My Top Songs of the Week

I thought this would be a fun series to start! I love music—we all do—so why not?

Here goes!

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10. The Boy Is Mine by Ariana Grande

Morality of her newest relationship aside, this song from Ariana Grande about her newest relationship is great. The classic pop beat and the snappy chorus meld so well with the smoothness of her voice, especially in that higher octave. Ariana sounds stunning on the track, as per usual; the girl can sing. Her sly, wistful delivery of the lyrics adds a nice touch throughout. The cut is airy and sexy in the perfect way, making it my personal favorite off her latest record. “The Boy Is Mine” is catchy, intoxicating, and easy listening all around.

Favorite Lines:

Somethin' about him is made for somebody like me

Baby, come over, come over

And God knows I'm tryin', but there's just no use in denying

The boy is mine

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9. Espresso by Sabrina Carpenter

Absolute bop here from Sabrina. The instrumental is pretty good—a little on the basic side, clean, poppy, and catchy—but it’s the lyrics and vocals that elevate the song from good to great. The wordplay and cute little lyrical flexes throughout the song about romance and desire are sweet and endearing. I love Sabrina’s confidence on the song; the whole keeping him up thinking about her all night/espresso metaphor is silly and sultry in the best way. Her voice always sounds great, but Sabrina has this more breathy, sensual tone on this track that is just so sexy and smooth and lovely. The sexuality and the light, confident exuberance Carpenter exudes on the track is electrifying. Her femininity and confidence shine through so well here, and I think “Espresso” highlights how far she’s come as an artist. This song grew on me big time and I’ve been absolutely loving it. I’ve been grooving to this one all week.

Favorite Lines:

Now he’s thinkin’ ’bout me every night, oh

Is it that sweet? I guess so

Say you can’t sleep, baby, I know

That’s that me, espresso

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8. Like That by Future and Metro Boomin (ft. Kendrick Lamar)

If you’re into hip-hop music or culture even a little bit, you couldn't have missed news of the beef between rapper Drake and… almost everybody else. Future, Metro, and Kendrick join forces here on the song for a surprise collaboration, and they’re just full-force gunning for Drake. Why? Couldn’t tell you. I think there was some alleged drama between ex-besties Future and Drake over a girl. I have no clue what went down between Kendrick and Drake, but as Drake is famously rather disliked by many in the industry—potentially for a pattern of behaviors that I won’t delve into—it didn’t come as a total shock.

Kendrick drops a particularly killer verse on the track, packed with a lot of bite and, as always, a ton of wordplay. He attacks Drake, calling him and fellow rapper J. Cole out for their arrogance in their previous song together “First Person Shooter” where Cole has a verse about Drake, Kendrick, and himself being on top collaboratively as the new “big three” of the current hip hop world. On “Like That”, Kendrick bluntly gives us the “fuck the big three, it’s just big me” line that had the Internet in shambles. He also makes rather interesting allusions to Drake being the Michael to his Prince with a line about Prince outliving MJ, potentially implying Kendrick’s music and legacy will outlive Drake’s. Popular music reviewer Anthony Fantano had an interesting insight on this line that I thought was a good point, stating that Prince is also a more “out there” artist than MJ as well as an innovator; Prince was a genre bending artist’s artist whereas Michael Jackson was a talented pop star, and as Drake’s rap style is far more poppy and mainstream and “digestible” than Kendrick’s, Kendrick flexes being an innovator of the genre and the culture of hip hop whereas it can be argued Drake can’t say the same. It’s a great feature and a great song overall—catchy, braggadocious, and brutal with all its contempt. Absolute banger.

Favorite Lines:

(insert Kendrick’s entire verse here)

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7. Space Oddity by David Bowie

Don’t mind me jumping back a few decades, because “Space Oddity” has been on repeat for me all week.

This song is perfection. The instrumentals, the lyrics, the pure and raw emotion of it. The story behind the song is also interesting, because despite the song’s popularity, it’s harder to interpret precisely than you might expect. On its face, it tells the story of a space landing, a beautiful, awe-inspiring and life-changing experience. But the song is also widely considered a metaphor for drug use (most likely heroin) and the bliss of an addiction to a transcendent high. This is pretty much confirmed in the Bowie lore too with the song “Ashes to Ashes” on a later (and absolutely amazing) album confirming it with the line “We know Major Tom’s a junkie, strung out on heaven’s high hitting an all-time low.”

The song is both stunningly otherworldly and sadly rooted in its humanity in this way. Bowie was great at creating characters and worlds of his own like this complex character of Major Tom and his metaphorical life and experiences, and it’s always an honor to immerse myself within them.

Favorite Lines:

This is Major Tom to Ground Control

I'm stepping through the door

And I'm floating in the most peculiar way

And the stars look very different today

Here am I floating 'round a tin can

Far above the world

Planet Earth is blue

And there's nothing I can do

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6. specialist by ATLUS Sound Team

Hard cut from a Bowie classic to this gem from the Persona 4 soundtrack — yeah, this song is phenomenal. I don’t care if it’s just a dumb video game song, it’s not to me. It’s an upbeat, catchy, jazzy instrumental, and it immediately puts me in a great mood every time I hear it. And the sax on the track is just amazing. It encompasses the fun of the game so well, but it’s also a great standalone track to listen to and just vibe. You can’t not dance to this, I guarantee it.

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5. Why Bother? by Weezer

Can’t say I’m too proud of this one. But alas.

Being a Weezer fan is famously difficult; one (me) can argue that being a female Weezer fan is even harder. But despite all of the ways in which the Pinkerton album is weird, mildly incel-esque, and has aged pretty poorly overall—god, I can’t help but love the album, and I love this song.

