Right Now Playlist

I have a Right Now playlist on my iPod, for the songs I can’t get out of my head. I feel guilty, sometimes, about not putting it on Shuffle more often and only listening to like eight songs, all day every day, but such is life. Here’s what I’m listening to a lot right now.

Blue Summer by The Phoenix Foundation

I’m careless and I’m blind

This song will always remind me of Wellington, I think. It just goes with a warm day on the beach, the sun and the sky and everything flowing perfectly together. When I leave I bet this’ll make me cry a lot.

Pulled Along By Love by the Muttonbirds

Thinking about the weekend, thinking about new clothes, thinking about touching

This is another Kiwi song given to me by Sylvia, one which we dance to at tribal jam pretty often. I see dance moves in my head every time I hear it and it always puts me in a good mood. This is good for Turkish shimmy and very good for dancing in front of your bathroom mirror in your bra and yoga pants.

This Is The One by The Stone Roses

This is the one, this is the one, this is the one, this is the one, this is the one she’s waiting for

Okay, so I don’t actually know the Stone Roses very well, I only know this song from the extraordinarily excellent soundtrack to the extraordinarily excellent Eagle Vs. Shark. You know what happened to me once when I was listening to this song, humming along and tapping my foot, when I was crossing the street to go to the Mt. Vic New World? I saw Jemaine Clement, who is in Eagle Vs. Shark and who is also in every one of my dreams every night, standing right next to me at the crossing. And he totally looked at me and we totally made eye contact, right when a song from a movie he was in was playing in my ears. It was the best Wednesday of my entire life, and I have been trying to write a song for Jemaine called “The Best Wednesday” ever since. But until I work out the lyrics for that then this is a great song to listen to whenever I want to relive Jemaine’s totally making eye contact with me right outside of New World, i.e., every day.

Black Magic by Jasper Cocker

My eyes can see the glory, baby

I just started to listening to Jarvis Cocker, like, this week, the whole Pulp thing completely having skipped me by and all I have to say is JARVIS JARVIS JARVIS I LOVE YOU JARVIS YOU ARE TALL AND THIN AND NERDY AND ENGLISH AND I LOVE YOU WITH MY WHOLE HEART PLEASE MARRY ME OKAY THANKS ALSO I LOVE YOUR BLAZERS. Okay, and in the above italicized lyric? When he kind of whispers and kind of growls “…baby…” and you feel like you’re going to faint? it’s like he’s whispering it directly into my bathing suit area. And also the song is like all spiritual and deep and shit. And the way he howls out the “yeah yeah yeah…” Oh, Jarvis. Jarvis Jarvis Jarvis.

Oh My God by Mark Ronson featuring Lily Allen

You work with your shirt with your name tag on it, drifting apart like a plate tectonic

You know what’s hard? Walking to work in the morning with this song in your ears and not acting like cartoon Lily Allen does in the video, like with the little burlesque moves and pouty lips and everything. Not that I ever wear a green strapless dress and big gold hoops to work. Nor I am accompanied everywhere I go by a four-piece horn section and adorable tousle-haired English hoodie-wearing DJs. But maybe I should be.

Beautiful by Goldfrapp

Oooooh love something something, oooooooooh, love something, BEAUTIFUL

I don’t actually know what the words are to this song or what it means or anything about it, except it is extremely good for grooving. Do you like to groove? Groove to this song, especially when you’re walking down the street wearing big round sunglasses. It is groovy.

The Girls by Calvin Harris

Now baby, I’ve got a lot of love to give
But I’ve been over, oversubscribed with relationships

Okay, and speaking of relationships, I have kind of a difficult relationship with this song.

One one hand: it is fantastic for the booty-shaking. In fact I suspect that if you don’t shake your booty when you hear this song (I don’t care if you’re waiting in line at the library) then the sad fact of the matter is that you have no booty at all. Mmph, girl, the booty-shaking you can do to this song.

One the other hand: The video is weird and misogynist.

But then: You know what? This guy’s a jerk and he’s refreshingly honest about it. He straight up full on comes out and says it! Right now he’s living life to mess around and play! He must warn you that he can’t help but mess around for sure—he did it before!

