#gnjsoty2k18

[groovesnjams]

[[ GROOVES N JAMS S.O.T.Y. 2018 ]] [ nO. 5/50 ]

“The Heart is a Muscle” by Gang of Youths

DV:

One of my favorite things about Gang of Youths’ “The Heart is a Muscle” is that they covered Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” before releasing it, just as Carly Rae Jepsen covered “Both Sides Now” before releasing “Your Heart is a Muscle” in 2012. It’s a weird, wonderful coincidence, though they use the idea a bit differently: Jepsen’s song hinges on the double entendre of “we can work it out”, while Gang of Youths go with a more direct “I wanna make it strong”. Their “Heart” is a song about striving and working and wishing, but it’s a self-affirmation at its core. There’s a listener, a “you”, but that listener is passive - secondary to singer David Le'aupepe’s drive to find new love. Which in one sense is solipsistic, especially compared to the duality and unity of Jepsen’s take on the concept. But it’s ultimately what makes Gang of Youths’ “The Heart is a Muscle” so powerful, the way it embraces the idea that love is a personal choice - a decision you make, something you have to be willing to accept and struggle and live for. Love isn’t just you, but it can’t happen to you, either; when Le'aupepe sings of wanting someone to “tuck my hair behind my ears and touch my soul again”, he’s also admitting he doesn’t have the confidence to be open to that without work. It doesn’t hurt that he’s doing it with that voice, over a driving rhythm and arena-ready dynamics, but what makes the song is how completely he turns this potent metaphor into his own.

MG:

No band encompasses the truth that love is a verb more than Gang of Youths. “The Heart is a Muscle” is a song that works. It drives and roves and paces. Le'aupepe is ready to do the work of love, in fact, one way he’s doing that work is by singing. A huge part of what makes this song work is the gravitas of his voice. That deep rasp bestows wisdom on his lyrics and suggests that he’s already labored, significantly, to find the truth in each line. “The Heart is a Muscle” has an air of Springsteen, but Springsteen is mostly grim stuff. Gang of Youths manage to accomplish something that decades worth of rock bands have attempted -- they’ve married the optimism of Springsteen’s sound with actual, human optimism. I have a soft spot for every band that aims, fires, and hits schlock, but it’s incredible to hear it, again, work. This is the sound of true believers. 

[groovesnjams]

Welcome to Grooves N Jams’ Song of the Year 2018! This is where MG and DV sit down and come up with a combined list of our favorite 50 songs of the past year (which we call SOTY (and pronounce “SO-dee” because we’re from Chicago)) and then write about what makes them special over the course of a couple weeks.

This year, we’re starting with two “honorable mention” posts highlighting things we want to talk about that didn’t really belong in the list proper, one by each of us. We’ll be back Monday with the top 50, both writing in our usual format. Thanks for reading! 

[groovesnjams]

[[ GROOVES N JAMS S.O.T.Y. 2018 ]] [ nO. 13/50 ]

“Love It If We Made It” by The 1975

DV:

This was the year Matty Healy said he wanted to make The 1975′s own OK Computer, clearly meaning only that they’d recorded a song with Siri doing spoken word, and credulous critics (specifically, those who’d previously dismissed the band) took him seriously. “Love It If We Made It” is the perfect song for them, and for this year. With a lyric assembled like an index’s worth of trending topics, it tries to both catalog and replicate the experience of being Extremely Online (or perhaps just vaguely alive) in 2018, and it’s a pitfall trap with sharp stakes at the bottom. 

