Shazaming anticapitalist TV theme songs
Through a Year with Music
Hella Immaculate is thoughts/FEELINGS, peculiar music, and actions to improve our world, from me, writer-performer-comedian Dave Maher.
Thank you for reading! I love my work, and you make it possible. I believe directly supporting artists we love is the way to a future of vital and varied art free of corporate dorks.
If you enjoy what I do and want more, join me on Patreon. Even $3/month validates me more than is healthy. Or send a friend the most popular edition of this newsletter or the funniest episode of my afterlife podcast!
YO! I’d love to hear one thing that got you through this year—a song, idea, metaphor, TV show, moment, or person—to include in next week’s Hella Immaculate. Doesn’t have to be profound! The sharing is the thing.
On to the essay!
Through a Year with Music
Here’s what I’ve been talking about for weeks: a non-linear, semi-chronological narrative of my music listening habits in 2020, which includes reflections on watching TV, my creative process, and the COVID/uprising elephant in the room.
These are the songs, albums, and artists that defined my year, organized by categories I’ll explain as they come. Some of them have 2020 release dates. Others, I just discovered or heard with fresh ears this year.
I hope this isn’t just for me and you find something to love or relate to.
Free
Music I remember from being out in the world before shit hit the fan.
Robert Glasper Trio – “Maiden Voyage”
My dad played this eerie Herbie Hancock (& Radiohead) cover on the new hi-fi system he built when I visited over the holidays last year.
Sunday Service Choir – Jesus Is Born
Andrae Crouch – “Soon and Very Soon”
The gospel duo. The Kanye-except-in-name Sunday Service album had me thinking gospel was gonna be the rabbit hole I’d fall down this year. It wasn’t, but “Rain” and this version of “Father Stretch My Hands” are still so funky they change the way I walk when listening in headphones. Plus, it led me to the naaasty drums on the Andrae Crouch song.
Nao (feat. SiR) – “Make It Out Alive”
Niia (feat. Jazmine Sullivan) – “Sideline”
The New Year’s duo. Grabbed these from a January 1st party where people were taking turns YouTube DJing. The falsetto run at the 3:14 mark of “Sideline” gives me chills. The Nao is wistful and nourishing, and how prescient is that title?
Sudan Archives – “Did You Know”
Soccer Mommy – color theory
The Lox (feat. DMX & Lil’ Kim) – “Money, Power & Respect”
The Lox (feat. Gucci Man & Infa-Red) – “Secure the Bag”
The riding CTA quartet. Sudan Archives exploring the disconnect between childhood dreams and adulthood. Soccer Mommy laying down vintage ‘90s alt-rock vibes. The menace of the Lox making me feel like I’m way better with money, or at least more ruthless, than I am.
All these evoke specific memories of being on trains and buses, a thing I didn’t expect to miss when first realizing we were going into lockdown. But I do.
Nujabes – “Flowers”
Marvin Gaye – “Distant Lover”
The rideshare pair. I don’t miss Lyft, but these songs take me to two specific pre-COVID rides.
The Nujabes could fit any “lo-fi beats to sweep your living room for the millionth time to” playlist, but it hit me right in the moment. Asking about it led to a conversation with the driver about his graphic art, and now I follow him on Instagram.
I’d heard the Marvin Gaye before, but on that particular grocery run, it just enveloped me in its suppleness.
Sharon Van Etten – “Give Out”
Kesha – “High Road”
Juice WRLD – “Lucid Dreams”
The Belmont trio. There’s a stretch of Belmont Ave. in Chicago—from the Red Line stop to the Annoyance Theatre—that epitomizes city life for me. In college, we (incorrectly) referred to this part of town as “Belmont,” and it was where we went to buy Beck’s Sea Change on CD, eat breakfast at night, and shop at the Army/Navy Surplus. Now, it is (or was) the path I’ve traveled to hundreds of open mics and where I go to buy not-obscure-but-still-jazz records, teach, perform, and grab essentials from Target.
