Music Diary, Vol. 91

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 Sept. 29-Oct. 5, 2025

LYRICS: Shania Twain, "When"
SONG: I’m a sucker for a hook like the one that powers this Ariana Grande tune. I love the way its 13 notes play under the verse, then provide the melody for the chorus, but I especially love the whole-step repetition under the words “be the one to take you home”—an earworm within an earworm.

ALBUM: Recently enjoyed hearing the Fort Greene Orchestra play the Eroica at the Co-Cathedral of St. Joseph in Brooklyn. Also spent the week sampling various recordings, with help from Josh Weilerstein’s podcast, and the clear winner for me: Furtwängler 1947.

LYRICS: Thundercat, "Dragonball Durag"
SONG: No one can make odd, jagged music inviting quite like Juana Molina. On her new single, she forefronts chirpy multitracked vocals and distorted keyboards more than her usual looped guitar (though it’s never 100% clear whence her sounds emanate), with typically mesmerizing results.

ALBUM: On first listen, this groovy Shirley Scott bop record seems dominated not by her tasteful organ playing but by saxophonist Harold Vick. Listen again and clock the ways her organ and mellotron hold it all together.

LYRICS: Courtney Barnett, "Avant Gardener"
SONG: The great Gillian Armstrong film My Brilliant Career was my introduction to this achingly wistful Schumann tune, in which my favorite things are the second chord (a wonderfully open-ended C#dim) and the way the bridge is cut short, as if it can't resist returning the main melody.

ALBUM: Maria McKee's last full-on Americana record, from 1993, may be her best. To be clear, I also love her glam-rock follow-up, Life Is Sweet, but if I were going to recommend an intro to both her songwriting and interpretive genius, this would be the one.

LYRICS: Jack Gilford & Lotte Lenya (Kander & Ebb), “It Couldn’t Please Me More (A Pineapple)” from Cabaret

SONG: My 16-year-old has somehow turned me onto Toto, a band I had no time for when I was his age. It feels as if some kind of wormhole has opened up to hear my kid crank up and sing along to this jazzy, nervy, pretty irresistible tune. Is this what time travel is like?

ALBUM: It may not be authentic flamenco, but Rosalía's first record—mostly just her and Raül Refree on acoustic guitar performing death-themed cantes—is a bold and beautiful showcase of her relentless vocal adventurism and a tasty prelude of the sonic experiments to come.

LYRICS: Taylor Swift, “Actually Romantic”

SONG: It's not quite on the level of his greatest fuck-off songs—"Positively 4th Street," "Idiot Wind"—but that may be because the anger coursing through this searing closing track of Dylan's Street Legal isn't directed at the song's subject but at the many obstacles between him and her.

ALBUM: The weakest track comes first on this Eric Dolphy/John Lewis record of Weill tunes (a queasy, overly literal "Alabama Song"), but it immediately improves from there, transforming this iconic theater music into bop/free-jazz fugues. A must listen.

LYRICS: Margo Price, “Hell in the Heartland”

SONG: One reason I love this track from Dodie’s great new record, made with her one-time Fizz bandmate, Greta Isaac: It has a distinct Roches vibe, not only in its tight vocal harmonies but in its po-faced whimsy—the “she loves her edamame” outro would not sound out of place on Nurds.

ALBUM: A classic with caveats: I’ve never warmed to the opening or title tracks, and there’s a bit of meandering in the margins. Still a powerful artifact of pre-ubiquitous U2, and I always love hearing the deep cuts “‘Wire” and “Indian Summer Sky.”

LYRICS: Jensen McRae, “King David”

SONG: I hear “It’s good to be soft when they push you down” as a variation on Jesus’s admonition to “turn the other cheek,” but that’s hardly the only line in this hymn-like Weyes Blood tune that makes it sound like it should be sung in church (and it has been, at ours).

ALBUM: A great choral work is like a cathedral of sound, and you could do a lot worse than spend time inside the bright, dramatic contours of this Vivaldi masterwork. There are some dark corners here, sure, but the whole thing is suffused with a pulsating light.