A Playlist For When You Don’t Want To Be Pissed Off Anymore

Are you pissed off? That’s ok! All your feelings are perfect and beautiful, I promise! I just happen to have more of a “ride that feelings wave” kind of vibe these days; I loved what Alex said about wanting to embrace how powerful feelings can get in her recent playlist, and I completely agree, but lately I’m just trying to be recognize you can have really strong feelings and still remain oddly chill about it, and that’s ok. There’s no one correct way to have an emotion, you know what I mean? Feelings are powerful but they are also strange and often unexpected!

There might be a common link between all these songs: none of them are solely about one emotion or the other, even if some of them lean heavily in one direction. I think I listen to them when I’m in this weird “pissed-but-also-maybe-not-who-knows” mood because they all recognize that the two thoughts can co-exist in the same brain.

What songs do you listen to when you’re having parallel emotions? Tell me in the comments!!

Rihanna and Kanye West, “FourFiveSeconds”
Ok, so first, let’s be pissed. Let’s roll our eyes like we don’t even care about what we’re saying, like we’re so over it, even though our voices are cracking because we’re not the sort of people who normally vocalize their anger, and we’re definitely not crying, we’re just checking our eye makeup with our immaculately manicured fingers, but maybe we’re crying a little because we’re just not sure if we even should be pissed off. But actually we talked it over with our friends Kanye and Paul and they’re like, girl, you have every right to be mad, don’t diminish your feelings like that!!

“FourFiveSeconds” is a video I watch so many times that now when I go to type “YouTube” into my browser window it’s the first option that comes up. I just think it’s so rare to find a really angry song that’s also sad and slow, because that’s an underrated emotion: when you’re so mad you cross over into this weird calm place, like you can’t even work up the energy to fly into a rage, but who knows, you might if you wait a few more seconds. I also like it because it’s kind of a dialogue with a person who isn’t there, but who I think is listening; Kanye and Rihanna aren’t talking to each other, I don’t think. Rihanna seems to be talking to A Man she left at home (or MEN amiright ladies ha ha oh god she’s so perfect) while Kanye seems to be talking to the friend he’s brought out with him — “hold me back,” he says, “promise you’ll pay my bail.” I mean, maybe they’re each other’s friends in this scenario? Maybe they met up at some bar after a very long Tuesday right in the middle of Mercury retrograde to commiserate and validate each other’s feelings, and I’m just listening like la la la yes same me too oh god I’ve totally been there.

Beyoncé, “Jealous”
This is a powerful song that somehow slipped by me the first three hundred times I listened to the album. The reason — one of the many reasons — that Beyoncé is such a goddamned musical genius is because she made her (perfect) self-titled album one that can function for the wide range of human emotions: happiness, sadness, horniness, and all the variants thereof. So after we’ve listened to all the (excellent) songs about self-esteem and beauty and power and married sex and all that fun stuff, she gives us the song we need for when we’re not feeling any of those things. “Jealous” is for when you’re insecure and you’re needy and you need to hear someone — maybe even an ex-boyfriend, who cares — tell you that you’re hot, you’re desirable, that you matter, because the person who should be telling you that is nowhere to be found and you’re mad but not so mad you won’t forgive said person when they inevitably walk through the door and hug you in that pleather maroon jacket with the matching matte lipstick. Fuck this is so good. I’m going to watch it again real quick.

Wet, “Dreams”
Feel all those feelings/but don’t make that call has become my favorite lyric that also functions as a mantra. Recently I’ve been into this idea of letting your emotions just ~happen~ without feeling compelled to do something about them and advising friends to do the same. I mean, like, we should definitely acknowledge our feelings and talk about them as much as we think we need to, but sometimes I think we’re a little too quick to try to get rid of the bad pissy feeling. Like maybe we’ll send a text a little too quickly or say something a little too snotty, just to expel that bad feeling from our bodies and maybe transfer it to someone else, and those are the bad moments that lead to the looooooong bouts of bad feelings. Maybe we can just feel all those pissed-off feelings but still not make that call, you know what I mean?

Sharon Van Etten, “Nothing Will Change”
I wish I could find the review I read of this song a long time ago but I tried Google searching all the phrases I remember and I just couldn’t seem to get it right. Anyway, to paraphrase: the title of this song is “Nothing Will Change” and the first lyrics you hear are Maybe something will change. Sharon Van Etten is so good at that kind of melancholic malaise that really does need to be indulged every so often. This is the song for after you’ve accepted your feelings and are just riding them out, trying to fight the two opposing thoughts: you could hope things will get better, or you could just decide that nothing will change and make yourself better after you’ve helped yourself to a heaping dose of some auditory self-pity, which is kind of a freeing option, if you think about it!!

Solange, “Bad Girls”
Oh, I fucking love this song. Apologies to my former neighbors and present neighbors because they must hear me singing it at least once a week, and like, believe me, no one wants to hear me singing ever. No I can’t tell you what’s wrong is my favorite part and I always sing it with a little shake of my head. I mean, I can tell you what’s wrong, but mostly it’s just that I was pissed and now I’m not anymore, I swear, I just want to talk about feeling like a hurricane, don’t worry about it.

Tei Shi, “Heart-Shaped Birthmark”
I have spent hours — weeks, probably, if you counted them all out — listening to this song. I can’t tell if it’s a love song or if it’s something else, like she’s not asking for what she wants but instead cursing another person: want you to touch me like you’re drowning in my water/cry over me like if you don’t you’ll become sadder could certainly be a punishment. Maybe it’s both!