Sing-a-long-a-blog-along

Happy end of May! Months are a sick joke invented by bastard father Time, but the end of every month should be welcomed anyway. It means we're travelling forwards, and I like that idea, even if I'd quibble with the speed of it. Today's song of the day is very on the nose. It's LCD Soundsystem's cover of "(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang", a groovy tune about how awful fascists are, just like how it says on the tin. The original song is 39 years old, but you would not know it - fascism is a tenacious little piece of shit, after all. Still, it's never a wrong time to dump on a stupid fascist - even literally, if you like. The thing I like about this song is that it gets that fascism is home turf for us in the West, and that we have to fight it as an enemy within, not as some kind of shocking invader from another planet. That's a truer message than any patriotic anthem. As if it needed saying, fuck fascism, and fuck white supremacis

Feeling more than a little writer's blocky today. Truthfully, it's hard to tell what to do with a silly blog like this given the state of everything, and trying to commit fully to one version of how to do things doesn't seem like the right idea. I'm aware that I've used the "let the music speak for itself" trick about two days ago, but that's the thing with music: it really doesn't need all these words about it, at the end of the day. Music is more than capable of speaking for itself when we can't. That's one of the reasons why it can be a medicine for times like these. Today's song of the day is "Jerusalem, New York, Berlin" from Vampire Weekend's 2019 album Father of the Bride . It feels like the right mood for today.

It has finally come. After seventy days of trying my bestest to come up with a new artist each day, today is the first time that I have doubled dipped. I'm sorry! I'm weak. Please say hello again to Sharon Van Etten, who we last saw on day 8. Told you she'd come up again. I do not think I have been subtle about the fact that I miss live music. I really, really miss live music! The joy in sharing what you love with others - it's good, and I really miss it. Still, you compromise when things don't go to plan, and a neat compromise I'm seeing now is the start of proper livestreamed shows with good sound and paid tickers that benefit the artist and their band. For instance, as I write this, I'm listening to Sharon Van Etten sing the hell out of a 10th anniversary performance of her first album, Because I Was in Love.  These quiet, reflective songs, like my song of the day, "Consolation Prize", are miles away from the sound of her latest album, but t

Whew. Almost didn't make it today. The powers of forgetfulness strike again. To distract from my near-failure, today's song of the day is one of those songs which is perfect and which nobody can criticise. It's "Something to Believe" from Weyes Blood's 2019 album Titamic Rising, a record which is just crazily, obscenely good all the way through and which, if I had a tiny bit less restraint, I would probably have all done in the first two weeks. It is a truly great song anyway (I was always going to like a song which begins with the lyric "drank a lot of coffee today"), even if I can now no longer listen to Weyes Blood without remembering the meme that called her "Lana del Rey for people who didn't support the Iraq war" - just listen to that voice! But there are ways to make great songs even better, and one of those ways is live performance, a forgotten art which once existed outside of somebody's bedroom. Look at those acoustics

Oh hey, it's day 69. I guess it means that I should say the thing. I've worked this hard to get to this point, so I might as well. Here it goes. The thing. Nice. There we go. Moving on. Today's song of the day comes from a film I just watched, a documentary on the Detroit singer Rodriguez called Searching for Sugar Man . It was soon into this film that I realised I had heard almost every song on the soundtrack, and that my dad had played his songs relentlessly when I was a kid. They'd just wormed their way into my brain, ready to be activated at a moment's notice, which I think is pretty neat. The brain's not too bad sometimes. The song is "Crucify Your Mind" from his 1970 debut album Cold Fact  (a bestseller in South Africa, don'tcha know). And wow ! Isn't it great? It's proper Bob Dylan-rivalling stuff - witty, eloquent, sardonic, perfectly tuneful. And let's be real here, Rodriguez has a much more pleasant voice than Bobby D.

