Year-End Rant: My Favorite Songs (and Biggest Complaints) From This Year
Year-End Rant: My Favorite Songs (and Biggest Complaints) From This Year
Airing my grievances and salving the wounds with my favorite songs from 2020
The time-warp year of 2020 is over somehow, despite having just been March last week, so it’s a good time to reflect back on the weirdest year of my life (so far).
There has been a lot of really good music this year. I got to write about a few of the bands and artists putting things out this year, and I tried to include a good variety as each blog post’s “musical guest.” I didn’t, however, get to be a part of any official year-end lists this year. So I’m doing my own, but I’m doing things a little differently than everyone else’s.
There’s also been a lot of bad shit this year.
Of course, there is the obvious, but to complain about these monoliths of badness that we’re living with every day would be a futile and redundant exercise, and I don’t need to add to those piles. But, venting is good. You need to get the little things off your chest.
Since it’s the end of the year and I am ostensibly a music writer, I’m going to throw out a list of some of my favorite songs from 2020, and I’m going to pair each one with a petty complaint from 2020.
Each grievance, irritation and annoyance will be followed by a song that I loved from 2020, the same way that I might put on a song when I’m feeling angry about something happening in real life. Call it a practice in balance, an exercise in vocalizing your feelings and finding what makes you happy at the same time, what have you.
Ranking art by totally subjective criteria isn’t something I’m super into, so consider this completely rankless. I just can’t play them all at the same time. Same goes for the annoying shit.
Got it? Let’s start complaining and jamming.
Grievance: Comcast Customer Service
I’m giving you the short version of this, but multiple people told me it’s the worst Comcast story they’ve ever heard. Let’s just say that for four days after moving into a new house, I spent a good 8 hours total on the phone (or two phones at the same time) with Comcast customer service after they couldn’t access wires, left without saying whether they were coming back (they didn’t), then on another day didn’t call me to say they were here so they canceled, then showed up and had the job canceled while a guy was here. All of this is while I’m home working from my girlfriend’s phone’s mobile hotspot and using whichever phone wasn’t in use to argue with no fewer than 10 different Comcast employees, all of whom were largely unsympathetic to my problems.
Also, that last guy who finally made it to my house to install cable, at the height of a dangerous pandemic, took his mask off and used it to rub his eyes while telling me how much he hates wearing masks, but that it makes him feel like Sub Zero from Mortal Kombat, and that he’s excited for Halloween so he can be Macho Man Randy Savage. I told him that I, too, made the Sub Zero connection, but that masks were important to wear, especially as a stranger in my house. I didn’t have the heart to tell him Halloween probably wasn’t going to happen.
Great Song: Bartees Strange - “Boomer”
When this song dropped, it was one of those “holy shit this is really something” moments, and I wanted to share it with everyone who would listen. I was already hooked after his EP of The National covers and “Mustang,” but this one really drove that screw in more for me. The plate-spinning act of genres he pulls off is nothing short of masterful. (Also check out our conversation from a few months ago!)
I knew this album had AOTY potential and (rightfully) had Pitchfork Best New Music written all over it. When I’m right I’m right.
Grievance: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
This fuckin’ game. At the beginning of quarantine, all of my friends had it. And the cross-platform aspect of it meant I could play with my friends who had PS4, Xbox or PC all at once. It was so great to be able to “hang out” with people. We’d plan time to play together and maybe drink some beers while we played. It was the closest we could come to hanging out. It really was a godsend—it had all of the companionship of a Zoom happy hour but with an activity built in.
And then the game decided it needed to continually update with 40 GB updates coming at the moment I wanted to play. And even if I had 90 or so GB available on my PS4’s hard drive, it would require a sacrifice of something else. I wrote about this a bit already, but it almost ruined video games for me. Now that COVID cases are still high, another new COD game is coming out. But, to quote my friend Anthony when asked if he’d be getting this one, too, “I don’t need to get a game that involves Ronald Reagan telling me to commit war crimes.”
