King Krule “Stoned Again”

“Stoned Again” moves along on the slow drag of a grungy bass riff that serves as the numb, deadened center of a song that’s otherwise expressing extreme depression, paranoia, and grief. The arrangement sketches out multiple levels of awareness – the guitar and sax parts fill in a melancholy atmosphere that’s like a dimming perception of the bleakness of the outside world, while Archy Marshall’s vocals cover conscious thoughts and feelings. He splits his vocal into two overlapping parts – the first a semi-rapped stream of conscious ramble contrasting memories of innocence with a pathetic and desperate present, and the second mostly wordless screams of anguish. The effect is similar to superimposing in film, and it’s up to the listener to decide whether it’s meant to evoke a collapsed timeline of emotions or the feelings just under the surface of the coherent thoughts. Marshall’s voice is unrestrained in both performances but particularly impressive in the foregrounded part where his words seem to tumble out of his mouth and verses end with him shifting his phrasing into a bark of disgust.

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Chemtrails “Slag Heap Deity 1”

“Slap Heap Deity 1” comes in upbeat and bright, bopping along as it comes to a big chorus in which Mia Lust cheerfully sings about the inevitability of failure. “We try our best, we are unsuccessful,” she chirps, “our hearts get filled with regrets and cholesterol, then we all just die yeah yeah yeah yeah!” I think normally this sort of peppy negativity would be considered a subversion of the form, but I think in this case it’s more about finding joy by rearranging expectations. The energy and drama of the song is not ironic, this isn’t about some sardonic wink to the audience. Lust and her band sound like they’ve found freedom in letting go of a lot of nonsense, and of throwing themselves into these chords and these melodies in the moment. And is insisting that we’re not special actually the same thing as nihilism?

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Gimgigam featuring Takara Araki “Dunia Kuu”

“Dunia Kuu” seems to introduce new musical ideas and textures every 20 seconds or so but never feels busy, cluttered, or disjointed. It’s more just a steady lateral progression through different sensations, all held together by a steadily bouncing groove, quasi-tropical instrumental motifs, and wordless vocals that are just shy of Donna Summer-ish moans of pleasure. The contrast of negative space and busy percussion through this track feels very humid to me, but not necessarily in the oppressive sense – it mostly just sounds like the way the air feels just after a flash rainstorm in the summer.

Buy it on Bandcamp.

Here’s a collection of playlists I’ve made recently; they’re sort of like my version of what used to be released as compilations and box sets.

WELCOME TO THE ’90s: THE NEW POP 1989-1992

An exploration of sleek turn-of-the-’90s pop sounds – not quite ’80s in style but also not what would take hold for most of the ’90s either.

WHAT WAS INDIE ROCK? 1991-1995

This one is starting from the conceit that indie rock is a specific genre with a particular aesthetic rooted in the first half of the 1990s.

WHAT WAS ALT-ROCK? 1991-1996

This one, which is a companion to the indie playlist, examines alt-rock – or alternative rock – as a genre with its own set of conventions rather than simply a marketing catch-all term.

WHAT WAS COLLEGE ROCK? 1986-1990

Completing the trilogy started by the previous two playlists, this one explores the foundational “alternative” music of the mid to late ’80s, when it was more likely to be called “college rock” or “postmodern.”

THE HIGH ’80s: GLOSSY POP 1985-1987

This is an exploration of the the ultra high energy, freakishly clean pop aesthetic of the mid-’80s. You probably already know these songs, but I sequenced them to highlight how unhinged it all is. Imagine living like this!

PRE-MILLENNIUM TENSIONS: POP BEATS 1996-1999

Pop and rock in the time of “electronica.” Back when artists – mostly established acts trying to keep their relevance – put loops and beats on everything.

MODULAR POP: 1995-2004

Mapping out the often kitschy and appropriative post-hip hop aesthetic in indie culture, DJ music, and the Shibuya-kei scene spanning about 10 years.

FUSION AND FUSIONS: 1970-1975

A collection of songs exploring the spaces between funk, jazz, psychedelia, progressive rock, and R&B in the early to mid ’70s.

