There are many amazing and beautiful things about this song, but for me “Time’s A Wastin’” has always been about the relaxed keyboard chords at the core of the arrangement and the particular tone of that instrument. I’m not an expert and it’s not specified in the liner notes, but I think it’s a Fender Rhodes? Something like that, at least. It’s a warm, wholesome tone that also suggests something cosmic or spectral beyond the physical realm. Badu is offering wisdom, advice, and encouragement in her lyrics, and the keyboards support that by conveying patience and gentleness even as she calls for immediate and decisive action. The song is basically about coaxing someone out of inertia, and she sings from a place of deep empathy – she’s obviously been in some place before. The implication isn’t that she knows much better and is condescending to this other person, but that she’s got some perspective. In its mellow feel and stately pace the music suggests a panoramic view going back ages, but Badu sings it all like someone firmly grounded in the here and now.
“In Particular” feels both twitchy and very even, like someone keeping something in a tidy order out of obsessive compulsion. There is an anxiety in this music, but it’s dialed down and kept at bay as Kazu Makino sings lyrics that sketch out a vivid portrait of a depressed person and expressing genuine empathy towards them. It’s a little ambiguous what the singer’s relationship with this person is – is it just platonic friendship, or is this romantic? – but the affection is clear and forthright, and the love is given unconditionally. But despite all that, the song is anything but sappy. There’s no sentimentality to the tone of this piece, and the rigidity of the musical structure makes Makino’s message come across as more logical than emotional: Of course I love you despite your “hysterical depression.” Of course you are special. Of course I am your “only friend.” Why would you ever doubt this?
I only recently learned of this Bette Midler cover of a Bob Dylan classic recently, as a result of working on the 1970s surveys. This version, which she performs as a duet with Dylan himself, was recorded around the same time as the original on Blood on the Tracks and came out only a few months after that album in early 1976. It’s an incredibly charming recording, and has the feeling of something the two of them decided to throw together on a lark.
Whereas the Dylan version is an earnest acoustic ballad, this is more of a cheeky honky tonk barroom piano tune that plays on Midler’s strengths as a campy cabaret act. They sound like they’re flirting and goofing around – like, why did they change the word “bucket” to “nuggets” here other than to be silly? Midler’s ad libs are both beautiful and hilarious, especially when she sings “Bobby, Bobby, hey there Mr. D, you set me free!” The playful spirit continues through the fade out in which Bob and Bette have a bit of charming banter that ends with him noting “you and Paul Simon should have done this one.” I disagree, that could not have possibly been as cute as this.
A very clever thing about “Polyaneurism” is how Kevin Barnes pushes hard on using language that signals a fluency in social media and contemporary slang, and in a way that shows him to be both plugged-in and slightly removed in generational terms. The song is just as much about this tension of staying “with it” as it is about the specifics of entering a relationship with a younger woman on her polyamorous terms. He’s open minded and excited by possibilities but can’t help but feel like maybe he’s internalized too much of the norms of his youth and slightly ashamed of it – “if you want monogamy are you just, like, some basic bitch?” The tone of the song is light and playful in a way that’s very much in line with Barnes’ earlier work but a refreshing change of pace from his more anxious and manic music from over the past decade or so. The silly mood conveys a more relaxed emotional stakes even if he’s clearly deep in love. He’s obviously attracted to her because she represents change and transformation, and he’s just figuring out how to evolve without betraying himself.
I saw Ariana Grande perform over the summer at the Barclays Center and it was one of the most memorable arena shows I’ve been to in recent years, largely because the energy of the overwhelmingly young and female audience was so overwhelming and purely joyful. I’m very glad that Grande’s new live album documenting this tour does a lot to preserve that aspect of the show, including big sing along moments as well as random girls near the front screaming out particular lines and little moments of Grande responding gamely to her fans’ enthusiasm. Grande is such a gifted R&B vocalist that it’s a given she can sing well, so this live album does some crucial work in conveying a casual charm that goes beyond that technical skill and what aspects of her persona would ordinarily make it through to a studio record.
