I have been laid off from BuzzFeed after working there for six and a half years. I started there as the music editor, but the majority of my time there has been serving as the company’s Director of Quizzes. (Here is a page collecting my favorite quizzes, reviews, interviews, and miscellaneous funny posts.)

BuzzFeed was a fantastic place to work, and the fact that I could mutate my career path so drastically is a good example of the sort of flexibility and creativity that has made the company quite successful. While it is not ideal to be laid off, I can say that I pretty much did everything I wanted to do in my time there, and had been feeling a bit adrift in the recent past. It was time to move on, and sometimes the world has to force your hand.

You might be wondering – wait, why would they lay you off? You were doing the quizzes, and that brings in a lot of money! Well, that is true. But another thing that is true is that a LOT of the site’s overall traffic comes from quizzes and a VERY large portion of that traffic comes from a constant flow of amateur quizzes made by community users. In the recent past, the second highest traffic driver worldwide has been a community user in Michigan who is a teenager in college who, for some reason, makes dozens of quizzes every week. It’s kinda amazing how much revenue-generating traffic the site gets from unpaid community volunteers. So, in a ruthless capitalist way, it makes sense for the company to pivot to having community users create almost all of the quizzes going forward. I understand math. I get it.

Anyway, I am now looking for work! I have two parallel careers, so let me break this up a bit.

• I am looking for work that allows me to continue on with the fairly complex skill set I developed at BuzzFeed. I was in editorial but worked with teams in video, social media, product, engineering, data, business, and creative – quizzes touched almost every part of the company, so I often worked as an internal consultant. A lot of my job involved looking at data and the big picture of what the audience wanted, developing strategy, and encouraging writers to come up with creative ways of entertaining the audience and expanding the range of what we could do.

I worked closely with the tech side of the company in developing new apps, formats, and tools. A huge amount of my job involved constant formal and technical experimentation. A lot of what I did involved understanding human psychology, and how to make things that resonated with people and encouraged them to share results that flattered or amused them. The job involved a deep understanding of semiotics in pop culture and cuisine. A large portion of what I wrote was comedic in nature. I have a very nuanced understanding of a mainstream audience primarily composed of young women, and am almost certainly the world’s foremost expert on online quizzes.

I feel like there’s a lot of applications for all of this in technology, advertising, and media. Probably a lot of other things I haven’t even considered, really. I’m open to anything. If you want to reach out, I’m at perpetua@gmail.com, and here is my LinkedIn page.

• I am in the market to write about music, movies, television, comics, and other pop culture things for whoever is interested in having me. I am also working on a book of music writing and shopping around for an agent and a publisher. Please hit me up if you would like to work with me on any of these things!

If you’ve read this far, I’d like to acknowledge a lot of the key people I’ve worked with over the past several years.

Anjali Patel is probably the most brilliant and impressive person I have ever worked with, and watching her evolve from a shy workaholic into a bold, one-of-a-kind hybrid of writer, artist, and product designer has been a privilege. Cates Holderness, Ryan Broderick, Katie Notopoulos, and Bob Marshall understand the internet better than anyone else on earth. Joanna Borns, Andrea Hickey, Alexis Nedd, Erin Chack, Daniel Kibblesmith, Sam Weiner, Julia Pugachevsky, Nathan W. Pyle, Loryn Brantz, and Matt Bellassai are the funniest writers I’ve had the pleasure of working with.

Thanks to Doree Shafrir, Scott Lamb, and Ben Smith for hiring me, and to Summer Anne Burton and Tommy Wesley for keeping me around. Thanks to Julie Gerstein, the best manager I have ever had in my career. Shout out to Tanner Greenring, Jack Shepherd, Dave Stopera, Matt Stopera, Lauren Yapalater, Dorsey Shaw, and Peggy Wang for creating the voice of BuzzFeed. Thanks to Louis Peitzman, Ashly Perez, Jen Lewis, and Heben Nigatu for making quizzes a thing. Much love to Andrew Ziegler, Sarah Aspler, Alana Mohamed, and all the other mindfreaks.

Thank you to Gavon Laessig for personally giving me the news. Thanks to Lisa Tozzi and her army of reporters who do their best to make the world a little better. Thank you to all of the designers and developers and data folks who created the best publishing tools a writer could ever ask for. Thanks to everyone who ever enjoyed anything I ever made and shared it with other people.

Vampire Weekend “Harmony Hall”

The first time Ezra Koenig sang “I don’t want to live like this, but I don’t want to die,” it was at the climax of “Finger Back,” on the second side of Modern Vampires of the City. That record was in many ways about the pressure to achieve goals and have experiences on a tight schedule, motivated by a deep fear of aging and the narrowing of one’s options. Every character on the album was terrified that their time was running out, or that they were in some trap they needed to escape.

