GL.24.06: CASEYSIMONE BALLESTAS
GL.24.07: Nora Tang
GL.24.08: Tony Schoenberg
***
0. The Stats
Let’s start with the facts.
This is the 4th time I have been asked to contribute to the famous Burn Your Hits List. The 2nd time I have started writing one. And the 1st time I have gotten it in on time-ish (you’ll know I did if this is published. lol.)!! (You know you’ve a good friend when your lack of submission doesn’t get you kicked off the list. Thanks, Aaron! … More gratitude at end <3)
Right, so this year I liked 455 songs, 48 of which were also released this year.
After exporting all said songs into two playlists, respectively, and then all of their metadata into this spreadsheet (with the help of “spotlistr.com”), I have identified an album of the year, a runner up, and 8 themes that characterized this year in music. (Due to issues with brevity herein, I will make a compendium Substack post for theme 8… maybe.)
THEMES:
1. Album(s) of the Year
2. Bangers
3. Light Bops
4. Mellows
5. CAPITALS
6. Covers, Samples, and Remixes
7. Repeats from Years Prior
8. Live Music
Without any further ado, and after years-in-the-asking, the hits to burn 2024:
*Pro-tip: The writing is VERY-roughly timed to the songs (depending on how fast you read), so if you play the playlist while you read, it will be like a podcast. ;)
Theme 1: Album(s) of the Year
First Place: Cartoon Darkness (Amyl and the Sniffers)
Runner up: Tigers Blood (Waxahatchee)
I mean, if I could shake anyone’s hand this year, Amy, let’ssssssss go!!! The way Amy Taylor and her bandmates dropped singles and music videos throughout the spring and then a full studio album … I was in a total A&tS chokehold. (And Spotify told me they were my most listened to artist with 494 minutes of listening making me in the top 2% of their listeners …)
My faves on this album are: ‘U Should Not Be Doing That’ and ‘Jerkin’ … but just listen to the whole album! (Or better yet, let's all go get tickets to go see her perform somewhere live in 2025?)
Before I touch on my two fave tracks from the album, I want to plug my godparents who intro’d me to her and the Viagra Boys in 2022 with their cover of John Prine’s ‘In Spite of Ourselves.’ This year, core memories have been: blasting the new Cartoon Darkness album’s music videos on their TV—hooked up to my godmother’s JBL L166 Horizon speakers from 1982—and dancing with them in their living room.
Right, so my two fave tracks work like a bit of a diptych. When ‘U Should Not Be Doing That’ was released I was actively working on the ongoing task of holding steady to my own sense of direction. And this song is the punk-rock anthem for this act of holding your own:
“I’m in my head, doing the work, putting on my shoes and my socks because I got to get out of here. Another person saying I am not doing it right. Another person trying to give me some type of internal advice. But. I am working on my work, I am working on my work, I am working on who I am. I am working on what is wrong, what is right, and who I am. I know my worth. I’m not the worst.”
Everybody needs to learn the lyrics to this song and sing it aloud! But when you do, you will quickly discover the tricky rhythmic complexity of how Amy emphasises the melodic beat.
So with all that sense of self worth built up from their first-album-teaser, out comes the second single: ‘Jerkin.’ And Jerkin’ doesn’t jerk around. It gets right at it. No literally, the song starts:
“You’re a dumb cunt, you’re an asshole. Everytime you talk you mumble, grumble. Need to wipe your mouth after you speak cause you’re an asshole, bumhole, dumb cunt. You are ugly, always. I am hot always. You are just a critic. And you want to hit it. You were fucking spiders. I am drinking riders.”
Well, what do you know, this song dropped while I was getting jerked around by a canonical-2024-*situationship.* (lol, I am nothing if not a trend-girly, had to get me one of these coveted sitch-ies). But I, like everyone, was already having a brat-summer, so I knew what I had to do by the time she got the chorus:
“Don’t want to be stuck in the negativity. Keep jerking on that squirter you will never get with me.”
Anyways, this is a music review, not the start of my tell-all diary-style substack (I ended things, no more being jerked around, why thank you).
The point is, just go listen to Cartoon Darkness. I am sure it will find you ready to speak truth to (insecure) power and banish the voices telling you to second guess yourself. Good luck!
