Time Best Songs of 2020

So first of all let me be honest - I am ready for year end lists in the world of music. Those of you who either watch this space or know me should also know that 2020 was a really different year in terms of the music I listened to. Yeah, yeah, we can all reflect on COVID and work from home and say unprecedented a  lot, but whatever it is or was, my musical tastes went really sideways. I'm sure I'll have more on that when I do my spotify write up, but for now, this list.

The full article is here. 

I fully appreciate that all the songs play embedded, here is the spotify direct link.

10. Long Road Home by Oneothrix Point Never off of Magic Oneothrix Point Never.

Do you know who this is? I didn't either, but I a couple seconds of searching informed me that it is Daniel Lopatin, the guy who did the excellent Uncut Gems soundtrack. This song is great and deserves more attention - its complex and challenging, but has enough structure there to be palatable to listeners who don's steep themselves in electronica or ambient. Great pick Time.

9. Uwrongo by Prince Kaybee, Shimza, Black Motion, and Ami Faku (Single)

I had no idea who any of these people were, Time gives some dramatic backstory, but the question is, is the song good? Yes, yes it is. It is great.  Sadly most of my touch in African pop is random bits and bobs I pick up in pop culture and Paul Simon's Graceland. This song is Graceland, updated for 2020 R&B sounds. I loved every second of it. If you liked Nico and Vinz in 2015 but wanted something a little more authentic and less pop, this is probably it. 

8. Back Door by Stray Kids, off of In Life.

2020 was truly my year of K-pop. I went from "I like a couple here and there because they are earwigs" to "I follow K-pop news and understand why music shows matter." That said, my appreciation of boy bands still lags well behind my enjoyment of the female idol groups. Of course, this must be balanced with the fact that I now categorize groups by their management, and know that I like a lot of what JYP is putting out. All of this is a long way of saying, if Time had to pick a single song to represent all of K-pop for 2020, this is not my choice but its passable.

7. 7 Summers by Morgan Wallen (single).

I'm not quite one of those people who says "Anything but country" when asked about my musical tastes, but I'm pretty close in practice. I don't stay that close to country except to understand that it is suffering from an identity crises where all the top 40 is formulaic and drowning out some really unique talents. This song honestly sounds like the former - there is unrequited love, beer, summer, and a river... The music is balanced but clearly makes use of 12 studio musicians to lay down the various layers of chords. The lyrics are also dripping in that bizarre sort of misogyny that is a warning sign of future violence when an internet troll expresses it but makes up the basis of country music. Wallen has the best mullet of 2020, and there have been some decent mullets this year. 

6. Think About Things by Daoi Freyr (single, Eurovision)

I love Eurovision and spend a lot of time with it, and with it being cancelled this year, I think much like the 1992 Phillies, Daoi Freyr will always be remembered as being robbed. I've been listening to this song since it first attracted Eurivision buzz and it still holds up. Its great, just great, that sort of simple electro-pop that Iceland is singularly good at once every decade. I just love it, and you should too.

5. Good News by Mac Miller, off of Circles

Sadly, Mac Miller has never been able to capture my imagination the way he probably deserves. Circles was no different for me, and Good News fits that bill exactly. I listen to it, think to myself "This is really great" and then turn it off and never listen to it again until it shows up on a year end list. He is soulful, his lyrics are deep and well written, and he absolutely knows what his strengths are, but again, of the song's 5 minute run time the first 2 minutes are enough for me.

4. Little Nokia by Bree Runway off of 2000AND3EVA

Time's write up, and the video, probably hurt this one more than it deserves. This song is just great. As Time does correctly point out, this walks across genres in a way that could easily be trite but instead just makes it into its own song. Its smart, catchy, and bold in all the right ways - I feel like this is Rhianna if she went harder and less broad appeal.\

3. Yo Perreo Sola - Remix by Bad Bunny, Nesi and Ivy Queen (single)

I wasn't as enamored with this one as Time, in fact this and 7 Summers are the headscratchers for me. Its a solid Reggaeton song for sure, and I also really like the minimalist presentation here. Unfortunately, it will probably be slaughtered with all sorts of extra noise in clubs for the next two years (assuming clubs ever are a thing again...). I really enjoyed that the video makes use of drag, something I understand to be a big deal in latin machismo culture, but otherwise I'm just not seeing how this is better than all but two other songs released this year...

2. WAP (feat. Megan Thee Stallion) by Cardi B (single)

If there was a single song that I think captures 2020, this might be it - its unique role in trolling the Republican machine was perfect, the genius of Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion, the fact that everyone needed a rude escape, if in 50 years they re-do Forest Gump this is a big part of the 2020 scenes soundtrack. Again, though, this isn't that great of a song in and of itself - its value is the commentary it makes, the commentary it generated, the commentary it will continue to generate. If the list was "10 songs that explain 2020" this would be number 1, if the list is "the best songs" of 2020, this doesn't qualify.