That line has popped up again in “Harmony Hall,” the first Vampire Weekend single in quite some time. The music is more mellow and graceful, but Koenig’s perspective has shifted. He’s singing about frustration with a complicated world, and the seeming impossibility of separating wealth from power. It’s a song about feeling disillusioned and disappointed, and that phrase – “I don’t want to live like this, but I don’t want to die” – feels even more ambivalent than when he sang it the first time. Is he shrugging it all off? Is he going to try to fight it? In the context of the song, he sounds hopeful as he sings it. I hear it as someone trying to find joy in a world he knows is rigged and unfair.

Buy it from Amazon.

Deerhunter “What Happens to People?”

“What Happens to People?” is light and brisk, with a melody that seems to float quickly by on a stiff breeze. Bradford Cox sings with a tone that’s half wistful and half distracted, like a fleeting thought about someone he’s fallen out of touch with has an entirely hijacked his mind. There’s a running theme of passivity through all of Cox’s work, but here it extends out to the whole world – life is a thing that happens to you, people are things that come and go around you. Everything is a chaotic drama that’s spinning on around you, and if you weren’t there, it wouldn’t matter too much. He seems so distant here, this guy on the outside of everyone just looking on as things happen to other people. They fall apart, they give up, they disappear, and there’s nothing he can do for them.

Buy it from Amazon.

James Blake “Can’t Believe the Way We Flow”

I always like the love songs that do their best to approximate the feeling the author is experiencing. “Can’t Believe the Way We Flow” is mostly James Blake singing about being perfectly in synch with his girlfriend, while the music softly glitches around him, as if it’s the rest of the world just outside their shared wavelength. It’s sweet and romantic, but makes an odd swerve in the middle as the music seems to abruptly click back to the start and goes off on a more neurotic lyrical tangent before returning to the blissful main theme. It’s an unusual decision that breaks the spell of the song, but allows for a deeper context for its sentiment. It’s also a reminder that even in that perfect euphoric flow, this is a guy who’s still very much in his head about this experience.

Buy it from Amazon.

Maggie Rogers “The Knife”

The tension in the verses of “The Knife” is subtle and elegant – there’s a swing to the groove, and as the syncopation gets busier the overall effect of the bass and percussion is rather light and slinky. The trick of the song is making you feel comfortable in that groove before moving you into a cathartic release in the chorus that makes you realize in retrospect that you’d been wound so tightly. This is mirrored in the lyrics, in which Maggie Rogers sings about a sudden epiphany that’s rattled her psyche, and about then letting loose on the dance floor. The emphasis of the song both musically and thematically is placed on the verses rather than the chorus, with the heavy implication that the really important thing here is the epiphany, not the release. The release is great, sure, but it’s all about the process leading to the reward.

Buy it from Amazon.

Annie Lennox “Little Bird”

“Little Bird” is all endorphins and adrenaline, with Annie Lennox singing about finding a newfound strength and courage in escaping a relationship that had gone sour over an up-tempo track that’s a little bit house and a little bit rock, and sung like a gospel song. Lennox sounds excited and unencumbered, but also rather nervous. Freedom has high stakes, and every note of triumph in this song is shaded by suppressed fear and doubt.

The line in “Little Bird” that resonates most deeply is at the start of the chorus: “They always said that you knew best.” That’s the crucial bit of context, the bit that shows you that this isn’t just about breaking free, it’s about getting out of a cycle of deferring to someone else. This other person doesn’t even need to be a villain, and doesn’t need to have been wrong about everything. The point is that Lennox is singing from the point of view who’s finally decided to trust themselves, and to follow their own path. Lennox’s voice soars on this part – her confidence is rising, but not quite as high as she’d like it to get. But there she is, trying. She makes you want to try too.

Buy it from Amazon.

Tune-Yards “Fiya”

What if my own skin makes my skin crawl?
What if my own flesh is suburban sprawl?
What happened between us makes sense
If I am nothing, you’re all
If I’m nothing at all

Those lyrics resonate with me so deeply that it can be hard for me to listen when Merrill Garbus sings it. I know so many songs, and almost none of them express this feeling, and it’s a feeling that is so common. For a long time, I just figured “Fiya” was a rare and special song. But now it seems more like a song that should be common but is not because the music industry has done such a great job of keeping anyone remotely fat out of the spotlight. The few fat people who do make it through are either the type of people who possess a superhuman level of confidence – not exactly common among fat people – or are like me, and do everything they possibly can in life to misdirect your attention and not address this fact of their existence.

