OLD FAVORITES: I watched I Am Not Okay With This and got turned back on to one of my longtime band loves, Cults, namely their songs "Oh My God" and "Bad Things." I also relistened to "NO HALO" and "1999 WILDFIRE" by Brockhampton quite a bit. I had heard The Weeknd's "Blinding Lights" here and there but I finally sat down and got into it this month. While doing some writing, "...Familiar Place" by Lucy Dacus came on and I didn't turn it off for like 48 hours. I also watched the Taylor Swift documentary with my mom and remembered, despite my somewhat lukewarm opinion on her most recent album, how much I like the song "Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince."
NEW DISCOVERIES: What a month for new discoveries. I listened to the cast recording of Jagged Little Pill and got hooked on pretty much any song with Elizabeth Stanley and/or Kathryn Gallagher. Heard a song by an artist called Angel T33th for the first time. Heard Chicks On Speed in a movie trailer for the first time and fell in love with their strange Euro-pop. My friend Elise turned me onto a Siouxsie and the Banshees song, "Cities In Dust" I'd never heard. My friend Myra sent me a track by Louis La Roche. I heard the artist Njomza and her 2017 album sad for you. I discovered a Blondie dance track called "Rave." I heard Calpurnia's very well done cover of "Say It Ain't So." Big Thief's "Real Love" came on Spotify radio. My friends and I started doing a musical replacement for March madness in the quarantine, we started with Father John Misty (whom I hadn't listened to much) but I absolutely loved the song "Nothing Good Ever Happens At The Goddamn Thirsty Crow." Perhaps most importantly, I finally listened to Liz Phair's Exile In Guyville, which I loved, especially the track "Glory."
NEW RELEASES: I (belatedly) fell in love with the new Phoebe Bridgers song "Garden Song." Hinds, Maya Hawke, and Hayley Williams also released new singles. Caroline Rose released her new album Superstar, and I got this one new Niall Horan song stuck in my head. Different for me, but sure. NPR also turned me onto "Think Too Fast" by JFDR and "Sweet" by Porridge Radio.
Confessions of a girl who’s still not sick of “bad guy”
Just over one year later, Erin revisits her favorite pop song from 2019. Why it's genius, why she wishes it was around when she was 16, and why she's still not sick of that dang song "bad guy."
The opening track to Billie Eilish’s debut, WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?, is technically two tracks. It starts with a joking conversation between Eilish and her brother/writing partner/producer Finneas called "!!!!!!!," where they joke about Eilish taking out her Invisalign and burst into hysterical, almost unsettling laughter. The last peal of laughter drops directly into the bass line of "bad guy," the darkly addictive song that took over radios everywhere almost immediately. Call that song what you want: the thesis or antithesis to hot girl summer, a feminist role reversal, weirdly seductive, wholly unsettling, "nugoth pop" if you’re Wikipedia, but don't call it unoriginal. "bad guy" played on repeat on radio stations, car Bluetooth, and party playlists everywhere. It was the song that should’ve gotten old by June but never did. At least, not to me. I still get a kick out of that deep bass and Eilish's absentminded but self-assured humming as she launches into what became one of the defining songs of 2019 and the decade.
The genius of "bad guy" lies a lot in its themes. There's sort of two layers to "bad guy," it's a song about a dysfunctional relationship and it's a song about being fake, with Billie Eilish saying of the song "it's like well if you're gonna act all tough when you're not, then fine, I'm gonna be the bad type, the make your momma sad type, the make your girlfriend mad type, the might seduce your dad type." The joke is that she's not any of those things, but she plays with identities as long as the people around her keep forcing her to.
"bad guy" is also a song that perfectly balances darkness and humor. In theory, "bad guy" could've been poppy and bright, but really it couldn't have. For a top 40 hit, the song is decidedly minimalist, favoring playful whispers and Eilish's well placed "Duh." over complex production and belting. The final 30 seconds of "bad guy" is even darker than the rest of the song but there is still this feeling that Billie Eilish is laughing behind a straight face. As she said in a Rolling Stone interview, "Things are more serious if you're laughing also."
