NPR Music - The Contenders, Vol. 12: The songs we can't stop playing this week

Episode Date: June 25, 2024

Our updated list of the year's best songs includes a sweet reflection from beabadoobee, Nathy Peluso's wildly infectious "Aprender A Amar," the mind-blowing virtuosity of pianist Yuja Wang and more.Featured songs and artists:1. Nathy Peluso: "APRENDER A AMAR," from 'GRASA'2. Jakob Lindberg: "Musette" and "Tombeau" from 'Robert de Visée: Theorbo Solos'3. Brijean: "Workin' On It," from 'Macro'4. Yuja Wang: "Danzón No. 2 (Marquez)," from 'The Vienna Recital'5. beabadoobee: "Coming Home," from 'This Is How Tomorrow Moves'6. Grupo Frontera & NICKI NICOLE: "DESQUITE," from JUGANDO A QUE NO PASA NADA'Enjoy the show? Tell a friend and leave us a review!Question, comments or any feedback always welcome at [e-mail] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

I was on a Zoom call with somebody once here at NPR. And because of the pandemic, they hadn't seen me in maybe a year and a half or two. They literally could not hide their shock. They gasped. They gasped and said, oh, Robin. Are you? Are you okay? And I said, yes, this is what I look like now.

Well, you are looking just a touch more like Tom York than you used to. I've never gotten Tom York. Oh, my God, said Tom York? I've gotten Moby. And somebody stopped me in Austin at South by one time. And they're like, oh, my God, you were that, are you, you look just like, oh, that actor. And they couldn't come up with his name. And I realized they were thinking of Michael Keaton.

No. No. No. I decided to take it as a car. No, okay. Yeah. Tom Hisinga, Anna Maria Sayer. How's it going?

Hey, Robin. So here we are. Summer has a. officially started. I don't know what it is with people saying that summer has started after Memorial Day, but it is officially started. June is just about over, and we're taking a moment again to update our running list of the year's best songs.

This is a list that we've been keeping and updating all year with songs we love so much. They're contenders for spots on our best of 20-24 lists. So this is Nati Peluso. It's off of her new record, Grasa, and the song is, called A Prender to Amar. There's to learn

But how will go to go to get to know I'm

to know to love to love to but

to get to said the pitty to to

touch to the cat to the city you

have to have to you have to love

to you have to you have to learn to

love There's so much to be said about Nati and what she's doing right now. She's a Spanish singer, born in Argentina, raised in Spain. So this is her second record. Now, she is one of those artists that we have been expecting to go somewhere for a long time. She's huge in Spain. She's huge in Argentina. And for whatever reason, just hasn't quite made that leap to be quite as global as, let's say, a Rosalia.

But it's playing in kind of a similar fashion. I mean, what I loved about those horns and that sound at the end that she incorporates, It's very kind of like Setengana, who's like a big driver of the Madrid production scene in Spain. And something about it felt very reminiscent of that to me. But it's very much her own. I mean, she is, and specifically on this record, so insistent. Like the name of the album is Graza, which directly translates to Greece, but can also be translated as vulgar, tacky, all of these very negative words.

And this, to me, this song is the second track on the album. It's her being like, yeah, I am, and so what? And it's so different from the first track. Because the first track is almost like it could be the lead song from a Bond film, this very bombastic, big Shirley Bassy sound almost and a very different feel. I have to be honest with you, I had to listen to this track a number of times, which is easy because it's only a minute 39 to really get into it. And then when you gave me the translation, that's what really triggered it for me.

Because it turns out to be an intense one-minute 39-second pep talk on how to love yourself. And that's the only way you're going to get out of this messy world is to love yourself first. Well, I'm glad you put it that way because I was thinking maybe I'm reading too much into it. Because, you know, it seemed to me like it was at least in part about the inner battle with apathy and that you can't win that battle. or do anything about the state of the world unless you first love yourself. I mean, my favorite line from this song is even if you add sugar to politics, it tastes like cement. We all want the revolution, but no one gives it a moment. Like, oh, wow.

Like, she really is saying so much, she's always been that kind of controversial character a little bit, where she's, she said, she was like, I chose a word that people could map so many different meanings onto it. So everyone could put something in there. And, I mean, take a step out, her home. You know, she was born in Argentina. Argentina is like the musical expression land of we're dissatisfied with the government and our situation right now historically and now and always. So there's always that aggression.

There's always that intensity. There's always that need to express this feeling of like, but we got to do more, you know? Yeah. And almost all of the songs on the album are like two minutes, two minutes plus. And so the concentration that she gets in a song like, we've just heard, it's pretty amazing. Yeah. And I mean, it's so, each song, track to track is so distinct. It was so difficult for me to pick a song because I love this

album. It's really maybe the best I've heard this year. And it's salsa, it's all kinds of tropical sounds. It's ballady. I mean, she really does do such a breadth of Latin American sounds, of sounds beyond that. But you don't necessarily get that within a single track in the same way, right? Because like you said, they're kind of almost like little. packages of sonic experiences. Super cool. And now for something completely different. Wow.

He just made that sound. Can you believe it? You want to coin that? Yeah. No, it's true. It is true. It's true. You should bottle it up and sell it.

I mean, we just had something that was just like punching us on the face. Well, for anyone of a certain age, who ever listened to a minute of Monty Python will know that that is a quote from Monty Python. I don't want to take credit for it. I think that. I think they get that. Anna Maria, did you get that? I didn't get it. Oh, uh-oh. I don't want to admit it on the mic, but. Anna Maria was not alive in the 1970s. Let's start mansclaiming. By a lot. By a lot. By a long shot. Okay, so we just got punched in the face, but with a good pep talk from

Nati Palozo. Because all the time, I just keep thinking her as Nancy Pelosi. That is staying in. That is the first time that that comparison has ever been made ever. I promise you. No one has ever said that. I'm going to retake that. Now, we just got slapped in the face by Nati Peluso. Now, as Robin said, something very different, something very quiet for our very loud world.

And this is Jakob Lindberg. He's a swede, a quiet, sensitive swede, who plays the lute and also directs a lot of operas. And I'm going to tell you a little bit more about this instrument that he's playing after we hear this track. But the pieces by this French Baroque composer named Robert de Vise, who was born around 1660. And the instrument that Lindberg is playing is called a theorbo. More about that after we hear this beautiful tune. Just pay attention to this really lovely little sparkling melody. It's a very cool baseline, especially in the lower strings and the kind of strumming that imitates the old version of the French bagpipe with all of Lindbergh's lovely, delicate little ornaments.

It is such an extraordinarily beautiful instrument, and I kept thinking loop, but it's basier than a lute. So you've got to tell us what this thing is. Well, first off, I just love this music because it just forces you to sit back and pay attention to something very, very. quiet and delicate yet just full and full of colors. So he's playing a Theorbo, and that was invented in Italy around as a reaction to the invention of opera, which happened in about 1600. So all of a sudden you could not have a more perfect answer for opera than this. Because all of a sudden you got opera, which is like a bigger, more sophisticated animal, and the smaller regular lutes just weren't cutting it. So the Italians got together with the luthiers, the instrument makers,

and they came up with something larger, with a beefier bottom, and a much longer instrument. And this Thiorbo, as it's called, or Kittaroni in Italian, it's more than five feet long. So it's a gigantic instrument with the bass strings are more than five feet long, and there are two peg boxes. So there's like one where you'd reach for like a gaderone, And then there's one like you can't even reach it.

You have to set the instrument down to tune the pegs on the upper. It's like holding a cello as a guitar and try, but do you need to be able to reach those ones? It's longer than a cello. Do you have to be able to reach those strings up there? Is that just for tuning? No, because they're not, they're not fretted. Oh, okay. They're fretted down below where you can reach them.

Okay. But it provides this really spectacular low end. And I think we should hear just the first opening moments of another track on the record, which is not so jaunty and delightful. In fact, it's also by Robert de Vise, the composer of all the tunes on this record, and he wrote it for his two daughters that he lost, which is, you know, obviously a terrible loss,

and he translated that into music, this remembrance of his daughters. And just listen to the real low bass strings. I mean, very mournful. but still just so beautiful. I just love the kind of the smoldering, chocolatey sound of those super low strings. That's Jakob Lindbergh playing his five and a half foot.

Theorbo, the record, is called Theorbo solos, and the composer is Robert de Vise, a Baroque French composer. But it's just music that makes you just want to sit back and think about things. I wrote the words deep contemplation. in my notes, because that is exactly what I thought, listening to this. But I'm curious, when you say it was an answer to the opera, was it designed to exist within the opera,

or literally present an alternative? No, not an alternative. I'm glad you asked the question. Oh, that's how I took it. I took it as a... You can't take opera. Well, that's what I thought, too, but then he starts describing how they brought in

this sexier, bold, or deeper instrument. No, it's because you have larger forces in opera, so you needed a louder instrument, basically. A louder, bigger instrument. So for much of its life, the lute, and especially the Thiarbo, was made to accompany singers. Okay, we got to take a quick break here,

but we will have more music for you right after this. I've got a band that's been around for a few years, but I've actually only just discovered myself. This is a duo that goes by the name Brigene. It features Brighine Murphy, percussionist and singer, and then the producer and multi-instrumentalist Doug Stewart together. They dropped this new single this spring that I think pretty much everyone on Team in P.R.

