I’m rapidly approaching 200,000 scrobbles on Last.fm. It’s currently 199,858, which will be even higher by the time I finish writing this, as I’m currently listening to music (when am I not?). That will be 200,000 scrobbles since 23 July 2005, which is a hell of a lot of music.
I think I’m going to write something about how my music taste has evolved since my teenage years. When I opened my Last.fm account in July 2005, I was currently enjoying some time off from education while I prepared to go to university in September of that year. I was a floppy haired spotty 18-year-old, who’s taste in music largely consisted of punk pop and people screaming in my ears at a volume that 37-year-old me be horrified at.
While I still enjoy a lot of that stuff, I’ve branched out to listening to pretty much anything. My quest to constantly listen to new music and new genres borders on the obsessive, but there’s so much music out there that I want to hear that I’m probably going to spend the rest of my life doing it.
I expect I’ll hit 200,000 by Friday at the latest. I’m having to keep a close eye on it as I don’t want my 200,000th scrobble to be something completely random. But, at the same time, maybe it should be completely random as that’s more natural. Or I could just stick on my most played song, which is currently The Middle by Jimmy Eat World (still an absolute banger of a song).
If you’re not on Last.fm and you listen to a lot of music, then what are you waiting for? We need to keep that site alive, so I’ll always recommend that you use it. I successfully convinced my wife, although the fact that it’s tracking the Disney baby lullabies that Alexa plays for our youngest at night isn’t exactly a great reflection of her taste in music. I’m sure she’d tell you it should be wall-to-wall Busted instead. I’ll refrain from commenting about whether that’s any better!
Welcome to the triumphant return of Songs of the Week! I realised that it lasted two weeks before it looked like I packed it in, but I had a good reason to put it on hiatus as my daughter ended up in hospital for just under two weeks. I’ve been meaning to write about it here, but I can’t bring myself to put what happened into anything coherent right now.
Having to take a break from my blog doesn’t mean that I stopped listening to music. Music is what I turn to when times are tough, and while I didn’t listen to anywhere near as much music as I normally would, I would still stick headphones in my ears when I got chance, mostly when I was walking back to my accommodation from the hospital.
So, the tracks in this week’s playlist don’t just come from the last week. Instead, I’ve thrown in some of my most listened to, as well as some great new discoveries, to create a bumper playlist of 60 songs.
Highlights include the latest release from Olivia Rodrigo in ages, ‘Vampire’, although she’s since released ‘bad idea right?’. One of my rules with these playlists is that I only include one track per artist a week, so ‘Vampire’ makes it in ahead of her new song as I think it’s a better song.
I’m really loving Taking Back Sunday’s new song ‘The One’. It’s quite different to their older stuff, but, like me, the band has matured and so has their sound. It’s great to see bands that were a big part of my youth still going strong, so I’m looking forward to seeing what else Taking Back Sunday has in store.
Three bands to feature this week that seemingly came out of nowhere (although I’m wrong, of course, as this blog post points out about Picture Parlour and laments people using the term ‘industry plants’, a term that has been levelled at two of the bands I’m about to mention here) are FIZZ, with the infectious as fuck ‘High in Brighton’, the apparent ‘next Wet Leg’ The Last Dinner Party, with ‘Sinner’, and the aforementioned Picture Parlour with ‘Norwegian Wood’. The last one is my favourite, with raw, scratchy vocals that transport you straight into a rocky dive bar and it reminds me a bit of Courtney Love’s Hole. I’m really looking forward to seeing what all three bands do next.
Speaking of rocky as fuck songs, be sure to check out ‘HAMMS IN A GLASS’ by Winona Fighter. Other highlights include ‘Spiral City’ by CARR, new track ‘Drag Me Down’ by Loveless (which I’ve recently really got into, listening to both of their albums recently), ‘Every Night’ by Flor (another band whose albums I’ve been devouring, but this track is an absolute banger!), and ‘Lights Out’ by the brilliantly named Teen Jesus and The Jean Teasers.
That’s it for this week. Check out the full playlist below and, as always, you can check this month’s ongoing playlist by clicking here. I’m pretty sure the schedule will be back to normal next time, so have a great music-filled week until then!
Want me to check out your music for possible inclusion in one of my weekly playlists? Please email me at tmulrooney AT gmail DOT com. Please include a Spotify link to your track.
