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New Bands for Old Heads makes its Substack debut

When I told my boyfriend I was thinking about making a Substack, he said it sounded like a dumb idea and I probably shouldn't do it.

Actually, that's not true — the first thing he said was, “what's Substack?”

I told him it was essentially a newsletter version of what blogging was like in the mid 2000s. Then he told me it sounded like a dumb idea and I probably shouldn't do it. Nobody has the attention span for anything but seconds-long videos anymore, he said. It's going to be impossible to convince any of my TikTok followers to read what are effectively just blog posts.

Honestly? He's totally right.

My own attention span is a testament to this. It’s been months since I've managed to finish a novel. My hobbies, which used to include comparative literary analysis and Criterion film viewing are now limited to doomscrolling, watching videos of round animals, and binging makeup tutorials I will never recreate. End of list.

But I'm not a great listener and a lot of my ideas are dumb, so I'm going to make a Substack anyway. I'll explain why, and then you can decide whether or not you want to stick around.

-Gabbie

A few years ago I started a series on TikTok to recommend new music to people who haven't kept up with new music for a long time, possibly decades. The idea was to contextualize with some nostalgic favorites (I started with ‘90s grunge: Alice in Chains, Smashing Pumpkins, Stone Temple Pilots), then introduce a much newer artist that had a similar sound.

It’s really nothing more than a simple “if you like X then maybe you'll like Y” formula.

@meandtimoryI've heard the slow tracks described as "country metal," which... SURE. #90saltrock #xennialmusic #musicrecs #shoegazetiktok #newmusicreview

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The trouble is TikTok. It's not just that it's almost certain to disappear in the US relatively soon, though that's something many creators are preparing for. It's mostly that, even after the peace restoration between TikTok and Universal Media Group, actually using music clips in videos is a very frustrating experience. There's no rhyme or reason I can personally discern to which video will be muted or flagged for “violating community guidelines.” It's a game of roulette where the end result is always the same — you don't get to learn about the music I'm recommending.

My goal is to introduce you to new artists you are unlikely to discover on your own, to let you hear the connection to artists you're nostalgic for, and hopefully to get you excited about music discovery again (for those of you who lost that magic). I can describe the similarities between old and new in words, but let's get real — it's much more exciting to listen.

So, enter this dumb newsletter idea. Not only can I yap with messy abandon, but I can embed songs and playlists for you to listen to at your leisure. Same with TikTok videos, while those are still around. And if you don't like all of my unnecessary commentary, you can skip around as you damn well please.

I want to fill some of the void left by the perfect music curation outlets we had when we were growing up. I’m mostly thinking of 120 Minutes, but we had others. College radio, record stores, (paper!) music magazines… they still exist, of course, but there was something that felt a little more personal back then, something that felt a little more like finding buried treasure. I know algorithmic recommendations rarely hit the spot the same way. I recognize how daunting the sheer volume of new releases can be, and I know how nice it is to have “that one music friend” sift through the (literal?) noise for you instead.

I’ll be that friend, if you’ll have me.

I’m not sure exactly what will be different here just yet, apart from all the additional yapping, obviously. I might not always talk about new bands, because there’s just so much nostalgia to mine (and a few other hobbies that may get some screen time; you’ll just have to forgive me for not thinking of a clever new name for the Substack). But I can tell you that there will be more of everything: more playlists, more under-the-radar artist picks, more “Best Of”s, more open discussions, and above all, more music.

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