“New Year’s Eve” by Mal Blum – or How the Beginning of 2012 Took a Massive Dump on Me

I’ll admit it, I found out about Mal Blum’s “New Year’s Eve” in a totally uncool way – it was in a commercial. No finding out about her song on a super indie music blog. No stumbling upon a tiny show of hers at a dive-y venue. No. No. No. No.

I found out about her because I was totally Google-creeping Freja Beha. I’ll be honest, I was Facebook chatting a friend and the topic of how hot Freja Beha is came up and also the fact that she’s one of my dream girls and also the fact that she’s a model and the fact that she’s a lesbian. Basically, she’s the girl I wish I could sleep with and also the girl I wish I could be. If only I were 7 inches taller…

Anyway, I happened to come across Nylon’s “Fashion Movie: Freja Beha x Free People” post about the (at the time) latest Free People ad spot featuring Freja Beha in various lookbook-esque poses and outfits.

It’s pretty obvious why they used Mal Blum’s song:

“I don’t like my t-shirt. I don’t like my blue jeans.” I mean, come on, of course you’d want to buy some awesome Free People pieces if you’re reminded that you don’t like t-shirt or your jeans. And how perfectly timed to include a song that mentions “it’s a happy New Year unlike all the rest. Feels like I am changing, and I know it’s for the best.” What is more epitomic of change, especially New Year’s change than a total wardrobe change? And what else is perfect? “Last year is ending just in time…” Yes, last year is ending just in time, considering the ad was featured on January 31. Essentially, what music could be more perfect for a Free People ad?

Ok, Media Studies major tangent over… kind of. And no, I didn’t mean for that to all sound sarcastic. I really do believe that that song was just absolutely perfect for a January clothing ad.

Anyway, for the personal aspect of this blog post – because it’s been a while since I’ve written one of those:

The New Year for me, the beginning of 2012, felt as if it were taking a massive dump on me.

I was broke – in so many definitions and levels of the term:

1. My bank statement looked pretty depressing.
2. I had a disgusting cold and a decommissioned right shoulder.
3. And for almost two weeks, I was so pathetically heartbroken that all I could do was just go home after work to a bottle of cheap wine and cry.

Most of all were five moments that seriously stick out for me:

1. A few days before New Year’s, during one of those morning after hours, a girl asked me jokingly “Do you ever sleep alone?” reminding me of the promiscuous reputation I’ve gained among friends of mine.
2. A few days later a different girl told me that she really wanted to sleep with me but didn’t want to just end up another girl on my list.
3. That reminded me of a few months before when a girl told me, “I don’t want to just be another girl you sleep with. I want to feel like I’m special to you.”
4. On December 31 around 8pm, I found out that the girl I’d fallen for at the beginning of 2011, the girl who told me that she was so physically attracted to me but who “respected” me so much that she didn’t want to be the person she used to be who would “use [me] physically”, the girl who told me that she was at a position where she felt she really just needed a friend, just got a girlfriend. An amazing, gorgeous, beautiful woman of a girlfriend. I’d never felt like more of a kid than at that moment. No matter how much I talked about my work in consulting. No matter how much I bragged about graduating a year early from a top-ranked university. No matter which big-name client I hyped up – I still felt like some stupid kid compared to this amazing, world-changing bombshell of a girlfriend of hers.
5. And that’s when at 10:45pm on December 31, 2011, I realized that I’d never be anyone’s girlfriend – that I’m just the skinny, “attractive” kid that people want to sleep with. And yeah, 99% of the time, I love that. I just want to sleep with gorgeous women and be friends and hang out. But when it hit me that the only time I wanted anything more than that with someone as enthralling as that girl yet couldn’t have it, I nearly broke down.

And with that, I present Mal Blum’s “New Year’s Eve,” which I discovered via a Nylon Magazine post about a Free People Freja Beha ad at just the exact time I was getting over all the emotions described in the song: