Weekend Kickoff July 2016
Twenty-nine tracks for early July 2016, the summer-peak edition of the standing Friday rotation. The week before the Independence Day weekend, when the friend group’s calendar was about to get loud and the porch was already open every night. Built for the audience that, over a decade, had become the actual audience for these editions.
The Jayhawks anchor the alt-country and roots-rock bridge that ran through the year’s quieter rotation peaks. The band had released “Paging Mr. Proust” earlier that year — their best record in a decade — and the singles kept rotating through the alt-radio context. “Comeback Kids” specifically is the cut that the rotation needed for its slower-tempo moments, the kind of song that fits the post-dinner porch stretch when the music has to do the work of being unobtrusive.
Red Hot Chili Peppers “Dark Necessities” opens because the album cycle was at its peak that month. The band’s late-career catalog gets dismissed and the dismissal is wrong — “Dark Necessities” has the bassline of the year and Flea’s playing throughout is the reason the band still matters. Drake “Controlla” follows because the album had come out in April and the song was inescapable on the patio for the full summer.
Marian Hill “Got It” was the discovery of the year for the friend group. The Philadelphia duo’s electronic-pop minimalism is the kind of sound that doesn’t fit any obvious genre — somewhere between trip-hop, alt-pop, and chamber-electronic — and the song landed differently every time it played. One of the friends in the group chat sent the album with the message “this is the sound” and she was right.
The Jayhawks “Comeback Kids” is the structural anchor of the middle section. The track is unhurried, which is the entire point. The band has been around for thirty years and the album that year was their best in a decade. Kungs with Cookin’ On 3 Burners “This Girl” is the dance-pop-radio bridge — originally a Melbourne soul track from 2011, the Kungs remix turned it into the kind of summer-radio anthem that doesn’t usually survive into the post-summer rotation but did.
Destructo “Techno” was the wildcard from the EDM-festival side. The track has the kind of dirty-house production that the year’s mainstream rotation had moved away from, which is exactly why it sounded so good as a left-turn in the rotation. The friend in the group chat who handled the dance-floor recommendations had been pushing for Destructo for months and “Techno” was the cut that converted everyone else.
Jay Vilpin with Lavishly Nasty “Again” is the deep-cut placement that elevates the run past radio-friendly. Jay’s catalog is the kind of streaming-era discovery that nobody else in the friend group had heard of, and that became the running pattern — anytime we played a Jay Vilpin track at a gathering, somebody asked who it was, and that was the entire selling point.
The Strokes “OBLIVIUS” closes the front-half with the indie-rock-revival anchor. The band’s mid-2016 EP was the kind of release nobody quite expected and that landed harder than the year-end critics gave it credit for. “OBLIVIUS” specifically is the cut where the band sounds like they remember why they used to be the best NYC rock band of the decade.
The back half pulls toward the late-July singles — Frank Ocean’s “Blonde” was still a month away but “Endless” had dropped and the rotation was anticipating, Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” was at its peak rotation, James Blake’s “The Colour in Anything” was the deep-album-listen of the summer.
Twenty-nine tracks lands at about ninety minutes. The right length for a Friday-evening porch session that runs from dinner-prep through the post-dinner cleanup. Built for the standing tradition with friends who, over a decade, had become the actual audience for these. The July edition locked in the summer-peak rotation for the year. Texted the link out on a Friday afternoon and two of the friends had it queued before they left work. The metric I use.
The week before Independence Day was always the rotation’s last opportunity to set the year’s summer-rotation tone before the holiday-weekend distribution disrupted the standing Friday cadence. The July 2016 edition specifically locked in the year’s summer rotation in a way that subsequent editions just elaborated on rather than redefined.
