There are bands that have a story so precise for me that I could drive back to the very spot where I was when I first listened to their music. I could tell you what I was wearing and where I was standing in the crowd when I first saw them live. Somehow, the specifics have disappeared and been lost in translation when it comes to Candy Hearts. I know our paths collided in the summer of 2014, but that's about it.


When Candy Hearts' (and now Best Ex's) frontwoman Mariel Loveland announced the name change, earlier this year, she said : "To me, Best Ex is like a breakup haircut, only I broke up with this part of myself that I no longer want or need. I broke up with a feeling that had no right to be around in the first place. I chopped off the dead, over-bleached ends of my hair my mom is begging me to cut and gave myself a confidence-boosting makeover (with lots of glitter, of course!)." Little did I know that when Candy Hearts stormed into my life, on a day I do not remember when I stumbled upon I Miss You, they'd turn out to be my confidence-boosting makeover, they'd be my breakup haircut, they'd be the start of me chopping off the dead, over-bleached ends of my figurative hair.


Reading an old interview of Mariel's for Substream, I realised Candy Hearts (and now Best Ex) might just be the most "me" band around. She says she wishes she'd written every Paramore album, but also Torn by Natalie Imbruglia. She claims to be inspired by Taylor Swift and Brand New. Find something more "me" than this, I dare you. Candy Hearts are the band I had wanted to have around my entire life, the band I would have loved to find in a battle of the bands episode of my favourite sitcom when I was eight, the band I would have sang along to in my bedroom, probably deafening my neighbours, aged twelve. Had I been in my Freaky Friday phase (is it a phase, really?) when I first listened to All The Ways You Let Me Down and I would have air-guitarred my way through it and scoured my closets in the hope of finding something suitable to channel my inner Mariel in the same way I did with Lindsay Lohan.
One thing I have learnt during my twenty-seven years on this Earth as well as during nine seasons of How I Met Your Mother is that timing is everything. When you meet people is capital. Where you are at a defined point of time is most important. It works the same with music.
I didn't find Candy Hearts when I was an eight year old obsessed with Sabrina the Teenage Witch, nor did I find them when I wished my life was like Freaky Friday, long haired Chad Michael Murray included.
I told you already, I found Candy Hearts in the summer of 2014 - the summer when a boy snaked his way into my heart, only to break it.


The story is older than the world and many people go through it every second of every day. There was this boy, and he lead me on, only to leave my high and dry, with a broken heart and self-confidence at the bottom of an industrial sized bin. When I discovered All The Ways You Let Me Down, back when I welcomed Mariel into my life with open arms and a shattered heart, my feelings were conflicted and intense. There were days when my anger was fiery and red-hot. There were days when the sadness was so heavy I wasn't sure it would ever lift away. I had brief confident spells that lasted just long enough for the boxed pink hairdye to fade away, or for me to be done crossing Portsmouth Harbour by myself on a sunny day. I can now safely say that Candy Hearts were instrumental in getting to the point where I am today - a stage of "over it" when I have fully accepted that it is okay for me to reflect on it and acknowledge every part of it, and when I hope that wherever he is, he's doing okay.


It was a long battle and I started it at the bottom of the industrial sized bin with the remains of my self-confidence and my broken heart. All The Ways You Let Me Down held my hand and refused to let it go. It held my hand and rubbed its thumb on my skin so that I could never forget it was there for better or for worse. It was the hug I needed, the tough love I needed, the comfort I needed. It acted as the best friend I wasn't sure I had, the kind of friend who is okay listening to you moan over and over again about how sad you are and how this is the end of the world, even when you both know it's not. All The Ways You Let Me Down was there, by my side, unconditionnally.


