2024 Soundtrack

In May I noticed that we had the family plan for Amazon Music without realizing it, so that’s when I fully became a streaming music app guy. I had used the app before when my better half was not using it, and I’d used Spotify with ads on our TV. I’m not a caveman. I just didn’t want to pay every month. I still don’t, but we have not cancelled the subscription.

One unbelievable thing about this Amazon Music experience is how the app did not already know my taste in music. I have purchased a decent amount of music from Amazon over the years, and my profile still has all of those mp3s. So you would think the algorithm already has my years of data to work with and would recommend songs based on that history. Nope! I think it has still, 7 months later, never played me a Neil Diamond song despite having purchased three Diamond greatest hits compilations, which are still in my Amazon Music library.

On the first day, I listened to an REM greatest hits album (from their IRS Records years), the new St Vincent album, and the The Last Dinner Party album before trying the “My Soundtrack” feature to see what the algorithm offered me. It played me THREE Smiths songs and one Morrissey song despite me never searching for those artists, never owning anything by them, and never clicking the thumbs up for their songs.

This year’s soundtrack is available on YouTube. Spotify. And Amazon Music.

Previous year’s soundtracks are in the archives.

1. IDLES - Gift Horse

I had a work trip to Minneapolis while I was finalizing the content and order of this playlist. On the first day, I had a nice walk through downtown to my old neighborhood, a quick look at the Spoonbridge and Cherry, a short ride on my old #6 bus, some meandering through skyways as the sprinkles turned to rain. This playlist will remind me of that day, and two nights later. Happy hour ended, local friends and peers excused themselves, and I readied myself for the walk back to the hotel in the cold with a wintry mix of precipitation. I had my winter coat, but I forgot my gloves and warm hat back at home. The only thing to keep my ears warm were my wired in-ear headphones. I hustled and made it to the hotel by track 6, even after stopping to take a picture.

2. George Harrison - Wah Wah

In my writeup last year, I wrote, “Who are you to want new music? Are you too good to go dig up the great works of the past?” That was my inspiration to listen to All Things Must Pass in January. 

3. Suki Waterhouse - Blackout Drunk

Amazon Music made me aware of Suki Waterhouse, possibly because I listen to the “Fresh Indie” playlist at times. I had no idea who she was, but the algorithm served me two singles, Supersad and My Fun, and I liked them both. Memoir of a Sparklemuffin was one of my favorite albums of the year. This song is my favorite – I love the quirky vocal melody – but check out the rest, too. 

4. Sprints - Literary Mind

This album is great. I heard about this band through a detailed Stereogum feature article, but that article could have read “This is a good Irish punk band” and it would have been enough for me to check them out. 

5. Lorde - Take Me to the River (Talking Heads cover)

From a Talking Heads cover album to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Stop Making Sense. Did you know this song is originally by Al Green? So it’s technically an Al Green cover. My daughter and I drove together for several hours on Thanksgiving, so I made a long playlist, no special theme, some different decades and genres. I included Genius of Love by Talking Heads spinoff Tom Tom Club and she recognized it and mentioned it was still in her head the next day. A timeless groove. 

6. The Smile - Friend of a Friend

New Radiohead put out two albums this year. Good for them! It’s nice to see old people staying active. Calling themselves The Smile did trick my brain enough to accept this style of music as it is, rather than some lesser version of stuff I loved 30 years ago.

7. Clairo - Sexy to Someone

A really great song on an album that otherwise makes me sleepy. We’re getting to the time in the soundtrack where I don’t have a lot to say about the songs, so I’m going to talk about things that happened this year. I went to DC for a conference in January, brr very cold, and stayed at the Omni Shoreham. That hotel is famous for hosting the “funny” political humor piano music of Mark Russell (my family watched his PBS specials), and presidential inauguration balls. It’s a filming location of the 1987 political thriller No Way Out, which I watched a few months after my stay, wherein Kevin Costner attends the ball, quickly seduces Sean Young, and they leave together and bang in the back of a limo. That happens in the first 10 minutes! Four stars!

