While the weather has remained surprisingly temperate this winter (thanks global warming), I still believe that the ~winter vibe~ is strong. So despite the lack of snow, here is a playlist of pretty songs to warm your cold heart as we trudge through the next few months of gray skies, barren trees, and seasonal depression.
1. “Tamales” by Alexander Fairchild
I want someone, anyone, to make this song into a movie scene. Who doesn’t want to watch some ridiculously cute rom-com couple trek between art museums in the snow?
2. “Wasteland, Baby!” by Hozier
While I am almost certain that our world will end with an inevitable heat death (once again, thanks global warming), sometimes during the winter it feels like the continent will freeze over before that ever happens. Either way, Hozier’s “Wasteland, Baby!” is the perfect croon to sing you to sleep as the apocalypse—or maybe just the first round of winter midterms—arrives.
3. “Promise” by Ben Howard
The intro of this song features the sound of rain drops hitting a roof, which I feel is very apt considering the rain that has dominated this oddly warm winter. This also goes out to those of you, who like me, remain single this cuffing season and constantly have to ask “Who am I, darling to you?” to every [insert dating app here] match with whom you feel even the remotest connection.
4. “Re:Stacks” by Bon Iver
No lyric quite encapsulates my winter mood like “All my love was down / in a frozen ground,” and no song makes me want to curl up in my bed under a mountain of blankets and watch snow fall outside of my window quite like this one does.
5. “Cherry” by Harry Styles
Am I a fan of Harry Styles’s new album, Fine Line (2019)? Yes. Is that something I would care to admit? Well no, but this beautiful, longing ode to lost loves speaks to my soul as I patiently wait for spring to arrive, so I just had to include it.
6. “Mystery of Love” by Sufjan Stevens
While it was actually Stevens’s song “Visions of Gideon” that played in the background in the epitome of a heart-wrenching winter scene in the final minutes of Call Me By Your Name (2017), I actually feel that “Mystery of Love” better fits my own winter aesthetic. There is something about how Stevens describes the simultaneous beauty and sorrow of love that I think can also apply to the winter season.
7. “When We Were Young” by Billy Raffoul
I heard this song live earlier this year and I almost cried. Raffoul’s raspy vocals urge me not to rush my days away, even when it is cold and life seems less than perfect.
8. “One Day” by EXES & Jome
As much as winter makes me melancholy, I actually love the cold and I have every intention of moving up north someday. This song speaks to future winters where hearts are already warm, despite the chill we may feel outside.
