Want to listen to all my favorite songs this year? Here’s the full playlist from my What I Listened to in 2012 countdown. Enjoy! For more info on the songs, click on the links below:
“You’re Too Weird” by The Fruit Bats
The Replacements: A rediscovered love
Here it is: the final page from my musical scrapbook this year. These are the songs I was obsessed with as the seasons changed, as I flew across the world and back, and as I criss crossed the country for the holidays. For the full lists for each month, click on the month/song title below.
September: “First Week/Last Week…Carefree” by Talking Heads
We rented an apartment in Melbourne, from a man who left his dirty t-shirts in the hamper and a scummy bar of soap on the shower ledge. My boyfriend worked all day and I worked all night; we met somewhere in the middle to cook kangaroo steaks and drink bottles of clear skin wine for an hour. The rented apartment was mine—I spent my days there, alone, I stayed up all night working at it’s dining room table, sipping endless espressos and battling the WiFi. I shared it, but not really with my boyfriend, who only came home to sleep and make steaks. And I ignored the owner’s visual claims on the place; his half empty chutneys in the fridge and unopened mail only meant it wouldn’t be mine later, which I knew.
I shared it with Talking Heads 77. I played “First Week/Last Week…Carefree” at 2:00am to wake myself up, sharpen my focus. I played it when I got out of bed, usually far too early, and I played it when I got ready to go out. It was a friend when I was alone, a fun and thoughtful companion for long walks and long nights and a trip that felt….well, long in every way it could. When I listen to it now, I feel like I’m in that little living room in Melbourne, and everything is going to be okay, even if it isn’t.
I returned from a six week “trip” to Melbourne on October 1st. Very few things went right when I was there; the exciting adventure I embarked on in August soured almost immediately. I arrived in San Francisco with the feeling that I wasted a lot of time and money and health that I couldn’t get back. I was jet lagged, I was exhausted, but more than anything, I was angry.
I’ve always had a hard time with anger. Anxiety, depression, general nervousness—that whole host of unpleasant emotions I can deal with and accept. But anger is terrifying, strange and unacceptable. It morphs into a million things and it’s rare that I just sit down and deal with it. “Violet” helped me get in touch with my anger—-it helped me stomp and cry and get it out. Most importantly, it helped me feel better, and not so poisoned by the cloud of frustration that I brought home as a souvenir. Courtney Love became my anger coach and spirit animal. If you ever want to have a beer and a weirdly long talk about her music and food habits, call me.
*Featured in “Album of the Week: Live Through This”
November: “Swingin Party” by The Replacements
Every time I listen to this song, I wonder how I would have interacted with it if I were still in high school. “Bring your own lampshade/Somewhere there’s a party” would’ve surely been scribbled on the white trim of my knock-off Converses. “If being strong’s your kind/ then I need help here with this feather/ If being afraid is a crime/ We hang side by side” would’ve appeared in margin doodles, or maybe I would’ve written it in exaggerated script and hung it on my door. And what heartbreak or angst couldn’t have been summer up in an away message with a quick “At the swingin’ party down the line”?
Rediscovering Tim gave me such a visceral, adolescent pleasure that I missed those ways of obsessing over music. There’s a cut off where it stops making sense to pull out a Sharpie and scrawl the lyrics that make up your burgeoning personality on every surface you can find. I passed that cut-off long ago, so I did the grown up thing: I listened to this album a million times. I let the lyrics run through my head. I wondered if I could pull off a lampshade tattoo, and doodled it in the margins of my very polished, grownup person notes.
*Featured in “Album of the Week: Tim”
December: “Don’t Save Me” by Haim
“You know how people want pop in the summer and dark slow stuff in the winter? I’m the opposite. I’m already happy in the summer—and who wants to be sadder in the winter?” – Zoe M., my wise sister
Here’s a sentiment that made no sense to me until this year. It was winter in Melbourne when I was there. I came home exhausted and slid straight into working on the election. By the time November 2nd rolled around, there were new huge projects at work and two trips to the East Coast to plan. San Francisco decided it wanted to dress up as Seattle for a few months, so every day was grey and wet with looming rain. I didn’t want to huddle up and listen to something dark or thoughtful. When my serotonin dropped this year, my need for fluffy pop music grew. Enter Haim: a bright burst of straight-forward pop, complete with catchy choruses and a quasi 80s sound. “Don’t Save Me” is particularly great because of the video, which features adorable synchronized dance moments and some very 90s stylings (little twisty buns right on top of the head, come back to me).
