BIG FEELS ON THE MUNA ALBUM:
Listen to The Madonna Notes 6.2 here👇🏻
MUNA dropped their self-titled album recently, and there is something astrological about listening to the right album at the right time.
The last time I felt these same stars align, I was listening to Taylor Swift’s Fearless in high school. It felt like mine and it felt shared. Cosmic. Something in the universe. My friends and I would drive around our small city listening to it from “Fearless” all the way to “Change,” and back again.
It was about us, and it was about the romance we wanted, and it was about the love triangle between Bella and Jacob and Edward. It transcended. We tried on harmonies we didn’t know and sang our hearts out. We spun our Twilight vs. Fearless conspiracies and laughed long and hard, only stopping to catch our breath to order an Iced Capp from the Timmies drive thru.
We each had different teenage angst and real shit we were going through, much of it we didn’t yet have language for, but this album simplified all of that, condensed our feelings into something we each understood. There was so much aliveness about us in those shared-feelings-moments. The anticipation for what was next, what we would find once we got out of our hometown. The possibility vibrating in our cells made us sparkle – like sunshine on a lake, like the skin of a killer (Twilight reference).
I’ve been looking around at my friends lately and feeling that same kinship of sharing a feeling. Different angst, but vibrating at the same tenor. There is something destructive about it, something creative. Inevitable in such a way that makes it astrological, I guess.
The song, “What I Want”, on the new MUNA album has the lyrics:
I've spent way too-too-too many years
Not knowing what
What I wanted, how to get it, how to live it and now
I'm gonna make up for all of it at once
Cause that's, that's just what I want
What we knew as seventeen year olds driving around in our friends’ cars was a feeling, a whisper of our intended future. This trend of dismantling what we’ve built so far is not so much chaotic as it is deeply intuitive. We’re getting back in touch with that original feeling, now paired with a bit more knowing of
What we actually want
How to actually get it
How to truly live it
I keep thinking of how alive teenage-Natahna was in those small moments, sitting backseat, giggling until my side cramped. I’ve been meeting my dissociation and depression with a lot of anger, like, no. I’m not fucking surviving like this anymore. I want to be present and sparkling, I want to know what I want and move towards it. I want to dance in the rain in my best dress, fearless (Taylor Swift reference).
Weirdly, I think the anger bit is necessary when claiming joy. Maybe that’s a me thing, or a scorpio sun thing, but I think there is a level of fiery audacity needed when choosing to seek out and cling on to joy for oneself.
The new MUNA album gets this juxtaposition; and from “Silk Chiffon” to “Shooting Star,” there’s not a skip in the line-up.
Talk soon,
Natahna
The Recommends: You guessed it—the entire MUNA album. Also, Oreo Thins and peanut butter. OMG.