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Who am I? I’m Shem Opolot, a health professional turned content creator, passionate about helping people be their best selves in life and work.
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Hi! I'm Shem Opolot, and this is The Friday Fix, my weekly newsletter. If you've received it, you’re either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you. If you fit into the latter (yes, I’m the kind of person who uses words like “latter”) camp and want to subscribe, then click on the shiny button below:
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HAPPY FRIDAY 🎉 I do this thing where I set all my watches 5 minutes ahead. The logic, of course, is that I’ll arrive everywhere at least 5 minutes earlier. However, whenever I check the time, I procrastinate for at least 5 minutes.
So, I’m hiring for a one-time position: I’ll set my watches to the correct time and the person must sneak into my room when I’m not looking to wind them 5 minutes ahead. It’s the only way.
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LIFE
Serendipitous songs
One of my favorite things about a new year is the certainty that I’ll discover new music I enjoy.
I must say, though, I detest what streaming has done to the spiritual and communal experience of discovering new music. When I was younger, if you missed a song on the radio, you had to wait a whole news cycle—days, even—to catch up with your friends who had already filled 96-page exercise books with lyrics.
This discovery process also inextricably tied songs to memories. For example, I remember where I was when I first heard Janet Jackson’s All For You. When I eventually watched the music video, I might’ve needed parental guidance.
With streaming, the point and place of discovery have become largely irrelevant. The song must carry the entire emotional and spiritual burden of staying in your subconscious. This might explain why most mainstream music today has low staying power. This, of course, is a more generous working theory than the prevalent belief that modern music is simply objectively worse.
Molded into an algorithmic hammer, streaming and social media—as mediums for dissemination and discovery—have panel-beaten artists into glorified content creators. They crowd source hits instead of making them. Some artists today make songs just to go viral on TikTok or Instagram. Songs are two minutes long because they must slot nicely into a GRWM video. Songs debut at peak hour with a planted, choreographed dance tethered to a catchy, if not repetitive, beat. In this scenario, the songs get stuck in your head not out of fondness, but because the repetition clings like glitter.
This ensloppification of music almost makes me wish we could bring back debilitating heartache and yearning as the true inspiration for the greatest hits. Without those ingredients, hear me out, a lot of the mainstream music produced today doesn’t inspire yearning—or heartache, by extension. So, on some level—let me land—bad music and social media are sterilizing society.
But, but…I’ve discovered some gems this year.
I’ve discovered Sienna Spiro, whose vocals in Die On This Hill make her a shoo-in for the next Bond movie soundtrack. That’s a hill I’m willing to die on.
I’ve discovered Jiire Smith, whose genre-bending banger, Yapa Yapa, will surely inspire some new Afro-something portmanteau.
Rosalía is classically trained, and even though I don’t understand a word she’s saying in her songs, I feel like I do? In La Perla, the rage that percolates as her voice goes from soothing to desk-shaking feels personal. I’m sure a man is involved, or a revolution. The song’s gravitas doesn’t equivocate, so I don’t expect its meaning to either.
Elmiene has come to breathe new life into R&B and revivify jaded millennials stuck in the 90s and 2000s. In Reclusive, he attempts to straighten our pouting lips and tame our tantrums. We should let him.
In Noah Guy, I’ve encountered a Caucasian possessed. That kind of style can only be achieved by a sip of the cocktail Justin Timberlake overindulged in during the 2000s—a mix of talent and cultural appropriation (or appreciation). I haven’t researched him much as a matter of principle. I believe one of the great casualties of the modern era is mystery. We weren’t meant to know nearly this much about each other, let alone celebrities. After listening to Bluesy Mae on repeat, I’m quite content to say that if you ask me if I know a guy, I’ll tell you about Noah Guy.
A new year—or any transition, for that matter—comes pregnant with uncertainty. How often can you say you know something will happen and it does? Today, I celebrate the certainty of good music.
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THINGS
A tweet
The most relatable thing I read this week was a tweet. Read the whole thing.
A picture
Spring has incredible staying power this year, but we’re still hitting the rooftops. This was last Saturday—one of the most action-packed (in a good way) days I’ve had in D.C.
WORK
Form function
If you use Google Forms, you can now schedule a form to stop receiving responses on some future date or when you hit a certain number of responses.
In the active form, click “Published” in the top right corner.
Click “Set close date or response limit”
The rest is self explanatory
PRODUCTS
A course
A guide
FUN
The Friday Fix playlist
Your picks
> Chefs from 13 different countries make sandwiches
> A game where you force your employee to lock in
Have a great weekend,
— SO
