Jillian Ran, assistant arts editor and MCAS ’22, is the type of person that you can’t imagine ever had parents. She’s not an orphan, but she was born a woman with her own agency and convictions. And from that woman a playlist was born. Simultaneously transcending genre and expressing a specific, cohesive mood, the playlist is a well-wrought repackaging of her avant grunge fashion sense. Ran listens to The Cure while she makes her own clothes, her needle weaving in and out of the cloth to the sound of Robert Smith’s careening vocals.
Melodrama—more specifically melodramatic love—is the theme of the playlist. The Stone Roses’ beckoning bass opens the playlist before lead singer Ian Brown begs, “I wanna be adored.” Ran pulls the playlist’s purveyors in with the classics—she complements the giddiness of “Friday I’m In Love” and “I Wanna Be Adored” with The Rolling Stones’ destitute “Gimme Shelter.”
But Ran is above simply stringing together radio staples. She re-contextualizes the inoffensive tracks by surrounding them with Lorde’s mournful “Liability” and Lana Del Rey’s deep cuts—the devoutly deviant “Religion” and the unabashed caress of the romantic violin on “Love song.” Notably, Del Rey is the only repeat artist on the playlist. Again, Ran was born a woman—and on the playlist she is in the company of the women that have redefined the meaning of femininity in their music.
Arctic Monkeys’ down-trodden “No. 1 Party Anthem” calls off the all-too-brief romance Ran incited with the 40-minute playlist. “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” Alex Turner’s Sheffield drawl pleads, leaving Ran’s listeners wishing they could follow her through her rose-colored world for another 40-minutes.
Featured Image by Spotify
