Music Listeners

listening to Your Favorite Songs 2025, part 14

we're almost there! what a time to be alive and have ears!

part 1 here. part 2 here. part 3 here. part 4 here. part 5 here. part 6 here. part 7 here. part 8 here. part 9 here. part 10 here. part 11 here. part 12 here. part 13 here.

scroll to the bottom for youtube embeds of all the songs!

"All the Right Weaknesses" - Brown Horse
from C.A. Fosnes:
"Emma Tovell's pedal steel. The Americana scene developing in the UK sounds more authentically like my hometown of Nashville than anything on this continent. Ryman awaits."

Wait...UK Americana?? This is a synthesis I can get behind. Baked beans X beans on toast. Beans for everyone. I'm in. Will have to dig into Brown Horse more, I just dabbled in their Substack and saw that Emma from the band quilted/appliquéd the cover of their album...neat!! This is 100% pure PORCH MUSIC. I'm on the porch, and I'm cracking a Newcastle.

"Black Eyelashes" - Franz Ferdinand
from Luke:
"Franz Ferdinand writing a Greek rebetiko song is one of those things that seems like it shouldn’t work, but it does! This album came out when I was reading Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, and I have to say, the vibe of this song specifically and the weird and wild world of ancient sculpture is a combination as simpatico as peanut butter and chocolate👌"

First: love a good multimedia pairing. Several recent Jeopardy! categories have caught me SEVERELY slipping in the realm of art history, so maybe I need a refresh with this Gardner book. Second: Franz Ferdinand are just so cool, and I was about to make an "we can let Scottish folks get a little Greek with it as long as it slaps" joke and then realized that the lead singer of Franz Ferdinand is Alex Kapranos. The good lad has a Greek dad. This is his birthright. I want to dance in a large dramatic circle to this song.

"It's About Vampires" - at first, at first
from Spencer:
"at first, at first's sound is like a warm blanket for my ears. There were other songs this year that had more of an emotional punch, or I was more excited by on my first (or first dozen) listens, but for me the top spot in regards to music is what can I put on and let run and have it just melt into the air around me. I've had this CD in my car for the past few months, with no plans on swapping it out anytime soon. This song is sort of standing in for the whole album it is on, but this is my favorite from the album, and I think it represents the rest of the songs pretty well."

I really like the way the vocals and the instrumentation mix, clash, play off each other, and blend into each other. An assault on the senses so total that it swirls into a pleasant vortex of emotion and noise. Had not previously heard of at first, at first and they're playing in L.A. right after New Year's...hmm hmm...

"Bitter Everyday" - Wednesday
from Quinnie:
"Really fell in love with this song after seeing it live! The image of "swimming through a cold spot in the lake" brings forward such a clear feeling for me, I feel like I'm in the lake. Really love this song!"

This is what I mean when I say that even though Wednesday's songwriting is geographically specific yet kind of universal—I know exactly what swimming through a cold spot in the lake feels like, being...lake-raised myself. Shout out Lake Champlain, shout out Champ the lake monster, shout out class field trips on the Spirit of Ethan Allen boat where we'd all look for Champ the lake monster. The thing about being a lake person is you have to suffer, a little bit. Lakes aren't as epic as oceans, nor as pleasant as pools. There are cold spots and bad smells and weird goos and zebra mussels. Lakes are a little weird, you have to debase yourself a little bit to enjoy them.

I wonder how the people of Wednesday feel about kitschy wooden lakecore decor.

"Cuntology 101" - Lambrini Girls
from Joshua:
"It's dumb.It's smart.You can dance to it.You can scream to it. It's over in less than two and a half minutes."

Had a great time with the Lambrini Girls record this year. Using contemporary therapy verbiage ("Healing your inner child is cunty") in the traditional singsongy cadence of Bikini Kill...I support and uplift. Also, can't argue with Who Let The Dogs Out as an album title. Have I mentioned here that one of the fastest ways to my heart is yelling in a British accent?

“Oneida” - Tyler Childers
from Mark, @hinkema on bluesky @gin_bois on twitter:
"I hope this counts since it was notoriously a performed but never released song for a long time. Musically & lyrically beautiful and caused a fun argument b/w my wife & I: I thought the titular woman was wayyy older than she did"

In terms of picking a specific narrative or feeling and expressing said narrative or feeling with extreme, exhaustive precision, there's still no genre like country. My favorite country songs are basically audiobooks—short stories delivered with heart (and twang...gotta have that twang). In this case, "Oneida" depicts a young man falling hard for an older woman; he's not even old enough to buy his own wine, and she's old enough to have a personal relationship with a radio that plays songs from the 1980s, but he's willing to "learn that song you've been dying to sing / about weddings and rings."

At a time of annoying discourse about Age Gap Relationships, this innocent declaration of love feels rather sweet, even if said Age Gap Relationship is doomed—by the third verse, the singer is stuck at the door of a bar, pleading with the bouncer to be let in, finally settling to leave a message for his elder sweetheart inside.

"blade bird" - Oklou
from Kiko Soirée

Mellow French indietronica as divine CVS banger. The reverse image of Nelly Furtado's "I'm Like a Bird" we didn't know we always needed. choke enough made a great first impression on me (my personal top pick is "harvest sky," the perfect club song that actually sounds like you're standing outside of the club, taking a break from the dance floor) and it has grown on me sooo much since then. A real intricate and comforting listen all the way through, and vaguely medieval at times.