I Mean Us: Forgive Me for Not Understanding Your Sorrow — Saying Goodbye to a Band That Faded Away (Jan 2024, Week 4 Playlist)
“ Okay, hold on — whatever happens, no matter how badly I sing this next song, no matter how off-key, or even if it comes out great, please don’t, don’t sing along with me, don’t open your mouths, don’t make a single sound, okay? Do you still remember? Do you still remember? And I don’t want to talk anymore about that beautiful madness… ” When the song was over, Xiu-Ze set his guitar down and handed it to the audience in the front row. It was a musician’s way of marking a flawless performance — by throwing away, by destroying the instrument, you make that one show an eternity that can never be repeated.
Maybe we’ll never see the day that I Mean Us (那我懂你意思了) gets back together, but the kind of jaded, world-weary lyrics Xiu-Ze wrote — that sense of being powerless in the face of the world — will keep playing on a loop in our hearts forever.
2024 / January Week 4 Recommended Playlist — Youtube / Spotify / StreetVoice
YouTube playlist:
Spotify playlist:
StreetVoice playlist: https://streetvoice.com/mydondon0308/playlists/919452/
Read along while you listen (for those of you without Premium):
Intro
Meow meow, hi everyone, I’m Mydondon — welcome back to the weekly recommended playlist. This is the recommended playlist for January 2024, Week 4. Enough chit-chat, let’s jump right in!
Maybe you don’t know I Mean Us, and maybe you don’t know the band’s whole backstory either, so let’s rewind all the way to before 2006. In the very beginning, I Mean Us got their start out of the Taipei National University of the Arts (TNUA) Rock Music Club [1]. Back then the band felt very different from the songs they make now — there was a kind of rawness to them, plus a more straight-up rock vibe. The 2006 incarnation of I Mean Us actually had a hidden mini-album — or you could call it a set of never-released tracks — titled “Before 2010” (2010以前).
The Good Old Days (過去真美好)
On this album there are two songs I’m especially fond of. The first is called “The Good Old Days.” Simply put, it captures that cynical, fed-up feeling you get as a college student — that mood where you don’t want to deal with anything and just want to keep chasing your dream. “ Mom, I’m not skipping class on purpose, it’s just that going to class is so annoying. Teacher, I’m not blowing off my homework on purpose, don’t expect me to promise I’ll behave next time. ” On the road to chasing your dreams you always run into obstacles big and small, and striking the balance between ideals and reality is hard to pin down — but maybe that’s exactly the lesson every college student needs to learn.
https://streetvoice.com/IGUband/songs/24622/
Comet (彗星)
The other song I really love is called “Comet.” Its theme and its content fit together beautifully: a comet travels along its own orbit, and every few years it swings back close to the planet it circles. It’s like you and your teacher — most of your skills may be ones you developed yourself, but you never forget the teacher who first guided you. Or it’s like a master and apprentice, watching each other grow within the same field. “ I want to chase your dazzling silhouette, no matter where it leads, even if I lose myself. And just as I’m sprinting forward I receive a wish: that one day I might become a great musician. May you keep chasing your dream, and even if you fail, may you fall with a smile. ”
https://streetvoice.com/IGUband/songs/30412/
What I find the most unfortunate is that these 4 songs were never released on any other streaming platforms — otherwise they might well have become a second or third “So I Stopped.” Between the original members graduating from college and Xiu-Ze going off to do his military service, they created the “grumble” series together, but after Xiu-Ze left for the army these members quietly vanished for reasons no one really knows. They’ve all got their own lives now; some, in this present timeline, even have families of their own. Most people probably don’t know who they are, but they actually left behind one very famous song that has carried all the way to today — “So I Stopped,” the first song in the “grumble” series.
This song is where most people first got to know “that band” — but it was also the starting point of “that band” drifting toward its breakup.
So I Stopped (所以我停下來)
The moment its DEMO dropped in 2011, “So I Stopped” stayed on the StreetVoice charts for a full 47 weeks. To me this song is a kind of helplessness in the face of reality, but compared to “The Good Old Days” that I introduced earlier, I feel this one crushes the breath out of me even more. If “The Good Old Days” is a teenager constantly fighting against reality, then this song would be a middle-aged person who has seen through all the worldly noise — as if nothing matters all that much anymore, as if life has been reduced to nothing but breathing.
https://streetvoice.com/svcollection/songs/155335/
” So I stopped, then opened my arms wide, spun in a circle to make sure I still exist. Then I jumped up again, gave my consciousness a little shake — I need you to confirm that I exist. ” This song is famous and the MV has been seen by tons of people, but that MV isn’t actually what they meant to convey. At the time it was something of a controversy in the music scene, yet however many corners of the internet I searched, I never found Xiu-Ze say what “So I Stopped” was actually meant to mean. Even though the MV wasn’t the version they wanted, the song still — unsurprisingly — drew in lots of new fans, and their follower count jumped by more than 10,000 in an instant. But… maybe that was exactly the moment “that band” started down a road there was no turning back from.
Insomnia (失眠)
That same year they also released their first album, “Nothing, Huh!? ” (沒有的, 啊!?). Personally the album as a whole is just okay, but there are a few songs on it I’m especially fond of — the one that left the biggest impression on me is “Insomnia.” ” The little birds don’t care, the blue sky doesn’t care, the sun doesn’t care, the white clouds don’t care, the city doesn’t care, the cars don’t care; time just travels wherever it pleases. ” Honestly I can’t quite grasp what the lyrics are trying to say. On the surface it seems to describe the way your mind runs wild when you can’t sleep, but underneath it feels like it’s hinting at something else — otherwise I really have no idea what those passages around ” only me, no you ” are supposed to mean.
