Rock Across the Clock: 8 Songs About Very Particular Instances of Day

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On Friday, the R&B artist and former Fifth Concord member Normani will lastly launch her debut album, “Dopamine” — a protracted (lengthy) awaited, endlessly delayed launch she has been teasing for practically six years. Not that I’ve been watching the clock. Or no less than I wasn’t till final month, when Normani dropped the album’s sultry lead single, “1:59.” That ode to not-quite-2-in-the-morning received me dreaming up a playlist of songs about extremely particular instances of day. Now that Normani is able to share her opus with the world, so am I.

Loads of songs have a good time the hour on the hour; Drake has a complete playlist’s value of songs with titles like “6PM in New York” or “8AM in Charlotte.” However that’s not what I’m concerned with right here. With all due respect to Ariana Grande, I’m not even speaking 6:30. I’m speaking absurdly exact, random time stamps glimpsed on a digital clock or a lock display screen and without end burned into one’s reminiscence: “12:51,” “10:35,” “11:59.”

Fortunately, there isn’t a scarcity of such songs, from artists as diverse as Moby Grape, Tiësto and Elliott Smith. And weirdly sufficient, there exists a trio of unrelated songs which are named after three subsequent minutes in the course of the ten o’clock hour. Go determine! Naturally, I sequenced the monitor listing in chronological order — like an extremely abbreviated playlist model of Christian Marclay’s “The Clock.” It actually received’t final you 24 hours, however it’ll take you on a temporal journey simply the identical.

All proper, you realize what time it’s: Press play.

It’s 11:59 and I wish to keep alive,

Lindsay


We start precisely 51 minutes after midnight, “the time my voice/Discovered the phrases I sought,” as Julian Casablancas specifies on this catchy leadoff single from the Strokes’ 2003 album “Room on Hearth.” “12:51” is a mumbled story of rekindled romance, the acquisition of malt liquor and different sordid issues that occur after the clock strikes 12.

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“Telephone ringing, it’s you/I’m on that point, you on it too,” Normani sings amid acoustic guitar licks and a beat that ticks like a second hand, earlier than the rapper Gunna joins her with a verse that echoes the tune’s stealthy, after-dark environment.

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Elliott Smith paints a really completely different image of the nighttime on this morose ballad from his 1997 basic “Both/Or.” “I’m going out sleepwalking/The place mute reminiscences begin speaking,” he begins, and spends the remainder of the tune attempting to outpace his darkish, racing ideas.

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Let’s flip the clock forward on this bittersweet monitor from the psychedelic San Francisco band Moby Grape’s self-titled debut from 1967. “8:05, I suppose you’re leaving quickly,” sings the vocalist and drummer Don Stevenson. “Please change your thoughts earlier than my sunshine is gone.”

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It’s night as soon as once more on this thumping 2023 single from Tiësto that includes the Canadian pop star Tate McRae, shortly earlier than she broke by along with her hit “Grasping.” When the Dutch D.J. and producer was requested why he gave his tune this particular title, he defined, “It’s that altering time limit, when it switches from day to nighttime.” (I suppose Tiësto’s bedtime is later than mine.)

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Weirdly sufficient, “10:35” was not a prequel to the indie-pop artist beabadoobee’s “10:36,” a standout from her 2022 LP “Beatopia.” “It was known as ‘10:36,’” the singer-songwriter stated, “as a result of that was the time I completed writing it.” Truthful sufficient!

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And much more weirdly: Here’s a tune concerning the subsequent consecutive minute. As with most songs by the Baltimore dream-pop band Seaside Home, it’s troublesome to decipher the precise that means of the lyrics, however this reduce from its 2015 album “Melancholy Cherry” is stuffed with shadowy, nocturnal environment.

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And at last, Blondie captures the nervy urgency of the final minute of the day on this monitor from the nice 1978 album “Parallel Traces.” “At this time may very well be the tip of me,” Debbie Harry sings with desperation. “It’s 11:59 and I wish to keep alive.” Fortunately, although, there’s all the time tomorrow.

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“Rock Across the Clock” monitor listing
Monitor 1: The Strokes, “12:51”
Monitor 2: Normani that includes Gunna, “1:59”
Monitor 3: Elliott Smith, “2:45 AM”
Monitor 4: Moby Grape, “8:05”
Monitor 5: Tiësto that includes Tate McRae, “10:35”
Monitor 6: beabadoobee, “10:36”
Monitor 7: Seaside Home, “10:37”
Monitor 8: Blondie, “11:59”

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