Music in 2023 // You’re an All-Star

The Highwomen at The Gorge. No better place to see a show.

I started last year’s recap of my Spotify Wrapped by saying I’ve been wanting to get back into writing for a while. Upon reflection, I can’t have wanted to write that badly because it is the last time I seem to have put pen to paper, or fingers to keys anyway. In the words of the great American philosopher Steven Scott Harwell, “The years start coming and they don’t stop coming”. Rest in peace Stevie.

The year ended with me moaning to Stu that there hadn’t been any albums I’d really loved this year. This was coming off the back of 2022 where every band finally released whatever they’d been holed up working on during the pandemic, and we were treated to release after release of great stuff. The common denominator of those records however was that they were more or less from a fairly familiar vein of modern rock, be it Gang of Youths, Spoon, Foals, and so on. Guys in a group with guitars. This framework has long stopped being cool or particularly relevant, but then so have I.

Foals have never sounded happier or been, based on the streams, less successful

After complaining that there were no albums I truly loved, I took a moment to realize maybe I just hadn’t listened to them. Over to Album Of The Year I went to work through the aggregated list for 2023. About here I would say something about not having recognized a lot of the acts, but that isn’t surprising from someone who just confessed a preference for more records from white guys in skinny jeans.

Album Of The Year aggregates a bunch of year-end lists to try and get to some sort of collective agreement on what actually constituted the best music released this year. In the top ten are four acts I had never heard of before (Lankum, Wednesday, billy woods & Kenny Seal, and JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown), two records I was aware were out but hadn’t listened to (Lana Del Ray and Mitski), two artists I will just say are not for me (Olivia Rodrigo, Sufjan Stevens) and two I listened to and really liked (boygenius, Caroline Polachek). I didn’t go back to Caroline’s record like I did when she was in Chairlift. I don’t know why, I can only guess at nothing getting lodged in my ear like I Belong In Your Arms or Moth To The Flame did. And boygenius, they were just so ubiquitous this year I had assumed the record had come out last year and taken it’s time to build. Shows how much attention I was paying.

There is a certain kind of Millennial who would like to remain in the early 2010s forever, & I am that Millennial

So instead of pretending I’ve changed my mind in some vain attempt at relevance, I will just have to try harder to dig up new records to listen to in 2024. I do want to take the time though to shout out a few musical experiences, in no particular order, that were highlights:

• Newcomer Weston Loney’s We Get On EP was a guitar-driven (see above) delight. How it found its way to my ears from a tiny town in Northern Ireland I don’t know, but I’m glad it did, and I sent it to more than few friends.
• The Highwomen live at The Gorge in the summer was incredible. I hadn’t seen a gig at The Gorge before, and while I know I have to get to something at Red Rocks as well, I can’t imagine a more magical place to catch a band you love.

• Cuts and Bruises, the sophmore record from Inhaler had some nice moments, though it is hard to imagine a band not fronted by Bono’s son with these songs achieving nearly the same level of recognition. I don’t think there’s anything stronger than the opener Just To Keep You Satisfied, but Stu thinks that song is the weakest among them. What can I say? You can be, and are, wrong.

Meanwhile at Spotify Wrapped:

• While I listened to 80 genres, my top 5 were Indie-Folk/tronica/Soul/Rock/Pop. I spent my teenage years and much of my twenties listening to mainstream music from mainstream acts, so it seems I’m giving this musical taste thing the Benjamin Button treatment.
• The place that listens the most like me is Boulder, Colorado. I feel insulted and seen at the same time.
• I listened to 5040 songs, only slightly down on last year but I have no frame of reference. Is this a lot? Is this a person that stays in their lane?
• Only two songs from 2023 were in my top 5, Red Diesel from the aforementioned Weston Loney and The Future from Satin Jackets & Panama. Sam Fender, who must surely be due for a new record by now, made up for not cracking the list last year with Getting Started, but the song that has my heart and soul is The Dress by Dijon. I know nothing about this man other than I love his song and I would like to replace the drum samples.
• 35,780 minutes of listening which puts me in the top 9% of listeners worldwide. I am clearly getting my money’s worth and yet I can’t help feeling like this brings with it more questions than answers. That number of minutes works out to be 7 minutes a song, and it is not like I listened to each song twice and then went about my day, I’d love to see the long tail of this graph as with a gun to my head I could not hum you a line of the 97th song from my automatically generated Top Songs of 2023 playlist

• Sam Fender I listened to more than anything else, courtesy of getting around to listening to Seventeen Going Under fairly late last year. From the visualizations Spotify shares it seems from January to April all I did was drink wine and listen to Sam Fender, which is not a bad way to get through the winter.
• Leif Vollebekk makes an appearance at #2, but Noble Oak is in at #3. I came across a 2020 record he put out called Horizon that I just fucking love. Kind of a throw back for me to Vondelpark’s Seabed which, were Spotify doing this annual reviews a decade ago, would have featured prominently.

According to Spotify, the type of listener I am is the Roboticist, leaning on the algorithms to play things I’d like to hear. This is true, I don’t find the playlists updated often enough for me to want to listen to them over and over again, but like media silos on Facebook or the family spaghetti recipe, not getting forced out of your comfort zone surely leaves one just cycling through other groups of white, let’s be honest, men, with guitars which I’m predisposed to enjoy.

That is not going to help me stumble across the next Anderson.Paak. Mind you neither is going through the albums on the aggregated list that reminded me boygenius put out their record more recently than I remembered. Most of what was there tickled someone’s fancy, but it has me thinking where most people don’t stop listening to the music they came of age to, I seem to be stuck in an endless loop of music that takes me back to being 30. Do you fight that? Do you acquiesce and embrace it?

Or do you just pick up your own guitar and go back to trying to join them?