Tag: Staff

This week we present a list of songs we love that happen to have really long titles.

Melissa

“I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You” by Black Kids

The epitome of a fun, feel good, mid-2000s dance song. I also appreciate the specificity of the title, as in the song this boyfriend is only referred to as “him.” 

“Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games” by of Montreal 

If you ever had an Uglydoll as a child, this song feels like what it felt like to play with those. 

“Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh” by Say Hi

For when one “oh”  just isn’t enough.

Corinne

“I Feel Like The Mother Of The World” by Smog

Maybe folk, sometimes country, Bill Callahan’s album A River Ain’t Too Much to Love is perhaps too genre bending to achieve the widespread success it deserves. “I Feel Like The Mother Of The World” showcases vulnerable lyrics set alongside a sardonic tone. I started listening to Smog before midterms, and Bill knows how to calm you when you’re crashing out. 

“RIP to the Empire State Flea Market” by Frog

STEREOGUM has called Frog “Remarkable.” Certainly, Frog is remarkably strange. A gem from New Rochelle, the duo scatters innuendos across their discography, towing the line between comedy and sincerity. Their recent album THE COUNT showcases their irreverent charm at its finest. Give them a listen, you won’t regret it. 

Dani

“You Might Think He Loves You for Your Money but I Know What He Really Loves You for It’s Your Brand New Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat” by Death Grips

MC Ride opened with this song when I saw him live and everytime it plays I get war flashbacks…

“I Get Along Without You Very Well (Except Sometimes)” by Nina Simone

I actually brought this song up in my college essay! It makes me bawl my eyes out good luck

“I Wonder Why My Favorite Boy Leaves Me in the Rain” by The Marshmallow Kisses

Cutest song ever and I’ll forever be sad they didn’t release more music

Isaac 

“Och of wij Uw geboon’ volbrachten” by John Propitius

This is an organ psalm improvisation that I listen to when I can’t fall asleep.

“Come Andy Play in The Milky Night” by Stereolab

This is my favorite song by Stereolab. The first time I heard it was on the radio, it was playing while I was interviewing for a job. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to find it afterwards, so I took out my phone and shazam’d it during the interview. I’m glad I did.

Avery

“Oh Me Oh My (I’m a Fool for You Baby)” by Aretha Franklin

Aretha’s voice is of course standalone grand, but this song’s chorus has a soulful, full sound that opens her Young, Gifted and Black with a bang.

“Borderline (An Ode to Self-Care)(feat. Q-tip)” by Solange, Q-tip

A yummy beat, a long title, and  two really great musician-producers.

“Eachhoureachsecondeachminuteeachday: Of My Life” by Maxwell

A song about a love that is all-consuming. So all consuming that even the spaces between the words in its title–not just time–are gone, too.

Maddy

“My Body’s Made of Crushed Little Stars” by Mitski

It’s less than two minutes long, but in my opinion, there’s something about this song that accesses the highs and lows of the human experience. It’s like stepping from somewhere warm and contained into the cold night air, except the sensation is either utterly overwhelming or entirely freeing. Unless both are possible at the same time? Mitski can do it. I like to listen to this song when I need to remember that nothing really matters – I’m just made of crushed little stars. 

“I Felt Like Smashing My Face in a Clear Glass Window” by Yoko Ono

Unlike pretty much anything by Yoko Ono, this song is something you could snap to. It’s a romp across town, and everything about it assumes a jaunty air, even with the dark, ironic lyrics, and the dark, direct title. 

“Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes” by Paul Simon

It’s impossible to have walking blues while listening to this song. Aside from the brilliant lyricism, it’s pure warmth in a bottle. I may not be walking on diamonds, but with this song in my ear, anything’s possible. 

Oona

“born again freestyle(shed a tear).mp3” by Samba Jean-Baptiste

I tend to think naming songs and instagram handles anything ending in .pdf or .mp3 and other things of that nature is pretty corny but lately I’ve been appreciating the ways art and culture reference the digital world and I really like this song.

