Max's Music Mondays with BABY BLEU & Ok Cowgirl
yeehaw this one is sweet.
Welcome to Max’s Music Mondays - a ~music discovery newsletter~ where I get too excited about songs I love. I hope you love them too. If you do, follow along on spotify and please be sure to absolute smash that damn subscribe button! tysm :)
How’s everyone’s Monday going? Good I hope! Actually, I hope it’s really good. Why not get a little greedy, eh? Listen, this thing has been finished all day… I just seem to be hitting a wall with this intro. So I am going to do what I do best and put music here instead of words. As a bonus, for my lack of earth shattering wisdom this morning, enjoy a few songs I’ve been loving but haven’t quite found their way into either newsletter. I hope that’s a fair trade.
^sometimes I forget about old MMM songs and then hear them again and lose my mind at how good they are.
Anyways, I won’t be forgetting about these any time soon, and am still very much losing my mind re: their high levels of being good.
This Week’s Songs
Please please follow along here ^^ for this week’s and every week’s songs. Scientists agree that all of these songs are incredible on their own and even better as a playlist.
Honey - BABY BLEU
An intoxicating ride. Hearing this for the first time, asking myself “wait who is this??” at least twice, even though I checked the first time… A sign of my bad memory, sure, but also a sign of me really liking this one. And I know you will too. The intro is half jazzy, half sun-rising-dew-sparkling-pond-in-the-clearing. A dreamy start. That sigh a palpable relief. Time warping, the rewind in action, showing us straight to the chorus. The 808s grab my attention, the first divergence from such a sweet picture. But they work so well - accentuating the softness not distracting from it. There’s something really cool happening with the background vocal & flute/brass/synth thing. The two lawyering and handing off melodies, creating more texture. It pulled me in trying to separate the two. A tension that continues to pull me through the whole song. The ah’s dotting the chorus with even more life. When we extend out into the verse, the 808s disappear, softening the moment again. It’s in the softness that BABY BLEU’s vocals shine. A dreamy tone, yearning for their lover. It feels gentle but the want is real, and it’s strong. The melody goes soaring up for the pre-chorus, BB taking the moment to push harder with that still dreamy tone. It’s a tender moment, a tender song to be honest, but one that lulls you into comfort just to smash you in the face with those 808s again. They add some edge and bolster everything BABY BLEU has to say. Letting the drums do the yelling. A quick bridge turns up the jazz again, those keys trying to hide but too beautiful to miss. A big sigh carries us back to the chorus and I gotta say the sighs are really winning me over. Such resignation about this love, every time you think about them you can’t help but be overcome. Hearts in the eyes like a dang cartoon. The message is clear throughout, and this song lives up to the sweet as honey lyric. The “so unfair” outro is a delight, a cheeky smile to wrap it all up. I’m just taken with this one! So many little moments elevate the whole thing, not only is it sweet and loving, but interesting and fun and shapeshifting and just well done. Heck of a debut for BABY BLEU.
Follow BABY BLEU on IG / Spotify
Across the Room - Ok Cowgirl
A band name for the ages, one I can’t see and not listen to. And a song that made listening very worthwhile. One I can’t hear and not want to write about. SO HERE WE ARE. Writing about it. It’s hard to resist, starts fast and pulled me in before I knew it. The vocals are rich, that little layer of fuzz giving them so much character. And the songwriting is fun too. It’s been a while since I’ve had a car, but easy to see yourself getting sucked in to a “is that…?” daydream and find yourself a few blocks off course. But DO NOT day dream right now, there’s too much good stuff to hear. A second guitar popping in, brightening the moment as it builds to that final heartbreaking lyric. Right when we’re set to soar, Ok Cowgirl reels it all in, a much more intimate move than expected. Drums building, eager to unleash again. But when they do, it’s this swaying sultry sound rather than the anthemic explosion I expected. It’s a great example of how I got lost in this tune. An incredible push and pull between the familiar and the unexpected. Take these swaying expanses as an example. The drums rattling off fast but Ok Cowgirl drawing each line out slowly and carefully, balancing the band’s urgency rather than relenting to it. Plus, we gotta mention how stunning the vocals are here, that flip in the melody across “see you in” is effortless in a Caroline Polachek kind of way. Dancing through their range with ease. Some maybe-too-recent memories are shared, summarized in a catchy me-and-youOuOu section. A second pass on everything starts with just guitar and drums. It all feels a little edgier, a little more angry. Especially when we get to the “see you in passing” again, there’s something real coming through. Some pain, some regret maybe, but emotion you can feel rising off of those vocals. Yet they’re still moving gracefully through the melody, it’s really a feat! When we get back to the me-and-youOuOu’s I’ve got my head rocking, just an irresistible groove. The vocals down the home stretch waver between the first and second half - moments of tenderness and moments of freaking-buzz-off-! that feel echoed in that guitars there as we close. Exploring some riffs, a little loving, a little tension, but even when it’s a little off, it’s still right. Can’t get enough of this one :)
Follow Ok Cowgirl on IG / Spotify
I hope you enjoyed these two as much as I have. More new faces this week, and I can’t thank y’all enough. If you did dig this week, last week, any of them really, please send to your friend who also likes music (not me, the other one). The more the merrier over here :)
As always - I’ll see you Friday with some new releases. But until then, if you need me, you know where to find me (in my room watching this video for the thousandth time).
Yours,
Max