I don’t know about you, but we’re feeling ’22.

But if there’s one thing we’re feeling more than an — at this point — already overused joke, it’s our 2021 champions, Chloe x Halle:

We love them at any hour, ungodly or not.

This concludes our coverage for this year. We’ll be taking a brief break from blurbing, but best believe we will return in the new year to cover the BBC Sound Of… shortlist along with the latest pop singles, to two decimal places, as always.

You can check out our top 50 songs via the following playlists on Spotify on YouTube. Feel free to also peruse our archives to catch up on all of this year’s blurbs.

Many thanks to our writers, editors and readers for carrying us through another difficult year. See you soon.

xo,

The Singles Jukebox

We close Readers Week and 2021 with a submission from Claire which sounds like how we felt. Please look after yourself and we will see you next year.

[Video]
[8.25]

Alfred Soto: There are more nuances to John Lydon’s ages-old “Anger is an energy” than were dreamt of in his philosophy.
[7]

Al Varela: Backxwash and Ada Rook are an incredible combo who make magic every time they collab together, and “I LIE HER BURIED IN MY RINGS AND MY DRESSES” is both artists at their best. Just the way Ada Rook howls with such guttural intensity is enough to quake the room, especially with the production blasting away like an explosion blowing radiation right at your face. Backxwash herself also delivers two of her best ever verses, feeling the weight of every shitty thing in the world collapse toward her as her voice gets more and more frail and scared. This whole song is a suffocating nightmare you can’t wake up from, and it’s one of the most terrifying, yet enthralling songs I’ve ever heard. Especially at the very last chorus, where the bass crashes so hard it distorts the song for a brief moment. Bone-chilling.
[10]

Ian Mathers: I’m sorry, but here as in Quiplash, sometimes when I see a prompt or hear a song my very first thought sometimes just demands I put it down pretty much as is (it’s practically intrusive), even though it usually doesn’t capture the nuances etc. So, basically: Kanye circa Yeezus fucking wishes he could.
[10]

Juana Giaimo: Having never heard of them before, you couldn’t imagine my surprised face when Ada Rook’s vocals started. There is an audience for this music, but definitely not me. I always rejected this kind of music, it sounds silly to me and I know that’s not the aim of the song, but I guess it kind of scares me and makes me feel attacked. And especially after such a long year, that is not what I’m looking for. 
[3]

Claire Davidson: The grainy, industrial blips of the song’s opening seconds sputter with fracturing anxiety, and from there, the title track of Backxwash’s 2021 opus unleashes with a fury so visceral as to become corrosive, as the grinding trudge of the beat accompanies the song’s desperate, bruised anger that is at once conflicted between survival and surrender. Backxwash raps with both the wisdom of a prophet and the despair to recognize that she is only a weary observer, penning a righteous elegy for the ghastly horrors that have been inflicted upon colonized peoples and their diasporas, and the spectacle of death she witnesses in the wake of this history. It is Ada Rook’s hook that allows the song to truly coalesce, her snarled wailing shrieked with such panic as to create the impression that very capacity to scream is tearing her apart, the disgust underlying her pronunciation of the word “abomination” gnashing with a feral sense of dread that the song’s verses further illuminate. By the end of her last few lines, Backxwash envisions herself as someone for whom only the devil could find sympathy, an offer she’d accept if only for the escape it would provide from a world that can only name her death, a eulogy she delivers as her accompanying guitars roil with simmering power — a purgatory envisioned with an appropriately harrowing soundtrack. 
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: Primordial maximalism.
[8]

Edward Okulicz: There is anger in music that makes me feel intimidated, some that makes me feel anger in turn and sometimes there is anger that is viscerally thrilling and empowering. This is all three at once. The raw bone on bone collision within the musical elements, the vocals, and their combination is not fun but it’s an experience. Play it once even if it’s not sounding like your taste. 
[9]

Nortey Dowuona: Someone left their modem on, gonna check that fir-Wait. Wait. Actually, i should maybe cut my grass instead. Backxwash got this repair in hand.
[10]

It’s still the 24th somewhere, so we continue with this from Ada:

[Video]
[7.43]

