17. Molly Nilsson - “Memory Foam”

Molly Nilsson is like a goddess of the underworld. She has all of the talent and skill to be a bonafide Pop star, writing infectious lyrics and composing hypnotic melodies with ease – and yet she stops right at the edge of perfection, never quite embracing her birthright. Instead she purposefully obscures it, dipping what could be crystalline into a dark and viscous pool of reverb-laden lo-fi, so that what emerges is uniquely her own. It’s like the difference between a raging fire and glowing pile of embers. The fire is beautiful, but after awhile it either gets too hot and chafes or dies out and goes cold. The embers, on the other hand, may initially appear to be less beautiful, but look closely and one can get lost in them, staring into the steady warmth for hours, almost as if gazing into the very depths of a smoldering universe.

Molly’s songs are pop with depth. Pop that refuse to cast away its humanity for the sake of perfection. Pop that clings to error as an essential part of its resonance. Molly refuses to sell out, and the result is a beautiful display of what lo-fi Pop can accomplish.

This jam explores the echoes of emotion, particularly the echoes of lost love, which Molly conveniently compares to memory foam. It’s a fitting comparison, given the contours lost lovers leave imprinted within the mattresses they leave behind. Most of us have experienced the sensation, whether its the exhilaration of colonizing the hard edges of a mattress that has previously only ever known one body, or reclaiming the lonely center of a mattress that has slowly adjusted to the presence of two. Mattresses track one’s love life more than any other possession, becoming an extension of the relationship, evolving with it and resonating in its absence.