After a couple years of struggle in gathering enough songs I actually liked enough for my typical 100-track playlists, this year I was back to figuring out which songs I had to eliminate to get down to my arbitrary-but-not cutoff. I don’t think that says as much about the quality of the music in previous years, nor my access to it, as it does about the unmooring of the pandemic slowly beginning to wane.
It’s pretty clear to me, for example, that my listening habits have returned, in a few small ways, to what they once were. For one thing, I spent more time listening to music out in the world again, whether via headphones on an afternoon walk, blasting on the car stereo on a long drive, or best of all, in the presence of others. Often, the latter meant hearing music in concert again in earnest, and there are a handful of those artists reflected here.
Mostly, though, I wonder if it was just a simple bit of luck, that such a large number of artists whose previous work I have either briefly or long admired, happened to release new music in 2022. Surprisingly, given my propensity for biographical statistics, I have not done any calculations on whether or not this year represents a new record in “via past experience” references, but I would venture it to be close, if not at the top. Such is the nature of an aging music fan, I guess.
Also reflective of my age—as well as my longstanding love for the genre— is perhaps my longest-ever stretch of Americana, folk, and country tunes, beginning first with Maren Morris and continuing, for over an hour of this nearly 7-hour playlist, through Angel Olsen. Though there are plenty of uptempo, rollicking songs in this group, as a whole, they reflect my growing tendency toward softer, more naturalist sounds. And as a more traditional rock music sound recedes from the culture, these acts remain my tie to that old standby, the guitar.
I do not see myself as too stuck in my ways, however. There are still new (to me) artists on this list, and there are even a few honest-to-god zeitgeist-y pop songs to be found. So I’m not completely out of touch. Which is nice. I will take what I can get at this point. And I hope that you will take, too. Take a listen, that is. Which you can do on either Spotify or Apple Music.