But here’s Merrill Garbus actually singing about it, and all the deep-rooted shame and insecurity that goes with it, and the way people – even good, kind people – will (often unknowingly) reduce your value and humanity because you are fat. She’s giving voice to the feeling that bothers me the most: The notion that someone could only want you out of convenience, and that every good thing about you can be cancelled out by your fatness. She’s singing about the cynicism and fear that grows inside you, the entirely justifiable suspicion that everyone you meet thinks you are disgusting unless they prove otherwise. And even then, can you really trust them? But all of that is really just the outside layer of the song. The core of it is a gnawing feeling of loneliness and yearning for affection. It’s disappointment, and resignation to the belief that you’ll never get what you need the way you are.

Buy it from Amazon.

My Chemical Romance “Teenagers”

I would have loved this song when it came out in the mid-00s, but I didn’t ever listen to it because I’d decided that My Chemical Romance and most of their mainstream emo MySpace rock peers were not worth my attention. I was in my mid-20s, was distancing myself from most rock music, and incredibly dismissive of the tastes of white suburban American kids. In other words, at the time “Teenagers” was released, teenagers scared the living shit out of me. But I hear it now, and I just think about what a fool I was to ignore this. This is exactly the sort of vibrant, catchy rock song I have loved at every stage of my life. Whoops.

“Teenagers” is a glam metal song in goth drag. Reduced to an elevator pitch, it’s Mötley Cüre. Gerard Way sings the song with an exuberant clarity but his lyrics are incredibly ambivalent, shifting back and forth between fear and empathy. It’s mostly the latter – Way is acutely aware of how awful being a teen can be, and his terror is mostly rooted in knowing that it only seems to get worse on kids and the kids seem to just get worse in turn. This is a song about teens in which the constant threat of mass murder is a major factor in growing up, and how the classic psychological tortures of adolescence seem quaint in that context. In Way’s mind, these kids are hardened, desensitized, and ready to snap at any moment. Who wouldn’t be scared of ‘em, even when they’re your target audience?

Buy it from Amazon.

Billy Joel “The Longest Time”

Billy Joel’s music was so omnipresent through my childhood that it took me a very long time to understand that his primary mode as a songwriter was pastiche. It’s pretty obvious! But you know, it’s easy to lose context when something is so foundational for you. With this in mind, it occurs to me that the contemporary artist with the most in common with Joel is actually Stuart Murdoch from Belle & Sebastian. Like Joel, Murdoch is skilled in adapting his natural gift for classic melody to a variety of pop modes from the past, but keeping it all within an immediately apparent personal aesthetic. But whereas Billy Joel’s music is rooted in bitterness and cynicism, Murdoch consistently writes from an empathetic and optimistic point of view.

“The Longest Time” is from An Innocent Man, the Billy Joel album most overtly based in pastiche. Each song on the record was written to evoke a different major influence from Joel’s youth, and this song in particular was a tribute to doo-wop. Joel is very well suited to the style, and the song is built around one of his loveliest and most elegant set of melodies. The most interesting thing about “The Longest Time” is that it’s written in the style of songs that were intended to express very sweet and naive sentiments about romance for an audience of teenagers, but he’s approaching that subject matter from the perspective of a man in his mid-30s. The guy in this song has fallen in love, but is surprised that this has happened – he’s been burned before, he’s had his defenses up for a while. But somehow he’s met someone who truly inspires him and shakes him out of a cynical, self-defeating rut. Joel’s lyrics are sincerely romantic, but cautious in its optimism. He’s absolutely smitten, and just trying extremely hard not to screw up a good thing.

Buy it from Amazon.

Billy Joel “Captain Jack”

The lyrics of “Captain Jack” are written in the second person, a technique that is almost always going to result in a creepy, uncomfortable feeling for the listener. You can hear this two ways: Billy Joel is either putting you in the experience of a young, privileged kid who has become a junkie, or he’s putting you in the mind of someone observing a young, privileged kid who has become a junkie and harshly judging them from a distance. Either way, the lyrics hijack your own perspective, so the seedy details and pathetic behavior come off a little more unsettling than they would if they were sung in either the first or third person. There’s an itchy feeling to the song – “ugh, get me out of here, this is gross” alternating with “ugh, get this voice out of my head.”

“Captain Jack” is a fairly early Billy Joel composition that sets the tone for a lot of the songs he would write as he progressed through his career. Musically, he’s merging the aesthetics of ’60s rock with the drama and grandeur of musical theater, and is basically on the same page as his contemporaries Andrew Lloyd Webber and Pete Townshend, and several years ahead of Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf. Lyrically, he’s 23 years old and already revealing himself to be a major curmudgeon with a defensive contempt for “cool” guys of every kind. The lyrics of “Captain Jack” are hectoring and pitiless, and seem to be written deliberately to humiliate his subjects and reveal them as pretentious frauds who are merely dabbling with a down-and-out lifestyle. In this song, and in many Joel hits, the implication is that he’s watching some guy and seething: “Oh, you think you’re better than me? YOU think you’re better than ME? Well, fuck you, buddy!”