Music team is super in love with. It's called Working on It is one of those songs that, you know, I think it sounds really simple, but it's actually doing a lot of different things all at the same time, you know, threading a lot of different needles. But we can talk more about it after we hear it. Again, it's called Working on It from Brigene. Is there a song that's I guess I'm working on it. Modern Tommy Chuggle,

my priority. Is there a song that strikes a more perfect tone for like the time that we're living in right now? Yes, I was going to say yes. I was like, can we not be, we can't

not be silly anymore. Yeah. It's silly, but it's also like this strange mix of of hope and dance grooves and then completely detached apathy. Yeah. Colliding. No, it's silliness based in awareness.

Like it's, yeah, it's like, no, I'm entirely aware of everything that's happening around me. I'm just like, I don't know. Modern times have a hold on me.

Right. And then I'm so tired of this apathy. I just want to be the better me. I mean, the song is so fun. There's not a millisecond of the song that just doesn't bring joy to my life. No,

I'm like bouncing. Bouncing the whole time. But the lyrics. actually are tapping into something that is actually kind of, you know, the pandemic is actually still here, but I think it speaks to that. And I just have this whole list of things that I love about it. I love the retro sound. It's a little bit disco. It's a little bit funk and jazz, a little house. I thought Delight. Did you, Delight? Killer percussion, that kind of a real rubbery Thundercat baseline, you know, and then there's that deadpan, ironic delivery that is just so perfect.

that reminds me of like dry cleanings, Florence Shaw, or maybe even a wet leg, perhaps, or, and then there's this kind of jazziness like Herbert. And then there's something, there's those Latin beats, those interlocking Latin beats that remind me that she's almost kind of channeling a Brazilian singer like Astro Giobarto or something like that. There's so much going on in this song, and every moment of it is joyful.

I entirely agree, one, with the retro piece of it, because I love that she takes this retro approach sonically to then be in this contemporary moment of recognizing the irony of how we're all trying to improve ourselves, right? Or trying to try. Trying to try is much more accurate definition. Yeah, I'm working on it. I guess I'm working on it. I'm trying to sleep. Like, what do you mean you're trying to sleep? Her goals are so modest.

That's the other thing I love. It's like more sleep, trying to figure out priorities, trying to be less apathetic. But that's what we're all just doing. We're all just trying to work on it. No, we're just trying to figure out how to figure out before we figure out, you know. It reminds me one year at the beginning of the year, my New Year's resolution was yoga to get into yoga. And like six months in, I hadn't done any yoga at all. And so I scratched it out and I wrote, be aware of yoga.

No, be mindful. I said they would tell me to say that in yoga, so it's like I went. Be mindful of yoga. So at the end of the year, I could say, well, I was aware of yoga. I was definitely aware of it. I thought about it. I knew it was there. You were working on it.

I was working on it. What would you think I've been doing? I've been thinking about yoga. So that is from an album working on it from Burjina's from an album called Macro that I think, certainly based on this song and the way I heard other people in the team talking about this band and this album will definitely be coming up, I think, at the end of the year. So, you know, I put all these songs on a playlist to listen and prep for the show. And Tom, when I was listening to my playlist, this next song that I know you're going to play

came up right after the Bregine track and it sounded so beautiful together, paired together. I thought you've got to play it next. Well, it is, again, something a little bit different. It's solo piano music by Yuja Wong, who is recognized as really one of the top virtuosos of her generation. And it's just not empty virtuosity. I mean, her fingers can do everything, like almost twice as fast as anybody else's. But there is real interpretive grit and rigor in what she does. But alas, over the years, critics, fans, they just cannot stop talking.

writing about what she wears on stage. Just even last month, Alex Ross and the New Yorker wrote a piece called the Fashionista Modernism of Yuja Wong, where he said, quote, It's curious that any controversy should attend the 37-year-old pianists who seldom speaks during performances, presents programs of wide-ranging seriousness, and plays with flawless technique. The debate such as it is is confined to her taste in clothes. She favors spangly skin-tight ensembles from high-end designers and clumps across the stage in Christian Lobotan stilettos. So her playing versus her clothes.

