These LITM Pop Picks are upbeat, expansive, and emotional; featuring Celeste Marie Wilson, PROJECT MEG, Shelita, and more!
1. Celeste Marie Wilson – Ever Wanted
On Ever Wanted, Celeste Marie Wilson throws you back to high school within seconds – it takes you back to the feeling of falling in love for the first time, not knowing how to take the first step, hoping they will instead. With its drums that linger in the background, setting an upbeat tempo, and guitar riffs that flow with energy, the instrumental arrangement lays the perfect foundation for Wilson’s vocals that rise and fall with the story’s arc. The accompanying music video pushes you further into the headspace of being 16 again, making this the perfect song for a nostalgic journey!
2. PROJECT MEG – force quit
force quit, the latest track from PROJECT MEG, is a synth-filled dream. Its catchy melody and bright sound weave around the darker lyrics (“I was there at the start, I gave you all my blood and sweat / Remember I have a heart, it's weighing heavy with regret / Rip out all my pages, will you rewrite my parts?”, Meg Mash sings with emotion weighing heavy in her vocal delivery), creating a contrast that keeps pushing and pulling, making for an interesting listen. It’s raw and cathartic, like the moment when everything building inside of you explodes, and in this case, explodes in a way that keeps you coming back for more.
3. Shelita – Sailors
Filled with reverb and Shelita’s strong vocals, Sailors is a powerful navigation through rising seas of emotions. With its undercurrent of highly danceable beats clashing with the raw vulnerability (in the most beautiful way), the song leans into dynamism, making it catchy as can be. It blends ethereal vocals with expansive production, creating an atmosphere that’s at once cinematic, intimate, and self-assured. It’s packed with intricacies and nuances that reveal themselves to you the more you listen, putting her in the driver’s seat as she lets the song unfold with ease, constantly moving forward without any urgency to finish. Listen here!
4. Allison’s Invention – Over It
Beginning with a synth that feels wrong – like it’s supposed to sound bright, but it’s gone bad, and so only sounds sinister – Allison’s Invention immediately sets a tense tone for Over It. A song about deciding not to care about the people who can’t seem to do the work it takes to deserve you, it’s filled with the suppressed rage, bitterness, and confusion that comes with realising that no one’s willing to step up when it matters most. Building up towards an expansive, triumphant flourish, the song takes you through the same emotional arcs of acceptance, defiance, and reclamation that it speaks of. Check it out here!
5. Tahani –17
Tahani perfectly understands the feeling of being 17 and lost: the feeling of slowly finding out that the world is bigger and more complicated than you could ever imagine, the creeping feeling that you’re missing out on what everyone else is doing. On 17, she takes back, hurtling, to that space of learning that things may sometimes suck, but the only thing that’ll keep you going is remembering the feeling of going “back to the time when I was carefree, when all I wanted was to have fun / dancing through the night, sneaking home by the dawn,” as Tahani puts it. Listen to it here!
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