The runner up album, with the second most songs on the list from one album, I will talk about in a compendium Substack post, where I (hopefully will) dive into the live music I saw (trust me, this post is too long as it is …).
3 Sisters (Waxahatchee)
Right Back to It (Waxahatchee)
Much Ado About Nothing (Waxahatchee)
Theme 2: Bangers
LUNCH (Billie Eillish)
Espresso (Sabrina Carpenter)
Toro (Remi Wolf)
Tragic (Charly Bliss)
Nasty (Tinashe)
Wanna Be (Glorilla, Megan the Stallion, Cardi B)
Mood Swings (Little Simz)
Santiladang (Master Peace and Santigold)
The bangers. AKA, this year’s dopamine. Yeah, ‘360”! Bumpin’ that!
So…welcome back, Charli xcx.
During her brat-summer, I learned the ‘Apple’ dance, and posted it after its peak but before it was over-done. (Folks, she’s chronically online! She’s a trend forecaster: my website has had lime green as a highlight since early 2022. She’s been brat-ready, if not, just-a-brat, for years. And, apparently, so was the rest of the internet.)
I did some musing during the fall of brat-summer and the rise of “very demure, very mindful”-trad-wife obsessed pre-fall with Carlos Torres when he was in town to see the Viagra Boys (I hate to be a bratty tease, more on that show later, again, see the live music compendium). Where we landed: when women start dancing and talk openly about subversion, traditionalism always comes to the party and (attempts) to shut it down. Ugh. NIMBYs abound, and given the patriarchy is pervasive, it even gets into our meme/culture.
And yet, despite Nara Smith and Ballerina Farm gripping us all, queer women seemed to be the talk of the town this year (s/o Julia Fox who is now a lesbian, hell yeah!) / talk at the dinner table, ahem, at ‘LUNCH.’
This really was the summer to be a queer woman. ‘Twas fun! … I don’t know if it's (internet) appropriate to go into more detail about my thoughts on Billie Eillish’s salacious hit, but we love that she’s out (and that it didn't have to be a thing, per se). In any case, it certainly gives a whole new meaning to ‘Here’s to the Ladies who Lunch,’ … and ofc you’ll find me simping for a song that has lyrics about skincare.
Ok, so of course, Charli is a gay icon, Eilish is out, and Chappell Roan took off this year (also more on this in the compendium, as I saw her at Outside Lands) thus, Sabrina Carpenter was teased for being the only straight pop star. But, let me ask you this: is there a more queer-coded lyric than, “too bad your ex don’t do it for you.”? I’ll wait. Right, so ‘Espresso’ ate drank.
The throughline here is: women were *fuckin’* this summer:
“Dancing around and spilling wine, you look good in my hotel robe...I’m horny and I’m not worried about waking up to people down the hall … sayin’” ‘Toro.’
While I am not 100% clear what/who ‘toro’ is, once I was also not familiar with what/who a ‘scrubs’ was. Regardless, I’m here for this unbridled, enthusiastic energy. And as a Bring it On devotee, obviously, I have to be because:
“BRRRRRRRRRR. It’s cold in here! There must be some Toros in the atmosphere..."
Stay with me.
This summer was giving: girl-power. And, thus, we were blessed with new music a la Legally Blonde, meets Bring it On, meets The Parent Trap, meets Josie and the Pussycats with Charly Bliss’ ‘Tragic.’
(Shut up, did I jump and sing-along and dance so hard with our illustrious publisher and his Ms. at the Charly Bliss concert in San Francisco!!)
Something about this song makes me want to crawl into the extended universe of ‘Tragic.’ It’s the gamer-girly-pop synths, the layered vocal production, the bridge, ummmmm … Ctrl + Shift + C + “ROSEBUD” I just want more. I want to go there, if you will:
“I want to go there, I want to go where you are. I know it in a vacuum. Feel it in a packed room. Couldn’t call you baby but I know I got to have you. Let’s make it a habit. Love so good it's tragic. Once you let me drive a car you know I am going to crash it.”
Whatever the above songs are pointing to in Girl World, I think it's good.
