Tokyo Police Club Starter Pack
I started listening to Tokyo Police Club when I was in eighth grade. One of my closest friends was then (and still is now) constantly invested in discovering new and/or little known alternative music. I’ve never quite understood the success behind his methods. He dives down Spotify rabbit-holes and commits to them wholeheartedly, listening to entire albums and artist repertoires. After settling on a few particularly special ones, he listens to them over and over again—in the car while driving, in his walks between classes, during class, alone in bed, or even surrounded by people at parties. He is always discovering, always listening, and sometimes letting himself fall inside the music completely—giving way to it.
I consider myself lucky to be one of the recipients of his musical finds. Tokyo Police Club is a personal favorite of mine. Throughout both middle school and high school, I have numerous memories of listening to Tokyo Police Club with my friends. During that time, I almost exclusively listened to songs from the album Champ. Released on June 8, 2010, Champ is the second studio album by Tokyo Police Club. From start to finish, its sound ranges from melancholy to upbeat and then back again. I loved the song Favourite Food the most. I even learned how to play it on ukulele in eighth grade, which, in reflection, was decidedly not a great fit. Favourite Food resonated with me in a way that the band’s other songs didn’t at first. The lyrics toy with the idea of consistency in the midst of change and growth. At the end of middle school, losing friends and making new ones, moving out of my childhood home, preparing to start high school, emotions alternating between extreme highs and intense lows, and of course experiencing puberty in full swing, life felt like it was changing dramatically. I found immense comfort in the idea of some sort of sameness lingering within all of that change.
It wasn’t until my first Winter Break home from college that I began broadening my exposure to Tokyo Police Club’s music. It started when, a few days after the start of the new year, my friends and I drove down to the Oregon Coast for a weekend. In the car, we listened to songs from the album TPC, released in 2018. Later that night, before we fell asleep, one of my friends played the song Ready to Win, from that album. I remember lying in bed, looking up at the ceiling, letting that song wash over me in a way that I hadn’t let music do in a long time. There’s a certain vulnerability that comes with allowing anything, but especially music, to affect you. For a while, that wasn’t a vulnerability that I had wanted to feel. I had been so wrapped in starting college and confronting all of the complicated and vulnerable emotions that come with that, I didn’t feel ready to give in to the emotional draw that music has historically lent me. Listening to Tokyo Police Club again changed that.
I was reminded of how cathartic music can be when you have the chance to sing along to a song passionately and sometimes sadly too. So for those of us that are ready now to feel a little bit more vulnerable than we already are, or simply for those of us looking for something to sing along to, here is your Tokyo Police Club introductory playlist.
1. DLTFWYH (album: TPC)
“And every time it rains I get the feeling
Got a little hole above my head
One more drop comes falling through the ceiling
And it's a long way down”
2. Hercules (album: TPC)
“Might remember all the books I never read
Might remember all the looks I never said
I'm not ready
I'm not ready”
3. Be Good (album: A Lesson In Crime)
“It's been a blast but we've been caught
Packing up your suitcase, hard day, long face”
4. New Blues (album: TPC)
“I've been low
I've been down and I don't want to go there anymore
The sky is wide
Grass is gold and I can't make my shadow out at all”
5. Wait Up (Boots of Danger) (album: Champ)
“Inside the lines
Gotta catch 'em in a paper cup
You never know when to change your luck
The sum of everything you like”
6. Can’t Stay Here (album: TPC)
“Well I don't know how to grow up
And I don't know how to stay young
I just know that I can't stay here
'Cause I been woken from a dream”
7. Hang Your Heart (album: Melon Collie and the Infinite Radness)
“I’ve been trying to put my finger on the thing that really makes you glow
I’ve been soaking up your eyes and you don't even seem to know”
8. Favourite Food (album: Champ)
“Classic Hollywood is a kid
With the volume up all the way
Now you do the same and you're right
things are better in black and white
But there's another girl and another day
And your favourite foods still taste the same”
9. One of These Days (album: TPC)
“I don't want to get by, getting by don't do the trick for me
'Cause I could get free doing things a little differently”
10. The Ocean (album: Melon Collie and the Infinite Radness)
“It goes down a little faster than I think
Everybody circles the sun on New Years Eve
Like the great parade that you just can’t leave
We're standing still, We're standing still”
11. Ready to Win (album: TPC)
“And I'll do it forever, do nothing but fail
A student of error who can only prevail
'Cause learning is trying and trying is hard
When it feels like falling's going to tear you apart”