Song Club #54: Nothing Days

Writing songs about ennui and slow, rolling hours

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You know the kind I mean. Nothing days are slow days. Days that wash over you. Days without much in the way of momentum. Days without grip.

These are days spent alone, or maybe in the company of only one other. Perhaps you don’t get dressed. Perhaps when you’re hungry you look in the fridge and find only grapes to pick at. Or, perhaps you are with your love and the two of you lose time becoming one with the sunshine.

Nothing days can be joyful, or desolate, or cloaked in ennui such as the day Allegra Krieger describes in ‘Came’:

Waiting on some consolation
For the unraveling sense that you’re going nowhere
Thought you had another bottle in the refrigerator
But you don’t see it there
Walk to the gas station and dish out some cash
The night moves as slow as a lifetime moves fast

(BTW, the way Krieger wraps these lyrics around her melody is fucking delicious.)

Musically, nothing day songs tend to waft, or drift, or dawdle. Take ‘Perfect Day’ by Lou Reed, for instance. It’s a sort of meandering waltz. And actually, the same could be said of ‘Came’—with its lazy 6/8. In my own nothing day song ‘A Dandelion Grave’, I tried to build a pillow beneath it via the slow tempo and floaty arrangement.

Some songs aren’t even about nothing days—they just feel like one. ‘Good Stuff’ by Bnny has verses that ache like a lonely nothing day, and choruses that feel like a breezy walk to nowhere. Once it gets going ‘The Lotus Eaters’ by Lightning Bug, feels like a nothing day walking along an abandoned stretch of highway.

There’s a lot of directions to explore! This week, let’s dig into nothing days.

Keep going,
Lucy

‘Entry Points’