The Music of 2024: Q1
Here we go, here we go, here we go again! Sticking with song--artist format this year again, I guess.
January
1. New Year's Day -- Taylor Swift
Please, don't, ever become a stranger
Whose laugh I could recognize anywhere
I keep forgetting that I sampled one more off Reputation! I really like this sweet, soft, gentle celebration of love, and it's rapidly becoming one of my favorite songs of hers ever. Beautiful album closer, better transition into the folklore era. Genuinely can't believe it's on this album. Now, let me take a few more pokes at Evermore...
2. Tolerate It -- Taylor Swift
I know my love should be celebrated
I watch you tolerate it
No song has ever needed the S word less (why in the world wouldn't you "lay the table with the fancy set?" At least in the clean version?? Pronounce 'portrait' in a slightly different but equally valid way if that bothers you. You changed all the other FCC-restricted curse words, why is this one only bleeped, and barely at that), but despite all my frustration I love this is, it's so haunting.
[edit: funnily enough, this has been HANDILY eclipsed by almost everything else on the album. but we'll get there...]
3. No Body, No Crime -- Taylor Swift ft. HAIM
I think he did it, but I just can't prove it
Oh man, I was not expecting to get Full Country Twang on a record like this. Not sure it fits with the set, and at first I thought it felt like a song she should have handed off to someone else to record because it feels like a cover rather than hers...but it is dang catchy. Five plays and it became hers, mine, ours; can't stop hitting the repeat button.
4. Long Story Short -- Taylor Swift
And he's passing by
Rare as the glimmer of a comet in the sky
And he feels like home
If the shoe fits, walk in it everywhere you go
Bouncy and fun! Also does not feel like it belongs on this album, as opposed to one that's more pop-oriented, but I'm still obsessed with basically all of the lyrics to this, SO many great metaphors. This is the first time I've ever been like, would not hate a tattoo of this.
5. It's Time To Go -- Taylor Swift
Sometimes walking out is the one thing
That will find you the right thing
I don't agree with all of the ideas in this song, but it still touches something in my soul. And that makes 8 spotlights from this album now, 50% threshold reached, so it is indeed time to go. (until I break my own rules; stay tuned!) (yes I have now made two hype teasers for the end of this post)
February
CD REC: Ellie Lawson, "The Philosophy Tree" (2005)
I just bought this for $3 at Barnes & Noble, because apparently they found a dusty box of unsold mid-2000s CDs in their back room, and also apparently this album retailed exclusively through them. Deaf buy because the gal on the cover looks like Jamie Lynn Spears circa 2005, and I'm delighted to find she actually sounds a lot like Alanis Morissette. I'm kind of sad I've missed out on this for almost 20 years, honestly; it really seems like it would have fit my college aesthetic. Since it hasn't fully clicked for me as individual tracks vs. decent Car Music, though, just a couple of standouts for now.
6. L.A. -- Ellie Lawson
I'm under the spell of L.A.
And I don't want to be home
Great opening track! It's kind of, a tiny bit, like if a London girl had read Weetzie Bat immediately before making her first trip the States/L.A. and was determined to see it through that lens. If that makes no sense to you, forget it and refer back to the opening sentence.
7. Gotta Get Up From Here -- Ellie Lawson
Today and I'm taking control again
Patch on my arm in the bright sunlight
There's no way that I'm gonna go under now
Plenty of ways to make a wrong right
When you're an angsty young person but you wanna change your ways! I think "24-Hour Life Crisis" is a superior title, but I still love the lyrics + melody of this one. Would probably recommend this one as the first to start with, as a softer opening sound, but honestly, either one's good.
