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Our Inspiration
Thanks to @TreyLaLa.
@tftpodcast In case you missed it, Leighton Meester will be releasing an album on October 28th. http://t.co/o4LOFhZPv1
— Dead Gay Trey (@TreyRSD) October 17, 2014
Spotify Playlist
Syllabus
- Heartstrings
- Wikipedia: Leighton Meester
- Heartstrings Lyrics
- Promotion in the Press: The Atlantic, Refinery29
- Videos: Leighton Meester sings Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams”
- Gossip Girl: The Complete Series
(affiliate link) or on Netflix
- “Entangling Alliances” by David Fromkin, from Foreign Affairs
I just listened through the album tonight so I could listen to the podcast. Guys, I’m super into this. I didn’t expect to like it this much. This is something I’d totally be into even if it wasn’t Leighton.
I do hear singer songwriter in this album, particularly in some of the instruments chosen but I don’t want to jump to saying it’s not contemporary. I also hear a little Meiko and Priscilla Ahn and there’s something about the use of drums that is super familiar. That is to say, if it’s a throwback it’s a throwback sound that a bunch of other people are also taking advantage of. There’s no one artist I can think of (at least on the spot) who is doing exactly the same thing but there’s a reason this fits in so well with the contemporary music I’m listening to right now.
I don’t think is for a Blair Waldorf audience in the sense that she didn’t make the album Blair would have made. And yet it contains the kind of songs I could see them using on Gossip Girl.
Doing presumably other movies? Guys, did you not know that she has a movie coming out with her husband and Gillian Jacobs? It’s called Life Partners.
To me, the album doesn’t sound that adult. At least, it gives me more of a Lykke Li/Lana del Ray/Oh Land vibe with a certain amount of maturity and world weariness. It’s different from Lorde playing at maturity and Lily Allen’s newest album which to me feels more like the adult album with adult concerns.
I actually don’t see Heartstrings as being so different from the characterization of Blair on Gossip Girl. Actually, there are a few tracks on the album that you could cut to a fan music video with clips from Gossip Girl that would totally work. Heartstrings is a big one. How many times on the show did Blair express similar sentiments to Chuck?
I thought of the imagery in heartstrings kind of like apron strings or purse strings. Or how you might truss a chicken or wrap a brown paper package. Tying something together but also closing it off and protecting and securing it.
The album is not on spotify anymore, so sad… Waffles it is, I guess.
WHAT? Leighton pulled a Taylor Swift? This is truly the most obscure record that we have covered!
Julia, I’m pretty sure it’s still on Spotify.
It seems it’s not on Brazilian Spotify, I had never noticed any songs being geolocked, but there’s a first for everything. Youtube saved me though.
About the album, even though it’s easy to make a Gossip Girl connection, this album really reminded me of another tv show, Nashville, and of Juliette Barnes to be more exact. I think that show is doing a really good job this season to show how scary and lonely being a celebrity can be, and I thought this album had a bit of the same mood. Not as dramatic, though, because although it’s a tough contest I think even Blair Waldorf is not as much a drama queen as Juliette Barnes.
I think Blair is more of a drama queen and Juliette’s the better actress. Blair is dramatic about everything while Juliette reacts to all the terrible things that keep happening to her. Juliette also has more control over her emotions even though she has a temper and can go off. But both actresses (Leighton and Hayden) can make me cry like nobody’s business. They play the best characters on both of their shows.
Happy to find someone who is a fan of both Nashville and OTI! :)
I may be totally wrong about this, but when she sings “tie my heartstrings” the first thing that comes to my mind is tying tubes, the birth control method. Meaning, you have these tubes that do thing/lead things somewhere, and you’re blocking that road. So it could mean numbing your heart or whatever, by blocking the influx of feelings?
So basically I agree with Cat’s “Tying something together but also closing it off and protecting and securing it.”
The verse “you took me for granted” from Heartstrings is really echoing the She’s Not Me verse “I took you for granted/when you were all that I needed”, continuing with the whole one ep bleeds into the next that we’ve got going on with Taylor bleeding into Jenny bleeding into Leighton. Just a random observation :)
Oh, that’s cool. So the equivalent is tying off veins and arteries and blocking blood to and from the heart.
LA’s playing now and it reminded me of another singer-songwriter whose albums may be even more obscure. I “discovered” her in this Elle Girl (RIP) interview with her high school BFF Scarlett Johansson
http://books.google.com/books?id=aSUEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA72&lpg=PA72&dq=elle+girl+jessie+baylin&source=bl&ots=GXh_i9Ucjw&sig=bphRSOAp-LK9M5QSRRDOp6M8aDk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=P1RlVOG0MMq2yAT11ILQDw&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=elle%20girl%20jessie%20baylin&f=false (sorry about the huge link)
Anyway, that was back in Myspace days, so I downloaded “I Can’t Explain” on my host family’s dial up and listened to it obsessively all year long. Eventually I got The Barefoot EP and later she released a couple full length albums (You, Firesight, and Little Spark). I just checked Spotify and the EP and the first album aren’t even there.