INVINCIBLE SUMMER Playlist: Song 5

SONG #5: "New Soul" by Yael Naim.

I'm sure you all know and are sick to death of this song, since it was EVERYWHERE during the summer of 2009. But! I put it on the playlist like four seconds before it was everywhere. I so, so rarely discover any music before it hits big, so I have to brag about it when I can. (I'm looking at you, "How to Save a Life." I was like a year ahead on that one. Still pissed.)

So anyway, like four days before this song was on every commercial in the universe, I stuck it on IS's playlist as the first song of the 2nd summer. The initial reason was pretty basic: We have a new character this summer! As Mama McGill (this is not something she's actually called. I stole this from kids in high school who called my mom Mama Mosk) was super preggo in the last summer, I don't think this is a huge spoiler. Pregnant women have babies fyi.

So yes, on a basic level, this is about this kid experiencing everything for the first time. But it is really, like most of the songs on the playlist, about Chase and his experience in the 2nd summer versus that of the 1st summer. He's 15, almost 16 now. He's in a very different place. Because, you know, some fifteen-year-olds have sex fyi.

So this is a song about being a baby in a new world, literally and otherwise, and about feeling as if you're surrounded by people who are way more experienced than you are. This is also a dividing point in the playlist for me, not only because it's the new summer (because then it would have made more sense to have the dividing point before this song, rather than after) but because it's, in my mind, the end of a certain kind of tone.

This song is more first summer in rhythm and sound, which is how Chase goes in expecting his summer to be. It doesn't work out this way. The playlist changes after this and becomes very...focused on one thing, let's say. It changes again between songs 8 and 9, when SOMETHING BIG HAPPENS.

SAMPLE LYRIC:

I'm a young soul
In this very strange world
Hoping I could learn a bit bout what is true and fake
But why all this hate?
Try to communicate
Finding trust and love is not always easy to make

This is a happy end
'Cause you don't understand
Everything you have done
Why's everything so wrong?

CORRELATING PASSAGE:
I unlock the front door with my free side while Lucy clings to the other. “Welcome home, Lucy,” I whisper to her.

“Forget something?”

I turn around in the doorway, and there's the college dropout herself, holding Lucy's car seat, that smile on those perfectly glossed lips.

--p. 79




PLAYLIST SO FAR:
1) "Turn Up The Sun" by Oasis
2) "Island in the Sun" by Weezer
3) "Just Like Heaven" by Gatsby's American Dream
4) "Bigger Than My Body" by John Mayer
5) "New Soul" by Yael Naim