8. Luminous - Jedward
We got the stars, and moon, and us
We're always gonna be luminous
This is one of the rare more-disliked-than-liked songs on the do-you-like-this-song poll Tumblr, which I cannot fathom because it's DELIGHTFUL? I've never heard of them; they have kinda freak behavior hair and vaguely look like Draco Malfoy's vampiric cousins, but this is the most pleasantly smooth (if heavily-overproduced) 2010s pop-radio sound I could ask for?? (edit: yessss, 2012! that is exactly the year it sounds like)
9. Gorgeous - Taylor Swift
You should take it as a compliment
That I'm talking to everyone here but you
And you should think about the consequence
Of you touching my hand in the darkened room
Guess who's back fighting with Reputation!! But after getting a lil' beaten up (I hate you, Dress), I wrestled this one out of it, and what it lacks in intelligent lyrics it makes up for with eminently listenable rhythm & music. Alcohol references aside, it honestly sounds like it belongs on an album for a teenager -- the lyrics are so basic and immature it feels like she wrote them while drunk-- but it's still weirdly fun??
10. Tike Tike Kardi - Arash
Thank you once again to the DYLTS Tumblr! I have no idea what this song means or anything about it or the artist whatsoever except that he's apparently Iranian-Swedish. I know only that it has that Middle Eastern musical flavoring crossed with a club track and I can jam out to it for an hour. Nobody tell me if its lyrics are trash.
March
CD REC: Taylor Swift, "Evermore" (CLEAN, deluxe version) (2020)
THAT'S RIGHT, GUESS WHAT'S BACK AGAIN! I finally listened to it all the way through with no skipping -- twice -- and now I love it so much that the only songs we're firing are the two with Unnecessary Dude Voice (Coney Island & Evermore, which: I'm extra-mad about the title track, because it's so gorgeous until THAT voice comes in. So I guess technically that one is only half-fired, but I'm still not spotlighting it), and to some extent the sleepy Cowboy Like Me. I'm also refusing to spotlight Closure because it's overproduced and all that fuzzy noise running through the beginning and in the background ruins the delicate piano notes that are all this otherwise great song needs.
But I love the rest so much, often more than some of the songs I've already picked, that it would just be, irresponsible?, NOT to discuss them all. 50% rule WHAT. Is it possible I love this one more than Folklore?? I can't decide yet. Ask again later.
11. Gold Rush
What must it be like to grow up that beautiful?
With your hair falling into place like dominoes
My mind turns your life into folklore
I can't pinpoint anything I particularly love about this song (except this verse, which is really captures the hero-worship I felt about girls I wanted to look like/befriend in high school and still makes me think of Blake Lively), but it was the only song in the first five on the CD I was skipping prior to this month, and I was thrilled when I no longer wanted to!
12. Ivy
My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you
The most beautiful ode to adultery ever! :P (Honestly it makes me want to read a historical romance novel about that very much.) I had a terrible time choosing the best lyric; this one has upgraded to a top-5-on-the-album track.
13. Marjorie
You're alive, you're alive in my head
Are some of the lyrics weird? Yeah ("what died didn't stay dead" so she's a zombie??). But for musical beauty and a tribute to her grandmother, we overlook. Took six rounds but there's always a song that makes me cry. (which. technically. Right Where You Left Me already did. But this one sounds sad, the whole way through. Yet somehow, the line that gets me every time is "should've kept every grocery store receipt / 'cause every scrap of you would be taken from me," perhaps because I first heard this on the way to an estate sale)
14. Happiness
In our history, across our great divide
There is a glorious sunrise
Dappled with the flickers of light
From the dress I wore at midnight
I honestly overlooked this one for a while, because it has such a quiet and slow start (which it maintains), but when it hit, wow. An utterly beautiful song mourning the unwanted end of a relationship while acknowledging that it was still worth it while it lasted.
15. Dorothea
It's never too late to come back to my side
The stars in your eyes shined brighter in Tupelo
And if you're ever tired of being known for who you know
You know, you'll always know me
Betty and James are still chilling in the dust because I either haven't found clean versions or they were too poorly censored, but thank god Dorothea can come play! This is a bit second tier, but I still love the laid-back-yet-cheerful music from the slightly wistful perspective of a childhood friend and/or high school sweetheart to someone who disappeared to Hollywood fame.
