Episode 1 – I’m So Happy…

This week we talked about the Top 5 songs that make you happy and it yielded a near 9 hour play list, be sure and check it out below.

Your Top 5 Submissions Playlist

We found a few gems in new music including tracks from Coco, Billy Raffoul, Wallows, the moss, and Liily. In addition, my daughter Jenna joined me on the podcast to talk about the Johnnyswim show we caught in Pittsburgh.

Show Transcript

Welcome to Songs That Don’t Suck, Episode 1. My name is Mark, and thank you for tuning in.
If you caught Episode 0, you know a little bit about me. If you haven’t listened to Episode 0, go and take 20 minutes and go listen to that now. I’ll wait. Now, for those of you who aren’t going to go back and listen, here’s who I am.

My name is Mark. I’m an aging Gen Xer. I am a husband and father of two teenage daughters.
I’m a musician, and I struggle with finding new music. And I know generationally it’s kind of said that people stop listening or stop searching for new music, kind of once they get out of college, maybe a few years after depending. But that’s not me. I still want to hear new music. I still want to go see live shows and artists that I was listening to back in college. They’re retired. They’re dead. What have you?
So I need to kind of get back and find new music. Now the way that I used to do that was through friends and record stores, things of that nature. But obviously, if the majority of your friends have stopped finding new music, that kind of dries up. And obviously, streaming has kind of killed the music store vibe, at least, from what I can tell. I can’t find a decent music store. So you’ve got to find another outlet, right?
And while I say streaming kind of killed that, I don’t want to say streaming is a bad thing, because you’re listening to this on Spotify. Or actually, yeah, you’re going to listen to this on Spotify, and I’ll get to that in
a minute. So that’s the whole idea around this podcast, is to basically force me to find new music,
hopefully, build a bit of a community that will help me find new music, and together we’ll hopefully find a bunch of songs that don’t suck. Pretty basic.

Now, I mentioned that you’re going to listen to this on Spotify. Here’s the reason for that. It is my desire to include music in this music podcast, shocker, right? Spotify owns the platform that I am recording the podcast on, which is Anchor. It’s a fantastic platform, and if you’re looking to start a podcast, I highly recommend it. But because Spotify holds music licenses, any podcast that includes music is available exclusively on Spotify.

So you have two options. You can sign up for a free Spotify account. You’ll get some ads, obviously, when you’re listening. And in the episodes, you’ll get 30 seconds of the song. Not a bad deal.
I’m going to include links in all the show notes, so you can click a link and listen to the full song, obviously. I’ll just make it easier for you that way. Now for the premium subscribers, you get the full song in the podcast episode, which is pretty cool. So I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do, because I feel like it’s important to get to the other platforms, like your Google podcast and your Apple podcast.
So I might record a kind of cliff notes of the episode without music to get to those platforms, but I’m still up in the air about that. We’ll see how this goes. So that’s the limitations of where you’ll hear it.
The other limitation that I found in some of the testing that I was doing between episode zero and now was that there’s no fade-in with the tracks. So I’ll be talking, I’ll intro the song, and it might hit pretty harshly. So consider this your warning. Hopefully, they’ll add that feature where we can fade in and out, especially with the 30-second clips, because depending where that comes in, it could be really harsh.
So that’s the platform, that’s the limitations that we’re dealing with.

So a little more housekeeping before we jump right in. I want to encourage you to like and share and review this podcast. It’s just going to help build the community. That’s all there is to it.
It’s completely selfish. Just please share the podcast. Don’t get as many people listening to it as possible. I have no plans to monetize any of this, so I’m not looking to make money.
I’m just looking to share music. So that’s all there is to it. I’ve got a website, songsthatdontsuck.net.
That’s going to be kind of the central location to find things like where to submit your top
five list, where to recommend artists to me, where to give me feedback. I am on social media.
You can find songsthatdontsuck on TikTok, on Instagram, and on Twitter. So follow all of those platforms if you’re on those platforms. And through all that, we’ll build the community together.

