Music keeps you young.
It sounds like one of those pithy phrases you might find on a decorative wall hanging into the home of a not-so-young person. (Full-disclosure: at this point I am a not-so-young person.)
I’ve always said that music is essential to me. It’s something that fundamentally makes me happy. The more I’m listening to music and playing my own, the more cheerful and productive I get in every area of life. One of the difficult parts of making the switch to a fully-remote life during the pandemic was a lack of commute – not because I like commuting, but because it is where I got my required one hour of music a day.
As music has come and gone from my daily routine in the past few years, I’ve realized that it’s not only my mood that changes when I have tunes in my ears or beneath my fingers. I feel like my actual age oscillates. New music makes me feel mentally and physically younger.
That might sound delusional, so allow me to explain by way of Wet Leg.
I’ll be honest, when I heard there was a hip new band named “Wet Leg,” I did not leap to listen to their music. Hip bands with clever names and ironic, punny songs come and go every year, each putting their own tweak on the current trends in pop production. After a few years of not connecting with them at all, I felt like hearing each successive entry just made me feel older. I just didn’t get what the youths were into, which made me decidedly not a youth.
Then, one day last in 2021, I happened to see the YouTube thumbnail for Wet Leg’s “Wet Dream” video, featuring lead singer and guitarist Rhian Teasdale dressed like an erstwhile modern day pilgrim wearing a pair of oversized lobster claws.
“Okay,” I thought, “it’s a hip band whose first song shares a word with their band name and is accompanied by an ironic video. I am going to hate this. Here we go.” [Read more…] about Music Monday: “Wet Dream” – Wet Leg