postcard playlist no. 10
a last postcard of songs to look back on a very consequential part of 2025
Fitting, to end the year with the tenth installment of this little series, right? It’s fallen a bit to the wayside with grad school, but I wanted to bring it back to round out the year because there are some songs I haven’t been able to get out of my head. I want a little document of what I listened to on loop my first semester in Dublin. So we’re going to change up the format and go mostly into older songs. Hopefully you’ll still find something new to love.
This one isn’t so much about music discovery as it is just remembering songs that have meant things to me in the past and mean new things to me now or have come to me in surprising ways that I might have missed on first release.
Funnily, these songs are all part of three distinct playlists I listened to through each phase. Getting Spotify back on Student Discount again but having to start a fresh account cause I’d maxed it out on my other really inspired me to get creative with vibes-based playlists again.
Fall
are you surprised these all came from a playlist called moody?
TV Show - Katie Gregson-MacLeod
I was scrolling through Ticketmaster late one night in the early days of being in Dublin just looking at all the shows that were happening during the semester. I stumbled upon a familiar name, Katie Gregson-MacLeod, who’d blown up on TikTok during the frenzy on that app precipitated by the pandemic and suddenly had many major musicians covering her song “Complex.” It was a small room and a cheap ticket, so I impulse bought one and then figured I should see what her music had evolved into in the last few years.
I listened to quite a few songs from her latest project, Love Me Too Well, I’ll Retire Early, including “James” and “Chess,” but I’m picking “TV Show,” a 2023 release, for this because it never fails to push a serrated knife into my heart. It exemplifies Gregson-MacLeod’s ability to get at deep, thorny feelings and really complex, thoroughly drawn stories that perfectly compress into these songs.
She was hilarious on stage, along with being majorly talented. You can read more about the live show here.
favorite lyric: was it almost love / was it nothing close / cause the call was shorter than a TV show
Open The Gate - Zach Bryan
You take the girl out of Wyoming, but then she’ll listen to a bunch of Zach Bryan to quell the homesickness? This might be my most successful instance of separating the art from the artist because I actively avoid knowing anything about him, despite his dedication to showing up in the gossip pages in unflattering ways.
There’s something about Noah Kahan and Zach Bryan that feel like going home, and to draw a thread through all these songs, “Open the Gate” tells this layered story about families, repeated histories, and, well, rodeos.
favorite lyric: so open the gates, I’m here to prove / I’m better than my father was / And where he came from too
Drunk, Running - Lizzy McAlpine
A theme of the fall was writing short stories that became intrinsically linked to songs. This song and “Chess” are examples of this. “Drunk, Running” is the standout off Older (the others being “I Guess” and the deluxe track “Pushing It Down and Praying”), and that project strangely did not stick with me, but a few of the songs lingered independently.
This song is a delicate unfurling of a toxic relationship where the narrator is realizing how actively destructive her partner is as he’s navigating alcoholism, and she’s grappling with her own position within that. As the song evolves, she keeps a similar construction of no one coming to intervene in his drinking and swaps herself in, that no one steps in to try to get her out of this relationship. The mirroring is particularly striking in such a spare song.
favorite lyric: make a person out of memories / they won’t live up to it / I’m so sorry I stayed / when I shouldn’t
Audrey Hepburn - Maisie Peters
This is my only truly new song of the fall. Maisie Peters’s two teaser releases from MP3 for the fall, this song and “You, You, You,” perfectly slotted onto my moody playlist right down to the haunted ghostly English fields aesthetic of the promotional material. While I feel like she’s let a lot of the momentum that came from these singles deflate and the songs haven’t quite stuck with me like I hoped they would, there is something quiet and pretty about this duo. There’s a return to something softer after taking more of an aggressive pop lens for so many years, and that’s encouraging for whatever this project shapes into this coming year.
favorite lyric: my hands were always clenching / til I held yours / and you held them back
Silver Jubilee - Audrey Hobert
In the bubbly, early, happy era of first moving when there was still a bit of summer in the air, I found myself digging into the new Audrey Hobert album. I was never a huge fan of her energy in her appearances with Gracie or the way “Sue Me” took over TikTok. There was a lot of context standing between me and liking this music, but when I was looking for some kind of euphorically confused music to soundtrack my life, I stumbled back into Who’s the Clown? with more open ears. And I find “Silver Jubilee” to be an under appreciated offering. Maybe it’s not the most lyrically sophisticated but it feels like a bubbly 2000s pop song, and it’s about seizing the moment and spilling over with (maybe a little drunk) love for the world.
favorite lyric: I’ma put my drink up, it’s drinks up now / I’ma tell my sister she’s perfect / Yeah, I’ma live it up like my life starts now
The Middle
first two are new releases, last three are scraped onto a playlist for the project I’m working on.
Tennis - Lily Allen
The obvious choice off of West End Girl is “Pussy Palace,” which, yes, that song has a truly infectious groove and the record scratch, absurd lyric, “I didn’t know it was your pussy palace / I always thought it was a dojo.”
The entire album is full of perfectly constructed songs that are more akin to tracks from a musical in the way they build narrative and progress a singular story, but it’s “Tennis” that takes the cake for me. The entire song revolves around how she unlocks this new layer of betrayal within the affair when she learns that he was playing tennis with his mistress. This shows there is more of a fully realized relationship there, of course, but it stings more because he’s always refused to play with her, which just adds another emotional layer and a bit of humor. I love how both sonically addictive and lyrically fully realized these tracks are, and while I don’t return to them much, I can respect the exacting nature of the project.
favorite lyric: I can’t get my head round how you’ve been playing tennis / if it was just sex / I wouldn’t be jealous / You won’t play with me / And who’s Madeline?
