1. Angel Olsen - “Shut Up Kiss Me”
We have finally arrived. Here it is, folks. The moment that you have all been waiting nearly 21 months for: my humble estimation of the best song of 2016.
…What’s that? You haven’t been waiting? Well, what is life and the passage of time if not one long period of indefinite waiting for that which we do not know? No? Too metaphysical for you? Well regardless, if you find yourself here and you for some reason happened to miss this track way back in 2016, then go ahead and pat yourself on the back and stick around, because this jam is quite the gem.
Angel Olsen channels the energy of the gods on this one, somehow managing to equally pack the passion and vitriol of love into a single track. It depicts the downward spiral of a crumbling relationship. She can sense the love decaying and falling apart, and she’s doing her best to hold it together and provide assurances and ultimatums, but nothing seems to be working. The tether holding them together is straining and about to break. She’s committed, but her commitment is being rebuffed. She’s unraveling. All her time and effort is evaporating into nothing. The emotion is bubbling up to effervesce and overflow. She can’t contain it. She’s about to explode with all of the frustration and longing that accompanies an unrequited and spoiled love. It’s this sense of effervescence that gives birth to the infectious refrain of the chorus – “shut up, kiss me, hold me tight”. Her delivery packs quite the punch. It’s a sort of last ditch effort to hold onto love through holding onto her lover. An attempt to co-opt emotion with physicality, seize back control, and reverse her impotence with action.
However, sadly that’s not how emotion works. It can’t be forced, or at least not in any credible or convincing fashion. Once lost, it’s hard – if not impossible, to replace. The body listens to the mind, but emotions exist within a realm more nebulous and infuriating than the physical plane. Emotions are a beast of their own, and try as she might to wrestle them into doing her bidding, she is left to expire amidst an onslaught of passionate despair.
