By the middle of the semester, youâre definitely feeling the heat from your professors and your courses. You feel that you should be refreshed by the spring break and even the Easter break, yet youâve had a pounding headache as a result of your studies for the past three days.
You begin to wonder that perhaps you havenât utilized your time to relax well enough. Maybe youâre not drinking enough water. Perhaps youâre simply not sleeping enough.
This is not your excuse to start napping incessantly throughout the day. Thatâs bad.
Truly, the issue is that youâre not taking enough âyou timeâ throughout the day. Itâs easy to get caught up in the schoolwork youâre doing and not think about the toll itâs taking on your mental and physical health. What you need to do is listen to the playlist below and forget about your schoolwork for a while.
I know, itâs hard to do. However, cramming for calculus or writing that paper into the wee hours with no relaxing break is not going to help you get your work done faster, let alone produce quality work. Grab your headphones, lay back on your bed and take just a mere 37 minutes to listen to these 10 tunes that are sure to get you back into prime student mode.
You can thank me later.
1. âNumber Oneâ by Tuxedo, off of their eponymous debut.
Iâm very much in love with this push to bring the funk genre back to the forefront of music. Forget mainstream R&B â this is where the feel good music is at.
âNumber Oneâ blends funk and blue-eyed soul to create a brilliantly sexy and smooth song to decompress to. The warm, harmonious vocals of Mayer Hawthorne and Jake One literally undo any mental knots (and perhaps even the physical ones in your strained shoulders) that the spring semester has tangled in you.
The bouncing bass and swirling synthesizers additionally make this track a pretty good dance song for when youâre not stressed out and inundated with work.
2. âShadowsâ by Petite Noir, off of his EP, The King Of Anxiety.
âShadowsâ is a track that is wonderfully loaded with cool emotion and a serious rhythmic section. Petite Noir unleashes a brutal, desperate honesty when he wails, âIâll be here forever / Baby tell me more / Tell me if you want me / Iâll be there for sure.â
If those lyrics donât hook you, then youâre just not listening to music correctly.
There is something about this songâs hollowness, despite the constant presence of percussion instruments. Itâs overwhelmingly haunting, as if you shouldnât be listening to âShadows.â Call it an auditory diary entry of sorts. Petite Noirâs voice flows as gently as a river and quietly beckons you to forget about the pressing real world and focus on drums and emotional vulnerability.
3. âUncle ACEâ by Blood Orange, off of his record, Cupid Deluxe.
The ACE line is known to some people in New York City as âUncle Aceâs houseâ and is used as a place to rest their weary heads on the cool metal walls of the subway in the evenings. The motion of the train is mirrored in the opening guitar work of âUncle ACE,â a song that features intricate rhythms and an effortless cool than only Dev Hynes could create.
âUncle ACEâ is a song that features a groovy pulse and a radical saxophone outro. The constant repetition featured in the track will easily lull you into a trance â a trance where youâll find yourself mimicking Hynesâ low vocal grumbles and his melodious and graceful high bits.
4. âThe Braeâ by Yumi Zouma, off of their eponymous EP.
Sometimes you just need some good olâ dream-pop to help you push through your pounding, academia-induced headaches. âThe Braeâ features a warm bass line and a calming guitar riff that blends together wonderfully to create a hypnotizing sound.
The actual lyrics need not be paid attention to. All you need to do is lose yourself in Christie Simpsonâs airy vocals and forget that youâre a member of the planet Earth for a moment. Indulge yourself in the soft guitar and the gentle fade of the track. Youâll be glad you did when you return refreshed to your 10+ page paper.
5. âMrs. Coldâ by Kings of Convenience, off of their record, Declaration of Dependence.
Iâve always liked Pitchforkâs description of Kings of Convenienceâs sound: âhushed politeness.â Thereâs no better descriptor for the seemingly introverted bandâs music.
âMrs. Coldâ is a track that is oddly warm (with a name like âMrs. Cold,â youâd be expecting a song that lashes out at the songâs subject). The acoustic guitar beckons you closer to Erlend Ăye and Eirik Glambek Bøe as they tell a story about âMrs. Coldâ who was âfrontingâ because she found herself vulnerable around the speaker. Itâs an acoustic, chilled-out song that has just the right amount of influence from pop music (meaning that you could get up and sway-dance to it if you wanted).
