Domenica 5 Gen 2014, 21:38
2013 was a great year for music, wasn't it? I definitely thought so.
It's already a few days into 2014, so I'm a little late writing this up, but I wanted to make sure I had it right. Even still, I'm not going to be 100% complete, as I had to redo my music collection, due to a failing hard drive, so even still, I'm not confident of all the facts I've put out here.
In 2013, I had at least 89 artists collected with new music, with well over 106 albums, EPs or singles, some of which I'm still sorting out.
I had just eclipsed the 100,000 scrobble mark on last.fm before the New Year turned over, sitting with 100,255 scrobbles at the time of this post. It was a quiet week at the office, so I really didn't post many there.
This was also a big year for me and running, so there was a lot of music and maybe some running-specific bands that earned a lot of scrobbles, which may not have happened in the past. Maybe even a few more scrobbles in the year than normal, thanks to some extra time on the trails or the treadmill.
Nevertheless, let's move on to the favourites, shall we?
Favourite album of the year… drumroll, please… Evil Friends by Portugal. The Man takes the cake! What an album! In the last 12 months, it finished atop the scrobble list with 651 plays among albums narrowly beating some of its close competitors for the title. Evil Friends just had so many tracks I could listen to over and over again, front to back, everything you want in an awesome album.
I was trying to list off my fave albums of the year to a friend of mine and I listed a lot of music, but since scrobbles are all about stats, the honourable mentions for my album of the year look like this… Dear Miss Lonelyhearts by Cold War Kids, Trouble Will Find Me by the National and The Weight of Your Love by Editors. Those three albums were also so good and got lots of plays.
Biggest surprise album for my everyday rotation belongs to ...Like Clockwork by Queens of the Stone Age. I like QOTSA, but am by no means a huge fan, but that album was pretty awesome and it finished 12th in my album scrobble list for 2013.
My favourite track of 2013, also the most played in the last 12 months, as it should be, was Miracle Mile by Cold War Kids, as it hit that nerve with awesome lyrics and it was a favourite to run to as well. Miracle Mile had 122 plays in the last 12 months and already sits 2nd overall in plays over the past 40 months or so.
Other 2013 tracks that got plays… Recover & Lies by CHVRCHES, Best of Friends by Palma Violets, Atomic Man, Modern Jesus and Plastic Soldiers by Portugal. The Man, Let Us Move On by Dido, Tuxedos and Jailbirds by Cold War Kids and finally, Do I Wanna Know? by Arctic Monkeys. They all round out the top 10, with a tie for 9th, which bubbled over the top in tracks.
As for my anticipated albums from my 2012 favourites post, Arcade Fire had Reflektor, which was pretty great and was released a bit late to get all of the plays that would have gotten them a real good mention in this post. Reflektor, the title track, finished 18th in plays and was one hell of a tune. There were some other good tunes on it, but I couldn't quite rank it among my faves of the year.
Beta Love by Ra Ra Riot was kinda over-synthed for my liking and Wolf's Law by the Joy Formidable didn't get any traction in my rotation, which was kind of disappointing.
What am I looking forward to in 2014? New stuff from Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks, Warpaint, Bombay Bicycle Club, Metronomy and Kaiser Chiefs… and that's all I can see on the Metacritic list. I'm sure there is much more coming, that's all I can see that's confirmed.
Looking forward to another big year of scrobbles!