Nothin But Fuckin Love Songs vol. 4

OH HULLO! ✨👋🏻

How’s my Valentine!?!?! 💘

Yo remember when I had a lot of intense but well meaning things to say about love on Valentines Day when I dropped vol. 2 back in 2021? I just had such a moment looking back at that post now, it’s so beautiful to be able to witness myself at the beginning of this healing journey I’ve been on. I’ve really been committed to making space for everyone to feel loved since I got in the thick of this. (She’s always been such a sweet sweetie! 🥹)

So wild to think of how little space I was actually making for myself in that moment. 

It can be really hard to see the love around you, let alone be open to receive all of it. I didn’t realize just how bad I had gotten at receiving love until I was fortunate enough to enroll in yoga teacher training in the fall of last year. During the week when we were covering the heart chakra, we were told we would be doing an exercise where we were going to sit in a circle with our knees touching, hands on our knees, and then have someone sit in the center of the circle. That person was then supposed to make eye contact with you, say something they loved about you, and you were just supposed to take a breath and receive whatever they said while maintaining eye contact. 

You had to rotate and have this experience with every single person in the circle. 

Yeah. 

I remember thinking to myself, “OMG That sounds so uncomfortable. Watch, they’re going to make me go first or some shit.” 

THEY TOTALLY FUCKING DID. 😂 

Let’s just say thankfully(?) it was just about as overwhelming for everyone else as it was for me. 😮‍💨 I probably had the most snot on my hoodie tho 😪. It was so fucking sweet. We all got so much closer after that.

I’ll never forget that experience. It’s made me think a lot about how it seems like it’s become just as hard to receive love as it is to feel comfortable asking for it, and not just from other people, but also from ourselves. 

I’ve recently started to use love songs as a litmus test to see where I’m at with my relationship with myself on any given day. 🧪 If I catch myself hung up on a song and I’m feeling anxious as a result, I pay attention to how the lover is addressed in the song and show up for myself in that way. When the song goes back to feel good vibes that’s how I know I’ve done my job effectively. It’s a pretty cool concept to experiment with. I invite you to give it a try with your favorite love songs. Alternatively, as per usual, I’ve assembled another stack of songs from my stockpile for my annual offering, so if you’re open to receiving some love from me while you venture inward, amazing. You can also just listen to these and pretend like they’re all for you, too. You know how to love yourself best (or you should anyway), so take all the love you need from these pixels you’re interacting with right now. 

Sending you Lots of love, Valentine! 💖

[SONG OF THE DAY] SAKIMA - "Virtus Domum"

As things have been winding down and I’ve taken time to reflect on the year in music we’ve had, I can honestly say that without a doubt SAKIMA is the most important thing that happened to music this year. With every single he’s released he continues to share carefully crafted narratives that are universally relatable but are still deeply rooted in his perspective as a gay musician.

In his latest, “Virtus Domum”, he addresses personal experience of being taken advantage of and being the subject of unwanted advances. Throughout the song you hear him working through the experience, complete with brief victim blaming and what I assume are things he wishes he’d said during the specific encounter he’s speaking to.

With every song he’s released in the past year I can’t help but think about the New York Times interview with Jay-Z where he says something that I’m sure he’s repeating from a therapy session: “What you reveal, you heal.” In every day life it can be incredibly difficult to expose our emotional wounds and begin the healing process. The fact that SAKIMA is very directly slaying his demons so openly will undoubtedly help a lot of people with theirs and even possibly prevent some trauma from happening altogether.

As he told Paper in an interview about the track, “I really hope that for anyone who relates to the track, that it gives them a sense of control over their own experiences, and reminds them that they are in charge of what happens to them. Even when something happens to you outside of your physical control, you still own your story and what becomes of it.”

[SONG OF THE DAY] Sakima - "Apps"

Yooooo London’s Sakima is out here raging against the hookup culture machine and I am HERE THE FUCK FOR IT, Y’ALL. His latest single, “Apps”, from his forthcoming debut full length, Project Peach, speaks to the overall disillusionment from the current state of modern dating. Although he’s speaking to Grindr related careless hookup culture, yer girl knows first hand what it’s like to come back from a bathroom break on a date and see a dude swiping away on Tinder to kill time. App dating is garrrbbbbaaaaaggggeee fam please for the love of everything in your being just go meet people at shows ffs.

As Sakima told Highsnobiety about the inspiration behind “Apps”,

“I was dating someone in particular and it was going really well but by the end of it, it transpired that even though this guy really liked me he just wasn’t ready to give one person his attention. Not because he wanted to sleep around or anything like that, but because there’s just so many endless opportunities to meet someone new 24/7, how can I compete with that? I’m the kind of person where if I like someone I get rid of all the hook up and dating apps on my phone and give whoever it may be my full attention to see where things go, and I don’t think it’s too much to ask for the same in return. So through the frustration and psychological stress that comes with feeling like you’re not good enough to compete with an entire world of new possibilities through an app, I sort of found this inner voice in me that was much stronger and self-knowing than before all this dating apps shit that’s ruining potentially meaningful relationships.”

“Apps” is a departure for Sakima, who typically relies on his angelic voice to be the central focus for his songs. Instead, he enlisted the production stylings of Robokid, who also contributed a verse on the song about dudes being “glued to [their] phone looking to get [their] dick sucked.”I especially appreciated Sakima’s jab at the end of the song about people being too disillusioned to vote. Impeccable timing considering we’re a week out from Election Day here in the US.

Suffice it to say if I didn’t already hardcore stan for Sakima I sure as shit do now.

[SONG OF THE DAY] SAKIMA - "Holy Water"

photo credit: Anna Partington

Our first taste of SAKIMA’s upcoming full length, Project Peach, dropped yesterday, which means your Saturday is about to get hella sexy. In true SAKIMA fashion, “Holy Water” is a come-to-Jesus (heh) moment between lovers. It’s a beautiful moment of vulnerability all the while maintaining a sense of self-worth. You can’t be more up front with someone than saying, “So if you make me love you like I think you are then boy, I’m fucking sacred, better treat me like I’m holy water”. Even though I’m of the opinion that SAKIMA could sing the phonebook and I’d be on board with it, if this level of intimacy is what we’ll be getting for this upcoming album, it’s going to be just peachy.  🍑

[SONG OF THE DAY] SAKIMA - "Show Me"

HAPPY PRIDE EVERYONE!!!!! ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🌈👨‍❤️‍👨👩‍❤️‍👩

Yesterday, Billboard premiered London crooner SAKIMA's  latest soft and ultra sensual single, "Show Me", which is all about communicating sexually with your body. 

Upon playing this track a good, oh I dunno, 20 times this morning, I had this nice moment of reflection of how beautiful it is that as more voices are being lifted up in music that we are getting so many different new ways to hear about expressing love, passion, lust, romance, etc. With his last few releases, SAKIMA has been boldly tackling the queer romance and queer sex from his perspective, all the while, as he told Billboard continually battling with feeling fully sexually liberated in the process. The thing that will always keep me coming back to SAKIMA is his hypnotically soothing voice, which sometimes puts you in a sexy stupor and in other moments (such as "Show Me") there's such a tenderness to his delivery that it evokes memories of being young, wanting to fall in love, make love, etc. 

The lovely London lad is currently working on a new project, which he's still determining the full scope of but is calling "Project Peach" and "it's going to be a complete celebration of queer art, queer iconography, queer stories, all of it." Obviously if there's no full scope of the project yet there's no release date to relay, but more updates on that as it reveals itself.