Lost Cause – Jules Paymer
Vampire – Olivia Rodrigo
Sour – Echosmith
High In Brighton – FIZZ
The Cheaters guide To The Galaxy – Warwick Smith
The One – Taking Back Sunday
Give Me My Halo – YONAKA
Summer of Luv (feat. Unknown Mortal Orchestra) – Portugal. The Man, Unknown Mortal Orchestra
St. Girlfriend – Games We Play
Dummy – The Regrettes
Bad Actors – The Menzingers
The Time Of Year Always – Crawlers
Firestarter – SUMR, Siamese
Like an Animal – Piqued Jacks
Rattlesnake Heartbreak – Miniature Tigers
DESIRE – NOISY
Push It Down – L Devine
On My Way – Dazy
Unwritten – Settle Your Scores
Indecent – Maggie Miles
Fuck Around Phase – Housewife
Lights Out – Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers
The Implication – Parrotfish
$wing – FEVER 333
BOOM – Cassyette
Tomorrow Is Closed – Nothing But Thieves
delirious – swim school
Heaven Without You – KID BRUNSWICK
Honda Civic – Lauran Hibberd
I Gotta Feeling – STONE
Electric Touch (feat. Fall Out Boy) (Taylor’s Version) – Taylor Swift, Fall Out Boy
This week I’ve mostly been on the hunt for artists that I’ve never listened to. This is one of the reasons I love the stat tracking music website last.fm (check out my profile here) as I can instantly look-up the artist and see if I’ve ever listened to them before. While I can’t guarantee I’ve never heard them while out in public or at a party, I can assume that most of the artists I’ve listened to are included in my last.fm profile.
I’ve been tracking what I’ve been listening to on there since 2005, and I’ve it says I’ve listened to over 16,600 artists so far. But that’s barely scratched the surface of how much music there is in the world (just look at the profile for BBC Radio 6, who is currently clocking in at over 88,000 artists). Obviously, I’ll always have my favourite musical artists that I’ll stick on when I don’t feel like hearing anything new, but I also don’t want to spend my life stuck in the same musical rut. I like to branch out and try things from all sorts of genres, so that’s why you may see a random mix of genres in every weekly playlist.
Yeah, you could say I’m a little obsessive in hunting down new music, but I’m not one to sit still when it comes to music. One day I hope to publish a post about all the ways I find new music, as there’s far more ways to discover music then you may think. With that in mind, this week I’ve mostly been doing one of the things I do to find new music, and that’s through listening to Spotify’s Fresh Finds playlists.
Fresh Finds is a Spotify brand that seeks to highlight new music from independent artists. Spotify’s thousands of editors and music experts scour blogs, social media, and go through submissions they receive, and some of them will end up on a Fresh Finds playlist. There’s a main Fresh Finds playlist that is a mix of genres, and then there’s sub-playlists like Fresh Finds Pop, Fresh Finds Indie, Fresh Finds Rock etc. The main playlist is completely refreshed every Wednesday, whereas the sub-playlists get new songs added every Wednesday, but the older ones may stick around for a month or two.
Fresh Finds is a great way to find new talent that may only have a few hundred listeners through Spotify, if that, and I’ve found some absolute gems through this initiative in the past. I’ve included quite a few on this week’s playlist, and expect more to appear on playlists in future weeks.
In addition to Fresh Finds and my regular Spotify listening, I’ve also been trying out some random artists on the likes of Bandcamp and Soundcloud. There’s a great profile on Soundcloud that I follow from a blog called Fresh On The Net. This is run by Tom Robinson, who has a show on BBC Radio 6. Each week, artists can submit their songs to The Listening Post. These are then listened to by Tom and the team, as well as anyone else who visits the blog, and voted on to create a top ten each week. The songs may end up on BBC Radio 6 too, but there’s no guarantee.
One of the new albums I checked out this week was Jessie Ware’s latest release, That! Feels Good!. I’ve only included the title track on the playlist, but the whole album is well worth listening to. It’s a catchy, pop album filled with wall-to-wall bangers.
Finally, speaking of BBC Radio 6, on Friday I was listening to the 10 June 2023 episode of The Craig Charles Funk and Soul Show on BBC Sounds. A bit of funky music is the perfect way to get that Friday feeling. So, there are a few songs from the show included on the playlist too.
Anyway, enjoy the playlist. I’ll be back with more picks next Sunday! Don’t forget, you can check out my June 2023 playlist to hear everything (at least everything that’s available on Spotify) that I’ve been loving this month.
