I’ve been making my way through NPR Music’s Best Songs of 2019 (So Far) playlist. 2019 really has been an excellent year for new music so far. I make my own Spotify playlists of new music that I like from each year. We’re only half way through this year and my 2019 playlist already has 51 songs on it. By comparison my playlist for all of 2018 only has 38 songs on it. One of the songs I put on my 2019 playlist and which I wrote about in one of my new music Friday posts was Gary Clark Jr.’s “Pearl Cadillac”. He is not an artist that I have historically loved as a rule, so I didn’t dig any deeper into his This Land album, but I should have because I finally just heard the title track thanks to the NPR Music list and just wow.

I don’t even know what I can say about this song and its video but holy crap. Gary Clark Jr. is not pulling any punches. He has written a very raw, angry, emotional song about a country that has not dealt with its racial issues no matter how much it likes to tell itself it has. Accompanied by an incredible video, this is one of the most powerful songs I have ever experienced. I wish it had gotten as much attention as Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” rightly did. The fact that it took me who is crazy into music half a year to discover it means it is definitely not having the impact it should. Be forewarned that this song is very NSFW or small children.