I’m not a list maker by nature. But spending too much time listing my favorite top 20 songs of the past year has become my annual December ritual. This year’s list is nearly finalized and will be posted on my social media accounts over the next few weeks.
I’ve written before about why I do it. I once heard that the average person’s musical tastes are set for life in their teens, which seemed sad. I love hearing new music all around me, and I don’t want that to stop.
So I spend my online time reading Stereogum, Pitchfork, Consequence of Sound, PopMatters and NPR’s All Songs Considered and sometimes discovering good songs via YouTube. Every once in a while, a tune on Pandora will introduce itself to me. I also use the Shazam app to identify news songs that excite my ears in the right away when I hear them on the radio. That mostly happens on C-89 these days, as 107.7 The End reflects the confusing, often boring mess that the “alternative rock” genre is 25 years after its ‘90s heyday.
I’ll admit that I don’t like a fair amount of new music, even if I understand why critics and other listeners embrace it. FKA Twigs, Lana Del Ray, The National and Tyler, the Creator and many others all make music that is objectively good; it just doesn’t match my tastes. This isn’t a change from my earlier decades as a music listener: Some of the most popular music of the 1980s and ‘90s never caught my fancy, either. It’s why I respect Radiohead and Pearl Jam more than I like them.
And not all my tastes are defendable. Front Line Assembly released a cover of Falco’s “Rock Me Amadeus” this past year that was completely unnecessary and reminiscent of Weezer’s recent cover of Toto’s “Africa.” I hate the Weezer cover, but I like Front Line Assembly’s, with no good argument to explain the difference—other than I never liked Toto much.
As the 2010s rush to an end, Hot Chip, Lorde, Courtney Barnett, Meg Myers, Idles, Public Service Broadcasting and Robin Schultz all have frequented my annual “best songs” playlists over the past decade. And some of my old favorites, from the late Leonard Cohen to James and OMD, continued to release great music during that period as well.
I’m now well past my teens and 20s, those ages that expanded my musical tastes exponentially. Early in the next decade, I’ll turn 50 years old, a milestone I already dread. But I will keep seeking out new music and eschewing the “classic rock” stations. Because the day you stop reading new things, hearing new things and thinking or doing new things is the day when you truly stop growing and just start aging.
(The Creative Commons rights photo posted with this essay comes from photographer Mark Seton via flickr.)