#11 - X Song
You can skip to this week’s playlist on Spotify or scroll to the end.
As obvious, every song here follows the naming format [X] Song. Stairwell Song, Trunk Song, Bread Song, and so on. That is really all these songs necessarily have in common, from metal band System of a Down’s powerful anti-prison anthem Prison Song to Tessa Violet’s very pop ‘domestic love’ tune Kitchen Song. It was a little harder ordering this one.
The playlist starts with New Song by Maggie Rogers and Del Water Gap, in honor of Maggie’s new album, Surrender, coming out nearly two weeks ago. New Song isn’t off Surrender, however, but a compilation album Maggie put out in 2020 called Songs from the Archive, which featured songs off EPs and albums she’d put out (and taken off the internet) before she blew up. It features songs from her high school and college days, including New Song, which she wrote with her ex-bandmate and college friend S. Holden Jaffe (who’s now a solo artist going by Del Water Gap, the duo’s original bandname). They were both freshmen, writing songs on those NYU dorm twin beds I know a little too well.
When I saw Del Water Gap live, Maggie showed up in the encore as a [very loudly welcomed] surprise guest, in one of her first live performances in years. They explained this would be the first time either of them sang New Song since 2012, that freshman year at NYU. As the two friends performed, they kept looking at each other in disbelief, laughing between lines, watching the entirety of Bowery Ballroom sing word for word a song they’d written together before any semblence of fame, as teenagers, a decade ago, and since abandoned. I’ll always remember that encore as one of my most joyful memories of live music. But it’s also kind of wild how thin (and random) the line is between a song becoming a demo written by mostly unknown friends, heard by a handful, and one loved and felt by many more.
Alongside Notes from the Archive, Maggie released a commentary version which made me realize the primary reason I love Maggie as an artist, as is the case with many of my favorites, is because her work makes me more comfortable and secure in feeling deeply; feeling too much or for too long or about too many things.
After New Song is Teddy’s Song by Christian Lee Hutson, who I think is one of the best songwriters around right now, especially in the indie-folk genre. His 2022 album Quitters is one of my favorites of the year. He called it “a collage” of scenes, explaining, “The person in the song falls in love, it doesn’t work out, they isolate from friends and try to make a change for the better.” Of course, this is the scene I know best:
“You talk all the time and somehow you say nothing
You're everything wrong with this horrible country”
10 songs
(Spotify)
New Song - Maggie Rogers, Del Water Gap
Teddy’s Song - Christian Lee Hutson
Love song - Lana Del Rey
Our Song - Matchbox Twenty
Kitchen Song - Tessa Violet
Trunk Song - Jelani Aryeh
Siren Song - The Brother Brothers
Stairwell Song - Bright Eyes
Bread Song - Black Country, New Road
Prison Song - System Of A Down