Great Song: The Beths - “Dying to Believe”
This song has been on an almost daily rotation for me since it came out. A lot days I’ll listen to it at least once. You can’t beat that hook. Come on. And those backup vocals? Masterful. This whole album is a masterclass in pop rock hooks.
Also, it makes me sad seeing The Beths’ internet presence, where they advertise that they’re able to play shows in person in venues around actual people because they live in New Zealand, where people took the pandemic seriously.
Grievance: Philadelphia Sports
Philadelphia sports are synonymous with letting their fans down. Except for a few sporadic years of happiness, we all live in a world of “next year is the year.” I don’t feel that way right now. Since baseball came back, the Phillies lost about every ounce of excitement from the year prior and are only going to get worse from here. The Eagles are a joke of a dumpster fire that I don’t even want to watch any week they play. The Flyers got my hopes up more than they had in years only to crash out of the Stanley Cup playoffs. The Sixers never really had the legs to make it to the finals but still gave me reason to be optimistic (while making me feel very bad).
Even the Union was the top-seeded team in the MLS before they lost in the first round of the playoffs. Disappointment is woven into Philadelphia fandom, but we thrive on that unrealistic “it could still happen” hope. That’s fine. I can watch a team lose as long as I have that misguided hope inside me.
Without that, it’s just pathetic.
This is why I have to outsource my sports happiness abroad to European soccer. (For the record, I’m really excited about my team this year, so I have the potential of adding “excruciating letdown from Tottenham Hotspur FC” to next year’s list like this. Stay tuned.)
Great Song: Fontaines D.C. - “A Hero’s Death”
I was heavy into the first Fontaines D.C. album that came out last year. I was surprised to see that they were already putting out another album still on the heels of their first. But I feel like this is a band that’s going to prove to be fairly prolific as they keep going.
This song kind of came out at the right moment in time, and the song’s drive and repetition feels like a guided meditation of sorts rather than a normal song.
“Life ain’t always empty” has served as a useful mantra these past few months, too, and the pieces of advice from vocalist Grian Chatten serve as good affirmations from a guy too young to be that analytical of his life.
Grievance: Push-Ups
A few years ago, like most people in their post-grad days who realized their body wouldn’t just let them eat junk without consequences forever, I started going to the gym. It became part of my daily routine. In my mid 20s, routine became even more important. So, when I had to stop going to the gym in March, it presented a brand new kind of anxiety—being thrown off of your routine and that everything you did to feel good is now gone. What can you do when you can’t go to the gym?
You can always do push-ups, frantically trying to push away that anxiety and try to find that feeling of accomplishment you had when you used to leave the house.
Thanks to everyone buying every piece of workout equipment ever produced, I’ve been forced to do dizzying amounts of pushups for the last 9 months, and there’s no end in sight.
Great Song: Dogleg - “Fox”
I’ve also been running a lot, which, unlike pushups, has been awesome. I moved right by Fairmount Park, and the schedule of working from home has made it a little easier to go for longer runs. Also, maybe I’ve been more inclined to go for longer runs to remind me that I do, in fact, live in a giant city. I just forget that these days.
Nothing else to do right now, is there?
This song has been in high rotation for running. It makes me instantly nostalgic for things that were coming out right when I moved to Philly in 2010. The all-hands-on-deck vocals in this one remind me of the twinkle emo bands I saw in basements, if they had just tightened the screws a little bit. I felt bad for Dogleg. This album was a huge triumph, and the rug got pulled out from under them before they could take the victory lap. If the internet response means anything, though, their eventual tour dates will sell out instantly and people will go ape shit.
Grievance: The Random Person Who Unsubscribed After One Week
You win some you lose some. But, as I made obvious in a previous posting, it’s illegal to unsubscribe from this newsletter.
Great Song: Run the Jewels - “Yankee and the Brave (Ep. 4)
Speaking of albums coming out at the perfect time, Run the Jewels couldn’t have planned this any better. Dropping a few days early (for free, as usual) RTJ4 came out during the height of the pandemic and protests in response to the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
There aren’t a lot of musicians alive who could put out an album during a time like this and make it feel poignant without being hokey or embarrassingly off the mark.
