The Year(s) In Music (2020 – 2024)

(By Richard Goodman, 7 June 2025)

Hello!  It has been a while since I last talked to you.  Has anything significant happened lately?  I did not plan to send you the box set of music you are holding in your hands.  It just sort of happened.  When I last sent you a Year In Music CD back in the beginning of 2020, Donald Trump was running a presidential campaign despite concerns about his fitness for office, Elon Musk was making waves in the business world and exerting his social influencer muscle, Brexit was causing turmoil in Europe, the United States exited many global alliances like the Paris Accords, weather patterns were changing and causing unprecedented natural disasters, the Kansas City Chiefs - America’s new favorite sports team - were Superbowl bound, and when someone said the word “Corona”, the first thing you thought of was a beer.

And now, um, well, all those things are still kind of true, but in completely different ways than before.  Part of the delay in sending music to you was because of my procrastination but a lot of it has been a lack of new music coming out in the last few years for some reason.  It almost seems like the world has been concentrating on other things from 2020 through 2023. 

The culprit, COVID-19, has affected public health, global supply chains, political agendas, education, social activities, and yes, even the music scene.  Since streaming music services have killed album sales and they pay out pennies to the artists in return, musicians depend on touring revenue to make a living.  Artists now release albums to help promote their tours, not because they expect to earn gobs of money from selling albums.  

Touring is needed to bring in money to pay the bills, since streaming revenue is negligible.  So if an artist can’t use a new album to generate ticket sales, many feel there is no point in releasing anything new.  When people were unable to safely gather and listen to a concert, musicians stayed at home and had to find other ways to earn a living.

As a result, there was not much new music coming out during the peak COVID years.  Heck, it seems like there were more corona variants coming out then there were hit albums.  We started with the big names in COVID - Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Omicron and then moved on to other “less deadly” variants like Epsilon, Zeta, Kappa, Lambda, and now there are so many we don’t have any fun Greek fraternity names to give them and have just started numbering them like iPhone updates (BA.2.86, JN.1, JN.1.7, JN.1.18, KP.2, KP.3, KP.3.1.1, and LB.1.)

Usually, I have no problem finding two or three CDs worth of material that I want to share but the Covid era made worthwhile new music much harder to find.  There were a few notable exceptions though.  Dua Lipa put out her glorious second album, full of insanely catchy feel-good songs that distracted us from a glum world.  Taylor Swift went in the other direction and released two (two!!) million-selling albums of comfortable, soothing, folk-leaning pop that made you want to stay home, wrapped up in a blanket, drinking a glass of wine.  A lot of us did that very thing, when we could find wine and cheese in stock at the grocery store.  Of course, Taylor Swift could release anything and it would do well- I’m looking forward to her putting out an album during the post-apocalyptic zombie outbreak.  It will probably feature a sequel to “Cardigan”, called “Kevlar Sweater”.

So for 2020 I barely found one CDs’ worth of music and didn’t feel motivated to send anything out.  Then as the pandemic dragged on into 2021, the lack of new music continued.  I explored the back catalog of artists I liked but hadn’t extensively listened to before and I re-listened to past favorites but that doesn’t really let me find unknown treasures for you.  I mean, you all know Belinda Carlisle’s songs, you’ve heard Henry Mancini before, you probably don’t care about Jefferson Starship, and you likely have heard all of Transvision Vamp’s good songs already - there are only two of them.  On the plus side, I got to fully evaluate some legacy artists to whom I had not paid proper attention, for example the whole output of The Bangles, Journey, The Cars, Foreigner, Veruca Salt, Lush, and U2. 

So 2021 also resulted in just one CDs worth of songs.  Still, that means I had two CDs worth of things I found worthwhile that you might appreciate.  It seems fitting that I would send both years at the same time because doesn’t it feel like 2020 and 2021 blurred into one long, long span of time where it was hard to tell one month apart from another and you weren’t motivated to do all the things you normally do?  Yes, yes it did. 

Then, as Covid started to wane and become less deadly and vaccines became widely available and utilized by those who understood how medicine works, I lost a couple of people that were really important to me.  My friend John passed away as did my mother.  Ironically, neither was a Covid victim but they were gone just the same and I was dealing with those losses and the emotions that went with them.  So that lethargy carried on into 2022 and 2023.  Since the music scene had picked back up again in 2023 and 2024, touring resumed and new album releases were coming out on a regular basis from people other than Taylor Swift, I figured I might as well wait until 2024 ended and include that year too and send everything at once.   

That’s not to say there weren’t some positive side effects of the pandemic.  Since everything has been anguish about COVID since it showed its’ face, I wanted to take a moment to recognize a few good things about what we experienced. This is not intended in any way to disregard or minimize the terrible death toll and the social impact of the virus but rather to celebrate the urge to look for silver linings and cheer on the adaptability that comes from adversity.

So first, traffic was amazing during the pandemic period.  It took almost no time to get to work and on days when I didn’t want to drive into the office, I could work remotely from home.  This meant more sleep time, less need for gas, and I could eat lunch from my own fridge with no need to pack a lunch or get take-out from a restaurant.  Gas prices were really low - I mean like 1980’s low.  Global emissions and carbon output dropped drastically, and some notoriously smoggy cities had clear skies for the first time in decades. 

There were no new television shows being produced so there was time to catch up on things that were backlogged on my DVR.  Clearing that backlog was bittersweet though.  Many of the episodes that I had waiting for me were the final episodes of series that had been cancelled and I was saving them because I didn’t want the show to be over because I loved it so much.  I watched the last season or final few episodes of The 100, Wynonna Earp, Last Man Standing, Agents Of Shield, High Fidelity, Silicon Valley, The Good Place, Modern Family, Brooklyn 99, and The Magicians.

Then there were the streaming services that exploded in the last four years. Everyone stuck at home, unable to go to concerts, or movies, or dinner out with friends, or sports events, or on vacations or dates, instead watched stuff on streaming services.  Yes, some of it was garbage like Tiger King but there was also The Queen’s Gambit.  I was amazed at how much I loved this drama about chess.  Everyone watched this show and talked about it, and it even kickstarted a public resurgence of interest in chess.  On the opposite end of the spectrum, I also loved Teenage Bounty Hunters, a dramatic comedy about some teenage girls who are, as you would guess, bounty hunters.  No one I know watched this show, which is why Netflix cancelled it, and I was crushed that I never got a chance to talk about it with anyone.  It was hilarious, heart-warming, satirical, soapy, sexy, and thrilling and no one will ever know it existed, except for me.   

People got to explore everything on streaming that they had never watched before or to revisit old favorites, which made Friends and The Office hugely popular shows again. 

