As the city I live in hurtle into a third straight week of lockdown with more to come, it’s heartening that there is so much great music to keep spirits higher than they might otherwise be.
Even better, this music comes with thoughtful, observant and playful lyrics that poetically reflect on what it means to be alive, all of it underscoring why we need talented singer-songwriters to help make sense of life and to do it to compelling, highly-listenable melodies.
Having these songs makes us rich, not just in terms of having a soundtrack to our lives but in giving us the chance to really think about things.
Anyone who think pop music is vapid and dumb has clearly never listened to the good stuff, of which these five artists are mighty fine purveyors.
“Revolver” by bülow
Born in Germany but a resident at various times of the UK, Canada, the USA and the Netherlands, where she currently resides, bülow aka Megan Bülow wants to hlp you take charge of your life with her song “Revolver”.
A fast-paced piece of energising pop, bülow has this to say about the track.
“I want people to feel empowered listening to it. You are as powerful as you want to be. I don’t wake up every day feeling my most confident self. No one does. I struggle with finding my footing and falling into a state of confidence every day where what people say or do doesn’t affect me. It’s something I work on every day, but I know that when I am that and I believe it, I’m not afraid of fucking up/falling on my face. That’s how I want to live. And that’s what I want people to feel when listening to ‘Revolver'”. (U Music)
If it any song is going to get you powered up to act in your own best interests with zestful intent, it’s this one, an infectious mix of encouraging lyrics and music that will not sit back and see where things take you.
“Groundhog Day” by Em Beihold
What a jaunty piece of music!
Em Beihold, hailing from the sunny climes of Los Angeles, has put a bright and breezy melodic wonderfulness into “Groundhog Day” but gone one brilliant step further by combining this brimming with good cheer music with impressively introspective lyrics which muse on why her life seems to be stuck in neutral.
“Oh, it’s easy to say I’m ok
But this smile I’m wearing is fake
I’m suffocating
Living Groundhog Day
Day after day, day after day
I think I’m gonna break.”
Beihold winningly wears her existential angst-ridden heart on her sleeve in a song which sounds like a thousands kinds of sunshine wrapped around the darkness of everyday living where what we want and what we have don’t always happily meet.
As self therapy goes, this song is just perfect.
“Cloudy Day” by Tones and I
Do you ever hear a song for the first time and know, just know, that you will play it into the ground, and beyond and be listening to it for years to come?
That happened the first time this reviewer’s ears chanced upon “Cloudy Day” by Australian singer-songwriter-producer Tones and I aka Toni Watson whose latest slice of pop perfection came out, in a happy piece of lyrical happenstance on or near the same day as Lorde’s “Solar Power”. (Let’s hear it for weather-powered music!)
The song is an exuberant piece of upbeat pop that contains some giddily sage meditations on seeing the good in the bad which came from a very dark time in the artist’s life as per NME.
“After my friend T passed away I was struggling to write any songs that were happy or that I even liked. I met up with a friend who told me this saying from his late mum — ‘on a cloudy day, look up into the sky and find the sun.’ I knew I wanted to use that as a lyric and the next time I went into the studio I wrote ‘Cloudy Day.'”
As someone who struggle mightily after the death of my dad and mum, I understand completely where she was and why this song is so real and important for anyone grappling with how to live when someone desperately dear is no longer with you.
“Unbelievable” by John Errol
I love a bright, upbeat piece of synth pop.
John Errol, described by Fader rather poetically as “a solo artist, stargazing L.A. singer and producer”, has delivered up a sublime piece of blissful pop that happily, as is the way with really clever songs like this, got some very serious lyrical intent beneath the bonnet.
Ditto for the video which the artist says is “loosely a metaphor for what it takes to navigate a career as an artist in the industry and quite literally involves a band selling their soul to the devil.” (Papermag)
So some serious thoughtfulness going on there, marking Errol as one of those artists who will have a long career because they know that pretty, listenable music needs to have some thematic muscularity to really do the distance, which songs like “Unbelievable” most definitely will.
“American Dream” (feat. MAY-A) by Baby Queen
Ah, the American Dream, a lofty concept that never quite works in practice as its lofty PR might suggest.
One artist who’s having some lyrical fun with the concept is Baby Queen, South African-born and now London-resident, who’s teamed up with Bryon bay-based Australian singer MAY-A, with her song “American Dream” which applies the notion to the idea of falling fabulously, glossily in love and it’s rather charmingly, intoxicatingly lovely.
“My wildest dreams always come true / So I’m dreaming wildly about you / And I’m nothing if not persistent / So I’ll think us into existence.
Be my American, my American dream / My American, be my American dream / My American, my American dream / My American.”
The music is exuberantly lush and giddily upbeat, infused with rock-driven energy and all of it in service to the idea that love is a wonderful, dreamy and hopefully literal thing. (As the song makes clear dreams don’t always finding real world expression, alas but a gal can hope, right?)
And it is, it really is and “American Dream” gives it the homage it deserves.
SONGS, SONGS AND MORE SONGS EXTRA!
Want to hear the best selling single for every decade from the 2010s all the way back to 14,000 BC? Comedians Adrian Gray and Archie Henderson via Laughing Squid can help with that …