Music Review // Mikayla Menzies "Misery"

 

The idea of the song "Misery" by Mikayla Menzies is an interesting one because it perhaps touches upon something people don't really think about when listening to music.  At the start of this song there is a line which says: "I'm blurring the edges of misery / With roadtrip expenses and bad company".  This goes on to discuss not knowing home and going from the east to the west coast.  I feel like this, more than anything else, is about how a musician can find themselves on tour because it's kind of like trying to outrun your problems in ways, but also it just feels like nowhere is home but the road.

There are references to the feeling of misery in here, with such lines as "Cause they say I'm 'fine' / But I still feel like I'm dying" which can highlight how many people (professionals) can think about mental health.   There is also the chorus which says: "When will my life start to feel like mine? / I think I've died over a hundred times".  Having that feeling of being on the road and not in control of your life is something we don't think about enough, as people who listen to music, but there is also a very real and emotional aspect to music which we do not discuss often enough and perhaps this song can bring that to light more.

When you think back to the days of grunge and how all of those musicians were writing these miserable songs-- Soul Asylum literally has a song called "Misery" from 1995, thirty years ago!  You have to wonder whether or not they've been miserable for those thirty years or if they're better now than when they wrote it.  But at the same time, it's a Catch-22 because no one wants to be miserable for thirty years but also if you don't *feel* miserable any more then does it change the tone when you play the songs still?

A dialogue could also be had about how some musicians seem to write songs better when they're miserable and so if an artist finds happiness (and if they're in a public relationship and seemingly enjoying it) then critics and fans will say their music just isn't as good.  Overall, as Mikayla Menzies can remind me of Lana Del Rey and Cinema Stare with those folk melodies, we have to appreciate that while these songs can be about very real human emotions there are also humans behind them that can feel that way in that moment of writing the song but shouldn't have to be made to feel that way forever.