8. Alice Phoebe Lou - Halo

In March, Janet and I drove to Abilene to visit the Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum & Boyhood Home. We did not pay to go inside his small boyhood home because I value my hard-earned money. That thrifty instinct paid off big time when we watched a free short film in the library that showed us the interior of the home. Thanks, suckers! A highlight for me was the old water fountain in the library - call me Bobby Boucher (aka The Waterboy) because that was some high quality H2O. When we left the museum to drive to the world’s biggest belt buckle and grab a late lunch, Janet asked what she was hearing on the radio. It’s THE AGRIBUSINESS REPORT, Janet! How else are we gonna know the price of hogs or wheat futures at the Chicago Board of Trade if the agribusiness reporter doesn’t update us over the airwaves several times every day?

9. St Vincent - Violent Times

Later that same March, I was in Oklahoma City with the boyz to watch the Thunder take on the Jazz. I enjoyed many earthly delights, like steak for breakfast, playing HORSE in a driveway, and one of those days when you realize you have not drank any water all day because you have been constantly sipping from beer cans. I ate the biggest and best pancake I’ve ever had.

10. Fontaines DC - Starburster

It’s tough to pick one song from Romance, but I went with Starburster. The song I enjoyed most when seeing them live in October was A Hero’s Death, which I did not expect. This year I also attended concerts for Neko Case, Alvvays, and Mates of State. Ben Folds was playing a free open-air concert in downtown Pittsburgh while I was there for work. I was eating some great Thai food al fresco, and could hear him playing and tried to catch which songs were bouncing off the buildings into my ears. My coworkers and I walked the few blocks over to the show after dinner, and took in several songs before continuing to walk across the fine bridges of the Steel City. Ben Folds playing solo doesn’t appeal to me anymore, the man needs a band.

11. Mary Timony - Untame the Tiger

My movie theater app won’t show me my past purchases, so I have to look up the 2024 box office data to see which films I watched at the cinema. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. My son wanted to see them fight each other, and they definitely did. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. I saw this with the same dad movie friend that I watched Mad Max: Fury Road and the John Wick movies with. And that’s it! Two visits to our town’s Regal Theater for me this year, which means I have saved my family hundreds of dollars by not joining them for viewings of The Garfield Movie, Inside Out 2, Moana 2, The Wild Robot, etc etc.

12. Haircut 100 - Lemon Firebrigade

The Amazon algorithm played this song for me. Sometimes I give it one new wave era song to play and then let the automatic shuffle based on that song play out. This is a good song to break up the playlist, right? Now we’re all set for the home stretch. 

13. The Last Dinner Party - Burn Alive

I probably heard about this band from Stereogum. I remember going to Bandcamp to give them a try, and seeing their “About” page:

We are an art-pop five-piece that drawn (draws?) on maximalism and theatricality. We like to dress up and be free with everything within our music. So imagine my surprise when I liked these guys, and listened to this album quite a bit.

14. Blondshell feat. Bully - Docket

This rocks. The app suggested a Blondshell cover of Sheryl Crow’s If It Makes You Happy and I listened to that plenty as well. A lot of the early part of this year was yelling at alipete that her ignorance of Sheryl Crow’s catalog is unacceptable. 

15. Cobrah - Brand New Bitch

This is the song that Emma Stone’s character dances to in the 3rd part of the Yorgos Lanthimos triptych fable Kinds of Kindness. You don’t have to watch it, but if you do, you have my permission not to watch all three parts of the movie in one sitting. Break it up, it’s fine. You know what I love? I love hitting my couch at 9:45 pm and turning on the TV and trying to remember if I am halfway through a movie or not. If I am not, great! I get to pick out a new movie. If I am, awesome! I already know what I’m going to watch and I’ve only got a little bit left before I’m done!

16. Laura Veirs - Drink Deep

I heard this song in the movie Hello, I Must Be Going, where Melanie Lynskey has a romance with a younger man. Three stars! It’s one of many, many movies I watched after returning from Pittsburgh with covid, and the 3rd movie in that covid watching period that featured relationships among people of different ages – The Idea of You (also three stars!), Miller’s Girl, (one star, what the hell is this neo southern gothic sexual spin on Whiplash?). All of these star ratings are taken from my Letterboxd diary. I decided I needed to track my movie history when I was searching for something fun and stupid, with nudity, to watch for me and Floyd’s joint birthday Zoom movie party. Blame It On Rio where Michael Caine has sex with his friend’s daughter, have I seen that before? I gotta start tracking this stuff. So, check me out on Letterboxd. If it’s 2.5 stars it’s meh, if it’s above that it’s worth watching, if it’s below that it’s not. Do I sometimes make little jokes about the movie in my review? I do, here’s examples:

We watched Hot Dog…The Movie for the birthday bash and while it is an important cultural document of 1984, I cannot recommend it, 1.5 stars. 

