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BEST RECENT SONGS

SHE WAS A SPY, NOW SHE LOVES TO LISTEN TO POP

Eyewear, the blog loves to share news of great popular songs (tracks) so you can hear our playlist. We are on Spotify endlessly as we edit. We favour indie guitar bands, 80 revivalists, synth-pop, dream pop, and George Michael, as well as Ska and The Smiths. We are publishing Sarah Walk, whose work is super - but we won't list her here, as that might be considered cheating... check her out. No National, lcd soundsystem or Fleet Foxes here, or The War on Drugs, sorry.... they would all make a best of year's end Top 100, and may well do....

Here are 25 recent tracks that over the summer and last few weeks have wormed their way deep into our psyches.

1. 'Persistence' - Albin Lee Meldau
Hardly a household name, he should be. This is the sort of passionate throwback to CCR guitar rock too many hipsters have aimed for of late. He achieves something classic, catchy, and oddly poignant here.

2. 'Royal Highness' - Tom Grennan
This is pure rock pop, with a touch of Hall and Oates in the lyrics, and a little bit of Jake Bugg, and some garage rock swagger. It's a bit silly, but energetic and sort of delirously happy.

3. 'In Undertow' - Alvaays
Basically, the best dream pop band of recent time stamp, this is haunting, sad, sweet, and perfect break-up music - "there's no turning back after what was said" - classic Brexit sentiment too.

4. 'Spent The Day In Bed' - Morrissey
Britain's favourite UKIP supporter - a tragic misalignment of talent and thinking - starts his new  grumpy yet scarily catchy song with music you'd associate with Supertramp - noodling organ. Oh well - his Trumpian attack on the news that makes "you feel small and alone" is bizarrely linked to a day in bed to "do as I wish" - you can please yourself...

5. 'What Have We Done?' - OMD
No one wakes up from their bed and asks for more OMD. Yet they were the smartest of the synth-pop 80s hit-makers, and their new comeback album is very good. This may be a Brexit song, too. It opens with some 'O Superman' Laurie Anderson stuff, and gets haunting and wise.

6. 'Someday' - Pale Seas
The sort of song I love. Swooning indie guitar twangs, echo chambers, and gender-neutral vocals, and lyrics that Echo & The Bunymen would consider apt, this is thrillingly melodramatic alternative pop - " your echo leaves a scar" indeed. I want to go to a small seaside town with these lads and get drunk.

7. 'Coke ' - BLOXX
'She's the greatest at it' - another dream pop song with a wonderful vocalist, who may be a girl, or a boy - love that ambiguity. Like early Cranberries, it is sincere, twisted, sexy - does she do blow or blow do?

8. 'Fantasy' - George Michael, Nile Rodgers
Well, perverse as it is to raid a dead man's back catalogue or in this case, second-rate unrecorded sessions, no one is better, ever, than Nile Rodgers, at producing this stuff - not even Sir George Martin - another GM of genius.

9. 'Vin Mariani' - Baio
Who are these guys? They sound like ABC married Human League. So 80s you want to sue a decade or something, but really, well done. Just great pastiche.

10. 'To The Bone' - Steve Wilson
A man who wants to merge Talk Talk and Peter Gabriel rock with 21st century stylings - and includes those noises that sound like zoo animals that Talk Talk did so well - but also uses Rush Prog rock... well, what a song! Like the theme to an 80s cop show set in Cincinatti called Maddoxx.

11. 'Shade' - IAMDBB
'Uber uber everywhere.... ' compelling hip-hop with an eerie Numan sensibility, this is icy cool and seems to be lamenting a bad world making too much money - and suggesting Trump will lose in 2020...

12. 'Bike Dream' - Rostam
If you love Vampire Weekend, you will sort of like this song, which could be a throwaway from a few other Brooklyn bands, but is redeemed from being so quirky and sweet and screwy you fall in love. Neck-kissing and penguins, I think are mentioned.

13. 'Lion's Pride' - Trevor Sensor
Great name. Pipes that sound like a frog has swallowed a pack of Marlboros, washed down with The Pogues, this is singer-songwriting you will either adore or despise.

14. 'Hey' - Hey Charlie
Fancy a girl band like The Runaways doing a song that is a rip-off of Nirvana? Check. Want a song that is mindlessly sexy and snot-nosed? Check. Here it is, go entertain yourself.

15. 'Feels Like Heaven' - Ariel Pink
Sweet, nostalgic, The Smiths lite. I am in love again.

16. 'Millenial' - Sam Fender
If you thought Trevor Sensor is stridently singer-songwriter sincere, check this out. Either an ironic Cambridge jape, or the most achingly sincere yawp of the times, you choose - but it is unforgettable.

17. 'Liars' - The Ninth Wave
Some more great indie rock pop with new wave twangs.

18. 'Take Back Time' - Faux
Wow. The most 80s pop song on this list, which is a miracle. A resurrection of Prince and Kenny Loggins, who never worked together with Huey Lewis, except now.

19. 'Work It Out' - Tiggs Da Author
This may be a pseudonym. Who would have expected a rewrite and new version of 'Jerk It Out'? Great.

20. 'King Charles' - Yungblud
Crazy energy, ska and dance and hip-hop and all sorts of stuff mix up with baggy-trouser 90s indie Happy Mondays stuff - and it is funny.

21. 'Kill4Me' - Marilyn Manson
Egregious. Sick. Evil. Yes, but supremely well-made evil sick egregiousity. Most shocking song since, well, 'Great Balls of Fire'.

22. 'Nancy Drew' - Slotface
A riotous girl band punk stomper, so funny and zany and sweet, it makes you want to read those mystery books again.

23. 'Yuk Foo' - Wolf Alice
An even more riotous girl band punk stomper, making 'Husbands' by Savages sound quiet and sedate. Pretty much the most exciting song I have ever heard. I think she says she doesn't give a shit. Love this.

24. 'Roulette' - Katy Perry
This is sublime. No pop song has ever been more weaponised. Perry here becomes better than Swift, Madonna, Gaga, or Spears(though not Rihanna). Sexy - insane - violent. In some ways more twisted than Manson's track. "Everything in moderation, sometimes you gotta give in to temptation" - a celebration of Tinder sex... preposterously savvy. Kitsch at maximum stunning.

25. 'Don't Know Why' - Slowdive
We end with a sad, autumnal, shimmering dream-pop track of majesty and purpose.

Enjoy.

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