May 2026: Something About the Month Makes Certain Things Stick
33 songs for May 2026, including a tribute to Doug "Sleepy" Shaw of Highlife and Frankpolis. Plus: the Ram wormhole, Lykke Li, Daði Freyr, and a month of ups and downs.
May was ups and downs. Literally — it started like summer, convinced everyone, then pulled back into something cold and overcast like it owed nobody anything. I was in CT, I was in DC, I was in wormholes. Old music, new music, music that felt like a new discovery until I realized I’d known it for twenty years. The month had that texture.
That’s the thing about playlists, at least for me: the mood I’m in when I hear something shapes whether it lands. Not whether the track is good — the track doesn’t care how you’re doing — but whether it reaches through the speaker and connects to something. May had enough weather in it (metaphorical and actual) that a lot of things connected in ways they might not have on a more even-keeled month.
Which is probably why Paul McCartney showed up.
The Ram Situation
I watched Man on the Run, the documentary about McCartney’s post-Beatles years — specifically the Ram period — and it had a lot in it I genuinely didn’t know. About the record, about Linda, about what that whole chapter actually felt like from the inside. Then he was on the Colbert finale, which was filmed in the same studio where The Beatles played their US television debut, which felt either deeply intentional or like the kind of coincidence that makes you feel like the universe is being a little too obvious. Then he was the musical guest on the last SNL of the season.
That’s a lot of McCartney in a short window. And Ram is one of those records that keeps getting warmer and stranger every time you go back — now that you have more context for what it was like to make it. “Smile Away” and “Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey” are both on this playlist. I don’t think that requires more explanation.
The Ones That Just Showed Up
Some months the playlist is a thesis. This one was more like weather.
Pamela. is a good example: “Better Than Before” and “Chain Reaction” arrived in sequence and needed to stay that way. I don’t have more backstory than that. Sometimes two tracks need to live next to each other and the explanation is just that.
Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood, and The Rajasthan Express have been in a release cycle — singles dropping as they lead up to the full record. “Ishq-e-Majnun” is the second of theirs to show up here in as many months. I’m not chasing it. It keeps finding me.
That’s May in a nutshell, honestly. The mood was open enough that things were getting through that might have bounced off on a different month. 33 songs. Some of them have stories. Some of them just fit.
How It Ends
The last track on this playlist is “Tuareg Dancehall” by Highlife. It’s there because Doug “Sleepy” Shaw died this week.
I found out the way you find out about things now — through the feed, through the outpouring. Musicians posting about him, people who’d played with him, people who’d been shaped by him. And I started going down the rabbit hole the way you do when something like this happens. Instagram sleuthing. Finding out who was still connected to who, what people had been doing for the past fifteen, eighteen years, how these threads that seemed to go quiet had actually just been running somewhere else.
Frankpolis — Jackson Pollis, James Pollis, John Paul Frank, and Sleepy Doug Shaw — I photographed their early shows. This is from 2006. This is from 2008. I hadn’t thought about those nights in a long time.
Photo Gallery: Frankpollis at The Annex, August 04, 2006
Photo Gallery: Frankpollis at The Studio at Webster Hall, November 22, 2008
I had lost track of him for nearly twenty years. And then the news. He was 43. Which is my current age. I don’t know exactly what to do with that, except sit with it for a while.
The tributes were everywhere — Gang Gang Dance, White Magic, Janka Nabay, musicians from scenes that overlapped and intersected with his, all circling back to Doug and what he meant. The kind of outpouring that makes you think about what legacy actually is. Whether you can see it while it’s happening, or only once something stops you and makes you look.
I went looking for his music to put on this playlist. On Spotify, all I could find were tracks from 2010. Which feels like the right kind of wrong — the archive doesn’t capture the person, but it’s what’s there, and you work with what you’ve got.
The track is on the playlist because of the news. It made me feel my age. It made me think about the people I’ve been in touch with, the people I’ve lost touch with, the people who influenced my life without me fully realizing it at the time. I’m leaving it where it landed.
Full Track List:
1. Lazy Dreams | Daniel Avery, yunè pinku
2. Allbarone (Meal Deal Mix by Parrot and Cocker Too) | Baxter Dury, JGrrey, Parrot And Cocker Too
3. Sets of Five | Frail Talk
4. Mahal | Glass Beams
5. Like You | Miss Grit
6. Rock Music | Charli xcx
7. here we are again | the cherish p
8. Perfect Kiss | Alexis Taylor, Mike Simonetti
9. All That You Are | Ray Bull
10. Baby Jean | Ray Bull
11. Do Things My Own Way (Cornelius Remix) | Sparks, Cornelius
12. Little Kids | Sondre Lerche
13. Hard to Find | Syd Sidney, Jesse Siebenberg
14. La La Land | Green Velvet, MEDUZA, GENESI, ESSENTIA
15. Better Than Before | Pamela.
16. Chain Reaction | Pamela.
17. take me home | Mette Lindberg
18. Ritmo Babilonia | Mexican Institute Of Sound, Meridian Brothers, Beck
19. Blue Flame | Temples
20. Tell My Lips | Anjulie
21. Smile Away | Paul McCartney, Linda McCartney
22. Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey - Medley / 2012 Remaster | Paul McCartney, Linda McCartney
23. Coeur Stone (feat. Styleto) | MIKA, Styleto
24. Flying Fuck | Daði Freyr
25. Don’t Worry Baby | Lyfe Dolls, Tiga
26. Lucky Again (petrus.wav + Mc Morena) | Lykke Li, petrus.wav, Mc Morena
27. Joy | The Lemon Twigs
28. Ishq-e-Majnun | Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood, The Rajasthan Express
29. On s’envoie en l’air (Tepr Remix) | Hello, Tepr
30. oeeluminagee | oee gee
31. PARTY | Goldie Boutilier
32. Richard! | Doublespeak (Vince Clarke, Blancmange)
33. Tuareg Dancehall | Highlife
Previous months:
I Didn’t Stop Making Playlists, I Just Stopped Hitting Send (March 2025 – February 2026)