17. Fontaines DC - Favourite

It’s tough to pick one song from Romance, but I went with Starburster AND Favourite. Two songs from one artist and album on the same playlist? It’s unheard of, it’s a breakdown of norms in America. I will not go back and research, but I know I’ve had back to back songs from the same artist, and perhaps I’ve bookended a playlist with the same artist, but not this. Never this. 

18. Elastica - See That Animal

It’s never a bad time to listen to Elastica’s stunning debut album. Here’s a list of significant health care issues this year. Boy had his first broken bone, a broken arm with no complications, and he healed in time for his first summer baseball game. Total out of pocket cost for one broken arm? About one thousand dollars. From the same Sunday pickup basketball games that previously gave me a sprained ankle and a broken thumb, I got 6 staples in the top of my skull from falling backwards into the basketball pole. Then I had a pinched nerve in my neck that persisted for about 8 weeks.

19. mxmtoon - the situation

I don’t know anything about this band, but thank you algorithm for this offering. What did I read this year? I read three nonfiction books that I will not discuss. I read Station Eleven, and then watched the HBO Series based on that book. I read It Never Ends, Tom Sharpling’s memoir, because I listen to his podcast sometimes. I purchased and read Hate To Fake It To You and Blood Sisters because I know those authors personally; since I publish this very popular and successful blog I think of them as my writing peers. 

20. Oso Oso - stoke

A Stereogum recommendation, thank you website. 

21. Gus Dapperton - Everything She Wants (Wham! cover)

Didn’t realize this was a Wham! song, thank you Wham!

22. Vampire Weekend - Mary Boone

I didn’t make it to this concert because I would have had to drive to Kansas City twice in a week. Can you imagine? I am tired of this album now but we had some good times together in 2024.

23. Waxahatchee - 365

The lead single, Right Back To It, was in my head for five consecutive days and that took all the momentum away from this album for me. Then I finally picked it back up and the sound quality bothered me. At times, the vocals max out into the red. Old golden ears over here with my tinnitus, complaining about the finer aspects of sound mixing.

24. Wang Chung - City of the Angels 

This is from the soundtrack to the film To Live and Die in L.A. Wang Chung did all the music. Willem Dafoe is good at counterfeiting money, can William Peterson and Paul Reiser’s friend on Mad About You bring him to justice? I also enjoyed William Peterson in Manhunter and The Contender this year. 4 stars, 4 stars, and 3.5 stars!

25. Gene Krupa & His Orchestra - Drum Boogie

I elected not to watch any election coverage on election night. I watched Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper in Ball of Fire, where she plays a nightclub singer and sings (lip synchs) this song with Gene Krupa. A screwball comedy from Howard Hawks and Billy Wilder, looks like the whole dang movie is free to watch on YouTube right now. Four stars! Then I spent the following morning only listening to big band music. The app has never recommended another big band song to me, the algorithm has dismissed that day as a moment of weakness or a mental breakdown.

2023 Soundtrack

Here we are again, another year of yearning to find great new music to listen to, even though you could never come close to hearing all of the songs that already exist. Who are you to want new music? Are you too good to go dig up the great works of the past? You ever listen to that first Crosby Stills and Nash album? Are your poor little ears tired of listening to Sixteen Stone?

I gave up listening via Amazon Music this year because the bitrate is ass. I still don't pay for Spotify, but I can use that app on my basement TV/receiver. During work from home days it's just more comfy to sit on the living room couch and connect the laptop to bluetooth and use YouTube. I don't pay for YouTube either, so yes, my music is interrupted by the worst ads in the world every 3 songs or so. The audio quality is okay-ish, especially now that I've linked a bluetooth receiver to an amp to some pretty nice outdoor Bose speakers that had to be moved indoors because we don't have a back deck anymore because shit got fucked up.

If Stereogum or the Indieheads subreddit doesn't have me interested in something particular, I'll check out playlists that compile the most streamed songs of the moment.

Unfortunately, in general, my days are spotted with meetings and bullshit so I'm spending much less time listening to music during a workday than in years past.

You can listen to this 2023 Soundtrack via Spotify or YouTube.

