Sad girl chunes ❤️🩹
A lover girl’s guide to processing your emotions through R'n'B 🥹
It all started here:
Forcing me to confront a truth about being straight up SAD. I have been for a while now. It’s all so blurry. It’s so confusing.
Every time I try and write something the first words I type are: I know the world is on fire. In the last year — as we continue to watch children being unalived on our 9x16 screens — I’ve been trying to accept that the flames aren’t dying down anytime soon. That we, those who truly care about liberation, have to somehow exist within this catastrophic mess, continue to do the work and find balance.
It’s a tension I’m constantly wrestling with, finding a way to practice my craft, to write, to share stories without completely being laced with guilt. Maybe it’s just a me problem? Every day I consume other people’s art and find gratitude in it.
So I continue to process and self-regulate; the big heartbreaks and the little ones too. That’s where sad girl music comes in.
A year or two ago (which feels like 10 on the internet), this post made the rounds on every millennial’s feed, making us all swoon:
I looked at it over and over, “feeling seen” while making direct comparisons to my own life wondering if I ever really lived out Brian McKnight’s ‘Back at One’. So much of my interpretation of love and relationships has come from TV and music, and while I’m unlearning a lot of that now — I probs never should have been taking advice from the four white women that made up sex and the city — I still believe a little bit of delulu can actually be healthy; healing even.
My addiction to R’n’B has always gotten me in trouble. It’s been a vehicle to how I think love should feel, taste, and sound. The words move through my body, touching me the way I need. I have all the playlists. For making out, making love, even make or break. Each song lyric weaving it’s way into a space that’s willing to hold the emotions. Each word wraps around my heart, which sometimes feels permanently broken, beats to the drum reminding me that I’m still here and held, even if it’s not physically.
I was thinking about all of this in the same place I used to get most of my brilliance: the subway. Sat on the 7 train before 9am, feeling nostalgic for my old life full of office commutes and opportunities for deep reflection, I hit play on my go-to chune, ‘Body Smile’ by DVSN, forever reminding me of the ➗ tattoo on my right wrist. I felt so fucking sad.
To know me is to know I’m mostly emo disguised as sunshine. Two things can be true. The train has always offered refuges as one of my favorite places to cry so I sat there, closed my eyes and waited for the water to come. It didn’t. Maybe I’m out of tears (I highly fucking doubt it) or maybe I’m disassociated (sorta) or maybe I just found the outlet I needed in Daniel Daley’s voice:
And now that you know
You were better than I was ready for, oh
It's not like before, no
Tonight I'm making up for it all
For every time
I let you cry
I have to make your whole body smile
There I was on the 7 train, laughing to myself like a psycho.
I listened to the song the whole way through and listened to it again. And then starting thinking of all the others that have kept me company in my sadness, and decided to not be a gatekeeper. This list is not entirely comprehensive btw. But it is the foundations. It will get you in your feels. It will make you cry. And then you’ll add to it.
10 songs for lover girl’s and boy’s who also want to process their emotions through R'n'b:
😴 ‘Dreaming of me’, Sir: The best part of a crush is the beginning. When you can’t sleep and don’t GAF.
🔝‘Top’, Lucky Daye: Don’t do sexy time without it! He took every single perfectly crafted R’n’B song and gave us this and for that I’m grateful.
💦 ‘A.D.I.D.A.S’, Ro James: And he’s not talking about the brand. TFW you’re fully inhaling someone, 24/7.
🫂 ‘Body’, Syd: Someone PLEASE give Syd their flowerssssss!!!!!
👀 ‘PoV’, DVSN: This song, both these albums. All of it, always and forever. This dude just knows how cut through flesh and bone.
💔 ‘Who hurt you’, Daniel Caesar: For when it hurts so good.
💍 ‘Promise’, Jagged Edge: A throwbackkkkkk, this came on in pole class last week and took me THERE.
🫰 ‘Really love’, D’Angelo: The king. No notes.
🌀 ‘Never leave you’, Bobby Valentino: TFW when your first ever crush in 2004 breaks your heart and you promise to never stop loving them.
😭 ‘I tried to forget you’ Sylvester: Sometimes you just can’t.
I hope whatever state your heart is in right now, that you find some comfort in the words of others. And as R’n’B reminds me, it’s okay to be full of maybes. It’s okay to be unsure.
They don’t call it Rhythm and Blues for nothing. Hugging you from this IG post if you need 👇🏽
Take care x