Music Diary, Vol. 74

For the rationale behind this mad effort, the initial post is here. The full series of Music Diary posts are here. The full playlist is above, and also here.

Week of June 2-8, 2025

LYRICS: Queen of Jeans, "Tell Me"

SONG: Happened to hear this Donna Summer banger in passing yesterday, and a) it took me straight back to 1979, when I owned a 45 of it, and b) it made me notice anew how much its gnarly rock/disco hybrid paved the way for “Beat It.”

ALBUM: n/a

LYRICS: Talking Heads, "Psycho Killer"

SONG: I was already into the swampy groove and husky vocals of this great new Miley Cyrus jam, but it was when she unfurled the majestic 10-note melisma on the first syllable of “easy” that I was really done for.

ALBUM: Recently spent some quality time spinning the Flying Burrito Brothers’ unfussy, under-loved third record, on which singer-songwriter Rick Roberts subs for Gram Parsons in what is arguably the most seamless frontman switch aside from Lou Reed to Doug Yule.

LYRICS: Roberta Flack (James Shelton), “I’m the Girl”

SONG: This achingly beautiful Simón Díaz ballad has a ghostly falsetto vocal and incantatory lyrics about birds, the moon, and farmyard violence, but what I find most hypnotic about it is the persistent triple-meter rhythm that underpins it, like the gallop of small but fierce pony, or a broken heartbeat.

ALBUM: I have denied myself the extraordinary pleasure of replaying this loose-spirited yet tightly constructed pop classic by the Police (arguably their peak record, though I don’t want to argue it) for too long. That ends today.

LYRICS: Pulp, "Help the Aged"

SONG: What are your working theories about what’s going on with the slow-boiling two-minute instrumental coda to this otherwise ebullient Prince classic? Mine is that it’s about sex—to be more specific, it’s masterful edging up to the orgasmic finish. Maybe he could take the place of her man.

ALBUM: Hard to believe that Hermanos Gutiérrez were not raised in the Sonoran desert or thereabouts (they’re Ecuadorians based in Zürich), as their evocative two-guitar instrumental music sounds to me like an Arizona sunset looks.

LYRICS: Liz Phair, "Dance of the Seven Veils"

SONG: Protest songs aren’t usually as catchy and sunshine poppy as this great Declan McKenna jam from 10 years ago, which took as its subject FIFA corruption around the World Cup but which persists as a kind of smiling, self-implicating anti-oligarch anthem.

ALBUM: For much of its running time, Boston’s debut is as perfect a distillation of mid-1970s pop rock as could be imagined. It has a few indulgent longueurs (also period-appropriate), but when it sticks to the band’s patented 2-guitar party sound, I’m all in.

LYRICS: Juliette Greco (Robert Nyel), “C’était Bien”

SONG: It will never supplant Sly and the Family Stone’s “Hot Fun” as an ode to summer, but this nervy Labi Siffre jam deserves a spin for its pulse-quickening gallop, with stabs of trumpet like the glare of sunlight over a bustling cityscape. (Also love the apt aside, “Damn those flies.”)

ALBUM: Another great '90s compilation not officially on streaming: This Matador collection of tracks by the Japanese mash-up band Pizzicato Five, whose electro-lounge pop hits a sweet spot somewhere between 2 other fave bands, Deee-Lite and Style Council.

LYRICS: Stevie Wonder, "Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years Away"

SONG: 2 thoughts about this Leonard Cohen classic. On the music: Starting the chorus unexpectedly on the IV chord seems to change the song’s key center. On the lyrics: “They’ve summoned up a thundercloud / They’re gonna hear from me” is the bell that rings right now.

ALBUM: In this transfixing 1941 choral work by Ernst Krenek, sinus-clearing dissonance alternates with chiming consonance over a shifting or non-existent tonal center—a fittingly unsettling setting for a work about apocalypse, both Biblical and contemporary.