But also: I love how he acts like it’s your fault for totally falling for him because girl, he told you what an ass he was, right there in the lyrics to the song. Little does he know that it’s actually his fault for being so freaking hot.

But then again: Right in the beginning of the song, where he enumerates the kind of girls he likes? Okay, check it: he says he likes them Italian girls, and then he says he likes them brown-hair girls, and then he says he likes them carrying a little bitty weight girl. HELLO THAT IS TOTALLY ME.

But you know what? It’s never going to work, Calvin—I mean just because you get all the girls, you get all the girls, doesn’t mean you’re going to get me even though, as previously noted, I totally fit into several of the categories of girls you like. I’m deleting you from my phone. Let’s make out later, okay? But I’m never speaking to you again. But come over after the gig. And I’m telling everyone what a jerk you are. You are so amazing, I can’t stop looking at you. I can’t believe you just pashed my best friend in front me, at my birthday party, when I have a broken leg and my cat’s in the hospital and I just lent you three hundred bucks. I love you. Get out of my sight. Jarvis would never treat me this way. Call me, okay?

Get It Together by the Go! Team

Right now! Right now! Go! Go!

This is just happy fun music that makes me feel happy and fun. Little cutey flutey sounds will do that, you know?

Can I Get Get Get by Junior Senior

I don’t do that kind of thing!
Say what?
I don’t do that kind of thing?
Why not?

This is one of my favorite videos ever in the history of the world—yes, I am including Freedom ‘90 in that assessment, thanks very much. I can watch the video all day and all night, but the best part of this song is really the above lyrics, when they’re just so surprised that you don’t do that kind of thing (in this case, take a second chance on ‘cause I know that you want to dance). I mean, seriously, why not? Don’t be shy, girl, get on out there! Come on and dance with me! You know how I said earlier that if you don’t shake your booty to that one song (CALVIN I HATE YOU CALL ME OKAY) then it’s likely you don’t have a booty at all? My considered opinion about this song is that if you don’t shake your booty to it then you have no soul.

Random (Menta Remix) by Lady Sovereign

Just check how my flow differs, I’m dropping lyrics like a whore dropping knickers

I have been listening to this song for a couple of years and still can’t completely understand her accent, but I don’t care. I don’t love the part where Riko raps, like, into the payphone from jail, but I don’t care. All I care about is my deep and abiding love for Lady Sovereign, and how weirdly awesome this song makes me feel when I listen to it. Everybody get random, indeed.

Umbrella by Rihanna

When the sun shines we’ll shine together

This is possibly the worst video in the history of the world—and I am including Wild Thing by Ton Loc in this assessment, thanks very much—but I try not to think about the video when I listen to the song. I pretend like the video doesn’t even exist. Instead I pretend that I am out dancing, wearing my boob tube and my rhinocerous necklace, and as soon as this song plays everyone turns to the person next to them and puts their arms around them and kisses them right there on the dance floor, and I get to kiss the cutest boy of all.

Sea Legs by The Shins

The choice is yours to be loved

This song is moody and will make you think about all sorts of incoherent and abstract things. You will think about what it would be like to fly, even if for only one day of your life. You will think about whether it is possible to ever really know another human being. You will think about the one that got away. You will think about sunrise and sunset and the deep dark blackness of the night. I highly recommend it.

Ongyilkos Vasárnap by Venetian Snares

Darling I hope that my dreams never haunted you

The beats freak me right out, on this one. I got it from a list on iTunes Rachel Brice made and every time I listen to it I wonder how she dances to it. (Answer: probably pretty awesomely). I am pretty sure I could never manage it. Also this song makes me, somehow, into a post-apocalyptic anarcho-punk anime character with pink tendrils of hair blowing back in the cyanide wind as I perch tenuously on the top of a ruined radio tower, even though in reality I have sort of fuzzy hair and I like to read books and drink tea and I don’t even own a pair of vinyl platform boots.

So that’s me, at the moment. What do you think? What’s on your Right Now list right now?