Spring Music Quarterly ‘26
ISSUE #327
Welcome to the year’s best music so far—and I have to say, in the music realm? It’s been a good early year. There’s plenty of great stuff that didn’t make this round, but these were the real clappers (lights on) to me in these first few months.
Just remember, if you like a track, there’s a lot more where that came from on each respective album!
March is, generally speaking, when a lot of the year’s best music starts coming out of the woodwork. Think last year: Cindy Lee, Adrienne Lenker, Vampire Weekend, Challengers score (okay, technically April). Think Scaring the Hoes the year before that. The story of music in the 2020s is the story of March.
Earwyrms turns six years old tomorrow, and now that my baby’s old enough for the first grade, I’m going to have to change some things around the house. As a birthday present, I’ll be making two major changes to the newsletter in next few days: 1) the weekly release day of Earwyrms is moving from Fridays over to Tuesdays; and 2) I’ll slowly be transferring this enterprise over to Substack. The first Tuesday issue will be released on April 30th, with Substack coming shortly after.
When Vampire Weekend was getting dunked on hard in the Obama era, it was just because they were clearly the best of their class—they had much more of a thing than your Two Door Cinema Clubs or your Passion Pits. Love them or hate them, Vampire Weekend was good enough to be in the crosshairs.
The kids go back to school next week, so why not sit back and listen to something new? I’ve always loved Songs of First Semester more than Songs of the Summer anyhow.
People, on the internet, a few years ago loudly pleaded “No pandemic art!” to whomever would listen (everybody was). I never agreed with the sentiment, but I stayed out of it—I know trauma when I see it. But today, standing this distance from that initial quarantine, the more I thank God Inside documented it, much moreso than I felt at the time.
I’ve put together a playlist of all the music I missed from the past four years. Songs that didn’t make it to the year-end lists, albums I didn’t catch until far too late. An ode to the constant blooming that comes with loving music.
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 new song we hear is a fresh batch of feeling. After weeks of Wyrms looking back to the past, here is a collection of new music we missed—with every note, the chance to remake a memory.
The first time I heard SOPHIE's "Hard," I felt like my car was going to fall apart. I was driving home from my night shift at the front desk of a tower dorm, using new music to stay awake as dawn blushed over Iowa City's east-side cobbled roads.
Short issue this week, I have 198 unread emails and still have to pick an outfit for cocktails tonight with a little owl named Blathers. Here's an update on my favorite songs of 2020 that haven't made Earwyrms yet.
I was feeling nostalgic, so I made a playlist for what I would listen to at a pool party in 2009. This first included all the embarrassing things I listened to back then, but then I thought I'd just focus on what still holds up. I wanted to re-evaluate it all, and see what still sticks.
Welcome to the year’s best music so far—and I have to say, in the music realm? It’s been a good early year. There’s plenty of great stuff that didn’t make this round, but these were the real clappers (lights on) to me in these first few months. Just remember, if you like a track, there’s a lot more where that came from on each respective album!