Top songs of 2013
Jan. 1st, 2014 11:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressSo, every year since aught-nine, I pretend to keep track of all the music I listen to, and then at the end of the year, I put together a list of the songs that Mattered. This year is odd, because the list is abnormally short --nine songs, before I go to do the last minute checks.
Actually, this year was really weird for music in general. My consumption has been going down [since college/as Vera ages], but I only put 29 new tracks into iTunes this entire year. I haven't even hit up Bootie in over a year. I've been listening to stuff, sorta, on my commutes and the like, but nothing has been STICKING or grabbing my brain and entrancing my mind or anything like that.
Well, almost nothing. Have a few examples.
The year started off with my exciting love of pop crashing into my weird love of Homestuck. [s] ke$ha: Enter is a mashup of the two. It's very well done and made good bouncy music for me to enjoy the rest of the year. Similarly in mashup joy, I've a random mashup (there are dozens, I'm sure) of Gangam Style and Party Rock that makes for a Grand Dancing Experience.
I am incredibly depressed that this is on here now: The Future's So Bright (I gotta wear shades) by Timbuk 3. I wrote about it in 2011, when I was graduating and everything was amazing and shiny and impressive and new. And gotta say, for the first six months of the year, hell yes this was apt. It's not like I don't like my life, or feel good for the future now, but it's draining being underemployed and (professionally!) unappreciated. Life will get better. It's just not the optimists dream it was from January to June.
I wrote in brief last year about the youtube video of Where the Hell is Matt 2012. Round about April I finally got around to adding the song -Trip the Light to my collection. It's lovely, and lightly sanity-inducing.
At the end of April, I started occasionally participating in Shapenote singing, which is wonderful, because there's no performance to it at all. The only song I knew previously (and still the only song I really know now) is Babylon is Fallen, and so anyone who shapenotes with me will have to put up with me requesting it every single time forever. Ayep.
Over the summer, I went to GENCON which was awesome, and I rode home with my new awesome friend Kate, who provided me a most wonderful dose of feminism! She also hooked me on the song Dutch, by Dessa, which is just beautiful. "Careful kid with that wolf whistle --you never know what you'll attract". For a year where becoming a more powerful kind of femme was a major theme, this was an excellent theme song.
Skid Row (Downtown) from Little Shop of Horrors appears for the second year in a row, as a counter to Future's So Bright. But even with the pain, there are grit teeth and determination and clawing your way out as hard as you can because fuck this. So that's there.
And similarly, there's Die Vampire Die, from Title of Show. Both carry an undercurrent of reaching deep inside yourself and _becoming better_ somehow. I struggle with motivation on my best days, because it is so easy to just...not do anything.
And then...there is Level Up.
Yeah, it's a problem to tell someone "oh just try harder and [be happy / leave your bed / get a job / perform humanity/existence/wonder/joy]". But like I said, I struggle with motivation, I need sometimes to hear it from another source that I need to stop doing whatever faff I'm indulging in and become MORE. Vienna Teng nailed it with her landmark new song this year. 74 plays in four months is not quiet, especially when my mind and self have been so gone for some of them.
This is a song that has no malice in it. All she wants is for you to become better and keep trying. I really like the message and idea of becoming better.
And that was my year. The only other thing that came remotely close to getting me entangled was The Creation of Man, from Scarlet Pimpernel. This is an entire song about how the only reason God created two sexes was so that men could look ~*~FABULOUS!~*~. I want to do a drag king/burlesque scene to it so so bad.
Here's to connecting more with sound in 2014.
~Sor
MOOP!
Actually, this year was really weird for music in general. My consumption has been going down [since college/as Vera ages], but I only put 29 new tracks into iTunes this entire year. I haven't even hit up Bootie in over a year. I've been listening to stuff, sorta, on my commutes and the like, but nothing has been STICKING or grabbing my brain and entrancing my mind or anything like that.
Well, almost nothing. Have a few examples.
The year started off with my exciting love of pop crashing into my weird love of Homestuck. [s] ke$ha: Enter is a mashup of the two. It's very well done and made good bouncy music for me to enjoy the rest of the year. Similarly in mashup joy, I've a random mashup (there are dozens, I'm sure) of Gangam Style and Party Rock that makes for a Grand Dancing Experience.
I am incredibly depressed that this is on here now: The Future's So Bright (I gotta wear shades) by Timbuk 3. I wrote about it in 2011, when I was graduating and everything was amazing and shiny and impressive and new. And gotta say, for the first six months of the year, hell yes this was apt. It's not like I don't like my life, or feel good for the future now, but it's draining being underemployed and (professionally!) unappreciated. Life will get better. It's just not the optimists dream it was from January to June.
I wrote in brief last year about the youtube video of Where the Hell is Matt 2012. Round about April I finally got around to adding the song -Trip the Light to my collection. It's lovely, and lightly sanity-inducing.
At the end of April, I started occasionally participating in Shapenote singing, which is wonderful, because there's no performance to it at all. The only song I knew previously (and still the only song I really know now) is Babylon is Fallen, and so anyone who shapenotes with me will have to put up with me requesting it every single time forever. Ayep.
Over the summer, I went to GENCON which was awesome, and I rode home with my new awesome friend Kate, who provided me a most wonderful dose of feminism! She also hooked me on the song Dutch, by Dessa, which is just beautiful. "Careful kid with that wolf whistle --you never know what you'll attract". For a year where becoming a more powerful kind of femme was a major theme, this was an excellent theme song.
Skid Row (Downtown) from Little Shop of Horrors appears for the second year in a row, as a counter to Future's So Bright. But even with the pain, there are grit teeth and determination and clawing your way out as hard as you can because fuck this. So that's there.
And similarly, there's Die Vampire Die, from Title of Show. Both carry an undercurrent of reaching deep inside yourself and _becoming better_ somehow. I struggle with motivation on my best days, because it is so easy to just...not do anything.
And then...there is Level Up.
Yeah, it's a problem to tell someone "oh just try harder and [be happy / leave your bed / get a job / perform humanity/existence/wonder/joy]". But like I said, I struggle with motivation, I need sometimes to hear it from another source that I need to stop doing whatever faff I'm indulging in and become MORE. Vienna Teng nailed it with her landmark new song this year. 74 plays in four months is not quiet, especially when my mind and self have been so gone for some of them.
This is a song that has no malice in it. All she wants is for you to become better and keep trying. I really like the message and idea of becoming better.
And that was my year. The only other thing that came remotely close to getting me entangled was The Creation of Man, from Scarlet Pimpernel. This is an entire song about how the only reason God created two sexes was so that men could look ~*~FABULOUS!~*~. I want to do a drag king/burlesque scene to it so so bad.
Here's to connecting more with sound in 2014.
~Sor
MOOP!