Now this is obviously episode one, and I expect things to change between now and the end of
2023. As far as how the episodes are structured, I’m going to find things that I like. I’m going to find things that I don’t like. You’re going to give me feedback on things that you like and don’t like.
And I’m going to take all that into consideration. But today here’s what we’re looking at.
I’m going to start off with some music history, because I always get a little nostalgic at
the new year. So we’re going to look back and see what happened this week in music.
I’m going to talk about the new releases, obviously that is why we are here. And I’m going to try and go across genres. Some of the stuff, there’s a very little chance that I’m going to include it, and you’ll
kind of pick up on that. I’ll talk about the top fives. I mentioned the top five form on the website.
In episode zero, I asked you to send me your top five songs that made you smile, made you
happy. And I’ll talk about your top fives. I’ll talk about my top five.
We’ll share a couple of songs from those top fives. My oldest daughter, Jenna, and I went to a concert when episode zero dropped. So we’re going to do a little concert review about that show.
It was a great show. And then we’ll talk about next episode’s top five, so you can send in your list.
And then I’ve got a fun fact to close things out today that kind of blew my mind a little bit when I heard it, and I’ll share it with you. All right, so that’s it.

Let’s go ahead and jump into some music history.
This week in music history. I don’t know if this is going to be a regular thing, but like I said, when I get to the new year, I always kind of look back and get nostalgic about things that happened in the
last year. Granted, the last two years have been a bit of a train wreck, but not musically.
Anyway, so this week in music history, January 2nd through the 8th. So we’re going to start in 1958.
Gibson Guitar has launched its Flying V electric guitar. If you’re not familiar with the guitar, I’m sure you can imagine what it looks like. Guitarists who famously played the Flying V include Jimi Hendrix and Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top. Now granted, the first Flying V that I remember seeing was on MTV, and it was Randy Rhodes in the Crazy Train video. In 1967, the Doors released their self-titled debut album, The Doors. The album featured the breakthrough single, Light My Fire, but that album was so strong.
Break On Through, Back Door Man, The End, so good, so solid. One of my favorite albums that has been released to date. In 1971, George Harrison’s album, All Things Must Pass, started a seven-week run at number one in the U.S. Albums chart. Now, he was the first Beatle to score a solo number one album on the U.S. chart. The triple album, that just blows my mind. The triple album included singles like My Sweet Lord and What Is Life, as well as songs like Isn’t It a Pity. In the title track, All Things Must Pass, which was turned down by the Beatles. Black Sabbath released Paranoid, their second studio album, in 1971 as well. This album featured the band’s best-known signature songs, including the title track Iron Man and Warpigs. In 1979, Prince made his live debut at the Capri Theater in Minneapolis. There were Warner Bros. executives at the show, but they decided that Prince and the band needed more time to develop his music. Just I would have loved to have been there to see that show. That would have been kind of really, really amazing to see. In 1987, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, became the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And sadly, in 2020, Neil Peart, drummer and lyricist for the Canadian band Rush, died of brain cancer at the age of 67. Rolling Stone listed him as number four on their list of all-time greatest drummers.

Okay, I’ve gone back and forth with the order in which the podcast should happen. So this episode, I’m going to do the top fives first and then talk about the new music. So this week’s or this episode’s top five was songs that make you happy. Songs that I said you had to take a jackhammer to chisel the smile off your face. The ones that you crank up when you’re driving and you scream at the top of your lungs even though you have the worst singing voice ever. Now this is obviously a tough list to come up with and it’s really broad because everybody has different tastes in music and y’all, y’all did not disappoint. I got more entries than I expected. So thank you for that. But it was very little duplication, which I kind of expected. But what I decided to do was I have compiled all of your submissions into a single playlist. So it’ll be linked in the show notes and that playlist is just around nine hours long to give you any idea of how many people sent in top five songs. So enjoy the eclectic happiness that is that playlist. It’s amazing. Now there was some duplication, so let’s talk about it.

There were a few artists that were duplicated, but different songs. So Queen was mentioned a couple of times and I will completely agree. There’s a lot of Queen songs that you can’t help but turn up.
It was a band called Soldier Story, which I had never heard of that was mentioned a couple
of times, as well as the Happy Fits and the B-52s, who can deny love shack, right?
But there were two songs that had multiple votes. Now technically it was three songs, but that third song I had in my top five and my youngest daughter had in her top five. And I’ll talk about that song, but from a pure community, non-related to the host list, there were two songs in no particular order that bubbled to the top this episode. The first one is Cut to the Feeling by Carly Rae Jepsen. Now if you don’t know this song, it’s Bop, no lie. It’s been on a couple of conference soundtracks, so I work in a tech industry.
We go to conferences and the conferences sometimes have soundtracks. And you will hear this one because it’s got great energy, definitely makes you smile. So good pick. The second one kind of surprised me, but I guess it kind of didn’t because it too is a fantastic song and that is Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears for Fears. That’s a great song. Like it has definitely withstood the test of time. So I’m going to go ahead and I’m going to play that one as the highlight for the top five songs that make you happy.

