NUR EIN
Crown Shy
BlueNur Ein XVI
almost 5 years agowon
3:42
Blue
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Crown Shy image
Crown Shy

Entry from Blue in Nur Ein XVI.

Bring Your A Game

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Crown Shy

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...This is also Sun-Ripened Raspbery erasure. One of my strongest Proustian sense memories from high school is the clouds of aggressively fruity Country Pear and Sun-Ripened Raspberry lotions from Bath and Body Works that would fill the classroom whenever my classmates decided they desperately needed to moisturize in the middle of math.

Anyway, fittingly for the 4th of July when I'm submitting this song, here's a song about that whole teenage experience of feeling ugly and feeling like you don't belong anywhere, amplified by all the complexities of growing up Chinese-American, with a visibly Chinese name, in a society dominated by white beauty ideals. I actually don't remember if my friend Yu-Tin specifically actually had blue contacts but I do remember a lot of my classmates having colored circle lenses, which make your eyes look weirdly huge and also have a certain creepy uncanny valley effect.

I did in fact once buy a pink lipstick in junior high after seeing it on Claudia Schiffer on a magazine cover and carefully researching the shade, only to discover that what looks great on a blonde, blue-eyed, fair-skinned German supermodel doesn't look quite the same on an awkward, gawky little Asian girl with braces. And don't get me started on the perm I got. Maybe a subject for another song #blunderyears

The samples are from a couple of nature documentaries about bowerbirds, which love the color blue and attract mates by collecting dozens of blue objects and carefully arranging them around their home.

From one point of view, these adornments are better than feathers. Individual birds of paradise have no option over the shape and color of their plumes. They have to display with what their genes have given them. Bowerbirds, however, can choose.

If you could look like anyone
Who would you choose?
I'd be Claudia Schiffer on the cover of Vogue in 1992

Yu-Tin breezes into the bathroom
In a Sun-Ripened Raspberry cloud
Silver nails and a tan from the summer
And she's bleached her hair to golden brown
Prying open her eye in the mirror
Circle lens balanced on her finger
She blinks it in and wipes her tears away

And then her eyes are blue
Her eyes are blue
Like the sky, blue
She smiles
They're so blue

Blue is his favorite color. Bottle tops nicked from a nearby campsite are his proudest possessions. He has an eye for detail, too, placing them precisely for maximum visual impact.

I just want to be an all-American, corn-fed, apple pie girl
Milk-pale skin, calling my parents by their first names, hair that holds a curl
Prying open my eyes in the mirror
Trying to make them just a little bit bigger
Trying out names that sound a little bit whiter
Wishing my eyes were blue

Like the sky is blue
I wish my eyes were blue
All the pretty things are blue
I wish my eyes were blue

Like the sea is blue (Linger on, your pale blue eyes)
I wish my eyes could be blue
All the pretty things are blue (Linger on, your pale blue eyes)
I wish my eyes were blue

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Adam!

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The bird sounds teleport me back to Round 1. The cloudy dream pop verses are very hypnotizing... I want a little more movement in the verse melody, although that would detract from the hypnotic effect. The big fuzzy guitars are a welcome surprise and really build up the energy of the chorus. The layered, overlapping harmonies in the later choruses add to the mesmerizing sound. This song made me realize that "calling parents by their first names" is a thing (I certainly did this when I was young, and I fit the profile, so it checks out).

Crown Shy - Blue | Nur Ein