What I Listened To
I've been meaning to post this, and frankly wanted to do it on New Years Day when it would be the most exact...but things have gotten in the way, like work, life, following what appears to be an interesting political primary season and the fact that my 49ers just hired another offensive coordinator I've referred to as "one of the dumbest coaches in football" -- more on all of that later.
But since I generally have Last.Fm on while listening to iTunes, and try my best to synch up my iPod with it, it does a pretty good job reflecting what music I listen to over a period of time. Surely, it's not exact...but it's - as we might say - directionally accurate.
What's interesting to me, as I believe I've noted elsewhere, is that so many of the artists I listened to in 2007 were barely on my radar, if at all, in 2006 or earlier.
Here's my top ten:
The National
Feist
Caesars
Heartless Bastards
Spoon
Interpol
Silversun Pickups
Mew
Midlake
Editors
While I started listening to some of these bands in the last quarter of 2006 (such as Mew, Silversun Pickups and Caesars), with the exception of Spoon, Interpol and the Editors, the rest are bands I hadn't heard until 2007. Or, mostly, even heard OF. Those "new to me" bands above, and below, are in bold text.
This is good news for music. More after the jump, including the rest of the list.
I'm a bit shocked by how much I listened to Feist, but in retrospect, I not only did go a bit overboard with The Reminder, but it's a CD my wife loves listening to, so it got extra play because of that.
Let's check out more of the list, shall we?
Sleater-Kinney
Minutemen
The Shins
Band of Horses
The New Pornographers
Radiohead
Well, that's more like it - all of these are bands I've listened to awhile (I'm listening to BoH right now, in fact)...and Sleater-Kinney, Minutemen and Radiohead are three of my all-time favorite bands.
Voxtrot
The Frames
The Submarines
Had neither listened to nor heard of any of these bands before last year. Apparently, I like them all a lot. Also worth pointing out is the seasonality here -- Voxtrot and The Submarines are bands I listened to a great deal in the first half of the year - but The Frames much, much more in the last half. Not sure what that means, though.
Cat Power
Beck
Iron & Wine
Amadou & Mariam
Ratatat
The Clash
Bloc Party
Neil Young
Peter Bjorn and John
The Hold Steady
Uncle Tupelo
Goldfrapp
Battles
Weezer
The White Stripes
Explosions in the Sky
The Snake the Cross the Crown
I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness
Ramones
Frightened Rabbit
The Long Winters
The Like Young
Jenny Lewis with The Watson Twins
Stars of Track and Field
Regina Spektor
Elliott Smith
Arcade Fire
Kaiser Chiefs
Victory at Sea
The Smiths
That's a lot of bands that are new to me, and had I bored you more by posting the entire list, this trend would flow through (though probably not as much, since the numbers start getting pretty low pretty quick.)
While lists like this at mp3.com (the top albums, artists and tracks of 2007) are awful, they bear no real resemblance to the quality and quantity of music out there right now. It's a good time to be a music lover, that's for sure.