1. People, I've been sad by Christine and the Queens off of La vita nuova

Ok, this can be the best song of 2020. This is a fine choice. I'm on board. This stands on its own as art, and you don't even need Time's overly contrived writeup about how this is how we all felt this year unprecedented etc etc. Song is so beautiful, so well performed, and it knows exactly what it wants to do at every moment. This is why I love the best IDM - there are a million bips and bops, and each of them represents a chance to be right or wrong, and the best (Aphex, mu-ziq) are always right, even when you aren't. This song has that quality. 

Spotify Wrapped 2018

Here we go! The annual Spotify Wrapped post, this time new and improved for 2018. Let's see what I did in my listening this year.

So - first of all, the format was a little different this year. Spotify continues to do its "hyper-targeted" listening data - I think at some point I may have authorized Spotify to put my 2018 Wrapped card on a billboard - and this year its gotten... a little odd. In previous years, I felt like there was a lot to learn about yourself, with things like what was your top song by genre, or quarter, or most repeated, etc. This year, there is a lot of odd data about the songs themselves (like the artists star sign or 'oldest'). I'm not sure I like this new approach. On the one hand, it is a cool use of the data and it is nice trivia, but on the other hand, it is just that - trivia. In the past, I've reflected on how my life changed and how that showed up in my music listening, or what certain habits said about me. This year, I see a lot less of that and more silly stuff like "the oldest song was recorded by a philharmonic in 1959." Interesting, for sure, but it doesn't say much about about me.

Anyways - I've got screen shots and writing space, so let's jump on in.

Firsts: The first song I listened to in 2018 was apparently Mozart's Symphony No. 35. I listen to classical music from time to time, so I was thinking that perhaps this was a deliberate choice on my part. I looked it up just now, and it wasn't - this must have come through on a random classical playlist.

The first artist I discovered (which I am going to take to mean "first time listening to") was Stev. Well, I couldn't remember who Stev was, so I searched Spotify for him. Turns out Spotify's search algorithim makes him impossible to find - entering Stev in the search bar (even with quotes around it) returns various "Steven" related strings. I messed with this for a bit, then turned to Google, and found the Google search card had a link to his spotify, which then opened in my browser, so I clicked that, and eventually got him playing in my Spotify app. If I'm an artist... I'm irate at this.

In any case, Stev does the downtempo electronica with traditional Chinese chamber music influences, so this is probably my jam. I think I'm going to spend some time with his stuff this last week of 2018, so a nice bookending to the year here.

Number of Minutes: Spotify presents this one as a quiz (which, if you recall, was a heavy theme of 2017's Wrapped list). I don't recall if I got it correct or not, but the answer is 25,331 minutes during whatever period they define as "this year."  That works out to about 422 hours or 17 or so days. Per Spotify that is up 18% from last  year (and overachieving, lol).

Spotify presents this statistic each  year, which is fine, although I wonder if they would surface it for premium members with, say 18 hours. I think my $9.99/month is well spent, but I don't know if everyone out there agrees.

In terms of listening, Spotify continues to be a mostly "at my desk" sort of thing. I listen at work. I picked up some Sony Studio Monitors this year which have enhanced my life in ways I didn't initially think possible. This year at my job saw a lot of turmoil - first, we adopted a more "open office" approach that saw me sitting next to a noisy sales team, which caused me to retreat more into the headphones. Then I was assigned to a project that essentially amounted to data entry, and as such I basically just put on 8 hours of music a day. Then, I was moved into a more senior role, and found that I needed to be available without headphones on, and listened less for a period.

One difference this year is that I picked up an audible subscription, and as such my commutes were mostly audio books and not music. 

Top Artist: Mokhov. Mokhov is phenomenal, and honestly this is a solid top artist pick. I think he was my favorite this year in a very genuine sense (in the past years I've seen artists like Taylor Swift on this list, whom I like but only made the list because a single song got stuck in my head). Interestingly, I listened to most of his discography.

I've written about Mokhov before - the biggest weakness is that the songs can get sort of formulaic. Still, that doesn't mean that there isn't a boatload of excellent stuff to enjoy.

The Charts. Well - I guess at least Spotify did provide this, in a year where they otherwise went for the obscure or the general.