On the eve of (starting the process of) writing this post, I had a heart-to-heart about being vulnerable with your heart, risking crashing the car, if you will. The conclusion: You gotta do it. In fact, you already are. (You do it just by getting in the literal car, like it is one of the most unsafe things most of us do regularly.) The catch is you have to protect the precious cargo too, your heart and those of everyone else you invite into your proverbial car. I think this is, most simply, our task in life: i.e., love bravely and safely. Do that, and maybe, just maybe, you will just find someone/s who will match your freak …
A friend of mine has called delicious food “nasty” since at least 2014. And, as it turns out, the rest of us have just been waiting for an anthem celebrating, no, lauding, the nasty, too. Thank you Tinashe, you ‘Nasty’ girl!
Basically, the girlies made this year’s bangers.
And, if you were online at any point this year, it seems we all ‘Wanna Be’ the girlies. And, “real-hot-girl-shit,” I get it. Anyways, enough word play, GloRilla, Megan the Stallion, and Cardi B’s collab was the yummiest contrast of vocal timbre. And, I mean, the lyrics were calling out the boys, generally, and being flimsy in character, rightfully. Love. (And I mean, same.)
This year, even something as stereotypically judged as femme-and-negative such as mood swings, became a banger for the list: Little Simz’ ‘Mood Swings’:
“I’ve been on the high, low, free souls go only where the love is. I’ve been having mood swings, mood swings, mood swings.”
… but I mean, in 2024, the year of our lord, really who hasn’t been having mood swings? And when you talk about it in a British accent … like, I also want mood swings.
Ok I lied, as a plus one, a single boy is allowed in the Girl World fort: Master Peace who joined Santigold on the track ‘Santiladang,’ you’re in. Like I said, talk to me in an accent courtesy of the British diaspora and I just melt, throw in values, dead:
“Are you hearing me? When I put my boots to the ground nothing in my way ... Try to hold me down, fight the power with my fists up.”
Theme 3: Light Bops
I Got Views (Getdown Services)
A Tear (Lostines)
Labrynth (Magic Fig)
Thrown Around (James Blake)
Messy (Lola Young)
Common Blue (Warpaint)
Lingerie Model (Paige Kennedy)
Bale of Hay (The Pill)
The thread here is chill-fun. These songs make life feel like an upbeat soundtrack to a, your, sweet life-as-a-movie. In other words, they are cinematic each in their own way.
Play ‘I Got Views’ if your life-as-movie is all about (outsized?) confidence and boundaries, in a british-lad-walking-through-the-streets-of-Manchester energy kind of way:
“I’m not saying you don’t have your own struggles, I am just saying, I don’t care”
Play ‘A Tear’ if you’re feeling nostalgic for She and Him. And you are post-breakup-sad (lyrics), but can’t help but feel glass-half-full energy of the future thats right before you (replete with 50s-adjacent upbeat harmonies—think ‘Cathy’s Clown’):
“A tear, a tear is running down your cheek. Lonely nights are all that’s left for me cause I had to say goodbye to your brown eyes.”
Play ‘Thrown Around’ if you have been thinking where the heck did James Blake go? Well apparently he’s been “thrown around” lol. Hope it was fun. Honestly, through the sound of the building synthy crescendo that builds into a rhythm piano that drives the song in a Coldplay-Clocks-type way that gives way to Moby-Play-type drums and then back to flutey-vocals, you too will be thrown around.
Play ‘Messy’ if you have always hoped that the opening chords of ‘Every Breath You Take’ weren’t actually well, a song giving’ stalker energy. Lola Young starts with a similar opening to The Police only to quickly move into an almost ‘Dreams’-like strings moment followed by the ask, “Who do you want me to be?”:
“You know I’m impatient, so why would you leave me outside the station when it was like minus 4 degrees and I get what you’re saying, I just don’t really want to hear it right now can you just shut up for like once in your life? Listen to me? ... but cut me some slack, who do you want me to be?”
And then the chorus:
“Cause I’m too nessy, and that I am too fucking clean...and I am too perfect, until i open my big mouth. I want to be me, is that not allowed? And I’m too clever, and that I’m too fucking dumb. You hate it when I cry unless it's that time of the month. And I’m too perfect, until I show you that I’m not. A thousand people I can be for you, and you hate the fucking lot.”
