Alternative Top 10, Week of July 25, 2021

I used to do this a while ago, but now that the pandemic is over (sort of) but I still have tons of free time on my hands, it's probably time once again to check out the week's alternative top 10 songs (I used to cover the Top 5, but let's broaden it a bit, okay?).

According to Billboard, the No. 1 song in the country right now is Permission to Dance, the new single from South Korean boy band, BTS.  The single debuted this week, and displaced the previous No. 1 single, Butter, also by BTS, which is now No. 7. Eighteen-year-old pop star and former Disney kid Olivia Rodrigo, who I had never heard of before she popped up at the Biden White House telling people to get vaccinated, also has two songs in the Top 10 - Good 4 U (No. 2) and Deja Vu (No. 10).  So two artists have four songs in the Top 10, and that probably tells you all you need to know about the state of pop music right now.  

Personally, I stopped listening to Top 40 pop music sometime in the late 1960s.  Whatever we're calling new music these days - indie, alternative, college, or whatever - is more interesting to me.  So instead of the Billboard "Hot 100," let's look at this week's Alternative 40 Chart, as calculated from YouTube and Spotify streams, as well as blogs, shows, and playlists focusing on new alternative and indie music  (source: https://www.youtube.com/c/NewAlternative40Chart).

1. Chvrches - Good Girls
2. Big Red Machine (feat. Taylor Swift) - Renegade
3. Haim - Cherry Flavored Stomach Ache
4. James Blake - Say What You Will
5. The War On Drugs - Living Proof
6. Sufjan Stevens & Angelo De Augustine - Reach Out
7. Soccer Mommy - rom com 2004
8. Big Red Machine (feat. Robin Pecknold & Anaïs Mitchell) - Phoenix
9. Courtney Barnett - Rae Street
10. Tycho & Benjamin Gibbard - Only Love

Like BTS and Olivia Rodrigo in the "Hot 100" top 10, Big Red Machine has two songs in the Alternative 40 top 10.  Not only that, but their Latter Days, featuring Anaïs Mitchell, is No. 24 and their Ghost of Cincinnati (no guest stars) is No. 32.

Big Red Machine is the collaborative project of Aaron Dessner (The National) and Justin Vernon (Bon Iver).  In June 2021, they announced their second album, How Long Do You Think It's Gonna Last?, will be released on August 27, and they dropped the singles that now constitute 10% on the Alternative 40 Chart (20% of its top 10).  I won't post all their new singles here, but here are the two in the top 10, one featuring Taylor Swift and the other featuring Robin Pecknold (Fleet Foxes) and Anaïs Mitchell (writer of the Broadway musical Hadestown):

Sufjan Stevens also has two songs on the Alternative 40 Chart, one, Reach Out, in the top 10 and both collaborations with folk singer Angelo De Augustine. Olympus, their other single, is currently at No. 35.  According to Pitchfork, Stevens and De Augustine worked on the songs at a cabin in upstate New York while watching movies each day, which somehow inspired their new album, A Beginner's Mind.  Here's Reach Out:

As you may have noticed, I've tip-toed past Chvrches and Haim, who have the No. 1 and No. 3 songs, respectively.  Frankly, their sugar-coated songs are too popish for my tastes.  James Blake's No. 4 song,  the melodramatic Say What You Will, is certainly not popish, but it breaks no new ground for him and sounds like archetypical Blake. In fact, if someone was going to record a parody of Blake, Say What You Will is what it may sound like. 

The War on Drugs' acoustic-based Living Proof at No. 5 is far more acoustic-oriented and countryish that I'm used to hearing from this once-driving rock band, but it's still a good song, though.

At No. 7, Soccer Mommy's rom com 2004 is almost by design a pop song, but Sophia Allison at least put some nice splashes of noise into the track.

Rounding out the Alternative 40 top 10, we have Courtney Barnett with a typical Courtney Barnett song, Rae Street, at No. 9.  You can tell it's a Courtney Barnett song based on just the chord changes alone, even before her familiar and distinctive voice kicks in.

And finally, we have the somewhat unexpected collaboration of electronic musician Tycho and Death Cab For Cutie's Ben Gibbard at No. 10 with their song Only Love.  Frankly, I'm only posting it because it's easier to post than to come up with a justification for not, but it's really on the bublle.

As is often the case, there are a lot of good songs in the Alternative 40 Chart beneath the top 10, including Thom Yorke's latest remix of Radiohead's classic, Creep (No. 13), Yves Tumor and Kurt Vile at Nos. 14 and 15, respectively, and the debut of The Linda Lindas on the Alternative 40 with Oh! at No. 36.  

That's it for this week.  That's what all the cool, alternative kids are listening to this week, or your big brother or sister off at college.  We'll pick this up again next week. Meanwhile, enjoy!