It’s a special week for the Friday playlist.
As some of you know, I used to do a semi-private podcast on which I played music for friends. At the end of each year, I would share my favorite songs of the previous 12 months. As the years piled up, I thought a cool way to introduce those year-end lists would be to review what my favorite songs of the previous years were. Thus was born a playlist made of of the #1 song from each of my Best Of lists.
Although I didn’t begin podcasting until 2005, this list begins in 2004. I’ve not edited it: for several of the years the song that I picked as #1 at the time would not still rank as #1 if I were to re-pick today. I’m sticking with the original list, though.
So there’s your set up. Here are the songs.
2004: “Float On” – Modest Mouse
2005: “Going Missing” – Maximo Park
2006: “Star Witness” – Neko Case
2007: “Intervention” – Arcade Fire
2008: “The Modern Leper” – Frightened Rabbit
2009: “Whirring” – The Joy Formidable
2010: “FootShooter” – Frightened Rabbit
2011: “He Gets Me High” – Dum Dum Girls
2012: “The House That Heaven Built” – Japandroids
2013: “Holy” – Frightened Rabbit
2014: “Red Eyes” – The War On Drugs
2015: “California Nights” – Best Coast
2016: “An Otherwise Disappointing Life” / “Break” – Frightened Rabbit
A couple notes: “Whirring” was rereleased two years later and actually was a bigger hit in the US then. I knew about it when it first came out, though, which makes me super cool. And last year I could not decide between two FR songs and thus had a tie for first. Something to keep in mind for next week…