Music Listeners

listening to Your Favorite Songs 2025, part 3

keep rollin' rollin' rollin' rollin

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

"STILLWELL THEME" - Frog
from Aoife Josie Clements (@ravineangel on bluesky, @ravine.angel on insta)
"A beautiful song about getting laid off, giving up on your dreams and moving back in with your parents. “IATSE spells ‘I’m an alcoholic who talks shit about everybody’ / I’m a pro, this ain’t a hobby” is an unbelievable couplet. It hits me in the soft, instinctual Charlie Brown Christmas / Royal Tenenbaums part of my gut, yet somehow Goes at the same time? Like, I want to slow-dance to this as the credits roll. As I’m sure is the case for many of us, I spent the year in a near constant state of terror and heartbreak, and I was happy to have a fantasy of letting it all burn down. (Ditto the other big song for me this year, Ethel Cain’s “Amber Waves”)."

There is something beautifully familiar about Frog. They have that quality where every song they play feels like it was your favorite song five years ago. Instant nostalgia, time-released delight. I wrote about their "Unplugged and Unhinged" concert film for the blog a while back...

..."STILLWELL THEME" sounds like a rough-and-tumble version of the Cheers theme, or maybe a country-cozy rendition of Billy Joel's more verbose hits. Really dig the magical friction of a song about your life falling apart, that sounds like it's about everything coming together in harmony.

"Tipping Point" - Megadeth
from Willie Caldwell (@williewaldwell on instagram, member of the Pile and @frenchnursesband)
"I know this is an objectively dumb answer. It should be something from the new Indigo De Souza or Nourished By Time albums. I know that! We all know that! But for whatever reason most of my listening time this year has been consumed by a recovering alcoholic and heroin addict playing guitar as fast as he can and screaming about the government out of spite.We’re turning the page on a lot of legacy acts because of how time works and I think it’s great when they can bow out on a high note.

This single and the upcoming (at the time of writing) I Don’t Care (Dave’s in his teenage rebellion era at the age of 70!) give me hope that it’s never too late to fight for what you believe in and make good art. (His personal politics are probably absolutely fucked, but he’s an idiot savant and I refuse to look into it further. I had the chance to see him in London while I was there for a wedding but he was opening for Disturbed and that album and guy suck too much for me to justify the ticket purchase while also going broke to support my friend’s love.) So, yeah all of this is to say Tipping Point fucking shreds and life’s too short to not like what you like full heartedly, even if it’s objectively dumb."

Thank you Willie for this one, I had no idea Mustaine was still cooking and I'm glad I know now. I read Dave's memoir for my podcast and it's still one of the wackier books I've ever read in the music memoir zone. I want to use this opportunity to share a couple of my favorite lines from Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir:

On why he started playing music: "I’d gotten into rock ‘n’ roll for the lifestyle, not because I aspired to great musicianship. I didn’t sit around waiting for people to come up and say, "Gosh, Dave, you arpeggiate so beautifully!'"

When introducing himself at group meetings in rehab: "I’m a recovered addict and alcoholic; I mean...I’m more like a dope-seeking missile, and for those of who you have done inner-child work, well, I have an inner weasel."

On converting to Christianity and turning his life over to Jesus Christ: "I’ve tried everything else. What have I got to lose? Sure I’ll turn my life over to you. Why not? My life sucks anyway."

Anyway I'm truly proud he's still out there making new tunes, and "Tipping Point" feels as ripe for a hockey game chant as anything else in his catalog.

"Sports car" - Tate McRae
from Madeleine:
"Is this a safe space to say that I love Tate McRae? I think she's a genius. She made a hard pivot from derivative moody pop by literally singing "sad girl bit got a little boring" and started releasing music videos that showcased her psycho dancer's sensibility, clearly honed through years of growing up in the harsh and unfeeling environment of Calgary, Alberta. In last year's video for "2 hands," she drives a sports car around, introduced by a subtitle that reads "(SPORTS CAR!!!)," and then this year she released "Sports car," which has a music video with *no sports car in it at all*. Incredible.

