shazams of my past
My rawest musical mode just might be Shazam mode. My husband will stealthily raise his phone, shark-like, at the dance club to try to "id" a song a DJ is playing so he can pilfer it for his own collection. I will Shazam songs I don't know that I hear in public that make me act like some teenybopper's mom in the 1950s catching an earful of rock and roll: hey, that's a SNAPPY tune! what IS that?
So in the name of pure musical honesty, here are some track IDs I have gathered in my Shazaming over the years.
"Pump It Louder" - Tiësto & Black Eyed Peas
I Shazamed this at a Brooklyn Nets game. It was my first NBA game and I didn't realize how present the DJ is as a presence at NBA games (then I read the interview with DJ Shawna, the official DJ of the Milwaukee Bucks, in John's Music Blog and got more of a taste of what the role of basketball DJ actually is). The Nets DJ played music basically the entire time the other team had possession. And "Pump It Louder" got played in the third quarter or so, loud as hell, and I was like: who did this tech house remix of the fuckin Peas? Is this recent? It sounds recent. And no one told me? Sometimes I feel like the last torch-holder for will.i.am and his buds.
"Graveyard" - Halsey
I have a soft spot for Halsey. It was her 2016 profile in Rolling Stone that did it. She was definitely putting on a bit of a Bushwick rapscallion act, but there was something genuinely compelling about her, and about the story that she ended up recording her breakout single because she met some guy at a party at a Newark Holiday Inn who introduced her to another guy who had a music studio. Who knows, maybe it's just clever backstory marketing, but it worked on me. I hadn't heard "Graveyard" when it came out, and then I feel like Manic, the album it was on, got memory-holed because it came out January 2020. Anyway I root for Halsey in general, I liked her latest rawk album very much, and most importantly, Halsey has Magic Voice, where it sounds like she's channeling some kind of video game fairy.
"Under the Water" - Camden Cox
I remember why I Shazamed this one! I assumed this song was a weird interpolation of the Rüfüs Du Sol song "Underwater", a song that has a super soft spot in my heart after a pumpkin-carving house party I went in Boulder, Colorado turned into a spontaneous dance party once someone broke out the Rüfüs. The Camden Cox song has similar watery lyrics, but also a remarkably similar sound, with big fat syncopated bass horn-synths. Anyway, it seems to have nothing to do with the other song, but it confirms my interest in vibey ~120bpm tunes. But look, I'm not nuts...
"Futile Devices (Doveman Remix)" - Sufjan Stevens
Not me Shazaming while watching Call Me By Your Name (2o17)! Not me indeed!! I love a "remix" that is more or less a soft piano swap-in. I watched this movie last year, in an absolutely miserable state, the perfect state to watch such a movie. The older, I get the less time and energy I have for being aimlessly moody, so I enjoyed this *paean* to picturesque emotional simmering very much. Who among us hasn't had a summer affair that has ended in the feeling of your brain having been Vitamixed into a thin juice? Would you believe me if I told you the next video that autoplays on YouTube is "futile devices with one hour rain loop"?
"Fake I.D" - Riton & Kah-Lo
Speaking of summer affairs, this was Shazamed by moi when the people nearest to our Prospect Park were absolutely blasting it. They all looked great and were wearing great outfits, and it was probably at least 80 degrees and sunny, and I definitely had some flavor of White Claw in my hand. A fine summer day art-directed by God, basically.
Molly Mary O'Brien runs I Enjoy Music and tweets here.