Drive-in movies became a thing again.  While theaters were closed, pop-up drive-ins, um, popped up because people could isolate in their cars and still a see a movie on the big screen.  When theaters did reopen, they were not as crowded, and people could reserve their seats.  I enjoy having an audience when watching a movie, but I don’t want people in the seats on both sides of me, boxing me in and crowding my armrest.  Theaters were pro-active and enforced spacing so there were certain seats blocked off to maintain distance between patrons. 

Once COVID restrictions were lifted, reserved seating stayed.  At first, I wasn’t a fan of reserved seating because I was used to getting to the theater early and finding a good seat but I eventually came around because a little planning ahead meant I didn’t have to spend time waiting around in the theater lobby, reading a book or fiddling around on my phone.  Ever since the Merrifield Multiplex theater closed and the Area 51 arcade game was gone, I haven’t really wanted to hang out in the lobby because it isn’t as fun anymore.  Sometimes I saw a movie with friends, so I could talk to them while waiting to get seated, but about 50% of the movies I see are by myself so hanging out in the lobby isn’t that much fun post-Area 51. 

Another forced benefit of the pandemic was that buying groceries was a breeze.  Not because there was an abundance of choices but because there were none.  Supply chain issues meant a shortage of almost everything.  Because many factories are specialized, they could make commercial paper products but couldn’t quickly switch to consumer paper items like toilet paper, even assuming there were enough healthy workers to staff the factory.  If you wanted toilet paper, eggs, bread, or vegetables, you grabbed whatever was there, as quickly as you could before someone else got it and the shelves were empty again.  Shortages even extended to metal used for coins and aluminum cans.  Gone were the days where I could choose whether I wanted Cherry Coke Zero, Cherry Vanilla Coke Zero, or Minute Maid Zero Lemonade.  Coca Cola cut back to just their core products so I got to choose from Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Zero or nothing.

There was also a renewed appreciation for simply going outside and taking a walk.  People who didn’t normally bother doing that in the “before time”, realized how enjoyable it was to get outside for some fresh air, opens spaces, and physical activity.  When you see the same four walls for weeks on end, you learn to appreciate different views and surroundings. 

Economically, there was lots of hardship, so I was happy for the little breaks that we got.  Income tax deadlines were pushed from April until July for the first year of the Corona virus, and then we also got three stimulus checks in the next couple of years.  It was nowhere near enough to replace a salary for people who lost their jobs, but it was a nice bit of relief for those still working who were struggling with the unexpected costs arising from the difficult circumstances.  Libraries stopped charging late fees for overdue books, and that stayed in place to this day. While I have always considered late fees as a way of supporting the library system, I’m happy to do that other ways instead of worrying when I need to return a book that I haven’t finished yet.  I would much rather give them money by going to library book sales. 

Another economic break was restaurant delivery fees.  Since restaurants weren’t doing dine-in service, they relied on pickup orders and deliveries.  To encourage people to order from restaurants, delivery fees were waived.  Owners wanted your food order and weren’t going to discourage that by charging you $5.00 to deliver it.  You got to feel like a hero for ordering food and not spending time cooking for yourself.  For me, that is an amazing plus.  I could order cooked food from a restaurant and feel like I’m supporting my community and being a good neighbor.  Granted, waived delivery fees just went back to the drivers as tips because they were being even bigger heroes, by bringing the food and interacting with people they didn’t know who might be contagious with a deadly virus, and possibly not wearing a mask.

Zoom was a gamechanger because it enabled you to stay in touch with people outside your household, conduct business, attend school, see concerts, and remain connected to the world.  This remained the case after the pandemic ended, and I’m very happy that I no longer have to travel to attend meetings or do training.  People can work remotely and be productive.  The time and expense saved by conducting gatherings electronically is a major plus.    

Finally, the pandemic likely forced you to spend lots of quality time with family.  You learned a lot about them because there was nowhere to go and nothing else to do.  This forced people to get better acquainted.  Even though you sometimes got on each other’s nerves, you later appreciated the time together, especially if you lost a loved one to the virus.  I’m so thankful that all my family and friends made it through the pandemic.  Although some of them are no longer here, at least they all survived the biggest health crisis of the last 50 years.

So that is a very roundabout way of telling you why I wasn’t prioritizing the delivery of my Year In Music CDs.  Now though I don’t any such excuses, other than laziness or spending too much time watching YouTube, which doesn’t sound like a reasonable excuse.  Thus, you now hold five CDs in your hands, covering my music obsessions from 2020 to 2024.

Looking at what I had sent out in 2018 and 2019, it felt like I was a bit too inclined towards pop and dance-y songs so I checked out more rock-based artists.  I already mentioned going through the back catalog for Journey and Foreigner, and gained newfound appreciation for them, although none of their stuff is on the CDs since they aren’t undiscovered artists who need promotion.  If you look at the 2020 track list, you might say “So why is Huey Lewis on here?  We all know him (them?)”  Yes, but during the pandemic, I learned that Huey Lewis has an ear condition and is going deaf. 

As a musician, it is very hard to play or write music if you are deaf.  (Yes, there was Beethoven - 250 years ago! - but can you name anyone else?)  Huey and his band put out what may be their final album of new material.  It was a decent album and I really connected with the song “While We’re Young”, which I am not, and neither is he.  The song is about making the most of what you have while you have the chance to do so and that was a very impactful sentiment considering what the world was going through that year. 

I also enjoying Green Day’s take on a Joan Jett song, Royal Blood’s latest monsoon of rock, and an album from a long time favorite – Local H – who is long overdue for recognition of their great work since their one hit twenty years ago.  I listened to a spinoff band (liarflower) from another huge favorite (Queen Adreena), a couple industry veterans (Dion and The Fleshtones) who re-emerged to share great new music, and some mid-level artists taking the next step up in their career (Tennis, Tame Impala, Avalanches, Travis, Dua Lipa).  I found yet another great Tom Jones song, an interesting acoustic cover of a Guns & Roses song, and multiple collaborations. 

The most unusual thing I came across this year was an artist called Poppy, who started out as a You Tuber called That Poppy.  She made bizarre videos on YouTube, some involving her mannequin friend Charlotte, others with her doing performance art, like the one where the whole video is her saying “I’m Poppy”, and some which were straight up music videos of her original songs.  The music had a bubble gum pop sound, but the subversive lyrics were razor sharp satire.  Most bizarre of all were interviews I found online where she went through the interview in character as a robot pop artist.  (See  one here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2J5WqyJFbVs.)  Her answers, her affect and vocal inflection were as if an AI chatbot were doing the interview, but this was a couple years before chatbots and AI tools were a thing. 

There are even some reaction videos online where kids are reacting to her personae and then she reacts to their reactions, culminating in her appearing in person, inside a box to talk to the kids and the kids just freak out!  (you can see the thing here: Poppy Reacts To & MEETS Kids React Cast: The ENTIRE Saga https://youtu.be/QJORKxYYrhQ?si=n3JriiYT0z9MUQ0q).         