On the exterior, All The Ways You Let Me Down has all the pretty, rosy, sweet and tender parts I love in music. You can hear it in I Miss You, a resolutely positive love song, or in Mariel's delicate voice. You can guess it when you find my baby pink vinyl. You can see it in the album cover, a naked brick wall decorated in shiny bunting reading its title. All The Ways You Let Me Down has all my dreams of loving someone so much I'd miss them even when they are still with me, of road trips with the stereo loud in the car, of diners in America and of coffee dates with my girl friends. All The Ways You Let Me Down is the perfect bubble of everything I grew up on, a sensitive and sweet teenager fed on American TV shows, who tends to romanticise cars and house parties.
One day, another day I don't remember, I stopped for a second and paid attention to the soundtrack of my hopeful morning dance-offs with myself, to the words I was singing along to. This is how All The Ways You Let Me Down went from being just the album I wished I had had when I was a teenager to the album that helped me through heartbreak. The exterior might be sweet and shiny, but the interior is full of hurt, and pain, of sadness and anxiety. That summer, I looked sweet and shiny with my layered necklaces, my frilly socks and my pink hair, but inside, I was hurting, I was broken, and my anxiety was skyrocketing. In retrospect, at least, I wasn't alone.


Sometimes, all it takes is a sentence. You don't need the whole story to apply to your own. You just need a couple of words. In Michigan, Mariel sings "You say that I have your heart, but I'm all alone when they're closing the bar, and I don't know what you're thinking". She probably had a specific bar in mind when she wrote those lyrics, they take me back somewhere completely different, and still, it stings. It wasn't even a bar, it was an empty tent at a festival, a tent where they had the brilliant idea to close the night with Green Day's Good Riddance, a tent where I was standing by myself, drunk on Jägermeister because they weren't offering anything else, a tent where I was looking like an idiot in my plaid skirt, my Kids in Glass Houses t-shirt and my green wellies. I was alone and I didn't know what he was thinking. What are you supposed to make of someone who tells you he thought he liked you and in the end he doesn't, and forty-eight hours later, he comes to your rescue when you're being bothered by a creep.
One day, I stopped looking at my own life and looked at the big picture instead. I realised that Michigan wasn't about about my own, personal broken heart and a tent in Knebworth, England, it was about a boyfriend who ignores you and does not treat you right, and slowly but surely, I saw this was the situation I had been in, too. I had been ignored, lead on and not treated right, and I deserved better.
The issue with being a highly sensitive person who cares a whole lot about what other people think is that a small thing can make you feel an unsufferable amount of guilt. The greatest thing about being a person who counts on music more than she counts on human beings is that a single song can teach you to let go of the guilt that is eating your insides.


In Brooklyn Bridge, Mariel reflects on a past significant other and says "I didn't know what I was doing, you were so beautiful and charming". Sometimes, it doesn't take a lot to fall for someone. They just need to have a nice smile and the right words at the right time, the right way of saying you are lovely, and you fall head first for it. I nursed delusional hopes of him coming back to me and drunkenly swore I was going to get him back, and then I saw behind the beautiful and charming exterior, the beautiful smile and the right words. Moments like those are like scratching the gold from a cheap necklace away, only to see the grey, ordinary metal underneath. Not all that glitters is pure gold. He would never felt the way I did, never had and never will. He had never liked me as much as I had, he never would, and he had never been as hurt as I was. There was nothing to get hung up on, nothing to waste my time on.


And mostly, there was Top of Our Lungs. Top of Our Lungs has my very favourite thing about Candy Hearts' (and now Best Ex's) music : it is the snapshot of a very particular moment. The lyrics are the clear description of a specific moment in time, the caption of a picture. Once again, it is not a song that was written about my personal heart and my personal moments in time. It still found its way to my heart and spoke to it (and me) in ways no other song did. The first verse hit me so desperately, so hard, so violently I still cannot quite believe I did not pen those words myself. "Sometimes I try to find you in the air before it rains, in the hiss of cassette tapes, in the way I pause before I say your name".
I have done it so much, you know. There was a long period of time during which I would see him absolutely everywhere, even where he wasn't. I would go home and think about my day and there had been at least one person who I thought looked like him. They probably did not even look the part, but my brain decided they did. There would be someone named like him. There would be someone who liked one specific thing he did, even though in this day and age and in our society, it's not that complicated to find two people who like the same band, or film, or food, or wear the same clothes. I could not quite explain why I did it, because I know it wasn't unconscious, and I knew it didn't help at all. You're never really getting over someone if you keep looking for them in tiny, little every day things. Then again, maybe you are.
Over the years, my broken heart has never related to a song as much as I relate to Top of Our Lungs. It is one of these songs that takes me back to the best moment I have ever had with him and to the long list of terrible ones I had by myself after that. This song is a rollercoaster, full of ups and downs, so sudden and violent it is an emotional Tower of Terror. This song made me long for him and nursed the delusional thoughts of us getting back together and this song accompanied my journey in getting over him and in stopping to look for him in absolutely everything. This song held my hand through thick and thin, through the good and the bad, through the moments of me kidding myself into believing I was over it and through the moments when I had to face the truth and admit to myself that I wasn't over anything at all.
Today, this song doesn't hurt anymore, and doesn't have the emotional violence of a brick in my chest. This song is a pop-punk masterpiece and a reminder of how far I've come, of how I thought I'd never get better and guess what? I went ahead and I did.