Of course the concept sounds important and meaningful and so on, but ultimately it just centers Matty Healy as much as any of his more personal narratives: the title omits the song’s most important word, but as always with The 1975 it’s “I”. So maybe it’s best not to take Healy’s word for what he’s doing, or at least not to take it without a shaker full of salt. His charm lies in his ability to balance between insightful and insufferable - and if you don’t believe he’s balancing there at all, you probably don’t hear any charm whatsoever. I think he’s managing it, at least so far, and what I hear is Healy trying and failing to create a Message Song for a new generation, largely failing to have anything interesting to say, and as a result creating something much more honest - or at least relatable - about the mess we’re in now than if he’d written something much cleaner. “Love It If We Made It” is an anthem both in spite and because of Healy’s flaws, which is to say it’s a 1975 song. To quote my favorite bit of awful online wisdom, which I fully expect to wind up on one of their future albums, (perhaps pieced together from fans’ Snapchats once that platform goes under) they’ve shot for the moon and even though they missed, they wound up among the stars.

MG:

I came late enough to the cult of 75 that I don’t mind seeing them get bigger and bigger, knowing that I’m sharing with people who don’t care in the same ways I do (not to shade with “less” or “more,” we’re all fans, I’m assured.) In that way, The 1975 are a microcosm of everything, something to feel ownership of, something to cherish, but also something that is not yours, something that people can get wrong. And boy did they get this song wrong! If you listen to this barrage of headlines, quotes, trends, and abominations and feel heard, known, recognized -- oh, fuck. “Love It If We Made It” isn’t a diagnosis, it’s a list of symptoms. Compare it to Parquet Courts’ “Violence,” which sums up the problem in a single word. “Love It If We Made It” won’t commit to believing there is a problem, it’s keen to observe from a safe distance. Just to be clear, Matty Healy’s refusal to indict isn’t my indictment of him. 

Because after all the shock and rasped half-raps is a forgone optimism that only Healy can manage. It’s not an “if,” for him; we will, of course, make it. Or he will, good enough. Healy is our own personal Jesus. He’s assessed himself and found that he’s got enough intellect to find this convulsive moment both funny and terrifying. He’s well-read but also well-scrolled. He understands the juxtaposition of dead wildlife and modernity. And he extends all these checkmarks to us, the listeners. If we’re cognizant enough to hit play, we’re gonna make it. That’s what I love, about this song and this band and Matty Healy. My guilt isn’t absolved, but I can store it on his cloud. 

[groovesnjams]

[[ GROOVES N JAMS S.O.T.Y. 2018 ]] [ nO. 1/50 ]

“Nobody” by Mitski

DV:

The piercing directness that distinguishes Mitski’s lyrics reaches a new zenith with “Nobody”, the most triumphantly sad song I heard this year. There was no other lyric that knocked me over quite like this song’s prechorus: “And I know no one will save me/ I just need someone to kiss/ Give me one good honest kiss/ And I'll be alright” is as absolutely stunning now as it was 300 listens ago. If something came close to matching that impact, it might be the casually devastating way Mitski links her desire first to the planet Venus and then to the destruction wrought by climate change, a dazzling shift in perspective that's at once too much and exactly right. And that’s “Nobody” as a whole: this a song of excessive emotion and obsession repetition, one that’s focused on as universal an experience as loneliness with the precision of a laser and the idiosyncratic worldview of an artist in complete command of her craft. By the time Mitski is singing the title as a rapturous wish for “no body”, I’m flat on the floor with her.

MG:

Loneliness, as a broad concept, is certainly universal, but the loneliness that informs “Nobody” is specific enough that I’ve never experienced it. It’s the loneliness of missing anyone -- not someone who was there and is now gone and not someone who was never there and never will be -- anyone at all. The aching is open and messy and everywhere from the song’s opening lines: “My God, I’m so lonely/ So I open the window/ To hear sounds of people.” Presumably, also to let the loneliness breathe a little, to hope that it drifts on the breeze and finds someone else’s loneliness. I’ve avoided or not bothered reading about “Nobody” because it’s simply lazy to say that this is a song about what everyone experiences and, oh, haven’t we all been here? I know that’s what much of the writing will be and that writing underrates and devalues what Mitski gives us with “Nobody.” 

