Agent Palmer

Every week, we get up and live through the same seven days of the week.

Sure, the days themselves are never quite the same, but the names never change. It’s no wonder, then, that those days of the week are often the basis for popular music.

Tim Minchin is many things. In 2013, the University of Western Australia gave Minchin an honorary Doctor of Letters degree for his contribution to the arts recognizing his achievements as a “composer, lyricist, actor, writer, and comedian.”

That’s a lot of things, but all of that is important, so you understand that Minchin’s first serious musical album, 2020’s Apart Together, is brilliant. It’s critical to first understand that it’s not only a long time in coming: it’s unique, bibliographic, and poetic.

So, as you may or may not be aware, I created a “Promise” playlist back in November. In my research to create that playlist and the affiliated post, I encountered enough “Promises” songs to do a follow up.

The songs below are selected from the playlist, but they are not the entire playlist. The same rules apply to the Promises playlist that applied to Promise, only I’m throwing out the singular. This is only songs titled “Promises.” No “My Promises” or “Our Promises.”

In October 2023, the iconic Sydney Opera House had a birthday festival to celebrate the 50 years since it opened its doors to the world.

The Sydney Opera House website, under “Our Story,” explains why this building should be a little more celebrated than most in their short three paragraph history, which is honestly one of the more accurate and succinct art building histories I have ever read.

Promise. It’s quite a word. It can be a declaration that one will or won’t do something. It can be legally binding. It can be a reason to expect something or an expectation of success. It can also be a pledge.

It’s a versatile word, and because of that I decided to see what a variety of artists could make of a promise by creating a playlist.