Even more interesting than whether Poppy is a real robot, or just a normally manufactured YouTube star, is her musical evolution.  I included three consecutive songs for this year so you can see her change from a satirical pop princess to a message driven artist, to an alternative metal singer.  Her last few albums have been very metal-edged, and the videos and songs remind me of Nine Inch Nails.  Then she will suddenly throw a curveball come out with something like “Stagger” (https://youtu.be/yp5A8awHfas).  I’ve just been fascinated watching this.  It is like a documentary of music history, or the Spinal Tap of pop music, or the blueprint for becoming internet famous.    

So that was 2020.  In 2021, I retreated further back into the past while listening to new releases.  By that I mean a lot of legacy artists put out new music.  So I heard stuff from Paul McCartney, Lindsey Buckingham, Pixies, Edie Brickell, Duran Duran, Sting, ABBA, and Barry Gibb but it wasn’t their oldies.  It was recent music that sounded like their oldies, which turned out to be a good thing.  Barry Gibb put out a covers album of his own songs done as duets with country artists.  It might sound like a weird combination, but it works.  The track he does with Alison Krauss is amazing.  While I think his vocals on the original version of “Too Much Heaven” are jaw-dropping, what Krauss does on this cover duet with him is equally magnificent. 

ABBA put out a new album some, let me check here…, FORTY YEARS LATER!  It was not worth the wait, but it was a nice bookend for their career and there were three songs on it that I quite liked.

There were a couple of throwback songs too. Ones that had been around for decades until I finally heard them this year.  I discovered Paul Anka’s “Times Of Your Life” - a sappy, over-produced, but surprisingly emotional and touching late career hit. Plus an old techno-industrial hit by My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, and a Bryan Adams Christmas song that I first heard this Christmas even though it had been around awhile.

There were exciting songs and albums from alternative favorites (Pretty Reckless, Royal Blood, Dandy Warhols, Courtney Barnett, Julianna Hatfield, and a full-on nu metal song from Poppy) and newly discovered favorites, specifically The Beaches, Zella Day, and Wet Leg.  Wet Leg was the biggest surprise for me, and the most exciting find.  The reason for the surprise is because I heard their first single, "Chaise Longue", and was not impressed.  I couldn’t understand why people were digging the song so I dismissed them.  Then I heard their second single, “Wet Dream”, and loved it.  That song deserved all the praise that it received.  Then I heard a few other songs of theirs, and they were all pretty good but not as good as “Wet Dream”.  When their album was finally released, I was not expecting it to be anything other than a collection of the singles I’d already heard plus some more filler.  Boy am I glad I was wrong!

The album came out in 2022, so let’s move on to that year’s disc.  I included Wet Leg’s “Angelica” and “Ur Mum” because they were awesome – equal or better than “Wet Dream”.  Their whole album was amazing, ending up as my favorite of the year. 

Also carrying over from 2021 was Zella Day.  I liked “Dance For Love” in 2021, so in 2022 I dove into her whole catalog, finding several favorites, including this disc’s feisty “Mushroom Punch” and shimmery “Golden”.  Writing this in 2025, I know what she has done next, which is an almost a Poppy-level switch-up, but I will discuss that when I do the 2025 disc since her new incarnation will have an entry on it.    

In fact, the 2022 CD is mostly filled with surprises and unexpected resurrections.  For example, who expected Elton John to have a major hit again by covering an old song of his?   During quarantine, Elton ended up doing a duets cover album thing as well, just like Barry Gibb did the year before.  Elton teamed up with Dua Lipa for a modernized mash-up of four of his songs.  As Wikipedia puts it, “The song is a medley of four songs written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, as well as Andrew Meecham, Dean Meredith, Nicholas Littlemore, Peter Mayes and Sam Littlemore, with the production completed by the latter three as part of the dance music group Pnau. Interpolating John's songs "Rocket Man" (1972), "Kiss the Bride" (1983), "Sacrifice" (1989) and "Where's the Shoorah?" (1976), the remix is an upbeat contemporary synth-pop, dance, dance-pop and pop song describing the decline of a relationship.”   Interestingly, I had also been unrelatedly listening to PNAU since they were connected to Empire Of The Sun and Sleepy Jackson, bands I found enjoyable in a slightly over the top way.  “Cold Heart” was a major pop hit for Elton John and Dua Lipa, a big surprise for Elton John fans and no surprise to Dua Lipa fans.

Another unexpected release came from Tears For Fears.  Their previous album had come out in 2004 and was long-time mainstay Roland Orzabal’s reunion with original member Curt Smith.  That 2004 album was also unexpected at the time since Orzabal had been basically doing solo work, just under the Tears For Fears name, since 1990.  With Orzabal and Smith’s exemplary reunion release being named “Everyone Loves A Happy Ending”, I expected that to be the end of their recording career, and for 18 years I was correct. 

Then in 2022 came “The Tipping Point”.  It was another new Orzabal and Smith TFT album, 18 years later.  Not quite an ABBA length absence, but still a long time gone since releasing new material.  The first couple of songs I heard on the radio were not encouraging though.  They seemed slow and melancholy.  When the whole album came out, I learned that the genesis of the album was Roland trying to work through his grief over his wife’s illness and subsequent death. 

I can understand how that would affect the songwriting process and become a more meditative work without the usual energy I attribute to them.  There was no “Shout” or “Sowing The Seeds Of Love” on this album.  After an initial listen, I set aside the album.  Later on, after continuing to think about the album and feel disappointment after such a long wait, I pulled it back out to give it another try in case I had dismissed too casually.  I listened to it again, with no expectations since I knew what it wasn’t.  After two or three listens, the songs made their way into my brain, and I appreciated what the album was and how it unwound as a slow burn and not an explosion.  The trademark TFT choruses were there, as was the impeccable production and the baroque chamber pop flourishes, and I fell for the album.  I ended up loving some five or six tracks and I really had a hard time deciding whether to include “My Demon” or “End Of Night” on this compilation since both are excellent.        

Another unexpected treat was a new Tom Jones album, with a bunch of unexpected covers that seem tailor made for Jones as an 84-year-old man, who had lost his wife in 2016.  He was unsure if he would ever perform again because she had been his rock, his love, and his emotional support for sixty years.  The songs reflected the relevant topics of aging, anguish, legacy and social consciousness he had been exploring on his last few albums in the 2010’s but this one had an extra dose of sadness.  Then there is his voice – it is still the Tom Jones voice that sends shivers down your spine.  The thing I included here is an oddity from the album.  Basically, it is like spoken word poetry in time with a rough beat.  It is too slow to be considered a rap; it sounds more like a monologue from a fervent and slightly sarcastic clergyman, and (trigger warning) it concerns a political figure.