After yesterday's very bad Dominic Cummings bit (anybody enjoy that? I'm asking because I personally did not), we're back to real music again. And, aw shit, I am feeling very musically inspired today. Blame it on the post-exams ennui and that. I haven't had an original thought not about Dominic Cummings in the day. It's a shame, because summer is usually a Very Musical time for me, for reasons.I can't quite articulate. Is it all the train journeys I would be taking? Long walks on the beach? Don't ask me why, but even in the cold dark of winter, I often find myself coming back to what was lighting up my brain back in July. So for today's song of the day, I am delegating to my past self - specifically, 2016 me. A thing I'll tell you about 2016 me is that he loved bands with less than 100,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. One song each from an obscure indie band, please. Today's song of the day is just one of those bands/songs - "A Millio

NOTE: Please do not read this post if you are not Dominic Cummings, senior adviser to the  Prime Minister. Please click away if you have made this mistake. If you are Dominic Cummings, please continue to read. Ha. I bet you, Dominic Cummings, expected something better when you clicked on this post. I don't know what kind of music you are into. Death... sounds? Death sounds. Are you into death sounds? It seems like you might be. In any case, I bet you didn't expect this. That's right, you piece of shit, today's song of the day, just for you, is the Waluigi Pinball theme from Mario Kart DS.  Waluigi, as everyone knows, is a horrible, defective man with not an inch of moral fibre, so this should signify the disdain I hold you in. That's not to say you are Waluigi - you are far, far worse, for Waluigi at least has the integrity to be honest about his dreadful nature. But as you listen to this irritating, curdling arcade theme, I do hope you are filled with the dev

If you have spent more than a single second on Instagram in the past couple of months, you might have seen the 30 day song challenge. I am not above it, even if my attempt petered out at about 8 days, for the record. One of the entries really stuck with me, though - the "pick a song by a band who's no longer together". There are many obvious answers to that - bands whose members have died, bands made up of brothers who hate each other, all of them very admirable and high-class. It is a sad fact that every time I've seen one of those entries, I've thought "but what about the early 2010s alternative band, Wolf Gang?". Justice for Wolf Gang, I think. Their music may not have been special, or particularly distinctive ( Suego Faults bangs, though, I swear), but they've wormed my way into their playlists for longer than the band may actually have been together. Today's song of the day is "Alveron", the title track from their second and la

Keeping up to date with music seems exhausting at the moment. For one, there's the endless conveyor belt of embarrassing milkshake duck moments - oh no, there goes Lana del Rey! Wait, didn't Doja Cat only get popular a few weeks ago? Even the new music seems stressful. The new 1975 album has 22 tracks? Yeesh. I am doing my best to try and navigate all of that, which leads me to the unfortunate position of becoming a hipster. Hey, did you know there was an actually good alternative album that came out yesterday that you probably didn't realise existed? Well, I did - I'm not like other boys (I dislike myself). Today's song of the day comes from that album, The Airborne Toxic Event's Hollywood Park. These guys are primarily famous for one song, the ultra-dramatic ultra-moody "Sometime Around Midnight" (it's a lot of emotional shouting), but I think "The Common Touch", and the entire album it belongs to, proves they ain't one hit wond

I will level with you here. I'm very tired, I'm very confused, and I am not really inclined to write anything other than the bare minimum for today's post. Unlike most times I've done this, I've actually got an excuse! Finishing a degree really takes it out of you. Contemplating what comes after takes what's left. I couldn't finish Avengers: Endgame earlier. I'm letting today's music speak for itself, then. The song of the day is the magnificently cursed rap from Succession season two, just released on Spotify, and I'd like you to bask both in its surprising musical proficiency and the absolutely bloodcurdling shittiness of the lyrics. It is an achievement of both music and television that I am glad to let stand in for whatever I could cook up to say about it. L to the OG indeed.

