By Maki
Every year we arrive at this curious stretch of the calendar: the solstice. The point where the sun pauses for a moment, takes a look around, and appears to think: “Right then, this seems about enough of that.” Whether it’s the longest day or the shortest, depending on which half of the globe you happen to inhabit, the solstice is all about middles, pivots, balances and the strange comfort of being somewhere between where you started and where you’re going.
Not that we have ever been particularly comfortable with the middle of anything. We like beginnings because they’re full of possibility. We like endings because they provide closure. The middle, meanwhile, is where the admin lives. The middle is where enthusiasm meets reality. Every abandoned gym membership, half-read novel and sourdough starter quietly expires in the middle.
This playlist celebrates that neglected territory.
The Jesus and Mary Chain open proceedings with Half Way To Crazy, a destination many of us reach several times before breakfast. It’s an apt reminder that halfway points are often less scenic than advertised. Nobody writes postcards saying “Having a lovely time in the vague transitional stage.”
Still, there’s beauty in these in-between places. Massive Attack’s Mezzanine practically turns the concept into architecture. A mezzanine is neither upstairs nor downstairs. It hovers. It loiters. It refuses to commit. If buildings could procrastinate, they would all contain mezzanines.
Björk’s Solstice brings us directly to the astronomical event itself. For millennia people have gathered to mark these moments, erecting monuments, lighting fires and attempting to understand what exactly the sun is up to. Today we mostly celebrate by taking photos of sunsets and checking whether the weather app was lying.
Elsewhere, Felt’s Riding On The Equator takes us to the ultimate middle line, the belt around the planet where north and south shake hands. It’s the geographical equivalent of sitting on the fence, except considerably warmer.
The notion of being caught between two forces receives perhaps its finest expression in Cab Calloway’s Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea. It’s an old phrase, but it remains surprisingly relevant. Modern life frequently presents us with choices that feel remarkably similar: reply-all or ignore; update now or remind me later; oat milk or existential despair.
Nas contributes Halftime, evoking the sporting world's great interval. Halftime is a peculiar invention. It’s a pause devoted entirely to discussing what just happened and speculating wildly about what might happen next. In other words, it is social media before social media existed.
Nils Petter Molvær’s Median reminds us that the middle is not always glamorous, but it is often useful. The median sits calmly amid extremes, refusing to be distracted by outliers. There is wisdom in that. If more of us thought like statistical averages, family dinners might be significantly shorter.
The Weeknd’s Half Measure suggests the opposite problem. We are constantly warned against half measures, yet most of life is composed of them. Few achievements arrive fully formed. Most are cobbled together from partial efforts, revised plans and educated guesses. Even reaching halfway is, technically speaking, half a success.
Jimmy Dorsey’s All Or Nothing At All provides the inevitable challenge to this philosophy. We admire decisiveness. We applaud commitment. Yet life stubbornly insists on shades of grey, middle lanes and compromise.
By the time Slapp Happy’s Half Way There, TV On The Radio’s Halfway Home and Eilen Jewell’s Half-Broke Horse arrive, we have fully embraced the charm of incompletion. Things don’t have to be finished to be interesting. Sometimes the journey really is the point, irritating though that may sound when you’re stuck in traffic.
And finally, the Pretenders’ Middle Of The Road delivers the perfect conclusion. Or perhaps the perfect non-conclusion. Because the middle isn’t merely a place between two points. It’s where most of life actually happens. The beginnings are brief. The endings shorter still. The rest is spent somewhere on the equator, in the mezzanine, at halftime, halfway home.
Which, come to think of it, is exactly where we are.
Full Fair to Middlin’ Have a Half A-List Playlist:
The Jesus and Mary Chain - Half Way To Crazy
Massive Attack - Mezzanine
Bjork - Solstice Felt - Riding On The Equator
Cab Calloway - Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea
Nas - Halftime
Nils Petter Molvaer - Median
The Weeknd - Half Measure
Jimmy Dorsey - All Or Nothing At All
Slapp Happy - Half Way There
TV On The Radio - Halfway Home
Eilen Jewell - Half-Broke Horse
Pretenders - Middle Of The Road
Guru’s Wildcard Pick:
Raimundo Amador was stuck somewhere halfway between Flamenco and The Blues but these two halves often added up to much more than the sum of their parts. Here he is with Medio Hombre - Medio Guitarra (Half Man, Half Guitar).
These playlists were inspired by readers' song nominations in response to last week's topic: June comes so soon: songs about solstice, middles, and other halfway points. The next topic will launch on Thursday after 1pm UK time.
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