This is my final list regarding music in 2016 and boy is it a doozy. Think of it as a giant funeral pyre – burning all the oil left in the can to exorcise my demons and start anew, with only shallow memories to remind me of times past, give or take a few albums I hang onto into 2017 and beyond.
I’ve done something like this for the past two years: a collection of 100 songs that made this year’s listening unique from other years, listed in chronological order from January 1, 2016 to December 31, 2016. But this year I thought I’d add some new features to get my list-making/data-mining brain all revved up on the dopamine it constantly craves. Below the 100 songs you’ll find my overall 2016 listening statistics (per my Last.FM) and a roundup of my favorite 15 concerts I attended in 2016. How cute! Read 2015 and 2014 to see how they stack up to this one.
My 2016 as a whole: not super great. Sure I did a few cool things here and there: traveled outside the US for the first time to see my girlfriend in Paris, I moved to NYC, I rode the train back to CT and the bus to DC a bunch of times. Visited Philly. Drove up to Cape Cod. I went through with posting at least 10 recommended albums per month on this blog. I saw a few friends sometimes, I guess. Finished THREE TV shows, a new record for me (granted, two of them were one-season anime). Watched around 10 new movies, another new high score. I am now a TV/movie person, of course. Played a bunch of Pokemon, too. Pretty modest overall.
But I don’t need to be another person to tell you that 2016 was “bad” because it was so aggressively bad that it needs no further explanation. You know this. The media especially knows this. Even your mom knows this. Like everything else in 2016, the badness of the year became a meme. A bad meme at that. Despite this badness, a lot of people said that the music was especially good this year compared to years previous. Gotta disagree with that one. There were a few records that were like “oh hell yeah” in parts, but for the mostly it was like “ok this is fine, I guess.” I had a bad 2015 and music that year was so good. But whatever. In one final flaming, grotesque burst, here are 2016’s 100 songs:
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Warm Visions 