Okay, I did a complete 180 degrees.
Over the years I’ve been boasting about my 20-year-old playlist that’s
consisted mainly of boyband music and grunge-y rock ballads. Those illegally
downloaded mp3s helped me big time, in making it through the long, sleepless,
and stressful nights in the call center, along with coffee from vending
machines, instant cup noodles, and stale sandwiches. Fast forward to 2020. Now
we’re in the middle of a pandemic and still expected to function like we
usually do on a normal day. Man, it’s proving to be so difficult and it’s
chasing my sanity away. So to make it easier for myself to keep it
together, of course, I turned not just to Kdrama but to that one thing that
helped me through it all – music. And, ho ho ho, did I take a huge leap on
this?
2020 is my year of K-pop
Thanks to Heartstrings, I discovered what I have been missing all this time.
CNBLUE has been there for a decade, Jung Yong Hwa has written over a hundred songs, and here I am fangirling over him in 2020. Naturally, Because I
Miss You became my number-one song of the year. I slept with it playing in my
ears. It was the calm I needed to start tackling spreadsheets. I played it
over and over and I memorized the lyrics even though I don’t speak Korean.
EXO is expected to be on my list too. The Eve, the song that introduced me to
the gorgeous Oh Sehun made it to my On Repeat playlist (also created by
Spotify). When I said I was ready to multi-stan, I meant it. I listened to
each of their albums and instantly felt connected with Lucky, Jekyll, and El Dorado; these songs easily became my favorites. EXO-SC didn’t make it to
the list probably because I’m more fond of playing the CD.
Keeping the Backstreet pride alive
take off his shirt in their music videos, and I am still here now that he has two kids who reign in his Instagram account. The 15-year-old me would have cried ugly
for sure, but we gotta grow up, baby. It was illegal to be Nick’s girlfriend back
then, and now it’ll be a filthy crime! But seriously, these five boys and their music helped me make it through my sickly teenage years and I couldn’t be more
grateful. They will always have a special place in my heart.
A little too not over you
There was a time, during late 2019 to early 2020 (maybe until April) when
I’d play A Little Not To Over You on repeat. I don’t know what has drawn me to
like this song so much when it’s not even from the last decade. I mean, sure,
there’s a little story playing in my head about high school lovers who drifted
apart and now they’re seeing each other again for the first time in 15 years
in an alumni reunion and the guy’s actually the campus heartthrob back then so
he was called by the emcees to give a little performance and he went on the
stage and sang A Little Too Not Over You but that’s beside the point. Besides,
that story pretty much resembles my short story, The Game of Twenty Questions.
Music is the cheapest therapy we can ever get, and in my case, along with
coffee. Thanks to Spotify for allowing me to listen to music legally, without
having to buy an entire album of the artist if I only like a song or two
(ex-boss told me this idea was from Apple, idk the facts). But who am I kidding?
Of course, I bought the K-pop CDs.
Be safe out there. Stay weird.