Music Monday: End of 2021 Playlist

Last year, I did an “end of the year” supplemental playlist to go with my normal summer playlist (which usually ends up covering the first two-thirds of the year anyway), and I kind of liked doing that. So it’s making a return this year to follow up my Summer 2021 list, especially since there’s a lot of good stuff I’ve been listening to since then. Like normal, I’m including a playlist link up top, followed by some stray thoughts on various entries on the list, and then a full text listing at the end. And as per usual, it’s mostly 2021 stuff, but I’m also only one person doing this on the side, so sometimes it takes me a while to get around to trying things.





To start: last time, I called CHVRCHES Screen Violence my album of the summer, and if I had one complaint, it was that it felt a little shorter than their last few albums. Well, they released a bonus version in late October that included three new songs, all of which are stellar. Especially “Killer”, which might be my favorite song on the album now? “How Not to Drown” is hard to top, though.

Moving on from my favorite album on the last list, to my favorite album on this list: it’s Mercurial World by Magdalena Bay, which has been living in my brain for the past month or two. Every song is just great, layers upon layers of hooks and melodies and interesting things. It’s almost hard for me to pick three songs off of it, but “Hysterical Us” is probably my favorite track (I absolutely love that main piano riff). And “Secrets (Your Fire)” feels like the perfect introductory single to the album (I think it was the first track of theirs that I heard, although I’m not positive), plus it’s such a smooth jam. A third pick from the album was difficult, since there are so many good songs. Just by how much I enjoy the songs, I’d probably go with album closer “The Beginning”, but I think part of what I like about it is how it works as a final track, so I left it as a surprise. After that, it was a tough call between the title track, “Chaeri”, “You Lose!”... but I ended up going with “Dawning of the Season”.

Music Monday: Best Music of 2017

Picking my favorite music for a year is a little weird, the more I delve into it. A lot of stuff that I “discovered” this year actually came out last year or earlier. Some of my favorite albums that came out in 2017 include songs that were released in 2016 or even 2015. When you think about it even more, there’s a very good chance that I haven’t even heard my favorite song from 2017 yet. Even if I have, I still might grow a new appreciation for something that I initially brushed off. Drawing up lists like this always involves some degree of arbitrariness.

But I still wanted to do something to mark the end of the year, so I built a list of my favorite songs from this year. I tried to stick to a full rules, though:

1) Songs should be from 2017 when possible. 2016 is okay if I wasn’t aware of the artist until this year, or if the song was released as an early single for a full album that came out in 2017, but try not to go earlier than that.

2) I decided to limit myself to 2 songs from a given artist. If they have two songs on the list, it should either be because the artist had multiple releases this year, or because I really liked the release in question. Generally speaking, I like the larger body of work of every artist here and would recommend listening to more of any of them if you like what I included here, but I didn’t want the list bloating up too much; it’s already nearly 5 hours as is.

Seeing as this list is 80 songs, I’m not going to touch on every single inclusion, but I’ll highlight a few things here and there. With that out of the way, let’s get to it:

Music Monday: Getaway Car Playlist (Inspired by Baby Driver)

Edgar Wright might be my favorite director of all-time. Naturally, I was super excited when I found out that he had another movie coming out this summer, but even more exciting was finding out that it was going to be a musical about car chases.* Sure enough, Baby Driver lived up to all my expectations when I saw it earlier this summer.

*A lot of the initial weirdness one assumes when hearing this conversation dissipates once you remember that The Blues Brothers exists. Apparently, this is a much more natural combination than it first seems.
I wanted to write something about the movie, but I never quite got a better idea than just a page of me just cycling through all of the synonyms for “really cool” that I know. So I finally decided that maybe the best thing to do would be respond to it.


Most of the film’s soundtrack caught me off guard, in a way. For those who haven’t seen it, the main character, “Baby”, is a getaway car driver who is obsessed with music, and needs to sync up his drives with carefully-selected songs. It’s a neat conceit, and I loved it. But thinking back to the movie afterwards (as well as looking over the soundtrack), I sort of had an epiphany: my idea of songs I would use in his place was totally different.

I mean, I had never really thought too hard about what made something a good “getaway car song” before Baby Driver, but my first clue was how little of the soundtrack was something I personally would have picked. Not that any of it is bad; it’s mostly just a matter of taste and frame of reference, if anything. But outside of maybe “Radar Love”, my hypothetical list would have little overlap.