The surprises continued this year with Gorillaz putting out a really good album after a couple of dull ones.  The Cult, Black Keys, Mitski, and Pixies did the same- a good album after a couple yawners- so I plucked a standout track from each to include here.  A magazine column from David Crosby (R.I.P.) got me to hear the Sarah Jarosz song, and I loved a super old song I heard from a 1972 Bee Gees album, released during their “lost years” phase when they were past their Beatle-ish and ballad years but before their disco resurgence, when they could not get a song or album on the charts.  After listening to this song, I just don’t understand how the public decides what to like.  This song is a banger.   

Moving on to 2023, I am mostly back in the present day, musically.  There are current songs, although from artists old and new.  Jason Mraz has a new hit, the impossibly upbeat “I Feel Like Dancing” which makes you feel just that.  Spoon, The Hives, Metric, and Juliana Hatfield- some of my favorite alternative rock artists- are back with new albums. 

Metric are icy, alternative pop, and are hit and miss but I included the album highlight.  The Hives are The Hives, which means – as they will tongue-in-cheekily tell you- they are greatest rock and rock band ever.  To describe them I would say to imagine the Ramones if they were brasher, catchier, more cinematic, and could write more than one song.  Spoon is an oddity.  When people say something is lo-fi, I imagine a guy sitting in a rocking chair playing a banjo, or a three-piece band doing one take into a small microphone in a bedroom or garage and refusing to do overdubs or multi-tracking. 

As someone who first heard music by listening to the radio in the 1970’s, a period ruled by artists like ELO, Pink Floyd, the Bee Gees, Chicago, Rod Stewart, Earth Wind & Fire, and Billy Joel, songs with a DIY feel or lack of strong production skills take some getting used to.  Granted, the 1970’s also had America, Olivia Newton John, and John Denver, which leaned more acoustic, but they were still perfectly produced.  They didn’t sound like they were sloppily recorded in someone’s bathroom.  This is why I’m surprised that I like Spoon.  They are definitely not overproduced.  You can clearly hear every instrument playing, there are no backing beats or electronic flourishes.  What makes them so enjoyable is the song construction and passionate delivery.  I read a review for the album “Kill The Moonlight” and decided to give it a try.  I went into it not expecting to be impressed but several songs hooked me and I’ve been listening to them ever since.  Every album is pretty much guaranteed to have four or five terrific tracks.          

Then there is Juliana Hatfield, an artist I have been listening to since 1992.  Every album is a treat, a present to unwrap and see what has been going through her mind lately.  On the 2021 mix CD, you got her gory and glorious “Chunks”, from her oddball, riff-y political leaning album “Blood”.  For her follow-up, she does one of her covers albums, this time focusing on Electric Light Orchestra (ELO).  Not exactly a straight line from one to the other. 

While I enjoyed the ELO covers album, I didn’t love it. It was too-straight forward and if it sounds almost like the originals, why bother.  There is no way anyone else can replicate ELO’s production.  That said, I wanted you to have a taste of the album, so I shared one of the lesser-known songs that I enjoyed.  Then for good measure, I included her cover of Neil Young’s “Lotta Love”, one of my all-time favorite songs.  It has been covered by many people and I love them all, from Nicolette Larson to She & Him to Juliana Hatfield to Courtney Barnett.  Incidentally, I feel the same way about covers of Neil Young’s "Only Love Can Break Your Heart", covered by artists such as Saint Etienne, I Blame Coco, Natalie Imbruglia, and Juliana Hatfield.

Speaking of covers, I included Dennis DeYoung’s “Hello Goodbye” which isn’t exactly a cover although it does include parts of that Beatles song. This is more of a pastiche of various Beatles songs and lyrics.  See how many Beatles references you can spot in this one song.  Similarly, I came across some mashups on YouTube by Wax Audio that combined multiple songs into one new Frankenstein song.  Those are actually on the 2022 disc but I wanted to mention them now.  Listen to “Blue Jump” and see how many songs you can hear.  I count four distinct songs that were combined into this one.

The other mashup song on the 2022 disc is “Stayin’Alive In The Wall”, a combination of “Another Brick In The Wall” and “Staying Alive”.  You might not think they go well together but once you hear the combo, you can’t imagine them not together, like a Reese’s Peanut Butter cup.  Chocolate is quite good by itself but you will always consider whether you want it with peanuts or peanut butter after having had a Reese’s peanut butter cup. 

The movie “Barbie” came out in 2023, and I know that because two of the songs on this disc are from that soundtrack, which is just as great as the movie is.  First, Dua Lipa, who is having her moment in case you didn’t already realize that, had a highlight song in the movie, during the dance party segment where Barbie (a terrific Margot Robbie) asks “Do you ever think about dying?”  Then at the end of the movie, when Barbie meets her creator, the Billie Eilish song “What Was I Made For” plays.  I got a little misty eyed during that scene in no small part due to that song so how can I not include it here? 

There are two songs on the disc from the band Sorry, a recommendation from Elizabeth that I’m glad I took to heart.  They are an English band I’d never heard of, but I ended up loving their two albums.  There is a Little Steven song I’d loved since seeing the video on MTV in the 1980’s and finally got around to buying the digital single.  The video was stupid- Little Steven riding around on a bicycle- but the music was anthemic. 

What else is left?  Some songs from Therapy?, Chemical Brothers, and Herb Alpert as I worked through my accumulated backlog of albums from those artists.  A representative Veruca Salt song as I delved into their catalog via John’s collection.  A hazy, dreamy, hypnotic song from Bakar, the Dutch band The Art Company with their UK Top Ten sing-along song “Susanna” from an 80’s collection, and a pair of instrumentals from Neil Richardson that give me happy 1960’s jet-set vibes every time I listen to them, which is only when I play this 2023 collection because I don’t think they were ever heard by the general public and are near impossible to buy now.      

That leaves three more songs on the 2023 collection.  There is the Billy Joel song “Turn The Lights Back On”, written and released 30 years after his last pop album.  It is neither a good nor bad song.  It would fit in reasonably well on the “Streetlife Serenade” album.  I include it here simply because it is Billy Joel, one of my top ten all-time favorites, and I think people should listen to it and decide its’ merits for themselves.

Another all-time top ten favorite is Kylie Minogue and in 2023, she was having another moment.  These seem to come along for her every 20 years.  She burst onto the music scene in 1987 with “The Locomotion”, a top ten U.S. hit, and then the UK # 1 hit “I Should Be So Lucky”, also a top forty hit the United States.  She was then completely ignored by the U.S. (but not the rest of the world) until 2001 when “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” went to # 7, and #1 everywhere else in the world.  The U.S. went back to ignoring her again until 2023 when “Padam Padam” would become another worldwide hit, selling millions of copies, and winning her a second Grammy award.

