Single Saturdays: December 17th, 2022

Single Saturdays is Five Cent Sound’s new weekly roundup, where our staff members share a song that they’ve fallen in love with and make their case for why others should give it a listen.

“If Winter Ends” – Bright Eyes

Dionna Santucci

Whenever winter break rolls around, I find myself growing increasingly anxious as the time to leave campus grows nearer. The relationship I have with staying in my hometown for long periods of time has always been a complex one. During the winter break of my senior year in high school, I found myself curled up in bed. Frigid and unresponsive to most stimuli, I was officially in the midst of one of my more severe depressive episodes. For hours, I watched the snow fall as I lay under heaps of blankets with my eyes just barely peaking above the covers. Music played through my headphones to block out the sound of my own self-loathing, but I had long given up on paying attention to what was actually playing from the 90s emo playlist I had clicked on for the ambiance. I was hoping for a song to break me out of the emotionless shell I had been rotting away in for months. Two hours into the comprehensive playlist, it became clear to me that hope was futile. 

Just as I was about to close my Spotify and draw the covers over my eyes to sleep for another 10 hours, a song started playing that made my ears prick up slightly. A culmination of white noise, ringing and children playing cross-faded into a loud industrial sound until all that was left was a single acoustic guitar. I let the song play, my heart rate readily increasing with every new line. It wasn’t until the climax of the song that I cried for the first time in months. As tears and snot collected on my pillow to the words: “And I scream for the sunlight or a car to take me anywhere / Just get me past this dead and eternal snow.” I unlocked my phone to add “If Winter Ends” by Bright Eyes to my favorites. 

An early emo, post-punk ballad full of angst and raw emotion, “If Winter Ends” was released in 1998 by Conor Oberst’s fever-dream of a band, Bright Eyes. Off of Bright Eyes’ sophomore album Letting Off The Happiness, the song is a testament to the loneliness and desperation that winter can often bring. “If Winter Ends” perfectly encapsulates the belief that winter is the all-consuming destroyer of human hope. While I love snow—and I much prefer the cold over hot and humid summer days—the home that I go back to during the winter is not one that I would choose. Oberst’s impassioned vocals screaming over a lone acoustic guitar made me feel understood in a time of great hopelessness. The song reaches its end with the lyrics: “And if the perfect spring is waiting somewhere / Just take me there.”  Whether your winter is metaphorical, or your winter is quite literal, your perfect spring is waiting for you, just as it did and does for me. 

“Spiderwebs” - Alfie Jukes

Sydney Johnson

Social media has become a new form of promotion for small independent artists. Apps like Instagram and Tik Tok are becoming platforms for these artists to share their work long before they’ve even finished a song, just to gain feedback from it. When I first discovered the song “Spiderwebs,” Alfie Jukes was sitting in a room with his guitar and only had a first verse. I was immediately enthralled by both the musicality and lyricism of the song that I couldn’t wait for it to be released. By the end of the week, I already had the song memorized and the playlist I wanted to add it to. There was something special about the simplicity of the song and Jukes’ voice that I loved. 

“Spiderwebs” can be interpreted as a reflection on a past relationship where the other person has moved on, but you have stayed in the past so long that you don’t recognize yourself. However, I can also hear the song as you’re still in the relationship; you’re just both changing into people who neither of you know. “You know it terrifies me / Are we missing out on something more.” I think Jukes perfectly captures the feeling of longing and regret through both his words and the way he sings. There’s a cry in his voice that flows with the acoustic melody very nicely. The song has been out for a little over a week and I truly haven’t listened to anything else. I think this song is beautiful and encapsulates so many different emotions.