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Pitchfork Music Festival 2023: The Playlist

Welcome to what’s become an annual tradition here at Faronheit – a week’s worth of coverage surrounding Pitchfork Music Festival! For the uninitiated, Pitchfork Music Festival is a three-day music and culture extravaganza that takes place at Chicago’s Union Park. It’s a smaller festival focused on up-and-coming acts with a few legends thrown in for good measure. You show up because of the names you recognize, but you stick around because you’re just as likely to discover something new and great you’ve never heard before. It’s a whole lot of fun, and the crowds are really cool too. If you’ve never been, I strongly recommend you check it out. This year’s Pitchfork Music Festival takes place from July 21-23 aka this upcoming weekend.

For those planning to attend this year’s festival, or maybe even those who can’t make it but still want to learn a bit more about the lineup, I’m thrilled to help you prepare with a series of preview guides. The week of coverage always begins with a playlist. Reasonably speaking, that’s the best way to familiarize yourself with the lineup. Listen to a song or two from every artist set to perform, so you can gain a sense of what they sound like and the kind of energy they might bring to a festival stage.

This 84-song playlist takes a little over five hours to listen from start to finish, and includes two tracks from every artist on the lineup. The order has been determined by the festival schedule, meaning the playlist begins with Nourished By Time who kick things off on Friday afternoon and it ends with Bon Iver who wrap things up on Sunday evening. Of course if you’d prefer to mix things up and let the chips fall where they may, shuffle is always an option. Also, apologies if you prefer to use a non-Spotify platform to stream your music. Unfortunately I didn’t have the time to redo this playlist for additional streaming services.

All that said, please enjoy the playlist! I hope it inspires you to check out some performances you might have otherwise skipped. Tomorrow I’ll be sharing a preview guide that digs a little further into all of the artists on the schedule for Friday, with recommendations on who you should see each hour of the day. Join me, won’t you?

Half A Degree Thru ’23

We’re officially six months into 2023, and you know what that means: time for a mid-year playlist! Feels like it’s been an exceptionally strong year for music so far, which is really heartening in a lot of ways. Not that the past couple were poor in any way, but sometimes it’s a bit of a struggle to fill an entire playlist and other times it’s a bit heartbreaking to make cuts and remove tracks because there are strict self-made “parameters” in place and you can’t go beyond them. When I say this playlist could easily have been 150 or 200 songs total, that hopefully gives you a sense of how challenging this was to assemble.

100 songs. All of them great in their own ways. You may not love every one of them because your tastes are likely different from mine, but that’s okay! There’s always some middle ground, and that’s what we’re searching for here. Are these the 100 best songs from the first half of 2023? I wouldn’t quite put that kind of label on it. They’re ordered primarily by style, so if you don’t hit the shuffle button you’ll get sections of rock, electronic, rap, pop, experimental, R&B, etc. Skip around if you’d like. Maybe find a song or artist you recognize, then listen to a song or two before and a song or two after. I may have imposed limits on what went into the playlist, but there are no limits in how you can listen to it.

You can listen to the playlist on Spotify and YouTube, plus each song can be heard individually by clicking on it below. Mostly I just hope you enjoy this, discover some new music, and maybe play it at a party or something to impress your friends.

Pick Your Poison: Monday 6-12-23

Flowers – Rewind (ft. Kah-Lo)

Forest Claudette – Two Years

KennyHoopla – YOU NEEDED A HIT//

Pick Your Poison: Thursday 6-8-23

Juice WRLD – Glo’d Up

KAYTRAMIN脡 – Rebuke

Liza Anne – Cheerleader

Pick Your Poison: Monday 6-5-23

Bishop Briggs – Baggage

Grouplove – Francine

Miya Folick – Cockroach

Pick Your Poison: Thursday 6-1-23

Monaleo – Ass Kickin’

Remi Wolf – Prescription

Rosa Linn – Hallelujah

Pick Your Poison: Thursday 5-25-23

MisterWives – Nosebleeds

Thirty Seconds to Mars – Stuck

yeule – sulky baby

Pick Your Poison: Monday 5-22-23

Bring Me The Horizon – LosT

The Dirty Nil – Celebration

underscores – Cops and robbers

Pick Your Poison: Thursday 5-18-23

Diplo & Lily Rose – Sad in the Summer

The Exploding Hearts – So Bored (2023 Mix)

Lola Brooke – Just Relax

Pick Your Poison: Monday 5-15-23

Crumb – Dust Bunny

K.Flay – Raw Raw

quinnie – fade

Pick Your Poison: Thursday 5-11-23

bludnymph – Watch Me

Goth Babe – Alone in the Mountains

Kim Dracula – Hysterics

Pick Your Poison: Monday 5-8-23

Chris Lake – Beggin’ (ft. Aluna)

Killer Mike – DON’T LET THE DEVIL (ft. El-P & thankugoodsir)

Vic Mensa – $WISH (ft. G-Eazy & Chance the Rapper)

Pick Your Poison: Thursday 5-4-23

Alaska Reid – She Wonders

Miya Folick – So Clear

Sudan Archives – Selfish Soul (ODESZA Remix)

Pick Your Poison: Monday 5-1-23

The Dirty Nil – Nicer Guy

Lewis Capaldi – Wish You The Best

ROSIE – Someone You Once Had

Pick Your Poison: Thursday 4-27-23

Cannons – Loving You

Jessie Ware – Begin Again

Shygirl – Crush (ft. Erika de Casier)

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