Here is Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears for Fears.

All right, so that was Tears for Fears with Everybody Wants to Rule the World.

Now let’s talk about my top five. Now I have discovered this about myself, and especially when I started talking about picking my top five and coming up with the songs, I found that most of the songs are attached to a positive memory. It’s not so much that the song is amazing, I mean they are, but they’re generally attached to a memory. And like the last two weeks or so, I’ve been driving around quite a bit and I’ll be listening to the radio and a song will come on and I will be just rushed with emotion.
And it’s just different songs coming on and me just having a genuine emotional response
to it. And I’m like, does everybody do this? Like there’s like a song and I’m not even going to mention it, there’s a song that comes on that actually, if I am in the wrong frame of mind, I will start crying.
I have to turn it off. That happened last week. I was listening and I heard the first three notes and I’m like, nope, push the preset, I’m out of here. And there’s other songs that make me remember like random people that I experienced something with, you know, 30 years ago. It’s crazy the way that music attaches to memories in my mind. So here’s my top five. Number five is the song Married in Vegas by the Vamps.
Now my wife and I were not married in Vegas, but I love Las Vegas. I love going to visit Las Vegas.
I would not want to live there, but this song has been on my I’m going to Vegas playlist. Like every time I go out to Vegas, I create a playlist that I listen to on the flight. Yes, I’m that person. Leave me alone.
But Married in Vegas tends to be on that playlist. So that’s number five, Married in Vegas by the Vamps.
Number four is a recent addition, despite the fact that I was raised on Motown, but the song is Can’t Get Next to You Babe by the Temptations. And the reason this one has has risen into the top five is there is a jukebox musical rolling through Broadway, and it features the story of the Temptations and this song,
the way that it is staged, I don’t know what magic it did, but man, it just it vibrated with me and like now I just crank up that song and listen to that all the time. So number four, Can’t Get Next to You Babe by the Temptations. Number three is probably by one of my arguably favorite bands. They only put out two albums in the 90s, and that band is Jellyfish. My favorite song from them is New Mistake. I love the lyrics in this song. I think it’s probably one of the more magical lyrics ever written. The opening lyric is Curtain Open, Spotlight the Gentleman, signing his love letters, Best Wishes Simpleton, Dialogue, Swam from His Pen Like Polywogs, freaking poetry. But the song is amazing and whenever it comes on, which isn’t often because I have to put it on because it’s not a well-known, you know, it’s not like a top 40 hit or anything, I
just have to crank that up. Now number two was the one that my youngest daughter Gillian and I both put on our top fives and it’s Weatherman by Eddie Benjamin. Now this past summer, we took a family vacation, it had been a while due to COVID, but we went to the Dominican Republic, we went to the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. Amazing, by the way, if you’re looking for a vacation tip, go for it. But Weatherman was on the resort playlist. So we’re laying poolside, kids are in the pool, sipping different frozen libations. And this song just, man, every time I hear it, I think about the Dominican sun and the beach and just puts me in a good mood. So Weatherman by Eddie Benjamin.
And the number one song on my list is a song called Happy by the band Travis. Now if you’re unfamiliar with the band Travis, I would say that they were in their heyday right when Coldplay was coming out before they turned into whatever they are today. But Happy is just a fantastic track. I think if I remember correctly, it’s off their first album. And it is a song that I requested played at my wedding and it was, I had very few requests shockingly. I was like, I don’t care, people are going to dance to whatever they dance to. I was like, I want to hear this song. So I’m going to play that one for you now. This is Happy by the band Travis. All right, that was Happy by Travis.

Now next episodes, top five songs. I want you to send into me the top five songs that mention states, cities or countries. And I’m going to give you bonus points for not using the song I’ve been everywhere
man by Johnny Cash. So head to the website, songsthatdon’tsuck.net. There’s a form for top five submission. Go ahead and throw your songs in there and we’ll see what y’all come up with next week.

