When she was a guest on KUOW last Friday, Imaginary Liz was playing some of her favorite summer jams for the listeners and fellow guests, but in the comments she said “Now let’s talk about what songs make YOU think of SUMMER 2009!”
Because I can post stuff here, I’ll add a couple of selections that are making my summer of 2009 better and my iPod a happier device.
My favorite music question to answer is “what’s your summer jam?” because it almost always means I don’t have to be as defensive about loving pop.
The first one is, appropriately enough, Sally Shapiro’s “Love in July”. It reminds me a lot of Annie’s “Heartbeat” in sense that it has a slow, breathy harmony and has a more upbeat melody that kicks shortly. It’s a gorgeous italo disco song.
Shapiro is a Swedish pop star whose forthcoming album My Guilty Pleasure (which I haven’t heard yet but am very anxious to) is the follow-up to her fantastic and dazzling 2007 album Disco Romance. It should be out sometime next month. In the meantime, you can download “Love in July” from Stereogum here and watch the video below:
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqEVOgZ_v3k]My other favorite song this summer is by Amanda Blank and it’s called “Make it Take It”.
The most obvious comparison to Blank is Lady Sovereign as both are young women who can rhyme in pop songs, and for the most part that comparison is apt and fair to both. The first time I heard Blank’s music was with her single “Might Like You Better”, which borrows the lyrical hook from Romeo Void’s “Never Say Never” before taking that idea into a different direction.
“Make it Take It”, though, is a perfect 150 seconds of bouncy pop music. It has a chorus that is completely irresistable while maintaining the same tempo and the same 4/4 beat throughout. The lyrics are simple and the chorus is repetitive (like the best of pop) and I don’t want to stop listening to it. It can be downloaded from RCRD LBL and here is a video of Blank performing it live in San Francisco:
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKOny2YdI_U]