Today is April 19th, which means two things. The Tortured Poets Department came out last night and Record Store Day 2024 is tomorrow.

I stayed up and listened to the entire album in one go and promptly passed out as soon as Clara Bow ended. Unfortunately, that does mean that I woke up this morning and quickly realized that I had missed the second half of the album–or a second and separate album, however you see it–when it dropped two hours later.

I have a lot of thoughts about the album and I'm sure I can put them together as time goes on. For now, I am obsessed with 'My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys', 'But Daddy I Love Him', 'Florida!!!', 'Fortnight (feat. Post Malone)', and 'The Alchemy'.

I currently only have the Target exclusive Phantom Clear variant but I'm hoping that FedEx shipping is accurate because it currently predicts that my three webstore variants and my signed vinyl are arriving tomorrow.

As for Record Store Day: I'm not yet sure when I'll go. I'm concerned that my local store is only going to have one in stock of Sabrina Carpenter's Feather 7" single and that's 1/2 of the reason I'm going in the first place, so I haven't yet weighed whether or not it's worth it to go extremely early and deal with annoying health issues without a bag or anyone else with me. At the very least, I hope to leave the store tomorrow morning with a copy of Olivia Rodrigo & Noah Kahan's 7" single of Lacy / Stick Season. 

I'm still extremely disappointed that they cancelled the release of the Wicked picture disc die-cut single. As one of my favorite musicals, it was immediately at the top of my ISO list but it's been removed from tomorrow's release for unknown reasons. 

It's been a slow couple of weeks but I'm getting back in the game in anticipation of some fun releases this month.

This morning I received notification that my Conan Gray's Found Heaven webstore vinyl just shipped! Today is the 3rd and they release on the 5th so it's nice to see UMG actually doing something to get packages to people on time... hopefully. If I come back here this weekend complaining about items sitting in Fernjail then I'll be very embarrassed for jinxing it.

I ordered the signed edition as well as the Alley Rose edition. I'm hoping the signed vinyl is actually signed on the jacket but I'm not holding out hope given how literally no artists sign on the jacket these days. Signed inserts are all the rage and it's kind of a win and a lose: I can frame the insert, but the signed jacket is just more special y'know? 

The Alley Rose edition is hit or miss for me right now since I don't know if I love the cover just yet, but I figured it was special enough and I should grab it while I can. Besides, I like having purple vinyl in my collection for a change (god knows I have so many red, green, and blue vinyl).

Apart from the webstore variants, I also have the signed Found Heaven CD from Banquet Records and the Urban Outfitters Electric Storm edition exclusive vinyl on the way. The signed CD is coming from the UK and I'm a little worried it's going to be absolutely destroyed when it gets here but for the absolutely cheap price I didn't want to pass on it. Unfortunately it's the 3.5" insert so it's not even the size of the booklet and probably the same way the Superache signed inserts were but it really could be worse so I guess I can't really complain about it. Thank god Conan doesn't use autopen.

I'm the most excited for the Urban Outfitters exclusive vinyl, honestly. I don't know what the poster is going to end up looking like but the mockup for the vinyl is insane and I really hope my pressing looks that incredible. The yellow and black marbling mix is hands down the best looking colorway. 

So other than Conan's release this weekend, I have a couple more weeks until The Tortured Poets Department comes out and I can get the four webstore variants in my hands. I bought all four together because I figured the amount I'd save on shipping actually makes them a reasonable price-per-unit. At the moment, I think the one that I'm the most excited for the is The Albatross edition because of the smoke gray vinyl color. I hope it's a really nice marbled vinyl, but after 4/5 of the 1989 (Taylor's Version) variants were just opaque I didn't have much hope. Most of Taylor's pressing from MPO (Made in France) are marbled; all of the Folklore, Midnights, and Speak Now (Taylor's Version) variants from MPO were marbled so they had a really good streak going until the 1989 (Taylor's Version) Special Edition releases on her webstore... so I don't really get what that's about.

In order of the coolest looking variants, I'm most excited for:

1. The Albatross (Smoke Gray)

2. The Bolter (Parchment Beige)

3. The Manuscript (Target exclusive Phantom Clear)

4. The Manuscript (Ghosted White)

5. The Black Dog (Ink Black)

Is anyone else concerned that the Black Dog variant is just standard black vinyl? Lol.

Not that I'm complaining but I was kinda happy that as an industry black vinyl was kind of dying out and that people stop telling each other that black vinyl sounds better when anything that's mass produced on this kind of global scale can't possibly sound much better than colored vinyl.

Eh, I don't have the energy to care right now. April 19th can't come soon enough!