Month: January 2024

These three together make me so, so friggin’ happy I can’t even tell you. It’s because they look like the absolutely best of friends and routinely look like they are having a ball. We can all hope to enjoy life as much as these three do according to what I’ve seen on their Instagram feed!

I’ve been lucky enough to see Julien and Lucy live, (Lucy in particular is fantastic, definitely check her out), but Phoebe has been elusive so far and I love her the most out of the three. If I had done this blog project like two years ago she would’ve featured in it heavily.

Phoebe takes the first verse and I just love how dark and kind of melancholy her voice is. I’ve always been kind of drawn to that. Maybe I’m a closet Goth. I love songs in minor key, the morally gray “villain” in a lot of books and shows/movies. But there’s this beautiful sadness to all of Phoebe’s catalog.

“Black hole opened in the kitchen, every clock’s a different time, it would only take the energy to fix it, I don’t know why I am the way that I am, not strong enough to be your man, I tried, I can’t, stop staring at the ceiling fan, spinning out about things that haven’t happened, breathing in and out”

Julien’s second verse is a little lighter. Of the three, I’ve listened to her the least, but you HAVE to check out Appointments. Such an amazing song by her.

“Drag racing through the canyon, singing “Boys Don’t Cry”, do you see us getting scraped up off the pavement? I don’t why I am, the way I am, not strong enough to be your man, I lied, I am, just lowering your expectations, half a mind that keeps the other second-guessing, close my eyes and count”

Lucy brings it home in the third verse wonderfully. She sings everything wonderfully. I’m serious, listen to Night Shift. 

“I don’t know why I am the way I am, there’s something in the static, I think I’ve been having revelations, coming to in the front seat, nearly empty, skip the exit to our old street and go home, go home alone.

The harmonizing during the “always and angel, never a god” part is absolutely top-shelf. The three of them weave together with one-another seamlessly. The guitars keeping the rhythm are wonderfully consistent throughout. 

This one is a special one. I truly hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!

BANKS is fucking DOPE.

She’s a rare artist in that I’ve never once been disappointed or even vaguely uninterested in her songs. Every single time I hear one, it’s magic. Such an amazing marriage of vocals and electronic music. 

Her music just has this really cool, kind of dark ethereal quality to it that really brings you on a journey if you give up to that kind of thing.

From the very beginning of the song where her vocal is acapella it seems otherworldly, right? 

“Had my trust and such, had my head, had my heart, and my eyes, baby your words don’t add up, had your gaslight on, then you promised I’m the one who’s crazy”

The whole song really is a treat of a “songscape” to explore. It’s really funny, just now, as I wrote songscape, I was annoyed that the red squiggly line appeared under it…a word I just invented on the fly, felt so natural to me in the description, surprised me when it was not really a word. :)

We can all relate to that binary feeling of loving someone and hating someone at the same time, right? There’s one particular relationship I think back to and it really was kind of like this song. One day it just like slapped me in the face that I didn’t have to deal with it anymore. 

“There’s something ’bout the way its like you’re running me over and over, something ’bout the way I miss you kissing me over and over, and you put your words in my mouth Till Now, and I let you turn me around Till Now.

I like that she capitalizes that lyric and names the song that. It makes me think of BC/AD in some way. TN, TillNow, and AN, AfterNow, are two distinctly different time moments in time in this song. It’s irreversible. I loved you, you hurt me, I let you continue hurting me because I thought you’d see what you had, and then, the realization hit that you don’t deserve me. Anything is better than this. That’s definitely what happened. I don’t begrudge the girl now, past is past. Songs like this though help me look at it for what it was though and learn from it!

I hope you enjoy! Like I said, I’ve never been disappointed by a song of hers, and you really should check out her 2014 album Goddess. Every single track is a banger. 

Thanks for reading!

This song gives me such Jimmy Eat World/Dashboard Confessional vibes and I am absolutely down for it. First of all, I love the album cover. Spotify really is failing me on the artist credit front. So simple, but so cool.

The songwriting is fantastic throughout the song. I’m talking Ben Gibbard-esque lyrics. Not necessarily for clever rhyming or anything like that but they just seem…luxurious to me.

“Lips were painted cherry red, and there are fossils in my head, you were young and full of dread, Bathsheba of the strip mall set, we knew vampires in our time, cutting in the bathroom line, looking bored and rolling eyes, ain’t pharmaceutically inclined”

But yeah, this song definitely feels like a throwback to me. Like farther than 2019 throwback. :) To me, that means if I feel like I’m getting Jimmy/DeathCab/Dashboard vibes from an indie band, then these guys have some chops. 

