Keeping Up With Music

I think I was arguing to deej elsewhere that the predominance" of "WAP" in 2020 feels almost like it has less to do with the song itself and more that it's maybe the only song this year that inspired both a massive tiktok dance craze and lots of political memes (via laughing at Ben Shapiro et. al) (though my favourite WAP meme was one about the despondence of the writers of KidzBop versions when they first heard it). So it feels like it sums up 2020 in that it captures a lot of the changing context in which music is situated now.

that's as good an explanation as any for why such a gleefully ridiculous sex jam will be the first song that people remember from the roughest year of American life since the depression

lol, i mean it will also be remembered for being a gleefully ridiculous sex jam, but I'm not sure that an equivalent song in say 2009 (which was also a pretty rough year for many) would have gotten equivalent critical traction.

the way I listen to music has changed - I live in a small flat with my boyfriend and it's harder to listen to stuff that he wouldn't want to because we are both always indoors now. When I'm physically going into work, I take a bus that's approx 40 mins each way and that's my time to listen to new music on my headphones.

We have listened to a lot of ambient and new-age adjacent stuff this year, more than any other. I don't think we'd have managed without Gigi Masin and Jonny Nash.

xpost should have qualified "predominance" as "critical predominance" in the first post (i.e. being p4k's song of the year)

lol I'm pretty sure I still haven't heard WAP but honestly haven't particularly connected to anything I've heard from Cardi B. *or* Megan Thee Stallion yet. Haven't even given the new Dylan the time and attention it deserves!

I consciously decided at the beginning of the year that I wasn't going to actively try keeping up with new music this year.

What that really meant was that I wasn't going to put in all the work that I usually do for the sake of creating a long best-of-the-year playlist: scanning Album of the Year for new albums every week, dragging them into an "new albums" playlist, listening to them repeatedly until I have a favorite track (or else I've decided the album isn't for me), scanning unperson's monthly jazz column to see if there are any albums I've missed, occasionally scanning The Singles Jukebox for songs with high scores and maintaining a playlist of those songs, aggregating songs that show up on major publications' year-end lists into yet another playlist and finding more favorites, etc. etc.

I've still heard a bit of new music this year, when I've happened to notice that an artist I like has put something out. But I haven't been systematic about it at all, so a lot has slipped through the cracks.

To be honest, it's been kind of relaxing. I've ended up just listening to a lot of old stuff. At one point I worked on a 1999 playlist. But as the best-of-2020 lists have been coming out, I've found myself wanting to...get a handle on all of it. So I'm not sure yet whether this year is a permanent break from Keeping Up or just a temporary one.

xp The first time I heard WAP was the other day, when I listened to Pitchfork's top songs of 2020 list!

lack of commute has killed my primary listening mode - has been tough to replace it tbh. podcasts have suffered this year too for me.

around the house i put on stuff i already know - too distracting to listen 'actively'

This is absolutely the first year I can remember where not only did I struggle to keep up with music, but I totally forgot about albums I liked from bands that I love. For example, I totally forgot that X released a good record this year. Or, the Dua/Jessie/Roisin glossy nu-disco trio, for example, all albums I really enjoyed and enjoy listening to yet keep forgetting to play. Or Fiona Apple and Kathleen Edwards, two artists I love that released great new comebacks that I love that I just keep forgetting to play. Looking over year-end lists, there is just so much I haven't heard or even heard of, and of the stuff I have heard it's just downright impossible for me to keep straight in my brain, let alone fore of mind. So much music!

Weirdly, I wonder if this has been inadvertently pandemic related. My family is around all the time, but I'm a speaker guy, not a headphone guy, and just haven't been free to blast stuff on the stereo when the mood strikes. Hmm ...

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 15 December 2020 21:59 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I feel this post. I was reminded yesterday of the existence of the Eddie Chacon album, which I loved when I first heard it and then promptly forgot about. Dylan too!

I think this year I have listened to as much new music as ever, but in the same way that I struggle a bit to keep track of what happened in which month this year (like, all the jokes that currently it's the 247th of March or whatever), almost all experiences of music have felt more transient, and less amenable to ordering and recollection.

one of the reasons i think tiktok has struck such a nerve and created so many big hits this year is that it helps people create those associations with songs that they aren't having in IRL

Right!

Including that we can't dance to these songs at a club but we can perform/watch tiktok dances.

Dancing at bars, albeit in small numbers, is starting to be allowed again in Australia for the first time since mid-March, and it's amusing to see teh-gays in particular express this sense of pent-up release at finally being able to dance in public to the broadly-recognised gay anthems of 2020 ("Physical", "Rain on Me", "WAP"), almost as if the very existence of these songs and their impact was somehow quasi-spectral until it could be properly acknowledged in that way.

my real name rhymes with and has the exact same number of syllables as "a savage" and the fact I haven't been able to do a karaoke performance of Megan & Beyoncè with my personal spin on it is killing me

xp great post, Tim

this year, probably more than any other, i've listened to the same 10-12 new or new-to-me albums hundreds of times. they were all very good at giving me what i needed in particular moments, and i kept coming back to them. i just didn't feel the need to adopt more, though i did scan through a few new releases here and there. my music listening experience is more and more becoming this reader response thing where every time i listen to the same thing my experience is a little different but no less rich. but the thing has to have sort of passed a few tests for it to get there, lol.

Dancing at bars, albeit in small numbers, is starting to be allowed again in Australia for the first time since mid-March, and it's amusing to see teh-gays in particular express this sense of pent-up release at finally being able to dance in public to the broadly-recognised gay anthems of 2020 ("Physical", "Rain on Me", "WAP"), almost as if the very existence of these songs and their impact was somehow quasi-spectral until it could be properly acknowledged in that way.

very jealous, i miss hearing music in a room with friends. some music just needs to be embodied and shared in social, physical space.

one of the reasons i think tiktok has struck such a nerve and created so many big hits this year is that it helps people create those associations with songs that they aren't having in IRL

Possibly the first thing I've read that's helped me understand tik tok!