Exclusive: Stream Smokey’s New Curated “Islands” Spotify Playlist

By: Staff –

Canadian singer-songwriter Smokey is back with a new single, and to celebrate he curated a brand new Spotify playlist. Stream it below!

Of the playlist Smokey said, “These are some songs that exist as their own microcosms, individual worlds that influence the musical dimension I live in.”

Martin Denny – “Pagan Love Song”

Entrancing entrance music for a world full of corny Captain Kirk sex and exotic danger, I can feel vines sliding down my back like beaded curtains every time I duck into this surreal party.

Vincent Gallo – “So Sad”

A sonic touchstone, brazenly clumsy and delicate, covered in layers of dust and hiss. The obtuse vision to release this 2:17 song as a standalone on compact disc with an entire jewel case is inspiring and wholly wasteful.

Jimmy Wakely – “Moon Over Montana”

To me, singing cowboys are rodeo clowns for the western apocalypse, and Wakely is a lonesome spectre haunting the midnight prairies.

John Lurie – “Fishing With John”

A perfect song for an expertly realized realm. Massively imprinting, this is my Twin Peaks.

Doug Kershaw – “I Wish I Had Died as a Baby”

Few lyrics are direct enough to approximate the blunt force trauma of absolute loss. This song exists to support the title, which offers more than most entire albums do.

Michael Hurley – “Werewolf”

Hurley has recorded numerous versions of this song and each one of them accomplishes an excavation of the subject that any film on the subject fails to sniff at. 

Billie Holiday – “I’ll Be Seeing You”

The appropriation of a casual farewell to illustrate obsessive mourning in this flirtatious dirge kills me.

Beck – “Totally Confused”

My first favorite Beck song, I still think it’s his best ballad. As a lonely 14 year old, I got my aunt to buy me the “Loser” CD single and this song changed my summer, if not my life.

Don Everly – “Omaha”

From one half of the exacting harmony machine The Everly Brothers, this song blows my brains apart every time I hear it. I don’t understand how a successful icon of the slick music industry managed to produce and release something so raw and weird, but it keeps me on track when I get scared and feel alone. 

Johnny Cash – “Delia’s Gone”

It’s so matter of fact and playful, I like to think this song is only about ruining a relationship.

George Jones & Melba Montgomery – “Let’s Invite Them Over”

This may be the most complicated tale of honesty and acceptance I’ve ever heard, and the way these two voices wind around each other is intoxicating.

Slim Whitman – “Rose Marie”

The first song I heard by the Pallid Prince, I might have been 10 years old when this alien crooner first yodeled his strange syrup into my ears. If there’s one pure thing in this dimension, it’s Slim Whitman, and he ain’t even from around here.

Bailey’s Nervous Kats – “First Love”

This is the sound of remembering holding hands.