The Archive’s Songs of the Week: 6/3/2024

Each week the Archive will shine a spotlight on our (my, I’m the only one on staff here) favorite songs. All songs are welcome, from swooning ballads and plucking folk ditties to pounding club bangers and sugary pop confections.

Genre(s): Dance-pop, jazz-house, experimental jazz, indie pop

1. “BET,” by METTE: As summer rolls along, so does the typical crop of upbeat bangers ready to blast from car stereos worldwide. METTE, an upcoming pop star and actress featured in last year’s Barbie, comes out the gate swinging with her propulsive single “BET.” Above a tried and true house beat, METTE sings a promise: her lover will fall in love with her. It’s a simple premise that carries so much weight, and her fluttering vocals carry the song on the nerves of new love. “I wanna bribe Cupid,” she coos, evoking the god of love to her side with a crisp Benjamin and her jewelry as collateral. The undeniable groove of the song proves infectious. Soon everyone should be singing: “One day soon you’ll be loving me!” And don’t keep METTE waiting.
2. “hot house,” by berlioz: Jasper Edward Attlee, better known by his stage name berlioz, has made an explosive debut in my music library with his warm and inviting jazz-house EP jazz is for ordinary people and its standout track “hot house.” Seeing them mold so effortlessly together as a lover of both genres has attracted my attention. As its name suggests, the song is a humid track brimming with life as if you’ve just opened the doors to a steaming greenhouse chock full of plant life, and maybe your crush is in their gardening. The beat is hot, the saxophone curls as warm air over pavement, and the song glimmers with the promise of a sexy, sweaty summer. There’s not much more to say other than give it a listen!
3. “Losing You,” by Solange: I’ve been on a little Blood Orange kick, and that extends to producer Dev Hynes’s credits across other discographies, and no song stands out more than the triumph that is “Losing You” by Solange. With a looping shriek evoking the calls of jungle birds, the music moves at a brisk saunter as Solange sings to her ex-lover. “Tell me the truth boy, am I losing you for good?” she sings, further pleading with them to treat them well and not make her their enemy. The lyrical content is direct and blunt at times. What sells the song is the overall vibe that only Hynes and Solange could create. It’s an indie classic for a reason. This is a great example of a song that uses the lyrics to propel the production, rather than the other way around. The verses repeat, with minor tweaks between them, but as the vocals layer, the claps punctuate, and the incessant shriek underscores it all, her love becomes a wily forest of emotions incapable of sorting themselves out. Anger, devotion, lust, and melancholy weave themselves into knots, and the final synth drop at the end creates a finite picture of this love now gone. But one gleans the sense that our narrator is all the better off having given it her last shot.
4. “Whiskey,” by Arooj Aftab: Night Reign, the recent release from Pakistani singer and composer Arooj Aftab, plays out like a summer afternoon: full of storms, the sun peeking out from behind the clouds at odd times, rain smattering the pavement and reeking with petrichor. “Whiskey,” the penultimate track, swells as the clouds clear to an evening sky. A striking love song, “Whiskey” carries a delicate lyric that my jaw dropped upon first hearing it. “I think I’m ready to give into your beauty and let you fall in love with me,” she sings, harp and percussion twinkling around her. Love is odd, a power dynamic forever in flux, and with a lyric such as that it is easy to see its push and pull. The narrator admits weakness and power together, ready to admit their love and allow love to come to them in turn. Though perhaps a drunken admittance, the adage sounds true: “Drunk words are sober thoughts.” “We’ll fade into the night,” her layered vocals cry, carrying their love to the sky as the sun sets to blueberry dark, stars sparking in the heavens. The romance is palpable.
5. “Sexy to Someone,” by Clairo: Clairo has a knack for plainspoken revelations. Maybe it’s her flat affect, but her songs charm with their simple energy betraying a complex nature. Like her summer staple “Bags,” “Sexy to Someone” lays out its premise rather easily: if someone finds you sexy, maybe that’s enough to feel confident. Punchy percussion, Carole King-inspired piano, and a hazy guitar guide Clairo through the song. “Sexy to somebody, it would help me out/ Oh, I need a reason to get out of the house.” It’s a somewhat immature idea at first glance. “You should find that within you!” I can hear the TikTok therapy girlies scream. But to a romantic somebody like me, it’s a given truth. Sometimes it is nice to feel desired as if that could propel you through the days. And maybe, after some time, you become that someone who finds you sexy.