Mitski is a genius. I know we throw that word around too much and that i’m underrated and devaluing just like everyone else, but that’s how you know you can trust me. She’s said that she knows people like her and that with each creative turn she takes, she puts a wedge between herself and that like. “Nobody” isn’t about your loneliness, it’s the exact opposite, and that’s what’s so brilliant. On top of that, all the narrative misdirection, this is a song that’s part jazzy and part sweeping epic. It’s about the only music to pair with a song that everyone will perceive as being for them (sweeping epic) that’s only about being you (jazz.) It’s amazing that “Nobody” works, that it’s so profound and arresting and affecting, and it’s all down to Mitski. Give it up to her. 

[groovesnjams]

[[ GROOVES N JAMS S.O.T.Y. 2018 ]] [ nO. 2/50 ]

“Moon River” by Frank Ocean

MG:

I’m not a huge Frank Ocean fan, though I enjoy his ability to work the public into a fine froth. Vocally, he’s par and as a songwriter, it’s hit or miss. I’ve always liked him best on other people’s work and maybe that’s why I find his arrangement of “Moon River” so affective. Like Frank Ocean, the Mancini original is a song I find sweet but Audrey Hepburn is weird and Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a movie about a cat. It’s real magic that this “Moon River” fills me with physical joy. I can feel it growing inside me as soon as the first notes strike. The vocal cacophony -- mostly speaking on key, but also warped and stretched, as though dueting with a cartoon -- is a profound re-imagining of the solitary original. The strummed guitar is even more minimal than the standard, eventually giving way to a soft, electronic blur as the song concludes. It’s beautiful and hopeful and much needed.

DV:

It’s one of those classic American songs I’ve heard hundreds of times but don’t know that I’ve ever played for myself - I was sure I knew “Moon River”. So I cued up Audrey Hepburn’s take, and later Andy Williams’, as comparison points. And I realized on revisiting that I really didn’t know them at all. What I knew was a “Moon River” that didn’t exist, a half-remembered, half-created version of its wistful melody. What I knew was Frank Ocean’s version. Ocean’s “Moon River” feels like he burrowed to the core of the song and rebuilt it from within; it sounds like the kind of song someone could encounter in a dream and spend the rest of their life trying to recapture, a realer and truer version of something too familiar to notice in waking life. I’ve always loved cover versions for their revelatory potential, for the way they can transform a song while showing me something new about both the artist and the composition. I’ve never heard one like this before, a cover that taught me the version of the song inside my own head.

[groovesnjams]

[[ GROOVES N JAMS S.O.T.Y. 2018 ]] [ nO. 3/50 ]

“Womp Womp” by Valee ft. Jeremih

MG:

Everything about “Womp Womp” is an instant classic and so deeply endurable that it’s impossible to wear this track out. The production is simple and repetitive, always folding into itself when it’s most satisfying. But the standout, the one, only, and true, is Jeremih. His delivery is so laconic it’s addictive but the bars are all jokes that are still funny, even months later. Partly owed to exceptionally out of date references (Bally Total Fitness) and partly owed to regional specificities (Luna carpet) and all tied together with breezy nonchalance, “Womp Womp” will still sound as good when the the world burns as it did today. 

DV:

I am continually impressed that a decade after releasing a debut single that was essentially a novelty song, Jeremih remains not just relevant but this good. He’s maybe not a reliable hitmaker - though I did still hear “Oui” on the radio this year, improbably - but he’s become a reliable cosign and feature presence. Everybody wanted to rap like Valee this year, Jeremih included, but everybody wasn’t on his biggest song. And with “Womp Womp” Jeremih was behind one of the year’s most unforgettable hooks - not to mention a verse that more than holds its own with Valee’s. For his part, Valee delivers the kind of loose and charismatic performance that justifies that level of hype and imitation. “Womp Womp”'s lurching beat juxtaposed with both artists’ laid-back flow provide one of the year’s most immediate and exciting sounds, and 2018′s most universal banger.