January
1. New Year's Day -- Taylor Swift
Please, don't, ever become a stranger
Whose laugh I could recognize anywhere
I keep forgetting that I sampled one more off Reputation! I really like this sweet, soft, gentle celebration of love, and it's rapidly becoming one of my favorite songs of hers ever. Beautiful album closer, better transition into the folklore era. Genuinely can't believe it's on this album. Now, let me take a few more pokes at Evermore...
2. Tolerate It -- Taylor Swift
I know my love should be celebrated
I watch you tolerate it
No song has ever needed the S word less (why in the world wouldn't you "lay the table with the fancy set?" At least in the clean version?? Pronounce 'portrait' in a slightly different but equally valid way if that bothers you. You changed all the other FCC-restricted curse words, why is this one only bleeped, and barely at that), but despite all my frustration I love this is, it's so haunting.
[edit: funnily enough, this has been HANDILY eclipsed by almost everything else on the album. but we'll get there...]
3. No Body, No Crime -- Taylor Swift ft. HAIM
I think he did it, but I just can't prove it
Oh man, I was not expecting to get Full Country Twang on a record like this. Not sure it fits with the set, and at first I thought it felt like a song she should have handed off to someone else to record because it feels like a cover rather than hers...but it is dang catchy. Five plays and it became hers, mine, ours; can't stop hitting the repeat button.
4. Long Story Short -- Taylor Swift
And he's passing by
Rare as the glimmer of a comet in the sky
And he feels like home
If the shoe fits, walk in it everywhere you go
Bouncy and fun! Also does not feel like it belongs on this album, as opposed to one that's more pop-oriented, but I'm still obsessed with basically all of the lyrics to this, SO many great metaphors. This is the first time I've ever been like, would not hate a tattoo of this.
5. It's Time To Go -- Taylor Swift
Sometimes walking out is the one thing
That will find you the right thing
I don't agree with all of the ideas in this song, but it still touches something in my soul. And that makes 8 spotlights from this album now, 50% threshold reached, so it is indeed time to go. (until I break my own rules; stay tuned!) (yes I have now made two hype teasers for the end of this post)
February
CD REC: Ellie Lawson, "The Philosophy Tree" (2005)
I just bought this for $3 at Barnes & Noble, because apparently they found a dusty box of unsold mid-2000s CDs in their back room, and also apparently this album retailed exclusively through them. Deaf buy because the gal on the cover looks like Jamie Lynn Spears circa 2005, and I'm delighted to find she actually sounds a lot like Alanis Morissette. I'm kind of sad I've missed out on this for almost 20 years, honestly; it really seems like it would have fit my college aesthetic. Since it hasn't fully clicked for me as individual tracks vs. decent Car Music, though, just a couple of standouts for now.
6. L.A. -- Ellie Lawson
I'm under the spell of L.A.
And I don't want to be home
Great opening track! It's kind of, a tiny bit, like if a London girl had read Weetzie Bat immediately before making her first trip the States/L.A. and was determined to see it through that lens. If that makes no sense to you, forget it and refer back to the opening sentence.
7. Gotta Get Up From Here -- Ellie Lawson
Today and I'm taking control again
Patch on my arm in the bright sunlight
There's no way that I'm gonna go under now
Plenty of ways to make a wrong right
When you're an angsty young person but you wanna change your ways! I think "24-Hour Life Crisis" is a superior title, but I still love the lyrics + melody of this one. Would probably recommend this one as the first to start with, as a softer opening sound, but honestly, either one's good.
