Continuing on with a tradition I've been enveloped in (in some unorganized fashion) for many a year and wrote about here more formally last year (in a co-blog with my lady buddy Melissa over at Comfortably Numb), it's time to watch the summer that barely was slip away to the tunes of the soundtrack it hath produced.
Like any good summer, there are one or two songs that are everywhere, and you either choose to embrace them or you exhaust yourself in your detestation of them as you attempt to gripe to anyone within earshot of said ubiquitous earworm every time it spins, which is at the top and bottom of each hour, if not even more frequently than that. Last year, of course, the track was "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen, and in a summer filled with a lot of great songs, I added the guilty pleasure as a bonus cut to my list of a dozen songs that captivated my summer.
This year, for whatever reason, I've been captivated by far less. I don't know, necessarily, that this means that there weren't any good songs this summer. If nothing else, we had not one but two "songs of the summer" in Daft Punk's uncharacteristically organic "Get Lucky" and Robin Thicke's he-slut high water mark, "Blurred Lines." And yeah, I dug them both. But because my list is so thin this year, I've got to add both of these done-to-death tracks to my playlist. I'm just not feeling enough of much else. Some songs, like the ever-present radio staple "Clarity" by Zedd, have great lyrics but canned and uninventive of-the-moment production values pilfered from David Guetta. Most everything, it seems, is EDM lite, and I don't like EDM much at all, even in a watered down for pop radio form. Sigh.
Other songs piqued my interest but, for whatever reason, didn't entice me into repeat viewings, a criteria I think is a baseline requriement for granting a song an appearance on a list such as this one. I then eliminated songs like Fall Out Boy's "My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light 'Em Up)," because my repeat listening of them was due to something other than my choice. In the case of that particular track, by the way, I heard it repeatedly as the theme music for the Blackhawks' latest Stanley Cup run, and thus can't hear the song without marrying it to images of ice hockey.
...and I'm too classy to include "Cruise" by Florida Georgia Line, though that's a summer song if ever there was one.
I've got three theories as to why I found this summers songs so, well, "meh." And I suspsect that the answer is a combination of all three:
1. This didn't feel like a summer, weather-wise. When the sun is out and the air is hot and you're walking around with sun glasses and bare feet, so many songs feel like a respite to the oppression of the humidity and a companion to the social gatherings. But this summer was unseasonably cold and frequently rainy. In fact, at my end-of-July birthday party last weekend, it was both (low-60s and rain). As such, the soundtrack seems to compliment the mood of the day, and if the mood is "blah," the soundtrack is sure to go all emo on you. And I can only speak for myself in saying that depressing and downbeat music requires me to be in a particular state of mind to enjoy, and that state of mind might occur regularly but it is nonetheless too fleeting to merit repeat listenings. As such, fewer songs stayed with me all summer long.
2. This was the summer of nostalgia. I helped to move my mom and grandma out of an 140-year-old farmhouse that has been in my family for over 60 years. I took days looking through boxes containing the remnants of my childhood. I turned 40. I made the weekend satellite radio countdowns on the 80s and 90s channels event listening every single weekend. It was almost inevitable that I would fail to maintain a pulse on what was current, and even friends like Melissa, who shot me YouTube links like daily vitamins, interspersed those offerings with vintage tracks in equal amounts. This was the summer of "I can't believe that song is 15 years old." 30 years ago, 1983, was a watershed year for some of the most iconic albums that shaped my sonic palate. My interest in current radio play was simply diminished, and for so many completely legitimate reasons.
3. I overloaded on Prince. I just get in these moods. After all, he is my number one obsession. And this summer, I listed to over a dozen episodes of the Peach and Black podcast, in which four Australian dudes who are probably a decade younger than me but have their Prince knowledge on lock go track-by-track through every Prince release and debate the songs, then rank the album as a whole. Each episode tips near the two-hour mark, and then I find myself spinning the discs again myself to come up with my own rankings. With my free time, I'm converting files of live shows from the summer, playing full concerts on my iPod while mowing the lawn or cleaning the house. Fortunately for me, there are at least a few new Prince songs circulating, which allowed me to add him to my list. I placed him first in an act of logic, as I listended to no single artist this summer more than Prince.
So here's my favorite new Prince track, along with some others that managed to rise above the mire of the meh and keep me coming back for more.
1. "The Breakdown" - Prince and 3rd Eye Girl
This week, Rolling Stone released a list called the 50 Greatest Live Acts right now. At the top of the list sits Bruce Springsteen, and you'll get no argument from me on that, having seen Bruce live and understanding with my own senses that the E Street Band is the single greatest live band in the world, able to turn on a dime to magnetically reproduce whatever Bruce or the audience throws at them. Bruce wins because he barely writes a set list; no other live act relies so heavily on what the audience wants to hear from night to night.