Really, itâs an honest track that puts the most complicated bits of human emotion into words. If descriptors of sound and timbre is not enough to convince you to listen, then let Kings of Convenienceâs ability to verbalize the impossible persuade you to plug in your headphones.
6. âChinatownâ by Wild Nothing, off of their album, Gemini.
A shimmering, echoing synthesizer opening that gives way to round pizzicato and bass â itâs awesome.
âChinatownâ is a song that has a bright sadness about it. Jack Tatum yearns for âsomeone / somewhere,â succinctly immortalizing that awful lonely sensation we have all felt at some point. He continues in the chorus, noting that, âWeâre only happy when weâre running away,â suggesting that there is a hope to be happy, but only when youâre running away from your responsibilities. Lovely.
Itâs easy to lose yourself in the haze of airy sound in the song. Tatumâs voice is a concrete presence that cuts through the atmospheric instrumentals and brings you back to reality.
While itâs nice to float away for a little bit, the real world has to call you back eventually.
7. âShe Lies Awakeâ by Younghusband, off of their record, Dissolver.
A classic, feel-good guitar sound that introduces the bedroom-recording voice of Euan Hinshelwood. Hinshelwood has a voice that is delicate and near whisper-like â as if, like Petite Noir, youâre not supposed to be listening to the track. The simplistic melody of âShe Lies Awakeâ adds a certain charm to the song, suggesting that you donât need complicated rhythms and melodies to create a great tune.
âShe lies awake / Every morningâ is yet another relatable lyric. This is the perfect song to laze about in bed and ultimately be five minutes late to class to. If there was any song you needed to forget that you existed for a little bit, here it is.
8. âDeadbeat Girlâ by Day Wave, off of his EP, Hard To Read.
I make it no secret that I really love everything that Day Wave does. Let it reflect again in this entry.
âDeadbeat Girlâ is a quintessential Day Wave song, featuring sun-stained guitars and echoing vocals. Thereâs an inherent emotional honesty within this song that makes you wonder if youâre the âdeadbeat girlâ the speaker is talking about.
Despite the fast pace of the song, âDeadbeat Girlâ asks you kindly to slow down and rest your head. It wants you to take the time to be melancholic and invent some sort of personal tragedy in order to feel the song that much stronger. Dramatic? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely.
In short, Jackson Phillips is a sad man who writes brilliant songs to soundtrack your momentary blissful ignorance.
9. âNo One Wants It To Happen To Youâ by Small Black, off of their album, Best Blues.
The opening on âNo One Wants It To Happen To Youâ is reminiscent of Joy Division, New Order and The Killers (are things allowed to be reminiscent of The Killers or is it too early to say that?). The dark, Joy Division-inspired opening bass line gives way to bouncing and weaving New Order-inspired synthesizers which is absolutely a good thing. More things should be inspired by those two, closely-connected 80s bands. Small Black is doing it right, man.
Josh Kolenikâs voice is gentle, smooth and near-desperate at times. He is adamant to warn people against whatever âitâ is, suggesting that tragedy can befall anyone at any time. However, the instrumentals promise a better, brighter future â you just need to suffer for a bit.
Suffer through your studies, that is.
10. âMoodâ by Porches, off of their record, Pool.
If you havenât been purged of your studies-induced stress, then, wow. You must be under a level of pressure unseen and unfelt before.
Aaron Maineâs plain vocal style has an aimless nature about it, but it works. Â The heavy bass intertwines with shimmering synthesizer notes and gives way to Maineâs smooth vocal style. âMoodâ is a slinky, chilled-out electronica song that repeats, âI donât want to be here / Donât want to be here,â which is probably how youâre feeling at this point of the semester.
Youâll be begging for the song to rush to the instrumental breaks between Maineâs lyrics because of how euphoric you will feel after the shimmering sounds wash you over. Itâs overwhelming, wonderful and heartbreaking all at the same time.
If you can find another song that can emotionally destroy you in less than three minutes. Let me know. I doubt that thereâs another track.
You can listen to this weekâs playlist via Spotify below.