Category: 366 Songs

It’s been awhile since I shared a playlist, in part because I started from scratch with the new year a few months back. (In addition, when I got sick, I just… didn’t listen to music at all for a few weeks, which probably should have been my biggest sign that something was wrong, but also meant that I wasn’t really adding anything to the list to get it to my entirely fictional threshold of 50 tracks before I share it here. So… later than I might have hoped, but here it is now.

For anyone who has no idea what I’m on about; every year for the last few years, I’ve made a Spotify playlist for the year that I add new discoveries, songs I’ve rediscovered, or just simply things I can’t get out my head to, as something akin to a musical diary of the year. It’s a throwaway project but a fun one, and I share the playlist every 50 entries here. You can see the beginnings of the list for 2025 below, and listen to the playlist itself right here.

In the couple of months, I’ve been listening to the song “I Have Been Floated” by the Olivia Tremor Control almost obsessively, over and over and over again. It was something that I found almost by accident, adding it to a playlist initially because I liked the organ hook and moving on, only for the song to take root in my brain and settle in for the long haul.

(To speak to how little I was really paying attention to it at first, when it started playing on a loop in my head, I couldn’t remember what song it actually was, just the melody; I went back through everything I’d been listening to to try and find it, going, it’s definitely got to be something I heard in the last couple of days, right? I’ve not just made this tune up, have I?)

Somewhere in the middle of the third or fourth day of listening to the song for a third or fourth time, I realized that this was something I do entirely unintentionally; become obsessed with something in the short term and loop it, revisiting it time after time to try and understand it on a level that unlocks something inside my brain. It’s most often music — with this song, it’s me realizing that the way the song plays with recurring elements is a masterclass in arrangement and production — but it can be anything: a TV show, a book, a comic, a movie. When I discovered the rom-com Rye Lane, I watched it three times in one weekend. I’ve watched Lovers Rock more times than I can remember, despite only seeing it for the first time three years ago, especially the “Silly Game” scene, which I rewind and watch again even while playing the movie through as a whole. It’s all about trying to get why it makes my brain itch.

This is, perhaps, a “me” thing — the desire to revisit until something feels fully understood and appreciated — but I doubt that I’m the only one who does it, somehow. Don’t all of us who have ever considered ourselves fans of anything have this gene inside our heads?

We’re close enough to the end of the year that I might as well finish up the 2024 playlist that I’ve shared once or twice during the year (okay, three times; it’s because I shared them in bunches of 50 songs at a time; there’s a formula!). As the year came to a close, I added less things to the playlist (intended to be new songs to me, or things I was becoming newly obsessed with after not listening to for awhile) because my attention was on things I’d already added, but nonetheless:

The actual playlist is here. If, by some strange circumstance, I add more songs between writing this post and the end of the year, you’ll find them here.

At this time of year, thoughts turn to holiday playlists, and the essential songs that have to make it on to every single one. (I shared mine earlier this week.) I had a thought the other day bemoaning the lack of good new Christmas songs, before I realized two things simultaneously:

1. I am old, and therefore almost destined to find so much of “new” music to be boring, dull, or just simply not my bag, daddio.
2. More than arguably any other music genre, the appeal of Christmas music is that it’s nostalgic and pulls you back to simpler, earlier times in your life. So finding “new” Christmas songs that appeal to you as much as songs you grew up with it… difficult, to say the least. (Which is to say, sorry Sabrina Carpenter and your Nonsense Christmas Song.)

That last one is something I should have realized sooner, because it’s a lesson I learned when I was a kid myself. There were many Christmas traditions in my house growing up, which is almost certainly why I’m such a holiday fiend to this day. One of the major ones, though, was that when we did the decorations for the living room and the rest of the house, we would listen to Christmas music, and if at all possible, that would start with the music my mother grew up listening to at that time of year — which is to say, Nat King Cole’s Christmas album.

I say, “if at all possible,” because there was a period where the album was gone for some reason. Maybe it was destroyed, or misplaced? I don’t remember what happened to it, but I do remember that a replacement was eventually purchased after a couple of years, and it was clear the difference it made in her experience just hearing him sing “The Christmas Song” again. It was what completed the whole thing for her; without that song, it wasn’t really Christmas.

