Wanderer, Sunny

Sunny: To quote the 2012 hit: "Not really sure how to feel about it."

Joe: What is that?

Sunny: It's the line from "Stay."

Joe: ...

Sunny: The song on the album.

Joe: ...

Sunny: The Rihanna cover?

Joe: Oh, is that... I don't know. Obviously it's been a while since we covered this one.

Sunny: Look it up later.

Joe: [laughter] Got it. Sorry. Go ahead.

Sunny: So that's how I feel. I mean—

Joe: That's a Rihanna cover?

Sunny: Yes! I heard it—and this is kind of the feeling I had for the whole album—this reminds me of something, and I can't quite put my finger on it. I heard that cover in particular, and was like, "Oh, I remember this from a long time ago." This was a very popular one, but got memory-holed. 2012? That's before trump! That's a different life. So I had to double-check, and it is indeed a shortened version of the Rihanna song.

It's not bad. The whole album's not bad. I appreciate the opening "Wanderer" thing, the low production singing, and then exiting on "Wanderer" too. It's just a big wandering album. It sort of dovetails nicely into our discussion on Nebraska. Whereas something I pulled out of that book was that Nebraska was an incidental display of wandering, this feels a bit contrived. The biggest criticism is that the two biggest song it are, one, the Rihanna cover—which, ya know, great, it's a strong feminist album, you have a strong Black woman writing a hit, so covering it is great.

And the other one is the "Woman" song, which, there ya go, co-written by Lana Del Rey. And there she is again. And so I thought, who is this album reminding me of? Is it Lana Del Rey? There's a little in there, but it's not that. Is it Maggie Rogers? There's a little in there, it's not that. Is it some homage to Dolly Parton? A little in there, but not that. Fiona Apple's probably the closest I've gotten, but it still doesn't feel quite right. Because of this whole feeling of "this isn't a uniquely personally product"—or if it is, it's not coming through—and it's sort of gesturing too much to other, slightly-more to mega-more popular artists. Even if you do consider the covers co-writes or not. It's just fine.

But you know what? Less than 40 minutes, I was able to listen like three times between yesterday and today, no problem. I can throw this on at an office party, no problem. I'm not gonna get a lot of pushback, or a lot of confusion. It's just fine. So that's my review for this. It's just fine.

Joe: Yeah, I mean I feel like it was definitely underrated at the time that Record Club did it, seven and a half years ago.

Sunny: One of the O.G.s.

Joe: Yeah! Underrated probably just because of the tone, that it was slow. Not necessarily something that I was personally used to at the time. I've gotten there, we've gotten there as a group. There's ways to appreciate this, without worrying about tempo.

Sunny: For sure. There's some great things you can do in a low tempo.

Joe: I read something that... Cat Power might be antivax?

Sunny: [laughter] See, that's an interesting twist! Another topic that probably wouldn't have come up too much in 2012. But now...

Joe: The classic "too far left," and not, like, following RFK or whatever. You know, proving the horseshoe theory, that the left and the right bend around. I don't often believe that theory. But with vaccines, sometimes... I don't think that affects the music.

Sunny: She's a wanderer, man!

Joe: That's right.

Sunny: Can't be locked down by autism!

Joe: She's definitely, uh, independent. Was it around this time that she might have had a kid?

Sunny: Okay. The album cover has a little kid on there. Something about motherhood, feminism... Maybe this is a criticism that's not fair to musicians, but sometimes, the music is making me do too much of the work for the theme-building. That's kind of their job!

Joe: That's a good thing to put a pin in, and save for our book club conversation.