Michael Hong: “Alter Ego,” the other version of “Virgo,” is classic Cantopop, sweepingly romantic and longing. It sways like ballroom dancing, decorated with gentle brass, an upright bass and that lovely piano line. The flutter of the flutes saves Lam from a night of loneliness as he offers his hand on the last line: “will anyone pick me up?” But “Virgo” is plinky, playful piano keys, animated little squiggles that follow Lam as he runs through the same words with more optimism and less desperation. Like astrology, “Virgo” is a bit more plastic but Lam is hopeful in the fakeness. When he sings that last line again, it’s with the positivity of a good horoscope reading, a hopefulness that persists even if that someone isn’t yet within your immediate future.
[7]

Ada M. : I was torn on which Ka Him song to submit, but I decided on “Virgo” because it’s through this song I got properly acquainted with his music. I don’t know how much he really believes in horoscopes, but the song was released on August 23rd, the start of the Virgo season, and he is a Virgo himself. The song talks about a Virgo being too critical and fussy with details, in a way I think that’s probably true about Ka Him and his passion (and perfectionism) about his music. I personally prefer the original, more animated version of the song more, but I also appreciate the more dramatic Alter Ego interpretation. There are many small details which make both versions of the song (and videos) so delightful and mesmerising, with the slightly retro synth sound taking me to a whimsical music world of his. I also find his way of singing, though probably not to everyone’s liking, particularly comforting. There is product/brand placement in his videos, but an indie artist also gotta eat right? 
[10]

Nortey Dowuona: The posted synth programming and warmly synth organs are so slight and thin that Terence’s papery, phlegmy voice nearly breaks it, but he finds his way on it, with little synth silkworms wriggling across his arms, then creating a beautiful synth riff for his echoes to dip in and follow. Then the bridge slips in, unnoticed yet full to its neck of plush chintzy synth chords, thatTerence walks across into his apartment, then lays his head down to sleep peacefully.
[8]

Iain Mew: The intense sweetness reminds me of the best moments of Bolppalgan4, with a similar way of switching up just enough to avoid becoming cloying. The good-time lounge keyboards do much of the background work while Lam gets a lot out of ranging from the occasional wobble to assured falsetto as the song drifts happily off into space.
[7]

Juana Giaimo: Even though it doesn’t offer major changes throughout, “Virgo” is full of small details like that short instrumental part or when his vocals start sounding a little bit muffled towards the end. A sweet, quiet and enjoyable trip. 
[7]

Scott Mildenhall: It’s a bit like the subject of “Miserablism” (not the real one) developed self-awareness, or at least a degree of it. “Virgo” feels very idiosyncratic, almost charmingly so, but the translated lyrics still wander towards the unendearing. Inevitably, things are lost in reanalysis, but Terence Lam’s self-pity isn’t all that compelling when read, for all the quasi-unassuming quirkiness.
[6]

Ian Mathers: This feels like the theme song for an extremely low-key and yet incredibly gripping (to its intended audience) tv show about the love lives of very un-self-confident people, where you’re rooting for pretty much everyone and the biggest problems tend to resolve down to people being gently misunderstood. Or maybe I should say it feels like the kind of theme that makes that show seems (delete as appropriate) even a little/even more appealing.
[7]

Suggested by Michael, a very high scoring conversation piece, being a piece made of conversations.

[Video]
[8.38]

Michael Burke: It was a hard week and it’s been a hard year but this song feels like a reminder that if you stand still for a second you can hear that there is something buried underneath every ordinary and fantastic and uncertain moment.
[10]

Nortey Dowuona: When you first hear what Cassandra Jenkins does, it stops you dead in your tracks. With Doug Weiselman’s moaning sax and JT Bates tapping upon the spine, you could have just played this with Cassandra’s soft, nearly invisible voice and walked away. instead, Cassandra speaks gently but firmly about small vignettes that are defining her life as she lives it, that cut quickly through the usual disinterest when someone is just talking. And at the beginning and tail end, the security guard she first meets excitedly begins spilling her guts, guts Cassandra collects calmly.
[10]