Die Happy - Holly Humberstone
Holly Humberstone is once again releasing music, which put her back on my radar and reawakened my obsession with her song “Falling Asleep at the Wheel.” She picks up with her dark, moody aesthetic where she left off before the break, and I’m honestly a huge fan of when an artist lingers in a similar place and works to deepen from the foundation they laid in prior work, so this song excites me for what’s next.
favorite lyric: there’s something about you / so strange and beautiful / two shadows on the wall
Boston - Augustana
This is a song I forgot existed and gave me a near vertigo-like feeling when I heard it again for the first time back in September. My friend put it on my going away party playlist, and I found it when I was going through old music to find songs for this work in progress playlist.
There was the sonic familiarity of finding something you’d heard a long time ago once again, but the song also perfectly fit the storyline of both the project I’m working on and my life. Having to turn around, face what you’ve known, and decide to move on and start a new life. That hope that explodes around going to Boston, starting a new life. “I think that I’m just tired” in this unspooling explanation of leaving California feels so true. There’s all these big reasons, but really, it’s the existential exhaustion.
favorite lyric: I think I need a sunrise, I’m tired of a sunset
Massachussettes - Jensen McRae
I got to see Jensen play this song live this year, which was a huge bucket list moment. From the moment I heard it, I had a whole big ‘wait why’d you steal my life’ thought. The lyrics are uncanny, but that also means it feels like home in a really sweet way. It’s like a time capsule. This is one of those prime examples of how music (and all art really) is such a function of the personal experiences we bring having an alchemical reaction with what’s on the page. This whole album is truly incredible.
favorite lyric: when someone asks me who’s my favorite Batman, I’ll think of you and say Christian Bale
Lavender Girl - Caamp
This is another resurfacing from the goodbye party playlist that took on new meaning this month. This was a song Averi actually introduced me to, but I heard it in a new way this November when I was going through some of the lowest weeks I’ve experienced in recent memory. I find when I’m in a bad spot mentally, I gravitate towards songs that sooth, that say, it’s okay, I’ve figured it all out, it’ll be fine. I don’t think I have many voices like that around me, so I look for it in art. The final choruses of this song had me absolutely sobbing in the shower a few times, which was what I needed at the time.
see also in this genre, a lot of Alexander 23, “Anyway” by Noah Kahan (I mean “always, I’ll wait for sharp glass when you break / I’ll be the light that you can’t make”… he also offers to do her laundry in that song which is both metaphorical and so real.)
favorite lyrics: Oh, don’t look now / If the superstition’s got you down / There’s no right way to get back to the heart / Don’t you worry bout how / But I got it all figured out
Winter
Marigolds - Del Water Gap
The new Del Water Gap project, Chasing Chimera, reminded me how much I love Del Water Gap music. I still think that “Perfume” is an example of a perfect song. Though, like all of his records, there’s songs I love intensely and songs I never want to hear again on the album. On the love front, there’s “Marigolds,” “How to Live,” “Damn,” and “Small Town Joan of Arc.”
The opening track does the record a service, except for the fact that it fades in so intensely, the first few seconds are silent and always makes me think Spotify is glitching when it’s shuffled into a playlist. '
He does a great job of blending these big, world shifting thoughts into very concretely drawn physical narratives. “Marigolds” is about realizing that you might’ve lost the love of your life because you were too scared to tell them you loved them when the moment was right, that you moved away from them, and now it’s gone, and this is now a fact you’ll just have to live with. The framing that moves from “my stomach sinks / like I got it all wrong” to “I want to tell you I’m sorry” for not telling her when he could always gets me. This apology for leaving their story in this false place.
favorite lyric: But I will not forget the way it felt / being alone with you / on the edge of love and strung out on your smell
In the Living Room - Maggie Rogers
Someone I follow on my Bookstagram put this song on their story, and I was like, wait, a Maggie Rogers song I don’t recognize (was obsessed with her last album my senior year of college), so I investigated. And wow did this song change my brain chemistry. It’s such a deeply nostalgic sounding song for being brand new, but it fits her carefully spun narrative of looking back on this relationship that’s now over with this warm glow. Now I’m deeply back into Don’t Forget Me and the story songs.
favorite lyric: But I will always remember you / when we were dancing in the living room. but also cause I remember late September / your silhouette on blue wallpaper / in the hallway
Bathroom Light - Mt. Joy
Thank you random Spotify algorithm for this one. I already liked Mt. Joy, but I’m nowhere near a completist. Still devastated that I missed them at Rendezvous Fest 2024 (maybe the last good Rendezvous Fest?). But I’d never heard this song and was immediately captured by the spare, beautiful imagery it is constructed out of.
The song unspools this hook up in a bar bathroom in the most beautiful, profound way that has new layers every time I listen. It’s this little fizzle of possibility rendered into this little bottle of a song that’s also reaching out to capture the frailty of life and limits of time. It’s so casual, so easy in its tone but so giddy in the feelings.
favorite lyric: cause someday our brains must return the movies in our brains / and these moments we can’t fake / yes, the angels never leak the expiration date
Unreleased Noah Kahan
My latest obsession has been watching old recorded Instagram lives where Noah has been leaking new songs from his much anticipated next record (that is now apparently, finally done). I love the Stick Season era deeply, but I’m excited to see what he comes out with for a next progression.
My Favorite Song of 2025: Clearblue by Lorde
To close out the song discussions of the year, I am so utterly obsessed with this song. It’s one of a handful that I’ve listened to and loved in so many different ways through the years. It’s lived in and through, and I’ll never stop thinking about how she navigates this incredible story of emotional vulnerability and transformation through the lens of a hook up. It’s your whole life and only a few minutes at once, and then it opens and closes with these mirror images of a pregnancy test cast in a totally different light than we’re used to seeing it in. As a memory, an artifact.