Monthly Favs

I don’t know about you, but I’m like a different person every week. Literally nothing’s off limits—including my tastes!

At the end of every month check back here to see what pop culture favs are really standing out: books, albums, songs, and what’s chic enough to survive another mercury retrograde.

May 2026

Album of the Month: “The Great Divide: The Last Of The Bugs” by Noah Kahan

Okay, so before I get into this, I just want to establish that I am not a music critic by any means, and this is just my opinion of the month based on the headspace I’m in at the time of writing this. I listen to a lot of music with no preference for genre and for that reason, picking a great album was difficult because so many of them have dropped in the last few months. However, in “The Great Divide: The Last Of The Bugs” Kahan to me, especially with his added bonus tracks was at his best. When I listen to songs, I not only listen to the melody, but the lyrics and how they fit. I enjoy music that means enough to the artist to make me feel something, and this album is dripping with smalltown nostalgia, the disillusionment of what it feels like to reach success, and the pain of outgrowing a system you no longer fit in.

I’ve been a Noah Kahan fan since high school in 2016 (yes, I’m old please don’t do the math), and I will be the first to admit from the time I heard his song “Sink” I genuinely thought good God, this man is onto something but this shit is so raw the masses are not going to absorb him the way they should. I was his biggest fan and #1 hater, and I am so glad I was wrong. As someone who’s just begun to understand and unpack what leaving to find belonging truly means as well as how inherited family systems can give you a warped sense of it, notable tracks like “Downfall”, “Orbiter”, “Dashboard”, “23”, and “Paid Time Off” encapsulate what it’s like to hold memory, appreciation, and resentment simultaneously over life not being the same anymore.

Standout Track: “Willing and Able”

There are SO many good ones, but this one hits in a fashion that I feel deserves special recognition. If you’ve ever had beef with someone you actually care about—whether it be a lover, a family member, a friend, or a coworker—that gets exacerbated by pride and communication issues this song is for you. I love that Noah Kahan is so candid towards the end of the song about what he wished he could say to whoever he’s singing to, and in the chorus is actively pleading to argue and sort shit out as a way of saying he wants to keep the door to communication open. It’s honest, it’s messy, it’s stupidly human and even if we don’t talk about it, we all have or have met someone we still have unresolved things to say to, even if that talk includes a fight.

Notable lines:

“I wish I could know you much more sometimes/Wish I could do nothing with you/And I’ll say, “I love you” and mean it this time/Say I’m sorry for everything else”
“I’m willing and able/If you wanna kick this rock around/If you’ve got a bone to pick with me/If you’ve got a flag plant it in the ground”
“‘Cause if I call you out, I’m an asshole/But I tell the truth when I drink/So come home, let’s fight ‘bout the childhood lie/We don’t care what the other one thinks”

*All rights to lyrics and images are reserved to Noah Kahan*

Movie of the Month: “Videodrome” (1983) dir. by David Cronenberg

So, I really fucking hate this movie. Not because it was bad and not because it was good, but because from the time I learned about it and watched all the trailers, I thought it was going to change my life. Spoiler alert: it didn’t. There are some movies you watch and afterwards you feel like your whole perspective on life has been challenged or fundamentally altered in some way, but all Videodrome illuminated for me was that I’m sick in the head. WHATEVER you think this movie is about if you’ve never seen it, you’re wrong. There was no part of the film where I knew at all where it was going; every new plot reveal just made me more aware that I’m a fucking weirdo. At all intervals I just kept repeating to myself I’d do this. Fuck you, David Cronenberg.

I don’t know if I can reiterate this enough but I’m chronically online and chronically in the archives. I love old movies, especially weird ones, and this was not my first introduction to Cronenberg or psychosexual media, so I have no idea why I was so surprised. The first film of his I saw was actually Crimes Of the Future (2022) with a man I was with several boyfriends ago, about a dystopia where surgery was the new sex. We watched it over a bottle of Absolut Vodka on a CRT TV. If that doesn’t paint a vivid picture of my life, I don’t know what does.

