Please tell me someone gets the reference in the title!
Anyway, it's 2am and I've been packing up my dorm all night and I still haven't posted anything here today, and I didn't really know what to write about. But as I was hauling shit about in my room with one arm, I was listening to that halloween playlist I had made and posted about ages ago, and "Disturbia" by Rihanna came on, and it fucking SOUNDS like P5 (year 5). I have two distinct memories attached to that song, the first being how, probably the day after I had downloaded it (so I was listening to it a lot), my mum had threatened to take away my iPod (silver iPod shuffle, of course) because she said it was distracting me from studying. I had felt like my whole WORLD was going to fall apart. I really was obsessed with my iPod (hey - I should add that to my list!), to the extent where I had the running order of every song on my playlist memorised. And so, I managed to choose my songs, even on an iPod shuffle. I used to not be able to sleep at night, worrying that my playlist order would one day randomly be messed up.
The happier memory, though, is of the first concert I ever went to. No, it was not, as you'd logically expect, a Rihanna concert. It was Avril Lavigne. I LOVED Avril Lavigne, and "Girlfriend" was the first song I ever bought on iTunes, with the $100 gift receipt my dad had given me for my tenth birthday. My parents were shocked by the "I'm a motherfucking princess" bit, but still let me listen to it. In fact, that's pretty hypocritical, because here's what I remember about getting that gift receipt for my birthday. I was on the farm with dad and his brother, my Uncle Frank, and he said "your birthday present weighs next to nothing. Can you guess what it is?" And Uncle Frank joked, "Jesus, Stephen, she's a bit young for that, isn't she?" I only just recently understood.
Anyway, I loved Avril Lavigne. And every day, when I got home from school (I left for school at 6am, before the newspapers had been delivered), I'd read the Straits Times back to front, but my favourite bit was the section called "Life" - basically the entertainment section. But one day, before I could even get the paper, I noticed a newspaper clipping stuck on the fridge. It was cut out from the Life section - a mini headline saying that Avril Lavigne was going to be performing in Singapore on the 7th of September. My birthday is the 5th of September. As you can imagine, my parents said that for my birthday, I could go to the concert with a couple of friends of my choosing!
Disappointingly, I don't remember what I wore! I wasn't very fashion-conscious back then, so it wouldn't have been anything amazing, but I do think I made some effort. I probably wore all my silver bangles - what a 10-year-old thing to have. I also definitely had my see-through mesh handbag (oh my god - I JUST got a plastic see-through handbag the other day. I've gone full circle!). I know I had that bag, because I remember that my Motorola razor flip phone, a hand-me-down from my dad and my first ever phone, was in there. And just as we picked up my friend Arielle, I got a call from the friend we were picking up next - and my ringtone was "Disturbia" by Rihanna. I so clearly remember feeling like The Shit, sitting between two friends, all of us giggly and excited and about to go to a concert, and I had a handbag and a cool ringtone.
There's really only one concert venue in Singapore (well, at least that was the case back then), the Esplanade. The dad of our family friends, Devon, owns Brewerks, which is a big beer place in Singapore, and they have a location right next to the Esplanade, so we all had dinner there beforehand. Devon was there, I remember, saying hello. I also remember the panic of there being nothing on the menu that I 'could' eat - not for ED reasons, as would be the case a few years later, but because I was a very very fussy eater. I ended up eating what I thought would be spaghetti napolitana, but which must have been arrabiata, because it was too spicy for me (lmao I'm so white).
Avril was very late to the concert - at least an hour. Her opening band wasn't very good - I remember they had a song where the hook was "Amanda, you suck!" and people were yelling back "no, you suck!" But eventually she did come out, and she had pink in-ears, which we could see all the way from the sitting area where we were, and dad told me what they were for. I remember us all being really tense about whether she'd actually say "motherfucking princess" when she sang Girlfriend. (She did, but she kind of mumbled it.) And I discovered songs of hers that I didn't even know existed, like My Happy Ending. That's all I remember about the concert.
The next day in school Natalie Toh, who was always mean to me, asked me in the bathrooms what songs Avril had sung, and I listed all that I could remember. She snickered "oh that's all?". I was so indignant; but she hadn't been there, it was me, and she couldn't take that. I was very sad that whole day, not because of Natalie, but because of some post-concert depression that exacerbated an existing anxiety about looming exams and how much I wanted to move back to Australia (a constant obsession of mine). At recess, when it was relatively empty, I sat at one of the glossy primary-coloured benches and sang "My Happy Ending" to myself, under my breath.
P.S. I went through my emails trying to find photos from the concert, and didn't find any, but found this exchange between me and my friend:
Such delicate socio-political mechanisms at work so young...
