We Are Done

“Done with being a silent many
Every voice rings out and carries
No we won’t just go back
Home without you hearing
The sound when the many say
We are done”

We Are Done – The Madden Brothers

I grew up with Good Charlotte as my favourite band. From when I first heard The Young and the Hopeless album when I was about 11 I fell in love. Billy was my favourite; Joel and Benji were alright and I did enjoy their stories, but Billy was the rockstar of my teenage years. I remember when I found out Billy wrote Ghost of You on their third album and it was totally my favourite track of Chronicles of Life and Death. Yes, in the 2000’s you could throw any emo style boy band at me and I would probably like them, but Good Charlotte were my top pick, always.

It’s always a bit of a mind battle when your favourite band goes their separate ways and start releasing solo music. When I heard The Madden Brothers were a thing and a thing without Billy and Paul, their longstanding band mates, I was sceptical. However, I am a fan of We Are Done. I’ve heard a lot of negative feedback about the musical style of the song and I know this isn’t the best work The Madden Brothers have done, and probably not the best work they will do.

No, it is the theme of the song that draws me in and in the best way possible reminds me of why I loved Good Charlotte. Nestled amongst the music from girls singing about their heartbreak and the boys singing about their favourite boo was this band I loved for challenging society in a way I could relate to. The music Good Charlotte made was never threatening but thought provoking, and was more than giving a giant middle finger to the world. Throughout their five albums their lyrics raised questions about the society we lived in – hierarchy, family issues, living outside of the spotlight and above all, making you think about what you believed in.

I know that Good Charlotte’s music was never known for pushing musical boundaries and people would think it strange when I say they were my favourite band. But they were the band that helped me gain my voice. They never told me what to do when a man broke my heart, they told me stand out from the crowd and be myself throughout my life. It’s a lesson that I thought would end in my teens, but has actually become more prominent as I grow into an adult. I get that it was time for Good Charlotte to move on and pursue new projects, but I am so glad The Madden Brothers still hold their priorities straight.

Make you Mine vs Tommy and Krista

“Cause there's a thousand ways
and a thousand times
That I could try to say
I will make you mine
And if it's not today
I'm gonna keep on trying
I'm gonna get there I'm gonna get there
I'm gonna make you mine”

Make You Mine – Benny Tipene

VS

 “Well Tommy never turned to aggression nor fear
Instead he started working in the New Year
But at night she'd invade his thoughts and his dreams
He can't keep his mind away from Krista it seems
And, so cold but funny enough
Krista and her boyfriend were broken up
But until they meet again and the time feels right
This is how it ends tonight
This is how it ends tonight”

Tommy and Krista – ThirstyMerc

I’ve had two very conflicting thoughts about a certain topic for a little while now. In an attempt to sort out my thoughts for the first time on this blog I’m going to put two songs head to head: two songs that describe but handle differently what is going through my head. If you’re one of my wonderful regular readers you may remember back to Don’t Say Goodnight which was about having one chance you have to take. But I’ve been thinking lately what if you don’t just get one chance with someone? What if you can’t be together but you think you should? I’ve come to realize you have two choices: you can either follow the words of Benny Tipene or ThirstyMerc.

Let’s start with Make You Mine. It seems most tempting to pursue someone. Although we go through our normal day to day lives I suspect most of us fantasize about a better, more exciting life. Most of the time that little fantasy includes a special someone, perhaps someone you only had a chance to get to know a little bit but made a lasting impression on you. And we only get one life so why not do everything you can to make someone your own? You could chase them down to tell the how you feel, you could drop every thing you have and do something completely irrational like follow them to the other end of your country or to the other side of the world. You could do all this just to be together, just to tell them they mean everything to you and start to live out your fantasies.

But what if it’s not your time to be together, like the story in Tommy and Krista. Most of my experience with this kind of thing is where the other person has moved away. I think that if someone travels to the other side of the world then they need to go, and they need to go alone. They are on a personal journey and it’s not my time to be in their lives. Instead maybe it’s better to leave things where you ended and go on with your own life and hope that one day your time works out and you get to be together. There’s a line in Tommy and Krista which has stood out to me from the first time I heard the song “until they meet again and the time feels right / this is how it ends tonight”. I think if something is meant to be then your life finds a way of bringing it to you, and I’ve talked to many people who agree that life has a way of working itself out.

