In a situation like this, any introspection or melancholy in the music I often listen to becomes a virulent plague that leeches the positive energy I’ve accumulated over the course of a hypothetical party. As I experience the jarring transition between a crowded space and the lonesome walk home, I find it best to ride the high, letting the party bleed into that exodus. I’d lean towards something instrumental with a healthy dose of funk, something like “Dallas” by L’Eclair. I previously used the song in a satirical video I made with some friends so listening to it by myself creates that illusion of togetherness, vaguely and briefly relocating my own December 2023 to the present day. “Dallas” has a smooth, brilliant sheen about it. Its downbeats uniquely compliment my footfalls on the concrete sidewalks that support my saunter home. I’d say either that or Kevin Gates’ herculean masterpiece, “Two Phones.” I don’t think I have to explain why I would at any point listen to one of the greatest musical works of the modern era. 

Perhaps it’s not the most spooky choice, but “Do You Think I’m Pretty” by Racing Mount Pleasant has been my choice for an end-of-the-night song for a while now. I always feel unsettled after the adrenaline rush of a good party, and the intensity of those feelings take some time to fade from my mind. So, I tend to gravitate towards something contemplative which matches the pace of my wind down and this song fits perfectly. It starts quietly with just a voice and guitar but quickly expands into the full range of the band. The lyrics are intimate and honest, with a raw vocal delivery to match. The song itself has this ebb and flow, a pulse, building until you’re drawn in and completely surrounded. Its culminating moment feels very intense, like an overflow of sound and emotion. And then the music slows and you emerge again just listening to the same voice and guitar from the beginning. While it is a very melancholy song, it also feels relaxing to me somehow. The immersion of the music breaks whatever dregs of excitement I carry home with me. It's the perfect song to keep me company whenever I wander back from a party through empty streets before sunrise.

The walk home after an apartment party is unparalleled, but the soundtrack depends on how the night is going. Am I still riding a high—there's a double entendre in there somewhere—or have I already mellowed out a bit?

If I'm looking for more energy, I can queue up "FOMDJ" from Playboi Carti's MUSIC. Teased during MUSIC's never-ending rollout, I was surprised this song wasn't on the standard edition of the album; we just had to wait a few more weeks for him to put it on the deluxe. "FOMDJ” sees Carti drop the middling Future impression he's done a ton since "FE!N" in favor of vocals closer to the inflection we’re used to. But I barely care about what he sounds like here; just listen to the beat. Carti ditches the basic trap that infects most of MUSIC and picks up swirling synths that swirl even more when you're not quite sober.

On more relaxed walks, I'll turn to a song like "Champagne Shots" by Sainte. In barely two minutes of rapping, the Leicester City MC oozes charisma and lets you know he's the HNIC. His frequent producer Parker Jazz provided a stripped back instrumental that simultaneously leaves a lot of open space and has a nice momentum to it; those bass kicks scratch an undeniable itch I can't quite pin down. "Champagne Shots" feels like having a silk robe on, gazing out of floor-to-ceiling windows from the 20th floor: a great nightcap.

After a night out I pretty much always want to listen to Lucki. It’s probably something about the relatively monotone vocals compared to the somewhat funky and at times energetic beat selection. My Go-to has to be 197 trap talk, with its strange and almost homey instrumental while Lucki raps about his thoughts on the debaucherous life to which he is committed and the feelings that he has about. The lyrics are simple, witty, and at times hard hitting, with nostalgic interludes where others speak braggadociously about the lifestyle and the glamour that comes with it. I think what really attracts me to the song is the calm simplicity and honesty with which Lucki speaks about his own trepidations and pride regarding the drug-ridden and violent reality that his album “body high” is centered around. The lyrics almost actively contradict the old fashioned and grainy production. In some ways the silences and absences of action or activity in the song become one of its greatest strengths. The interludes also give the song enough flavor and happiness to bring the night to a calm close while I wind down and maybe play some fifa, and the silences and slow pace of the song make it easy to think.

No song is more thematically fitting for this prompt than 21 Savage’s “monster.” This isn’t some anthemic ditty about goblins and ghouls— the party is over. The monsters of power, money, and fame entailed in the chorus provide some realistic scares for party-age people. Reaching further, perhaps the costume donned by 21 is that of an American, a mask briefly removed in 2019 when it was revealed that he originated from Britain. 

But for those who label the faux-American rapper a one-trick pony, this restrained departure of his may come as a shock. Disarming synths and chilling pianos create a perfectly uncanny ambience to help wind down from any high-octane tricks and treats. There’s even a pleasant final jumpscare in the form of what is perhaps the most buttery-smooth surprise feature ever. Just enough eeriness looms in the track’s outro to leave you looking forward to next year, when the festivities will once again rise from the dead.

