Graphic by Sonia Zahid
For Stony Brook students, winter break is a time of rest, relaxation and recuperation. For the Stony Brook Press, it’s our time to reminisce on warmer months: when the trees had leaves, when you were tanning on a beach or when you were listening to your favorite summer playlist. Wanna know what was on our summer playlists? Keep scrolling.
Mechatok — Expression On Your Face (feat. Ecco2k & Bladee)
by Brian Chen
The world is a different place when you’re behind the wheel. It’s no longer just about getting from Point A to Point B, but also the space in between. This summer, that space became my very own when I finally got around to getting my license. With it came the newfound, unbridled freedom to drive aimlessly, get lost and absolutely obey traffic laws on quiet late-night drives.
“Expression On Your Face” dropped just five days before my scheduled road test. I remember making a mental list of all the songs I’d listen to the moment I had my license in hand. Amidst Crystal Castles, 2hollis and NewJeans, this was at the top. And it was better than I’d ever imagined.
The opening synths and Bladee’s distorted vocals set the intensity from the very beginning. It’s the kind of start that makes you turn the volume all the way up.
It’s the wrong taste, don’t waste that change
It’s the expression on your face
As the beats kick in, Ecco2k takes over. He’s hushed and wispy, a melodic sigh in contrast to Bladee’s intentionally abrasive, 8-bit-sounding delivery.
I’m touched by nobody
I show affection to the floor
The song’s two divergent voices weave seamlessly together over a neon-coated electropop track. Listening to it over the gentle hum of a car engine and with cool air rushing through rolled down windows feels like pure, unadulterated independence.
From Applebee’s after a Bibi concert to a Hong Kong trip with my brother, I made so many memories this summer. But under the silent moon and warm glow of the dashboard with streetlights blurring into golden streaks, I felt the true satisfaction of navigating the world on my own terms. “Expression On Your Face” soundtracked the turning of a new chapter in my life, and I’m excited for what comes next.
City Walls — Twenty One Pilots
by Carson Mao
I’ve never been too invested in Twenty One Pilots before this year. I heard a decent amount of praise for both their concepts and eclecticism, so I listened to Trench and Clancy some time ago. While I came away with high regards for the former, I left Clancy without really seeing myself coming back to the band.
That is, until Breach released this year.
It was with my first listen to “City Walls” that I knew this album was going to be something different. In just one song, the band fits callbacks, a story, mesmerizing production, fiery rapping and an unforgettable chorus. It is the best song ever released on a Twenty One Pilots album, and much of that is because of how well it concludes the band’s longtime fictional world, tying the darker reality of mental health with a constant presence of optimism.
In just the first few seconds, the heavy bass continues to build and then explodes into this great, cinematic combination of guitar and drums. This energy continues to expand with every rapped verse and sung chorus, building more and more anticipation towards the song’s climax.
I wonder where you are
I wanted to you to show me
The way around those city walls
The way on through
I wonder where you are
I wanted to you to show me
But now the night was fallen
Abandoned by the sun
Our main character tries to find “the way around those city walls,” only to end up failing because the sun (hope) “abandon[s]” him and the night (depression) falls on him again. His light wasn’t there for him in the moment where it mattered most. Kind of gloomy, but the song stays hopeful as woodwinds elevate the layers of cinematic tension, carrying you through to the moment of revelation in the song’s powerful conclusion.
It’s here where we’re reminded of the inescapable truth: that mental health is ultimately a natural struggle of ours, and that while overcoming it might only be temporary, we’re still able to rely on the support from those closest to us to keep giving us the light we need to try again and again.
This message, this song and this world all came together in one, five-minute culmination of ideas and ended with me falling in love with the band. Maybe not all of their music, but absolutely for the concepts behind them. Through this, I was brought back to the times I would spend reading about fictional worlds and analyzing lore for whatever was my hyperfixation at the time. “City Walls” was a sign of comfort for me, an indicator that I could still appreciate the art of storytelling even as I grew older — especially if stories could come in the form of music as ambitious as this.