Ian Mathers: At this point it’s kind of exhausting how much great music I’ve been exposed to via Amnesty and Readers’ weeks. I had heard of Jenkins and An Overview of Phenomenal Nature, plenty of people I respect and love had said it was good, but somewhere in some way that’s now obscure to me, I got the impression it wouldn’t be my thing. That part I’m not embarrassed by; there’s so much music every year, the reasons why certain things never get listened to are just arbitrary. But when I did play “Hard Drive”, as it slowly bloomed into life and then something more, I belatedly realized some part of me was trying to do something I don’t think is fine. Out of… defensiveness? pride? stubbornness? I was listening to “Hard Drive” like I was looking for elements I could reject, reasons my arbitrary decision to not listen to this record was justified; not seeking to explain and unpack my visceral emotional reaction to the music, but instead trying to force that visceral emotional reaction into the shape of a rationalization. It is, I hope, something that I don’t normally do, and thankfully with “Hard Drive” those real feelings diverged from whatever kneejerk lingering ridiculousness was in me first subtly and then sharply. “Hard Drive” does, in general, feel like something that’s maybe here to tech us a lesson (although maybe more in the Platonic sense where learning something is unforgetting it), and in my specific case I’m glad for the chagrin I feel that it had to bop me on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper to get me into the room with it and out of my head. One, two, three.
[10]

Andrew Karpan: Deliberate performances of pretentiousness generally open themselves up to criticisms that conversations in the lay-language of pop do not. This goes beyond strutting around and harassing security guards at the Met for profundity — if only Jenkins threw a nice riff or two in there, the record would have the smoov, dumb flow of something like “Hypersonic Missiles” or a Billie Eilish deep cut. But form dictates function: this is meant as a tribute to the style of the late ’90s singer and poet David Berman, whom Jenkins was booked to tour with two years ago. Consequently, we are stuck with her free verse cleverness, which ekes out in a patter of spoken word seances that hover just above the small country of coffee shops where people wonder what the rest of the world has to say. 
[5]

Michael Hong: Cassandra Jenkins has a voice that tells you everything you need to know about her. When she parrots back “oh, dear, I can see you’ve had a rough few months,” there’s this relief, that finally someone’s willing to say it instead of skirting around your feelings but also this kind of frustration that the best anyone can capture your state is the word “rough.” On “Hard Drive,” she sifts through memories that shouldn’t have existed, trying to make something clear of the past few months that she was merely drifting through. And in between brief scenes of clarity, she pulls together something beautiful. She keeps the security guard’s message but throws away the ramblings about a president she’d rather forget, gliding into a new memory as the full backing of the instrumental takes over. She sings, flying over the arrangement when she remembers what the bookkeeper told her. She rewrites those words when she’s floating, in the meantime rewriting a memory because no one learns to drive that calmly. Every line is delivered with a clever little smile, a little sad but no longer felt like it has to be, as she speaks and sings about how a hard drive can mean so many things — at the same time hiding the lessons she hopes you don’t need quite yet. When Jenkins starts to count off the twinkle of the past few minutes, you suddenly find yourself counting with her, meditating, sifting through the blur of the past few months — maybe years — trying to piece together a lesson, trying to put your heart back together again.
[10]

Scott Mildenhall: It probably helps to find the lyrics profound, poignant or perspicacious — if they touch you in some way, “Hard Drive” could easily be transcendent. It brings to mind “I Trawl the Megahertz,” which made much more of metaphysical thoughts at great length; transmitting more than reporting them. Jenkins’ distance from events, even as she is at the heart of them, isn’t so engaging without prior introduction. It’s a shame, because the atmosphere and her delivery create extremely solid ground.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: There is a line or two, and also Jenkins’ delivery, that really transfixed me for a moment. The one that really did it for me was “I’ll count to three and tap on your shoulder/We’re gonna put your heart back together” which is just so evocative. If “Hard Drive” was a bit more curated, it would be stunning. But like my own hard drive, this needs a bit of an edit job. It is almost perfect but the flaw is a big one.
[6]

Vikram Joseph: Through little vignettes of conversations with people on the peripheries of her life, Cassandra Jenkins makes us understand not only how human interaction can be healing, but also how that healing often comes not from the interactions you expect. In this, and in other ways (the sing-speak delivery, the gently blossoming soundscape) it reminds me of Craig Finn’s near-perfect “God In Chicago,” a song about processing grief on an unplanned road trip; Jenkins’ narrative is a little more personal, more surreal and more humorous, but the two songs share a calmness and an empathy that could move you to tears, in the right/wrong moment. Jenkins ensconces “Hard Drive” in warm, shuffling bass and ribbons of sax and guitar that feel loose and improvised (but are much too perfectly judged to be). Hearing it for the first time in late December, there’s something elegiac and intrinsically hopeful about it; count to three with her and believe that maybe this year will be better than the last.
[9]

Mica offers us this other kind of break-up song.

