Track of the Week

 This week I wanted to talk about a track which has been on my radar for a long time, but I never loved it quite as much as I have recently. It’s no secret that I’m a Julien Baker fan, I first found out about her music through her work as a third of Boygenius on their first EP and since then I’ve been a religious listener of her solo stuff whenever I’m in the right mood. 

Until the past few weeks, though, I had never really become attached to her music in the same way I had to Lucy’s and Phoebe’s, but through regular listening I’ve now come to appreciate her albums for the art that they are, especially ‘Sprained Ankle’, which gave us this week’s track of the week ‘Good News’. Accompanied by heavily strummed guitar chords, Julien’s smooth yet gritty vocal timbre puts across the message of this track so effectively. Towards the end, harmonies are introduced adding to the bleak beauty of a song which is raw almost to a fault and feels a bit like a gut punch. 

Lyrically, it tells the story of Julien’s personal struggles with addiction and mental health candidly (‘I’m trying really hard to keep my nose clean / The blue out of my arms’). Her writing is just stunning, but my absolute favourite lyric coincides with my favourite moment in the song when the harmonies are first introduced like a sudden drop on a rollercoaster ‘When what you think of me is important / And I know it shouldn’t be so damn important / But it is to me’. With a line that, without any fancy stuff, tells it like it is, Julien manages to provide an insight that is as real as it is painful. 

So, if you’re a fan of music that makes you feel something, you should definitely listen to ‘Good News’.