We all need music to make the world go round.
Some more than others, of course, but music provides a soundtrack for our lives, an emotional articulation that sometimes we can’t manage on our own, and it often comes with lyrics that hit home in short, sharp three-minute bursts that often contain a whole world of thinking and feeling.
These five artists known how to craft songs that are the perfect marriage of lyric and melody and that get you dancing or moving in body but also in mind, a mix that appealingly brings our lives alive in ways they might otherwise lack.
“River” by Miley Cyrus
Miley Cyrus is one of those public figures who feels like she’s been famous for almost her entire life.
That’s likely because she has been; the daughter of country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, Miley got her start as Disney’s Hannah Montana, re-invented herself countless times and has released all kinds of music from what Wikipedia called “teen-friendly pop rock”, country and now in her latest album, Endless Summer Vacation, some driving pop that comes with delicious melodies and cleverly incisive lyrics.
Case in point is “River”, which the singer says had its genesis in a time when she had a lot on her plate.
“It was a time in my life where I was going through just a lot emotionally and personally, and I guess all my songs kind of evolve. They can start as something that was a trouble, like, it just feels like it’s an April shower. It never stops raining. And then it started raining down like love,” she said. (Today.com)
It’s a fantastically upbeat piece of full speed ahead pop that demands repeat listens, both to take in the lyrical intensity but also to soak in music that lifts you up and demands you lose yourself in its infectious expanse.
“I Wrote a Song” by Mae Muller
If you’re a Eurovision tragic like yours truly, you will be well aware that we are heading fast towards Europe’s biggest, campest, most wonderful week of music of the year.
Eurovision is HUGE, and increasingly, many countries are sending their biggest and best along, including the UK which this year has nominated to send along Mae Muller and her super catchy track, “I Wrote a Song”.
An English singer-songwriter who first shot to attention with the 2021 track, “Better Days”, Muller is delivering a song that stands manifestly on its own two legs and which should go down a treat with the song contest’s audience.
Describing how she handled the aftermath of a break-up, which included infidelity and some rather low-life behaviour by her now-spurned romantic partner, Muller says that instead of trashing his home or reputation or licking her wounds at home with litre upon litre of restorative ice cream, she simply wrote a song that cleanly and neatly delineates how her onetime love did her wrong.
It’s lyrically militant in a feistily fun way, original and makes the point far more effectively than anything destructively negative would have done, and it’s a ton of fun to listen to, a danceable slice of revenge that lifts you up instead of tearing you down.
“Nobody” by half·alive
Hailing from Long Beach, California, Half Alive has a knack for delivering tracks that are harmonically resonant and which have something profoundly good to say.
Take their latest track “Nobody”, which insightfully muses on fame and the fulfillment of ambition:
The more that I grow, the more that I come to know / Yeah, it’s hard to be someone
/ And it hurts to be nobody / Playin’ this game, it’s easy to lose both ways / Yeah, it’s hard to be someone / And it hurts to be nobody
With a musical style that runs the gamut from indie pop through to alternative rock and electropop, and much more besides, Half Alive have crafted a highly likeable track that works its way into your earworm and which gets you thinking too, a rich mix of danceability, harmony and thoughtfulness that adds to a richly-rewarding upbeat pop song.
“So Hard, So Hot” by Alison Goldfrapp
Bursting forth from the collective that was Goldrapp to do her own thing, Alison Goldrfrapp has happily not strayed too far from the melody-rich, ethereal pop that made her a household name in richly quirky electropop.
Possessing a whole distinctive sound all her own, the artist has released “So Hard So Hot”, drawn from her upcoming album The Love Invention, which according to its media release, refers to a “machine or pill that gives you a feeling of complete euphoria” (Stereogum).
The track, notes Consequence Sound, “mixes disco vibes and a more contemporary, bass-driven sound” and heralds what is unbelievably the artist first solo foray.
It’s certainly a hell of a way to announce your arrival sans bandmates, and it comes with a gloriously colourful and trippy music video that matches the breathy remove of the song perfectly.
“Raincatchers” by Birdy
With a sound happily reminiscent of Kate Bush and Annie Lennox combined, English singer-songwriter Birdy aka Jasmine Lucilla Elizabeth Jennifer van den Bogaerde has crafted a wholly ethereal piece of gorgeous pop in “Raincatchers”.
Breathtakingly beautiful musically and lyrically, and anchored by vocals that bring the whole song resonantly alive in epic cinematic terms, “Raincatchers” has an escapist element to it that makes listening to it feel a trip to somewhere utterly removed from the day-to-day.
Lifted from her forthcoming fifth album, Portraits, there was conjecture at one point that the song heralded an imminent announcement that Birdy was going to represent the UK at the Eurovision Song Contest with a song that lead Eurovision blog, Wiwibloggs, found appealingly catchy.
‘Raincatchers’ has a dramatic orchestral opening before going all ’80s alt-pop. Birdy seems to sing about a past love who made her worries disappear. Any angst and upset would flow away like rainwater, down a gutter and into a raincatcher.
While Mae Muller ultimately got the Eurovision gig, you can imagine this song soaring in that world, possessing the sort of emotional intensity, lyrical meaningfulness and arresting musical presence that always do well when the world’s biggest musical contest struts its stuff.