The Best Music Of January: NPR Staff Picks
NPR Music
NPR
4.3 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 1 February 2021
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Songs featured on this episode:
• FKA twigs (feat. Headie One, Fred again..), "Don't Judge Me"
• Jazmine Sullivan: "Girl Like Me (feat. H.E.R.)" from Heaux Tales
• Ian Sweet: "Drink the Lake" from Show Me How You Disappear
• Cassandra Jenkins: "Hard Drive" from An Overview on Phenomenal Nature
• William Parker: "The Golden Light (Hymn)" and "A Great Day to be Dead" from Migration of Silence Into and Out of The Tone World
Follow the Press Pause playlist for the NPR Music staff's favorite new songs.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If you're into science but you need a break from the coronavirus, NPR Shortwave has your back. |
| 0:06.4 | Whether we're talking about how scientists measure Mount Everest or spiders that hang out underwater, |
| 0:13.8 | we promise you'll have fun and learn something. Subscribe to Shortwave, the Daily Science Podcast from NPR. |
| 0:22.0 | For NPR music it's all so long, so consider that I'm Bob Boylin and today we bring you the |
| 0:26.3 | best of January. Where NPR music staff picks their favorite albums or songs. |
| 0:32.4 | And joining me is Latisha Harris, Latisha works on the louder than a riot podcast for NPR music. |
| 0:38.0 | And I don't know what else you do Latisha because we've never been in the same room with one of |
| 0:42.5 | their halfway. We have it Bob, just little virtual screens. Great, where are you talking to me from? |
| 0:49.1 | I'm calling in from Chicago. Well I hope one day you get to come to the office. |
| 0:54.4 | Me too. And join the crew. I look forward to those days again. We were just reminiscing about, |
| 1:01.0 | well I was reminiscing about the tiny desk and thinking of it makes me sad but happy that we have |
| 1:09.2 | a continuation of the series and the home concert series has been a lot of fun. Home concert series has |
| 1:14.2 | been so much fun Bob. You can't even imagine how much joy it's brought me. Oh that's great to hear. |
| 1:20.0 | You're gonna kick us off for the best of January. There were an awful lot of releases as they're |
| 1:24.8 | off and are at the top of the year. What is it that you fell in love with? So this month I fell in love |
| 1:30.6 | with FK Twigs's Don't Judge Me. It's her first release as a lead artist since I think her best |
| 1:37.0 | album ever 2019's My Deline. And it features UK Drill Rapper, Heady One, and producer Fred again, |
| 1:43.5 | which I think is indicative of the amount of collapse she'll have on her next album. |
| 1:47.0 | What's this song and what's it about? So this song from What I Can Hear, this song is a little bit |
| 1:54.6 | of Twigs asking for some type of judgment-free love in an interpersonal relationship on a more |
| 2:01.2 | personal individual level. But then when you get to know the next verse with Heady One, it's really |
| 2:06.0 | about like the oppression that black people are experiencing and have been experiencing for a |
... |
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