Finally, the long-belated May edition! This month was defined by great delivery, epic synths, and…can you tell I took the AP Music Theory test?
Imagine That, Patsy Cline
One of these is not like the others…but this song is easily one of my favorites from this month. It’s an old Patsy Cline country tune that came up randomly on Spotify one day and caught my attention. It also became the first song on the playlist I used for most of this month, so it was always in my vision. It’s a classic ballad about the silliness of going back to someone who’s wronged you, but what makes it so good is Patsy Cline’s performance. She adds so many details, tones, and laughs to her vocals that it feels like she’s telling you the story over a personal lunch. It makes it so much more timeless than most older songs–I guess human connection surpass the limits of decades.
Tennessee, Kevin Abstract (feat. Lil Nas X)
This was my sleeper hit of May. I didn’t take much note of it the first time I heard it, but I noticed it on my Release Radar because of the Lil Nas X feature and I offhandedly added it to my playlist. I found it getting stuck in my head more and more and it’s majorly grown on me over the last new months. It’s a slow and sticky rap song about wanting to hook up without any baggage, but much like Patsy Cline, what makes it work is the performance details both Kevin Abstract and Lil Nas X add in. They work incredibly well together. The little moments are addicting–my favorite has to be the Latto/lotto beat drop. They flow in and out of layered vocals over the beat, taking you on a aural journey and perfectly soundtracking these incoming summer nights.
BOA, Megan Thee Stallion
Megan is back again. This is the third single from her recently announced album, MEGAN. Whenever I play her music for my dad, he likes to bring up that she has an incredibly consistent “thing.” Though within her broader discography I’m willing to argue against that (there’s a lot to be said about boxing in female rappers to nothing more than “wow my ass”), “Boa” unquestionably is designed to show off Megan’s “thing.” And it does so perfectly. From only 3 seconds in, Megan comes right at you. She starts off strong and never dwindles. She’s carried by a very well chosen Gwen Stefani sample (slyly alluding to the message of the song: she doesn’t need TikTok to have a successful career) that provides the perfect candy-sweet balance to her intensity. It’s full of strong moments: some of my favorites are the switch up on “He do what I tell him, I do what I want to do,” the line “If it’s fuck me then we havin’ sex,” and the hook which refuses to get out of my head: “Bitch, your time up, why is you not clockin’ out?” Continuing with what appears to be this month’s theme, Megan is a master of the delivery–you could trace her flow with a pen. We’re witnessing her at the top of her game. I’m excited to see what else will be on the album!
Human Sacrifice, Childish Gambino
This song was performed for the first time 6 years ago at a Childish Gambino concert in Georgia. Since then, it’s been played at multiple shows, used in a Google Pixel ad, and…not released until this month. It’s become a fan cult-favorite in that time, and when you listen to it, you’ll understand why. It’s not a traditional pop-structured song, working almost more in line with a classical composition (much like one of the later picks on this list). This is a song all about the production–so luckily’s it’s filled with some really cool stuff. Gambino’s vocals play against the rhythmic thumping of the beat, and the rest of the space is filled by various synths and instruments that create a sound best described as lush. Between the title, the instrumentation, and the accent he puts on for part of the song, it seems as if it’s meant to depict a return to humans’ natural state of being as tribal creatures who live in tandem with the land. Everything in the production feels like it’s working towards that visual, which constructs a really beautiful sonic landscape.
Handle Me - RedOne Remix, Robyn
As a big fan of Robyn’s most recent two albums, it’s been on my long list to check out her first synth-pop record for a while. It’s a solid album, though much messier than her later work, and very much a product of the time. I kinda passed over this song’s original version, but the RedOne remix caught my attention. I mostly know him for his work with early Gaga, but I don’t think I appreciated until now just how much he impacted the entire dance music scene of the late 2000s. His production style is so unique that it still holds up excellently 16 years later. But my favorite detail of this song has to be blink-and-you’ll-miss it moment in the lyrics: for the most part, it’s a pretty standard pop tune trashing some guy about not being good enough for her, containing the usual suspects of cribs, cars, and film bros. But in the middle of the chorus (they censor it in this remix, but you can find it in the original song) she offhandedly mentions the guy’s a nazi.
BLUE, Billie Eilish
Hit Me Hard And Soft is undoubtedly Billie Eilish’s best album to date. The last two songs are, in my critical opinion, the best 10 minutes and 41 seconds of her career. I’ll talk more about this if I ever get around to completing my planned HMHAS listening party coverage (which is the only thing that prevented this month from having a double album feature), but the way that Billie and Finneas are able to shape synths into something so otherworldly it becomes visceral is a skill no one has or possibly will ever match. “Blue,” specifically, is my favorite kind of song: a multi-sectioned one! It manages contains both the best lyrical and musical moments of the album while also taking time to call back to each of the previous songs on the record (another favorite move of mine) in a way that concludes the ideas presented yet also continues to move them forward. It’s a phenomenal closer and easily my favorite song from the record. If you listen to anything from that album (though it’s definitely worth checking out the whole thing), it should be this song.
Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl, yeule
This song was the final addition to this list, but it would have felt incomplete without talking about the soundtrack to I Saw The TV Glow. The movie itself is amazing (a new psychological horror from A24 about what happens when you choose not to take risks, set to visuals of the late 90s and TV nostalgia), but the soundtrack feels like possibly the most important piece of the puzzle. In a movie so heavily driven by aesthetics, the soundtrack is vital to filling in the world for the viewer. TV Glow uses much of its soundtrack (all original songs commissioned for the movie) like a score, putting sonic movement in priority over lyrical content. This is smart for a film, because it allows the songs to smoothly blend with the actual score and to coexist with the visuals as one piece, as opposed to trying to divide focus between the screen and the lyrics. I think the first track, “Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl,” is the best example. Though it’s actually the only cover on the record, it feels most like it was made to be here. The song moves far more like a classical composition than it does a modern song: there are only 3 unique sections, which get repeated across the song in a style more reminiscent of classical musical phrases than of the standard verse-chorus-bridge structure. Despite functioning on repetition, the song builds around the repeated melodies, adding more and more texture and layers upon each repeat. This is also one of those songs where I find vocals being used as just another instrument instead of being the focal point, and I think it’s one of the most interesting ways to write modern music. Broken Social Scene (the original writers of the song) deserve some the credit for the repetition, but yeule’s composition of the song was able to blend it so well into the digital-age, dreamy sound of this movie that you’d never know it wasn’t written for this film.
Grins, Charli XCX
I have to give the credit for this entry entirely to one Jasper Ralph. He stopped me one day in the middle of what we were doing, and said, “Have you ever listened to ‘Grins’ by Charli XCX?” “No.” “You should. It’s really good.” I likely would have never made it back this far in Charli’s discography by myself, but I was surprised to find that it was actually much closer to her current music than I expected. It’s messier, of course, but that works for the songs on True Romance. I ended up listening to the whole record, and I really enjoyed it–but there’s no question that “Grins” is the standout song. Since I heard it the first time, I haven’t been able to stop listening–on the train, on walks, at night, on my bike, everywhere I can get a hold on music, this song has been soundtracking my life. I’ve listened to it on repeat for days on end. It sounds like euphoric summer, but it also sounds like the moment of heartbreak in the dark. It sounds like teenage years, or childhood seconds. It sounds like every moment of my life hitting me at once. Charli says “beaches and oceans for my baby,” and I think it’s a fitting line. My favorite part of the song is near the end, as it breaks into the outro–it feels like finally breaking the surface.
After Destruction, Descartes A Kant
I was recently in the car with Kayla and her father, and she was encouraging us to chat about music since she claimed she thought we had a similar kind of vibe. He asked me what I listened to, and I said, “A little bit of everything genre wise, but honestly, mostly modern stuff.” He took a contemplative pause, then responded, “Well, if you’re looking for modern, my favorite album of 2023 was by this mexican punk band called Descartes A Kant. It’s called After Destruction.” And so began the tale of Eric Pincus’ favorite album of 2023, and my favorite album of May 2024.
Before I’d even heard it, he told me a lot of what he loves about the record, the most important of which was that it was a product of the pandemic. It’s an album about the desperation, depression, insecurity, and derealization we all went through over the Covid years as told through the concept of a computer designed to “turn your pain into art!” It has a dedicated introduction and conclusion as well as a number of interludes spoken by the character of the computer, which is an incredibly cool (and at times a bit unsettling) way to narrate an album. The meat of the record can be found in the fabulously crafted punk-rock songs exploring disillusionment, immoral affairs, screaming for god, and uncontrollable sobbing. That might sound like a downer, but the music is far more positive than the lyrics–a juxtaposition likely intentionally designed. Especially in the digital interludes. The synths they put under the spoken word are bubbly, sci-fi-esque, and just a tad uncanny, which is a very cool texture to contrast with the lyrics. I’ll always remember the way Eric explained the story of the album to me: it always had to be played more than once, because it’s created to destroy your faith in humanity–and you have to restart the record to restore it.
In all my listening, I can’t say I’ve heard anything quite like this. I suppose that’s fitting for an album that came out of a period of time unlike any other in history. But if you never quite got over the demons that came up during the lockdown (or are simply in the mood for one of the most interesting albums of your life), it just might help you restart and heal.
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