Eilish's album, particularly this song, is the kind of song I wish was around when I was in high school. I'm only 20, I think there's something special about the people who get to grow up watching Billie Eilish call herself the bad guy, and kick down a wall just to take out her Invisalign and dance. There's a level of not taking herself too seriously and yet self-respect that Eilish emulates from the song. She laughs and hums and teases and full-on burns, and she allows for no fuckery from anyone but herself. I think that's an extremely cool thing for today's teens to see. Eilish has emphasized in countless interviews that nothing she does is actively trying to break any rules or rebel or whatever else she's been dreamed up to represent. She's just trying to wear what makes her happy and write songs that she likes. I think the thing that really brings "bad guy" together is that it's NOT meant to be a rebellion against all pop, it's just meant to be something that's Billie's.
For the whole time I've known about the song, "bad guy" has yet to make me sick of itself. The teasing tone, the playful "duh," and the simple but punchy beat bring the song together as everything from a club hit to a perfect driving song. If "bad guy" truly represents the future of pop, everything may look a litter darker, and that's okay! Billie Eilish is something of a poster child of Gen Z, facing climate change, growing political turmoil, and now possibly entering college and the workforce amid a recession. Pop reflects pop culture and that means it's not always going to be happy, but on "bad guy" especially, Billie Eilish shows us that doesn't mean we can't laugh along with it.
Caroline Rose returns to the scene with a darkly funny, deeply cathartic album about the process of losing and finding yourself, no matter what anyone else says.
Caroline Rose has gone through many different eras. She started in a more Americana style with 2014's I Will Not Be Afraid, then moved to more of a pop-rock style with 2018's Loner. For this album, Rose settles on a story-driven, psychedelic-tinged, indie pop, thus creating the gorgeous Superstar. Superstar essentially takes you through a character breakdown, as Rose says, "The album starts high and there is all this grandiose kind of attitude, ... The further you get into the album, the more you realize this person is either having a mental breakdown or maybe they are all talk and having some regrets."
Superstar seems to be split up into three acts. The first three songs have a synth-y, St. Vincent/Goldfrapp tinge to them. The attitude of songs like "Do You Think We'll Last Forever?" is upbeat even through the struggles depicted in the songs, like uncertain relationships, futures, and solitude. There's a brief dip at the abruptly dark interlude, "Feelings Are A Thing Of The Past," and the mood picks right back up. But act two is a different kind of happiness. Songs like "Feel The Way I Want" and "Someone New" hit closer to mania than elation, but they're nicely balanced with softer songs like "Freak Like Me." The final act starts with "Command Z," the computer code for "undo," and leaves us with the joyously tragic "Back At The Beginning" and what might be my favorite track, "I Took A Ride." "I Took A Ride" is, in some ways, the darkest song on the album, but it's also the time where Rose feels like she has her priorities straight. All the aforementioned grandiosity has been stripped back and Caroline Rose feels like she's truly starting anew.
Superstar is an album you have to listen to in full. In order. The shift in mood from "Nothing's Impossible" all the way to "I Took A Ride" is something that hits you differently when you've followed the album's protagonist through her whole journey. Rose took care to make the love interest in Superstar gender neutral so every that listener can feel like it's their journey too. Rose uses the songwriting skill she's had since 2014, the dark humor she injected in 2018, and a personal journey to create the tale of Superstar, letting the reader run from, then back to, themselves.
OLD FAVORITES: "Work Song" by Hozier came on, perfectly timed, during a drive through Switzerland. I had forgotten how gorgeous it is.
I went to see Angel Olsen for the second time on the All Mirrors tour, and though I love all her music, something about "Shut Up Kiss Me" will always get me.
