So they days have finally gone from being about white tundra, grey skies and air so cold it hurts to breath, to late sunsets, skin prickling with warmth and the fantasies of festival season. It’s only right that the music mood changes too, and this playlist is my own version of a summer roadtrip that covers all the outdoor revelry plus a tinge of the nostalgia that’s as inevitable as the turning of Earth.
Be warned that this is a Passion Pit peppered playlist, and listening to ‘Whole Life Story’ (from the new album, Kindred) especially makes me so desperately want to geek out to Michael Angelakos and the gang live. Perhaps at the same festival that I’m imagining where I’m swaying to Courtney Barnett’s dreamy steel guitar in ‘Depreston’ in the late afternoon, and then that night being warm and sticky, jumping up and down, hands clapping high overhead scream singing “I HAVE NEVER REACHED SUCH HIGHS!!” during Jamie xx’s DJ set. And of course Kendrick Lamar would have to be there performing the album that is most likely to be named one of the most important of our times (because if you’re not listening to To Pimp A Butterfly, you’re not listening) and the song with the most DEElicious bassline of the decade so far (that’s ‘King Kunta’).
There are also older songs from my ‘50s/’60s girl group obsession phase (Cults falls into this category because they are like a modern incarnation of that sound and style), which was inspired by a documentary called 50 Feet From Stardom about backup singers. Hence the significance of Lou Reed singing “and the coloured girls go…” in ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ and why I will always mentally see a young Luther Vandross giving it his all behind David Bowie in this video for ‘Young Americans’.
Lastly, there’s Michelle Branch’s ‘All You Wanted’ thrown in simply because it is one of my favourite songs to sing out loud, and it specifically reminds of a Monday orthodontist appointment when I officially decided I liked this song after seeing this video on MTV. So listen and enjoy, and most importantly, ask yourself why I am not an actual festival line-up co-coordinator person because this playlist is nothing but a darn good jam.
Dear Music, I Love You 
I love this so much! Thanks! And i didn’t know Lou Reed’s tune was the sample on A Tribe Called Quest’s “Can I Kick It”. And this Marvellettes tune is also a jame because I too have an obsession with 50s and 60s girl groups. Keep posting!