Finally, we come to Midlake, a band that appears to have one excellent album among the half dozen they recorded.  I heard the song “Young Bride” on a Sirius channel and fell in love with the mournful, melancholy, ballad.  Even though it came out in 2017, I can imagine it being played by a guy in a tavern in coal country in the 1800’s.  It is the violin the gets me the most.  The vocals are sad and bitter but when the violin kicks in for emphasis, it just devastates me.  Let me know what you think.  I paired this song and the Billie Eilish “Barbie” song to close out the 2023 collection and leave you weeping sadly, a perfect way to end the pandemic.

By 2024, COVID was behind us, maybe not in actuality since it continues to hang around and infect several thousand people a month, but its lethality is greatly decreased, and people no longer take any precautions to protect themselves from it any more than they do to avoid getting the flu.  So we are now in the new normal, in society and the music industry.  That means concerts are going on, new albums and singles are coming out, late night shows are promoting artists, and I can hear large amounts of new music.  As a result, I ….. have retreated to the past.

It wasn’t intentional but during the pandemic, I started getting hooked on a compilation series called “Now”.  I’m sure you have heard of them since they have been popular in England for decades and about 15 years ago, the U.S. started doing their own version.  A couple of times a year, “Now” collects the biggest songs that were released since the last collection came out.  I had picked up a few of the CDs when the series first rolled out, but I stopped pretty quickly because, to sound old man-ish, a lot of the music sucked, and I was better off just cherry picking the singles I liked and buying them individually.  Paying for $3 worth of singles sounded better to me than spending on $14 to get those same songs and 14 others I didn’t like.                

In the last five or six years though, the people who put out the “Now” series got clever and started releasing a “Now Yearbook” series.  This is a four-volume collection of the biggest and best songs of a specific year.  So each year’s release had around 80 songs, and they included British hits too.  That means some of my favorite hard to find 1970’s and 1980’s hit singles like Sheila E’s “Love Bizarre”, Alexander O’Neal’s new jack swing classic “Fake”, and John Paul Young’s “Love Is In The Air” were available without having to buy a whole album just for one song.  As a plus, I got to hear what was hot in England during the same time, including a lot of songs I’d never heard before because I was not buying imports of S Club 7 or Deacon Blue.     

Even more insidious, the company started releasing a “Now Yearbook Extra” series consisting of three discs of additional and lesser-known songs from that year. I decided I would get all the “Yearbook” And “Yearbook Extra” volumes for 1973 to 2000 and then stop collecting anything before or after that since my music collection was pretty well stocked on both sides of that time period.  Heck, it is well stocked even within those years, but I was enjoying getting some of the rare selections and hearing what was on the British charts at that time. There is no pattern to the release schedule, so in a given year they might put out volumes for “Now Yearbook 1974” and “Now Yearbook 1992” and “Now Yearbook Extra 1998.  I’ll be done once 1975, 1976, 1989, and 1994-1997 get released. 

Then the bastards started a “Now Yearbook Vault” series.

It is meant to fill in the gaps in the years that are not covered by the seven volumes already released for each year.  You would rightly be skeptically of the merits for the “Vault” series.  The problem is that the five released so far have covered 1980-1984 and 1976-1984 is my favorite period of music, without question.  Can I live without them?  Yes, I could.  Did I want to have them so I could hear additional songs from one hit wonders like Dexys Midnight Runners, M, Rupert Holmes, Fun Boy Three, and Yello?  Yes, I did.  Plus getting them, I’ve built up a nice collection of hits by Shalamar, Madness, OMD, Gary Numan, Japan, The Tourists, and The Stranglers that I wouldn’t otherwise have sought out.  So I’ll wait and see how far the “Vault” series expands but unless it covers 1976-1984, I should be able to pass on those, like I have on the “Now Millenium” series for the post-2000’s years.  

This is my meandering way of apologizing for and explaining why you might recognize some older songs on my “Year In Music 2024” collection.  I’ve included several selections from the “Now” volumes, but they are likely to be new to you, like the bonkers spoken word UK song “Hole In My Shoe” by Neil, Matt Bianco’s festive groove “Half A Minute”, or the humorous female empowerment anthem that never became an anthem, Carole Bayer Sager’s “You’re Moving Out Today”.    There are also personal oldies favorites, like UB40’s cheerful “Rat In Mi Kitchen”, Paul Young’s booming vocals on “I’m Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down”, Robert Plant’s moody dirge “Big Log”, and Tina Turner’s “Let’s Stay Together”, included simply because it is a great song and to recognize the passing of Tina Turner during this year.

Some other older favorites here that are not from the “Now” series are included here.  Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s “Murder On the Dancefloor” had a resurgence due to being included in a pivotal moment of the recent movie “Saltburn”.  I’ve enjoyed Sophie’s music ever since randomly buying a CD of hers on a trip abroad fifteen years ago and I was glad to see her get some attention stateside.  The song is always a pleasure to hear.  New Order apparently has too many great songs to bother releasing them all.  “Touched By The Hand Of God” was released as the B-Side of their remake “Blue Monday 1988” and wasn’t released on an album except a 1994 best-of collection and as a remix on a couple remix collections.  Give it a listen and see if you think it sounds like a hit. 

Tears For Fears had a few studio leftovers from their recent album so they put them on a live greatest hits album.  The live album was okay but if it wasn’t for the four new studio songs, you could ignore it in favor of the original versions of the songs on the albums.  Of the four new songs, two are nice and two are blah.  I did give them a thorough listening though to make sure I didn’t initially ignore TFT stuff a second time in a row.  I put my favorite of the four on this compilation.

Don’t worry- there is also a lot of recent stuff too.  Billie Eilish continues to turn out touching ballads like “Birds Of A Feather” so I included that standout from her recent album.  I also liked “Lunch” but that is a bit too metaphorically raunchy to include.  When I was watching a morning show, I heard a band called Guster doing a live song that captivated me.  After playing their most recent album, I found that song and a few others that charmed me with their melodic wistfulness.  Two of them are included here and tissues may be needed since they are a little downbeat.      

Last year I shared Kylie Minogue’s “Padam Padam” from her new album “Tension”, and normally that means I’d have to wait another couple of years for the next album, but she surprised me and released “Tension 2” in 2024.  Kylie is often opaque with her lyrics, touching on universal themes rather than explicitly linking them to her personal experiences but “Someone For Me” sounds like she might be trying to say something about herself and that sentiment resonated with me since I sometimes feel the same way.   

