Shook - Tkay Maidza
This song is what the term slaps was made for. It's bashful, eclectic and contagiously energetic. It goes hard, it hits, it slaps, it bops.
Figaro - MF DOOM
DOOM is the artist I find myself recommending to everybody regardless of what kind of music they like. It takes some time to train yourself in noticing the sheer complexity of DOOM's flow, rhyme schemes and cryptic wordplay. I could put so many DOOM songs here, but even amongst them Figaro stands out. Bar after bar without interruption in an unbelievable showcase of DOOM's skill, which is unmatched by any poet or rapper or author that ever existed.
Moanin' - Mingus Big Band (from Nostalgia in Time Square)
My favourite instrumental piece of music of all time. The heavy baritone sax, the piercing trumpets, the entire rise and fall of the brass sections and the melodies and harmonies. There's such a range in this song and it contains such energy.
Tintin in Tibet - Mount Eerie
This song perfects Mount Eerie's entire songwriting ethos: finding poetry in completely grounded truth. There are very few metaphors or abstract imagery, and they appear only with delicacy. This song alone changes my entire perspective on written art, when so much emotion can be found in such simple language.
The fish song - Underscores
After years of listening to this song, I still have absolutely no idea what it's about. Like, it's obviously about a fish and there's themes of death and discovery and the conflict between studying something and exploiting it. But I don't know what its really about, and I want to keep it that way. It's so wonderfully different to every other song on that album I feel like someone in the band must have dreamt it.
Kick, Push - Lupe Fiasco
Maybe the first song I ever truly liked. I didn't know how to skate, I'd never been in love, I didn't listen to hip-hop ... I barely knew what "rebel" meant. But this song stuck with me. It's simple in form, and Lupe intertwines a solid flow with direct and sincere storytelling. It's a song about being free, and where nothing bad really happens.
Ponyboy - SOPHIE
This song makes me feel things no other song has made me feel. My recollection is that I didn't question my gender whatsoever before I listened to this song. Listen at your own discretion.
The Blacker the Berry - Kendrick Lamar
The most visceral and raw performance in Kendrick's entire catalogue. It goes straight for the heart. Lyrics which struggle with some internal contradiction in the artist's interaction with the world often evoke very emotional responses in me, and the end of this song breaks my soul everytime.
Lisztomania - Phoenix
Poppy and light, happily nostalgic. It's just a nice time, and that's enough.
Artwork - Richard Tipping
There is a semi-famous street sculpture down near Sydney Harbour of a car in the middle of a roundabout which has been seemingly smashed by an enormous boulder, fallen from a nearby cliff. A bit jarring, sure. Before this sculpture Tipping placed a sign with the words "Begin Artwork" in the standard style of road signs in the area, perhaps to fend off complaints of those alarmed by the sculpture. This is all setup to my favourite piece of street art I've ever seen: the sign on the other side reading "End Artwork". What does it mean for the artwork to end? Am I encouraged to no longer think about it? Is it an imperative for all art outside of this sculpture to be ceased? Is it self-referential? It's the closest I've ever come across to a kōan in the 'Western' world.
To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain - Zhang Huan
The title is a translation from Chinese but it makes everything work. A bunch of people climbed a mountain, stripped naked, and stacked on top of each other human-pyramid style and made a mountain a metre taller for a few minutes. This art has a political context you can read about on Wikipedia, but you don't need to. It's the most human idea of all ideas, and the more you think about it the more incredible it gets.