I put both versions of the Phoebe Bridgers song "Killer" on here. It's fun to see the progression of a song, EP to the album. Speaking of badass women of indie, I was looking for some chill songs on an anxiety-inducing day and found myself going back to Stella Donnelly's songs "Allergies" and "Lunch" off of Beware of the Dogs.
I was doing some creative writing and was looking for the perfect song to fit this scene (I often write to music) and "Spellbound" by Siouxie and the Banshees popped into my head. It's been stuck there ever since.
NEW DISCOVERIES: I have always been a pretty casual listener of Grimes, but there are a few of her songs that just stick with me. "Pin" is one of these songs. Describing an, at times tumultuous, relationship with a dance-worthy beat and raw lyrics has always been when Grimes is at her peak."Cruel" by Honeyblood exemplified destruction and pain so well I wrote a whole post about it. Their song "Bud" popped up in my Spotify radio and I hit repeat, over and over. "Hope" by (Sandy) Alex G also came on Spotify radio and gave me a similar reaction.
I was sitting at a restaurant with my mom and over the speakers heard "How Far" by Tei Shi, a sexy bedroom pop song with a banging downbeat. I immediately Shazamed it (where would I be without Shazam? Nowhere.) and put it on the playlist.
My friend turned me onto Koffee, a now-20-year-old Jamaican artist who recently became the youngest person ever and the first woman to win Best Reggae Album at the Grammys. She is wildly talented, the song I've been listening to in particular is "Rapture." The same friend asked if I had ever heard Kah-Lo. "Fake ID" is a popular song amongst the staff at the summer camp I work at, but being reminded of her I discovered a new song of hers I love, "Rinse & Repeat," featuring the excellent lyric "This is not how I woke up/But it's how I look now."
I often go to the Jagged Little Pill album looking for a specific song, and to be honest, I think I put on "Right Through You" by accident. But, Alanis' screams at the chorus and the sheer honesty and power of the song, coupled with the fact that it kind of sounds like she's having fun, have turned it into one of my favorite songs on the album.
I was writing a piece on Tina Turner's Private Dancer and I realized I'd never heard the powerful, autobiographical "I Might Have Been Queen."
NEW RELEASES: Hinds released their latest single, "Good Times Bad Times," off of their upcoming album The Prettiest Curse.
Beulahbelle (Kaitlyn and Maddy Dever), U.S. Girls, and Billie Eilish all also released new singles. About five people texted to ask if I was okay. No, I was not.
King Princess made her debut album, Cheap Queen, a deluxe. My personal favorite of the four bonus tracks is "Back of a Cab" but they're all as poppy and seductive as King Princess usually delivers.
Soccer Mommy released the gorgeous new album color theory. My favorite track is "night swimming," which stopped me in my tracks on first listen.
Grimes released her long-awaited album, Miss Anthropocene. My favorite track is the opener, but the twangy "Delete Forever" also stood out to me.
"Good Bad Times" follows in the vein of "Riding Solo," ushering in a dreamier, more cinematic era of Hinds while staying true to their garage roots.
Hinds has always had a knack for throwing a dance party, even to topics that seem hard to dance to. Their most recent single, "Good Bad Times" off of their forthcoming album The Prettiest Curse, is their newest feat in this category. It dissolves a whole relationship over the course, or rather chorus, of a song. The song mainly focuses on the communication problems a couple is having, where one of them feels the relationship is perfect and the other feels deep anxiety around it. Said by the band: "[G]ood [B]ad [T]imes is the struggle of communication, time difference, distance. [L]ike the two sides of a coin. [T]wo sides close together that can’t be separated, even though they seem to be completely different."
The first pre-chorus reveals all the problems the song's couple is having; high levels of anxiety, fears, and scenarios that aren't true about the relationship ending. The chorus then goes on to say that the couple in this song isn't sleeping together, likely due to the communication breakdown within their relationship. The band, in turn, says that maybe these bad times could be a good sign because "maybe I'm no longer as nice as you think." I love how Hinds can make a chorus start as one thing and turn into something else. It has all the best parts of Hinds' energy: serious topics and clever lyrics set to the most fun music.