The Dandy Warhols are another long-time favorite artist, possibly top 25, and after a stretch of mediocre albums, their last two have reminded of what I love about them.  Their songs have a distinct vibe, a fuzzy, slightly psychedelic, groove driven sound.  If I was a stoner, I would love these songs for this reason.  As a music fan, I love them for their unique texture and clever lyrics.  “Root Of All Evil” is representative of their recent output.  Still, nothing will match their first three albums, but this recent album is a welcome throwback to that style.    

Mysteries Of Life are an offshoot of The Blake Babies, an earlier band of Juliana Hatfield.  The two Blake Babies who are not Juliana formed Mysteries Of Life so I was curious to give them a listen and I liked the pleasant “Going Through The Motions”.  Dicte’s “You Wanna Dance” was discovered by letting Spotify play me stuff chosen by their algorithm after the album I had selected was over.  That is often a way that I find artists to check out further.  Susanna Hoffs has become a favorite artist of mine.  I love the smoky, soothing sound of her voice and generally enjoy hearing her sing anything.  Given that she either covers classics or write engaging new material, she has a high percentage of good songs.  “City Girl” was a B-side on a single but I feel it deserves to be judged on its’ own merits.              

Speaking of smooth and seductive voices, we are down to the last two songs on my 2024 collection.  Clairo is an indie-leaning artist that I just recently noticed, and I need to go listen to her previous work beyond what I’m hearing on Sirius XM but “Sexy To Someone” immediately struck me and put her on my radar as someone to pay attention to.  The song has a seductive feel while echoing the longing sentiments in Kylie Minogue’s “Someone For Me” of wishing someone would notice her.  On the other end of that scale is Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso.  She knows that everyone is noticing her, and they all want her, like a caffeine addict needing their shot of espresso. Both of the songs discuss desire but from different perspectives, but both do it with a voice so smooth and seductive that you cannot imagine either of them having a problem capturing someone’s attention.  They certainly did that with me, at least musically.  

So that has been my musical journey in the last few years.  I used the framework of the COVID pandemic to give it some form of context, but looking back at my selections, I notice some other commonalities emerging.  I see that I responded to songs about having a purpose in life (Clairo’s “Sexy To Someone”, Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For”, Billy Joel’s “Turn The Lights Back On”, Paul McCartney & Beck’s “Find My Way”, Mysteries Of Life’s “Going Through The Motions” ), about death and aging (Paul Anka’s “Times Of Your Life”, Huey Lewis “While We’re Young”, Guster’s “When We Were Stars”, Pretty Reckless’ “Death By Rock And Rock”, everything by Tears For Fears), and political and social unrest (Ministry’s “Alert Level”, Tom Jones’ “Talking Reality Television Blues”, Dandy Warhols’ “Root Of All Evil”, Poppy “Time Is Up”, Edie Brickell’s “Horses Mouth”.) 

Maybe subconsciously I’m trying to find answers to these unspoken questions?  Maybe listening to pretty and catchy songs on these subjects will let me avoid thinking about them?  Maybe it is a coincidence?  I think that will be a topic for another day because this is already long enough. 

Thanks to those of you who read through to here.  Let me know what you think of the music.  It isn’t a good collection if I don’t have at least a couple of songs that people absolutely love and a couple that make them want to punch me in the arm for subjecting them to such a stupid song.  

Do you have things you can recommend to me?  It doesn’t have to be just music either.  That’s why I like doing this- I want to start conversations that are not about the serious topics I just mentioned.  Sometimes you just want to enjoy yourself and clear your head.  Since there are forms of entertainment besides music, I’ve included some recommendations below in case you are interested in the other things I appreciated in the last few years. 

So that’s a wrap on 2020 -2024.  I’m eager to see what surprises 2025 has in store for us.  I hope that they are mostly positive and that life treats you well until next time.

Other People’s Resolutions

I didn’t make any radical New Year’s resolutions this year.  I’m just going to keep working on the ones I had started last year, which can be summed up in 5 words, literally- “Sleep, Write, Socialize, Exercise, Organize”.   I’ve made some headway on them.  For instance, I just donated my old car to a veteran’s charity and the existence of this post shows that I’ve done some writing.  Also, poker counts as a social activity because I do it with live people and we discuss other things as well, like Scrabble words, sports, TV commercials, and current events.  I’ve been doing a lot of poker “socializing” lately which is why the resolution I’m failing at the most is sleep.  As for other people, right about now is when they start to reconsider their resolutions and make some modifications to them (and by modifications, I mean they dump them altogether.)  Since they have given up on the goals they set for themselves, I thought I would step in and give them new goals.  I’m going make resolutions on their behalf because these people, or groups, don’t seem to be able to come up with any plans of action on their own.  This is what they need to focus on for the coming year.

10) For all webpage developers: No more massive click-thrus on your websites!  If I go to your site because it has something cool on it, I want to see that cool thing right away.  I don’t want to get carpal tunnel syndrome by having to click through page after page where I see just one picture and two sentences per webpage before having to click on the next page and wait for it to load.  For instance, this site ( http://liveiseedeadpeoples.tumblr.com/  ) has an interesting idea- pictures of classic album covers with the deceased artists removed from the covers.  It is an unusual artistic statement that makes you reconsider the album in a whole new perspective.  When I go there though, there is no description as to what the page is about nor do I have any idea about how many pages there might be or even if there are any more examples of the concept.  Then I suddenly come to an end and think “That was neat, but kind of irritating to get through.  And where was the Traveling Wilbury’s revamped album cover?”

Then I go to another site, like this one ( http://www.spin.com/articles/spins-50-best-albums-2011 ) which has Spin Magazine’s listing of their 50 best albums of 2011. Since I’m a music junkie and they are a professional music magazine, I want to see what they thought was the year’s best stuff.  So I click on the link and it takes me to several pictures of covers from albums like Britney Spears and The Foo Fighters along with some text talking about what made that particular album great. So I scan through that page and then click to go to the next page.  It takes 20 or 30 seconds to load up and then I have 5 more albums displayed.  This means if I want to see all 50, I’ll have to click on ten different pages and wait 30 seconds per page just for it to load before I can start reading.  After the third page, I figured my time was better spent on doing something else so I abandoned the website.
 
So that’s why this resolution is needed.  Just show me the whole list at once!  If I wanted to click a lot of things repeatedly, I’d be playing a video game.  Put everything on the same page.  That’s actually part of what makes it a list. If you spread it out over lots of pages, it becomes a book.  If I can actually read a physical book or magazine quicker than the electronic version, what is my benefit for investing the time in the electronic version?  Plus, if it is displayed all on one page, I can start reading the top part while the remainder of the page loads.

