DFGAS6

Featuring Miles Davis, The Magnetic Fields, and Charli XCX in a special takeover from my older sister Raquel.

May 20, 2024

Welcome back to Melissa Recommends Music! Today I’m excited to welcome none other than the man, the myth, the legend — my older sister Raquel. At this point she is a storied figure of MRM, having appeared across a few different writeups (one being my review of a Grizzly Bear song in DFGAS1; in a full circle moment, she also recommended a Grizzly Bear song in today’s playlist!).

Perhaps it goes without saying, but given our older/younger sister dynamic, the impact that she’s had on my music taste is enormous. I believe it all started with the fateful 10th birthday mix CD that she made, featuring the likes of Sufjan Stevens, Blink-182, The Clash, Broken Social Scene, the Spice Girls, and more of her favorite artists at the time (she was 17). This mix became my gateway into music, and Raquel’s evolving list of favorites continued to act as a touchpoint for me growing up. Of course our relationship is much more symbiotic now, but as a ten-year-old this mix was highly influential.

Considering all this, it’s only fitting that she write a newsletter for me. So without further ado, read on for Raquel’s playlist of Divorce Songs (no explanation necessary).

Click the image to get to the Spotify playlist, or listen on YouTube

Track Listing

“Shhh / Peaceful” - Miles Davis
“Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand” - Primitive Radio Gods
“In Circles” - Sunny Day Real Estate
“I Think There’s Something You Should Know” - The 1975
“I’m Your Man” - Mitski
“Shift” - Grizzly Bear
“Yeah! Oh, Yeah!” - The Magnetic Fields
“How Can I Not Know What I Need Right Now” - Charli XCX
“You’re a Big Girl Now - Take 2” - Bob Dylan
“Govinda Jai Jai” - Alice Coltrane

It’s been just about a year since I first started thinking about getting a divorce.

A divorce is a break up, at the end of the day, but an incredibly belabored and lengthy version of one. I don’t think people realize just how belabored it is. For me, at least, the experience has felt like a sort of death by a thousand cuts. It’s taken many discrete decisions, an innumerable succession of mini break ups—breaking up our home, breaking up our bank accounts, breaking up our families—each one pretty daunting and heartbreaking in its own right. I Googled “how to get divorced in NY state” a year ago (which in itself felt like a shameful betrayal), but I am still, at the time of writing this, not yet legally divorced.

This process has been like one really winding walk. Interminable, really. I’ve been walking for a long time, it feels. Trying to make up my mind, trying to suss out my own feelings, trying to work up the nerve. This playlist is comprised of songs that genuinely kept me going, one foot after another.

1. “Shhh / Peaceful” by Miles Davis

Something really restless and anxious underpinning this song. There’s a mix of dread and dreaminess. (Or maybe I’ve projected that onto the song? Would love to know if you think so.) I listened to this a hell of a lot throughout my brief stint in Greenwich Village, when I first moved out.

2. “Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand” by Primitive Radio Gods

Another classic walking song, what can I say. Just fucking go for a walk and listen to this, you’ll see what I mean.

3. “In Circles” by Sunny Day Real Estate

This song is a bit on the nose, I know, but often break up songs have to be unsubtle. Indulging in self-pity is one of the best parts of breaking up, after all. And if you’re going to be emo, you may as well do it right and pick a true classic of the genre to get you there.

4. “I Think There’s Something You Should Know” by The 1975

Is this album a divorce album? It is now. There’s a lot of songs on this album that I could’ve chosen—”Frail State of Mind,” and ”What Should I Say,” were both strong contenders—but this song speaks to a very specific moment in time when I finally gained some clarity of mind. I knew what I had to do, and this song helped me do it.

5. “I’m Your Man” by Mitski

This album is definitely a divorce album. No question. (I don’t actually know if Mitski got divorced or even went through a break up with this album. I’ve read that her songwriting is highly metaphorical; nonetheless, this album resonated in very specific divorce-y ways for me.) This particular song gets at a feeling I couldn’t escape. I still haven’t escaped it. “You’re an angel, I’m a dog,” she says, and then layers a choir over barking dogs. Mitski is nothing if not theatrical, even when she sings about a guilt so deep it feels like a stain on one’s soul.

6. “Shift” by Grizzly Bear

If you’ve never heard this song before, I’m sorry for potentially destroying your life and happiness. It’s the only song I know that represents, so well, that place you go when you step beyond devastation. When you’ve sobbed your last sob. When you feel nothing. The song is incredibly jarring, and clangorous, and hollow at the same time; a feat, really.

7. “Yeah! Oh, Yeah!” by The Magnetic Fields

I remember being on a walk (yes, another fucking plodding, pitiful walk) when this song came on shuffle and made me laugh out loud. I’m so grateful for this album, and for all 69 of its songs that truly cover the gamut of how terrible it is to be in love. When I told a friend I couldn’t stop listening to it, she said “Tell me you’re getting divorced without telling me you’re getting divorced.”

8. “How Can I Not Know What I Need Right Now” by Charli XCX

I think this is one of Charli’s best fucking songs!!! And a great normalization of the volatility we experience when things are fucking hard. “I cried hard at the hotel / Did that show in London / Then I passed out at the party.” That’s real af.

9. “You’re a Big Girl Now - Take 2” by Bob Dylan

Obviously Blood on the Tracks is the divorce album and one simply can’t make a divorce playlist without it. (He famously wrote these songs at the end of his first marriage. He also famously re-recorded several of them at the last minute before the album’s release.) Generally, I think, the real ones agree that the re-recordings are a tragic fuck up. On the official album, Dylan’s singing feels performative, and all the instrumentation feels like a heavy lacquer painted over the songs, obscuring them entirely. I’ve personally spent quite a bit of time mining all the demos from the bootleg series released over the years—this is where you’ll find the songs in the raw, with a much more palpable sense of pain and loss. This bootleg is my personal favorite version of this song.

10. “Govinda Jai Jai” by Alice Coltrane

Alice Coltrane’s meditative harp has pulled me out of the mud a bunch of times now. This song reminds me, when I need to be reminded, that joy isn’t that hard to find.

PS: I didn’t include Liz Phair’s Divorce Song because I’ve been listening to that song on virtually every walk since I was 19 years old.