All right, so let’s talk new music. So since this is the first episode, let me talk about what the process is that I go through to find the new music. I go on Spotify and I find their new music playlist.
Every week they curate new music that is coming out. The playlist include New Music Friday, The New Alt, Fresh Finds, and All New Rock. Those are the ones that I tend to look at. The Alt and New Rock obviously lean into genres that I like the most. Fresh Fines and New Music Friday cover the entire genre spectrum. And I can’t listen to every song in its entirety, one because I don’t have that kind of time
and two most of it is trash, at least to me. So I listen to anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute to give the song a chance to catch my ear. If there’s something that I can get into about it, I will listen to the whole song. If I really like this song, those become the best of the playlist and I talk about them
here. And my idea is that each episode will have a playlist. I’ll include those songs.
I’ll include anything that I highlight like the Tears for Fears track as well as the track
from Travis so that we have kind of a running record of the things that we do other than the podcast.
So that’s what I do. And you know, out of hundreds of songs that I listen to, I’m lucky to get five.
And that’s my goal is to find five songs that are decent. If you are not a musician, you have no idea the process to get music onto a streaming platform. Let me just tell you that it is stupid easy.
Like you could fart into a microphone over an 808 beat and put it up on Spotify and Spotify
will play it. It won’t vet anything. So while I’m probably harsh in saying this, there’s a lot of garbage that gets on the Spotify and a lot of it gets featured in that new music. And I’m sure it resonates with somebody. It must, right? For it to be like those things are curated. They’re not AI. Somebody’s listening to it going, yeah, that feels like a great song. But when I’m listening to it, I’m like, what was this person thinking? So I have to wade through the swamp of terribleness to find these pearls to share with you.
So you’re welcome. So let’s jump into this week. I’ve got five tracks that I’m going to share with you.
I think they’re the best of the best from the ones that I was able to listen to this week.

So the first one is by an artist, Cuco. And I apologize if I mispronouncing that.
This song is called First of the Year, and I thought it was an appropriate way to start
this week’s New Music Finds.

So here is Cuco with First of the Year.

I don’t know about you, but the first impression that I got from First of the Year was it reminded me of Pink Floyd, just the production of it. Sonically, it gives me the wall or dark side of the moon vibes. could definitely see myself throwing on some headphones and laying in the dark and giving this a listen. Definitely very chill to listen to. And as we just hit the New Year, like I said, very appropriate that he released it at this point in time. But yeah, I don’t know why.

I don’t know why it struck me, but this was definitely a track that stood out this week
amongst the music.

The second track that we’re going to give a listen to is by Billy Rafaal. Again, I apologize, I’m horrible with name pronunciations, but Billy Rafaal, the track is called Jim Carrey, and when I first looked at it, I thought the artist was called Jim Carrey, and I was like, man, I really would have changed my name.
Not that I don’t love Jim Carrey, but for search engine optimization, that’s not going to be really effective for people to find who you are. But Billy Rafaal here sharing the track, Jim Carrey, check it out.

So when I first started listening to this track, it reminded me of Tom Waits from a
vocal standpoint. But after the first line, it gets a bit airier, and as it gets into the track, it cleans up
a lot. I am, and you will learn this as we go, I am a sucker for vocals and acoustic guitar,
as long as it has done really well. And this track sat really well for me. This is one of those artists that I feel like I could just sit in a coffee shop and listen to for a couple of hours.
There’s a really nice build towards the end of the song where the strings come in and
really fill out the sound. I wasn’t expecting that, I was expecting it to just be vocals and acoustic guitar the whole time, but I don’t know, I just really like this track and I hope you did too.
Now the next track is a little bit more rocky, so the first two very chill, so we’re working our way up.

The next track is called Wish Me Luck by Wallows. So check it out and let me know what you think.
Wish me luck by Wallows. Now I don’t know about you, but that track reminded me a bit of the Smashing Pumpkins, at least sonically. And nothing against Billy Corgan, but the vocals here are a lot more palatable. I love the Smashing Pumpkins for what they are, but Billy, it’s a bit much. Anyway, the guitar tones here, both the rhythm and the lead give me a very strong 90s vibe, which probably caught my ear, I’m not going to lie, I guess I do have a bit of a bias to that era of music, but what I can appreciate here is that the artists are letting their influence show while putting their own artistry on it.
The layered vocals towards the end of the back half of the track, really nice, and the
whole thing comes together in a very grungy ending feedback-y, which again, probably biased, but it worked, congratulations, Wallows. You caught my ear, and I’m definitely going to have to check out a little bit more music from y’all.

The next one is a track by The Moss, and this is Blink. I can’t put my finger on what this song did to hook me, but it did. I love the vocal quality that the lead singer has, and I love that the song plays with the
rhythm and the tempo, and at the beginning, it’s not afraid to stop and start. if you can tell me what this reminds you of, or what you’re hearing, that would be great, because again, I can’t put my finger on it at the moment, but I definitely dug this track and definitely going to go back and listen to some of their other music as well.

