Ty's FIRST 5 - Start With These New Songs 2/26
Last night, I held Teddi while I connected my phone to the HomePod in the bedroom and Corri and I listened to all of the songs I’m adding below - there were so many different, dope, interesting choices for new music this week that I’m still narrowing it down as I post. I’m going to do my best not to cheat with “BONUS” tracks, this week, but I reallllllllly hope you hit up every link on this page.
Rather than listening to every album, every single and every minute to decide where to start digging into this week’s new music, let me lighten your burden (cuz I already did!)
Here are the FIRST 5 new releases you should hear…
“Drunk (and I Don’t Want to Go Home)” - Elle King & Miranda Lambert
I don’t even drink and I related to this song! I feel this song! I freaking loved this song! Again...my FIRST 5 is generally an “In No Particular Order”...but this is the FIRST song I played on the HomePod for Corri, last night!
I’m the DD in my group - I never have really been a drinker and I always thought my friends were a little bit funnier as the night wore on 🤪. I’ve never experienced the decision of where to leave my car near Rush Street or Wrigleyville.. I have been on the receiving end of 3am “can you pick me up” calls, just as my friend drops their phone in the bar toilet on accident.. and this seems to be where the night is headed in “Drunk”
This is an ANTHEM - which I love! If a song has a steady pulse, it lands on my watch’s cardio playlist. In the vein of songs like “We Are Young” or Lanco’s “Rival” - with the smirk of levity that is so engaging in a Duffy track, and some smoke in the atmosphere like an Amy Winehouse record.
I love the honest representation of the state of the night - unlike the protests from friends “I’m not tipssssy”…this collab is excited, uninhibited and all the while, throwing a little bit of a fit! From beat 1, the percussion represents liquid courage - getting bolder as the song and the night progress..
LISTEN ON APPLE MUSIC: “Drunk (And I Don’t Wanna Go Home)”
“Hold On To Me” - Lauren Daigle
…Corri didn’t let me be a dumbass. There was a total freakout moment as we were doing long-distance, and she refused to let me let go of something that is certainly awesome. She did it in a powerful way. Corri and I met while we lived in Los Angeles. When I moved to New York to take over the morning show on 92.3, we traded off on flying back and forth, across the country for the weekends.
Neither of us thought this relationship was more than a friendship at first, and when it quickly became a crush, then love, we hadn’t expected to be getting into a long distance relationship - I’d known I was soon moving to NYC if things went as I hoped in my career, and I’d been a notorious commitment-phone for years. But Corri is most-definitely my person. Marriage is work, but she is easy (I’m probably the work). I had a week where I think I had gotten super insecure or nervous or something and I was just very quiet about our communication as her next trip to New York approached. I was trying to do an internal assessment, and not make any rash decisions or speak words I might want back later…so I just kept conversations brief and had “a busy week.” Even that early in our life together, Corri knew me well enough to see that something was amiss. I learned later that she talked with her friends about things and they all came to the conclusion that I might be reconsidering the relationship. Some of those friends told her that she should just cancel the trip and say “buh bye!” But Corri is a totally badass person, and she knows herself, her worth, and the value of things she believes in. She responded by telling her friends, “I love him, and I’m not going to run from it. If he wants to break up, he’s gonna have to say it to my face.”
Well, the second I saw that face (and the fact that I was in the lobby of my building as she hopped out of the cab…she saw me as she was entering the revolving door and got so excited she forgot to pull her suitcase all the way into the door with her, which led to it jamming the door and her basically walking into the glass panel ahead of her haha) is the last second I ever doubted she was for me. Her strength and loyal nature. Her self-confidence and selflessness are what it took to show me that I could let go of my baggage (even as she was trapped inside a revolving door by hers) and I have never held back anything from her, since. She’s my literal rock.
WIth an agony that haunts like Jason Isbell’s “Cover Me Up” or Alison Krauss’s “My Ain True Love”…the vocal on this song is everything. There’s pain in there, with optimism masked under layer after layer of struggle. Lauren Daigle does an incredible job conveying despair at so many levels - not just those on the edge of the precipice, but even just the compounding layers of stress that a COVID world has produced for many of us. The strength that she sings of is delivered in the background by a choir of what I can only assume is angels in a sound booth. The gentle production allows for the nuances of this performance to cut straight through. Its beautiful. These are the moments where I wish I had a mailing address, because I want to send a Thank You card. This is a song that the world needs. If we pay attention, it could be legend.
LISTEN ON APPLE MUSIC: “Hold On To Me”
“Cross Country” - Breland
Who can’t relate to “I tried to fit in, but didn’t, I’m different, I know.” Every non-vanilla, unique, complex person feels that…but when you make it a string of thoughts that becomes one sentence, it attaches a new meaning to those separate pieces of “trying to fit in” “I didn’t” “I’m different”
I was just talking to Kip Moore about the search for what feels like home. I think he’s found his zen in Maui. In my journey to find a place that feels like home, I have found a LOT of places that fill my soul. Chicago was my first true love. That’s where I was free somehow. But…I wanted more out of life. LA - nope, didn’t fit (it feels very comfortable, after three stints there, but its kinda like when you spend a week back in your hometown). NYC - I felt alive in NYC. I started my family in NYC, I ran miles and miles and just stared at everything that a South Dakota boy never saw, growing up. Nashville was an evolution from the lifestyle of young, unattached, explorer. Corri and I had found love and a new existence that was such a different level of contentment - when you’re an individual, you’re searching for someone to share it with, even in the times when you want to stay free; when you’re a family, you take the greatest foundation with you.
