Looking at the calendar, this may be the last regular FP of the calendar year. Next week will be a set-up piece for my Favorite Songs of the Year playlist, which will drop the following week. I plan on a non-traditional holiday music playlist for sometime the week before Christmas. Then I will most likely take the final Friday of 2023 off.

Even this isn’t going to be your standard playlist, though. I’ll throw in a few holiday tunes to help setup the rest of the month.

“Faded State” – Home Front
Since back in my iTunes days I’ve kept a playlist of the latest songs I’ve come across at the core of my daily listening. Tracks generally get about two months in the playlist before they cycle out. I added this song on October 30. Somehow between travel, holidays, and other distractions, I have barely listened to it over the past seven weeks. Big bummer because this is an awesome piece of modern post-punk. Apparently I played another kick-ass song from Home Front in my first playlist of 2023, so I guess they are bookending the year. I might need to look into their album.

“Adelaide” – Sand Brothers
This is an Australian super group, although I don’t know any of the bands it pulls from. It definitely sounds 100% Australian.

“Bend” – Middle Kids
As much as I’ve enjoyed the three previous advance singles from the next MK album – spoiler alert, one will appear on my Favorite Songs of 2023 list – this is the first that recaptures the strong emotion that was such an important element of their last album. This is fierce, dramatic, and has a sense of desperation I’ve not heard in their music before.

“Bright As Yellow” – The Innocence Mission
I forget where I recently re-discovered this wonderful song. It may have been on Rob Harvilla’s 60 Songs That Explain the 90s podcast. I’m pretty sure he and his guest talked about 1995’s soundtrack for Empire Records on an episode I listened to recently. Then again, Spotify may have just churned this up and thrown it into something else I was listening to. I should take better notes. Anyway, this was on that Empire Records soundtrack – one of the better soundtracks of the Nineties – and was a minor hit. I’m sure its success had nothing to do with how much the song, both in the music and vocals, resembled Mazzy Star. Thank goodness it was a great song on its own.

“Yellow Bike” – Pedro The Lion
Songs about your most-loved Christmas present are always awesome, especially when they match up with your childhood.

“Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” – Brenda Lee
Allow me to put on my Reaching for the Stars hat for a moment. This hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 last week, setting a couple records in the process. First, it shattered Mariah Carey’s record for longest gap between a song’s original release and when it first topped the chart, finally reaching #1 after 65 years. Second, the 78-year-old Lee became the oldest performer to hit #1, breaking Louis Armstrong’s record by 16 years. Good for Brenda, and better that she is still alive to enjoy the moment. With the nuttiness of the charts these days, including the fact that Christmas songs can actually chart on the Hot 100, there’s certainly a chance each of those records could be broken in a future holiday season.

“The Chanukah Song” – Adam Sandler
Happy Chanukah everybody!

“She Kissed Me” – Sananda Maitreya (FKA Terence Trent D’Arby)
This is definitely a lost song I re-discovered on Harvilla’s podcast, although I forget what episode, as it was one of the songs/artists he talked about leading into his main subject. I remember this 1993 track actually getting some airplay on alt-rock stations thanks to its grungy lead guitar, but guarantee I had not heard it once in the 30 years since. It’s a shame whatever torpedoed Maitreya’s career happened, because he made amazing music.