For Em Beihold, the intention was never to become a popstar. It was never on her radar that she'd tour (spoiler alert: she's currently touring), she never dreamt that millions of fans would stream her music (they do), or that she'd even be recording her songs.
Music has called for Em Beihold her entire life. It started when she saw a piano in the window and begged her parents to buy it for her. They'd let her, but only if she practiced. Em admitted with a laugh that she wasn't very good,
"I started playing the piano when I was 6 because I thought cool kids played instruments," Beihold confesses. "So I started with classical music and then got bored and wanted to see where the notes would go."
From there, the piano evolved into not only an instrument to conquer but a tool to help Em explore the world of music. After working with a teacher, who showed her the world of writing and introduced her ears to artists like Regina Spektor and Fiona Apple, the rest just fell into place.
"Growing up, the piano felt like my therapy, my journal, my closest friend."
As Em continued to grow up teaching music, she dreamt of making sync songs until she graduated high school (from her living room, she adds) during the pandemic in 2020. But everything changes with the rise of TikTok, an app capable of making your dreams come true and ruining the dreams of others.
Relatably, Beihold admits that she joined TikTok because her crush was posting at the time. But beyond a bit of doom-scrolling on her crush's account, Em quickly realized that this app leveled the playing field. Unlike YouTube, she mentions, you didn't need a certain amount of followers to get a certain amount of views. Game on.
"I secretly wanted to be an artist, but never let myself say it because I didn't think it was feasible. I never dreamt that I'd be going on tour or anything like that."
It didn't take long for the world to fall in love with Em Beihold's bitingly honest lyricism, her crisp vocal range that transcends timelessness, and her natural talent of writing what we're all feeling.
When she released her first major label debut single, "Numb Little Bug", which delves into her struggles of feeling nothing while on anti-depressants, fans were instantly captivated by her candid approach to mental health. But the success of "Numb Little Bug" didn't mean Em wanted to be pigeonholed into becoming the poster child for mental health music.
"When 'Numb Little Bug' came out, I was always bracing for the fall,"
After watching it climb to a million streams on Spotify in less than a day, Beihold remembers being frantic about it. While viral moments are amazing, she tells me how it can be hard to keep up with them when kicking off her career. But, nonetheless, 2022 was booked from there on out.
She tells me how she's always written about what she's feeling- there's no intention to be funny, or brutally honest, or mean- it's just whatever is coming out at the time. One thing is for sure: Em Beihold's music is deserving of the pop-stardom she didn't allow herself to dream of...and it's why she earned opening spots for acts like AJR, King Princess, and Lewis Capaldi. It's especially why she's in the midst of her very own headline tour.
Her music led her to other artists like Lauren Spencer Smith and GAYLE, where they created what Em refers to as "Bang Bang Part Two" with their hit song "Fantasy." The song's a scathing breakup anthem- written in LA by the trio as they talked about boys and scrolled through Instagram- Beihold shares that the session was special because it didn't feel like they were really writing a track, just hanging out.
Aside from her own music, she hopped on Stephen Sanchez's hit track, "Until I Found You"- a dreamy, nostalgic blend of their two voices on a timeless love song. She admits that she doesn't write about love very much, so when she went to write her verse, she was surprised to find it happened in less than a day.
They had created the song without meeting, coming together for the first time to perform at the Moroccan Lounge. The song worked so well that fans continue to speculate the pair are dating (despite the fact that she has a boyfriend who isn't Sanchez).
But her new music is where she shines the most, where she's on her own and staying true to her songwriting. She credits a team that helps uplift her abilities and allowt her shine in areas she's strong in. With a plethora of instruments in her repertoire including the ukulele, the piano, the guitar, and more, Beihold can continue to surprise us with her music.
Her most recent single, "Maybe Life Is Good", is a bit of a sonic shift for her: it's upbeat, a pop number with a hint of rock, about dreaming of better days. Written during a rough patch in Beihold's life, the song was more of an aspiration than a reality at the time of writing. You can listen to the song here:
"'Maybe Life Is Good' was a bit of a lifeline. I was writing about what, at the time, wasn't what I was feeling- which was optimism and positivity. So writing that song was a life vest for me."
