Everyone has a story. That’s the truth of life: everything that’s ever happened, every moment between then and now has put you exactly where you are today. The good and bad, the mundane and thrilling, the things you never think of again and the ones that you revisit constantly… All of it makes you who and what you are.
All of us here have our own stories, too. Every single part of them brought us to the right place at the right time, and they brought us to each other. Most importantly, they brought us to you. It is my greatest joy to introduce to you, for the first time, Honorable Mention Magazine.
Welcome, it’s here.
Each of us at HMM contributed a song to this playlist that is very important to us and our journey to this point in our lives. Here’s a little glimpse into why these songs are so special to us.
“Honorable Mention” by Fall Out Boy
“Honorable Mention” is the first song on this playlist, and it’s also the first song on Fall Out Boy’s first full-length EP, Evening Out with Your Girlfriend. The EP tends to get a bad rap from fans, and even more frequently from the band themselves, but it can be worth digging into a little deeper. Their early music actually has a lot of charm hiding in its potential. Honorable Mention is one of the finest case studies for that on Evening Out, particularly for Patrick Stump’s vocals. He was only 17 at the time of recording, but you can hear in this song the earliest versions of the vocal runs he’d later become famous for. We at Honorable Mention Magazine did, in fact, name ourselves after this song – not because it’s everyone’s favorite (though for some people, like Fox, it is up there, maybe), but because we find a lot of inspiration in that early sense of potential and how far Fall Out Boy has come from the very first song on their first EP. It’s potential we also find in ourselves, and it’s something that we all hope we never stop finding in each other and our passions. — Fox Nichols
“Rose-Colored Boy” by Paramore
I have a crystal clear recollection of when I first listened to Paramore. I was at my middle-school best friend’s house, hanging out with her and her older sister, sitting on the floor going through their CDs. I came across one with a white background and the same word, sketched in black across the cover, aside from one instance in orange: Riot! From that moment on, Paramore, and Hayley Williams specifically, would have a significant impact on my life. Fast forward to 2017, to the release of their 5th studio album, After Laughter, Paramore had been informing the person I was for a decade. I was in the midst of a great deal of change in my life. I was depressed, existential, and to let you in on a little secret, you still don’t have all the answers or know who you are when you reach your twenties. The opening chant of “Rose-Colored Boy” immediately grabbed hold of me. Admittedly, I am a pessimistic, glass-half-empty person, and I tend to have a little rain cloud in tow, but that doesn’t mean I don’t desire clear skies. For most of my life, I had been made to feel I was not enough, too much, and to make myself smaller in order to be loved. “You say, ‘We gotta look on the bright side’ / I say, ‘Well, maybe if you wanna go blind’ / You say my eyes are getting too dark now / But, boy you ain’t ever seen my mind.” I have playlists full of songs that I have resonated with at one time or another, but I felt every line of “Rose-Colored Boy” deep in my bones. I’d never felt so seen. This song helped me to not only accept, but embrace my dark, to hold space for myself, and feel it all. I wouldn’t be the person, nor woman, I am without “Rose-Colored Boy”, and After Laughter as a whole. — Shelbi Renea
“Are You Satisfied?” by Marina
I was a textbook gifted kid with burnout, a star performer, a kid who always placed in the Science fair, an advanced placement college level high school student who left the program to take more art classes. We don’t need to get into my exact story, but I trust in the shared collective experience to understand. Once I graduated high school, I moved to Europe. For one, I was fortunate enough to do so and could; and for two, I didn’t have guidance with how college admission worked, and academic debt was something I wanted nothing to do with. I traveled, I existed, I ate good bread, I scrolled for hours on Tumblr.com. I stumbled on a post where I heard the most unique, angelic, opera-like vibrato. Marina Diamandis, I’ll never forget how a song ever made so much sense “Are You Satisfied?” A song that questions if you’re okay with an average life, with the regularly scheduled programming, the outlined future everyone follows. Are you happy with it? Maybe I’m happier doing exactly what feels right, instead of what is expected of me. Maybe I’ll be able to make a life out of the creative. And maybe “it’s my problem if I wanna pack up and run away.” Maybe just choose happy. — Ambrose Gatsby
