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?
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.
As we speed headlong into the second half of the decade, pleasant surprises abound. Among other things, for me, 2015 is proof that bands I’ve…
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…
Once again, I’m turning this in a few days past deadline. No matter! It’s still not too late to celebrate 2013, which in my musical…