Favorite Songs of 2020
My pre-list State of Music comments are pretty simple this year: 2020 felt like a weak musical year. I don’t know whether to blame that on Covid, me getting older and having to fight changing tastes harder, or that it was just a rough year for good tunes. There are some high quality tracks in this list, but I’m not…
Tops of Eighty Four
It only took six weeks for Tom Breihan to roll through the 20 number one songs of 1984. 1985 has some bangers, for sure, but we’re approaching the point where I’ll be more interested in his words than in the songs themselves. In the comments, people ranked the Number Ones of 1984 in their preferred order. Believe it or not…
Favorite Songs of 2019
This was not a classic year for music. There were only a couple albums that I listened to more than a few times, only one of which that I went back regularly over the course of several months. There were long stretches in the year when there were no new songs that I was crazy about. But there were still…
Favorite Songs of the Decade: The 2010s
Well shit, I’m late. Last week I looked back and saw that I released my Favorite Songs of the 2000s on November 23, 2009. I was aiming to post this decade’s list on December 1 but when I saw that date, I figured I better get my shit together and drop this on your heads. Besides, I haven’t even started…
33 Favorite Songs of 2016
I usually offer some State of the Music Union thoughts when I share my favorite songs of the year lists. 2016 got off to a great start and then kind of cruised to the finish. Most of my favorite albums of the year came out during its first six months. There were some albums I was greatly looking forward to…
Top 5s
If you follow Joe Posnaski on either Twitter or his personal blog, you no doubt saw his recent piece that was based on Xavier basketball coach Chris Mack’s list of favorite Bruce Springsteen songs. A Bruce Top Five There is so much for me to love here. A) It’s Poz, so it’s almost automatically great. B) It’s about music lists,…
25 Favorite Songs Of All Time, 2013 Edition
As I mentioned a couple weeks back, it’s been five years since I first posted my 20 Favorite Songs of All-Time list. Which means it’s time to review and tweak the list. There wasn’t any great, complex methodology to this. I simply took the original list and evaluated those 20 songs against each other. There was some movement, and one…
So Very Eighties
Last weekend I was sitting around, enjoying an 80-Acre Hoppy Wheat when Madness’ classic 1983 tune “Our House” came on the radio. Being the reflective cat I am1, I savored my beer and considered that I very well could have been listening to the same song exactly 30 years before that moment. I also thought if you had to sum…
Stats 2012
Top 10 artists for 2012, based on my Last.fm stats, which sadly, aren’t necessarily a full representation of what I listened to. Close enough for blog purposes, I suppose. Wussy – 250 The Clash – 220 The White Stripes – 219 Japandroids – 188 Jack White – 184 Frightened Rabbit – 169 Radiohead – 150 Pearl Jam – 145 Dum…
Five Favorite Albums Revisited
To continue my recent music nostalgia jag, the fifth anniversary of me posting my favorite albums of all time list just passed. Seems like a good time to revisit the list and see if anything has changed. As a quick refresher, here were the Top 5, Honorable Mentions, and Super Honorable Mention from August 2007. 1a – London Calling –…