“Heading Up High" by Armin van Buuren ft. Kensington, Wednesday, November 2, 2022 (partial repost)
Dutch DJ Armin van Buuren's sixth studio album Embrace was released in 2015. The album topped the Dutch charts and reached number 4 on the Billboard US Dance/ Electronica charts. "Heading Up High" was released as a single in February 2016. The song featured Dutch rock band Kensington. The band had formed in 2005 and had modest success in the Netherlands and Belgium. Like groups like A-ha, Scorpions, and Blindside, Kensington prefers to record songs in English rather than their native tongue. "Heading Up High" reached number 40 on the Dutch charts. It's a pop song, but it also has clear rock origins. These days, EDM has mostly ignores rock, yet 'rock bands' such as Imagine Dragons and Coldplay have incorporated more and more electronic elements to stay relevant. The smokey, rock-vocal style of Eloi Youssef makes for an interesting dance track along with the the synthetic sounding electric guitar.
WHEN YOU'RE HOLDING ONTO ALL THAT YOU CAN'T BE. "Heading Up High" was one of the songs they played at the gym I went to back in 2016. I was stressed and my body was stressed. I had turned 29 in June and by the fall, I started experiencing neck pain frequently, and I think a lot of it was from sitting much longer in the office with poor posture and stress from the worst coworker in all of my teaching years. On top of that, my boyfriend had started his military service, and I was unsure when he would have time to call or meet. After trying to manage the pain with a combination of ibuprofen and alcohol and a Thai massage by sleeping in a nice hotel for the night, I decided to give the gym a try. I went to several gyms in town, but Van Buuren Gym was the closest and the trainers were the friendliest. The membership fee seemed high, but that only caused me to be more committed to the gym. I started going three nights a week, but gradually increased to every day the gym was open. They were always closed on Sundays, which was frustrating. As I was becoming a gym bro, I really didn't know what I was doing. I was pretty scared of the machines--killing myself or throwing out my back for the rest of my life, so I played it safe. Then one of the trainers, Adam, approached me one day.
IT'S A LONG WAY DOWN. Adam stood in front of me in all of his muscular glory and asked me in a round-about way how I was enjoying the gym and what my goals were. I coyly mentioned health and wanting to feel better before stating that I wanted to have a good body. Then came the sales pitch: "I can help you with your goals. We have a special program at our gym where we monitor your progress and design a program for you." It turns out that many gyms have a similar program, but it's never advertised because personal training sessions are much more expensive and the trainer makes tons of money. YouTube videos couldn't give me the muscle memory I needed, so I signed up and devoted even more of my paycheck to the gym. So I started spending more time at the gym. I memorized the limited playlist: Korean Hip-Hop, forgettable American pop songs, and a few rock songs like today's song. Set after rep after set. I was fully embracing gym life and my body was looking better, and my taste in music suffered.
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