It doesn't matter what she wears. Oh, I love the classical world. This is such a phenomenal drama. It's as weird as any other world. That was published. I have to say that Alex, who I revere, goes on to talk about her most recent album from which this cut that we're going to hear comes from. It's taken from a live concert that she gave in Vienna, where she matched all this disparate music from Beethoven to Philip Glass, and she played ten encores.

Only four of them actually made it to the record. And this is one of them. It's called Danzon number two, and it's a solo piano arrangement of this sparkly, loud, colorful orchestral piece by the Mexican composer Arturo Marquez. That is a journey. Because when this song starts, like, I could just feel my shoulders drop. You know, like, oh, thank God, I really need this. But then by the end, you know, my heart rates up to like 150 beats a minute. It takes such a turn.

Yeah, it's amazing. The way she builds it is really fantastic. And by the end, you think there's like at least two pianists working at it. She doesn't give it away. She's so sneaky about it. Yeah. There's nothing. There's no tell that something's coming.

We had her in Studio 1 back in 2000, right after we moved into this building, so around 2013 or 14, and she was a little shy at the piano at first, and she was talking to Stevens' keep of Morning Edition. But then she started playing excerpts from the Rachmanano's piano concerto number three, which is finitely difficult, and then playing Art Tatum's version of T for 2 at like just blistering speeds. It was breathtaking. So when I heard this, like when I heard this second half, I drew a parallel with the NAPD track. Because to me, I was like, this is such unapologetic intensity with which she's delivering this. And now that you brought up the outfit thing, Tom, not to harp on that, like I guess everyone else does. But in a good way, I love that you're like, she doesn't really speak a lot when she comes out on stage. She just says, I'm going to play with this level of obviously capability and intensity and deliver this kind of energy.

and also I'm going to wear whatever and dazzle. Like you literally called it a sparkling dress and a sparkling number. Like dazzle in this dress, dazzling with my playing and walk off stage and I have nothing more to say. A note I made about this is that I was hearing a lot of pop elements in it, especially when that makes that turn about two minutes or so into it. And I thought, you could drop a pretty mad beat on top of this and it would really, really, really work. So danceable. Yeah. It's a dancey beat that you have.

Well, it's a dance element that originates from Cuba and came over to Mexico. So amazing. Mic drop. All right, we got to take another quick break, but we will be right back. It's All Songs Considered from NPR Music. I'm Robin Hilton. I'm here with all Latino host, Anna Maria Sayer, and NPR's Tom Hisinga, and we're updating our list of contenders for the year's best songs.

I've got this new cut from the singer, Biba Doobie. Nancy Pelosi. Biba Doobie. I can see why you get the two mixed up there, Tom. I almost called Natsy Nancy on that last song. I'm not going to like that. She's now forever, Nancy. So Biba Doobie, you know, her music has been labeled, you know, indie pop and rock, and, you know, she has definitely cranked up her guitars on some of her songs.

But really her sound is all over the place in really wonderful ways and unpredictable ways. She's got this new album coming out called This Is How Tomorrow Moves. And, you know, true to form, based on what I've heard so far of it, you can't really pin it down to any one thing. But it's got this song on it called Coming Home. I just find so transfixing. It's kind of a simple little song. It's just a couple minutes long. But listen to what she does with her vocals, I think, in particular on this cut.

Again, it's called Coming Home. You do the dishes I'll carry the law to me. The trash to the prim, and I'm scared of it. But you always know just what to say, and I'm sorry if I'm coming home too late. To the gap all my blinds peaking sunlight I do anything just to be with you To sit and watch you slowly waking I'm sorry if I'm coming home

Hotel for American stay Makes me feel so far out So I promise this time I won't be a way to leave you to This time Have I eat the trash Like I said I would And you'd never guess what I'd have to say I'm not sorry

Because this time I've got to be The softest sweetest little drums and horns I've ever heard Isn't it lovely? It is so lovely It's like, I don't know It's like some French new wave Pop song or something

From the 60s Do you hear that? I would just like to say My name is Tom Heisinga And I'm powerless over waltzes That's a waltz I mean, it's a waltz. It is a straight waltz.