But second on the list, cutting off The Rolling Stones (yes, it's true!) is my Prince. Says Rolling Stone: 'he's never sounded better, his band 3rd Eye Girl is fire-hot and he's plundering his back catalog with a vengeance."
More than that, however, Prince is making new music with his all-girl band. Those tunes are said to be appearing on a forthcoming album called "Plectrum Electrum," but Prince is so busy showing up to play a few nights here and there and everywhere from Europe to Tempe, Arizona, that he hasn't confirmed a track list of new material yet, nor a release date. And since Prince can be super squirrelly when it comes to releasing new music on a schedule, he's left fans like myself to scramble on the Internet for breadcrumbs, such as his killer three-night stand at the Montreux Jazz Festival last month.
New songs like the alleged title track to his new album and the hard-pop "FixUrLifeUp" (the latter a legally downloadable track on iTunes) are great, but the hidden gem is "The Breakdown," a moody slow-burner that builds to a thunderous conclusion that defies the melancholy of the song's lyrics ("this could be the saddest story I've ever told"). There is no studio version available as of yet, but if you are clever enough, you can find some live recordings of the track. My favorite of these is the Montreux performance, where Prince fully deploys all three personas of his still-amazing singing voice: the silky falsetto, the throaty chest voice, and the 80s-era chicken scratch screams. With a piano featuring prominently in the mix, this song feels like a cousin to "Purple Rain" but also gives off a "November Rain" vibe. It's probably the song I've listened to the most in the last month.
2. "Mission Bells" by Matt Nathanson
Over a summery, percussive beat, Nathanson opens "Mission Bells" with the line, "I had a dream you died."
Um...what?
The lyric returns for the chorus as the full band comes in as sun-dipped harmonies are layered on. I'm still not sure if this the greatest slice of sonic irony or pop schadenfreude ever, but it's exactly the kind of warm-weather pop song I like to blast from the car stereo while I'm driving down the road with the windows open.
I've been a fan of Nathanson's since before he cracked Adult Top 40 radio with "Come On Get Higher," and his latest, called, "Last of the Great Pretenders," is likely to release him from our unknown-to-him contract as one of my best kept secrets. Nathanson's gift is truly his lyrics. His new disc opens with the line, "I'd kill anyone who treats you as bad as I do," and tells us in the chorus that "it feels like summer, but it's earthquake weather." But he also manages to tackle frank and emotionally complex ideas with a trademark pop production gloss that puts him at the front of the heap when it comes to male singer-songwriters of his type.
I'm starting to hear "Mission Bells" on the radio, particularly on Sirius-XM's The Spectrum, so I suspect that I'm just beginning to realize how much I enjoy this one. Few songs this summer were as instantly catchy to me as this.
3. "Royals" by Lorde
While half of America spent their free time with their eyes glued to their televisions to await the birth of Diana's grandson, I spent my free time with my ears glued to radio stations smart enough to play this sparse and sassy track from this 16-year-old from Down Under who rhapsodizes about the Windsor life over a low and echoey boom-chick beat and finger snaps.
I learned about "Royals" from college kids while rehearsing a production of "Jesus Christ Superstar" this summer; they were posting song lyrics as status updates on Facebook and talking about the song during rehearsals. Then, WXRT-Chicago started playing it...a lot. And before long, I have friends sending me links to the track.
I find it interesting that "Royals" is really the only song by a female singer that registered with me this summer. I don't know why that is. But this song is boss, with a slack vibe perfect for a leisurely drive or an evening sipping - well, Gray Goose - on your back patio, while also possessing enough bass to groove on the dancefloor at a house party. With only an EP currently available to support the song (and this is the best song on that EP, if you ask me), I am eagerly awaiting a full release from Lorde, and I'm expecting big things from this girl who makes music that feels wise beyond her years.
4. "Radioactive" by Imagine Dragons
If "Royals" was my favorite indie song on the radio, than "Radioactive" was my favorite mainstream pop-rock track, though Imagine Dragons is still sitting precariously on the border between indie and mainstream themselves (though with more than one foot clearly planted on the mainstream side by now). It's my third song in a row that relies on heavy, pounding bass - an emerging theme on this year's list, which is something I hardly considered until now. This is one of those songs that I find myself banging my head and grooving to and yet have not quite learned the words despite the dozens of listens. But it's also one of those songs that everyone in my family likes, which is important from time to time.
5. "Back Seat Lover" by Mayer Hawthorne
Only Mayer Hawthorne earns a spot on back-to-back summer lists. This dude is one of my favorite guys out there right now. His last album, "How Do You Do," was all retro soul, and the single "The Walk" was then and still is one of my favorites from a great release. And now, as of just a few weeks ago, he's released the follow-up and with it, yet another new throwback sound. This one, "Where Does This Door Go," feels more like yacht rock than neo-soul. And though he's released two singles from the project already (showcasing his work with Pharrell, easily the producer of the summer), it's this album-opening track - heavily influenced by Steely Dan - that has kept me hitting the repeat button. With its cheeky lyric from the perspective of a guy who seems resigned to the fact that he's being asked to participate in a tryst, it's a great marriage of modern radio content and cool 70s jams.