This whole album feels like one cohesive piece, so I chose the intro track. It’s probably not even the best song on the album, but I can’t choose which one to pick. It’s like picking a scene in a movie. So, I chose to start from the beginning. I’d watch the hell out of a Buddy Crime Duo show with El-P and Killer Mike.
Grievance: Spotted Lantern Fly
Like our sports teams, Philly readers know what I’m talking about here. That house I moved into had a tree in the yard that these invasive bastards really loved. If you’ve ever seen one of those trees when they take over, you know how disgusting it is. It’s like the bark has a texture and is moving, and they leave this goo all over it.
No bug has ever been worse at being a bug than the Spotted Lantern Fly. It’s like they were people cursed by a witch to live as bugs until they atone for some wrongdoing in their human life, and had to learn to fly on their own. I’ve never seen something that has existed as a flying animal its whole life be so bad at flying. It’s like it’s surprised by it. They’re also the easiest things to kill in the world. And yet they keep coming back in larger numbers. We’re stuck with these things now in PA.
An endless, unbeatable hoard of bugs this stupid and stubborn is a fitting mascot for Philly, honestly.
Great Song: Soccer Mommy - “Circle the Drain”
There are certain songs I go to with the specific purpose of calming me down when I catch myself clenching my jaw or jittering around in a nervous fit. They get me back to a level of presence and controlled movement. A more manageable wavelength.
The first time I heard “Circle the Drain,” I knew this was going on the list. And it has stayed there for good reason. (For those curious, my other favorite song for making the world stop spinning so fast is “Coffee and TV” by Blur. But that didn’t come out this year.)
Grievance: IKEA
IKEA on a Saturday is tough. IKEA on a Saturday during a pandemic when everyone just found out they are moving back to their college towns in a week is Hell. I think a lot of my frustrations from this year came from moving. I hate moving. I hate it more when I take my UHaul van to the South Philly IKEA with a list of things you need—things the IKEA website swears is in stock but won’t let you buy in advance—only to find about 33% of them amongst the sparsely stocked shelves reminiscent of those videos of Soviet grocery stores. No amount of playing Tokyo Drift with those fun IKEA carts made up for that.
Great Song: Tigers Jaw - “Cat’s Cradle”
If you were to ask me a couple of months ago which Tigers Jaw song I’d put on this list, I would easily have put “Warn Me.” I said at the time that it was as perfect an indie rock song as you could get. Will Yip’s production and this current iteration of Tigers Jaw found its sweet spot. I listened to that song so much. But I’ll be damned if the Jaws didn’t come back with possibly their strongest hit ever. This one just doesn’t stop. It’s one big hook. I said this before in my post about their livestream, but this is a band finding a new height of its power.
Grievance: Fred Willard Dying
This is the only true tragedy I’ll talk about, in that it’s the only one related to loss of life. Whenever someone funny died in years prior, I always had this thought in the back of my mind that eventually Fred Willard would die, and he wouldn’t pop up in movies to steal the show like he frequently did. He was my favorite scene stealer. He was a genius and there will never be someone funny exactly like him. I of course don’t know him personally, I am just personally (and selfishly) sad that there won’t be any more pleasantly surprising cameos where he pops up and makes me laugh.
This one is somber, so it’s alright to cry.
Great Song: Frances Quinlan - “Your Reply”
Speaking of people who do things unlike anyone else, you’d be hard pressed to find any songwriter working like Frances Quinlan. And, speaking of pleasant surprises, I was excited when she announced she’d put out her first real solo album apart from Hop Along (sort of)—the phenomenal Likewise, which came out in the Before Times of January. I say it was “sort of” apart from Hop Along because she still used the other members of the band here and there throughout, but there’s no questioning that this is her album. Her creative and musical identity is so unique, and I hope she puts something out every single year.
