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.
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.
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.
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