2024 Music Feelings - Songs

Charly Bliss have totally refined their pop sound with there newest album, and this song feels like the most in-your-face incarnation of that ethos. Extremely high energy, totally fun to sing out loud, a banger from front to back.

Something noisy had to make it into the top 10, just to make sure everyone was paying attention. Gentle guitar plucking descends, ever slowly, into a pit of chaotic guitars. A word isn't even spoken for the first half of the song. When the cacophony starts, a single guitar melody transecnds the whole track like a bugle leading a war charge. And

Standing in the grocery store buying veggie dogs, I heard this song for the first time and was struck by the beauty and the vitriol of this song. To reduce someone you loved into a master of nothing, the "god of losing me," is only natural when they worked to cross you out of their life. The songs meandering lyrics break into a vindictive chorus, echoing those moments lost in thought when you remember your anger and sadness once more.

Rarely have I seen someone invoke a melody like "Tom's Diner" and totally let it live, seamlessly, in a new song with a totally different mood. The song is called "Broke My Heart," but this is no dirge. This is about moving on, starting over in a brand new way.

I could write a lot about all the tracks on BRAT, and this era of Charli in general, but I think "360" succinctly captures her style now. It is high energy, it is pop, it is refined and streamlined and leaves everything on the table without restraint. Shout outs to my boy A.G. Cook.

As a great friend of mine said, "this Wishy album has no skips," the entire thing is full of bangers, which is unfair when it comes to picking songs from a whole year. "Just Like Sunday" always captures me when I hear it late in the cadence of the album, the whole thing slows down and takes a breather, and I adore the acoustic guitar laying on top of the backwards-tracked synth.

I certainly have to award "grower of the year" to this song and record. On first listen, I found it an accessible and fun indie/emo record. Each successive listen, the absolute crash of insturmentation that comes in around "YOU. OLD. DOG." lit up all the neurons in my brain. I love how many times this song switches gears, up and down and back and forth, it really rewards a close listening.

Music, of course, is always tied to our experiences. It is perhaps unfair to all the great pieces out there that I listened to on a bad day. And in return, what feels like a nice and slow build of an electronic song from Fred again.. was something I dove into on a late night drive, accidentally hours further from my destination than I thought I would be in the middle of the night. The slow, plodding build of this song let me drift into the late summer's night and forced me to requeue like four times in a row (maybe more).

Greatest duet of the last year? Who will sing this with me?? Waxahatchee continues to flex when it comes to simple and straightforward songcraft, full of feel-good hooks and such a beautiful and gentle structure.

I'd be lying if I said something about the title of this song didn't capture me. Music is so good at capturing those indescribable feelings, and what feeling is more indescribable than that of our heart's? From the first moment the staccato riff of this song spurs to life, a wall of shoegaze paints a portrait, simple and still dynamic. Not just sound or noise but something that really speaks to its