A MILLI
/That’s right, with this post, Swim Into The Sound has officially hit one million words published! That’s one million words just on the main feed, so not counting Swim Selects, playlists, photography, or anything else. It’s also worth noting that Google Docs counts hyphenated phrases like “post-hardcore” as one word, not two, and knowing how much we hyphenate the shit out of stuff, we very well could have hit a million a while back.
Even still, I wanted to take a break from our regularly scheduled emoposting to commemorate this gargantuan milestone. This happens to be coming at a good time, as we’re also coming up on 600 posts and Swim Into The Sound’s eleventh birthday in June. Truth be told, I was hoping those things would overlap more, but we’ve been (expectedly) verbose, so I’m not surprised we reached this million milestone a little early.
If you are curious to see this website's word count over time, take a look at this plot from one of our resident data enthusiasts, Braden Allmond.
You may notice that flatline at the beginning. This is a stretch I’d like to refer to as “The Great False Start of Swim Into The Sound.”
Those of you in the know might remember our big-ass Tenth Anniversary Bash from last June. In that article, The Swim Team broke down our favorite albums from the ten-year window from when this site started on June 13th, 2015, to the date the article was published on June 13th, 2025. Goofy premise, but it resulted in an incredible list of really important and fun records.
That June 13th start date essentially comes from the day I published a review of Mogwai’s Come On Die Young to Tumblr. That’s how the site started, and I’m simultaneously proud of and embarrassed by that fact. Despite linking it above, I really don’t recommend that you go back and read that review. I would recommend you listen to that album, though.
Back to the timeline at hand.
Essentially, I spent a few days writing and editing that article, then shared it on June 13th. From that point, I proceeded to enjoy my Summer listening to Barter 6, DS2, and Donnie Trumpet. It was my last summer in college; what are ya gonna do?
The following summer, I graduated, worked an internship, and found myself committing to picking this thing back up after leaving it dormant for a full calendar year. I view this as one of the most pivotal decisions of my life, and it’s something that was initially borne of strife as I navigated the post-college world for the first time.
To this day, I remember someone, upon seeing my portfolio, asking me, “Sure you can write, but what do you care about?”
I spiraled out about that for an afternoon, went for a walk, treated myself to a 24-oz pour of an IPA at a pizza place near my old campus, and worked myself into an existential froth. I’d just spent the last four years focused on a business degree and building out a portfolio of copywriting for brands that I had no personal connection to. He was right: what do I care about?
After a little thinking and a few sips of beer, I realized that music is the thing I care about. It’s always been the thing. It was the thing when I was ripping CDs to my family laptop to fill my iPod Nano. It was the thing as a surly high schooler who was too cool for everything else. It was the thing all throughout college, and it will probably be the thing for the rest of my life. This is just the way my brain works.
At that moment, I decided to commit to Swim Into The Sound as something I did — a living entity that also served as an articulation of my fandom and obsession. Here’s that same timeline showing just the days between posts. It’s obvious to see this one-year incubation between the site’s first post and me truly committing to it.
Okay, time to put aside the fun graphs and move on to the posts that made us a millionaire.
In brainstorming how to celebrate this million-word milestone, a braintrust of Braden, coder-artist Alex Couts, and data visualist Katie Hayes, we arrived at a timeline breaking down each article that pushed us into a new 100k. When we ran the data, this resulted in a pretty great crop of articles that also mirrors this site’s growth from one nerd yappin’ about emo to many talented writers following their intuition and covering the music we love.
Please enjoy this miniature stroll back through the word count with an interactive timeline built by Alex with commentary by yours truly.
101,596 words
Funnily enough, the post that pushed us over our first 100k words was also this site's very first article from someone besides myself. Penned by Grant Hillyer, one of many lovely friends I met through the /r/indieheads subreddit, he had reached out to me sometime in the early days of 2018 asking if he could have the space to pontificate long-form about connections he was formulating between Lorde's sophomore album Melodrama and Medea, the ancient Greek tragedy by Euripides. This type of hyper-specific connection is exactly the kind of writing I had hoped to be putting out on Swim, and, up to this point, it had never even occurred to me that other people might want to write for this site. I gave him the thumbs up, and we worked together to craft the most compelling version of his argument. The result was this 3k-word piece that binds an ancient Greek play together with a pop album released over 2,000 years later. True nerd shit, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
202,442 words
New Year's Eve, I was really working on this one up to the eleventh hour, huh? Pretty solid list; some records here I still listen to regularly and a few that have fallen far out of rotation. Not to toot my own horn, but Morbid Stuff, Basking in the Glow, Super Enthusiast, Somewhere City, and It's Not Forever is an iron-clad Top 5 for an emo fool such as myself. Retroactively, both Greet Death and Mannequin Pussy should have both been way higher. Overall, a great crop of albums to cap off a really distinct phase of my life and, in a way, the world.
301,806 words
Here, we have a 2021 articulation of me doing my own little “new notable release” lineup. Looking back half a decade later, Wild Pink's third album, A Billion Little Lights, absolutely remains a must-listen, especially if you find yourself on a road trip or anywhere else while driving serenely at 70+ miles an hour. For a more underrated pick, go check out Mister Goblin's Four People in an Elevator and One of Them Is the Devil , a beautiful, freaky little folk album from Sam Goblin where, yes, the opening track is devoted to recounting the 2010 M. Night Shyamalan film Devil.
400,665 words
A beautiful and compelling retrospective from Grace as she looks back at her own history with the Goats and celebrates the two-decade anniversary of what is perhaps the most pivotal record in the band's discography, All Hail West Texas.
502,514 words
This one was a beast. The final article weighed in at around 8k words and wound up composing a pretty comprehensive timeline of the pivotal Ohio-based emo festival. This included lots of pictures, videos, flyers with lineup history, and deep-in-the-weeds fun facts from festival organizer Conor Alan. Overall, I had a blast chatting with him and weaving together the history of this festival, which has been a central nexus for so much of the emo world.
600,005 words
Oh brother, another album roundup? Before you pull me off the stage with a comically-sized hook, I'd implore you to note that this roundup comes courtesy of The Swim Team! To me, this reflects the ongoing democratization of this Swim Into The Sound as it evolved from one guy talking about albums he loves to many people talking about records they're enjoying. Looking back, there were a few records from this timeframe that wound up being some of my favorites of the year; shout-out to Glitterer, Gulfer, and Katie Crutchfield- love you, divas.
702,191 words
An absolutely excellent and, at times, hysterical interview that Lillian Weber conducted with the New York no-wave band Pop Music Fever Dream. Great band, great music, knockout live show. Don't sleep on them or this interview.
800,400 words
Here we have Logan's review of a record that soundtracked much of my hot, hazy spring-summer of 2025, Beauty Saloon's semi-eponymous BS. A really fun record that deserved to be in the conversation with the Florrys and MJ Lendermans of the world.
900,974 words
Last up, we have a great retrospective piece that David Williams put together, contextualizing (and going to bat for) Smashing Pumpkins' messy, bloated, beautiful, complicated, high-concept fifth album, Machina/The Machines of God.
That brings us to 1,000,000.
I truly owe a million thanks.
Thanks to anyone whose words have helped us reach this number.
Thanks to everyone who has encouraged me at any point in the last ten-plus years.
Thanks to anyone who’s read, shared, or connected with any of these million words.
I hope you enjoy it here.
No AI bullshit, no advertising, just a bunch of people writing about music they care about. Laboring over it. Meaning it.
As it should be.
Thank you, I love you, here’s to a few million more. 🥂