As for the future, Em Beihold is currently on her very own Maybe Life Is Good tour, where $1 per ticket will go towards Active Minds, an organization that brings mental health services to college campuses, and there will be stands set up at every show. She teases surprise guests, special songs, and an overall amazing time.
Throughout this interview, Em Beihold has been humble, thoughtful, and insightful, which is exactly reflected in her music. As she rises further into popstardom, it'll be no surprise.
Canadian songstress Dorothea Paas just released her debut album, Anything Can't Happen.
Miriam Paas
Love has a long half-life.
That's one of the major takeaways from Canadian singer-songwriter Dorothea Paas's debut album, Anything Can't Happen, out today (May 7) via Telephone Explosion. The record — crafted between 2016 and 2019 — finds the Toronto native spinning love and longing into gorgeous, ruminative guitar pop that will take your breath away.
If Paas's dreamy heartbreak ballads sound like they could have been plucked from her diary, that's because they were plucked from her diary. "What spurred the songs was deciding to write more," she recently told me over the phone. "I bought a notebook and decided I'm just going to start writing every day. A lot of the songs come out of my reflections and themes that recur in my journal."
Paas claims that she hasn't fallen in love for a long time, but she's scarily good at tapping into romantic longing — the fantasies, the self-questioning, the disappointments, the gaps. What she's ultimately after isn't love but effortless love, which I'm pretty sure doesn't exist even though I, too, am after it.
"I long for a body closer to mine / but I don't want to seek, I just want to find / I need a lover, one who's perfect for me," Paas sings in "Closer to Mine." On "Perfect Love," she qualifies that statement in a telling way: "Although it was once said, 'perfect love casts out all fear' / I think fear is always in love / it's the risk inherent in allowing anyone near."
Dorothea Paas wants love to be easy.Miriam Paas
For a while, Paas can't make up her mind: "Love should be effortless, shouldn't it? / Or was it ever as easy as I played it back in my mind?" she sings on "Container." Later, on "Waves Rising," she concedes, "It's supposed to be easy to love, but I'm finding it hard." Notice how sneakily Paas shifts from the universal to the deeply personal: "All we want is to be seen and heard / we want so badly to be loved by each other," she continues. "We built up ideas of one another into something so big it was destined to topple over." Then, on "Frozen Window," we get this scene: "Sitting on your couch, not speaking, I feel you losing interest in me / I sense the image you had of me shifting, revealing all of my flaws." Ouch. Still, she's prepared to move on: "Oh, somehow," she sings, "I will love again."
I ask Paas if she wrote these songs around a specific breakup.
"I feel like the formative relationships of my life — when I was young and I fell in love in a real hard way — I come back to those relationships because they give you these impressionistic ideas that are really bold and bright," she replies. "The later songs [on the record] expand out into the forms of love that aren't so much about relationships or heartbreak. [They're] more about universal love or family love. I describe them as love songs about not being in love — love songs about longing and loneliness."
Paas pulled the album title from lead single "Anything Can't Happen," but the lyrics of the song are actually "anything can happen." This was an intentional contradiction. "I started that as a joke to myself," says Paas. "I don't think it would resonate with me or make sense with my approach to just have a song where the lyrics are 'anything can happen' and I call it 'anything can happen' and lean into the inspirational feeling of that. It just didn't feel right."
"Anything Can't Happen" is one of the more driving songs on a record that mostly strives for something more intimate and patient and ethereal, like a late-night lounge performance. Paas's vocals contribute to this effect in a big way.
"Listening to Joni Mitchell influenced my voice a lot," she explains. "That felt most potent a few years ago when I was writing these songs… I want to feel like I'm taking some of her threads that she started and extrapolating them out into different places." Paas says she's also taken cues from The Carpenters and Fairport Convention. "I'm figuring out what my voice is and what qualities are unique to me over time."