 For the top artists, something interesting happened this year - an 'outlier' crept into my listening profile. My son really likes the StoryBots and we have been listening to a couple of songs on the way to drop him off at school. As far as kid's music goes, the StoryBots are probably a parent's favorite way to go - the music is good and the styles are varied (I'm particularly fond of the Colors album that references a sort of Rap/R&B style). Still, I was surprised as I've read a lot of articles that detail Spotify's algorithims, which should be able to separate out the music you put on when your toddler is in the car from the rest of what you listen to. I guess I finally listened to enough StoryBots, or regularly enough, to trip to the other side where its just "my tastes."

Otherwise, Mokhov was top of the year, and Tycho has been on this list many times before. New entrants are Levox and nervous_testpilot. Levox was a real surprise find but also a bit more niche - I mostly looped the stellar Noriko's Story. I did go through the Dynasty Chronicles album a couple of times, and drifted through the top tracks once or twice, but it was mostly Noriko's Story. None of this is necessarily a bad thing, of course, but its a little less instructive.

nervous_testpilot, on the other hand, was a cool find. I'm covering Music for Code, the album I spent the most time with, in depth elsewhere, but in short, it was both terrible and goofy while being impossible and awesome. I think the album was basically someone saying "What music would I like to listen to while I wrote code?" and came up with this - it toys with chiptunes, it isn't overly lyrical, it moves quickly with heavy bass, and its maybe a little on the simple side at times. I listened a couple of times and immediately made a connection to Explosions in the Sky - if nervous_testpilot did a videogame soundtrack, people would find some of his other work and then say "Oh yeah, I'm into soundtracks" when asked about music. Well, to no one's surprise, nervous_testpilot does soundtracks.

It sounds like I'm dragging this album but the fact of the matter remains that it was one of my most listened to, and one that I came back to repeatedly throughout the year. I just can't get over the fact that I liked it so much.

With the top songs, I'm not going to go into too much depth. Noriko's Story clearly was my favorite this year, and Akane is another Levox song that I went deep on. If Noriko's Story is too on the nose with the bamboo flutes, try Akane for something that is solid EDM (heavily looped too). Wishbone is from nervous_testpilot's Music for Code, so no surprises there. Arty's Last Kiss was a real treat. Arty is obviously a giant in the industry, but someone I've always sort of orbited around. His stuff is always a bit more big room than I'm after. Last Kiss, however, is something else altogether. It's just beautiful. It was a song that I put on repeat when I had stuff to get done and wanted my mind cleared. It moves. It's delicate. It has a beat. It's unique, but draws from predictable influences. Maybe the best way to describe it is "delicate" and if you have followed anything I've written about music before, you can see why this matters so much to me.

And... well... I've been doing these since 2014 and I don't think there has ever been a list without a Burn remix so we are all good there.

The Top 100. You don't know this yet but I've been working on a retrospective of the entire top 100 list. Check back and you might actually get to read it.

Non-Mainstream. This is maybe the coolest card in the whole list. I listen to 91% more non-mainstream artists than the average Spotify listener. This is a cool statistic. This is interesting. This is about me and my habits.

Of course, I don't know how mainstream is defined... and of course there is no real baseline here. How much music does the average "mainstream" listener listen to? I will say, this isn't surprising - most of my listening if deep in the ambient/IDM/chill EDM side of things, and even when I dip out I spend time in things like traditional classical which is probably "non-mainstream." I guess I really can, unironically, say "You probably have never heard of them" when someone asks about my music tastes.

Seriously though - cool stats.

Oldest Song. Ah - this one has the potential to be awesome but kind of falls flat. For those of you who are less familiar, La Gionconda is a ballet that I think I picked up because my son was watching Little Einsteins and this was the featured track. Apparently the recording for this version was done in 1959... but the song is from 1875. See - if Spotify could have picked that out, that would be cool. I wonder if this is actually older than some of the other songs I listened to. I probably listened to some rock and roll from pre-1960 at some point this year, but Spotify can only pick out the date the album was released.

So... a nice thought but really poorly implemented torpedoes this one.

Star Signs. Ok, what is going on with this? This is seriously the oddest statistic I have ever had presented. I mean, its cool in that I would have never thought to categorize my music like this. Is there something that makes me drift towards artists of a certain birthdate?

But - let's start with the problems. First, why use star signs? They are so useless and silly. Second, who are these artists? The card lists Tiesto and Skrillex, fine, but who else? What is the sign of the my most popular artist? I know for a fact that Tiesto and Skrillex didn't combine for a high volume of music this year, so obviously something else is at play. 

Like the oldest statistic above - a great thought but a poor implementation.

Tastebreakers. This is Spotify's annual attempt to make you listen to music you active decided not to listen to during the year. I don't know why they think this is a good idea but they do it every year. Last year, I went through most of the list and concluded, yes, I am ok with having skipped these songs. I'll probably take a browse through this year and see what is there, but again, if I didn't listen to these songs, why would I want to now?

