I didn’t stop making playlists when I started publishing my Best Of pieces. I was only at around 575 in mid-November, and I had a lot of work to do if I was going to make it to 600 by the end of the year. I finished 599 more than a few days before Christmas, accomplished mostly by working on multiple playlists of different genres simultaneously in December.
But in the spirit of fresh starts, I’m kicking off the new year with 601 off chance. I’ll revisit the last quarter of the 500s as From the Archive posts, published twice per month. Here’s a sneak peek, if you’re interested in the highlight reel: 573 do you care if i stay, 577 will you, 587 you too, 593 the best is yet to come.
Madi Diaz has been a songwriter in the country scene since the aughts. Her personal discography reaches as far back as 2008, but it doesn’t pack the punch that her new record, History of a Feeling (2021) does. There is no abstraction or generalization, no room for interpretation. This album is raw and honest:
I'm not proud of kicking in your bathroom door
Or screaming at you, I don't know you anymore
When I started saying things out loud
I couldn't take it back
All of this anger and sadness is presented in a neat package of acoustic instrumentation and country harmony, no bells and whistles whatsoever. Madi Diaz has worked for nearly twenty years in Nashville as a songwriter and session musician, mostly for commercials and TV, but her prowess as an emotional and personal lyricist is the most shining aspect of this album. It’s impossible to shy away from the subject matter of the record; there is nowhere else to focus your gaze. I think I’ll devote another whole issue to what I’m calling the Phoebe Bridgers Phenomenon: artists writing hyper-specific, highly personal material that people love not because they see themselves in the stories, but because those stories are fundamentally true.
I’ve been obsessed for the past month with another genius songwriter, Holly Humberstone, who I found because MUNA tweeted about her. I started playing “The Walls Are Way Too Thin” on repeat. On paper, she’s pretty incredible: she just released an EP that has millions of streams, she won the Rising Star award at the BRITs, she’s opening for Olivia Rodrigo on the east coast leg of the SOUR tour. The thing that makes her music so good is her writing; in the tradition of Lorde and Phoebe Bridgers, she overshares, spills herself all over the songs. The song on this playlist, “Overkill,” is an honest portrait of the anxiety of a crush:
A couple more tequilas
And I'll tell you how I'm feeling
Don't wanna kill your evening
Don't wanna be a buzz kill
This stripped live version is my favorite performance of the song, I think because the lyrics feel so vulnerable and sensitive. I love that the pedal board is hooked up to the battery of the car, that all her backing vocals are obviously just her, which is fitting for a song written about such a personal experience.
I’m fascinated by Holly Humberstone’s use of loops. She sets up the performances with simple but incredibly effective stacked harmonies that come in for the chorus, like ghosts, impressions of the feelings she expresses. She doesn’t have a band, so her performances are even more intimate. In the music video for “Deep End,” she’s just looking right into the camera. It’s impossible to break away from her intense gaze:
Gracie Abrams has a similar video for “Feels Like,” in which she stares directly into the soul of the viewer, but it’s cut in such a way as to make the brief moments of stillness almost uncomfortable, like we’re not supposed to see her unless she’s in motion.
Gracie Abrams put out a twelve song EP called This Is What It Feels Like (2021) in early November, but she’s been releasing music since 2019. Her early writing is soaked through with the sensation of being a teenager—she writes about living at home, not being able to drive around LA, having a curfew. There’s nothing general about her writing, but somehow it’s still relatable.
I started doing research on Gracie Abrams because her Instagram is littered with pictures of her happy six year long relationship with producer Blake Slatkin, but This Is What It Feels Like is obviously a breakup record. I wondered if she was doing a Taylor Swift, writing about entirely fictional situations, but the whole album is consistent in its tone, its details, the things that reveal what kind of relationship it was or wasn’t. I started doing some digging.
Turns out, the record is both produced by and about Blake Slatkin. They had broken up briefly, she apparently experienced enough heartbreak to fuel an entire career, and then they got back together. Before that though, they started working together again. That timeline implies that Gracie Abrams showed her ex songs about their separation and he worked on them—and these songs are not impersonal. I can’t imagine the vulnerability, the strangeness of those interactions, or having to relive that rollercoaster on tour every night.
But those are the types of things things that songwriters live for, the drama and the heartache. It all gets jumbled up and processed and comes out as good music, the kind that makes people feel something. Being an artist renders pain useful and productive, even if it hurts a little more. We’re strong, and we’re lucky.