Tell Me I'm Not in the Blue
What you missed this month on BTI5
This is an off week for the podcast, but it's been a minute since I recapped recent episodes and felt like we should get caught up. However, as I combed through the past four transcripts to look for a theme, I realized this show makes about as much sense as the clumsy Max Martin lyrics I reviewed in last week's episode e.g., how in (You Drive Me) Crazy, Britney sings "tell me I'm not in the blue / that I'm not wasting my feelings on you." I think about “I’m not in the blue” a lot. Maybe even more than I wonder why in Our Song, TS sings “when it’s late and you talk reeeeal slow” instead of “real low,” given that low makes more sense than slow, and it wouldn’t compromise the rhyme scheme?? But we’ll take that on another time.
While "not in the blue" is likely a product of the Swedish pop sensation misunderstanding and/or rewording an English idiom, it somehow feels right even though it makes absolutely no sense. Kind of like how the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives talk about #MomTok like it's an official governing body, but I'm pretty sure it's an imaginary club where the cost of membership is looking good while dancing in front of a camera, then talking badly about everybody behind their backs. In this case, I am glad I'm not in the blue [peacoats], and to quote one of my guests last month, Nora McInerny, “may a group of friends like this never find me.”
ICYMI, in the episode The Secret Lives of Catholic Wives, Nora and I have a slightly delirious giggly episode where we poorly recap SLOMW season 2, gossip about the pope, clutch our pearls about sex scenes, and help eachother through our respective grief as we mourn the loss of Nora’s arguably replaceable current season Gap sweatpants, which were compromised by a rogue splinter late in the episode. But if a TikTokker's pop debut can be well-received and if Taylor Frankie Paul can overcome rumors of soft swings, then we, too, can do hard things.
Even though I’d like to steer clear of #MomTok, I am endlessly grateful for the Beth friends and moms who talked me through the past month of grief following a pregnancy loss I detailed in The Losses We Share Part II. The comments on that post are so supportive, kind, reassuring, and at times heartbreaking; you consistently amaze me with your generosity and openness in sharing your own stories with the BTIF community about motherhood, fertility, loss, and everything in between.
And by in between, I mean sharing your wildest senior stories, which apparently involved leaving school 10 minutes early, going to after-prom at the YMCA, beach week at Colonial Williamsburg, and watching classmates participate in senior pranks from afar. Kelly and I felt seen by your choices to avoid being seen on the scene of senior hijinks in the crowdsourced episode Class of BTI5, and friendly reminder, if you have submissions for other crowd sourced episode ideas or deep dives, you can submit them (and search BTI5’s entire back catalog) on my website’s new podcast archive page.
In addition to the episodes with Nora and Kelly, I brought you along to NYC, Italy, and Michigan in the travel diary-style episode Beth: A Week in the Life. Like many fellow millennials, before I ever went to therapy, I read Eat Pray Love, and that became my blueprint for a sensible means to process heartbreak, so it seemed like a decent methodology for learning how to move forward with grief, too. While my trip started with swimming in the spa pool so people wouldn't know if I was crying or had just been submerged in water (very similar to Addison Rae's new song In the Rain!), I slowly but surely did get my head above water, mostly with the help of conversations over carafes, carbonara, and the kindness of strangers. I ate good food, prayed I’d make my flight connection (and once in a cathedral, too), and ended up experiencing the L part of my EPL in the least likely of places. I never saw it coming that I’d experience a moment of human connection near the people movers at Dulles airport (Are you there, Travis? It’s me, from 5D), or that a Beth would invite me to her home in the Italian countryside to heal, but I guess Hugh Grant playing the Prime Minister in the second-best ensemble-cast Christmas romcom was right when he said love actually is all around.
In all seriousness, the Beths have helped me through many a life phase that really did feel in the blue, and I appreciate you bearing with me on mic as I’ve been sorting through the *highs and lows* of real life. While I firmly believe talking about highs AND lows (stick to the highs!!) in wedding vows or captions about your partner is red-flag-city, I do think that's been the broader theme of the past couple of months for me.
Perhaps the best example of a pop culture high paired with a low was learning that it turns out Reputation (Taylor’s Version) is not coming, despite our best efforts moonlighting as re-record flat earthers for the past two calendar years. However, this low is fortunately linked to a broader high for the Swifties, because it sounds like we still get the vault tracks, and more importantly, Taylor Swift bought back her master recordings, sending a powerful message that (per Total Request Five) unfavorable contracts designed to strip artists of their life’s work can be defeated. Her six-year battle has not only secured her own creative legacy but has fundamentally transformed how the entire music industry approaches artist ownership rights. Selfishly, I was looking forward to hearing what “he can be my jailer, Burton to this Taylor” sounds like in 2025, but far more importantly, the most epic reputation era is the one where you aren’t just dropping an album, but rewriting an entire industry playbook.