1. Chris Farren - Cosmic Leash

I noticed comedy people on Twitter were talking about this new album and I had never heard of him before. Actually, let’s back up a sec. In 2023, Twitter became X, and we definitely all call it X now and support everything it’s become. OK? So then Farren was a guest on Hollywood Handbook, the finest podcast, and that was enough to get me to listen to his pretty good album. I feared since he was funny and collaborated with comedy people on the video it would be more of a funny album than a good album, but Cosmic Leash rips.

2. The Japanese House - Sunshine Baby

YouTube was pretty insistent that I watch this live performance of this song, even though I’d never watched or heard the studio version. The live version is so much prettier and I like it a lot! 

3. Boygenius - $20

The first time I listened to this album, I was glad it started with an upbeat song and this is the track I kept coming back to.

4. Blur - The Narcissist 

I was not expecting a late-career album by a band that’s never been among my favorites to be my top album of the year, but here we are lads! I have long followed the person who wrote NPR’s review of The Ballad of Darren on X - it all happens on X! - so I saw this when he re-X’d it:

It’s funny because it’s true! (The parts I comprehend anyway - I have no knowledge of that era of David Bowie). I love that St Charles Square opens with the line, “I fucked up. I’m not the first to do it.” Barbaric rules. It all rules. But don’t get me wrong, I’m still Team Oasis.

5. Mitski - Bug Like an Angel

I can’t believe how often the simple guitar opening of this song pops in my head. YouTube recommended a video of Mitski explaining the structure of this song and the lyrics, and I wonder how long it would have taken me to notice what the lyrics were or what they meant had I not watched.

6. Julia Jacklin - Love, Try Not to Let Go

July 26 10:30 pm message to the group thread: Just stepped out of the very warm Julia Jacklin concert in kc and the heat index outside is 104

July 27 message to the group thread: Drank two Negra Modelos between 7:30 and 10:00 last night, drank like 24 oz of water on the drive home after, still have a headache right now after multiple cups of coffee and a tylenol. I am dying!

This is Jacklin’s first appearance on a year-end soundtrack but I have been enjoying her since the pandemic. She opened with this song.

7. Grian Chatten - Fairlies

Didn’t noticed this song was titled “Fairlies” rather than “FairLILLIES” until I typed it. I’ve been digging Fontaines DC since their debut, I liked this and one other song on his solo album but I guess I never went back and gave any of the other songs another chance.

8. The Animals - Inside-Looking Out

I was scrolling through the posts on X and saw one talking about a Spotify user named Brad who had playlists for different kinds of keyboards, so I listened to a few of those. The Hammond B3 Organ playlist has this absolute banger. I was only 57 years late on this one. 

9. Samia - Honey

Samia’s album is my second-favorite album of the year! I did not know her prior to this year. What a journey from “Oh I like this song” to “She’s the daughter of Kathy Najimy and the guy who sings Total Eclipse of the Heart in Old School?!” to “Oh this album rules”.

10. Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds - Easy Now

See, I told you I was still an Oasis man. Being a lad is what I’m about! 

11. Pool Kids - That’s Physics, Baby

This was on Stereogum’s best of 2022 list. 

12. Black Country, New Road - Up Song (Live at Bush Hall)

Another concert I attended this year - this was at The Granada. I was not a huge fan but I was interested to see what they were like live, especially since they had their lead singer leave after their breakout album. I didn’t anticipate a big crowd, but the show got moved from a smaller venue and I believe it was a sellout at the bigger place. When they opened with Up Song, the crowd shouted along when they sang “Look at what we’ve done together! BCNR, friends forever!” and Corinne and I kinda looked at each other like, “Oh, this band is beloved?” It was cool. They have two complete live sets up on YouTube, including this one with the new lineup and songs they played on this tour. (The new lineup of BCNR does not have any studio recordings, so this live version was the only option to put on the soundtrack.)

13. The Replacements - Can’t Hardly Wait

Between The Bear and their Let It Bleed reissue, I tried to brush up on The Replacements this year. I’m a mid-40s white male so yeah, I like the soundtrack to FX’s The Bear. I’ve always loved REM’s Strange Currencies so it was cool that it was a repeating theme of this season. And I listened to plenty of IRS-era REM this year. 

14. Gus Dapperton - Don’t Let Me Down

I know of this guy because he was featured on the Benee song Supalonely from my 2020 soundtrack, and here they are together again, making another fun song.