David — Lorde
by Vik Pepaj
When Lorde first announced she’d be releasing her fourth studio album Virgin, the concept of having a “Lorde Summer” consumed all my thoughts. In the same way “BRAT Summer” had consumed people’s lives last year, I knew this album would define mine. As one of my favorite artists, she has taken every feeling and experience I’ve had and made it into expertly produced music.
The single for the album “Man of the Year” showcased how the album would represent the sense of dread and freedom. Her lyrics are contemplative and bittersweet, filled with a sense of confusion and, at the same time, self-awareness. It showed how Virgin would be a reflection on the people who left her destroyed, eventually allowing her to rebuild. However, no song on the album ended up showing this better than “David”.
And once I could sing again I swore I’d never let myself sing again for you
“David” sonically begins as soft and slow, bringing Lorde’s vocals to the forefront. As the song progresses, she tells this story of someone she let take everything from her. The music begins to rise, taking her power as a singer as well.
I made you God cause it was all that I knew how to do
But I don’t belong to anyone
The more the song progresses, the more the music distorts and the louder it becomes. By the end, the distortion becomes impossible to withstand. Lorde has put every piece of herself on this track, exposing the shame that comes with allowing someone to become the most important person to you despite how badly they’ve treated you. While beautiful, the production forces you to feel as uneasy as she does with this revelation, overtaking you and her completely.
Am I ever gon’ love again?
Will you ever feel like a friend?
“David” effectively delivers the theme of “Lorde Summer.” Suddenly, the music returns to the subdued production from the very beginning. Left fully bare by both the song and the album, Lorde lays out how difficult it can be to continue despite coming to terms with a heartbreaking situation. She’s self-aware enough to know that the way she’s been treated is manipulative and caused her to lose her identity. Knowing how all-consuming her love became, and understanding the impact this person left on her, she still struggles to see if she could allow herself to be in that vulnerable position again. She’s no longer battling the past or the music, but reflecting on herself and where she goes from here. Summer will not fix you, but it can give you the stepping stones to get over whoever broke you in the first place.
Diet Pepsi (Live from 2025 Las Culturistas Culture Awards) — Ben Platt
by Victoria Weglicki
Ben Platt covered Addison Rae’s “Diet Pepsi” at the 2025 Las Culturistas Culture Awards, and it may be the best cover of the year. Rae’s original has its own fun, upbeat melody, but Platt’s interpretation transformed it into something completely new. With a live string orchestra, he delivered an emotional, ballad-style performance that made the song feel raw and honest.
For me, this cover is my “90 in a 50” — because the song gives such an emotional rush, it feels like I can’t help but drive past the limit. One random summer night, there were five of us packed into my tiny red Hyundai, windows down and music blasting. My car’s bass system was unmatched, and every single vocal shift, string and layered harmony hit us in full force. It felt like we were ascending into heaven, or more accurately, (safely) flying down the empty streets.
Untouched, XO
Young lust, let’s-
When we drive in your car, I’m your baby
Losing all my innocence in the back seat
Say you love, say you love, say you love me
Of course, we weren’t losing our innocence in the backseat, we were keeping it. 17-year-old girls savoring late-night freedom with our best friends. It reminded us of how quickly summer passed, how change was inevitable and the bittersweet reality of leaving my friends for college. More than anything, it made us feel alive, free and careless. In those moments, I was taking everything in — the scenery, the laughter of my friends and the love and innocence of our youth.
Platt’s cover isn’t just some regular song to me; it’s a memory and feeling of what it means to be a high school girl, capturing the bittersweet truth that nothing stays the same forever.
Hammer — Lorde
by Tui Katoanga
There’s peace in the madness over our heads
Let it carry me u-u-u-u-up
I love canoeing, but I’m not very good at it. Although I had canoed before, it had been years since I’d done it in Samoa. Whereas my sister, cousins and best friend would glide across the water, I capsized every few minutes. As someone who hates doing things I’m not naturally good at, watching them zoom past me while I quite literally flopped felt very embarrassing. My Polynesian ancestors may have navigated the oceans using only the stars, but I couldn’t even navigate the shallow water of the resort beach.
