At the height of his fame, David Bowie forged Ziggy Stardust to help him withstand the heat of the limelight. He quickly came to resent it. He was starting to think that he was Ziggy. He even went as far as trying to kill Stardust off one summer in London. “That fucker would not leave me alone for years,” he once said.

I’ve been nothing but hot air recently—rising temperatures and all—so I’m taking a break from my little history lessons and absurd canonization efforts to catch us up on all the music we’ve missed.

Every spring, I like to stop time at the end of March to make a playlist of Soft Songs—gentle lullabies borne by warmer winds, paeans to nature and steaming baths.

I’m tackling the impossible: the 100 best songs ever recorded. Not ranked from #100 to #1, but instead given their own meaningful sequence, a personal structure to reveal itself over the next few weeks. It will be a compass for navigating my sonic perspective. An Official Earwyrms Canon.

Pretend it’s 1962. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring hits The New Yorker in June. In a month, heavy smog descends upon London; the first Walmart rears its head in Arkansas. Another month, and Marilyn Monroe is dead. The world could collapse any day now.

Over eight albums and almost twenty years, surprisingly little has changed about Beach House. They still write gothic, cavernous love songs that glint and gleam like the sea.

I’m tackling the impossible: the 100 best songs ever recorded. Not ranked from #100 to #1, but instead given their own meaningful sequence, a personal structure to reveal itself over the next few weeks. It will be a compass for navigating my sonic perspective. An Official Earwyrms Canon.

Karaoke playlist. It’s my birthday weekend!

In Drive My Car, an actor directs a production of Chekov’s Uncle Vanya in which the performers all speak a different language—Japanese, Mandarin, Korean Sign Language, more. They combine textual familiarity with deep attention to their partner’s body language.

When did 2021 begin? Was it January 1st? It couldn’t be—that was thirty Jeffreys ago. Was it two weeks after we got the second shot? That was May 1st for me. Half a year went by before I emerged, stunted and shaking.

These are songs that represent the wrangling of time, the freedom of the future. Through tempo, these songs can change our heartbeat, grant us the energy to hit the road. It’s the inherent power of keeping time—it’s fuel for the engine of hope.

Last week, I talked about music as a manipulator, an art form adept at drawing forth emotion. But there’s another side to this manipulation: tension and the suppression of release. Coming inches from what you want, only to find you’re not going to get it—that is power in its purest form.

Life’s purest delights—singing, dancing, telling someone you love them—all come from indulgence in unsolicited feelings. The path to euphoria is narrow—it demands we ignore our exposure to pain. This section of the Canon is filled with those songs that speak directly to our emotional fears, the music that conquers pain with melody.

This issue of the Canon is about Voice—the first ten were an introduction to the list, but these ten are grouped by one of humanity’s great gifts, an instrument whose versatility often feels unnoticed.

I’m ending the year by tackling the impossible: the 100 best songs ever recorded. It will be a compass for navigating my sonic perspective. An Official Earwyrms Canon.

It’s fitting for a holiday that celebrates death to reflect so aptly the nature of life—that there is far too much to do before we’re gone, and we will always dream it differently. But we feel our imagination as much as we see it, and thoughts change our cells as much as chemicals—

Last Wednesday night, desperate for consolation from lives shackled with chaos, I went with Elsie to go see Candlelight—a small concert series of classical music held in hidden, non-traditional venues around the city, each lit solely by hundreds of scattered candles.

I’ll meet you at the wrought iron gate—get there as close to sundown as you can because it only opens once a year. Wait for the moon to crest the roof, then dip down through the hedges to the yard.

For all my terror, I find delight in apprehending the grotesque. It’s the illness we ignore that tends to kill us, after all. So let us stare our specters in the eye—we’ll be dancing step-in-step with them for the next few weeks.

Swamptember is over.