Same Old Song

This might be the least original music post I've ever done. The last one was a couple of weeks ago and among others it featured Charli xcx, Olivia Rodrigo and Mike D. Guess who's in this one?

And guess who else is in it? Gracie Abrams, Westside Cowboy and Blondshell. Anyone getting a sense of déjà vu here? 

Yeah, I know, but what am I supposed to do? People I like have albums coming, they put out singles to promote them, the songs are great... I'm supposed to just ignore all of that? Pick a bunch of second-rate stuff just to be edgy? 

OK, I could do that. Alright then, I have done that! In the past, though. In the past! Look, it's called evolution. Or emotional maturity. Something like that. I think it's meant to be a good thing?

Whatever it is, it's what's coming next so best get on with it. It's not like I have anything else. Unless anyone wants another post about Neverness to Everness? I have plenty more of those I could write.

No? Alright then. Here we go.

Kick Stones (The Boys) - Westside Cowboy

Spoiled for choice when it comes to bangers this time around. As will soon become obvious. I might ought to have saved this for the end, now I come to think about it. It has that manic, driving, end of set energy. Reminds me a little of Tom Verlaine's  Breaking In My Heart that the Blue Aeroplanes always used to end on. 

Reminds me of a lot of other things, too. That rhythm has done much service over the years. No surprises there other than to hear it again in 2026. 

Westside Cowboy are a true surprise, though. Attentive readers may remember I only came across them as the best of a really bad bunch of applicants in one of Glastonbury's increasingly disappointing Emerging Artists comps. Yeah, well, maybe the organizers of that bunfest did know something after all because I've liked everything I've heard by the band since then and this might be their best yet.

And y'know what the best thing about it is? That female vocal, way down in the mix all the way through, until it comes up at the end or rather stays where it is as everything else drops out. That's novel. I like that a lot.

 SS26 - Charli xcx

Charli's causing all kinds of chaos with her New Direction. The last single was called Rock Music and a lot of people who like rock music got all upset about it. Whether it was rock music is up for debate (If you missed it, let me redirect you to my last post so you can decide for yourself.) and I guess the same arguments are going to get trundled out for this one although not by me. I've listened to a lot of rock music over the years. It sounds like Westside Cowboy and it sounds like Charli xcx does now. And it sounds nothing like either of them. 

Not that I don't like putting everything in the right box as much as the next pedant but maybe just have a bigger box marked "Good" and when you've boxed everything, stick all the boxes with stuff in that you like in that?

 the cure - Olivia Rodrigo

When I logged in after breakfast this morning, this was in my feeds. I watched it. It had just over half a million views. I notice these things. Then Mrs Bhagpuss and I took Beryl for a walk and when we got back I started writing this post, went back to YouTube to rewatch it and grab the link and it had 1.6m views. People really like Olivia Rodrigo. 

Even rock fans like her. She's like the acceptable face of pop for people who need the cover. She's smart and funny and she knows the things she needs to know as well as a lot of other things as well. She knows, for example, that when some people see she's done a song called the cure it will immediately make them think of the band The Cure and remember how they saw her bring on Robert Smith at Glastonbury and how he's been in the studio with her for her new album and they'll jump to conclusions that are not at all going to be justified when they hear the song but by then she'll have them anyway.

And she hasn't lowercased that title by coincidence, has she? And I'm not even sure it's a coincidence that she's playing acoustic guitar in the video like she was on stage with Bob although it's not the same guitar and now I'm starting to think I overthinking things. But that's the sort of associative thinking you get from rock fans, isn't it? No wonder they like her.

I wonder why they don't like Charli? She's smart and postmodern too, isn't she? I dunno. I guess you'd have to ask a rock fan.

 Hit The Wall - Gracie Abrams

I don't think there's much chance of anyone calling what Gracie Abrams does "rock music". Pop is the new rock anyway, isn't it? 

The thing that interests me more is how really similar so many pop songs sound now without being in the least obvious or repetitive about it. It's like how all funk sounded like funk once but every song was different. Very much that, actually, rather than a couple of decades ago when all "R&B" sounded almost identical to me and I didn't like any of it. That was a bleak time in popular music. Well, for me it was. I honestly thought we were done at one point. I thought it was all going to be like that forever. 

And then one day nothing was like that and hasn't been since and instead almost everything was better and keeps getting better and now it's the best it's ever been. Maybe someone should tell Jack Antonoff.

Things I've Killed - Telehealth

Oh, look! Here's someone almost as mad at modern life as Jack! If I understand correctly, the lyric consists of a list of things Millennials rendered untenable. I read that somewhere. I've forgotten where. It was definitely something a human wrote though, not an AI, so it must be true. Everything said by humans is true and everything made by humans is good.

