Tag / Kim Petras

by sweensryche

New Songs to Quarantine To, May Edition

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Here are my favorite songs released in May 2020, the month we decided a pandemic was over because we just really super wanted it to be. While any news of America’s blind “reopening” scares me to no end, even I, the guy at the grocery store who still wears gloves, can support one thing opening up again – your car window. On your next drive, press play on this mix and crank the volume. Because the only thing that’s contagious about it are the hooks.


1. Pa Salieu – “Betty”

Spacious, dancehall-infused UK hip hop that shows how mesmerizing vocal syncopation can be.

2. Charli XCX – “Enemy” 

Over some full-blown Cyndi Lauper slow-dance synth-pop, Charli XCX realizes the person she loves has the power to destroy her.

3. Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist (ft. Rick Ross) – “Scottie Beam”

On the same week George Lloyd was murdered by Minneapolis police officers, Indiana rapper Freddie Gibbs dropped this chillingly appropriate chorus: “The revolution is the genocide / Yeah, my execution might be televised.”

4. Moses Sumney – “Keeps Me Alive”

Here’s a falsetto that can dance in the rafters of a track like an acrobat.

5. Carly Rae Jepsen – “This Love Isn’t Crazy”

CRJ shared a whole album of B sides this month, and per usual, they’re catchier and sweeter and more emotionally authentic than most artists’ A sides.

6. Polo G – “Martin & Gina”

“I get this feeling in my stomach when you next to me.”

7. Kim Petras – “Malibu”

’80s Whitney Houston reverie pop that fills our need for party music like summertime comfort food.

8. Kamaiyah – “Go Crazy”

The last time I heard a rapper be this intoxicatingly melodic over a cookout-ready G-funk beat, Warren G was asking us to mount up.

9. Orville Peck – “No Glory in the West”

Everybody’s favorite Orbison-ian masked country singer is back, with another gorgeous, stripped-down showcase for his honeyed rumble of a voice.

10. Grave Digger – “Lions of the Sea”

Shamelessly catchy retro power metal about Scottish military history from a group of middle-aged German dudes? That’s my kind of escapism.

11. Nick Hakim – “Qadir”

Seven healing minutes of low-lit, slow-building, grief-stricken R&B.

by sweensryche

October’s Bestest Songs

CLean Oct.jpegHere are my favorite tracks from October 2019. I will not be trading these pieces of sonic candy for ANYTHING. Nope, not even Junior Mints.


1. Gang Starr – “Bad Name”

I don’t understand how Gang Starr is releasing new music, and not just because 50% of the group was lost forever when Guru succumbed to cancer in 2010. Rap has evolved and splintered in so many ways since the duo’s mid-’90s peak. Yet when the serpentine rasp of an unearthed Guru verse finds the pocket of DJ Premier’s rumbling, trumpet-flecked beat, “Bad Name” feels impossibly, thrillingly alive.

2. Caribou – “Home”

You know you’re doing something right in life when the return of a daily routine is cause for celebration.

3. Neil Young & Crazy Horse – “Eternity”

On Neil Young’s new LP, which seethes with environmental outrage, this sweet, ramshackle love song is the eye of the storm – an effective reminder of all we have to lose.

4. Pusha T – “Succession (Remix)”

Pusha T sounds completely at ease rapping over the theme to HBO’s white-collar depravity drama Succession. And of course he does – he’s our poet laureate of dirty deals.

5. Kim Petras – “Close Your Eyes”

EDM Elvira realness.

6. Sudan Archives – “Glorious”

Violin-fueled R&B is not something I knew I needed.

7. Danny Brown – “Combat”

Danny Brown might be the most versatile rapper working. He’s got a voice that could drown out a marching band, but here he is, gently cracking wise over a muted trumpet loop: “I don’t give a fuck / I could talk a cat off the back of a fish truck.”

8. Coldplay – “Arabesque”

Based on this advance track from its impending double album, Coldplay is getting back to doing what they do best – writing catchy, atmospheric songs that shamelessly, earnestly embrace us. Don’t we all need a hug these days?

9. Ghetto Sage – “Haagen Dazs”

A memo to Chance & Kanye: Chicago has left you behind. Ghetto Sage is the second dynamic Windy City rap crew to make this list in 2019, and they’ve got the heady slam poetry of Noname to anchor this ice cream-metaphor-laden jam: “Looking at Ben and Jerry / Hope one of my n—-s coming through.”

10. Wiki – “Fee Fi Fo Fum”

As sitars burble under the surface, this self-proclaimed New York giant casually raps about sipping Arnold Palmer. Damn, does it go down easy.

11. Bask – “Three White Feet”

Celebrate the early darkness of late fall by cranking this – a beautiful, billowing cold front of progressive Southern metal.

by sweensryche

June’s Bestest Songs

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Here are my favorite tracks from June 2019, a time when I would usually chase those delicious clicks and list my Songs of the Summer. But nobody ever clicked. It’s fine, it’s fine. It’s fine! It’s fine. I don’t need you anyhow. JUST WATCH ME NOT CARE.

1. Prince – “Sex Shooter”

This never-before-heard demo of Purple Rain-era Prince, laying down a song he would give to Apollonia 6 to perform in his movie, is as excellent as you’d hope – a pop-funk workout so erotically charged, even the puns are sexy.

2. Sleater-Kinney – “Hurry On Home”

“Disconnect me from my bones,” pleads Carrie Brownstein on this lustful synth-rock scorcher, foregoing the “you up?” routine in favor of complete emotional transparency.

3. Goldlink (ft. Haile) – “Yard”

This chameleonic DC rapper made this list last month by applying his sinuous flow to an Afropop groove. Here, he does it with dancehall, eradicating bad vibes like a sonic exorcist.

4. Kim Petras – “Clarity”

Shimmering, flex-laden 2019 pop meets Pete Townshend’s “Let My Love Open the Door.”

5. Nicki Minaj – “Megatron”

The legend returns with her best single in five years, an island-inflected banger that plays to all her strengths, leaving the scents of rum and Mercedes leather in the air.

6. Hatchie – “Her Own Heart”

An Alternative Nation dream-pop ballad that sounds like The Cranberries getting The Bends.

7. Freddie Gibbs & Madlib (feat. Anderson .Paak) – “Giannis” 

I’m still reeling from seeing Anderson .Paak perform back in May. And his gliding croon and formidable bars are perfectly suited to this twinkling groove from Madlib. But that doesn’t stop the Indiana rapper Freddie Gibbs from outshining them both.

8. Lucy Dacus – “Forever Half Mast”

“Yes you’re evil but you’re not that bad,” goes the chorus to Lucy Dacus’s July 4th-inspired single. Over rich Americana strumming, Dacus nails the guilt of being from the richest, most damaging nation on earth, and loving it all the same.

9. Zara Larsson – “All the Time”

At first, Zara Larsson’s latest single feels like a swing at the Song of the Summer crown.  “Summertime and I’m caught in the feeling,” she sings over the roboticized, irresistible mantra, “From the breaking of the day to the middle of night.” But this isn’t about partying at all.

10. Bill Callahan – “What Comes After Certainty”

Magic is for rom-coms. The real shit, the chills-up-your-spine shit, is knowing, without a doubt, that you have found your person.