TRIP HOP MOOD MAP

This playlist collects all the major trip hop classics alongside songs with a similar feel by artists not typically associated with the genre.

FUCK THE PAIN AWAY: ELECTROCLASH SOUNDS 1998-2005

Exploring the raunchy, abrasive electroclash era at the turn of the millennium, along with some aesthetically adjacent music.

Lianne La Havas “Weird Fishes”

Lianne La Havas co-wrote all but one of the songs on her new album so I feel a little bad about focusing in on the one she didn’t write, which is a Radiohead song. I mean no disrespect to her as a songwriter, but her work in arranging and performing “Weird Fishes” is remarkable, up to the point of rivaling the original Radiohead version in quality. La Havas’ version of the song isn’t far off from Radiohead’s arrangement, but she loosens up some of its stiffness and foregrounds R&B elements that they had left under the surface. There are other songs from In Rainbows that are more obviously Radiohead approximations of R&B – “Nude,” “House of Cards,” “All I Need” – but “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” tilts more towards their art rock comfort zone with its interlocking guitar melodies and Steve Shelley-ish beat. La Havas’ interpretation is inspired in hearing the soul in this one, for slowing it down to a more liesurely Erykah Badu-ish pace and giving space for the vocal to convey a sensuousness that Thom Yorke stops short of fully exploring. It’s not hard to imagine members of Radiohead listening to this recording and hearing the song they were trying to make but were not able to create due to their limitations as performers. These limitations are what give their own performances and recordings character, but an interpretation of their work on this level this reveals their full range as songwriters.

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Kate NV “Plans”

Kate NV presents her titles in English but sings in Russian, which I suppose makes a certain amount of sense: In terms of reaching the English-speaking world, i.e. a substantial chunk of the potential market for her sort of groove-centric art rock, having the titles be understood and pronounceable is a matter of utility. The actual content of the music is so effective in terms of melody, groove, and texture that English lyrics are superfluous. (After all, plenty of indie records are sung in English but are barely comprehensible because the singing is muffled or mumbled.) “Plans” sounds like Kate Bush with the rhythmic edge of Interpol – jagged and thrusting, but also soft and hazy. About two minutes in the song takes a very welcome left turn into a sax solo apparently assembled entirely from samples. It’s a great bit of unexpected atmosphere that nudges the sort deeper into a Bush-esque hyper-romantic surrealism.

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Hum “Waves”

The sound of “Waves” is simple enough to explain with two ’90s reference points – it’s basically the sensuous romantic noise of My Bloody Valentine but performed with the precise brutality of Helmet – but the effect of the music goes beyond that aesthetic arithmetic. It sounds simultaneously violent and serene, and truly vast in scale. The chord changes feel like they could represent geographic epochs, like the song is some kind of time lapse representation of chaos and catastrophe settling into equilibrium. Matt Talbott’s voice is low in the mix; his monotone vocals make him come across like a cold and dispassionate witness of this enormous noise. His lyrics are like jotted down observations – not particularly emotional in tone, but emotional in impact as he describes the humbling effect of perceiving things at this scale and remove.

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Taylor Swift “Invisible String”

“Invisible String” is a song in which Taylor Swift ponders the notion of fate, of whether there was something guiding her to the stable, happy relationship she’s in now. The lyrics lay out two unrelated trajectories coming together, like she’s looking for some logic in how her life has played out. A lot of the charm of this song is in that she’s not fully convinced this is some divinely preordained thing, though she thinks it would be “just so pretty” to think it was. The traces of skepticism give the song its depth – it’s about looking at this relationship as a miracle that she’s grateful for, not some fait accompli. The tone of the music, which sounds a bit like she was trying to remember how to play Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” but arrived at this instead, feels bittersweet and hesitant rather than jubilant, as the lyrics might indicate. It sounds like she’s being careful not break a fragile and delicate thing, as though she’s afraid that if she expressed more joy about this relationship the invisible string could snap.

Buy it from Taylor Swift’s official site.

