The Songs We Can't Escape

ANIMAL HOSPITAL
"Nostalgia" Like the feeling it's named after, "Nostalgia" is intense, incandescent, and fleeting. Keyboards vibe-vamp by like foot traffic viewed from a basement window; samples vehicular and oceanic breeze in and out of the peripheral ambiance. Soft-focus daydreams seize the mind's eye, then they're vapor.

THE-DREAM
"Sweat It Out" Paul Rudd's I Love You, Man character might be the epitome of the ideal boyfriend, but summer-jam singer/producer extraordinaire Dream? Like a consummate gentleman, he warns you—pre-intercourse, yet—that the love you're about to make will be so seismically insane that it'll tear your mane up. "Girl, call Atisha, your beautician/Cause your hair is gon' need fixin', yeahh," he coos, later offering to cover the beauty shop damage. Damn! Somewhere, Smoove B is mean-muggin' it.

courtesy of the artist

The-Dream

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More About

• Paul Rudd
• Rick James

MODERN MUSIC
"Sixteen Going on Seventeen" The joke is that this song isn't about car insurance, like, at all; it's about how men are pigs.

OPEN STAR CLUSTERS
"I Came on Too Strong for That Animal" Root around on their last.fm page and you'll find a cache of what sound like deranged Flying Saucer Attack vocal demos. "Animal," though, is waaay more hardcore punk primitive. What's that Rick James used to say? "Cocaine is a helluva drug."

WHITE SUNS
"Exposable Income"

These fellas probably just wanted to bust out a rampaging, post-Sightings noise bomb, but "Income" sums up the "fuck bonus-collecting financial-institution CEOs" zeitgeist rather well.