“Somebody that I Used to Know” - Goyte (Interscope, 2011)
"Somebody That I Used to Know" is a fear-based track. Telling the tale of a harsh breakup? Relatable, but born out of fear. The ticky-tacky instrumentation that sounded like no other pop song at the time? Scared radio half-to-death, which is why it had a slow, glacial walk to become a chart-topper, a Grammy-winner, and one of the biggest singles of the decade. All of this sudden fame? Struck so much fear in Gotye that he hasn't made a single solo Gotye track since. Shame: we really miss him too. - ES
“Sprained Ankle” - Julien Baker (6131, 2015)
Daily reminder that Julien Baker is a national treasure and should be protected at all costs. Also this song is sad as hell and got me back into emo. (Nathan’s saying, “Was there a time when Hunter wasn’t listening to emo?” which is fair.) - HM
“Stoned and Starving”- Parquet Courts (What’s Your Rupture?, 2013)
Light Up Gold came out in 2012, after I dropped out of school to work in the music industry (sorry, Mom). I was driving from Gardena to Sherman Oaks, which in LA-speak means a shit ton of driving on the 405. This album became the backdrop for much of my time there, spent sitting on the freeway for two hours until I could go home and eat whatever dinner I could find/afford. Recorded in three days, Light Up Gold is a taut rubber band threatening to snap, mirroring my own frenetic mind. It’s blurred and hazy guitars belies its anxiety and frenzy; Texans transplants adapting to NYC.
Practically oozing with 90s nostalgia, Parquet Courts hits post-punk perfection with “Stoned and Starving,” a five-minute ode to wandering around to find shit to eat when you’re high. Largely the same verse repeated over-and-over again with a few differences here and there, Andrew Savage and Austin Brown’s guitars issue a two-chord wail that firmly places them in the upper echelons of the garage rock world. - BN
“Swan Dive” - Waxahatchee (Don Giovanni, 2013)
“Swan Dive” makes perfect sense when you learn Katie Crutchfield has a tattoo of the cover art of Rilo Kiley’s The Execution of All Things. Like Jenny Lewis, Waxahatchee spins syllables into tangled knots and yet it’s woven so gracefully melodic. But more than the emo-adjacent writing style as well as the autumnal guitar-pop sound, she takes from Execution an ability to narrate a dark scene with such detached stateliness. Crutchfield suggests but never fully explains, with chills arriving a little later when you digest the lyrics and their implications: “Dark winter morning, you/ honk your car horn at me/ and I grow out of love and/ empty bottles in my closet/ and you’ll quit having dreams about/ swan dive into the hard asphalt.” She recites an intense, if not destructive relationship like a secondhand account, and her own removal of herself from the trauma lets “Swan Dive” silently sink more of its teeth. Crutchfield then hums the melody like it’s a lullaby, slowly relieving herself from the ghost of relationships past. - RM
“This Too Shall Pass” - Ok Go (Paracadute, 2010)
It seems strange to think that when Ok Go released their first music video A Million Ways, the idea of going viral wasn’t part of our daily lexicon. YouTube was a new platform and let’s be real, the closest I got to watching music videos online was Yahoo Music. Going viral was the Charlie Bit My Finger kid or Liam Kyle Sullivan’s debut Shoes. Ok Go has managed to create a decade of viral videos that are a master class in the art of a seemingly low-budget video that you could have made yourself (or at least that’s what I told myself when I was spending my entire retail paycheck on Final Cut Pro).
This brings us to This Too Shall Pass. This upbeat confection is the equivalent of Taylor Swift recording an album in Big Sur in remodeled mid-century modern with a conversation pit. Their approach to bringing together their quirk and off-kilter sounds with an ear for infectious anthems and images that have such mass appeal is groundbreaking. While this is now the norm (see the Jonas Brothers), Ok Go pioneered the viral pop anthem where the music video was arguably more important than the song itself.