Whitney Houston “I’m Your Baby Tonight”

From the first few seconds “I’m Your Baby Tonight” feels slightly, imperceptibly wrong. It’s something about the beat – is it too fast? Or too emphatic too soon, like it’s somehow starting with the climactic fill? There are pop songs that sound like an idealized experience of cocaine, or like the music one might make on cocaine, but this song is like being around someone who’s totally coked up in the most cartoonish way while you’re stone sober.

The frantic energy of the music feels incongruous with the song on a compositional level, but it does suit the lyrics, in which Whitney Houston sings about obsessive, yearning lust. It’s an interesting contrast with her earlier hit “How Will I Know,” which approaches similarly neurotic crush feelings from a more wholesome perspective. That song is also quite energetic, but it’s stable and grounded and as much she overthinks her situation in the lyrics the music conveys faith in a positive outcome. “I’m Your Baby Tonight” feels frazzled and insecure. Whereas “How Will You Know” is confiding in someone else about a crush, this song directly addresses the object of affection and while that’s drastically bolder, it’s also significantly more nerve-wracking. The words are direct and frank and sung by one of the most confident vocalists to ever live, and yet when paired with this percussion all of that is undermined. But then again, the lyrics also contain some rather morbid asides like “from the second you touched me I was ready to die / I’ve never been fatal, you’re my first time.”

“I’m Your Baby Tonight” was written and produced by L.A. Reid and Babyface, and the latter’s involvement is made obvious in the bridge to the chorus. It’s the best part of the song and the melody is so obviously Babyface, not too far removed from his then-recent solo hit “Whip Appeal.” The song falls in a strange spot on the R&B timeline – it’s part of Babyface’s ascendency as a major figure in the genre through the ‘90s, the verses are seemingly influenced by Michael Jackson’s 1987 hit “The Way You Make Me Feel,” the production is adjacent to Teddy Riley’s emerging New Jack Swing style. It’s a few too many things at once, but in a good way – it sounds like a specific moment in time, and the musical decisions are risky as so much of it is a step away from the aesthetics that had made Houston a superstar.

Houston’s first two albums present her a safe, idealized young woman and the focus of every track is on her enormous technical prowess as a vocalist. Her last major hit before “I’m Your Baby Tonight” was “One Moment In Time,” a ballad recorded for the 1988 Summer Olympics and that makes all kinds of sense because her approach to music up until that point was more similar to an Olympic athlete than a typical R&B or pop vocalist. Showcasing this vocal talent remained the focus of her work through the rest of her life, but “I’m Your Baby Tonight” was the first single of her career to offer up a version of Houston that was allowed to seem less than superhuman. I’m not sure if the goal was for her to return with a song that conveyed anxiety and vulnerability or if that was just the organic result of the artistic process, but it was nevertheless an important step in her progress.

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Genesis “Invisible Touch”

Try to imagine “Invisible Touch” without any of the ‘80s-ness of its arrangement. It’s not easy, given how overwhelmingly ‘80s it sounds. You have to strip away the keyboards, the drum machine, the echo effect on the guitar, the very sound of Phil Collins’ voice. Like a lot of beloved ‘80s hits, “Invisible Touch” is essentially a Motown-style R&B song played in a completely new style utilizing then-cutting edge technology. Collins and the rest of Genesis were working from a structural template and an approach to singing rooted in Black music, but the result is so transformed by their aesthetics that it barely registers as direct influence. From the perspective of the early 2020s, this looks like a very responsible sort of appropriation.

Phil Collins’ fascination with drum machines in the ‘80s is interesting to me because as a very technically gifted drummer, there was very little he could do with programming that he could not emulate at a drum kit. He was going after a sound – modern, fresh, colorful. The programmed drum fills in “Invisible Touch” have a timbre closer to keyboards than any acoustic percussion instrument, and that’s the appeal. Drums without drum sounds, keyboards that sounded like no analog instrument: We’re so used to artificial textures in music now that it’s hard to get a sense for how revolutionary this was at the time, and how quickly the technology moved that early iterations of these new sounds could be horribly dated and unfashionable within a couple years.

