listening to Your Favorite Songs 2024, part 9
Pickin' 'em up, knockin' 'em down...
Part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six, part seven, part eight.
"The World's Biggest Paving Slab" - English Teacher
from Andrew Murrell
What does it mean to "sound cool" on a record? It is something I ponder daily. Is it a particular tone of voice, cadence of delivery, or other immeasurable essence of being? Do you have to be cool to sound cool? Sometimes people make dorky music but still sound cool doing it (Jonathan Richman) and sometimes people make cool music sound even cooler (Kim Gordon) and sometimes actual coolness eludes you no matter how many pairs of sunglasses you wear (Bono).
Anyway, English Teacher vocalist Lily Fontaine sounds extremely cool as she sing-talks through this post punk / dream pop hybrid, even though the song is about being a bit of an underdog. The track's syncopated stops and starts keep you on your toes, as does Fontaine's suggestion to literally "watch your fucking feet." I'm sure the reverb-saturated chorus lyric "You should see my armoury" [ed. note - spelled it the British way out of respect] implies some stash of metaphorical weapons, but apparently Leeds, where English Teacher resides, has a Royal Armouries Museum that contains a stash of literal weapons. You don't have to do the "give Carly Rae Jepsen a sword" thing for English Teacher, because they already have a bunch.
"Purple Roses" - Ogbert The Nerd
from Jacob
"Amazing DIY emo, frenetic, anxious, absolutely full of energy, fantastic guitars, a reprise that just soars, and an absolute gut punch of a final line. 10 years from now I think they're gonna have the same kind of legacy that the greats of early 2010s emo like Glocca Morra or Snowing. (Hopefully they'll stay together longer, though."
Between the non-stop agitation of the guitars and the vehemence of Madison James's vocals, this is a total panic attack of a song. The imagery on "Purple Roses"—a candy apple full of razor blades, a car out of gas, trying to write with a ballpoint pen on "soaking wet paper"— conjures that particular kind of interminable bad dream where Everything Goes Wrong and it feels so real that you believe this is going to be the rest of your life. Brutal!
"Good Luck, Babe!" - Chappell Roan
from kat
"Nobody writes bridges anymore, and no one will after this either because there's no way they can measure up! It's juuuust this side of being too kitschy & too catchy. I love that the title has two punctuation marks. Comphet awareness is important, even if the straight girls breeze right past it. The drag! The makeup! The artistry! The performances! It's the perfect BPM for CPR, on top of everything else. Lesbian dance & karaoke supremacy!"
Chappell, Chappell, Chappell. What a freakin year. If you will let me toot my blog horn for a second, I wrote about Midwest Princess at the end of last year when Justin Poirier rec'd "Pink Pony Club." Hark, a blog within a blog:
It's not the point of music blogging, but damn it feels good to be RIGHT. I'm glad everyone's talking about her now, mostly because everyone in the pop game needs to step it up and start writing songs with MELODIES, HOOKS, DYNAMICS, and PIZAZZ. Stop singing in cursive and start singing in Jokerman.
"Good Luck, Babe!" presents Chappell in a more refined state than last year's sparkly West Hollywood partygirl, with courtly strings that remind me of Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach" and a falsetto chorus that, having tried it at karaoke, is not suitable for normal human beings to attempt. (I almost died!) "You'd have to stop the world just to stop the feeling" is a jaw-dropping line, a line that gives me hope for the future of pop because think about it: if someone didn't come up with it until 2024, imagine what else we might come up with songwise going forward? The comphet-critical Trojan Pink Pony we didn't know we needed.
"Love 2 Hate" - Warm Human
from Nick!
"It was tough to pick from my shortlist this year but ultimately this is the song I’ve been most eager for more people to hear, and completely unlike most of what I’d heard from Meredith prior to this single. Really though, no song made me *move* more this year. I challenge you to listen to this and not bounce around your home/work/car (drive safely). Wonky wiggly synths, fun and funny lyrics, a catchy as hell chorus, and a self-loathing reveal. It’s a song about being a hater in all forms, not least of the self, what more could you want? The whole album is a necessary listen, but I love L2H."
Um I love this. Double-tracked vocals? J. Lo "Play"-esque synths? Music video where the artist is dressed like a 18th century French courtesan? It's all happening.
I love a pop song with a strong thesis, and this one couldn't be more coherent: Warm Human's Meredith Johnston just loves to hate. She delivers the chorus with a bitchy sparkle that the Mean Girls movie musical lacked: "Read the burn book, I wrote the page / What can I say? I love to hate." And though other flashier pop culture moments may have gotten more airtime (yr Brats, yr "very demure"s, yr tiny glistening Thai hippopotamuses), the act of Being a Hater felt fun and fresh this year for the first time in a long time. Eli Schoop's Constantly Hating, Delia Cai's Hate Read, the frenzy over a negative review of Lauren Oyler's essay collection in Bookforum...in the ongoing pitched battle between snark and smarm, snark won this year. I'm way too sensitive to be a full-time hater (the more u hate, the more hate u receive after all) but I looove to book a room at the Hatred Motel every so often.
“Burning” - Hitsujibungaku
from John (longtime music enjoyer; currently working on making every pizza from every Pynchon novel)
"I got into J-rock this year among other heavier/shoegaze-y stuff. This song is just so good top to bottom. The riffs are simple; guitar tones are thick and crunchy. The higher-pitched female vocals are such a nice counterpoint to that. And it’s catchy as hell: the pre-chorus and chorus especially with those harmonies. Everything just scratches my brain just right. I’m also trying to learn Japanese, and reading lyrics while listening is a great way to learn the characters.
I heard about Hitsujibungaku after hearing an episode of Fortune Kit where they talked about them. Great recc!"
Ooooooo!!! This guitar tone is delectable, as warm and fuzzy as one of those fluffy coats that everyone started wearing in 2018, and the chorus is perfection. The aura is very '90s (I played it just now and my husband said "it sounds like a Dinosaur Jr. song") but the melody reminds me of that early '00s female pop rock moment I still think of fondly: Michelle Branch, Tegan and Sarah, Kelly Clarkson in her more hardcore moments, and of course Liz Phair when she started working with The Matrix. I remember watching every music magazine I read mock her mercilessly for going pop, meanwhile I was listening to "Why Can't I?" going uhhh but this is incredible...what is the problem here...
I never listened to much Japanese music in the past but the past couple of Music Moots™ rec'd some J-pop and city pop and I enjoyed them both. Need 2 keep expanding the musical horizons. "Burning" is apparently the outro song for an anime called Oshi no Ko, adapted from a popular manga that "follows a doctor and his recently deceased patient who were reborn as twins to a famous Japanese pop idol." This sounds wild, and you know I love nutty fictional depictions of pop stars. Might need to tune in.
Thanks for reading I Enjoy Music! If you like it, tell a friend.
Thanks to all the song recommenders <3 See you...tomorrow...