I heard the latter two songs one night at the Annoyance bar (and they fit with the Annoyance’s usual party-music-but-make-it-a-little-psycho soundtrack) and the former while I was browsing at Reckless Records. The menace in Sharon Van Etten’s voice when she sings, “It might beeeee I alwaaays give-oooooout” is one of the best musical moments I heard this year.
These songs are that stretch of Belmont for me right now.
Caribou – Suddenly and Swim
I walked around to these records. Buoyant, sometimes dense (in the case of Swim), white-boy-funky, tentatively soulful dance music.
Kadhja Bonet – Childqueen
I sought this record out at the aforementioned Reckless Records on Belmont, isolated myself at home with the lights off, and slipped into the thick bass line on “Delphine” (“Another Time Lover” is another favorite). That isolation ended up lasting.
TV/Media
Music I Shazamed watching TV, and in the last case, discovered from a YouTube embed in a newsletter.
I subscribed to and read a lot of newsletters year, so it makes sense they’d infiltrate my musical taste. Newsletters are media, so this feels like the right section, even though all the other songs came from watching TV.
I’ve listed these as quick hits: no embeds, sources in parentheses, and my briefest descriptions, since you’re probably more inclined to go exploring if I talk about actual sounds instead of just the street in my town I happened to be standing on when I heard them.
El Goodo – “I Sit and Wonder” (Lodge 49): reverb-y psychedelic folk that somehow came out in 2017 instead of 1967
Kasbo – “Bara Du” and “Stay With Me” (Cheer): wobbly, melancholic Scandinavian pop
Jax Anderson – “Queen - Remastered” (Cheer): literally and figuratively brassy, big-echoey-drums pop
LADIPOE (feat. Simi) – “Know You” (I May Destroy You, but not a Shazam, if I remember right it’s from crushing on Weruche Opia and reading an interview where she mentioned this song): sexy Nigerian pop that sounds like two people whispering up-close to each other
Steve Reich – “Come Out” (Devs): legendary experimental piece; about half a sentence of vaguely unsettling speech fractaled into an eerie rhythm
Manu Pilas – “Bella Ciao (Money Heist Version)” (Money Heist): like a couple hundred people slowly gathering and humming outside a castle wall and at the front is a flamenco guitar player and a relaxed opera singer, maybe he’s on his off-day
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – “Into My Arms” (forgotten): love song masquerading as agnostic hymn but secretly just a hymn (side note: Nick Cave’s an artist who I love in articles, interviews, and his humble, moving newsletter. His work is full of spirit and mystery and death and love, yet I’ve only been able to shave off pieces of songs to love. I’m still anticipating my year-long Nick Cave Phase.)
Paul Williams – “Euroleague” (James Acaster’s Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999 special): a wisp of a vocal performance, the Kiwi “White Iverson,” frat dude Imogen Heap but that’s not a read
Bob Dylan – “Masters of War” (Welcome to Hell World): Bob Dylan just savaging rich, powerful fucks, sample lyric: “I hope that you die”
Drag
Music I heard in a lip-sync on some iteration of Drag Race, original music from Drag Race queens, or a song featured in a digital drag performance.
Drag Race and Survivor are the two shows I heaped into my eyes in ungodly portions this year, so I had to create a separate category. Survivor doesn’t have quite the musical tradition of the history of drag, so it’s just the former that exerted an outsized influence on my taste.
These are all high-energy anthems, so I’m just gonna list ‘em with sources, and if you wanna feel empowered, click them all into separate tabs and play them one after another.
