This Track Is Fire!

Let's start with some truisms: the Beasties are amazing, Licensed To Ill is really fucking good, but Paul's Boutique  is fucking great. Unfortunately, like Weezer's Pinkerton , not everyone immediately realized the genius that  Paul's Boutique  is/was.  I say all of that to set the stage: Check Your Head  was considered a comeback for the Boys. Right, wrong, or indifferent, that was the impression at the time, so despite the fact that over the years their second album has been re-evaluated and properly heralded, in 1992 the Beasties needed a hit. Check Your Head was said hit. Now, the point here is not to consider the entire album, because there are many, many , tracks that I could have highlighted here today. Maybe the obvious choice is "So What'cha Want," but I mentioned yesterday that a lot of the music that informed my youth came from going to the the local teen "alternative" club and I cannot even begin to tell you how many times this track...

So, funny story. Actually, two funny stories. Last week when I was deep into Scene Queen and Wargasm (UK) I let the music keep playing and I stumbled across this track by Delilah Bon. I liked it immediately, but also the song, and her, seemed familiar, but I couldn't figure out why. Her music is clearly similar to the other artists I was listening to and I thought my friends Adam and Holly would like her, so I sent her a link to her track. They had, in fact, heard of her, and Adam reminded me that they had sent me a text in March of this year asking me to check out Delilah Bon, so yeah, I had listened to her before and forgotten. Ope. Now, is that because of my age, or the fact that I have too much music, because this is not the first time that I thought I had discovered an artist only to find out that I had already encountered them before, like I did with Boys Noize . Once again, if you like aggressive, female-fronted music with hip-hop beats and shredding guitars, Delilah Bon i...

Recently I heard something off of Dermot Kennedy's new album, The Weight of the Woods , and while it was a good song, it took me back to 2019, right before the pademic and this track that pulls at my heart strings. I remember we bought tickets to see him here in our town, but then COVID happened. Finally, in August of 2022, he was able to perform, and masked up we enjoyed hearing this song, and many others, live. And really, that's it: sometimes you hear a voice that hits you just right, and then, if you're lucky, you get to hear that talented singer all the way from Ireland perform in your town in the Midwest and it's a magical moment. Whenever I hear this I am thrown back to that evening. It was perfect. Just like this song. Happy Monday! Enjoy!

Sometimes you climb into your car and tell your music app to play music that you like while you're driving and it plays some song that makes you go, "that was fucking good, who was that?" In this case it was Zimbabwean-Australian singer-songwriter and hip-hop artist Tkay Maidza singing and rapping through "Must Be" and before you know it you've gone back, repeated the song four times in a row. I've already shared with my daughter, and my friends Adam and Pete because in just a couple of hours I have become obessed. Enjoy!

While this song is 20+ years old, it keeps swinging back into my orbit every so often, but it's such a good song, why wouldn't it? I am sure that I heard this on a commercial at some point because I am Gen X and apparently have money now. I mean, I heard Depeche Mode played before a commercial break while watching an NFL game the other day. That said, this song gets me to chair dance, which is a high indicator for me that a track is fire. I've included the album version here because it's three minutes longer than the radio version. Who doesn't want more of a good thing? Not me! Happy Wednesday! Enjoy!

I know almost nothing about 21 Savage other than I knew he was a rapper with some amount of popularity, nor do I recall how I even came across this track. Honestly, I'm not the biggest fan of the lyrics (they hew a bit too misogynistic for my usual tastes). And yet....and yet, damn, there's just something about this track that I just love . Enjoy!