Songs that Course Through my Veins, Vol. 1

Originally posted November 27, 2024

I’m having a bit of a melancholy morning. I woke up on the wrong side of my mind, and while it’s not the healthy emotional crutch I should be leaning on when this happens, but I’ve been listening to what can be called “depressing teen girl” music since I got up this morning. I’ve specifically been listening to songs that are very, very, very relatable to me. These songs read me to filth. These are songs that I often describe as “songs that were written when I had a gun to the artist’s head in the studio asking them to write something gutwrenching about me.” Let me be very clear that this is hyperbolic and I’ve never held a gun to anyone’s head, including these artists.

So anyway, I thought for today that I would share five of these songs with you and explain a little bit of why they’re so personal to me. If you’re interested, I complied them into a Spotify playlist called “Willianny.” Arranged in no particular order, but I’ll go based on the way they were added to the playlist.

Nothing New (Feat. Phoebe Bridgers) (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault) – Taylor Swift

I vividly remember listening to this vault track off of Red (Taylor’s Version) for the first time in 2021. For reasons I won’t disclose, I had to wait about a week before I could indulge in this remastered classic album, and my friends were waiting and waiting for me to catch up and listen. My cousin Alexa specifically said to me “When you get to ‘Nothing New’, you will cry. You will lose your mind.” And I sure did. Some lyrics that really get to me:

They tell you while you’re young
“Girls, go out and have your fun”
Then they hunt and slay the ones who actually do it

How long will it be cute
All this crying in my room
Whеn you can’t blame it on my youth
And roll your eyes with affеction?

How did I go from growing up to breaking down?
And I wake up (wake up) in the middle of the night
It’s like I can feel time moving
How can a person know everything at 18 but nothing at 22?
Will you still want me when I’m nothing new?

She’ll know the way, and then she’ll say she got the map from me
I’ll say I’m happy for her, then I’ll cry myself to sleep

“Nothing New” is a beautifully recorded and produced song, and Phoebe’s feature was really the cherry on top. It shows these two “older” women struggling with the idea that they’re no longer young and fun and desirable and new to the scene, whether that be the dating scene, the music scene, or whatever way you interpret the song. They can’t get away with the things they did when they were younger because they’re not the cute new girls anymore. It punches you in the face. It punches me in the face, knowing that my time will be up soon and all my quirkness won’t be cute and funny, it’ll be annoying and immature. It really is like, how long will it be cute?

Writer In the Dark – Lorde

I get the most inspiration to write from my own experiences. I’ll fictionalize real people in short stories and dial up their personalities and change their names and warp them into a story character. It’s how I write with the most fluidity and work through whatever experience I’m writing about. Sort of how songwriters do, especially Lorde. My Scorpio sister (go Nov. 7 twin!) is a genius with a pen and I don’t care what anyone says, Solar Power went double plaitnum in my headphones. Writer In The Dark is noteable for me personally because is about the fact that she writes her experiences, and she’s directly telling the unnamed (cough cough Jack Antonoff) man she writes about in the song that she writes songs about her experiences and now she’s going to write about how he screwed her over. There’s something about writing about writing that really gets to me, I love books about fictitious authors or songs about writing songs, and this one really gets to me.

Bet you rue the day you kissed a writer in the dark
Bet you rue the day you kissed a writer in the dark
Now she’s gonna play and sing and lock you in her heart
Bet you rue the day you kissed a writer in the dark

I am my mother’s child, I’ll love you ’til my breathing stops
I’ll love you ’til you call the cops on me
But in our darkest hours, I stumbled on a secret power
I’ll find a way to be without you, babe

The lyrics in this song are really simple, it goes verse, chorus, verse, chorus. And I think that’s really interesting because the lyrics themselves are about writing lyrics. To me, it’s like she’s telling him to just wait because something bigger is coming, bigger lyrics and bigger guns aimed at him. This song to me is like “okay you’re going to regret this soon,” which is literally what she says. It’s resonating.

Making The Bed- Olivia Rodrigo

GUTS and SOUR are two really perfect and really personal albums to me, and for different reasons. SOUR is an album where every song can relate to an experience that I’ve had, but GUTS speaks to my constant state of being. It can relate to who I am as a person. While SOUR can be interpreted as being written about my life, you’ll notice that I’ve opted for three GUTS songs instead, because these songs can be interpreted as written about me, and “making the bed” is one of them.

