Oh 2024, what a wild year you have been. One could say I “got thrown in the trunk of a blacked out 1999 Corolla”. It really felt like it was all for the plot and I mean that both with a smile on my face and smoke emanating from my tired head.

This year brought so many amazing albums and I just about changed my mind about my album of the year with each one that came out. But only one seemed to explain how I wrestled with the past, present, and future to understand something I’ve literally been needing to understand my entire life. And that album is I Love You So F***ing Much by Glass Animals.

It’s kind of insane for me to remember that I was just a casual fan of Glass Animals up until like 6 months ago. The best way to divide up this year is for sure the pre-Glass Animals obsession and the post-Glass Animals obsession. So let me gather my flowers (maybe white roses?) for the band.

Glass Animals hails from Oxford, England and it feels fitting that this year’s album of the year was taken by the Brits since I did finally visit and officially fall in love with London. The band is made up of Drew MacFarlane (guitar, keyboards, backing vocals), Edmund Irwin-Singer (bass, keyboards, backing vocals), Joe Seaward (drums), and the now infamous around this blog because I literally can’t shut up about him being a sexy genius of a man Dave Bayley (vocals, guitar, keyboards, drums, songwriting, production).

My first encounter with Glass Animals came in the form of a recommendation from a friend in college. I remember this friend telling me how they were her favorite band and so I went ahead and listened to their most popular song on Spotify at the time, “Pork Soda”. I still remember listening to that song for the first time, its quirky groove being so good that I didn’t care to figure out what on earth they were talking about.

I forgot about the band for a while and then stumbled upon Dreamland, their 2020 album. I had other friends that really really loved them and I started to understand in pieces why. Dreamland was a sonic delight to listen to and truly the first time the production in an album had stood out to me. It was safe to say a creative crush started to form.

When their newest album, I Love You So F***ing Much, got on my radar this year, I didn’t really know what to expect. I had started listening to them casually because of Dreamland but I hadn’t dived into their artistry much. I knew they made sonically interesting music but I didn’t always relate to it — which is usually a pretty big driver in me gravitating towards music in the first place. For example, I remember occasionally listening to and loving the bounciness of “Space Ghost Coast to Coast”. Did I realize Dave was talking about a childhood friend that tried to make a school shooting happen in high school? Absolutely not!! I was too fixated on how he sings “cut into the back of your bedroom door frame”! However, I did fixate on “Tangerine” (the version with Arlo Parks) quite a bit due to a personal connection. In my defense, I was deep in pandemic anxiety mode and realizing then that there was “nothing I can keep” from my ex with the “pale blue eyes”.

But yeah, in so many ways, I felt quite disconnected from the Glass Animals lore of it all, choosing to engage with them on a mostly intellectual, music critic level. But that changed when I listened to I Love You So F***ing Much this year.

The current man of my dreams, Dave Bayley, described this album as “sad but optimistic” and says that he wrote it in the midst of an existential crisis in spring 2023. And well, if that doesn’t explain my emotional state since literally THAT time period then I don’t know what does.

Dave explores moments of intimacy with the backdrop of space in this album and it makes for the most interesting juxtaposition. Dave said that he wanted to write a space album for years now, but couldn’t make it work because it always sounded so cold. By setting up such a tender themed album in space, he shows that love really is what grounds him amidst such a dark, confusing, and forever changing universe. And to that I have two responses: 1) swoon, I love him so fucking much and 2) you’re absolutely right bestie and I always need that reminder, especially when I’ve had the year I’ve had.

Somehow the emotional arc of this album has been able to reflect my emotional arc of this year in the most profound yet simple way. What I mean by that is when there’s so many different ways to say “I love you so fucking much” to so many people and things, I’m now able to say that to myself AND MEAN IT. And achieving that feels like the biggest accomplishment for me.

This album has a gentleness to it that has been able to walk with me in understanding that lesson this year. Not only has it made me feel held among what has been a painful and humbling time for me, but it has tenderly inspired me to move on from the heartbreaks that made up this era of my life and into what may be the first time I’m truly on my side. But that means there’s been a whole lot of grieving and crying over past situations, people, and crucially, old ways of operating. And this album has a song for every layer of the pain. There’s a lot of “what ifs” in this album, according to Dave, and it makes me feel so seen that he explores them in it. By making space for that in the grieving process, he’s modeled a new mode of self-compassion to me — one that calls me to embrace my big heart, my quirks, and the twists and turns of life, in only the way Dave Bayley and his quirky genius mind can.

This album is so vulnerable lyrically and yet has the coolest production I’ve heard all year. I’ve been in awe of Dave Bayley and co for a while now for their musicianship, but this era made me fall deeply in love with the band because of how they explore what it all means to be inexplicably human in their artistry. This album is a masterful journey into the depths of love and loss. And no album could better explain that in this rollercoaster of a year.

That said, let’s get into it.

Show Pony

“All that shit I learned from you, kindness spilled like milk and juice, so blindsided by the truth, in some way I was sure you knew. But you don’t…”

The opening track on this album follows Dreamland’s lead and sets up the themes of this album. While Dave has said that he set up this song as the “table of contents” for this album, it somehow feels like the opening credits AND the end credits song of my year.