So I put more thought into it: what would my “Getaway Car” Playlist look like? After thinking it over for a while, this is the result. It’s not one of my normal playlists, in that there isn’t really a flow or an “order” to this, and I didn’t spend hours honing the song-to-song transitions; by nature, it’s supposed to be a little stop and start, something you can listen to on shuffle (because, you know, a car chase probably shouldn’t last long).

I’m pretty happy with the end result. Despite not being one of my original “themes” or ideas, I think I put my own distinct spin on the subject. A full text list can be found below as well.


Run with the Bulls-Smallpools
Sins of My Youth-Neon Trees
Stolen Time-Gemini Club
Started a War-Gemini Club
Sex-The 1975
Let’s Make a Lot of Money-Junior Prom
Dance, Dance-Fall Out Boy
Kill V. Maim-Grimes
Next to You-The Police
I Will Follow-U2
Got to Get You Into My Life-Earth, Wind, & Fire
You Dropped a Bomb on Me-The Gap Band
Mirrored Sea-Passion Pit
Something’s Bout to Change-Strange Talk
You Will Leave a Mark-A Silent Film
Atlas-COIN
I Love You to Death-Five Knives
North American Scum-LCD Soundsystem
Leave the Lights On-Mainland
Hello-Oasis
I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor-Arctic Monkeys
Turn It On-Franz Ferdinand
Hang Me Up to Dry-Cold War Kids
All of This-The Naked and Famous
Let It Go-Dragonette
Help Me Run Away-St. Lucia
Paddling Out-Miike Snow
Drive It Like You Stole It-Sing Street
Witchcraft-Pendulum
Bounce-Calvin Harris ft. Kelis
My Type-Saint Motel
Try to Lose-Penguin Prison
Making the Most of the Night-Carly Rae Jepsen
Mr. Brightside-The Killers

Music Monday: Summer Playlist

I had a lot of fun making a playlist for the last Music Monday, so I want to try it again. This time, in celebration of the Memorial Day weekend, I want to focus on Summer Songs. And I’m not referring to how people will label certain pop songs “the song of the summer”, I’m talking about songs that feel explicitly summery (although there can be overlap, depending on the song I guess, although I don’t include any of that overlap here). I have no idea if other people think of songs as “Summer Songs”, but I definitely do. And for whatever reason, none of the other seasons get that sort of label in my head.

My most basic definition has been a sort of tautological “songs that sound good during summer”, something you would listen to sitting by the pool, or driving around with the windows down on a hot day, or just enjoying warm evenings.

I’ve just tried reverse engineer what qualities make me think that, but there hasn’t been any one factor that’s consistent among them.*  There have been a few qualities I’ve noticed though, including things like strong basslines; a light and almost airy feel (although not all are explicitly; explicit references to summer, heat, relaxing/wasting time, and youth; high synth or guitar parts, mostly as rhythm instruments but sometimes with lead riffs; and big, easy-to-sing-along-to choruses as well as frequent use of non-words (like “ohs”, for example) to the same end.

*Other than “I have memories of listening to them over the summer”, but that’s a big chicken-and-egg question. Did I listen to them over the summer because I thought they sounded summery? Or did I decide they sounded summery because I remember listening to them over the summer? Not all of them came out during the summer, for what it’s worth, so I think that leads me to think it’s the first, but I can’t be sure either way.

Now that I got that way-too-academic breakdown, here’s the playlist:

Music Monday: Pick-Me-Up Playlist

I wanted to try something different for this Music Monday. I’ve been wanting to write about music for a while, but no song has inspired me enough to write a could hundred words on it. In any case, it was kind of a gray, cold, rainy, and all-around miserable weekend, and I needed something to cheer me up, so I started listening to some music to perk up my mood. I just kept going with songs until I decided to just make a playlist and share it, with some words about that. Maybe by just chipping in a few words about each one, I’ll feel more inspired. Either way, it’ll let me share music I love, which is always a plus.

  

Music Mondays: "Killer Whales" by Smallpools

I’ve been wanting to write more about music than I have been, and considering my best music of 2014 article (the pop version is here, the full list is still forthcoming) made me think about it several different ways. Specifically, I found it much, much easier to write about what I didn’t like than what I did. I want to work on that. So, I’m going to try and make a weekly feature where I write a little bit about a song that I’m listening to recently and why it specifically out of all the things I’m listening to piques my interest.

To start, I’ll be looking at “Killer Whales” by Smallpools. The song technically came out a few months ago, but I’ve been listening to it a lot again this week with the release of their debut album LOVETAP!