In Times Like These ...

Hello hello! We’ve got a shorter newsletter this week since I’m dealing with either an allergy attack or a cold (not COVID, thankfully!), but I wanted to get my summer jams playlist out while it’s still balmy enough to cruise with the windows down here in the Motor City.

There wasn’t really a song of the summer, was there? I mean, quantitatively speaking, it was Alex Warren’s “Ordinary”, and I guess a track with overt Christian overtones really matched summer’s vibe in America, for better or for worse. But its cadence is so plodding, it makes me nostalgic for Creed, because at least Creed rocked.

But don’t worry, there is 0 Creed on my summer songs playlist. I normally mix new songs with oldies, but since there wasn’t an official song of the summer, I kept to recent tracks this month – and there were plenty, despite the lack of critical consensus. To call out a few favorites:

• King Princess, my favorite queer “nepo demon”, parted ways with Mark Ronson and sounds so much hotter for it;

• Tyler, The Creator threw down a rager fit for this summer, which, thank God;

• The Beaches, NewDad, and Wet Leg continue proving girls and guitars go together, no matter what the boys say;

• Lola Young has an anthem for messy babes thinking about getting it together;

• Sabrina Carpenter is the reigning queen of summer pop songs – although if flowerovlove takes her crown in 2026, I wouldn’t be surprised;

• TBH, I still don’t know how I feel about the production on Lorde’s new album, and a friend just sent me a deep dive podcast to rabbit hole into, but I do know “Current Affairs” is mind-bendingly good;

• Erin LeCount breathes a haunting air into this summer’s religious overtones with “Marble Arch”; and

• Kesha, who never left, but is back in full brush-her-teeth-with-a-bottle-of-Jack mode with “YIPPIE-KI-YAY” – and she teamed up with T-Pain for the remix, because they know exactly what the millennials need rn.

And OK, I cheated a little by including SZA’s “BMF”, which came out as a single in January, and Charli Xcx’s “party 4 u,” which was a re-release from her 2020 album, how i’m feeling now, but I listened them too much this summer not to include them. Plus, we could all use a few extra bops right now, couldn’t we?

Because, truly, living through America’s post traumatic shock syndrome in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, it’s fucking hard. Like, I’m not mad I got sick enough to be a homebody this week, because it’s hard moving through an area with diverse politics right now. How are my neighbors and I supposed to trust each other when the MAGA elite is fomenting hate against “far-left” queers and our kin? I’m aware some people may be staring me and my tattoos down, wondering what they might “mean” … But I have to reroute there, because I need to keep living my queer as fuck life, tank tops and all. Even the baddest of MAGA can’t scare me out of being a proud dyke :)

Anyway, I’ll be back soon with an octopus-themed essay, an essay I was drafting for my first post back to Emi on Earth, before all this bullshit popped off. Although, to be honest, I’m not mad, since I got to read Verlyn Klinkenborg’s “‘Such a Flexible Intensity of Life‘“ in the most recent New York Review, which is incredible, sensational across so many dimensions.

Plus, it helps when these jackasses are so brazen in their publicly televised appearances (content warning: Stephen Miller), since the “everything will be fine” crowd is going to have a hard time calling the rest of us “crazy” as MAGA & Co is fomenting hatred and outrage against us in such plainspoken English. Like, it’s a good legal precedent the FCC can’t bully networks into kicking talk show hosts off the air — but the vast majority of us do not have talk shows, so we all still have work to do :)

And, as always, I’m right here in the “everything will be fine — but only because I have faith that we are all worthy of being and living as so much more than society, etc., tells us we are worthy of” camp. Trying to articulate that is a mess, but I have faith in good faith mess. Good faith mess is a reason to keep reading, to keep engaging with art, to keep wrestling with our difficult thoughts, to keep in touch with the broadest version of the universe we can imagine for ourselves to touch, to keep searching for what new clarities we may find along our ways. It’s not as if anyone gave humanity a guidebook for what we’re supposed to be doing here, so it seems we must keep drafting and re-drafting guidebooks for ourselves — and stay willing to break them into pieces if they stop making sense as a whole ...

Oh, and, one last thing, dear reader: I’m revising my novel to go back out to agents soon, so I’m trying to be more intentional about marketing Emi on Earth (which, yes, means me, and no, it’s not my favorite part of being a writer, but c’est la vie). If you could click through to “heart” this post on Substack – or leave a comment with your favorite songs of the summer and/or thoughts on Virgin, because I’d love to hear them all! – I’d be very grateful :)

So with that, here are the links to my songs of the summer playlist on Apple Music and Spotify (and the cover shot is from this year’s Woodward Dream Cruise, and was in my summer photo round-up, ICYMI). Hope you enjoy!

XOXO
Emi