In the song, Dave unpacks different relationships, observing dynamics that affected him growing up. The lyrics paint vivid pictures of relational dysfunction and how Dave feels about it. For me, the tension in this song might as well have been talking about the completely unideal relationship between my parents — and the resentful response I’ve carried to it. To understand the journey this album takes is to truly “begin at the beginning”. And that’s what I’ve been unpacking in therapy since I decided to start a new season of it in November 2023.

What happened then was I had sunk into this depression after a breakup where I was staring at my anxious-avoidant attachment style in the mirror feeling like I was never gonna heal from all the ways my parents and their relationship fucked me up. I started fixating on how their emotional unavailability towards each other and me had affected everything, including the dismissive attitude I had developed towards myself. And the thought of one day having to explain that to a romantic partner deeply terrified me.

It’s been painful for me to unpack all the ways I’ve struggled caring for myself because I learned avoidance from my parents. It hurt to hold that because I had always idealized my parents, especially in my childhood. And I don’t blame them completely for their lack of care emotionally — their life circumstances emotionally stunted their growth. But the fact still remains that my mom and dad’s trauma is in my DNA and I’ve seen them play out in my relationships to work, in past romantic situations, in friendships, how I relate to the rest of my family, and crucially how I handle my inner world. It left me feeling doomed last Fall. But it helped me to start healing by recognizing a few things: 1) Being able to voice that my parents have been wonderful at caring for my physical needs, BUT have not been great at caring for my emotional needs is a big step. And I’m proud of myself for getting to that place where I can hold both of those things to be true. 2) It is not my job to fix their issues, but it is my responsibility to fix mine. And 3) I’m definitely capable of reparenting myself.

Where this song speaks a word of encouragement is in that very concept. I continue to turn to this song when I need a reminder that I am in fact “coming back to show [everyone] that girl”.

Sonically, this song feels familiar to me. Its roaring guitars, steady drum beat, and pop melodies all feel like songs I’ve always gravitated towards. But it still maintains the classic Glass Animals quirkiness with the hypnotic synths and incredibly specific lyrics that you wouldn’t expect. It ends up feeling warm and familiar, like an old family blanket that’s stood the test of time. The acoustic guitar serves as a grounding presence in the song, like Dave is holding my hand as we start the journey of this album. His sweet voice tugs at my heart strings, especially in the bridge as he sings “boy, those scars must really run deep” and then as he turns up the intensity with the next line “and all that hurt comes out in one scream”. He sings it with the deep understanding that he likely knows what my therapy sessions have been like. Dave’s voice here really just feels like a warm hug.

I say that this song serves as an end credits song for me because it has enough encouragement for me to keep applying what I’ve learned. Yeehaw.

whatthehellishappening?

“Just as I was getting comfortable, man, are you serious? My luck…”

Dave said he wrote this song about the existential crisis that he felt after “Heat Waves” blew up. Since it took off during the pandemic, he said it was weird to start playing shows again and see how much it meant to people all over the world. So many doors opened up and he felt like he needed to say yes to it all, but then he started to feel ungrounded. It wasn’t until he was alone and sick in an Airbnb on stilts in the Hollywood Hills during a heavy storm that he caught up to the brewing existential crisis. This song (and this whole album) was born from that.

If “Show Pony” was the table of contents, as Dave said, then this really is the opening scene of the album and for me, this year. This song gives context to the confusion I felt for the first half of this year and the rising action that ensued.

From November 2023 until literally summer 2024, I was unbearably focused on grieving things I had just started letting go of: my old church community and potentially the most electrifying relationship I had experienced. The grief was bigger than I thought and I really struggled with it, not knowing how to truly move past it most days. I felt inexperienced at holding space for the more complicated, negative emotions, so I became numb.

It was so weird how it happened because it’s not like I wasn’t trying to shake the numbness. In those 8 or so months, I tried to focus on healing activities like starting work on my music project, going to therapy, going to concerts, going on walks, and slowly integrating into a new church for a way to try to ground myself in the present moment. But I couldn’t shake the sadness as my default state. At some point it all became too much for me, so I settled into being comfortably numb to get through the days since my energy was zapped from dealing with the sadness.

The numbness didn’t make sense to me. Things were great right? Yeah I was sad but it wasn’t all that deep was it? I should be over it soon right? I didn’t realize how much I needed to be broken down until the heartbreak of the year, being let go from my job, happened.

From then, the numbness turned into confusion about what the hell was happening. Yes, part of it was that I had been grieving to the point where I started caring less about the quality of my work. But also, looking back now, I started to feel lost in the work I was doing and I didn’t even realize it.

In December of last year, I hit an important milestone for myself at that company: I had officially been there longer than my first, miserable job. I was ecstatic to celebrate that and it coincided with the launch of a really cool product that I was really proud to have played a tiny part in. I started asking myself “what’s next for me?” and I felt unable to answer that question. It’s as if my vision suddenly got hazy and I didn’t have energy to focus on it. Everyone on the team had their specific lanes carved out and I felt like an impostor trying to convince myself that I was contributing something crucial to the team. Other than good vibes of course. I couldn’t even begin to explain that to my manager at the time. I was too deep in the numbness. I remember hoping my Europe trip would give me a fresh perspective, but sadly that was not the reality that would happen. The official reason was “due to business constraints, the company had to let me go”. I still remember seeing the sadness in my manager and the head of HR’s faces as they delivered the news. Everyone said I had been such a special part of the company during my entire time there. Even the CEO wrote me the sweetest email validating that.

