Year End Review!

We’ve done it again. We’ve arrived at the end of another year and nested safely into my favorite season (well, at least as far as this newsletter is concerned), Spotify Wrapped Season! I’ve only been a full-blown Spotify subscriber for a few years, so I don’t have an extended history with Wrapped, but I love looking back on my play habits and getting a screenshot of where my head was for the preceding year. Turns out 2022 was a lot less musically hostile than 2021 (no Death Grips on the list this year) and I was very pleased to see that what I thought were my favorite recordings of the year ended up being my favorite recordings on the list!

I recently did a TikTok of my Top 5 releases of the year 2022 which included (in no specific order) The Weeknd, FKA Twigs, Jean Dawson, Steve Lacy, and Ravyn Lenae. Though Jean and Steve get plenty of love past the halfway mark in my top 100 playlist, they were edged out of the Wrapped top 5 by two releases from late 2021 that had a hold on me like few others: Dijon with his release Absolutely and Wet with Letter Blue. It’s no surprise that ‘Clementine’ took my #1 spot of replays and ‘The Dress’ the #2 spot. Those two songs were basically my mantras for 2022 and found themselves running 2, maybe 3 times a day through my speakers.

The Weeknd and FKA Twigs were the two artists that spurred me to start writing here about music, and the fact that they stayed on my Top 5 even through an early January release speaks to the strength of their albums. Dawn FM is the Weeknd’s best full release since the Trilogy days and Caprisongs is FKA at her most carefree and danceable and I feel like it doesn’t get said enough, but Ravyn Lenae had the most competent and magical debut of the year with Hypnos for me, and I want people to give her all the flowers.

So, without further commentary (I wrote about most of these artists, many times twice throughout the year!) I present the final playlist of the year. Curated through shear habit and love, My Spotify Wrapped.

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