Buy it from Amazon.

Coldplay “Clocks”

Chris Martin only wants to make everyone’s life feel more meaningful and romantic, and I think that’s a noble pursuit. The best Coldplay songs – and “Clocks” is the best of them all – blend the uplifting dynamics of classic U2 with the yearning and sentimentality of glossy rom-coms. It’s always cinematic and grand, because you’re supposed to hear it and feel like you’re suddenly in some beautiful moment in a movie about your life. This can be sappy, and it can be narcissistic. But in most contexts, a Coldplay song is empathetic and generous in spirit. It’s Martin and his band giving you permission to let your emotions and experiences feel important, even when everything else in the world is telling you that you’re insignificant and boring.

A song like “Clocks” is at its most powerful when you hear it unintentionally in a mundane context, like if you’re at a Panera Bread in a strip mall on an overcast Tuesday afternoon at 3 pm. You need that grandeur and romanticism to feel a little incongruous with your surroundings. That glorious piano melody tells you that you’re living something bigger and more colorful than where you happen to be in the moment. The falsetto chorus, with Martin repeating the ambiguous phrase “you are,” could be an affirmation, or maybe a declaration of love. It can be anything you need it to be as long as it makes you feel like it truly matters.

Buy it from Amazon.

Sophie B. Hawkins “Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover”

“Damn, I Wish Your Lover” is the ultimate example of how if your big chorus hook is easy to relate to, you can say absolutely bonkers nonsense in the verses and most people won’t notice or care. And like, it’s not the actual premise of the song that is particularly weird – Sophie B. Hawkins is singing about pining for a woman trapped in an abusive relationship – but that she articulates this with colorful, mind-boggling phrases like “I give you something sweet each time you come inside my jungle book.” This is not a complaint, by the way! I think it’s better for songs to embrace strange language. It’s usually more musical, and songs with odd turns of phrase tend to stick out in your head more than a song with bland, prosaic lyrics. It’s a big part of popular music. There’s a certain thrill in paying attention to a song and going “WTF? Come inside her jungle book??”

But again, the verses aren’t really what you’re here for. This song is an expertly crafted chorus delivery system, and anyone who has ever experienced the feeling of lust can click into Hawkins belting out the title phrase. At some points in the song she swaps out “damn” for a wholesome, demure “shucks!” and that sort of dorkiness only makes the song more resonant. It’s unguarded, it’s sweet, it’s self-effacing. There’s no pride in this song, just someone laying it all on the line and owning a desire they figure is entirely futile. But the feeling is there, and it’s got to be expressed somehow or she’ll lose her mind. There’s a desperation here too, as if by writing and singing this song, it’s a last ditch attempt to push this feeling from unrequited to reciprocated. She wants to be a hero to this woman and get her out of a bad situation, but it’s more like she’s hoping she can rescue her from loneliness and humiliation.

Buy it from Amazon.

Massive Attack featuring Tracey Thorn “Protection”

“Protection” is a love song, but more specifically, it’s empathy song. A lot of love songs are selfish, or myopic. They get caught up in neuroses, or tangled up in obsession, lust, fear, insecurity. But this is a gentle and thoughtful song with a warm elliptical groove in which Tracey Thorn sings about how love can’t solve another person’s problems, but it can alleviate pain. It’s an expression of humility and selflessness. She offers herself as a human shield in the chorus, knowing full well that she’s only offering symbolic relief. It’s bittersweet, but so genuine and pure that it can choke me up. The third verse is particularly interesting as the gender pronouns switch around, and the notion of masculine and feminine qualities are deliberately blurred into mutual vulnerability and a shared sense of responsibility to look after each other. And that’s true love.

Buy it from Amazon.

Christina Aguilera “Come On Over Baby (All I Want Is You)”

“Come On Over Baby” exists in many versions, largely because Christina Aguilera’s label was eager for it to be a hit and paid a lot of money to tinker with it until it clicked in various formats. This radio edit version, with a pepped-up bridge and more openly sexual lyrics, is my favorite. As far as I’m concerned, this is the apex of early 2000s teen pop – catchy and dynamic without the overbearing keyboard chords and dinky melodies Max Martin favored at the time, and highly effective at conveying the horny-but-wholesome aesthetic of the era. This might be a happy accident in some ways, since when you go beyond the surface level of the production, it’s pretty clear the real goal of this song is to provide the young Aguilera with a hit in the mode of Whitney Houston’s most ecstatic up-tempo numbers, like “How Will I Know” and “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me).” The songwriting is rooted in gospel, and it’s constantly pushing you up towards total euphoria.