This isn't a new process for Paas, who has a choral background. "I didn't have a context for classical music growing up — it wasn't something that my parents were involved in, they just put me in the opera choir because my neighbor was going," she recalls. "That definitely impacted my singing form even though I was never truly trained or took lessons. I try to draw on some of those classical or baroque elements occasionally."
Paas's other musical influences are wide-ranging. "I'm getting more into classical guitar, which is a mode that I play a little bit on this record," she says, adding that she's found inspiration in the "Ramy" soundtrack. "One artist that I've become fixated on is Issam Hajali. He has this really beautiful kind of classical guitar folk funk record." Other artists who earn Paas's praise include Kim Jung Mi, Paul McCartney and Wings, and Young Thug ("I feel like he's a vocal genius and has really changed what it means to be a singer," says Paas).
When it comes to her own music, Paas is especially proud of "Container." The Canadian songstress says "it feels like a classic."
"I like the structure of it," she explains. "It's simple enough that it feels comfortable but it's also kind of wacky with the way that the chords move around and return back to the C all the time. And I feel like the vocals are indicative of my style. I had written the guitar part first and then I riffed that melody line and reworked it one or two times, refining it and memorizing it. I feel like it's a good indicator of my vocal instincts and I like that," she continues. "To have a record of that feels good."
Vida Beyer
Anything Can't Happen is out May 7 via Telephone Explosion. You can stream and order it here.
One day you're listening to your usual assortment of experimental synth music and whale noises, maybe a little Kero Kero Bonito if it's sunny out.
In a good mood, you decide to branch out, and a song comes on your discover weekly that you don't recognize. You bob your head along to the beat, and wonder who the band is, thinking they must be deliciously obscure. You reach for your phone to save the track, and recoil at the glitter-sprinkled name: Rainbow Kitten Surprise. The name sounds distinctly like the name of your seven-year-old niece's Guitar Hero band, but you find that in reality it refers to a group of serious musicians from Boone, North Carolina who play an amalgamation of indie and folk rock. Even worse than their name, they have millions of plays. They're popular and kitschy and unacceptable for someone like you who only shops at organic co-ops in your vintage Doc Martens. You move on to the next song.
A week or so later, you're in a Williamsburg bar that you have to enter through a secret fake refrigerator door, and the bartender plays a song, and, liking it, you ask who the band is. They tell you. It's Rainbow Kitten Surprise. You throw your drink at the bartender and walk out in disgust. But on your way home to your Bushwick loft you hesitantly search the band's name on Spotify. But you think, What if someone sees my Spotify? Should I risk it?
But you do, and soon, with enough exposure, you find yourself willing to ignore the band name in exchange for more of Sam Melo's distinctive, folk-rock voice. You start to recognize the exceptional quality of the bass lines and the burningly poignant, playful lyrics that characterize nearly every song. No, they don't have much edge, in fact, they're often persistently uplifting. You keep your new passion to yourself for awhile, sure that it's just a neurological blip. A music aficionado like yourself would never like a band with such a gimmicky name and earnest vibe. You liked Billie Eilish before she was big, dammit, you read Pitchfork like the Bible, and you proudly tell people at parties that your favorite band is Deerhunter. You once said, "Die Antwoord is too mainstream for me," and meant it. How can you love Rainbow Kitten Surprise?
But soon, your roommate knows the words to "Goodnight Chicago" just from hearing it through your bedroom wall. You semi-seriously consider getting lyrics from "First Class" tattooed somewhere hidden on your body, just for you to see. You begin to mention the band hesitantly to strangers, maybe even a few close friends at the anarchist bookstore you frequent, and find you aren't alone in your devotion. You begin to believe the joyfully meaningless name is the perfect, thoughtless collection of words to describe the genre defying band. Afterall, they don't abide by the structural or sonic rules that govern most of the label-made music that tops modern charts. You start to feel strongly that they're a band in the way so many bands don't feel like bands anymore: you can hear the spontaneity of ideas from rehearsal in every song; every track evolves unexpectedly, and every musician is audible, present, and indispensable, singing loud backup vocals and allowing instruments to compete with and complement the lead vocals.
