the personal web page of arielle lok home

funny thing - thundercat

i've seen stephen live 3 times now and he never misses. this song brings me back to the first time i saw him. i had 5 tickets for my friends who were visiting montreal and thundercat ended up rescheduling to the next month. i forgot to sell the 4 extra tickets, so i texted 20 acquaintances and managed to rally a new group, including one of my closest friends now, michael (but at the time, we had never actually hung out before!).

when thundercat plays bass for 3 hours straight, firstly, you're in a trance. secondly, it is quite hard to dance to funky, jazzy bass. we just stood in awe. the set ends with this song and the pit opens. michael grabs my hand and we run STRAIGHT to the front via the pit (bad manners, i know) and we jump and scream together with our fingers intertwined as thundercat absolutely shreds the bass. that was the beginning of our beautiful, wonderful friendship and truly one of the warmest memories i hold in my heart.

call it fate, call it karma - the strokes

i listened to this song on repeat during (probably) my darkest, physical times. i was living in montreal alone (december 2020) and it was the first time i spent the major holidays away from family. i genuinely cannot remember a single happy moment from this period of time. my fridge stopped working so i put all of my food on the rooftop just in time for a heatwave to destroy all my perishables. this was peak covid and i couldn't leave the house after 7pm due to montreal curfew. i spent my nights lying on the floor and trying to do weird exercises. i grew up really fast in the spring. regardless, the strokes is my favourite band of my 20s and it sucks that this was my introduction to them but it feels fitting! hearing this finally played live at red rocks made me cry. i had to sit down.

delilah (pull me out of this) - fred again..

this song is the peak of summer 2023 with new best friends and newfound happiness. bo and i went to osheaga together to see fred again live and this song makes me dance and smile like no other. i always pause during the last build up and honestly it's hard for me not to cry out of sheer joy. it is so silly that music can just provoke me to become an emotional mess but this song just makes me want to let loose of every burden and enjoy life for 4 minutes and 10 seconds, breathing fresh air and smelling like a burnt waffle cone.

sanctuary - joji

YES, I KNOW, BASIC. i admit that i secretly enjoy listening to 88rising on occasion (not often though, lol) but this specific song defines my summer 2019. i had broken up with my highschool boyfriend which felt pretty great, i came back from a grad trip to japan with my best friends after we saved and planned all year, and i had two weeks left before i finally moved out of calgary. it was a season of major change and i felt zero anxiety around it, only excitement. i booked a flight to vancouver to visit my childhood best friend for a few days and we drove around at 2am every night blasting this song. we got drunk on kits beach and saw one of the best sunsets of my whole life. i swear it was one of the deepest, long-lived transitions of dark reds and oranges.

on the way back to his home, the 5 of us sat on the skytrain buzzed and sunkissed. his cute friend and i shared our earphones, played this song, and he rested his head on my shoulder for the duration of waterfront to patterson. what a peak memory of innocent, teenage crushing before i became a full fledged adult!

thursday night - urban zakapa

i was so excited for my first day of high school that i went to school an hour early. my heart was beating so fast. i think i fell in love with every boy i saw in my first period classroom. 10th grade arielle was so touch-starved lol. i listened to this song on repeat and it became my back-to-school anthem every time i started a new school year… which i guess will never happen again… oh…

summer - joe hisashi

my first real love was in 8th grade and we met on league of legends duo queue. as fate would have it, we were similar in age and he also lived in calgary. there's a bit more behind this, but ultimately we hit diamond together in a year playing some crazy comps like kalista/nunu (season 5, pre-rework) and he was always so perfect at timing jinx rockets on enemy spawn. we watched over 60 foreign movies together and this was the soundtrack of our first. we both cried like babies. this song makes me feel like im growing up in the country side, and brings me back to my slow realization that i had met someone very special to me for the first time in my life.

kahlil gibran - strfkr

this was the anthem of my first adult relationship. it reminds me of greenways, heatwaves, and long vancouver bus rides. now, it is a bittersweet warm hug.