As massively popular as Collins and Genesis were in the ’80s, a lot of people reacted poorly to this sort of drum programming and I think to a large extent it’s because in addition to the false notion that programming drum machines was “easier,” the synthetic sound removed the physical elements of drumming that could be respected as a show of athleticism – a performance of masculinity. “Invisible Touch” has all the function of an up-tempo R&B-based rock number but excises everything that could be interpreted as macho. Artists working in the industrial and hip-hop spaces would go on to convey an aggressive masculine-coded energy to drum machines by the end of the decade, but Collins and a lot of new wave, dance, and synth-pop acts were deliberately rejecting all that.

“Invisible Touch” is sung from the perspective of a guy who is absolutely terrified of a woman he believes is attempting to seduce him, possibly with nefarious goals. I hesitate to say this song is misogynistic, but it is expressing a level of distrust in female sexuality that suggests a lot of unflattering things about Collins, who wrote the lyrics. The paranoia is focused on this woman, but it sounds to me more like he’s projecting a lot from a deep fear of sex in general. The words present this woman as having some special power – an invisible touch, yeah – but I get the impression that this character would see sex as a corrupting influence regardless, and a way of losing a sense of control over himself. It’s a remarkably anti-horny song, and when the song modulates upward for that big key change in the final third it’s almost as though he’s leaping up to evade the clutches of this scary sexy lady.

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Guns N’ Roses “Paradise City”

I’ve come to the conclusion that when people think abstractly about the concept of the “rock star,” whether it’s in casual conversation or corporate rhetoric or in hugely successful rap songs, they’re basically thinking of Guns N’ Roses, and Axl Rose in particular. While there are other figures who probably are mixed up in this – Kurt Cobain for the people fixated on authenticity, Jagger/Richards or Led Zeppelin for ‘70s classicists – Axl Rose represents all the attitude and every excess that goes along with the term.

To some extent, this is by Rose’s own design as Guns N’ Roses is the postmodern synthesis of nearly all the major tributaries of popular rock aesthetics up through the mid ‘80s: metal, glam, blues, and punk most obviously from the start. By the time they released the Use Your Illusion albums that would expand to prog, folk rock, rock opera, and Beatles-derived pop. Guns N’ Roses united all of this with a musical and visual aesthetic that was as iconically rock as it gets while rooted specifically in the late ‘80s. The look they and their cohort in the Los Angeles scene in the ‘80s refined and codified the appearance of the “rock person,” and their stylistic influence continues to this day.

Guns N’ Roses made themselves a living, breathing representation of rock values and aesthetics at a time when this canon was becoming formalized both in the development of the “classic rock” radio format, the recent opening of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and in the pages of Rolling Stone, a magazine with a vested interest in establishing and maintaining a canon built around what they had been covering for 20 years. While the construction of a critical canon is always self-conscious affair, the beauty of Guns N’ Roses’ achievement is that their synthesis of all this rock history was almost certainly an intuitive move coming out of natural fandom for all the popular bands of the past 15 years or so up to the point they got together. It looked and sounded authentic because they’d internalized all the same things their audience had – they were sharp critics and analysts of all that music, but that was filtered through strong songwriting instincts and a genuine “give ‘em what they want” populism.

“Paradise City” is the pinnacle of that impulse in their catalogue. The song, written and recorded long before they’d ever played arenas much less a stadium, is built to be the ultimate mass-scale rock experience. It’s hard to imagine the starting point for this track not being something along the lines of “we need the best concert-ending song ever.” It’s starts off as a cousin to “Sweet Home Alabama,” is built around a big sing-along chorus hook, and moves through big riffs, punky verses, solos and more and more opportunities for everyone to sing along. “Paradise City” is extremely eager to please, but it never feels cheap or condescending, and there’s so much momentum in the song that it never feels overwrought, plodding, or clumsy. As with everything on Appetite for Destruction, Mike Clink’s production is sleek and professional but allows for a ragged, wild energy to come through in a way that sets it apart from most other big mainstream rock albums of the mid ‘80s. “Paradise City” is mixed to evoke a massive scale so that it feels like you’re front row in your personal stadium concert.