But after a while, even when the salt water blinded me and burned my nose, I became comfortable with the fact that I was not very talented at canoeing. And it was freeing to admit that I was bad at it!
On “Hammer,” Lorde also makes peace with not knowing, which may seem surprising for an artist praised for her wisdom. When she was just 16, she released her debut album, Pure Heroine, which made a name for herself as a precocious young artist with sharp insights about coming of age. Her now-classic second album, Melodrama, is acclaimed as a de facto guide to navigating your first heartbreak. And with Solar Power, perhaps her most polarizing album, she wrote to her audience, who are now grown up, about dealing with stress and anxiety in a constantly changing climate.
But on her most recent work, Virgin, and on the track “Hammer” specifically, Lorde makes a shocking concession: maybe she’s not the omniscient oracle we’ve all heralded her as for over a decade now. While singers have always admitted their flaws in their writing, very rarely do they do so in such a direct manner.
I might have been born again
I’m ready to feel like I don’t have the answers
Hearing Lorde sing gleefully about how she might be just as lost as we are, I felt inspired. As my boat flipped on itself and my loved ones sped ahead, I realized that I, too, needed to be okay with not knowing sometimes: not knowing how to canoe properly, not knowing how to beat my sister at Scrabble, not knowing how to solve certain math problems and occasionally not knowing what to write! I initially thought of each capsize as a failure — and honestly, they kinda were — but they were also opportunities to try again.
Headphones On — Addison Rae
by Kaan Ozcan
My summer nights were spent wandering Hell’s Kitchen with friends. Post-club debriefs in humid streets, cigarette fumes seeping into our conversations, while our eardrums tried to recover from the Lady Gaga that was blasting only a few minutes ago. I’d kick myself in the morning when I would inevitably wake up with a splitting headache.
I spent a lot of time throughout the year worrying. About what, I wish I could articulate. This summer I worried less. Was it the exhaustion from my previous nights that left my mind incapable of forming an anxious thought?
“Headphones On” by Addison Rae — an artist I preemptively judged for lacking creativity or depth — spells out the feelings I struggle to communicate. In her single, Rae doesn’t even attempt to hide her personal turmoil: her parents’ public divorce, the unstoppable force comparison is in her life. Things that may (or may not depending on your celebrity status) happen to you, too.
Despite her inability to heal and move on, Rae teaches us a lesson on sucking it up. Rather than dwell on it all, she suggests we “surrender to the moment.”
Guess I gotta accept the pain
Need a cigarette to make me feel better
Every good thing comes my way
So I put my headphones on
Like Rae, we all deal with our own share of problems. But instead of letting our problems destroy us from the inside, Rae suggests we accept them and enjoy what life has to offer. Our problems won’t disappear at the snap of a finger, so you might as well meet up with your friends at the club at 10 p.m., and face the late-night nauseating train ride.
I didn’t spend my summer worry-free, but I definitely spent it worrying less. When you stop thinking about the downs for just one second, you get to see the beauty outside of your own anxieties. You surely don’t need to pay $50 on a hot dog at 3 a.m. to figure that out, though.
I <3 You — MARINA
by Christiana Hadjipavlis
Whenever I listen to a song for the first time, my brain’s default setting is to figure out how I would choreograph a dance routine for it. What style of dance would I choose? Would it be a solo or a large group routine? What little details did the artist bake into the music that I can extract with a sharp movement?
With each additional listen, I’ll keep fine-tuning the details. Do I want a closed fist or a flat hand for a pose? What face should be made at this exact moment? Every little component gets adjusted, all to make the routine sharper, tighter and cleaner until it’s perfected.
“I <3 YOU” serves as an infectious and glamorous disco-pop anthem, one that deserves to be overused at every dance competition for at least the next three years.
