Dear listeners,
On Friday, the R&B artist and former Fifth Harmony member Normani will finally release her debut album, “Dopamine” — a long (long) awaited, endlessly delayed release she has been teasing for nearly six years. Not that I’ve been watching the clock. Or at least I wasn’t until last month, when Normani dropped the album’s sultry lead single, “1:59.” That ode to not-quite-2-in-the-morning got me dreaming up a playlist of songs about incredibly specific times of day. Now that Normani is ready to share her opus with the world, so am I.
Plenty of songs celebrate the hour on the hour; Drake has an entire playlist’s worth of songs with titles like “6PM in New York” or “8AM in Charlotte.” But that’s not what I’m interested in here. With all due respect to Ariana Grande, I’m not even talking 6:30. I’m talking absurdly precise, random time stamps glimpsed on a digital clock or a lock screen and forever burned into one’s memory: “12:51,” “10:35,” “11:59.”
Luckily, there is no shortage of such songs, from artists as varied as Moby Grape, Tiësto and Elliott Smith. And weirdly enough, there exists a trio of unrelated songs that are named after three subsequent minutes in the middle of the 10 o’clock hour. Go figure! Naturally, I sequenced the track list in chronological order — like an incredibly abbreviated playlist version of Christian Marclay’s “The Clock.” It certainly won’t last you 24 hours, but it’ll take you on a temporal journey just the same.
All right, you know what time it is: Press play.
It’s 11:59 and I want to stay alive,
Lindsay
Listen along while you read.
1. The Strokes: “12:51”
We begin exactly 51 minutes after midnight, “the time my voice/Found the words I sought,” as Julian Casablancas specifies on this catchy leadoff single from the Strokes’ 2003 album “Room on Fire.” “12:51” is a mumbled tale of rekindled romance, the acquisition of malt liquor and other sordid things that happen after the clock strikes 12.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
2. Normani featuring Gunna: “1:59”
“Phone ringing, it’s you/I’m on that time, you on it too,” Normani sings amid acoustic guitar licks and a beat that ticks like a second hand, before the rapper Gunna joins her with a verse that echoes the song’s stealthy, after-dark atmosphere.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
3. Elliott Smith: “2:45 AM”
Elliott Smith paints a very different picture of the middle of the night in this morose ballad from his 1997 classic “Either/Or.” “I’m going out sleepwalking/Where mute memories start talking,” he begins, and spends the rest of the song trying to outpace his dark, racing thoughts.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
4. Moby Grape: “8:05”
Let’s turn the clock ahead on this bittersweet track from the psychedelic San Francisco band Moby Grape’s self-titled debut from 1967. “8:05, I guess you’re leaving soon,” sings the vocalist and drummer Don Stevenson. “Please change your mind before my sunshine is gone.”
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
5. Tiësto featuring Tate McRae: “10:35”
It’s evening once again on this thumping 2023 single from Tiësto featuring the Canadian pop star Tate McRae, shortly before she broke through with her hit “Greedy.” When the Dutch D.J. and producer was asked why he gave his song this specific title, he explained, “It’s that changing point in time, when it switches from day to night.” (I guess Tiësto’s bedtime is later than mine.)
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
6. beabadoobee: “10:36”
Weirdly enough, “10:35” was not a prequel to the indie-pop artist beabadoobee’s “10:36,” a standout from her 2022 LP “Beatopia.” “It was called ‘10:36,’” the singer-songwriter said, “because that was the time I finished writing it.” Fair enough!
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
7. Beach House: “10:37”
And even more weirdly: Here is a song about the next consecutive minute. As with most songs by the Baltimore dream-pop band Beach House, it’s difficult to decipher the exact meaning of the lyrics, but this cut from its 2015 album “Depression Cherry” is full of shadowy, nocturnal atmosphere.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
8. Blondie: “11:59”
And finally, Blondie captures the nervy urgency of the last minute of the day in this track from the great 1978 album “Parallel Lines.” “Today could be the end of me,” Debbie Harry sings with desperation. “It’s 11:59 and I want to stay alive.” Luckily, though, there’s always tomorrow.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
The Amplifier Playlist
“Rock Around the Clock” track list
Track 1: The Strokes, “12:51”
Track 2: Normani featuring Gunna, “1:59”
Track 3: Elliott Smith, “2:45 AM”
Track 4: Moby Grape, “8:05”
Track 5: Tiësto featuring Tate McRae, “10:35”
Track 6: beabadoobee, “10:36”
Track 7: Beach House, “10:37”
Track 8: Blondie, “11:59”