Nicksy Once Monthly says hello
Before the official launch, let me reintroduce myself—or introduce myself, if you weren't around in my past life as a pretend music blogger.
Well, hello there, and welcome to Nicksy Once Monthly.
First off, this isn’t the proper launch installment. That happens on 16 January. Yes, I’m doing a pre-launch post, because it felt right. Besides, I need to introduce myself, and this project as well.
Despite this project’s name, I don’t really call myself “Nicksy”, but rhymes are good. Anyway, hey there. I’m Niko. That’s my actual nickname.
Perhaps, if you’re in the right circles, you remember me from earthings!, the little music blog I wrote (with the help of some friends) from 2012 to 2019. I took that a little too seriously: inspired by the old music magazines I perused back in high school, I attempted album reviews, concert reviews, recurring features, and even wrangling musicians to pitch in themselves.
But it was always grounded on the stuff happening to me and around me. I noticed that, outside of the release cycle and the PR campaigns, I tended to write about songs that resonated to me at a given time. Maybe I heard it on the radio and I ended up really feeling it at the time. You get the idea.
If I’m being honest, I’ve been plotting this “revival” for the past few years now, stacking the odds so that I don’t burn out like on the old blog, mainly by attempting to completely remove myself from the aforementioned release calendar. But I hesitated finally pulling the trigger, because it takes so much time. I mean, the planning alone took a lot of mental energy. But here we are. I’ll probably elaborate on the proper first edition.
Here’s the plan, for now: I’ll be sending out an email every third Monday of the month, with a playlist of the songs that have resonated with me: the new stuff, the classics, the “overlooked” and the “underrated”. Of course I’ll talk about why I chose the songs I did. I’m honestly not sure if all this makes for an appealing product, but then, this is a bit of an experiment, so let’s see where we end up.
I expect that there will be extra emails in between the monthly playlists. I’ll be figuring it out as we go along, but to be honest, I have a bunch of ideas already, which makes me wonder about the whole idea of this newsletter adjusting to my workload and not the other way around. But I digress.
If that sounds interesting to you, then why not subscribe? Honestly, I get a kick out of knowing that people are reading what I write—and email newsletters mean you get a bigger kick out of knowing how many people actively choose to include you in their reading lists.
If you’re already a subscriber and are reading this on your inbox, thank you! And maybe tell a friend too about Nicksy Once Monthly. I’d be really grateful.
Also, if you have a song you want me to hear, email me at nicksyoncemonthly@gmail.com, or you can get in touch through Facebook and Twitter.
Oh, right, here’s a playlist, too. It’s not exactly a list of my absolute favorite songs, but I hope it’s representative of the stuff that I like listening to (and raised on, in some cases), as well as songs that have defined my past life as a pretend music blogger. I mean, you could go back to earthings! for this, but it featured almost two thousand songs, and some of my favorites never got mentioned at all. (But there’s a playlist for that, too.)
Now, it’s time for a Taisho secret: one of the songs here is my morning alarm tone, and another of the songs here was, until very recently, my phone’s ringtone. Guess which is which in the comments, if you’ve gotten this far. And maybe if you have song recommendations too, post them here too!
Nicksy Once Monthly properly launches on 16 January. See you, then? Please please please be here in two weeks’ time, thanks!
Yes, I commissioned art for the pre-launch post.
A tip of the hat to my friend Noreen Santos, who illustrated the key visual for this pre-launch entry. I met her almost fourteen years ago, at an Allison Iraheta mall show—she was a kid back then!—and we somehow kept in touch all these years. You can follow her on Instagram, where you can see her draw Red Velvet’s Wendy a bunch of times.
On the playlist
Cœur de pirate—“Golden Baby”
Blonde (2011)Tears for Fears—“Everybody Wants To Rule The World”
Songs from the Big Chair (1985)Kenny Loggins—“Heart to Heart”
High Adventure (1982)Elbow—“The Birds”
Build a Rocket Boys! (2011)Baek Yerin—“Across the Universe”
Frank (2015)Suede—“She’s In Fashion”
Head Music (1999)Marjorie Fair—“Waves”
Self Help Serenade (2004)Imago—“Sundo”
Blush (2006)Reese Lansangan—“Autopilot”
Arigato, Internet! (2015)D’Sound—“Do I Need A Reason”
Doublehearted (2003)Camera Obscura—“The Sweetest Thing”
My Maudlin Career (2009)Manic Street Preachers—“Empty Souls”
Lifeblood (2004)Kimbra—“Come Into My Head”
Vows (Australian tour edition) (2012)Broken Social Scene—“7/4 (Shoreline)”
Broken Social Scene (2005)Keane—“Everybody’s Changing”
Hopes and Fears (2004)