🪴 top ~10 daughter songs
Mar. 4th, 2022 11:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
girlrockafter all this time daughter are essentially my favorite band and despite the fact that they're considered an ultimate """emo""" (heavy air quotes) acoustic teengurl band because of youth's astounding tumblr popularity circa 2013 (which i understand because i was in 9th grade and also loved youth then...) i really adore their entire discography and have only grown fonder of elena tonra's lyricism as i've gotten older. daughter alone account for 2% of my entire last.fm library (6k / 275k scrobbles) and since i recently made my top 10 parannoul songs post i thought i'd make this as well.
+ this is actually 12 songs because i added 2 ex:re songs (elena tonra solo project). who says we need to follow the decimal system in the first place...
1. no care [2:53]
from not to disappear (2016)
and you laugh, kiss my neck, say our arguments are insane
fighting over the way something was said
while i'm still here like a cheap threat
/
and i felt like a bad memory / like my spine was a reminder of her
and you said that you felt sick
fighting over the way something was said
while i'm still here like a cheap threat
/
and i felt like a bad memory / like my spine was a reminder of her
and you said that you felt sick
what i love the most about elena tonra is that she understands all the ways in which intimacy can be deeply traumatic—or at least unfair, or ill-fitting, something deceptive and mechanic. sometimes the emotion is more in the aftermath. but my mouth felt like i was choking, broken glass / so i just slept it off. i still hate the word womanhood more often than not, but whether i'm 13 or 23 i feel like there's a perpetual truth to her explorations of self-deprecation and trauma and harm, how we are so often led astray by our socialization. i know daughter's lyrical angst can feel fake deep and reductive at times (or just reductive to talk about in a summative fashion) but i'd be lying if i said that it doesn't genuinely resonate with me.
2. smother [4:01]
from if you leave (2013)
i am wasted, losing time / on a foolish, fragile spine
in the darkness, i will meet my creators
and they will all agree, that i'm a suffocator
/
i should go now, quietly
for my bones have found a place to lie down and sleep
what a mess i leave / to follow
/
oh, love
i'm sorry if i smothered you
i sometimes wish i'd stayed inside / my mother
never to come out
in the darkness, i will meet my creators
and they will all agree, that i'm a suffocator
/
i should go now, quietly
for my bones have found a place to lie down and sleep
what a mess i leave / to follow
/
oh, love
i'm sorry if i smothered you
i sometimes wish i'd stayed inside / my mother
never to come out
i used to like youth more than smother but this song has really shot up my list in the past few years... probably because the lyrics are just the story of my life lol. i always remember this interview where she said that the last line was really difficult for her mother to digest and it made me think about how art and music are things we so often appropriate through a personal / consumptive lens and ultimately divorce from the original impact of their messaging. like yes these lyrics feel deeply applicable to my own life but it's still just a reflection. even so i love this song so much and sometimes it's the only thing i can stand to listen to for hours...... i think the verb smother shapes my existence more than anything else.
3. the right way around [2:41]
from music from before the storm (2017)
this is from their life is strange ost album (i guess) which is mostly instrumental..... i don't know anything about life is strange except that someone is named max and someone is named chloe and one of them has blue hair (i think chloe???). that being said this track somehow makes me feel all the emotion in the world in less than 3 minutes
4. [EX:RE] romance [6:43]
from ex:re (2018)
with every stab wound and exhale, i promised myself
that i would never lose my youthful fears of grown up men
i'm scarred with cruel intentions
/
see, he saw me as a human / this one thinks i'm a slaughterhouse
and you know in the grand scheme of everything / he's probably called a nice man
or an ordinary kind of man
/
romance is dead and done / and it hits between the eyes on this side
the grass is dead and barren / and it hurts between my thighs on this side
that i would never lose my youthful fears of grown up men
i'm scarred with cruel intentions
/
see, he saw me as a human / this one thinks i'm a slaughterhouse
and you know in the grand scheme of everything / he's probably called a nice man
or an ordinary kind of man
/
romance is dead and done / and it hits between the eyes on this side
the grass is dead and barren / and it hurts between my thighs on this side
the entirety of ex:re is genuinely so incising and painfully personal. i love i'm scarred with cruel intentions more than i should. again what i like about tonra's lyricism is that even when things are plainly miserable there's a subtlety in the truth of her writing, where the execution is purposefully muddled and left to more universal application. things are as we see them, or if not, does it even matter? who knows. it's just about the sprawling feeling of being cut open—this one thinks i'm a slaughterhouse. left bare. she knows that any kind of aloneness is worthy of its own expression.
5. youth [4:13]
from if you leave (2013)
collecting pictures from a flood that wrecked our home
it was a flood that wrecked this home
and you caused it
it was a flood that wrecked this home
and you caused it
youth lyrics are kind of meh to me but i still love this song. fsr i used to explicitly prefer the ep version but now that i'm older i'm not as annoying about these things anymore [sorry parannoul 2018 beach life is better than 2011 beach life]....... if you leave in general has a lot of songs that are narrowly focused on navigating the uncertainties of... well, youth, all to varying degrees of success, but while i do appreciate that i think i mostly just love this song for its instrumentation now.