What I am hearing: another woman here for radical, confrontational, girlhood. You want this track playing for the drone shot of you walking down some major piece of infrastructure as you feel yourself stepping more into your own. You are the main character, you want to be you, yes this is allowed!
I Choose Vodka | Bridget Jones's Diary | Screen Bites
Play ‘Common Blue’ if you’re in an indie movie montage (you might be packing, or moving, or driving, something that indicates change is afoot and you are in control).
“Let’s see what rises up inside. Take my time, don't have to say why. Pleasures like a butterfly. Can you see the colors? Everything is changing.”
The next two in this cluster were pushed to me via instagram ads. And I’m glad I got targeted.
‘Lingerie Model’ is a British indie-synth dig at cultural disregard non-binary folks. Put this on if you’re getting ready and are feeling queer, hot, and jonesing to air guitar or lip sink into hair brush:
“Cause I’m a little rat boy in the body of: A LINGERIE MODEL! ... she’s giving pear-shaped trouble.”
‘Bale of Hay’ is another (British) grunge-pop dig at the cultural fetiisation of blonde women. Put this on if you’re wanting to rage against the patriarchy while wearing all pink and Doc Martens:
“I’m a blonde ditz ... I’m a blonde bitch, bimbo, buthole, tits. You expect me to be a sex icon, oh wait, I AM! You want it, I got it, I’m a bale of hay, baby bale of hay!”
Theme 4: Mellows
Spike’s Interlude (Mr. BigB)
Coyote, You’re My Star (Dana and Alden)
Police Scanner (Channel Beads)
Nomad (Clairo)
Life Is (Jessic Pratt)
TEXAS BLUE (Quadeca and Kevin Abstract)
There was a little collection of modern jazzy tunes in the liked songs. I'll s/o the two with backstories:
I found ‘Spike’s Interlude’ on Marios Fournarakis’ Discover Weekly (this is one of my hacks, I listen to other people's DWs when mine gets a bit shit. So go follow and listen to your friends’ DWs, they might have gems, you also learn about their mood…)
And I discovered ‘Coyote, You’re My Star’ on TikTok via Gucci Pineapple. Umm yes, he and his brother are the band leaders of an incredibly talented group of young Jazz Musicians which I was lucky enough to see in person in San Francisco this fall at the Rickshaw Stop.
Theme 5: CAPITALS and/or “Eastern/Europea Harcore”
DEVIL IS A LIE (Tommy Richman)
BACKBONE (Chase & Status and Stormzy)
AH OK (DIKKE)
NISSAN ALTIMA (Doechii)
YO NO TENGO UN NOVIO (Lola Indigo and La Zowi)
HIGHJACK (A$AP Rocky and Jessic Pratt)
LESGOOOOO (MEROL)
Europapa (Joost)
The Spark (Kabin Crew and Lisdoonvarna Crew)
You Make me Horny (Nico Moreno and Laren)
The Substance (Raffertie)
Tailor Swif (A$AP Rocky)
So there are three micro categories here.
First, we have hip-hop / rap tracks with all caps titles. (‘DEVIL IS A LIE,’ ‘BACKBONE,’ ‘AH OK,’ ‘NISSAN ALTIMA,’ ‘YO NO TENGO UN NOVIO,’ and ‘HIGHJACK’). Really, the most important thing to say here is: the world needed Doechii’s TikTok to mixtape to Tiny Desk trajectory! (And if you need songs to keep you going on the stairmaster, these are them…)
Then we have some driving upbeat and positive-lyriced Europop/Hardcore tracks (‘LESGOOOOO,’ ‘Europapa,’ and ‘The Spark’). Obviously, we can all agree: Joost being kicked out of Eurovision was a tragedy. And who knew the world needed an Irish Hip Hop group composed of gen alphas cheering us on with kind-affirmations? 🫶.
