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."
While "Heat Wave" has been steady in its reign on top, another Snail Mail song, "Full Control," has been consistently inching toward it's album-mate the past month and finds itself in the top 5 this week. "Heat Wave" is a no-brainer front-runner for my Summer Song of 2018, though August may hold unforeseen surprises.
Those surprises could begin with the third song from Soccer Mommy's excellent Clean to hit the Mixtape this year, the complicated tale of love lost that is "Scorpio Rising." I missed this one during my initial love affair with Clean, opting to put "Your Dog" and "Cool" in my own personal heavy rotation, resulting in my listening to them 74 and 43 times respectively this year so far. (Yes, I'm a music stats nerd much in the way some geek out over sports or movie stats. I'll get in to that in a future post.)
"Scorpio Rising" landed on my radar this week in a big way as I sought to fill the gaps created by an anemic July for new music releases that I actually like, by revisiting a few tracks that slipped through my cracks. I mean, how can you resist lyrics like "I don't think of my life, Anywhere but in your arms tonight" and "With your love, you want warmth and I'm somethin' colder, I'm putting your hands to her heart" being sung as earnestly, and with a detached calm, as Sophie Allison does? It's the kind of song that, if it existed in the '90s, would have perfectly sound tracked Angela Chase's boy troubles during nearly any episode of "My So Called Life." Man, I loved that show. And I love this song, as its leap from #35 last week to this week's #6 clearly shows. It's not an exaggeration that "Scorpio Rising" could be in the top 5 all August long.
Another big mover is the latest from Death Cab For Cutie. Their new single, "I Dreamt We Spoke Again" makes a jump from #37 last week to #15 this week. I never expect a DCFC song to grab me the way "The New Year," "I Will Possess Your Heart," or "I Will Follow You Into The Dark" did, but this one comes close.
Further down, a trio of songs that have been on The Mixtape since January are all seeing their six-month plus reign wind down - How Simple / Hop Along (32), All This Useless Energy / Jeff Rosenstock (35), and Baby I'm Bleeding / Jpegmafia (36) are all in danger of falling off, but have more than cemented their spot in my best songs of 2018. I've listened to those three songs a combined 345 times this year so far, something I couldn't have anticipated happening way back in January when they were released. We could see them fade away next week if new songs by Mac Miller, Swearin', and Blood Orange that I've been listening to the past few days have anything to say about it.
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