1.  "Possibility," Lykke Li

A suspended haunting, an aching, because what's not to want at the turning of a new year? For white shoes to remain white all year, less plastic in the bellies of the fish we catch, access to hike trails behind high-end residences, maybe unearthing more Okinawan sweet potatoes in the next round, maybe less violence and victims of war. It's possible, right? And I could dream-wake with you, and you'd forgive me sooner than later. Outside my door, the grass here carries so much blue and chalky ochre.

[Shareen K. Murayama]



2. "Candy Says," The Velvet Underground

We don't know that the apple has to be fresh, who even has a fresh apple when they're 19?, and it collapses when we screw into it with the butter knife. We end up sucking in chunks of fruit. Christmas lights are strung through the living room so everything is colorful and we are laughing and coughing and dancing around the rotten weed apple like a maypole when they push me onto the couch and strap me to these big headphones. "Have you ever heard this," they go, only they aren't they yet, and that girl with the headphones isn't me yet, no one is anyone yet, except for Lou Reed, who is definitely Lou Reed because he is singing straight into my brain. Dooooo, doo-doo-wahhhh. Jesus Christ, where have all the headphone jacks gone? I am 30 and looking for a place to plug in my big headphones because I need to tap back into the feeling. At a failure to find a device, I plug them straight into my friend, right into the center of their chest, and now I have won because we are tethered forever, and we don't ever have to be 19 again.

[Hannah Smothers]



3. "Truth Nugget," Helena Deland

Out of the discordant funk we find ourselves lulled, cajoled by the beat, the hook, invited like the heart warming itself by the working oven. Everything sizzling on its way to a winter soup, or a soup to be eaten in winter. Earlier, walking down the middle of a dark street, cold faded by the third, fourth block, dog pulling at her leash, the intimacy of the headphone's whisper, and we might be young again, the cold night ambering us for at least a little while. That much.

[Rebecca Bernard]



4. "My Boo," Ghost Town DJs

"My Boo," the only single by Ghost Town DJs, swims with ghosts. According to producer Lil Jon, Ghost Town DJs "Wasn't like a real group... We never did another record." The lead vocalist, Virgo Williams, stepped in when the original lead could not sing her part. The lyrics are conditional statements ("If your game is on, give me a call boo /If your lovin's strong, gonna give my all to you"), sleepless fantasies ("At night, I think of you / I want, to be your lady, maybe"), limerent surveillance ("I've been watching you"), and straight-up projection ("Boy you've got all I need / From what I see")—it's never clear whether the song's protagonist has met, much less talked to, the object of her obsession. It's not quite "Every Breath You Take," but it's a bit creepy. Recently, on the Boston Celtics Discord, I saw a clip of teenage Payton Pritchard, the Celtics' most uncanny player (his smooth mannequin face forever frozen in mild surprise), dancing the "Running Man Challenge" to "My Boo" next to his open refrigerator. You, too, can see Payton's "My Boo" clip on X, the ghost of Twitter.

[Joe Aguilar]



5. "Harvey," Alex G

It's January in Philadelphia, and there's not a coat to be seen in the crowd, just a sea of bare arms, all facing the band like believers, and if you're lucky you get an okay spot, and the congregational swarm heaves all night until eventually you find yourself at the front with a bunch of people you don't know, but also, on some level, know very well, a kind of metaphorical door opened in each of you, and inside isn't your corporate email signature, or your mortgage statement, or the recap of the summit in Dallas, but your parents, and the old dog, and the house with yellow walls, and a single, shoutable lyric, something the whole room can sing together, something that was written especially for the coatless people who are in this room on this night, something like: "Run my hands through his short black hair, I love you Harvey, I don't care. . ." 

[Natalie Warther]



6. "Bluer Than Blue," Lil Hardin Armstrong

This is the song of my winter, and now it will be the song of yours. I hope you still listen to it many years from now and wonder how you ever found it. We're the same this way. The song was passed to me from someone else, too. The internet can echo a feeling across countries and time and now here we are—something like and not at all like together. Whoever had it playing on their social media post when first I heard it will someday be a stranger. You're a stranger now. Lil Hardin Armstrong was a stranger then. But we can all share something that feels like the truth for three minutes and eleven seconds. Is that long enough to last a winter? If you have an answer, I'll never know it. We shouldn't want it any other way.

[Adam Peterson]



7. "Pillow Talk," Sylvia

When I was 11, I couldn't sleep nights. Couldn't stop my brain, couldn't keep my heart from doing heart things. All that wondering, all that wishing. Doctor gave me something for it, the not-sleeping. Don't remember what it was—sleep medicine, we called it. Took it every night. It helped sometimes, helped with the swirl, helped with the sinking. So did thinking about the songs of the day, songs that ran on a reel-to-reel in my worried-blues mind. Songs like "Pillow Talk" by Sylvia. That slinky chirp of a guitar. Those layback strings. Sylvia's humor and chutzpah. Her voice. That different kind of can't-stop-my-brain I imagined would accompany it. That different kind of can't-keep-my-heart—a flitting heart, a flirty one, a ferocious one. This heart, Sylvia's, so new to me then, felt perfect, it felt like maybe. It felt like next. It was medicinal. As I wonder and wish and wait for what's next in the shudder and chill of this December night, Sylvia's voice feels 143 shades of perfect. Feels "what your friends all say is fine but it can't compete with this pillow talk of mine" perfect. I mean, that outro.