15. Alice Phoebe Lou - Lose My Head

16. Varsity - Done With Bits 

I am sorry, but we are getting to the point in the playlist where I don’t have a lot to say. Instead of saying over and over, “I read about this song or the algorithm suggested this song to me, and I like it,” I’ll write something else. You know what I was pretty into this year? Toast. Going to the sad little nook at the grocery store where they throw the bakery items that are getting old, finding an older but fancy loaf of sourdough or jalapeno cheddar, freezing it, and pulling out slices to toast in the morning. And with the price of cereal going to the fucking roof, that’s a deal! 

17. Tapes n’ Tapes - Just Drums 

I finished the project I started in 2021 of listening to all of my purchased CDs in order, from A to Z. This year I moved on to my burned CDs, so my wife and other car passengers had to wait for me to move a huge Caselogic binder of CDs before they could sit down in the Camry. One summer evening I was home alone, and decided to grab a Dairy Queen Blizzard for the first time in forever. I put the windows down and cranked Tapes ‘n Tapes Insistor album. I’m sure you remember the title track Insistor from the 2006 soundtrack? I took that Blizzard from the drive through and didn’t want it to melt on the way home, so I stopped in the nearby, empty rec center parking lot and ate it there. Summer nights, baby! 

18. Lunar Vacation - Only You

Yeah, another one where I don’t have much to say. You know what I played a lot of this year? Little browser grid games. You finish Wordle and your day isn’t done, you can think about some sports guys on Immaculate Grid and Crossover Grid, and at night when I am trying not to scroll through whatever trash (X isn’t trash, of course - It All Happens On X!!!) is online I challenge my brain with the Cine2nerdle movie game. I made my own grid game where my high school friends had to guess classmates that fit the categories, and I even made a music one starring the songs of Pearl Jam:

19. Superviolet - Angels on the Ground 

I investigated this based on Stereogum’s mid-year best-of list, and really liked this opening track. I listened to the album while walking around Salt Lake City in June and like it alright but could never turn the corner to truly dig it. 

20. Katie Von Schleicher - Montagnard People

I don’t know this was on some indie playlist and I put it into regular rotation. It reminds me of Ofelia K, an artist I liked but who hasn't put out any new music since 2016. Anyways, while I was in Salt Lake City I was craving falafel, and the restaurant I went to was playing a Regina Spektor album and that rolled right into Fiona Apple’s When the Pawn… I was loving it. I can’t remember a restaurant playing an album through since 715 did back before we were married.

 

21. Charly Bliss - You Don’t Even Know Me Anymore

22. Cherry Glazerr - Bad Habit

God, I have the hardest time keeping these bands apart because all women are the same. No wait - because they are female-fronted, two-word guitar bands that start with CH. I was looking forward to the Cherry Glazerr release more, and it let me down. I tested that album while watching Paul play on his first kid pitch team this summer. I’d get there early with him so he could warm up with the team, and then walk around the complex listening to podcasts. Should I have tried to make friends with the other parents instead? Maybe the mom who wore a shirt that said “One Gun Two Gun Red Gun Blue Gun”? 

23. Overcoats - Want You Back

Yeah, this is just another song that came along, I don’t have any big thing with it. That the end of the playlist and for the first time in its history, there was no song by The New Pornographers in a year where they released a new album. We went to their show and had another great time, and overall I think the album is fine but it sounds muddled to me. The words of the chorus of Pontius Pilate’s Home Movies don’t fit the music - it drives me crazy! If I had put a track on here it would have been Continue as a Guest.  

2022 Soundtrack

I do this every year. These songs are what I loved this year, or what reminds me of this year. I have always strived to sequence them in the best possible order, and I feel that this year's sequence is lackluster. Maybe you won't notice, or maybe you will only notice because I mentioned it right off the bat. Damn it!

My yearly soundtrack used to fit on an 80-minute CD, which was burned and mailed to friends. I wonder, now that it exists as an internet link, if it has more or less staying power. Is it heard once and never again, as its listeners dive back into the content the algorithm provides? Or do my friends listen multiple times until they focus on the new music of the next year? Or do they exclusively listen to my soundtrack archives, foregoing new music year-round until I bless them with something new every December?

This playlist is on Spotify at https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4Y2yQJNJjYFa5pOVrpB14i?si=197a493a93d34054. Keep reading and you'll also find a YouTube playlist version.  

