Dear listeners,
As Lindsay mentioned on Friday, she’s out on book leave for the rest of the month. Starting next week, a series of knowledgeable Times staffers will sub in to provide thoughtfully curated playlists each Tuesday. This week, however, you are stuck with me: a reporter on the Culture desk who has written about Dylan and the Dead, and whose current Spotify rotation includes CoComelon’s “Wheels on the Bus” and the “Encanto” soundtrack (possibly Lin-Manuel Miranda’s finest work).
For some of us, this is a week of reflection, repentance and weaning ourselves off caffeine: It’s the Days of Awe, the 10 days between Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, which was last Thursday and Friday, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which begins this Friday night. There are more superficially appealing holidays; Yom Kippur in particular is a fast day and is not supposed to be “fun.” But I earnestly don’t know what I would do without this time of year and the space it provides to pause and take stock. You don’t need to belong to any particular faith to find that a useful exercise.
A High Holiday playlist might appear a tricky proposition. Popular music is not typically a space for solemnity and self-denial. On Yom Kippur itself, sex and nonessential drugs, to say nothing of rock ’n’ roll, are prohibited. But apology, forgiveness, moving on: These are some of humanity’s richest themes, and they have rich songs to match. While we cannot skimp on some of the most obvious artists — hello, Barbra; nice to see you, Leonard — we are also including Stevie Wonder and Outkast.
I hope you reflect and enjoy. And, if you celebrate, have a sweet new year and a meaningful fast.
Gut yontif,
Marc
Listen along while you read.
1. Outkast: “Ms. Jackson”
The High Holy Days are known in the wider culture as the time Jews repent before God. But actually, that is the main subject of just one day (Yom Kippur). For the preceding days, and the entire month before them, Jews are obliged to apologize to other people. And there is no more iconic interpersonal musical atonement than this plea to the mother of a former partner. (I am thinking specifically of André 3000’s parts; Big Boi’s verses are, uh, less contrite.)
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2. Vampire Weekend: “Hope”
Vampire Weekend has recorded songs with more explicitly Jewish lyrics, but “Hope,” the closing track off “Only God Was Above Us” (2024), fits best here. Its repeated intonation, “I hope you let it go,” in particular reminds me of one of the season’s more colorful rituals, tashlich, in which Jews throw pieces of bread into a body of water (it must be flowing!) in order symbolically to cast away their sins. Like that tradition, this song is fun for all ages: My 4-year-old son loves it.
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3. Barbra Streisand: “Avinu Malkeinu”
The exquisitely haunting minor-key melody of this High Holy Day prayer — a request to “Our Father, Our King” to grant a good year — has made it irresistible to many contemporary musicians, including the Scottish band Mogwai, who transform it into a 20-minute noise-rock dirge, and Phish, who play it as a funky waltz. Us? We will daven in Barbra’s congregation.
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4. Bob Dylan: “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”
Every Yom Kippur, I think of its line, “Forget the dead you’ve left, they will not follow you,” which in my head somehow becomes, “Forget the debt you’ve left, it will not follow you” — practically a restatement of Kol Nidre, Yom Kippur’s most famous component, a declaration that one’s vows to God are now void. This Dylan song features plaintive bass from Bill Lee, who years later composed the scores to “School Daze,” “Do the Right Thing” and several more of his son Spike’s joints.
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5. Stars: “Your Ex-Lover Is Dead”
The gorgeous, acidic opening track from Stars’ “Set Yourself on Fire” (2004) ends with a series of I’m-not-sorrys, but sounds like an apology anyway. The tone of autopsy, the forlorn wistfulness, the determination to carry on: It all feels very appropriate to this time of year.
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6. Leonard Cohen: “Who by Fire”
Leonard Cohen’s lyrics are directly inspired by a High Holy Day poem that frames the holiness of the days in trembling terms: On Rosh Hashana, it is written whether in the coming year one will live or die (and how — fire, water, you get the idea), and on Yom Kippur, the book is sealed. The song appears on Cohen’s “New Skin for the Old Ceremony” (1974), an album that, as described in Matti Friedman’s book “Who by Fire,” arose partly out of Cohen’s experience in Israel and Egypt during the Arab-Israeli War of 1973 — often referred to, after the day it began, as the Yom Kippur War.
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7. Stevie Wonder: “Higher Ground”
Stevie Wonder sings, with defiance, “I’m so darn glad he let me try it again/’Cause my last time on Earth, I lived a whole world of sin.” While the High Holy Days do not promise literal reincarnation, they are an opportunity for a clean slate. And those who hear a message of social justice in Wonder’s lyrics (“Powers, keep on lyin’/While your people keep on dyin’”; “Sleepers, just stop sleepin’”) can find it echoed in the supplemental reading chanted on the morning of Yom Kippur, a passage from the Book of Isaiah comparing the day’s traditional fast to a more progressive vision of abnegation: “to unlock fetters of wickedness/And untie the cords of the yoke/To let the oppressed go free.”
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8. Lyle Lovett: “Church”
And then, when it’s all over, you get to eat!
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The Amplifier Playlist
“All Apologies: 8 Songs for the High Holy Days” track list
Track 1: Outkast, “Ms. Jackson”
Track 2: Vampire Weekend, “Hope”
Track 3: Barbra Streisand, “Avinu Malkeinu”
Track 4: Bob Dylan, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”
Track 5: Stars, “Your Ex-Lover Is Dead”
Track 6: Leonard Cohen, “Who by Fire”
Track 7: Stevie Wonder, “Higher Ground”
Track 8: Lyle Lovett, “Church”
The post Is It Too Late Now to Say Sorry? 8 Songs for the High Holy Days. appeared first on New York Times.
