Tag Archives: 2024

My Year in Music – 2024

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I have so far continued to buck the trend of the music industry and still own my music instead of listening to a streaming platform like Spotify.  I no longer have a CD player, but I upload CDs onto my computer’s hard drive, and download a portion of the music collection onto my iPhone, which allows me to access music wherever I am.  I currently have 166 GB of music (almost 32,000 tracks).  I could explain in detail why I do this, but I’m afraid this would bore most readers.  The short answer is that I find streaming platforms unacceptably restrict the ways I can listen to music and also lack the full range of music I am looking for.  This may be changing, and I may give in to streaming eventually, but not this year.

I keep track of my listening habits through the last.fm website, which keeps track of every song I play on my computer or phone from my collection.  Unfortunately, last.fm doesn’t track the songs I listen to on YouTube, where I often go to listen to artists I’m not familiar with.

The results of my year in music, shown below, were influenced in large part by three factors:

  1. I love love love the Canadian band The New Pornographers, and sometimes they’re all I want to listen to. I truly believe that A.C. “Carl” Newman is one of the most gifted songwriters of the 21st century.
  2. I created an iTunes smart playlist called “Artists I’ve seen live” and listened to it quite a bit. On the list below, I’ve added an asterisk to any artist I’ve ever seen perform live.
  3. When I’m not listening to a specific playlist, I just put my entire music collection on random shuffle and listen to whatever pops up. I love the odd, often serendipitous juxtapositions of genre and mood that this creates, although this also means that artists with more (and shorter) tracks in the collection tend to rank higher in the end-of-the-year stats than artists with fewer and/or longer tracks.

NOTE 1: Even though I have listed “most listened-to album” by each artist below, that doesn’t mean I’m actually listening to the album start to finish (something I do very rarely), only that songs from that album were played more frequently than songs from other albums by the same artist.

NOTE 2: I normally only begin acquiring music from the current year in late December after the “best of the year” critics’ lists are released, so there are no 2024 releases on the list. Check in next year for those results.

Most Listened-to Artists (including the artist’s Most Listened-to Album)

  1. The New Pornographers* – Electric Version (2003)
  2. The Decemberists* – The Hazards of Love (2009)
  3. Aimee Mann* – Queens of the Summer Hotel (2021)
  4. PJ Harvey – Rid of Me (1993)
  5. Angel Olsen* – Burn Your Fire For No Witness (2014)
  6. The National* – Trouble Will Find Me (2013)
  7. Juliana Hatfield – Only Everything (1995)
  8. Alvvays* – Blue Rev (2022)
  9. Wolf Alice* – Blue Weekend (2021)
  10. Steely Dan – A Decade of Steely Dan (1972-1980)
  11. The Roches* – The Roches (1979)
  12. Sharon Van Etten* – Are We There (2014)
  13. Bob Dylan – No Direction Home: Bootleg Series, Vol. 7 (1959-1966)
  14. The Beatles – With the Beatles (1963)
  15. R.E.M.* – Around the Sun (2004)
  16. Frank Sinatra – Sinatra Reprise: The Very Good Years (1960-1979)
  17. The Hold Steady* – Stay Positive (2008)
  18. Paul Simon – Hearts and Bones (1983)
  19. Tom Waits – Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards (1984-2005)
  20. The War on Drugs* – I Don’t Live Here Anymore (2021)
  21. Buddy Holly – Memorial Collection (1954-1959)
  22. Laura Marling – Once I Was An Eagle (2013)
  23. Talking Heads* – Sand in the Vaseline (1976-1992)
  24. Yes* – The Yes Album (1971)
  25. Julien Baker* – Little Oblivions (2021)
  26. OutKast – Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (2003)
  27. Duke Ellington – The Blanton-Webster Band (1940-1942)
  28. The Everly Brothers* – Cadence Classics: Their 20 Greatest Hits (1957-1960)
  29. Alison Krauss & Union Station* – Lonely Runs Both Ways (2004)
  30. Beck – Morning Phase (2014)
  31. T-Bone Walker – The Complete Imperial Recordings (1950-1954)
  32. World Party* – Arkeology (1986-2011)
  33. Yo La Tengo – Summer Sun (2003)
  34. The Who – Quadrophenia (1973)
  35. Bill Frisell – Have a Little Faith (1992)
  36. Miles Davis – ‘Round About Midnight (1957)
  37. Radiohead – Hail to the Thief (2003)
  38. Jimi Hendrix – The Ultimate Experience (1966-1970)
  39. Muddy Waters* – The Best of Muddy Waters (1948-1954)
  40. Sufjan Stevens – The Ascension (2020)
  41. The Velvet Underground – Peel Slowly and See (1965-1970)
  42. Genesis* – Selling England by the Pound (1973)
  43. Little Walter – The Essential Little Walter (1952-1963)
  44. Soccer Mommy – Sometimes, Forever (2022)
  45. SZA – SOS (2022)
  46. Elvis Costello – Punch the Clock (1983)
  47. Lester Young – The Complete Aladdin Sessions (1942-1947)
  48. Bud Powell – The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 2 (1954)
  49. Dizzy Gillespie* – The Complete RCA Victor Recordings (1937-1949)
  50. Spoon* – They Want My Soul (2014)

