I’m not qualified to write a review of Bittersweet, an album by Jamie Paige
“I feel a feeling indescribable.”
I’m not at all qualified to write a review of Bittersweet, an album by Jamie Paige.
For…a bunch of reasons, really.
But chief among them is that I’ve never felt qualified to put my feelings about music into words.
I have no training in music composition or in songwriting. Arguably, I don’t even have training in listening to music. At least, not the type of nuanced “deep listening” that I imagine enthusiasts and reviewers do when they sit down and let an album or a symphony wash over them, drink in hand.
For me, music is as raw as art can get. It’s the connection between one human being’s emotions, my own nervous system, and the dancing of the air molecules between them. Unlike film, comics, or video games, it doesn’t feel like it’s filtered through any unnecessary layers. It’s less reliant on combining and assimilating disparate art forms together. It’s direct. It’s sensory. If anything, it feels closer to cooking than it does to film. It tastes like something as soon as you try it.
Music stands on its own. It moves me, and it always seems like it does so effortlessly.
I’m not qualified to write my feelings about an album…I don’t even know any of the right terminology… but Bittersweet has moved me to at least try.
I’m woefully unprepared to describe Bittersweet by genre, but I can at least tell you that it’s tagged on Bandcamp as “pop”, “breakbeat”, “synth pop”, and “gay shit.”
Whatever it is, I’m certainly into it!
It’s fun. It’s bright. It’s emotional. I want to call it “maximalist” but maybe that’s not the right word. Maybe I just mean that it feels like it’s bursting at the seams with color and energy.
If I may shamelessly quote from Bandcamp user penultimateApogee from the Bittersweet store page: “i once said that jamie paige’s whole discography “feels like one big concept album, except the concept is just ‘what if love was real?’.” This might describe the album better than any of my attempts will.
I love the album as a whole, which is a rarity for me. “Paisley Patterns” is a moody head-bopper. “Gummyworm” is a melancholic trudge through heavy electronic beats. “Greatsword / Love as Fire” feels like soaring through the clouds.
But the two tracks that have pulled me into their orbit are, undoubtedly, “Asemic Speech (feat. telebasher)” and “Nothing (with You).”
I don’t know why my journey with music feels so winding.
There’s really nothing that complicated about music as, like, a thing. It’s one of the earliest and most basic forms of human artistry, and it’s pretty easily available. It’s everywhere!
That said, it still feels like I somehow lost my way with music.
From childhood to middle school to high school, things were great! I adored songs that I could get on CDs (including homemade mixtape discs), I enjoyed the things my parents played on the radio, and grew to love the stuff that I would hear on my older brother’s iPod. I eventually got an MP3 player of my own and, wasting no time, filled it to the brim with pirated rips of anime openings, Youtube medleys, and video game songs.
I was a band kid in school, playing trumpet and tuba, and had a deep connection to performing and listening to music in the auditorium and out on the football field. I’d discover songs old and new from Guitar Hero and Rock Band, which essentially became our medium for living room karaoke.
Sometime after that, I don’t know what happened. I graduated from school and stopped playing instruments. iPods and MP3 Players, in their traditional form, fell out of fashion. Youtube and streaming services like Spotify filled the void of accessing music. The monkey’s paw curled and the world was given what it said it always wanted: the ability to listen to as many songs as they want, whenever they want, without having to purchase them.
Even knowing Spotify’s nature (of being the devil), I dabbled with it for a few years and had a great time. It helped me sing in the car while I pushed past my anxiety of driving. It helped me stay focused while working. It helped grocery shopping and chores become fun. It helped me find a few new artists, although I admit the Discovery algorithm method doesn’t work super well for me.
I don’t necessarily regret my time using Spotify, nor do I begrudge the thousands of people who use it. It’s a fascinating and convenient service, and a powerful way for artists to get discovered, I’m sure. I just, personally, wanted something that felt different. I wanted something that felt great to use and to be a part of.
I turned my attention back to Bandcamp, a site I had been familiar with for a few years. Backed with the privilege of having some disposable cash to spare, I asked a question: What if I just went all-in on Bandcamp instead? What if I built up a digital collection, from scratch, of albums from indie artists that I had purchased one-by-one? It’d start off small, sure, but it’d be my own little treasure, something that felt more personal than a Spotify playlist.
So far, it’s been serving me well.
Something about browsing Bandcamp just feels different from browsing Spotify, even without counting the approach in artist revenue. Bandcamp at least feels a LITTLE bit more like flipping through discs at a store than streaming services do. It’s really fun to find something new that I like, that I never would’ve stumbled on otherwise, and add it onto my Wishlist. And when Bandcamp Friday comes along, signaling that artists will get a boosted cut of the revenue? That’s the perfect permission to go on a mini shopping spree.
I never had to worry again about how many cents the artist makes each time I stream a song, or whether I was clicking on their stuff enough, or whether I should offset my guilt by subscribing to their Patreon. If you really want to fixate on the financials, by purchasing a single album you essentially do the same level of direct support as a thousand Spotify listens. And now the album is yours to keep! Drag-and-drop it onto whatever device or hard drive you want to. Bring it with you in the car. It’s there for you, you’re not renting permission to listen to it with a wi-fi connection.
Beyond all that, it’s just fun. I have fun going through Bandcamp and listening to new things. It puts me in a good mood. It makes me smile. It feels light and airy.