Another exciting part of this song is we hear Hinds sing in Spanish on an album single for the first time! We heard them sing in Spanish on the 2016 dual single "Holograma," but I always love the idea of more popularized pop and rock being non-English.
"Good Bad Times" has an even summery-er, almost 80's inspired sound to it compared Hinds' prior, more beachy, garage rock music. It's a perfect song for driving with the windows down, dancing around your kitchen, laying in the sun, or partying with your friends. It's for sure a little glossier and has more pop production than an older song like "San Diego," but that doesn't mean that sound is going away, or that this one isn't just as fun. "Good Bad Times" still sounds like a Hinds song to me, and though I love my garage rock, I like my garage-pop too.
I recently discovered the song "Cruel" by Honeyblood, which sees them at their most raw, gut-punching, and somehow, powerful.
It's A Hit is a section where I revisit some incredible, not new songs, albums, music videos, etc. The title is taken from one of my favorite Rilo Kiley songs, listen to that here.
Stina Tweeddale, the lead singer and guitarist of Honeyblood, described "Cruel" to NME as "the most honest song I've ever written." Even though there have been songs like it in subject matter, there is something especially gut-wrenching about "Cruel." It's less sad than it is remorseful. Less apologetic than it is honest. In just the first verse of the songs, Tweeddale sings "I'm destroying things/Is that a sign?/Maybe I, maybe I'm not doing this life thing right." Something about this song mirrors the girl on the cover of Babes Never Die, the record "Cruel" is on. She looks a little sad, a little lonely, and yet there's just a hint of something tough underneath her.
The chorus of "Cruel" is my favorite part. The writing of it is almost destructively honest as Honeyblood indulges in wanting to hurt someone else in a personal, emotionally gruesome way. :
"When I do things to hurt you I do it with the intention
When I say words meant to bruise, all for the pain inflicted
I tell you that I'm through, I want to feel your heart breaking
Oh yeah that kid can be so cruel"
That ending line of "That kid can be so cruel" is such a well-placed shift in perspective that puts a perfect bow on an incredibly raw chorus. One of my low-key favorite things a lyricist can do is rewrite their chorus for the end of the song. I want to be taken on a journey, and Honeyblood takes me on one. On the last chorus, Tweeddale sings:
"When I do things to hurt you it's to my own affliction
When I say words meant to bruise I feel it when it kicks in
I tell you that I'm through, wreck my heart for yours is breaking
And I don't mean to be so cruel"
And that's when it came together for me that "Cruel" is not really about a failing relationship or breaking up or anything like that. It's about the ways we hurt other people in a roundabout way to hurt ourselves. Honeyblood alternates asking "What will make you walk away?" and pleading "Come here, lay your bones 'cause I don't mean to be so cruel." It's not a song about punishing someone else as it is about punishing yourself, taking all your supposed bad behavior out on the world and hurting things you even think you love. I think a lot of the power in this song lies in the layers explored in this, it's about wanting to destroy someone else, but at its core, "Cruel" is a song about self-destruction.
Honeyblood is an endlessly dynamic project, having pulled off endless facets of indie, garage rock, punk, and lo-fi, but I think this song might be my favorite iteration of Honeyblood's sound yet. It's tough, vulnerable, clever, and deeply emotional. The song does what all well-written music should do, slap you across the face with lyrics and cradle you in the execution. Pulling off a sonically interesting, properly emotional, relatable, self-loathing ballad that still somehow finds power in its vulnerability is not often done this successfully, so I am reveling in the blindingly dim light of "Cruel."
Listen to “Cruel” here.
NOTE: In some regions, "Cruel" is known as "Cruel Kids."