NOTE ON LAST.FM: I mainly track my music (known as ‘scrobbling’) through last.fm’s connection to Spotify. But when I’m listening to other stuff through my laptop, such as the radio or websites like Bandcamp, I use a Chrome extension called Web Scrobbler. It doesn’t work with every website that plays music, but there are a good few hundred supported. If I hear a song in other places, I’ll sometimes use Shazam on my phone to find out what it is, which then gets automatically added to a Spotify playlist. I may then manually add it to last.fm with Open Scrobbler. But I’m not obsessive about doing that, as adding each song manually would suck up a lot of time.
One of my favourite things to do is to listen to music. I have it on all the time; whether I’m at work, washing the dishes, or taking a walk. I’m in a fortunate position that I have a job that allows me to listen to music all day. I think I’d be lost without this benefit, as sticking on some good tunes really helps me focus and get the best out of my day. I’m even listening to music as I write this, with Inhaler – Just to Keep You Satisfied currently blaring out of my speakers.
I also love writing, but it’s obvious from the last post being months ago that I’ve not been doing much of that lately. So, in an effort to both start writing more and share my passion for music, I’m going to start a new series in which I present my songs of the week.
I can’t promise it will be long. Sometimes it may just be a short track list and a few comments, while other times I may delve more into why I love the songs I chose. I’m going to try and pick at least 10 tracks that I loved that week. Sometimes there may be loads, sometimes there may only be a few (I’ve managed 25 this week). It really depends on how much music I’ve listened to that week. Although, at the rate I go through tracks, it will take some extenuating circumstances for me to not have enough choices that week.
The songs I pick won’t necessarily have been released that week, or even recently, although I’ll try and pick at least a few new tracks. With music streaming services apparently having over 100,000 tracks added every day (and it’s probably more now that AI generated music is flooding these services), it’s impossible to keep up. Even my Release Radar, a playlist that Spotify generates every Friday that includes new tracks from artists I follow and may be interested in, bangs out 200 tracks a week, and I can never get through it. But this is clearly a first world problem. As Jake Shears says in one of my picks this week, ‘there can never be too much music for me’.
No, the songs I pick will be a mixture of new and stuff that I’ve simply been really enjoying that week.
I’ll add these songs to a new Spotify playlist each week, which I’ll embed in every post. So, you can easily check out how great or terrible you think my taste is.
Anyway, enough blabbing, what have I picked this week?
I’m not going to talk about everything, as we’ll be here all day, but I’m going to pick out some highlights.
First up is ‘Not Strong Enough’ by the supergroup boygenius (made up Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus). The whole album (ironically called ‘the record’) is a shoe-in to be on my list of best albums released in 2023, but ‘Not Strong Enough’ is my favourite track on the album, as it’s simply sublime. The best thing about it is that all three singers have sections they sing on the song, and each sound unique but still manage to meld together perfectly to create one of the best tracks of 2023.
Speaking of new albums, May 26 wasn’t just a great day because it happens to be my birthday, but also because Arlo Parks released her new album ‘My Soft Machine’. The whole album is fantastic, but ‘Devotion’ is my pick from it. I recently started listening to Arlo Parks, thanks to Spotify’s all-knowing algorithm, and her new album shows me I made an excellent choice to hit ‘play’.
Blur released their first new single since 2015, unleashing The Narcissist, which is the first single off a forthcoming album that the band recorded in secret. I must admit that, beyond the hits that we all know, I’m not overly familiar with Blur’s discography, so I’m finding it hard to compare to older stuff. But it’s a good tune, and I’m looking forward to seeing what they do on the new album.
Bring me the Horizon released an absolute banger a few weeks back. ‘LosT’ is inspired by the emo genre, with the band saying that My Chemical Romance influenced the song. It was accompanied by an absolutely mad, but brilliant, music video. Naysayers will bemoan the fact that it sounds nothing like BMTH’s early sound, but bands evolve and BMTH have been experimenting with new sounds for ages now. I’m of the opinion that they’ve never been better than they are now, and I’m really excited for what the next album will be, especially if it includes more bangers like ‘LosT’.
If you’d told my younger self that I’d be loving the likes of Harry Styles and Jonas Brothers songs, I probably would have laughed. But these two tunes – Music For a Sushi Restaurant and Waffle House – are ear worms, and Harry Styles is putting out some fantastic music. I’m far past the point of caring about genre or how music snobs perceive a certain artist. All that matters is that I enjoy listening to it.