But aren't you on a little, aren't you on like a little Vespa with a baguette in the basket in the front? Or, you know, your best friends on the back. And you've just been tootling around all afternoon. And the ocean's just twinkling off to the side. Yeah. It's a sweet little love song about being away from you, sweetie. And I love that line, I'd do anything just to be with you to sit and watch you slowly wake. It's very sweet.

Well, and it's that perfect little romance. and whimsy of mundaneness. Like that's the perfectest little love song ever. It's like, oh, it's absolutely delightful to do nothing with you. Yeah, it's sort of like the burgeon cut in that, you know, the stakes and the goals here are pretty modest. It's emptying the dishwasher. It's taking the trash out, you know. But then, you know, it's also just taking the time to notice how the light looks when it's coming through the blinds first thing in the morning when you're waking up, you know.

I love all those little details, but as sweet as it is, you know, and as much as it sort of glows with that morning light that she describes, there is definitely a hint of sadness in the song, you know. And it's not just that she's homesick, although that's part of it. I don't, I feel like there's a hint of time slipping away from you. Yeah. That's the bitter part. There is an element to me, too, of the sweetness of the vocals and the sweetness of the piano and the sweetness of the horns and the drums and everything's so sweet and picture. perfects and wimsy and then you're like am i missing part of the story here is how i felt like you know like i was a little bit like oh like some of the the the lyrics and some of the way she

phrases certain things she's like oh but this time i won't like there's a little bit of like well what happened before oh that's so it's so cool that you sort of clock that because now that you say that i think about like well yeah there must be some history here right of you are you are not around and you're you're trying to make up for time that you've lost maybe be promises that were made and not kept. Yeah, that's interesting. I think she said that she wrote it missing her, missing her boyfriend, missing her boyfriend on tour. But I think musically, it's very interesting too. I think it's great that they didn't overload the song at first, you know, and that the guitars are processed to be like just slightly off-kilter pitch-wise.

So it's all kind of simple. And then later when that kind of Beatles-esque break comes where you've got those faux horns that come in, like something from Sergeant Pepper, that makes a really satisfying splash. Yeah. And I love that piano so much. And it almost, the way that they added it in there, it almost sounds like it's an effect on her vocals. Like, that's how kind of like tightly interplaying they are. And again, that plays to me of like, very clearly this song is told from her perspective, maybe with some rose-colored glasses. And to me, what's hanging in the air is the missing perspective. Well, so again, uh, the song, is coming home and the album is from is called This is How Tomorrow Moves and that is out

August 16th. Anna Maria, what do you got? So this is off the group of Frontera album that just came out, Jugando Ake no Pasa Nada, and this is a song called Desquite. And I will just start by saying that genres are being changed with this song, okay, to put it lightly. I mean, what's happening here is you have quartetto, which is exploding in Argentina at the very same time that regional Mexican is exploding in Mexico and outside.

And when I say exploding, I mean these reimagining, re-creations of these centuries-old genres that are now being timed up and added and then have a little bit of a regitone undertone to them, an urban sound. And so what Edgar Barrera, who's the producer and songwriter of this particular song, who I actually got to speak with in Miami and he broke down this entire song for me, which was... Oh, that's so cool. Yeah, no, I'm like, how do I spark notes this? So anyways, the point is, is what he did is he said,

I'm going to combine these two worlds. And that's very much what he's done. He's basically made all of the most massive Spanish language songs in, like, the past five years. And that's what he does? He says, I take Daddy Yangi and I say, what do you want to make that's not reggaeton? And so he took basically what is a representation of a sped-up cumbia rebaughada from like the 2000s Mexico DJ collective scene. and then this quartetto energy and sound, and he took a Mexican cumbia band

and an Argentinian rapper, and he paired them together, and he created this song. All right, Anna Maria Sayer, Tom Hisinga, thanks as always for the pleasure of your company. Great to be here. And just hanging out, chilling out with some great music.

And for Inpeer music, I'm Robin Hilton. It's all songs considered. what you did you to me, yeah no me you don't put that carita of you, no free,

that all the world know that's all you know, I'm that I'm that I'm a car that

and you putting me the cairno I'm gonna go to go to see the and see the

pain with the I'm I'm not doormo I'm I'm gonna take

because there desquite if I'm emborrache that the cellular me quitted to know to say

to say you that I'm that's a I'm I'm going to take because I'm getting

if I'm morracho that the cellular me quits to not to say to say

that's that I'm that I'm I'm that I'm that's I'm that's chelul

that can't that call you to tell you to say to say I'm going to tell you

I'm saying Today I'm going to I'm going to take Because there's