This much is clear if you listen to the earlier version of “Paradise City” recorded live in session at Sound City that is featured on the expanded “super deluxe” edition of Appetite for Destruction. It’s a great raw version of the song and it feels a bit more edgy and ferocious, but the song doesn’t ask to just sound like five guys in a room playing instruments. “Paradise City” demands to be presented as an idealized experience of rock music, performed by untouchable iconic figures. The sound of it needs to imply your presence, to make you feel included. A lot of rock music thrives on feeling like a document of a special moment in a studio, but songs like “Paradise City” are more like works of fiction that ask you to complete it by imagining the most perfect and magical experience of the music.

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Madonna “Express Yourself” (Shep Pettibone Remix)

The Shep Pettibone remix of Madonna’s “Express Yourself” – the famous one used in the genuinely iconic David Fincher-directed music video, the version that was a hit – is maybe the best ever example of a remix being so much better than the album recording that the original is made obsolete by its existence. It’s not that the version that appears on Like A Prayer is bad – it is still the same song in structural terms and has the same vocal take as far as I can tell. But Pettibone’s arrangement strips out all the dorky ‘80s-specific elements of the album version, like the horn arrangement and the campy male vocal part, and finds the appropriate level of energy for the song. Pettibone’s aesthetic is sleek and elegant in a specifically turn-of-the-’90s way, and just as with his production on “Vogue” a year later, he found a sound that’s very much rooted in its moment but still feels incredibly stylish today.

This is a quote from Madonna about this song from an interview with Stephen Holden published in the New York Times in 1989 that has really stuck with me, both adding some extra depth to the music but also just functioning as very good life advice:

”The message of the song is that people should always say what it is they want,” Madonna said. ”The reason relationships don’t work is because they are afraid. That’s been my problem in all my relationships. I’m sure people see me as an outspoken person, and for the most part, if I want something I ask for it. But sometimes you feel that if you ask for too much or ask for the wrong thing from someone you care about that that person won’t like you. And so you censor yourself. I’ve been guilty of that in every meaningful relationship I’ve ever had. The time I learn how not to edit myself will be the time I consider myself a complete adult.”

Madonna was 30 years old when she said this, and in the process of finalizing her divorce from Sean Penn. 31 years later, I wonder if she still feels this way.

“Express Yourself” is generally understood as a female empowerment anthem, and it is, but more than anything it’s Madonna singing about the value of communication. Without communication, there is no happy relationship. Without communication, there’s no negotiating for what you deserve personally or professionally. Without communication you can’t authentically express your identity. And communication in a relationship is a two-way thing, so if you can’t make your partner open up it doesn’t matter how well you advocate for your needs. This last part is so crucial to the character of the song – Madonna’s lyrics acknowledge the shortcomings of most men raised with stifling heteronormative gender roles, but she’s telling you to not bother with those guys. The song allows for the existence of good men, and considers them a luxury she’s earned. She’s begging you to do the same, and for the men who aren’t up to the standard to level up.

It’s notable that the verses of “Express Yourself” make a point of contradicting pretty much everything she sang a few years earlier in “Material Girl.” Madonna did not write that song, but its sassy cynicism was so aligned with her persona in 1984 that it’s been understood as a sort of mission statement through her career. She’s always said she liked the song because it was “ironic and provocative,” which it absolutely is, though it’s hard to fully buy it when she says she’s not actually at all materialistic. But still, the lyrics in “Express Yourself” – which she wrote herself – ring a lot more true to her actual personality. It’s easy to take this song as being from the perspective of the Material Girl a few years later, with the experience to know that the fancy sheets and expensive jewelry aren’t enough of a reward for having to deal with some dull, shallow rich guy.

Nearly ten years ago Lady Gaga released “Born This Way,” one of her best singles even if a lot of the lyrics are clunky for various reasons. The common complaint about “Born This Way” then and to this day is that it sounds too much like “Express Yourself,” as if this could ever be a bad thing or that there were too many other songs like it, which there are not. This criticism frustrates me to no end, partly because I find it rather insulting to Lady Gaga. The songs are similar but not the same. There’s a clear line of inspiration, but of course Lady Gaga is inspired by Madonna. Madonna practically invented the lane of pop stardom Gaga exists in, it’s no different from how there’s countless artists directly inspired by previous template-setters like The Beatles or James Brown. To act like spotting this influence is some career-undermining “gotcha!” is absurd, and furthermore is a standard not applied to artists in other genres, most especially rock and rap.

