“The first that comes to mind is Oh My Darlin’ Clementine which was a song that I really liked as a kid because it was one of those songs that they teach you in elementary school and you sing. I wasn’t old enough to understand the lyrics because the lyrics, for a little background, I don’t know if you know, it’s written about a miner in 1849 who goes out to California for the Gold Rush and he has a daughter named Clementine. He’s singing to his daughter Clementine and in the last verse Clementine slips while wearing sandals falls into a river and drowns because she’s fat. That’s in the song. I don’t know, I guess I should’ve looked up the lyrics before I started talking. I remember the point where I got to be old enough where I looked it up because it's not super obvious what it’s talking about and I was horrified. I still like the song. Cuz then it ends with, “you are lost and gone forever, oh, my darlin’ Clementine.” So it’s this song about a father losing his daughter in this horrific accident. From the way that the song is written it’s almost like he watches her drown. Its extremely dark and it was my favorite song as a kid.
I distinctly remember finding out when I was… I can see it in my mind, I’m in ohio so I guess like eleven. I was in my living room in dusk. I was singing the song cuz I sang a lot as a kid, I was a showoff. I had more confidence and less anxiety. I think I was thinking about it and then... I didn’t have a phone back then, maybe my mom looked it up on our computer. We lived in Streetsboro, Ohio. It’s in between Columbus in the upper right side- sorry not Columbus, Cleveland, the three C’s of Ohio run straight through - I lived a little bit south of there in a hole in the wall small town called Streetsboro for seven years. The list of places I’ve lived is long. This was before I moved to Kentucky. I still sing it and I still like it. 
My dad claims that I got my voice from him but I’ve never heard him sing. I like to think since my grandma used to sing in the church choir, that I got my voice from her. I was in choir in high school. I dropped out cuz (my teacher) humiliated me in front of the class. We were trying out for solos, it was strange we were group singing to try out for a solo, and at one point he said to me, “I need you to sing quieter, you’re singing too loud.” It wasn’t just that, it was a mixture of the girl who would stand next to me - I don’t think I sing that loud but apparently everyone else did, cuz she would always roll her eyes. I don’t even remember who she was. She was just a bitch. I had a great music teacher in middle school when I lived in kentucky. It was so stereotypical Kentucky: she was the pastor's wife. Her name was Miss (Harrison). She used to yell at people for using the Lord’s name in vain. Like if you said “Jeez” or “Jesus.” Other than that she was a very kind lady, for someone that led a mixed men and women’s middle school choir, she was very nice. 
Speaking of middle school choir, I can't remember the name of it was, but there was this song about the “tail of a midnight rider.” I think a ghost was the premise. Because I remember parts of it, cuz it went like, “whenever the moon and stars are set, whenever the winds are high, all night long through the dark and wet, a man goes riding by” and it continues on. I think it’s about the ghost of a man who rides on the highway. I feel like that’s a folklore thing, like, highwayman. That was one of my most favorite songs in choir. There was this part in the middle where we mimicked the wind, was the idea. It was a fun soprano part too, because it was really high. I’m a soprano. I imagine, almost like, the headless horseman but with a head. A creepy figure in a long black coat that’s behind him, riding a horse. The creepiness of it.
There are composers who make music for choirs and then there’s religious and cultural music. I feel like we sang a couple of slave songs in choir in Kentucky which is just... They’re cool but also a bunch of scrawny, white teens in Kentucky singing a slave song is not really, not really what it was intended for. We did that a lot, too, with songs in different languages. Oh, what is it called… Call of the Flowers. It’s an opera or something very French and it’s a beautiful song, you’ve probably heard it before. We sang it in french and it was horrendous because this was in Kentucky, in middle school.
She taught us how to pronounce things, but apparently singing in a different language is different than speaking in it. All you have to do is get annunciation correct and it doesn’t matter as much. In singing you already make things different. In English you widen your O’s more than a speaker would, you stay off S’ so it sounds cleaner. Our pronunciation was probably horrendous, but no one pronounces anything correctly in Kentucky. Like, “this sounds like French.” We did a German song in (my high school choir) before I quit. I think it was heavily religious because it was not a fun song. No shade to religion. But, I remember there was this kid in my class who was in German, maybe first or second year, and (my teacher) kept asking her about the pronunciations of stuff. She did not know! What are you doing? If you’re gonna pick a German song you gotta know how to pronounce it. 
A lot of acapella is mimicking sounds because people have to be the instruments in the background. Have I ever told you about the time I was in an acapella group? (Laughs) So first of all, the acapella groups at (my high school) were way too intense. You had to audition for them freshman year and re audition for them every year, but if you didn’t audition as a freshman you probably couldn’t get in. I moved there Sophomore year, so I couldn’t audition for one and I wanted to be in one. So, when a bunch of Freshman in choir - there were different levels of choir: there was a first level womens, second level women’s, acapella choir combined men and women’s and first level men’s. But there was only a second level women’s and I was in that one. These girls were in the first level women’s… Way too much detail. But, they decided they wanted to form an acapella group. I joined because I couldn’t audition for any of the other groups. But that just contributed to the fact that everyone thought I was a Freshman and also the fact that people thought I was not as good. They were like, “why are you in that group, they suck,” and to be fair we kinda sucked. We didn’t have any help. The song that we did for the first concert was Valerie by Amy Winehouse which I love that song. The performance is still on Youtube. All the people that had solos were really good but we didn’t have enough people to carry the background and we didn’t have enough experience to write our own harmony to the melody of the song. There was also a lot of drama that I didn’t care about or understand because I was a year ahead of everyone. 
I was just cruisin’ on through, so I quit the group afterwards and then I quit choir a semester later. In part because - so, the highest level you could be in was acapella choir which was men’s and women’s and I wanted to be in it not only because I wanted to be in the higher level choir, but also because it was men’s and women’s. I didn’t want to be in an all women’s choir. At least if it was a men’s and women’s choir it wasnt like, “ah, yes, here is the women's choir.” I’m a soprano so there’s no way I can pull the, like, “Oh, yeah, I’ll sing tenor,” it was not gonna happen.”

