I wanted to write a full essay that thoroughly explores my thoughts about this album, Mesita’s Twitter song project, and how it all is actually impacting my views on life, art, &c., but since I already have notebooks and drives and clouds half-filled half-empty with so many other such good intentions that I never follow through on, I’m just going to post this now, and state that I think that Mesita’s You Are Beautiful is pretty much one of the most honest pieces of art I have ever encountered.

It’s simultaneously a breakdown and a breakthrough. It includes petty rants about fantasy football, music vloggers, and needing to buy a window shade at Ikea because the sunlight “feels fing bright” as the season changes. At the same time it’s filled with grief over a mom dying of cancer, personal firsthand details from the Columbine tragedy, and an underlying desire to simply be heard, connect with people, spread positivity, and pay the rent in the midst of a stalled music career. It shouldn’t necessarily work, and I’m still not entirely sure if it will work for anyone in the world I know who might read this post and then listen to the music, but it really works for me. It works all the better for the rawness, the asides, the missed notes, the improvised lyrics. I can’t stop listening to it. Some of the most random bits repeat in my head, and I guess this is because a hook is a hook, even when the lyrics are about watching Mad Max at an Alamo Drafthouse in Littleton, CO. One of my big takeaways is that singing about whatever comes into your head at the moment can end up being at least as relevant and much more revealing as whatever dramatic or antic nonsense usually constitutes a pop song. This is the pedestrian and the profound jumbled up together. It is like a rambling message from an old friend. It is like scrolling through someone’s social media feed and seeing their silly meme retweets and their most vulnerable and insightful moments, originally separated by days or weeks, all together. For better or worse, it is now my favorite album of 2019.

So with that introduction, here is You Are Beautiful, by Mesita:

and here’s the addendum bonus track:

And I might gather some random tweets about the album that I liked, both from Mesita and a couple of other random Mesita appreciators of the internet, and come back and embed them here. No promises.

• He goes on an actual rant about New York pedestrians in one song, so this is both figurative and literal.