Preparing this post has taught me a number of things. The first being that I didn’t blog nearly enough this past year and it has motivated me to be better going forward. As I was going through my posts for this past year there were songs I swore I had written about and then instead located them in my google docs just sitting there mostly finished…(I am quite angry with myself about this) Secondly I have a tendency to fixate on things. Out of the artists on this list that I wrote about last year I wrote about half of them more than once. I cannot promise I won’t continue to do that so I need to write more to balance out my craziness.

This was my favorite album of Taylor’s for quite awhile because of just how new and unique it was; any country roots that were still present within the previous album “Red” essentially disappeared. What we got was something so different in the best way possible. So needless to say I was very excited to get this re-release nearly a decade after I was initially blown away by this album.

This weeks post was brought about by a number of times over the past few weeks where I found myself; as Cerian would say “on the wrong side of the morning.” During particularly restless nights my go to is music. As I listen through various tracks I will make recordings about anything that makes an impression on me.

As I was going through tracks from this past year there were a number of them which struck me in an especially powerful way. This is just the first group of the aforementioned tracks.

This is a tremendous album with so much to unpack and discover. I am in awe. The writing is so poetic in a classical, traditional sort of way that I don’t come across very often. As I was digging through the tracks it really felt so much like analyzing poetry even more so than usual. There are occasionally moments when I come across a song that truly causes me to think deeply, look at my past and to even take a look inside myself. As I went through this album I had more of those moments than I was expecting. It was an awe-inspiring experience.

I realized on Monday that is had been forever since my last entry. I am striving to teach myself a lesson in balance. I tend to go all in with one hobby for a time and then switch to another. I am working to devise a way I can do more than one at a time it is still a work in progress.

In an effort to play a bit of catch up I am going to write about each of the three albums that have been on a steady rotation on my turntable as of late. I am hoping that I will be able to do each of them justice.

Tall and Small aka Colin and Ioana create cover songs though I would say they are much more than that. Their passion and enjoyment of music is evident as they weave together these magnificent tributes to songs they love.

I came to a realization the other day that while I often gush about the music of Chelsea Cutler I have never written about any of her songs which is a great wrong that I will make right today.

Lisa’s music always strikes a certain chord with me. There is something truly exceptional about the way she meticulously crafts her songs. It always gets me thinking and inspires me to write. It just feels so sincere; it has been said that the only truth is music. I really feel that as I listen to this album it has this magnificently genuine aire about it. I don’t feel as if Lisa is holding back and all the emotions put into this album come across unquestionably; I feel it so heavily and completely. 

Lights has released acoustic versions of most of her albums but “ded” is something different. Instead of an acoustic version she took her previous album “pep” and flipped it on its head giving it this brilliantly somber and pensive tone. For me it completely changed everything about the album in every way possible.

Songs are often written about specific experiences yet when they are superbly crafted their meanings extend far beyond the situation about which they were written and their messages are far reaching. That is the case with this track. What truly strikes me about this track is how incredibly pensive and vulnerable the lyrics are. Lowering your defenses to be so introspective is challenging. I would assume it is even more so when you are putting those feelings into a song and releasing it out into the world.

Abrams debut album is bedroom pop perfection. She owns up to past mistakes in a way that I think many of us would be afraid to do in private; she barres her soul to the world and in doing so has managed to create one of the best debut I have heard in many years.

I recently saw many people posting on Instagram “six albums that changed my life” and I thought it was interesting idea. I often do posts that are Top __ albums or top albums within a specific genre but this prompt had me thinking about things differently.

This year I decided to completely abandon any sort similarity my top albums of the year post had to the plethora of others you will find out there. Rather than causing myself an abundance of tedious work listening to many albums which in some cases I wouldn’t normally listen to in order to determine which ones I thought were the best of the year. I decided to instead talk about the top artists which defined my year musically regardless of whether they released any music during the year.

The collaboration album In This Together has a cohesiveness to it that is impressive; I am amazed by the way all styles of these different come to together so spectacularly.

The way the sound of Swift has evolved since she began her career and especially these last few years has me in awe. While listening to “Love Story” or “Long Live” I never would have thought that one day we would be here. Through it all she maintained what I have always considered to be the essence of her music which is weaving emotional tales in her songs.

The profundity of emotion in this track astounds me. It contains a brilliant blend of both chill and delicately upbeat pop sound; with lyrics that mesh a fear of reclusion and expectantly looking toward the future.

It is rare to come across an artist whose music strikes a nerve in the core of your soul. In a way that is inexplicable; you enjoy their music even if you feel there is so much about it that you don’t understand. You are consistently coming up with new ideas and feelings the more you listen. Lisa’s music is that for me

Matty has crafted something outstanding once again. I really enjoy the magnificent instrumentation on this EP; there are these fantastic stretches without lyrics that provide me time to truly reflect on what the tracks are making me feel

This is the kind of album I don’t come across all that often; one where each track builds on each other and they all work together to form such an extraordinary narrative. Due to this fact I don’t want to listen to the tracks out of order. Doing so really changes the experience of listening

I have talked much in the past about love on this blog. How it can be quite complicated, difficult, open us up to vulnerabilities and the list goes on. I have been thinking on this subject a lot recently, mainly due to the music I’ve been listening to and now I think differently.