Nine songs from 2023 and into the first month of 2024. That’s what I’ve chosen to write about, as I languish in the US deep south, totally alone. People always talk about past decades and how great the music was. I do that all the time. But the reality is, we have more great music now than we ever did, except that most of it won’t be found on the radio. There are songs that you would dearly love but for the fact that you’ll never hear them unless you dig so deep. Let me do a bit of digging for you, huh. Some of these tunes are bangers. Some are folks. Some are electronic. Some are hip-hop. And one or two are not going to fit into any genre that I can think of.

One of these songs, as noted, stands above the rest. I don’t pick favourites. They pick me.

Meeting the Master, by Greta Van Fleet, April 2023

Talk about a banger. Who are the people in this band? The lead singer shrieks, but it’s sort of like Freddie Mercury with a migraine. I remember hearing the opening of this song and not thinking anything of it, except that voice… that headache-y voice, what was up with that? And then, around halfway through, boom. What the hell was that? I mean, you can’t really do that in a song, can you? There goes the headache. Now it’s an eruption, and you just want to climb to the edge of the caldera and let the lava warm you up for the ride, because you’re going a long way today.

I don’t want to spoil the lyrics, they’re sparse. I think these folks are reaching out to God, or god, or gods. This has got to be the most unique prayer I’ve ever heard. I don’t pray. Don’t know how. But if I must do it, and contemplate the around-the-bend mysteries that lurk at the edge of our vision, I think I’ll just try to do it this way, and sing like this. Even the blowing-up parts. I mean, especially the blowing-up parts.

(A word on the video: Lord of the Rings meets Queen. So delicious.)

Moment of Silence, by Robin Schellenberg & Rauschhaus, November 2023

Modern electronic music is a thing of spiritual beauty, it’s no wonder kids are so into it. I used to find it hard to grasp but have been listening to it for a few years now. I think this song is a gateway for anyone who doesn’t quite get what electronic music is. This song is melodic, it bangs, and the words that whisper at you from under your pillow suggest that something much bigger is to come. What is that bigger thing? I can’t tell you. You have to listen to glimpse it. You just have to keep listening, until it lands, just like this song does, so hard.

‘We are the people who lost ourselves to insanity.’

I think anyone young looks insane to us. We don’t get them. We rue the fact that they’re not like us. They are making so many mistakes, in our eyes. But we were just like that when we were young. The tide just turns. We get old. The young never get old. They just listen to songs like this, and get them, and god knows how hard they dance as they absorb the sound. Play this loud. Consider this the gateway to being young again. To being insane, like you used to be.

(A word on the video: there isn’t one, just the song. And that’s so okay.)

Danzig With Myself, by the Dandy Warhols, January 2024

A long time ago, I started saying to myself, “you don’t mess with the Dandy Warhols. You just do not mess with the Dandy Warhols.” I don’t remember why I thought this. But it’s still true. If the 90’s had never ended. If noise could still make music. I badly want to see these guys live, but I’m going to miss them when they’re here. Let me tell you two lines that encapsulate the Dandy Warhol experience, from this song:

‘I can’t believe how many people want to deceive us

And I can’t believe how many people want to receive it’

You know what this means. You know exactly what this means. Turn on a speaker, play this song loud, and pretend we’re still good at being angry at all the things that are so unclear. And also, please, do not mess with the Dandy Warhols. Just do not mess with them.

(A word on the video: this one has the lyrics. Might be helpful.)

run away girl, by Alice Merton, January 2024

‘And the sirens scream down every road

While the signs light up, ‘This way to gold’’

I’m a fan of 80’s music. It’s innocent. Almost oblivious in how it just never foreshadowed the world we would be living in now. The 80’s didn’t prognosticate. They just were, a self-contained time period that existed for its own pleasure, things like video game machines and strips of dried bubble gum in affordable packs of baseball cards. You put those cards on your bicycle tires, because you didn’t know they’d be worth something, someday. There was no someday. There was just that bicycle.

Alice Merton has written an 80’s song. Not a pretend 80’s song, but a real one. She time travelled. That’s right, she’s a time-traveller. Dipped right into that cauldron of pre-grunge and extracted a song that should have been written then but wasn’t. But here it is. A 2024 release that’s pure gold.

(A word on the video: live performance in Berlin. Gorgeous. So 80’s)

Football, by Youth Lagoon, January 2024

This is modern music. You know? In your head, you can picture a 2024 band that just captures who we are right now. They’d look like this. They’d sound like this. And they’d say stuff like this: ‘She would fuck the preacher if he only paid enough.’