“Get Well Soon” is one of Grande’s finest songs, and it showcases her exceptional taste in melody, her deft vocal skill, and her genuine warmth and empathy. Her lyrics are directed as advice to herself but easily double as kind, generous words to anyone struggling with serious anxiety and mental health. There’s a lot of songs like this now, and I find many of them to be rather shallow or even full-on opportunistic. But this one is the real deal, and given the circumstances of Grande’s life around the time this was being made, it very much came from a real place of sink-or-swim emotional survival instincts. But these are just the lyrics – the music is carrying a deeper, fuller feeling of love and kindness, and you can hear that resonating with people in real time in this recording. Solidarity with the girl in the front row screaming along to “girl what’s wrong with you, come back down!,” by the way.
I started making “survey mixes” at the end of the year at the start of this decade, and my approach to anthologizing the year’s music has changed over time. Initially it was all about my favorites, and then there was more of an effort to be as expansive as possible. When I’ve gone back to do previous decades, I’ve tried to be as thorough as I can, which is a little easier with hindsight. This year I’ve been collecting the survey in a rolling playlist in real time, and the result is a playlist of around 1000 songs that’s too much for anyone to reasonably listen to but is also STILL fairly incomplete in my mind. The amount of music produced now is truly staggering and we don’t talk enough about what that volume of material actually means for music culture, especially when the full range and diversity of what’s going on in music is largely ignored by media in favor of celebrity and whoever has serious money behind them. Hopefully these 2019 survey playlists will help you find some things you love that exist outside of all that.
Because the main survey is so large and unwieldy I’ve decided to make three other playlists with specific musical themes in the interest of listenability. The first of which is focused on, loosely speaking, R&B and slow jams. There was a huge amount of excellent music in this vein in 2019 and that chunk of the main survey was one of the things I listened to most frequently.
The second breakout playlist is basically all “indie,” which is defined somewhat loosely – I mean, I have a Taylor Swift song in this one – but I think it all fits together quite nicely.
And finally, here’s just a lot of bangers and bops – up tempo pop, dance music, and rap.
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It’s slightly odd to me that when given this prime Katranada groove – so densely programmed but somehow quite airy! – Kali Uchis wrote a song about behind-the-scenes music industry shenanigans and haggling for cuts, but I guess you gotta write what you know. But still, it’s very incongruous to have this very sensuous composition as the backdrop for a sentiment so sour and score-settling even if she’s probably correct to be demanding her fair share and, of course, there’s more than enough love and sex songs in the world. In this context Uchis’ words start to fit into a more romantic narrative, with “where’s my 10%?” seeming like a more interpersonal audit for attention, effort, and emotional investment.
“Future Doesn’t Know” has a bright and hyper sound to it that signals an energetic optimism, but the lyrics by Kassie Carlson are mostly about confronting the future with total confusion. These aren’t mutually exclusive things, of course – the sentiment here isn’t far off from Björk declaring “I don’t know the future after this weekend, and I don’t want to” in “Big Time Sensuality” – but her choice of words leans heavily on anxiety triggers. It’s an expression of indecision that vacillates from second to second between “now what???” and “NOW WHAT!!!” She may seem lost and humbled by bad experiences, but there is a joy and sense of adventure here that overrides the worst of it.
It was not at all surprising to learn after having heard this song a few times that the primary instrument of the composer, Joseph Carvell, is the bass guitar. The bass line is prominent in the mix and central to the song, driving it along with a slow-burn urgency. The surface of the song is glossy and chill, but the tone is more like the inadvertent creepiness of someone who doesn’t understand their feelings are coming off more intense than sweet. The atmosphere of this song is excellent – the gentle drones, the chords that seem to pop in for a moment just to sound like a sparkle, and that synth flute sound which shifts abruptly from ambiance to a busy, slightly winded melodic flourish.
Lee Ranaldo’s new collaborative album with Raül Refree moves about as far away as any former member of Sonic Youth has away from the aesthetics of Sonic Youth. So far, indeed, that guitars are not even part of the palette: “Names of North End Women” is all vocal and polyrhythmic percussion. Ranaldo’s voice is in excellent form here, leaning on his usual rhythmic poetry but allowing for more purely melodic and soulful moments along the way. The percussion is busy but there’s a lot of silence on the track and that negative space feels distinctly cold, like crisp winter air at a high elevation. This makes the movement of the track feel necessary, like it’s doing what must be done to get along and survive.