8. Luminous - Jedward
We got the stars, and moon, and us
We're always gonna be luminous
This is one of the rare more-disliked-than-liked songs on the do-you-like-this-song poll Tumblr, which I cannot fathom because it's DELIGHTFUL? I've never heard of them; they have kinda freak behavior hair and vaguely look like Draco Malfoy's vampiric cousins, but this is the most pleasantly smooth (if heavily-overproduced) 2010s pop-radio sound I could ask for?? (edit: yessss, 2012! that is exactly the year it sounds like)
9. Gorgeous - Taylor Swift
You should take it as a compliment
That I'm talking to everyone here but you
And you should think about the consequence
Of you touching my hand in the darkened room
Guess who's back fighting with Reputation!! But after getting a lil' beaten up (I hate you, Dress), I wrestled this one out of it, and what it lacks in intelligent lyrics it makes up for with eminently listenable rhythm & music. Alcohol references aside, it honestly sounds like it belongs on an album for a teenager -- the lyrics are so basic and immature it feels like she wrote them while drunk-- but it's still weirdly fun??
10. Tike Tike Kardi - Arash
Thank you once again to the DYLTS Tumblr! I have no idea what this song means or anything about it or the artist whatsoever except that he's apparently Iranian-Swedish. I know only that it has that Middle Eastern musical flavoring crossed with a club track and I can jam out to it for an hour. Nobody tell me if its lyrics are trash.
March
CD REC: Taylor Swift, "Evermore" (CLEAN, deluxe version) (2020)
THAT'S RIGHT, GUESS WHAT'S BACK AGAIN! I finally listened to it all the way through with no skipping -- twice -- and now I love it so much that the only songs we're firing are the two with Unnecessary Dude Voice (Coney Island & Evermore, which: I'm extra-mad about the title track, because it's so gorgeous until THAT voice comes in. So I guess technically that one is only half-fired, but I'm still not spotlighting it), and to some extent the sleepy Cowboy Like Me. I'm also refusing to spotlight Closure because it's overproduced and all that fuzzy noise running through the beginning and in the background ruins the delicate piano notes that are all this otherwise great song needs.
But I love the rest so much, often more than some of the songs I've already picked, that it would just be, irresponsible?, NOT to discuss them all. 50% rule WHAT. Is it possible I love this one more than Folklore?? I can't decide yet. Ask again later.
11. Gold Rush
What must it be like to grow up that beautiful?
With your hair falling into place like dominoes
My mind turns your life into folklore
I can't pinpoint anything I particularly love about this song (except this verse, which is really captures the hero-worship I felt about girls I wanted to look like/befriend in high school and still makes me think of Blake Lively), but it was the only song in the first five on the CD I was skipping prior to this month, and I was thrilled when I no longer wanted to!
12. Ivy
My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you
The most beautiful ode to adultery ever! :P (Honestly it makes me want to read a historical romance novel about that very much.) I had a terrible time choosing the best lyric; this one has upgraded to a top-5-on-the-album track.
13. Marjorie
You're alive, you're alive in my head
Are some of the lyrics weird? Yeah ("what died didn't stay dead" so she's a zombie??). But for musical beauty and a tribute to her grandmother, we overlook. Took six rounds but there's always a song that makes me cry. (which. technically. Right Where You Left Me already did. But this one sounds sad, the whole way through. Yet somehow, the line that gets me every time is "should've kept every grocery store receipt / 'cause every scrap of you would be taken from me," perhaps because I first heard this on the way to an estate sale)
14. Happiness
In our history, across our great divide
There is a glorious sunrise
Dappled with the flickers of light
From the dress I wore at midnight
I honestly overlooked this one for a while, because it has such a quiet and slow start (which it maintains), but when it hit, wow. An utterly beautiful song mourning the unwanted end of a relationship while acknowledging that it was still worth it while it lasted.
15. Dorothea
It's never too late to come back to my side
The stars in your eyes shined brighter in Tupelo
And if you're ever tired of being known for who you know
You know, you'll always know me
Betty and James are still chilling in the dust because I either haven't found clean versions or they were too poorly censored, but thank god Dorothea can come play! This is a bit second tier, but I still love the laid-back-yet-cheerful music from the slightly wistful perspective of a childhood friend and/or high school sweetheart to someone who disappeared to Hollywood fame.