5 Songs I Love w/ Josh McCausland

On the back of his brilliant new album with stunning, brooding electronic lead single 'Lurking Within', we sat down with New York City based musician, composer and producer Josh McCausland to learn all about the 5 songs he loves, exclusively for FLEX!

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1. Nicholas Britell – Agape

I’ve cried to this more times than I can count. Some music hits in a way that makes everything else fall away — this is one of those pieces. It’s tender, patient, devastating in its beauty. You ever hear something and think, yeah, play this at my funeral? That’s what “Agape” is for me. No skip. No notes. Just ache.

2. Ab-Soul – Book of Soul

I’ve been riding with TDE for years, but this one? This one stuck. “Book of Soul” is raw in a way that most music is too scared to be. Ab-Soul lays it all bare here — grief, regret, growth, love — and somehow it still feels like a poem. One of my favorite verses of all time lives in this track. It’s not just rap. It’s a reckoning.

3. Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross – Orphans of Krypton

This one’s been the background music to so many moments of my life it’s basically scored a third of my journals. I’ve looped this for hours — writing, thinking, unraveling, rebuilding. There’s something surgical about the way it builds tension and release. It never gets old. It just gets deeper.

4. Amos Roddy – Possible Futures

This is what it might feel like if we actually took care of each other. It sounds like empathy. Like looking out a train window and realizing a moment is slipping away — not with sadness, but with quiet gratitude. This song reminds me that the smallest things — a look, a laugh, a breath — often end up meaning the most. We just don’t always know it at the time.

5. Thomas Newman – Mental Boy

This is the one that made me want to sit down at a piano and figure out what I was feeling. Newman has this way of writing music that feels like it’s been with you your whole life, even if you’ve never heard it before. I go back to this one a lot. It’s simple. Honest. Quietly powerful. Like a memory you didn’t know you needed.

Don't forget to stream Josh McCausland's new album and 'Pieces from a Forgotten Time' here: