To offer more insight into the preteen perspective on music in 2024, my 11-year-old daughter—at her request—will be offering some color commentary throughout this post.
For the last 45 days, I’ve been participating in another Blue Sky music challenge: #UncoolTwo50. Organized by the account @uncooltwo50.bsky.social, the idea is to is…
When I tally up my most-played artists of the last year, the vast majority of my Top 10 is basically indistinguishable from my Top 10 most-payed artists from 20 years ago. Is it my fault they insist on still putting out strong, fresh material?
If you’re a Dad Rock and ’90s Nostalgia aficionado, have I got 30 tunes for you to check out.
On the whole, I’d say these songs are a hopeful bunch, rooted in the possibility of muddling through somehow and reclaiming a semblance of fellowship, cohesion, progress, and well-being. Perhaps 2022 will deliver on that promise.
What can one say about 2020 other than, “Good riddance”? I can think of one thing: There was some damn good music released this year. Is it because 2020 was a particularly fruitful year, with talented artists who had nothing else to do but write and record new music?
Fourteen of the 30 tracks below are either by a female solo artist, a band with a frontwoman, a male-female duo, someone who doesn’t subscribe to binary gender identifiers, or a Canadian indie-supergroup prominently featuring Neko Case.
“Everything, everything, everything, everything, everything is awful!!!”
That, my friends, was 2018, in all its mortifying, capricious, senseless absurdity. I can think of no better soundtrack.
Even the shittiest of years can produce moments of musical transcendence. The tumult of 1968 gave us Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, Sweetheart of the…
The past year was nothing if not a “low-flying panic attack” … .