[Video]
[7.71]

Mica Hilson: One of my first post-pandemic concerts was seeing Real Lies in a tiny London storage unit turned club. I got there unfashionably early and watched the lads in the band struggle to tack up their stage set: little white banners emblazoned with slogans like “What Bliss to Be Alive.” And yet when their all-too-short set started, the club came alive with sweaty fans pressed close together shouting out the lyrics, reveling in the late-night energy of the music. “Oh Me, Oh My (Nicotine Patch)” is basically made for this nocturnal club setting, with its woozy synths and breathy vocals. “What you gonna use those sore lips for?”/”Making vows, breaking laws” might just be the half-rhyme of the year.
[10]

Nortey Dowuona: The pealing sample lops and bland, slipped drums make a somewhat appealing track to run on, but Kev is blown away by Dominique Russell’s more lively and commanding voice which truly owns the swirling mists around, making it a home on which Kev and Patrick have wound up as guests.
[7]

Iain Mew: Pitched somewhere between dance and synth-pop with a perfect balance of brightness and depth, the sound is enjoyable enough that it took a long time to even notice that it was being sung to nicotine. And they follow through deliciously, though “there are shrines to you outside every club I’ve ever been to” would be a brilliantly evocative line even without the topic. 
[8]

Ian Mathers: Now that I’ve heard it, like, of course someone decided to make synthpop in the style of The Field (I bet this isn’t remotely the first time, just the first time I’m running into it). It works… pretty well! The could have removed the male singer and just given the other one more to do and it’d work better though, I think.
[6]

Scott Mildenhall: The constantly jarring instrumental, dominating the encumbered vocal, does its job of representing the oppressive, cyclical nature of addiction, but nevertheless makes the whole pack of Gauloises seem very slick. It’s the sort of thing advertisers would probably use to promote tobacco in the UK now if they could. Happily, they can’t, but although there’s doubtless an extra dimension to this for smokers, the concerted allure is easily enjoyed without engaging with the subject matter.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: The most distinctive thing about this song is that show it stops and starts and makes the listener feel a bit woozy. Maybe that’s what withdrawal feels like, although its thematic relevance still doesn’t stop it being the thing I like the least here. Otherwise this is actually very clever and subtle, in passing it passes for something that’s not a duet between a man and a cigarette. But how good a premise is that?
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: Late-night bar blur, male vocals curling smokebreath and dripping sleaze, blank female vocals reminiscent of “Entropy Reigns in the Colossal City,” a “Promiscuous” bridge — a dispatch from a parallel nocturnal world less and less reachable by the day, but one that perhaps left some unlit lights in you.
[8]

Coming to us from Caro, a brief bit of break-up wistfulness…

[Video]
[6.50]

Vikram Joseph: A gently flickering piano ballad that nicely captures both a feeling of numbness and a sense of motion, of being completely hollowed out by someone and yet life continuing to move around you as if nothing had changed. It’s a shame that Augustine doesn’t seem to know what to do with it after about 90 seconds; the badly autotuned “oh my lady love” bits are very cringe (yes, we get it, you’re straight) and it just fizzles out thereafter.
[6]

Ian Mathers: You know how you can say just about anything to a cat or dog as long as you say it in an affectionate tone of voice? (I have no idea if this is scientifically valid, but it’s certainly something people say, and what pet owner has not, at some point, tested it?) “Summer Wine” makes me feel like one of those animals, because whatever is actually being said, the vibe is so strong that it’s all I can hear. Everything is OK, it says. You have time to catch up. You can put it down. You can relax. There’s a very real sense in which it’s not true, but you can’t just run until the point of collapse.
[9]

Michael Hong: Like a short film, Augustine’s keys pack a plot in the short run time. They spend their first moments trying to find stable ground, coolly coasting in something grandly cinematic. It fades out into a sunset of strings, the “can’t wait to do it all over” a promise for another summer.
[6]

