Hurts to liv - liv

Hurts to liv - liv

You know, when you are guilty of something you often get that feeling that makes you try to stay away from everything related to your guilt and makes things even worse. It's not like it was/is my duty to post on this blog, but what happened to it, or better, what didn't happen to it (i.e. me not posting anymore) makes me feel bad, a little bit because of what it represented for me, a little bit for the (few) people that I hope I reached out to and entertained with my stories and especially "my" songs. Unfortunately all good things come to an end, and so it is for blogs. I tried to carry 'A song or two per day' on and on as much as I could, but at one point I lost the necessary motivation to carve 10-20 minutes (almost) every day to devote to it. Be it for (finally, yay!) being involved in a serious relationship, be it because the new school is eating out most of my "free time", be it... I don't know what other reasons, but it just happened that I slowly stopped posting. One thing I can reassure you about is that I haven't lost my passion for music, even if I haven't found a way to keep sharing it here! Rather, this 2017 has been a great year for new music, I am so excited about many of the new albums and songs that have been released! I have been (with my special one) at Lollapalooza Paris, seen a bunch of very nice gigs! Life goes on, I have been having a rough month: school gets more and more stressing, and however much I like doing a PhD and the road it is projecting me to, I often stop to wonder whether it's really worth the insane amount of stress and huge effort I am putting into it. Special one went to study abroad for a couple years, which makes things incredibly harder, so I'm having a bit of a tough time, hoping for things to be better in the future. Let's say I am in investment mode...! Music becomes even more important at these times, as it really is the one thing that brings me forward sometimes. So here I am, back on the blog. I just wanted to let you know I'm alive and well, notwithstanding the hardships of life, and that... well, you never know! I might pop up here every now and then and share something, if I find it in myself to write something else that is not academic thoughts..! I'll leave you with a brand new songs released by liv, the "super-group" founded last year by Lykke Li and a bunch of other Swedish famous singers and musicians. The song seems to come at a perfect time for me, so I hope it can help those of you who are also having it a bit rough lately! Wish you the best!!

Young folks - Peter, Bjorn & John

Young folks - Peter, Bjorn & John

Hello people! It's the last day of my internship and things are spiralling into craziness! Tonight there's gonna be a goodbye meeting, I still have to finish packing, tomorrow I'm gonna be in Bristol spending my day exploring the city (under the rain probably) and... woah, everything's messing up even inside me, I'm excited to get back home but at the same time sad 'cause I don't wanna leave the people from here... it's a very messy and exciting day, but I'm confident everything's gonna turn out just fine. Luckily enough under the musical point of view I'm not having many problems, there are still lots of songs I want to post! Here is today's, which actually I started listening to together with yesterday's, as I found out about them thanks to the office playlist. Hope you enjoy, I'll be back in a hopefully less stressful moment! Cheers!

Love me again - John Newman

Notwithstanding the fact that the piano section just before the last chorus is practically identical to the one that Isabella "the Machine" plays live during Rabbit heart, or maybe just because of that, this is still one of the most likable new songs I've been listening around on the radio and on TV lately!

Jackie's strenght - Tori Amos

22.11.1963: 50 years ago US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated while parading through the ways of Dallas. His wife Jacqueline was next to him in the moment he was shot and stayed close to him in the moments right after. Jacqueline Kennedy has always been acknowledged not only for her style and elegance, but also for her strength, for how she "held the country together after she watched her husband get cut down in front of her", to say it in the words of Tori Amos. The American singer-songwriter dedicated her song Jackie's Strength to the famous First Lady. The choice of Jackie as the theme of the song, which also refers to the assassination ("shots rung out, the police came"), is about Tori's personal doubts around the idea of marriage. She says: "I saw Jackie as a bride - and I used to think I would never be a bride." Tori portrays a cynical and pessimistic view on marriage, implicitly referring to how JFK has been unfaithful to Jackie and how she still maintained her dignity and grace, but also singing about how she was keeping herself for a boyfriend who promised to marry her and who was sleeping with the bridesmaids in the meanwhile. There are also references to anorexia
("you're only popular with anorexia"), to virginity ("virgins always get backstage, no matter what they've got to say") and to dark times in life in general. Tori hopes she will be as strong as Jackie in enduring the burdens of life and I think this lesson is a great takeaway from this moment of recollection.