New music for 2009

John H January 2nd, 2010

Yes! It’s my annual “new to me” top 10 post: the top music I’ve come across over the past year, based on Last.fm scrobbles. Here’s the chart:

Chart of new music for 2009

Bubbling under: Casiotone For The Painfully Alone (70), Little Boots (70), Bad Lieutenant (59), The xx (50), The Hidden Cameras (44), St Vincent (26, all in the last week of the year).

The main difference compared with previous years is where I’m coming across new stuff. For the past few years, eMusic has been my main source for discovering new music. This year, it’s been eclipsed by a combination of Twitter and Spotify, to the extent that I’m still pondering whether to ditch my eMusic subscription.

The Twitter/Spotify dynamic has encouraged two other trends: first, being surprised by artists I wouldn’t have expected to like (Amanda Palmer, Public Enemy, Lily Allen); second, rediscovering old music that had previously passed me by for one reason or another (Tindersticks, Cocteau Twins, The Auteurs). Arguably The Auteurs shouldn’t be on the list, as I used to own their New Wave album on CD and got rid of it some years ago: Spotify enabled me to discover, belatedly, just how foolish a decision that had been.

Another way to discover new music in the social media age: Camera Obscura and The Clientele both cropped up in replies to tweets I’d posted saying “Can’t think of anything to listen to, anyone got any suggestions?”

Rather than writing an essay about each artist, here is a sample track for each one. The links are to YouTube videos, to avoid excluding the Spotify-challenged, but if you do have Spotify then I’ve also set them up as a playlist:

But to conclude this post, a video that highlights a large part of the appeal of Amanda Palmer: her direct and transparent relationship with her fans (she wrote the song and posted it straight onto YouTube as part of a discussion about Lady Gaga), her engaging personality, her humour and her incisive songwriting. Enjoy!

2008 music report

John H January 3rd, 2009

Well, it’s time for this year’s bulletin on the music I’ve been listening to over the past twelve months, courtesy of my Last.fm-meets-OCPD audioscrobbling habit.

In my previous posts in this series (covering 2006 and 2007, respectively), I only reported on the “new” (to me) artists I’d come across during that year. This year, though, I’m going to look at both the new artists, and the overall top ten, for reasons that may become obvious.

So first up, here are my top ten artists by number of tracks listened to during the past year:

Top ten artists for 2008

Last year’s top 10 new artists are well-represented, with Eels (a late entrant last year after I bought Blinking Lights in late December), Cat Power, Rufus Wainwright, Neko Case, the New Stenographers (who have grown on me over the past year) and Aimee Mann all staying in this year’s overall top 10.

Number 11, incidentally, was the Beatles, with 253 plays. Quite impressive given that I first got into them back in 1980…

New artists for 2008

Chumbawamba are not technically a “new” artist – I’ve had Tubthumper in the collection for a decade – but their recent albums are such a departure from their earlier stuff, and made such an impact on me this year, that I’ve given them a wildcard entry into the chart. I’ve also included Shearwater and Bon Iver, who were way down the field, just to show how far down the field they were. If you follow.

It has to be said that, in contrast to 2006 and 2007, 2008 was not an epic year for discovering new artists. Only four new artists – the National, Chumbawamba, the Magnetic Fields and Fleet Foxes – beat the Beatles in my overall chart for the year.

But let’s not be churlish: those four bands are all absolutely superb. In the end I can hardly complain about a year which introduces me to four artists of that quality. And the others are all pretty good: just less earth-shattering in their impact than, um, the Beatles…

  • RSS Wandering Hedgehog

  • Archives

  • Meta