* = have seen this artist perform live

Most Listened-To Albums Released in 2023

  1. Lankum – False Lankum
  2. Lana Del Rey – Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd.
  3. Caroline Polachek – Desire, I Want to Turn into You
  4. Mitski – The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We
  5. PJ Harvey – I Inside the Old Year Dying

Most Listened-To Classical Albums

  1. Jacques Offenbach – The Tales of Hoffman (Andre Cluytens, Choeur et Orchestre du Theatre National de l’Opera-Comique)
  2. Isaac Albéniz – Piano Music (Esteban Sánchez)
  3. George Frideric Handel – Twelve Concerti Grossi, Op. 6 (Orpheus Chamber Orchestra)
  4. Johann Sebastian Bach – St. Matthew Passion (Otto Klemperer, Philharmonia Orchestra & Chorus)
  5. Henry Purcell – Dido and Aeneas (Trevor Pinnock, The English Concert)
  6. Anonymous – Adorate Deum: Gregorian Chant from the Proper of the Mass (Alberto Turco, Nova Schola Gregoriana)
  7. William Bolcom – Songs of Innocence and Experience (Leonard Slatkin, University of Michigan School of Music Symphony Orchestra)
  8. Ludwig van Beethoven – Violin Sonatas 7-10 (Daniel Barenboim & Pinchas Zukerman)
  9. Modest Mussorgsky (arr. by Ravel) – Pictures at an Exhibition (Eugene Ormandy, Philadelphia Orchestra)
  10. Philip Glass – Einstein on the Beach (Michael Riesman/Philip Glass Ensemble)

My Year in Books – 2024

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As usual, the bulk of my reading this year followed my world literature meta-list.  I began this particular project with The Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2000 BCE) in 2012 and have progressed chronologically ever since.  This year I turned the corner into the 20th Century, an exciting milestone.  Highlights included a wonderful multi-generational novel from Portugal that deserves to be better known (The Maias, written by Eça de Queirós in 1888), a somber modernist tale from Norway (Hunger, by Knut Hamsun) and the thought-provoking, darkly ironic plays of George Bernard Shaw.  A large chunk of my reading time this year was devoted to the works of Sigmund Freud. I read a compendium of six of his works (Interpretation of Dreams, Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Wit and the Unconscious, Totem and Taboo, and History of the Psychoanalytic Movement).  (The book was left over from a college philosophy class in the early 1980s; I didn’t get around to reading it back then!) To obtain some perspective on how Freud’s theories are perceived now, I read the recent biography by Frank Tallis, Mortal Secrets.  My views on Freud are complicated, but right now I believe he was a revolutionary thinker and psychologist whose ideas influenced the development of psychology and psychotherapy, mostly for the good, although also in negative ways.  He was no scientist, but recent science has found support for some of his theories.

My continuing studies of art led me to read a number of art books, including a riveting biography of one of my art heroes, Marcel Duchamp, by Calvin Tomkins.  I also read a very funny memoir by one of my favorite comedians, Maria Bamford (Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult).  I was fascinated by my friend Andy LeCompte’s account of his experiences in an actual cult (Finding Miracles.)

Here are the books I read this year, with Goodreads rating.

5 Stars

  1. The Maias – Eça de Queirós (Portugal, 1888)
  2. Hunger – Knut Hamsun (Norway, 1890)
  3. Plays – George Bernard Shaw (UK, 1893-1912)
  4. Duchamp: A Biography – Calvin Tomkins (US, 1996)
  5. Finding Miracles: Escape from a Cult – Andrew LeCompte (US, 2024)

4 Stars

  1. The Essential Tales of Chekhov – Anton Chekhov (Russia, 1880-1903)
  2. Thus Spoke Zarathustra – Friedrich Nietzsche (Germany, 1885)
  3. Plays – Anton Chekhov (Russia, 1887-1904)
  4. The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Short Stories – Oscar Wilde (Ireland/UK, 1888-1891)
  5. Diary of a Nobody – George Grossmith (UK, 1892)
  6. A Shropshire Lad – A.E. Housman (UK, 1896)
  7. Cyrano de Bergerac – Edmond Rostand (France, 1897)
  8. The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud – Sigmund Freud (A.A. Brill, ed.) (Austria, 1899-1914)
  9. The Immoralist – André Gide (France, 1902)
  10. The Varieties of Religious Experience – William James (US, 1902)
  11. The Souls of Black Folk – W.E.B. Du Bois (US, 1903)
  12. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism – Max Weber (Germany, 1905)
  13. The Confusions of Young Törless – Robert Musil (Austria, 1906)
  14. The Playboy of the Western World and Other Plays – John Millington Synge (Ireland, 1902-1907)
  15. Mythologies – Roland Barthes (France, 1957)
  16. Greek Art – John Boardman (UK, 1964)
  17. History of Modern Art – H. Harvard Arnason (US, 1968)
  18. After Modern Art: 1945-2000 – David Hopkins (UK, 2000)
  19. Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity – Peter Attia (US, 2023)
  20. Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere – Maria Bamford (US, 2023)
  21. Mortal Secrets: Freud, Vienna, and the Discovery of the Modern Mind – Frank Tallis (UK, 2024)

3 Stars

  1. Art: A Brief History – Marilyn Stokstad (US, 1999)