The Sharing Card. This is cute little summary, and I like that they have worked in the album art. I also enjoy the little "if you don't post did it happen" quip, but I've got them covered without adding in the card. The only weakness I will point out is that the Top Songs list is meaningless without an artist or album to pin them too (searching Akane brings up a lot of other hits that are not the one by Levox that I listened to).

Well, there we have it - Spotify's Wrapped 2018. In terms of the overall Wrapped service, I liked this format more than last year's bizarre "know yourself" quiz feature, and I'm glad they got away from the pastel Christmas color scheme. That said, they still are way behind 2014 and 2015 in terms of interesting data uses! Let's get back to discovering cool things about myself, not useless trivia about when a particular artist was born or when a song was recorded to CD.

I'll probably have some more posts on this coming up - I'm about 75% done with a retrospective on my top 100 songs.

2017 Wrapped - Spotify

Well, after the 2016 disaster that saw me cancel my spotify premium, this year I did receive a 2017 in review playlist and was able to click-through the little website that pulls the information.

Let's dig in, shall we?

In 2017, I listened for 21,201 minutes, to 3,346 different song and 1,475 different artists, along the way exploring 45 genres. For those keeping score at home, those 21 thousand minutes work out to about hours or just over 14 days. That's not bad, but even more so, consider that for about half the year I didn't even use Spotify after being really frustrated by losing the end of year review for 2016. I'm generally an active listener to - I put it on in the background while I'm working but I don't generally leave it playing if I'm not at my desk.

I'm not surprised about the variance in number of songs, that number is basically meaningless anyways, but I was surprised to see nearly 1,500 different artists. My only guess is that it is partially drawn from the way spotify sometimes considers it a different artist if there is a "feature" but I still think this is pretty mind-boggling. Although I guess you can subtract a couple for Richard D. James, Caustic Window, Aphex Twin, etc...

Top Artist

For some reason Spotify leaned in heavily with the "know yourself" theme this year and quizzed you on your listening habits. They presented a solid list but it was an easy pick for me, Lymbyc Systym was certainly a bright spot in my year and Split Stones was an album I put on repeat for a solid part of the year. This category is almost always guaranteed to be a new discovery - I am a huge fan of Mrs. Jynx and her body of work, but I generally don't spend a lot of time with songs I've heard before. I don't have the exact numbers but I doubt the others here were even close.

Top Song

Ah, this category always is enjoyable for me. The top artists and albums are always pretty predictable, but you never know what song you'll get stuck on for a three day period that will show up on this list. I actually had to think really hard about this one, because I had no idea if it was TYSM or Taylor Swift... Ultimately, though, I think Honeymoon Phase might actually be a 2016 song, so this year it was ...Ready For It? (abysmal punctuation aside). I mean, its a good song, and Taylor Swift is a good performer. It still is funny though - you don't see much of Taylor Swift or top 40 elsewhere in my lists.

Top Genre

I used to think genre really mattered, then I decided it was a waste of time, now I'm somewhere in the middle. Having said that, looking at these vague words, the answer should be obvious. Scorecore? Neo Mellow? Deep Chiptune? Compositional Ambient? These remind me of the Xbox Live Gamertag generators from a couple years ago that just did "AdjectiveNoun" to make you a screenname.

Results

I was pretty confident in getting these right, but I was pretty surprised with the variance between my top 5 artists, songs, and genres. For Artists, Lymbyc Systym and Tycho do something very similar, and Little People is certainly directly adjacent. Its Taylor Swift and TYSM that stand out a bit, especially so because in each of their cases, it was really just one single song that I put on repeat (a lot). I was also kind of surprised that Kiiara didn't make that list, since Gold was one of my top songs.

The top genres, on the other hand, are probably reflective of my general listening tastes. I probably spend most of my time with IDM, but some songs that I think are IDM are categorized as Electronic instead, and I have no idea what the difference between those and EDM is. Trip Hop is my standout here - a genre I had almost no experience with and did some exploratory listening to through reddit.

The Age Thing

Spotify knows my age, so I assume that is where they pull this from, but I just had a nice laugh at seeing "Brostep" with an average listener age of 25 at one end of the spectrum and "Folk Rock" with an age of 40 at the other end.

Skips

187 skips this year, only defined as "less than the average listener." I've done some informal polling and amongst my friends with premium accounts, this is several orders of magnitude less (most of them are in the range of 2-4 thousand).

 Overall

I'm... ok with this new format. On the one hand, it works, and that is a massive improvement over previous years. On the other hand, the data is just ok. It doesn't really tell me much about my listening habits that a "most played" list wouldn't. The red, green, and pink color scheme is also tough to get behind.