I’m Not Paranoid, I'm A Realist

A shout-out to the Asterisk, simple and powerful

✳️

It’s come to mean so much here, to the fannish and wayward who feel the #LoveforLovejoy.

First it meant the caveat, and not the good kind. Then it meant anticipation. Then it came to mean a bonus, an extra thank you, a promise.

In our house, it’s hope in the form of punctuation.

Caveats (the Google Problem)

Lovejoy 😎 pushed past the pain on their own terms, taking the hits without mounting any defense except to keep making music. I respect their position that private stuff should be private, but unchallenged bad-guy labels tend to become fact by plea of no lo contendre. Mentions come with caveats. Anyone who googles Lovejoy finds bad-guy stuff without a rebuttal. So they’ve got a Google problem. They’re a band with an Asterisk (until they’re not), and we’ve just gotta live with it.

Anticipation

Are you okay? New song when? Soon.

How soon??? ::Crickets::

WHEN? Soon.

WHEN?— and don’t you dare say s**n! Sheepish s**n.

Video when? Tour dates when?Album when?? S**n kittens, s**n.

THANK YOU

Bonus

One Simple Trick blew us away. It exceeded every expectation.

And just when the road looked long and boring (because nothing could be better that that) Lovejoy dropped Second to One.

The Asterisk as cover art was clever on multiple levels. Most obviously, it meant the EP wasn’t a stand-alone piece, but rather bonus tracks from OST, born from the same creative effort. STO is OST*, loud and clear.

The Asterisk is special to Lovenjoyers. Lovejoy released these tracks because they wanted to, but the cover art made it feel even more like a gift. Intentional or not, it felt like a wink, a nod to our common history.

Didn’t mean to re-open the bullshit. I was in the mood to pop off and got all typey. I truly don’t want to promote this discussion and I’m a orry for poking it with a stick for my own entertainment. Wrong choice.

(Outraged Anon who won’t see this: I agree with some of your points but of course disagree with many. We see this differently for a bunch of reasons, all well debated and documented over the past two years. You may think I’m trivializing the bigger issue. I’m not.)

1. He’s too happy to write sad songs. Too happy. TOO HAPPY!!!

2. He’s as grown man with a cock and balls and doesn’t want all the damn pity and worrying.

Copy. Done. Yes captain.

3. He can talk about loving the Sorry Boys without an ounce of pain on his face. Thats astounding to me. None of us can, so Wilbur is officially more well-adjusted than we are. Good for you, man. Tough as nails.

4. The old relationships are done, stop wondering, stop asking, stop wishing, fucking stop. Tear off the rearview mirror.

5. He’s not your dad, he’s not your brother. My interpretation of his tone on that was that he’s weary and wary of the weight people keep placing on his role in their lives. (It’s a trick box really, because he’s setting it up again by going back to streaming. It’s almost like saying, “here kids, I’ll give you a little bit of drugs but don’t become addicts.” He’s smart enough to know this but can’t stay away. But I digress.)

6. The Los Campesinos thing was just as big of an ouch as we thought it was.

7. His fangirl rambling about why he loves that Arctic Monkeys song was straight up adorable.

She’s about to find some vintage fan fiction 😬😎😝👀 // Hopefully she won’t tell me when she finds it so I don’t DIE.

Passwords people, passwords

INDIGO GIRLS

OK, so I’m about to get sappy as hell. I can’t pick a single song, but a confluence of things over the past few weeks have compelled me to both celebrate and wallow in the songs of the indigo girls.

Emily Sailors recently came forward with the news that she has been diagnosed with two chronic conditions that are affecting her ability to sing. She is half of the Indigo Girls, along with Amy Ray, who are pioneers of LGBTQ music and source of the some of the most gorgeous harmonies in music history.

As a girl figuring things out, a young woman trying to navigate painful crushes, falling in love, and the joy and pain of a hidden relationship - these songs are attached to core memories. Things were different. We hid things. We felt like everyone else in so many ways but so many of us were quiet, watching brave women like Amy and Emily sing everything we felt out loud.

Here are my favorites, narrowed down to a few.

1. Power of Two

Harmonies are unmatched.

2. Ghost

Unrequited love, forbidden love, lost love, and just straight up naked yearning. This is may be the most gorgeous song ever written.

3. Least Complicated

This song is for every baby-dyke who awkwardly bought her girlfriend a silver ring. An innocuous looking thing that quietly meant so much, a secret symbol of how you wished you could shout from the rooftops.

4. Galileo

Classic harmony.

5. Get Out the Map

Road trip joy, lesbian style.

What bugs me

is that you believe what you're saying

What bothers me

is that you don't know how you feel

What scares me

is that while you're telling me stories

So I spent a decade in New York. And it was spectacular. Brooklyn is fine, hipster, cool, whatever. But Manhattan is divine.

