The idea of “the voices” has become a prominent fixture in the comedic zeitgeist of Gen Z. Flipping over too many civilian cards in Codenames? The voices told me to. Itching to go haywire in a driving simulator? The voices are calling. Booting up Hitman to a crowd of non-targets you can open fire on? They beckon. I have feelings with a capital F about the voices trope that are beyond the scope of this piece. One concise criticism I will give here, though, is that this joking portrayal gives the improper sense that “the voices” are some distant, clearly nefarious entity. Ditto for the notion that counterproductive inner voices are exclusive to someone on the verge of a psychotic break, clawing at their neck and cackling about the “spiders in my blood.” In reality, they’re not too distinguishable from intrapersonal dialogue. You have to listen to them a few times and get burnt by doing so to realize when the voices are maladaptive and not worth heeding. I have a friend who’s diabetic who talks about having “tells” for low blood glucose, and I imagine it’s similar to that. There are details and patterns you pick up on to figure out when you ought to ignore your impulses and just ride them out. It's all part and parcel with learning about yourself.

Little aside here! I get that I'm talking about voices and I'm not exactly exuding mental wellbeing here. I would like to be very, very clear about one thing: I do not have schizophrenia, nor am I claiming to or comparing myself to those who do. What I am referring to is intrapersonal communication, self-talk, and internal monologue that happens to be negative or ill-advised. I am well aware that this is perfectly normal and prevalent, and you don’t have to tell me that I'm not special. I know I'm not some tortured soul to be pitied for my cruel fate and that this is just how I choose to dress up the same stuff that everyone else copes with. I'm just a guy who’s maybe a little worse at dealing with his problems than you are. It is absolutely not my intention to belittle or make light of a serious condition, one that is not dehumanizing but rather requires a compassionate, equal care and understanding that it so rarely receives. That said, if I've pissed you off anyways, I highly encourage you to donate to the Schizophrenia Society of Canada. I've already wired them 50 bucks. They seem genuinely invested in positive and dignified outcomes for their constituents, which is all too often not the case with mental health charities. They’ve even got a little about-us-without-us type thing in their values section! Ain’t that nice.

Alright, picking back up now: you know the idea of self-talk? It’s the dialogue in your head that’s directed at yourself as opposed to an imagined other party. It can be positive or negative, use first or second-person pronouns, yadda yadda yadda. The angel and devil on your shoulder type stuff. Well, sometimes that internal monologue will want to argue with itself and fragment into various tones as if Asmodeus and Beelzebub are getting into it over my clavicle. I've noticed that when this happens usually neither of them are right, so it’s best to just sit on my hands and do nothing until I feel a bit less shaken up. Sounds easy enough, but as anybody who has ever practiced any manner of self-restraint knows, damn brain got hands. Those voices like to taunt, tease, and demean. And since my thoughts are myself and I am an obnoxious little shite, I get a lot of songs quoted at me. Sure, when I do it it’s “an immature communication strategy” and “stop texting my number with Spotify links Alec,” but my inner critics have no such remarks to answer to. Thus, I've gone ahead and compiled some of my voices’ favourite songs to chirp me with. Enjoy a dark look into my grim, twisted mi— I can’t even bring myself to write that ironically. Besides, it’s pretty chill up here right now.

‍

“Where is Everybody?” - Nine Inch Nails (NIN)

I've chosen this song to lead off the playlist because it is absolutely front-to-back quotable by the little demon they call my conscience. If one of those little bastards up there is in the mood to ask me: “Did you happen to catch or did it happen so fast/That what you thought would always last has passed you by?” I have no choice but to be like, ‘Yeah, no, you’re right.’ I did sorta fuck up something I thought I was in for the long haul, didn’t I? It's a good rule of thumb that someone who wants to be that virulent has no advice worth listening to.

Look, I could sit here all day just pulling lyrics out of a hat and explaining the how and why of my internal monologue barraging me with it, but I'll instead take this space to flesh out just one line that I really love. It’s a bit of a doozy. I think you’re supposed to do line breaks for a poetic/prosaic quote of this length which I really don’t wanna but, ugh, fine:

And goddamn I am so tired of pretending
Of wishing I was ending
When all i’m really doing is trying to hide
And keep it inside, and fill it with lies
Open my eyes, maybe I wish I could try

I know this is a big ole excerpt but it really does run through my head quite often. A lot of the time at work. retail makes you feel a certain way, I suppose. But truly, there are times I have felt I could not have written a better description of my own mental state. There is nothing I can say about this quote, no way I can expand on it to make it a more accurate encapsulation of myself. 

