"My Winter Lungs”
Songs for the New Year
While scrolling through Instagram and Facebook over the last few days, I’ve noticed everyone posting their obligatory “End of Year” Wrap-Ups and Photo Sets. It seems 2023 was a year of many blessings, joys, and accomplishments amongst all those people I tend to call my acquaintances: somewhere between friends, old school mates, and those hundred or so people I used to do x, y, and z with.
I’m so glad to see everyone is doing so well.
Well, except, sometimes I don’t believe it. Social Media is increasingly boorish to me, even through all the aesthetic photos and pretty words.
I see it most often in the photos of my friends and how their lives have evolved. I’m struck both by how many people I’ve met and known in 26 years. I’m struck by how many of them feel like strangers to me, how I’m sure I am a stranger to them too. How weird it must be to have once spent 8 hours a day with them, a full decade ago. How weird it must be to have once lived with a few of them in a tiny dorm room just 6 years ago. How weird it must be to have once spent long, whispered nights with a few just 4 years ago. How weird, how strange.
I watch their babies grow. I watch them get married and engaged. I watch their husbands and wives and partners build homes together. I watch their parents retire. I watch their friends create communities and make music. I watch them find themselves, get jobs, and go to school. I watch them fall in love with new people and new places.
But that’s the funny thing about observing, especially through the cracked glass screen of social media. It distorts itself. People appear happier and happier all the time, but are they? Is the facade of meticulously crafted self-confidence, joy, and wisdom really doing it for us?
Not for me. But still, I envy the lives of those encased in their third spaces. Fulfillment is everywhere and all that good stuff. We make music. We make babies. We make friends. We find love. We find success. We find the truth. We create. We love. We fuck. We cry. We laugh. We live. We die. All the verbs.
During a particularly isolating doom scroll, I found a reel that made me giggle. Gabe Gibbs is a comedian, musician, and borderline savant. He posted this video in honor of the new year:
What struck me about this song is how depressing it actually sounds: to try and prove to yourself you’ve had a good year by posting all your happiest moments side-by-side for everyone to envy & ogle.
I felt the impulse to do this too. I even had my draft ready: photos from concerts, photos from trips, photos with friends and family…and then, I struggled to come up with a caption to encapsulate the feelings I had all year. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t depressing, but it was sad. I spent much of the year asleep or exhausted or working myself to death. There was a lot I learned about myself that irrevocably changed my life for good. Still, there were good moments and happy times. How could I discuss all of this without it becoming a too-long, tone-deaf thought dump?
So, I didn’t post any of it. Instead, I let the photos sit in an album and drove the 9 hours home to New York. I made a playlist (as I so often do). I chose songs that encapsulate the feeling of ambiguity: not too sad, but also sad. Hopeful, but realistic. Wandering guitars, piano ballads, and existentialism. So, here’s my New Year’s post, but it’s songs for a new year.
“Why Try to Change Me Now” by Cy Coleman, cover by Fiona Apple
This first add is my response to the age-old tradition of creating New Year’s Resolutions. After February 11th or so, we’ve already fallen back into bad habits we can’t necessarily explain. I rarely, if ever, follow-through on mine all year. I love the idea of making positive change in my life, but having a specified period of time in which to make those changes feels limiting. Why try to change me now? I’ve reframed “resolutions.” Now, I want to keep and sustain “reminders.” I don’t want resolute commitment, so much as gentle reminders to love myself and the people around me. That feels more my speed. I love this Fiona Apple cover of an old standard from the Cy Coleman songbook. It’s such a wonderful blend of my taste: 40s and 50s jazz, musical theatre, and unhinged alt girls of the 90s. Coleman’s lyrics and Fiona’s voice blend so seamlessly. If you like 90s music and want to dip your toes into a little big band and jazz this Winter season, check it out.
“Little Blue— Mahgony Sessions” by Jacob Collier
If there is any artist I associate most with Winter, it’s gotta be Jacob Collier. Ever since I heard his cover of “In The Bleak Midwinter” in 2016, he’s been a featured artist on every single one of my New Year’s/Winter playlists. The gentle harmonies, soft guitar, and reassuring lyrics speak so deeply to quiet, cold nights spent indoors, reading by the fire. “Little Blue” is hopeful and soft, two things I wish we all found more pleasure in being and doing.
“Bowery” & “Riding for the Feeling” by Bill Callahan
Bill Callahan is the only repeating artist on this playlist, partly because his music quieted the latter, more chaotic half of my 2023. “Bowery” is like swimming in the deep end of generational history and trauma. Much of last year was about me reconnecting with my varied family history, watching home vidoes and reading letters from my Great Aunt, who once lived on East 53rd Street in the 1940s. “Riding for the Feeling” is a beautiful, melancholy reflection on being a traveling artist or preacher (in Callahan’s words). It hangs heavy on me right now, as I grapple with my true purpose in life and what I need to accomplish to be able to achieve it. Wandering traveler or stable librarian? I’m not sure. Every time I hear a Bill Callahan song, I pick something new out of it. That’s true songwriting to me, and I cherish humanity’s ability to not only create that sort of thing, but to feel it too.