[groovesnjams]

[[ GROOVES N JAMS S.O.T.Y. 2018 ]] [ nO. 4/50 ]

“Missing U” by Robyn

DV:

If she made Body Talk Part 4, she wouldn’t be Robyn. The woman who walked away from Max Martin, the one who released an album in 3 EPs and then used that success to explore a series of collaborations over the past decade: Robyn was never gone, she just wasn’t doing the obvious thing, wasn’t making the most commercial or easiest choice. So it only made sense that Honey wouldn’t sound quite like anything she’d done before; the surprise was how directly and immediately she set about contradicting any expectations to the contrary. “Missing U” works with the shimmering synths of Robyn's Body Talk work, but turns them toward a straightforward house beat and - crucially - robs the song of the kind of catharsis that made jams like “Dancing on my Own” into club staples. Thematically, it makes sense: the song is about an absence, a sense of loss, it builds to the emotional devastation of “All the love you gave, it still defines me”. There’s no lyrical release, so there’s no musical one either - “Missing U” comes, it overwhelms, and it goes. It was a bold move for Robyn, but what hasn’t been?

MG:

It seems strange to acknowledge this, given what a pillar Body Talk is probably anyone engaged with music writing and especially to this particular blog, but I’ve enjoyed Robyn’s wandering detours more in the past decade. Body Talk is encased in amber for me, so pristinely of that moment that it can’t be relevant to this one. It can’t be. I do remember listening to those songs every single day and feeling like, with regards to love and sex, all I needed was a little nerve and a little vulnerability and I’d get by just like Robyn. It’s only with hindsight that I can hear the posturing. It’s not a bad thing, it’s a defining quality of that time of life, but, generally, you don’t want to posture for more than 10 years. Body Talk is gorgeous but it’s not useful, not to me, not anymore. And that’s why “Missing U” is such an unusual gift. There’s no other artist of that era that’s revisited their manifesto and provided an afterword. The catharsis of “Dancing on my Own” is a front. “Missing U” is frustrated and lonely and no crash of drum pads can cure it. Maybe we’ll get more music from this Robyn archetype, but if we don’t, there’s no finer ending. 

[groovesnjams]

[[ GROOVES N JAMS S.O.T.Y. 2018 ]] [ nO. 6/50 ]

“Talking Straight” by Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever

MG:

A guitar solo! Pardon me while the tears of sweet relief flow. There are some things I could say that, despite being true, no one will believe. I’ll say them anyway. Guitar music is undoubtedly sounding better than it has in six or so years, but I didn’t spend that time pining for guitar music. Like anyone would, I will listen to whatever is good and I will enjoy it. I didn’t miss guitar music while it was gone but I’m relishing the return to life. “Talking Straight” sounds extremely alive -- vibrant, jangly, full of nonsense lyrics all the better to ignore. It’s the music I was raised on, and it will always be the most familiar and comfortable footstool to stumble over. I’m not advocating for receding into the deepest folds of your grey matter, but I am saying that I don’t think the old needs to die for the new to exist. We contain multitudes, we can have both. As for Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, I’m American, but it’s my opinion that this band is quintessentially Australian. Like the Go-Betweens or the Lucksmiths, there is always going to be something just slightly weird at play and that’s what will keep their music from veering into boring regurgitation. In the case of “Talking Straight,” it’s the guitar solo.

DV:

The main difference between Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever and the classic Australian bands I love is Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever has managed some commercial success in the USA. Jangle pop remains a commercially unsuccessful subgenre of the commercially unsuccessful power pop genre here, and I’m not holding out hope they’ll be able to make it last. But I want to be wrong! Those chiming guitars are a sound MG and I both unabashedly love; I too would be thrilled to hear them catching even a toehold on the radio here. Rolling Blackouts have a way of balancing that propulsive, chugging rhythm with a nasal lead vocal delivery that moves easily between deadpan and languid, urgent and commanding. Time and again power pop have been subordinated into some other trend - new wave, grunge, alt rock, pop punk. Maybe now it’s finally time for the sound to have a well-earned moment.