Everyone Asked About You - S/T

_{1997 | Midwest Emo, Twee Pop}

I have a strange relationship with Everyone Asked About You - both the band and the ep, technically; they're somewhat synonymous as the band never really did anything else (besides two other eps, one being a split, so while this is sort-of a lie, this release is by far their most acclaimed/popular, so I’m going to act like it’s not). It doesn’t feel like I listen to it often, yet it’s probably the ep I’ve binged the most. Meaning, despite not necessarily revisiting it much, when I do decide to sit down and listen to it, I simply can’t turn it off. For example, this past June I remember replaying it 200 times over the course of two days (now, 200 times, as in playing songs from ep 200 times, not 200 times front to back, as 200 times front to back would mean I would have spent a collective 36 hours listening to this thing. Now, this is feasible if I get very limited sleep, and consume no other media over the course of said 36 hours, but overall it just seems quite unreasonable. Though, thinking about it more, it doesn’t really seem like a horrible way to spend 36 hours.) It was an especially beautiful weekend, and summer had really just started to set in. Over the course of those two days, I discovered that this was, quite literally, the perfect soundtrack to the season.

Those two days marked a turning point in my life. Now, at the time of writing this, it’s seven months later - I’m still 20 years old (my birthday is in January; it’s currently the end of November) yet I feel as though I’ve aged significantly since. Friends are lining up internships and job opportunities, and talks of spending this upcoming summer away from home are becoming common. It’s corny, but this overwhelming feeling of wanting to be “young” again is one that I’ve gotten all too familiar with recently (which, admittedly, is silly, as I know that 20 years old is still very young, but it’s okay to be overly-sentimental sometimes). That bittersweet feeling permeates through this ep.

And yes - Everyone Asked About You is bittersweet. This word gets thrown around a lot with midwest emo, but I think these short eleven minutes really embody that descriptor in spades. I mean, you can practically taste how sweet this music is - it’s utterly tangible. It doesn’t necessarily do anything special or unique that separates it from other emo acts of the time, but it’s just so authentic and cute and lovely and… Well, put simply, it’s absolutely impossible to dislike.

In an attempt to summarize, I'm currently in the midst of another binge of this ep seven months after my last. I've barely listened to it in between this time period, and although I feel I've changed quite a bit since then (emphasis on "feel," as I probably haven't much in reality), the music certainly hasn't. And so my point is this: one of the many pleasurable characteristics of this ep - and music in general for that matter - is that it's always going to be there so long as you wish to hear it. Have some fun. Stay a while. It's not going anywhere, and neither are you.