Different aspects of our lives have come to an excruciating level of automation, for reasons that are justified, sometimes, if making long and demanding tasks a bit less tiring. However, in these simplifications, we also risk losing the joy of experimentation, curiosity, and adventuring in activities that can actually be rewarding and exciting. Listening to music has unfortunately fallen into this silent and precarious dynamic, where highly-intrinsic, unresquetedly-built algorithms try to predict (or maybe impose) our preferences for songs. Instead of paying attention to what and how we listen to music, listeners (myself included) are often caught in an unconscious habit of following whatever streaming platforms safely assume is adequate, safe and relatable. A habit that adds yet another layer of dissonance between the audience and the artist, as we miss the latter intentions behind, for instance, the storytelling made by the track sequence in an album or nuanced references written in the lyrics.
“Glitch bass morning”, “Indie chill face melters Wednesday afternoon”, “Ambient fresh Tuesday evening”. Beyond setting AI-generated vibes for our productive routines, the LINA Library Musical Curation proposes a reflexive exercise where music itself is highlighted. It represents an initial conversation that invites us to recover and create a new and more wary relationship with musicians, their struggles and inspirations.
For the first Musical Curation session, I present a playlist with songs that resonate on a personal and sociopolitical level with the topics of Home, Cities,and Living Abroad. Some tracks were selected for their more introspective lyrics, playfully portraying contemporary issues of urban crisis. Others for making unexpected synergy and references to architectural features and the public space. Nevertheless, the reasons behind some of the picks are presented in a brief paragraph.
I hope that this starting playlist brings you reflections about how we can be more conscious, attentive to music and its ability to link fields of creativity. And, as importantly, I hope you have fun listening! Enjoy!
‘Little Boxes’ by Nara Leão
Leão’s Portuguese version of Malvina Reynolds’s “Little Boxes” (in Portuguese) adds an extra layer of disdain for the highly predictable lives projected for those inhabiting modernist cities. The Portuguese cover gives a clue of how much Brazil absorbed the ideal of North American Suburbia, influencing the collective imaginary of places we live in for decades.
‘So Typically Now’ by U.S. Girl
With a peculiar sense of humour, the U.S. Girls’ lead singer, Meghan Remy, creates what could be called the most Real Estate pop music ever. “So Typically Now” jokes about the upper-to-middle class’s despair of looking for a new home in New York City and moving to a distant neighbourhood during the COVID era. Unfortunately, the lyrics still resonate as powerfully as their disco beats, considering the housing crisis seems far from ending.
‘Sims 2’ by Coco & Clair Clair
Let’s agree that most Millennial architects and urban planners would likely be lying to you if they hadn’t had their future career epiphany after several hours of playing The Sims or Sim City. The Duo Coco & Clair Clair revives this nostalgic thrill by sampling the game’s theme into this incredibly familiar track.
‘Chocolate’ by Ana Frango Elétrico
Perhaps mirroring the delight of eating chocolate, Ana wonders about a romantic figure. The Brazilian singer is paradoxically soaked into thoughts about incertain futures while also submerged in a longing for a more hedonistic reality that never came into fruition, represented in the lyrics by the many empty and sunny apartment balconies in Rio.
‘Home to You’ by Cate Le Bon
Cate Le Bon challenges the notion of home, presenting it as a contested concept, a decade-later reencounter of old friends who become unfamiliar to each other. In ‘Home to You’ 2019’s video clip, the singer’s yearning vocals reverberate even deeper. Followed by the British director Phil Collins’ images of the Lunik IX, a disadvantaged neighbourhood in Košice, Slovakia, the lyrics depict the reality of a large Romanian community living under intense sociopolitical pressures.
‘A Ordem das Árvores’ by Tulipa Ruiz
In a reappropriation of human logic, Ruiz enlists an unusual take on the mathematical properties, completely reconfiguring the rules of nature and semantics. She depicts a beautiful and diverse forest where the order of animals and tree multiplication also does not affect the ecosystem’s products.
‘Sacro Bosso’ by Anna von Hausswolf
It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Anna von Hausswolf’s entire work complements, and depends on, architecture. Not because of the fun fact that she used to be an architecture student in Gothenburg, Sweden, but due to the main instrument used in the multidisciplinary artist’s catalogue. In Sacro Bosco, as in most of her creations, the musician teleports the listeners to a parallel, foggy territory thanks to the monumental cathedral and church organs. A kind of mutualism where there is a very ethereal line between the built environment, the instrument and the creative mind.