Okay, maybe there’s one detail I can give. Do you want it? Alright, so the end of this passage stitches in to the start of the chorus, which answers the title query with a multitude of gerunds including pleading, needing, breeding, etc. etc. etc. If you read it as one continuous declaration, Trent Reznor is saying that he wishes he could be so superficial and illusioned with life as the rest of society. If, on the other hand, you separate the verse and chorus… well it means what “trying” usually means. That isn’t even the on— okay, enough! I've had my fun. I get it. On to the next track.

‍

“People = Shit” - Slipknot

Oh boy. Bad memories of walking around front campus with a persistent psychosomatic ache in my chest and “People = Shit” pouring through my puny earbuds. Something about that straight up death metal intro giving way to Corey Taylor unleashing a world of pain into a microphone just feels like home when your consciousness is burning. I’ve already written ad nauseam about why Iowa is a perfect soundtrack for a hell you dug yourself into, but it boils down to the fact that Corey et al. had a lot of problems on their hands, were remarkably poor at dealing with them, and decided to pour all that strife onto tape. Lemme see if I’ve got anything more here that didn’t make it off the cutting room floor.

This is a feeling so strong that you spend every waking second experiencing it. Its grasp is so fierce that you will not remember so much as a moment when you weren’t forced to bear it. It is a red hot ball of pure intensity sitting within your chest that pervades every fiber of your being and occupies every second of your thoughts. It seeps into every last thing you do — and that includes, in this case, the vocal performance on… all of Iowa, really.

Look at me, block quoting myself. Is this what it feels like to be an academic? Anyways, if handling all that ever got to feeling like too much, the voices in my head were keen to remind me: “Overdo it, don’t tell me ya blew it/Stop your bitching and fight your way through it.” And, I mean, I guess I did…? But I’m certain there were healthier ways to do it. Ones that didn’t involve mediating my emotions by slipping a name into the drunkenly stammered “Everybody’s gotta die” adlib right before this song’s final chorus. I still catch myself wanting to do that when I play the tune back through my mind: Pavlovian response, I guess. Maybe not a perfect analogy, but this is my brain and I make the rules around here. Moving on!

‍

“Soil” - System Of A Down (SOAD)

“Don’t you realize evil lives in the motherfucking skin?” This is a line that has resided in various nooks on various socials of mine for quite some time, and I've always found it quite poetic. Because you do realize it, don’t you? You’ve suffered through enough hardship in silence to understand people don’t exactly wear their struggles on their sleeves. So why don’t you act like it? Treat people with compassion, and try to be understanding of others because you have no idea blah blah blah we’re getting way too wholesome for this listicle. The other side of that coin is that it enables me to maladjustedly single people out and say “Hey, you, I bet that, in spite of any evidence to suggest it is true, you are absolutely down in it right now.” (Waiter waiter! There’s a NIN in my SOAD!) Sounds innocuous, but it screws with your psyche. People are never dealing with as much as you want to think they are, but they never have it as good as it may seem, either. Something, something Riemann sums.

A quick side note for some actual music journalism for once: the teetering verses of “Soil” and the thick, crashing instrumentals it juxtaposes with unpredictable bouts of rest and melody make the tune System’s heaviest by my estimation. Which is not saying much in the grand scheme of heaviness, but it’s a neat distinction nonetheless.