I can’t rightly figure this song out. It needs more plays, and to that I will dedicate some time. I have an airplane flight coming up, over a land of gas flares and desiccated little river beds, not a spot of green in sight. I always get the window seat. It’s just a matter of staring at those flabby motes of orange flame down there, as I play this song over and over, and try to figure out exactly how we stay aloft. It’s science. It’s magic. It’s music.

(A word on the video: that is not what I expected. But that’s the point)

Vampire Empire, by Big Thief, October 2023

There’s a better than even chance that you’ve never heard of Big Thief. I don’t get that. Why? How could you miss this band? I remember first hearing ‘Change’ and just being floored by the folksiness of the thing. I mean, I’m not even from North America, but suddenly I felt like I grew up here a few decades ago, and spent time sitting on a boulder in a forest on the edge of fucking everything.

The thing about Vampire Empire, a new song, is that it rocks. I hear screaming when I hear this song, a sound I want more of, because in the end, rage is good for our souls. Here’s how this tune starts:

‘Watch TV tired, bleeding on the bed

The milk has just expired, all the leaves are dead’

But that’s not the highlight. The screaming is. Listen carefully for it. Hear it? That’s the song. That’s the sound of it, on the spiritual edge of fucking all there is.

(A word on the video: live on Stephen Colbert! Look how much joy this band has. It’s wonderful)

Paint the Town Road, by Doja Cat, August 2023

Okay, you know this song. It’s on the radio every five minutes. I don’t go for radio too much, and most of the music I listen to never gets to radio, but I have something to share about this song. First, radio edits. Yes, she says ‘bitch, I said what I said‘, and utters the word ‘devil’. And what do the radio stations do? They edit the hell out of it. ‘Bitch’ becomes ‘trick’; ‘devil’ becomes a blank space in the song.

Every time this song comes on the radio, I switch the station. Because Doja Cat deserves more regard than having her lyrics censored. I want to hear the dirty parts. I want to hear the conviction and confidence of her voice as she cusses us out and rails exactly against the type of inane censorship that radio stations practice when they play this gem. Listen to the explicit version. Be explicit, it’s okay. We’ll still love you. Promise.

(A word on the video: holy wow. I think Doja Cat may be a pure genius. She’s fearless)

I Can’t Get My Head Around You, by Billie Marten, March 2023

Don’t know anything about Billie Marten, but I’m going to learn more about her music. This song is simple. There’s not that many lyrics, so I won’t bother sharing any. When I hear this song, I think about Heaven Honey’s ‘Tomorrow I’ll Try’, the most tragically underrated song of the past decade. I’m a writer, and ‘Tomorrow I’ll Try’ is about me, you, and the act of creation in a way that sits in my stomach. Billie Marten’s song is a companion piece. I don’t know why. I just feel it that way, as though these songs are related in some way, like they build on each other. Do these artists know each other? Did they talk when putting these songs together? Maybe it’s like quantum entanglement, you know? That theory that particles at very large distances to each other can still connect, and if you give data to one, the other will repeat it instantaneously. If that concept is correct, can I suggest that you play this song first? Follow it up with the Heaven Honey tune. It’ll make sense, if you but try. This is quantum, and we don’t necessarily have to understand the entanglement. We just have to feel it.

(A word on the video: just a gorgeous live version of this song. If you want to hear what I believe to be the companion piece by Heaven Honey, it’s here: https://heavenhoney.bandcamp.com/track/tomorrow-ill-try. Really had to dig for this video. What a song)

Mermaids, by Florence and the Machine, April 2023

Hands down, the best song of 2023. It’s not close. You cannot beat a tune like this, with Florence’s voice, those lyrics. That haunting sense of the past and the future, and the fuck you to the time in which we live. The present is irrelevant. This song actually has a beginning, like every song does, and it has an ending, but it shouldn’t. This song should not end. We should hear more about mermaids and their desire for sailors’ blood, English girls and the memory of drunkenness (long-since given up), shitty clubs, shitty drugs… I think my world would be complete if there were but a video for this song, but there isn’t one. What would a video for this song even look like? How could you possibly represent this tune?

Art has an ability to amaze, when it sings to its own voice, not our expectations. Not the hope that someone will buy it. I feel like this song was written from the standpoint of pure voice and a contained vision that no one saw coming. I cannot imagine the creative process that went into it, but you can say that for a lot of F+TM songs. Stunning stunning stunning. Let me one day, someday, write something as evocative and pure as this slice of magic, please. Give me the strength!

Lyric video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2NR-UHH1KE

(A word on the video: those lyrics. That sound. What a package)