I finish my degree tomorrow, and I think that's kind of weird. It obviously had to happen, and it would have been weird anyway. Yet I don't think it would have been quite as weird as this. When I finish my second and final online exam tomorrow, I shut down my computer and university is done. And then I'll go eat lunch. Normal stuff. As ever when something ends, it's tempting to feel all nostalgic for what has passed (never mind the actual details of it!). So I've been going through lots of songs that I played over and over while I was at university, trying to recapture the obsessive headspace I was in whenever I picked that particular tune to define my life for a while, as you do. Today's song of the day is just one of those - it's "Never Miss a Beat" from Kaiser Chiefs' 2008 album Off With Their Heads , and it was the obsession of Louis almost exactly one year ago. It has seen me through infinite walks to college, gym visits, a 10k in Lond

I don't like summer. If you know me, you probably know this. If you're a family member, you definitely know this. I know Seasonal Affective Disorder is a thing, I know that sunlight produces serotonin, I know that humans are meant to be outside, yadda yadda. But ugh. Ughhhh. Is it really meant to be this hot? Seriously. For those who want to know. Did God intend this? Hot weather simply makes me very cranky. It's a smothering blanket that you cannot refuse. It is enforced joy for something that brings plagues of bugs and shirtless men wandering around town in its wake. Summer can go to hell for all I care. All I think about is it being October, with a cool breeze and leaves crunching over my feet. Anything else is garbage. Today's song of the day is tenuously connected to all that. "Bullet With Butterfly Wings", from The Smashing Pumpkins' 1995 album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness , is an angry song about anger, and that's enough of a moo

It's May 19, 2020, and it has been two months since I started this song-diary-cum-blog-cum-something-I'll-think-of-later. It's day 58 of the UK-wide lockdown, though we're now staying alert rather than staying home and I'm pretty sure I saw eight guys who weren't part of the same family playing basketball in the park yesterday, which doesn't seem right. Today's post comes from you in the middle of my final exam week, which is a strange time to be writing a daily blog. Honestly, though exams are still a gigantic fart in an elevator, I'm mildly grateful that something is happening to make a week feel different at all. Next month will come to you from the endless morass of post-degree-in-a-pandemic uncertainty, and while I look forward to watching nothing but Star Wars: The Clone Wars all day along, I don't look forward to that bit. It's at this point that I should point out that my degree ends in three days. It's kind of a whole thing,

Day sixty? Oy. Time flies during an exam season during a pandemic, right? Coincidentally, we're also hitting the two-month mark tomorrow, true proof that, and I cannot state this enough, the calendar is an absolute joke that should be cancelled. Did I mention exams? I am doing them. Well, two of them, and they're online. The ritual loses some of its power when you can drink coffee while working. There are many drawbacks to the world of the hated online, but one thing that I have come to appreciate is the music. This is naturally banned in a usual exam setting, but who's watching me in my bedroom? Nobody, I hope. As we all know, the only good study music is film soundtracks, and as we all know, the only good film is Bong Joon-ho's Parasite. Therefore, today's song of the day, "The Belt of Faith" from Jung Jae-il's score for the film, is right at the top of my playlist where it deserves to be. If the title doesn't ring a bell, think - ram-dom sce

There is truly nothing better on God's green earth than a song named "Intro". Okay, there are many things that are better, and that claim is ridiculous, but I hope you get the point that I just invalidated. Intro songs are exciting. They're full of potential and mystery and excitement for the album ahead, and, if they fancy it, they can just be 40 seconds of weird ambient music and nobody will be offended. That ain't the case with today's song of the day, the "Intro" from M83's 2011 album Hurry Up, We're Dreaming. What is this song about, exactly? Who can say! It's got some words that make some sense in there, but that's not the point. It's about creating a mood and a sense of a journey beginning, and showing off some delightful synthiness. I feel like "Outro" gets all the intention, and that ain't fair. "Intro" is weirder and moodier and much cooler. We should appreciate it more. Fine, yes, I also like

It's a shame when a song gets boxed in as an advertising thing. It kind of squeezes the life out of them; artistic achievement reduced to corporate ones and zeroes, the actual meaning of the song dissolving into a catchy jingle. On the other hand... Look, there he goes, defending capitalism again. Well, hold on one second. Sometimes, songs being jinglefied for popular consumption on TV is good and interesting, actually. Sometimes it recommends music to an audience who would absolutely not think of otherwise consuming it. Sometimes it's just curiously weird. Such is today's song of the day, "Harder Than You Think" from Public Enemy's 2007 mouthful How Do You Sell a Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul? . For reasons I'm actually very happy keeping a fun mystery, this song is now best known in Britain as the main jingle for the coverage of the 2012 Paralympics. None of the actual lyrics were ever used, so audiences could happily be fooled into t