OLD FAVORITES: I started this month off with Ariana Grande. I'm not typically a regular listener of hers but with the release of k bye for now (swt live) I got on the bandwagon. My favorites from the live album were "nasa," "successful," and "7 rings." I also rediscovered to some songs off sweetener, namely "breathin" and "no tears left to cry."
Another rediscovery I recently made was Lily Allen. In the spirit of studying abroad to London, I listened to a lot of the cynical "LDN" off of Alright, Still and also the smooth, societal commentary song "The Fear" from It's Not Me, It's You. Speaking of LDN, whilst in a London bar I heard an upbeat pop jam I hadn't heard in years, Scissor Sisters "I Don't Feel Like Dancin'."
Going back to the '90s, I listened to a lot of No Doubt's Tragic Kingdom, namely the scathing "Spiderwebs," as well as Le Tigre's pop culture commentary song, "Hot Topic." Going even further back to the '70s, Patti Smith's "Free Money" from her debut Horses got constantly stuck in my head. I don't know why but I'm certainly not complaining. "Disorder" from Joy Divisions Unknown Pleasures came on the recommended shuffle after listening to "Free Money" and wow did I forget what a good mood that song could put me in.
NEW DISCOVERIES: I put someone else's random Spotify playlist on shuffle and a song called "Juno" by Choker came on, it's one of those songs that comes on and you just keep restarting it. It's not just lo-fi or hip hop or r&b, it's some combination of all three that works perfectly. There's something that will always be utterly beautiful to me about French music. This month, I was loving Françoise Hardy's simply melodic "Le premier bonheur du jour" (translation: the first joy of the day.)
In my previously mentioned post-"Free Money" Spotify shuffle, I discovered two new songs: Iggy Pop's groovy and rascal-y "Gardenia" and PJ Harvey's simple but vocally gorgeous "Shame." More Spotify shuffle treats came in the form of Ariel Pink's chilled out "Another Weekend" and the slow, catchy "Skinned Knees" by Soccer Mommy. In the realm of catchy pop songs, I heard mxmtoon's "prom dress" in an Eve Cornwell video and couldn't get it out of my head. My friend Tom also sent me two songs by Rina Sawayama, the borderline 80's dance song "Comme Des Garçons (Like The Boys)" and the alternately groovy and poppy "Cyber Stockholm Syndrome."
Finally, one night I was walking home and had just finished listening to The Archer and a song I'd never heard before came on, Weyes Blood's "Seven Words." It's one of those songs that sort of makes you stop in your tracks at how beautiful it is. I listened to it over and over, it's a good feel-better song.
NEW RELEASES: The Archer by Alexandra Savior delivered us femme horror noir love/breakup songs. Tennis released a very classic and well done new single called "Need Your Love." Molly Burch, Tame Impala, Demi Lovato, Sofi Tukker, and Caroline Rose also released fabulous new singles. Soccer Mommy announced her new album color theory with the catchy and gorgeous single "circle the drain." Best Coast released the single "Everything Has Changed" and officially announced their forthcoming album, Always Tomorrow. And finally, U.S. Girls announced their upcoming album "Heavy Light," out on March 6, with the harmonic and upbeat single "Overtime."
On her sophomore album, "The Archer," Alexandra Savior sings sexy, noir-esque songs about love, heartbreak, and everything in between.
Alexandra Savior came onto the scene in 2017 with her debut album, Belladonna of Sadness. The album was co-written with Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys, who she had traded songs with in the past, and featured some pretty incredible songs, notably "Mirage," "M.T.M.E.," and "Bones." My friend Elise and I were talking about this new album before she released the first single, "Crying All The Time," in June. We wondered how it would sound because she was writing this album solo. Would it be completely different? The same? Delightfully enough, it's neither. The Archer is a natural evolution for Savior, and she hits every emotional mark she swings at.