When lead singer Will Lindsay starts belting out “I thought you knew me better” at 4:38 we’re again channeling this breaking of an emotional damn. He’s letting some stuff go for the rest of the song. It just feels like a release.

Oh and get this…

Barely over 8000 people listen to this band a month. You are in on the ground floor!

Halfway in and I’m feeling Angels and Airwaves vibes too. I’m really looking forward to diving into more of their catalog. Let me know if you hear any that you particularly liked!

Oh and fucking props to this song for clocking in at 5:48. We don’t have enough long ass songs anymore!

As always thanks for reading! Enjoy!

(is it weird to say “as always” on…checks notes…Day 19? I dunno, but if you’ve been here since Day 1, we’ve been through some shit already together!)

Aww, I smiled when I saw this song was the next entry! I’ve come to discover Noah this year, and appreciate her big sister Miley’s work and voice more this year too.

I absolutely love Noah’s cadence from the get-go on this song. I absolutely love that gravel that has been gifted to the vocal chords of the Cyrus’s…Cryus’. That looks so awkward BOTH ways. 

“I’ve been holding my breath, I’ve been counting to ten, over something you said, I’ve been holding back tears, while you’re throwing back beers, I’m alone in bed, you know I, I’m afraid of change, guess that’s why we stay the same, so tell me to leave, I’ll pack my bags, get on the road, find someone that loves you, better than I do, darling, I know, ’cause you remind me every day, I’m not enough, but I still stay”
-Noah Cyrus

I bolded the above part because I was super blown away that Noah managed to make the words I and why be five syllables. I’m not being sarcastic. It’s beautiful.

I definitely added this song to my To Learn on Guitar playlist. The duet version with Bridges is top-shelf. His voice is butter smooth…but not just butter…like, that sugar and cinnamon toast your Mom made you when you were little. That butter. Sweet and spicy.

“Feels like a lifetime, just tryna get by, while we’re dying inside, I’ve done a lot of things wrong, loving you being one, but I can’t move on (oh, I), you know I, I’m afraid of change, guess that’s why we stay the same, so tell me to leave, I’ll pack my bags, get on the road, find someone that gives you, all of the things I could not know, ’cause I keep fighting all the way, I let you down so I could stay, if you want me to leave, then tell me to leave and, baby, I’ll go, and baby I’ll go.”
-Leon Bridges

This song just hit me when I heard it. I initially discovered the duet version first and I prefer to the solo Noah version. It’s just a song that seems meant to be song opposite another. It’s a conversation, a fight, a dance, a lament.

If there’s such a thing as a self-care love-song, it’d be this.

Take time, take all the time you need, take time or you won’t succeed.

We don’t take enough time for ourselves. None of us do! You need to make space for you. This song is a good start.

I started to highlight a lyric and realized I just kept typing because Angie somehow makes the first verse feel like it lasts five minutes and her singing on this is some of her best. Particularly this sequence:

“My baby talks at a mile a minute, she sings like a church with a choir in it, she shoots for the moon to land in the stars, and wakes up heavy with a sunken heart, thinking twice will lead you into a bad place, you got to move fast to win, no space for time, no time for space, I got what the human race needs, my baby runs ten miles to win it, she moves like her body’s got a fire in it, she makes me swoon when she walks in the room, she wakes up early and she leaves too soon“

If anyone said that about you, you’d melt right? For sure. Wait ’til you hear her sing it.

The original artist on this song was the band Oh Pep! Shout out to Mike and Erin’s cat Pepper! The original version is excellent! Such a different energy than Angie’s and yet conveys the exact same emotions. Their harmonizing starting at “why don’t you forget about it” is so spot on it inspires an ache. Really reminds me of First Aid Kit in some ways!

We also shout-out that tambourine when we hear it. Game recognize game.

I really hope you are enjoying our journey so far! I’ve had such a great time re-listening to these songs and analyzing them for each entry.

Thank you for any and all seconds you’ve spent reading this blog. I really do appreciate you taking moments of your free time to discover a new song every day. I think it’s such an easy way for us to expand our brains. Experience something new everyday. See how many of those feelings you can stack together in a given day. You really would be surprised the things you notice when you look a little harder.

Enjoy the songs! Let me know what you think of them!