I’ve always followed the idea in Tommy and Krista and let someone go because I don’t think it’s my right to stop them. But in some ways I’ve sacrificed my happiness to be selfless, and I’m kind of sick of it. Maybe it’s my time to start chasing and stop letting people go. I’m going throw this one out to you in the first ever blog war. Pick a song to side with. Share an opinion. Tell you stories about whether you decided to chase or decided to wait. And help me figure out what to do.

Sugarpills

“So long all the sugarpills and alcohol
These scars are the stumbling eyes and cold reminders

So long all the sugarpills and alcohol
These scars are the stumbling eyes and cold reminders

I will become undone and then I'll write about it
You'll be the one to lose control

I will become undone and then I'll write about it
You'll be the one to lose control”

Sugarpills – Kids of 88

Did you know I did a Contiki around USA last month? Okay, I realise I’ve spent a lot of time talking about it and sharing many photos, and you’ve probably got FOMO and want me to stop mentioning my trip. But the trip has been the source of a lot of blogging inspiration and I want to share another memory with you. If you read On Top of the World you’ll recall I wrote about becoming quite emotional after singing with my Contiki group as a tribute to Clarissa. I remember going outside and crying and not being able to explain why I was so upset. It wasn’t until a week after this night I got the chance to write and post that blog and I felt incredibly relieved at getting those thoughts down after having them nag me for seven days.

I’ve always been a writer and a storyteller. My computer folders are littered with half finished writing projects and over a hundred of these music blogs. I’ve explained before why I started this blog – a mixture of wanting to focus writing and of having ideas about songs – and as I wrote about in Demons this blog became very important to me. I have a note on my phone that I wrote shortly after having my breakdown at Bass Lake. I remember typing it furiously and getting all that emotion out while a new friend sat opposite me and probably wondered what the heck I was up to. But after I had written what became the basis for my second USA blog I was able to go back to the dance floor and have a great night. I chose Sugarpills this week because I think it sums up these blogs rather well: when life becomes undone I write about it.

I want to focus on the line “you’ll be the one to lose control” for a moment. I draw most of my inspiration from my peers and sometimes they don’t know their experiences with me have influenced my writing. I was questioned just last week by a friend about what I wrote about them and I realised certain people may not like being at the receiving end of my comments. Some of the people I write about will disagree with what I write, or potentially worse, not know my true feelings until I put up a new post. But I write this blog primarily for my own personal reflection and I’m prepared to risk my peers losing control if it means I feel better.  

Shortly after I came back from my trip one of the guys I had met messaged me and asked about my blog and mentioned he’d lost interest in writing his blog because not enough people read it. I told him I never cared about number of viewers or whether people liked it, I was just wanted to write. This blog is a place I can be brutally honest with myself and share thoughts I may not usually say out loud. As I’ve said before, I’m going to write this blog until I run out of ideas or run out of songs. And if you think about it, there are millions of songs and I’m telling you know that I’ve got millions of ideas.

Complicated

“Why do you have to go and make things so complicated?
I see the way you're acting like you're somebody else
Gets me frustrated
Life's like this
You, you fall and you crawl and you break
And you take what you get and you turn it into honesty
You promised me I'm never gonna find you fake it”

Complicated – Avril Lavigne

This week is an insight into my teenage music tastes. I’ll start by admitting that I’m a bit of a hoarder of anything involving emotion. I have a spike key hanging around my room because it reminds me of my athletics days and somewhere in my childhood room is a box of cards from nearly every birthday and Christmas I have lived through because they still mean a little something to me. If it’s sentimental then I have a hard time throwing things in the trash.

I also have difficulty deleting music that played a big part when I was growing up. For example, I still have every Good Charlotte album on my iPod because they were my favourite band growing up and I could never let them go. I also have a few (twenty) Avril Lavigne songs on my iPod because that girl was the shizz when I was a teenager. She understood me and she understood teenage angst. I was never a big fan of female artists because I wanted to rock out with the boy bands (like Simple Plan and Elemeno P) but I had a special place for Avril Lavigne. Maybe it was because her first hit Complicated and second hit Sk8er Boi talked about hating on fake girls and during my teenage years I could not stand those types of people. I loved her and I wanted to be her.

