20X21 | 420 TUNES FROM 2021
Every year—first started in either 2012 or 2014 (who can remember that long ago), but retroactively done as far back as 20X10—I do this thing where I put an 'X' in between the TWENTY and the CURRENT YEAR and then I make myself put together a big-ass mix cd based on the result of that equation. And, every year, as another 20 songs gets added to the playlist’s quantity, I am amazed at how quality the overall quality manages to stay while, at the same time, anyone can do a quick scan of what I include and still go:
“How the f*ck do you not have ______ in this ridiculously long mix of great music released this year?!”
But this is more a testament to just how much great music gets released each year, and not so much about who has got the better taste in music. Also, taste is super subjective and somebody else’s end of year list is never going to perfectly represent the personal relationship you had with music this year—because that stuff is based on all sorts of different factors and it’d be kinda weird if all the exact same things resonated on all the exact same levels. Besides, nobody can listen to everything anyways (believe me, I’ve tried) so everybody’s list automatically excludes a bunch of stuff on the basis of ‘never got around to it’.
So, with those caveats in mind, here is my annual ‘20X Current Year’ end of year playlist, which features 420 great tracks from 420 different releases, all from the year 2021 (listen/follow the full thing on Spotify, as the embed below just shows the first 100 tracks).…
…and, yes, I know, 420 tracks is A LOT of music — so much so, you might even say that it’s probably just easier to press play and see what catches your ear rather than trying to search for what is or isn’t included.
In fact, that’s what I’d recommend here. Just press play and listen and see how many times you find yourself going “this sounds nice, who is this?”. Because when you get this high up in the song count, there’s no need to overthink order/placement, or who did or didn’t make the cut. Instead, just know that the whole thing has been put together as if I was making a nice (and massive) mix cd, based on the music that resonated with my ears over the course year + what was still connecting with my headphones on a high level when putting this playlist together over the last couple weeks of December 2021 / first week of January 2022.
And since I’ve been doing this bit for awhile now, thankfully somewhere in 2018 I finally got smart enough to realize I should start doing a better job keeping track of everything I liked throughout the year instead of scrambling in the last month to discover/re-remember enough music (here’s that ongoing playlist, which gets reset to zero once I start “liking” new songs in the new year, if you want to follow along on Spotify). Which means that I went into making my giant End-Of-Year’r with WAY more than the needed 420 tracks from 420 artists (like, 1200+ songs/artists WAY more). So, as ridiculous as it sounds, I actually had to make a lot of cuts & tough ear decisions when headphone filtering things DOWN to the final 420. And that’s just a sniff of how much good music gets released every year (tbh I didn’t even bother checking other peoples EOY lists out as I already had too much of my own collection to sort down to 420).
So think of this 20X21 playlist more like tuning into a radio station that just plays 2021 gem after 2021 gem (for 24+ hours straight, if you let it / come back enough times) — some tracks you’ll have heard before, maybe already dig, and a bunch of tracks I bet your ears will be discovering for the first time. Sure, have a scroll thru to see what wasn’t included and curse me out under your breath appropriately, but don’t forget to also press play and listen to the music that did make it in there, because, at the end of the day/year, this is really just a REALLY good playlist for listening/discovering, regardless of what may or may not have been included.
But since Spotify is a great discovery / radio replacement tool and not such a great ‘financially support the people who make the music’ tool, I have also recreated this ‘20X21=420 Tunes From 2021’ playlist on Buy Music Club, which means you can find easy Bandcamp links to almost everything featured (about 40 tracks from the Spotify list were not available on Bandcamp, but since I had to make 100s of cuts to get my ‘songs liked this year’ down to 420, I was able to find some worthy replacements and keep the ‘listen/buy on Bandcamp’ version of the list to 420 as well). So, make sure to check that BMC list out, whether it be a Bandcamp Friday or not…
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…because I think you’ll be able to find more than a few things that your headphones enjoy — and when/if you do, make sure to do the universe some good and check those artists out further and maybe follow one of the many Bandcamp links provided to throw a little of that Xmas money your parents gave you directly towards some of the artists providing your ears with the goodness.
And high five for another nice year of music + here’s to 2022, which, based on past music blogging experience, I have a feeling will also be pretty nice — well, as far as the quantity of quality music released goes, I can’t vouch for what the rest of society will get up to in 2022, but that’s why I try to just focus on the tunes \m/
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