‍

“The Wretched” - NIN

Some songs just feel like they were written about you. There are many circumstances that society tells us might befall the nebulous group known as “people.” Without fail, they accompany the implied essentialist caveat that you aren’t — nay, couldn’t be one of them. But then the bogeyman comes knocking at your door and, well, “Now you know/This is what it feels like.” Feel free to take your stab at what exactly I'm talking about. This is one of those gold star taunts that my voices just love to come back to, and they’re fucking mean about it too. I've tried to rationalize why that is, and though the realistic answer is that there is no rhyme or reason, I'd like to think my affinity for the song is due to the sheer emotion behind the vocal delivery. It’s a tough call between some other songs off The Fragile, but I’d say “The Wretched” features the best pure yelling of Trent Reznor's studio career. I don't mean yelling in the pissed-off, head-out-of-your-ass punk sense, but rather an unadulterated cry for help. It’s a concoction of distilled anguish and sheer desperation to feel okay again. Beautiful stuff. In my humble opinion this passion reaches its zenith in the final chorus with the overdriven calls of “You can try to stop it but it keeps on coming!/You can try to stop it but it—” Sometimes this line presents in my stream of consciousness as an acerbic lamentation of depression, but sometimes it begs to be exclaimed in a thunderous expression of everything I have ever felt.

The zingers don’t end there, though. “The Wretched” features an absolutely scathing pre-chorus of “It didn’t turn out the way you wanted it to/It didn’t turn out the way you wanted it, did it?” So simple, and yet declared with such pointedness. I have tried indefatigably to hurt someone with this lyric, to believe someone might be so vulnerable as to be pierced by the sharpness of its wit. I even tried sending it to a high school acquaintance whom I hadn't messaged before or since. Unfortunately, since this is all a load of sophomoric melodrama bull-shite, I haven't found any targets but myself. I promise you, despite how insufferable I've pretended to be about it, this does actually hurt to hear from inside your head after a failed relationship. That is, indeed, also the initial context in the quasi-concept of the album. You don’t have to let those destroy you, but you get some damn fine media out of doing so, if I may say so myself.

‍

“The Grocery” - Manchester Orchestra

“I don't know where I'm going, but I'm going anyway.” Hasn’t that been true of me many a damn time? If you have ever known me you will be aware that I love just going places. I can never seem to get enough of walking around and such. I think that if not for the constraints of this mortal vessel I would be walking around 24/7, 365. Sometimes it’s for leisure, and sometimes it’s just to stay afloat. This one likes to bounce around my skull during those “stay afloat” times, off-genre-ness notwithstanding. I saw the Manchester Orchestra at the CNE in 2024, and their opener Moneen had a mosh pit going which I still think is bizarre. It was fun though. Oh, and I caught Andy Prince's bass pick.

“Dirty Window” - Metallica

Listen, I know this is a St. Anger track, and I'm not here to try to convince you that it’s somehow a beautiful exploration of novel soundscapes in heavy music or some horseshit. However, the album has some good material on it, even if the development and execution of that material leaves a plethora to be desired. “Dirty Window” is one of those cases. It was purportedly written about James Hetfield's alcoholism, but it’s easily generalizable to any manner of struggle. Whereas James was in recovery or denial or whatever, I am in a much more secure place than when many of these songs would frequent my train of thought. “This house is clean, man/This house is clean!” With that said, is that how I'm perceived by others, or am I still marred by misdeeds? Have I really been freed from the apprehensions and criticisms of my mind yet? “Am I who I think I am?” “Dirty Window” suffers from the same overly repetitive song structure and god-awful propane-cylinder-slash-[metalpipefallingsfx.mp3] snare tone as the rest of St. Anger, but it’s got some pertinent ideas up in there.

‍

“Dig” - Mudvayne

Okay, yeah fine it’s the ‘br br deng’ song. The lyricism may be unpalatably y2k nu-metally, I know, but that doesn’t change the fact that the latter half of the song is chock full of sardonic one-liners for a belligerent mind to latch onto in troubled hours. Mind you, I’m not pathetic enough to say any of this shit to myself in earnest, it just works well to hyperbolize the prospective poor decisions that do thump around between my ears. But hey, if you so much as think of wanting some kind of reprieve or accommodation to help you process this? “C’mon, motherfucker, dig.” Don’t even look weak around me. I said dig deeper, motherfucker. This is a very difficult song to take seriously, but I don't think you have to.

‍

“Sleep Now In the Fire” - Rage Against The Machine

The voices like to quote this one at me on those nights I'm acutely aware of what I'm missing. Seeing an iMessage group chat blow up over someone’s shoulder, the eruption of boisterous cacophony from a mess of pinned messenger bags across the street, or the banter of two lifelong friends on the train who’ve already discussed all there is to know about each other many moons ago. “The cost of my desire: sleep now in the fire” ringing through my ears as I attempt to release myself into the night. The worst part is they’re right about every last bit of it. On a completely different note, I’ve always thought this would be a great soundtrack to some action movie hero shooting their way through a boardroom full of evil executive officers who exploit the labour of the proletariat for personal advancement or perpetuate the influence of the military-industrial complex and its disregard for human dignity or whatever it is that evil suits would be doing.