I grew up dancing. It’s the first thing I ever loved. That said, I fall into a batch of dancers who aren’t good enough to become professionals or join their college’s dance team, so their time dancing ends once they graduate high school. After a full year without taking dance classes, I became detached from something I once imagined I’d never be able to live without.
This song came out around the time dance studios have their recitals, which for me was always the culmination of a full year’s sweat and energy. The first time I listened to it, I could imagine the stage lights, the heat, the nervous bubbling and excitement waiting backstage to show the audience what you’ve put so much effort into. It’s exactly the kind of song I would’ve begged zmy dance teacher to use for the recital that year.
I love you, and I know that you love me too
I want you, and I know that you want me too
I love you, I’ve been waiting to make you mine
I want to be holding you tonight
“I <3 YOU” was made to be a celebration of love, and while the lyrics describe something completely different, the words “I love you” are probably the simplest way for me to describe how I feel about dance. This song reconnected me to the happiest, freest part of myself.
Skyfall (THE 8 Solo) — SEVENTEEN
by Sonia Zahid
When the summer heat rolled around, I learned I’d be leaving my hometown for good in just a few months. Naturally, it didn’t sit quite right with me. It was hard to even think about not being around the free weekly concerts, Polish delis and vintage car shows I always knew I had.
After a day or two of mulling over the news, vigor fueled me to bring a piece of my town with me. There was no way I’d so easily be able to let everything go. How could I? I devised a plan right then: I’d pay attention to every moment of every day and snap photos until my phone storage was full. That way, they’d always be a part of my life, and I wouldn’t possibly forget them.
On one of my last bus rides back from work, after I had taken roughly a thousand photos of the window view, I put in my earbuds and listened to THE 8’s “Skyfall” for the first time.
“A flying bird leaves no trace,” he sang, airy and distant behind the intensity of the song.
The lyric instantly left me confused. I couldn’t wrap my head around it! Maybe it was something lost in translation, and I would have to figure it out myself. Or maybe it referenced another song of his?
Whatever it was, it stuck in my mind for a while. I thought about it once I reached my bus stop, and I thought about it while getting ready for bed. I remembered it while making breakfast the next morning and thought about it then, too.
The time ended up passing just like that. In between the exciting synths and heart-racing beat drop, I had my last commute from my beloved LIRR station, my last sunrise in the kitchen and my last lazy morning in my bedroom. I got my last piece of mail in my creaky mailbox and treated it the same way I usually did: ripped it open and threw it in the trash.
When the time came to leave, I was so caught up in my thoughts that I packed up everything in a frenzy and left. I hardly gave anything a once-over. It was only when I listened to “Skyfall” again a few days after classes began that I realized I’d already said all my goodbyes, and I didn’t even know it. I didn’t leave a single trace behind.
The Subway — Chappell Roan
by Samantha Sanso
On July 31 at 8 p.m., a timestamp I mentally marked weeks prior, Chappell Roan finally released her highly anticipated song “The Subway.” Before the intriguing promotional work began — where an auburn-haired figure, likened to The Addams Family’s Cousin Itt, was spotted haunting the L train — a snippet of Roan’s latest hit captured attention on TikTok. At least, it certainly captured mine.
Made you the villain, evil for just moving on
I see your shadow, I see it even with the lights on
I made a promise if in four months this feeling ain’t gone
Well, fuck this city, I’m moving to Saskatchewan
When I first listened to “The Subway” in its entirety, I was driving home from work at 9 p.m. Before Roan arrived at the aforementioned second verse, I had already found the song singable, sonically appealing and to my surprise, contagiously wistful. I was curious by my own sense of yearning, since I had nothing to consciously yearn for. I began questioning what aspect of the song had struck such a strong, melancholic chord with me. I did not relate to the intense heartbreak that Roan sings of; I seldom commute on the subway, and I assuredly have never felt a pull towards Saskatchewan, even in the face of unbearable adversity (has anybody, besides Roan?).