I’ve been writing this site for almost 20 years, and in that time I’ve been sent a few thousand records and I’ve screened a lot more looking for songs to feature. And in all that, I’ve probably basically heard the same stupid punk rock song thousands of times by hundreds of bands. No one complains about this, though if you ask me, they should because it’s tedious and lacking in imagination. But to people who like punk rock songs, there’s never enough of the same damn thing. But somehow the notion of there being one other song that sounds like “Express Yourself” is offensive to people? This boils my blood. I’d much rather live in a world full of “Express Yourself” copies.

Madonna, no stranger to these sort of disingenuous criticisms and a shameless magpie herself, was a good sport about “Born This Way.” When she tour for MDNA in 2012 “Express Yourself” was part of the show, and near the end of the song she seamlessly integrated the song’s chorus. It rules.

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Beabadoobee “Care”

“Care” has the dynamics of early to mid ’90s alt-rock but has the shiny polish of late ’90s/early ’00s mainstream rock – the vocal tone conveys softness and earnestness rather than aggression and irony, and when the guitar gets crunchy and loud it’s rendered with a styled gloss rather than blunt force. Beabadoobee is aiming for a romanticized Hollywood sound here and nails it, right on down to the vague sense of triumph as the song moves along. The sentiment of this song is extremely teenage – “I’m misunderstood and alienated and none of you actually care about me, but I will get through this!!!” – but it’s real and pure, and the song has just enough self-aware brattiness to it to keep it from getting too self-pitying.

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Nirvana “All Apologies”

The guitar line that runs through “All Apologies” sounds like a mid-‘60s Beatles melody stretched out and twisted into a Moebius strip, as though Kurt Cobain had found a way to take the essence of ephemerality and joy in rock music and make it seem eternal and holy. The core of the song, extending out into Cobain’s lyrics, is in this tension between the thrill of living in the moment and the vastness of all the time around that moment. It’s like he’s taking this thing he obviously cared deeply about – the inspiration and thrill of the moment, of living and feeling as authentically as possible – and making it into a religion. And in this faith, Rubber Soul is a book of psalms. In this creed, “All Apologies” is as much an expression of guilt and shame as it as a hymn to the power of the rock music can make life feel urgent and exciting and real.

It’s hard to get over how much “All Apologies” sounds like a suicide note set to music, even with the knowledge that Cobain wrote the basic structural elements of the song and its lyrics before Nevermind even came out. A lot of the ideas that Cobain put into his actual suicide note are there in the lyrics, but so was a reference to the famous Neil Young lyric “it’s better to burn out than to fade away.” “All Apologies” sounds like it’s trying to do both – the chorus hinges on the fantasy of being incinerated in the sun, the ending evoking the gradual erosion of time with everything eventually turning to dust.

Cobain had described this song – which is mostly him singing about gnawing guilt and self-loathing and an inability to experience joy like other people – as “peaceful, happy, comfort.” I suppose when he said that, he was mainly thinking of the Lennon/McCartney sunshine in that guitar melody even if he played it as overcast, and in the notion of embracing total oblivion. Or maybe he was thinking of that last “married, buried, YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH,” a moment of dumb rock fun in a song that’s otherwise heavy and solemn.

For many years I never thought too much about the “married” part of this song, but there’s a passage in Rob Sheffield’s first memoir Love Is A Mix Tape that changed my perspective on it. The book, which is mostly about Rob’s marriage to the late writer Renée Crist, takes place in the ‘90s and there’s a bit midway through the book in which Rob remembers listening to Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged in New York shortly after Cobain’s death. The album really messed him up at the time, and not for the obvious reasons. Rob and Kurt were around the same age and married around the same time, and this point of identification made Rob zero in on this aspect of his life. He heard it all as love songs, especially “Heart-Shaped Box” and “All Apologies.”