‍

“Highway Song” - SOAD

There are some truths contained in this track that my brain is quite fond of eliciting. Plus, this is the last song I've cried to, so I kinda had to throw it in. I feel a little dumb about that, given it was written about the internal conflicts of a band I am not in, but it really just hit me one day. “The purest forms of life/Our days are never coming back/The canons of our time…” and sure, maybe that was prophesying a final chart-topping album/touring cycle before System went dormant, but I’ll be damned if I can argue when that little voice reminds me: “...our days are never coming back.”

‍

“We Sink” - CHVRCHES

‍

‍

Shoutout to the people at EA Sports who chose the soundtracks for FIFA in the mid 2010s for putting me on this one — y’all were really dialed in. CHVRCHES’ The Bones of What You Believe is a veritable magnum opus of synth pop: catchy, infectious, and rhythmically diverse, with more than its fair share of emotional charge if you scratch beneath the surface. I contend that between the album name, the group’s moniker, and a tracklist flashing titles like “Gun,” it really should have been some anti-theistic black metal bootleg tape. Anyways, the big line here is “I’ll be a thorn in your side ‘til you die,” which is certainly true of my internal voices as they run through excerpts from this very assemblage of audio. I'm sure others would argue it's true of me, as well.

‍

“Little Talks” - Of Monsters and Men

Before I did my, ahem, reconnaissance for this playlist, I thought the end of the chorus went “Though the truth may bury this/Ship, we’ll carry our bodies safely to shore” with a word’s worth of enjambment on the first clause. I always felt that was oddly dark for the tone of the song: are they saying the truth is going to drown them but they’ll wash up ashore or something? That seems a bit macabre for a folky-poppy little acoustic jig. But no, apparently it’s “Though the truth may vary, this/Ship will carry our bodies safe to shore,” meant to be felt with “this” anticipated. I still maintain that “Don’t listen to a word I say/The screams all sound the same” is a bonkers line to include in such a quintessential stomp-clap-hey tune. It’s not the worst advice for me, either.

‍

“Laid to Rest” - Lamb Of God

Modern metal classic right here. It opens with a pretty iconic spoken word intro: “If there was a day I could live/If there was a single breath I could take/I'd trade all the others away.” It's plenty poetic and romantic and all but it’s terrible advice. I've tried, and it’s not worth it.

‍

No, “Laid to Rest” cracks this list for its chorus. It brings the perfect energy and verbiage to beat yourself up to, so train yourself to some pounding riffage and get after it. Withdraw from people. Knock something back to cope: “see who gives a fuck.”

‍

Lithonia - Childish Gambino

“Nobody gives a fuck.” My name isn’t Cody Larae but man, what have I done?

‍

“The Big Come Down” - NIN

Remember earlier when I said only a few songs could give the screaming on “The Wretched” a run for its money? Oh, you don’t because I said that ten tracks ago? Well, anyway, this is one of them. If “The Wretched” is a release of Reznor's emotions, then this track is their genesis. Trent is livid with himself. He’s pissed that he relapsed, he is completely indignant at the fact that he’s thrown away all of his hard work spent clawing back from addiction, and he is foaming at the fucking mouth at the idea his mind would betray him and reprise the feelings of inadequacy and dysphoria that drove him to substance abuse in the first place. And god, does it ever show in “The Big Come Down”’s apoplectic vocals. The track superimposes them upon an equally vitriolic background loop: an absolutely grating drum machine that ostensibly sampled a pickaxe striking rebar, mechanical synths, and this horrific atonal acoustic motif played on a wildly out-of-tune guitar. In a later instrumental break, electric tremolo passages are interspersed with choked out squeals from Danny Lohner defiling his fretboard. It's deeply unsettling to hear all this on such a polished album; there’s no reason such unmusical material should end up on a record. Yet it perfectly backdrops the seething hatred pouring out of Trent Reznor's heart. He knows the rules well enough to break them. It's the same thing with writing. I could draft this up with perfect punctuation and grammar and formality; I swear to you, I really could. I could drop the second-person shtick and do away with the sentence-initial conjunctions and make this stomachable to the most academically fastidious of professors. But I cuss and I write like I'm speaking and do my whole little conversational routine. Why? Well, nobody wants to listen to you scream your lungs out in perfect contrapuntal harmony. and nobody wants to read a show review written like a grade 12 AP English essay, now do they, Will Cunting.