Flash forward, three months. You bought tickets for the "How to: Friend, Love, Freefall" tour and pushed your way through the crowd until you're right up against the stage. You're openly weeping as Ethan Goodpastor leans towards you as he shreds the intro to "Devil Like Me." Your kitten ears are firmly clipped into your hair, your t-shirt proudly displays the band name that you once questioned, but has become a part of your musical identity. You proudly post pic after pic of Sam Melo's energetic, bizarre dance moves on your Instagram story. The concert is a transcendent experience that leaves you full of energy for days to follow. They play their classic hits but they also cover their new album — debatably their best yet — and every band member is visibly enjoying themselves as much as the crowd. When Darrick "Bozzy" Keller joins Sam Melo on vocals and the two lean together, eyes locked, you wonder if this is your peak, if you'll exist forever in this moment, watching lights play through Melo's magnificent beard. Watching them perform, you think of how they exist as an antithesis to bands like Maroon 5, that churn out songs that are overplayed after one spin. Rainbow Kitten Surprise lets songs fall from their fingers in whatever weird and wonderful way they happen to emerge, ultimately reminding their audience what live music is supposed to feel like.
At this point in your obsession, you've even stopped exclusively referring to the band as RKS, instead, you proudly say their full, glorious name. In fact, you shout it at the top of your lungs as Hammerstein Ballroom finally goes dark and the band exits the stage to frantic screams for an encore: Rainbow Kitten Surprise, mother f*cker.
The story of psychedelics is intertwined with the story of music, and tracing their relationship can feel like going in circles.
For thousands of years, artists have been using naturally-grown herbs to open their minds and enhance their creative processes. Since LSD was synthesized by Albert Hoffman in 1938, psychedelics have experienced a reemergence, blooming into a revolution in the 1960s, launching dozens of genres and sounds that focused on acid, shrooms, and all of the portals they opened. Around the 1960s, scientists also began studying the relationship between psychedelics and music, and even back then, researchers found that, when combined, music and psychedelics could have therapeutic effects on patients.
More modern studies have discovered that LSD, specifically, links a portion of the brain called the parahippocampal—which specializes in personal memory—to the visual cortex, which means that memories take on more autobiographical and visual dimensions. Other studies have found that LSD can make the timbres and sounds of music feel more meaningful and emotionally powerful. Today, psychedelic music still thrives, and you can hear flickers of those early trip-inspired experiences all across today's modern musical landscape.
"There is a message intrinsically carried in music, and under the effects of psychedelics, people seem to become more responsive to this," said the psychedelic researcher Mendel Kaelen. "Emotion can be processed more deeply. It's a beautiful narrative. It's like a snake biting itself in the tail."
All that said, psychedelics can be as dangerous as the archetypal live-fast-die-young rock and roller's average lifestyle. They can destabilize already fragile minds and can encourage further drug abuse and reckless behavior. Often, psychedelic revolutions have coincided with colonialist fetishizations, apocalyptic visions, and appropriations of Eastern culture.
However, sometimes psychedelics and musical talent can come together in a synergy so perfect that it can literally create transcendent and healing experiences. Hallucinogens affected each of these following musicians in a unique way, but their experiences with hallucinogens produced some of the greatest music of all time.
Harry Styles — She
In his revelatory Rolling Stone profile, Harry Styles spoke out about how magic mushrooms inspired his most recent album, Fine Line. Inspired by Fleetwood Mac, the 25-year-old apparently spent a lot of time at Shangri-La Studios in Los Angeles tripping and listening to the old psychedelic greats.
"Ah, yes. Did a lot of mushrooms here," he said in the interview during a tour of the studio. "We'd do mushrooms, lie down on the grass, and listen to Paul McCartney's Ram in the sunshine."