As the grief rushed in from being let go, I was starting to realize there was a deeper storyline at play: a new, more integrated version of me was emerging. Tragically, this situation was the last casualty before I could see that was what the hell was happening.

And this song came at the perfect time to give voice to all of that.

The first verse paints the picture of being thrown into chaos. Or being “thrown into the trunk of a blacked out 1999 Corolla”, as Dave sings. For me, that explains two things: the numbness I wrestled with for the first half of the year AND the wake up call of having to deal with being unexpectedly jobless. My kidnapping started with the trip to London and Paris I had already scheduled and paid for. A new adventure was looming and I knew the only way through it was to stay present in the chaos. It was then that profound gratitude and freedom rose up among the grief.

In the chorus, Dave sings “I’m so happy, this is just where I wanna be” and it’s such an interesting choice because of the way it evolves in meaning every time it hits. The first chorus repeats with a confusion and a euphoria in his voice as he tries his best to convince himself that he’s actually ok with the kidnapping. The second time grows a sarcastic tone, but you can tell he’s still trying to convince himself he’s ok. The third time has a frantic resignation to it, like he’s saying it in acceptance because he sees he doesn’t have control over the situation he’s in. And yup, I definitely felt all of that.

In the second verse, Dave’s bitterness and confusion make way for embracing the present chaos. He says “True love, what a fucking beautiful shitstorm. But it makes me wonder, who’s been driving us”. I felt the bitterness and confusion as I realized that the grief I was already struggling with had compounded. I really thought I was done crying. But I knew I needed to move through this new round of grief to understand what needed to happen next. The lyric about “who’s been driving us” literally just hit me these last couple days reflecting on this song. Speaking for myself, it was my inner teenager who seemed to be kidnapping me, forcing me to recall that I had dreams I was not actively chasing while at my old job. I started to reconnect with those dreams when I was in London, absorbing the iconic music history and networking with people that were part of the global music community there. Maybe being kidnapped by my inner teenager was actually kind of fun??

The part in the second verse that eerily hits for me is when Dave says “if I survive, if I survive, I’ll do this again every summertime. I’m so happy with my hands tied…” Because actually David — it’s like you knew this would happen in the summertime.

The interesting turn in the song is the part in the bridge where Dave calls out to a repo man saying: “Repo man, hey how’s it going, don’t want to impose. All good back here, keep on rolling, just thought you should know.” It literally sounds like a conversation I’ve had with God at some point this year lol.

The way Dave follows that up with “somehow I feel safer here than I would do at home” absolutely explains the newfound freedom I felt in accepting the circumstances. It didn’t make any sense to feel gratitude and freedom at the loss of something I had loved but I did. The way he circles back to the chorus with this frantic acceptance validates how deep in my soul I needed to be thrown into this chaotic letting go, grief and all. Because yeah, it was that deep. I needed a complete overhaul of my life to prepare for what was coming.

Sonically, this song is dizzying. It feels like you’re caught up in a spiral. I love how there’s a steadiness in the drum beat and in the guitar but the echoing vocals make it just a little fuzzy. That heartbreaking day in June really was “such a nice exciting hijacking” and really so funny how the next month is when this album dropped. Thanks for eventually showing me what the hell was happening, Repo Man. Also my inner teenager is not a bad driver.

Creatures in Heaven

“You held me like my mother made me just for you. Held me so close that I broke in two…”

I should’ve known Dave Bayley was out to get me when he decided to have this song be the album’s lead single. Like what an insane thing to do, lead with the textbook definition of a devastatingly beautiful song.

It’s so interesting that it follows “whatthehellishappening?” because the other side of the confusing numbness and the “hijacking” of the beginning of the year was the tender, grief-filled nostalgia that this song vocalizes.

This gorgeous song reminds me of all the good things I have had to grieve. My church community changed and I realized I had to leave it. My ex who I could picture myself committing to was unable to reciprocate my energy. And then, my job that kickstarted my professional career in music let me go and I didn’t know where to go next. It has all hurt like a motherfucker to let these good things go, especially because I had lost sight of the fact that they were never meant to last forever. I carry the lessons and the memories of those experiences so tenderly because this song was able to teach me that it’s ok to carry that love as I move forward.

This song has made space for me to carry the compounded “ten tonne heartache” sitting on my back. In the grief process, you’ll have times where you sit and wonder about what was. You’ll see things that remind you of all of it and it will be hard to move on. That’s how you know it was something special. In some of the most devastating lyrics I’ve pretty much ever read, this song has given me the permission to accept that you can miss people that are long gone. You can hold that love in your heart and still move on. And it truly exemplifies the theme of this album that love is central.