All The Ways You Let Me Down was my breakup haircut, my confidence boosting makeover, but more importantly, a lesson in letting go. I chopped off the over-bleached, dead, split and delusional ends of my hair and grew much stronger. 

As the last notes of closer Keeper resonated inside a packed Kentish Town Forum, I could have told you three things : 

A- I have just had the time of my life,

B- My ribs are now bruised and that shit is painful and

C- This was the last time I was seeing With Confidence in 2017.

2017 has been a rollercoaster year for me, and Australian pop-punks With Confidence has led the way with their tunes, full of sunshine and positivity. I have mentioned it many times before: they have entered my life thanks to their lead single Voldemort, a "carefree fuck you" to mental health issues, according to frontman Jayden Seeley. The three-minute track is a bubble of happiness and lightheartedness, with just the right amount of gang vocals. At the beginning of the year, I have to admit, in all honestly and as embarrassing as it sounds, this song was also my lifeline.

I rarely talk about my mental health on social media or my blog, as I have never been one to want to attract attention to the cracks in my porcelain, but I have an anxiety disorder and have had one since I was a child. I have also dealt with depression in the past. On a daily basis, I would describe these issues as pretty mild. I don't need medication or therapy. Sometimes, though, it becomes bad. Painful. Unbearable, almost. It keeps me up at night and makes me believe nothing will ever be right again. The worries pile up like dirty dishes in the sink. It feels like carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders.

As far as I can remember, music has always been the single most important part of my life. I have friends, I have family, and I am lucky and privileged enough to have a strong support system, but where, sometimes, people disappoint you, music does not. Music is there, constant and stable, quieting the fears and the worries. Linkin Park became my favorite band aged thirteen because of a sentence the late Chester Bennington said in an interview. I grew up keeping close to my heart the music that made it easier to breathe, the songs which acted as soundtracks to the important moments in my life, and the things I was going through. Falling in love with With Confidence was no different. I needed oxygen, I needed a little hope, I needed to look forward to something instead of staring backwards at things I had had to leave behind. Three minutes of a goofy music video later, they were here. Miracle, happy coincidence - whichever way you choose to name it, you're probably right. 

It didn't take me long to go from the stage where I liked Voldemort (the song, not the Harry Potter villain) to the stage where I knew every word to every song. It also didn't take me long to go from the stage where I was happy they were playing Paris on their first ever European headline tour to the stage where I attended five shows on said first ever European headline tour. It's just one of those things. Objectively, it's not the smartest idea in the world. Your anxiety wonders if you're not just infatuated, as if you were the cliché of a schoolgirl with a crush on a pop star and would move on to the next one at the speed of sound. The voice in your heart of hearts knows it's the right thing to do, though. A thirteen-hour journey with an hour-long break in Lille at 4am in the middle of winter is a terrible idea on paper. So is jumping on a plane to Berlin at 6am after a night out in Birmingham. Somehow, it happens. You want it to happen. You make it happen.

With Confidence's European gallivanting is over for the year and during that time, I have seen them sixteen times in four different countries and eleven different cities. It sounds crazy. Tell that to any of my workmates, the ones who regularly say "Whoa, you go to so many gigs, I swear you're at one every week" and they will think I'm crazy. I probably am. The majority of people don't do that. Worry not, I am not about to embark on a Jughead Jones-style speech on how in case you haven't noticed, I'm weird, I'm a weirdo. I'm just going to say I wanted to follow what made me happy. So, I did. It could have been anything. Anything turned out to be an Australian pop-punk band I like to make fun of on a regular basis, a band I like to have an occasional mosh and crowdsurf to.

This year has taught me many things on many different levels, and as far as my traipsing around Europe behind With Confidence is concerned, the lessons are many, too. Pragmatically, it reminded me that four vodka-cokes in twenty minutes followed by a rum and coke and then another vodka-coke is a terrible idea, and leaving a giant margin of error to Megabus is not that stupid a concept. Most importantly, it showed me I still had things to look forward to. I still had the ability to make friends and talk to other people, make the first move in interacting with other humans, hence why I have probably annoyed poor Josh more times than we both care to count, but mostly hence why I have new, wonderful friends. I still had the ability to be carefree and not think about what brought and still me down. I still had music. I still had the ability to love fearlessly, recklessly, endlessly, even when I still insist on hiding that love behind terrible jokes and tour bingo cards. 

I don't know how much of this I genuinely did not know and how much was just hidden behind and underneath the clutter my anxiety tends to create. The only thing I care about is that 2017 has been made absolutely incredible by a small Australian pop-punk band, and in 2018, during the next tour, you can be sure to find me in the pit, celebrating sunny pop-punk and life in general.

---

Sixteen gigs make for a lot of adventures, especially if, like me, you hide everything, every worry and every question under a shrug and a pretend-careless "I mean, Yolo". Those sixteen gigs have all had their fair share of special moments, they have all been unique in their own way. Some people wonder how others can go see a band more than once on a tour, and my answer will always be that the atmosphere isn't the same in every town. Leeds wasn't the same as Leipzig and Birmingham wasn't the same as Glasgow. They were all different. Leeds was sweaty and rowdy; Leipzig was quieter and slightly more emotional. Birmingham was all about finding my friends in the moshpit and jumping around with them; Glasgow had its very own cover of 500 Miles. Every show had its moments, its weather (literally and figuratively), its vibe, its adventures.

I love looking back at those gigs - every one of them, even those that have had their weird instants. The drunken embarrassment of Hatfield, the Uber debacle of Brighton, or the bruised ribs of London will never ruin the joy I felt during the forty minutes to an hour With Confidence was on a stage that day. I wish I was less cheesy, less soppy, less emotional. Looking back, I have only had good times following these dorks around.

The adventure started on a rainy, cold Tuesday in Leeds and finished on an equally rainy and cold Saturday in London. Leeds was on the 28th of February, London on the 30th of September. Seven months and two days when all I looked forward to was the next gig or the next tour.

Leeds was rainy and cold, but the best start I could have asked for. Inside, it was rowdy and sweaty. People started crowdsurfing during Milestones' first song and did so to the very end. It was an endless, relentless explosion of energy. After the show, I went out and made friends. Once again, it was the best start I could have asked for.

The next day, Manchester was freezing cold and had snow on the way back. Someone got punched in the face whilst crowdsurfing and I felt tears coming up during Keeper because I did not want it to be the end. Waiting two weeks for Paris seemed too much to handle.

Berlin was much smaller and people were obviously less inclined to start jumping on top of one another. The moshpits of Leeds and Manchester were nowhere to be found and people were mostly singing along and happily jumping around. The layout of the venue did not make it easy to crowdsurf, and no one tried. I'm still mindblown by what happens on the stage.

Leipzig was not full. I tried to count how many of us there were, but couldn't separate the group of people near the stage and stopped at twenty-eight. All in all, we must have been forty. I cried again - my tears do not surprise anyone anymore, least of all myself. It was the moment when I realised I had pretty much covered the entire setlist with my tears.

Paris was a huge celebration. The sun was high in the sky (we all joked that With Confidence had, indeed, brought better weather with them) and for the first time, I knew people in the venue. I had brought friends along and made new ones on the day, having a cold Coke outside the building or in the sweaty, low-ceilinged room. My hometown did not disappoint and we even had a stage invasion. I stayed on solid ground, watching like a proud mother eyes baby ducklings, and smiled. My hometown did me proud, that day. It was the best end of a tour I could have asked for.

