including the sequel to the Taylor Swift Review Saga
August 20, 2024
This summer, instead of working a normal job, I’ve been focusing on building a creative portfolio and professional presence in the field I’m looking to enter after college. I’m extremely grateful I have the flexibility to do so, but I also feel a bit weird about it. I haven’t felt as productive on the outside, because I don’t have much concrete to show for it yet, but energy-wise, I think I’ve actually been working way harder than I would have at my regular job. Planning for the future is exhausting, and I’m not sure how much of this pressure is just societal.
Anyway, all that is to say I haven’t had time to do a lot of writing recently, so I figured in the meantime, I’d informally announce some of the stuff I’ve been working on instead. Or, at least, the ones that aren’t super boring and career-oriented.
I’ve drafted a few ideas for blog posts; some serious, some less so. Here are the working titles for a few of them:
The more serious ones are tough, because while I’m extremely passionate about them, it takes a little bit for me to figure out how to articulate my thoughts clearly. Plus I have to do, like, research ’n’ stuff. What a pain.
In addition to blog posts, I’ve also been putting a lot of my free time into a new section for the site, which I’m calling “The Garden”. It’ll be a host for basically anything I hope to never forget, whether it be old tweets of mine, nostalgic YouTube videos I watched growing up, or just art I love. Current progress on it is unclear, because I keep thinking of more and more stuff to add to it. It’s been really cathartic actually. I should have an incomplete version of it up soon, although I probably won’t ever consider it “complete”.
I love video games, and I love music. So it’s no surprise that I love video game music. There’s a very unique community that’s developed online around game soundtracks, and I think one of the big reasons for their appeal is that they’re able to capture a scene or environment while also being listenable on their own, devoid of context. That being said, much of the VGM remix/rearrangement scene is primarily focused on the ‘fan-favorites’; usually the main theme, first level, or final boss music from the most popular games. But game soundtracks are so massive, some reaching 7 CDs worth of music, and there are a lot of great songs that go completely unnoticed.
With the Hidden Stars project, I’ll be rearranging some of the more under-appreciated songs from video games that I think deserve a chance in the limelight. As a matter of fact, one song has already been finished and released on YouTube: New Age Tropics, a rearrangement of Catching Fleas and A Line in the Sand from the 1993 game Plok! The thumbnail on that video kinda sucks, so it hasn’t gotten a lot of attention, (at least not as much as the Xenoblade mashup, but to be fair, that does have a million views, which still blows my mind. Maybe I should start making those “1 hour of relaxing nintendo music” compilations, those would probably pop off…) but I guess that’s also the nature of covering songs that aren’t as popular. I’ve got a whole album tracklist of planned arrangements, and I’m excited to share them with the wider VGM scene.
After the “success” of... hold on, that feels too corporate. Maybe “positive reception”? Ew, I don’t like that either. Whatever.
People seemed to enjoy my series of Taylor Swift album reviews, so I’ve done a lot of thinking about other artists I might want to dive into. There were a few I had in mind, but I think I’ve picked out one that’ll be fun for both me and for others.
The next discography I plan on reviewing will be…
Much like with Swift, I’ve never intently listened to the Beatles; I’ve only ever heard them on the radio or playing in the store or whatever. Unlike Swift, though—whom I had no opinions on going in— I’ve gone on record in the past saying I think the Beatles are overhyped. While I still stand by that to some degree, I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to state that without having heard much of their music.
Additionally, while I don’t know much about the Beatles themselves, I actually know quite a lot about Yoko Ono; in fact, I wrote a research paper about her works for my feminist art history class. (I’m pretty proud of it honestly, I may post it here at some point.) So, long story short, I think I’ll have some interesting thoughts about their work. Now I just need to figure out how many unique albums they actually have…
These are just the major projects, too. I’ve still been hard at work with music stuff, so hopefully I don’t fall off completely once classes start back up. I do have a new song coming out in a few weeks, and while it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, it’s one I’m really proud of. I hope you’ll look forward to it.