Sonically, “Creatures in Heaven” is euphoric. It’s what stargazing feels like to me. Specifically stargazing on a date, which I’ve never done but have always wanted to do. The synths take you on a journey across the universe and the drums create this beautifully intimate space, mimicking the sound of a heartbeat. Dave’s sweet, breathy voice here feels effortless but also I can say from experience that it’s a very hard song to sing. With all the lyrics and varying melodies he sings, he creates this feeling of when you’re trying to process grief and all you can do is word vomit about it. I love the way he grounds his voice in his lower register in the bridge, as if that’s the moment he’s realizing he needs to let it go.

Dave said it best when he said this about this song: “it’s done, take the good thing from it and move on”. God knows I did.

Wonderful Nothing

“I’ve just come back to life, I’m here, I’m your little ray of sunshine…”

With the nostalgic sadness of “Creatures in Heaven” in mind, the vibe shift into “Wonderful Nothing” is actually not as drastic as you think. Especially not for me.

I legit think this song is one of, if not THE best song I’ve heard all year. And it’s absolutely no surprise that it was my top song this year because it’s the kind of song that I’m still finding new things to love about.

It’s unlike anything I’ve heard this year. It’s angry in a sexy and empowering way. And the beat is INSANE. It starts off with an ominous orchestra but then it drops into this heavy groove before going back and forth a couple times. It takes so many twists and turns that it makes you wonder how someone (Dave fucking Bayley) could have conceived it all. I love how Dave’s voice floats among the heavy beat. It makes it feel 10 times more sinister when you account for the words he’s singing. He has a calculated deviousness in his voice as if he has been wanting to say all these unhinged things to a certain someone and is just brimming with the opportunity to let loose. I’m obsessed with the character he puts on here. It’s Wavey Davey if he had a hit list.

Dave talked about this song being about the tension between love and hate. For me, it serves as the sound of everything falling apart this year in a classic Saturn return-esque turn of events. It is the sound of me finally getting FED UP with systems and situations that have never actually worked and using that anger to rise from the ashes.

As much as I loved all the good things that had to leave me, I subconsciously knew that I needed a big change because I knew I was not completely fulfilled by those things. There was something not quite perfect in each of those things, even if they were still good for me. While it was enough to keep me going for a few years, I had learned a complacency in them that was keeping me from staying connected to the fire in me. It’s been a painful process to realize that the only way out of it was for everything to fall apart. I had no idea how to make sense of my next evolution until I found this song.

This song has helped me realize how I need to be more adamant now more than ever about advocating for myself and what I care about. Some of those things include me releasing my music, being someone that seeks change for the people that make the things in the music industry, advocating for the people being hurt by unfair systems in America, and of course, breaking every toxic cycle I’ve inherited from my parents. The rage/righteous anger comes from this fiercely protective place. It’s as if my inner teenager took the car keys and said “we have things to do and fuck anyone who judges what I do and don’t do next.”

It also has choice words for the ex that triggered this chain of events. In my grief I carry a slight bit of anger towards him because I feel like he gave up too easily. Especially after I tried reaching out in March to stone cold silence from him. There is a part of me that still cares deeply about him and probably always will. But I see that the line between love and hate that Dave talks about is very thin.

I LOVE the way this song ends with “I’m trying to stop but I still love you”. Because when I finally found myself angry at that ex, it came from this place of “there’s a lot I really could say and do to hurt you because I really do still love you. But you know what, I’m just gonna let you know that you hurt me and then work out my anger away from you. Because surprise – you’re not only the one I’m angry at”.

This song contains multitudes and it’s paralleled the way I’ve become more comfortable expressing anger in its different flavors, especially when I know it’s coming from a loving, “I want things to better” kind of place. I used to be scared of people seeing me angry, but this song makes working through anger sound so fucking cool. So yeah, let this be the theme song to my upcoming world domination era.

A Tear In Space (Airlock)

“Ooh, too late my love, you blew me into stardust…”

Ah yes, so much for stardust, we thought we had it all, didn’t we? I’m truly amazed at how there’s been a lyrical through line from apocalypse to stardust linking my last 3 albums of the year. Anyway, our beloved Dave said this song is about someone “pushing you down until you feel completely insignificant”. And boy did it help me unpack how long I’ve been used to that.

I’ve known for a while that I developed a disorganized (anxious/avoidant) attachment at some point in my life. But I didn’t realize how sly the push and pull was until I dealt with the fallout of dating then trying to be friends with my ex at the end of last year/beginning of this year. In short, I had to break it off because he was being inconsistent with me and it was triggering my self-esteem issues. It was through this final test that I realized how avoidance had been a common theme in my life. Seeing it reflected back to me by him showed me how disconnected I was from myself. I was attracted to people that couldn’t be there for me physically/emotionally/spiritually because I was constantly trying to run away from myself.

I used to feel this craving to make those people care about me because subconsciously, I felt incapable and unworthy of caring for myself. I would always get really angry with myself when people couldn’t be there for me, as if this was just a sign validating that I was unworthy. It was a very tough pill to swallow and this song in so many ways feels like the sonic explanation of that.

