The melody, the melancholy, all of it just really hits me and reminds me of so many past relationships that just kind of slipped into limbo for no discernable reason. The Weeknd reference is the heartbreaker rather than the banana peel slip.

Terrace Martin, Robert Glasper et al. - Sleepless Nights

Sort of like the Orion Sun song, this all hinges on a reference to an R&B song I love (in this case, a subtle nod to Usher) but also just really captures this feeling I have of wanting to be relaxed and content with where this moment in time is while constantly being reminded of how impossible that is. My actually favorite track from this is "Freeze Tag", but I came back to this song recently and it's the one I get most excited about right now.

Disclosure - Birthday (feat. Kehlani and Syd)

Struggling with a breakup I didn't want years after the fact, this song came across my radar right as a friend of mine who'd gotten married for insurance purposes right before quarantine to his girlfriend of over eight years was finalizing the paperwork to annul the marriage. If you've ever cared deeply for somebody and recognized that it wasn't working out, but still find yourself hoping they're doing alright time to time, this is a really fun expression of that idea.

Masego - Passport

This is always one of my favorite types of songs because it just sounds impossible to be sitting in the booth and decide, "yea, that's finished." This song stops and starts, lurches and lurks all over its three minute runtime. Sometimes Masego is rapping, sometimes he's in a high tenor, sometimes a low falsetto, sometimes the beat flirts with kicking into high gear and others its barely present.

Kevin Krauter - Pretty Boy

This song just hit me out of nowhere at the exact right time. It recalls the grungy, home recording aesthetic of Red House Painters but marries it to this very American Top 40 guitar line and vocal melody that brings the suburban teen in me bubbling back to the surface. There's nothing all that special about it, it just has a feel I wanted right now, and it makes a neat choice to start quiet and only get gradually louder but never truly noisy.

MICHELLE - THE BOTTOM

I could've put any number of MICHELLE tracks on this list, and often started to before deciding I really just needed to take it back to the source. Similar to something like Kendrick Lamar's "Swimming Pools", this is totally a party banger, but on closer introspection this is a pretty sad song about a self-destructive girl trying to bring a potential love interest down with her, and not just implying that's the case but straight up saying, "I'm not afraid to see the bottom, 'cause I will - and I WILL." It's one of the more interesting juxtapositions of music to lyrics I've heard since, I dunno, New Order?

Arlo Parks - Sophie

I'd put this and Coffee for Dinner up as a one-two punch for how I've felt this whole summer. Kind of similar to "The Bottom", this is from the point of view of a young girl over medicated and under loved who sells that experience as cool, but Parks' arrangement lets you know she's aware this isn't a story with a happy ending. That doesn't mean it's a total downer of a song, though, with this nice little counter melody that lingers around like a rainbow hoping everything will get better eventually.

Crooked Still - Ecstasy (Instrumental Edit)

Owed completely to one of the penultimate scenes of this year's most divisive blockbuster video game, The Last of Us Part II, I'm as fascinated by the digging in the crates it must have taken to be aware of the album this track is from as its potency within the narrative of the game itself. I'm not entirely sure I'd be as hooked on it as I am if it weren't for that, but even on its own I can safely say it's one of the more engrossing banjo, cello and steel guitar instrumental cuts I've heard. For whatever that's worth!

Joy Crookes - Yah / Element (Medley)

Absolutely HILARIOUS. It's pretty as hell, so when the restaurant is bustling you can play it without fear people will fully pick up on what's going on, but when the place is dead it'll get the staff cracking up in laughter as we stack wine bottles and plot seating arrangements for the night. In a normal year, I'd have plenty of fond memories set to this jazzy take on Kendrick's "make it look sexy" anthem; as is, I'll be taking this one to the grave.

Blue Scholars - 50 Thousand Deep

If you don't remember these guys, they were part of that Rawkus 50 promotion back in the day, and this was from their sophomore album. They're Seattle natives and wound up embroiled in the World Bank protests in the late-2000s, and this song was their response - it opens with the first protests, stamped down by military police, moves into a motivation speech sort of mid-section and then returns for the final verse with the successful second round of protests.

If there's any song that completely, emphatically captures what it feels like to be a member of the labor/protest class in 2020, it's this random song most people don't know or remember from 2008. I kind of shrugged this album off as a pleasant, charming 7/10 back then at the start of my crit career. 12 years later, it's the strongest reminder of my privilege to listen to a song like this and nod moderately before shuffling into something from Wilt Chamberlain 2.5.

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"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
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