“We’re Everywhere” is a ballad with a sophisticated R&B gloss that conveys a very heightened sense of romanticism – it’s very “we’re in a movie, and this part is so perfect it makes me cry.” It sounds like a perfect vision of love, but the English translation of the Korean lyrics reveals some interesting contextual details: She’s mostly singing about feeling awkward and anxious with someone, and is very fixated on the smallness of her body. It’s as much about being in love as it is about feeling insignificant and shy – not necessarily contradictory things, but something that complicates the sweetness and purity of this music.
I was not familiar with song – which was previously recorded by The Emotions and Patti LaBelle – before hearing Molly Burch’s new recording of it for her Christmas album, but it hit me immediately in the gut. Burch’s arrangement is a slightly jazzier take on the Emotions’ version, but retains a very specific early ‘70s sort of melancholy. It’s a very graceful and dignified sort of sadness, the sort of seasonal misery that would be dressed up in a beautiful peacoat. The lyrics hit very close to home for me now as someone whose family is no longer nearby and doesn’t have default company for the holidays. It’s an awkward position to be in, but at least I have this and the original recording as a way to really play up the lonely Christmas vibes.
I like to imagine interviewing this band and casually mentioning Lou Reed and the main guy looking blankly at me like, “who is that?” It is entirely impossible to imagine that this guy is anything other than a Lou Reed obsessive who has decided to make his own Lou Reed songs. I suppose this will come off as insulting or as faint praise, but this is an exceptionally good fake Lou Reed song, something that would’ve fit in very nicely on any of the Velvet Underground records. The rhythm, the lyrical detail, the specific vocal tone – it’s all very Peak Lou in a way that doesn’t seem remotely accidental. I’m in awe of how well this guy nails it. The craft and precision is so strong you could absolutely trick someone into believing this is a Loaded outtake.
“So Good It Hurts” is a country rock song that opens with an unexpected cold and brutal sound, not far off from the BDSM cyborg vibes of Goldfrapp in electro-glam mode. It’s a strange contrast with the rest of the song, which isn’t far off from Shania Twain at her most pop, but it doesn’t clash either. It just sets up an unusual tightness in the verses that makes the more traditional by-the-book chorus feel more jubilant. The whole song is just Olivia James singing about how hot her boyfriend is, so in that context it’s like the verses are all horny tension and the chorus is ecstatic gratitude for being blessed with this rugged but well-dressed country hunk. The details are specific enough to make anyone outside of the country cultural bubble go “uh, really, that’s what you’re into?” but it’s all very endearing and good-natured.
“Lumen” is essentially an R&B song, but んoon’s arrangement is so peculiar in its rhythms and contrasts of textures that it comes out sounding sorta alien. It’s like Aaliyah/Timbaland music reinterpreted as post-rock – two concurrent off-kilter turn-of-the-millennium aesthetics merged into something both sleek and slightly awkward, but entirely mesmerizing. The band convey absolute confidence on this track, with every unusual choice played with an elegance that smooths out the tentative feeling of the beat.
Letherette’s music is like a much hornier version of J. Dilla, like it’s all deliberately constructed as sex music. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say it’s all a tribute to the sensuous, luxuriant sex music of the 70s – everything they do is so rooted in those aesthetics that it’s hard not to approach this music as something that’s so earnestly enamored with its source material that it moves beyond the point of kitsch. “Hornty” is a particularly smooth track that holds up better as a discrete composition than most of Brown Lounge Vol. 5, which is clearly intended to be experienced as a suite. It’s a real “does-what-it-says-on-the-tin” sort of song: It’s obviously a horny reconfigured jazz song featuring horns. Would you want it to be anything else?
The version of Animal Collective that recorded and toured in support of Merriweather Post Pavilion was a trio – Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Geologist – performing almost entirely with electronic instruments. This isn’t unusual, but the band’s approach was. The core of the band’s music was rooted in folk and psychedelic rock, but they mutated it all by forcing it all to work within the limitations of their instruments and, more specifically, what could be done when approaching machines that were not necessarily designed to be played “live” with the improvisational spirit they would bring to guitars and drums.