6. "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke featuring T.I. and Pharrell
I am not going to use my blog space to debate whether or not the lyrics of this song or either version of its video (nude or clothed) is "rape-y" (the WORST new term that seemed to magically appear this summer and one that was bandied about everywhere from "The Today Show" to the film "This Is the End"). I'm not going to decide here if these are the lyrics of the misogynist or if Thicke is a grade-A douche. What I will say is that I had two of Thicke's releases on my shelf prior to this release and this is, without a doubt, his breakout hit. It's THE sing-along song of the summer ("hey-hey-HEY!") and I've seen more people on the street trying to capture their inner R&B crooner while blasting this than any song in a long time. Billboard ranks this as the #1 song of the summer (three other tracks on my list appear on theirs), and only Daft Punk's single merits any debate in confirming its status as such.
In a time when Jay-Z can chart with a track that has the f-word in its title and artists like Macklemore (much as I love him) can get massive airplay for singles that are little more than aural swiss cheese after their profanities are muted, I find it shocking that people who hate this song seem to forget that 20 years ago, they were running on treadmills to Janet Jackson's "If," watching the music video on a channel called MTV that used to play music videos - that one featuring dance routines that just barely counted as dancing vs. clothed sex. Yes, I've sheepishly changed the channel when this song comes on and my kids are in the back seat, just as I've done so with Bruno Mars' "Locked Out of Heaven" and its obvious references to not getting any sex and the feelings a woman's sex gives to a man. But I'm not going to sit here and lie and tell you that I don't think it has THE groove of the summer. This song brought the party to the summer of 2013, and that's saying something, considering there wasn't much of a party to speak of without it.
7. "Get Lucky" by Daft Punk
Though its lyrics clearly make it pop radio's cousin to "Blurred Lines," it's the shockingly non-computerized technique employed by French dance duo Daft Punk to create this track's groove that garner the most attention. Buoyed by some licks from the incomparable Nile Rodgers, I love "Get Lucky" because it's NOT an EDM track in a summer where it seems every dance track is a slave to the genre. This is made significantly more confounding by the fact that Daft Punk are essentially the building blocks of the very genre that is now popular; they seem to have abandoned it with "Random Access Memories" just as it's hitting its commercial peak. Kudos, Daft Punk. For this, I love you even more. And not even the fact that a Chicago DJ repeatedly swears on air that they are singing "Mexican Monkey" can dampen my love for you or this song.
8. "Mirrors" by Justin Timberlake
The album version of this track - the best one from "The 20/20 Experience" - is a balsy eight minutes-plus. It eventually morphs and contorts into something else within the album's sequencing, and I have to be honest in saying that JT's latest isn't generating the heat on my stereo that "Futuresex/Lovesounds" did. All of that being said, I'd put "Mirrors" right up there with any of his best songs, and if I debated whether or not this song was even too old to make my summer list, it's probably because it dominated the front half of my summer. I played it over and over in the car. It was probably the first song on this list that I fully memorized. Though I've grown a tad weary of it by now, it's still a first-rate production. And I'm excited to hear that JT isn't done, having just released "Take Back the Night," a funky MJ rip-off, as a precursor to a follow-up sequel disc to be released this fall.
9. "Diane Young" by Vampire Weekend
I don't know much about Vampire Weekend, but when I do listen to the "regular" radio, it's Chicago's WXRT. And they have played the hell out of this song this summer. I like the word play with the title and the lyrics and the songs almost rockabilly groove. It's made for great dishwashing music. But beyond that, I don't know what to say about it!
My list is supposed to have a dozen tracks, but truthfully, that's all I've got. I considered padding that list with a few songs I like, but thought better of defying my criteria, and the repeat listening just wasn't there for these songs, though I'm listing them hear to identify additional tunes I'm enjoying:
"Second Chances" by Gregory Alan Isakov (very Dylanesque, a free download on iTunes a few weeks back)
"Coming Home" by Dharma Protocol (the name of Boy George's new band, and it's great to hear him again, even if this song is sonically identical to George Michael's "White Light," which appeared on my list last year)
So...that's all I've got. If I was to include old songs that have recaptured my attention, I'd be adding David Bowie's "Last Dance," a song I play almost daily after having rediscovered Stevie Ray Vaughn's stacatto guitar licks peppered throughout the track. Or "Gethsemane" from "Jesus Christ Superstar," which provided me with the most emotionally visceral moments of my summer. But that's not what this list was for. In any case, it's time to wrap-up a musically lackluster summer and prepare for fall, which, if it ends up containing the long-gestating and rumored new albums from U2 and Prince, is going to be the greatest song season in the history of all mankind.
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