In “Cross Country”, Breland mentions a couple places we never quite called home - the DMV (I moved there, knowing it was a short term stint and after the fun of the vacation wore off, and we still lived there without having put down roots, we made great friends but it never felt like our home). Atlanta - I love Atlanta, unless I’m in a car, but Corri grew up there and moved because she needed to be somewhere else (maybe we were searching for each other? awwwwww ;c)
The two most-powerful things about this song include the journey - enhanced by the production decisions (including crickets! Shoutout Nitty Gritty Dirt Band!) - which is the true point. I’m not positive that one city/home can quell the curiosity that resides in me, and that’s the point. We can all be “trying to fit in” and not fit in, and be different. Ultimately, this song exists not at the END of the journey…but in it!
And the other thing that makes me such a fan of “Cross Country” is the departure, itself, from anything Breland has delivered before. I don’t know him well, yet, but I can tell through every detail and interaction that he is so enthusiastic about innovation and so intrinsically-creative and talented that we can expect to see more sides of him every time we turn on a song. He delivers this song with authenticity, because it isn’t repeating an old formula, its speaking an existing truth! Cool.
LISTEN ON APPLE MUSIC: “Cross Country”
“Somebody Does” - Tigirlily
When I was in high school, several of the friends I went to school with committed suicide. I state that bluntly cuz it sucks, bluntly. All around is horrifying, unsettling and traumatizing. My heart broke then as I attempted to put myself into the mind of these very real parts of my world that were now gone - what had they been going through? Did they realized what a permanent outcome that was? Is it something that your logic can’t overcome because of your body’s or mind’s state? What’s the start of that plan like? What’s the last moment like? I hate writing this, and I also think its so important to tackle these questions and this subject so head-on.
That year, I started to learn more about the signs and what I could do to help. I was part of implementing something called the ALI (Ask, Listen, Inform) program in schools in Sioux Falls. I did it then because I really needed to do something. I have felt like an outsider. I think a lot of people feel bullied and outcast, even when we can’t imagine it from our read on them (look at “Homecoming Queen”) - you just never know what pain someone is really going through. I’ll never not be affected by seeing the potential affect of bullying, of fear, and of loneliness. It sort of guides my life - I want people to feel equal to, confident, and loved.
This is a really powerful song in an era (its now over a year) where despair and difficulties line the path of so many lives. The loneliness is almost inevitable at times, and that drives the other factors and obstacles to feel bigger. I love the production on this song from these North Dakotan sisters who have worked their butts off to create a platform where they can share messages like this. Louis Newman and Shane MacAnally put a digestible optimism into a song that needs to be heard by someone in an entirely non-optimistic moment in their life. That’s what wins for me - the lyric. I’m a songwriter-first fan. The message is SO important. Its directly stated. Kendra, Krista and Zarni De Vette may have just wanted to brighten someone’s day, or they may have seen the larger picture, worst-case scenario that I’ve seen and they decided to tackle it with an acknowledgement of the almost-maybes that cause doubt, followed by the truth that YOU are important to someone (and they are probably important to you).
LISTEN ON APPLE MUSIC: “Somebody Does”
“Never Break Heart” - Eric Church
Corri and I packed bags of clothes. I just packed mine & an Amazon Fire stick (which would fail to actually connect to the hospital tv that I was hoping to watch Netflix on). Corri packed her own clothes along with options for the first outfit a new life would ever wear - and multiple sizes in case the daughter we were about to meet was bigger than the “Premie” clothes we anticipated needing.
We never had a chance to do more than talk about how we both loved kids and would definitely see that in our future, before kiddo one was on the way! Corri moved from LA to NYC so we could start our life together (I’d started making a proposal video montage before we even got baby news). When we moved to Nashville, we waited a couple years and then decided maybe we should pluralize how many kids were in our family…so we started trying for number two. That chapter includes some difficulty, some sadness, and then a rainbow baby boy! That was where we tied a bow on our family. Time for me to book a doctor’s visit and buy some frozen peas.. but, 2020. Non-essentials were shut down, we shut in…and along came the true gift that would complete our family! Teddi was born just as the Groundhog was lying to us about how much winter was left on February 2nd.
With my babygirl in my arms as I listened for the first time, Eric’s opening lyric on “Never Break Heart” forced me to pay attention. Where were we headed after “people say its a crime bringing a life into the world these days?”
We were headed for the tale of true strength. Expect the low moments in life, but bring them on. Feel pain, open yourself up to the potential for it to rear its face. That’s how you chase the amazing things that I have been lucky enough to find (and lose, and find, and lose, and find). There are terrible days. There are tears. There are trials. They’re on the same path as immeasurably awesome days. The same path as laughs and love. The same path as treasure.
I dig a good, gritty Eric Church vocal - but this is where-in magic lies. Eric just sitting in the pocket of his sooo unique voice (terrible grammar, makes my point, though). I want to shout out the cleverness I always see in a song with Luke Dick’s involvement. The production from inside a North Carolina restaurant, is what really set the tone of the message for this song. Jay Joyce makes sure we don’t misinterpret the outcome of the lesson that’s being told.
LISTEN ON APPLE MUSIC: “Never Break Heart”