Machinist

Michelle Zauner wrote “Machinist” as a love song from a woman to a robot, and scored it with a disco-adjacent groove, pitched-up backing vocals, and a saxophone solo that arrives in the final minute sounding like it came in through a skylight. It is her most unabashedly cinematic song.

The scene it summons is specific: a fluorescent-lit commute, the train pulling in, the narrator locked in a glass love she will not explain to anyone. The saxophone is the arrival of the idea as reality. Five minutes of pure ordinary-day uplift. Put it on and see what gets scored.