9) To all marketing departments and/or entertainment media outlets:  Stop hyping mediocre stuff!  Just because a book or a movie doesn’t suck doesn’t mean it is fantastic.  It just means it doesn’t suck.  Something that is well-made and entertaining is not a masterpiece so stop pretending it is and stop trying to convince me that I must buy, watch, hear or consume this product.  For example, the movie “Drive” had Ryan Gosling playing a professional stunt driver who moonlights as a wheel man for criminals in need of a driver.  In his down time, he tinkers with weapons and falls in love with the neighbor in the next apartment.  Of course, things go wrong and his life gets upended.  It’s a decent movie, characterized by good performances and solid directing but it is still just a high-end, artsy rehash of “The Transporter”.  I cannot fathom how critics are pushing it as “Oscar-worthy” or as one of the best pictures of the year.  It is a yeomen accomplishment.

Yes, Albert Brooks has a nice lively turn as a villain, but Ryan Gosling is in his usual half-asleep mode and Carey Mulligan remains as talented and unsexy as ever.  The violent scenes are well executed but predictable along with the rest of the script. So I watched and liked the movie but it is nowhere near my top 20 for the year.  Critics- please stop falling all over yourself just because you came across something that didn’t suck for once.  That is supposed to be the norm.  There are enough good things out there to push on people so don’t test their patience with stuff like Drive, Jesse J, Skrillex, the Hollywood remake of Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, any book in the Twilight series and so on and on.

8) Banks- Don’t charge me for the privilege of accessing my own money.  I have money.  Not loads of it, but enough that I can’t keep it all in my wallet, not even if it was all in hundreds (unless by wallet I meant purse.)  I have to put some of it in the bank.    I have been conditioned by society and my parents and force of habit to stash it there.  When you get money, you are taught to put it in the bank, to save it and invest it.  Supposedly I will earn interest on my money by doing so and it is safer in a bank than it is in a can in the freezer.  Maybe I could put it in a book in my house since no one reads books these days and crooks probably wouldn’t bother to look through them, but I feel better with it behind big, heavy vault doors.  Yeah, I know nowadays it isn’t actually in the safe but being in the financial “cloud” is just as good- someone else is responsible for it and crooks can’t touch it.  Unless those crooks also own the bank, which could never happen, right?

The problem though is that I now have to pay the bank to be able to use my own money.  Let’s say I’m going out to dinner with friends and I want some cash.  If I go to the ATM, I have to pay a service fee to get my own money from the bank.  You might say there is only a fee if I don’t use my own bank’s ATM but why should that matter?  My money is in the cloud.  It’s not like the money is being shipped back and forth between the banks.  Why should it cost money to access it at a different bank?  The cost for them to maintain their ATM is the same as my bank’s ATM costs and it isn’t really determined by the incremental cost.  The people who use my bank should offset the times when I use their bank and have a net zero usage effect.  Plus, even if I only use my bank branches exclusively, it still costs me because the bank charges a $1 a month fee for a check/ATM card. 

In the olden days (the 1980’s and earlier, i.e. pre-Madonna), when my money was sitting in a bank, the bank gave me interest for it.  They would loan it out to people so those people could buy a car or a house or start a business.  My money was backed by tangible assets so the bank had low risk and they were happy to share their success with me.  I got a decent interest rate, something with a number in front of the decimal point instead of behind it.  As banks were deregulated, they started moving into other financial areas, ones that came with a bit more risk because what they were investing my money in was an intangible product.  Because of that extra risk and the danger of losing my money, the banks could no longer afford to give me much interest because that would cut into their profits.  Instead, I had to give them my money and only expect to get back basically that same amount.  I guess that is still okay, because isn’t there that saying “Higher risk means lower return”? 

Besides, it’s not like the banking and financial industries are posting record profits so why would I expect to get anything back for letting them use my money to generate income for themselves?  Goldman Sachs is struggling to make enough money to cover their annual bonuses.  (Yes, I’m being facetious because I think the banking industry is almost as big of a scam as the catering industry.)  On top of that, if I don’t have enough money in the bank, I might have to pay an under-the-minimum- balance fee.  Who determines how much money is too little?  I didn’t realize it wasn’t worth the bank’s time and energy to have people give them money.  I would be thrilled if people walked up to me and said “Here’s some money.  Can you hang on to this for me for a couple years, interest free?”

7) Stop giving away the secrets, surprises and twist endings of things.  I used to think that everyone loved a surprise.  Isn’t that why you jump out of hiding and yell “Surprise” when the birthday boy walks in to a surprise party?  I thought the whole reason for wrapping Christmas presents before putting them under the tree was so people didn’t know what they were getting for their gifts.  They would get a (hopefully) pleasant surprise when they gently unwrapped and/or tore off the paper to see what was underneath.  The reason I’m saying these things in the past tense is because all the evidence seem to point to the contrary, like I need to change this mindset.  These days, when I’m at the theatre seeing a movie and a preview comes on for an upcoming movie, after those two preview minutes I know the whole plot of the upcoming movie.  If it is a mystery, thriller or drama I know all twist endings and surprising revelations.  If it is a comedy, I have heard all the really good jokes.  If it is an action movie, I’ve seen all the fight scenes and explosions from multiple angles, plus I’ve heard the “hoping to become a pop-culture catchphrase” at least twice.

I want to be entertained and part of that requires that I don’t know exactly what will happen.  I almost never flip to the end of a book to see what happens.  The only time I do so is when I’m worried my favorite character is about to die.  Would you pay $100 to go to a football game if you knew the final score ahead of time, and you had already seen all the highlights and big plays on ESPN?   Would you even watch it on TV for free?  Probably not.  The whole fun of sporting events is that anything can happen.  The Giants can improbably, impossibly, win the Super Bowl against the Patriots on an unbelievable drive in the final seconds of the game.  Then they can do it once again three years later against the still-favored Patriots.   D.C. United can win the first MLS championship game on a wild overtime goal.   Michael Jordan can push off from Bryon Russell of the Utah Jazz to hit a three-pointer that wins the Bulls another championship.  You want to see these things happen.  You don’t want to know the outcome ahead of time. 

So why do television shows end an episode with a cliffhanger, like someone getting shot or some other dramatic turn of events, and then thirty seconds later show scenes from next week’s episode that makes it clear that everything worked out fine?  You’ve just deflated my dramatic tension.  Instead of being on pins and needles until next week to see if Rick Castle got back together with his ex-wife or if Kate Beckett really is dead, I immediately see a scene of them laughing over a joke while investigating next week’s murder.  The suspense and gravitas is gone.  Back in the old days, although I always knew Jack Bauer wouldn’t be killed, at least not until the final season, I didn’t know how he would escape his captors or what unhinged torture scheme or daring plan he had in mind.  I was surprised! 

