The warm weather over the past week has been teasing us, and hopefully, that means soon it will be here to stay. To prepare us for what will hopefully be a long spell of pleasant temperatures and beautiful sunshine, here are some infectiously catchy songs recently released which may well contain the choruses we’ll be shouting out our car windows all summer.
- Carly Rae Jepsen — “I Really Like You”
Leave it to the artist who penned 2012’s song of the summer, the mind-numbingly heartwarming “Call Me Maybe,” to come back in 2015 with yet another chorus that will not exit your mind. Jepsen, who operates best within those early moments of a relationship between the first words spoken and the first kiss shared — a stage we can call the “really like” stage — finds herself completely at home with these awkwardly adorable lyrics sung over luscious production reminiscent of that found on Taylor Swift’s most recent album. Suffice it to say, I really really really really really really like this song.
- Grimes — “REALiTi”
Eccentric indie pop pioneer Claire Boucher, better known as Grimes — thanks to her fans who supported her during the leg of her world tour in Asia — released a cut from her scrapped album to hold us all over until the follow-up to her 2012 album “Visions“ is released (hopefully) later this year. “REALiTi” has the potential to be that left-of-center pop anthem on every hipster’s soundtrack this summer, much in the same way Ryn Weaver’s “OctaHate” was last summer. Grimes sings a forlorn ode to a hopeless romance, her vocals soaring as she recounts how the love of the song’s subject “kept [her] alive and made [her] insane.” In one of her catchiest choruses ever, she succumbs to this less appealing existence, noting the “mountains to climb” each morning — a reality which welcomes her each morning. All of these lyrics, sung over a hodge-podge of synths, work to create a song so quirkily enchanting that also highlights much of the crossover appeal she possesses. If this song wasn’t good enough to make the final cut for the album, I can only imagine what else she’s going to release this year.
- Ty Dolla $ign ft. Charli XCX and Tinashe- “Drop That Kitty”
Ty Dolla $ign isn’t exactly known for his deep lyrics. Being signed to Wiz Khalifa’s Taylor Gang label and being known for making the phrase “or nah” a thing last year would support that assertion. Being a deep, socially-conscious rapper isn’t what he’s aiming for. But for what he aims to do, creating intensely earwormy dance-rap tracks, he does a pretty darn good job at it. Ty does his thing on “Drop That Kitty,” which is what it is, but where the show is really stolen is that hook, tag-teamed by both mainstream radio’s pop-punk darling, Charli XCX, and urban radio’s up-and-coming star, Tinashe. Whatever the phrase “drop that kitty” actually means, Charli and Tinashe have it engrained in my brain forever.