"Sports car," the song, is straightforwardly horny in a refreshing way, taking the classic metaphor of "cars = sex" and repeatedly hitting everyone over the head with it. So many songs these days ask the listener to read between the lines, to see lyrics as poetry, to understand Lore. "Sports car" says "I THINK YOU KNOW WHAT THIS IS" and then, in case we didn't get it, adds "I THINK YOU WANNA UHHH." The beat is propulsive and synthetic in a way that is clearly derivative of 2000s club pop, but Tate has never pretended to be groundbreaking (another thing I love about her). In a year of trials and tribulations, this song has never failed to cheer me up. Let's go ride!"

Last year Madeleine recommended a Taylor Swift Tortured Poets cut that I'd written off and ended up giving a favorable second glance. Now I'm revisiting a song that almost made me crash out over its lack of melodic chorus back in February, and you know what? Yes. Madeleine is right. This is a heater. The Pussycat Dolls of it all is a good thing. We need more hair and legs tossed in different directions. We need a decent spray tan here and there, especially now that Ariana Grande is so ghostly pale. (I just googled "Tate McRae spray tan" just to see what showed up, and lo, here's ALOHA GLOW SUNLESS TAN taking credit for Tate's bronzed Lollapalooza skin on TikTok. I love the world wide web.)

One of my gigs last year was editing an interview series for Logo and one of the interviewees was Tate's choreographer Sean Bankhead, who revealed that Tate, a frequent audiovisual contributor to the ongoing '00s renaissance, had never seen the "Crazy In Love" video. People were agog, but I actually think that's a superpower. She plucks inspo from the era, tabula rasa style, with a clear head and a ballerina's work ethic. That being said, god bless to anyone who tries to fuck in a modern sports car, there's not a lot of interior room in those things. You need to fuck in a CLASSIC CAR, an enormous one that looks like a shark.

"S.N.C." - Darkside
from Matthew Perpetua, Fluxblog:
"The middle section with the "I did it for the rush" sample is one of the coolest things I've ever heard, it's like the voice of God getting broadcast directly to your skull and God sounds like the Beegees. Incredible arrangement, god tier sample flip. I have no idea how they arrived at this song, the mystery makes me like it more.

You already know I'm a Coachella girlie even though I hit the polo fields long after the fest's heyday. I'm also a lurker on the Coachella subreddit because I'm a fucking dork. When they aren't insisting that Daft Punk are definitely, absolutely, no doubt reuniting for next year's festival, that sub's users are pretty good at surfacing acts on the lineup I wouldn't have necessarily noticed. This year one name popped up often: Darkside, Darkside, Darkside.

I listened to Nothing in preparation for their set and "S.N.C." was by far my favorite song on the album; when it came time for their Gobi set, I dragged my crew inside the tent just as "S.N.C" was kicking up. The vibes were HEADY. I think at least a few people in there were smoking marijuana cigarettes. Anyway, between the sample flipping, the jam band-ish energy, and the minimal disco framework, this is a good listen for any type of music enjoyer.

"Home Sweet Home" - Johnny Mullenax & All His Friends
from @acidnasa.bsky.social:
"There was a lot of really good music released this year, but they were artists I've submitted in previous years: Agriculture and The Armed. Johnny and his band play an almost weekly "Bluegrass Brunch" near me and it is great to see how talented they are. This is one of my favorite songs that they do, and this is the best version that they've recorded of it. And even then it still doesn't compare to seeing them do it live, where it feels like they're playing it 150 mph."

Hooooolly shit!! This is why I do this. I would have never listened to a song like this if someone didn't tell me to. Talk about "it's our human right to go fast"—this is positively blistering bluegrass. The guitar solo is cranked...the fiddle/guitar pairing is nutty...the speed is unreal. I'm hooting AND hollering.