Reminder that Track Five 2025 is on July 19 at Chop Shop in Chicago, which is a live show paired with a 3-hour TS dance party we do every summer. Come with friends, come alone, make some new beth friends, and cathartically scream-sing The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived to your personal or political enemies. It’s healing. Limited tickets available at bethereinfive.com/live-shows.
Speaking of highs, I have to give a shoutout to Amazon Music for featuring Be There in Five on a billboard in Times Square— to say it was a pinch-me moment is an understatement. Courtney and I had so much fun going to see it, I only wish I had photoshopped her face onto the thumbnail too, because without her, it’s very possible Be There in Five might’ve Been Gone Five years ago, and sometimes I hate that you can only see my face in these moments. We run a small operation, and it's not often that major platforms prioritize (or even pay an ounce of attention, tbh) to independent shows like BTI5, and it was honestly so cool of Amazon Music to give the Beths our corner of the sky, if only for 15 seconds in between ads for Wicked and Jumbo Reeses. While waiting for the billboard, I thought about how if you told me I’d be seeing Jumbo Kate up in lights when I first moved to NYC in 2009, I would’ve been not-in-the-blue levels of confused, especially by the tagline: “more millennial than a going out top.”
First of all, I wouldn’t have understood why going-out tops were being spoken about like a generational trope when I had just proudly moved to the city with my collection of timeless Charlotte Russe investment pieces in tow. Secondly, because the first day I moved to NYC, I happened to go to Times Square when I was taking my friend to her VH1 Surreal Life spinoff "For the Love of Ray J" audition (awesome sentence), and while I didn’t have it in me to try my hand at reality TV, I wondered what it would be like to see yourself up on those LEDs. Sixteen years, three corporate jobs, two books, one doormat business, and a podcast later, there I was, experiencing my own version of the surreal life.
Long story short, there were highs and lows, moments in the blue, out of the blue, and while I'm not quite in the clear yet (good), somewhere in between the boot and the mitten, I felt a little less in the woods. Watching tourists accidentally include my face in the back of their vacation photos while they tried to capture the neon chaos of Times Square felt a little like processing loss in public: the glaring thing that's consuming your entire world blends in with the background for everyone else walking by. But the few people who stop and really see you make all the difference.
Thanks again to those of you who reached out, to those I met along the way, and especially to Courtney, for handling everything behind the scenes when I have to drop everything, and most importantly, for talking me out of my second choice for a tagline on the BTI5 billboard: “Only Fangirls.” While I am looking to spice up my image, that may have created some confusion for new listeners when they learned the spiciest thing about my show is explaining how the Spice Girls shared a manager with S Club 7.
Eat Pray Love Ya,
The Scenic Route: A round-up of this week’s [not sponsored] tangents
This segment highlights some of the most recent podcast episodes’ detours, tangents, and offhanded comments, so you know what on earth I’m talking about.
Naturium Phyto Glow Lip Balm, the $10 Rhode / Summer Friday’s “dupe” I talked about last week
Beats Flex headphones, even though Nora and I sometimes wonder if having our heads exist between these two magnets is contributing to our cognitive decline, these headphones have transformed my quality of life in ways I cannot articulate. If you lose AirPods often, trust me on this!
Making Bead Lizards, Inflatable Chair Lounging, and Rage Against the Vending Machine, my one-hit wonder playlists from 2021, mentioned on the pod
Want more? Here are recent popular BTI5 bonus episodes on Patreon!
Snorkeling random topics from this week, like Alex Cooper’s Documentary, Paige DeSorbo's PJs, Sabrina's Album Cover
Is Mel Robbins the New Rachel Hollis? about the viral book The Let Them Theory.
Deep dive into the content of husband-wife evangelical influencer duo Madi Prewett (from The Bachelor) and Grant Troutt if you feel like dining on a word salad
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“Moonlighting as re-record flat earthers” 😅 just one of the many clever lines that made me literally LOL. Love every time we get new written content from you! You’re a very gifted writer and inspire me to keep writing, too!
“The glaring thing that's consuming your entire world blends in with the background for everyone else walking by. But the few people who stop and really see you make all the difference.” This is beautiful.
I love how you seamlessly weave meaningful messages like this amidst S club 7 references and colonial Williamsburg.