Aaaand here it is. February is over, so it’s time to round up my favorite songs from the month and put em in a big ol playlist. I think the playlists are really starting to reflect how inconsistent and weird it feels to be alive right now. Oscillating wildly back and forth between sad, joyful, terrified, nostalgic, and fifty other emotions all at a moment’s notice. This month had a lot of highs, (I got some amazing new opportunities with my art) and also some lows (everything going on with the US government and the larger societal failings it continues to highlight). If you too are occasionally overwhelmed by it all, why not at least take a couple minutes out of your day and listen to some good music?

There are a couple artists that have multiple songs in the playlist so I’m only writing one thing per. Just rest assured that those other songs are also very good.

An absolute straightforward banger. I love a song that’s just unabashedly about one simple thing and doesn’t try to disguise it. It’s sexy, it’s catchy, it’s Remi Wolf!

Joyce Manor came back with another round of hits this month. This one in particular hit close to home. I moved to a new city last year and this got me feeling nostalgic for the absolute sh*thole my friends and I used to hang out at back in Santa Cruz. It was right down the street from my crappy house (a la the song) I lived in with six other people (!!!) and we would all walk down there and drink and play pool and sing bad karaoke on Wednesdays. The floor was always sticky and the only other people there were a couple of old biker dudes, but it was close by and they had The Munsters pinball, so it was pretty much the greatest place ever for a bunch of newly 21-year-olds. If you’re ever in town and need a cheap beer, check out Callahan’s Irish Pub and tell them The Rat sent you. They will not know what you’re talking about, and you may be asked to leave.

My sister showed me this song because we like to watch The X-Files together. I like that the lead singer sounds like he has a cold, and that it sounds like they wrote the lyrics by just seeing how many words rhymed with “Mulder”.

I didn’t know there was a first “Dissociating in New York” until I sat down to write this. I like this version better! The production on this one is fun and crisp and the vocals sound like cotton candy. I too am often dissociating but I am rarely in New York.

This song comes off this crazy project called “Everybody’s Album”, where the idea was that a bunch of people would all record 1-second audio clips and send them in and then they’d be incorporated into this big album. It’s a neat idea! I haven’t listened to the full thing yet but I like a lot of the featured artists that appear on it, like Daisy the Great and The Femcels. Anyway I’ll report back once I hear the full thing.

Good song!

A modern love song. This was my favorite track off Ninajirachi’s recent “I Love My Computer”, and now it’s been remixed by a newer favorite artist of mine! The slowdown at the end is really cool.

Nostalgia bait chiptune emo. If you remember watching asdfmovie at 480p on the family computer you’ll probably like this on some level. You also may want to get your vision checked, you’re getting up there in years.

It’s about falling out of love with someone and finding them annoying but it’s also a total bop. I like the revitalized trend of songs that sound like they could play during an episode of The O.C. We were missing out on that style for a while there.

I think if you’ve ever grown to know and love someone that you met later in life you’ve had the wish to know them when the two of you were growing up. A lot of us only find our people once we’re adults and it’s easy to imagine the kind of comfort having those friends around longer would have brought. How much easier and different would things have been? I often wonder what it would have been like to have all my favorite freaks around me from the time I was a kid to now.

More than that, a lot of the people I care about had lonely, hard, childhoods. It’s silly to think about but I do sometimes wish I could have been there for them in those times I wasn’t a part of their life yet.

This song hurts my feelings. It does the lyrical equivalent of the opposite of a compliment sandwich. It opens on a depressingly bleak vignette, then moves into a darkly funny scene, and then to a grand, sweeping and sweet sentiment. There’s one line in the middle where the singer suddenly sounds a lot like Adam Sandler to me, but I really like the last verse and chorus so I end up kinda forgetting by the time it’s done. Really good lyrics.

I was just told about this artist and their album this month and I was really into it. It has the energy of an album that was just made as a byproduct of two friends who are the exact same type of weird spending a codependent amount of time together in one another’s bedrooms making goofy music. Like when you would spend an afternoon in middle school in Garageband with a friend just making the weirdest stuff anyone’s ever heard that’s filled with inside jokes only the two of you find funny. But make it a whole album and make it good.

Rufus Wainwright wrote this song while on a bunch of acid at a time in his life where he was obsessed with the documentary this song takes its name from. Lyrically, it’s just a nonsensical collage of his favorite imagery at that particular moment, referencing both the doc and the novella “Death In Venice” by Thomas Mann. That rules. It’s cool to make art that’s just about other art you like. Plus, the song is gorgeous.

Easily my favorite song I heard this month. Honestly it feels like a disservice to try and describe it. It kept me sane. Please go check it out.

I never really know what to put at the end of these so I’m going to start just listing my favorite albums from the month.

Albums I Liked This Month:

“I Used to Go to This Bar” by Joyce Manor, “Honey” by Samia, “Big Ideas” by Remi Wolf, “Poses” by Rufus Wainwright, “Singin’ to an Empty Chair” by Ratboys, “I Have to Get Hotter” by the Femcels, “CREAM” by Kassa Overall, “SALVATION” by Rebecca Black, “The Art of Loving” by Olivia Dean, “The Refrigerator” by Remember Sports, “Hot Sauce Committee (Pt. 2)” by Beastie Boys, “HYPERYOUTH (afterparty)” by Joey Valence & Brae