Medialoper

Certain Songs #2323: Soccer Mommy – “Lucy”

March 23, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Color Theory
Year: 2020

. . .

On Feburary 28, 2020, Soccer Mommy released the follow-up to 2018’s Clean, which was called Color Theory. This was literally the last possible time to release an album for at least the next two years (and, sigh, counting) and not have it affected in some way by the pandemic.

And in a weird way, that wasn’t even true, at least for me: working from home for these last two years (and, yay! counting) has meant that I didn’t have to listen to music through headphones, as I’d had to do for several years prior. (Except for that glorious glorious period at WME when I had my own office overlooking Sunset Blvd in Beverly Hills, which now seems like a weird dream.)

Certain Songs #2322: Soccer Mommy – “Cool”

March 22, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Clean
Year: 2018

. . .

Near the end of the last decade, there was a microtrend of young female artists who got noticed by writing “songs” based around “guitars.” Some of them, like Courtney Barnett, made music under their own names, others like Sophie Allison, recorded under band names, in her case, “Soccer Mommy,” a phrase that is older than she is. But, intentionally or not, ties her back to the 90s, when that was a new term.

That said, the second single from her 2018 breakthrough, Clean, deals with a subject as old as time, open admiration of the cool girl over there. Yeah, that one.

Certain Songs #2321: Snow Patrol – “Spitting Games”

March 21, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Final Straw
Year: 2003

. . .

No, not that Snow Patrol song. That Snow Patrol song is called “Chasing Cars” and is objectively one of the most popular rock songs of the entire 21st century, having made it to #5 on the Billboard charts and into top tens all over the world. Also, it’s been played nearly a billion times on Spotify (OK, closer to 900,000,000 as of this writing, but still), and a couple of years ago was declared the most-played song on U.K. radio in the 21st century.

“Chasing Cars” is perfectly fine, and definitely the answer to the question “what if U2, but with a baritone vocalist?” But the Snow Patrol song I’ve always loved is 2003’s “Spitting Games,” which, uh, reminded me of R.E.M. if their singer were Irish.

Certain Songs #2320: The Sneetches – “Unusual Sounds”

March 19, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Sometimes That’s All We Have
Year: 1989

. . .

How in the world did I miss The Sneetches? They were a power-pop band named after Dr. Seuss characters based in San Francisco who started recording in 1985. Given my love for obscure San Francisco-based 80s bands like The Cat Heads or X-Tal, you’d think that at some point, The Sneetches — who recorded through 1995 — would have crossed my radar while they were still a going concern.

Certain Songs #2319: Snail Mail – “Valentine”

March 18, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Valentine
Year: 2021

. . .

A couple of years ago, a Twitter reply guy messaged me and asked me if he was correct in assuming that I stopped listening to new music in the 2000s. Because all he knew about me was Certain Songs, and Certain Songs is heavily weighted towards music of the last century. Of couurse, there were more decades in the 1900s than there have been in the 2000s, so that’s part of it, but honestly, it’s mostly music from the 70s-90s that I focus on. You know, music that came out while I was young.

That said, I’ve written about more post-1999 songs than I’ve written about pre-1970 songs, and anybody who knows me knows that i’ve probably listened to more music – a wider variety of artists and genres — in the past two decades than I ever did when I was young. Which might be part of the reason that Certain Songs skews older: the more songs that are in my life — and my curated iTunes library shows 41,000 at this point — the harder it is for a new song to make an impression.

Certain Songs #2318: Snail Mail – “Pristine”

March 17, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Lush
Year: 2018

. . .

In the last half-decade or so, there was a microtrend of young female artists who got noticed by writing “songs” based around “guitars.” Some of them, like Phoebe Bridgers, made music under their own names, others like Lindsey Jordan, recorded under band names. Jordan records as “Snail Mail” a phrase that is older than she is. But, intentionally or not, ties her back to the 90s, when that was a new term.

And so on “Pristine,” the first single from the first Snail Mail album, Lush, Jordan’s slightly echoing guitar drives the song ever forward, as she’s singing about a love object who doesn’t necessarily love her back.

Certain Songs #2317: Smokey Robinson and The Miracles – “The Tears of a Clown”

March 16, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Tears of a Clown
Year: 1970

. . .

So a guy walks into a psychiatrist’s office and says to the psychiatrist, he sez: “Doc, I’ve been really really depressed lately. You see, my baby left me, and I just can’t keep from crying.”

And the psychiatrist says: “What you need is music. Music makes everybody happy. As it turns out, the great Motown group Smokey Robinson and The Miracles are in town tonight. You should go see them, as the lovely tenor voice of Smokey Robinson will do both your heart and your soul a world of good.”

At that, the guy bursts into tears and exclaims: “But Doctor, I am Smokey Robinson!”