The rules
I chose 21 of my favorite songs that were released in 2021 (with one or two exceptions). These are “songs” as in “music with lyrics you could maybe sing along to if you wanted.” I’ll cover instrumental and other unsingable music in part two.
Also, there are a few songs marked with an [X] because those are songs that I think Laura Crossett, who doesn’t usually like new-to-her music, might like.
The playlist
Spotify is a terrible company and most of the songs/albums below I have bought on Bandcamp; you can see all the stuff I own on my Bandcamp fan page. But for making a playlist that I can share with you, I guess Spotify is the way to go.
Ungrateful
Let’s get this out of the way right at the top. Mostly I want to talk about the new music I listened to this year, but I would be lying by omission if I didn’t come clean with the fact that The Grateful Dead’s “Box of Rain” was like my number five most-played song of the year according to Spotify. I have gently teased Shanon about the Dead for as long as I have known her (only this year realizing that she really hates being teased about her music taste—sorry babe!) but our re-watch of Freaks and Geeks got me listening to American Beauty and the first three songs of the album—”Box of Rain,” “Friend of the Devil,” and “Sugar Magnolia”—are all bangers! Who knew? Of course then there’s “Operator” to bring us crashing back to earth, but three songs in a row is pretty good.
The Mountain Goats
Remember how there was a brief window of time in 2021 where if you were vaccinated you felt like maybe the pandemic was kind of winding down? One of the highlights of my whole year was seeing my favorite band, The Mountain Goats, at the Black Sheep (ungulate conjunction!), a small music venue about a mile from my house in mid-August just as that window was starting to slam shut.
They checked our vaccination cards at the door, and the audience all wore masks, and it felt great to be out with people hearing live music. Anyway, I put the live version of “Sax Rohmer #1” from this year’s recording The Jordan Lake Sessions Volumes 3 & 4 on the playlist because I think that’s where I basically lost my voice from singing along when they played it in Colorado Springs.
Good songs on disappointing albums
The Weather Station’s album Ignorance will be on a lot of end-of-year lists, but it kinda didn’t do much for me. The leadoff song, “The Robber,” though, has drama, cool instrumentation and solos, so I’ll allow it.
I thought I was really going to like the distorted sound of Low’s HEY WHAT, but I mostly just come back to “Days Like These” and “More.” I still have hope I’ll return to this album in future years, though.
Phoebe and friends
I wrote about Bo Burnham’s Netflix special Inside before. Some of the jokier songs from that show didn’t really stick with me, but “All Eyes On Me,” with its simple melodies, cry of climate despair and cynicism, and the haunting performance sure has.
Then our lord and savior Phoebe Fucking Bridgers went and started playing Burnham’s funny and poignant “That Funny Feeling” in concert & recorded it as a single, and I hit peak 2021
Or maybe it was Phoebe Bridgers as guest artist with Taylor Swift on “Nothing New” when I peaked.
Bridgers found a way to dominate 2021 without releasing a new album, while Taylor Swift just kept re-recording her old albums. There are many songs I enjoy on both Fearless and Red; I put the one about me on the playlist.
Punkish and Metalish
Three of my most-played artists this year are Mannequin Pussy, Jeff Rosenstock, and Pat Schneeweis (aka Pat the Bunny, Johnny Hobo, Ramshackle Glory, Wingnut Dishwasher’s Union, etc.). They all play in a style that’s rooted in punk, especially Pat, but they also all sound outside the conventional boundaries of punk as well.
I first encountered Mannequin Pussy on the TV show Mare of Easttown where they had lent one or two of their songs to be performed by the onscreen teen band. Their song “Drunk II” is the clear front runner for me as pop/rock song of the millennium, but that was released in 2019, so I’m going with “To Lose You” from this year’s EP Perfect. To me it sounds like something that should be blasting on rock radio in the summer, but I guess I like it more than the singer/songwriter, Missy, does:
As with Mannequin Pussy, the Jeff Rosenstock song I listened to the most, “Nausea,” is older (2015). For the playlist, I chose the leadoff track on his 2020 Dump record where he released a bunch of loose ends he’d recorded last year “Department of Finance” [X] is a great slice of 2020-into-2021 malaise.
