Donovan Woods – image from Jason Hudson’s blog THESE ROVING EYES (click to visit)
I am writing this on Christmas night when I most certainly should be sleeping. I’m in my parents house in Sarnia at the kitchen table, everyone else is asleep. I had a weird year. It was great, the best year of my life certainly. Huge swings up and down for me this year, and these are some of the songs I listened to while I was swinging. I do find that my taste is changing with age. I need songs to make sense now. I mean, not really, but, you know. I’m 33 so I need some proof that someone put some thought into something, or what am I even doing? I could just listen to silence instead, I’m 33. I can just sit and look at a wall and I’m totally happy, it doesn’t matter to me. I’m 33.
So here’s 10 songs I got into this year, I think there might be 11:
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Lori McKenna – My Love Follows You Where You Go
This song is a groove and a rut, you know? Lori is just one of the best writers presently writing if you’re gonna ask me. The whole album is good, it’s called Massachusetts, which is where she lives. Her songs are actually “rough” and “real” and “gritty” – all things that one million male singer-songwriters, myself included, claim to be and NEVER actually are. These songs are about folks’ lives. She also co-wrote a Hunter Hayes #1 hit this year called “I Want Crazy” which is a song that has 42 hooks and still could not be more clear and good. She’s also a married mother of 5 kids, so don’t you ever say “I’m so busy” ever.
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Lorde – Royals
Yeah, who didn’t like this shit, eh? I remember the first time I heard it, in July in Nashville. I had just picked up a rental car was flipping through the satellite radio trying to find CBC Radio 2 because, I’ll be honest, I like hearing myself on the radio in other countries. I wasn’t on, so I switched to Lightning 100, Nashville’s hippest fedora-scarf-type station. They played this song and I was all, sweet God in heaven, that is moody. Has a song ever hooked you quicker? I was all-in on the first line. It sounded like 2013 to me. It wasn’t a throw-back or re-hash of anything and that’s about as hard as sudoku to do (I can’t do sudoku).~~~
Kanye West – Blood On The Leaves
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Charlie Worsham – Trouble Is
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Drake – Come Thru
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Frightened Rabbit – The Woodpile
This song is badass and it has distorted guitars. Ever heard of those? “A lit torch to the woodpile, aye” is the chorus line and isn’t that quite the thing to sing in a song? It’s a grindy, angsty jam that I would’ve loved when I was 25. I still love it now, but I don’t play it real loud in my car like I would have then; I don’t record a cover of it on my voicemail and send it to some sweet-faced girl I’ve been bothering like I would have then. Thank God.~~~
Leif Vollebekk – Southern United States
I kept seeing this guy’s record on the iTunes chart while I checked to make sure people were buying my record. I don’t actively seek out singer/songwriter records because if they’re good they depress me, and if they’re bad they depress me. What’s the point? Eventually I sampled this song and loved it. It’s clear he really likes Dylan, but what’s wrong with that? I do too. Leif does that “Blood on the Tracks” rambling-guitar-with-only-loose-bass-and-harmonica-accompaniment thing real well. I’ve tried and failed, it’s hard. The whole record is great. Great lyrics, interesting melodies. This song in particular was right about where I was at when I heard it. He’s being questioned at the border: “I don’t know what it is they thought I had, but by the end I had had it.”~~~
Tim McGraw – One Of Those Nights
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The 1975 – Chocolate
Yeah, this is great. A hook machine. I don’t know what the hell dude is talking about. I think he says, “…and your hair smelled like chocolate” and then a bunch of stuff about petticoats. I don’t know. I heard it in a bar in London (London, UK) (which is something you have to say in Ontario or people think you’re talking about London, Ontario which is a town that I don’t love deeply, I’m sorry) a long while back and thought, THIS IS A HIT SONG. I think it was to a certain extent. It’s a song for dancing maybe? I can’t think of a song like it. It’s good.~~~
Kacey Musgraves – Merry Go Round
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Shark Tank – Out For A Rip
This song so perfectly captures how I talk it’s frightening. It is a complete work of art. His swearing is poetry. He never sounds like he’s trying to rhyme or speak rhythmically, it just sounds as if he’s speaking. It’ll make everything else you hear today sound pretentious and ridiculous. I love it very much.
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Timber Timbre w/ Feist – Homage
This is just sad and beautiful. I heard it first in a rental car pulled over to the shoulder because it was raining so hard in Mississippi that I couldn’t see. I was driving to see William Faulkner’s grave in Oxford, MS. I got there at about 2AM, I had to climb a small fence. I saw the grave and I felt nothing. Here’s what I tweeted, to prove it to you: https://twitter.com/DonovanWoods/status/355161056416505856. Feist and this other guy’s voices together harmonizing were perfect for me though. I downloaded this song and listened to it on repeat, holding my phone up to my ear the whole way driving back to Tennessee. That is not illegal in Tennessee or Mississippi~~~
Top image from These Roving Eyes post from last year that includes an interview of sorts (& a cover by Woods of Sufjan Stevens….) – the post is HERE, so swing by for some more Donovan Woods love.