6. fossa [6:46]
from not to disappear (2016)
i don't know you now / but i'm lying here, somehow
i feel sick / you're drowning in the pit of my stomach
oh, i know / it's my fault
while you're busy diving down, i find i feel
alone
i feel sick / you're drowning in the pit of my stomach
oh, i know / it's my fault
while you're busy diving down, i find i feel
alone
this and no care are the true standouts on not to disappear imo... i just love the construction of this song so much, the melancholy and the burst of energy in its instrumental outro. so good.
7. human [3:32]
from if you leave (2013)
woken up like an animal / teeth ready for sinking
my mind's lost in bleak visions / i've tried to escape but keep thinking
limbs lost to a dead weight state / skull cage like a prison
/
underneath the skin there's a human
buried deep within there's a human
and despite everything i'm still human
but i think i'm dying here
my mind's lost in bleak visions / i've tried to escape but keep thinking
limbs lost to a dead weight state / skull cage like a prison
/
underneath the skin there's a human
buried deep within there's a human
and despite everything i'm still human
but i think i'm dying here
i think that i'm still human...... who knows this one.
8. candles [4:53]
from his young heart (ep) (2011)
i'll do whatever you say to me in the dark
scared i'll be torn apart by a wolf in mask of
a familiar name on a birthday card
/
well, i have brittle bones it seems
i bite my tongue and i torch my dreams
/
things cannot be reversed / learn from
the ones we fear the worst
and learn from the ones we hate the most / how to
blow out all the candles, blow out all the candles
"you're too old to be so shy," he says to me, so i
stay the night
/
wide-eyed, like we're in a crime scene
scared i'll be torn apart by a wolf in mask of
a familiar name on a birthday card
/
well, i have brittle bones it seems
i bite my tongue and i torch my dreams
/
things cannot be reversed / learn from
the ones we fear the worst
and learn from the ones we hate the most / how to
blow out all the candles, blow out all the candles
"you're too old to be so shy," he says to me, so i
stay the night
/
wide-eyed, like we're in a crime scene
9. [EX:RE] the dazzler [4:42]
from ex:re (2018)
alone i pondered the cheap frills of hotels
the miniatures, the endless throwaway towels
/
i think about the falsity of hotel sex
expensive bedsheets, and the orange / glowing filaments
the way you used to say you loved me
/
oh, this is heaven
alone
the miniatures, the endless throwaway towels
/
i think about the falsity of hotel sex
expensive bedsheets, and the orange / glowing filaments
the way you used to say you loved me
/
oh, this is heaven
alone
yeah, this is living / alone. i also love that ex:re is a solo project because there's an indulgence to it that you don't really feel in daughter's work as a group, which is kind of what the dazzler is about to begin with. hotel rooms and liminal spaces and being granted the distance to throw yourself into bombastic gestures sans consequence. isolation as escape but also venue for painful introspection, and ultimately the fact that neither of these notions are fully exclusive.
10. numbers [4:17]
from not to disappear (2016)
take the worst situations
make a worse situation
/
i feel numb
i feel numb in this kingdom
make a worse situation
/
i feel numb
i feel numb in this kingdom
i think the lyrics are pretty silly sometimes but i occasionally find myself lying down like damn... i DO feel numb in this kingdom. They got me.
11. still [3:33]
from if you leave (2013)
i'll wrap up my bones / and leave them
out of this home
out on the road
/
two feet standing on a principle
two hands longing for each other's warmth
it's spiraling down / biting words like a wolf howling
out of this home
out on the road
/
two feet standing on a principle
two hands longing for each other's warmth
it's spiraling down / biting words like a wolf howling
this spot honestly could have gone to amsterdam or tomorrow or shallows.... i like a lot of songs from if you leave... tbh now that i'm thinking about it maybe i should have gone with shallows but i've already embedded this so i'll commit to it. this isn't like lifechanging lyricism but i love the repetition of all the still verses as reflection of stagnancy and it really hits overall.
12. to belong [4:17]
from not to disappear (2016)
don't you think you'll be better off
without me tied around your neck
don't you think we'll be better off
without temptation to regress, to fake tenderness
/
i don't want to belong, to you, to anyone
/
don't you think we'd be better off / without the pressure to address
a room of faces / waiting to hear some strange woman / speak in tongues
on lonely fridays
without me tied around your neck
don't you think we'll be better off
without temptation to regress, to fake tenderness
/
i don't want to belong, to you, to anyone
/
don't you think we'd be better off / without the pressure to address
a room of faces / waiting to hear some strange woman / speak in tongues
on lonely fridays
kind of self-explanatory in the way candles is but i love how a lot of the songs on ntd have this synergy between the subdued vocals and angrier instrumentation which really brings out a dimension their earlier work sort of lacks. it's good [2]
sometimes your comfort music is just a depressed white woman from england........ maybe elena tonra is my phoebe bridgers.... no care can be my motion sickness.... ok i'll stop sorry phoebe
unrelated why is parannoul ultimate rymcore topster unironically endearing i think i'm diseased
