For this month’s additions to the playlist, we’re obviously going to focus on a couple of love songs since we are in the month of love and this will post on Valentine’s Day. Strangely, that made these selections both the easiest and trickiest ones to choose.
Johnny Blue Skies (Sturgill Simpson) – Right Kind Of Dream
My favorite song from my favorite album of 2024, Passage Du Desir, “Right Kind Of Dream” sounds like a song that could have existed for fifty years. With a simple piano lead and a driving bass, Simpson bares his soul for a raw, heart wrenching five minutes. By the end of the song, your heartstrings are playing along with the violins as the hook repeats over and over.
They say joy is fleeting and pain is forever. How I wish happiness left scars too. Just like you do.
Ruston Kelly – Mockingbird
“Mockingbird” was the first song off of Kelly’s incredible 2018 debut album, Dying Star, that hit a high note with me the moment I fits heard it. On an album filled with tales of heartbreak, regret, addiction, and yet somehow summoning the will to live to see it through, “Mockingbird” is a harmonica-filled ride that conjures Kelly’s imagined Johnny Cash to accompany the Parker Posey-like love interest to share a love that’s probably too doomed to continue. While not directly inspired to his relationship at the time, the song sadly mirrored Kelly’s personal life as a few short years later as his marriage to singer Kacey Musgraves ended.
Both songs share the sentiment of the unsexy side of love. Whether it’s Sturgill’s laying his heart like a doormat to be walked upon, or Ruston’s confirmation that the little moments “wasn’t much, just everything”, it’s often the minor details one discovers that make you fall in love again or send you back in a web of tear-filled nostalgia. Happy Valentines!
I love both these songs so much. Maybe you will as well. Check back next month for new songs!
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