Allison Renner

Yup, this one cut deep. Love the structure, the voice. SO GOOD. I'm so in my sads after Tori and this one today.

And this... "How many models, how many archetypes, of the voice of your generation, of you? How do you separate the voice of your generation from the voice of your mental illness? ... Does what you repeat, replay, make you who you are?"

Obsessed with the structure of Jennifer Gravley's essay. And so many gutpunch quotes. "In the end, the choice to live wasn’t a choice at all. You just kept waking up."

Work kept me from essays until evening as well 😡 But it's turning out to be soooo worth it. And YES to the flute, totally forgot to mention that and crush crumbs! Geez, so good

Grandpaboy is new to me but now I'm wishing someone with more talent would make a mashup of this song and mine. I mean, "I kissed the wind and made the rain
Jealous enough to fall for days" COME ON!!!

Also a Captain Beefheart reference in the bio? Hell yes!

Saaaaaame oh my gosh, it was everything. Father/daughter relationships changing, parenting and empowering your kids (and letting them go?!) and more, with that song playing in the background... wow!!

I'm in LOVE with this Mo Daviau essay: "Why wasn’t she, like me, punished for showing her real, disagreeable emotions? Not many women succeed purely on talent. They have to be liked. They have to be palatable. I would never look ungrateful. I would never lose my shit."

I also LOVE this idea of sadness: "That’s what the song made me think about—not the loss of something I’d experienced, but the realization that I will likely never feel that, that it’s a feeling entirely out of my reach."

As someone who hadn't heard "Linger" until a friend mentioned it when I said I was writing about "Kiss the Rain," so much of Silas Hansen's essay resonates with me! "I was always an 'old soul' (neurodivergent, I’d likely say now) and was in a hurry to grow up" and a murder of crows, yay!

Christopher L. Keller's essay made me cry too so NOW what do I do?! "It felt less like something was missing & more like something had been taken. What remained was a space that never quite filled in." & "For all the time I spent in my head, I didn't have the tools to describe how I felt to others"

Also that perfect parenting advice at the end: "I have done my parenting duties; I’ve given her what she needs to stay grounded, to stand up for herself, to handle her own problems. She knows I’m here when she needs me, but she doesn’t need me to save the day."

First essay I'm reading today and it made me cry, reading it while the song played. Nanette Donohue, librarian (whoo!) coming in with some very relatable experiences and humor ("This was like a Sweet Valley High super edition").

Love spotting a typo so long after the message is out there... meant as a COMPLIMENT, d'oh!

Oh my gosh I didn't even think of that!!! 🤦 I'm so sorry

Love this framework for an essay: "In fairness, this isn’t speaking. It’s not a conversation, not even a letter. It’s me talking to an idea of a you." and the description of clipping the walkman to the pants - something I haven't thought about in so long!

Love Alanis no matter what, especially because "Sometimes she has to unhinge her jaw to let the full sound out." And WOW, this essay is a sadness I didn't expect (meant as a complete, because whoa it packed a punch!)

Today, @cbiondolillo.bsky.social's essay is the one that made me cry. "I was just another guest at his celebration of life, and our relationship didn’t even merit mention in his obituary."

"The friend had gotten it from a guy in England who sent it to him via dial-up, a transmission that took all night to complete." Is that 90s or is that 90s?

I also love the description of opening a CD, even if it "cannot be cradled in your arms on the way home from the record store."

I'd be interested in goth covers of the entire bracket, tbh 😂

I strongly dislike the Black Crowes because of an ex, but @levin.bsky.social 's goth cover? Hell yes!

I actually suggested Slide for the longlist but Iris was already on it! And yes would have been so funny with Brick. Well, not funny, maybe, but yeah.

"Big Machine" is my favorite. My mom wouldn't let me get "Dizzy Up the Girl" because of the title implications, which I didn't understand then but strangely respect now. So "Gutterflower" was *my* album. (I eventually got Dizzy too though - "Slide" is my 2nd fave!)

I remember the songs but not the facts. My kid spouts animal facts and I marvel about how he knows... and it's always "From Octonauts!"

I also loved the Bubble Guppies songs but he doesn't remember those... or maybe just hates me singing them.

"Music feels like the ultimate mirror; if I listen to something on a loop long enough, dig through the lyrics intelligently enough, venerate the idea of self-reflective naval gazing enough, I will be granted permission by myself to see myself. The searching itself could be enough. It never is." 💜

"Iris" is possibly my least-fave Goo Goo Dolls song but there's so much to love about this essay that now I'm reconsidering everything I know... And again, with the bio love: "Self-indulgent sadness is no longer Moira’s favorite hobby."

"NOW you can pivot from Disney kid to sexpot, from harmless reality TV himbo to fascist political monster, from porn star to first lady. You can pivot and pivot until Words no longer mean Things." got me thinking about how some artists get pigeonholed & some can move on... Love how it's worded.

I used to work at Putt Putt & Skid Row came once but it was post-Bach so I was NOT interested. I appreciate a lot in this essay, especially "Bach is SO pretty, an impossibly tall chiseled Viking with what looks like a yard of blond hair." & the Octonauts reference?! Are our kids friends?

"I need music as squirrelly in its feeling as I am" and what might be the saddest line of the competition: "I became a girl who no longer haunted the stacks."

Also super interesting to compare reading books to listening to lyrics, and the revelation that Ben Folds Five has no guitar?! I'm invested.

Cicily Bennion's essay might be one of the most powerful I've read - was NOT expecting that shift but wow, it's written about as beautifully as it can be. Great quotes, too: "already I was becoming a person who was not particularly interested in or good at straightforwardly happy" ...

Perhaps biased as a Tennesseean who has fond Little Rock memories but @amygcb.bsky.social is BRINGING IT with "the boyfriend book" and all the pictures!