#1 | Tame Impala – Lonerism

Damn. It has taken me so long to write this damn list that The Slow Rush finally came out (I loved it btw), but my reaction to TSR kind of just reaffirms why I love Lonerism: Kevin Parker makes relatable fucking music. As a whole, this list is full of hot takes and my putting Lonerism over every other album of this decade was a hard choice, but really the right one for me because Kevin Parker just so perfectly captured so many feelings that I (and countless others) have experienced in an unforgettable way.

Look at the first song, Be Above It – a fantastic start to the album that just builds into a crescendo that washes over you as you hear this mounting refrain of “gotta be above it” and I personally get this incredibly vivid, strongly ambiguous memory of myself walking from class to class to obligation to task and repeating to myself similar mantras as I try and just get to the end of the day.

Moving on to Endors Toi, we have a wonderfully bliss and lush song of psychedelic bliss. Remember that vine to the song shooting stars when Patrick (or whoever) would fly through space and it was all trippy and shit? This is roughly similar to what I feel when Kevin Parker tells me “go to sleep, you’ll be fine” and everything goes crazy. I get this sense that I am starting a journey for the next 45ish minutes and I just need to go to sleep and leave my body behind so my mind can soar.

Apocalypse Dreams then starts on an anxious note of possibility: “This could be the day that we push through | It could be the day that all our dreams come true,” but that’s only until the day ends and he is still stuck where he was without any forward progress. The chorus then bemoans how everything is changing while there is nothing he can do until he eventually decides nothing ever changes. To me, this is a song about those things that are plaguing you at night, those apocalypse dreams, and how the dreams of success seem always out of reach, “No matter how long you do your hair.”

Mind Mischief is an incredibly beautiful and painful song for me. As I see it, this is basically a song about Kevin meeting someone he falls for, greatly misunderstanding her intentions and where they stand as he is blinded by optimism, and then getting crushed as he realizes she does not feel the same way about him that he feels about her. The lines “How optimism led me astray | Two hundred things I took the wrong way” hit particularly hard for me here. But then, right after that verse, this incredible moment kicks in where Kevin belts out “She remembers my name” and this fleeting moment of blind optimism comes back where he thinks he was blowing his doubts way out of proportion. This is sadly followed by realizing he was wrong and he tells her how he actually feels, but it backfires so he decides “I’ll be frozen, here on” and be more reluctant to show his feelings in the future.

Continuing from Mind Mischief is Music To Walk Home By, my other favorite song on the album besides Mind Mischief. I can never choose one over the other because they’re both great songs and MTWHB is a continuation of Mind Mischief. Here we see that Kevin is really in love with a version of this girl that he has latched on to, “some vision that I hold onto.” He never really knew her and his view of her was shaped by his infatuation. Yet this realization doesn’t help the heartache and he still thinks about her all the time: “I just don’t know how to feel right | A beautiful girl is wasting my life.” And so he is confused, hurt, and just needing someone to tell him that it will all make sense one day, but until then, what he wouldn’t give to be under the spell of those that seem to actually be happy.

Honestly, I could go on like this about every song on the album, but it would take way too long and I think I’ve made my point. This album is a beautiful, eerie, psychedelic, painfully relatable, and entrancing masterpiece. It is one of my favorite albums of all time and I think my favorite of last decade. Few albums speak to me as much as this one does and I think it will continue speaking to me for many years to come.

Favorite Song: Mind Mischief