Several weeks (or maybe a day?) ago, I started to try and commit to the whole "new music Friday" thing. No more falling behind the treadmill of cool new music releases. Now I would become a trendy boy, like I have always wanted to be. In a fully non-ironic way, that has fallen by the wayside. But darn it, I'm trying. And it certainly seems that today was a remarkable bumper crop of exciting releases I was only vaguely aware of. There's so much to scramble to catch up with! My choice, though, didn't seem too difficult; out of the many new albums that came today, Perfume Genius' S et My Heart On Fire Immediately stuck out. You can't ignore all those five-star reviews. My song of the day from that album is "Jason". Frankly, it's a song too well-crafted for me to describe, but hey. When I want to capture Perfume Genius in a song, I'd like to point at this: ethereal, featuring vocals so high and precise that I do not know how I did them, a

Okay, I'll be honest here, I almost forgot about the blog today. I'm doing my best to remember! But my brain is increasingly liquid these days, and occasionally something slips through the ooze. So today's post is coming in a little bit of a pinch, and with not a great deal of creative inspiration. It's "Late Night" by Foals from their 2013 album Holy Fire.  Why did I pick that? Well, because it's late night, of course. I mean, I think it is. Is 10.30pm late night? Does that just out me as a big old square? Am I out of touch with the children of today? I mean, it's late enough, but is it really late night? Much to think about, but not today. Song's good, by the way.

Algorithms have ruined music. That is what I've heard, anyway. Nobody listens to full albums anymore, and nobody really listens  to music at all; it's all a big wall of auditory stimulation to tide us over between Netflixes. Infinite choice means zero choice. I'm a tiny bit sympathetic to that argument. There's a dumb, nostalgic part of me that likes the idea of having to flip through displays in record stores to discover my new favourite band, and having to block out hours to enjoy the latest music rather than just pop it on in the background while I'm scrolling Twitter. And, okay, algorithms are at the forefront of a process of cultural dilution which stems from aggressive capitalism's total disregard for artistic value in favour of profitability. There's a good case to be made that the algorithms are evil. Still, with all of that very sensible analysis in mind, today's song of the day comes from my Discover Weekly on Spotify, and I think that the

We have many things to thank Twin Peaks: The Return  for. Kyle MacLachlan's perfectly stupid performance as Dougie. The gargantuan mindfuck of the atomic bomb episode. David Lynch having "another Monica Belucci dream". The nightmare-inside-a-nightmare finale. Today, I choose to be thankful for the Roadhouse. For the unenlightened (come on, guys, it's only 18 episodes, some homework and more existential stress than anybody deserves), every episode of The Return  ended with a live performance taking place at the show's fictional music bar. 18-year-old me was mostly blank about the acts there, but boy, did David Lynch snag some good acts. Sharon Van Etten, Chromatics, Au Revoir Simone, Eddie Vedder and more all gathered in a room for one long concert day of filming, and I love it so much. My favourite of the set, and today's song of the day, was a song I was obsessed with at the time anyway - "Wild West" from Lissie's 2016 album My Wild West

Freedom! Yes, I have been emancipated from the cruel whims of my very nice friends. This blog is once again subject to my horrible will. Today, I am thinking about delayed gratification. You know, that unfamiliar and non-relevant thing of having to wait a very, very, very long time for the thing that you would like to happen, and therefore being suspended in a state of tension from which there is no immediate escape. That thing that has nothing to do with the world we live in today. Songs live on delayed gratification. We wait for the chorus, or the bass drop, or 'dem riffs'. But my favourite kind of delayed gratification is when they wait a really, really long time to say the title, so you can point out what the song is called. In that vein, today's song of the day is "No Sleep Till Brooklyn", from Beastie Boys' 1986 album Licensed to Ill. This is an incredible example of delayed gratification. They keep almost - but not quite saying "No sleep till

