God, where to begin? The 1975 were the spark who ignited the flame of my love for music. I spent much of my childhood just mindlessly listening to whatever was on Youtube or the radio — but when i first heard “The Sound”, from their extravagantly-titled sophomore album I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it, that flipped the switch in my brain which turned me into a full-on audiophile.

I wish i could stand here and be a contrarian and be all “haha, actually, foolish Olds, the Beatles suck!” — but alas, i instead have to confirm the truth that the Beatles were, indeed, very good at making music.

You know that really cool thing you saw on the internet once when you were ten? Yeah, Neil Cicierega probably made that.

As Neil Cicierega, he produces mashups which insidiously start to supplant the original songs in your head:

As Lemon Demon, he made (among… other things) the sublime occult-pop concept album Spirit Phone:

Elbow are my mam’s favourite band, so, as you can imagine, they were tied up in a lot of my nearest and dearest childhood memories. I’ll save you the weepy commentary.

It’s a rare thing, really, to see a Geordie not named Ant or Dec to make it big in entertainment. But Sam Fender has, against all odds, managed it, even with a sound more reminiscent of ’70s Bruce Springsteen than anything on the charts today. Howay the lads!

Electropop for sad weebs. (I, uh, not me. I hate anime. Just, you know. For the record.)

On the more “-pop” side of things, we have:

And on the more “electro-” side, there’s:

I’ll confess, i’m not a big fan of Talking Heads’ weirder, brasher deep cuts — but when they’re good, they’re bloody brilliant.

I only recently found XTC — their album Apple Venus turned up on RateYourMusic’s highest-rated “pagan” albums — but from what i’ve heard so far, i quite like them. There’s this very English sensibility about them, and, what’s more, a refreshingly sincere one.

Humanity has, of course, been making music long before the advent of the phonograph. I’ve been trying to get into folk music, but even as someone who values sincerity, i find much of it unbearably twee — plus, as a newcomer, i don’t know who the big names to look for are. Nevertheless, here are some of my favourite trad tunes.

At some point in the latter half of the 2010s, something clearly broke in the heads of music producers, and we got hyperpop — the distilled, distorted essence of pop music, EDM, internet memes, and LGBT culture, all thrown into a blender and coated with glitter.

Dutch people have such bad taste in music and film that we actually have a term for when something from the Netherlands is actually good: on-Nederlands goed — “un-Dutch-ly good”. In that spirit, here are some rather undutchly songs.

Not every song i love is by a band i’ve consistently looked out for — some might be quick flashes in the pan, or bits of gold from an artist whose discography i haven’t fully explored yet. These “singles” are a taster of the boundless ocean of music that exists out there.

Not every song i love is by a band i’ve consistently looked out for — some might be quick flashes in the pan, or bits of gold from an artist whose discography i haven’t fully explored yet. These “singles” are a taster of the boundless ocean of music that exists out there.