Breaking my silence in your inbox to direct you to a guest piece I wrote for my favorite Substack, “Shut Up, I Love This Song,” written and curated by my friend, Carl Lavigne.
The prompt behind the ‘stack is deceptively simple: pick a song and write about why it’s so lovable!1 But to actually execute this is to open a Pandora’s (music)box — from within the unforgettable melodies and evocative bridges, the more personal, emotional threads of your real life demand to participate. Without them, the song of the hour may certainly remain Great, but the “Shut Up, I Love This Song” experiment requires a little more oomph. Musical soul-bearing, if you’re nasty.
It only took a little over a year for me to sit down and ask Carl, and subsequently you, to shut up and love this song, too. It’s about “The Dress” by Dijon. And an episode of Girls.2 And a deeply heterosexual teenage crush that I still managed to approach in an explicitly gay way, but more specifically, seeing that person again after a few years.
I hope you read it, subscribe to Carl’s newsletter, and pine after a long-lost love (which, spoiler, is more often than not a yearning for a past self and life than anything else) for a maximum of 4 and a half minutes.
Big love,
kaylasomething
Fun fact: Carl’s first selection was “Big Love” by Fleetwood Mac and I sign off this decrepit newsletter with the same phrase… huge for the lore.
Arguably, the best episode of Girls. The “All Too Well” of Girls, 28-minute version — which is a timestamp I’m sure Taylor Swift will one day reach, too.