Scott Mildenhall: Augustine may or may not be aware of Compo in a bathtub, but in the UK, Last of the Summer Wine has a considerable head start over this song. For all that he pours his heart and soul into it, he’s overpowered by the acutely nostalgic theme tune that was given loud-and-clear lyrical accompaniment by Bill Owen, the Mike Sammes Singers and more. By comparison, it gets quite hard to even hear what Augustine is saying. His chosen route to making the song compelling — starkly focusing on his spartan words — is thus heavily impeded.
[5]

Iain Mew: Especially on headphones this is almost uncomfortably intimate, vocals sounding like they’re crumbling to pieces in my ears. The blast of AutoTune that finishes it off is just as bizarre next to the repressed calm of the string arrangement, but in a very different direction. The overall effect is baffling, memorable, and somewhere more than the sum of its parts.
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: The lilting piano is constantly rushing forward, then halting and tripping over its words, before the bass and strings slowly pour over its toes, while Augustine and his echoes, bound with keening pitching and vocoding, begin to blossom and flower, the strings pushing the piano to walk, walk firmly in this direction…
[7]

Next up, Sam has us revisiting an artist for the first time in three years…

[Video]
[7.14]

Sam Blizzard: Over the course of almost six years of EPs, one-offs, and features leading up to her debut album release early next year, Amber Mark has cemented her place as a master of woozy, throaty neo-soul with an ear for nagging pop melodies. The best of her 2021 singles, “What It Is,” gets esoteric as she questions love, life, and her career over a warm, murmuring synth. As the chorus of Ambers harmonizes on the bridge before the electric guitar solo takes us home (in 2021! more of this, please), her point becomes clear: these grand universal questions don’t often have answers, but posing them creates one hell of a barnburner ballad.
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: Amber Mark has yet to break out of her cohort of neo-neosoul artists with impeccable taste, even more impeccable PR, and decent, polite songs. “What It Is” is also decent and polite, save for the guitar solo around 4:40. It’s cheesy and ’80s-garish and way too late in the song, but at least it is something.
[5]

Will Adams: It’s tasteful, it’s well-performed, it’s manicured, it’s studied. The electric guitar begins to add that needed spark, but then the song’s over.
[5]

Vikram Joseph: A long, hazy exhalation of a song, bearing a more than passing resemblance to “Susie Save Your Love” and sharing an aura with the sunblushed languor of Empress Of’s Us, and lasting five and a half minutes largely due to being entranced by a feeling and unwilling to let go of it. It’s a really lovely thing, especially strong in its final stretch (the close, emphatic harmonies in the final bridge and the sheer decadence of the guitar solo). To be honest, it’s so out of season right now that it’s hard to really feel it in the way it wants to be experienced — holed up in the shortest days of a winter spent in uneasy adjacency to a wounded beast of a pandemic, lurching towards its endgame but lashing out vengefully along the way, its crushed-out summer vibes feel like an alien art form. But I know it won’t be all that long before I hear this floating in from a terrace somewhere, where it belongs.
[8]

Nortey Dowuona: The lazy, dragging drums make so much space for the drizzled bass and noncommittal synth programming, which both leach towards Amber’s pliant yet bouncy soprano tone which makes the mix fritz and freak out as she twirls it. When spreads it across the sky, her voice sways and shatters into gorgeous harmonies that make her patiently penned lyrics come alive in each vocoded coo and reverb drenched echo. The plush, open crassness of the bridge speaks to Amber, who flattens the mix then sends it spiraling into the sky, then spins it into a hurtling dervish that she shapes around her, a guitar appearing as she shreds it to pieces, sending it to pierce the clouds and mix above her, leaving behind her and her echoes.
[10]

Alfred Soto: One of those studious artists whose gestures I question for their reflexive sincerity, Amber Mark releases a well-paced R&B thumper distinguished by wonderful call-and-response vocalizing and a solid guitar solo. Then I forgot it existed.
[6]

Ian Mathers: I’m a fan of Mark’s performance and the way the music here makes “politely funky” into a virtue, but I have to confess… I think she does know what it is. And I don’t myself. And I wish she’d just tell us.
[7]

Greg wants to know if English post-punk still speaks to us…

[Video]
[6.86]

