Color Theory by Soccer Mommy
by Lana Fleischli
I started listening to this album a while ago on and off. I had heard “Lucy” once or twice. About a month later, my mom got really into listening to the Song Exploder podcast. It’s a podcast about songs, and in each episode, the host and whatever artist they have on break down one of their songs to each component. Now they even have a Netflix show of it. She kept telling me to listen to it, specifically the Run The Jewels’ “JU$T” episode, and the Soccer Mommy “Circle The Drain” episode. I hadn’t listened to Soccer Mommy much at this point, but while I was exercising one day, I decided to try out the podcast, I mean, I had nothing better to do!
As I absorbed each sound that was played in the podcast, like the bubbles, the water sounds, the riff that she created, I found so much more of an appreciation for the song. I felt like I had a connection with it. The connection only grew when she began to explain why she wrote it. It’s a pretty sad song, but she explained that when she wrote it, her life was going pretty good. She was becoming successful, she was in a good relationship, and she had an overall good life. She said that even though she was doing good, she was just kind of sad for no reason.
I could totally relate to this sentiment. I feel like we all have these moments when we are just depressed for no reason for a while. It sucks. For me, it's often when I get into a routine, and have nothing else going on. I have trouble being happy in those times. It feels like an endless cycle of mediocrity. Wake up at 7:15, make my bed, brush my teeth, wash my face, get dressed, make food, sit at my desk, turn on Zoom at 8:15, do class, do another class, another, and another, homework, night time, wake up the next day and do it all over again. How boring is that?!
So, even though everyone has ACTUAL struggles, sometimes these times of just nothingness make us numb, and at least for me, depressed.
After I listened to the Song Exploder, I listened to “Circle The Drain” all of the time. I even learned it on guitar. There's something very raw about it to me. Perhaps it’s because of the podcast where they took each part and played them separately. There’s something about that that makes it feel so much more tangible. Like, wow, someone did that! They were just sitting around and started playing that riff, they talked to someone else who said that they should add this sound, or that sound, and they worked on it, and made a piece of art!
When winter came along, I was feeling gloomy, but in a good way. I was missing people, but I also really like winter time because the air is crisper, and the holidays remind me of baking and movies, and my birthday was soon. At that point in time, I decided to listen to the rest of Color Theory. “Bloodstream” really caught me as another beautiful song. I could hear the influences of some of the other songs on the album, and how they all kind of had a similar feeling. In my head, the riff in “Bloodstream” and the riff in “Circle The Drain” really complimented each other. The DJing part of my mind was thinking about how cool they would sound layered over each other.
I kept listening to the album, and I just think about how sometimes to really value music, you have to understand the story behind it. Like I said, I already thought the songs were pretty, but I hadn’t taken the time to listen to it. I remember that when I was younger, I would always ask my mom the meanings of songs, because I like storytelling, and I wanted the meaning because even at seven years old, I knew that knowing the story behind the song made it that much better.