This Is the Banger for…Your Bang

“I don’t wanna be in love, I don’t wanna be your baby.”

Litany/Twitter

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This week: “Call On Me” by Litany (Litany, 2018)

Why we’re into it: There’s no time wasted with this track, because it throws you right into the fray with blunt lyrics and music to match.

There’s something to be said about honesty—well, there’s a lot to be said about honesty. But how do you find those pearls of truth in all the songs about that never-ending chase for love, or heartbreak, or the possibility that, in fact, sometimes love isn’t necessarily what you’re looking for?

Jake Nicolaides, who’s in charge of production, and Beth Cornell, who rules the vocals, seem ready to play when they get into their newest track, “Call On Me.” They waste no time bringing you into the fun, with beats and keys that allude to the sense of playfulness Cornell’s vocals construct. “You know I got a free house tonight/I’ll rent some films for us to see” opens the track, with no subtlety—but who wants subtlety when so much else is possible?

As the chorus rolls around, the plainness of the lyrics are refreshingly bold: “I don’t wanna be in love/I don’t wanna be your baby.” Nicolaides’ production bounces with joy, as the two artists are so obviously connected and eager to indulge in happiness that’s fun and guilt-free.

By the time the bridge rolls around and the song begins to close, Cornell’s tone shifts, inserting a frisson of insecurity that gives depth to the track. It’s only a moment—a fleeting thought in the night while waiting for a lover. She breaks out of her trance and shakes it off before belting out the final chorus.

The song balances a tone that can be either slow and sensual or strong and aggressive, but it doesn’t lose its pace as something playful and light. Cornell and Nicolaides have made something quite special with this track, and it’ll be on repeat all December long.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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