Greg McMenamin: A song that encapsulates the seemingly inescapable numbness of depression, and the practical solutions offered by people who have never experienced it. The well-meaning parent who offers chocolate as a cure because they don’t have the language to express themself in any other way. The friends who suggest that “maybe you should try an evening class, get out there and meet some new people!” (Which results in going to a pottery class and trying your best to suppress the desire to smash a stranger’s ceramic footwear.) It presents a modern world in which the abundance of choice helps to perpetuate apathy rather than offering a solution for it.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: I’d mentally filed Dry Cleaning away with Soccer Mommy and Phoebe Bridgers and various other acts I don’t love; if only I had taken the arduous step of actually listening and finding the sort of tense post-punk I do. The songwriting reminds me a bit of Sidney Gish; Gish is chipper and earnest where Florence Shaw is deadpan and detached, but they’re both the kind of songwriters who would nick their anhedonic plaint from a British tampon commercial. The cataloguing of summer-camp frivolities — smashable pottery of shoes, hand-woven ladders for bunk beds — is also reminiscent of Kate Atkinson’s apocalyptic Williams-Sonoma catalog in “Charlene and Trudi Go Shopping. While the lyric is slightly anachronistic — it feels made more for Groupon times than These Current Times — it still basically works, reveling in all the snappy phrases there are to describe all the cute activities you can bring your apathy to.
[7]

Nortey Dowuona: The bass and guitar are so awkwardly taped together that when Florence Shaw strides in, bored and haughty, intoning perfectly fine poetry against a heavily leaning left arrangement held together with struggling kicks and snares, the song feels like it’s being pushed closer and closer to the cliff. It then stumbles back towards Florence, who coldly pushes the song towards the cliff, continuing to intone, while the guitar finally begins to shriek and howl against the tape, slowly but surely lurching the mix away from the cliff and breaking free, snatching her with it, leaving the bass and drums to slowly walk away.
[6]

Ian Mathers: I choose to believe this is a “Kidney Bingos“, because that makes me happy.
[7]

Iain Mew: I like “Scratchcard Lanyard” as absurdist poetry, delivered with a keen ear for the possibility of different sounds (the juxtapositions of the title phrase, the rich chewiness of “that’s just child chat.”) I’m just not as convinced that the identikit post-punk adds much to it.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: Teenage me would have given this a 10, obsessed as he was with female vocals over arty guitar rock. The nonsense lyrics contain some particularly great sounding nonsense, with a bored but engaging delivery that makes middle-aged me think is still pretty cool in that detached way. 
[7]

Alfred Soto: When fans and detractors mention the Gang of Four influence, it’s thanks to tracks like “Scratchcard Lanyard,” which begins with a bass riff that might’ve anchored an album track on, say, Solid Gold. It’s got something to say in its laconic, droll manner, for which I credit Florence Shaw. “Do everything, feel nothing” are words for the times.
[7]

And next, some Afrobeats courtesy of Daavid…

[Video]
[6.29]

Iain Mew: I have a friend called Lucy, and based on that chorus I give this score on her behalf. 
[2]

Will Adams: When he calls her “loose” he means, like, “good at dancing”, right? Right??
[5]

Oliver Maier: Another slice of Afrobeats that makes most US-grown derivations sound like hack jobs. I think the presence of breathing space is the differentiating factor; countermelodies and instrumental flourishes weave in and out without crowding the mix or making the song busier that it needs to be. You are trusted to be a patient listener and rewarded on repeat listens with new details, like circling back to look at the same painting again and again. Eltee and Niniola give exactly as much as they need to and no more.
[8]

Ian Mathers: Especially on headphones, there’s a subtly discombobulating way some of the production elements here warble from channel to channel, quietly but insistently and rapidly. You can maybe hear it best during the instrumental outro. The rest of the song and especially the performances from Skhillz and Niniola are solid, but there’s an addictive quality to that wavering element for me that makes the whole thing a bit more than the sum of its parts.
[7]

Scott Mildenhall: “Lucy” is halfway to something great, but there isn’t quite the thrust to take it there. Eltee Skhillz had more time and space to make his mark on the slower original — which simultaneously suffers for being more light and airy — while the addition of Niniola doesn’t feel especially functional. There’s little connection between the two performers, and that contributes to a sense that — compelling as the atmosphere remains — this is somehow not quite as claustrophobic as it should be.
[7]