Over the years I became less attached to Avril Lavigne as I grew up and, well, her music became rather shit. Her tracks Girlfriend and Here’s to Never Growing Up became guilty pleasures for me because I was still hanging on to her that little bit. That is, until I heard her newest song Hello Kitty. I was going to make it the title song of this blog and analyse it a bit but I couldn’t lower the standards of my blog for that song, and this blog doesn’t have very high standards. I can’t even bring myself to post a link to the song because it is probably the worst song I’ve heard, ever. It’s worse than Call Me Maybe. It’s even worse than Friday. It’s an insult to Hello Kitty. And I can’t believe I’m about to write this but Chad Kroeger wrote the song and it’s an insult to Nickelback.

So instead I give a last tribute to the artist Avril Lavigne was when I was growing up with. I’ll keep her early songs on my iPod partly as a reminder of my life ten years ago and partly because the teenager in me still loves the tracks. But as for Avril Lavigne I’ll no longer care for her as an artist nor will I follow any of her new music. I suppose most artists reach a time when their music takes a turn for the worse and their fan base slowly falls away and I expect it will happen to many more of the bands and singers I loved when growing up. But for now I’m giving Avril Lavigne one last bit of attention.

Swing

“Oh shit, shake that ass ma, move it like a gypsy,
Stop, whoa, back it up
now let me see your hips swing
Oh shit, shake that ass ma, move it like a gypsy.
Stop, whoa, back it up
now let me see your hips swing”

Swing – Savage

I was in a San Diego nightclub on my first evening on Contiki when Swing came on. I’d so far spent most of the night dancing in the club, obviously showing off my impressive dance moves to my fifty new best friends. When Savage starting playing I went a bit mental, and myself and another guy from New Zealand sung (okay, screamed) the entire song and did all the dance moves, and at the end made sure all the Aussies and British people around us knew Savage was from New Zealand.

If you’re a New Zealander you probably know Savage isn’t our musical claim to fame – Swing is literally his one hit. And yet at that moment in that nightclub I was so excited a New Zealand song was playing. It boiled down to pride. Not pride in Savage particularly, but pride in that something from my country was being played across the world. While few others in that room that night would understand it, I knew how important it was to me because I love being from New Zealand. And in a strange way this song began my journey of self-discovery.

I went travelling across to America and joined a Contiki because I needed to go exploring on my own. Other people on the tour talked about how they could never travel alone and join up with fifty strangers, but I had never considered going with someone else. I needed to make sure every step I took was for myself and every decision was one I was comfortable with. Most of the time this was easy enough because you wouldn’t think twice about missing out on opportunities. Sometimes I had to push myself and know I would regret not taking part – like when I drove the speedboat despite how nervous I was and at the end of it I felt really accomplished.

Fast-forwarding two nights after Savage played in San Diego and I was in another club in Scottsdale, Arizona, and I was not dancing alone if you catch my drift. Contiki has a bit of an underground reputation for being a shag fest and I didn’t manage to escape it. Before I went the whole hog though I wanted to make sure I wasn’t doing two things. A) I wasn’t hooking up just because I was on a Contiki and B) I didn’t want to become known as the girl that did that guy from that place. These thoughts created a bit of doubt in my mind so I snuck away for a moment and wrote myself a note on my phone to clear my thoughts. One of the sentences I wrote that night said “anyone can walk into your life for a minute, an hour or a week, but only you will be there for the long haul”. It has taken me nearly 23 years to figure out that in your entire life you are the only person who will be with you forever.

I left with that guy that night because I actually, definitely wanted to. And I didn’t care if I became known so and so’s Friday night hookup, because if you listen to what people who you’ve known for four days say about you, then you need to reevaluate your perspective. Everything I did in those two weeks in USA I did for myself. It took me two decades, a trip halfway around the world and a guy from Australia to figure out that no matter what I do or where I go, I do it for myself. And, most important of all, I spend the rest of my life loving myself and looking after myself.