The lyrics in the second verse where Dave sings “I’m here but you aren’t sure, what are you waiting for?” hit the exposed nerve. I’ve felt the desperation of this song many times in my life, but not as painful as I had with that ex. The toughest thing about dating someone that mirrors you in one of your deepest wounds is that the things that frustrate you most about them are the same things that you are frustrated by in yourself. I kept trying to be available for him at the end of last year but I didn’t realize how his inconsistency with me quickly escalated to my self-esteem issues and self-abandoning behaviors. It was so bad that I called a state of emergency and jumped into a new season of therapy in November 2023. It’s as if I finally saw how I have always been so quick to say to others “stretch me like leather rope, make me invisible, shape me into your form, what are you waiting for?”

And for what I hoped would be the last time, I saw the desperation in myself — once again asking for someone to show me that I’m worthy of love because I couldn’t bear to believe it without someone else. It’s a devastating thing, and Dave so artfully communicates that desperation through this song.

The production in this song is again insane. It combines space sounds with bounce music with a western movie theme. It shouldn’t work from that description — but it absolutely DOES. The spacier sounds on this song capture this feeling of inescapable loneliness. But then the bouncy chorus beat is addictive, pulsing, and euphoric. The words of the chorus serve as a percussive element as Dave describes an overwhelming sadness that is just floating in space with nowhere to go. It’s such a bop sonically that you forget that it’s lyrically that painful. It captures the dopamine hit of stretching yourself thin for someone even as you hold the cognitive dissonance of realizing they cannot be there for you in the ways you need them to be. It hits so deep and I definitely think you can miss the layers to it unless you’ve experienced it. And yeah, that’s the level of sadness I was feeling all year.

I Can’t Make You Fall in Love Again

“But you were gone in high school, you walked out of my life, I still wonder sometimes what would we have been like…”

This song is just dripping in pain from the get go. It somehow manages to twist the knife after “A Tear in Space (Airlock)”.

This song became my letter of resignation as I surrendered to the truth that there’s nothing I can do to change how people see me and how much effort people put towards a relationship with me. For me, that all started back in high school. I’ve literally been trying to do that since then.

I don’t believe I’ve discussed this on the blog before but one of my core wounds is from high school, when I was rejected by my guy best friend. I told him I liked him and he didn’t know what to do with it so he gave me the cold shoulder. I put away my strong feelings and sought his friendship, but I still tried to do everything I could to change his mind about me, including pushing the boundaries I could. It was a very unkind, weird thing of me to do.

Everything comes back to that completely twisted high school wound: that because the person I want to love me doesn’t want to love me, therefore I am unworthy of love. It’s felt like a curse with every relationship I’ve been in since because it’s played out like that so many times. But I realize now that there is nothing I can do to make someone fall in love with me.

Like “Show Pony”, the familiar guitars ground the song and call me to buckle up buttercup because this is gonna hurt. There’s a lot of space sounds in this one that swirl around with pounding drums that sound like a rapidly beating heart or an outlaw running away on a horse into the sunset. Then there’s these sweeping strings that call you into the past and then push you into the present pain.

You can hear the hurt in this song and that’s what makes it so easy to get whacked in the stomach by it. Dave makes such a profound space to stew in the agony in this song. It really makes me want to give him the biggest, warmest hug I can because if he’s experienced what he’s talking about in this song, I need him to know how deeply loved and lovable he is.

The emotional journey in this song is just heart-wrenching. One of my favorite things about this song is the progression of the intensity from the second verse to the second chorus. The way Dave sings “so I can’t make you fall in love again” into “that’s just one more thing about you, I don’t need in my life” has this heartbroken anger to it. It so beautifully validates that pain of realizing this hard truth.

The way this song soars in the second chorus feels like the angry scream of grief, the moment when your voice gets raw from sobbing because you’re in pain. I’ve cried to this song so many times just holding all the times I’ve repeated the cycle of trying to get someone to care about me as much as I have loved them. It feels incredibly special to have a song that meets me in the pain of realizing the hardest lesson of my life.

The last verse offers a sobering reality check and I love how Dave phrases it: “the light that afternoon exposed the cracks in you, the ones you filled with dust”. It speaks so plainly about the disappointment it is when you realize the love you received from someone was unavoidably not enough. It’s the moment you finally see that this person you had put on a pedestal never deserved to be there. You start to pity the person and almost start to look at them with disgust. It’s a huge heartbreak that I’ve had to get very comfortable with. This song is masterful for the way it evolves sonically and captures all those feelings.

How I Learned To Love the Bomb

“Maybe it’s just a strange time that I found you in my life…”

In the same “how the hell did you write a song that feels like a page out of my diary” place as Taylor Swift did in The Tortured Poets Department‘s “Guilty as Sin?” (let’s talk about that one another time), Dave Bayley sings about a person that is a paradox. And oh boy, do I have a guy in mind.

This song really helped me make sense of the situation with my ex from last year. I spent a lot of time the past year and a half feeling confused about how someone who really liked me that much was able to just switch off so easily. I mean it was a total switch up.

He was so eager, open, invested, and sweet towards me at the start of it. Like he wanted to be the man for me. But I knew he had a dark side that he was scared of showing to me…because he was scared of it himself.

On our second date, after he had said he really liked me (and I stated the same), he said that he felt like he needed to get his shit together for me. And part of me thought that was sweet in a “wait but what do you mean by that?” kind of way.

