NPR Music - The Contenders, Vol. 6: The songs we can't stop playing this week

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

We've got just what you need for that stubborn case of existential dread in a looming dystopia as we update our running list of the year's best songs, with new ones from yeule, Raveena and more.Also, we continue to celebrate the 25th anniversary of All Songs Considered by looking back at our number one songs from each year. On this episode: the songs that take us back to 2005Featured artists and songs:01. Everything Is Recorded: "Never Felt Better (feat. Sampha, Florence + The Machine)," from 'Temporary'02. yeule: "Skullcrusher," from 'Evangelic Girls Is A Gun'03. Raveena: "You're So Good To Me," from 'Where the Butterflies Go in the Rain (Deluxe)'04. Gordi: "Alien Cowboy," from 'Like Plasticine'05. Whatever The Weather: "12°C," from 'Whatever The Weather II'Enjoy the show? Share it with a friend and leave us a review on Apple or wherever you listen to podcasts. Questions, comments, suggestions or feedback of any kind always welcome: [e-mail] Hear new songs from past episodes in the All Songs Considered playlists in Apple Music and Spotify.See 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

Sheldon Pierce, welcome. Hello. Let's get some housekeeping out of the way first. As always, if you like the show, share it with a friend. Leave us a review in Apple or wherever you listen to podcasts. And also a reminder that all songs considered is celebrating astoundingly. It's 25th anniversary this year. And we're looking back at our number one songs from across the years.

We're doing a different year each episode on the show. And on this episode, we'll look at the year 2005, our number one songs from 2005. That'll be at the end of the show, so stay tuned for that. It is such a good day for a show. Let's do two. Do you ever find yourself at a party or wherever, and you've got to make small talk with somebody, particularly someone, you know, who you just met? And you can't think of anything to say to them other than, what do you do?

Yeah. It is just the most boring question, and it is the default for every kind of interaction like that. But at one point, I stopped asking that question. And instead, I started asking, what have you? been thinking about lately. So I guess I'm wondering, what have you been thinking about lately? Yeah, you know, for no reason in particular, I've been thinking a lot about the end of the world. Huh.

Post-apocalyptic futures and such. Yeah. And how we survive them. That has nothing to do with anything. No, I can't imagine. I will say that, oddly, it seems like a strange coincidence, but I have been having these dystopian, post-apocalyptic dreams lately. I've been waking up from at like one or two o'clock in the morning.

Right. But, I mean, it also sort of doomsdayer thought process leads me to sometimes think about, like, the beauty in how fleeting things can be as well. I mean, all of our times on Earth are finite. It is a blip in the grand scheme of the universe. But it can be so special. This is my jam. 100%. You're picking up what I'm putting now.

Yeah, 100%. Always thinking about that. And, I mean, I think that coincides with some of the music that I've been thinking about some of the stuff that I brought to today's show. And I want to start with a song from Richard Russell's project, Everything is recorded. It's called Never Felt Better. location time frequency reception see how I projected your affection yeah I never felt better

I thought I was in so much pain never felt better I thought I was in such a bad place Never felt better I thought I was in so much pain I never felt better I thought I had my guard up as prevention I got hit so I guess that was invention

I'm laid out seeing butterflies ascension I put my guard up back again convention Yeah, that's the singer, Sampa, and also Florence Welsh of Florence and the Machine. While you know them, you may not know the artist for whom they are guest starring, but you do know his work. Richard Russell, by day, is the owner of the British record label, XL Recordings. Right. puts out records for Radiohead, King, Cruel, Arca, Burial, Ibeye, Mackay McCraven. Yeah.

also released debuts from Adele, Vampire Weekend, MIA. But he also Moonlights as a producer, and this is from his fourth record as everything is recorded. Just to be clear, everything is recorded is the name of the band. That's the whole, everything is recorded. Everything is recorded, which, you know, in keeping with the life that he lives, countertracks. Yeah.

