Lyrically Literal

What’s up music muser,

It’s me again with a new mixtape — lately I’ve been cleaning up my playlist folders, and I’ve quite enjoyed attaching the right songs to the right playlists. As a music thought daughter and mindful collector, this is a very important life decision. 😂

Anyway, here’s a glimpse of some tracks from my more literal playlists grouped by the whats, and wheres. They might all share something in common, but their respective sounds say otherwise. To quote a famous Singlish slang: Same same, but different.

How do you sort your own playlists? I’d love to hear how you organise your music inspirations 😊

Have a great week,

Val ♫

(P.S If you are reading this in your email, please click “Read Online” at the top-right corner next to the date for a better reading experience!)

In this week's setlist:

• 🗓️ Monthly Picks

• 🎨 What’s Your Favourite Tertiary Colour?

• 📍 Note-able Landmarks

• 🎶 New Music This Week

🗓️ Monthly Picks

While "December" is probably the most popular month singers write about (I’m looking at you, Taylor Swift and Anson Seabra), there’s a lot more out there when it comes to music inspired by the months of the year.

Here are some months that deserve a little more love:

• January by Disclosure and Jamie Woon

• June by Chris Lanzon and Eluera

• September by James Arthur

• November by Satrio Pamungkas

🎨 What’s Your Favourite Tertiary Colour?

If you’ve seen or did those 100-day music challenges on social media, you would have seen one challenge asking you to share a song with a colour in the title.

Let’s take it up a notch, shall we? Here are some song titles named after colours you don't hear every day:

• Magenta by WILLIS

• Cerulean by Maths Time Joy

• indigo by Days to Waste

• Vermilion by WENDY

📍 Note-able Landmarks

Move over, Vienna and New York — cities like Budapest and Tokyo have made their way into the global music map, and into our hearts.

Looking for new places to travel? Explore these tracks:

• Queenstown by Passenger (based on Queenstown, New Zealand)

• TOSCANA by Cardellino (based on Tuscany, Italy)

• MARSEILLE by Ashley Iman (based on Marseille, France)

• Istanbul by Kowen (based on Istanbul, Turkey)

🎶 New Music This Week

Lovers in Seoul by off the menu: I’m not synesthetic, but I can picture pink and purple skies when I listen to this song. Really loving the synth keyboard on this one — it adds just the right amount of pizzazz.

The Crying Scene by Aztec Camera: Keep your head up and go with the flow with this pop rock track. It sounds just like every soundtrack I’ve heard from a coming-of-age '90s film.

他没有骗你 by Zhang Bichen: Still keeping up with the news about the mass migration of Americans to the China-based app Red Note (小红书)? Impress your Chinese spy by listening to this emotive track.

(For non-Chinese speakers, the title translates to “He didn’t lie to you”.)

Inspired by this week’s music picks?

Don’t miss out on future music discoveries — be the first to get weekly finds and recommendations straight to your inbox.