By Mia Zuckerberg and Carol Holan
Have a gay crush but don’t want to ruin the friendship? We have your soundtrack.
As first-year students, we created and currently run WORM Radio, one of The Sounds Of Colorado College’s many student-produced radio shows. WORM Radio stands for Women On Rad Music, which we think is a good descriptor of the femme-focused space we try to create with our show.
Every Tuesday at 8 p.m., we air a new cross-genre playlist that encompasses a specific theme or emotion. So far this year, we have created four hour-long playlists with the themes “Having a Gay Crush but Not Wanting to Ruin the Friendship,” “Driving Alone for the First Time,” “Fourth Week Rage,” “collaging.” Our most recent playlist is called “Putting Glitter On Your Face and Feeling Invincible.” Our playlists are all available on the SOCC website, so the next time you’re struggling with a gay crush or feel like you just might explode during fourth week, take a listen.
WORM Radio began when we first met. Going into college, we both knew we wanted to be involved in The SOCC radio program, and when we found out that we shared similar music taste, it was obvious that we had to create a show.
Through each other and the show, we have discovered many amazing artists. Creating our playlists has forced us to view music in a new way, to find the connecting themes and emotions in music that might sound radically different at its surface. WORM Radio is a show run by two female music enthusiasts, and we want to use our platform, however small, to expose CC students to underrepresented artists we love. We play artists from every genre and background, and we like to highlight femme-identifying and queer artists whenever we can.
Although our favorite artists are mostly current alternative or hip-hop artists, we pull music from a variety of genres, such as classic rock, early alternative, and R&B. Some of our shared favorite artists that we feature frequently on our playlists are Tierra Whack, Anderson Paak, Mothers, and Mitski. Whack is a female rapper who defies the traditional confines of rap music with her lyrics, videos, and song lengths. In 2018, she debuted her album “Whack World,” which features 15 interconnecting one-minute songs. Whack’s artistry and creativity are inspiring and exciting. Check out her songs “Only Child,” “Hungry Hippo,” and “Wasteland” for a taste of her music, or listen to any of our published playlists — she’s on all of them.
On a different note (literally), Mothers is another favorite of ours. The band creates beautiful and often somber alternative-indie music with strong, raw instrumentals. Kristine Leschper’s unique vocals bring the emotional lyrics to life. Mothers’ songs “It Hurts Until It Doesn’t” and “Easy As Possible” can be heard on our equally emotional playlist “Having a Gay Crush but Not Wanting to Ruin the Friendship.”
One more prominent artist on our show is Mitski, another woman with music that is inventive and exciting, both instrumentally and lyrically. Her distinct voice carries slow ballads, such as “A Burning Hill,” as well as guitar-heavy tracks that you can really rock out to, like “Nobody.”
We hope you tune into WORM Radio this next Tuesday at 8 p.m. for some dope tunes. You can check out some of our playlists on the SOCC website to catch up on our past shows.