Grievance: My High Maintenance Cat’s Expensive Health Woes
Those of you who know me personally have probably seen my cat. She’s a weird little gremlin, and she’s the cutest thing that’s ever existed. She’s also been a real pain the ass lately with minor health issues. We saw some little irritations on her claws, so we took her to the vet, and that led to having to scrub her paws twice daily with some blue stuff. Eventually, this issue led to the vets thinking it was an autoimmune disease, which led to getting lab cultures taken at a different vet, which led to finding out she’s just a sensitive little cat prone to irritation, and we have to go back to scrubbing her paws.
While we were scrubbing her feet (which cats love) one night, we noticed a flea on her, and we had to treat her for that.
Then she got her teeth cleaned. My girlfriend is in dental, so she requested seeing all X-rays before the vet decided to rip her teeth out willy nilly (as apparently vets tend to do).
Turns out our little goblin’s jaw never fused together. What an adorable, costly freak.
Great Song: illuminati hotties - “melatonezone”
Quick context for those out of the loop: IH’s Sarah Tudzin put out this album as a way to get out of their Tiny Engines contract. Tiny Engines had been accused of withheld royalties, bad communication and other unsavory business tactics. So, Tudzin, shackled to Tiny Engines because their second LP would be “an important record for [label founder Chuck Daly],” had to put something out. So we got Free I.H.: This Is Not The One You’ve Been Waiting For.
The album itself is so good and fun, with songs like this that alternate between Calypso beats and Weezer sludge. It might’ve been a way to get out of an unhealthy business relationship, and it might not be the “one we’ve been waiting for,” but god damn was it good. And there’s this extra element when I listen to it, like I’m actively participating in Tudzin’s fuck-you to Tiny Engines.
There’s that bit on Always Sunny where Charlie writes the “Nightman” play, and the rest of the gang can’t wrap their brain around why he would write a musical without their being a mark. Who is he trying to get? Tudzin wrote an album with a mark.
Grievance: Rise of Skywalker and the Fight Against Cynicism
I went to see the latest Star Wars movie in theaters with my girlfriend and her brother in January. No one said much throughout, but I could tell morale was low. As the movie wound down, I saw them both making jokes to each other a lot.
I was trying my best to be the one to push cynicism aside, and remind them it’s a series about space people and it’s for children and we can’t hold it to the same level as normal cinema.
They laughed in my face and told me that it’s OK to just say it sucked. I really tried to hold onto that self-imposed lesson of taking something at face value and not trying to write something off as bad just because it seems like the popular route. Within hours of seeing it, I not only was admitting that I hated the movie, I also felt like a dingus for trying to force a lesson into the experience. I’d pay so much money right now to go see a movie in theaters, though. More than usual. Movies are expensive.
Great Song: Empty Country - “Marian”
This was the debut album from former Cymbals Eat Guitars frontman Joe D’Agostino. It came out about a week into quarantine, and it was one of the first albums that made me sad that I couldn’t go hear in person. There were so many good Philly bands putting things out this spring and summer, and this was one I’d love to see in a smaller venue. Remember those? This is just one of those songs that I’d feel very cool watching while drinking a beer. Does that make sense?
I obviously liked far more than just 10 songs this year, and I was probably frustrated by more than 10 things. But, it’s probably best not to dwell and go searching for things that upset me. This felt good. It’s nice to get things out in the open, and gear yourself up for another year. Maybe it’ll be better. Maybe it’ll be worse. If you’d like to hear more songs that I liked from this year, you can check out an accompanying Spotify Playlist I made here. There’s lots more, including Perfume Genius, Ratboys, The Strokes, Ganser, Shamir, Trace Mountains and more!
If you’d like to hear more things that pissed me off. Well, give me call sometime.
In the meantime, as we gear up for 2021, consider subscribing to Snakes and Sparklers. I have plenty of more stuff on the way for next year.
Today’s Snakes and Sparklers musical guest is The Hold Steady.