I mention this because it was exactly the headspace I was in when I first heard “Asemic Speech (feat. telebasher)”.
I don’t really have the words to describe this song. It’s colorful, it’s energetic, and it’s loving.
It’s somehow both the perfect “song of the summer” hit on the radio while also feeling like something that would never be found on the radio. It’s somehow both something you’d hear in the soundtrack to a blockbuster movie, while also being as specific and lovingly weird as something you’d find on a Soundcloud with 80 followers.
As far as I’m concerned…it’s a perfect song? I think???
The sound flows straight into my bloodstream. The lyrics are so poetic, so romantic, and filled with lines upon lines of “how did I never think of that?” imagery.
I don’t know what else to say. I love this song. It feels like the perfect little gem I would’ve found on CD, or in Rock Band, or on my brother’s iPod in 2006. And while I may be two years too late, it is certainly my song of the summer.
I mentioned that I don’t feel qualified to write a review of Bittersweet. In part, this is because I don’t feel like I can put the feelings down into words.
It’s also because I’m not sure I’m someone who should decide what those words should even be.
I want to be very clear: what I’m going to try to express is from my heart, but it’s important for me that I clarify that I’m a cishet guy so that you know that I’m coming from a place of humility and love and learning.
This album, and the fact that I coincidentally stumbled upon it during Pride Month specifically, is something that I will treasure forever.
The album is proudly a tour de force of homosexual melodrama, and Jamie Paige delivers.
It’s certainly not my place to speculate or interpret or project anything that Jamie intends with the meanings of any of her tracks, but “Nothing (with You)” really clicked with me, especially lyrically. It’s yet another piece of art that feels like a key slotting perfectly into the lock that makes the world make sense for me. I may or may not be the target audience for a song like this, but I can already tell that it’s a song that I’ll never forget. It means a lot to me.
As with all outsiders and allies, my understanding of folks with different experiences from my own only ever comes from listening to them. I often sit and wonder how I got from childhood, soaking in a bath of homophobic and transphobic culture in the 90s and 2000s, to where I am now. How could I possibly have kept my head above water when everything I was exposed to was so flippant and so hateful? When did a switch flip, turning me into a person who doesn’t find that hateful stuff funny? When did I become a person who was open-minded enough to at least have the potential to be…decent?
I see other guys from my high school, same age as me, same classes, same teachers…who have turned out very differently after all this time. A little more hateful, a little more cold-hearted, a little more close-minded. It’s disconcerting. It makes me wonder if I dodged some sort of bullet?
The answer, of course, is that there is no singular switch to flip or bullet to dodge. Instead, I’ve been lucky enough to have grown up over the years with countless different works by queer creators. I’ve read comics, watched movies, seen TV shows, and played video games that all steadily chipped away at my preconceived notions about love and gender and filled in the gaps where public education failed me. Countless Twitter threads, blog posts, and Youtube videos of people explicitly explaining their life and their experience in a crystal-clear way that even an ally like me could understand…all of these things were essential to me becoming the person that I am today. I’m grateful for it. Going away to college and actually being friends with new people and hearing about people’s life experiences certainly helped.
Of course, the pitfall of any self-proclaimed “ally” is ego. Which is why I’ve never really called myself the word “ally” until just now, writing these paragraphs. It feels a little cocky, a little defensive. It feels like stamping yourself as “one of the good guys” when you only have an outsider’s understanding of something that is much more nuanced and complicated than you ever give it credit for. A true “ally”, in the most sincere sense of the word, feels like a title that has to be earned through kindness and support and action. As far as I’m concerned, you can’t really congratulate yourself by labeling yourself an ally. That’s something for your friends, peers, and loved ones from that community to decide for you.
This may seem like a tangent, but it’s certainly the feeling that “Nothing (with You)” had me grappling with, and I love it for that.
The song is catchy and fun. For a dude like me, it’s also humbling in the best of ways. For me, it’s a reminder to not categorize every human individual and emotion and identity into easy little labels. It’s a reminder to not get cocky and think that you know everything about a person, or their relationships, because you know the proper terminology. It’s a reminder that every person, their internal sense of identity, and their external web of connections are deeply complex.
For me, it feels like an anthem against prying, judgmental eyes. It feels like an anthem against “rainbow capitalism”, where companies profit off of the LGBTQ community without actually doing the work of being supportive. It feels like a shield built against those who claim to be “allies” but still take advantage of you for convenience and profit.
Above all, it’s a beautiful song and it’s a gentle reminder that it’s not anyone’s job to present their whole life in a way that’s convenient and “understandable” for you.
It’s okay to not fully understand. It’s okay when things don’t fit neatly into the boxes you’ve prepared for them. It’s okay for people to reject the labels that you’ve tried to impose on them.
It’s okay to be nothing. It’s okay to be everything. It’s okay to be you, and to not necessarily be understood.
And, of course, it’s okay that I don’t feel qualified to write a review of Bittersweet, the album by Jamie Paige. There are other people out there who would probably be better equipped to do it. I can live without writing a review.
Instead, I can hold the album close to my heart, and carry it with me. I can appreciate what it is and what it makes me feel, like it’s bringing the world to life in a new array of tastes and colors. It brings me joy and a deeper sense of love and clarity.
I could never ask it to do anything more than that.
You can find Bittersweet on Bandcamp.