When are girl groups going to be a thing again? Boy bands had a renaissance this year; fingers crossed that 2013 brings back the finger snapping, synchronized dancing, matching outfits awesomeness of girl groups.
Honorary Mention: “Young and Cold” by The Raveonettes
Do you disagree completely with everything I said about light-hearted poppy winter music? Then this is the song for you. “Young and Cold” is a classic, dark and foggy song for walking around in cold weather and watching the sun nod off at the crack of 4:00pm. And the chorus is particularly applicable to the winter—“I don’t want to be young and cold.” Agreed, dears.
World Party: A new favorite
Musical tastes change as the weather gets warmer. I seem to go back East every summer now for a wedding, so I get a seasonal split: a few weeks of pure steamy Baltimore summer, and a few months of blustery summer time San Francisco fog. When I lived on the East Coast, my summer soundtracks stayed uniformly poppy and light. Now they waiver between upbeat dance-worthy fare, and slightly darker songs.
This is page two from my musical scrapbook this year: the main song I was obsessed with each month, and one honorary mention for the season. For the full lists for each month, click the months/song titles below.
May: “Emmylou” by First Aid Kit
How did two girls from Sweden create the country-tinged folk song of the year? If Stockholm’s weather didn’t come up in the first verse, I would’ve pinned this gem’s geography elsewhere based solely on the sweet Americana feel, so clearly influenced by American folk music. Johanna and Klara Soderberg’s lovely, honeyed voices intertwine on a chorus that’s a music lover’s dream “I’ll be your Emmylou/I’ll be your June/I’ll be your Graham and your Johnny too.” I love songs that directly reference other music and musicians—it’s usually such a friendly hat tip, and a nice reminder that the people who make the music you love are music lovers themselves.
It’s also a deeply moving love song—wistful, full of straight forward declarations of love and regret. They admit to past mistakes and hope for a future where the lovers can reunite, and, even better, sing together. It sounds like something Emmylou Harris or June Carter Cash would sing, if they weren’t the focus of the chorus (Oh how I would love to hear Emmylou Harris cover this song. So, so much).
*Featured in “Songs Named After Girls”
June: “Second Hand News” by Fleetwood Mac
Rumours stalked me last summer when I came back to the East Coast. Everywhere I went—every beach town movie theatre, every local Baltimore bar, every gas station on the way to Philly, Rumours was playing. It was even firmly lodged in the CD player in my sister’s car, and we listened to it as we criss-crossed the city. It’s a great album at any time of year, but there’s something particularly thrilling about rolling down the windows and playing this on a balmy Baltimore summer evening, when the heat is thick and everything smells like honey suckles and car exhaust. I’d listened to enough bits and pieces of this album over the years that I knew almost all of it, except for “Secondhand News.” What a treat to find something new tucked away in an old favorite. It’s such a great song too, and really encapsulates that “blasting Fleetwood Mac in the summer” feeling—I love the line “Won’t you lay me down in the tall grass/and let me do my stuff.”
July: “A Minor Incident” by Badly Drawn Boy
Every time I hear “Reconsider Me” by Warren Zevon, I burst into tears. I tell people this and no one gets it. My sister played me a song by some local band a month ago, where the floppy haired singer asked a girl to come back to him. It was terrible, but overwhelmingly sincere, and at one point I covered my ears and winced, saying “Ahhh! Too earnest!”
Lugubrious songs full of weepy stories? Sure, those get to me. But thin skinned, wide eyed earnestness? That destroys me. “A Minor Incident” is a suicide letter from a mother to her preteen son, based on events in the book About a Boy. It’s sad and sweet and straightforward, and the guitar bits and wheezy harmonica sound like early Bob Dylan (but it’s not Dylan, a plus for all you Dylan haters). The plain spoken honesty is heartbreaking—the first lines are “There’s nothing I could say to make you try to feel okay/ And nothing you could do to stop me feeling the way I do.” Ugh. But the truth is I like songs that spur crying jags—I think they’re cathartic and really satisfying. Sitting around crying on purpose to songs that I like is my version of a bubble bath.
