Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.
This week: here’s what Supergirl (2026), my Instagram algorithm, and my ongoing Britpop obsession dragged in.
Enjoy this week’s songs!
SUNDAY SONGS: 7/26/26
“Animal Nitrate” – The London Suede
Something about listening to early Suede makes me feel like an anthropologist. Every song I’ve heard off of their debut feels like finding a missing link in alternative music evolution, the point where British alt-rock branched off and evolved into Britpop in earnest. It’s cloaked in the power pop of the ’70s and the Smiths-like atmosphere of the ’80s, and yet it feels like the breaking point where the ’90s distinguished itself and became a whole new beast.
“Animal Nitrate” is one of my favorite Suede songs at this point—at their best, Brett Anderson and co. had an innate talent for crafting some of the most intoxicating British rock at the time. I remarked that “New Generation,” which came a few years after this album, sounded like fanfic set in David Bowie’s Hunger City; “Animal Nitrate” only fuels that flame. Awash in intoxication and seduction, “Animal Nitrate” glides along with razor-sharp guitar riffs from Bernard Butler and Anderson’s howl. The music video continues their quest of pushing the envelope as far as possible while maintaining their velvety, shocking aesthetic, but, yeah, the fact that Anderson admitted that the whole band consumed copious amount of cocaine in preparation for the video shoot explains…well, practically everything about that video. (“Fuck it, let’s spin this pig head around a bunch of times! Faster! FASTER!”) Yet it fits the slinky underworld of “Animal Nitrate” in all of its drugged-out splendor. But honestly? I feel like there’s no drug more powerful than the key change at the two-minute mark. WHEW.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Hammajang Luck – Makana Yamamoto – a soundtrack for the gritty—and grotty—cyberpunk underworld of this series.
For all of the heinous evils of the Instagram algorithm, the one credit I can give it is that it occasionally hacks up new music I might not have heard of otherwise. This one interrupted my scroll with an unusually catchy bassline, hooky enough to make me do a double take. By all accounts, Annika Rani is leading up to her debut album sometime in the future, and if “Blush” is the lead single, then it’s a great pick—it instantly snags you with its funky rhythm and Rani’s vocals. (That guitar/piano double hitter at the three-minute mark is especially addictive.)
Granted, there really isn’t a reason for this song to be over four and a half minutes long. It gets repetitive in sections, and I think it would benefit from being a minute or so shorter because it has the perfect bones for a catchy, three-minute indie-pop tune. Along with the music video, where Rani pouts in clownish makeup and tries to shake off too-small heels, “Blush” is an unfolding tale of going to the extreme trying to impress the person you’re attracted to, to no avail—all Rani ends up with is a smudged, messy face: “Blush on my cheeks starts to run/Damn, my mascara’s a river/It fills up and leaves me with none.” Despite a few snags, I’m glad that I stumbled upon “Blush”—it’s a catchy track full of angst and goopy makeup.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Margo Zimmerman Gets the Girl – Brianna R. Shrum and Sara Waxelbaum – “I know you pick the people who look like you/So I’ll try and put some blush on/I’ll dab it right up…”
Madeline can’t be normal about comic book movies, more at 6. Yes, I finally saw Supergirl last week, and while it was fun in places, there were so many decisions that hampered it. To keep things somewhat short, nothing about Tom King and Bilquis Evely’s Woman of Tomorrow—possibly the best comics treatment that Supergirl has gotten to date—was respected. Not Kara’s character arc, not the aesthetic of the comic, and certainly not the message. Don’t get me started on how they brutally botched their attempts to be feminist. (There was no need for Krem of the Yellow Hills to be a sex trafficker and to have all of those teen girls unnecessarily exploited for their trauma onscreen…it gets to a point. Jesus Christ. Just let a woman take the wheel, god.)
One of the lesser criticisms that I have is that it blatantly tried and failed to be Guardians of the Galaxy. But for the most part, it had some great needle drops, and that might be the only ray of light amidst the botched-ness of it all. There’s a great list of mainly women-led bands in the mix: Wolf Alice, Wet Leg, Rilo Kiley, and Modest Mouse all get their day in the sun. (Supergirl was basically reverse-engineered to include a fight scene set to “catch these fists.”) In the theater, it was killing me where I’d heard a certain song before—and then I realized that it was Hana Vu, who I’d discovered last year after seeing her open for Soccer Mommy! She’s not my favorite, but if there’s any positive impact that Supergirl has, I hope it gives Hana Vu a wider audience. She deserves it. “Care” plays during an appropriately angsty scene of Kara staring teenagerly out the window, and Vu, with her aching vocals and punchy indie-rock production, provided the ideal backdrop. On its own, “Care” pairs well with the emotional atmosphere of Romanticism, with its crunching guitars. Vu truly has a powerful voice, and it only positively propels her perspective of love gone down the drain.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Forever Is Now – Mariama J. Lockington – “Oh, hold me now/When I open my mouth/It just screams ‘why?’/And oh, I don’t know/I just hope that someday I’ll be fine…”
What a wonderful, talented pop star…it’s such a shame that she never made anything after 1998 and never expressed any questionable views about vaccines…what a shame…[cough cough]
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Like a Love Story – Abdi Nazemian – it’s in the title…very much a love letter to queer resilience, the ’80s, and Madonna, of course.
“Rock ‘N’ Roll With Me” – David Bowie
Diamond Dogs is the gift that keeps on giving. It’s been regularly on my rotation ever since I got a copy on vinyl back in June (because pride is all about self-love and self-care and supporting queer artistry…so I bought some Bowie on vinyl). At the moment, it’s still in my top 5 Bowie albums—even the weak links are darkly theatrical romps through the twisted, dystopian world that he weaves. Interspersed between them are songs like “Rebel Rebel,” which Bowie called his “goodbye to glam rock”—and what an enduring goodbye it was. Both this track and “Rebel Rebel” were holdovers from the Ziggy Stardust era, and it shows. There’s a lot of ballad-ing going on in Diamond Dogs, what with the thematic through-line of forbidden love in the face of a totalitarian government; “Rock ‘N’ Roll With Me” is the most Ballad of the ballads to me, more of a traditional rocker. And yet it holds some of the same emotive yearning as “Sweet Thing,” though it sounds more like a drunk serenade than the former’s heartstring-tearing plea.
This was the tip of the iceberg in terms of Bowie’s experimentation. He was a master of musically pushing boundaries, and Diamond Dogs was far from his first attempt at worldbuilding and concept albums—and it would be far from his last. And yet, “Rock ‘N’ Roll With Me,” despite being on the simpler side shows that he could bring that same charm to more stylistically straightforward songs. Like with Let’s Dance, he could make even the most ordinary formats into something exuberant and fresh, which is exactly why “Rock ‘N’ Roll With Me” endures to me.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
You Sexy Thing – Cat Rambo – “When you rock ‘n’ roll with me/No one else I’d rather be/Nobody here can do it for me/I’m in tears…”
Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.
That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
The Bookish Mutant 