Maybe you Mydon-folks have your own take — feel free to share it with me down below.
https://streetvoice.com/IGUband/songs/135046/
How Did It All Just Vanish (怎麼都沒有了)
Another song I love a lot is called “How Did It All Just Vanish.” I think this one hits me because of its style, but the lyrics land just as hard too. From start to finish the whole song keeps cycling ” how did it all just vanish, turns out it’s all gone ” — simple, but it strikes you with real force, like it’s telling you to wake up, to snap out of that beautiful dream. ” Remember you said you’d stop the world from ending, remember you never thought you’d ever get tired, remember how growing up was supposed to give you the strength to do so much — how did it all just vanish, how did, how did. ” Sometimes I keep doubting whether I’m still living inside that hollow, idealistic world, and shooing away the thorns that want to pop my pink bubble.
https://streetvoice.com/IGUband/songs/135188/
927
There’s one last song from this album I want to share with everyone. The moment I heard it, my whole body broke out in goosebumps, because this song really, deeply spoke to the exact struggle in my heart right now. Why do I say that? It’s because, to me, “that band” has always been a band that holds on to its ideals, dares to chase its dreams, and is willing to throw itself fully into the things it loves — even if they themselves might not see it that way, their songs always lead me to read them like this.
So when I heard this song, I instantly felt like it was singing my own inner voice — like a young person who isn’t yet clear about their future, unsure whether to just go with the flow of the world or to push against the current of the times and bravely carve out a place of their own; that kind of hesitation and inner struggle. ” Maybe I still miss home, I’m afraid of being lonely. Maybe my dream isn’t enough to let me walk this road alone. Maybe it’s that I just left my girlfriend, maybe it’s friends I haven’t talked to in a while. “
https://streetvoice.com/IGUband/songs/135182/
“Nothing, Huh!? ” also set the mold for what “that band” would become from then on. If I had to introduce them in three words, I think they’d be anger, cynicism, and romance. Their second album, “Forgive Me for Not Understanding Your Sorrow” (原諒我不明白你的悲傷), carried these same three traits forward and kept telling that same story. And every single album is guaranteed to have at least one song with heavy rock elements, or with words and phrases that repeat over and over to let the emotion keep building.
You Sing Alone (你孤單地唱著歌)
On this album, the song I’d call the rock standout is “You Sing Alone.” This one has always been an unsolved mystery to me — why do the lyrics keep switching back and forth between “me” and “you”? ” Memories are still performing in the dream — is it a smile or tears? Walking through the time I left behind, you sing alone. Singing, singing, singing, you sing alone. Singing, singing, singing, I sing alone. ” Every time I listen to this song I sing along with it, and as I sing I can feel the sadness piling up and up, until by the end it gets a little self-indulgent — that lonely feeling always crushes the breath right out of me.
https://streetvoice.com/IGUband/songs/183529/
In some ways, maybe this song was also a reflection of how Xiu-Ze was feeling back then. But I think I’ll leave today’s story here, since we’re about out of time. I also want to say sorry to everyone up front, because there are very few articles and interviews about “that band,” and most of the information online has been lost — a lot of it you can’t even find with the Wayback Machine. So most of this is just my personal interpretation plus song introductions; the rest of the story will probably have to wait for the various experts out there to come fill in the gaps.
Alright, thanks everyone for watching today. If you enjoyed this week’s recommended playlist, go ahead and hit like! But since we’re actually running a week behind, how about this — if this issue gets more than 150 likes, we’ll speed up and put out the next episode. Mydon-folks who don’t want to miss it, remember to follow first! See you next episode — sell the noodles! (賣的麵, mai de mian)
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References
Content still to be confirmed. Most of this was pieced together by cross-checking various sources online, so it isn’t necessarily accurate — any Mydon-folk who wants to dig deeper is welcome to do their own research:
[1] I Mean Us got their start out of the TNUA Rock Music Club in the very beginning, as mentioned on Wikipedia: ” The original members were Chen Xiu-Ze (vocals and guitar), Wang Teng-Yi (bass), Guo Zi-Yu (drums), and Liu Dai-Ling (keyboards). ” MUMMUM ZINE also notes: ” I Mean Us (IGUband), like Mary See the Future and the recently surging No Party for Cao Dong, got their start out of the TNUA Rock Music Club and stirred up quite a wave in the indie music world. ” Searching “Guo Zi-Yu + TNUA Rock Music Club” turns up a mention of this person at a 2009 concert held by the TNUA Music Department, and searching “Liu Dai-Ling + TNUA” brings up an album on KKBOX called “The Sound of Silence in Taipei” (臺北的寂靜之聲), whose blurb includes the following: ” Liu Dai-Ling graduated from the Music Department of Taipei National University of the Arts. She is now a music educator and songwriter, and the keyboardist for the band I Mean Us; during that time she was invited to perform at Spring Scream and won two major awards at the Chunghwa Telecom Indie Pop Music Creation Competition — Most Popular Band and Best Outstanding Band. Beyond composing and arranging music, she also devotes herself to promoting music creation, putting music education into practice, writing textbooks, and more — extending music’s reach into every corner and turning it into limitless possibility. ” Based on all this, I’ve concluded that the four members above were members of the TNUA Rock Music Club.