Pat the Bunny apparently retired in 2016 at the age of 29 after what seems like an eventful life of writing, recording, and performing tons of music, doing tons of drugs, and getting clean in reahab, all of which he writes and sings about (“I’m growing old in rooms full of kids with unruly haircuts”; “I got sober by going to rehab / And not arguing so much for once / Punk rockers ask me how I did it / Hoping for an easier way / And would you, and would you believe / That they don't like what I have to say?”). So he doesn’t have a new release, but there is the quite wonderful collection Keep On Loving, Keep On Fighting! A Pat The Bunny Covers Compilation Benifiting Trans Lifeline. It’s uneven like a lot of those tribute albums are, but there are a lot of very good versions. It’s not on Spotify, however, so I went with the original Pat the Bunny version of “We Don’t Get Tired, We Get Even.” [X]
Then there’s Deafheaven. Kinda-sorta a black metal band, their 2021 release Infinite Granite sheds the screamy vocals and more intense aspects of the music for something more shimmering relying much more on hooks and textures. I dig it, and put the leadoff track, "“Shellstar” on the playlist.
Just Good Pop Songs
Ok, I have run out of useful subheadings. The rest of the songs are just tunes that I still enjoy after hearing them a few dozen times.
Arlo Parks, “Caroline.” There’s something 90s sounding about this maybe? I don’t know but it’s catchy, I enjoy the tone of her voice, and especially the way she says “suddenly he star’ed screaming.” “Eugene” from the same album is also great.
The Reds, Pinks & Purples [Oxford comma missing in original], “I Hope I Never Fall in Love.” Speaking of the 1990s, this sounds like Galaxie 500 + The Magnetic Fields, and if that sounds good to you, this song probably will too. I found this in some Bandcamp blog post I’m pretty sure.
Courtney Barnett, “Write a List of Things To Forward To.” I love Courtney’s guitar playing and her Aussie slacker delivery on this late-Anthropocene tune.
Hurray for the Riff Raff, “Rhododenron.” I don’t know anything about this song or artist except Spotify told me to listen to it and then I listened to it like three times in a row and it’s a really good song to dance around the kitchen to.
John R. Miller, “Faustina.” [X] Another one that showed up in my playlists unbidden and I kept listening to. Just an impeccable country song.
Big Thief, “Time Escaping.” Big Thief was also on the Mare of Easttown soundtrack with “Two Hands” from 2019; a beautiful song. I also listened a lot this year to Big Thief’s vocalist & songwriter Adrienne Lenker’s 2020 album, Songs. On “Time Escaping” the band sounds like some kind of percussive indie rock gamelan orchestra. I’m looking forward to the full album coming out in February.
Japanese Breakfast, “Be Sweet.” This song is lovely pop music that I thought reminded me of Thomas Dolby’s “I Love You Goodbye” until I listened to that one again and now I think that both songs just have great synth sounds and are awesome but otherwise don’t sound that much the same. Where was I? Oh yeah, “Be Sweet” is just an explosion of pop joy with lyrics that hint at anxiety, insecurity, and anger, and Missy from aforementioned Mannequin Pussy is in the video which is a silly X-Files romp apparently inspired by the line in the chorus “I wanna believe in you, I wanna believe.” Also, the whole album, Jubilee, is really good and I like it more the more I listen to it—probably my favorite pop album of the year.
Snail Mail, “Valentine.” Spotify was pretty sure I would like Snail Mail because I like Phoebe Bridgers and other current women vocalists. It took me a while to surrender, but I dig what sounds to me like a grunge soft-verse, loud-chorus structure and I dig Lindsey Jordan’s whine. You win, Spotify.
Indigo De Souza, “Hold U.” Look, a lot of the songs on this list have great pop hooks and everything but are lyrically kinda of apocalyptic bummers. But this one is about, like, hugs? And one of the refrains is “It’s gonna be all right” and I think she is trying to mean it and it’s just a happy song I hope.
Phoebe Bridgers, “Day After Tomorrow.” [X] Well, that’s enough good vibes, bring us home crying, Phoebe. It seems she releases a bummer of a cover every holiday season, and this Tom Waits cover is our gift this year.
That’s what I have for you this year! I hope you give some of them a listen and find some new favorites yourself. I would love to hear from you in the comments what you were listening to this year, whether it was from 2021 or not.
Thanks for the list! I'm listening to it now and thought I'd share my best of 2021 list: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3Q7TCdGpECzrBIL9vOloLT?si=e333ceb582f646e0