The Archer opens with something different than we've ever heard from Savior: a ballad. The soft, sad, and beautiful "Soft Currents" pretty much updates us on where Alexandra Savior has been since her last album: seven years of bad luck, tears, and finding happiness in all the wrong places. Every time. I think it can almost be bold to make your album opener a ballad, you can risk being too soft or quiet, but the way Savior sings lines like "My fate is at the hand of my mistakes/And that's alright/My fate is in your hand/Without you even trying" hits you right in the gut. It's the best.
The album boasts a wide range of thematic material and metaphor. A melodramatic, and just a little morbid, breakup song filled with tears ("Crying All The Time") hits just as well as a danceable, crush song ("Can't Help Myself"), a dark, seductive song comparing a toxic relationship to a disease ("Bad Disease"), and the perfect closer, a sort of sweet-but-psycho love song that boasts lyrics like "You ate me right up, you spit me back out/You bit my head right off with your tiny little mouth/And I licked the blood from your lips" ("The Archer").
I have long been obsessed with the sequencing of albums. Where people place their title track, how they incorporate their singles, the flow from one track to the next, it can tell a lot about the care put into an album. There's something about the sonic arc of starting with "Soft Currents" and finishing with "The Archer" that feels very whole and complete. Ending the album on the title track gives you a kind of satisfaction while listening to it I can't help but appreciate. There's a gap of silence between "But You" and "The Archer," it's not long but it's just long enough that "The Archer" could feel like a hidden track of sorts. The middle of "The Archer" is filled with big, fun, upbeat songs like "Howl," "Send Her Back," and "The Phantom," but I do like that the album ends how it began: quietly and intimately.
On The Archer, an older, wiser, solo Alexandra Savior brings indie pop, psych-pop, Americana, love songs, sad songs, songs that are both and neither, and makes them all sound like one unit. With two strong albums, longtime support from Courtney Love and Linda Perry, and a unique sound, Savior is slowly but surely earning her stripes as the music industry's new cool girl. Patience is a virtue, but I can't wait to see what she does next.
I know, bold to start with a "best of." But here we are. What better way for us to get to know each other than for me to share what I think the best parts of 2019 were? Obviously they pretty much all had to do with music.
King Princess feels like she just appeared one day. One night I'm unaware of her songs, the next night my friend is sending me a playlist that's just "Pussy Is God" 15 times. King Princess a.k.a. Mikaela Straus filled her debut album with sweet but sad love songs like "Homegirl," odes to her friends, drag culture, and making something from nothing in "Cheap Queen," and "Hit The Back" which she calls "the anthem for bottoms everywhere." Straus is not the music industry's typical pop star heroine, but that hasn't stopped her from playing SNL, working with Mark Ronson, and getting endorsements from the likes of Harry Styles and Kourtney Kardashian. "Cheap Queen" has appeared on the year-end lists of the likes of AllMusic, Consequence of Sound, and Time, Mikaela Straus is freshly 21 and opening for Harry Styles on his European tour this spring. Here's to everything 2020 will bring for King Princess.
The best thing about "What Chaos Is Imaginary" is its ability to be more than one thing at once. Penning songs like the classically indie "Lucy's," the sweeping and swirling "Roses," and the songs like "Lucky Joke" and "Minute In Your Mind" that can be both, it's clear this album marked a shift in the Girlpool sound that coincided with Avery (formerly Cleo) Tucker's transition. The harmonies are more defined, the lyrics are dark, the production is bright, and the songs are altogether cinematic. The centerpiece of this album is the title track, "What Chaos Is Imaginary." The longest song on the album, it features unreal harmonies on the chorus, a gorgeous string section, and enough material lyrically and structurally to feel like an entire arc has come and gone by the time it's over. Immediately followed by the quieter "Hoax and the Shrine," it's clear the longer this album goes on that Girlpool is going to make whatever they want, taking up as much space as they need in the process. We're all better for it.
