Staying in similar territory to last week, where I wrote about January 2015, but my life felt quite different by Summer '16. By this point I was established in my job and overall pretty happy with how things were going. Will my music taste reflect that? Let's see...
Hearing this song kick in gives me an instant rush of pleasure. It's Springsteen's classic sped up and sounding even more triumphant than the original. It's a little tongue-in-cheek, being sung by an obviously gay frontman, but the way that the instrumentation gallops along like a machine makes me want to take off on the adventure that the song promises. It's bold and powerful, and in my eyes, the superior version of Born To Run. In 2016 I fell in love with the first Frankie Goes To Hollywood album and this song still thrills me - a strong start.
I've said it before but Alex Turner doing his Euro-crooner thing just makes me melt. This sounds like it should soundtrack a movie set on the Riviera; it's lush and palatial and sun-soaked, the smell of suntan lotion and expensive perfume mixed with sea air. I love the hushed vocal and retro guitar sounds. Do I understand what the lyrics are about? No, I've never taken the time to think about it - I don't think I need to.
3. The 1975 - Sex (Acoustic) 🔵
The 1975 were my favourite band of 2016 and I was still in my 'honeymoon phase' in the summer. This version of the song sounds so, so different to the one on the album with its capoed arpeggios and Matty singing the lyrics in that barely-comprehensible indie boy accent with an added layer of melancholy. With the addition of a synthesised string part played long chords to underpin the whole thing, it turns a big emo song into a reflective ballad. Sex was the first The 1975 song I loved and the acoustic version puts a different spin on it that's no less beautiful.
4. Cocteau Twins - Cherry-Coloured Funk 💜
We are now entering a dream world. Where Matty was barely-compehensible, Elizabeth Fraser is entirely incomprehensible in the way that she sings - it might be English but it's impossible to tell, and it's like being in another universe. That shoegazey guitar part is hypnotic, like being taken by the gentle waves on a calm sea. Cocteau Twins are one of the greatest bands ever to come out of Scotland; their beauty is unsurpassed.
5. One Direction - Temporary Fix 🔵
Boybands aren't usually my thing and I was never a 'Directioner' but Spotify offered me this and it's quite edgy and sexual, especially if their audience is supposed to be young girls. It has the sort of rock drums and suggestive vocals that wouldn't sound out of place on an album of the era by someone like All Time Low. It sounds like a Harry Styles number, the sort of thing that would fit in on his first album, so I was surprised to find that Niall wrote it with some other pop songwriters and that it wasn't an outtake from an indie band that they sold to 1D.
6. Jefferson Airplane - Somebody To Love 🔵
A 60s psychedelic classic. I think Grace Slick is so cool - I read her autobiography last year and she described how she and her boyfriend started a band with another couple just because she wasn't sure what she wanted to do with her life, saw some friends doing well with their band, and thought it looked like a fun job. I always find it interesting when people talk about choosing music as a career rather than claiming it was some sort of 'calling'. I'm glad she picked this career because she has such a commanding, powerful voice. This is my favourite song of theirs; it makes me want to dance and perfectly encapsulates what I imagine it was like to be young during the Summer Of Love.
7. The 1975 - Milk 🔵
Milk is a hidden track turned fan favourite, a rowdy little emo-pop song about drugs which I love to hear live. They always play it really fast and it's a short song with just two verses and choruses so it's a perfect burst of energy midway through the set. The combination of simple riff, quiet verses and wild chorus are magic.
8. Cocteau Twins - Pearly Dewdrops' Drops 💜
Some more Cocteau magic. This song sounds like the sun coming out to chase away an April shower. The component parts of waltz rhythm, toy piano twinkles, washes of guitar and dreamy vocals combine to create something soothing and uplifting. It's lovely. 🥰
This has that 2010s echoey EDM production which I don't love, but I fell for this song because her voice is so, so pretty. The chorus, and in particular the way she sings 'oh darling', hooked me in. I think the style is starting to sound really dated; it's got that dubstep build up and drop with keys and heavy beat, but with an indie pop song welded on top. It's too delicate, vocally, for the club, but too traditional in its EDM elements to be a cool indie record. I rate it highly for the singer and not the backing.
I've written a couple of times already about Nicole's lyrical style and themes and this song is typical of that. She plays a simple two-chord guitar part which matches the sweetness of her voice, and pairs that with a lyric about a boy who kills his girlfriend's parents before taking her off on a killing spree which ends only with his execution. I always assumed it was fictional - a Bonnie & Clyde for the mass-shooter generation - but upon looking it up I've discovered it's the true story of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate in 1958. Nicole closes the song with "and sometimes I feel we're heading down the same road" which is a chilling ending; no longer just a ballad about the past but now a cautionary tale to entertain her own lover.
Opening with synth steel drums (one of my favourite instruments), this would be a fairly conventional dance song if it weren't for the inclusion of Grimes. She sings in her usual fragile femme voice and adds some unusual sounds into the mix to keep this interesting. The end result is something more ethereal than the dance music which was in the charts and therefore it hasn't dated as much and still sounds fresh.
