qtb mixtape #07: obamacore.

I believe we could all benefit from a dose of late-aughts indie optimism.

Your girl, circa 2010. This was an outtake from my ill-advised attempt to take my own author headshot. (Photo: Joe Erbentraut)

I understand that everyone has a different relationship with social media—and the TikTok platform in particular—and that there are many valid arguments for why it probably isn’t the best place for us as humans to be hanging out.

That said, I love TikTok. Let me tell you what I’m enjoying on my feed lately: First, we’ve got lots of videos of animals like donkeys, llamas, cows, and an occasional raccoon. Then, I’m still deeply entrenched in tea room reviews, and as of late, I’m also feasting on comedic reenactments of Sydney Sweeney and American Eagle’s recently dabbling in eugenics (one of them involving a llama!) and Appalachian home healthcare ghost stories.

But one of my favorite things about TikTok continues to be how it resurfaces older music and shares it with new generations of listeners. We saw this happen with Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” and Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” (with a big assist there from Stranger Things, of course) but my feed recently resurfaced a song that instantly transported me back in time 15 years.

The song is “Mouthful of Diamonds” and it was released in 2010 as the lead track off the dream pop band Phantogram’s brilliant debut album, Eyelid Movies. When I hear the song’s distinct opening notes, I think back to the person I was then and how the world felt very different from the current mess we find ourselves in.