🎵 Music findings #14

Hello everyone, and welcome to issue #14 of Music findings. The songs all came off the playlist this week and they leaned guitar-shaped on their own — three 2000s radio staples, a couple of rap records built on other people’s hooks, and one very new band nobody had heard of in March.

🎵 Songs

• Travis Scott — goosebumps — off Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight, that one hazy arpeggio looping the whole way through until Kendrick turns up for the last forty seconds:

• Dexter and The Moonrocks — Freakin’ Out — “western space grunge”, their words. Opens as a spare acoustic panic attack and ended up top 40 on the Hot 100:

• Red Hot Chili Peppers — Otherside — Californication’s addiction song, and Flea’s bassline does most of the work before the chorus ever shows up.

• Wheatus — Teenage Dirtbag — pop’s most-quoted Iron Maiden reference, and a record that was always bigger in Britain and Australia than at home.

• Kanye West — Follow God — 1:44 off Jesus Is King: an argument with his father, chopped over a 1974 gospel single called Can You Lose by Following God.

• Jonah Kagen — God Needs The Devil — dark indie folk, and the title is the whole thesis — needing the thing you’re trying to quit:

• Jack Harlow — First Class — the Fergie Glamorous sample doing the heavy lifting. Teased on TikTok, number one a week later.

• Hippie Sabotage — Devil Eyes — the Sacramento brothers who broke on that Habits (Stay High) remix, this time on a song of their own.

• Mike Posner, Gigamesh — Cooler Than Me — the remix that ate the original. Gigamesh’s Single Mix is the version that charted and the one everyone means.

• Lustra — Scotty Doesn’t Know — the EuroTrip song, permanently welded to the shot of Matt Damon fronting the band.

📜 Playlists

• Dark Jazz Noir for Deep Focus, Work & Night Study — Floating in Silence’s long noir set: the shadowy end of the study-music shelf, for work at odd hours.

🎧 Play them all — the full playlist, where the next issues pull from too:

🗂️ Catch up on past issues.