“Lights Out” by We Are The In Crowd
It was Warped Tour 2010, the summer before my sophomore year of high school. It was only my second year attending, so my parents hung out at the “Reverse Daycare” tent while my best friend Bianca and I explored the festival, our gameplan in mind after meticulous planning by the giant inflatable schedule. I assumed my parents would at least enjoy a few of my favorite bands, albeit from a safe distance (not squished against the barricade like me). What I didn’t anticipate was my mom and dad discovering a new band that would soon become one of my favorites. Around lunchtime, we took a break and ended up running into my parents near the Skullcandy stage. My mom smiled and held up a signed CD case, “We just discovered this great band with a female lead singer—actually, she and the guy sing back and forth, it’s really cool. I think you guys would like them!” The band was We Are The In Crowd, and the lead singer who signed my mom’s CD was the incredible Tay Jardine. We listened to the seven-song, no-skips EP, Guaranteed To Disagree, on the way home and instantly became fans. Bianca and I would go on to see WATIC at Warped 2012 and on the Glamour Kills Tour in 2013 supporting Mayday Parade. At that last show, we met Tay, along with drummer Rob Chianelli and bassist Mike Ferri, outside after the show and they were kind enough to take sweaty selfies with us. It’s not lost on me that many people my age got into this scene because they felt misunderstood by their parents. I certainly felt that way at times, but looking back now, I consider myself lucky to have parents who were so supportive of my interests that they were not only willing to take me to shows and festivals but also showed an interest in the music themselves—even helping me discover one of my favorite bands. — Sarah Elise
“All Over You” by Live
I grew up in a home where my parents listened to a lot of rock music in the 90’s and early 2000’s. This era of music has transcended me into the person I am today. When I was a kid, my mom had a big stack of CDs in her closet that I would go through often; I can still remember specific albums that I would pick up and put on in my CD player. To this day, if I see a CD from my mom’s collection, I can still remember what it looked like and listening to them. Picking just one song is difficult for me because I have so many that blossomed me into who I am today. The song that I feel is the true definition of me would have to be “All Over You” by Live. There are home videos of my dad and I dancing to this song many times. Growing up, my parents blasted music every weekend in the basement. I think this plays into why I am so into music as an adult and how it was so easy for me to get into the emo scene. This song reminds me of my childhood and gives me many heart warming memories of spending time with my parents and my little brother. It was not until 2005 that I really got into emo music, but I can say I have been a rocker chick since the day I was born, thanks to my wonderful parents. Still to this day, my parents blast music over their giant speakers every weekend and it brings me so much joy. — Alannah Rae
”Love Me Dead” by Ludo
In April of 2008, late one Sunday night, I tuned into my favorite local rock station. They had a show on Sunday nights that played new or undiscovered music – stuff that wasn’t played in the standard rotation. On that particular night, they played Ludo’s “Love Me Dead,” and from the moment the guitar started, my 13-year-old brain lit up like a Christmas tree. I’d never heard anything quite like it. It wasn’t standard mid-2000s pop punk, but it didn’t have the vaudeville edge of early Panic! at the Disco either. The synth was sharp, the lyrics were funny and incredibly weird, the guitar solo ripped through me, and I fell instantly in love. That night I went to check out the band’s myspace and found out that Ludo was playing a show in my state that same month. I convinced my mom to drive me down, and that was my very first GA club show – me and 20-30 other kids in a hole-in-the-wall venue in North Carolina. It was a thousand times better than any stadium show I’d ever been to, and it changed me forever. — Fox Nichols
“Homesick At Space Camp” by Fall Out Boy