A little excerpt:

“He sings, all through Unplugged, about the kind of love you can’t leave until you die. The more he sang about this, the more his voice upset me. He made me think about death and marriage and a lot of things that I didn’t want to think about at all. I would have been glad to push this music to the back of my brain, put some furniture in front of it so I couldn’t see it, and wait thirty or forty years for it to rot so it wouldn’t be there to scare me anymore. The married guy was a lot more disturbing to me than the dead junkie.”

That’s the guilt in the song. It’s the fear of not being enough for your wife and child, of feeling in over your head and not up to the challenge of being what you know is owed to them. Like a lot of Nirvana songs, “All Apologies” is about grappling with the expectations of masculinity, but unlike a lot of Nirvana songs it’s not coming to the conclusion that these gender roles are all bullshit. In this one he’s confronting his shortcomings and inability to “be a man” and deciding he’s not enough and never will be enough. He’s sorry about it, but finding a sort of peace with it. It’s the mentality of someone who’s convinced that he’s a failure and people are better off without him.

Because this song is coming from such a specifically masculine perspective I think it’s a hard song for women to cover, though several have tried. The version sung by Lorde, backed up by the surviving members of the band, Kim Gordon, and Annie Clark, is interesting but when I hear her sing it I don’t sense much connection to the material. It’s more like she’s just engaging with the abstract concept of Cobain, the Pure Authentic Rock Star. The version by Sinead O’Connor, released the same year he died, is better. Her vocal is strong and her connection to the themes comes across, but the arrangement omits the central guitar melody and that’s just too essential to the song for any version to work without it. If you’re not playing that part, you’re just not doing the song.

I’m more fond of Herbie Hancock’s instrumental take on it, which really digs into the possibilities of Cobain’s guitar and vocal melodies while voicing it all with more soulful inflections. It engages with the musical tension of the song, that pull between right now and forever. Hancock’s version is like a What If? comic, imagining what the song would’ve been if it came out of a totally different artistic lineage – jazz, R&B – but was reckoning with all the same ideas and feelings.

There are several recordings of “All Apologies” by Nirvana besides the original studio version on In Utero and the famous acoustic version from MTV Unplugged. Demos at various stages of completion, a early live version with unfinished lyrics, a handful of different mixes for the In Utero version. One of the most striking things about even the earliest versions is how the differences between them and the final recording are relatively minor – the structure doesn’t change much and though he revised the lyrics a few times the sentiment is always the same. The greatest variation is in tone, and I imagine one’s taste in “All Apologies” versions largely comes down to what aspect of the song is most resonant. If I had to choose, I probably like the proper In Utero version mixed by Scott Litt the most, but I do love the deep, funereal cello moan and soft landing of the Unplugged recording. I like the way the “2013” mix adds some scuff marks and texture to what Litt arrived at in the booth. Even the one demo version on the deluxe In Utero with the often barely audible scratch vocal and the overbearingly jangly Lemonheads-ish second guitar part is worthwhile, if just because there’s something perversely wonderful in hearing Cobain force the song into a happier, more carefree shape.

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Young Chris & Wale “Yellow Flag”

Super Miles and DJMoney’s track for “Yellow Flag” is pure mid-’00s chipmunk soul, so reverent to the form that it could slot in seamlessly with early Kanye and Just Blaze tracks, or songs from Ghostface’s peak era as a solo act. This is a huge compliment as far as I’m concerned – originality may be nice, but you can’t argue with effective results when someone absolutely nails genre conventions. Young Chris and Wale trade off verses through “Yellow Flag” like they’re running a relay race, and while the tonality of their voices are fairly similar, there’s a nice contrast between Wale’s wordy delivery and Young Chris’ slower, more relaxed flow.

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Jockstrap “Acid”

“Acid” is, at its essence, a straightforward ballad in the tradition of mid 20th century melodramatic pop, but the arrangement is constantly mutating to the point that the entire track feels a bit deranged. Taylor Skye’s production decisions have the song lunging between clashing tonalities, lending the piece a cartoonish quality. Imagine flipping the channels on a TV and every station is playing the same song with a different kitschy arrangement. Georgia Ellery plays it straight with her vocal, but her high and pretty voice lends another layer of uncanny irony to the song by obscuring her more brutal and grotesque lyrics somewhat in sugary sweetness.