“I Don’t Want to Be Hurt Anymore” by James Carr

A good classic soul/blues song. I love those “please baby baby please” type of songs a lot; I am deeply attached to the idea of pleading in love; I like how you can picture James singing his heart out, the feeling of deep emotion in this song, the vocals, the bluesy instrumentals, and the bassline. The 60s!

“No Soy De Aqui… Ni Soy de Allá” by Jorge Cafrune

This song has a nice sweet haunting feeling. Its about transience, missing, grieving, moving.

Zephyr

“Angel Carver Blues/Mellow Jazz Docent” by Pavement

This song appears on Westing (By Musket and Sextant), a compilation of early Pavement EPs released the year after Slanted and Enchanted earned the band their first crop of quasi-religious devotees from the indie scene and the year before Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain brought them the mainstream success they’d pretend to begrudgingly tolerate for the ensuing decades. Does Westing’s unique place in Pavement’s history make it the singular perfect expression of the band’s real sound? Do I believe that to be true only because I first encountered the record at the peak of my adolescent Malkmus man-crush? Everybody wants the questions to be asked/The questions are the answers/To the questions in themselves. 

“That Night in Hawaii When I Turned into a Panther and Started Making These Low Register Purring Tones That I Couldn’t Control … Sh¥t Was Wild” by Andre 3000

This song is ten and a half minutes of experimental ambient flute music. Of all the tracks on Andre 3000’s Grammy-nominated debut solo album, New Blue Sun, TNiHWITiaPaSMTLRPTTICC…SWW may not be the most accessible, or the most exciting, or the most interesting. There’s no ‘but’ coming. I’m just warning you. Try listening to this the next time you’re doing homework. It’s like if “10 Hour Lo-Fi Beats to Study To” made you feel like a jaguar in the Amazon. 

“I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar” by Jonathan Richman

A strange and wonderful song by a strange and wonderful man. My Russian literature professor once said that he feels like Jonathan Richman is his close personal friend. Give this track a listen and I guarantee you’ll know what he means.

This week, the Orpheus Review staff got together and collected some of our favorite songs about cities. Some are about our hometowns, others about places we have never been before. Maybe it’s time for an Orpheus field trip…

Neria

“Glasgow” by Jockstrap

This is a huge song for me…a great song about getting over a crush, and also about Glasgow, which is famously a city. 

“Athens, France” by Black Country, New Road 

Wow, I’m going hard with these Windmill selections. While this song is not about a real city, per se, the song does mention Paris in its first minute. There is also a shoutout to a “rural American town,” so that’s two potential cities mentioned. 

“Zürich Is Stained” by Pavement

Another great song about breaking up and falling out of love. Zürich, which is now stained according to Stephen Malkmus, is a city in Switzerland. 

Avery

“I Left My Heart In San Francisco” by Lisa Ono

I like Tony Bennet’s original ballad-adjacent serenade to the city. Lisa Ono’s Brazilian roots give the song a new life and a fun bossa-nova flair that places the listener into San Francisco on a sunny day, absent of gloom.

“Seattle Afternoon” by Reilly & Maloney

I first saw Reilly and Maloney with my Great Grandma and family at the Marina close to my house in Northwest Washington. We sat on the deck of the port’s Italian restaurant and watched the endearing duo sing a variety of happy folk songs. Suffice to say, it was a very, albeit sunny, Seattle Afternoon, beautifully painted by Ginny Reilly’s soaring Soprano voice. When I listen to this song it is a capsule of that moment–for me the song is imbued with a warmth that is home.

Melissa

“Santa Fe” by Beirut

Why have just the song title be a city when the band name can be as well? Not only is this song incredibly on theme, but it is also incredibly catchy. The way it builds layer after layer only to strip them all back down to just the drums at the very end… “sign me up, Santa Fe” is right!

