what sweet means to me; a thread

(this is kinda like a vent thread and me being emotional over rockstars from the 70s all in one, fair warning... but I tweet what I want )

so at the end of February/beginning of March 2020, I felt super lost. I’d been heavily into queen for about a solid year and a half, but I could feel that special interest pull starting to wane, and I didn’t have anything else to jump to

I’d made a lot of friends in the fandom and made a name for myself as a fic writer, but I was tired

I was tired of writing the same shit, of doing the same shit. And I watched as my fandom friends found other interests anyway, and we drifted apart and I felt unanchored

And then the whole pandemic shit started and upended my life

Maybe not as much as other ppl, but it still affected me, still does

I’d had a fuckton of health issues previously and had devoted the entirety of 2019 to fixing them

So 2020 was gonna be the new me, seriously

I was looking forward to it, had booked a whole seven concerts for the year. I’d be turning a monumental age and I promised myself this would be the year I’d take control of my life

And then the pandemic. And I watched as those concerts got cancelled or postponed

And I watched as everything I’d looked forward to in 2020 slipped out of my fingers

All the time I was gonna spend at the gym?? Gyms closed

All the movies I was looking forward to see?? Postponed, movie theaters closed

I have a friend whose relationship with me is almost (c)

solely based on going to see movies/do cool things and then going out to eat after and I didn’t get to see them for months cause of this shit

And I was classified as an essential worker, doing a job I hated at a place I hated, being forced to stay late because of all the (c)

people panic shopping. Suffice to say my mental health was suffering lmao

It was in March I heard ballroom blitz for the first time. And tbh?? I felt ambivalent about it. Half meh, half intrigued

But I didn’t think of it much after. And since they hardly play sweet on the (c)

Radio, I didn’t think about it much till may (I think it was may, y’all know how time feels in a pandemic) when I heard little willy on the radio

And maybe it was just what I needed because its simplicity and catchiness had me hooked from the fucking START

But see, unless something grabs me from the start, I tend to take a very long time to stan

So I poked around on YouTube and found the music video for ballroom blitz and I was like wow these boys are gorgeous J F C

But like I’m autistic and very frequently my brain gets (c)

stuck on a loop. I can listen to one song for six months and not get tired of it.

So I didn’t venture beyond ballroom blitz. I just watched that video over and over again, trying to decide how I felt about these boys. Trying to predict if this was going to be a new (c)

special interest. And worst of all, trying to figure out how to cope with the guilt I was starting to feel as my current special interest was fading, because I’d had it for such a long time that what was I without it?? Who was I??

Do I regret all that wasted time I spent (c)

Just watching that one video, not finding more?? Not bothering to find out more about these boys??

Absolutely. Not because of the song or anything, but because not long after that, Stevie Priest passed away, about a week before my birthday.

I found out after hearing (c)

Ballroom blitz on the radio on the way to work. And although said radio DJ failed to properly identify which member of the band Stevie was, I felt SOMETHING welling up in my chest.

Something like grief for something I didn’t even know I’d lost.

That day, I sat in the (c)

breakroom at work on my lunch and watched as many sweet music videos as I could cram into the span of an hour, and I decided there was definitely something special about these boys, even if I didn’t know what.

But I got caught up in life again and the boys just kinda (c)

stayed in the back of my mind. Cause I wasn’t sure what I’d feel if I kept listening to them — guilt that I didn’t find them sooner, grief for most of them being gone — and those were emotions I couldn’t cope with at the time with my mental health being so volatile

Then around the 4th of July, this one radio station started playing their song “4th of July” and I was like hmm this is good shit. Very good shit.

And I’d heard fox on the run from my copy of the guardians of the galaxy soundtrack, and I’d really liked teenage rampage

So I listened to those songs kinda exclusively throughout July

I spent the month trying to get a new job (and succeeded, thank fuck) but in the whole “adapting to the new job” thing unfortunately the boys got relegated to the back of my mind again

So close to the end of august, I was feeling restless (lmao get it) and I knew I needed a new special interest. So I had a good talking w/ myself and bought every damn sweet album available to an American on iTunes ( not very many, lemme tell you ) and I decided (c)

I was gonna properly listen. I wanted to hear everything, not just the hits on the radio occasionally.

