my 2024 playlist, or "fantastic beats and how i found them"
I'm sorry about the subtitle of the blog post. But I had to do it. Has Grindelwald been held accountable for his Crimes yet??
We're about to kick off year 2 of "listening to your favorite songs of the year" which I am absurdly excited about. Last year's batch came entirely from a Twitter request for favorite songs; this year will be the same thing only on Bluesky (I wrote a little bit about this post-election social media scoot on my non-music blog...sheesh, I've got blogs coming out of my freakin ears) plus I've made some direct requests of friends, IEJ contributors, and musicians I have covered this year as well. It promises to be a delicious batch of songs.
While the gears are churning on that endeavor, which will take up the entire month of December, I thought it would be fun to write a few blurblets about songs on my sprawling, messy, 'random' 2024 playlist. This playlist is where I dump any song that has caught my fancy in any way—maybe someone blogged about it, maybe I heard it in passing somewhere in the real world, maybe I tapped in via TikTok, maybe I remembered I was obsessed with it seven years ago—and listen on shuffle, usually in my car when I don't have enough bandwidth to choose a particular album. It is my musical id, and though I'm not sure any of them are my Favorite Song of 2024 (a lot of them didn't even come out in 2024), together they form a nice "juice cocktail" of the mood of my year.
Let's take a look at a few...
Jamie xx - "It's So Good"
First song on the playlist, kinda set the tone for the year. A wonky bop that encourages one to get lost in thought more than it encourages dancing. I don't know if it's weird that it came about as a soundtrack to a Chanel ad campaign but I guess I'm tickled at the concept of a Chanel cassette so whatever. I dug Jamie xx's album this year, and his warehouse 'club night' The Floor was one of my favorite shows of 2024. I just DMed someone I met at that show about the Coachella lineup. Jamie brings the people together.
ITZY - "Untouchable"
This one came from listening to an Apple Music "New In K-Pop" playlist. I was attempting to take the general K-pop temperature, and noticed that many groups have been abandoning the maximalist Black Eyed Peas-esque sound of the late 2010s (encapsulated best in the Steve Aoki remix of BTS's 2017 song "MIC Drop") in favor of more chic and spare garage-inspired beats. To my dismay! As I want every pop song to sound like you can play it for hapless tweakers in Miami Beach hotel bars. "Untouchable," thank god, did not hear the news that everything needs to sound like "Super Shy"—it is big and bouncy and fun.
Madonna - "Ray of Light" (Sasha Ultra Violet Remix Edit)
"Ray of Light" is a very important song to me. I liked it when it came out in 1998 but after a pretty intense plunge into the Madonna catalog during the pandemic, I realized this is probably one of my favorite songs of all time? It contains catharsis that's fully earned, really sweated for, rather than just handed over for free like a piece of melted Halloween candy. Once I sang this song at the Planet Rose Karaoke Bar in Atlantic City, sober, at the beginning of what ended up being a rather long night, and the KJs handed me a little golden microphone trophy, I assume because I really went for it on that last note: AAAuhhhAAAuhhhAAAuhhAAAAuhhAAAAAAAHHHHHH.
In March I saw Madonna play the Forum, my first time ever seeing her, and not to be cliché but it really was a religious experience. She had me eating out of the palm of her hand. I knew she was going to sing "Ray of Light" but I didn't know the backing track was going to be this 2022 remix, which has a thundering industrial breakbeat that sounds like it would fit in on one of the The Matrix movie soundtracks. It ripped live, I lost my shit.
Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band - "The Fire Inside"
I think this might have been played during the Flamin' Hot Cheetos movie episode of Time Crisis though I am not totally sure. When we used to visit L.A., pre-moving here, Chris would play "Hollywood Nights" in the rental car on the drive from LAX to wherever we were staying. In year 2 of living in this city, I can confirm that blasting Seger whilst driving is a really good thing to do.
