5 Songs We Can't Stop Listening To is a collection of our newest favorite songs. Every week we ask an artist that we love to tell us about the music they love.
Listen to the whole segment and all the songs below.
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1. IshDARR picks “Silent Ride” by Boogie
IshDARR is Milwaukee born and raised, but he has gone world wide. His songs on Spotify have millions of plays. He was recently in the movie “White Boy Rick,” with Matthew McConaughey. We’ve been playing his song, "Slow Down," recently and he just played the Rave this weekend. My guest is Milwaukee’s own IshDARR.
Justin Barney: IshDARR, what’s one song that you can’t stop listening to?
IshDarr: Aye, so one song I can’t stop listening to right now is a newer artist. Goes by the name of Boogie and the song is called “Silent Ride.”
Justin Barney: What do you like about “Silent Ride?"
IshDARR: Really the meaning of the music and kind of the feel of it. Um, he’s just talking about... just things he’s going through, kind of being a young entertainer like myself. Coming from kind of a hard time, which is things that we kind of all go through as far as friends, family and just kind of noticing things around him happening.
Justin Barney: What are some of those things? I want to know!
IshDARR: Some of those things ha, you know he said, “voices in his head” kind of telling him right from wrong and the main hook is just “silent ride home.” It really alerts me, because I know I’ve had a lot of those silent rides home where I’m just in my head and I’m thinking. Kind of just really thinking everything that he’s saying and it’s crazy, because it usually happens for me on a ride home from a tour or I just think about really being on tour and being on the tour bus. So, silent rides home, after the fact and just to recap it’s always just a silent ride, where you just think on everything and I feel that everyone has them. So, kind of why it touched me.
Justin Barney: Yeah dude, so what’s the name of the song?
IshDARR: So, the song is called “Silent Ride” by Boogie.
2. Justin Jagler – “Stay Freaky, Giannis”
Last week I got to my desk and there was an envelope addressed to me. Not too weird, I get a bunch of music sent to me every day. But the return address on this package just said, “Stay Freaky, Giannis”
The #stayfreaky hashtag is a personal favorite. If you’re not familiar just a hashtage that Giannis Attenkumpo’s uses all the time. I think it started with him trying new American foods for the first time.
Anyway I open the pacakage and it’s a thumbdrive to a song written by local musician Justin Jagler. Justin Jagler has invented a new genre called “fan folk,” which is a genre of music based entirely of music about Wisconsin sports teams.
It’s brilliant. So, let’s listen to the first song this new genre of fan folk. And enjoy music and the Milwaukee Bucks at the same time. Go Bucks and stay freaky.
- Listen if you like: Milwuakee Music, fan folk, the Bucks
3. Pedro the Lion picks “Devil In His Youth” by Protomartyr
My guest today is David Bazan, lead singer of Pedro the Lion. Pedro the Lion was a band that was formed in 1995 by lead singer David Bazan. They released their last album in 2004 and kind of disbanded for a while and David Bazan released a string of solo albums. And then, last year they picked it up. Last year they got together and recorded this new record that just came out last week. It’s called “Phoenix.” The thing is a triumph. Lyrically it’s great. It sounds amazing. It is just a fantastic new record from Pedro the Lion. We’ve been playing the song “Yellow Bike.” My guest today is lead singer, David Bazan.
Justin Barney: David, what is one song you can’t stop listening to?
David Bazan: This band Protomartyr I just can’t get enough of. Somehow they just make the most perfect distillation of my taste in the world. It’s just really bonkers.
There is so much pop smarts and hookery in the records but there is this…it’s just such well-made music.
Justin Barney: And then a lot of darkness.
David Bazan: Yeah yeah.
Justin Barney: Listening to Protomartyr, sometimes it can be brutal.
David Bazan: Oh it’s so brutal. The song, “Devil In His Youth,” when it comes on, the opening strains of that song are just one of my favorite things to hear in the world.
When they play it live, I just saw them recently for the first time. It’s so simple and so perfect, it just feels like church. To me. In a really good way.
Justin Barney: Yeah, I saw them play here in Milwaukee at Cactus Club
David Bazan: DANG! That would have been amazing! What great room to see those guys in.
Justin Barney: It was AMAZING.
David Bazan: That room is electric, man. It’s so fun to play rock 'n' roll in that room.
Justin Barney: Yeah, when that room is rockin' and sweaty, it was so all-consuming. You know?
David Bazan: Yeah
Justin Barney: “Devil In His Youth”
David Bazan: Yeah, that’s an all-timer for me.
And, if you listen to the lyrics in our current context, I mean it’s really, it’s just a really helpful picture.
- Check out our full interview with David Bazan/Pedro The Lion here.
4. Ken Sumka picks Simple Minds – “Love Song”
Justin Barney: I’m here with afternoon DJ Ken Sumka. Ken, what’s one song you can’t stop listening to?
Ken Sumka: We’re gonna do a song by Simple Minds. Now a lot of people think of Simple Minds they think, “Don’t You Forget About Me,” which was a great song. They didn’t write that song.
Justin Barney: Who wrote it?
Ken Sumka: Keith Forsey. Who was working with John Hughes. He’s worked a lot with Billy Idol.
We’re not going to do that song. Because that song has unfairly maligned that band for their entire career. It’s a song they were almost forced to make, and then they made it and it made them huge stars. But the problem is they had a really amazing career leading up to, and after that song, but everyone thinks that’s the only thing they did and it’s a song they didn’t write.
Justin Barney: Ken Sumka rewrites history for us!
Ken Sumka: That’s right!
Justin Barney: What is the song you want to talk about?
Ken Sumka: There’s a whole bunch, but the one I think is best suited for radio and making people fans of Simple Minds, other than that one song, is “Love Song.” And it’s just this driving song, it’s got an amazing bass line, it’s got an amazing drum part, it’s got this cool little sequencer part. And it’s just this great song of a catalogue that has a lot of really great songs. And that’s the thing is a lot of people “oh Simple Minds they just have that one song.” They had that one song that was a hit that they didn’t even write, but they had other hits, and they had other songs well before and well after.
5. Lala Lala – “See You At Home”
Song five this week is my pick.
The other day I was having this conversation with Noah Lennox of Animal Collective and I was telling him about how I used to feel like I was the only person who knew about a band before Spotify. And we talked through the positives and negatives of that. And I’ve just been thinking about that conversation a lot.
Then I went to this Lala Lala show. And I felt that this-music-is-my-identity aspect that I thought I might have lost.
And seeing the crowd, the other Spotify listeners, putting faces to those numbers and seeing that we are all part of the same scene made it feel like this is our identity.
Listen if you like: college rock, a scene, sad stuff