In both sound and sentiment it’s closer to “How Will I Know,” as it’s a joyful crush song grounded in doubt and insecurity. Aguilera is singing from the perspective of someone who is absolutely certain how she feels about the object of her affection and is doing everything she can to invite them into her life, but is frustrated that they don’t seem to be brave enough to go for it. But frustration isn’t really the point of this song, just the context. “Come On Over Baby” is thrilling because it’s so bright and optimistic, and Aguilera sings it all with casual confidence and genuine empathy for her shy, awkward suitor. She ultimately just wants to make them loosen up and feel comfortable, and for the opportunity to be affectionate. Like I said: Horny-but-wholesome.

Buy it from Amazon.

Sleigh Bells “It’s Just Us Now”

The running theme of Sleigh Bells’ records is the effort and emotional strain it takes to overcome insecurity and push yourself to be the kind of person you want to be and to become something truly great. Derek Miller makes it all sound like a matter of life and death – there’s no half-measures in Sleigh Bells songs, and the music is always pushed to the furthest extremes of catchiness, of emphatic self-belief, of raw force, of blaring loudness. They’re aiming for an overpowering physical sensation; they want to give you a thrill. But it’s all a dramatization of an inner struggle to be optimistic and have faith that you can make things work.

The phrase “It’s Just Us Now” doesn’t come up in the song, but it’s the subtext. It’s a message to the people who stuck with them after the hype for them died down: You get it, so here’s the most ambitious music we can come up with, because we’re not going to stop fighting even if everyone bails on us. No one would ever consider the music on their previous records to be timid or repressed, but they do feel that way in the context of where they’ve been since Jessica Rabbit came out in 2016. It’s loud, but not in the red and warped to the point that it sounds like an accident. They stopped relying on decibels to give you that oomph feeling. And crucially, Alexis Krauss had revealed herself as a powerhouse singer – the airy head voice of the first few records was now supplanted by a fierce, belting rock voice that was more En Vogue than indie pop. They leveled up, in large part because these are people who thrive as underdogs.

“It’s Just Us Now” tips back and forth between confidence and doubt, but it’s not the pessimistic feelings that stick. The lines that jump out at you are statements of certainty: “I believe deeply in decency.” “When you die, I wanna die with you.” The music sounds defiant and heroic, so when Krauss sings “when I’m conscious, I am cursed,” it just comes across like pointing at an obstacle to kick down and overcome. They’re ready to push and fight, and are not afraid to fail. This is the energy we should be carrying into the New Year.

Buy it from Amazon.

The Scary Jokes “Community Gardens”

Liz Lehman’s previous record as The Scary Jokes was delightfully melodic and agonizingly neurotic, something like a feminine equivalent to Kevin Barnes’ music as Of Montreal. Three years later, Lehman remains a natural with melody and is no less angsty, but has further developed their style beyond obvious reference points. BURN PYGMALION!!! is a cleaner, less frenzied record that tells a complicated love story about an entertainment journalist and her movie star girlfriend that sometimes seems like it’s actually about reconciling one’s own introverted and extroverted impulses.

“Community Gardens” opens the record by laying out the record’s emotional themes, but not so much its plot. Lehman’s vocal tone is incredibly warm, but the phrasing is crisp and precise – it’s like someone who is trying to ingratiate the listener, but also stick to an agenda. The lyrics are fantastic, opening with self-deprecation and fear, but quickly moving on to imparting two crucial pieces of wisdom. First, that “despair is less abundant in those who understand how to plant their hearts in community gardens.” Yes, this is a good way of putting it! The second point is bigger – the world may be fucked over by the decisions of powerful and capricious men, but there’s at least a lesson to learn from their arrogance and hubris. Lehman is not much of an optimist, but it’s hard not to hear the genuine hope in this song.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Broadcast “Before We Begin”

Trish Keenan was a deeply shy woman who sang everything with an ambiguous tone, as if the Mona Lisa was fronting a psychedelic pop band. Conflicting emotions and ideas overlapped in her songs, but in a very tidy way. She was precise in her phrasing, and expressed as much as she could in small, low-key utterances. She made her shyness a strength in her music, particularly in the way her reserved quality suggested an emotional depth that canceled out the potential irony or kitsch in Broadcast’s taste for mid-20th century nostalgia.