Previous soundtracks can be found at Spotify here.

1. Porridge Radio - 7 Seconds
I was listening to a performance from their new album and they closed with this song, which was released between their first album and their new one. The new album is good but I love this single. And as I pulled up the YouTube link while writing this, I decided to make one big YouTube playlist for this entire soundtrack. In some instances it’s the exact video I watched one or multiple times this year, and in some cases I grabbed any live performance I could find that had decent video and audio quality. 

2. Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - Dive Deep

I woke up before dawn to drive to the airport, on my way to my conference in Louisville. At the kiosk to check my bag, it said I was too late. 2022, the first year I missed a flight. I drove all the way back home, went to Paul’s baseball game, and then drove back to the airport and successfully boarded a flight. When I was at O’Hare, looking at the framed displays of aerial photographs of O’Hare from its inception to current day, headphones on, waiting to board the Louisville flight, this song came on and gave me a boost of energy. This was my most listened to song of 2022. 

3. Wet Leg - Being in Love

Of course, you know Chaise Lounge from the 2021 Soundtrack, and yes it does feel great to have been on the cutting edge of taste by loving Wet Leg in 2021 before their breakout album was released in 2022. While I think Wet Dream is a better song, I chose Being in Love for 2022 because it’s the opening track, and I smashed that play button to listen to the album many times throughout the year. 

4. America - Sister Golden Hair

I am still often streaming movies that look like they will be an exact 5 out of 10. Hulu has a 2016 movie titled Miss Stephens that costars a pre-fame Timothee Chalamet? Sure, okay. Sister Golden Hair is prominently featured, the titular Miss Stephens and Timothee’s character sing along with it on a road trip. This was a #1 Billboard hit, you know. There’s a Stereogum.com column about #1s that I continued to read in 2022, and I went back and read the writeup on this one. Pretty crazy that America had two #1 hits and they are both impersonations of more famous artists’ sounds. And when your band’s sound is to steal other band’s sounds, people get confused. That’s why I had to correct a coworker at an autumn happy hour, after she said one of Simon & Garfunkel’s songs was A Horse With No Name.  

5. Yonaka - Seize the Power

The She Hulk series premiered on Disney+ this year. I would turn on the TV at night and think, “What day is this? Is this new She Hulk day?” because it was a funny show, and because every summer night feels the same. Remember before streaming, when you knew what night it was? Last night was Top Chef night, so tonight is Parks and Rec night? Yeah. So there was an episode featuring Megan Thee Stallion, and when this song came on during the closing credits I initially thought it must be one of her songs. Whoops, it’s by a weird English alternative rock band. Not even close, you out of touch dumbass.

6. Harry Styles - As It Was

Whoa, a Top 40 song on my soundtrack? One I heard for the first time on terrestrial radio while driving? Like how people used to hear songs for the first time? This was in my head for a few days while vacationing at Lake of the Ozarks, and that shit got real old real quick. Then I later read this tweet and thought, man, As It Was and The Weeknd’s songs kinda are just takes on Take On Me?

7. Cilla Black - You’re My World

I checked out a BLU RAY from the LIBRARY and placed the disc in my PLAYSTATION 4 and turned on my STEREO RECEIVER so I could experience Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho with the finest audio and video output available. It was great! This song is featured!

8. Alvvays - Pomeranian Spinster

Finally, a new Alvvays album! Worth the wait! It friggin rocks!

9. Black Country New Road - The Place Where He Inserted the Blade

I think I heard about this band from Stereogum. When I listened to the album it wasn’t what I expected, and I wasn’t excited to listen to it again, but I flagged this song and kept coming back to it during the year. 

10. Alice in Chains - Angry Chair

I heard this first thing one morning, right around 8 when I fired up the bluetooth speaker and turned on the Minneapolis’ The Current radio station app. A nice, hard, abrasive song - it got me pretty pumped up to stare at my laptop all day. While we’re on the subject, here’s how I was listening to music in 2022:

Working from home:

• The Current, via bluetooth speaker, in the living room. This was pretty routine until the app became unusably glitchy for an unknown reason. 
• Amazon Music, via bluetooth speaker, in the living room. We have an old phone we use for the kids’ to message/video call their friends, and we have Amazon Music on it too. But then the app updates made it unusable on that phone, so I had the idea to switch to
• Amazon Music, via Roku app, in the basement. So I play it through the TV, through the receiver, through the good speakers and subwoofer. Amazon’s streaming quality is actually not as good as  
• Spotify Music, via Roku app, in the basement, through the same TV/receiver setup. But I don’t pay for Spotify so I get ads, which is fine, except that they don’t normalize the volume so I hear Jill Scott singing about Nationwide Insurance at twice the volume of the music.