[Pat Foran]



8. "New York Transit Queen," Corinne Bailey Rae

You may know Corinne Bailey Rae for "Put Your Records On," which pairs singer-songwriter intimacy with easy R&B. That song was a hit in '06, when Bailey Rae was twenty-seven. My pick for the Solstice list is this new song of hers, "New York Transit Queen." This new song is pretty unexpected. I could write a song about this song. If you're out walking on a winter night, and there's a moon, and it's the kind of cold that seems both vast and immediate, calling up whatever gods you have, you might get an unpracticed glimpse of yourself. Feel the force in that.

[Scott Garson]



9. "I Know," Fiona Apple

Senior year of college. Fiona Apple's When the Pawn on repeat. 1999/2000. Chain-smoking and full of violent thoughts about myself. Binge-drinking but it should have been therapy and forgiveness. Beyond all that, I needed one last elective for my advertising degree. I picked a writing class with an open seat. One night, this guy Ben goes, "Oh my god, you cut off all your hair. I love it." Ben and I started seeing each other. He said he only smoked when he wanted to be bad, and that he only smoked with me. Bars, parties, one strip club where I went looking for the bathroom but ended up in the dancers' changing room. I told the girls I was with a guy, and I was lost. Then, Ben had a move date. East coast. Law school. His real life. We were in the parking lot of my apartment complex in the dark. I said, I know you're moving but I feel—he said if we were different people under different circumstances maybe he could see us going somewhere but—I said stop, I know, and I understand but I was lying.  

[Stephanie Austin]



10. "Anytime Anywhere," Milet

Maybe there's something going around compelling the family to talk about their deaths like they're rinsing rice (a step that Dad and I skip—yes, savages). Mom is convinced she needs to send me all her passwords and figure out how to leave behind money without the government eating into it. She's bouncing back and forth across the Pacific ocean to tend to her parents—Grandpa who is recovering from stomach surgery and surviving off pigeon soup and Grandma who might nag Grandpa into his grave first. At least we'll last for a while, I'm thinking. And then Husband goes something like, "ah yes, I'll statistically die earlier since I'm taller, drink alcohol, and fret out about work and money all the time." He bought these GABA, L-Theanine, lemon balm gummies to deal with stress, lest I end up too long-lived without him.

[Lucy Zhang]



11. "Life in a Scotch Sitting Room 2, Ep. 11," Ivor Cutler

I listen to this song when I'm walking around the shores and forest paths of Loch Ness and especially when I'm feeling homesick for America. Listening to Cutler, and this song in particular, makes me happy to be living in Scotland. My friend Cooper introduced me to Cutler's music, which are really little flash fictions, and recently I found out that the Beatles loved him. This particular song feels like it's about my own life even though it couldn't be. It's the way he tells it, the warmth and intimacy of tone, and the nostalgic sound of the music, which makes me feel like I'm drifting over a shared childhood. There's a lot of joy in this story, yet it always makes me sad. I love Cutler's voice, and the way it makes me feel like I'm sitting next to him, by a fireplace.

[Meg Pokrass]



12. "'81," Joanna Newsom

Last June I listened to this song in a rose garden in Vienna at dusk. My life was a horrible metaphor. I was coming into my own. Found it again in December, in the credits of the movie The Adults, with Michael Cera, coming into his own. My boyfriend was in a different hemisphere. I was applying for jobs and forgiving my childhood self. In college, I wrote a paper arguing that every story is a coming-of-age story. My professor said maybe, Chloe, but that doesn't really answer the prompt.

[Chloe Alberta]



13. "Road to Nowhere," Talking Heads

The road to nowhere is a two-lane highway somewhere outside Bakersfield or Nogales or Las Cruces. The road to nowhere is paved with compacted gravel and missed opportunities. Your radio oozes music through the static, Johnny Cash and Wanda Jackson and Rancheras. Your windshield is pockmarked with bugs and regret, and the headlights in your rearview mirror are gaining ground. The road to nowhere is lined will screaming billboards, lawyers and Jesus and gun shows. All promising to save you. Call now! 
 
The traffic going the other way is the road to somewhere and the cars are lined up like marching ants. Their radios are crystal clear and play top 40 hits on repeat. The traffic going the other way is the road to somewhere, and the signposts tell them where to turn, and the drivers tap their thumbs in sync to the beat, and their headlights shine bright like diamonds and predictability, and they blind you as they pass. 
 
But the road to nowhere is has no speed limit, so press hard on the pedal and pick me up at the Gas n Go. I'll be the one waiting with armfuls of beef jerky and cherry soda and endless hope, and I'll get in and we'll take that ride to nowhere and it'll be all right.  


[Eric Scot Tryon]

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