So a few weeks back I made a post on my Instagram that I honestly didn't think would get the reaction it did, which was basically me announcing, somewhat sheepishly, that I've started a CD collection. And I know how that sounds. In a world where literally everything is streaming, where you can pull up any song ever recorded in about four seconds flat, where your phone holds more music than any physical shelf ever could, here I am going out of my way to buy little plastic discs. It's wild, honestly, even to me, and I laughed a little writing that caption because I could already picture people reading it and going "wait, CDs? like, actual CDs?" Yes. Actual CDs. And I wanted to take some time here, since this is my music blog after all, to actually sit with why I'm doing this, because it's not a decision I made lightly or randomly. It's been building for a while, and I think it says something bigger about where I'm at with music, with ownership, and ...

 When Blue October asked their fans on Facebook the other day what their favorite deep cut is, I didn't even have to think about it. The answer arrived instantly, the way certain songs just live in you permanently, tucked into some quiet room of your chest that only opens when the right question is asked. For me, it's "Overweight." Not the singles, not the songs that get played on the radio or show up on curated playlists for people just discovering the band. It's this one, the one that doesn't get talked about nearly enough, the one that opens with a line so simple and so devastating that I still catch my breath a little every time I hear it. Ever carry the weight of another, for how long. That's it. That's the whole thing. Seven words that somehow manage to describe an entire way of moving through the world, an entire personality, an entire life pattern that some of us fall into so naturally we don't even realize we're doing it until a song c...

  It’s funny how certain realizations don’t arrive all at once, but instead build slowly over time—like waves rolling in, each one bringing a slightly clearer picture than the last. I’ve written before about the similarities between Keane and Blue October, and every time I think I’ve exhausted the connections, something new surfaces. Maybe it’s coincidence. Maybe it’s just the way our brains like to find patterns. Or maybe there’s something deeper, something quietly shared between these two bands that goes beyond surface-level comparisons. Either way, the parallels are hard to ignore once you start looking closely. The most recent thing that caught my attention was purely visual at first. Blue October’s debut album, The Answers , and Keane’s third album, Perfect Symmetry , share a surprisingly similar color scheme. At a glance, it might not seem like much—after all, album art across music history often overlaps in tone and palette. But when you’re already aware of multiple connecti...

 This post was written on 6/24/2026. Today is June 24, 2026, and Netflix finally let the world see "The One Piece," the WIT Studio remake of Eiichiro Oda's manga that fans have been waiting on since it was first announced back in December of 2023. The teaser dropped at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, and within hours it was everywhere, splitting opinions the way only a beloved, decades-old franchise can when it gets a new coat of paint. Some viewers are thrilled by the cleaner animation and the fluidity of the fight choreography, while others are mourning the loss of the scrappy, lived-in texture of the Toei original that's been airing since 1999. That tension is the whole story of a remake, isn't it, you're not just updating visuals, you're asking an entire fanbase to renegotiate its relationship with something it has loved unconditionally for a quarter century. What caught my attention, though, wasn't just the animation debate, it w...

 There is a strange parlor game that exists in the corners of music nerd culture, a kind of bracket nobody officially built but everyone seems to understand instinctively, and it goes something like this, if you had to rank the most culturally significant Justins in popular music, who comes out on top, and the immediate gut reaction for most people is to reach for the two names that dominate headlines and streaming charts, Justin Timberlake and Justin Bieber, two men who built empires out of boy band beginnings and solo reinventions, who have sold more records combined than most countries have citizens, who are, by any conventional metric of fame, untouchable. And yet, if you actually sit with the question, not as a popularity contest but as a question about who has done the most interesting, emotionally resonant, technically impressive work as a vocalist and songwriter, the answer quietly drifts toward a name most casual listeners have never said out loud, Justin Furstenfeld, the ...

 There are certain collaborations in music that make immediate sense. The kind where audiences hear the announcement and instantly understand the vision. Same genre. Same audience. Same aesthetic. Safe combinations that feel inevitable before a single note is even recorded. And then there are collaborations that initially sound completely insane. The ones that make people pause because the artists seem to exist in entirely different musical universes. The pairings that sound random until you actually stop and think about them for longer than five seconds. That is exactly what happened to me when I started thinking about Blue October and Mitski. Because at first glance, it sounds absurd. But the more you think about it, the more disturbingly perfect it becomes. And honestly? If Blue October’s next album after Spinning The Truth Around Part II eventually embraces collaborations with newer alternative artists, Mitski might genuinely be one of the smartest possible choices. Not becaus...

 People often ask musicians what inspired them to pick up an instrument or what helped them improve over time. Sometimes the answer is formal lessons, expensive classes, music school, or endless hours of technical exercises. For me, a huge part of my growth as a saxophone player has come from something much simpler. Listening to and playing along with Blue October songs. I've been practicing saxophone for years now. I don't consider myself a professional musician by any means. I play because I genuinely enjoy it. It's therapeutic. It's creative. It allows me to express emotions that sometimes words cannot fully capture. Over the years, I've discovered that some of my biggest improvements haven't come from scales or practice books alone. They've come from finding music that challenges me, connects with me emotionally, and motivates me to keep picking up the instrument even on days when I don't feel like practicing. Blue October has been one of those bands...