Some songs find you at exactly the right moment and change your life, and for me one of those will always be Homesick at Space Camp. To set the scene, I was 12 years old attending a friend’s birthday party. We had just met two months before, but immediately I was welcomed with open arms. My dad had passed unexpectedly and suddenly four months earlier on the day of my 12th birthday party. My grade school was the only one in the district that sat on boundary lines so all of my friends went to another school. I was, without question, the loneliest and saddest I knew how to be, so standing in a circle singing “these friends are, new friends are golden” set me on a path I would never turn back from. From then on my path was finding beautiful, golden friends – keeping my arms open wide to more love, bigger community and shared joy in spite of all of the dark things in this world. I didn’t know then where it would lead me, but it led me here – to these friends in this place at this time. A full 20 years later and still new friends are so very golden. I hope when they listen to this song, their headphones tell them how much I miss them from a million miles away. — Allison Haley
“Honey, This Mirror Isn’t Big Enough for the Two of Us” by My Chemical Romance
I’ve always loved music. From the second my hazy memories start, I was singing or dancing or dreaming about becoming the 14th winner of American Idol. My younger brother had sports, and I had music. It was never a group activity, though. Sure, my mom would put on music in the car, and we’d have the radio playing quietly in the background during dinner every night, but music wasn’t something I felt a shared experience in. It was very much a solo activity, saved for the shower or my bedroom or when no one else was awake at night. It was solace and it was not to be shared. Until one of my dearest childhood friends introduced me to My Chemical Romance in 7th grade. I’d been a big fan of Fall Out Boy and Paramore for half of my life by then, but this was the first time someone went out of their way to show me something they loved that they thought I’d love. She was right, by the way. I remember being twelve years old and writing “Oh, how wrong we were to think that immortality meant never dying” on the whiteboard in my locker, not knowing what it meant but knowing it felt right for the first time in my life. — Jordan Ames
“Such A Person” by Midtown
As a young girl trying to find her place in the world, I found true solace in this astro-orbiting album. “Such A Person” eloquently recounts what it felt like to be a teenager and full of absolute rage. In retrospect, part of the reason why I was so full of rage back then was because girls in the early 2000s were told to ‘“sit still and look pretty”, when in reality, all I wanted to do was jump around and use my voice and be loud. This song and this band were my outlet, teaching me spin by spin and play by play that it’s okay to back yourself, that sometimes rage is better than silence, and that what I was feeling was valid. This catapulted my connection with music and emotion, let alone my love for Argent and KISS (Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey fans, can you hear me?!) with the interpolation in the outro. A perfect record cover to cover. And a perfect companion for teenage-hood. — Megan Juliet
“Sugar, We’re Goin Down” by Fall Out Boy
It’s the spring of 2005, school is almost out for the year and you’re coasting somewhat aggressively out of sophomore year. Your parents finally let you get into driving classes so you can get your license soon. Freedom is so close. All the extracurriculars are out for the season, so you get to head right home, jump off the bus, flop onto the bed, and open the window for the warming Midwestern spring breeze to pass through the window before your parents get home for the day. You turn on the TV in your room which flips back on to MTV, where you left it yesterday. TRL is on and a new video is premiering. The notes start and you’re stopped dead in your tracks. The video is a little weird from your normal diet of pop and (parentally managed) rap videos, but the lyrics are hitting right. The abbreviated clip of the song they play ends, but you’re already furiously on your computer begging your friend Kat via AIM message to have her brother find it and burn it onto a CD for your CD player. That single song on a then-too-expensive CD-R gets absolutely worn out. But, finally, this band releases a full album – right as you get your license. Kat’s brother comes through and burns you From Under The Cork Tree and it’s the first CD you get to play as you drive by yourself for the first time that summer. Windows down, the whole world ahead of you. Never would you know what that moment on a spring afternoon with that song would end up meaning to the trajectory of your entire life. — .arh.