If we see a dream, you know we're gonna chase it (yeah)
So get over any fear you have, just face it
That's my passion and I couldn't live without it (no)
You can do it like we do it, don't doubt it (go)
Any obstacle, we find a way around it
If you're proud of who you are and what you do, shout it
Lastly, a mini-category that I can only be described as tracks-that-would-play-atop-a-movie-scene-of-an-Eastern-European-warehouse-rave: (‘You Make me Horny’ and ‘The Substance’). An honorary member of this category is ‘Tailor Swif’ because of the creative direction of the music video which was shot in Ukraine in 2021:
Theme 6: Covers, Samples, and Remixes
Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl (Broken Social Scene (2002) covered by yeule, IAN SWEET, June Henry)
Rebel Rebel (David Bowie (1974) covered by Tegan and Sara)
Save It for Later (The Beat (1982) covered by Eddie Vedder)
Liebe in Stereo (‘Stereo Love’ by Edward Maya and Vika Jigulina (2009) sampled by Baby B3ns and Yung Hurn)
It’s Not Right, But It’s Ok (Whitney Houston (1998) remixed by Mr. Belt and Wezol)
COVERS
While walking through the Dulles airport this summer, my Discover Weekly served up Broken Social Scene’s ‘Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl’. I was obsessed and listened to it on repeat for hours. When I got a bit bored, I downloaded every cover of it I could find. And while the original is from 2002, three covers were released in 2024. Ugh this song calls me out:
“bleaching your teeth, smiling fresh, talking trash…”
This song arrived after a lot of thinking I had done on the movie Daisies and the politic of being a teen girl. In short: it's meant to be unabashed, courageous, political, radical.
Of the three ‘Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl’ covers released in 2024, I think IAN SWEET’s version captures the essence of unabashed girlhood the best, which is what I love most about the song. June Henry’s feels like evidence of changing values of masculinity, yummmmmm—lucky young men of the future who also get to experience girlhood as a (genderless?) phenomenon. And yeule’s cover is giving: collab energy between a liberal-arts-sound-engineer and miscellaneous-creative-english-major (make of that what you will).
Moving on. If Spotify tells me that Tegan and Sara released new music, I am listening (side bar, speaking of Spotify push notifications, did anyone else get the notification that Prince released new music, only for it to go to a banger bollywood track?! Another place we see the impact of firing your workforce, but I digress…) Their rendition of ‘Rebel Rebel’ was giving: ‘Cherry Bomb.’
And Eddie Vedder’s cover of ‘Save it for Later’? Well I can’t get through it without tearing up. This year has been one of the first since my mom died that I haven’t been rushing…and in that space, among other things, I’ve been feeling a new wave of grief. One that is accessible and sweet. Lots of tears of joy for the love shared, if you will. And The (English) Beat’s album that ‘Save It for Later’ showed up on was not only my first vinyl record, it was my mother's and my favorite album. So you can understand how this song felt like a musical kiss and hug from her.
“Cry but I don’t need my mother. Just hold me in while I come to a decision on it. Sooner or later, your legs give way, you hit the ground…”
I think what I am saying is: I think my legs have hit the ground, finally. Thanks universe for getting this one to me, now I’m sending out the ask: I know Eddie Vedder’s voice is iconic and all, but how about an instrumental only version too!?
SAMPLE
If Yung Hurn is new to you, fix that. (Unless you don’t like German rap, then don’t.) While not all of his tracks are bangers, I mean duh, enough are that I have Spotify notifications turned on for when he releases new tracks. And in the first week of him and Baby B3ns releasing the track, ‘Liebe in Stereo’ which heavily samples early aughts club hit ‘Stereo Love’, I can confidently say I was singularly responsible for at least 50 streams. It takes you to Ibiza in the 2000s, spiritually, with a minimalist vocal aesthetic (which shouts out San Francisco!) that is so specifically Northern European. Maybe what I am trying to say is: I feel seen so I get up and dance?
REMIX
There’s not much more to say about Mr. Belt and Wezol’s remix than: it’s a bop. And if you like it, might I suggest Whitney Houston’s little-known christmas soundtrack from her Denzel Washington and Courtney B. Vance’s 1996 movie The Preacher’s Wife. Specifically, the ‘Step-by Step Remix’ on the album that set me up decades ago to love this ‘It’s Not Right, But It’s Ok’ remix.