"Body" is an unfairly good opening track to Julia Jacklin's "Crushing." It tells the tale of Jacklin and her then-boyfriend getting kicked off of an airplane for him smoking and then spirals into her wondering if he would ever use a naked photo he has of her against her. In a resigned and tragic acceptance that whatever happens will happen, she sings "I guess it's just my life, and it's just my body." "Crushing" is structured like a story, rising action gleaning with danceable tracks like "Pressure to Party," which transitions into the emotional "Don't Know How To Keep Loving You" and climaxes with the devastating "When The Family Flies In." The action falls, not without one last dance party on "You Were Right," and the album culminates in the minimal and beautiful "Comfort." She ends her album with the lyrics "Don't know how you're doing/But that's what I get/I can't be the one to hold you when I was the one/Who left." Story told.
Music makes people feel all sorts of things, Sharon Van Etten's "Remind Me Tomorrow" makes me feel triumphant. Parts of the album hurt, "I Told You Everything" recounts the feeling of telling someone a story about your past they haven't heard before, knowing that may change how they see you, and "No One's Easy To Love" places heartbreak over a shimmery, pop-like sound. But these aren't necessarily the sad songs you would sit still and listen to, the album provides less of a melodramatic musing and more of a cathartic release you could even dance to if that's how you felt. The album builds to the climax of "Seventeen," a love letter to New York City and finding out who you are. Sharon Van Etten has always had an incredibly raw songwriting ability, but "Remind Me Tomorrow" seems to come with a newfound perspective. Whatever that perspective is, on album five, Sharon Van Etten is bigger than ever.
From the self-titled album, you may assume this is Chastity Belt's debut but it's not their first, second, or even third record. Chastity Belt began putting out crass, fun, post-Riot Grrrl tunes in 2013 with their debut, No Regerts. (That's not a typo, that's just good comedy on Chastity Belt's part.) The group's new album, "Chastity Belt," sees the band at a softer point, trading some of the more raucous parts of their classic sound for softer tunes like "Ann's Jam" and "Rav-4." Even the most upbeat parts of the album seem to have a relaxed, hazy glow over them. More mature, elegant, and at times even sweet, the rock band seems to have settled down, but they're far from boring. This album simply favors lush sounds, emotional lyrics, and music so well done it almost hurts.
As someone who is perhaps most passionate about album openers, Angel Olsen could've only released her opener, "Lark," and she would've automatically been in my top ten, the other tracks on the album only serve to push her higher. From the powerful, cinematic opener, we hear the gothic eighties yet noir-inspired "All Mirrors," the sexy, steady "New Love Cassette," and the gut-wrenching, haunting "Impasse." The music Angel Olsen makes on "All Mirrors" is larger than life and could fill everything from a mountain to a church to a concert venue. Beautiful strings, ridiculous high notes, and lyrics that hit you in the chest fill every inch of the album. Of her closing track, "Chance," Olsen says something that I think beautifully captures a lot of the feeling of "All Mirrors": "I didn’t love the recording of it very much, and now I just feel in love with it as a closing statement because it’s a way of saying, ‘Look, I have hope for the next thing in my life.’ I’m not going to anticipate negativity or hate or an end. But instead of us looking towards forever, why don’t we just work on right now?"
Stella Donnelly delivers a smiling, guitar-laden "fuck you" right out of the gate on "Beware of the Dogs." From the opening judgments of "Old Man" to the melancholy closing speech of "Face It," Stella Donnelly sings of all the biggest things on her mind, namely a disintegrating relationship and activism. The songs seem to go back and forth from scathing commentary to another chapter in a relationship. In most albums like these, there's usually one thematic point that's stronger than another but not on "Beware of the Dogs," the songs about rape culture ("Boys Will Be Boys") and the Australian government ("Beware of the Dogs") hit just as hard as the songs about Donnelly's old boss ("U Owe Me") and a breakup song recorded the day of ("Allergies") where you can hear her crying between verses. Donnelly's lyrics are funny, snarky, genuine, and in the best way, favor straightforward stories and metaphors over anything too heady. On "Beware of the Dogs," I was delighted to hear that Stella Donnelly was still not shying away from a single topic, she's back with a bark and a pretty sharp bite.
