Is It So Childish? Falling for Oh I Get What You Mean All Over Again — 2024 Early-February Playlist (Part 2)
Mew mew, hello everyone! Today is our first-week-of-February recommended playlist, aka the second installment of my Oh I Get What You Mean (那我懂你意思了) band feature. I’m splitting the deep dive on Oh I Get What You Mean into three parts, so if you haven’t read part one yet, go check it out over here first!
2024 / First Week of February Recommended Playlist – Links for All the Major Platforms
Since a lot of these songs were never uploaded to the major streaming platforms, you can head over to StreetVoice to listen for the best experience.
YouTube playlist:
Spotify playlist:
StreetVoice playlist: https://streetvoice.com/mydondon0308/playlists/920512
So Childish?
Last time I mentioned that their first album was basically the record that defined “that band.” Well, their second album is the one that made me fall in love with Oh I Get What You Mean. Apart from the intro and outro, the whole album has 7 songs, and 5 of them are my favorites! Yep, that’s how much I love it~ In the last post I introduced you Mai-Mais to the song “You Sing Alone,” so today I’ll kick things off with “So Childish?” for you all. Honestly, what first drew me to this song was its style of music. It just makes you want to sing along without even realizing it. The song gives off this high school / college student vibe — that feeling of stepping into different departments full of ideals, chasing after some impressive mentor, but then sometimes wondering what any of it is even for. Or constantly doubting what’s the point of studying all this, and what it’ll actually do for you. Looking at the people who’ve made it big and then looking at your own empty-handed self, you start thinking maybe it’s time to give up…
Maybe this song is describing exactly who we were back then. “Reading the books you read, dreaming the dreams you dream, still not getting why yesterday is worth holding onto. I know, I’m me and in the end you’re you; I know, I’m just not that strong yet. Those dreams I once understood, those words I still can’t quite grasp. Do you know, do you know — and I’m still standing where you left, singing the words I still can’t understand, you know, right? You know, right?” For everyone who still doesn’t know where success is.
https://streetvoice.com/IGUband/songs/183890/
The Café Where I Worked
Honestly, I feel like all the songs Xiu-Ze writes come from the various things he runs into in everyday life and his feelings about them. He’ll suddenly bump into something that moves him, and it turns into a song. Take this one, “The Café Where I Worked” — it’s literally about what Xiu-Ze saw and heard while working a part-time job at a café (well, duh). I’ve always thought cafés are such fascinating places, because a café is where all kinds of different people gather every single time. Whether you want a spot to study or work, or somewhere to go on a date or meet up with people, you end up at a café.
A café worker must get to witness all sorts of scenes. As a bystander, though, you can only really see things through a haze, and that’s when we start projecting our own subjective take onto them. But then again, maybe no matter who we’re looking at, we end up projecting our own feelings onto other people! “I know, all of this will pass in the end. I know, someday it’ll all be over. I know, I’ll inevitably forget. I just hope that I can never lose it.” Truthfully, those customers don’t matter at all — they’re just the kindling that reminds him of the people he doesn’t want to lose.
https://streetvoice.com/IGUband/songs/183816/
A Sudden Everyday Life
After “that band” blew up, they kept writing songs and performing, just like any other band. They signed with a management company, they played festivals big and small, and everyone loved their music.
The next song also comes from the same album. It’s called “A Sudden Everyday Life,” and unlike the more rhythm-driven tracks before it, this one is a lot less aggressive — it actually has a jazzy feel. It’s relaxed and easygoing, but never dull for a second.
I wonder if you’ve ever had that feeling where you don’t want to do anything at all — you’ve got no energy for a single thing, you can’t focus on anything, you just want to be a breathing lump of meat. I feel like this song is singing about exactly that kind of feeling. “Took a bath, washed a shirt, let my worries get filled up with tedium. The book by the bed, turned one page, but it won’t make its way into my head. I feel like I’m already tired, so why hasn’t sleep come yet. Oh, how could it, how could it be. All I can do is shed tears again, on this night drowned in memories.”
These are all such ordinary, everyday things — basically things you run into every single day, things you’ve done so many times you don’t even register them. So why does it have to be called “A Sudden Everyday Life”? I’m sure it’s because something changed all of a sudden! When something in your life suddenly shifts, or you lose some important connection, in that state where you don’t want to think about anything or do anything, the things you used to overlook quietly start to surface, don’t they?
https://streetvoice.com/IGUband/songs/183604/
Forgive Me for Not Understanding Your Sorrow
The last of my favorites on this album — and also the song I used at the very beginning of this post — is “Forgive Me for Not Understanding Your Sorrow.” Even though this song came out in 2012, listening to it in our current moment actually hits even harder. I think what makes “that band” so special is that they hold onto their own personality while never losing that sing-along quality you get from pop music.