“Before We Begin” is an expression of cautious optimism that makes the most of the ambiguity in Keenan’s voice. She sings her melodies with sweetness and a touch of melancholy – earnestly hoping for the best, but prepared for disaster. In a way, this is a song about how arbitrary beginnings and endings, like the change of one year to another, give us a way of shaping our personal narratives and opening us up to opportunities to have a fresh start. The loveliest part of the melody expresses the most hopeful thought in the song – “it’s in tomorrow, fortune or sorrow / wait, you may win.” It’s a very reassuring sentiment. A guarantee of success and joy would ring hollow, but put in this way, it feels like a more real possibility.

Buy it from Amazon.

Every year I make a survey collection intended to represent the scope and tone of music over the course of 12 months. This year’s survey comes in two forms: A sprawling 500+ song playlist that gives what I believe to be the most accurate summary of music in 2018, and an abridged version of the playlist that is half as long and more focused on my taste and what I believe to be essential, even when it’s music I don’t particularly like. The latter version is also available as a download, as per usual.

Here is the full version of the survey…

…and here is the abridged version.

One of the major goals I have in making these survey mixes, including the versions covering the 80s and the 90s, is showing the full context for music in any given year, and proving how even in what seems like a “bad year for music,” there are always still a lot of great songs. I would categorize 2018 as one of the worst years for music I’ve lived through, but then I look at this survey and see so much quality material! The culture around music may be depressing and oppressive right now, but you can’t ever stop artists from doing wonderful things. I hope you find more to love than to dislike in this year’s set.

DOWNLOAD PART 1

Lana Del Rey “Mariners Apartment Complex” / Soccer Mommy “Your Dog” / Taylor Swift “Delicate” / Ariana Grande “R.E.M.” / Gorillaz “Humility” / Playboi Carti feat. Lil Uzi Vert “Shoota” / Pusha T “If You Know You Know” / Valee feat. Jeremih “Womp Womp” / XXXTENTACION “Moonlight” / Travis Scott feat. Drake “Sicko Mode (Skrillex Remix)” / DJ Koze “Lord Knows” / Kanye West “Ghost Town” / Kids See Ghosts “Freee (Ghost Town, Pt 2)” / Jean Grae & Quelle Chris “Gold Purple Orange” / NoName “Self” / Smoke DZA feat. Joey Bada$$ “The Mood” / No Joy & Sonic Boom “Obsession” / Janelle Monaé “Make Me Feel” / Of Montreal “Sophie Calle Private Game/Every Person Is A Pussy, Every Pussy Is A Star” / Caroline Rose “Jeannie Becomes A Mom” / Miss World “Oh Honey” / U.S. Girls “Incidental Boogie” / Insecure Men “Mekong Glitter” / Drake “Nice for What” / Nicki Minaj “Chun-Li” / Cardi B “Bickenhead” / Sophie “Immaterial” / Red Velvet “All Right” / Amanda Shires “Eve’s Daughter” / Lucy Dacus “Addictions” / Zizi Raimondi “Folly Dolly” / Father John Misty “Mr. Tillman” / Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks “Solid Silk” / St. Vincent “Hang On Me” / Arctic Monkeys “Star Treatment” / The Internet “Come Over” / Anderson Paak “Smile/Petty” / Maggie Rogers “Fallingwater” / Twice “Deja Vu” / Shawn Mendes “Nervous” / Vince Staples “Don’t Get Chipped” / Jay Rock feat. Kendrick Lamar “Wow Freestyle” / Famous Dex “Japan” / Grace Vonderkuhn “Worry” / Teyana Taylor feat. Kanye West “Hurry” / Khalid feat. Swae Lee “The Ways” / Kali Uchis “Flight 22” / Me’Shell NdegéOcello “Sensitivity” / Adrian Younge & Linear Labs “Silhouette Dreams” / Jorga Smith “Lost & Found” / Amber Navran “Lastaya Love” / Charlotte Day Wilson “Doubt” / Ali Shaheed Muhammed & Adrian Younge feat. CeeLo Green “Questions” / Spiritualized “A Perfect Miracle” / Beach House “Pay No Mind” / Deerhunter “Death In Midsummer” / Kurt Vile “Bassackwards” / Makaya McCraven “The Newbies Lift Off” / Everything Is Recorded feat. Sampha, Ibeyi, Wiki, and Kamasi Washington “Mountains of Gold” / Tirzah “Do You Know”

