The Mixtape 7/31/18: Five weeks at #1 for "Heat Wave" by Snail Mail

If anything, July has been consistent. For each of the five Mixtape Tuesdays that occured during the first month of 2018's backside, the top two have been #1) Heat Wave / Snail Mail and #2) How to Socialise & Make Friends / Camp Cope. The # 3 slot was held down either by one of two different KIDS SEE GHOST songs or, for the past three weeks, Vic Mensa and G-Eazy's "Reverse."

The Mixtape 7/24/18: Snail Mail, Camp Cope, Vic Mensa (again)

It's the same top three as last week, but there's plenty of action elsewhere on this week's Mixtape.

Snail Mail sits comfortably on top for a fourth week with Heat Wave while another track from their album-of-the-year contender Hush, Full Control, climbs from 16 to 8.

My Five Favorite Things This Past Week

A Chance Return

Chance dropped four new songs this past Thursday and they're all really different, but all really good. The aptly named I Might Need Security is my standout. Chicago's prodigal son is back with a bang, announcing his purchase of city culture catch-all blog, The Chicagoist and calling out the Windy City's Mayor, Rahm Emanuel, all with a sped-up, pitch-shifted Jamie Foxx hook that I dare you to unhear.  Chance is an advocate for Chicago and for its people and it's great to see him back with a fire in his belly.

The Mixtape 7/17/18: Snail Mail, Camp Cope, Vic Mensa

The Heat Wave continues at the top as Lindsey Jordan aka Snail Mail continues her dominance. The top 10 looks a bit different with all things Kanye finally falling out to make room for a few big movers, namely:

Movin' On Up

Bleeding / Thick (10-6)
Fuck Yo Club / 'Lgado, Valee (13-7)
Hot Pink / Let's Eat Grandma (14-8)

The Mixtape 7/10/18: Snail Mail, Camp Cope, Kids See Ghosts

The Summer slowdown is in effect.

This past New Music Friday was the first one that I can remember this year where there wasn't anything that excited me. No new albums. No new singles. Nada.

The Kanye effect is similarly slowing down. Instead of being on three of the top five tracks as he has been the past few weeks, Kanye represents the top 3 with Kid Cudi on the title track off their KIDS SEE GHOSTS while other KSG and Ye tracks are starting to begin their descent down the Mixtape.

What's not slowing is the upward movement for Late Bloomer's "Sleeve," (6) a rockin' romp reminiscent of The Replacements as interpreted by the Goo Goo Dolls when they started to discover songcraft (around their third full-length album). Vic Mensa's collabo with G-Eazy, "Reverse," (5) moves in to the top five this week, taking one of those Kanye vacancies. Courtney Barnett, one of my favorite artists of the past five years, is approaching the top 3 with "Charity," (4) one of several standouts off her latest album, Tell Me How You Really Feel.

I don't see much on this Friday's new releases that excites me at face value, so here's hoping some random singles come around and provide some of that new tunes feeling I've been missing in July.

The Mixtape 7/3/18: Snail Mail, Camp Cope, Kids See Ghosts

Slow and steady wins the race

After five weeks of being denied the Mixtape's top spot by Childish Gambino, Kanye West, and Kids See Ghosts, Snail Mail has reached the pole position. I had a suspicion that would be the case as the rush from the June-long fix of new Kanye-centric tunes wears off. Snail Mail's "Heat Wave" has been around a couple months, while Camp Cope's "How to Socialise and Make Friends" has been tattooed on my grey matter since the end of January. Those tunes have legs and I can easily see both songs ending up in my top 10 of 2018. It's actually not that hard to imagine both being near the top of the Mixtape for several more weeks.

10FTW: Songs From The Backseat

"I like the peace

In the backseat

I don't have to drive

I don't have to speak

I can watch the countryside

And I can fall asleep"

- "In the Backseat" by Arcade Fire

Some of my best childhood moments are centered around music. Songs that elicited pure joy when, by chance, they'd come on the car radio while riding around town with my folks. It seems like forever ago - I'm acutely aware of just how cyclical generational perceptions are - but I can't resist the urge to become my parents for a moment and say, "When I was a kid, things were different." Because they were. There weren't a lot of options to entertain a kid in a car back then and music was most definitely not on-demand. If you had good reception, you'd get whatever tunes the local radio DJs served up. Some songs were played more than others, but by and large, you'd be treated to a pretty random mix of current songs, along with 'oldies' from the decade before.

