The Neighbourhood In My Neighborhood

In honour of college app season and them being due in literally 5 days, I wanted to make a list of my top favourite songs by The Neighbourhood that have been on repeat in my AirPods while I live in front of my computer and tirelessly type my life away. 

I would like to preface before you all keep reading this blog that I am not a music professional and only listen to music for my enjoyment, so I guess I would choose label myself as a music maniac because you would never catch me without an Airpod in ever (unless I’m driving, but there’s still always music playing nevertheless).

I also honestly think that the band doesn’t even have any bad songs, and the rankings are my just my favourites out of all of the fantastic songs they have. If you couldn’t tell, I’m a pretty big fan of their music and I even have this sweatshirt that my sister made back in middle school along with her friends with their logo on it.

  1. The song I would put into first place would probably be Single from their Wiped Out! album. I listened to this song for a whole week on repeat during junior year (it may seem like I’m lying but I’m not, it was a very concerning time) and I have no regrets. I feel like what made me really like it was probably the instrumental of the track, which is incredibly beautiful. I would definitely recommend giving it a listen, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. I still listen to the song on occasion, but definitely not on repeat anymore.
  2. The second song is probably a classic for people who are on TikTok, but I swear I found it before it became popular on the platform. I would definitely recommend Softcore from their Hard To Imagine The Neighbourhood Ever Changing album. It’s such a fun song and like Single, the instrumental is extremely fun to listen to. I found it maybe in November of last year and it’s been a definite favourite of mine since then. It’s even on my Spotify playlist specifically for driving at night.
  3. You can’t mention The Neighbourhood without thinking about Sweater Weather from their I Love You album. I hold strange but also fond memories of listening to it with my sister when she was in middle school whiledriving home with my dad from Chinese School on Saturdays. It was a good song to listen to then and it still is now, and if you end up driving up next to me, more often than not you would hear this song being blasted through my car bluetooth. 
  4. The fourth song on this ranking would be Cry Baby which is from their Wiped Out! album. I don’t really know what it is about this song but I was absolutely obsessed with it during the summer before junior year. It would be playing all the time no matter what I was doing and it would be my favourite song to play while driving to work at the time. I guess listening to it now kind of reminds me of the summer I had junior year which consists of pretty good memories.
  5. Fifth place definitely goes to The Beach, which is also from the Wiped Out! album. If you couldn’t tell by now, I’d say my favourite album out of all of the ones they have would be the Wiped Out! album. I know I keep mentioning the instrumental to these songs being really good but this one is especially pretty and I definitely believe that it’s worth trying to look for on youtube or another platform. The song with the lyrics and everything else is also really good and relatively calm so it’s a pretty good song to play for typing up apps or blogs.
  6. I think sixth place would be Pretty Boy from their Chip Chrome & The Mono-Tones album. It’s just such a wholesome song and I love how mellow it is compared to a lot of the other songs that I tend to listen to. Like all of the other songs on this list, it’s great for studying or typing up assignments. In fact, I’m listening to it right now as I’m making this ranking.
  7. Honestly seventh place would definitely be Wires from the I’m Sorry… album. It’s just such an interesting song to me especially in terms of the lyrics and it’s also not as upbeat as the other songs which makes it good to listen to while typing things up or doing homework.

Either way despite my rankings, I would 100% recommend you all listen to the band if you haven’t, and if you have, then please let me know which songs you all like. Also feel free to suggest any other bands that you like to listen to and would like to share. I hope by the time everyone reads this blog that I’m done with apps and am no longer stuck in front of my computer, but then again I’m extremely unpredictable when it comes to being productive. I’m hoping that everyone is now app stress free and relaxing.

 



 

Dumb Wolf Hunting Student Sheep? Growing up Asian.

One thing that I vividly remember from my growing up in China was watching this kids cartoon about student sheep living on the grassland who try to run away from a dumb hungry wolf who wants to eat them called 喜羊羊与灰太狼 (XiYangYangYuHuiTaiLang), the English name being The Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf. 

I feel like watching the show is almost a universal experience for Chinese children around our age, especially because it was so popular. To be honest, my very lacking short summary doesn’t do the show justice at all. I swear I made it sound a lot lamer and maybe more violent than it actually is but even now, I sometimes click on an episode or two to watch just for the fun of it. I would definitely rate the show number 1 on my childhood shows list because even though there were also big competitors like XiongChuMuo (Boonie Bears) or XiYouJi (Journey to the West), XiYangYang has a very special place in my heart.

My memories of the show include sprinting up the stairs of my grandparents’ old house at 3-4 years old, candy or snack in hand, and plopping down on the bed or on this old woven wood chair just so that I could catch the show while it was being played on cable. The only days I could catch it were usually on the weekends, when I didn’t have kindergarten at the local school.

Watching XiYangYang as a child would bring me extreme amounts of joy. The world around me would melt away and all of my focus would be on the small TV in the room, the speakers blaring the theme song so familiar to me that it was engraved in my brain. My grandma would occasionally come sit with me and watch along, bringing me cut up fruit or fresh Bingtanghulu from when she left the village to go to town. My sister and dad would also watch with me when they came to visit during summer break, making commentary and much to my dismay, stealing my snacks. 

When I moved back to America, I found that I could no longer find the show on cable and substituted the show for a DVD called Salad English, which helped me learn English, and the PBS Kids network that showed on cable in our old house up in Wisconsin. It was never the same though and I was always pestering my dad to find DVDs for XiYangYang or help me find videos online, which I eventually did.

I never really knew why I had such an attachment to this show, even after being here in America for so long. Obviously the main reason was because it kept me entertained as a child and made me laugh, but now that I think about it from my current point of view, I guess it’s because it reminds me of a time where I could afford to be carefree and also brings a sense of nostalgia for the life I had growing up in the old house in the village. Now, watching the show reminds me of my grandparents and how much I miss seeing them. With everything happening in the past few years, I haven’t gotten a chance to go back and visit everyone in quite a long time. Watching the cartoon is, in a strange way, my way of trying to keep a connection with how it felt to be back there.

Either way, the show brings back parts of the best moments of my life, and while it’s specifically catered to children, I find that it’s still strangely entertaining to me even now.