A soundtrack for daydreaming: Emma Bradley’s maladaptive playlist
Posted On
(Credits: Far Out / Emma Bradley)
“This is what dreams are made of,” Emma Bradley sings wistfully as if you’re hearing a luscious love song about the perfect connection. Then she drops the truth, admitting that it’s all “maladaptive, but I’m having fun”.
On her new track ‘This Is What Dreams Are Made Of’, the London-based artist is flying far from reality. Dazed and daydreaming about a life outside of her own, or about all the different lives that she almost could have led with just one different step, this is an anthem for those moments where you’re so in your mind that you’re not even in the world.
It’s a song for maladaptive daydreams, where you’re walking down the street listening to music, but in your head, you’re fully the singer of the song. Or when you’re building a love narrative arc about the way you and your favourite artist might fall in love and get married, or you’re writing out the exact imaginary text that you want your ex to send you, fully imagining a scene in which they do.
It’s daydreaming, but in extreme mode for people who are especially prone to getting lost in the imagery world of their minds. Bradley admits to being one of them, so when a person like that is stuck in their flat during a bout of illness, the storylines in her mind are bound to get intense.
“This song is the product of being locked inside sick for a week, starting to feel kind of stir crazy and like I was just living life out within my own head,” Bradley said about the track. Written and produced at that time, the whole point of the track is to sound exactly like that moment where you slip into daydreams. “I’d had to miss a Pride party that evening, and I started dwelling on an ex and playing out situations in my head because I was feeling bored and disconnected from reality through being unwell and not going outside.”
Adding, “The song is about maladaptive daydreaming and how there is often one person that it always comes back to. It’s me being like, why when I’m in a weird headspace or left alone with my own thoughts for too long am I always coming back to this person, am I actually having fun here, is this healthy?”
Everybody has that. We all have those people and scenarios we return to in our minds time and time again, and likely we all have songs that provide a strong push direct into it, that soundtrack those wandering thoughts.
Bradley made her own but also has a playlist of them, ranging from downright devastating acoustic cuts to more wistful and cinematic moments. Some feel like classics by now, like Phoebe Bridgers’ ‘Scott Street’ where the long outro feels tailor made for daydreaming as Bradley said it’s “perfect for when you miss someone or feel nostalgic or bittersweet and need to stare out of the bus window mentally reminiscing,” but warned that it “might make you cry in the process.”
Taylor Swift’s ‘August’ is another, as the track reminiscing on an old love is kind of Bradley’s bread and butter, as she described the track as perfect for “whimsical daydreaming with heavy flavours of thinking about someone you should definitely in theory have moved on from by now.”
There are some timeless cuts in her list too, including Radiohead and Sufjan Stevens to bring in the big leagues of yearning, or M83’s ‘Wait’ as perhaps the ultimate cinematic daydreaming track. Outside of the obvious, though, Bradley’s daydreaming crosses genres, from Jean Dawson’s experimental pop to the R&B of Mustafa the Poet or the electronic details of Frou Frou.
No matter the circumstances that prompt it or the storyline your brain is writing, Bradley’s soundtrack to daydreaming can provide the score.
Emma Bradley’s soundtrack to daydreaming:
- ‘All I Need’ – Radiohead
- ‘What Do You Want’ – German Error Message
- ‘Justin’s Headed Out’ – Mercury
- ‘Pirate Radio*’ – Jean Dawson
- ‘Space Song’ – Beach House
- ‘Another Love’ – Tom Odell
- ‘Wait’ – M83
- ‘Scott Street’ – Phoebe Bridgers
- ‘26’ – Paramore
- ‘Breathe Me’ – Sia
- ‘Hear Me Out’ – Frou Frou
- ‘Death With Dignity’ – Sufjan Stevens
- ‘Larabar’ – Wet
- ‘August’ – Taylor Swift
- ‘Big Jet Plane’ – Angus & Julia Stone
- ‘Re: Stacks’ – Bon Iver
- ‘Don’t Panic’ – Coldplay
- ‘I Need A Forest Fire (Ft Bon Iver)’ – James Blake
- ‘Capo (Ft Sampha)’ – Mustafa
- ‘Chicago’ – Sufjan Stevens
- ‘Ilomilo’ – Billie Eilish
Related Topics