“Filled with Wonder Once Again” by Bill Fay
Every new year, despite the pitfalls of the world and the mistakes we’ve all already made about half-way through the second week of January, I try and remain hopeful about the future of the year. I am, like Bill Fay sings sweetly in this song, “filled with wonder once again” for all that I have and can see, both directly in front of me and far behind. Strangely enough, my favorite time of year in which to take a walk is January. The shorter days make you realize just how little time we really have. It’s important to take a look around once in a while and see what still exists before it disappears.
“Which Will” by Nick Drake
There’s a school of thought (…the Nick Drake fans who provided a meaning for this song on Genius) that this song is about the choices we make as listeners of music: literally choosing between Nick Drake and other musicians. Who do we claim as “the one”? I can see that, but I also think it speaks to the idea of choices in love: who and what we choose in this life, maybe even the ones we leave behind. Beyond Drake’s honey-soaked voice keeping me warm at night, it felt right to add this one to Songs for a New Year, as the fear of making choices often paralyzes me, so much so that I’ve been known to avoid them altogether. Still, I think adulthood is the art of making choices and having the freedom to do so (either to your benefit or detriment). As I watch my peers make their own choices in life, love, and career on social media, I am reminded of my own choices and how unpopular they may appear to some, but inspiring to others. It’s strange.
“I Was Young When I Left Home” by Bob Dylan, cover by Anohni & Bryce Dessner
You ever hear someone say that they prefer covers of Bob Dylan songs to the orignals? Well, I’m one of those people. I am infinitely in love with Dylan’s songwriting (even if he borrowed the melody of this song and a few of the lyrics from “500 Miles”) and decidedly less impressed with his actual performances. This is one of those examples for me. (As an aside: Anohni’s cover of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” is also an exceptional example of this phenomenon.) Something about Bryce Dessner’s nuanced string arrangement and Anohni’s hautning voice combine to create a perfect ride-along song on the drive back from your parent’s house after the holidays, broke as fuck and trying to make it all work without having to ask anyone for help.
“Lakes Of Canada” by The Innocence Mission
Okay, if you haven’t listened to The Innocence Mission yet, you must. If there is any artist on this list who deserves more active listeners, it’s The Innocence Mission. Considering this band originates from a serendipitous Catholic school production of Godspell, they are exactly my speed, particularly Birds of My Neighborhood, the album on which this song features. I appreciate the soft folky nature of frontwoman Karen Peris’ songwriting & voice. Coupled with pretty references to winter’s sheen and snowy landscapes, the yearning to be joyous, hopeful, and seen sticks out to me. As January 22nd approaches, I feel the shell of armor I’ve built around myself harden. The years go on, and I find myself forgetting how to be simple, how to laugh, and how to remember the happy times I had with my late father. It’s always good to have a reminder. (Also, Sufjan Stevens covered this song, and it’s just as perfect as you might imagine. He describes this song better than I ever could.)
“Whither Thou Goest” by Palace Brothers
By the end of this, you all will tire of my devotion to the subtlety of artists like Will Oldham and his many pseudonyms. The religious imagery and references to the Book of Ruth in this song are clear, made more so by Oldham’s “growling,” “baa baa” animal noises at the end. In truth, I think it’s just a funny little song that takes itself a little less seriously than the rest of the songs on this list. Levity in a cold, January depression such as this one is necessary once-in-a-while. Or, as the ever-witty Alan Bumstead notes in his commentary: “Who needs a song to make sense beyond that?”
“Only She Knows” by Loving
This song came on shuffle while I was walking back to work from a lunch stop at Sweetgreen last week. It’s not even a song that means that much to me, but it was such a hopeful, much-needed tear-jerker, as I, quite literally, walked into the late-afternoon sunlight. Sometimes it’s nice to end on a happy coincidence.
I celebrated New Year’s Eve in a hotel room in Fredericksburg, VA with a gas station hard seltzer, watching High School Musical and thinking back to another January night in 2006 when I was young and still loved to dance and sing with abandon. I had so much energy in which to do and be all that I ever wanted to be and do. And as often happens with youth, I squandered it. Or, at some point between th ages of 11 and 26, I simply lost it.
Miraculously, I realized how much joy that hilarious little TV movie gave 9-year-old me. I was surprised by how much of it I remembered, imprinted on my psyche like a worn-in tattoo. The ink may have faded, but it’s still there. And that’s when it hit me. Music is probably the only thing in this world that still leaves me unfailingly optimistic. It brings me an overwhelmingly sense of joy, as evidenced by the 170+ playlists I made last year and the length of this very post. It’s the language in which I speak my truth. It’s simple. It’s human. And I love it.
That’s really what I want to take into 2024: a willingness to find out what I’m still optimistic about in this world. Don’t we owe it to ourselves to at least take a look?
Full Song List:
“Why Try to Change Me Now?” by Cy Coleman, cover by Fiona Apple
“Little Blue— Mahgony Sessions” by Jacob Collier
“Bowery” by Bill Callahan
“Filled with Wonder Once Again” by Bill Fay
“Which Will” by Nick Drake
“Riding for the Feeling” by Bill Callahan
“I Was Young When I Left Home” by Bob Dylan, cover by Antony & Bryce Dessner
“Lakes Of Canada” by The Innocence Mission
“Whither Thou Goest” by Palace Brothers
“Only She Knows” by Loving