Telehealth self-evidently wish it was 1978 though, so I'm not sure we should be listening to anything they say. I mean, I was there and it wasn't that great. Now is better. Musically, I mean. Not anything else, obviously. Well, not everything else.

Goes out. Comes in again.

Heart Has To Work So Hard - Blondshell

Sometimes I wonder if Sabrina Teitelbaum might not be working on some kind of performance art project, the way Poppy uses music or used to before she went all metal. First Sabrina was Baum and she sang big songs with a big soul voice then she went grunge and invented Blondshell and the first album had loads of tunes you could hum, like you could if it was something Dinosaur Jr might have done.

Then there was the second album and I think it might have had two actual tunes on it although the only one I can remember and sing would be 23's A Baby. And now she releases this as a taster of the third album and it's literally her intoning one note for most of the running time like some kind of Tibetan chant. 

And I love everything she's done. All of it. I just love her voice. It doesn't matter how few notes she makes it do. It's the timbre. I'm not saying I wouldn't mind a melody, once in a while. It's  not like she can't hold a tune, either. She fucking kills on the covers she's done, where she has to sing someone else's melodies. God - maybe she'll do a covers album some day...

Excuse me. I need to go lie down for a moment...

EVERYTHING I'VE EVER WANTED 

Tiffany Day

Really, who even wants a melody these days, anyway? They just get in the way, don't they?

Also I really am going to have to do a whole post on smoking in pop videos one of these days. I need to start making notes for that although I could probably just throw a stone at YouTube and hit a dozen. I just googled it though and it looks disturbingly like something the alt-right is stressing over. (Are they even alt these days? If so, alt to what, exactly?). If I did post something, is it going to align me with some terrible doomsday clique? 

Then again, if it's all part of a terrible conspiracy to Bring Back The Good Old Days when you were Free To Do What You Want, you'd think the billionaires would be all for it. Maybe it's just that smoking looks hella cool even now, when almost no-one does it but really poor people? Maybe it's really that simple. Because almost no-one does it but really poor people, even.

Anyway, if I don't stop I'm gonna be writing the post right here so let's move on.

 DANCE - Slayyyter

I'm sorry. I was sleeping on Slayyyter. I'd love to say it won't happen again but there are a lot of really great new acts coming up all the time (Cf. Gracie Abrams commentary above.)   Who can keep up?

I only caught up with Slayyter because she was at Coachella and I was on the stream looking for Blondshell. I watched three or four numbers from Slayyyter's set, where she was absolutely killing it with a huge early afternoon audience that apparently knew the songs and wanted to hear them. 

I know! Unheard of at festivals in general let alone at the laziest, most uncommitted of them all, Coachella. For calibration, Blondshell played a bigger stage a couple of hours later to what looked and sounded like half a dozen uninterested passers-by and a dog. (I don't think they actually allow dogs into Coachella, do they? I mean, it's not like a real festival. I once watched two panicking dogs that had got siamese-twinned while mating, as dogs do, carve their way through a festival crowd like a chain mower... Now that was a real festival!)

Slayyyter did this one on Jimmy Fallon a couple of days ago but whoever uploaded it to YouTube had the volume down too low. Great visuals, shame you can barely hear her. As for the Coachella set, if you care to watch some of that you will see Slayyyter is absolutely, unequivocally playing Rock Music. Boundaries redrawn.

 Requiem For A Dying Day - Francis of Delirium

Yes, yes. Bootlegger turn, I know. Where was I going to put it though, eh? It's not like it was going to fit in better anywhere else. 

As Chandler would say, could it be any more Nick Drake?

 The Standard Model - MORN

The post-punk avalanche is stuttering to a standstill now, I think. A couple or three years ago half my feeds sounded like this. Now they sound like Gracie Abrams. Room for both, I'd say.

Two or three more and we're done, I think. There's a couple in my YouTube subs I haven't even listened to yet. Talk among yourselves while I check if there's anything good there... Hmm. 

Tiger LeFlor and Goldie Boutlier and they both sound exactly like they should but I'll pass for now. Tiger's just a little too authentic 'sixties this time around and Goldie's new one is great but she'll be back with a video, I'm sure. I'll wait for that.

Oh, wait... haven't checked my other account... Aha!

 E8/N16 - M(h)aol

It's the video more than the song. Not gonna lie.

Kiss Goodbye - Sad Happy Birthdays

Almost as new to me as it is to you. Saw the thumbnail back when I was grabbing the address for Charli at the top of the post and thought it looked worth a click, then I got distracted and by the time I got down here and wanted it, it had vanished and of course I couldn't remember the name of the song or the artist. Took me about a dozen pokes of the algorithm to get it to spit it out again and it was worth it.

And finally...

 What We Got - Mike D

Did you miss the Beastie Boys? I did. 

That's lucky thirteen. I'm done.