Things even got a little violent, as they often can when dealing with hallucinogens. "This is where I was standing when we were doing mushrooms and I bit off the tip of my tongue. So I was trying to sing with all this blood gushing out of my mouth. So many fond memories, this place," he reminisced affectionately.
Kacey Musgraves' dreamy song "Slow Burn" was apparently inspired by an acid trip. Listening to the lyrics, you can hear the influence of psychedelics twining with country and singer-songwriter tropes. "I was sitting on the porch, you know, having a good, easy, zen time," she said of the songwriting experience, which she said happened out on her porch one evening. "I wrote it down on my phone, and then wrote the songs the next day with a sober mind."
LSD, she said, "opens your mind in a lot of ways. It doesn't have to be scary. People in the professional worlds are using it, and it's starting to become an option for therapy. Isn't that crazy?" Her affection for the drug also appears in her song "Oh What A World," which contains the lyric, "Plants that grow and open your mind."
A$AP Rocky — L$D
While A$AP Rocky's affection for LSD isn't a surprise given his propensity for writing about the drug, apparently the rapper has an intellectual approach to his psychedelic experimentation.
"We was all in London at my spot, Skeppy came through," he told Hot New Hip Hop about his experience writing LSD. "I have this psychedelic professor, he studies in LSD. I had him come through and kinda record and monitor us to actually test the product while being tested on. We did the rhymes all tripping balls."
Apparently his first acid trip happened in 2012. "Okay, without getting anyone in trouble, I was with my homeboy and some trippy celebrity chicks and…" he said in an interview with Time Out. When asked how long it lasted, he said, "Too long, man. Twenty-three hours. I was trippin' till the next day. When I woke up, I was like, Damn! I did that shit! That shit was dope. It was so amazing. It was a-ma-zing. Nothing was like that first time."
Acid changed his entire approach to music and success. "I never really gave a f*ck, man, but this time, I really don't give a f*ck," he said. "I don't care about making no f*cking hits." Instead, he focuses on creating. "It's so hard to be progressive when you're trippin' b*lls," he said. "You make some far-out shit!"
The Beatles' later music is essentially synonymous with LSD, and the band members often spoke out about their unique experiences with the drug. According to Rolling Stone, the first time that Lennon and Harrison took it was actually a complete accident. A friend put LSD in their coffee without their knowledge, and initially Lennon was furious. But after the horror and panic faded, things changed. "I had such an overwhelming feeling of well-being, that there was a God, and I could see him in every blade of grass. It was like gaining hundreds of years of experience in 12 hours," said Harrison.
Paul McCartney had similar revelations. LSD "opened my eyes to the fact that there is a God," he said in 1967. "It is obvious that God isn't in a pill, but it explained the mystery of life. It was truly a religious experience." Of LSD's effect, he also said, "It started to find its way into everything we did, really. It colored our perceptions. I think we started to realize there wasn't as many frontiers as we'd thought there were. And we realized we could break barriers."
Using the drug not only helped the band create some of the most legendary music of all time—it also brought them closer together. "After taking acid together, John and I had a very interesting relationship," said George Harrison. "That I was younger or I was smaller was no longer any kind of embarrassment with John. Paul still says, 'I suppose we looked down on George because he was younger.' That is an illusion people are under. It's nothing to do with how many years old you are, or how big your body is. It's down to what your greater consciousness is and if you can live in harmony with what's going on in creation. John and I spent a lot of time together from then on and I felt closer to him than all the others, right through until his death."
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (Remastered 2009)www.youtube.com
Ray Charles — My World
The soul music pioneer allegedly once described acid as his "eyes." Charles was blind, but LSD is said to have allowed him some version of sight. Though he struggled with addiction, Charles eventually got clean, though his music always bore some markers of his experiences with the subconscious mind.
Actually, blind people on LSD and hallucinogens can experience hallucinations of different kinds, though it's somewhat rare. According to a study in the journal Consciousness and Cognition, this happens because during a trip, "the plasticity of the nervous system allows the recognition and translation of auditory or tactile patterns into visual experiences."
