Chasing Fridays: 100 songs I like and 13 blurbs

Alright this is a special edition of Chasing Fridays — a roundup of music I consumed and shows I attended over the last seven days. It's special because instead of reviewing a few albums/songs, I'm promoting a 100-song playlist I made that's entirely composed of songs that I really fucking like. A lot!

I've been making these 100-song Shit I Like playlists for seven years now. I don't really know why I started making them, but they've long served as a way to catalog individual songs that I enjoy listening to. But not just any song I enjoy hearing. The loose-fitting criteria for these playlists — all 29 that I've completed thus far, which adds up to 2,900 songs that I like — is that I only add a song when I first realize how much I like it. I'm not just loading them up with Weezer or Built to Spill or Playboi Carti songs that I've loved for years and heard dozens of times.

Most of the tracks that end up in these playlists, including the 29th edition down below, are songs I'd never heard before. Or if I had, then they didn't resonate with me in a positive way until the moments before I decided to add them to this playlist pool. Some of the songs are old — decades old — and many of them are new. Basically all of them were new to me before I plopped them into this unsequenced list that I've been building since December 2023.

I've got the full playlist on Spotify down below (I don't have Apple Music, sorry!!) and then I've got blurbs on 13 standouts from the 100-song lot. Oh, and if the playlist embed isn't showing up for some reason, open this article in your browser instead of viewing it in your email :)

But before you do....

....If you like what I wrote down below, or anything else I've ever published on Chasing Sundays, then I'd appreciate it if you subscribed at the $5/month tier. You can subscribe for free, too, and that's also much appreciated. But my paid members (thanks to all of you!) help me dedicate a bunch of hours each week to keeping this blog as active as I'd like it to be. So thank you for supporting independent music criticism.

And now you can continue scrolling!

100 songs I like

Behold, the 29th edition of my Shit I Like playlist series. If you'd like to listen to all ~2,900 songs in this series, you can shuffle through the Shit I Like Masterlist right here. It's....a lot. But a lot of great stuff!

Anyways, I could write about every song in this playlist but I won't burden you with that. Instead, I've selected a few inclusions that I actually have something (brief) to say about. Hope you find something you like. Or feel affirmed that I like something you already like. Or find something you hate, cause hey, at least you tried.

Color Filter - "Let Me Sleep"

I found Color Filter on the internet somewhere back in December, and I was immediately smitten by their utterly gorgeous 1998 album, Sleep in Synchrotron. Japanese dream-pop with hooks that remind me of the freshest powdered donut I've ever eaten. It's one of those albums that sounds just like how the cover looks. Magical, gossamer, a little heavy-handed in its sweetness, and all the better for it.

Slowdive - "Yesterday" - Demo Version

I finally spent some significant time with Slowdive's Pygmalion earlier this winter, and came to the conclusion that it's my second-favorite Slowdive album. However, my favorite song on the whole record is actually this B-side, "Yesterday," which is labeled as a B-side but sounds just as crisp and buttery as any of the Eno-produced tracks that made the record. So. Fucking. Beautiful.

Hitkidd - "You the Type" (Feat. Aleza, Slimeroni, Gloss Up, K Carbon)

"You the type of bitch that's buddy, askin' n***as, 'Where my hug?'" makes me laugh out loud every time I listen to this song.

Lou Reed - "A Gift"

The funniest thing about this song is that there's a 50/50 shot Lou Reed was 100% dead-serious when he sang, "I'm just a gift to the women of this world." Absurd (but great) song released during an absurd (but great) era of Reed's absurd (but great) career. I like Coney Island Baby more than Berlin. Yeah I know. Absurd (but great) opinion.

Homefront - "Nation"

This song didn't crack my Top 5 songs of 2023 — but it should've. Shoulda been No. 1, tbh.

Drive-By Truckers - "Zip City"

Oh yeah, I got really into Drive-By Truckers' Southern Rock Opera over the last few months. Whole record is killer, but the standouts are the ones that rawk harder than Guns N' Roses ever did. GN'R catching strays for no real reason here other than I think the solo in "Zip City" is on-par with anything Slash has ever played.

Reprisal - "Death Fortress"

Got hugely into this Italian metalcore album from 2000 a couple months back. When I tell people "I've been listening to metalcore lately" and they cock their head at me because they think I'm talking about Architects or whatever: No. I'm talking about shit like Reprisal, which sounds like Earth Crisis but at least nine times heavier and gnarlier. World-burning music.

The Pastels - "Dark Side of Your World"

What if the Velvet Underground actually made their 1969 self-titled album in 1983? That's what this Pastels song sounds like. But even better than that, somehow.

Divine Sentence - "Flames of Justice"

Fuming feminist metalcore from Switzerland that pulls no punches and asks the same of all its listeners. Lotta bands doing this sound right now. Divine Sentence do it right.

Hook - "Peasant"

I really liked Hook's 2022 album, From, Hook, which sadly got pulled off streaming shortly after it dropped. Her new album, Castle, delivers more of the Cali rapper's idiosyncratic charm. Like "Peasant," where she's for some reason doing a dry British accent over a beat that sounds like tossing a gift basket of gas station fireworks into a bonfire.

Ken Carson - "Overseas"

My favorite rap song of 2024. Gonna be hard to beat it.

Nia Archives - "Tell Me What It's Like?"

The first time I heard this I thought, "oh shiiiiit I love this." I still do!

CLIP - "Hate Me"

Actually, this is my favorite rap song of 2024 so far. The Marceline to Ice Spice's Princess Bubblegum, CLIP's 2023 Appetizer mixtape caught me off guard with how clattering and heart-stopping her emo-y digicore could sound. "Hate Me" is her NY drill-ified flip of Future's self-loathing all-timer "Hate the Real Me," but the energy and feeling she brings to this track — not to mention her slick, electrifying rapping — makes it feel like way more than a lazy remix or a one-note cash-in on familiarity. Which is a tricky balance CLIP also pulled off on her most popular Spotify song, "Sad B!tch," which interpolates Crime Mob's "Knuck If You Buck" in the context of an ethereal cloud-rap beat. At this point, a CLIP album or mixtape is what I'm most anticipating for the rest of 2024. I think she's got a classic in her.