When you load up Spotify, a great big chunk of the time you can’t think what to play, right? You default back to your old favourites, those albums and songs you played on repeat when you first discovered you could make them yours.
This isn’t about guilty pleasures; it’s about those songs you’ll still be listening to when you’re old and in your rocking chair. So, enter Teenage Kicks – a playlist series that sees bands running through the music they listened to in their formative years.
Next up, Miya Folick.
Radiohead – Everything In Its Right Place
Imagine me with my bright orange portable CD player, listening to this song for the first time in my parent’s closet, hiding behind my dad’s suit. This is where I would go when I really didn’t want to be found. I was probably hiding because I’d stolen a mix CD from my brother’s room and I didn’t want him to throw a basketball at my head or something like that. Most of my musical taste in high school came from this single mix CD that my brother’s friend made for him. I think I still have it somewhere.
Joni Mitchell – Woodstock
‘Ladies of the Canyon’ was the first album that I listened to obsessively. I found it in my dad’s collection and decided that it was actually mine. As a kid, I was obsessed with the song ‘Colors of the Wind’ from Pocahontas, and ‘Woodstock’ feels like the mature, teenager-approved version of that. Beautiful, expansive ballad about connection to the earth.
Rilo Kiley – Portions for Foxes
When I first heard this song in my friend’s car as we were driving to Del Taco to share a bean burrito, I didn’t like it at all. I thought it was annoying. But I think I was just hungry because months later, it became my singular obsession. I love the way Rilo Kiley tells a story.
Laura Nyro – Stoned Soul Picnic
I had never heard freedom like Laura Nyro before. She goes wherever she wants. And such power. I first heard Laura Nyro’s music when I was 18 and living in New York. Through her, I fell deeper in love with the city.
TLC – No Scrubs
There were a handful of songs that my best friend and I would always put on as we drove to basketball practice on Saturday mornings. This was one of them. I remember singing along but also thinking that the lyrics were kind of mean. I didn’t understand why someone had to have their own car to deserve love.
Frou Frou – Let Go
Thank god for the Garden State soundtrack. This song is immaculate. In my memory, this song is linked with my walk to middle school. But it took me several more years to really understand that there truly is beauty in the breakdown.
Feist – Let It Die
Mushaboom had the US in a chokehold, but it was really the rest of the album that I loved. To this day, I find myself singing ‘Let it Die’ absent-mindedly on maybe a weekly basis. I don’t think I’m exaggerating. The melodies on this album are so deep inside me now, I think they are part of my DNA. Feist is a true great, and she continues to gift us with her incredible musicianship and songwriting.
Taken from the March 2025 issue of Dork. Miya Folick’s album ‘Erotica Veronica’ is out 28th February.
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