Tuesday Tunes: I am Stars.
To this day, when everything breaks, you are the anchor that holds me.
If you were to ask my my all-time favorite musical genre, you might be surprised to learn that it's not Britpop or Grunge, or even those all-encompasing to kind of not mean much at all groupings like "alternative" or "indie".
No, as much as I hate to admit it, my favorite musical genre remains 2000s Canadian Indie Rock. Every band was a banger, uniquely jangled and weird, most with some badass female leads.
I could sit here and pretend I was an OG hard-core fans of "the cool ones" but that would, again, be a lie. I love Broken Social Scene, Metric, and The New Pornographers more than anything, but these bands, as much as I would like them top, do not have my heart. I was not hipster-cool enough to be with the BSS crowd, not dork-cool enough to be amongst the NewPs crowd, and probably didn't wear enough black to roll with Metric. Yes, my favorite all-time Canadian band is Arcade Fire, who I love with my everything, but I never felt like Arcade Fire loved me back.
These bands rule. But they don't have my heart. They never loved me back.
The band that loved me back? Stars.
Big-hearted and earnest, Stars grabbed me from the first spoken words on their 2004 debut album, Set Yourself on Fire:
"When there's nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire."
This spoke to the Tumblr girl in me.
Then came the first lyrics to the opening song, "Your Ex-Lover is Dead":
God that was strange to see you again
Introduced by a friend of a friend.
Smiled and said, "Yes, I think we've met before"
In that instant, it started to pour
Captured a taxi despite all the rain
We drove in silence across Pont Champlain
And all of that time you thought I was sad
I was trying to remember your name
THAT IS THE FUCKING SHIT RIGHT THERE. Sweet, nostalgic, with an absolute hammer of sadness. Their songs, either quiet or anthemic, were never dark or cynical. They were sad. They weren't complicated riddles shrouded in mystery. Their meanings were clear on the surface. They said it plainly and loudly. Their message always: "It's hard out there and your heart will be broken. Love each other anyway."
And maybe that's why I always come back to them.
Anyway, here are some of my favorite Stars songs. In the last 20 years, I have listeneed to their second album In Our Bedroom After the War (2007) more than any other.
