Yes to a slow dance: “Afterglow”, Ed Sheeran – My partner’s favorite thing to do is get drunk and say “let’s just jam.” Jamming is what he calls putting on sadboi music as loud as possible and swaying back and forth, oftentimes by himself. This NYE as we sit at home there will no doubt be another call for jamming and Ed Sheeran is the only artist he and I can really agree on, our tastes are very different as he has actual music taste and I do not. Afterglow perfectly employs Sheeran’s ghost-on-an-English-cliff voice and none of his white guy rapper special sauce. I really can’t ask for more. —Shannon Melero
I mean, yes, if you’re feeling nostalgic: Death Cab for Cutie, “The New Year” – When I was a tweenager living in Germany, I romanticized returning to the U.S. and becoming involved in an American music scene. (Retrospectively, I was an entitled brat who gleaned so much more insight and curiosity about the world from living overseas, but that tidbit isn’t totally relevant to this contribution.) I would start all New Years’ Eves alone, hiding from my family and friends in the living room, listening to Death Cab for Cutie’s “The New Year,” allowing it to transport me into the new year. It still sounds lonely and hopeful to me—obsessed with distance, punctuated by percussion like fireworks—ideal who those who want to dance to a Coldplay-style pop-rock epic without, you know, listening to Coldplay. (For the record, Coldplay has a lot of hits, and I love them dearly, but DCFC has more street cred… somehow.) —Maria Sherman
I mean, yes, if you’re feeling nostalgic: Death Cab for Cutie, “The New Year” – When I was a tweenager living in Germany, I romanticized returning to the U.S. and becoming involved in an American music scene. (Retrospectively, I was an entitled brat who gleaned so much more insight and curiosity about the world from living overseas, but that tidbit isn’t totally relevant to this contribution.) I would start all New Years’ Eves alone, hiding from my family and friends in the living room, listening to Death Cab for Cutie’s “The New Year,” allowing it to transport me into the new year. It still sounds lonely and hopeful to me—obsessed with distance, punctuated by percussion like fireworks—ideal who those who want to dance to a Coldplay-style pop-rock epic without, you know, listening to Coldplay. (For the record, Coldplay has a lot of hits, and I love them dearly, but DCFC has more street cred… somehow.) —Maria Sherman
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