Well, here we are again, kids. As 2019 quickly draws to a close, FRIDAYNIGHTSALONE is back with what will probably be our final playlist for the year, and I’ve decided to bookend things with a second edition of Love & Street Fighting. While we started the year off musing on how to shoot at someone who outdrew you, I decided to close out the year with an ode to a phenomena that’s always fascinated me – the Holiday Fling.

As I write this, Thanksgiving Eve is just mere hours away, allegedly (according to Complex and others) the biggest hookup night of the year – as single twenty and thirtysomethings migrate back to their hometowns like inebriated swallows and attempt to continue the circle of life with whoever they can still recognize from high school.

Once Thanksgiving passes and your hangover (whether tryptophan or alcohol induced) has subsided, it’s a mad sprint to a New Year, New You – but we love to cram in a few questionable choices along the way, don’t we? Maybe it’s a whirlwind romance between trips home for the holidays. Maybe it’s a drunken hookup at the company holiday party (or better yet, someone ELSE’S company holiday party), or wrangling a last-minute Tinder date for New Year’s Eve. Whatever the case may be it, if you’re single for the holidays, there’s a high likelihood that you may feel the siren-call of temporary companionship during the holidays, and I’m not here to stop you, I’m here to help you.

So here it is: Love & Street Fighting, Volume 2 – twenty-odd songs about love, lust, and bad decisions to put you in the dating mood for the holidays. If you catch feels (which of course you will, you doofus), that’s on you.

And just remember: even if you’ve decided to take Chet to your friend’s ugly sweater party because you’re tired of being the only single person every year, that doesn’t make dating any less of a bareknuckles street fight. It’s still a street fight; you’re just wearing a terrible sweater while doing it.

Stay sharp, kids.