He had told me he had addictions he’d been fighting and he definitely struggled with his own darkness around why he was indulging in those addictions. I was so fascinated by him because of it though. His awareness of his darkness made him real and that rawness felt like an invitation to me in the throes of shedding my people-pleaser self. While that darkness didn’t stop me from loving him, I knew I didn’t really understand that battle. On top of that, his life was in a state of flux where I could see him wrestling with a lot of the same things I was. Except where I was opening myself to face my issues messily head on with him, he seemed to be shutting down in front of my eyes. So I came to understand that him switching up on me came from the place of potentially wanting to protect me from him in this messy place. He was trying to protect me from “the bomb” in him. Which, if true, I kinda respect in a way, but it still sucks, it still hurt, and it still makes me unbelievably sad.

This song really helped give me the words to understand this – while still giving me space to be confused and kinda angry and yet still insatiably curious and willing to bargain with him. Grief, what a fucking beast.

Sonically, this song flip-flops very intentionally. The guitar and the drums work together to punctuate every other beat throughout most of the song to create a sort of neutral state. But then the pre-chorus and the bridge have this hypnotizing swirl to them. I love the way Dave’s harmonies interact with each other too, it’s “the duality of man” at its finest lol. I love how the melody snakes through the chorus too. It definitely hints at Dave’s point about this song: despite this person scaring you with their dark side, you also “admire them for having this side” and “maybe it’s quite sexy”. Which, yeah I can now say I know exactly what he’s talking about. Leave it to a Gemini sun man to give the best read of a Gemini rising and Venus man lol. But also Dave’s the sexy one for capturing that unique experience in a song. I doubt that ex could do that, let’s be real here.

White Roses

“I knew it and my heart burst, I said it was beautiful at first…”

“White Roses” is the saddest song I’ve ever wanted to throw ass to. Dave has such a good sense of humor in this song, really finding a way to say “I’m heartbroken about this ending but also here’s me owning up to the ways I messed up”. He’s said that it’s about “when you can’t give [someone] the one thing that might make them happy because ultimately it’s a lie.” And honestly that explains an important layer of my grief about this year.

This song is the love letter to the people and places I’ve had to grieve because I couldn’t be what they needed anymore, specifically meant for my time at my last company and my community at my old church. Naturally, I’ve thought about all the ways I messed things up in those situations in my quest to embrace my messy humanity for the first time in my life. Whether I was feeling rebellious in a space that wasn’t as safe as I thought or slowly losing excitement for what I was doing for work, it was hard to accept that I was outgrowing things. I knew I wasn’t supposed to stay in those places but I couldn’t figure out why I needed to leave until I was pushed out. And sometimes you only see that you’re outgrowing something when you’re messing up in ways that add up.

I really feel like this song is the best eulogy for my time at my last company. In my grieving, I had to own up to the fact that I wasn’t putting my best foot forward after a certain time and while they said they had to let me go due to business constraints, I couldn’t help but feel like I had put myself in a place where it was easy to let me go. It has been truly heartbreaking to say goodbye to that chapter. I mean the day I got the news I legit didn’t eat a meal until dinner time, even though I had packed a breakfast and lunch that day. But that day was the final nail in the coffin of the version of me that self-sacrifices to my detriment.

That heartbreak showed me that I had let myself get too comfortable with being overly flexible, to the point of losing sight of what I was actually passionate about and pursing that. It’s taken moments of injustice, frustration at the broken systems I relied on for so long, and even my own sort of starving artist era to remember that I want to be someone that makes a positive impact in the lives of artists. Being an advocate of that comes with its own challenges, like needing to structure my life in a way that balances my goal of financial freedom and the goal to be generous with my time and money for artists. I’m still surrendering to the process as I take on a new, exciting era of my career but it has felt so nice to be able to take the initiative and choose what that will look like with the two opportunities I’ve taken on.

This song makes space for me to own up to my imperfections and any damage I caused in my outgrowing of those two places. It’s hard to grieve something that was once so good to you, but everything is always changing all the time, whether you’re aware of it or not. And sometimes that means you need get a headstone, a coffin, and lay some white roses at the grave.

Sonically, this song feels like walking down a corridor of an art museum or a hall of mirrors. The main synth almost sounds like crying to me, idk how else to describe it. There’s a nostalgic bounce to this song and it almost tries to distract you from the very vulnerable lyrics. Dave’s voice again just floats so vulnerably in this song and I love the way his harmonies punctuate the sadness in the verses. The second verse harmony when he says “slowly I’ll dissolve into echoes in your walls” hit so good. That said, the lyrics of this one hurt in the prettiest way. “Everlasting in a different moon, there’s a perfect side to me and you”? David you’re a poet. I love the picture that paints. It’s just ultimately such a sweet song to grieve to.

On the Run

“But the sadness is behind me with its own wheelie case…”

From taking accountability to saying “I should fake my own death”. All I can say is I get it Dave…too well actually lol.

This song speaks to two things: my natural tendency towards avoidance (thanks mom and dad) and how I literally feel like it’s time to leave the country and start something new.