“Man! I Feel Like A Woman!” by Shania Twain
I always felt different when I was a kid, like I didn’t fit in with other kids. My first memory of listening to music was in 1997, when I was just seven years old. My family really only listened to country music and that’s what was always playing on the radio, so that was really my introduction to music. The song that made me fall in love with music was “Man! I Feel Like A Woman!” by Shania Twain. Since I was only seven at the time, I didn’t really understand all the lyrics deeply. I just knew how that song made me feel every single time I listened to it – free, happy, strong, and like I wanted to dance. Girls have always had the stigma of not being strong or pretty enough, but this song made me feel like we could do anything. It’s hard to believe that this is where it all started for me, but this brought me to where I am now. Music will always be an escape for me whether I’m having a good day or a bad day. I love everything and everyone that it’s brought into my life. — Janelle Alana
“Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)” by Journey
Some of my earliest childhood memories revolve around music. Whether it was watching episodes of The Little Einsteins after school, my grandfather unsuccessfully teaching me how to play the flute, or my parents blasting MTV music videos throughout the house, I’ve always been surrounded by and inspired by music. Some of my fondest childhood memories involve going for sunset drives with my dad while listening to his burned CDs, specifically disc 1 which was full of 80s rock anthems. Separate Ways by Journey was one of my favorites to scream in the car and the lyrics have stuck with me ever since. As I’ve gotten older, it’s remained an anthem for me and has helped me get through some tough relationship separations — be it friends, significant others, or even family. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this life, it’s that true love won’t desert you. — Sydney Aldrin
“See Right Through You” by Heart Attack Man
2017 was the year that I had discovered the beautiful world of the Midwestern DIY scene. It was also the first time I had bought my own concert tickets that I had proudly saved for from working after school at a coffee shop and had begged my mom to drive a friend and I an hour away to a small venue that held 100 people or less. Opening that night were Cleveland’s very own punk rockers – Heart Attack Man. “See Right Through You” became a song that my friend and I were able to relate to, not because we had the exact same lives and scenarios and just so happened to both want to see the group live, but because we found that our own personal struggles didn’t have to be something that left us feeling isolated. From then on, music became a core part of our friendship, and all of my best memories almost always involved music or talking about music. Finding a community with others in music is what I believe to be the best thing to happen in my life and is a core part of who I am today. Thanks Hammy! — Shaylyn Marie
“El Mañana” by Gorillaz
“El Mañana” by Gorillaz, specifically the music video, is where I first learned that music and visual art can be used together to tell an impactful story. I was eleven years old when I first watched it — probably way too young to start delving into the wild world of Gorillaz, but it left a lifelong impression on the way I approach art. A good chunk of the art I make is inspired by music; mainly creating visuals that pair with the tone of whatever song or album I’m listening to. “El Mañana” translates to “the future”, fitting the meaning of the song. It’s a slow, solemn plea longing for moving on from a tough past: “Lord I’m fine/Maybe in time/You’ll want to be mine“. The tone carries over into the music video where Noodle’s floating island is mercilessly gunned down by helicopters, causing it to crash with Noodle inside. A perfect blend of crooning vocals and horrifying visuals. I keep this song and music video deep in my heart. I always look back on it knowing this is where the idea of becoming an artist solidified in my eleven year old self’s brain. — Winona Anne
“23” by Jimmy Eat World
The song “23” by Jimmy Eat World is the phenomenal & timeless closing track off of their 5th album Futures, which was released in 2004. I remember hearing this song for the very first time when I was only 9 years old. The first time I heard the opening guitar riff in “23”, it captivated me immediately. Even more so, the lyrics that stuck with me the first time I heard this song was the following line, “You’ll sit alone forever if you wait for the right time, what are you hoping for?”. Those lyrics still hit me in the depths of my soul 20 years later. Regardless of the many different seasons of life I have been in, this song has always been a reminder to make space for myself & my emotions, but at the same time, be aware of the opportunities that I have in my life to better myself. This song has shown me how to try to create balance between grief & moving forward, and how those feelings & experiences can coexist in a healthy way. — Bekah Eiswald
