Playlist #19: There's a big world out there

And yet the idea that, somewhere out there, there's something better than what you're used to makes you a little bit sad, yes? Or is it just me?

Françoise Hardy passed away last month.

It’s weird for me to point that out, because admittedly, I haven’t listened to a lot of her stuff. I’ll go one worse: I only really know her first hit, “Tous les garçons et les filles” from 1962.

But I remember coming across that song over a decade ago and being utterly fascinated with the idea of chanson. It’s not that I never had the idea of songs in a language other than English—I mean, I live in the Philippines, and we have a lot of languages here—but I’m certain it was the first time I grasped the concept of a song transporting you to a different place and a different time. The world of the yé-yé girl, the idea of the fashionable, hip one you can’t help but admire.

But then, it’s also perhaps me having this romantic notion of everything French. For some reason, they always seem to have a better grasp of style. Just take their radio stations, or at least the likes of FIP and Radio Nova, where genres are a suggestion and everything just makes sense together. (Or maybe it’s me resisting the American idea of high rotations and homogenous playlists.) It doesn’t even have to be in France: one of my favorite stations is the Swiss-French oddity that is Option Musique, which is even heavier in chanson, especially a decade ago when I first discovered it.

It’s really funny, though, me saying all that while I’m only really familiar with Françoise’s first hit, and one of her later works, a collaboration with Air that was a B-side to their first hit single.

I picked that song instead because—apart from the fact that I really should’ve spent some of the last two decades or so digging deeper into Françoise Hardy’s music, as the Guardian’s Alexis Petridis helpfully reminds me—it’s a pretty melancholic track, and… well, yes, I have noticed June has always been a melancholic month for me. I mean, always has been. Something about knowing you’re close to halfway through the year and feeling that you haven’t really done much—even if you actually have.

Not that this playlist is all gloom. One of my obsessions from the past month is the new single from Clairo, “Sexy to Someone”, not just because I’m surprised that I can relate to it now, but because it rumbles (and yes, it rumbles) along quietly, burrowing its way into your head without you really expecting it.

I suppose what attracted me to “Sexy to Someone” the most is another idea - the idea that here’s a Clairo song that I really liked at first listen. I wouldn’t say I have a complicated relationship with the musician, but sometimes when you give someone a try thinking you’ll like them, you’ll find that there are things that really click with you, and things that are, well, just fine. (An update, hours before I send this email out: Charm is officially in serious contention to be my favorite album of 2024.) That said, I’ve been listening to (and writing about) music for a while now, and I know I will not fall in love with everything, even the stuff from performers I officially (meaning, I have said it out loud) like.

But then, you know how things go now. You really love something, or you really hate something. You are perfect, or you’re a red flag. The middle ground is for those without convictions who are not worth your time. And we can’t even decide what the criteria is.

Whoops, I digressed. The playlist. The playlist. I like this month’s hour because, as I put it together, there was a stronger sense of everything clicking together, whether it be the slow stuff (I really like the Cathy Jain track I stumbled upon this month) to the upbeat stuff (I was meaning to add the new Ysanygo track in last month’s playlist, but I am a forgetful 35-year-old now). I could attempt to loop all that in with what I said earlier about discovering a different way of doing things, of being fascinated by how French radio programmers seem to get it. Dare I say, this comes close? No, I’ll be more modest than that.

The closing track to this playlist is one I heard on a German radio station. The jazz trumpeter Nils Wülker has somewhat jumpstarted my thing for trumpets deployed at the right time—also see Manic Street Preachers’ “Kevin Carter”, which was almost in this playlist—and, well, I felt it right to go back to the melancholic mood I always seem to have every June. “Continuum” is a collaboration with the Müncher Rundfunkorchester—speaking of, German radio also has this distinct way of programming music—and, well, at least I’m certain it appeals to that side of me that grew up with smooth jazz radio stations… or at least that side of me that attempted to listen to classical radio stations with some degree of regularity because I knew someone who knew how to play the piano.

And then I had to stop myself from adding even more songs to this playlist. This went way beyond one hour, so I had to drastically cut it down. Sorry, live version of “Mirrorball” from Elbow and the BBC Concert Orchestra, among many others.

I have one question: are you here for the playlists, or are you here for the words that accompany it? It’s a little question I can’t help but ask. In any case, my next playlist should drop on 9 August, and obviously there’ll be other stuff before that. As always, you can recommend songs to me by emailing nicksyoncemonthly@gmail.com or going to the socials, never mind that Substack readers seem to be anti-social media lately.

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On this playlist

• Air—“Jeanne” (featuring Françoise Hardy)
  ”Sexy Boy” single release (1998)

• Cathy Jain—“Green Screen”
  Artificial (2021)

• Black Flower—“Morning in the Jungle” (featuring Meskerem Mees)
  Magma (2022)

• Clairo—“Sexy to Someone”
  Charm (2024)

• Ysanygo and Purplecat—“Sunny When I’m With You”
  single release (2024)

• Ezra Collective—“God Gave Me Feet For Dancing” (featuring Yazmin Lacey)
  Dance, No One’s Watching (2024)

• Remi Wolf—“Cinderella”
  Big Ideas (2024)

• The Beaches—“Blame Brett”
  Blame My Ex (2023)

• Lola Young—“Messy”
  This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway (2024)

• The Waeve—“City Lights”
  single release (2024)

• The Beths—“Future Me Hates Me”
  Future Me Hates Me (2008)

• James Blake—“Thrown Around”
  single release (2024)

• Eels—“That Look You Give That Guy”
  Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs of Desire (2009)

• Billie Eilish—“Halley’s Comet”
  Happier Than Ever (2021)

• Nils Wülker and the Münchner Rundfunkorchester—“Continuum”
  Continuum (2022)