August: “Put the Message in the Box” by World Party
Do you ever hear the first few bars of something, sit back, release a voluminous sigh you didn’t know was stuck in your chest and feel like all is right in the world? That’s how I felt when I first heard “Put the Message in the Box” in August. It’s such a treat when a few notes of something spur an overwhelming feeling of wellbeing. World Party woke up my imagination, and made it colorful and happy as I walked around daydreaming and listening to this on repeat. I don’t know how it took this long for me to come across this band, but I’m thrilled that I did because they quickly became one of my favorites.
Honorary Mention: “Our Most Brilliant Friends” by Slow Club
Lets just admit that Yeah, So is a truly perfect album. If these posts were focused on “Top 12 Not Necessarily Current Albums of 2012,” Yeah, So would be at the top of the list. The first four minutes of “Our Most Brilliant Friends” are like a kick in the adrenal glands. It’s exciting and playful, it makes me want to run outside and find some tiny late night hub bursting with sweaty dancing masses. I would wear my hair wild and curly and some slip of a dress, and jump up and down at the “Your body looks GOOD tonight” part. Then it segues into this beautiful breakup song with lovely insightful lyrics, with just Rebecca Taylor’s voice and guitar. Dancing and jumping, followed by something wistful and pretty? This is the musical equivalent of the total package for me.
Click here for What I Listened to in 2012: Part 1 by Claire
“I Swear” by Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside
“Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” by Aretha Franklin
Etta James: My main 2012 musical obsession
One can’t subsist on a diet of new music alone. Okay, you could, but I don’t recommend it—imagine how many songs and albums you would miss if you firmly planted your playlists in the current year with no exceptions. I love year end wrap up lists about music that came out this year—but what about the scads of other music you listened to?
Here’s page one from my musical scrapbook of 2012: These are the Top 5 songs I listened to in the beginning of the year, the ones that shaped my monthly soundtracks and that I couldn’t stop playing if I tried. For the full lists for each month, click the months/song titles below.
January: “I’ll Try Anything Once” by Julian Casablancas
I became really exhausted by insincerity and apathy this year. How embarrassing for me, right? What a gee shucks, fresh off the turnip truck sentiment (…why is it always turnips?). But there it is: I like sincere people who care about things. I want to be more like that, not less. And (oh, the cringe worthy vulnerability here guys, I can hardly bear it) I think I got really in touch with that sentiment when I heard this song.
The Strokes, whose tour bus I once trailed after a show with fellow moonstruck girlfriends (all of us far too innocent and curfew abiding to go full out Pamela De Barres, we simply followed the bus as long as we could and then went home), were my late high school rock icons. They were loud and oddly sexy; I screamed and jumped through their show, finally understanding the squaking, convulsing crushes my middle school friends used to have for every boy band du jour. Almost a decade later, I heard this fragile, bare bones song—so soft and spare, with nothing but Julian Casablanca’s voice and a keyboard. The lyrics are mostly straightforward, sagacious (to a confused, slightly lost 20something) life advice: “10 decisions shape your life, you’ll be aware of 5 about” and “There is a time when we all fail/Some people take it pretty well/Some take it all out on themselves.”
I listened to this 100 times, at least. I liked the weariness, and how different it sounded from The Strokes I knew years ago. I too was feeling weary and changed. I was growing tired of writing borderline mean jokes that don’t mean much. I was tired of pretend opinions and sound bites. I started wondering who I actually want to be and if I’m becoming that. It was earnest and it was deeply uncool; but, most of all, it was a relief, the kind that warrants a million cheesy similes (my favorite is “like a breath of fresh air”).
It’s a year later, and I’m still wondering.