I have a very specific answer. This spring I lived in Malaga, Spain. I learned bits and pieces of Spanish, played beach volleyball, and went out more than anyone should. I lived in El Palo, the working suburb a fifteen minute bus ride down the coast from the city center.

In the daytime, the 8 bus was crowded, loud, and smelled of cigarette smoke. The night bus was different. Past 3 am, the four seat-compartments where I liked to sit were empty. Sometimes, my legs would intertwine with a friend across the seat or rub against one next to me. More times than not, I found myself alone. When that happened, Lou Reed was on.

Like all great songs, “Perfect Day” found me. It did so the day I met the three guys I still talk to every week. For the first time since I’d been there, I finally had a hold on my life. I loved, and love, that the “you” was ambiguous: it could be a good new friend, old friend, a lover, or my mother. That day, it was me. I was glad I spent it with my three new friends. But more than that I was happy to spend it with myself — a feeling I’ll forever associate with that song. 

Something about the end of an era (e.g., the mourning of halloweekend) fills me with a somber tranquility. At times, the music of the quiet street itself is enough: the crisp Chicago air, the rustling of tree branches, and the crunch of the leaves under my feet. The sound of my thoughts adds a melody to the song. I love recounting my favorite events, the funniest jokes, and the smiles of my friends around me. The moon shines through the midnight clouds, and I want to laugh, cry, and yell all at once because, well, it’s over.

Now, if I want to put my headphones on, it’ll most likely be “Mystery of Love” by Sufjan Stevens. The song leaves me physically numb, and the montage from Call Me by Your Name plays in my head as moments like these truly help me relate to Elio. As much as it hurts to leave such fun moments behind, the bliss from knowing I lived them is unmatched.

I rarely want to continue the energy going if the night is over, but “CRANK” by Slayyyter has been on repeat and would be my song of choice because I do get so gay off that tequila.

I don’t like ‘beef’ narratives, mostly because they’re so cloaked in marketing that they come off as executive shadowboxing half the time. True hatred can’t be instrumentalized into a streaming check. I want beef so potent that the involved parties won’t acknowledge each other publicly, but the corrosivity in their hearts leaches into their music. Private people. Burial and Aphex Twin. That would be a true heavyweight championship, two foremost electronic pioneers dukin’ it out in encrypted bleeps, bloops, and Ray J samples. Despite their comparable magnanimity and influence, their dispositions couldn’t diverge more: Aphex the in-your-face eccentric, Burial the elusive enigma. The two have mutual respect that would erode into some generational music. I’d love to hear Burial’s desolate Londonscape blanketed with asbestos and Aphex’s crystalline funhouse broken into shards. The only downside—if the meme-hungry public caught wind of the secret feud, it’d be so insufferable I’d have to quarantine myself from the internet for at least a month.

This is less of a desire and more of a prediction, but I think Taylor Swift is going to shift her ire to Brendon Urie of Panic! At The Disco fame. I mean think about it—she's launched her showgirl-themed album to mixed reviews, and he's doing  sold-out 20th anniversary performances of the quintessential Vegas-burlesque-showboy(?)-top hat album A Fever You Can't Sweat Out. It's going to brew with shady subtweets about just who was to blame for the critically maligned Lover lead single—yes, the one that borrows his punctuational stylings and rhymes its title with itself at least ten times. It's going to culminate with Taylor declaring she's got a favorite singing, backflipping Mormon—and it's the one with the alliterative moniker and affinity for lunar-themed sweet treats. But she's got a wedding coming up, and he got his start crooning about just what exactly is going on with the groom's bride behind closed doors. 

I’m super hyped for the new Erykah Badu x Alchemist record dropping this fall (Alc and Freddie Gibbs’ Alfredo 2 was great). But when the lead single, “Next To You,” dropped in June, it received a lot of well-deserved criticism for using AI to create its uninspiring cover art and sloppy accompanying music video. 

Recently, many artists have spoken out about the use of AI content across the industry—from artists like Hiatus Kaiyote, Anderson .Paak, and King Gizzard calling for AI slop to be removed from streaming services to Mac DeMarco criticizing AI for stripping away “the human element” of music. I’m hoping that if Badu and Alc end up releasing a heavily AI album (please, prove me wrong), other artists will call them out. Hopefully, the resulting beef could spark a real conversation about the use of AI in art and music, and help Erykah (still my favorite) course-correct.

I’ve got two answers to this one, but they both involve Cameron Winter. 

