I played a lot of music on my show. I listened to more music than I had time to play. This is a distillation of those two lists. It's a giant weird, lopsided Venn Diagram that I had to stop tweaking and finally walk away from. As always, there's a mix of indie rock, hip-hop, noise rock, electronic, and a little country thrown in.
When I did my top seven most played albums of the year for BFF.fm, I was a little surprised. When I had to expand it to my top 33 albums, everything started moving around. Albums that I had played a lot started to drop. Albums that I had played once (or not at all) moved into my top ten. They were just that good.
Of course, this is all completely arbitrary, started with metrics, and finished with emotion. What I like best about this exercise is the chance to revisit albums you haven't picked up in months, and remember what you were doing when you first heard it. Or, listening to friends' best of shows, and realizing there's still plenty of new music to discover.
So, without further ado, let's put the spaghetti in the machine.
Playlist
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Mental Disease by Dow Jones and the Industrials on Can't Stand the Midwest 1979-1981 (Family Vineyard) -
Ordinary People by Black Monuments on Black Monuments LP (Self Released) -
Wall Watcher by Sunflower Bean on Human Ceremony (Fat Possum) -
Cosmic Zeroes by The Genders on Phone Home (Self Released) -
Blind Kids by American Wrestlers on Goodbye Terrible Youth (Fat Possum) -
Mölkky by Pinkshinyultrablast on Grandfeathered (Club AC30) -
Is It So? by The Pack A.D. on Positive Thinking (Cadence Music) -
Stupid by Wrangler on White Glue (Memetune) -
Love Is A Fire by Junior Boys on Big Black Coat (City Slang) -
Wriggle by Clipping. on Wriggle (Sup Pop) -
Suede by NxWorries on Yes Lawd! (Stones Throw) -
Period Piece by Jenny Hval on Blood Bitch (Sacred Bones) -
Human Performance by Parquet Courts on Human Performance (Rough Trade) -
Not What I Needed by Car Seat Headrest on Teens Of Denial (Matador) -
Dead Man's Gun by Thee Oh Sees on A Weird Exits (Castle Face CF-080) -
Sea Stories by Sturgill Simpson on A Sailor's Guide to Earth (RJ Records Inc) -
Rings Of Saturn by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds on Skeleton Tree (Bad Seed Ltd) -
Hand of God by Emma Ruth Rundle on Marked for Death (Sargent House) -
Choose Your Own Adventure by Vanishing Twin on Choose Your Own Adventure (Soundway) -
Line Up by Sad13 on Slugger (Carpark) -
Circuits by Trentemøller on Fixion (In My Room) -
Cogs by Minor Victories on Minor Victories (Fat Possum) -
Monotony by Preoccupations on Preoccupations (Secretly Canadian) -
Signals by School Of Seven Bells on SVIIB (Vagrant) -
Constellations by Black Mountain on IV (Jagjaguar) -
Rome by Operators on Blue Wave (Last Gang) -
Dre by Warpaint on Heads Up (Rough Trade) -
The Family Physicians by Duchess Says on Sciences Nouvelles (Slovenly) -
Street Drugs and Cartoons by Mall Walk on Funny Papers (Mt. St. Mtn.) -
We The People.... by A Tribe Called Quest on We Got It From Here... Thank You 4 Your Service (Epic) -
Rolling Stone (Ft Petite Noir) (Clean) by Danny Brown on Atrocity Exhibition (Clean Version) (Warp) -
Candy Sam by Ty Segall on Emotional Mugger (2016, Drag City) (Drag City) -
Memory Girl by Tobacco on Sweatbox Dynasty (Ghostly International) -
I Think I Smell A Rat by The White Stripes on The Complete John Peel Sessions (Third Man)