The Three Best Songs Released This Past Week, Pt. 33

Happy Sunday! Did you hear the Christmas song featuring Ariana Grande, Megan Thee Stallion, and…Jimmy Fallon? I wish I didn’t.

Noteworthy album & EP releases:

A Very Lonely Solstice – Fleet Foxes
Girls In Purgatory (Full Moon Edition) – Julia Wolf
Live From Blackalachia – Moses Sumney
Don’t Look Up (Soundtrack From The Netflix Film) – Various Artists

“Change My Mind” – Anna Shoemaker
Release date – December 8

We recently featured this track in a post earlier this week, written by Erin, so here’s more info on what she had to say about the song, cause I think you should listen to it. Like, I really think you will enjoy it.

“Change My Mind” showcases “Shoemaker’s thought process through a failing relationship of some sort…”including “several different ways of interpreting the various failures of the relationship including ‘being okay in the morning’ and placing the blame on both herself and the other person. Who can’t relate to the constant second-guessing in a fraught relationship? Happy people, maybe? They can go listen to something else, then.”

“Body Of Water” – Tierra Whack
Release date – December 9

What can I say other than I am completely blown away by the music Tierra Whack is consistently making? I am shocked that she isn’t bigger than she is by now. After a quit Google search to see if I could find anymore info on what she’s been up to, I realized she apparently announced early this year that she was going to quit music: hopefully that’s no longer the case! “Body Of Water,” one of three songs from a new EP titled Pop? gives me big Janelle Monaé vibes: a comparison I’m heavily into.

“Second Nature” – Bon Iver
Release date – December 10

This may be an unconventional and admittedly dorky thing to say, but I am not as into Justin Vernon’s experimental sound of his music: quite frankly, I prefer the majority of his music that sounds like you can hear it in any suburban supermarket across the country (this is by no means meant to be a dig). So when I saw that Bon Iver was apart of the 31-song soundtrack for the upcoming Netflix film Don’t Look Up, I figured it’d be more of a commercial sounding song, which it is! This doesn’t negate its beauty by any means: I didn’t even really pick up on it sounding “soundtrack-y” upon my first listen. But regardless, I’m into it.

“MENTHOL*” – Jean Dawson ft. Mac DeMarco
Release date – December 10

When Jean Dawson released his sophomore album Pixel Bath last year, he earned a fan of life out of me, so much so that team member Mitch and I advocated for the album to be our 8th best album of the year. There’s something so uniquely different and alien (to quote Mitch) about Dawson’s music and sound, it made complete sense to me that he looked towards Mac DeMarco to collaborate with: DeMarco is credited as producer on the track and speaks on it during the last 20-ish seconds.

“I’ve just been wanting to scream all the time—not out of anger or any emotion I can pinpoint but just scream at the top of my lungs at nothing,” Dawson stated in a press release for the song. Hopefully we’ll be getting more new music from him soon.

“Bottle of Advil” – Julia Wolf
Release date –

One of our faves is back with two new songs on the deluxe edition of her 2021 EP Girls In Purgatory, and I seriously want to know why artists leave some of their best material off releases and save them for deluxe editions?! Is this a strategy in place for a specific reason? Cause I’m completely blown away by this song and wish it was on the original version of the EP! There are many lyrical moments in this song that remind me so much of Taylor Swift, (“Time moves / like traffic lights changing / steady they go / but I’m growing impatient and “Drive past my hometown like a guest / windows down and the heat high / parts of me I grew out of / no chance to wave goodbye”). Excuse me while I cry.