Now I know Julian Casablancas is a big Geese glazer, but I still want to see him go after Winter. On some level Geese are just The Strokes with homework, Winter having replaced the raw hungover coolness of Casablancas’s crew with over-thought art-school anxiety. I imagine The Strokes’ frontman saying no less and Winter firing back with a baroque revenge album. It’d be a duel between a proper Brooklyner and an OG nepo baby—two men who built their myth on cool detachment, but only one who earned it through-and-through. Somewhere, Ezra Koenig moderates a panel, and the feud ends with a joint single: Casablancas mumbling into a vocoder while Winter pens a manifesto for the liner notes. 

Second, I want Winter to square off with Thom Yorke. Both write like the world is ending. A feud between them wouldn’t be about who’s better, but who’s more authentically doomed. Yorke’s alienation is global—surveillance, systems, the slow death of meaning—while Winter’s is self-inflicted, like he’s writing footnotes to his own breakdown. They’d probably realize they’re arguing over the same apocalypse, just scored in different keys.

I want to see SG Lewis vs Brutalismus 3000 beef this fall. Here is why: They are on totally opposite ends of the electronic music spectrum. SG Lewis has a basking in golden hour dance sound on a beach and watching a disco ball spin in the wind. 

While Brutalismus is much more Berlin warehouse hard-core techno vibes. SG’s diss track would have sultry energy with layered melodies and honeyed vocals that draw the listener in. But upon listening to the lyrics SG sings ‘ All distortion, no direction ‘… taking a stab at Brutalismus’s sound. Brutalismus’s diss track would include bumping techno with a series of screams rattling and exciting the listener. The screams would be saying “SG Lewis makes elevator music” similar to the way the group yells “Satan was a baby boomer”. This collision is the excitement that the electronic music community needs this fall!!!

I want to see Fakemink enter a beef with that one AI Velvet Underground dupe band and just like yell at them about how he's more intelligent. And also, how he is better dressed and is more sonically talented. And also, how they just suck in general. But then at the same time complain about how his life is so hard and also at the same time say he is merely a humble being and that he deserves no praise and is no better than anybody else.  Then I want the AI band to dox him and like leak his DMs or something and then they start making music about each other and it just develops into a nothing burger beef, because all beef in the music industry is nonsense and kind of just pointless spectacle.  

It’s time other genres beefed. For too long, Rap has dominated the beef market in music. For my generation, hip hop is the medium of big-time beef: Kendrick and Drake, yes, but Logan Paul, Jake Paul, and all the recess rap battles they inspired, too. But just because a group has guitars doesn’t mean they don’t hate their rivals, and I think it’s about time they started to act like it again. I want more of the Gallaghers getting up the Brits and belting “Allllllllll the people” with their fresh "Best British Band" trophy in hand, a year after blur’s win in 1995. I’d love to hear the Jungle rip into someone like that. Who knows, it might be blur again. 

“Sunday Bloody Sunday” by U2 live from Red Rocks. Before that, I just listened to whatever was popular or whatever indie stuff my older sister was bumping—I figured I could siphon off some of her cool if I listened to one more Mura Masa track. 

The summer before ninth grade, my dad and I redecorated my room with his old vinyl, none of which I could name. To fix this, he made me a playlist of his favorites that I first heard on a flight to North Carolina: “Roxanne” was fine, “Losing My Religion” didn’t land, but then came this live version of “Sunday Bloody Sunday.”

I had no clue what The Troubles were; my biggest concern was beating my cousins at paper football. But this song cut straight through me. The guitar carved out a space in the white noise of the plane, and Bono’s voice hit with the rare clarity of someone who means every word. With Larry Mullen Jr.’s martial snare driving him forward, Bono belts with the electrified crowd, “No more! No more! Wipe your tears away! Wipe your blood away!” I didn’t understand the politics, but I felt the conviction, launching me into a full-blown U2 obsession that shaped my incipient music taste and deepened my bond with my dad. It was a watershed moment in the band’s history—one that cemented their reputation as an extraordinary live act—and here it was, thirty-six years later, still working its magic on a teenage me.

My uncle called him “Slash”—he was a cigarette-smoking, tattoo-clad guitar god whose curly hair spilled from beneath his iconic hat. There was no denying it: this guy rocked. He’s the guy who convinced me that music is special, and so are the people who can master it.

I must’ve been 12 years old when my uncle first played  Guns N’ Roses for me in the car—probably “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” or maybe it was “November Rain,” either way, it caught my attention immediately. My GNR addiction grew and grew until my parents were probably concerned that all I wanted to do in the car was blast “Welcome to the Jungle.” Listening to GNR exposed me to everything  classic rock has to offer, but perhaps more importantly, it gave me my icon: Slash.

Slash was him: effortlessly cool, endlessly talent, and woefully nonchalant. From the first time I saw him drunkenly messing up “Welcome to the Jungle” in some old GNR performance I found on YouTube, I was obsessed. I begged my dad to take me to one of Slash’s live shows with his solo band, and my dream finally came true when my I found my little 14-year-old self helplessly out of place amongst the sea of middle-aged white bodies in Atlanta. But the music spoke for itself—and hearing it live was everything.