But this song is from his fourth record. It's called Temporary. And the whole thing sort of meditates on grief and separation, remembering things, things being fleeting, but also sort of finding your way to the next stage. Like not sort of wallowing in any emotion. He said in an interview with The New York Times that he didn't want to make a miserable record, that this record is sort of meant to be joyous. It is about loss, but it's about how to be all right with it. And I think this song sort of encapsulates that to a T. Yeah, I mean, that is exactly the thing that I always try to keep in mind

and why the word temporary itself, the album title, is one of my favorite words. Because, you know, if something terrible is happening, I remind myself it won't last. Yeah. And if something good is happening, it's a reminder to really sit with it and appreciate it as it's happening. And that's the thing, you know, living in a relative world where you can't have a up without a down or front without a back, top without a bottom. He really explores the idea that joy and sorrow have to live together in this kind of perfect harmony. You know, the key to being happy in a lot of ways is understanding that you won't always be happy and that's a part of it. That's why I love

the swing of this chorus. I never felt better. I thought I wasn't so much pain, but I never felt better. I thought I was in a bad place, but I never felt better. It's this swinging pendulum of, you see, the pain in the rear view, you're like, oh man, I got through that. It feels like a sign that you could push through the next thing. I think what's really impressive about this song, I think about the title when I'm listening to it. I'm like, oh, I got to really sort of settle into this. It will end, but then it can begin again. It's such a beautiful sort of fitting reminder of the concept behind this record. I love it. Serious catnip for me. I mean, existential insertion. in the face of a fleeting universe.

Count me in. So good. From everything is recorded, also known as Richard Russell, the song never felt better from the album temporary. So this whole idea about the temporary nature of everything and how finite everything is is also, I think, at the heart of this new album coming out from the singer known as Gordy. And we featured Gordy on the show last year in a song that she did with the artist, Soak, and now. Now Gordy is back with a full-length album called Like Plasticine. And I want to play a cut from it called Alien Cowboy. And I feel like before we hear it, I should set it up by saying that Gordy's actually a doctor.

She is not currently practicing medicine, but she's a doctor. And starting back in 2020, when the pandemic broke out, she was working on the front lines in Australia, where she's from, treating COVID patients. and she says that being surrounded by so much suffering and death and loss really made her reflect on just how precious and beautiful life is. So this album, like Plasticine, it really reflects on sort of the wonder of life and love and just the vast range of feelings and experiences that altogether collectively make us human. We can talk more about all of that and the rest of this record from Gordy after we hear this song, which is also very well. wondrous, I think, again, it's called Alien Cowboy. You know, I think it's clear when you listen to this song, there's definitely like this unsettling undercurrent of darkness in it, but there's so much euphoria at the heart of this, this song.

Gordia is Sophie Peyton, and I mentioned how she was treating people with COVID during the pandemic. And that was just one of the, you know, big life-changing things that she went through these past handful of years. She also came out. So she has been reflecting, you know, not just on the that death and loss shape your view of life, but also the power of love and how falling in love and all of that sort of stuff changes your life as well. She actually said that she got the idea for the song Alien Cowboy when she tried to imagine what a gay utopia would look like.

And it's just this technicolor burst of euphoria and all of that incredible noise. Yeah, I think, you know, thinking about this record being made coming out of the pandemic and trying to imagine a vision of the future that is brighter. Sometimes that requires a little bit of fabrication, right? A little bit of going to your imagination and trying to pull something that only you can see.

And maybe it's not real now, but maybe that vision can become something real. And this song feels like very otherworldly, very dreamy. You can hear sort of an encroaching dread, like, at the back of it. But also, it's, like, very clearly trying to tunnel through it, right? It's, like, looking for the outside of that cloud and trying to imagine a future that is beautiful and bright. This album, like Plasticine, it is her first record since 2020, and it is out at the end of May on May 30th. Well, Robin, we just talked about a song that imagines euphoric future.

I want to talk about a song that imagines a euphoric present. Yeah. It's from the singer-songwriter Ravina, an NPR favorite. It's from a deluxe release of her 2024 album, Where the Butterflies Go in the Rain. The song is called You're So Good to Me. You feed me in your mind with wings of white and perfect tea. With holy waters from my fingers landing on a fairies.

Yeah, I'm a big That's sort of embody That it is trying to convey This song like radiates such positive energy And it's an interesting song in that it's A songwriter writing a song about somebody writing a song for them and sort of being wrapped up in the euphoria of somebody envisioning them in lyrics as bigger than themselves, right?