Notable Scene:

When the protagonist, Max, in a frenzy removes a gun from the belly-button slit in his abdomen. Happy viewing!

Book of the Month: “It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over” by Anne De Marcken

This was one of the best books I have ever read. I bought it after seeing it pop up as a recommendation on Pinterest, and at the time I was mass buying a bunch of used books on eBay to sink my teeth into. This one was a wildcard since it wasn’t the typical genre I read. I paid extra for the Fitzcarraldo edition too because the cover was so beautiful but, holy mother of Mary the cover doesn’t do the book justice. If you like descriptive prose, sci-fi, and scenes that make you ache every time you turn the page this is for you.

Book Synopsis: An unnamed protagonist narrates her experience with loss and decay after a zombie apocalypse effectively ends the world, as well as her struggle with how to preserve her own humanity after becoming undead.

I know what you’re expecting. A dramatized Divergent-like atmosphere with monsters or laser guns, and undead individuals gnawing on limbs but it’s actually quite the opposite. Well, except for the gnawing on limbs part. What drives me away from sci-fi of any sort typically (even though I absolutely did read every Divergent novel as a pre-teen) is the wasteland imagery and overemphasis of future-driven themes or technology. It’s boring to me, overdone, and unrealistic to imagine even if it is fantastical. But De Marcken doesn’t do any of that—in fact the book is so unsettling because she’s describing a world that has for all intents and purposes ended yet everything is the same. The houses look the same, the technology is the same, the undead even though their limbs are rotting, inside are the same and still do things like brush their teeth and form churches. It’s the best metaphor for grief that I’ve ever read.

Notable Lines:

“I say, “I hope we meet a bear.” You say, “I hope we don’t!” And I say, “It wouldn’t be a bad way to die.” I ask you how you would like to die. You have an answer ready. You say, “In my sleep after a really good day.” ” (p. 87)
“You are saying something about your brother or mine. I can hear you clearly but it is also as if you are far away. It is unbearable to look back from the future we did not know we had been traveling toward. That is not right. It is unbearable because we did know. It was as plain as our own palms.” (p. 87)
“How small or altered or distant must a part of us be before it stops being a part of us? Does it ever?…Is hunger, is rage, the attachment to one’s own form? Is grief surrender?” (pgs. 100-101)

I read these lines back and every time, a lump forms in my throat.

Song of the Month: “Will We Talk?” by Sam Fender

Now, the thing about me and Sam Fender’s music is I’d been listening to him for longer than I realized before I heard this song from his album “Hypersonic Missiles” and discovered something crucial: this man is fine as hell.

Now you may say “Dawnie, why does this matter?” and furthermore “Why the fuck are you talking about music again when we’ve already covered this?” and I will dramatically answer both questions.

First of all, since music is my life choosing songs to talk about is hard because if it’s on my playlist, it makes me feel something again no matter what genre. But albums that catch my attention versus particular songs that take me somewhere else are two different moods for me entirely. Think of the album of the month as the theme of that month’s environment and the song of the month, even if not from the same artist as the details.

On Sam Fender and why his attractiveness matters, when you hear this song and most of the music from this era in his career both of them work together to cultivate an archetype that reminds me of AM era Alex Turner from the Arctic Monkeys. Music about bar sex, drugs, and rock and roll but from the rocker who reads poetry then broods in a corner. This song is the epitome of making eyes across the room at a stranger while sipping on a Heineken, waiting for them to give you the signal to walk over. It’s chaotic, it’s loud, and somehow full of nervousness. It definitely has the vibe of being in your twenties and just doing shit for the hell of it not thinking about the consequences. Even though it has an alt rock arrangement Fender’s voice is so soulful it makes you question how Britain could’ve produced an artist like that (she says as if George Harrison wasn’t manufactured there).

Thanks for reading!

June 2026

No new favs yet…check back at the end of the month to see what’s doing it for me, slime.

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