#109, “Blackout,” Ruston Kelly (2018)

150 Favorite Songs, #109, “Blackout,” Ruston Kelly (2018)

In the initial version of this list, back when I was writing it on Tumblr in 2010, it included three songs by Ryan Adams. When I was in my twenties, Ryan Adams was my guy—I spent a lot of nights feeling like “La Cienega Just Smiled,” a lot of mornings feeling like “To Be Young,” etc—but then, in 2018, I saw Phoebe Bridgers play a show at Antone’s in Austin, and she talked about Adams. My understanding of their relationship, prior to that night, was that he was the mentor who discovered her. She told a story while introducing the song “Motion Sickness,” that put him in a much worse light that evening, though, and a year or so later, the whole story about Adams came to light.

Those stories made it basically impossible for me to feel the things I felt when I listened to Adams’s old songs. It was a lucky break, then, that I didn’t really need them anymore. And part of the reason why is that Ruston Kelly was, by that point, writing songs that captured the feeling I got from those early Ryan Adams songs more effectively, and without the baggage.

I would love Ruston Kelly’s music even without the Ryan Adams thing, but the two are, for me, intertwined—and mostly in a good way. Nobody is irreplaceable, and there are always other artists who can touch the parts of you that someone you can’t stomach anymore used to. I didn’t seek out Ruston Kelly because I was looking for a Ryan Adams replacement—his work means more to me than that—but that’s the context in which his music really caught my attention.

Here’s what makes Ruston Kelly matter to me, though: His songs are so fucking good. “Blackout” is a “baby, I’m a mess” song, which is a genre I’ve always had a lot of time for, and it’s one of the best there is. It’s funny, which is an underrated part of what makes these songs great—it doesn’t take itself at all seriously, so it’s not full of self-pity, just self-awareness. It’s vulnerable in a way that feels authentic, rather than manipulative, with an attention to weary detail that makes it feel lived-in rather than hollow. It wisely recognizes that at a certain point, hearing the Messy Sad Dude sing the same thing over and over doesn’t get you anywhere anymore, and then brings on the harmonica—an instrument that is incredible when it hits right, and obnoxious when it doesn’t—and it stays on the right side of the line with it. It’s also catchy, especially in the chorus, which matters a lot when you’re separating “messy sad dude you have sympathy for” from “messy sad dude you wish would just go cry somewhere else.” It’s so much easier to sympathize when you can hum along with a good hook.

Here’s another thing that makes “Blackout” work: The line, in the second verse, “I fake it through the day / that I ain’t suffocating / and I argue LeBron with my friends.” This is a line that it takes a lot of confidence to include in a “baby, I’m a mess” song! Nobody signs up for this sort of song expecting to hear LeBron’s name, but it’s so illustrative of a particular kind of feeling—what does faking it through a day actually look like? Specificity helps here, and the real answer is “you talk about bullshit that doesn’t matter, that you can’t affect in any real way, until the conversation exhausts itself,” and arguing about LeBron, whatever the specific argument might be (better than Jordan? Should go back to Cleveland? Would be an all-time great tight end?), is the textbook definition of the kind of time-waster you use when you are trying to avoid your feelings, to make the day get a little shorter. (Also the harmonies on that part, which I am pretty sure are from Joy Williams from the Civil Wars, really sell it.)

There’s a specific kind of mess that Kelly—who has been in recovery since a few years before Dying Star, the album from which “Blackout” comes—sings about being. It’s not the kind I’ve ever been. I don’t black out in a bar, get high in my car, drive ‘round in circles till I’m seeing stars, or get so fucked up to forget who you are. I’m not a drinking or drug guy, so I’ve never done those things. Mostly, in the days when I felt messy and lovesick the way the narrator of the song feels, I listened to songs like “Blackout” (or, sure, “La Cienega Just Smiled”) and ride those feelings as a way to touch that kind of messiness. I suspect the fact that I’ve never really indulged in the sort of self-destruction that the song is about is part of the appeal for me. “Blackout” romanticizes the hell out of falling apart, certainly, but it’s also a boundary that I always found useful. I haven’t been in a place where I’ve needed a “Blackout” in a very long time, but that makes the fact that it exists even more meaningful to me—it’s a gift to get to feel those feelings still, without having to collapse myself.