I love music.
I don’t think that’s a particularly unique statement by any stretch, or even that my taste is particularly esoteric or special – I just like what I like. Most of the time I am listening to Japanese music, be it pop or vocaloid or whatever. The Western music I listen to has become very few and far between.
This past weekend while hanging out with my best friend I started listening to Penelope Scott’s stuff again. Never have I felt more…dissonant with the music I am listening to and what I usually like. Every time I listen to her debut album, Public Void, I feel….odd – like this music is not meant for me. I’ve always felt this is music for some hopeless Zoomers complaining about the state of America or whatever problem there is.
The mixing is terrible, it’s often off key, you can hear the echos like it was recorded in a tin can, she’s clearly a college student just writing what she was thinking at the time, and the lyrics can be repetitive.
But I love music.
Every song on the album speaks volumes about nihilism to me, the hopelessness and just visceral feelings. Although Sweet Hibiscus Tea isn’t on the album it’s my favorite song of hers and gives the overall feeling of what it feels like listening to it all. I don’t think there’s a person on earth who can’t resonate with the lyric “I’m not your protagonist, I’m not even my own.” It doesn’t hurt I’m a sucker for good piano. The hopeless, trying to search for what meaning there is in life just has a different feel.
Cigarette Ahegao I feel is so much more upbeat with all the beeps and boops UwU but perfectly encapsulates being a young person in college, trying to find direction when there isn’t really much of one. “In my defense I wasn’t supposed to be around this long” – what a statement, living simply because….you’re living. Go to college, they say, get a job, they say, why? No need to cry about it.
Now in considerably less subtle allegories there’s American Healthcare. This one hits like a truck for me personally. In the most uncontroversial opinion imaginable it’s pretty easy to say American healthcare is a bit of a mess – but what about the side of the doctors? I may have never been a doctor but I did work in healthcare and even on the other side of the coin not a single person I worked with liked Insurance. People would get denied, people would be told they can only have subpar treatment because they can’t pay out of pocket, and the insurance companies got insulated from it all. People with genuine needs were told to go die for the sake of the almighty dollar, and the doctors usually were the ones who had to tell the patients that. “I wanted to help people” – basically all doctors and healthcare workers want to, but this system is designed to kill.
Aaah, now getting into that deep self-loathing from Feel Better. I feel this song has a much more serious tone of the Tom Cardy “Why Am I Anxious?” – that self destruction tenancy of spiraling into hell. “I don’t want to feel better.” I feel this song really encapsulates the back and forth of feeling and letting feelings overwhelm – like a sort of tidal wave that goes in and out where it just ends with the thought of “feeling like shit is the norm, so stay with it.”
And now for something entirely different – Rät is almost certainly the most literal of songs on the album. It’s clearly pointed directly at Elon Musk and the entire cult of personality he had around him circa 2017. Becoming disillusioned with the thoughts of ethical capitalism or that billionaires may have the best in mind for the regular folk. There’s also so much cognitive dissonance with many people around that time that perfectly gets encapsulated with the “I loved you….. And sometimes I feel like I still fuckin’ do” line. The fall of Elon, even since 2020 when this song was released, has really been the biggest nail in the coffin for people to have hope and I’d love to see the conjecture that Penelope Scott may have on this song in 2026.
I didn’t cover every song in the album, mostly just the ones that resonate the most and give that nihilistic, hopeless feeling. I haven’t heard her new albums but it’s absolutely worth a look. All of her albums are available on her Bandcamp.