Probably the biggest outlier on this list is The Salmon Dance by The Chemical Brothers. I added this because it’s a) weird as hell and b) a banger. I first heard it a few weeks back on BBC Radio 6 (man, if you ever want to know how out of touch you are with music beyond the charts, listen to an hour of that station) when it was chosen as one of the Teatime Anthem’s. For some reason, I instantly fell in love with it and proceeded to play it to death over the following few days.
Finally, I’m still listening to Enter Shikari’s latest album, A Kiss for the Whole World x, quite a lot, and the title track remains one of my faves. The album got to UK number 1, a first for the band, and I’m implore you to check it out if you haven’t already. I do still prefer their previous effort, but I listened to that non-stop, so it’s going to be hard to top it.
Here’s the full list of my picks this week, followed by a Spotify embed so you can easily check it out.
Not Strong Enough – boygenius
So Sorry – Lola Young
Labour – Paris Paloma
Devotion – Arlo Parks
The Narcissist – Blur
Nothing Matters – The Last Dinner Party
LosT – Bring Me The Horizon
Music For a Sushi Restaurant- Harry Styles
BLOW OUT MY CANDLE – Betty Who
The Salmon Dance – The Chemical Brothers
I’m sorry – lovelytheband, blackbear
Too Much Music – Jake Shears
How Does It Feel – Tom Grennan
Waffle House – Jonas Brothers
Tattoo – Loreen
A Kiss for the Whole World x – Enter Shikari
Mountain – Sam Ryder
Bitter – Chunk! No, Captain Chunk!
After Hours – Aly & AJ
People pleaser – Cat Burns
Mountains at Midnight – Royal Blood
Overcome – Nothing But Thieves
Under You – Foo Fighters
Double Life – Cold War Kids
Kicking Up A Fuss – BC Camplight
Songs of the Week Playlist #1 – Week of 5 May 2023
If you want to see what I’m listening to throughout the month, I maintain monthly playlists that I add my favourite tracks to as I listen. Here’s the playlist for June 2023.
I wouldn’t call myself a U2 fan. There are certain U2 songs that I like, but I never go out of my way to listen to them. Yet in the year 2001 – long before U2 would annoy millions of people by putting their new album on everyone’s iPhone – when I was at the tender age of 14, one of their songs came to mean a lot to me. That song was Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of.
Released on 29 January 2001, I was the second single from U2’s tenth studio album, All That You Can’t Leave Behind. According to a Rolling Stone interview with Bono from November 2005, the song is about the suicide of his close friend Michael Hutchence, the lead singer of INXS. It’s written in the form of an argument where Bono tries to convince Hutchence that suicide is foolish.
It’s a row between mates. You’re kinda trying to wake them up out of an idea. In my case, it’s a row I didn’t have while he was alive. I feel the biggest respect I could pay to him was not to write some stupid soppy song, so I wrote a really tough, nasty little number, slapping him around the head. And I’m sorry, but that’s how it came out of me.
Wenner, Jann S. (3 November 2005). “Bono: The Rolling Stone Interview”. Rolling Stone. No. 986. pp. 48–67, 102–103.
As a 14-year-old, I was unaware of what the song was actually about. The original reason I fell in love with it was due to the music video released for the song. Three versions exist, and the version that I fell in love with was the original version (also known as the US version). It features an American football game where a placekicker keeps reliving a field goal he missed that would cost his team the game. The video ends with the linebacker, now a postman, as an old man. He kicks the ball and scores.
This video captivated me and my brother. It used to play on either TMF or The Hits music channels quite a lot, and always around the same time of day. This happened to be not long after we finished school. When we got off the bus, we’d run towards our home to turn the TV on and catch it before we missed it. We’d then sit there with grins on our faces while we watched it.
I’m not sure why we loved the video so much. Watching it back today, it’s well shot and the story it tells is relatable to us all. No, I don’t mean that we all go through missing a kick at school. But we do all go through something that went wrong that we keep playing over and over in our heads.
