Music Listeners

listening to Your Favorite Songs 2025, part 4

heard you liked songs, so i put songs in your songs so you could listen to songs while you listened to songs.

part 1 here. part 2 here. part 3 here.

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

"no limit (live)" - Adrianne Lenker
from Bill G.:
"This is a sweet, genuine (and previously unreleased) song that captures what fans enjoy about an Adrianne Lenker concert. It feels like a friend letting their guard down and telling you a secret."

Every year the I Enjoy Music Enjoys Your Favorite Songs series reveals my weak spots. This year I can tell you that I've definitely not listened to enough Big Thief yet. Not that I don't dig 'em, I just haven't yet given them the time they probably deserve. This solo endeavor feels like the perfect gateway, just some sweet finger-picking and Lenker's unique, intimate, seasoned voice. As she cues up the song, Lenker says "This is one of my favorite songs...of mine," and everyone laughs. I appreciate the honking of one's own horn. If you can't honk your own horn, who is gonna do it for you?

"17" - Bartees Strange
from Curtis Reeves:
"In my most intimate friendships I often talk about holding my space in a room or area as a black man. I often used to shrink myself to accommodate for others sensibilities. Bartees often makes songs that make me feel personally seen and heard. This song has multiple layers of “Curtis making a place for himself” within this world. Also how uncomfortable and unsettling that can often be in a scene dominated by white faces and voices. I’m from NW Florida and grew up for my first 11 years in the projects. This song is me rooting for that kid who felt he needed to curry favor from anyone “first time that I felt impending doom was realizing I’m too black for the room, I was pushing it down, pushing it down, just for you for you”.

He also mentions his mother repeatedly in this song. I lost my mother in 2022 and another Bartees album Farm to Table helped me attempt to begin healing from that. “17” starts to become a declaration to myself from my own and my mothers spirit to see myself for all I am now, and to know I belong in whatever room I end up in."

This is such a beautiful statement from Curtis, I feel very lucky to publish it. When Bartees Strange announced his Shy Bairns Get Nowt EP a few weeks ago, he did so with an Instagram post that contained some thoughts about the public reception of Horror, the album "17" is on, which came out in February of this year. He was very honest about how it felt to have an album launch feel underwhelming in relation to his expectations: "I put an album out eight months ago and I was sure it was going to be a big earth shattering thing...When it didn’t do what I expected I thought well —?? Do I suck at this? I had to sort of re-meet myself. Ask myself why I made things at all anyways."

I think it's pretty cool that he was so up-front about how it feels to work hard on something that doesn't get boosted into the indie rock hype cycle. Especially with the lyrics of "17," with him feeling "I'm too Black for the room," those words hold extra weight considering this sector of music still feels dominated by white voices, and still so often defaults to whiteness. So I guess reading Curtis's reason for "17" being his favorite song of the year, I am struck by the emotional effect a song can have on an individual person, which exists beyond hype / clout / accolades, beyond the endemic racism of the music industry, might be hard to measure or even detect, but remains the reason to keep doing any of this stuff...

"New Threats from the Soul" - Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band
from Anthony C:
"It's a beautiful song about self-destructing but it also features perhaps the best collection of one-liners ever assembled."

and from Alex:
"It feels like this song has been stuck in my head for a decade. An ancient hymn that makes the time slip away: every time that intro kicks in and you see the ten minute run time, feels like only a second later and it’s over. The whole album feels that way, but i never stop humming that damn chorus."

I'm generally pretty anti- letting "the algorithm" make all of your music choices for you, but recently I changed my Apple Music settings to let them choose recommended songs for me once my own chosen album or playlist had wrapped up. That's how I got put on to the Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band—I believe they got pulled into the stream after Manning Fireworks ended (that one IS growing on me, last year I wasn't super into the MJ but I'm coming around). A nine-minute epic that sounds kind of like if Jimmy Buffett had gone to liberal arts school and came down with generalized anxiety, or if Bob Dylan made Blonde on Blonde with a Zyn pouch in his upper lip, "New Threats from the Soul" takes you on a pleasantly sarcastic journey to the bottom. My favorite lyric: "I was a cactus flower / I had Heisman buzz / Now it's a pissing competition / Between the man I am and the guy I was."

"Diet Pepsi" - Addison Rae
from Cynthia Rodríguez Juárez:
""Diet Pepsi" by Addison Rae makes me feel like everything's fine in the world, and that pop music has a future. The production of that entire album slaps so hard. If the radio played more stuff like this, I would still listen to the radio. We would all still listen to the radio. It's one of those songs like "That's Alright" by Kindness that, if it became a Top 40 Hit, we would be living in a much better world today. Next time a weasel wrecks up the CERN, it should take us to that magical timeline of perfect pop songs getting their flowers and the world not being a mess. I demand a parallel utopia and I demand "Diet Pepsi"."

Beautiful write-up, Cynthia. Addison was my girl this year. All-female production team? Music videos with chic choreography, film grain and Icelandic locations? A revival of the original iPod headphones? A song about DIET PEPSI? What a delightful expansion from her spiritual mother Lana Del Rey, who of course scandalously invoked the full-sugar version of that second-tier soda last decade.

Addison tore out of the khia asylum parking lot in a pink convertible with one of those furry steering wheel covers this year. She knew that there are plenty of girls out there who are gorgeous and can move their bodies in a seductive manner, and so rather than be content to gyrate vertically on TikTok forever, she sought to differentiate herself by curating an aesthetic from the most interesting bits of the world around her; she is, as Lady Gaga once put it, "unafraid to reference or not reference." The schools are open with Addison, Addison is not a Child Left Behind, and let her be an inspiration to all.

"Spit" - Gelli Haha
from The Flon:
"From the cover art, artist presentation to the most surrealistic live show of 2025 (trampolines! matching costumes!! all female band!!! CHOREOGRAPHY!!!!) this has been a song playing non stop in my house since it came out. The live show is sensational and check out her videos and performances on youtube."

A little electroclash, a little trance-y, soooo much fun. Gelli Haha feels like she comes directly from the zesty ancestry of Lady Miss Kier and Peaches—a Parker Posey type of party girl with googly eyes on the back of her head. If she were starting out in the early 2000s she might have been in a band like Gravy Train!!! but instead we get this kinda chic, polished clubby vibe that is very "let's put stickers on our phone cameras and actually dance." And that doesn't even cover her Contemporary Clown energy. Keep jestermaxxing in 2026, everybody.