In New York, you can butter all sides of your soul at once. The artist inside of you can stumble out of a bar in the Village, a gay bar that serves popcorn with m&ms just to be cheeky, and catch a surprise Off-Off-Broadway show in a park at midnight on your way home. You can have a happy hour cocktail on the rooftop at the Met, skip dinner, and ride the 6 to SoHo to eat rice pudding instead. You can have a thousand dollar twelve-course meal or eat the best falafel you’ve ever had for $2.50. You can go for a run in Central Park and spend the whole time knowing that you’re so, so lucky.

No one cares what you do or how you do it. You can wear sequins to a show or a tank top and shorts. Anything, anything, anything goes. People think it’s too crowded, but somehow there’s privacy in the size of it all. It’s a few million people busy being alone together as a living, breathing thing. Being themselves. Sorting themselves out. Figuring out who they wan to be.

There’s a sense of community among the strangers because everyone shares this one common thing. They are part of the fabric of this place. There’s a secret proud feeling that you can do anything. This place is a jungle and I own this town.

So much energy. So much vibe. I miss the whole damn thing.

They’re on outdated topics so too late to bother finishing - 2025, the album, tour, who knows what.

Everytime I wander back into Twitter I regret it.

Current thing pissing me off?

People who are obsessed Lovejoy/Wilbur fans but also drop hate and spread rumors.

Wilbur fans who play both sides kinda suck.

Referring to Wilbur as an abuser while fangirling at the same time doesn’t make them better than everyone else. They act like other fans are in denial or delulu and they are the special, honest, clever ones who call out the truth.

My words to them:

It’s not clever. You’re not funny.

It is damaging to reputations that are already pretty screwed up.

It’s encourages and perpetuates and a culture of making fun of people.

You can accept whatever you believe Wilbur has done, accept even the harshest view of the allegations, and still wish for a good future for this band. You can accept and want recovery.

If that’s what you want, for reputations to recover and the band to continue making music, quit contributing to the very thing that is impeding it.

Give your second chance or don’t.

If you’re a fan, shut up, and stop trying to build your own reputation as a sassy funny-guy by standing on other people’s necks.

Thats it. Just Buffy and Faith. Feeling nostalgic and a few other things.

I do not,

can not,

will not

understand what makes people feel justified in treating Tyler Catastrophe this way. It’s horrible mean-girl middle school bullshit.

Don’t tolerate it. Don’t excuse it.

So he’s infatuated with a celebrity. So he was overwhelmed by it one night, cracked his brain open, and made a pretty humiliating video. (Yep, I’ve seen it. Ouch. It’s got major I’m-gonna-regret-this-tomorrow vibes.)

SO WHAT?? Actually— so what?

(And not for nothing— He’s hardly the first or last person to suffer from a debilitating crush on Wilbur Soot. Half the globe was Sootsick in 2023. You’ve seen them crying at concerts. )

To the mockers, haters, bitches: Maybe your personal brand of crazy doesn’t look the same, but guess what people, I PROMISE you’ve all got some crazy. Not everyday, maybe not often, about something completely different. But someday you’re going to be feeling something intense and irrational, and you’re going to show your ass— just like Tyler did. I hope the world leaves you alone to snap out of it and nurse your embarrassment privately. Because no one deserves to be a punchline.

Someone said to me, “I’m sorry, but this person needed to be called out.” Really? What for? What does that accomplish? And what is calling out exactly? Endless viral mockery?

Please, for the love of God, DROP IT.

Perhaps if people stopped mocking Tyler for a minute they might actually notice what a cool and interesting person he is.

He’s got a wild history and has overcome personal hardship. Tyler has demonstrated, long before this, that he’s got the strength to rise above bullshit. He has interests. Talents. He makes things that add to the greater good. (Next time you read a post making fun of someone else, take a minute and ask- what good has that person added to the world?)

You should overlook Tyler’s yikes-video and look at the dozen ways he should inspire you. Appreciate the good in someone and have the compassion to ignore their mistakes.

(that you didn’t ask for but get anyway)

Go listen on Patreon or Apple Podcasts or wherever you pod. Follow, like, buy it, show love however you like. Go. Enjoy.

Ep 299: Will Gold discusses Lovejoy’s “Scoundrels”

1. Highly entertaining - host, guest, and song choice.

2. Chris DeMakes might actually be Casey Kasem. Except cooler obviously

3. Ska! So validated! I’ve been alone on an island hearing the Mighty Mighty Bosstones in there

4. Will doesn’t know how to say Sophomore. Charmed.

5. The music theory breakdown is amazing— need more, wish we could commission Chris D to do more songs from One Simple Trick

6. Scoundrels is about the internet? Reductive— but sure, ok, true-ish, if you say so.

7. Chris called him out for being esoteric :) // (bro is a poet, he def can’t help it)

8. I will now always hear that spaceship synth sound, diving, parking, idling

9. Fun knowing bandmates put a governor on that characteristic little vocal bend //

10. Curse these metal hands! Ash’s image clue

11. That E minor E major thing? Loved. For a second I thought Will was mmhmm-ing and pretending to keep up, and then he corrects him. Geeks geeking about music 🔥- doesn’t get better

12. “Well, where do we go from here?” Eleven. (Obviously.)

13. It’s Know???? Not BE?? Well that changes things. //