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Earl Sweatshirt “Shattered Dreams” / Action Bronson “Prince Charming” / Ari Lennox “No One” / Diana Gordon “Wolverine” / Mariah Carey “A No No” / Natalie Prass “Short Court Style” / Caroline Says “Sweet Home Alabama” / Yo La Tengo “Polynesia #1” / Jerry Paper “Your Cocoon” / Okkervil River “Famous Tracheotomies” / The Rock*A*Teens “Go Tell Everybody” / Flasher “Pressure” / Jeff Rosenstock “Beating My Head Against A Wall” / Bad Bad Hats “Makes Me Nervous” / Astronauts, Etc. “Symbol Land” / Fog Lake “I’ll Be Around” / Gerard Way “Getting Down the Germs” / Karen Meat “Overdwelled” / Magic Potion “Shock Proof” / George Clanton “Make It Forever” / Mormor “Whatever Comes to Mind” / Electric Six “(It’s Gets) (A Little) Jumpy” / Margaret Glaspy “Before We Were Together” / Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper “Shallow” / Mark Ronson & Miley Cyrus “Nothing Breaks Like A Heart” / Trippie Redd “How You Feel” / Hit-Boy “Out the Window” / Childish Gambino “This Is America” / N.E.R.D. feat. Rihanna and Drake “Lemon (Drake Remix)” / Camila Cabello “Inside Out” / Troye Sivan “My My My!” / Public Memory “The Line” / Matthew Dear “Echo” / Thom Yorke “Has Ended” / Lil Peep “4 Gold Chains” / Sheck Wes “Mo Bamba” / Smino feat. Mick Jenkins “New Coupe, Who Dis?” / Post Malone feat. Ty Dolla $ign “Psycho” / CupcaKKe “Duck Duck Goose” / Saweetie feat. Kehlani “ICY GRL (Bae Mix)” / CZARFACE & MF DOOM “Captain Crunch” / Cavern of Anti-Matter “Solarised Sound” / The Smashing Pumpkins “Solara” / Nine Inch Nails “Ahead of Ourselves” / Interpol “If You Really Love Nothing” / Negative Gemini “You Weren’t There Anymore” / Pressa feat. Lil Uzi Vert “420 in London” / A$AP Rocky “Changes” / H.E.R. “Can’t Help Me” / Kamasi Washington “Show Us the Way” / Christina Aguilera “Like I Do” / Georgia Anne Muldrow “Overload” / James Blake “Don’t Miss It” / Louis Cole “When You’re Ugly” / Jake Shears “Big Bushy Mustache” / Pistol Annies “Got My Name Changed Back” / MGMT “She Works Out Too Much” / Speedy Ortiz “You Hate the Title” / Robyn “Ever Again” / Anchorsong “Testimony”