Anyway, it's 2am and I've been packing up my dorm all night and I still haven't posted anything here today, and I didn't really know what to write about. But as I was hauling shit about in my room with one arm, I was listening to that halloween playlist I had made and posted about ages ago, and "Disturbia" by Rihanna came on, and it fucking SOUNDS like P5 (year 5). I have two distinct memories attached to that song, the first being how, probably the day after I had downloaded it (so I was listening to it a lot), my mum had threatened to take away my iPod (silver iPod shuffle, of course) because she said it was distracting me from studying. I had felt like my whole WORLD was going to fall apart. I really was obsessed with my iPod (hey - I should add that to my list!), to the extent where I had the running order of every song on my playlist memorised. And so, I managed to choose my songs, even on an iPod shuffle. I used to not be able to sleep at night, worrying that my playlist order would one day randomly be messed up.
The happier memory, though, is of the first concert I ever went to. No, it was not, as you'd logically expect, a Rihanna concert. It was Avril Lavigne. I LOVED Avril Lavigne, and "Girlfriend" was the first song I ever bought on iTunes, with the $100 gift receipt my dad had given me for my tenth birthday. My parents were shocked by the "I'm a motherfucking princess" bit, but still let me listen to it. In fact, that's pretty hypocritical, because here's what I remember about getting that gift receipt for my birthday. I was on the farm with dad and his brother, my Uncle Frank, and he said "your birthday present weighs next to nothing. Can you guess what it is?" And Uncle Frank joked, "Jesus, Stephen, she's a bit young for that, isn't she?" I only just recently understood.
Anyway, I loved Avril Lavigne. And every day, when I got home from school (I left for school at 6am, before the newspapers had been delivered), I'd read the Straits Times back to front, but my favourite bit was the section called "Life" - basically the entertainment section. But one day, before I could even get the paper, I noticed a newspaper clipping stuck on the fridge. It was cut out from the Life section - a mini headline saying that Avril Lavigne was going to be performing in Singapore on the 7th of September. My birthday is the 5th of September. As you can imagine, my parents said that for my birthday, I could go to the concert with a couple of friends of my choosing!
Disappointingly, I don't remember what I wore! I wasn't very fashion-conscious back then, so it wouldn't have been anything amazing, but I do think I made some effort. I probably wore all my silver bangles - what a 10-year-old thing to have. I also definitely had my see-through mesh handbag (oh my god - I JUST got a plastic see-through handbag the other day. I've gone full circle!). I know I had that bag, because I remember that my Motorola razor flip phone, a hand-me-down from my dad and my first ever phone, was in there. And just as we picked up my friend Arielle, I got a call from the friend we were picking up next - and my ringtone was "Disturbia" by Rihanna. I so clearly remember feeling like The Shit, sitting between two friends, all of us giggly and excited and about to go to a concert, and I had a handbag and a cool ringtone.
There's really only one concert venue in Singapore (well, at least that was the case back then), the Esplanade. The dad of our family friends, Devon, owns Brewerks, which is a big beer place in Singapore, and they have a location right next to the Esplanade, so we all had dinner there beforehand. Devon was there, I remember, saying hello. I also remember the panic of there being nothing on the menu that I 'could' eat - not for ED reasons, as would be the case a few years later, but because I was a very very fussy eater. I ended up eating what I thought would be spaghetti napolitana, but which must have been arrabiata, because it was too spicy for me (lmao I'm so white).
Avril was very late to the concert - at least an hour. Her opening band wasn't very good - I remember they had a song where the hook was "Amanda, you suck!" and people were yelling back "no, you suck!" But eventually she did come out, and she had pink in-ears, which we could see all the way from the sitting area where we were, and dad told me what they were for. I remember us all being really tense about whether she'd actually say "motherfucking princess" when she sang Girlfriend. (She did, but she kind of mumbled it.) And I discovered songs of hers that I didn't even know existed, like My Happy Ending. That's all I remember about the concert.
The next day in school Natalie Toh, who was always mean to me, asked me in the bathrooms what songs Avril had sung, and I listed all that I could remember. She snickered "oh that's all?". I was so indignant; but she hadn't been there, it was me, and she couldn't take that. I was very sad that whole day, not because of Natalie, but because of some post-concert depression that exacerbated an existing anxiety about looming exams and how much I wanted to move back to Australia (a constant obsession of mine). At recess, when it was relatively empty, I sat at one of the glossy primary-coloured benches and sang "My Happy Ending" to myself, under my breath.
P.S. I went through my emails trying to find photos from the concert, and didn't find any, but found this exchange between me and my friend:
Such delicate socio-political mechanisms at work so young...
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