreakers of Abby's past

I learned so much about myself, music, and the world during this brief four year period. It’s hard to look back on it all and realize I’m coming up on a decade since it happened.

These days, I see the incoming students at my university job and immediately feel protective. I have no real reason to feel this way, other than the wisdom that has come with moving beyond those undergraduate growing pains. They were just kids when I was 19. Hell, I was just a kid then too. It’s hard to believe they could be that age now.

I’m sure some people still say the same thing about me.

Here are the albums I listened to all the way through this past week: