Be Okay - Ingrid Michaelson
I often listen to this album together with Girls and Boys, which I already reviewed, and much of my observations about that album seem to extend to this one. One difference is that while Girls and Boys is pretty evenly ambivalent throughout all its songs, Be Okay contains a bit more of a mix of happy and wistful songs, along with the ambivalent ones. It also has some covers of quite old songs. One is a rendition of Can’t Help Falling in Love which successfully overcame my preexisting dislike of Elvis Presley, and the other is an especially loopy version of Over the Rainbow.
The Way I Am and You and I are some of the most simple and unreservedly happy love songs, and Giving Up is more bittersweet, framing love and commitment as a somewhat resigned determination to stick together even through very unromantic circumstances: “What if we stop having a ball? / What if the paint chips from the wall? / What if there’s always cups in the sink? And what if I’m not what you think I am?” I especially like songs that explore the darker and dingier side of love, and accept them.
Another favorite on this album is Keep Breathing, which strikes me as a musical endorsement of mindfulness meditation. Through death and chaos and suffering, the calm yet unrelenting chorus repeats “All we can do is keep breathing now,” at a pace consistent with slow, even, mindful breaths. I only wish it were more than three and a half minutes. That’s the real problem with pop songs: they’re too short.
Next: Everybody
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