“Clint Eastwood” by Gorillaz
My entry into popular music as we know it was the Now That’s What I Call Music franchise. Every 4 months, I’d beg my parents to go to the local music store and buy the latest Now for me so I could grace my ears with the freshest radio-friendly compilation of hits. I enjoyed all of them up until this point, but Now 8, released in the fall of 2001, hit right at that special point where I started to really gain some musical sentience. There are some real bangers on the 8th installment (I will take no Smash Mouth slander in this house, thank you), but the real shining star for me was Clint Eastwood, the lead single from Gorillaz’s debut self-titled album. In the era of Hatsune Miku, I think it’s easy to forget how weird of a concept Gorillaz was at the time – nobody really knew what their deal was, and if they did, I was 9 years old and out of the loop. All I knew was I loved it. My next allowance was spent on my own Gorillaz CD, and that thing got some major play on my Walkman while I rode the bus to and from school. I like to think my affinity for this album set me up for my general appreciation for weird music and my complete disregard for hard genre lines now, and for that I’m so thankful. — K8
“Work Song” by Hozier
I have always been a hopeless romantic. My parents are brilliantly in love and this gave me impractically high standards from a young age, which is a wonderful notion on paper, but not so wonderful in reality when spending my teenage years and early twenties flinging myself into mediocre relationships. The first thing that drew me to Hozier (shortly after a frankly devastating post-college breakup) is the way he writes love like a spiritual experience. “Take Me To Church” embodies this and is worthy of being a hit, of course, but another single from his debut album, “Work Song”, is where real yearning is stored. “No grave can hold my body down, I’ll crawl home to her?” Are you kidding me? How could I listen to those words and remain jaded, how could I find any challenge in believing that love exists, and would indeed exist for me again someday? It’s also the song Hozier always uses to end his shows, and live music is my favorite shared spiritual experience in the world, second only to love. From hearing it at the barricade at Metro, to showing the music video to a Romanian innkeeper while sharing homemade wine, to putting it on a playlist for the love of my life, “Work Song” maintains its special place in this yearner’s heart. — Madi Jay
“Last Hope” by Paramore
Paramore’s self-titled album came out during a very uncertain time in my life – I was preparing to move away from my hometown to get distance from an abusive relationship, a toxic friend group, and a handful of self-destructive habits. I had no direction, and I was severely depressed. “Last Hope” was like a punch to the gut. I will never forget hearing the bridge for the first time and breaking down in tears. “It’s not that I don’t feel the pain, it’s just I’m not afraid of hurting anymore.” As I drove to my new city, I told myself that as long as I had even just a tiny spark, I would be okay. Since then, this song has continued to push me through some of the most difficult times of my life. “Last Hope” gave me the courage to keep going and do things I never thought I would have the strength to do. I don’t think I would be who or where I am today without it. — Crysta Marie
“Saturday” by Fall Out Boy
Potential – standing on the edge of something great, with best friends who make the impossible seem not only possible but inevitable. “Saturday” is a song that I always thought I understood, but only now on the edge of this great thing with these golden friends has it taken on a greater meaning than ever. Our feet really are in the door, these open doors are so very open ended. There’s this one big dream that we all have together, now. While I can’t speak for my friends, in so many ways it feels like I never really lived before now. Or maybe I lived, but now there’s a purpose to all the living that brought me here – brought us here. We all gathered unique skills, our own experiences, successes and failures. But then there was this song. This song brought us all community and joy. It brought us, this team at Honorable Mention Magazine, together. At the time of writing this we launch in two more weeks (give or take a few days). I don’t think I’ll ever listen to this song the same way again. In great moments of our lives, in songs that shape us, this song is reshaping us all right now. Two more weeks. — Allison Haley