Melody
11 tracks.
One phrase is answered by another: a lead voice and a choir, a vocal and an instrument. It comes from African and African-American traditions and runs through gospel, soul, funk and house.
Read more on WikipediaA guest performer credited on another artist's track, usually as "feat.": a rapper's verse, a singer's hook or a second voice. Features bring together different styles and audiences and are central to hip-hop, R&B and dance music.
The African-American music born in the Deep South around the start of the 20th century, built on call and response, bent "blue" notes and short repeating forms such as the twelve-bar blues. Almost every later popular style, from rock and soul to house, carries some of its scales and phrasing.
The short, memorable idea a song is built to stick with you: a sung phrase, a riff, a synth line. A hook is designed for repetition and usually arrives early.
Two or more voices singing different notes at the same time, so that together they sound a chord. Stacked harmonies make a chorus feel wider and warmer.
theAngelcy
Plucked strings, a chorus of voices and Rotem Bar Or's raw tenor make this Tel Aviv folk song feel like a lullaby sung in a dark, uneasy time.
The Supermen Lovers, Herr Styler, Cristine
A flirtatious slice of French pop-funk house from Guillaume Atlan's project, two voices trading lines over a springy bassline until the title becomes a shrugging, grinning verdict on the night.
Joss Stone
A teenage Joss Stone leans into a lilting, reggae-kissed soul groove and sings about wanting less with the husky authority of a singer twice her age.
Mickey Avalon
A darkly comic outlaw ballad from Mickey Avalon's 2020 album Speak of the Devil, produced by Eli Meltzer as Smoov-E: two small-town boys, a shovel and a getaway, over a jangly guitar and a refrain that nothing in this world is free.
IDLES
IDLES' song about the cycle of alcoholism passed from mother to son, from their 2021 album Crawler: a menacing one-note riff, heavy chords and Joe Talbot howling a gospel-preacher call, here in a live KEXP session.
The xx
'Crystalised', The xx's 2009 debut single, is minimal indie pop at its most intimate: a muted guitar riff, a sparse beat by Jamie xx, and two voices, Romy Madley Croft's and Oliver Sim's, answering each other verse by verse.
Groove Armada
Groove Armada's 2001 single fuses house with dancehall, reggae and dub over a speed-garage bassline, with MC M.A.D. on vocals and a live horn section; a UK number 12 and a 2003 Grammy nominee.
Louie Austen
'One Night In Rio' by Louie Austen is a tongue-in-cheek electro-lounge story from 2001: a Viennese hotel-bar crooner, then in his fifties, counting off a tour from Rio to LA to Moscow and complaining about a taxi, with backing singers echoing every line.
Lipka
A Geneva duo stops the party to break the worst possible news: a wry, shout-along electro-indie track in which the DJ is told to cut the music because the beer is running out.