Because I’ve spent a lifetime avoiding myself, I’ve had a lot of different ways that it’s manifested. One of the particularly painful ways has been realizing that I’ve always carried this sort of dreadful loneliness, where I never feel like I truly belong anywhere so I tend to daydream about living a completely different life quite often. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve definitely gotten glimmers of a sense of belonging in different seasons of life but idk, it’s as if the moment passes and I quickly outgrow the space or the space changes on me in a way that cuts me off. I’ve been feeling especially out of place in LA for the better part of the past 2 years.

It’s a strange thing to contend with because LA will always be home to me. But I can’t help feeling like I’m suffocating here. Yes, living with my parents is part of it. But it’s also the fact that I don’t have regular community here (anymore) and it is notoriously difficult to find/create community in this city. I see a lot of people trying but it always feels disjointed. God, I’ve tried so many times to bring people together but I swear I’m one cancelled event that I organized away from actually going on the run.

Thankfully, as Dave sings in this song, “I’ve got a way, definitely” – I’m not gonna fake my own death, but in some very tangible ways, I’m planning to go on the run. This time it’s not mostly about escapism.

While I do feel like I’ve been messing up and running away from myself for so long, this time it’s about me going on the run to explore again. There are so many things I want to do and try and I would be remiss in letting the last year of my 20s trying to conform somewhere I wasn’t made for.

This song helps me contend with the truth of how the dreadful loneliness and all the sadness from the aforementioned heartbreaks is coming with me into this new adventure, complete with its own wheelie case. Just because I’m tired of being sad and feeling left out, doesn’t mean I can just escape my problems. “On the Run” beckons me to get familiar with that sadness, because it’s coming with me whether I like it or not.

I love the doo-wop style vocal lines paired with the very spacey guitar and synths. It feels silly but it’s so apt. The lyrics of this song are hilarious because they’re trying to paint the picture of freedom, but you can see Dave is actively trying to shove away the sadness. Which again, I know what you mean here bestie. The intense spacey build at the end feels as if you’re kicking the spaceship into overdrive to get the fuck out of this universe. The twinkly instrument in that last chorus feels like all the stars passing you by as you zoom out of there. It was so fun to see Glass Animals play this song live and see how fast they can play the last chorus. I believe I referred to it as their “Beyoncé ‘Love On Top’ moment” lol.

Safe to say, I have the theme song to go on the run to next year. And yeah yeah yeah, I know the sadness is coming too. I’ve had to accept that.

Lost in the Ocean

“The flood, the feeling comes over, how are you so loved and so lonesome? You get lost in the ocean, but you know I’d do anything for ya, babe…”

On the note of accepting the sadness, the album closer, “Lost in the Ocean”, may be the kindest song I’ve ever heard. And it serves as the sonic token I want to remember this difficult year by.

Remember when I started spiraling last fall and Bad Suns said “now I’m lost at sea, at what cost I’m free on an odyssey of apologies, my dependencies got the best of me now the rest of me struggles endlessly”? Well for Glass Animals to end my year with “you get lost in the ocean, what do you do when you are so broken” is insane. And I totally understand why Dave said it’s his favorite on the album. It’s mine too.

This song really captures the lesson I’ve needed to learn my whole entire life: self-compassion. Among all the grief of this past year and a half or so, I’ve had to upgrade my toolbox to include “Kelly, we listen and we don’t judge here. You deserve your kindness.” And that’s come from my inner teenager work.

The past year and a half of learning to love my inner teenager has been incredibly hard, but this song feels like the hug my inner teenager needed from my adult self.

Over the past couple years, I realized that I spent so many years of my life feeling like my emotions were too big and scary because my parents’ emotional immaturity had taught me that they were too much. By extension, it taught me that I was too much and everyone around me didn’t even want to engage with me because I was too much.

As I mentioned in the “On the Run” section, I’ve struggled with this dreadful loneliness my entire life. I have this vivid picture of me as a kid sitting on a bench watching everyone else play. There were times other kids would invite me to play and I’d join. But there were more times I’d spend recess alone just watching everyone, trying to be content anyway but wishing someone would ask me to play with them. I hated feeling lonely and excluded and would chalk it off to “oh, everyone thinks I’m weird”. So I learned to cope with it by avoiding and people-pleasing. It was easier to do that instead of letting myself be sad about it. So I grew comfortable neglecting myself.

For years I didn’t feel like there was any room for me anywhere…so I learned to write songs. Writing songs and developing my love for music became the place I allowed myself to see myself. And then in the biggest act of self-compassion this year, I decided to learn to produce some of my songs and put out the messiest collection of songs that felt like me finally screaming “at the top of my lungs”. I’m so glad I gave myself the permission to do that and I’m excited to deliver the slightly more polished version as a birthday present for myself next year.

“Lost in the Ocean” captures the beauty of learning to be a safe space for myself, as imperfectly as it is. The lyrics feel like a dialogue between that “so loved and so lonesome” inner child/inner teenager and my present-day adult self who’s trying to create a sense of belonging for those sides of me. Especially as I challenged myself with the word “integrate” as the word of my year. This song’s lyrics have been my inner dialogue so many times this year because yeah, it’s a new thing for me to acknowledge my feelings, however messy, before doing something about it. There’s been times when I’ve been really good at approaching myself with honest curiosity and gentleness, as Dave does in the first verse. But there’s been even more times where I’ve “heel [pressed] me down into the ground” and the emotion has been harder to move through because I started with unkindness. In both cases, the words of the chorus have grounded me in getting on my side again.

