Instant Replay: My Year in Music
Okay- that’s all the data, now. . . let’s talk about it!
I think I’m able to pull out some themes right away. Lana Del Rey, Björk, Caroline Polachek, Johanna Newsom, and Grimes all hold their own as female soloists. LDR and Newsom held down the fort of lyricism and stripped-down or more acoustic-based production, and Polachek’s versatile style bridges the way to Grimes and Björk, who are the resident production and synth masters.
Yo La Tengo, Dismemberment Plan, and Silver Jews, respectively representing Matador, DeSoto, and Drag City records, hail from the same 90s alternative milieu. I could have stuck Nirvana right in there, but they’ve kind of transcended their indie roots. Though they began on Sub Pop, they went major, and in the years after Cobain’s death, they’ve achieved “classic rock” status. I’ll put them adjacent to these three for that reason.
Vampire Weekend, Mac DeMarco, Big Thief, and Dr.Dog are artists I associate with the popular indie alternative scene of my teenage years. They’re my comfort artists. The stuff you throw on from when you’re 15 and think to yourself, “damn, I kinda had good taste for a 15-year-old.”
The Grateful Dead, The Doors, Bob Dylan, and Pink Floyd, although quite varied across the genre of “classic rock,” which is really too broad of a genre to begin with, are unsurprising choices for me. I’m always driven by lyricism, guitar-based music, and loooooong songs, and those artists check all three boxes. They also help me transport to what I imagine would have been my ideal lifetime (being born in 1953 so I could basically live through the same years as Steven and Elyse Keaton from Family Ties).
2nd Grade is a bit of a standalone. They have a laid-back indie sound that could fit right in with Mac DeMarco, but because their first album came out eight years after Mac’s, 2nd grade is not his contemporary as much as they were perhaps inspired by him. I absolutely adore 2nd Grade’s sound, and I highly recommend checking them out, in addition to their lead singer Peter Gill’s other band called Friendship, particularly the song “Chomp”.
Similarly, Pulp doesn’t fit nicely with anyone else; however, they’re one of my all-time favorite bands. Just about anything Jarvis Cocker puts his mind to is magic for me. Whether he’s composing the adorable Alien song for Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, playing with Hot Chip, collaborating with Riton, working on his solo projects, or touring with Pulp, he’s an utter genius. Pulp’s dance-driven beats, accompanied with lyricism so poetic it will knock your wind out, and Cocker’s fantastic delivery are a force to be reckoned with. I would sing their praises from the rooftops more, but because many people only know them for their most popular radio hit, “Common People,” I like to keep them secret in the hopes that if they do a tour in the United States any time soon again, I can afford the tickets. Because I have a healthy sense of my own personal ability to influence the masses and effect market prices. If you don’t know this band, let me set the scene for you. You must be on Greyhound bus, in a window seat, with your forehead pressed up against the rattling glass. It should be raining outside or so ironically sunny and beautiful that being on that bus is miserable. Don’t go by album, play these songs: Underwear, Pencil Skirt, Babies, Disco 2000, Pink Glove, Do You Remember the First Time, Cocaine Socialism, and Lipgloss. You’ll thank me later. After all that, listen to Common People if you don’t already know it.
Now, for the interesting part: the tastebreakers, and the things that surprised me.
Om, an ambient “doom metal” or “stoner rock” band from San Francisco, Lil Uzi, and Elastica all somehow made it onto my leaderboard. Om makes some pretty heavy, pretty heady stuff, but I do genuinely enjoy it. I found them on a deep dive of Drag City’s roster and loved their dark, meditative, almost Gregorian vibe. The reason they made my leaderboard is because I listen to their music when I’m working, and their album Advaitic Songs has been the soundtrack to my paperwork. Is it my favorite music? No; but I put the hours in so they reserve their spot. As for Lil Uzi, a different explanation applies.
While I do love a few handpicked selections from his catalog, namely “Top,” “XO Tour Llif3,” “Just Wanna Rock”, and “CS”, and many of his features, I must have accidentally left the Pink Tape playing overnight once this year or accidentally let it run in the background. I think the same goes for Elastica’s Elastica. However, Elastica’s placement is even stranger because I don’t even like them! Not because I have harsh words for them, I’m just not familiar with their work. I think I wanted to get into them and kept starting the album, then getting distracted by work, lowering the volume, and accidentally letting the album play itself a few times. Hence- it’s apparently been “listened to” enough times to make my list, and yet, oddly, I’ve never even actually listened to it at all!
Who’s missing?!
I was absolutely shocked to see that Fleetwood Mac, Joni Mitchell, Beyonce, and the Beach Boys didn’t make the top of my list. Rumours, Tusk, Blue, Renaissance, Lemonade, Smiley Smile, and Pet Sounds are on constant rotation for me. They must have been beaten out by the accidental overnight plays of Lil Uzi and Elastica. If there’s a way to find more data or exclude those two, I would love to know my stats for these artists. Of course, this was also just my Apple Music Replay. I’m going to have to deep dive again for Spotify Wrapped. . .
What Does it All Mean?
In the information age, we are constantly provided with data. We can look at our steps, heart rate, sleep quality, and breathing rates with Apple watches and Oura rings. We can wear continuous glucose monitors and EKGs at Orange Theory, and adorn ourselves with Fitbits. We enable cookies for personalized ad experiences and give out our emails, numbers, and addresses everywhere on the web. While we’ve arguably gained so much from this, we have also given so much up. Before streaming, there was no data to determine our top albums, songs, or artists. We might take guesses, but there was no way to know- we could see how tattered a record sleeve might become or how worn down the paper package had become, and when the telltale circle in the shape of the vinyl would etch through the cardboard of the album cover. We might have known the 6 CDs we kept in rotation in the glovebox player of our car or which tapes we always packed to listen to when traveling. This was intimate and deeply human, and we’ve lost it to data optimization. Perhaps the strangest effect of streaming in the information era is the conclusions we draw about ourselves based on our generational narcism in the social media age.
Because of the popularity of Spotify’s Wrapped feature, which enables users to share their year in music, users are actually swayed to try and make themselves “look cool” by tailoring their selections to create data they want to display on their Instagram story. Too bad if “Rockstar” helps you run an 8 minute mile, “Baby Got Back” is the only song that can get you out of bed on a snowy morning, or “We’re An American Band” is your mortifying guilty pleasure. Because part of the culture of being online these days is sharing your music taste, and opening yourself up to judgment based on what you share, the results are inherently skewed.
While I love taking part in the yearly tradition of looking back at the songs, artists, and albums that shaped me over the last 12 months, I do so knowing that there is an element of cringe, the part of me that hopes these answers make me look cool, or deep, or knowledgable. I was embarrassed by the overwhelming amount of Lana Del Rey, the Cranberries song that only made it up there because TikTok rammed it into my head, and the inclusion of my “Jazz music for Studying.” But goddamnit, that’s authentic.
Beauty emerges in embracing the genuine, unapologetically owning the eclectic mix of tunes that define our individuality.
