Extracted and Bottled

Songs as Scents

For every artist I’ve chosen here, there is of course an infinite list of others that I had to ignore, both for your sake as the reader and my sake, because as fun as this is, I don’t want to spend so long writing this up that I never actually publish it. The songs I’ve chosen are also not necessarily my favorites from these artists, that title is more often than not shapeshifting over time and depends heavily on the current phase of my life. 

I chose songs that I felt could provide a nice diversity of scents to explore – it would be very boring if I wrote about a bunch of indie-twang artists, not to say that they would all have the same perfume, but that I imagine the notes would become repetitive. In the indie-twang sense, there would probably be a lot notes like of hay, leather, wood, flowers found in the Midwest like peonies and aster, and probably a decent amount of dirt notes, to really hone in on the “mucking up my boots” aspect that that genre of music has.  

Sometimes when listening to a song, I find myself thinking a lot about the environment that it was either written in or about, because they are not necessarily always the same. Someone can write about a life-changing trip to Brazil while they are back in their home of Poland, for example, and both places would influence how the song ultimately sounds and thus smells. Maybe in that case, the song would encapsulate both the beating rays and lush environment of the Brazilian countryside while also still having a heart that is more Polish, with a heavy church presence and the brooding energy of a deep forest nearby. How does that translate to a scent? In that case, the scent may have top notes like peach and amazonian lily, middle notes of rose and white musk, and base notes of pine and incense. 

If you’re reading that and thinking “what the hell”…welcome to the world of scents! There are three levels of notes in a perfume: top/head, middle/heart, and base/soul. Top notes are what you smell immediately upon spraying a perfume, they are the fastest scent to appear and the fastest to disappear. They are short-lived and ephemeral and also why you probably continuously reapply your so-called “lily-scented” perfume when you don’t smell like lilies after three hours and wonder if it was a waste of money. Heart notes appear more slowly and disappear quietly, slipping out the back door, Irish-exiting, whatever term you fancy. When the top notes begin to die down, these start to become more noticeable, but also eventually make their (quiet) exits. Finally, there are base notes, which are the heaviest and the longest lasting. When you go to grab your sweater the next day after wearing it out the night before and you catch a glorious whiff of your perfume still on the neckline, it’s the base notes making themselves known. Base notes linger, like a lover that won’t shut the door, and whether you see that as a blessing or a curse is an opinion I’ll leave you to make yourself. 

If you prefer a more scientific explanation, this all has to do with the volatility of the compounds in a perfume and the rate at which they evaporate. Top notes evaporate fastest, then middle notes, which leaves base notes making a slow burn. Perfume is both an art and science, which is the intersection criteria for many of my interests. In another life I could’ve been a zany perfumer/mad scientist, mixing up concoctions with things I happened upon walking in nature, which is also what every little girl does when she plays “witches” as a child. 

Writing about music and pairing them with scents might bring to mind the condition synesthesia – you know, the one that every odd-ball girl in middle and high school loves to claim they have for some reason. Synesthesia is a perceptual phenomena in which stimulation of one sensory pathway leads to involuntary stimulation of another sensory pathway; people claim that the number 7 is always yellow, for example. Most people know what this is because it is heavily memed at this point. 

I do not have synesthesia, thank heavens, imagine how much more annoying I would’ve been when I was younger. Instead, an ex once told me that I am an aesthete in the truest sense of the word. So, I’m going to choose to be annoying and eagerly accept that title instead. If only I could get paid big bucks for it!

Instead I am doing this for the love of the game, so let’s begin.

How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful by Florence and The Machine

Scent Idea: Churchy (cedar, olive for the wood of the crucifix), airy, city.

Scent: Suscepto by Spiritica

Despite my initial assumption that this song was about the ocean, it’s actually about how beautiful the skyline is in Los Angeles. However, I think that the vastness of the sky, the inherent romantic energy of a particular city’s skyline, and the humbling power of the ocean are all related here, as water is a foundational element to the band in general. In my search to find the perfect scent, I kept getting stuck – I was asking for too much! I wanted to highlight plants local to LA while also touching on the religious aspect and honoring the sky that she was mesmerized by. Which ultimately means that maybe I should be partnering with Florence Welch and Alessandro Michele himself to make a perfume specifically for her songs, which is a dream job I just made up. 

Suscepto by Spiritica is, I imagine, as close as I’ll get to the perfect scent for this song. It features notes of ozonic (sky), bergamot and rose (which both grow in L.A.), frankincense (religious aspect), and metal and smoke (the city life aspect). One review said it was the “perfect marriage of the sacred and profane”, which I think sounds like an apt description for the city of angels. 

Silver Springs by Fleetwood Mac

Scent Idea: Moss, dirt, flowers, enchantment, anger.

Scent: Chypre Mousse by Oriza L. Legrand

Read: Behind the Song: Silver Springs by Fleetwood Mac | KWVA 

My friend Viviana texted me saying that she wished she could smell like this song and thus, the idea for this article was born! The lore for this song runs deep and I recommend reading the article above for some background information, but this song is basically Stevie’s “Fuck you” to Lindsay. The title represents the “fantastic” relationship that they could’ve had, but didn’t, and goes on to scorn his new lovers and ultimately “cast her spell” on him by saying that he’ll never forget her. Crazy things to be singing with your literal ex, but then again, that’s normal for Fleetwood Mac. There’s a lot going on in this song and I wanted to touch on a few key aspects – the magical what could’ve been, the palpable anger, and the bewitching quality. 

Chypre Mousse by Oriza L. Legrand features notes of clary sage (burning sage is very witchy, spiritual, and feels proper to put to a Stevie Nicks songs), galbanum (leaves a bitter taste in your mouth, self explanatory given the nature of the song), and boletus edulis (a type of mushroom that grows in California near pine trees during late summer and early autumn after the summer rains and is both a bit cheeky to me and represents the end of this tumultuous (rainy) relationship that allowed something else (a mushroom/this song) to grow). 

Cloudbursting by Kate Bush

Scent Idea: Air, family drama, rain, sun, yo-yo, screw the gov.

Scent: Petrichor Plains by Mihan Aromatics

Read:The tragic story behind Kate Bush’s ‘Cloudbusting’ - Far Out Magazine 

Cloudbursting may take the cake when it comes to most interesting background stories for a song – is written from the perspective of a boy, Peter, whose father, psychiatrist and philosopher Wilhem Reich, believed he could build a contraption to create rain on demand and who was eventually seen as a threat by the government and imprisoned, leaving the boy fatherless and confused. And that’s just the brief version! I love songs that have a heavy and slow building crescendo, it is propulsive and addicting and makes the eventual explosion of tension all the more delicious and heavenly. 

Petrichor Plains features notes of rain (duh! He is literally making rain), earth (poor little Peter had to bury his yo-yo in the ground because his father was afraid of the fluorescent dye that was in it), solar notes (lyrics mention the sun coming out, but I also feel like the slow crescendo in this song feels like riding a hot air balloon closer and closer to the sun), and asphalt (symbolizes the government and their police cars driving Wilhem to jail). 

Good Woman by Jade Bird

Scent Idea: Cheap hotels, cheating, anger.  

Scent: Black Hole by Nicheend

Jade Bird set out to write a classic “cheating, done wrong” style of song, inspired by Alanis Morisette, but that also leaves me wondering what is “cheating, done right”? The lyrics mention the hallmarks of cheating – hotel beds, the cheating girl being “cheap”, the singer being a “good woman” and I can’t help but love the attention-grabbing powerful beginning that sets the tone for the rest of the song. I imagine a woman singing this after having one too many whiskeys in an old bar in Nashville and seeing her ex enter with the “dollar-store version” of her. Needless to say, I obviously love female rage.

Black Hole by Nicheend features notes of whiskey (country, liquor-fueled rage), vanilla and rose (notes that typically signal “goodness” and “pureness”), and milk and sweet notes (which perfectly represents the “other” woman to me, as the milk is slightly sexual (just think of the movie Babygirl) and the sweet notes invoke the inversion of a “good woman” aka a “naughty girl” (sorry) and conjure up images of someone who buys candy at the gas station. 

G.U.Y. by Lady Gaga

Scent Idea: Woman in charge, gender reversal, greek goddess.

Scent: Born Screaming by Toskovat’, honorable mentions to Boys by Freddie Albrighton and Maggie’s Last Party by Filigree & Shadow.

I’m not sure if a more gender-reversing and sexually liberating and fun song exists than this. It’s from 2013 and still fresh and pushes the envelope in terms of cultural and sexual status quo. If things were fraught in 2013, they’re fraught as hell now, what with trad-wives and incels and right-wing dominating fascist ideas of gender performance and roles of the household being back in full swing. Super fun!

This song is full of fun word play, historical references, and role reversals and it is a fucking treat, to say the least. Much could be said about this but I’ll just say that playing with dynamics – sexually, in terms of gender, and romantically – encapsulates the erotic and highlights what is so badly missing from discussions and representations of sex and love today. I referenced the movie Babygirl earlier and if you read my Letterboxd review, you’ll know that I actually find it pretty sanitized! Sex today is plastic and clean and never plays with ideas that are actually threatening to society or its expectations as a whole and thus renders it boring, understimulating, and vanilla (best case scenario if it’s even vanilla!). I eat up representations of damsels in distress as much as the next girl because it’s so easy and soothing to imagine someone coming to save you from all your problems, but it is so much sexier and empowering to remember that you can save yourself too.

I found quite a few perfumes that I honestly think could work for this, but I’m going to focus on just one for the sake of being fair. Born Screaming by Toskovat’ features notes of cherry and latex (no explanation needed, inherently sexual, etc.), pearls! (I don’t even know what that is supposed to smell like but I love the sentiment behind it and the playful energy it brings), and myrrh (which smells a bit musky and is referenced in many religions, from being one of the three gifts given to Baby Jesus by the Three Kings to being an ingredient in the incense offerings used at the first and second temples in Jerusalem, I think it’s a silly nod to religion and also grounding).

I wanted to finish with Criminal by Britney Spears (I wanted to feature a note of gunpowder!) but I think I’ll have to save it for another post. This has been lovely, but I fear that at this length I am overstaying my welcome limit on people’s attention spans. If you have not already fallen into the joyous, overwhelming, even drama-filled black hole that is the perfume world, tread lightly. Or, douse yourself fully and leave a scent trail so strong you’ll have people turning back to look at you as Lot’s wife did, the choice is yours.