Lana Del Rey is a divisive artist. Or at least she was until she released "Norman Fucking Rockwell!" to the tune of 33-year end lists, 14-decade end lists, 2 Grammy nominations, and the title of "one of America's greatest living songwriters," (a title bestowed by Pitchfork's Jenn Pelly.) This album shows Del Rey taking all the best parts of her discography (the wonderfully tragic "Cruel World," the sexy-but-pleading "Blue Jeans," and the gut-punch that is "Terrence Loves You") and creates a great American masterpiece. The writing on "NFR" is superb, lines ranging from the clever "Changing like the weather, oh that's so like you" to the simply put "Do you want me or do you not?" shine through the pop, rock, psychedelic, folk, and trip-hop sounds. The cohesion and flow of the album between songs like the dressing down of a male artist/boyfriend, "Norman fucking Rockwell," a brilliant cover of Sublime's "Doin Time," and perhaps the climax of the album, the sweeping "California" is nothing short of sequencing genius. The glossed production and impeccable flow of the album only serve to make it more perfect. On her last album, "Lust For Life," Del Rey boasted a slew of successful featured artists, on "NFR" it's just Lana and the music. It's perfect.
If you haven't already heard every statistic and number related to Billie Eilish's success then this is the first review of her you're reading. Billie Eilish is the 18-year-old dead-eyed, sweet-smiling poster child of Gen Z who released the objectively strange "WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?" The album was produced by her brother, Finneas, recorded in a bedroom in their childhood home, and now hailed as an intimate, emotional, fun, ingeniously structured 42-minute masterpiece. The album opens with a funny, perhaps sonically disturbing skit of Eilish slurping out her Invisalign while she and Finneas joke around and laugh. From there the album spins from the mocking euphoria exhibited on "bad guy" to the depressive warning of "xanny," from the upbeat, nightmarish perspective of "bury a friend" to the suicidal thoughts on "listen before I go." No emotion is too bold, scary, or complex for Eilish to untangle; fun, frustrating unrequited love ("wish you were gay") and burning relationships ("when the party's over") fit seamlessly next to each other, not a single transitional blip to be found. The album ends with three songs that read like a sentence: "listen before i go, i love you, goodbye." These songs are some of the most blatantly dark on the record, known to make the audience and Eilish alike emotional at live shows. They are also some of the most beautiful. Eilish has been open with her struggles with depression, anxiety, and self-harm, both in her music and in real life, and filled with catharsis for both herself and its listeners, "WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?" serves as a well-executed reminder to find strength in the dark and weird and turn it into something beautiful.
A lot of people were surprised that "On The Line" was my number one, but I have long been attached to the Jenny Lewis style of songwriting. She has always been a genius at writing abstract songs about very specific feelings, from the cathartic post-sadness of "Red Bull and Hennessy," the heartbreaking, nostalgic love on "Dogwood," or the optimistic album closer "Rabbit Hole." 70s-inspired composition, a sound that feels like a love letter to California, killer harmonies, danceable guitar solos, gorgeous ballads, evocative lyrics, weird imagery, and strange magic run amok on the record. It's a combination of so many things only Lewis could pull off so effortlessly. From rumination on time and death ("Heads Gonna Roll") to an upbeat groove about visiting her dying mother ("Little White Dove"), Lewis has always made the heady, the weird, the tragic, and the hard a little bit easier to handle with clever lyrics and catchy bass-lines. Acclaimed and hailed as Jenny Lewis' best solo album yet, "On The Line" is a powerful album of love songs, breakup songs, songs about when life is hard, and songs about when it's not. It's an album about when life changes; when that hurts. when that helps, and when you need to screw it and start singing along.