Nortey Dowuona: Eltee Skhillz shows he clearly doesn’t have them, buttoning up in thick layers of Auto-Tune and reverb, which slowly stifles his already weak and thin voice. This allows Niniola to simply slip the song under his eyes with her firm, yet also light tone that slowly begins to struggle against the slaloming 40 synths, before the crisp drum programming shocks the song alive. Niniola circles it while awkward horn synth stabs are slammed down, then withdrawn as the pad lifts away, the drums churning until they come to a complete stop.
[8]

Juana Giaimo: The fast beat with the slow keyboards is already a good combination and while Eltee Skhillz’s voice can be quite challenging — too high pitched for my taste — Niniola’s soulful voice tones it down to make a song that can be both danceable and relaxing. 
[7]

Welcome to Readers Week! We begin with a suggestion from by Amber…

[Video]
[7.50]

Ian Mathers: It’s rare – like a couple of times a year rare – that I remember any dream I’ve had, good or bad. (A friend told me once that practically every morning when they wake up they know they were dreaming and it felt vaguely terrifying. I go to sleep and I wake up and most nights there’s nothing in between as far as I know.) And yet those times where I wake up slowly enough that my dream is discernible to my waking self are powerful enough to me that I’ve never questioned their prominence as a cultural reference/metaphor/etc. But in my (limited) experience, the power of dreams isn’t terribly overt. So while there are songs that have disappointed me because they never quite take off, when the chorus to “You Were in My Dream Last Night” comes and it’s so much gentler than I expected, it has the opposite effect. Maybe it’s that the whole song does such an indelible job of evoking the soft regret I feel when my dream did involve me making some emotional connection or resolving some wounded relationship that hasn’t managed to happen in real life, the way the wistfulness of feeling like it should be fixed persists even as the details fade almost immediately from my mind. There’s something terribly sad about the happiness in that kind of dream, like a glimpse at a different path that could never have been taken. On those mornings I feel painfully delicate, but also wonderful; somehow this song gives me those moments back. Maybe it’s also that Babygirl capture the way this kind of dream can make you want to reach out to someone you haven’t thought about (let alone talked to) in a long time, even if things worked out for the better for you both, even if you don’t want to change your life. It can feel like the other person must have felt the same thing you did in your sleep, or like they deserve to know what happened. But nothing happened, really.
[10]

Juana Giaimo: Even though the lyrics are sad and very nostalgic, I like how the music is more gentle and her voice sounds absent-minded, wandering through different scenes with a calmness. A great example of a song about dreams being dreamy. 
[7]

Will Adams: The kind of crush song that isn’t an explosive proclamation but rather a bashful admission, the kind that you wouldn’t dare say to them, even though you want to so badly, even though that would leave you sprinting a mile away immediately after, hand covering face. The ending is the tell: the ghostly choir and gauzy guitar immediately vanish, leaving “but that was just a dream last night” to snap you back to reality, yearning for the confidence to just say it.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: Babygirl don’t remember the ’90s, in the literal sense — vocalist Kiki Frances is young enough her influences include Hilary Duff! Yet they sound more authentically ’90s here than many people who were actually alive for it. Sweet and gauzy, “You Were In My Dream Tonight” recalls Ivy or Emm Gryner or Sixpence None the Richer, but a less-produced version: tiny in a good way.
[8]

Nortey Dowuona: The loping guitar is swept away by low humming bass to make way for Kirsten Frances’s soft, pulsing voice. It needs very little of the guitar and synths and cooing echoes to make her lyrics float, melting together as she begins the chorus, so full of love and and worry. Her feelings are so bright and taut and exuberant that she worries about it slowly rotting in her teeth. So as the chorus begins again, Frances fills it with the excitement a world away in the eyes of her lover, so luminous and vibrant the fear is cast into shadow, beyond her sight.
[8]

Alfred Soto: What a lovely tune — a musical sigh as lovelorn and delighted to be lovelorn as any by Sarah Cracknell’s. The keyboard curl around the drums with precision. Too much of this and we might have a rather welcome collective erotic escapism. 
[6]

Edward Okulicz: If in the wrong mood this could be too fey for its own good in how the verses dance around the feelings the title make clear. But despite that, it’s still lovely and hopeful. 
[8]

Iain Mew: If this hasn’t already soundtracked some key scene of longing in a movie or TV, that’s surely its natural destiny. It’s gauzy classicism works really well at casting a mood as long as you don’t focus too much on the details, epitomised by the bizarrely flubbed Beach Boys reference, which quotes a whole line as if it were a title.
[5]