February: “My Dearest Darling” by Etta James
In Songbook, Nick Hornby says writing about how and where you heard a song is for the birds (my words, his bird-free sentiment), that if you really love a song it doesn’t matter how and where you heard it. I say Nick Hornby is a fool (*gasp*): when a love is new, you tell it’s story, and I fell in love with Etta James last winter. It took two distinct listens to become hooked on this song. The first time: at a smoky bar the size of my closet under the train tracks in Tokyo, where I sat spellbound under a chandelier. The second time: at a shoe store in San Francisco, delirious with the flu, buying very expensive high heels for a business trip I was too sick to go on. Both instances had wildly different levels of glamour and health, but shared one thing: They became moments frozen in my memory because I heard that song and had to hear it again, as soon as possible, as much as I could.
March: “Spooky” by Dusty Springfield
Dusty Springfield makes the word groovy sound seductive. That feat deserves it’s own accolades. “Spooky” is a luscious ridiculously sexy song that is very 60s without being dated, very slow and jazzy without veering into smooth jazz or lounge lizard territory. It’s an odd defiant miracle of a song, refusing to be any of the things it’s supposed to be, sort of like the spooky little boy Dusty is singing to. I love the full stops and snaps, the echo-ey moment at the end, and most of all Dusty Springfield’s light, soulful voice.
In honor of year end wrap up season, one of my favorite TV moments of 2012 was Jane Krakowski playing Dusty Springfield in the live 30 Rock last season.
*Featured in “Top 5 Songs for a Foggy Day“
April: “Wagon Wheel” by Old Crowe Medicine Show
I missed this song when it had a moment a few years ago. When I heard it this year, the timing was perfect: San Francisco was experiencing a handful of rare, summery days and all I wanted to do was lie around in the park with friends, drink wine, and listen to something cheerful with a fiddle.
I love those songs that get so tied into the weather that it’s impossible to untangle them. It’s brisk and drizzly outside as I write this; Christmas is around the corner and I head back East tomorrow. But as I listen to this song on repeat, I want to throw the windows open, slip into a sundress, invite everyone I adore over for dinner. I have an unquenchable craving for the green capped, seven dollar Vino Verde I swill from April through August.
Honorary Mention: “Day Dreaming” by Aretha Franklin
Love, travel, day dreaming, and Aretha Franklin? All my favorite things, all at once. “Day Dreaming” perfectly represents the swooning, butterflies in your stomach part of love. The theme of sitting around, daydreaming about someone you love who will sweep you off to some exciting elsewhere is charming and matched well by the dreamy flute and electric piano. Why don’t people ever use lines like this in their wedding vows: “I want to be what he wants, when he wants it, whenever he needs it/When he’s lonesome and feelin’ love starved, I’ll be there to feed him/ Lovin’ him a little bit more each day.” How great would wedding ceremonies be if everyone swapped Corinthians for some Aretha Franklin lyrics?
Fun fact: Rumor has it this song is about Dennis Edwards, from The Temptations.
*Featured in “Songs for When You Need to Get Away“
“Girl From The North Country” by Bob Dylan, with Johnny Cash
This is going to be embarrassing.
We’ve been writing this blog for a year now, and I’ve, by virtue of some of the posts we’ve done, revealed some very embarrassing musical truths about myself. For example, how when I was a teenager, I was totally into Limp Bizkit and Korn. Or how I unashamedly like a song by The Eagles. Also the fact, against all rhyme and reason, I just don’t like Bob Dylan. But this might be even worse.
There are still a handful of songs by the Dave Matthews Band that I still like.
I know. I have trashed them more than a few times on this blog, for a myriad of reasons. And I’m right to do so. Dave Matthews has a just god-awful falsetto (might go down as the worst falsetto of all time) and he writes bland, cookie cutter lyrics and he has a fiddle player who can get far too overbearing. Not to mention they have some of the most annoyingly self righteous fans out there. They are all frat boys and self-possessed sorority girls (read: rich, white people) and they somehow have gotten it into their head that Dave Matthews Band is the end-all, be-all of good music. They love the band’s ridiculously overly long “jams.” I hesitate to call these extended solo section jams because that would imply musical cohesion. I’ve seen this band a few times live (deal with it.) and while they have skill keeping their fan base happy, they will certainly make you look at your watch a couple of times as they bust out 15 minute plus versions of songs that are, at best, 4 minute songs.
