The Pitch’s Infinite Playlist Round 35: Emily Jacobs

The Pitch’s Infinite Playlist. // Illustration by Shelby Phelps

Welcome to The Pitch’s Infinite Playlist, a forever-growing playlist of songs picked by people in KC. View/follow the full playlist on Spotify, and you can always go back and check out the full run of articles. Throw the playlist on shuffle and enjoy away!

Playlist guest #35: Emily Jacobs

Who are you, and what do you do?

My name is Emily, and I am an intern for The Pitch and a UMKC journalism student, graduating this December (hopefully).

I’m also a bartender and write fiction and the cringiest poetry in existence. I enjoy live music, checking out new restaurants, and hanging out with my cats.

Where can we support/follow your work?

My Instagram is private, but feel free to request to follow me @emily.x.elizabeth for more music recommendations, memes, and pictures of my cats.

“Silvertongue” by Young the Giant

The first time I heard this song was on The Buzz back when I was visiting Kansas City several years before I moved here, and it was on repeat for many months afterward. At the time, I was taking a break from college and making a myriad of poor life decisions. An upbeat tune about the power of words and being “addicted to madness,” this song reminds me of that volatile period of my life and how I ultimately came out of it a better person.

“Swords and Pens” by The Story So Far

The Story So Far is one of my favorites of the “Defend Pop Punk Era” of the 2010s, with their edgier take on the genre. Their niche is angsty breakup songs with poetic lyrics, and this track is no exception. I still scream along to this song regularly, the same way I did as a teenager. 

“It’s Not a Fashion Statement, It’s a Deathwish” by My Chemical Romance

Listening to My Chemical Romance takes me back to the days of wearing thick black eyeliner on both eyelids, wearing all-black clothes, straightening my hair daily, and leaving for school before my parents woke up so they couldn’t make me change. This song is criminally underrated among their discography and is one of my favorites. 

“The Middle” by Jimmy Eat World

One of the best bands to come out of the wave of pop punk in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Jimmy Eat World was one of several bands that influenced my taste in music from a young age, and this album is golden from beginning to end. This song blew up on mainstream radio around the time my parents were separating, and this was the song that made me feel like “everything’ll be just fine.”

Listening to this track later on as a teenager, I understood the true meaning of this song, which is about a girl who feels like she doesn’t fit in with her peers and the singer telling her that it’s okay to not fit in. 

I saw Jimmy Eat World at the Uptown last year, and it was the only show I’ve been to that has moved me to tears more than once. Though I’m usually one who doesn’t like to pick a band’s most popular song as my favorite, this song will always hold a special place in my heart. 

“Like a Ritual” by Title Fight

A passionate hardcore punk track, it took me a ridiculous amount of time to decide which song I wanted to include off of Title Fight’s third and best album. Title Fight is my go-to band on a late-night drive through downtown. They’ve been on hiatus for several years, but if My Chemical Romance got back together, there’s still hope, right?

“Friday I’m In Love” by The Cure

A more upbeat song to shake things up, this is one of those songs that I put on when I want to feel like I’m the main character in a cheesy, feel-good movie. 

“Badfish” by Sublime

If you didn’t think this list could get any more random, you were very wrong; in fact, the randomness of this list is put to shame by my personal Spotify playlists. 

This list wouldn’t be complete without Sublime, a band I listened to on repeat in my late teens and early 20s.

“We’re not trying to write punk rock. We’re not trying to write reggae. We’re not trying to write ska,” said Bradley Nowell in an interview in 1995, which accurately sums up their musical style. Though some of Sublime’s discography hasn’t held up over the years with some questionable lyrics, their music led me to check out several genres that I didn’t expect to like.

While living in my hometown in northwest Indiana, I used to drive to the beach on Lake Michigan and play this song as I listened to the waves crash against the shore. Though this song is about drug addiction, it takes me back to that beach—something I (unrealistically) wish KC had more of.