I compile a playlist of songs which I found to be the most meaningful each year. Typically, this is a combination of new songs, songs that are new to me, and older songs which I’ve known for years but have had an outsized impact on me of late.
My 2021 Mix can be found below via Spotify. I also wrote about my choices.
Japanese Breakfast – “Paprika”: The opening track of Michelle Zauner’s new album is almost unbelievably audacious. This is an artist recognizing their immense power and marveling at it. It’s as vaunting as any classic braggadocious hip-hop cut, and it works for the same reason: the words are backed up by the performance, elevated further by that Beirut-esque horn line she floats above. David Foster Wallace wrote about the chasm between autobiographical expectation and reality, and how the greatness of these minds is often inaccessible to us because it’s also inaccessible to them. But Zauner poses that question (“How’s it feel to stand at the height of your powers, to captivate every heart?”) and answers proudly: what a rush.
Kero Kero Bonito – “Time Today,” “21/04/20,” “Swimming”: I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a songwriter whose words I identify with more strongly than Sarah Bonito. It’s hard to articulate this without sounding supremely self-absorbed, but her work with Kero Kero Bonito over the past three years feels like my view of the world made manifest. These three tracks capture that. The creative malaise of the lyrics on “Time Today” contrast its masterfully layered construction. “21/04/20” (the best song of the year) is the only pandemic art I respond to after spending 18 months and counting covering it, painting a hazy early-lockdown day. And “Swimming” is a beautifully realized metaphor on beating on against the current: “I get the feeling I always have been swimming.” This is essential, life-affirming art.
Magdalena Bay – “You Lose!”: The debut album from Magdalena Bay is filled with expert pop songs. None are better than “You Lose!,” a pop song which stands in the same echelon as all-time greats like David Bowie’s “Life On Mars” or Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” (or “Time Today,” for that matter). The chorus is viscerally powerful, filled with boundless ambition.
Slowdive – “Celia’s Dream”: I spent a lot of time with Slowdive in 2021, particularly towards the start of the year, and with their underrated debut album Just For A Day. When they were firing, no one did this type of hypnagogic dream-pop better. “Celia’s Dream” has another one of those full-body choruses, rendering the words less important than the feeling, of self-effacing longing.
Sweet Trip – “Milk”: No idea why this one is called “Milk.” Another gorgeous, trance-like song, with Valerie Cooper delivering its words almost as a plea. Those synths are massive.
The Innocence Mission – “Spinning”: I love the line that begins that intoxicating chorus: “I know nothing about so many, too many things.” I feel that elementally. The Innocence Mission may be the greatest winter band of all time. Excited to dig into their work again in the coming months.
Angel Olsen – “Spring”: Another song that’s all momentum and hypnosis, with a breathtaking performance from Olsen. What a heady line, as the song enters that dizzying, washed-out bridge: “I’m beginning to wonder if anything’s real/Guess we’re just at the mercy of the way that we feel.” I’ve been thinking about this track a lot this year, after getting married in September, holding down a job, paying a mortgage, and still feeling the same way I did when I was 14.
Phoebe Bridgers – “Graceland Too”; Okkervil River – “A Favor”; Radiohead – “Fake Plastic Trees”: Earlier in the fall, I was thinking about these songs together, and how they represent the most difficult part of a relationship, which is wanting to be totally and completely available and deferential but being unable to do so, and all the guilt associated with that. Throw “For the Widows in Paradise” by Sufjan Stevens in there too: the tangle of giving one’s whole self.
100 gecs – “ringtone”: I’m loath to include 100 gecs in anything, but I’ve got to be honest to myself here — this is one of the sweetest pop songs I’ve ever heard, and it works on me on a chemical level. Those punctuating synths during the Laura Les verse are heart-stopping. The central sentiment here (“Twenty-seven missed calls lighting up my cell phone/sending you a text saying, ‘Call you when I get home’”) is pretty much my platonic ideal.
Mitski – “Working for the Knife”: I listened to a lot of Mitski this year. This, her first single for an upcoming album, is an incredible continuation of the sound that I found so successful on Be the Cowboy, and that guitar break is the most monumental sound she’s achieved since “Your Best American Girl.” The lyrics remind me of Red House Painters — “I thought at 15 that I’d have it down by 16/and 24 keeps breathing in my face.”
The Beths – “Future Me Hates Me”: What an incredible pop song, with Elizabeth Stokes imbuing her vocals with a deep yearning. A true lightning-in-a-bottle chorus. I’m increasingly thinking there’s zero chance I will see The Beths play Calgary on Feb. 2, but I’m crossing my fingers regardless.
Los Campesinos! – “This Is A Flag. There Is No Wind”: Los Campesinos! were my My Chemical Romance when I was in junior high. Heart-on-the-sleeve songwriting that felt world-defining. Turns out their music still feels the same way a decade-plus later. The first three LC! albums were on regular rotation this year, and probably will be for the next decade too.
Tropical Fuck Storm – “You Let My Tyres Down”: I was a big fan of The Drones with their final two albums, but hadn’t checked out the band that spun out of their breakup, largely because of their ridiculously edgy name. Big mistake, since this song, the first track on TFS’s first album, is a masterpiece. What a beautiful creative outpouring.
Aimee Mann – “Save Me”: I saw Magnolia for the first time in January 2021, and it hasn’t left my brain since. Truly ostentatious filmmaking, told with so much compassion. The lengthy final shot, set to “Save Me,” might be my favourite ending to any movie. The moment when Melora Waters looks up and sees the future, as the guitar screeches into the bridge before cutting to black, is so masterful. Magnolia grapples with coincidence and fate and the impossibility of rationalizing things which could only be so through some higher power, and that’s also what “Save Me” feels like. What could this be if not design?