(via Shutterstock)
One of the lovely parts of life is that we set out expecting everything to be wonderful.
Fuelled by the innate optimism of youth and free from the scars of bitter experience, we naturally assume, because why would we think otherwise, that life will be one long moment of got-it-together emotions, immaculate, consequence-free decisions and blissful outcomes.
But, oops, surprise, surprise, it’s not, and instead of an eternal air of glass-half-full-ness, we instead have all kinds of dark imperfections, troubling thoughts and worrying vibes soaking through the tissue-thin veneer of our perfect imagined lives.
That’s kinda disappointing but we get through somehow, most of the time anyway, and it helps to have artists like these five making sense of things …
“i can’t get my sh*t together” by Baby Queen
(courtesy official Baby Queen Facebook page)
Thank god for South Africa-born, London-based singer Baby Queen aka Arabella Latham.
Possessed of ready wit, captivatingly catchy tunes and some liberating self-awareness, she’s able to come with songs like “i can’t get my sh*t together” which thumps out of your speakers or into your headphones with the intensity of a therapy session on steroids.
It’s intensely honest but vibrantly realised stuff that pours a soul’s worth of confessional moments into music with fantastic momentum and a buoyant sense of existential rumination that goes deep lyrically but stays light musically, forming an arresting whole that feels like life sprung onto the dancefloor.
It’s emblematic of an artist who is described in an NME piece as “an artist who feels emotions deeply, but [who] will also analyse her own destructive behaviours as well as her personal wins” and who distilled all of this emotional truthfulness into not only “i can’t get my sh*t together” but an entire album, Quarter Life Crisis.
It’s one of the songs of the year for this reviewer because not only does it nail what life feels like but it comes soundtracked with music so arrestingly good that even as you’re mired in a sense of hopelessness about your incapacity to do life properly (what even is that? Is it a thing?), you’re dancing your way hopefully to somewhere better, sparked by a song that brings the good and the bad together in such a way that maybe things won’t feel so bad when it’s done.
“know that you’re not alone” by Cat Burns
(courtesy official Cat Burns Facebook page)
Someone else who’s really getting in touch with her emotions and exactly, or as exact as she can pinpoint anyway, is Cat Burns, an English singer-songwriter whose 2020 breakthrough song, “Go” got a mighty popularity assist from TikTok, soaring as high as number two on the UK Singles Chart.
Her latest song, “know that you’re not alone”, which also eschews capitalisation for a more intimate lower case look, is an uplifting trip into some real emotional honesty, which the Gen Z singer says is for anyone who not sure where they are in this messy maze called life.
‘know that you’re not alone’ is a song for anyone feeling lost and confused in their life, that they aren’t the only one feeling this way. It’s good to lean on people around you to take the weight off the feeling. (RCA)
Importantly, the song is filled with a vibrant sense of community that says again and again with impellingly alive urgency that we need our village around us and that rather than handling these dark and confusing times alone, that we should lean on others.
It’s a beautiful call to healing in togetherness and it resonates through this gloriously and wondrously upbeat song that acknowledges life can be sh*t but it can also be communally good too and honestly, that’s something you need to hear whatever age you are.
“Burn” by Tom Walker
(courtesy official Tom Walker Facebook page)
Wow the intensity is this song is cathartic that you can burn your soul coming alive with fire in every note and word of Tom Walker’s delivery.
The Scottish singer-songwriter is an artist who pour absolutely everything into his music and “Burn” is no different, vibrating with the depths of someone who, at one particular point came to the soul-sapping end of himself.
I had just done seven days of rehearsal in a row, straight into a UK tour, then into 2 weeks of writing, worked my arse off every hour, of every day for months. When the powers that be came back having a dig at the songs I’d poured my heart and my soul into, I absolutely lost it. I honestly thought ‘I’m going to have to call it a day with music, it was making me miserable’ I was angry, and you can hear that in ‘Burn’. In many lines of work, music included, you give it everything and sacrifice every other aspect of your life and it’s never enough. (The Noise)
We’ve all been there in one way or another and it’s liberating af to have someone distill it so powerfully into song where the lyrics and the music stand so intensely and honestly together in ways that make you punchy the air in furious but healing recognition.
The passion roils in “Burn” and as The Noise perfectly observes, “this is a great track to listen to if you’re ever feeling under appreciated!”
“Don’t Get Mad Get Famous” by Bonnie McKee
(courtesy official Bonnie McKee Facebook page)
We all want life to be an unending stream of goodness and positivity but as Bonnie McKee artfully observes that’s usually not how things go.
In “Don’t Get Mad Get Famous”, the American songwriter takes a catchily powerful swipe at people who want to drag you down, right down, under the weight of their negativity.
After years of sitting on a mountain of songs I love, I can’t tell you how satisfying it is to finally be releasing them. ‘Don’t Get Mad Get Famous’ is a quirky lil bop I wrote about ignoring the haters and being fabulous no matter what, and my sweet #Bonbons have been asking for this one for ten years! It’s the shortest song I’ve ever released, so if it’s too short for you I guess you’ll just have to stream her again! (PM Studio)
With a rollickingly upbeat melody underpinning its inspiring and necessary militancy, “Don’t Get Mad Get Famous”, the third single of the artist’s sophomore album Hot City (it succeeds her 2004 debut Trouble), is a short but savagely sweet piece of pop-laced encouragement to take on the disapprovers and the naysayers and stand firm for who you are.
For anyone who’s ever been at the pointy end of bullying or scornfully disapproving criticism, this song is an empowering breath of fresh air that will revive and restore and get you ready to fight another day in the bruising moshpit of life.
“You’re Not a God” by Jade LeMac
(courtesy official Jade LeMac Facebook page)
Canadian Jade LeMac is not the kind of artist to let people labour under the fabulous delusion that they are residents of some floating deity-filled cloud in the sky.
Springing from a high profile on social media especially TikTok, LeMac’s song “You’re Not a God” is, as Pop Passion rightly notes, “a middle finger to the type of people who think they can just push others around” with the song giving “power to those who are the ones being pushed.”
It’s a bold piece of lyricism perfectly married to a snark-infused slice of mid-fi music that is all swagger and bravado of the right kind, a rebuttal of melody and words that takes the arrogance of the over-inflated and happily takes them down, not just a peg or two but the whole damn board.
It’s fantastically empowering and repeat listenable for both its music and its lyrical edge and it will leave you feeling like you’re not at the mercy of the emotional morons of the world which can only be a good thing.
EUROVISION 2024 UPDATE!
2023’s unifying tagline is now the heartbeat theme of the Eurovision Song Contest! Good news indeed for a contest that has always sought to bring together rather than push apart.