Anna H.
“Blue skies, smiling at me… Nothing but blue skies, do I see,” sings Ella Fitzgerald. It’s my magic spell for when a perfectly sunny day is threatened by a brewing thunderstorm. I hum it when trying to meet a deadline that just got moved up, paying the bills and yes, trying to catch some sun by the Gulf of Finland. I love watching the sky clear and for a second, believe that I can actually change something. And then I get drenched on the way to the office.
Anastasiia L.
I’ve never been a fan of Russian hip hop (let alone Russian pop music in general), but it got to me anyway. I don’t know why, maybe because these singers are just about the same age as myself, but I feel that their songs somehow resonate with me on some level, even if I can’t always personally relate to the experience. It all started with my younger brother sharing one of Max Korzh’s (Макс Корж) songs with me. Even if you don’t know any Russian, check it out – the video is very well-done, it’s like a short motion picture about relationship, trust and “the cost of lies”, which, as we all know thanks to our HBO friends, can be explosively high.
Maria
I am not a big fan of summer: work tasks and problems do not subside, and the unpredictable weather that turns from sunny +30°C to sweltering pre-storm gray do not contribute to improving the performance of my brain. And the harder I perceive reality, the more influence music has on me.
Therefore, I am gripped by sadness and melancholy when I listen to Empty by Ray LaMontagne (and when you listen to it – be honest: do you like Detachment like I do?)
And I find strength for new achievements if I listen to a very inspiring song One of Us by the Danish rock band New Politics, which renews my faith in humanity.
Anastasia K.
End of July is a wishy-washy time: you start having a creeping realization that summer will be ending in a month and you feel kind of dull, but on the other hand, there’s still that another month of non-coat-wearing left. What is helping me to gulp these thoughts down is the delightfully (and measuredly) melancholic artistry of the Canadian singer-songwriter MorMor, whom I’ve been listening to on repeat. He doesn’t have a lot of songs out yet, but everything there is is just the cream of the crop. Imagine if Quality Street chocolate boxes only had Orange Chocolate Crunches, Coconut Éclairs and The Purple Ones? That is MorMor’s music in a nut – (chocobox) – shell: diverse, moreish (is that the key to his moniker?) and delicious, and it doesn’t give you cavities. Win-win-win.
I have also got it bad for Angèle, a Belgian alt-pop sensation with a voice of a siren and lyrics of a millenial Boudica, especially in Balance Ton Quoi, a snarky feminist chef-d'œuvre with 35+ million views, its video clip starring, among others, Pierre Niney as a (latterly redeemed) misogynist. If you enjoyed it, I really recommend her debut album Brol: my favorites are Je Veux Tes Yeux, Ta Reine, La Thune and La Loi de Murphy. I also love her cover of Cry Me a River (Billie Holiday’s one, not Justin Timberlake’s, although here’s a great cover of that).