“Wichita Lineman” by Glen Campbell

If we were doing a “most romantic songs of all time” playlist, this one would be top of that list too. Though I have never worked on telephone poles in the great plains, I can only imagine that the way the violins soar and whine throughout this song is how it feels to be up there all by yourself, missing your lady. 

“The District Sleeps Alone Tonight” by The Postal Service

Nothing makes me more homesick than this song. “DC sleeps alone tonight… because Melissa is at Swarthmore” was actually the rest of the lyric but they cut it because Ben Gibbard couldn’t get through it without crying.

Zephyr

Brooklyn Hip-Hop

Fun fact: though Brooklyn is just a lowly borough nowadays, it was a city of its very own until the consolidation of Greater New York in 1898. Another fun fact: entire staff playlists could be made up exclusively of hip-hop songs that reference locations in Brooklyn, or even of hip-hop songs that are entirely devoted to the discussion of Brooklyn, or even of hip-hop songs that are named after Brooklyn. With that in mind, here are some of the Brooklynest Brooklyn hip-hop songs of the past five decades: No Sleep Till Brooklyn (1980s), Brooklyn Zoo (1990s), Brooklyn (2000s), Brooklyn’s Own (2010s), Brooklyn Chop House (2020s). 

“Englishman in New York” by Sting

“Englishman in New York” is Sting doing what Sting does best: barking out melancholy lyrics over a bassline so effortless and buoyant that you don’t realize how bummed out he is even when you (inevitably) start singing along. Also, if you haven’t heard Shinehead’s reggae adaptation of the song, “Jamaican in New York,” do yourself a favor and give it a listen. Not to be out-cooled, Sting later teamed up with Jamaican national hero Shaggy to perform his own reggae-fied version of the piece for an NPR Tiny Desk concert. Seriously. Check it out.

“All the Critics Love U In New York” by Prince

I may be a humble collegiate music magazine contributor, but I mean it with all my heart when I say that this amateur critic loves u, Prince. The song is a satirical takedown of the New York arts scene of the early 1980s, which Prince accused of being subject to the whims of capricious, superficial posers. Prince fails to make the ‘Scene’ sound unappealing though, for the simple reason that the minute Prince sings about anything, it becomes impossibly, unattainably dope. 

Maddy

“Pulaski at Night” by Andrew Bird

As far as cities go, Chicago is a place I have never actually visited. Yet now that I’ve heard this song, I can say that I love this city at least a little bit. Built around the sentence “I want to see Pulaski at night,” which Bird overheard a visiting student from Thailand telling their friend, the song is a tribute to the bittersweetness of the city, a not uncomplicated love story to Bird’s hometown. With the help of melodic violin and bass, the tune creates a sophisticated and dynamic accompaniment to the sparse yet powerful lyrics.

“Los Angeles” by Big Thief

A place I have visited, Los Angeles is one hour removed from being my hometown. Yet it’s not my attachment to the place that lights up the song for me. The city is the backdrop for a deep kind of friendship and love that Adrienne Lenker sings about in this song, a relationship clearly deserving of the kind of joy that the song’s opening ushers in with laughs. She might not live in LA, but she gets it. 

“New York” by St. Vincent

As a city that is diametrically opposed to LA and yet only slightly less relevant, New York is proudly the object of many songs. Yet in this song, the city shares the spotlight with an anonymous and somberly missed individual, whom “New York isn’t New York without.” Still, St. Vincent would “do it all again,” just as you should listen to this song – again and again.

Dani

“Philadelphia” by Good Night & Good Morning

Wow! We kinda live there. A song that feels like catching the last SEPTA train home. It has that Philly tenderness, Brotherly Love, tenderness hidden under chipped paint. The kind you only notice when you pretend you’re in a movie staring out the window of the train, realizing you don’t feel as alone as you felt an hour ago. 