But somehow I cannot shake these songs from my life. Maybe it has something to do with the fact I liked this band at such a formative age (15-19), or that I barely listened to anything else at those times (literally, my iPod was jazz, Laughing Colors, and Dave Matthews Band), or that these individual songs, whilst having the traditional DMB failings, are actually pretty decent songs. But I’m probably pretty biased.
“Stay (Wasting Time)”
There’s a reason people unabashedly like Dave Matthews Band. If ever there was a perfect example of why it might be okay to do so, it would be this song. It’s a great picture of a couple in love, hanging out on a hot summer’s day, and the music captures that feeling perfectly. It has this light, airy guitar line, backed up by a lazy but insistent drum and bass part. The drums are especially good here – it’s a relatively simple beat, but executed so perfectly. The best part is the lack of the snare hits during the verses: the drummer, Carter Beauford (I may hate on the band and their product, but he is an amazingly good drummer), hits the snare only once, and on the 2. It’s an interesting change from the normal rock beat, where we’re used to hearing the snare hit on both the 2 and the 4. But the best part of the song has to be the gospel-style backup singers they have singing at the end, with the elongated, arena-rock-style tenor sax solo closing it out.
“#41″
I couldn’t tell you why Dave Matthews has a habit of naming songs with numbers (I can think of least three songs named in this way), but this is a good one. I love the lyrics, despite the fact they don’t really mean anything. The last line of the song, “Why won’t run into the rain and play / and let the tears splash over you” is permanently stuck in my brain. Yes, I know, it’s not good. This song is not a good song. And the extended instrumental outro is boring. (However, most of you haven’t heard the worst of it. I used to own a recording of a show where they played this song with Bela Fleck and the Flecktones and the runtime was over 30 minutes. And I used to play this recording all the fucking time.)
“Grey Street”
Here’s another sign of my previously unhealthy level of love for the Dave Matthews Band: In 2000, they went back into the studio to follow up their album Before These Crowded Streets. The recordings, lead by producer Steve Lillywhite, were both productive and disastrous. By the end of it, the band had nearly self destructed and fired Lillywhite, tried to destroy the recordings, and hired a new producer and released a terrible album, Everyday. But before the album came out, someone got hold of the masters for the sessions with Lillywhite and leaked them to the interwebs (thank god for them interwebs!). They became known by the fans as The Lillywhite Sessions, and they were some of the best songs they had ever done as a band; moreover, this opinion was shared by nearly all the fans and the band themselves. After enough fan pressure, they released the songs, albeit re-recorded, for the album Busted Stuff. This song is from that re-recorded album, and is possibly they best song off of either set of recordings. Like most of the tracks from Lillywhite, the lyrics are dark, and the instrumentation is as tight as you can get. The best part about this song? No falsetto.
“Bartender”
Another track off of The Lillywhite Sessions/Busted Stuff. I’m pretty sure Dave Matthews was raised Catholic, and the religious imagery here is particularly good, if a bit heavy handed. And I really like the idea of pouring out your emotional and religious guilt to your bartender rather than your priest. The priest can give you homilies and make you say Hail Mary’s til your face turns blue, but only the bartender can ignore you to your face and hand you beer and expect you to tip them heavily. Which I do. Wouldn’t it be better if your therapist was also your bartender? Have a beer while you get psychoanalyzed? Seems like a good business idea to me. Lemme go get my MD and a bartender’s license.
“Gravedigger” (by Dave Matthews, solo)
This may be the most embarrassing one, as it’s not even a Dave Matthews Band song, but a song off of Dave Matthews’ solo album. But, hot damn, is that drum beat awesome. And even if the lyrics are a bit underdeveloped, the idea of creating stories of names off of headstones is wildly inventive. The song nearly comes to a crashing halt, however, over the terrible interpolation of “Ring Around the Rosie” interjected as the bridge. That part is terrible. But it picks right back up, and the end turns it into a pretty good pop song. The best part about this one? It’s not 10 minutes long, and it would be harder to make it longer than it is. It’s not setup to “jam,” it’s just a pop song. And, I’m not ashamed to admit it, a pretty damn good one.