And their slow songs are amazing too — they have this feeling of a wounded person tending to their own wounds. “Do you still remember, do you still remember? The truth is I’m a little afraid to know how you’re doing now. How has this world grown more and more unfamiliar; I know I shouldn’t stop walking — to you, remember I made a promise.” This song has a bit of continuity with the previous one? It feels like the person in the last song, on some day when life is slowly getting back on track, suddenly remembers someone they once missed so badly, and sings this song while longing for the past.
https://streetvoice.com/IGUband/songs/183937/
After listening, don’t you also think their slow songs are incredible? Honestly, while I was gathering info I already knew that “that band’s” story couldn’t be squeezed into three weeks of recommended playlists. But by total accident I stumbled across a bunch of “hidden songs” I’d never heard before, ones that were only uploaded to StreetVoice, and I fell in love with them all over again. In the end… there were just too many songs I wanted to feature, and I couldn’t figure out which ones to leave out, so this week’s selection might feel a little thin. Sorry about that, everyone!
Honestly, I find it such a shame. It feels like so many songs never got the chance to be released for everyone to hear before the band broke up, and now all I can do is pick up those scattered fragments and share them with you.
The Last Cigarette
The first song is called “The Last Cigarette.” I don’t really need to say it, but plenty of longtime fans have heard this one, right? It’s such a shame it never made it onto Spotify. This world is too cruel, there’s too much we have to face, and sometimes we all just want to escape for a bit — like how I’ll lie in bed binging a pile of brain-rot videos, or go play some games. But no matter what method you choose to escape the world, right before we have no choice but to go back, we all try to convince ourselves “this is the last time, this is the last time.” And we do that simply because we don’t want to go back and face things (taken from this song’s liner notes).
“This is the last cigarette, and then it’s back to the cruel world. Everything changes in an instant, and I’m always too slow to face it.”
https://streetvoice.com/IGUband/songs/206349/
A Pact with the Devil
Sometimes all we need is the time it takes to smoke one cigarette to escape this overly chaotic world, right? The next song is a really interesting one, because it’s about the issue of nuclear power. For Xiu-Ze, the pollution nuclear power causes is enormous, but it only shows up hundreds or even thousands of years later. For us humans, the pollution nuclear power creates is something we have no way to measure, so for us to use nuclear power now is like signing a pact with the devil — sweet at first, but the price you have to pay later is higher than anything before.
“We helped him take his shape; he showed us the power to destroy the world. We built up wall after sturdy wall, and then tried to steal his power for ourselves.”
https://streetvoice.com/IGUband/songs/203594/
Twenty-Seven
Even though the nuclear power debate is one where everyone talks past each other and every side has its own valid points, being able to turn your own thoughts into a song that actually sounds good is seriously impressive. The last song for today, in my opinion, has a lot of the flavor of “A Sudden Everyday Life” that I mentioned earlier. This song is called “27.” Even though I’m not yet 27, the way I imagine it, I think 27 is a point in time when everything has ended but everything is also just beginning. You might have just finished your studies, just quit the first job in your life that didn’t suit you, or just failed at starting your own business and decided to enter the very workplace you once thought wasn’t for you. A lot of things might have just ended, and a lot of things might be just beginning — that’s what 27 is in my mind.
Maybe this is Xiu-Ze’s own 27, too. That format of narrating everyday life plus looking back on the past is ordinary, yet it conveys exactly the feeling you want to express. “Sitting on the newly bought sofa, should I go and buy a TV to watch? The bookshelf is packed with book after book; I’m counting how many I still haven’t finished. Have I forgotten, have I forgotten — that dream that’s been through layer upon layer of reality, what shape is it in now?”
https://streetvoice.com/IGUband/songs/195874/
“She and I once had an imagined life together, the kind imagined in the lyrics of ’27’: a job you hate, a family, maybe kids — the kind of imagining that’s just like all the other grown-ups in this society. Ordinary grown-ups.” Maybe by 2012 Xiu-Ze was already worn out, maybe he’d long since stopped wanting to be in a band, maybe without realizing it he kept burning himself out from the inside, until he was like ash-gray, burnt-out firewood with only a faint glow of red left, still barely clinging on.
Thanks for reading — that’s where this week’s recommended playlist comes to an end. First, let me apologize to everyone, because thanks to my own laziness and stubbornness I didn’t get this post up until the end of the month, leaving it sitting in my folder for so long. But I finally worked up the courage to finish the last part, and I’ll definitely upload it tomorrow to share with you all. So if you still like my posts, feel free to hit like and save! There are a few more posts below that I’m sure you’ll love, so go take a look over there too~ And with that… see you in the next one~
You can check out part one over here:
Mydondon’s new recommended playlist family bucket (full leg meal) on YouTube:
Mydondon’s new recommended playlist family bucket (full leg meal) on Spotify: