Keepsake of the Week: “to fall in love with anyone…” by Sofía Campoamor
“to fall in love with anyone…” is an unreleased compilation of songs answering the 36 Questions That Lead to Love by singer/songwriter Sofía Campoamor and is this week’s #KOTW.
In this semi-monthly blog series, we post our favorite new or re-discovered independent music, our Keepsake of the Week, or #KOTW.
In 2015, The New York Times released an article based on a 1997 study by Dr. Arthur Aron: the now-famous 36 Questions That Lead to Love. There is much to be said about how and why these questions work, which I'm not going to get into. Suffice it to say that the questions pull from the participants their "human moments," the little moments and observations in which you recognize a person's emotions and inner humanity. Keep that idea in mind—the human moments—while I tell you about a songwriter named Sofía Campoamor.
Sofía has recently completed a song cycle on her Instagram called "to fall in love with anyone..." a series of 36 short songs that answer each of the famous 36 Questions. (She will be performing them live on Monday, Feb 27th at 6:30pm at The Bowery Electric!) Some of them are humorous little ditties—question 5 reads "When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?" and her answer is basically "right now, I guess." But most of them are deeply and strikingly emotional—songs about love, death, and everything that makes us human. Sofía has a talent for capturing and expressing human moments in just a few words and a few chords, and each song is a glimpse into the infinite memories and feelings that comprise who she is.
2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?
"And I would be famous / if that's what it takes / to make it to you when / you're making mistakes"
This question is clever because it's really asking about what you value: do you want money? Influence over people? Power for power's sake? And Sofía gives the answer that I think any good artist ought to give: she values connections. For Sofía, fame is just a way to reach more people with her words and music—she doesn't want to be famous for its own sake, but if that's what it takes to connect to people, she's happy to reach for it. She wants to be there for you in the private moments no one else sees—doing laundry, driving home alone, breaking down and crying in your room—because she understands how sad and lonely life can be. Sofía talks about how music has helped her through that loneliness in last year’s debut LP “if you knew, i couldn’t tell,” in which she invokes the diaristic style of artists like Taylor Swift or Lizzy McAlpine; it’s no wonder that her dream is to give back that empathy and understanding to the world.
3. Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?
Sofía is smart about answering the 36 Questions obliquely: while this question is phrased to be general, she finds a story from her life and uses that to answer the question, because she understands the power of stories that showcase human moments. I've found that the best songs don't talk about emotions generically, but tell the story of a specific time in the songwriter's life that evokes that emotion; we as a species respond well to narratives, and Sofía captures her narrative beautifully in just a few lines. In that sense, this song reminds me of “Above the Chinese Restaurant” by Laufey, another song that uses a specific time and place to access a timeless feeling of loss.
23. How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people's?
This song takes a different approach—rather than fill an entire song with one story, here Sofía hints at many little stories by selecting key, evocative details to use in each line. This technique works so well for this question because she has so much ground to cover—an entire childhood—and she can't hope to cover or even remember every moment she ever lived. I think there's a kind of magic in revealing just enough to hint at a story, but hiding most of it to retain a sense of mystique.
30. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?
"And I wept / on the sidewalk / No one saw / except Manhattan"
This one got me. I grew up in New York City, and I'm deeply familiar with the cold anonymity of the skyscrapers and subway; and when Sofía sings "no one saw except Manhattan," I know exactly what she means. There is something harrowing about being surrounded by faces who don't care about you, who will forget you as soon as you leave their field of vision—but there's a comfort to it as well, the knowledge that you won't be judged for anything simply because no one cares enough to judge you. And somehow, in all the hustle and bustle of the city streets, the cold, anonymous skyscrapers become your friends in a way the people don't; they see everything, watching over millions of New Yorkers, and they recognize your feelings without ever saying a word. For more songs about how cold, dead concrete can come to life, try “A Thousand Eyes” by Sarah Kang, or “Autumn in New York” as sung by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.
33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven't you told them yet?
To be perfectly honest, I'm at a bit of a loss with this one—there’s nothing I can say that would capture or add to this song. All I can say is that we should try to live a little more like Sofía: say what you mean and how you feel and leave it all here on Earth, so that when it's time to go, you don't die with unspoken words in your heart.
36. Share a personal problem and ask your partner's advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.
This question, and Sofía's answer, is really an invitation: it says, "Here's the journey I'm on right now. Do you want to walk with me?" I want to say thank you to Sofía for taking us on this journey with her—she's shared with us so many human moments, and openly told us the things that are resolved and the things that are not. And I think the hardest thing for an artist to do is not to reveal old, buried trauma that's had time to ferment and mature, but to talk about Now, the problems they're currently struggling with, and to say openly, "this story isn't finished yet, but I'm sharing it anyway." Thank you to Sofía for sharing your stories, both finished and unfinished—they have touched my heart, and I know they will touch countless more as well.
(Honorable mention to question 11: Take 4 minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible, for the story of telling a girl about a bunch of boys you liked and not realizing that you should’ve just kissed her instead. Relatable queer moment.)
Listen to the songs from “to fall in love with anyone…” on Instagram now, support Sofía Campoamor by buying her music on Bandcamp, and see her perform this project live at The Bowery Electric on Monday, February 27.
Sofía Campoamor for the cover of her 2022 album, “if you knew, i couldn’t tell.”