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Metro Boomin feat. 21 Savage “10 Freaky Girls” / Kodak Black feat. Travis Scott and Offset “ZEZE” / Lil Wayne feat. Kendrick Lamar “Mona Lisa” / Tierra Whack “Cable Guy” / Doja Cat “MOOO!” / Beyoncé feat. Jay-Z “Lovehappy” / Ella Mai “Boo’d Up” / Nao “Another Lifetime” / Nadine “Pews” / Juice WRLD “Armed and Dangerous” / G-Eazy feat. Blac Youngsta and BlocBoy JB “Drop” / Oh Sees “Sentient Oona” / Car Seat Headrest “Cute Thing” / Lithics “Still Forms” / Cat Power “In Your Face” / Boygenius “Salt in the Wound” / Haley Heyndrickx “Oom Sha La La” / Jeff Tweedy “Bombs Above” / Neko Case “Hell-On” / Courtney Barnett “Hopefulessness” / Paul Simon “Can’t Run But” / Jeremih & Ty Dolla $ign “The Light” / DeJ Loaf feat. Leon Bridges “Liberated” / Dear Nora “Simulation Feels” / TV Girl “7 Days Til Sunday” / Phosphorescent “Around the Horn” / Julia Holter “Whether” / BLACKPINK “DDU-DU DDU-DU” / Grimes “We Appreciate Power” / Hobo Johnson “Peach Scone” / King Princess “Pussy Is God” / Lizzo “Boys” / Billie Eilish “When the Party’s Over” / 03 Greedo feat. Lil Uzi Vert “Never Bend (Remix)” / Esperanza Spalding “The Longing Deep Down” / Neneh Cherry “Kong” / Videotapemusic “Hot Pants in the Summercamp” / Cuco “Lover Is A Day” / Boy Pablo “Losing You” / Unknown Mortal Orchestra “The Internet of Love (That Way)” / Video Age “Pop Therapy” / Darwin Deez “The World’s Best Kisser” / Sales “White Jeans” / The Breeders “Walking with a Killer” / Rhye “Feel Your Weight” / Cherophobiac “Unknown Liquid Substance” / Eleanor Friedberger “Make Me A Song” / Sloan “Don’t Stop (If It Feels Good Do It)” / Guided by Voices “Colonel Paper” / Lil Uzi Vert “New Patek” / Lake Ruth “Julia’s Call” / Yaeji “One More” / Alison Wonderland “No” / Mildlife “The Magnificent Moon” / Sibille Attar “I Don’t Have To” / Haley “Bratt” / Joan of Arc “Punk Kid” / Born Ruffians “Side Tracked” / Nicholas Krgovich “Time” / Belle & Sebastian “Poor Boy” / Mazzy Star “Quiet, the Winter Harbor” / Ian Sweet “Question It” / PC Worship “Shell Power” / Friendly Fires “Heaven Let Me In” / Migos feat. Drake “Walk It Talk It” / Meek Mill feat. Miguel “Stay Woke” / Tune-Yards “Heart Attack” / Chvrches “Graffiti” / Imagine Dragons “Natural” / The 1975 “Love It If We Made It” / Weezer “Africa” / Maroon 5 feat. Cardi B “Girls Like You” / Panic! at the Disco “High Hopes” / Zedd feat Maren Morris and Grey “The Middle” / Rita Ora “Anywhere” / Mitski “Me and My Husband” / Halsey “Without Me” / Carly Rae Jepsen “Party for One” / Dierks Bentley “Woman, Amen” / Florence + The Machine “South London Forever” / Kacey Musgraves “Slow Burn” / Luke Bryan “Sunrise, Sunburn, Sunset” / Ed Sheeran & Beyoncé “Perfect Duet” / Snail Mail “Heat Wave” / Lake Street Dive “Jameson” / Molly Burch “Wild” / BTS “Fake Love” / Mac Miller “Self Care” / 6ix9ine feat. Nicki Minaj and Murda Beatz “FEFE” / Logic feat. Wu-Tang Clan “Wu-Tang Forever” / Brockhampton “New Orleans”/ Ellie Goulding feat. Diplo and Swae Lee “Close to Me” / Aphex Twin “T69 Collapse” / Sharon Van Etten “Comeback Kid” / Crepes “As You Go” / J. Cole “Brackets” / Tyler, the Creator “OKRA” / Rich the Kid “Plug Walk” / The Alchemist feat. Westside Gunn and Conway “Judas” / King Tuff “Raindrop Blue” / Ty Segall “The Main Pretender” / Swae Lee “Hurts to Look” / Ashley Monroe “Hard On A Heart” / Christine and the Queens “Doesn’t Matter” / Amen Dunes “Blue Rose” / Saba feat. Chance the Rapper “Logout” / The Good, The Bad, and The Queen “Merrie Land” / Leon Bridges “If It Feels Good (Then It Must Be)” / Rico Nasty “Rage” / Metric “Love You Back” / Justin Timberlake “Midnight Summer Jam” / Rosalia “Malamente” / JPEGMAFIA “1539 N. Calvert” / Zayn “Let Me” / Bell’s Roar “You Call Me Cold”

Makaya McCraven “The Newbies Lift Off”

Makaya McCraven is a drummer, and that much is fairly obvious by listening to the compositions on his outstanding and varied record Universal Beings – the other instruments provide melody and texture, but McCraven’s percussion is always steering the music. “The Newbies Lift Off,” one of my favorites from the album, is a perfect example in how its sections seem to stop on a dime to switch up percussive strategies. It keeps the music exciting and interesting in a way particular to the thinking of a drummer, particularly one who seems to be influenced by the way rap DJs and producers have cut up beats in the ‘90s. Listen to this – there’s no way this guy hasn’t heard Endtroducing a million times over, right?

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Amanda Shires “Eve’s Daughter”

“Eve’s Daughter” is in many ways a song you’ve heard before – a country rock rave-up with lyrics that tell the story of a woman who fell in love, and then fell on hard times. But the execution feels fresh to me. Everything in the mix sounds like it’s in the red, and Amanda Shires sings with a raw, wild-eyed intensity that raises the stakes of every line of the song. It’s not quite shoegaze-y, but in terms of how country music is typically produced, this is just blaringly loud and abrasive, like the Stooges backing up Dolly Parton at the Grand Ole Opry. Traditional, but extra rowdy.

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DJ Koze “Lord Knows”

“Lord Knows” is warm and familiar, a sort of sample-based song that gives me a sense of deja-vu even without trying to figure out if I can place the vocal samples. Like, you could’ve told me that this was The Avalanches or Fatboy Slim and I would’ve believed you. And this is no slight on DJ Koze – if anything, it’s high praise. The feeling that he creates here is not unique, but it is rare and special. It’s hard to get just right. This is a remarkable composition – in perfect balance, but also so full of energy that the beats land in a way that feels like the whole thing could rattle and fall apart, like when the engineer on Star Trek worries that the ship is moving too fast and could explode at any moment.

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