While Childish Gambino may have grabbed the higher ranking song on this year’s list, I don’t know that there will be someone on it more times than Lil Wayne.

If you appreciate double and even triple entendres, Weezy is your man. Listen to his songs while following along with the lyrics if you can. There is so much STYLE on his words and it’s in EVERY SINGLE SONG he appears on.

“Man, I got Summer hatin’ on me ’cause I’m hotter than the Sun, got Spring hatin’ on me ’cause I ain’t never sprung, Winter hatin’ on me ’cause I’m colder than y’all, and I will never, I will never, I will never Fall, I’m being hated by the seasons, so fuck y’all who hatin’ for no reason”
-Lil Wayne

If you’re curious as to my 42-year-old, straight cisgender white-man opinion on this Holiest of Hip Hop topics, he absolutely deserves to be in the conversation with those Hip Hop lyrical gods and giants. Eminem is in there, Nas is in there, Andre 3000 is in there. We’ll hear a lot more from these guys this year because I discovered some INCREDIBLE Hip-Hop this year.

Jay’s verse on this track is Jay just being Jay. Absolute quality every single time and has to be one of the most consistent rappers in my lifetime in terms of just beginning of career to modern times he’s just straight fire whenever he opens his mouth. That was an awful, awful sentence. I kind of like editing this in first person and just talking to you while I do it…leaving it in because I’m obsessed with the idea of Kintsugi. (See the Regeneration post: https://everything-etc.com/2020/02/01/regeneration/) It’s was a shit sentence but it’s MY shit sentence.

Anyway, Jay’s verse!

“I’m right here in my chair, with my crown and my dear, Queen B, as I share mic time with my heir, Young Carter, go farther, go further, go harder, is that not why we came? and if not, then why bother?”
-JAY-Z

My personal favorite verse is Weezy’s last verse.

“It’s my go, yeah, and I’ma go so opposite of soft, off the richter, Hector, Camacho Man, Randy Savage, far from average, above status-quo, flow, so pro, I know I ride slow, and when I pass, they say, “What up, Killa?”, man stop bringin’ up my past! and next time you mention Pac, Biggie, or Jay Z don’t forget Weezy, baby”
-Lil Wayne

Please enjoy a great performance by these two future Jesse Terry Hip Hop Pantheon Members. I guess I’m doing that I’m at some point! Let me know what you think!

If you’re looking for authentic, look no further than Noah Kahan. Follow this dude’s socials if you wanna enjoy watching someone who is an amazingly grateful performer. Noah seems so down to earth, and honestly who can’t picture him as a best friend you bare your soul to? It’s only polite after he shares his with you in this song. 

The man affectionately known as Folk Malone as one hell of a songwriter. I love that he’s so raw and honest with his own mental health struggles because it destigmatizes talking about it. This man puts it all out there, no BS, and I love him for it.

“You were a work of art, that’s the hardest part, howlin’ like dogs in the light of the moon, holdin’ our breath after 132, you asked me why I wasn’t saying a word, I’m naming the stars in the sky after you“

I was lucky enough to see him in concert at SPAC this past summer and I cannot stress how much you need to see him live. You won’t be sorry. This song in particular blew me away. Check out the video Nic got here:

https://share.icloud.com/photos/0abTxNkCCMwLVheSBDTO04rXg

I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed such an honest performance…

When he belts out…

“To spiral out, to try and float, to see a friend, to see a ghost, bitter-brained, always drunk, rail-thin, Zoloft, subtle change, shorter days, dead-eyed, dead-weight, your life, your dreams, your mind, your needs, and my needs“

…it’s like in movies where they do the big snap cut montage, like you see 30 images in the span of like three seconds. That’s the kind of view you get into the pain and anguish of Noah Kahan in this song. He bares all and it’s an incredibly memorable performance.

I look forward to diving into more of Noah’s catalog with you all because he really is an amazing performer from our neck of the woods on the other side of Lake Champlain. Stand out vocals, songwriting, band, it’s the complete package. 

One more plea, if you get a chance to see him live, even if you can only get lawn seats at a venue or something, do it. You will not regret it. It’s probably one of my Top -5 concert experiences and I never saw the stage at SPAC. Your mileage may vary but I really don’t think it will.

Please enjoy a simply magnificent song. Share your thoughts! Thanks for reading.