This is called an acoustic version but it's entirely synth-based - it's just a sparse and slowed-down arrangement of the song. Matty is singing in his melancholy boy voice again as opposed to the knowing smile that The City is usually performed with. It's atmospheric and a different take on the song which is pretty but doesn't rival the album version.
I've written about Milord already so I won't go into depth again, but it really stands out here. Following on from the synthesisers and slow acoustindie, the intro to Milord sounds light-hearted and quaint. I think Piaf works better for me in the context of a playlist than as part of an album - she really shines in contrast to the modern shiny pop. Milord is a real romp of a song that is brought down by its inclusion on a 12" of ballads.
14. Cults - Go Outside 🔵
Hearing this song during a pandemic makes me really sulky. The xylophone part which opens this song and then runs through it is a really cute motif, almost like a jingle. The song has a 70s rhythm mixed with modern vocal production and I think it's pretty but a bit sad - I think the lyric is about trying to convince a depressed partner to get up and join you outside, and eventually giving up? Either way, it makes for nice advertising music.
15. Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot - Bonnie & Clyde 🔵
That weird animalistic/yodelling noise at the end of every line is very annoying, but it's something to cling to when you don't speak French so can't use the lyrics to work your way through the song. I don't know what the couple are saying but have always presumed they're playing the couple and telling their story (running the lyrics through a translator has proved that theory to be correct). It's a nice ballad, they sound a little bored which adds to the mood of doomed lovers. The other weird thing for me is hearing them repeat the couple's names, which are American, in a French language song. I do think it's cool to hear icons portraying icons though.
16. FKA Twigs - In Time 🔵
If I was to pick my favourite modern-day singer it might be FKA Twigs. I think her voice is perfect, the way she sings in her very English accent with such fragility which is combined with heavy-handed beats and world music influences - it's a fascinating sound with so much going on. I love that she grew up adoring punk stars like Poly Styrene and Anabella Lwin but didn't go in that direction, she just took what she needed from them attitude-wise and built something modern. Musically it does sound like the mid-10s which is receding in the rear-view mirror now, but her voice is timeless.
17. Amy Winehouse - Tears Dry On Their Own 🟢
Like Twigs, Amy is another timeless talent. This sounds classic due to the retro production and old-school jazz sound of her voice. Tears Dry On Their Own is a decent Amy Winehouse song but it's not one of my favourites; it's very loose so I find it hard to hold on to this one and really live in it.
18. Édith Piaf - Padam, Padam 🟢
Again, I covered this when I wrote about The World Of Piaf. This plays an interesting contrast with Amy Winehouse as they're both mid-century sounds but where Amy is loose and jazzy, Édith is controlled and powerful.
19. Pet Shop Boys - West End Girls 🔵
A very different mood, from a vintage orchestra with passionate vocals to cold synthpop and disinterested spoken lyrics. I love the sound of West End Girls, it's somehow both detached and soulful. "Sometimes you're better off dead, there's a gun in your hand and it's pointing at your head" is one hell of an opening line. The synth choral and brass instrumental part is very dated now and another verse would have been preferable to this break. I'm taken in by the way Neil Tennant almost raps this song - I'm not saying it's hip hop but it has political spoken words set to a repetitive beat with sampling throughout...
20. Milk Teeth - Swear Jar 🔵
A rare pop punk number for 2016, with a slow vocals-and-chords intro opening up to the full band for the second verse. It's the third of the trio of songs on this disc about young people running off and getting into trouble but there's no murder in this one, just second thoughts; it reminds me of the TV show The End Of The F**king World. It has that last-song-on-the-album contemplative feeling to it and I wish there was one more verse as I'd like to have heard more of it.
21. The Crystals - He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss) 🔵
The bass intro to this song is instantly recognisable. I am in two minds over whether to refer to this as a 'love song', it's obviously incredibly sad and a lot of people say that it shouldn't exist at all as it glorifies domestic violence but I think it's healthy to have this sort of perspective out there. Subject matter aside, it's a decent sounding 60s girl group song performed by a group of professionals, it just isn't as uplifting as Then He Kissed Me.
22. Death Spells - Why Is Love So Disastrous? 🟢
What an unsettling intro this has - a sort of horror movie spoken word sample. By 2016 I was moving away from hardcore music but the sound of these frantic drums makes me long for a packed venue with a wall of death and everyone throwing themselves around. It ends with a fade-out which sounds wrong, like it's a sample and not the full song (I think it might be faded out before the DJ starts talking). It's not the best of its genre but not bad.
Looking back at this list, I'm not sure why I was so obsessed with songs about escapism and violence at this point in time... I think it's coincidental as I don't remember purposefully looking for that sort of thing, although I suppose I was seeing Robbers by The 1975 and its allusions to Bonnie & Clyde and True Romance and all of that. Unlike Winter 2015, when I was listening to mostly chart pop, this is a mixture of alternative music and old stuff. The music which was going for a modern sound now sounds very much like a product of its time, whereas the songs taking influence from past movements have survived better. Not a bad mix overall - nothing that I'd be averse to hearing again - but most of it fits the "good songs that I'm happy to hear but not favourites" category.
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