Let me set a scene for you. The date is October 18th, 2024. I may have only played this song once that day, but my inner voices kept it on repeat. “There is a game I play/Try to make myself okay/Tried so hard to make the pieces all fit” but you hoisted your sledge and smashed that all apart, didn’t you? And for what? A month and change later you’ll be pacing in the foyer of a common room, hardly working up the courage to walk through those regal doors, sit your ass down, and talk to exactly no one. Did it help?

Next scene: November 2nd, 2024. “There is a hate that burns within/The most desperate place I have ever been/Try to get back to where I’m from,” but the closer you got, the worse it became, eh? “The closer I get, the worse it becomes.” Loop it. Loop it. Loop it. There is enough carnage in your heart today to match his intensity. Words used sparingly, so each one lacerates. Shrapnel to the sternum. Loop it. Loop it. Time to isolate again. Your last Hail Mary worked, and you think you’re Brett fucking Favre. It won't do jack; why the hell would it? Loop it. once more with passion. “There is no place I can go, there is no place I can hide/Feels like it keeps coming from the inside.” Better get used to that. You’re gonna hear it a lot in the coming days. “Gotta get back to the bottom.” Well, look: you’ve done it. Those brittle cries will be echoing through your thoughts for weeks, because fuck, it’s not like you have someone to yell them to anymore. It’s the big come down, Alec: “Isn’t that really what you wanted now?”

If you’ve made it this far, it means you’ve put up with a whole slew of my bullshit, and for that I sincerely thank you. I hope you’ve enjoyed my attempts to soundtrack and explicate the basest of my internal dialogues. I also hope you haven’t come out of this disappointed that I failed to serve up any brilliant back-of-the-bin cuts that you’d otherwise have had no way of finding out about. Unfortunately, our minds aren’t pretty and they aren’t fun. They like to latch on to familiar things: familiar patterns, familiar bad ideas, familiar songs. I feel a little bit bad about putting so many massive commercial artists on this playlist, but the reality is that when my mind wants to piss and argue it chooses songs I've heard umpteen times over as its medium. Not the worst bargain for me as it makes it a touch easier to tell when to shut my shit down. To try to atone for this, though, I've attempted to put a spotlight on more varied artists in my honourable mentions. Coming at you without further ado:

‍

“You Know What You Are?” - NIN

I know I just said all that crap about “different artists” and yet it’s more of my depression music, but I came so damn close to putting this on the playlist that I have to mention it here. It's a fun one to bring up because the answer to the titular question was “no” for a hot minute for me. Ever since then I've wanted to throw together a poster reading: “Remember where you came from/Remember what you are.” I think it’d make nice decor. That said, there’s already way too much NIN here and the song isn't that good in all honesty.

‍

“Sun of Nothing” - Between The Buried And Me

There are certainly some pertinent lyrics in here but it’s a 10 minute song and there are, like, 13 verses. I don't expect my mind to remember all of this, much less quote it back to me in a panic.

“The Rat” - Melted Bodies

Yeah, I suppose I do have a nerve, don’t I? Melted Bodies are an absolutely awesome little project, but they’re a topic for another day.
Any Paleface Swiss song

The instrumentation is top notch and they’re topical, but good lord Marc Zelli is one corny dude. I'd like to imagine I'm not that trite (well, anymore).

“Cool About It” - boygenius

What? Don’t tell me you thought that was an accident. Truthfully, “We’re In Love” cut a little deeper for me, but it’s a bit less quotable. And I gagged y’all. Be honest.

‍

Alright, I’m done talking now. Just one last thing: there are more songs in the playlist that I didn’t mention here. Just because I chose not to write about them, doesn’t mean they’re any less significant to me. I would really love to share them with you, so feel free to check them out at the link above!

‍