It's been a long road (of seven days). Empires have risen and fallen. Something happened to the UK lockdown, though it's unclear precisely what. Through it all, Friends Week has survived. It involved some minor cheats, and a very large helping of latent social anxiety at asking people to do stuff, but hey, we made it. It's been a sort-of success, and in this town, that's a big success! The final friend (sorry, she probably didn't sign up for that title) to pick a song this week is Imy. She is a friend from the real world, which means I had to do the thing of accosting her about a blog she had never heard of and beg her for a song, like a polite musical mugger. Fortunately, she complied, and gave me her musical wallet, or something. The song she picked is Solomon Burke's "Flesh and Blood", from his 2002 album Don't Give Up on Me . Honestly, on hearing the choice, my mind instantly went to indie softboy territory, so it was a complete surprise

Friends Week was a little on the ropes yesterday. Calling in an assist from my mum was not precisely the spirit of proving that I have friends. Not that my mum isn't my friend, to be clear - if you are reading this, you are!! - but, well, you get the point. Fortunately, what is dead may never die, and on its penultimate day, Friends Week has risen from the tomb of mixed metaphors and is back in the house (I had no clue where that sentence is going). Today's song of the day comes from Gabriel, one of my flatmates from university. Wait, shit. Former flatmate. I'm not there anymore. Ah. That brought down the mood a little. Gabriel picked out "Here, There and Everywhere" from The Beatles' 1966 album Revolver . Hey, it took 51 days, but we finally got to the Beatles. We cannot forget them, after all. Imagine a world where nobody remembered the Beatles. That'd be crazy, right? (#watchyesterdaynowstreaming) This is actually one of the Beatles' more blis

Day 50! Five-zero! The golden five-o! A half-century! I understand some of those terms. Anyway, it's Day 50, a hilarious milestone because I am certain that I have either been doing this blog for a few days or several years, depending on how time seems that day. Friends Week does not stop for arbitrary milestones, however. Back when I started it off, I joked that it was hilarious how I had "seven friends". Well, now it's time to pay off that dumb bit, because today's friend of the day is my mum. This is partly due to my crippling shyness at asking friends of my age, and partly due to the fact that I promised her and she likes reminding me. Fortunately, Mum picked out a perfect song for today. It's Simon & Garfunkel's "The Boxer" from 1970's Bridge Over Troubled Water, and did I mention that it's freaking perfect? I mean, it comes from a perfect album, but this is perfect squared; wistful Simon & Garfunkel and emotionally over-

The great thing about doing Friends Week is that every day is a vital piece of affirmation. It's like I'm asserting that I've met other human people in the world one day at a time, and I think that's really powerful. The third day of Friends Week means a third friend, and that friend today is Michael. Michael is a friend from school, a place where I think I went at some point long ago, and the magic of Twitter means that we can occasionally shitpost in each other's general direction to maintain connection. Don't say Jack Dorsey never gave us nothing. Michael picked out "Hope" from Blood Orange's 2018 album Negro Swan , which is a song that proves that he is at least significantly cooler than I am. This is just a really cool song. It makes me feel like I've done a lot more in life than I have actually done, and have become both sophisticated and zen in the process just by listening to it - a dangerous illusion, but a comforting one. It'

I have become a bit sceptical of optimistic songs lately. They just don't seem to hit the mood, you know? I don't want to hear Frank Turner bellowing about how we're not dead yet at the moment. I want the inky dark of my soul to be represented in audio form right now. Today's song of the day is therefore a bit of a curveball with me. Today's friendly friend responsible for picking a song is Jasper, whose very evident love for Tom Rosenthal's music made it not entirely surprising that he picked out a Tom Rosenthal song for the day. I see you, Jasper. I see your Spotify, which I view as the window to anybody's soul (is that weird? I hope not). The song is "Throw the Fear" from his 2017 album Fenn , and I have to admit that its defiant and sunny optimism confused me. You see, it's purportedly about seizing the day and unlocking one's inner potential, as communicated by its happy tone. The content matches the lyrics, and it's exceedin

