Before I drop my favorite songs of the year on you, a few moments for my annual State of Music address.<\/p>\n
2018 was tough. Regular readers know the biggest reason why I say this: the May suicide of Frightened Rabbit frontman Scott Hutchison. I was pretty emotional about Prince\u2019s death, and felt a little strange because of that. I figured that was a one-time effect. But Scott\u2019s death floored me, and in some ways I\u2019ve still not recovered.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve written about that several times this year, so won\u2019t dive into too many details. Looking back the thing that strikes me about his death and its effects on me are how it keeps coming back. Every few weeks I\u2019ll run across a seemingly innocent artist profile, tweet, podcast, etc. where someone mentions Scott and how his death affected them. And that brings it all back.<\/p>\n
By mid-summer I had completely stopped listening to Frightened Rabbit\u2019s music. It was too painful, hearing Scott\u2019s lyrics and making direct connections between them and his death. It wasn\u2019t until early December, when I finally decided to watch some of their old performances on YouTube, that I could listen to some of the band\u2019s music. I\u2019m still not ready to reintroduce my favorite band of the last decade into my regular listening routine. But I think I can finally not skip past their tracks when the algorithm randomly selects them.<\/p>\n
Beyond that, I feel like there wasn\u2019t a ton of great music this year. Plenty of good music, yes. But was there a classic track that I\u2019ll still be excited about next year? In ten years? I don\u2019t know. Same for albums. Some nice ones, but very few that I put on heavy rotation in the days after their release and then returned to regularly.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve wondered if that was because it was, indeed, a bad year for music, or at least the music I like. Is the music I like getting squeezed out by other, more dominant sounds? Or, gasp, am I finally aging and it\u2019s getting harder for me to connect with music written and performed by 20-somethings?<\/p>\n
I\u2019d guess it\u2019s a little bit of each of those, plus some bad timing: very few of my favorite artists put out new music this year and there weren\u2019t a bunch of bands that jumped up to fill those holes.<\/p>\n
And then there was our move and stretch without cable\/stable internet access, which totally threw off my listening habits for a bit.<\/p>\n
As I\u2019ve whittled down my Favorites list from the original 40 or so songs to its final number, I\u2019ve become a little fonder of all the surviving songs. I think the top 10 is pretty solid. It just doesn\u2019t compare to the top 10s from other, stronger years.<\/p>\n
So, for now, I\u2019ll hope 2018 was an aberration and 2019 will be better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Before I drop my favorite songs of the year on you, a few moments for my annual State of Music address. 2018 was tough. Regular readers know the biggest reason why I say this: the May suicide of Frightened Rabbit frontman Scott Hutchison. I was pretty emotional about Prince\u2019s death, and felt a little strange because of that. I figured that was a one-time effect. But Scott\u2019s death floored me, and in some ways I\u2019ve still not recovered. I\u2019ve written about that several times this year, so won\u2019t dive into too many details. Looking back the thing that strikes me about his death and its effects on me are how it keeps coming back. Every few weeks I\u2019ll run across a seemingly innocent artist profile, tweet, podcast, etc. where someone mentions Scott and how his death affected them. And that brings it all back. By mid-summer I had completely stopped listening to Frightened Rabbit\u2019s music. It was too painful, hearing Scott\u2019s lyrics and making direct connections between them and his death. It wasn\u2019t until early December, when I finally decided to watch some of their old performances on YouTube, that I could listen to some of the band\u2019s music. I\u2019m still not ready to reintroduce my favorite band of the last decade into my regular listening routine. But I think I can finally not skip past their tracks when the algorithm randomly selects them. Beyond that, I feel like there wasn\u2019t a ton of great music this year. Plenty of good music, yes. But was there a classic track that I\u2019ll still be excited about next year? In ten years? I don\u2019t know. Same for albums. Some nice ones, but very few that I put on heavy rotation in the days after their release and then returned to regularly. I\u2019ve wondered if that was because it was, indeed, a bad year for music, or at least the music I like. Is the music I like getting squeezed out by other, more dominant sounds? Or, gasp, am I finally aging and it\u2019s getting harder for me to connect with music written and performed by 20-somethings? I\u2019d guess it\u2019s a little bit of each of those, plus some bad timing: very few of my favorite artists put out new music this year and there weren\u2019t a bunch of bands that jumped up to fill those holes. And then there was our move and stretch without cable\/stable internet access, which totally threw off my listening habits for a bit. As I\u2019ve whittled down my Favorites list from the original 40 or so songs to its final number, I\u2019ve become a little fonder of all the surviving songs. I think the top 10 is pretty solid. It just doesn\u2019t compare to the top 10s from other, stronger years. So, for now, I\u2019ll hope 2018 was an aberration and 2019 will be better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9],"class_list":["post-7216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-music"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7216"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13295,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7216\/revisions\/13295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}