September 12 - Song for Sasha Banks

I've always loved the story behind this one. Mountain Goats finished Beat The Champ, and put it out. And then Sasha Banks, who was at the time by far the hottest women's wrestler in the United States and had just burned the entire house down with a series of matches with Bayley, posted on Twitter chiding John for not having written a song for her.

And so he did. Because what else do you do? Especially when the story of Mercedes Varnado is such a tremendous one. A mixed race kid from a family who moved around frequently trying to find the best medical care for her brother, who spent a bunch of her childhood around thew sort of medical facilities that John Darnielle used to work in, and whose way of connecting with her brother was through watching wrestling, and through working out that she could do it. She also has a tie to the Guerrero story in that she was in the audience for Monday Night RAW (had won tickets to attend, in fact) on the night that it was announced that Eddy Guerrero (her favourite wrestler) had died.

Oh, and also Snoop Dogg's cousin, but that's secondary to the real meat of the story.

You can see why John would see a similar soul in a kid who bounced around the place, grew up idolising a Guerrero brother and who turned their childhood passion into a vocation. And so much of this comes through in this song. The line "everyone I love is gonna have their own safe place" sticks through this song like a spike of emotion.

Not everyone makes it, but sometimes you look at someone who did and you can see they started from close to where you did. I like to think that went both ways.

Oh, and Sasha Banks, now Mercedes Mone, just won the AEW women's world championship in front of 45,000 people in Wembley Stadium. Hell yeah, honestly.