The studio versions of the MPP material are very focused on conveying Avey and Panda’s songwriting, which by this point in their career had fully matured structurally and melodically. The live versions were far more chaotic, sometimes seeming as though they could collapse or deviate wildly off course at any moment. Ballet Slippers, the new live album collecting recordings from this period, isn’t always easy to listen to, as the more improvisational elements of the performances are more compelling in the moment and sometimes rather tedious outside of that context. But even still, the energy is there – often disorienting, vaguely mystical, sometimes mesmerizing, and totally dazzling when those gorgeous melodies settled into the foreground.
“Daily Routine” translated particularly well to the stage as the trio could click together well in the more traditionally structured chunks of the song, and the composition allowed a lot of space to drift off into ambiance and abstraction in the second half. This coda sequence is rather lovely in this performance and emphasizes a sensuous shoegaze quality that’s less pronounced in the studio recording. The song’s lyrics are written from the perspective of a young parent getting used to the seismic lifestyle shift of caring for a child and the anxiety around trying to do it right, but in this wordless sequence Panda’s voice conveys a mix of joy, love, and fear that’s beyond what could be communicated with words.
Divino Niño have a rowdy sort of elegance on stage that plays up their casual charisma and clever guitar playing, but their studio recordings have a different feeling – hazier, nostalgic, and much more introverted in tone. A song like “Coca Cola” certainly benefits from the hyper-romantic atmosphere of this production aesthetic, but it’s frustrating to listen to their record after seeing them live and feeling like their personality and energy is lost in the translation somewhere, or just overpowered by reverb and synths. But either way this song nails a specific feeling of being young and desperate to make something happen if just to alleviate boredom.
I’m not sure exactly where Lulileela is coming from in terms of her musical influences but to my American ears “Dive” sounds sorta like the quasi-80s hyper-romantic aesthetics of M83 at their commercial peak, but with the rock boy melodrama cut out and the slick sophistication dialed way up. Her voice is soft and airy, but her bass playing is very loud and assertive in the mix, driving the song while also providing popping flourishes along the way. A lot of artists aim for this mark but don’t nail it the way she does here, and I think it comes down to her composing like a bassist. Anyone with the right keyboards and presets can go for this sort of atmosphere, but not everyone can lay down a groove as dynamic as this. She centers the drama of the music in the hips rather than leaving it all to your head.
The record ends with “Everlasting Nothing,” a majestic ballad that’s among the best songs Beck has ever released. “I woke up in a movie, didn’t know if it was my whole life,” he sings over a stately guitar rhythm. “When it ended, I laughed before I cried.” A verse later, he imagines his rebirth as “a standing ovation for the funeral of the sun,” sounding less blunt and plainspoken and more poetic and abstract — that is, more like himself.
As the song progresses it grows grander in scale, and finally peaks with the ecstatic glossolalia of female gospel singers. The effect is similar to “The Great Gig in the Sky,” in which Pink Floyd used a similar arrangement trick to convey a cosmic notion of death and the afterlife. But whereas Clare Torry’s voice was foregrounded on that song, the gospel vocals in “Everlasting Nothing” are distant in the mix, like a siren call to oblivion that Beck is tuning out for the time being, choosing to stay grounded as he faces the unknown. It’s not quite a happy ending, but it’s at least a dramatic ride into the sunset, capping all the gloomy resignation with some sense of direction and purpose.
I always favor cultural omnivores as electronic dance producers. I’m not dialed into the ongoing narrative of this milieu to care much about the concepts, aesthetic purity, or subcultural contexts of microgenres, and I find it much easier to connect with the sort of DJs who have internalized every trick in the book for getting people to dance and are ruthless in their pursuit of delivering thrills. Jubilee is very much this type of producer, and while her record Call of Location doesn’t sound quite like my beloved Basement Jaxx, it’s very apparent that she’s cut from the same cloth. The record is all energy and joyful eclecticism rooted in a deep love and history with the music she’s drawing on. It’s not hard to dissect the mix of grime, Miami bass, and dancehall that comes together on “Mami,” but the song is so effective on a raw physical level that examining it that way is besides the point. She’s connecting the dots between these things, but mostly just in a “by any means necessary” approach to moving you.
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