Clapton struggled with drug abuse throughout his life, and LSD certainly had an influence on him. While he was a part of Cream, he frequently played shows while tripping, and according to outontrip.com, he became "convinced that he could turn the audience into angels or devils according to the notes he played."
Before he was creating the ultimate dad rap, Chance the Rapper was an acidhead.
"None of the songs are really declarative statements; a lot of them are just things that make you wonder...a lot like LSD," said Chance the Rapper of his hallucinogen-inspired album, the aptly named Acid Rap. "[There] was a lot of acid involved in Acid Rap," he told MTV in 2013. "I mean, it wasn't too much — I'd say it was about 30 to 40 percent acid ... more so 30 percent acid."
But the album wasn't merely about acid; like much of the best psychedelic music, it was more about the imagery and symbolism associated with the drug than the actual drug itself. "It wasn't the biggest component at all. It was something that I was really interested in for a long time during the making of the tape, but it's not necessarily a huge faction at all. It was more so just a booster, a bit of fuel. It's an allegory to acid, more so than just a tape about acid," he said.
Jazz great John Coltrane was a regular LSD user who used the drug to create music and to have spiritual experiences. Though he struggled with addiction throughout his life, LSD was one drug that had a major artistic influence on him. While it's not known for sure if the album Om—which includes chanted verses of the Bhagavad Gita—was recorded while Coltrane was on LSD, many rumors theorize that it was.
"Coltrane's LSD experiences confirmed spiritual insights he had already discovered rather than radically changing his perspective," wrote Eric Nisenson in Ascension: John Coltrane and His Quest. "After one early acid trip he said, 'I perceived the interrelationship of all life forms,' an idea he had found repeated in many of the books on Eastern theology that he had been reading for years. For Coltrane, who for years had been trying to relate mystical systems such as numerology and astrology, theories of modern physics and mathematics, the teachings of the great spiritual leaders, and advanced musical theory, and trying somehow to pull these threads into something he could play on his horn. The LSD experience gave him visceral evidence that his quest was on the right track."
Jenny Lewis — Acid Tongue
Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis wrote the song "Acid Tongue" about her first and only experience on LSD, which happened when she was fourteen. She told Rolling Stone, "It culminated in a scene not unlike something from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas—the scene where Hunter S. Thompson has to lock the lawyer in the bathroom. I sort of assumed the Hunter S. Thompson character and my friend – she had taken far too much – decided to pull a butcher knife out of the kitchen drawer and chase me around the house… At the end of that experience, my mom was out of town on a trip of her own and she returned to find me about 5 lbs lighter and I had—I was so desperate to get back to normal I decided to drink an entire gallon of orange juice. I saw that it was in the fridge and decided that this would sort of flush the LSD out of my system, but I didn't realize that it did exactly the opposite."
The Beach Boys' mastermind Brian Wilson was famously inspired by psychedelics, which both expanded and endangered his fragile and brilliant mind. After his first acid trip in 1965, an experience that he said "expanded his mind," Wilson wrote "California Gurls." After the trip, however, Wilson began suffering from auditory hallucinations and symptoms of schizophrenia, and though he discontinued use of the drug, he continued to hear voices; doctors eventually diagnosed him with the disease. Wilson later lamented his tragic experiences with LSD, stating that he wished he'd never done the drug.
Though it led Wilson on a downward spiral, LSD inspired some of his band's greatest work—namely the iconic Pet Sounds, which launched half a century of "acid-pop copycats."
The Flaming Lips — Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
The Flaming Lips' "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" is widely believed to be the product of lead singer Wayne Coyne's LSD experimentation. This theory is corroborated by the fact that the album's cover features the number 25 (and LSD is also known as LSD-25). They also frequently reference LSD in their music, which includes an album called Finally, the Punk Rockers Are Taking Acid.
the flaming lips yoshimi battles the pink robots part 1www.youtube.com
Jimi Hendrix — Voodoo Child
While there is still some general contention on whether Jimi Hendrix hallucinated frequently, nobody really doubts that he did. According to rumors, the legendary musician even used to soak his bandanas in acid before going onstage so the drug would seep through his pores.