The more I watched the music video and listened to the song, the more I came to connect with the lyrics. As a teenager, I suffered from social anxiety. I would repeat conversations I’d had with other people over and over in my head. I’d wish I’d said something different or been a bit more approachable. Like a lot of teenagers, I obsessed over how people perceived me, and I wanted people to like me. But my social anxiety prevented me from being the real person I wanted to be. It also meant that I could come across as unapproachable and disinterested in involving myself in social activities with others. I tried to avoid social situations because I got anxious thinking about them.
There were so many moments during my teenage years when I’d get stuck replaying the same situations over and over in my head, wishing I’d done something different. Wishing I’d talked to that girl, or wishing that I hadn’t gotten so pissed off at someone and ended up having an argument over nothing. I always seemed to be ‘stuck in a moment’ rather than forgetting about it and moving on with my life. The lyric ‘don’t say that later will be better’ was always me saying I’ll come out of my shell when I’m ready, rather than going and doing something about it right now.
These days, I’m far better at dealing with and moving on a lot quicker than I used to. That social anxiety is still around, but it’s not half as bad as it used to be.
This song reminds me of darker times in my life, but it’s a positive thing as I know I ended up getting through it all to achieve the great life I have today. It also reminds me of having a connection with my brother and bonding over something we both enjoyed. That’s why I love music. It reminds you of periods in your life and the connections you shared with others.
I’m over the moon that pop-punk seems to be undergoing a big revival at the moment, mostly fueled by Generation Z and amplified through platforms such as TikTok. The golden era of pop-punk is filling the ears of a new generation, influencing new bands and proving that singing about teenage-angst will obviously never die amongst teenagers. I’m probably going to write about that at some point, but for now I thought I’d launch a new series called ‘Ones to Watch’ and highlight a pop-punk band that I’m really loving right now. I hope to use this series cover relatively new artists that I’ve found in my voracious need to consume new music.
Anyway, let’s meet Meet Me @ The Altar.
The story of how Meet Me @ The Altar formed pretty much sums up how Generation Z lives their lives, as the band was formed completely over the Internet, with each member living in different US states. This thoroughly modern journey began in 2015, where guitarist Téa Campbell found the YouTube channel of Ada Juarez. Ada has been pumping out excellent drum solo covers of pop-punk classics on her channel since she was 14. The pair bonded and vocalist Edith Johnson would join them in 2017 after an audition where she sang Paramore’s All I Wanted.
As they lived in separate states, they had to work on music remotely. They would also fly to Orlando to do basement shows, telling Louder:
“I don’t even think there was ever a day where we didn’t talk to each other,” says Johnson.
“It felt right though. Sometimes in life you have obstacles, and this distance just happened to be the thing we needed to overcome in order to do what we love. We never complained and we’re seeing those sacrifices pay off now,” she adds with a grin.”
Their track Garden was released in 2020 and was well received, appearing at a time when we were all needing a little emotional support during an incredibly shit year dominated by a pandemic. From there, a record deal by Fueled by Ramen followed. Earlier in 2021, they released their Model Citizen EP and also went on a US tour with Coheed and Cambria (a band I absolutely adored as a teenager).
The Model Citizen EP is brilliant, kicking off with the infectious ‘Feel a Thing’, a song that is constantly stuck in my head (in a good way). It’s also accompanied by a retro-inspired music video where the band go into an arcade and get sucked into a game. Cue some charming retro video game inspired graphics, with the band lovingly rendered as characters in a side-scrolling brawler.
It’s also very refreshing to see a fully female pop-punk band and one made up of women of colour too. The pop-punk scene has mostly been dominated by chino-clad white men, from the early days through the 2000’s. A sizeable amount still put out pop-punk tracks in their 40’s that can sound a little dull and uninspired (see Green Day’s latest output). I’m not saying you can’t do a good pop-punk song when you’re older, but it is a musical genre that tends to be better with young and fresh bands like Meet Me @ The Altar, as well as connecting with a younger audience too. Plus, those older bands have made the pop-punk genre a little stale in the last few years.
My teenage years may be long gone, but the energy that Meet Me @ The Altar put out makes me feel like one again. These newer pop-punk bands remind me of being 19 and sitting on a train at 7am in the morning on the way to university in Leeds. They always helped put me in the right mood, especially when I was half-asleep at that time. Those bands were also a big part of my identity at the time and helped me cope with the world. As much as I never want to back to how I was back then, as I’ve changed so much, I know that things would have been a lot harder without music like this. So, I hope that bands like Meet Me @ The Altar can help a new generation come to terms with who they are. I wish them massive success!