In the office:

• Bandcamp, via headphones. I’ll pick a album I want to check out, see if it’s on the Bandcamp app, and listen. I don’t listen much at work anymore.

In the car:

• I am almost finished with the task I started when I bought my car in early 2021 - listening to all of my non-burned CDs in alphabetical order. I’m up to U2! It’s taking a long time because I am listening to podcasts in the car unless I’m driving with the kids.

Other:

• If I don’t want to start another show or movie but I don’t want to go to bed, I might watch some YouTube-recommended music videos or live performances.

11. The Beths - Knees Deep

I love the production on this album and I wish every rock album sounded as crisp as this. 

12. Skid Row - 18 and Life

This popped up when I selected the Hair Metal station on Amazon Music. Paul and I were doing something together… probably putting together a robot hedgehog that had a million plastic pieces we had to snip off and assemble? It prompted me to listen to the first Skid Row album. It was fun but I didn’t listen to it twice.

13. Spoon - My Babe

I bought this CD on sale at my local record store. I still do that sometimes. If I like something a lot I buy it on Bandcamp, or sometimes it’s only like a buck more to go buy the CD if it’s on sale.

14. First Aid Kit - A Feeling that Never Came

There are multiple good songs on this album that I could have chosen, but I picked this one because the melody is so unique.

15. Metric - Comes Crashing Down

I do not have anything special to say about this. Remember when Brie Larson sang a Metric song in Scott Pilgrim? And then she won and Oscar and became a Marvel superhero but now the only time you see her is in commercials for Nissan?

16. Beach Bunny - Oxygen

I went to her concert early this year. I found it odd that neither her guitarist nor bassist had a microphone for backup vocals. She can really belt it out live, and I was surprised that I could discern that at The Granada, which must have upgraded its sound system during the Covid shutdown. Speaking of the pandemic, the band requested masks at the show, and maybe 5% of the audience wore one. That was the vibe of 2022.

17. Peaness - How I’m Feeling

I discovered this through Fluxblog’s spotify list.

18. The Joy Formidable - Whirring

This is several years old, but I had never heard this band before this song caught my attention while listening to The Current.

19. The Jayhawks - All the Right Reasons

Corinne convinced me to see The Jayhawks at Knuckleheads, thank god, because they played the fucking hits all night long. She gasped when this song started, and happily this was one song during the set that was not interrupted by the terrible metal-on-metal screeching braking trains on the track that borders the outdoor venue. 

20. Lisa Loeb - This 

Lizzy’s local eye doctor retired, and the new eye doctor called and said they could no longer see her as a patient because no one was certified to assist with her binocular vision. “Her what?” I asked, as her previous doctor had never told us this was her diagnosis. So I found a doctor for her in the KC area, and drove her over to her first appointment, Lisa Loeb’s Firecracker CD as the soundtrack. The sound production on the album is really good. Maybe it doesn’t come across as you will listen to it on a bluetooth stream, but man, trust me you can distinctly hear every instrument on that CD. I listened to the album on the way back to Lawrence, too, and that’s when we ate some ramen and Lizzy picked out her new glasses, sparkly cat-eye frames! Just like Lisa Loeb, but with another musical connection - the frames are Gwen Stefani’s brand. 

21. Arcade Fire - The Lightning I and II

Ah, well, in the beginning of 2022 we were enjoying a pretty decent new Arcade Fire album (and they did a fun cover of As It Was!). Then we learned that Win Butler went through… a… phase?... where he was a sex-crazed emotional abuser? You can’t be abusive at worst and problematic at best and write hopeful anthems. That ain’t gonna square up. If your songs had the lyrical content of, say, One Week by the Barenaked Ladies, maybe your audience could turn off their brain knowledge and enjoy your nonsense songs. Arcade Fire isn’t that. I don’t see a path forward. Oh well.

22. Jane Inc - 2120

Another song I liked on Fluxblog’s spotify playlist. I couldn’t find a good spot for it on my soundtrack so it’s at the bottom. Ah man, I should have made it track 22. That would have been so tight.