According to one source, Hendrix did more than just play music while tripping. He was also an expert at (of all things) the game of Risk.
"Jimi would play Risk on acid, and I never — and me personally — ever beat him at all," said Graham Nash in an interview. "He was unbelievable at it. He was a military man, you know, he's a paratrooper, and I don't know whether you know that about Jimi, but no one ever beat him at Risk."
The Doors — The End
Jim Morrison was a documented LSD user, and it eventually led him out of his mind. "The psychedelic Jim I knew just a year earlier, the one who was constantly coming up with colorful answers to universal questions, was being slowly tortured by something we didn't understand. But you don't question the universe before breakfast for years and not pay a price," said John Desmore in Riders on the Storm: My Life With the Doors.
Morrison used many different drugs during his lifetime, but apparently LSD had a special place and he avoided using it while working. "LSD was a sacred sacrament that was to be taken on the beach at Venice, under the warmth of the sun, with our father the sun and our mother the ocean close by, and you realised how divine you were," said Ray Manzarek. "It wasn't a drug for entertainment. You could smoke a joint and play your music, as most musicians did at the time. But as far as taking LSD, that had to be done in a natural setting."
Morrison himself—a visionary who was also a drug-addled narcissist—was kind of the prototypical 1960s LSD-addled rock star. Alive with visions about poetry and sex but lost in his own self-destruction, he perhaps touched on something of the sublime with his art, but in the end he went down a very human path towards misery and decay.
Like many of these artists' stories, Morrison's life reveals that perhaps instead of using hallucinogens and psychedelics as shortcuts to a spiritual experience, one should exercise extreme caution when exploring the outer reaches of the psyche. When it comes to actually engaging with potent hallucinogens, that might be best left to the shamans, or forgotten with the excesses of the 1960s.
On the other hand, we might do well to learn from the lessons that people have gleaned from hallucinogens over the years—lessons that reveal just how interconnected everything is, that shows us that music and memory and nature may just all stem from the same place.
This morning, Donald Trump authorized a drone strike at Baghdad International Airport that killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Iran's top security and intelligence commander.
Since this action, which The New York Times described as a "serious escalation," the United States has been preparing for potential retaliation.
This event feels like a turning point in the midst of endless conflict between the United States and Iran, a flashpoint that has everyone waiting with bated breath. It's impossible to say at this point whether the strike will merely mark a continuation of previous conflicts or if it will launch a full-blown World War III, but for fear of the latter, some people have been turning to age-old mechanisms of coping with war and fighting for peace: anti-war protest songs.
The history of American war protests is intertwined with music. From Bob Dylan to Bob Marley, from Joan Baez to Jimi Hendrix, anti-war protests of the 1960s marked a glorious ascendance of protest songs, but many of them had their roots in the past, either in gospel or blues or from somewhere else, some undercurrent of defiance.
Many of the greatest protest songs are applicable across movements, accessing a core of anger and solidarity, and that's what each of these songs does. War has never ended; it's only moved and shifted. These songs remind us that the struggle is an age-old one.
Masters of War — Bob Dylan
Very few artists are as synonymous with protest music as Bob Dylan, and "Masters of War" is one of the most damning songs of all of his work. It was written in 1963 as a protest against the nuclear arms buildup of the early 60s, and it's ultimately a treatise against the military industrial complex and all the forces that profit off the deaths of others. "You hide in your mansion / while the young people's blood / flows out of their bodies and is buried in the mud," he sings, one of the most searing lines in protest music.
Black Sabbath's vehement, sprawling f*ck you-ballad to everyone making money off war. The song was the opening track on the album Paranoid, and its original title was "Walpurgis," which references April 30th, a traditional feast day sometimes referred to as the "witch's Sabbath," a holiday with roots in the 8th century. It was released as a protest to Vietnam and the draft but has endured as an anthem to rage at the futility of pointless war.