The next track is, I don’t know what to say about this track. I was listening to it, it’s by a band called Lily, and the song’s called Applause, and I was reading up on this band, and the kind of the bio that I was reading mentioned that their live shows were a bit of something to behold, and after hearing this track, I can believe it. Here is Lily, spelled L-I-I-L-Y, Lily with the track Applause. So like I was saying, I could see this in a live show, and this is one of those songs that was going to get the crowd going.
I know I am guilty of cranking this one up in the car as I was doing prep for the show, driving around, and I don’t know. Some of this guitar work reminds me of kind of early nine-inch nails, had like a hole
kind of stuff, but the one thing that this song I noticed very strongly that I feel like is missing in a lot of music that comes out nowadays is a good and different bridge. The bridge in this song, just, it works really well and it breaks the song and then it builds it back up, definitely going to go find more music from Liily, and honestly, if they come into town, I’m probably going to have to go see them because this track is amazing and if it’s got anything of a DNA pattern that’s going to be like the rest of their music,
I’m probably going to have to invest some more time with them. So there you go.

All right, so let’s talk about a live show, do a little live show review, and I’m going
to welcome to the podcast my oldest daughter, Jenna. She’s sitting here looking very anxiety-ridden at the moment because she doesn’t know how this is going to go, but it’s going to be fine.
So the day that I published episode zero, Jenna and I went and saw Los Angeles-based
artist, Johnny Swim, they are made up of a married couple, Abner Ramirez and Amanda
Sedano, and they are no doubt my daughter’s favorite band.
Is that fair to say?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So just for an example, this year’s Spotify Wrapped, she was in their top.001% of listeners
after having listened to over 18,000 minutes, and the same was true last year, as far as
her percentage, but the minutes were slightly lower.
What’s up with that?
Well, I don’t know.
They released a new album this year that was pretty good, and I’m lying, it was phenomenal.
So I spent the better part of last year listening to their entire repertoire, and then the rest of this year basically just listening to the album on repeat.
And this was actually the third time that we saw Johnny Swim this year.
So we caught them in Columbus the first time, where we paid extra and did the little VIP
meet and greet.
So we got to meet Abner and Amanda, which was cool, and it kicked off Abner and I’s
bromance, which we’ll talk about later.
And then we saw them in Cleveland, but the show we’re going to talk about is the Pittsburgh
show, and it was at the Carnegie Hall of Homestead, beautiful venue, old venue, the seats hurt
my butt, it was rough, but the acoustics of the venue I thought were really good.
This was another Johnny Swim Christmas tour, which they do every year, I think, or most
years when there’s no pandemic.
And so yeah, this tour, they play like some of their own holiday music, they’ve written
a couple of holiday songs, they’ve covered some holiday classics, and they play some
of their kind of non-standard, well, their standard set, like their hits.
And Jonathan Berlin was on the tour with them playing guitar and bass.
Phenomenal guitar play.
Phenomenal guitar play.
He does all things, percussion, piano.
Yeah, the man’s a pro.
It’s great.
He’s amazing.
He has his own band, musical thing called Sun Bears.
And I’ve listened to a few of his tracks, and those are also great.
So Jenna, why don’t you kind of give me your impression of this show?
It’s tough because I love Christmas, so it’s hard to separate those two things.
I actually found Johnny Swim through one of their Christmas songs, so this was kind of
a full circle moment for me in the two and a half years that I’ve kind of been experiencing
them.
And yeah, like this show was great.
It was definitely more laid back.
I loved it.
It felt like I was in their living room.
They had a projection on the piano where they put a sheet, and they played like a little
fire.
And in one of their songs, they played like videos that they had people send in of Christmases
of years past, and my little face ended up on there, which I really love.
That was a very awkward Jenna talking to Santa Claus.
But yeah, it was just the best part about Johnny Swim for me is that every time I go
and see them and all of the music that I hear from them, they feel real.
And I think that’s something that’s really lacking for me.
And so there’s just really refreshing.
Yeah, I agree.
So Jenna introduced me to Johnny Swim, and I went to the first show mainly because Jenna
wanted to go see Johnny Swim, and I was like, yeah, sure, we’ll go.
But after seeing them live, my opinion of them really changed because of that authenticity
and just how good they are live.
And the three shows that we’ve seen have all been different.
The first time in Columbus was with the full band.
The second show in Cleveland was Amanda Abner and Jonathan.
Same configuration for Pittsburgh, but with it being the Christmas theme, but very much
laid back.
Like it was the living room, the old timey turntable, the Christmas tree.
It was great.
It was great.
So the set list consisted of, like I said, it was a couple of their Christmas songs
past me a pint, Don’t Make Me Wait, which is the new one, but also some of the kind
of the mainstays of their shows, Take the World, Diamonds, Don’t Let It Get You Down.
So fantastic show.
And we had a moment, Abner and I.
Oh my gosh.
So we’re in the sixth row, I think.
Just about, yeah.
Just about the sixth row.
And literally in the middle of the show, Abner stops talking, playing, makes eye contact
with me and waves and says, how you doing?
Okay.
To be fair, y’all, so they turned the lights up.
So he’s not like searching for my father in the crowd.
Let’s take a reality check.
But like he sees us and this is now our third show in six months because I have an issue.
And yeah.
And the two of us wave and it was like the most bizarre moment.
He’s like, say hi.
He’s like, you know, preacher Abner comes out.
He was his dad was a preacher.
So he, he has these moments and shows where he just like rambles in the most endearing
way.
And this was one of those moments and he was just like being grateful for the crowd.
He was like, good to see y’all again.
And I was like, oh my gosh, I’m mortified, but also very excited.
And it just solidified that Abner and I have a bromance.
So the first, we should talk about how the bromance started.
So when we went to the meet and greet, Abner was talking about growing up in Jacksonville
and I grew up not far from Jacksonville and I kind of made that comment as we were kind
of standing there chatting and he had spent time in the town that I grew up in.
And you know, we just had a moment, you know, at the end of that show, he makes eye contact
with me, hands me a signed set list and a guitar pick and I was like, that’s, that’s
cool.
You know, that was awesome.
The Cleveland show, he, we make eye contact again and he kind of gave me a nod.
Like it was definitely like, it was definitely a thing.
And I just started joking about this whole bromance thing.
But then at Pittsburgh, when he just stops, he’s like, Hey guys, how you doing?
I swear to God, I felt the whole crowd kind of turn and look at us like, who are these
people?
Yeah.
It was so weird.
It was just, yeah, it was a moment and I am equally, equally excited for you and your
bromance and equally mortified that an entire theater of people looked at me, but yeah,
sure.
Overall, it was a fantastic show.
They are a fantastic band live and while obviously the Christmas season is over, the
Christmas tour is over, I would imagine that they will be touring in 2023, maybe a new
album, at least a new single.
Definitely a new single.
They were teasing new music.
I don’t know if they’ll pull a new album, but they had so much time over COVID when
they weren’t touring and they have a lot of recording stuff in their house and their producer
lives very close to them and obviously it’s virtual, so they do a lot of stuff.
So I mean, I’d be thrilled with a new album, but I know it’s not confirmed.
So if they happen to come to your town, go see Johnny Swim, highly recommended, and you
can tell them that Mark sent you.
The Bradbournes.
All right.
Thanks, Jenna.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you to Jenna for joining me to talk about the live show review of Johnny Swim.
I know my bromance with Abner is a little bit embarrassing to her, but you know, these
things happen.
I can’t say enough.
I actually, I love Johnny Swim.
I think they’re amazing live.
But to close out this episode, I’ve got to share this fun fact that I learned a couple
of weeks ago.

