I climbed over the center console into the backseat of the car as Skyler pulled up at the Starbucks drive through. She turned down the music while I ordered from the back window. Then we went back to jamming to Palaye Royale again. I tried to sing along, but I only knew one line: “I’m dying in a hot tub, dying in a hot tub with my friends.”
We didn’t bother to explain to the confused Starbucks employee that I was ordering from the back because the front window did not roll down anymore. I just passed the coffees up to Skyler and climbed back into the shotgun seat.
When I first met Skyler, the thought of rooming together never crossed my mind. She was just someone from my World Lit class, but as life would have it, we randomly met again because we were both looking for roommates.
I was the last one to move into the dorm room. I did not really expect to be friends with my new roommates; I just hoped we would get along well enough to room together. Skyler had already put books in the bookcase taking up all four shelves. (She offered to move her books and split the shelves, but by that time, I actually liked seeing her book collection there.) There were cacti everywhere: on the wall hangings, the pillows and even a couple of real ones. (To be fair, I have grown fond of our unplanned cactus theme.)
When three of us were quarantined together because our fourth roommate got COVID, none of us expected to enjoy it, but in a way, it was a blessing in disguise to have concentrated time together.
I do not remember who started looking at buying stickers online first, but Skyler and I both wound up ordering stickers because when you are in quarantine, why not get stickers from some of your favorite fandoms shipped to you? You need something to look forward too. Mine were mostly based off one of my favorite book series. Some of Skyler’s were from a band I had not heard of at the time, Palaye Royale.
“You should watch this music video,” she said, and so I did.
They had a look that fell somewhere in the category of Twisted-Sister-meets-My-Chemical-Romance, which are not bands that I regularly listen too. I had low expectations and was pleasantly surprised. The intense but catchy music and fancy cinematography captured my interest.
While Skyler played quite a bit of music from Palaye Royale for me, it always came back to “the hot tub” one. Mostly because the one line I remembered from it was quirky enough to stick with me. She’d say something about Palaye Royale, and I would say something like, “oh, the drowning in a hot tub band.”
“Yeah, but it’s dying, not drowning,” she would say.
The band is made up of a trio of brothers, Remington Leith, Sebastian Danzig and Emerson Barrett, who released their first album in 2016 and have released an album every two years since. “Dying in a Hot Tub” came out on their 2018 album “Boom Boom Room (Side B).”
To this day, when I try to sing along with the song, the only lines I remember are “Have you heard the news” and “I’m dying in a hot tub / Dying in a hot tub with my friends.” It is odd for me to not care so much about the lyrics. Usually, the main reason I like particular songs is because I resonate with the words, but that is not true for any of Palaye Royale’s music for me. In fact, if I bothered to stop and listen to the rest of the lyrics, I might not like their music as much, but their melodies capture an angsty, angry feeling I resonate with and am completely content feeling. The lyrics are depressing, but the song has become imbued with the happy memories of an unexpected friendship.
Most of the time, if I like a song, it gets incorporated into my Spotify playlists and joins the regular circulation of music I listen to, but Palaye Royale became the soundtrack to my friendship with Skyler. It feels wrong to listen to them in any context other than riding shotgun in her car. The weeks she introduced me to Palaye Royale were also the weeks we started to become friends. The days we drove to get coffee, groceries or down to the local bookstore, Palaye Royale played in the background, the bass at times making the speakers buzz with the vibrations pouring through them.