I’m the same. Not just with “The Christmas Song” (I learned from the best, and was taught at a young age), but with “Merry Xmas Everybody” and “I Wish It Could be Christmas Everyday” and at least half of the Phil Spector Christmas album. That’s not to say that new songs can’t be added to that must-listen list, because they can — things like Low’s “Just Like Christmas,” The Blind Boys of Alabama’s “Last Month of the Year” and The Executor’s “Christmas is a Joyful Day” have all achieved that goal since I was a kid — but the core songs, those ones that get played the most and induce the strongest festive feelings… all of them come from way back, and remind me of the wonder that you feel most strongly when things were simpler, happier, and I didn’t have to worry about taking time off work in order to celebrate everything appropriately.

Sure, my thoughts might have turned to the festive musical season a little later than usual this year — or, rather, I was surprised how quickly December arrived, when my brain apparently had a lot more November to deal with — but I rallied and built myself a holiday playlist to play while getting in a holiday mood. Unusually for me, this one is all killer and no filler, with the arguable exception of its opening track (I love it, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if other people disagree); it felt like a year to bring things into sharp focus with the classics, maybe. Anyway, for those who want two hours of holiday music, it’s right here for your Spotify ears. And what’s on it? Why, check out the screenshots below.

It strikes me that I should share that my 2024 playlist — which I’ve previously shared tracks from here and here — is now passed 150 songs. For those who’ve forgotten or never knew in the first place, it’s a playlist of songs that I’ve either discovered and become obsessed with, or simply recently remembered and become obsessed with, throughout the year. I update here everytime it tops another 50 entries, so here’s songs #s 101-150. (Yes, we’re above that already.)

You can find the actual playlist on Spotify here.

I feel that I am letting myself, and everyone else around me, down by not having more of a response to the news last week that Oasis is getting back together after… what, a decade or so…? Given the reaction that has been seen from the British media, and seemingly a fanbase that is shockingly devoted considering it’s been so long since the band were last together — and even longer since they were a meaningful force in pop culture in any real sense, let’s be honest — this is clearly A Pop Culture Moment, and yet, the most that I can honestly muster is, “Well, it was probably going to happen at some point, so sure.”

It really was an inevitability, after all; their Britpop contemporaries have all reunited at some point or another for varying degrees of lucrative nostalgia and/or creative impulses needing fulfilled. (Blur have done so twice, and had accompanying documentaries both times — as well as brand new albums, both of which were worthwhile endeavors and enjoyable, to boot.) Even the Stone Roses, that strange Mancunian north star that shone high above Oasis’s collective head for so much of their career, got back together for an ill-fated attempt a decade or so back. The idea that Oasis were really never going to do it always felt unrealistic. How could they not, when both Liam and Noel are so devoted to re-enacting rock history?

Maybe this is what the world needs to re-examine Oasis as a band, as opposed to… I don’t know: a cultural icon, or a bunch of sometimes funny, constantly mouthy dicks that occasionally put out some records. The common wisdom is that they were spectacular before burning out similarly spectacularly around their third album, and never recovering, but… that’s not really true on either end. There’s a story to be told where they were an okay band with some great songs, perpetually uneven, even when familiarity felt like a sign of quality… although whether or not that’ll be one told when a bunch of old men are on-stage failing to live up to everyone’s memory is anyone’s guess.

I was a fan, back in the day, and to some degree or another, I stayed one — or, at least, an interested bystander — all the way up until their split. They were never my band, but I was close enough to their epicenter to care all the way through the end. And now, maybe I’m the one missing out by not caring anymore. We’ll see what happens when (if?) the reunion gigs actually take place; perhaps I just need to spend some time in the soon-shee-iiiiiine again.

Man, it’s been awhile since I shared updates to the 2024 playlist. A reminder, because it has been awhile: these are songs that for the most part are new discoveries (but in some cases, are things I haven’t thought about in awhile, but recently resurfaced for whatever reason; see PJ Harvey’s “Wang Dang Doodle,” which I first heard something like 30 years ago) that I’ve become obsessed with in the last few months. I share updates every 50 entries, and you can listen to the playlist if you have Spotify right here.

I wrote about my 2023 playlist three separate times last year, and I’m doing it again this year. (That’s no surprise; even last year was the second time I did it.) The thinking behind it is simple: it’s songs that I’ve been obsessed with that I add to the playlist in real time. (Originally, it was primarily songs I’d discovered for the first time, but that’s slipped a little this time around with old favorites I’d forgotten and rediscovered entering the mix.) As I did last year, I’m sharing the playlist as it hits multiples of 50 entries, so here’s the first lot, and if you want to listen to it for yourself (Hi, Alex), you can do so right here.