So as I’ve mentioned, I’m a musician, I play drums, and at one point I was playing drums
in a band called Emmett. And side note, you can check out a link to the playlist of all the bands that I’ve played with that are on Spotify, if you go to songsthatdontsuck.net, in the episode zero summary, there’s
a link there for the playlist. But anyway, we once opened a show for a band called Steel Train.
Now Steel Train was fantastic. They were an amazing live band. We got lucky enough to open for them when they played in Cleveland, but they toured with a ton of big acts. They were on national TV at one point. They were probably one huge hit away from Stardom. Now the guitarist singer of that band was Jack Antonoff. Jack went on to become part of the band Fun, as well as Bleachers.
But that’s not where his story ended. Come to find out he has been producing and co-writing with Taylor Swift since 2013, including he co-wrote 11 of the 13 tracks on Midnights, which is Taylor’s latest album, and he was also co-writer on the first single, Antihero. Kind of blew me away when James was telling me this. James was the singer-songwriter for Emmett, and he was sharing this fun fact with us. And I was like, wow, it’s amazing how close you can get to Stardom and not even realize it, but yeah.
So Jack, if you happen to be listening, it was great sharing the stage with you. So with that, I hope you have a great week. Send in those top fives. And we’re looking for the top five songs that mention a city, a state, or a country. And we will catch you right here next time on Songs That Don’t Suck.