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Issue #1

Hi Reader , how you been lately?

Thanks for being here for the first issue of my newsletter 🫶🏻

Let's Talk Songs started as a small fetus in my brain a few months ago while doing my laundry in a Laundromat in Melbourne and was written throughout January between Sydney and Barcelona. And now you're reading it in some other part of the world and I just can't stop thinking how crazy that is.

You know what? When I think of my closest friends and how we first bonded, music was always a key element. We would talk about our favourite bands, search up the lyrics to sing along while playing guitar, discuss the lyrics and who / what they reminded us of... that was always my favourite kind of hang-out. My world revolved around absorbing as much music as I could, figuring out the meaning of lyrics, learning how to play guitar, writing my own songs...

And in a way those are still my favourite things in the world, my life still pretty much revolves around music, I just don't share it much with other people, I don't really talk about it. Real Estate's song Interior starts with the line

Get in the car, I've got a song I have been dying to show you

When I heard it for the first time I felt my heart shrinking a bit. I used to be that person, I would say that to my friends and they would say it to me (minus the car part!). Those words stayed in my head. I have so many songs I've been dying to show you. I might not have my friends close but I can surely share music with even more people around the world, which brings us here.

I'm sending you this letter with five songs I like because of their lyrics. They're organized in five different categories. Some I've been listening to for years, others are new obsessions. Below there's a Spotify player so you can play them while you read. I've also included some collages I made just for the hell of it : )

I hope you enjoy it, I hope this makes your day a bit nicer. If you fall in love with some of these songs and want to tell me about it you can send me an email to hello@letstalksongs.com I would love to hear from you.

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Now hit play : )

Let's talk songs - The newsl... Cloudbusting • Kate Bush PREVIEW   ​

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A female artist

Cloudbusting by Kate Bush (1985)

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How cool is that Kate Bush would write songs based on books she liked? You’re probably familiar with Wuthering Heights, which I discovered (and loved) when I was a teenager, before knowing it was a book (actually, it was through the song that I learnt about Emily Bronte’s writing!).

Anyway, Kate Bush wrote Cloudbusting after reading Peter Reich’s memoir. He was the son of Wilhelm Reich, a very important physic and psychiatrist who at some point became a mad scientist. The lyrics are written from the perspective of Pete as a child. The line

You’re like my yo-yo that glowed in the dark, what made it special made it dangerous. So I bury it… and forget

might evoque an unrequited love interest of yours, but it’s actually referencing a time when Wilhelm developed a paint that glew in the dark and used it to paint a bunch of things like his son’s yo-yo. The problem was that the paint turned out to be highly toxic so eventually he had to get rid of everything he had painted it on. His son couldn’t stand the parting with his yo-yo so he buried it, which totally fucked him up.

Wilhelm also created a machine called Cloudbusting which, he claimed, could produce rain. When he started selling it he got in trouble with the government and was eventually arrested and incarcerated. This song is mostly about that episode. In the chorus Kate sings

Cause everytime it rains you’re here in my head like the sun coming out. Oh, I just know that something good is gonna happen, I don’t know when, but just saying it could even make it happen.

This songs also works as a mantra. I used to repeat those last lines to myself whenever I needed reassurance from the universe: Oh, I just know that something good is gonna happen, I don’t know when, but just saying it could even make it happen. It’s magical thinking. it’s a bit silly. It worked every time.

Either a guy or a band

Corncob by Martin Courtney (2018)

Martin Courtney is the only artist I 100% trust with capturing nostalgia and longing in a way that I know will feel tailored to my own experiences. Plus, he writes melodies that match his words perfectly. His lyrics, while poetic, are often simple and is that balance that allows his songs to hit the right spot in my soul... crushing it.

Corncob is the opening track on his second, and last to date, solo album Magic Sign. It opens with the line

Who’s that kid you hung out with all the time when you were young? what’s his name? You can’t remember, it’s on the tip of your tongue.

Ugh, can you answer that question? What shows more the passing of time, the death of childhood, than not being able to quite recall the name of your first best friend? I write this and I think of the group of 7-10 kids who for the last week have been trying to build a fort around a tree in the park my home looks out to. It’s summer in Australia, they’re on a school break and so they're spending the scorching afternoons gathering sticks and blankets, but would they still be friends when it’s time to go back to school? would they hang-out again next summer? would they remember each other’s names 25 years from now?

The last verse is particularly hunting

Twenty minutes from your house there are places you don’t know, problem is that if you find them you’ll have no place else to go.

That phrase has been on repeat in my brain for a few weeks now. It’s the adult talking to the child, warning him about the future. I remember being a small girl and my world being the five blocks around my house. Everything beyond that was yet to be discovered, the world was bigger then. It can be hard being on your thirties and not feeling like everything you’re experiencing is a slightly different version of something you have already seen/experienced before, whether that’s a new travel destination, a new relationship or hobbie. We'll soon run out of first-times, where would we go then?

This song is a cool kid with glasses

Family Romance by Department of Eagles (2003)

If you have a playlist for songs to listen to while riding your bike you should add Family Romance. Also worth adding to your Winter playlist.

