Chris Lawhorn, the resident DJ at Marie Claire and Real Age, reviews 300-400 singles every month, trying to find the best new music for a workout. Every week, he’ll be posting an indie-centric playlist for MAGNET readers. To vote on upcoming tracks, hear this month’s contenders and find more resources for matching songs to the pace of your exercise routine, you can visit his workout music site.
This week’s workout playlist is really just an excuse for me to write about one of my favorite Carly Simon songs. My exposure, until a few years ago, to Carly was limited to Bond themes and songs that may or may not have been about Mick Jagger. But my old roommate had her boxed set. So, I borrowed it, and as it turns out, she’s crazy. Not crazy like Kool Keith, but more like the way Shakira describes herself as “Loca” in her new single with Dizzee Rascal. Namely, she’s really just quirky.
There’s lots of proof for this argument: A song about a diplomat who can’t get over her (“Halfway ‘Round The World”). A song addressing her dead mother, wherein one of them begins to love the other like a river (“Like A River”). There are so many examples I’d like to use here, but the best for a workout is “All I Want Is You.” It’s a song about wanting some “Mack truck loving,” not a “man who tiptoes up the stairs.” Over a beat that could have come from the Mannequin soundtrack, Carly makes it clear that she doesn’t care what the neighbors think of “the sexy hurricane that we share.”
To that end, her craziness is usually limited to curious ways of expressing fairly ordinary feelings. I’m a sucker for all that. If you’re in the same camp, I’ve put together a handful of tracks with the same tempo (128 BPM), around which you can build a workout.
1. Carly Simon “All I Want Is You”
2. Junior Senior “Together For One Last Dance”
3. Michel Cleis “La Mezcla”
4. Sia “The Girl You Lost To Cocaine (Stonebridge Edit)”
5. Empire Of The Sun “Standing On The Shore”
With a delicate band name befitting a group of 19th-century Romantic poets and a harmony-driven sound that channeled the British Invasion 25 years earlier, the Seattle-based Posies were a clear change of musical direction from the flannel-flying sturm und drang of the days when grunge ruled the roost. The final verdict on whether they should be tarred with the brush of power pop may not be rendered until all parties are resting peacefully in “a fine and private place.” But the backbone of the Posies, Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow, caring little for such matters, are back on the scene, creating new music as thrilling as ever. The band just released Blood/Candy (Rykodisc) and is kicking off a North American co-headlining tour with Brendan Benson on November 5 in Milwaukee. Download album track “The Glitter Prize” below.