If I was in the car with my parents, the radio was usually on. It's just how it always was. Looking back, there were a handful (maybe armload) of songs that sound-tracked that blissful moment when all I knew were the storefronts, green spaces, and neighborhoods around town that shaped the limited reality of my five - nine-year-old self. I still hear these songs from time-to-time, though it's rarely a random occasion anymore. I put on these little aural bites of comfort food and reflect on those mostly extinct hometown images from my most innocent of days. Many of the stores no longer stand and roads exist where fields once extended seemingly forever. New freeways have been constructed. Generations have come and gone, though Facebook tells me many folks I knew have hung around there for the long haul. The very few parts of town that still possess a sense of familiarity within their appearance are personal treasures of mine and keep me connected to my history, much like the 20 songs in the two playlists that follow.

The time spent in the backseat of my parents' cars as we went to the store, the drive-in, the beach...wherever the day happened to take us, is responsible for some of my fondest memories. The view from the backseat was a carefree one; one without bad drivers or clueless pedestrians. A view accompanied by some great songs that have become ingrained in my fiber, serving as mileposts in the story of my life. A view free from the constrictions of a seat belt - we didn't have much use for those things in the '70s. It was a view experienced from the bucket seat of a turd-brown Ford Pinto and the luxurious expanse of our Cadillac or Grenada's leather (or was it pleather) bench seat.

These are not my favorite songs from my childhood, nor are they what I consider the 'best' songs of the 70s. They're simply the songs that, for a few minutes, remove the chaos of adulthood and slow the constant churn of reality to a crawl.

Some, like "Sir Duke," "Don't Go Breaking My Heart," and "Still The One" bring back the innocence of youth. Others remind me just how far removed from that innocence I am. "Just The Way You Are," "Reminiscing," and "Silly Love Songs" were favorites of my mother; songs that made her light up from ear to ear. I haven't had the fortune of seeing her smile in over 12 years so those songs, painful as they can be to hear sometimes, are nostalgic as much as they're therapeutic. My dad has been gone for much longer - this December will mark 25 years without him. I can't hear "The Gambler," "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown," or "Rhinestone Cowboy" and think of anything other than being in the car with my pops while we sang the choruses of those classics together.

"Dream Weaver," was unlike anything else I heard on the radio at the time, so it was always a treat when it would come on. That doesn't mean I can listen to more than 30 seconds of it now, but man...I really loved that song back then. "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" was just fun wordplay that was easy to remember. Thanks for that one, Mr. Rhymin' Simon. Like the aforementioned signature tune of Kenny Rogers, "Take The Money and Run" and "American Pie" unfolded their stories as the songs played on. Cinematic sequences correlating with the songs' lyrical journeys played out in the movie theater of my mind. I had a pretty good imagination as an only child and it was fun for me to close my eyes and envision how what I was hearing might look like on the big screen.

In the backseat, I discovered how funky music could be, courtesy of Stevie Wonder's "Superstition." It's still one of the funkiest damn things I've ever heard. I internalized the words of Henley, Frey, and JD Souther's "The Best Of My Love" before I really knew how devastating they actually were. "You see it your way. I see it mine. But we both see it slipping away." I just got goosebumps typing that. Dang. Those words, much like others from the best Eagles songs, are lyrical daggers that cut through the bullshit and serve up a reality most would prefer to brush aside with a pained, yet blissful, ignorance. Those words moved me then, though in a way I couldn't understand as a child who was focused on far more important things (what the new Saturday morning cartoons would be once Fall came around, who would win Battle of the Network Stars, or when I might get to go to Skipper's next) than a relationship's impending implosion. And...this was a big one, the backseat was where I found a loophole that allowed me to 'innocently' sing along to a popular song and get away with saying a bad word. It felt like I was breaking the law without anyone around me being the wiser. Thanks, "Rich Girl."

I always had a great bedroom filled with toys from parents who really didn't have the means, but always found the way, to give me most of what they knew I wanted. I'd eventually have a bike that would take me on adventures around my part of town. Later on, I'd experience the 'joy' of what people dealt with in the front seat; insanely slow stoplights, rush-hour traffic, flat tires. None of it ever matched the weightlessness I felt while in the backseat. Such levity came with brevity, but these songs keep that magical time alive.