This song is the most stripped back on the record. It matches the lyrics in its gentleness, but it also completely soars in the second to last chorus. The first part of the song feels like when you wrap yourself up in a blanket and lock yourself in your room to self-soothe. I’ve done that so many times. Especially now since I have a Glass Animals blanket. The second to last chorus’s soaring feels like stargazing in the same way “Creatures in Heaven” does, except you’re alone in your childhood home’s backyard staring at a mix of the night sky and city lights. Seeing this song live made my year, especially with all the colored lights everyone held up at the Forum. Dave was on this lifted platform, scared shitless, but also so in awe of the moment we had all created. It made my heart soar to witness this moment.

It is completely impossible for me to listen or play this song without crying. Seriously, EVERY TIME – it’s at least a tear, but other times it’s a full on sob. I’ve never heard a model of accepting my whole humanness in a song before. But Dave did it. This song has given me the words to acknowledge that the sides of me that I’ve tried to hide my entire life: my big emotional self, my messy self, my quirky/odd one out self–all of it deserves my love and kindness. This song gives me the words to stare at myself in the mirror and finally say, “Kelly, I love you so fucking much”. The safe space I’ve been for so many people throughout my life, I am becoming for me and it’s healing me deeper than ever. Thanks to this song I have the soundtrack to practice that gentle kindness.

Seriously, thank you for this perfect song, Dave. I hope you know it’s something really really special. I hope you think of all the lights in the audience every night of tour as little stars of people you’ve impacted with your beautiful songs. It’s meant the world to me to have the space (pls excuse the pun) to process this wild year with your incredibly thoughtful and thought-provoking songs.

Conclusion

So yeah, some 9,000+ words later, that’s my 2024 album of the year lol. It’s been a wild and lonely ride, but it feels really special that this album has met me there in every complicated emotion and situation. I get to see Glass Animals play again in January and y’all I’m SO excited for it. I wish they were playing a full length set but hey, I’ll take what I can get. Dave Bayley, I love you so fucking much. Drew, Ed, and Joe I love you so fucking much. 2025, I can’t even begin to predict what journey you’re gonna take me on. But I hope the soundtrack hits as good as this one.

If you’ve made this far, I figure I call out my honorable mentions and some other projects you should listen to.

Honorable contenders for my album of the year:

eternal sunshine by Ariana Grande

The Tortured Poets Department by Taylor Swift

American Disco by Never Ending Fall

Buzz by NIKI

I’m Not Afraid of Music Anymore by COIN

Everybody Needs a Hero by Orla Gartland

Other albums/EP you really need to listen to:

ORQUÍDEAS by Kali Uchis, Portraits by Quarters of Change, Nothing Like a Dream by Juice, Saviors by Green Day, Prelude to Ectasy by The Last Dinner Party, GLOOM DIVISION by IDKHOW, Inner Light (Phase 1) by Kid Bloom, Shadowboxing by Hannah Connolly, Underdressed at the Symphony by Faye Webster, work in progress by Holly Humberstone, Submarine by The Marías, Deeper Well by Kacey Musgraves, Don’t Forget Me by Maggie Rogers, Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran by Shakira, TYLA by Tyla, COWBOY CARTER by Beyoncé, Found Heaven by Conan Gray, I’M DOING IT AGAIN BABY! by girl in red, Clockwork by Sophia James, KYORYU by Last Dinosaurs, Older by Lizzy McAlpine, What a Devastating Turn of Events by Rachel Chinouriri, empathogen by WILLOW, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT by Billie Eilish, Clancy by Twenty One Pilots, Radiosoul by Alfie Templeman, The Sweater Club by Jelani Aryeh, The Secret of Us by Gracie Abrams, God Said No by Omar Apollo, MEGAN by Megan Thee Stallion, Charm by Clairo, Big Ideas by Remi Wolf, Vertigo by Griff, Say It Back by golda may, Trouble in Paradise by Chlöe, Quantum Baby by Tinashe, Paradise State of Mind by Foster the People, Short n’ Sweet by Sabrina Carpenter, Imaginal Disk by Magdalena Bay, Escaper by Sarah Kinsley, Water the Flowers, Pray for a Garden by Valley, PRATTS & PAIN by Royel Otis, Dayglow by Dayglow, Memoir of a Sparklemuffin by Suki Waterhouse, SHINBANGUMI by Ginger Root, Flood by Hippo Campus, Songs About You Specifically by MICHELLE, Late Start by Carol Ades, Dunya by Mustafa, Coyote by Tommy Richman, Moon Music by Coldplay, For Cryin’ Out Loud! by FINNEAS, Changes All The Times by James Bay, Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat by Charli XCX, Metamorphosis Complete by Infinity Song, The Great Impersonator by Halsey, liminal space by mxmtoon, Cunningham Bird by Andrew Bird and Madison Cunningham, The Jester by Wallice, What a Relief by Katie Gavin, GNX by Kendrick Lamar, Persona by half-alive, Alligator Bites Never Heal by Doechii, No Way To Relax When You Are On Fire by Dora Jar, Vicious Creature by Lauren Mayberry