Sellphone - "Fck Yrself"
My friend Charlie Baker of the ever-rising DJ duo We Take Manhattan (he's been spotted 'about town' in New York, SINGING some new songs of his own) texted this song to me in May with the commentary "Yo check out this song my friends just dropped." That's enough encouragement for me! This is sassy house music laced with a pleasant, taunting falsetto voice that encourages you to go and do the title of the song. Especially love the line "Why don't you go fuck yourself...motherfucker?" This is Sellphone's only single, I don't even think they have any social media? Spotify says they have 2 monthly listeners and one of them is definitely me.
The Chemical Brothers - "No Reason" (Chris Lake Remix)
Peggy Gou played this pretty early on in her Coachella set, which I didn't see live but did catch on the YouTube stream. Reviews of her set were mixed, many dropped the dreaded "mid" word, but I don't think there is anything mid about this song!! The original Chem Bros version is nice, the Chris Lake version perks it up and takes it over the top. That super clean bass line gets even cleaner in the remix.
Chris Lake is in a DJ duo with deeply silly Australian producer Fisher called Under Construction and they have an enjoyable Goofus and Gallant dynamic. I just pulled up a video of their Hollywood Boulevard shutdown and somehow scrubbed exactly to the "No Reason" remix without planning it. All things serve the Beam.
Dean Blunt & Joanne Robertson - "repeat offenders" (feat. Elias Rønnenfelt)
Threw this one on because someone, I forget who, said on Twitter that this was going to be their song of the year, and I admired the confidence with which they predicted this favoritism. I dig the muddy lo-fi mood and the traded off vocals. This is where I say that I don't really know anything about Dean Blunt's music and I probably should? Was this song's hyperbolic arrival to my playlist "your sign to start listening to Dean Blunt," as TikTok usage would put it?
Mala Fe - "La Vaca"
I heard this because my neighbor played this in his backyard when he was hosting a party and I thought it sounded hype. If I need a burst of energy and I've already cashed in all my caffeine chips for the day, I reach for "La Vaca."
The Knocks - "All About You" feat. Foster the People
This played in a bar of the Sahara Casino in Las Vegas on a Tuesday evening as I was sipping a dirty martini. The bar specialized in whiskey drinks but I did not know this before I ordered my dirty martini. If I had been paying attention, I would have noticed that the liquid in every backlit bottle on the bar was brown. But I was not paying attention, because I was in Las Vegas. The bartender was very nice and made the martini for me—he had to duck down and reach into a fridge tucked under the bar to get the vodka. Why was I in Vegas on a Tuesday? Hmm, I asked this question to myself as well. This song sounds like a nice pen smoothly signing the receipt for an expensive Vegas bar tab. It sounds like "we have early Tame Impala at home" but that's fine. I want early Tame Impala at home, I don't care where it comes from.
Steely Dan - "Gaucho"
Played the whole Gaucho album en route to a fancy birthday dinner at the Sunset Tower Hotel—I wanted to go because years ago I read that RuPaul ate a chicken pot pie there—and it hit so hard that I have played it basically every day since. The way the chorus singers pronounce and attack the word "poncho" is like nothing I have ever heard, spicy yet gentle, like a mild salsa.
I can't help but feel bad for this gaucho, because I'm so damn sensitive; when Donald Fagen sings "I'll drop him near the freeway / Doesn't he have a home?" my heart breaks for this unwanted, spangled friend. That's just where I'm at these days, misty as hell. I got the pot pie at the Sunset Tower and it was delicious, though it was one of those "cheating" pot pies where instead of a full crust, there's just a sheet of puff pastry across the top. Still, you know what they say—don't look a gift pot pie in the mouth.
Fievel is Glauque - "Dark Dancing"
Quirked up indie-prog-jazz with the choice lyrics "Shake your ass, lose your mind / Never know what you might find" pronounced elegantly, Continentally, by Belgian singer Ma Clément. This is the right and correct song for closing out the blog post, because it's my main philosophy right now. I think everyone needs to be shaking their asses more. We as a society used to shake our asses more, we prioritized the shaking of asses. We've fallen off and need to initiate ass shaking protocol. Free your mind and your ass will follow—but also, free your ass and your mind will follow.
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