Song of the Week w/c 12th May 2025

This week I've been doing an awful lot of revision, and an awful lot of not much else. It's been a weird week, feeling particularly detached from the regular flow of time. I spent much of the week convinced it was the incorrect day which lent it a topsy-turvy quality, and the return of lectures from first term only added to the feeling. I've also, I confess, not been crazy obsessed with much music this week. In terms of flops, I listened to Sleep Token's new album, Even in Arcadia, which did not particularly excite me. There were a couple of genuinely banging tracks, and I'll have to give it a relisten, but overall very little of it actually grabbed me, which is a massive shame! I am a big fan of Sleep Token, and they were super awesome to see in concert fairly recently. It is an unfortunate truth of the matter that I am generally disappointed by new albums by artists I'm a fan of, and so I've picked up rather an aversion to them. Maybe I've just been horribly unlucky, because I had to watch Twenty One Pilots, Panic! at the Disco, and Fall Out Boy (all of which were bands I LOVED in highschool) just slowly drift further and further away from any music I could actually appreciate. If you are a metal band, you had better remember that. Please do not croon at me, or attempt to put dance beats in your song. Actually, this was true of the new Halestorm song that came out recently too --- I love The Strange Case of... especially (banger album, AND the songs transition really well into each other) --- but PLEASE if you are a metal band REMEMBER THAT!! No ballads! (Please, insert an Edna Mode voice here.)

Anyway, I will attempt to stop being a hater (a very difficult task for me, I hope you'll understand) and get on to the actual meat of this week. Despite not being completely obsessed with many tracks this week, I have been pretty obsessively listening to my usual line up of "study albums", so that's what we're going to discuss. These take a few forms, but they're generally at least one of (1) albums I'm so familiar with that they become effective background music or (2) music that is never obtrusive and is good to listen to even when I feel evil and bad (the revision of it all). I will pick a representative track from each and then, hopefully, by the end of writing this post up I'll decide which one gets the honor of song of the week :).

I must first, for posterity, note that I will not be covering the music from my "study music <3" playlist because that is entirely (old) Fall Out Boy, and I do not wish to force my dear readers to listen to more Fall Out Boy. Plus, it's not really one album so doesn't quite fit the category (more like 5 albums, which is too much).

ALBUM ONE: I've been listening to a lot of Mulberry Mouse recently, from Alan Gogoll. I've chosen the titual track off the album as the representative track. It's just deeply chill fingerstyle guitar music, and I love the whole worlds of sound that Gogoll creates with just one instrument. As I've discussed many a time, I am a really big fan of instrumental music for how it lets the instrument shine, and this is a really fantastic example of this. The main drawback is that this album is an absolutely tragic TWENTY TWO minutes long. That's nothing. Where I'm from (prog rock town) that one bloody song.

ALBUM TWO: The next classic Sof studying album is the New New Annie soundtrack (more commonly known as Annie (2014)). Emily and I were super massive fans of Annie as kids and I watched Old Annie and New Annie obsessively (had them both on DVD). Well, Old Annie mostly, New Annie is unfortunately by far the worst of the trio in my opinion. Anyway, I think I would've been eleven when New New Annie came out, and I was really perfectly tee-d up to go crazy over it. Quvenzhané Wallis is almost exactly the same age as me, and I love love loved her as Annie. She was totally my idol for a while, and her voice is GORGEOUS. I believe she's also the youngest person to ever be Oscar nominated! Anyway, this is an album I know like... well, even better than the back of my hand, and it always injects some joy into my day too. The tracks I've chosen are really short, so I've gone for two of them. The first is Overture, which I had listened to much less until recently. It doesn't stand out as a classic one of the songs you want to sing along too, which I think hurts its memorability. But, it immediately encapsulates so well the feeling of New New Annie, cutting together the most iconic song of the original version into a modern tapestry. I love all the different ways they incorporate the sounds of New York into this track, and it has such a great energy to it. By far my most listened to track off of the album is I Don't Need Anything But You. Track of ALL TIME and I love to sing along to it (sorry to my neighbours). It is tragically rare to find non-romantic love songs (I will throw in one of my favourites as a bonus), and I think that helps to make this song especially gorgeous, as it focuses on the love between Annie and Will Stacks, who takes on a paternal role in her life. I am a MASSIVE sucker for these kinds of stories in general (Kokowääh my absolute BELOVED I have watched it too many times), and the song hits the notes perfectly. And, of course, you can interpret it however you wish, which I enjoy too. It's always the right song for the moment!

ALBUM THREE: The How to Train Your Dragon soundtrack is a very important album to me, because it has gotten me through every exam season I have been a part of. Actually, just looked up when it came out and the answer is 2010, which is fucked up. That's so long ago. Anyway, I can listen to this album 1 william times in a row and NEVER get sick of it, it's perfect every time. My mum is a really big fan of the film, and I remember those many years ago sitting in the movie theatre with her, tears just absolutely streaming down her face. She'd read all the books to me and my brother when we were really little, and she'll agree with me that she enjoyed them even more than us! There's a lot of tracks that are really iconic to me on this album (not surprising, I know, given how many thousands of times I've probably listened to it), so it was really hard to pick one. So, I didn't :D. Honestly, two was hard enough. Forbidden Friendship I think is a really great representation of the album in general. Even without knowing what happens in that scene, I think the music is so expressive that you can close your eyes and imagine your own story along to the music. It's so dynamic, rising and falling, and has this almost quizzical nature to it, capturing those first few moments when you start to understand someone for the first time. The second track is Sticks & Stones, which I believe to be the only track on the album not by John Powell (which is why he always makes my top artists list every year...). It's also, I think, the only one with words, which is why I've chosen it for a little bit of a shake up. As with a lot of the tracks I've chosen this week, I love it for the relentless energy of the track. It makes me feel sort of exuberant; excited. I want to close my eyes and dance when I hear it. In a funny way, Jónsi's music reminds me a bit of MØ, and it's not just they're both from the Arctic Circle...

FINAL ALBUM: Good news, while writing this I did in fact settle upon my song of the week. Have you guys ever heard about how much I like Spartacus (1968 Bolshoi Ballet Version)? If you haven't, I'm concerned about whether we've ever spoken. While there's one or two albums I've repeatedly talked about that might rival it (Vices & Virtues, Electric Warrior), it's certainly on that list, you'd best believe. I am a known Ballet Enjoyer and while I'm not going to argue Spartacus is one of the best (my favourite is in fact Coppelia) it is one I find endlessly fun, and the bombastic soundtrack is a big part of that. Plus, who doesn't love a good slave revolt. Anyway, I'm going to go horribly basic on this one and pick Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia[^1]. Look, it's a classic for a reason. It's fucking gorgeous and tragic and delicate and, importantly, more than nine minutes long, because Aram Khachaturian understood that I needed nice long albums for studying. Oh, the treat of a nine minute song. The journey you can be taken on. The joys you can experience. What a joy. What a wonderful track. What drama. Has there ever been a better love song. Etc etc.

Alright, well, yet again that was much longer than expected. Who's surprised (me, everytime, somehow). Love you all for real, hope everyone's exams go great, and let me know if any of my study albums get used. See ya next week!

[^1] Please, when you listen to it on Spotify note the track name and realise why I always call it, even verbally, "Spartacus (1968 Bolshoi version)". Why did they have to make all of the track titles so long. What were they on. The cut off length of the titles makes it impossible to ever find which specific track you're looking for.

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