Bob the Drag Queen (feat. DJ Mitch Ferrino) – “Purse First” (Season 8 artist’s original)
The Frock Destroyers – “Break Up (Bye Bye)” (UK artists’ girl group challenge)
Little Mix feat. Stormzy – “Power” (UK lip sync)
Alex Newell & DJ Cassidy with Nile Rodgers – “Kill the Lights” (Season 12 lip sync)
Patti LaBelle – “New Attitude” (Season 10 lip sync)
Deborah Cox – “Nobody’s Supposed to Be Here” (All Stars 3 lip sync)
ไหง่ง่อง (Takkatan Chonlada) – “ตั๊กแตน ชลดา” (Thailand Season 2, challenge I think?)
Todrick Hall feat. Tiffany Haddish – “Dripeesha” (Drag Race judge’s original)
Chaka Khan – “Ain’t Nobody” (Pose not Drag Race, but give me a break)
Röyksopp & Robyn – “Monument” (digital drag performance by Hungry)
Tierra Whack, Beyoncé, Moonchild Sanelly, Nija, DJ Lag, Yemi Alade & Busiswa – “POWER” (digital drag performance, artist forgotten)
Bree Runway – “What Do I Tell My Friends?” (digital drag performance, artist forgotten)
Okay, there’s a lot more, but I’m running out of steam a bit. Stay tuned for Part 2 next week!!
This Week’s This Is Your Afterlife
Vashon Jordan Jr. is a photographer I discovered on Twitter this summer. He was snapping photos at every protest and speaking on how little the media showed Black joy in their coverage of these events. He flips that script in his work, which is full of color and movement.
Here’s one of my favorite photos of his.
Vashon was thoughtful and game in our conversation, and I hope you enjoy it!
Vashon’s full episode is the place to hear him talk about the community college graduation he would choose to relive and his unique relationship to death happening around him. Get it at patreon.com/davemaher (along with so much other good stuff, I’m so fucking proud of what I’ve done on Patreon this month).
Wamp Wamp (What to Do)
Donate to Stop Line 3, a group of folks opposing an oil pipeline through untouched wetlands and Anishinaabe territory, including the headwaters of the Mississippi River and the shore of Lake Superior. The pipeline is a violation of treaty rights and would decimate the Anishinaabe peoples’ food supply.
I donated $20 directly to the frontlines of the resistance. Reply with what you donate, and I’ll report our total next week.
Learn more here. And read the tweet that alerted me to this issue:
Celebrate! Last week, we donated $20 to The Grassroots Morning Garden Project to help Black, Brown, and Indigenous families get groceries.
Think about how you’re gonna fight next year. Can you set up regular donations? To whom? (I’ve got monthlies to Brave Space Alliance and the Chicago Reader, and I’m considering adding to that list another local news site, that cool water justice org Imagine Water Works, and a few more Patreons.)
Where you gonna plug in? Are you already in any communities/orgs? Any you’ve considered but not taken that first step toward? I actually forgot until typing this sentence that I set a goal for myself at the beginning of summer to find a political home, and I feel like I’ve found (an imperfect!) one in DSA. So it’s possible! I just went to a ton of Zoom meetings/panels until I found a space where I can contribute that isn’t only weird white people.
I plan to use Chicago DSA as my homebase, continue to organize with my neighbors around getting the fucking cops out of Chicago Public Schools, and possibly plug in to my neighborhood mutual aid network.
I’d love to hear your plans.
Do one holiday thing you believe in. I just wrapped the live Zoom reading of Bad Santa I did with a bunch of comedy pals for my Patreon subscribers, and I did my annual viewing of the movie beforehand. It’s not a festive movie, but just seeing the colors worked some subliminal Christmas magic on me. And organizing a bunch of talented friends for a glorified hangout made me genuinely reflective and grateful for my life and the people I know.
It’s so easy as we age to lose the magic feeling of the holidays (was it all just a commercialist delusion?), and obviously a pandemic DOES. NOT. HELP. But whether you’re a Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa guy, or just a straight-up lil demon, there are moments of reflection, lightness, love, and grace we can snatch from this week and year). I hope you choose and clutch yours.
Fraggle stick car,
DM