After that, there was no stopping me. I quickly outgrew my rock obsession, moving onto nu metal, hip-hop, and, eventually, jazz, indie, EDM, and more. And it’s all thanks to Slash—that forever-young, hyper-talented, and endlessly cool guitarist who captured my attention from the very first note.

I’ve dabbled with instruments my whole life. The violin lasted a few months, the flute two years until high school came around and I got embarrassed. But when school started to feel like too much, I realized something was missing.

My dad’s been saying “this year I’ll learn guitar” for as long as I can remember. He’s obsessed with The Who—our basement walls are covered in red, white, and blue targets, and his Who sweater hangs framed above his bed

I bought a second-hand Fender from a rummage sale and started lessons. I stumbled through Green Day songs and eventually made it to playing “Wonderwall.” One day I finally built up the courage to try a song by The Who.

I picked “Behind Blue Eyes” from Tommy. The song played in the background in every memory of a late night car ride or Saturday night sitting around the fireplace.  Halfway through (after butchering maybe every fifth chord), I saw my dad in the doorway—foot tapping, head bobbing. He looked proud in that quiet dad way.

That was the moment I understood the power of music. It isn’t just something to listen to, rather something to share. Music taps into a communication that is hard to encapsulate in plain language alone. I’ve since hung up the guitar, but that song will always feel like a bridge into my father’s mind. 

I was a ballet kid. From the age of three, at least once a week I was being dragged to different classes, associating movement with beats and keys on the piano; everything felt mechanical, automatic, nothing compared to the radio hits I would scream to on the way home. I thought the “old” rehearsal music was boring, relics belonging to my grandparents, lining the walls of my grandfather’s house, encased in plasticky, colorful records.

I did not know I loved music, nor that I could love it in the way that I do, when it started. While my cousins turned their noses up at movies whose entire soundscape was crafted for the purpose of replacing dialogue, scores  of ballets and operas emanated from the screen with aplomb, emphasizing dramatic exclamations and cries, building dread and despair, sealing it all with a happily ever after. To me, it was magic. Suddenly, the tracks I once so longed to replace with bubblegum pop in my dance classes breathed life into my favorite films and so, too, invigorated my dance classes, took point in turning me around the room, lifting my arms in the air, sending me leaping (mildly ungracefully) around the room. 

Now, twenty years later, I cannot claim to flounce around in a tutu anymore, but I still adore music and its enchanting allure.

It’s late spring in 2019. The air is still cold but pollen season is basically over. My dad and I were driving to New Hampshire for the weekend, about four hours from our home in Massachusetts. In the photos, I’m wearing a Twenty One Pilots shirt. I have bangs. There’s a lot of eyeliner involved.

I had spent the last three years exclusively listening to bands like Panic! at the Disco and Paramore, believing that music died the day My Chemical Romance broke up. But for those four hours in the station wagon, my dad was on aux. He was playing SiriusXM 34 Lithium, a collection of nineties grunge and alternative. Music may have died in 2013, but I realized it was born long before 2005.

I just found the playlist of songs I ripped from the station six years ago. It’s full of Jane’s Addiction and Bad Religion. It has “Say Hello 2 Heaven” by Temple of the Dog—my dad remarked that it’s not a particularly good song, and I agree, it’s not. There’s “Sabotage” by Beastie Boys—much better—and “Brick” by Ben Folds Five—excellent. We sat there listening and talking: my dad’s tales of the nineties, The Smiths lyric in his high school yearbook, and a crash course in alternative. We heard “Everlong,” “Lightning Crashes,” and “The Distance.” 

What is needed to fall in love with music? I have a list: four hours of traffic, a watered down iced coffee, stories of a far off time, and the radio.

Some of the first music I really loved was on Lorde’s Pure Heroine. When the album came out in 2013, I was around 10 years old. Like many other 4th graders, my exposure to music was mostly from listening to top 40 in the car. I’m sure this is exactly how I found Lorde: “Royals” and “Team” were unavoidable every time I turned the radio on. I remember my friends and I remarking on why there was an “e” at the end of “Lorde” and musing about what “[cutting] teeth on wedding rings” meant. While I couldn’t necessarily relate to Lorde’s references, Pure Heroine captured a nostalgia of growing up that was palpable to me even at such a young age. “400 Lux” and “Ribs” are evergreen and continue to be some of my most played songs every year. In 2014, my parents took my friend and I to see Lorde at a music festival near us. It was my first concert, and watching a 17-year old Lorde sing some of my favorite songs while flipping her billowy hair around deepened my love for her and my appreciation of music in general.