Yeah. Seeing them through clear eyes as the best version of the person that they could possibly be. There's a lyric where she says, I'm not just a girl, but a girl with bigger dreams. And she's sort of beaming at the third. thought that anybody could see her that way. The lightness of it, the beauty of her voice, it's like a shining, sunny day that you can't escape from in the best sense. But I think when you hear a song like this,

this idea of beauty and fragility, weathered storms, like finding comfort in others through crisis, it feels like there is an actual story being told by these. new songs being added. And I think that is one way that a deluxe can truly enhance the relationship between listener and artist. Revena is what I call a gatekeeper. This is an image that I've had in my mind for a long time. But a gatekeeper to me is someone who will be standing at the entrance waiting for you. When you move on to whatever the next dimension of life is, you'll find Revena standing there.

And she's there to welcome you. Maybe has a clipboard that she's looking through a few notes just to be sure that it's okay to let you in, but just so many good vibes radiating from this music. He said something about the Ravina song that I think, again, plays into this recurring theme we have, the sort of duality of life. I think you said, like, the beauty and fragility in that song as comfort in a storm. That, again, is a theme that is in this next song that I want to play from the artist known as Yule. The song is actually called Skull Crusher, which sounds like it will be wildly different.

And in a lot of ways it is because it is a very noisy dystopian track. But I think in the case of this song, Skull Crusher, it is about the idea of desire and love and passion and how it continues to exist and hold on in a very dystopian world where, you know, everything is sort of obliterated, but it holds on. Again, this is from Yule, the song Skull Crusher from their upcoming album, Evangelic Girl is a Gun. just so much tortured rage and inner turmoil in the song. But you know, again, that idea of the duality, to me, it sounds a little bit like, and maybe it's their voice, Yule's voice, sounds like this little flower in full-color bloom, but the flower is standing alone in this vast, endless black-and-white field of nothingness.

You know what I mean? Sort of quivering there against this wasteland. Yeah, there is a sort of like beautiful daintiness to it almost. Yeah. They often like to almost snuff it out with larger sounds, bigger and cascading sonics. It is moving between raw and heavy guitars, but also the cyborg pop that they first became known for on the internet. But it's also interesting that this is like the clearance. their vocals have ever been on this record.

And they said that it's like as a counter to the emergence of AI. They wanted their vocals to be raw and have like an irreplaceable edge, which is funny when you think of you'll being sort of like an internet artist in a certain sense, like very much built on like this sort of online

dystopian future aesthetic. Almost like an avatar too. I mean if somebody's said, oh, Ewell is the avatar of... Right, right, right, right. But, yeah, I mean, and Ewell's music also can be real shape-shifting, you know. It can range from this sort of scream-core metal to just the sweetest, almost quirky little songs that they've had in some of their work.

Yeah, there is a true, like, shape-shifting aspect. I think a part of that is in the idea of the avatar that you can be anything in the thing in that situation, that you don't have to always embody the vision of self. You can extend outward and that can look like many different things. Well, this song, Skull Crusher, is from an album coming out called Evangelic Girl is a Gun. And we're going to do a spring preview coming up where we talk about some of the albums we're most excited about in the second quarter of the year. But this is definitely one of them for me. Again, it is out May 30th. So we were just talking about Yule and the shape-shifting that they do across their music.

Another artist who I think moves in a similar fashion is Lorraine James, the British electronic musician who also records under the moniker, whatever the weather. She is releasing the second self-titled album from the project, and it is led by a song called 12 degrees Celsius. Yeah, and to your point, this one I think is really an incredible. journey. Where you start, where you go, and where you end up are all entirely different things. I mean, it's not as dark and sort of twisted as the Yule Cut, but the transformations and all the different sounds and sort of contrasting sounds in universes that all come together and exist together in this kind of harmony on this cut kind of blow my mind. I mean, it starts off as this sort of found sound collagist piece and you think, okay, this will be nice to sit with.

But it never stops evolving. You know, it goes into this sort of chopped up, glitched out electronica and then almost has a sort of little country dusty road shuffle at one point, you know. Yeah. And it's all still just sort of, I don't know, super synthetic but expansive. Yeah, I mean, the cover for whatever the weather to has sort of a desert landscape on it. And I think it does feel like this is taking stock of the wide open. expanse.