I thought it, so I said it, took it ’cause I can
Another day pretendin’ I’m older than I am
Another perfect moment that doesn’t feel like mine
Another thing I forced to be a sign

Well, sometimes I feel like I don’t wanna be where I am
Gettin’ drunk at a club with my fair-weather friends
Push away all the people who know me the best
But it’s me who’s been making the bed

I’m so tired of bein’ the girl that I am
Every good thing has turned into something I dread
And I’m playin’ the victim so well in my head
But it’s me who’s been making the bed

Olivia writes about how she’s not happy with where she’s at in her life, but she put herself in that position. She made her bed and how she has to lie in it too. She’s tired of how she’s living and being the person she’s made herself up to be, but she’s made herself up to be that person; she did it. She can hate it all she wants and pretend that she’s the victim in her self, but she wouldn’t be there if she didn’t put herself there. It’s getting repititve to explain, but it’s something you have to hear over and over again until it sticks when you’re living your live in that way. You have to hear it until you understand it and that’s when you make the change. I want to make that change, buttttt I’m playing the victim so well in my head!!!

Mad Woman- Taylor Swift

If I was to be ranking these songs from most to least Willianny-coded, “mad woman” would take the top spot. I’ve kind of felt for most of my life that my default state of being is anger. I think I’m perpetually angry, and that’s a very hard thing to understand about yourself. “mad woman” alleviates that a little bit for me; it makes me feel safe in my perpetual maddness, and it makes me feel like it’s okay to be mad, and it makes me feel like I don’t have to be angry all the time.

What did you think I’d say to that?
Does a scorpion sting when fighting back?
They strike to kill and you know I will

Every time you call me crazy
I get more crazy
What about that?
And when you say I seem angry
I get more angry

And you’ll poke that bear ’til her claws come out
And you find something to wrap your noose around
And there’s nothin’ like a mad woman

Now I breathe flames each time I talk
My cannons all firin’ at your yacht
They say, “Move on”, but you know, I won’t

But no one likes a mad woman
What a shame she went mad
You made her like that

Really and truly, I could have inserted the entire song, but I kept it to the most personal parts of it. Taylor once said that when Aaron Dessner came to her with the “mad woman” melody, she heard it and thought that’s the sound of female rage. She wanted to capture what that was like. It’s hard to me to describe exactly why each line reminds me of me, for this song to me, it’s like just read the lyrics. It’s so explicitly how I feel, constantly.

Breathe (feat. ruben blades and doreen mantalvo) – leslie grace, in the heights movie soundtrack

I know it can seem like having a song from a musical on here is out there, but to be honest, it’s the most explicitly and obviously relatable out of all the songs on this list. I love In The Heights. It makes me cry, laugh, smile, sing, and mostly it makes me feel really proud to be Latina. It just has that energy. And “Breathe” is a song sung in the movie version by Leslie Grace, a singer I’ve bachata’d to my whole life.

Hey guys, it’s me
The biggest disappointment you know
The kid couldn’t hack it
She’s back and she’s walking real slow
Welcome home

I am the one who made it out
The one who always made the grade
But maybe I should have just stayed home (Mira, Nina)

I got every scholarship
Saved every dollar
The first to go to college

How do I tell them why I’m coming back home? (Respira)

Basically, the premise of the song is that Nina (played by Leslie Grace) was the first in their family, and neighborhood, to go off to a big university and she was expected to do amazing things and become bigger than what a life in Washington Heights would allow her to be. But she couldn’t do it; she came back home. Now replace Nina with Willianny and Washington Heights with my hometown. If you didn’t know I did a one semester stint at a big university, not too far from my family, but far enough and grand enough where I would be doing what I was always supposed to do: have a bigger and more educated life. I was always supposed to be the way who made the grade and went to university- and I did. But I couldn’t hack it, for a few reasons, and I came back home. Now I live back home and go to the local college, and I’ve mostly made my peace with it, but at first, it was really hard. I felt like the biggest loser. I felt like how Nina felt, word for word.

SO! There’s five songs for you that were written with my blood, songs that were written through Willianny-colored glasses. There’s so many more songs and lyrics that relate to me and my life, but these are the bigger, louder, shout-in-your-face, punch-you-in-the-mouth ones. I’ll be sure to bring you the other five I keep on my tape soon!

With love, Willianny