“San Francisco” by I Hate Sex

San Francisco is a city. Also, the title of this song. I used to listen to this one on repeat in middle school, pretending I understood every messy emotion in it. Now, it just reminds me how dramatic I was back when I would blast it in my room and feel so angsty. It still hits, just in a funnier, more self-aware way. 

“Heaven or Las Vegas” by Cocteau Twins

“Hi I’m Dani, I use she/her pronouns, and I’m from Las Vegas.” – my intro obv

I listen to this to feel like I’m home. Not the Strip version of Vegas, but the slow desert mornings and the quiet neighborhoods where the sky feels too big. This song and I are a bad combination when I’m too homesick. 

Oona

“The City” by Jockstrap 

Darius

“Dallas” by Silver Jews 

I’ve never been to Dallas but the lyrics evoke such a sinister pynchonian suburbia that I find engrossing. My favorite lyric in the song sums it up best:

 “Once you taste the geometry of a church in a cul-de-sac/you’re gonna wanna sit with the bad kids in the back” 

“Portland” by The Replacements 

Admittedly if I hadn’t been searching for city themed songs, this would not have been a song I would actively choose to listen to. Regardless, I’m so happy I did because now I’m obsessed!

“Night Lights” by Gerry Mulligan Sextet 

“Night Lights” is an instrumental jazz song about no city in particular. Either way, it’s the song I picture myself listening to as I walk late at night down some rainy city avenue. The album cover basically.

Hope

“Losing Touch (NYC)” by thanks for coming

This instant classic is from indie rock god Rachel Brown. Although their solo career, under name thanks for coming, is sometimes upstaged by their very popular awesome duo Water From Your Eyes with Nate Amos, thanks for coming has much to offer. This song leans more traditional singer-songwriter, but it is certainly equally as head-boppable as any WFYE song. 

“Dream of San Pedro” by Dos

A duet of two basses, just singing to each other. Perhaps one of the most beautiful songs ever made. The tune is made even better when you learn Dos is a project featuring Mike Watt of the Minutemen and Kira Roessler, a former Black Flag bassist. This song, on their third album justamente tres, was recorded shortly after their divorce.

“I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City” by Harry Nilsson

I listen to this every time I go to New York; the perfect song for returning home. 

Isaac

“Just Outside of Austin” by Lukas Nelson

A song that does a wonderful job capturing the essence of Austin. Written by the son of outlaw country legend WILLIE NELSON!!

“Terlingua Sky” by Gary P. Nunn

For those unfortunate enough to have never spent a night in Terlingua, eating three-bean chili beneath the West Texas stars, this song will give you a glimpse of what you’re missing.

In honor of the world’s finest holiday, when we change the time for no real reason, here are some songs to get you through the next months of early sunsets and late sunrises.

Zephyr

“Daylight Savings” by Mavi

Luckily for my fellow Orpheus contributors, this article isn’t a competition for the most on-theme song recommendation. Luckily for our readers, “Daylight Savings” is both the perfect track for time-change listening and the perfect introduction to one of alternative hip-hop’s most interesting voices. The dreamy haze of Mavi’s beats provides a distinctly modern backdrop for a flow that recalls the effortless, unrelenting delivery of older artists like Nas and MF DOOM. What more could you ask for? 

“Time” by Richard Hell and the Voidoids

It’s always the right time to listen to Richard Hell and the Voidoids, but Daylight Savings Time is the perfect time for “Time.” Offering as much lyrical sophistication as unbridled punk energy, the song was once praised as ‘rock poetry at its best’ — by none other than the New York Times.

“(Such A) Trip Thru Time” by Rogér Fakhr

Looking for a folk soundtrack for your fall-weather walks between classes? Nauseated by the sound of Bob Dylan’s voice after watching A Complete Unknown? Lebanese folk-funk icon Rogér Fakhr is here to help. This song is his most obviously time-related, but you won’t regret listening to the rest of Fine Anyway (Habibi Funk 16) if you get the chance. 

