If you are in Phoenix, I hope you can make it to the 2025 Oh My Ears New Music Festival this weekend (March 28-30). I founded OME in 2014 wanting to find community and a place to listen and perform new and weird music. 11 years later – its still happening. This is OME’s 3rd Festival as an independant 501(c)3 nonprofit. So if you can’t make it, you can donate here to support our efforts.
This week’s playlist comes as a suggestion from my neighbor. She gave me a list of her favorite artists and asked for a playlist. Challenge accepted.
Here is the list:
So how to tie in some of the most prolific pop artists of our time and new/weird/experimental music? Let’s find out. One of the main challenges here will be mixing. Pop music albums are mixed to blast, “classical” albums are typically not. The next is song length. How do I make this playlist feel balanced since all the pop songs are probably going to shorter than their counterparts? And as much as I wanted to do a deep dive and find music parings that went with the pop artists backgrounds… its OME week and that’s not happening.
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I give this playlist a Difficult Listening Hour rating of ???/10.
1. Garden of Eden by Lady Gaga. Album: MAYHEM
2. Tan Te by Lao Luo performed by Gong Lianna and the Bang on a Can All Stars. Album: Cloud River Mountain
3. eternal sunshine by Ariana Grande. Album: Eternal Sunshine.
4. Cheating, Lying, Stealing by David Lang performed by the Bang on a Can All Stars. Album: Bang on a Can Classics.
5. Kaleidoscope by Chappell Roan. (Single release)
6. Black Sheep by My Brightest Diamond. (Single release)
7. her by JVKE. (single release)
8. Sciosophy by Graham Fitkin performed by Eleanor Alberga, Graham Fitkin, Shelagh Sutherland, and Errollyn Wallen. (Single Release)
9. Nessun Dorma by Giacomo Puccini performed and arranged by Babatunde Akinboboye. Album: Della Citta
10. The Lavender Song by Jinkx Monsoon. (Single release)
11. The Protest by Ray Angry. (Single release) NOTE: YouTube playlist has Music Mechanique #3 in place of The Protest