Put A Record On: New Year, New(ish) Music

The picks just keep on coming :)

Welcome back to Don’t Rock the Inbox! Here’s this week’s music recommendation post and playlist, which are for paying subscribers only. Subscribe to get access to all our new (and old) music picks and pans, and so much more — including new playlists weekly, which are always at the bottom of this email (paying subscribers — make sure you don’t miss them!). If you’re interested in paid content but not able to afford it, shoot us an email.

The Good (and it’s all good this week)

It’s the slow season for music releases and I don’t have it in me to think about the new middling Wallen song or Zach Bryan live at Foxborough — so we’re just going to stick with the good stuff :)

“i hate this fcking country,” Julia Cannon: “I hope that we do not lose hope and continue to fight for the kind of world we want to live in, not because we think that we might achieve it, but because if we don’t fight, we never will,” Cannon wrote on Instagram upon the release of this song. That combination of despair and yearning for progress and change finds its prettiest expression in this song, which is lilting, delicate, sad and completely unfliching in its assessment of our current state of the union. I’ve been in my Colson Whitehead era of late; John Henry Days is, I think, still my favorite but there aren’t bad ones. He told the New York Times this week: “I have no hopes for 2025. Humanity is disappointing. We killed the Earth. Villains triumph and the innocents suffer. I imagine these trends will continue.” All too true; I hope he hears this song, though. — NW

“Cheap Cocaine,” Willi Carlisle: Not new at all, but a song that punches so far above its weight and has been getting a lot of play in the Weiner-Auping household of late. The feeling of hearing a roomful of people singing this intensely sing-a-long-able chorus last fall has stayed with me for months; whatever drugs you’re on, “Tryin’ to make it better but it’s always the same” is just about as real as it gets. — NW