(This probably also stems from the fact that my new job occasionally plays sweet and I heard love is like oxygen for the first time there and lost my collective shit)

And I fell HARD. like out of a plane right on your fucking face hard (y’all better get this ref)

Oh my god. Full blown special interest, immediately. I was here like queen who??

Wouldn’t shut up about them. Made my mom listen to them. Watched hours of videos. Downloaded (c)

hundreds of pictures. Watched the documentaries a bunch. Made my friends listen to them. (One friend was 7 when they started getting popular and remembered hearing them on the radio and BITCH I WAS SHOOK)

And I also cried a lot, tbh.

I cried for many reasons. I cried cause I grieved over Brian, even though I hadn’t even been born when he passed

I cried cause I grieved over mick, even though I was a toddler when he passed, but goddamn if he wasn’t a fucking beacon of light in every sweet video

And (c)

I cried cause I grieved over Stevie, whose passing, now that I was thoroughly obsessed, felt as fresh to me as the day I’d heard it on the radio (and I also cried because his version of sweet had toured here in 2010 and I had no fucking idea)

And I also cried because I didn’t understand how I felt like I was the only one who cared about them

It feels like the whole world’s forgotten about them, even though we’ve got KISS and Motley Crue and Def Leppard and fucking axl rose calling them an influence

But it still feels like I’m the only one under 50 who knows a damn thing about them.. at least in this state anyway

And so now I get to the point: what’s my attachment to them

It’s different from my attachment to queen or to glam metal, even

I still like queen, but in a way they don’t feel real to me. Freddie is a legend and rightfully so, but sometimes it’s hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that he actually existed

And queen feels so perfect, so carefully put together (in their music at least) and (c)

Even after seeing QAL last year there feels to be some kind of untouchableness (if that’s not a word already it is now) to them.

But sweet?? They feel REAL.
There’s a rawness to their music that I fucking love. There’s a rawness to them that I can feel

Is it cause I read (c)

Stevie’s book and now I know the whole history, including their feuds?? Maybe. Is it cause I’ve heard about their struggles, that they feel more human to me?? Maybe

But imo I think it has to do with their music, mainly

There’s something about it that just takes me back

I listen to them and god it’s like I’m 16 or 17 again, figuring out my identity, establishing it, accepting it. I can see myself back then, trying to disentangle myself from the toxicity that was present and trying to create a new future, looking forward to it

Trying to learn more about music, letting myself dream about it. And honestly with sweet, it feels like if they did it, I can too, and it’s very comforting

But something about their music takes me even further back, too

I listen to their music and I remember being four years old, sitting in the backseat of my moms car while she played the oldies station and I heard The Rolling Stones and free and Elton John and I fell in love with rock

I listen to their music and I remember being seven years old, getting taken to (several) oldies circuit concerts (60s tho, not 70s) and it felt like discovering another planet, a new world, and that’s how I feel when I listen to sweet

Like there’s something more for me (c)

Out there.

Like I can actually accomplish something with my life. Like there’s more to life than what I’m doing right now. And when so many people have told me otherwise... sweet are all I need rn tbh

They give me hope, that’s what it is.

Hope that I’ll endure the rest (c)

Of 2020, and whatever 2021 brings cause I’m sure it ain’t gonna be pleasant with 2020 bleeding into it

Hope that I can do everything I wanna do with my life.

And hope to live my life to the fullest, cause they sure as hell did.

And I’ll never shut up about them, I won’t (c)

Let the world forget about them. People were disappointed about me changing my pfp... lemme tell you everyone knows about Queen.

But a language dies if ppl don’t pass it along, and music is a language, and I refuse to let sweet’s language die

Which is kinda why I picked the pfp I did. For those of y’all who don’t know, it’s purported to be the last pic taken of Sweet together, and imo it’s haunting

Bc you can see all they’ve done, all they’ve gone through in their faces, in their body language

And it’s a legacy in a pic.

And for all they’ve done for me... I’ll be damn sure to make sure that legacy lasts

/end thread