Against all odds, Friends Week has reached its second day. I know, I have more than one friend! This is a joke I will continue to make, because weak self-deprecation has always been my speciality. Sorry, therapist. Today's song of the day comes from the mind and also the voice of Sasha, my very cool internet friend. Sasha asked me to "take good care of her child" (the song), and I am going to do my best with that. The child/song is a-ha's "The Sun Always Shines on TV" from 1985's Hunting High and Low , You know, the one with "Take on Me", and the other songs that are not that. I would be lying if I said that my exposure to a-ha had gone any further. 80s music is a weird and baffling thing to me, and my taste in it is overwhelmingly mainstream, so to go for even a slightly deeper cut is revolutionary and frightening. Thankfully, this is not a difficult song to listen to. Those synthy, mildly anti-consumerist boys knew what to do! Ah, to punc

Everybody loves a gimmick, especially people who are running a blog which needs 365 entries. I am saying this, of course, in relation to myself. I'm excited to announce that I have found a good gimmick. Unsurprisingly, I've been the one choosing all the songs for this blog as of yet. While that is very much the point of a blog by me, it does help build a sense of sameness that we do not want in this house. So, for this week, I am handing over the keys of the music car (?) to others. I mean that I am asking different friends each day to pick a song to write about. I am calling this, imaginatively, 'Friends Week'. I know - I have seven friends? Don't worry, I'm accommodating for that. Today's song of the day comes from my friend Alice, currently holed up for the next couple of months in the very nice island of Jeju in South Korea. It's "Kiss with a Fist" from Florence + the Machine's first album, Between Two Lungs . Honestly, I'm shoc

I like to think of "song of the day" as more of a guideline than an actual rule. Who needs songs, right? They're just musics with words in them, and that personally doesn't mean a lot to me. What I'm trying to say is that I have chosen another tune from a soundtrack again and I would like to justify myself. Today's song of the day is the absolute mouthful, Hans Zimmer's "What Are You Going to Do When You Are Not Saving the World" from the Man of Steel soundtrack. Hey, I can hear some faint rumbling in the background. Man of Steel ? The grimdark Superman reboot? Yes, that one. I'm not a big fan of it, really (I am not a #releasethesnydercut warrior, for my sins). It's a bit of an overblown mess that sinks into its mindless destruction and mindless Christ metaphors by the third act. But hoo boy, have you heard that soundtrack? That is the stuff . That's the kind of thing that gets the blood pumping and the serotonin miraculously pro

"I Am the Walrus" is a landmark in stupidity. Everyone takes John Lennon seriously as a profound songwriter, but he's also responsible for the lyric "g'joob g'joob g'joob". I mean, it's not that weird, I guess. William Shakespeare loved dick jokes more than Adam Sandler could ever wish to. But I'm still confused how this deeply evil song came to be. Its existence is like a glitch in the universe - a tear in the flypaper of reality. It simply should not be, and yet it is, and will always be. One imagines that it has existed for millennia, waiting for a mortal vessel to give it form, and, upon the heat death of the universe, it will simply become part of the Great Nothing until it is ready to reborn. Today's song of the day is the Oasis cover from 1998's The Masterplan.  I know that it seems gimmicky not to choose the Beatles one, but I like this cover a lot. For one, Oasis covering the Beatles is perfect, the snake eating itself be

Happy May! A new month may not seem like much of an occasion at the moment, but I'm firmly believing at the moment that future > past. I welcome the rapid passage of time, if not scientific progress on making fast travel a real life thing. Let's just get through this nonsense. I was going to do a dumb and on-the-nose "song with May in it" pick for today, but at the very least second, my subconscious vommed up something slightly more interesting and still possible to link very, very loosely to it being a new month, so here we are. Today's song of the day is "Ogden's Nut Gone Flake", the title instrumental track from Small Faces' 1968 album. I hear you - Louis, have you chosen something idiosyncratic and original today? Could you be acquiring individual taste? Don't worry. I first heard this song in the announcement trailer for Grand Theft Auto V , eight and a half years ago, and that is the only reason why. In its defence, it was a pr