Theme 7: Repeats Not From 2024
Since there are no rules for the Burn Your Hits list, that is, since you can also list music released in previous years. Of the 407 songs I liked that were not released this year (some of which I was astonished were not already in my music library!), I want to share a gaggle that, together, read like a relationship across many stages.
Eggs in One Basket (Tele Novella)
Waiting Room (Fugazi)
Short Skirt, Long Jacket (Cake)
Sinds een dag of twee (Doe Maar)
Good Sex (Palehound)
Love You to Death (Type O Negative)
Sweet Jane (Cowboy Junkies)
Don't Stop (Qendresa)
Do You (GHOSTWOMAN)
Blue Monday (New Order)
Fidelity (Regina Spektor)
First, we start with a song that I've committed to memory because I think it's essentially a lullaby, and Lord knows the only songs I have memorized are early 2000s club music and classical arias. Right, so ‘Eggs in One Basket,’ reminds you that you have to give your all, in life, clearly a theme this year:
They told you not to put
All your eggs in one basket
To have a plan b for safer landing
But the universe
Wants you to ask it
For that which you need
And it will answer
Fresh off the heels of that burst of confidence from Tele Novella, we get the second phase of relationships: the diving into romance. Fugazi sets the tone acoustically, and temporally, “we are patient, we are patient,” we can remind ourselves in my favorite recorded silence of all time in the first measures of ‘Waiting Room.’
Then Cake delineates what is sought: a ‘Short Skirt, Long Jacket.’ Finally a Dutch pop band from the 80s, Doe Maar (translation: just do it) reminds us how fun it is to fall in love and see someone through brand new eyes ‘Sinds een dag of twee’ (translation: for a day or two). ‘Day two eyes,’ could be a saying, I reckon…
Next, you’ve met someone, you’re seeing someone, its fun, there's chemistry of many versions. All poles thereof are covered between Palehound’s quirky ‘Good Sex’ (my most listened to song this year, according to Spotify) and the 90s metal classic: ‘Love You to Death.’
On your birthday last year I
Secretly put on a corset and
Fit it under a bathrobe
To surprise you
Palehound
I beg to serve, your wish is my law
Now close those eyes and let me love you to death
Type O Negative
Somewhere around then, there is some sweetness that emerges, a falling of hearts: ‘Sweet Jane.’ In this phase of heartfelt deepening, we (might) see some foreshadowing, in Qendresa’s ‘Don't Stop’:
(Don't stop ever loving me)
Don't stop ever chatting my name
Sometimes, an end is imminent like in GHOSTWOMAN’s ‘Do You’ before there is a kind of no-more-space-to-explore as hinted at in New Order’s eternal classic, ‘Blue Monday.’
All is well though in love and trying. You, maybe, reflect that you were careful with your heart as chronicled in 2010s twee-girl classic, ‘Fidelity.’ But you are resilient and determined; heart broken, but in a poppy-upbeat-tempo way. You start the playlist again.
Before I go, before we say goodbye to one another until we have new music and sounds and (shared) experiences from a whole new year, I want to tell you this: Aaron is really onto something.
Tending to my accidental soundtrack of this year (that is, all of the songs I gave a big-heart emoji to on an app) was joyous and emotional. I shed tears on a trans-pacific flight, I snuck editing moments in at work and played German Rap to my colleagues, I wrote this ALL-ON-MY-OWN (with no help from chat!!). In these ways and more, I felt like I tended my garden of sounds. I felt like I “stayed with the trouble, ” as it were:
“Staying with the trouble does not require such a relationship to times called the future. In fact, staying with the trouble requires learning to be truly present, not as a vanishing pivot between awful or edenic pasts and apocalyptic or salvific futures, but as mortal critters entwined in myriad unfinished configurations of places, times, matters, meanings.”
Donna J. Haraway
Thank you for this gift of reflection, Aaron. It has deepened my connection to these waves of sound that have accompanied me in a turn around the sun. A turn which, for lack of a better metric, finally saw me carve out the time to make music and this list a priority (i.e., taking *myself* to see live music for the first time since my mother died).
It’s good to be back! Happy listening!
No comments:
Post a Comment