I was on the night bus, on a Monday night, on my way to England. I never liked night buses, as they make for uncomfortable sleep, but they have always been much cheaper than planes and trains, and, as such, they have been my gateway to touring adventures. I was on the night bus on a warm Monday night, warmer than most May nights usually are, and I woke up somewhere between Paris and Calais - much closer to Calais than Paris.

It was the Monday night a suicide bomber ended his life and the lives of twenty-two innocent people in Manchester's MEN Arena, as happy, carefree gig-goers were leaving Ariana Grande's concert.

Of course, there were the worries about the tour, about what would happen to the tour, about Slam Dunk possibly not going forward with the imminent threat. There was the imminent threat. There was the guilt I felt as I had just left home and would not come back for ten days, ten days during which I knew my brother would worry about me, his gig-enthusiast little sister. There were the awful memories of the Bataclan.

There was, somewhere, the desire to live harder. I think, halfway through, that desire won.

Bristol was the opening night, and usually, you never know what to make of opening nights. Are they going to shape up the rest of the tour? Are there surprises in store, still, after that? I know I had friends coming to the Paris gig but, in a way, Bristol was the first time I really went to see With Confidence with someone else, someone who loves them as much as I do. (Rachel, this one's for you).

Manchester had the worries when a car did a strange noise down the road, and the official start of a week of partying. The weather was ridiculous for the end of May - the sun was out and being dressed in black was not a smart choice. We had cocktails before the show and started opening moshpits in the crowd. I might have cried - at that point, the week is drowned in a blur of tears.

Glasgow was, quite frankly, the most perfect mess I could think of. With Confidence covered (I'm Gonna Be) 500 Miles by The Proclaimers, which, if I have understood correctly, is some sort of national anthem in Scotland (Forgive me, but to me, that song is closely related to How I Met Your Mother). It was twenty-seven degrees in Glasgow and, whilst we were suffering and I was collecting my first tan line of the summer, a certain group of Australian people joked on a stage about how this was a regular day down under. We went out after and everything you think will happen after you have walked into a bar that charged you seven Great British pounds and twenty pennies for eight vodka and cokes probably happened. Glasgow has to be one of my favourite With Confidence shows, alcohol and stupid night out aside - they proved to me they could still surprise me and blow my mind, they showed me doing this was not such a stupid idea after all.

At Slam Dunk Birmingham, I was standing behind the crowd with Marie and Hanna, and when Marie left to watch Beartooth, I kinda gave up and ran into the moshpit. Imagine being at a gig, and quite a rowdy one, at that. You're helping someone crowdsurf and it turns out she's your friend. You're on the edge of a circle pit, debating if you should run, and your friend runs past you, clearly having the time of his life. You give in and get into the heart of the action and find more friends to sing along with. Four months down the line, I still cannot really understand the moment suspended in time this Slam Dunk set was. Another one for the history books, maybe.

Leeds was not quieter, but let's say I would have been better off crowdsurfing in Birmingham. The funny thing is, I made my comeback into the crowdsurfing world in the O2 Academy in Leeds of all places, got dropped, and ended up right next to Rachel. If that isn't a happy coincidence, tell me what is. 

Can I call every single person I know a unit? I want to, because I feel like me and every other person I knew coming to Slam Dunk Hatfield had decided this would be a giant mess, as a unit. I reached Internet fame (not thanks to With Confidence) but mostly crowdsurfed to my favourite line, in my favourite song. I don't know what it is about the bridge in Dinner Bell that gets me, and I don't want to know. I'm happy with this song being my fireworks and my magic trick - the things you don't understand but mean more than most others.

I wanted London to be a party. I did not want to be sad and soppy like I had been in Paris. I could not end a week of partying with all my friends in tears. Instead, I finished it off the way I spent it : having the most fun I had had in a very, very long time. London was a perfect reflection of this week. I had a slightly above average (as if) band to soundtrack this with positive pop-punk tunes and the odd tear-jerker, I had my best friends and I had apparently enough energy to open up pit after pit, sing along until my lungs gave out, carry every person who wanted to crowdsurf and join on the crawling on top of other humans fun myself. 

The original plan was to attend ten shows out of Mayday Parade's A Lesson in Romantics tour. Ten turned into four, because I found a job, and I could not quite possibly ask for ten days off on my first month of being an employed human again. It should have been Rach and me reunited for more drunken antics, but sadly, sickness and full-time jobs went in the way and I found myself back to square one. Sort of.

Manchester was my opening night, but believe me, it was strange seeing With Confidence play the UK, thank Nottingham, Leeds, Newcastle, and Glasgow, and know I was not there. Making plans with Rachel, I had, somehow, forgotten one thing : this was not With Confidence's crowd. They did nothing wrong, and hearing Here for Nothing live was a treat of the best quality - there's nothing I love more than hear a song come to life on a stage. People, though, were here to listen to Mayday Parade. So I dad danced the night away, all by myself, and hope no one noticed me. 

Birmingham had the crowd I was expecting from the Midlands. Their Slam Dunk set here had been the best out of the three, and I was expecting the crowd to deliver once again - I was not disappointed. When I saw the moshpit and joined in on the fun, it made up for the solo dad-dancing of yesterday and the person carrying a flag printed with the band's faces. I can apparently go see a band sixteen times live and still think some ways of expressing your love strange. I seem to express mine best with either a, synchronised finger-pointing or b, apple Sourz shots, interpretive dancing, and slightly embarrassing conversations. There used to be a time when I didn't drink alcohol. Then, it all changed, and a lot of my stories related to bands start with the phrase: "That one time, I was drunk and...". On the 23rd of September, I was drunk and decided talking to Jayden whilst inebriated was the only valid way of making up for all the times I'd spoken to him whilst inebriated. I might have learnt to love along the way, but these sixteen shows have not really changed the person I am that much. (Or have they?)

I could have picked any show of the tour to go to, but Brighton was a no-brainer. I used to live in Brighton, and happy as I am right now, in Watford, the seaside town still qualifies as my favourite place on Earth, a place which will always feel more like home than any other. I absolutely, entirely refused to miss With Confidence there, and if I had had to pick one show out of the whole tour to attend, it would have been this one. It was a quiet one. They had never played there before and not many people knew who they were. Georgia and Tyler were the ones who had the accidental and probably unwanted duty to watch me watch them, and shed a tear or ten to Dinner Bell of all songs. Despite being dropped by an Uber driver in the wrong place under the pouring rain, my fifteenth With Confidence show was one of the happiest memories. It has to be the seaside air.

I bruised my ribs in London. That's the first story I go for when I talk about the Forum show. I crowdsurfed to Keeper, the security guy didn't catch me properly and I bruised my ribs. At least, it saved me from being a mess because, in the legendary words of Owl City, "I'm weird 'cause I hate goodbyes". (Beside the point, I know, but someone needs to sit him down and tell him that most people hate goodbyes). I'm bad at goodbyes. I always make them more emotional than they should be. I didn't cry this time - I just bruised my ribs and heard London Lights in London again. 

This wasn't goodbye anyway.

This is "Have fun, see you next year, enjoy a full tour without me".

--- 

I often joke about bands "being sick of seeing my face" or "seeing me more than anyone ever should". If you know me and have heard of my gig stories, you have heard me say that in some way, shape or form. It stems down from a story I've heard about a particular band and people that are not me, and since I heard that story, five years ago, I have always had the nagging worry a band will genuinely hate seeing me around. Add to that the band member who once said to me, not as a joke, "We're never getting rid of you, are we?", and my anxiety disorder, and I suppose you'll understand where I come from with this.

I said that With Confidence haven't changed the person I am at heart and I believe this. Seven months and some days ago, I was already the quite delightful human I am today (read: the small, overly emotional, passionate, and dedicated person I am today), but as I have mentioned, it was all hidden under clutter and worries. Seven months ago, I promise you I did not see myself as passionate and dedicated, let alone delightful. I saw myself as hopeless, a little desperate and lost. The worries are now gone, at least for now. Sorry for the soppiness, but I think you all know who was the storm who blew them away.