After a marching band place holder flick, we got the glorious Rube Goldberg machine music video. Built in a two-story warehouse with over 700 household objects, this machine extended over a half mile. Mousetraps are set off, pianos drop, and paint guns hit the band; all in synchronization with the track. While the records set by this music video seem perhaps tame to the records of today, the Rube Goldberg machine music video earned six million views in six days, its bursting joys gone firmly viral. - BN
“Them Changes” - Thundercat (Brainfeeder, 2015)
Anchored by a beat sampled from the Isley Brothers’ “Footsteps in the Dark,” Stephen Bruner uses his six-string bass to render a melancholy reflection on heartbreak on Them Changes. Two years had passed since Bruner’s sophomore album Apocalypse was released. Those intervening years saw him as a creative force on critically acclaimed albums, such as Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly and Flying Lotus’ You’re Dead. However, those years also saw the death of close friends, including 22-year old piano prodigy, Austin Peralta, and processing the systemic racism and inequity that’s still prevalent today.
Them Changes, off of his mini-album The Beyond/Where the Giants Roam, paints a cosmic, aching picture of loss, where Bruner’s bass chunks out heavy lines that weigh down the track with his grief and confusion. His lyrics meander; there’s no chorus to serve as thesis. He wonders: “Somebody tell me how I'm supposed to feel / When I'm sitting here knowing this ain't real.” Kamasi Washington’s sax grooves in the background in the track’s final minute, which gently fades out into nothingness. - BN
“Tightrope” - Janelle Monae (Bad Boy, 2010)
In 2010, Janelle Monae released the afrofuturistic, awe-inspiring ArchAndroid, a masterclass in neo-soul. If Fritz Lang could jitterbug, it would look like the album’s first single, Tightrope. The track is buoyant social commentary laid over bass riffs and horns, which Monae has perhaps perfected at this point. - BN
“Today’s Supernatural” - Animal Collective (Domino, 2012)
Decades from now, when music fans and critics look back on the praise received by Animal Collective in the mid-‘00s, culminating in the sometimes catchy but wildly overrated Merriweather Post Pavilion (2009), they’ll all have a good laugh. Surprisingly enough, though, on the followup to that most lauded record – 2012’s Centipede Hz – the band pulled out some real bangers, this one chiefly among them. Sure, it sounds like you hotboxed a Mars Volta song and then threw it into a garbage disposal, but that’s the type of stoned hijinks we’re here for. - BE
“Two Weeks” - FKA twigs (Young Turks, 2014)
Two Weeks” is like a hymn from the Sex Bible. It’s all soaring choral vocals and glistening harmonies while twigs tells you how much better in bed she is compared to your current girl. Makes sense. With braggadocio and brashness at the ready, twigs promises to “quench that thirst” and “put you first” as she drowns the listener in sordid bodily imagery and nasty-but-erotic one-liners. Meanwhile, Emile Haynie’s industrial-pop production shines in its own right, swiftly carrying twigs through the track like Tarzan on a vine. LP1 is assuredly a magnificent record, and “Two Weeks” is almost certainly twigs’ finest piece. - HM
“Video Games” - Lana Del Ray (Polydor, 2013)
Lana and I don’t have the best relationship. We’re going to couples counseling and meditating together twice a week. I make her lunches and she puts out tolerable music once in a while. We’re working on it. All the way back in 2012 — before Charlie’s Angels, before Gucci, before “High by the Beach,” before certain body parts tasted like Pepsi, before SNL — Lana put out a little record called Born to Die. It was a sleeper hit, aided in large part by singles like “Summertime Sadness” and the title track. “Video Games,” released the year prior, was the first single from the album, and, in this writer’s opinion, it remains her best. On the track, Lana’s nostalgic lyrics and pin-up-girl-with-a-secret vocals are filled out by a simple piano melody, a downright gorgeous string section, and lush production courtesy of LA-based Daniel “Robopop” Omelio. The song conjures up Mulholland Dr. imagery — sunny, bright southern California; a deep, dark underbelly — while also making us yearn for something we never had. Lana’s sense of romanticism and fondness for big emotions belie just how powerful her songwriting can actually be: the audience begins to wish they and Lana shared the same memories. - HM