Sweater Weather
Maybe you’ve seen a leaf change color and fall lazily toward the ground. Maybe you’ve noticed yourself wearing in your favorite sweatshirt again. Can you smell the pumpkins yet?
It’s officially mid-November; we’re on the cusp of fall, crisp air and everything spooky. (If you’re in that part of the world, at least.) To celebrate the change of weather and reappearance of sleeves, I’ve been adding songs over the past few years to a curated playlist of my favorite cold-day jams. You can tap on the button below to find the Spotify Playlist, with a rundown of a few select tracks (title then artist) to follow.
Stuck with Me - The Neighbourhood
The Neighbourhood are known for their slick beats, dreamy vocals and overall mastering of the moody vibe. Nearly all of their discography is perfect for fall/winter listening—their most popular track is literally named “Sweater Weather.” I rest my case.
“Stuck with Me” is the closer of their most recent, self-titled album. This track feels like a cool, smooth surface gliding across your ears in some kind of indifferent, slicked-back storm. It’s electric, slowly building and brewing while only visible from a distance. You’re in a bus, pressed against the foggy window as you speed down the dark countryside. If you wipe your hands against the cold glass, you can make out the skittering flashes in the distant sky. You can feel the power building in black and white, and as you get closer you can hear the synths cry among the gleams of light. That is this song.
Winterbreak - MUNA
There’s something about the way MUNA delivers lyrics. It’s somewhere between the Robyn effect—joy and heartbreak, togetherness and loneliness—and the lyrical specificity of Lorde. The rising electro-pop trio, made up of Katie Gavin, Josette Maskin, and Naomi McPherson, manage to produce with the air of a cold front but sing with the warmth fierceness of a movement. It’s a particularly cold track, complete with skittering hi-hats, icy bass beats and careful lyrics:
“Oh it's magnetic, isn't it?
The sense of something underneath the surface
When you're laying on thin ice”
You can dance to it as you walk home bundled in a coat. You can shed tears to the lyrics from under your covers in bed. It feels a lot like snowfall—delicate, quiet, beautiful. With the opportunity to burst into a snowball fight or send chills down your spine in the silence of it all.
Halcyon - Ellie Goulding
Some songs have a heartbeat. This deep cut from Ellie Goulding’s second album, Halcyon, has an insistent one, and quietly demands that you listen to it. The entire album builds itself up like a perfected dark-pop dream, one where Goulding sings longingly and lyrically from atop a rock near the sea, waves crashing all around her. It’s quite the pop effort, with other great fall tracks worth checking out like “My Blood” and “Joy,” two masterful works that ebb and flow perfectly with the subtle strength in Goulding’s voice.
Elizabeth Taylor (Atu Remix) - Clare Macguire
What’s fall without a sultry, slow-pop remix? “Elizabeth Taylor” is instantly icy and defiant. The voice is strong, not loud. The production is minimal, yet authoritative. Slow snaps enter as the beat begins to fill out, completing a perfectly playful, not often known noire standout.
Undiscovered - Laura Welsh
This track breathes on a different wavelength than the often electronic-leaning productions of most tracks on this list. It has a beat that’s strong and immediate, with Welsh’s voice commanding instantly even among the longing lyrics. I love cooking to this song, partially because it has a warmth to it not usually found. It’s also damn catchy.
Slow Dive (Candle Burned) - I M U R
If you’re a fan of lo-fi beats and minimalist production, this sleek slow-burner is in your sweet spot. It’s a warm song, the vocals tender and willful against the melancholy guitar and crystalline production. It’s like a sip of hot cocoa next to the roaring fire, all after a long trek in the dark winter’s night.
Bravado - Lorde
This was the first song I ever heard from Lorde. It was released on her debut EP, The Love Club, among a fantastic set of perfect experimental pop that included her global smash “Royals.” It begins in haunting acapella, then layers and builds up to a slinking finish that sounds hollow and full at once. This one is a chilly temperature, at full strength in the later months of fall-turning-winter.
A Change of Heart - The 1975
It’s just so sad.
“For goodness sake
I wasn't told you'd be this cold
Now it's my time to depart and I just had a change of heart”
The lyrics are undoubtedly reflecting on a relationship fading away, but the production gives it space to breathe without becoming overbearing. Fans have theorized that it’s not the lead singer, Matty Healy, who’s saying “I just had a change of heart,” but his lover. The lyrics don’t give too much away, but the video works to the theory’s favor. He finds himself asking why, then after the end of the relationship tries to play down the heartache. It’s reflective and spacey in a way that cold weather is connected to all too well. It’s perfect for a wet day of feeling dreary.
Obedear - Purity Ring
This song sometimes makes me shiver.
Is it the shifting production? The lifting vocals? That repeating, crystalline choral lead-in that sounds like an icicle falling onto a xylophone? I could never really put my finger on it, but it’s there. This song is the perfect fall beat, suitable for everything from working out to dancing.
Freeze - Prinze George
Mysterious, blue, smooth.
Vintage with a sheen of modern snowfall.
It’s aptly titled and solidly produced, making for a shamefully slept-on song that chills in all the right ways. I listened to it almost every night walking home in the blinding snow while studying at university. I can still hear the crunch of snow under my trudging boots. It’s perfect for those kinds of walks, where you have to get home and out of the cold quick—but still want to enjoy the freeze until you’re there.
Slip - Elliot Moss
The definition of a slinking beat.
Its synthesized vocals tilt and shift over the heavy backbone beat, guiding you over mountains of twisting, darkened slopes. I still hear it playing in a friend’s car as we zoom down the pitch-black country roads, rain splattering the windshield like thousands of tiny marbles gliding across the glass. It was as if the song was all around us, reflecting itself out to the night and beyond.
Nature Boy - AUROROA
Aurora is a force to be reckoned with.
Her debut album, All My Demons Greeting Me As A Friend, is brimming with cold-weather tracks. It’s a surprisingly strong collection of dream-pop complete with memorable lyricism and that crystal-clear, old-soul voice of hers. The chilly production plays off of Aurora’s incredibly warm-yet-haunting vocal style. Her live covers, like Bowie’s “Life on Mars” are so unbelievably good they seem fake.
Fans of older tracks might recognize “Nature Boy,” her slow-burn, deconstructed reworking of the Nat King Cole favorite. Another standout, “Runaway,” sees reverberating production make way for a snowy chorus of glittering instruments and soaring vocals. The album lives and breathes like a winter wind, with subtle hints of a roaring fire nestled somewhere nearby.
Landfill - Daughter
Ever heard something that made you feel empty and alive at once?
Daughter, a trio folk band hailing from England, create songs with space for the airy, textured vocals of lead vocalist Elena Tonra. She’s not afraid to lay vocals bare, or build tension lovingly until an explosion of thundering timpani and crashing cymbal. It’s haunting and soothing at once, cold and warm yet embracing its own contained changes. Its place in the fall favorites may be connected to just that—although things may be dying, there’s a beauty to the change of it all. The color, the crest, the cold.
Cold Little Heart - Michael Kiwanuka
This song sounds like a magnum opus.
It begins with a feeling of cold isolation, like the first felt burst of cold air, before the first guitar strums lazily enter, accompanied with cheery-mournful chorus. It moves along like a streete in winter, leaves billowing across the pavement, broken benches glittering under the glow of street lights. As you walk down the space the song creates, you gain a strength in the changes. Electric guitar bursts in. Vocals align. The bounds of the song expand and contract with no real destination, the vocals similarly fluctuating between forlorn observance and determined strength. It’s analog, refreshing, progressing at a flickering speed it created itself.
“Cold Little Heart” is the perfect Cold Weather Song.