playlist review: Good Culture Cottage Cheese's "Culture Counter" playlist
I thought this summer was going to be chill but I've been running around like a lil headless chicken.
First, because listening to James Frey's episode of How Long Gone has completely rewired my brain about self-promo, I must remind you that I Enjoy Music is now a music label that releases REMIXES and the first one just launched (Sun Kin and Styles Munson remixed each others' tracks, wild stuff, just wild) so that's been a thing.
Molly Mary O’Brien
Ok second...lots of fun blog stuff in the pipeline but I thought I'd bring back the playlist review, a format I used a little bit when this blog first launched two years ago. I saw a playlist that I couldn't help but examine closely, because the creator is my favorite brand of cottage cheese.
#notspon #justadmiration I don't know what makes Good Culture cottage cheese so much better than average cottage cheese but it's incredible. I first saw it mentioned, I think, in ex-Bon Appétit video star Claire Saffitz's Grub Street Diet, but it took me a couple of years after that food diary was published to get brave enough to tackle the concept of cottage cheese on a personal stomach level. Now, I eat cottage cheese for breakfast every day. Savory-style, with chili crisp and a handful of crumbled crunchy snacks, whatever we have in the house (pita chips, tortilla chips, etc.). That's it, you know my secret—the secret to good blogging is eating the same protein-rich dairy slurry daily.
Well, I usually eat it every day, but there's been a run on Good Culture and in fact all premium cottage cheese brands in the northeast Los Angeles area for weeks, which I must assume is inspired by some kind of horrible viral TikTok recipe. So I looked up G.C. on IG to see if they had announced a shortage or something, and what I saw instead was a link to a Spotify playlist that had soundtracked a recent Good Culture tasting event: Good Culture Culture Counter, a "FOMO-inducing twist on a classic foodie experience." As a music blogger, it felt right to review the playlist.
Overall notes - this is a "good vibes" playlist meant to keep people attending a brand activation in high spirits. Lots of inspirational pop and upbeat but non-aggressive tempos; a smattering of Y2k throwbacks, but enough releases from this past year to imply the desire to stay 'hip' and 'with it.' A few songs had topical food references: two songs that have fruit in the title, three songs with "sugar" in the title, one song that has fruit and sugar in the title ("Watermelon Sugar" by Harry Styles of course), plus a specifically dairy-themed song, "Milkshake" by Kelis.
Sequencing starts out a little shaky, with five Dua Lipa songs in a row, then two Lizzo songs, then three Haim songs...that's a lot of back-to-back The Wing type of shit....but it straightens itself out and finds its footing, ending with an intriguing run of jock jam adjacent songs that played anachronistically at my middle school dances ("This Is Your Night," "Blue (Da Ba Dee)," "Jump Around," "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It" and "Let Me Clear My Throat"), all of which must have sent the cottage cheese enthusiasts back outside with a burst of energy.
Random selections from the playlist with commentary:
"Peach" - BROODS
A 2019 song by a New Zealand duo I remember seeing in 2016 at my first ever Coachella. We've actually lost a lot of the technology to create "indie pop" like this and we're clawing that tech back. Sonically eclectic, mildly ecstatic. It is somewhat surprising this song wasn't on the Someone Great soundtrack.
"Houdini" - Dua Lipa
Picked this one because I just watched Dua Lipa get a little buzzed on negronis for a Vogue video ("Dua Lipa Makes Roasted Sea Bass Dinner"). Dua got razzed for failing to supersede her transcendent Covid album with an equally transcendent follow-up, but this was an impossible ask. She committed the crime of making an album of songs that are Pretty Good. What pop stars need to stop doing is describing their new work as "psychedelic." Dua did it. Miley Cyrus just did it with her latest album. Stop it, guys. A single distortion pedal does not a psychedelic song make. Don't point at a rock and tell me it's a shroom.
"Can't Get You Out Of My Head" - Kylie Minogue
How I feel about cottage cheese.
"Avalanche" - Bad Sounds
Had never heard of Bad Sounds before. They are two British brothers. Stylized post-Odelay metropolitan hip-pop meets 2010s afternoon festival slot indie. Not mad at this one. Wow, there's so much more music out there that I haven't heard than music I have heard. How will I ever listen to it at all?
"Sing Like Madonna" - Sebastian Schub
Based on the outsized number of listens this has on Spotify, this must have been a viral song from the past year or so. Very much in the realm of a soulful Hozier number, this feels a bit formal and intense for a cottage cheese tasting pop-up, but maybe some levity was needed. Sebastian Schub doesn't have his own Wikipedia page yet but he apparently contributed songwriting to Azerbaijan's submission for the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest.
"Hawt Heart" - Born At Midnight
Okay, a theme amid the songs I was previously unfamiliar with is becoming clear: music that could have easily been on an Urban Outfitters compilation. Back in the day, if you spent a minimum of $50 at Urban Outfitters, the sales associate would stuff a free CD in your bag. And the CD would be stuffed with bangers. The first time I ever heard a contemporaneously-released Radiohead song ("There, There") was on a UO sampler. Anyway, "Hawt Heart" has perfect quirked up retail energy. And turns out Born At Midnight's bio validates my perception: "Playing into whilst poking fun at our era’s omnipresent narcissism and self indulgence, the group stitch together an unsponsored sort of ‘product-placement-punk’." Yes!! Fake vintage band t-shirt rock (NON-DEROGATORY).
"like JENNIE" - JENNIE
You know me. If someone writes a song that romanticizes their name, I will support. Kassie Krut, Fergie Ferg's Fergalicious...women, we must celebrate our identities in the third person.
"Collect 200" - Collect 200
Excuse me...is this song called "Collect 200" by the artist Collect 200? Bad Company 'til the day I die, babe. I think Jungle's influence has been a net positive for music. Who doesn't want a poolside chilling vibe? Collect 200 is a new duo, a producer named Stevie Appleton maximizing his joint slay with another producer named Nick Henriques. They're so new (two songs on Spotify) that I needed to make sure that, after all the AI-generated psych-rock band kerfuffle of the past couple of days, they were a real artist. And I think they are? The due diligence is now the responsibility of the consumer—it's up to us to find out what is real. Good Culture promises their cottage cheese is "made from stuff you can pronounce"; cottage cheese is technically slop, but it's Real Slop. It's all in the curds.
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