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Pop Smoke “Yea Yea”

Pop Smoke was murdered only a few months ago, he was only 20 years old. His voice on record comes across as much older than that – raspy and weathered, with a cadence that suggests relaxed patience rather than youthful exuberance. “Yea Yea,” from his recently released posthumous major label debut, is a showcase for that loose, unhurried delivery. He raps a lot about luxury, but the most luxurious thing on display is that vocal delivery and how it conveys the absolute confidence of someone who knows he doesn’t have to work too hard to impress anyone. I wouldn’t say he sounds care free here, you can hear traces of stress and strain in his voice and in his words. But when paired with SephGotTheWaves and Hakz Beats’ mellow, guitar-centric track he projects almost a zen “be here now” vibe even when he’s mostly just listing off models of guns in the chorus.

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Vampire Weekend “2021” (Live in St. Augustine, Florida 2019)

Father of the Bride is full of lyrics that have taken on new meanings during the pandemic – “I don’t want to live like this but I don’t wanna die,” “things have never been stranger, things are going to stay strange” – but the track that’s most transformed in the new context is “2021.” The song, just over a minute and a half long, is brief meditation on time and patience. It’s all questions and incomplete thoughts, the space between weighing options and making decisions. The core question – “I could wait a year but I shouldn’t wait three” – changes over the course of the song, the second time Ezra Koenig sings it the second part becomes “couldn’t wait three.” He’s thought about it enough in that space to realize the damage the wait would do to him, but it still doesn’t sound like he’s fully committed to anything else.

The live arrangement of “2021” is quite different, and extends the length of the composition by an extra three minutes that mostly elaborates on the lovely guitar melody that breaks up the more minimal and vibey piano-centric verses. I prefer this version, largely because it focuses on my favorite melodic part and emphasizes the “lost-in-thought” character of the song. The harmonic aspects of the song are much deeper too, and when you move through the instrumental break before reaching the final verse it feels like an emotional journey, as if you’re flash forwarding through entire potential timelines full of good and bad possibilities. Whereas the studio recording is so elliptical it doesn’t suggest any end to a holding pattern, the live version suggests an eventual path out of this purgatory. In a moment when we’re all waiting around to find out what our lives might be like in 2021 for reasons Koenig could have never foreseen, the more hopeful version of the song feels like a gift. The suspense of waiting is excruciating, but it’s not forever.

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Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire “Black Mirror”

Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire is a tremendously versatile rapper, as adept with over-the-top raunch and bravado as he is with aggressive political music or more introspective and philosophical work. “Black Mirror” is in the third category, with him reflecting on his childhood in Bed-Stuy, the physical and psychological tortures that Black slaves endured in America, and as he puts it in his own description of the song on Bandcamp, “Black masculinity and the role males play in the growth of younger men.” His performance matches the wistful tone of MadLib’s track, which recuts an old Stylistics track into melancholy abstraction. The second half of the song is a tribute to eXquire’s late uncle, a man he credits with setting him on the course of becoming a rapper. He’s clearly in awe of the man but doesn’t portray him as some untouchable hero but rather as a complicated person who taught him to respect himself and take pride in what he does. This could easily just be pure sentimentality, but eXquire ties together all these thoughts to arrive at a core theme: Pride is important, and it has to be modeled and passed down somehow.

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Drea the Vibe Dealer “Catastrophe”

“Catastrophe” is stacked with the sort of ear-catching bits that someone could sample and extrapolate into another song entirely – the slinky guitar part at the top of the song, the chiming chords at the start of the chorus, the ba-da-boop keyboard sound that punctuates the hook, the slight drag on the beat. Drea the Vibe Dealer is truly dealing in strong vibes here, and this extends to how she records her vocal so her jazzy phrasing slurs slightly in heavy reverb without sacrificing the nuances of her singing. Maybe the best way to put it is that it’s sort of painterly – photorealistic, but smudged and blurred a bit for style.

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