Now Playing: August 2021

Need a soundtrack for your next Lyft ride? Our August 2021 edition of Now Playing has you covered. Check out these music and podcast recommendations from our contributors!

Kristina Ten

My partner and I recently road-tripped through northern New Mexico and spent nearly the entire time listening to this podcast called Time for My Stories. Matt Christman and Felix Biederman talk about prestige TV shows—everything from Mad Men to X Files to Gilmore Girls—and dissect what their popularity can tell us about the state of the American psyche at the time. It’s thoughtful and funny and fascinating, and I love that it takes bad-bad TV to task while still giving good-bad TV its due.

Steven Espada Dawson

Today I took a Lyft to a doctor’s appointment, and the driver was playing a Game of Thrones battle music playlist. He was a talker, too. He complained about the height of every speed bump, traffic cones that were a couple inches too far into the street. The mundanity of the conversation, combined with the dynamic, high-stakes background music really washed over me. Today is Friday the 13th. That feels right.

Ariele Le Grand

Right before the pandemic, my partner introduced me to Telefon Tel Aviv. We saw him perform at Johnny Brenda’s in Philadelphia. It was an intimate show. Every so often I glanced around the room and watched people staring into the visuals or nodding in rhythm. I thought of the show often in the beginning months of quarantining. Something about the privacy I felt, while also sharing that experience with a crowd of strangers—I wanted to insulate myself in that way again. I discovered “For James, To Sleep” on YouTube. Eustis writes that he created the song for his newborn nephew. I spent many nights quieting my anxious brain to the track, which opens with a white noise like ambience.

Deesha Philyaw

The other night, for no reason that I can recall now, I thought about New Edition's song "Earth Angel." Fifteen-year-old me loved this song. It's a cover of The Penguins' 1954 original, and it's not on Spotify, perhaps because there are issues with permissions and copyright. So I found it on YouTube and listened. The album cover image reminded me that New Edition had actually made a whole album of doo-wop covers, 1986's Under the Blue Moon. Fun fact: The album is New Edition's only recording as a quartet. They made it after voting Bobby Brown out of the group and before Johnny Gill joined.