I was blessed with this song by the Spotify algorithm last summer when I was riding back home from the gym, I had to stop and check who was it, then saved it to liked. Since then it has become a recurrent image: me, pedaling by the sea while singing ask our neighbors, I would know!

The song has a spooky vibe, or maybe it's just the three ghosts on the album cover (one of them is wearing socks). It might be the choir towards the end urging us to go ask our neighbours. Okay.. I will.

I’m always conflicted by the lyrics because while I love the song, it sounds like something a dickhead would say. I like the first verse

There’s every good reason to let down your hair

It’s nobody’s business

and nobody cares

So, we shouldn’t care about what other people think of us. Good. Oh, and nobody is thinking about us anyway. Which is true but also a bit of a passive-aggressive thing to say. Or maybe it isn’t? I'm confused!

And then it follows with “I would know, ask our neighbours” which seems so childish, why would this person go double-check with the neighbours? Who cares about getting validation from the neighbors? who are you neighbours with? I think the line is so incredibly ridiculous is brilliant. I love it, I love singing it.

You know this artist, maybe not this song

Nightswimming by R.E.M (1992)

Actually, you might know this song since it was a single for Automatic for the people. But I’m assuming that you were not around then or that this song never got to you for whatever reason. Maybe everyone knows this song and I'm completely unaware.

In 1992 I was practically a baby, but in 2003 I asked my dad to buy me a copy of In Time as a birthday present. In Time was a CD compilation of R.E.M singles, I was familiar with some of their songs from MTV and was curious about what else was there to be discovered. It was 2003 and access to the internet was limited and poor-quality, cd's were still alive and kicking.

Anyway, In time was a great introduction to the band and Nightswimming one of my favourite tracks. It’s basically a song about nostalgia, about growing up. I love how it starts with a very detail description of what it could be just a picture in a car except that back then a picture was never just a picture, pictures didn't use to be an everyday life thing, remember? it's a picture of a long distant memory, so distant that the its reflection on the windshield is clearer

The photograph on the dashboard taken years ago

Turned around backwards so the windshield shows

Every streetlight reveals the picture in reverse

Still, it’s so much clearer…

And the rest of the lyrics elaborate more on this feeling of time passing, early memories becoming more distant, the loss of excitement.

I’m not sure all these people understand it’s not like years ago (...)

These things they go away replaced by everyday

Yep, swimming at night with your friends from Santa Teresita at 16 gets replaced with figuring out how to do your taxes. We’ve been cheated. The thing is, even if I summon my friends in Santa Teresita and we go nightswimming it's never gonna be the same 'cause we're different people. It's not like years ago.

Special mention to the piano in this song. If we go to heaven when we die, I’m sure that piano plays in the background on our way up there.

My discovery of the month

A song for Rosie by Matt Berry (2011)

After spending 20 days in summer Australia surrounded by love, nature and creativity, this week I flew back to Barcelona's winter where I was met by my cold and lonely apartment, underemployment, and the christmas deco lingering like a subscription I’ve been delaying to cancel. It hit me like a thousand bricks.

But after a few days of doom and gloom today I decided it was time to get dressed and go out! to a cafe! to write my newsletter! I put together an outfit I was excited to wear, put on some makeup, a fancy perfume and went out to follow that ✨spark of joy✨.

This is probably my deepest, cheesiest secret: I believe in magic, I really do. Or at least a part of me does. And so, as I was getting ready to go out, I started to hear that part of me whispering to my ear “something magical is going to happen to you today” (remember the Kate Bush song?) time and time again. The trick is, when you’re looking for magic, the magic appears. I’m not inventing anything here.

As I walked out my door I opened Spotify and the universe the algorithm invited me to play an album I have never heard of by an artist I have never heard of. I was drawn to it by its cover, which showed a man wearing a coat in a forest during the golden hour with a bird resting on his arm. That pictured screamed “cozy winter” and I immediately knew I was into something good, something magical.

A song for Rosie is the fourth track of Matt Berry Witchazel album. The track gives me medieval celtic-folk vibes, which is always comforting. But the lyrics, AH, THE LYRICS!

We’ll warm you by the fire as the storm brews outside

(One, two, pull off my shoe

Three, four, knock on my door)

Keep you safe from the rain, you won’t go out again

(…)

Rosie, you’ll always be safe from harm

There’s food to eat and clothes to wear

The lines are simple and felt like a warm hug, that song comforted me by telling me what I needed to hear when I couldn’t say it to myself. I'm pretty sure the song is about taking care of a child, probably his daughter (there's a part where he sings about a penguin in a bathtub left by Rosie's mum) but it doesn't really matter because to me it was just what reconnected me with my city, my home and my enjoyment.

Thank you song for reminding me that I don’t need to be in the summer to feel warm, that being home in the winter doesn’t have to be depressing because you can also just be the bear from Sleepytime Tea, there’s food to eat and clothes to wear!. me of all people should know that, how could I forget it?

So yeah, today I went out to find the spark of joy, to write this newsletter without a clear idea of what to write about, I was just trying to show up to the task, to check the box. And on the way to the coffee shop I discovered this song, whose almost three minutes of music and lyrics, despite being something I’d never heard before, brought me closer to who I've always been. And that, my friends, is magic 💫

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