Scottish pop sensation HYYTS choose their favourite Scottish pop. Proof that this small country with dodgy weather punches above its weight when it comes to un-dodgy, quality pop tunes. And yes that includes Hue & Cry, Eurythmics, The Proclaimers, Danny Wilson & Travis. And some new stuff!
Curation & words by HYYTS, cover art by…Mick!
Pop music is such a weird thing. From being the norm to being a dirty word to now being the ‘cool’ thing again, pop music has gone through so many changes for something that, at its heart, has stayed exactly the same. To me, pop music is just music that tries to connect universally - it can be weird progressive songs about aliens and spiders (David Bowie). It can be songs about teenage sexual enlightenment (Madonna, Britney Spears, Billie Eilish etc.). It can literally be anything that a group of people have felt - condensed into about three minutes for all to share.
As the most disproportionately artistic nation in the world, Scotland has always been naturally brilliant at pop music. I think it just suits our personality. We’ve always been a culture based on shared experience and not taking anything (especially ourselves) too seriously. I might be biased, but Scotland is the single best nation at everything except football, so it’s no surprise some of the best pop songs in the world have come out of our wee country. Here’s some of our favourites, we hope you agree and enjoy!
And, if you are celebrating Burns Night, or Scotland winning a footy match, then enjoy even more…and crank the volume up!
Track-by-track:
Texas Inner Smile: just unbelievable. Was hard to pick just one Texas song. They sum up the sound of Scotland to us. Charlene is an absolute tank we love her.
Travis Why Does It Always Rain On Me: timeless, beautiful pop (but if you are in your 40s, you are allowed a cry when you hear it…Ed.)
Gary Clark Freefloatin: we’ve been lucky enough to work with Gary a bunch of times and he is genuinely one of the best songwriters in the world. Everything he touches is gold but this is one of our personal faves
The Waterboys Fisherman’s Blues: pop comes in all shapes and sizes. Here it’s pretty folky but the universal theme of not being able to put how much someone means to you into words (woo hoo hoo!) is pop at its greatest!
Jackie Leven The Sexual Loneliness Of Jesus Christ: this is pretty unknown but absolutely genius and so, so weird!
Jack Brotherhood You Know I Love You: these four are our personal faves of what is coming out of Scotland right now. There’s so so much to choose from that we were always gonna leave some people out. The pop scene in Scotland right now is absolutely mental.
And, we had to end with this…
Michael Marra ‘Hermless’: one of the greatest pieces of music of all time. Just lovely!
Happy Burns! Thanks for listening and reading!
HYYTS XXXX
Afterword: Thanks so much to Sam & Adam of HYYTS. The boys were too modest to include their own stuff in the Scottish Pop Songbook (I did suggest it). Well well, we'll have none of that Scots Modesty! The band's awesome 'eepee' is end-to-end classics in our opinion. So…check this out huh!