Playlist: 2026.6 | In search of Something Real

And just like that, summer has arrived. Santa Fe had fits and starts in April and May, signs that warmer weather, time in the sun, afternoons at some pool somewhere, were just around the corner, but it never quite made it. And then, at the very end of May, arriving with the Blue Moon: summer, fully formed and unapologetic. And with it, for me, came mornings in the garden with an explosion of roses, a desire to get outside and revel in it, to celebrate.

The title is not a complaint about the times, though you could read it that way. It is a description of what we find ourselves reaching for: music that does not perform sincerity but simply has it, the way a well-made coat has weight before you ever put it on. We start with Ezra Collective and Yazmin Lacey because joy, when it is unforced, is the most serious thing a record can offer, and God Gave Me Feet For Dancing makes no apology for it. From there the playlist goes looking for the genuine article.

It wanders, deliberately. There is the melancholy of Frank Ocean and the restlessness of Lykke Li, and then it slips somewhere warmer: DJ Cam’s Paris with Anggun gliding over it, The Main Ingredient’s Summer Breeze, the kind of soul music I have never stopped trusting. Prince is here, because Prince is always the answer. Then the geography keeps moving, Quantic’s borderless funk, Ckay out of Lagos, Maribou State and Holly Walker holding the floor at that blue hour when a night decides what it wants to be. The thread is never genre. It is conviction, the sense that each of these people meant it.

It closes the way the search tends to close, quietly: Chet Faker, Hot Chip dancing in the dark, and finally Imogen Heap alone with Hide and Seek, which is about as close to the unguarded center of a person as a song gets. That is the real thing we were after all month. Not polish, not mood for its own sake, but the moment the artifice drops and you are simply somewhere true. Play it loud, play it late, and let it find its own way.

—Christopher Webster

Track List

• God Gave Me Feet For Dancing
  Ezra Collective, YazinLacey
• Lost
  Frank Ocean
• I Follow Rivers
  Lykke Li
• Sunrise
  Dublon, Dana Williams, jev.                                     
• I Wanna Be Your Lover
  Prince
• Summer in Paris (Starring Anggun)
  DJ Cam                 
• Summer Breeze
  The Main Ingredient
• Earrings
  Malcom Todd
• Time Is the Enemy
  Quantic
• Teardrops
  Neil Frances
• Darling
  Esbe
• Viscus (feat. FKA twigs)
  Oklou, FKA twigs
• By Now
  Ckay
• Midas
  Maribou State, Holly Walker
• Over You
  Chet Faker
• Dancing In the Dark
  Hot Chip
• Hide and Seek
  Imogen Heap