Yeah. I mean, even to that end that you talk about, I mean, out of nowhere, the sort of acoustic guitar, the like gentle finger tapping, the distorted voice. It comes out of nowhere, but it does feel reflective of the way that that track is building sort of what it seems to be gesturing at, wide open space and all its possibilities, and the transformations that the track undergoes over the course of. of its run seems to be like leading you anywhere. Like you could go anywhere.

Yeah, the thing I had in mind was like moving through a wormhole, like that scene in 2001 in Space Odyssey where all the lights are flying past you, you know. Yeah. And then you emerge from the tunnel and you're in this field of poppies or in the case of 2001. I think you're in a bedroom, right? Yeah. But you emerge and you're in this field of poppies with your robot companion. Yeah.

standing in there with you with that, you know, that little voice. Really incredible stuff. I'm a big fan of Lorraine James. I, you know, love the work that she's done under her own name. I think really just one of the most arresting original electronic artists making music right now. Okay, so I mentioned that we're celebrating our 25th anniversary. All Songs Considered, launched in January of 2000. Stephen Thompson and I had a whole episode all about it last week where we looked at our number one songs.

and other stuff that we could remember from the first five years of the show, so starting with 2000 to 2004. And we're going to be looking at the remaining years with each episode of the show going forward. One year on each episode, we're up to 2005 now. Misheldon, as always, thanks for coming on the show and hanging out and just sharing some great new music with us.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me. All right, here's Stephen Thompson in our conversation about the songs we were loving in 2005. Well, I'm going to kick us off with a song that has gotten me through a lot of different years and lost nothing in the process. Well, it's the Mountain Goats. Very good. I can't believe this is 20 years old.

I know, right? Referencing the name of the song in that line this year by the Mountain Goats, yeah, I know this one well. Yeah, this is a song that has lost nothing. Yeah. This is a song that remains 100% relatable, no matter where you are in your life. even though the song is recounting this kind of, this big, tragic teenage drama, the emotions in this song remains completely timeless. And it's amazing how many seemingly unendurable life events are made better by the presence of this song.

This song has helped a lot of people. If you've ever seen the Mountain Goats in concert and they get to this song, you'll get a sense of how much this song means to Mountain Goats fans by how, everyone in the room will shriek this song and shriek basically every word of this song. It's very cathartic. Well, we've talked about this before on the show, you know, whenever we do a call out to listeners

to tell us about a song that, you know, like either lifts them up or gets them through. This song always comes up. Yeah. Such a great pick. But I'm going to play something completely different. I have to say, first thing I think of when I think of 2005

is maybe this. I turn my camera on. Yeah. Spoon. Spoon. I'm like, I knew the words to the song before I knew the band. This album from Spoon, Gimme Fiction, that came out. Oh, my God. I listened to it so much in 2005. Easily, my favorite album of 2005, but it's not going to be my number one song pick for 2005. I know I'm kind of cheating here. I'm trying to get as much in as possible. This is going to be my, my pick for 2005.

And I bet you'll know it right away. Okay. Oh my gosh. When we take a walk down memory lane and think about how music was changing and all the wild stuff we were hearing coming out in the early 2000s, when LCD sound system burst onto the scene with this song. Daff Punk is playing my house from their self-titled debut album in 2005. It was the ultimate party song. It was everywhere. It was incredible.

It's so funny, like, you know, I talked about this year being like the perfect song at the perfect time for me. LCD sound system was a little too cool for where my headspace was. I said, you sound like maybe you were in a different space. I was very much in like, give me some strings to reflect my sadness. It wasn't this? This song is having a better time than I was in 2005. Well, like with all of these years

that we're looking at, as we look back at 25 years of all songs, considered there's a billion other songs that we could play. We haven't even talked about the Sufion Stevens record. Well, I was going to say Illinois came out that year. Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine

came out that year. Talk about phenomenal albums. Oh my gosh. Such a huge year. But until next time, Stephen, thanks. Thank you, Robin. And for NPR music, I'm Robin Hilton. It's all songs considered.