“Why Bother?” is just such an experience. The drums and bass are so loud and bold, and Rivers’ vocals here are passionate and whiny in the best way. The guitar is killer too. I love how raw and angry the track is, even on their loudest and most “rock” album. It’s an awesome, epic, depressingly honest banger about bitterness, loneliness and the difficulties of love and trust. It’s also very unintentionally funny. I find the “keep whacking” line absolutely hilarious every time I hear it.

Favorite Lines:

Why bother?

It's gonna hurt me

It's gonna kill when you desert me

This happened to me twice before

It won't happen to me anymore

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4. Down In A Hole by Alice in Chains

One of my absolute favorites from the band that I’ve been rocking out to this week. I love the start of the song and the mood it sets from the start. The gentle strums of the guitars and the lull of the vocals in the song are captivating and beautiful. With this song, Alice in Chains diverted from their signature metal sound and showed a softer, more acoustic side of grunge music that I think is just phenomenal. I love the moany, desolate tone of Layne’s voice on this track. He sings every line with heart and hurt and you feel that he means every word. It also breaks my heart because the song can be seen as foreshadowing for his addiction to drugs and his eventual demise. It’s a great, dark, hopelessly honest song that has contributed to the band leaving their mark on the music world as legends.

Favorite Lines:

Down in a hole and I don't know if I can be saved

See my heart, I decorate it like a grave

You don't understand who they thought

I was supposed to be

Look at me now

A man who won't let himself be

Down in a hole, feelin' so small

Down in a hole, losin' my soul

I'd like to fly, but my wings have been so denied

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3. Bodyguard by Beyoncé

Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé’s most recent studio album and her debut into country, has been on repeat for me all month, and “Bodyguard” has to be my personal favorite track off it at the moment. It’s a jazzy, feel-good song about a woman wanting to protect and defend her man. On the record, Beyoncé delves into this concept of being “the man” for herself; it is a role she can fulfill herself rather than one she needs fulfilled completely by another. She stresses a mundanity towards expectations others have for her to lower herself/pretend to be something she’s not. She is a woman, and she’s beautiful and sensual and feminine in many ways, but she’s also powerful, hard-headed, aggressive, independent, and strong, qualities that can be considered “masculine”, and she fully embraces her masculinity alongside her femininity with all her heart. She is the woman and the man. She is the mother and the wife, but she is also the provider and the protector. I just absolutely adore this messaging and the way she went about explaining it through her music; I find it so amazing and inspiring.

Back to the song, before I start crying about how much I love Beyoncé.

The instrumentals are so rich here—luscious, even. The “ooh-ooh-ooh”-ing and “ah”-ing at the beginning of the track sets the light, airy tone of the track so nicely. The lyrics are sugary sweet, sexy, sincere, and dramatically humorous all at the same time. Beyoncé highlights female independence and strength so well on “Bodyguard”. She exudes pride, strength, and confidence on this track better than ever. It’s a celebratory, glorious song about empowerment and love. It’s just amazing. She’s amazing. I am Beyhive to the core of my very being.

Favorite Lines:

They couldn't have me

And they never will

And sometimes I hold you closer

Just to know you're real

Wheels in the gravel

Davis in my bones

Sometimes I take a day off just to turn you on

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2. Retrograde by James Blake

This is an amazing track from James that I’ve always, always loved from his discography. It’s a touching, relatable depiction of waiting until someone is ready and has grown into themselves enough for you to pursue a relationship with them, but it’s the vocals and the instrumentals that make it so, so good. It starts very quietly and sensually with Blake’s beautiful hums and croons, gets progressively more intense, especially when the chorus and the synths hit, and then ends as softly and sensually as it started. The synths make the song sound chilling and almost haunting. There are so many different ways to interpret both the vibe and the tone of the track, which I love. It can come across dark and moody or hopeful and euphoric depending on how you want to decipher its sound. Either way, it’s a gorgeously atmospheric song that I loved listening to this week a ton.

Favorite Lines:

I'll wait

So show me why you're strong

Ignore everybody else

We're alone now

Suddenly I'm hit

It's the starkness of the dawn

And your friends are gone

And your friends won't come

So show me where you fit

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1. I Want To Be Well by Sufjan Stevens

This is the top song of the week for me.

Stevens’ vocals, as always, are insane. He is so, so very talented and his voice is as lovely and unique as ever, and he really goes into this more powerful, loud direction here with the track, diverting from the more subdued, quieter tracks he is most known for. The boldness and sheer volume of his voice help to best express the emotional nature of the song, the frustration and anger and desperation and hurt. The classic Sufjan flutes are lovely and add a lot of soul to the track, and the drums in the second leg of the song are insane. The transitions from rage to the softer, more emotional sections of the song are amazing, and the shouts that conclude the track are chilling.

But it’s the content of the lyricism that is most significant. This idea of wanting to be well, of wellness and what it means, of being healthy and happy and okay, of wanting it more than anything and not being able to have it, of the ways Sufjan expresses this desire — it’s all heart wrenching. This is even more the case with the background knowledge than Stevens wrote this song about an illness he was struggling with as it crippled his body and his mental health. The focus on seeing “ordinary people” live in wellness day to day and the spiral it sends him into is so painful and powerful. The desperation and rage in the track is just unmatched. It is a beautiful, raw, cataclysmic song, and it’s one of my favorites ever from him. I’m so glad I decided to revisit this album and this song. My absolute favorite of the week.

Favorite Lines:

Did I go at it wrong?

Did I go intentionally to destroy me?

I'm suffering in noise

I'm suffering in touching ordinary bodies

The burning from within

The burning from ordinary hysteria

I could not be at rest

I could not be at peace

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What did you think of the picks for this week? Do you love/hate any of these songs or artists? What songs are you guys loving this week? Leave a comment and let me know!