My 2023 in Pop Culture: Favourite Music

Favourite Songs

Fuck man, Carpenter is such a good song. Vera Ellen is a Pōneke-based artist whose album Ideal Home Noise I fell in love with this year. The album tells the story of the an escalating mental health crisis, climaxing with a devastating gut punch of Broadway Junction but ending on an ultimately hopeful note with Stick Around 2 See. It's a beautiful, cathartic piece of work I'd recommend to anyone who knows what it means to experience the pain of being alive (i.e., everyone).

Carpenter is the stand-out song of the album and cuts like a knife in its familiar depiction of depression, using metaphors to provide insight into the feelings of hopelessness and exhaustion ("I call the carpenter/I broke the furniture/I don't know where to sit/I think I'm gonna quit") before building to a a plaintive chorus: "If you saw how close I was you would pick up the phone/and if you saw how close I was, you wouldn't leave me alone". It starts quietly and slowly, before becoming increasingly urgent until Vera is shouting the lyrics in agitation, as if exorcising every bad thought and feeling in her body. Like all her songs though, there are rays of sunshine through the clouds; the song ends with the recordings of a small child's voice, as if to say "it'll be all right".

Badah! Bah bah badah! With those four opening notes, I became forever addicted to The Tom Tom Club's Genius of Love (Live Version). Only included in the Stop Making Sense setlist so David Byrne had time to change into his famous Big Suit, Tina Weymouth and Chris Franz' iconic homage to funk captured me more than any of the Talking Heads songs in that film.

The track, which is already sonically overwhelming and slightly bizarre, becomes even stranger with Chris Frantz' frequent interjections: "shock! shock!", "the girls can do it too y'all!", "who that, who that, who that trying to bad? YOU MOTHER" (I understand Frantz is emulating legend of soul James Brown - mainly because he keeps shouting his name over and over - but there are things James Brown can pull off that are harder for a white man with a terrible haircut in a brown polo shirt). Meanwhile, Tina Weymouth uses a demon voice and does a weird leprechaun dance at the end. Far from detracting from the song, these touches just add to the atmosphere of a joy-filled, cocaine-fuelled party where "everything's just jumping out of sight". When Frantz yells "okay, okay, BYE" I'm genuinely devastated.

I first heard Eliza Rose & Interplanetary Criminal's B.O.T.A. (Baddest of Them All) as I celebrated the new year, and as shit as 2023's been at least I was welcomed in with the perfect anthem. It's a dreamy, loopy slice of house perfection. As the music video suggests, to listen to this song is to enter a sonic wonderland, a place where you can dance with abandon and forget your pain.

I discovered Tom Lark's Live Wires through the Silver Scroll shortlist (a really good way to get into some local music) and I'm so glad I did. As soon as the first chords played I knew I would love it; there's something about the pedal steel guitar classic to country music that makes my heart ache in the best way (I attribute this to listening to the Brokeback Mountain soundtrack on repeat as a teen). The song, according to Tom Lark, is about death and legacy - the way people remember us is about how we made them feel. This song makes me feel the way I feel after a good cry: I'm still sad, but the world seems clearer and more hopeful.

The BTS boys went solo this year, with varying results. RM produced a well-regarded, respectable rap album, Jimin created an EP of glittering city pop, V sang some melancholy, jazz-infused songs... and Jungkook made Seven. Let's get this out of the way: this song is fucking stupid. Sonically, it's like a Crazy Ex-Girlfriend parody of a Craig David song. Lyrically, he's just listing the days of the week. The appeal of the song really only lies in the fact that he's singing about fucking... and, you know what, it's enough. For whatever reason, Jungkook's stupid sexy phase just works. This earworm is destined to be a forever classic of karaoke, its silly lyrics bouncing off the soundproof walls as the girlies scream "YOU KNOW NIGHT AFTER NIGHT, I'LL BE FUCKING YOU RIGHT" into their mics. And yes, I'll be one of them.

Favourite Albums

Holy fucking shit, the damp sexy goth absolutely killed it this year. Caroline Polachek's Desire, I Want to Turn Into You is a beguiling monster of a pop record. From the opening seconds of the album, which begin with a siren-like wail, I was entranced. The songs bathe in shimmering eroticism and mystery, undefinable but undeniable. Caroline's confidence, her weirdness and her obsession with Greek mythology are all in play here, her lyrics weaving powerful fantasies of sex, violence and destructive forces of nature.

Favourite Track: Bunny is a Rider

My beloved Jenny Lewis finally released another album this year, the gorgeous Joy'All. This album finds her older and wiser, looking back on her life with her trademark dry humour: "So, I'm 44 in 2020, and thank God I saved up some money/Time to ruminate like,"what the fuck was that?"" She doesn't claim to be someone who's figured out love or life, and I find enormous comfort in that.

Jenny's music is my medicine, having helped me through multiple mental health crises. Her songs ache with longing and sadness, but in a way that invites you in to share in it. She's expressed that this album is a result of a desire to return to "campfire music", and it's easy to imagine her singing these songs around a fire pit, strumming her guitar as we all weep and laugh together.

Favourite track: Apples and Oranges

In contrast to Joy'All, which I listened to compulsively, turning over the vinyl to start again as soon as side B finished spinning, I've barely listened to Sufjan Steven's Javelin. His emotions are so raw and overwhelming, and bring me up to such a heightened emotional state, that it's hard to bear. There's also the pain and sadness infused into the listening experience, knowing about with the death of Sufjan's partner Evans Richardson and Sufjan's hospitalisation for Guillen-Barré syndrome. Having said that, it's one of the best pieces of music I've ever listened to, and when I actually sit down and let it take over me, it's a cathartic and powerful experience.

Favourite track: Shit Talk

Having listened to them back-to-back, Pickle Darling's Laundromat bears quite a lot of similarity to Javelin. There's a similar sensibility, a delicateness, a layering of sounds that build to a crescendo of feelings. In constrast to Sufjan's sweeping orchestrations and choir though, Pickle Darling, aka Lukas Mayo, creates their songs with a slightly more DIY ethos in their bedroom in Ōtautahi. The songs are imperfect but beautifully formed small creatures, often less than two minutes in length. The wry humour in the lyrics and Mayo's strong New Zealand accent keep the songs grounded, while also evoking feelings of sweetness and love.

Favourite track: Head Terrarium

Next time: Books!