Few voices captured the fear of war and spun it into something like hope as well as Bob Marley. "Redemption Song" is timeless and of its time. With lyrics inspired by Pan-Africanist speaker Marcus Garvey, it speaks to a very specific and universal feeling. It's the last song on Marley's last album, written in 1979 when he was already suffering from cancer, and the stripped-down acoustic version is a mix of pain and faith.
"Zombie" is so catchy that it's easy to forget what it's about, but it was written about the casualties that occurred during the 1993 IRA bombing in Warrington, England as part of the ongoing war between England and Ireland. Dolores O'Riordan wrote the song in 1993, and its release—along with a music video that showed children playing war games and clips of British soldiers—resulted in a ban from the BBC; the video later garnered over a billion views and the song became a protest anthem.
The Cranberries - Zombie (Official Music Video)www.youtube.com
5. Jimi Hendrix — All Along the Watchtower
This cryptic song was written by Bob Dylan, but even Dylan began covering Jimi Hendrix's version when it came out in 1968. The song might be about Vietnam, Armageddon, or the crises of meaning that these kinds of events open up, but its true power is in the sound and the power of Hendrix's guitar skills, perfectionism, and ability to distill centuries of oppression into sound.
The Jimi Hendrix Experience - All Along The Watchtower (Audio)www.youtube.com
6. People Have the Power — Patti Smith
Patti Smith just turned 73, but her song "People Have the Power" is timeless and still resonates just like it did when it was released in 1988. Inspired by the radical spirit of the 1960s, it has since been used in protests everywhere from Greece to Palestine.
This song is likely descended from a gospel hymn by Reverend Charles Albert Tindley, who wrote the original version in 1900. The first version of the song as it is today was sung by Lucille Simmons, who was leading a cigar worker's strike in 1945. It was popularized by artists like Pete Seeger and became a seminal song of the Civil Rights Movement when it was performed by Guy Carawan. Then it was used by folk singers like Joan Baez at rallies and concerts of the 1960s. The song's mutability and applicability to so many movements reveal more about what all these movements have in common than anything else—a desire for freedom, equality, and peace, and a faith in the people's ability to get there.
Lizzo poses in the press room at the 63rd annual Grammy Awards at the Los Angeles Convention Center on March 14 with both live and prerecorded segments63rd Annual Grammy Awards - Press Room, Los Angeles, United States
Photo by Jordan Strauss/AP/Shutterstock
Lizzo dazzled on her SNL debut this weekend, but fans might have noticed another source of energy and talent emanating from next to the "Truth Hurts" singer as she belted out her tunes.
That would be Celisse Henderson, who shredded on guitar as Lizzo sang.
Henderson is a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist who is a member of the band Ghosts of the Forest. She took center stage during Lizzo's performance, adding a layer of gritty, bluesy rock to the unbelievably catchy song about getting over a man who doesn't deserve you.
Henderson styled her look and guitar after the legendary Sister Rosetta Tharpe, whose gospel and blues recordings were instrumental in shaping rock and roll. As one of the first guitarists to use distortion, she inspired many blues and rock players, and her voice and stage presence helped make her a star.
Seeing Lizzo's pristine, very 21st-century pop mixed with a tribute to one of the greatest rock and roll guitarists of all time gave scope and depth to the performance and helped make it the unforgettable showstopper that it was.
Celisse Henderson - Stuck On You Blues | Sofar NYCwww.youtube.com
Lizzo, who took to the stage covered in head-to-toe Gucci and hit stratospheric notes from start to finish, also posted a heart-warming tribute to her journey.
— (@)
Between Henderson's masterful guitar playing, Lizzo's unbelievable pipes and stage presence, and the dancers that lit up the stage, it was a performance to remember.
— (@)
Lizzo's sets were highlights of Eddie Murphy's star-studded, highly acclaimed, and hilarious SNL episode, which also braided tributes to icons of the past (like Gumby, dammit) with very modern humor.
Dorothea Paas wants love to be easy.Miriam Paas
Vida Beyer