Hope

“Twilight” by Elliott Smith

Possibly the hardest listen from Smith’s whole discography. The feeling of things ending and beginning, all at once, imperfectly, on top of each other, and damned inconvenient. 

“The Summer Ends” by American Football

Maybe a bit literal for the Daylight Saving theme but summer has ended! There is no going back, only forward. 

Maddy

“2:45 AM” by Elliot Smith

Stripped down, somber, and somehow nostalgic, 2:45 AM catches you up in itself like a dream might, which makes sense, because that’s kind of what it’s about. Though the lyrics don’t exactly reflect a peaceful dream state, there’s something soothing about it all the same, especially when listened to late into the night while romanticizing one’s life. 

“7:30 AM” by Slothrust

Best known for their cover of The Turtles’ mega-hit, Slothrust still has its own glories, and 7:30 AM is a prime example. With on-and-off portions of rapid guitar work and building, direct vocals, the short track delivers a punch – as an early morning wake-up might. Best listened to when raging about something unspecific and existential. 

Anna

“5:15” by Chris Isaak

“5:15 is just a train.”

Apparently not, considering the extent to which 5:15 o’clock insights Chris Isaak’s mourning of his lost love. Quite melodramatic, as per usual.

“Once I Was” by Tim Buckley

Once, but no longer. Another lament of love lost to time’s cruelty.

“Time (You and I)” by Khruangbin

An appreciation of both love and change. Not mournful, but optimistic about the joy that can be found through the passage of time. “That’s life.”

Melissa

“12:51” by The Strokes

I know this song is about 12:51am but I feel very strongly that this is a Mid Day Song. This should be listened to at 12:51 in the afternoon and not a minute later – it’s the perfect lunchtime-pick-me-up kind of song. 

“Time (Clock of the Heart)” by Culture Club

Boy George dancing in a clock tower. Boy George singing the word “time” in 44 separate instances. Boy George in general. Need I say more?

Neria

“In Time” by Sly & The Family Stone

I was obsessed with this song (and album) in high school. I still haven’t put meaning to the lyrics, but as Sly so eloquently puts it, “In time, (in time) feel a little newer.”  

“I Can See the Sun in Late December” by Roberta Flack

Oooooweee nothing like a 12 minute song to get you thinking about time. This whole song is pretty striking…the lyrics, the melody, the bridge. Simply put, Roberta Flack. 

Oona

“I’m Still Waiting” by Bob Marley & The Wailers

I think “still” is an important measure of time for me. Often I don’t know where I am in time or where time is but I know a little of what feels familiar. 

“Once In A While” by Aretha Franklin

How long is a while? 

Kate

“Reelin’ In The Years” by Steely Dan

This song uses a lot of time terminology to describe a past relationship. Unrelated, the guitar is really, really good.

“Running Out Of Time” by Paramore

“Running Out Of Time” is about, unsurprisingly, the narrator constantly running out of time. Furthermore, they worry that they seem like a jerk since they’ll be seen for their actions rather than their intentions.

“Killing Time” by Magdalena Bay

I feel like somebody had to add this song, considering the album’s popularity and the obvious reference to time in the title. The song features a narrator lamenting the passage of time and waiting for a purpose.

Dani

“You got time and I got money” by Smerz

Not really about time… but it has it in the title. Enjoy!

“Incomprehensible” by Big Thief

“”I’m afraid of getting older, ” that’s what I’ve learned to say / Society has given me the words to think that way”

Growing old doesn’t have to be scary! Time isn’t scary! “How can beauty that is livin’ be anything but true?”

“This Time Around” by Jessica Pratt

“This time around has it gone so grey that my faith can’t hold out?”

Time doesn’t always heal, sometimes it just makes the picture sharper. If you ever need a song to cry to at 3am…

“Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.” by Simon & Garfunkel

Because nothing good ever happens at 3 am.