Tag Archives: song-to-know

Last year, Alex “Yung Skayda” Calderon, a member of the duo WhoKilledXIX, casually wrote a TikTok hit while holding down a day-job as a warehouse worker for Amazon. His groupmate, Kareem “Karm the Tool” Patterson, fleshed out the demo into a wriggling, buzz-saw single titled “Kismet”; TikTokers started using one …

From the time Jorja Smith had just one song on SoundCloud to her current status as an R&B darling, the singer has weaved social commentary into her tales of youth, self, and love. At 17, she wrote her first single, 2016’s “Blue Lights,” to recognize the fear of police and …

Lawrence Rothman whips up a seething garage-rock song in “Sunny Place for Shady People” with help from the Philadelphia blues musician Son Little. Inspired by the nightmare miasma of Donald Trump’s leadership — and particularly of being a gender-fluid person through that stretch of time — “Sunny Place for Shady …

Dolly Parton’s Seventies country classic, “Jolene,” has received many a rendition in English, including takes by goddaughter Miley Cyrus, the White Stripes, Pentatonix, and even a queer interpretation by Nadine Gibbs. But nearly 50 years since its release, the legendary song finally gets its first Spanish-language makeover by two Mexican …

Melbourne, Australian, guitar ninjas Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever made a near-perfect indie-rock gem with 2018’s Hope Downs. They worked their own little sliver of history beautifully, essentially the airily melodic song poetry of the Go-Betweens or if they had R.E.M.’s melodic-but-driving rhythm section, or the twisty guitar weaves of Television …

“All my friends are at the party/But I’ve got other plans,” Ella O’Connor Williams, the indie singer-songwriter who records as Squirrel Flower, tells us on “Streetlight Blues.” If those plans involved heading home to write this song, it was alone-time well-spent. Williams grew up in Boston and went to college …

Ethan Gruska has been there all through Phoebe Bridgers‘ rise to the top of the singer-songwriter pack. The grandson of Star Wars composer John Williams and one half of the brother-sister duo the Belle Brigade, Gruska has had a hand in producing Bridgers’ 2017 debut, Stranger in the Alps; her …

There’s a deceptively simple joy in the music of soul singer-songwriter Zawadi Noel. At a recent Brooklyn show, the New York-via-Washington D.C. musician pulled off the tricky feat of uplifting the audience without wading into maudlin waters that trip up other performers. Maybe it’s the childhood years spent living all …

Every blue moon, you can actuallyhear a pop superstar be born. “Motivation” is that song, and Normani is that superstar in the making (but already well ahead in her development). Prior to “Motivation,” Normani had quite a successful incubation period, first as a member of Fifth Harmony and then with …

It’s difficult not to appreciate a song that sounds like it was solely made for rooftop parties. John.k evokes exactly that on “If We Never Met,” a soulful, simple pop tune about the “what ifs” in a life without someone special. “If We Never Met” builds upon itself. It starts …