After replaying the song four and a half times, which is as long as my 20-minute commute would allow me to, I pulled into my driveway and had a startling realization. The final hours of July were upon us, and August was, quite literally, on the horizon. Time appeared to rapidly speed up as the sun began to set on the illusory freedoms that only June and July can offer a student.
When the song reached its outro for the final time, as Roan moved between a powerful belt of “She’s got a way” and “She got away“, I realized that my “she” was summer break, and I had not fully appreciated her. My blithe on-summer-break attitude and sun-kissed skin would soon fade away, leaving me to bittersweetly reminisce on bygone days, much like Roan does throughout the song. “The Subway” gave me something to miss despite my unbroken heart, a testament to not only Roan’s musical ingenuity, but also the power of a perfectly timed release.
under the weather — sunvale
by Steven Ospina Delgado
There’s something so defeating about not being able to see your partner when you feel like you need them the most. If you relate, be on the lookout for Sunvale, an up-and-coming sad girl ready to bring new themes to the genre that won’t fail to tug at your heartstrings.
Under the alias Sunvale, Selah Estes has proven herself in the playlists of many depressed teenagers. Through only her debut single, “under the weather.” Estes pulled the heartstrings of her cozy, yet strong community of dedicated listeners.
Estes’ inspiration to write her debut single arose on one night when she was exceptionally sick. The combination of yearning for a partner who’s far away coupled with physical unwellness would eventually become “under the weather.”
Many midwest emo artists speak on heartbreak, but Estes is the voice of emos that struggle with something a bit different: long-distance relationships. The only thing that can match the sorrow of being alone is having someone and being lonely.
“A lot of times when he couldn’t call, I’d sit in the corner of my couch and watch cartoons,” Estes told The Press.
Truthfully, it’s a feeling yearners around the world can relate to; at least, it’s one I feel all too familiar with.
My partner lives a busy life almost 50 miles away from me. It gets lonely not being able to be by her side for at least an hour a week. As any long-distance couple, there’s only so much daily video calls can do, nothing will replace seeing and embracing her.
Estes nails it on the head, sometimes all I can do is curl up in a corner and watch cartoons, desiring for my partner to have her arms around me.
“under the weather” makes me feel seen. I can resonate with Estes’ feeling through the genre’s twinkly sound. Estes makes emo for yearners; she speaks to those who miss love, rather than those who want it. Estes’ ability to bring something fresh to the conversation will result in her uprising within the emo community, keep an eye on her, because she spoke to me this last summer.
Yes, You May — Lucy Bedroque
by Liam Hinck
Try to imagine my grief for a moment: In May, I decide not to make the trip to Brooklyn to see my favorite artist, Jane Remover, which I later regret. The days following the show, I repeatedly see videos of the opener, a name I’ve never heard before, Lucy Bedroque. Their stage presence absolutely captivates me.
I then dive deep into the rabbit hole that is Bedroque’s discography, and their song “Yes, You May” particularly catches my ear. The next three months were a period of grieving for me; each time a Bedroque or Remover song plays, I’m reminded of the grave mistake I made by not going to that show.
I mean, the tickets were less than $30, so why didn’t I go? I don’t know, maybe I was too lazy to make the drive. What a pitiful excuse.
“Yes, You May” combines elegance, stemming from Bedroque’s otherworldly vocal range and harmonization, with modern-day underground rap. Think Imogen Heap meets 2hollis.
It’s this unique combination of vocal range and new-age sound that makes Bedroque a consistent staple on my playlist. I am enthralled by their sound. It’s something I’ve never heard before, and I love it.
Now, back to my grief. The thought of being at that show and the blissful feeling that would’ve come with it. To be in the crowd for two artists whose music is so full of life and energy could have quite possibly changed my life. I would pay top dollar today to go to a show where Bedroque opens for Jane Remover. But I can’t change the past, and I must accept the mistake I made.
I can’t and won’t ever forgive myself for the rest of time. I promise I’m not exaggerating.
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