Im Not Okay // My Chemical Romance

Kushmaul's Interview

“At the height of my emo phase - people ask me all the time, “what’s the song that will get me” and it is I’m Not Okay by My Chemical Romance. I was the biggest My Chemical Romance fan and the worst part about it was, well everything about it, but for me was that they broke up the year I started listening to them. I was in eighth grade so I lost any hope I ever had of going to a concert. I don’t think they’ll get back together because the lead singer tried to make music in a different genre. It was almost not a genre of music. He was trying to do something all his own. It was almost like weird techno indie. It was awful. It came out Sophomore year of high school and it just made me even sadder cuz it was like, “I missed the prime of this man.” It’s a pretty generic emo group. The lyrics were essentially nonsense - he talks about a girl. It’s the classic emo boy thing of like, “I want you but you’re dating a boy who’s a piece of shit, I can do better by you.” So she’s cheating on her boyfriend with him and he sings about how she drives him crazy. It’s like (singing) “I’m not okay, I’m not okay.” 
I’ve had multiple peaks of emo phases. We’re looking at this from an analytical view. So, middle school was the first time: I wanna say eighth grade. Freshman year of high school was also a peak cuz that’s the last year in Kentucky. I guess the peak continued into sophomore year of highschool, continued into junior year - maybe it’s just my entire life. Maybe I just have always listened to it. It’s the song that I come back to when it’s like, “alright I’m giving into this.” I’ll bounce back and forth between genres, like, it’s been a while since I listened to this song, currently. I wanna say maybe a year ago. I have a distinct memory, when I lived in Ohio it was probably fourth grade or fifth grade, seeing someone wearing a My Chemical Romance shirt. So, I knew of them but I don’t remember how I got into it. I do know that I used to always listen to my music on YouTube because I couldn't listen to emo/punk/rock music on Apple music because my parents didn’t like that type of music and they watched what I listened to. They were the ultimate helicopter parents. So, I have all the music videos for all of these songs memorized. For I’m not ok he was in a locker room (laughs). 
I got a computer in eighth grade, I didn’t have a phone. So I would put the music on the computer and I would dim my screen all the way down and have headphones in when I did homework so that they couldn’t tell I was listening to music. But when I was on my own it was almost like MTv for me. I don’t know if it was a thing for other people cuz their parents aren’t insane, but… Yeah I used to watch a lot of music videos. I wasn’t out to myself so it didn’t make me think of a girl yet. Eighth grade, I was not. Eighth grade, I was dating a boy, at that time. I dated a couple of boys. So I still had current boyfriend, one boyfriend, and then a third one where we both figured out we were gay at the same time. We’re still friends. That was great. Still, technically three boys. The first time I had an inkling that I was gay was freshman year at the end when one of my friends came out and I wrote an essay about why gay marriage should be legalized. I got into a fight about it. 
What I was thinking about listening to any emo song in middle school or high school was probably my parents. “You don’t understand me, this is so unfair. Yada yada yada.” When I first thought I was gay I was thought I was just looking for attention, because that is what my mom had told me. I didn’t come out to here but she was probably like, “gay people are just looking for attention,” So I was like, “I must be looking for attention.” The song that makes me think of (my high school crush) is the American Psycho, American Beauty Fall Out Boy album. I can’t listen to it, I can’t listen to it. That’s not even good Fall Out Boy, this is a true emo kid opinion, Fall Out Boy stopped being good after the first album. I can’t listen to Fall Out Boy anymore, not only that album but any of their music is awful. Thanks for the Memories was the peak, straight down from there. It was horrific. I listened to it a lot sophomore year of high school when we quote unquote “dated” for a couple of months. 
Our first technical date was my sixteenth birthday party, fun fact. There were other people there but I invited them which almost made it a date, by like gay dating standards. Like, “we went out to eat once with three other people, it was a date.” Everybody knew, cuz I had told (my friend) and she was the one who set us up. I told her first that I thought (this person) was cute and she got it to them somehow. (My friend) was like, “invite them to your birthday party.” So, I did and at that point everyone in theater knew that we were like about to date. (One of the theater boys at my birthday party) locked us onto my screened in porch and that was the date moment (laughs). For the last couple months of school we were, like, “dating” but then school ended and they didnt text me for the entire summer. That’s how it ended.”