Another all-female UK rock band hits it out of the park in 2023. I owe finding this one to Alt Nation too. What’s great about this song is that it comes on like this prim and proper ditty, like you’d hear it in some TV show that modernizes a Parisian party and then that one word hits and changes the song completely. These are not your prim and proper women of yesteryear. I’m 100% here for it.

“‘Cause we’re a lot alike, in favor, like a motorbike, a sailor and a nightingale, dancing in convertibles, and you can hold me, like he held her, and I will fuck you, like nothing matters, and you can hold me, like you held her, and I will fuck you, like nothing matters”

Overall the song simultaneously is about forgetting someone and being head over heels for them at the same time. Though it doesn’t seem as if she’s with the one she wants. Pronouns are important in that lyric above. Maybe I’m stating the obvious here. Our lead singer probably got cheated on. Fuck that guy! I dig the defiance. The shade being thrown. Deserved!

This is another one of those “soul songs’ that I feel like hits you and you can’t help but move. I bet if someone analyzed all 366+ of these songs after this year they’d find two to three common themes within! If these songs stuck out to me after so much listening, they have to be something, right? 🙂

“Even when the cold comes crashing through, I’m putting all my bests on your, I hope they never understand us, I put my heart inside your palms, my home in your arms, now we know nothing matters, nothing matters (oh-oh)”

We get a fantastic guitar solo at ~2:00 that just melds wonderfully with the entire song and leads into us belting through the final chorus. Such an incredible ending to this song. 

I hope you truly enjoy. Please let me know what you think of the song!

Pair this guitar with this beautiful British voice and you have the recipe for some SOUL. I recently purchased a guitar and this song makes me wanna teach myself on turbo. So good throughout and worth a listen with focus on it on it’s own right!

We are quickly drawn into this beautiful dance between the two, and when everything opens up at :52 it’s what I imagine the beginning of a psychedelic trip is like. A kaleidoscope of sound and color.

The opening lyrics are such a great intro with that guitar. We know we’re in for something. LAUREL has this voice that is somehow simultaneously able to purr and be sharp as a dagger. With a sprinkle of gravel. It really is special.

“Put his hands on my face, the kind of touch that made me chasing down, like it’s true love, just tear me up, tear me down, ooh, like it was true, oh, every word that you’re saying, and God, keep me staying, I’m like gold, lord, pull me in, then let me go, should’ve known the first time you played with me like I was a devil, and I played with you like you were just a man, wanna lay with you but I’m never better, from your God these are the days”

That kind of prose is present throughout. 

“Take what you need, darling, I’m just here for you, give me your love and physical affection, give me the worst of you to hold, didn’t take me to the heavens, give me the best of all the grace, ooh, you make life worth living, ooh you make life worth living“

This is definitely one of the more poetic songs we’ve heard on the countdown so far and the more I listen to it the more I appreciate her performance as well as the sound mixing. 

My favorite part of this song is how bluesy it is. We are pining for someone in this song. Are they pulling away? Do they belong to someone else? Both? LAUREL channels that complication. 

If Salt is Angie’s minor-key/wounds are fresh album then Light, Dark, Light Again is the other side of the healing process for those wounds.

This is one of the most beautifully poignant self-care songs in this year-long list. Sometimes you’re in a position when you’re the only one who can take care of yourself. ”Okay you can take a break now”…is that something we honestly let ourselves do in today’s society? There certainly isn’t time built into the day for it. Maybe the first step is literally just giving ourselves permission to slow down?

“Okay, you are healing again, remember when you weren’t dreaming, you can stroke your own skin, pull yourself back into your own love, gave so much to them , you have so much to give yourself now, everything is quiet but the music’s coming in…”

We are enough, because at the very simplest we only have to be enough for ourselves. This song is about having that soft and forgiving relationship with yourself, because oftentimes, we’re our own worst enemy. I love that this song encourages coming to peace with that side of ourselves through breath and yoga…a pair of things I’m trying to do more of 2024. 

More stillness. More balance. Light and Dark in all things…

This song packed such a punch for me in our four short minutes together. Yet again Angie’s voice wallops the soul. If Rocky’s body shots were cathartic lyrics, that’s this song. This song is what I imagine that first breath of fresh air is like after spending a long time underground. Finally taking that deep breath. It’s that hug from a friend that finally breaks us. Then we can begin to grow again. To rise from the ashes of who we were.

The sun will rise tomorrow, no matter how hard things are. I promise. There’s hope in tomorrow. Enjoy the song and the healing. Let me know what you think!