This next paragraph gives away a vital plot point so skip this if you don’t want to see a spoiler for The Hunger Games books.  I was enthralled with the book, a supposedly young adult mélange of the television show “Survivor” and the short story “The Most Dangerous Game”, where kids are forced to fight and kill each other to become the sole survivor of that year’s game.  (Have you noticed how the most entertaining books these days are Y.A. books?)  About halfway through the book, I knew I would want to read the next one in the trilogy.  I was pretty sure that the heroine, Katniss, would win because she appears in all three books but I couldn’t figure out how she could kill Peeta, the boy from her town who helped her family survive after Katniss’ father died.  As I’m reserving the second book from the library, I see a blurb about it that starts with this sentence “After winning the Hunger Games, Katniss and Peeta…”.  What the hell?  They both win?  You just ruined a heck of a lot of the story’s dramatic arc!  Now I know a lot of her angst in the last half of the book is unfounded and the plot twists have been deflated.  I didn’t need to know that Peeta lived as well.   When I reserved the third book, Mockingjay, I made sure to hold my hand up in front of the description part in case the library tried to ruin it for me again.  I’m actually one of the few people I know who likes having movie adaptions of books take small liberties with the plot because it means I will get some surprises from the movie even though I’ve already read the book.

6) Everything in life is NOT free so start paying for things!  Let me tell you a little parable.  There is this kid who is good at playing guitar and writing songs so he decides he wants to be a musician when he grows up.  During high school, he plays in the school band to practice his musical skills.  On the weekends he jams with his bandmates, sometimes getting lucky and having the chance to play some gigs at local clubs where they earn $50 each for the show.  After graduating, the kid works as a bartender so he can play shows at night and still have a regular job.  In order to generate some buzz for the band, he records a couple of his original songs on his computer and posts them to his website.  One of the band’s fans makes a video of one of their shows and posts it on YouTube.   Several thousand people download the songs and watch the videos and they post really positive comments on the band’s website.   Their shows generate a small but loyal following so they have a steady gig on Wednesday and Thursday nights at a local club and they now earn $100 each.  Occasionally, they play shows in other cities but it is tough moving around all the gear and coordinating the band member’s schedules and the cost of gas and lodging can eat into their earnings.  They decide to sell t-shirts at their show to up their revenue at each show so they pay a guy $3,000 to produce their shirts. 

Because of the economy, the guy’s business tanks and he can’t pay them back their money.  About the same time, the kid’s girlfriend gets pregnant.  He’s happy about this because he’d always wanted to be a father.  The problem is that it will take a lot more money to properly take care of the baby.  The couple can’t afford day care so the mom will have to stay home and take care of the baby.   The kid, now an adult father, wants to keep playing and being a musician but he also wants to take care of his baby and have a place to live and save some money for the future.  How will he do this?  He doesn’t get paid by people downloading his songs for free from his website.  YouTube doesn’t pay him anything either.  It generates publicity but not enough to get a record deal; besides, record companies are on the way out.  Musicians are now expected to everything on their own.  D.I.Y. and all that. 

The club shows don’t pay enough to do more than cover rent and food and their fan base isn’t big enough to beat out the more famous acts when trying to book shows at the better venues.  He is going to have to invest some money to get the band to the next level but he never made enough money to be able to do that.  There is no way a bank will loan money to someone who’s business plan is “to be a rock star”.  The audition line at American Idol is impossibly wrong.  So how long do you think this guy will keep trying to make a living as a musician?  Probably not very long.  At some point in the equation, money needs to come into play. 

That’s what record companies used to be able to do- spend money on long shots because the ones that succeed will pay for the failures.  That’s how you end up with Modest Mouse and Skinny Puppy.  Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, Justin Beiber and all those other mass consumption pop acts fund the misfits, the fringe acts and all the really good bands that don’t find their groove until their third or fourth album.  When the record label model collapses, musicians will be left to their own devices.  Not everyone will survive long enough to get the attention and money they need to produce the songs you love.   Less good music will get made and you will have a harder time finding it. 

You need to start paying for what you like.  Downloading and file sharing will not put money in a musician’s pocket and he will soon cease to be a musician.  He’ll become an accountant or an RV salesman.  Haven’t you ever seen an episode of Behind The Music or Bands Reunited?  People stop playing music because they stop getting paid for it.  It is not because they don’t like doing it anymore.  They need to eat.  I love Pandora but I have a hard time seeing how anyone other than the big name acts can make money from it.  The one that really scares me though is Spotify.  It is an incredible site- I can play millions of songs whenever I like.  It’s like having a radio that I can program myself so I hear exactly what I want whenever I want.  Best of all, it is free to do this!  Now if I can hear whatever I want whenever I want, why would I need to buy it?  Digitally or otherwise? 

 It is just as easy to click on my Kylie Minogue playlist on Spotify as it is to pull up the tracks I bought digitally from Amazon.  The ease of use is the same but one costs me money so why would I pick the one that I have to pay for?  If everyone starts using it, then Lana Del Ray will never get rich because people will do what I did this afternoon- listen to the “album” and see if it lives up to the hype/backlash/additional hype (since no one has yet read resolution # 9 ).  Outcome- I like it but don’t think I will buy it, so she gets no money from me.  Multiply that by the entire world, and Lana needs to find some other way to pay her rent.  Maybe modeling, since she is absolutely gorgeous.  That’s one of the reasons I still buy actual, physical CDs- I know that it puts money in the pockets of my favorite artists and they can continue making music I want to hear without having to resort to licensing songs to Katherine Hiegl movies.

This is the same thing that is happening in the newspaper and magazine industry.  All the content is online now for free so no one wants to buy a physical version.   Although I kind of disagree with that thought process, I certainly understand it.  The problem is that someone has to generate that content.  Someone has to write it; occasionally someone edits and proofreads it before it gets posted to a website that an IT person maintains.  Another person sells ad space on the website and collects the money for that and a purchasing department buys new computers servers and security software when the site needs to be upgraded.  I guarantee you that the people at Huffington Post are not volunteering their time and efforts for free.  They are getting paid for it and in a lot of cases, they might be making more than the originators of the content they repost.  If you are going to argue that advertising covers the expenses, then tell me what are the last five ads you clicked on when checking out a website? 

You don’t know because you don’t click on sidebar ads and you hardly glance at banner ads or pop-ups. You delete emails that you think are spam and you have stopped subscribing to Groupon and Living Social because they send you too many things.  If you don’t check out ads, then advertisers will stop paying to display their ads.  Without ads, how will websites generate enough money to pay for content?  How will television programs keep getting made if you watch shows commercial free on your DVR or Hulu and you no longer buy the shows on DVD?  Are the actors and cameramen going to work for free?  No.  Movie studios will have to stop making movies because people are not going to movie theatres as much.  They are staying home to stream them from Netflix instead and they make their own popcorn too.  The money Netflix pays studios can’t possible cover the billions of dollars they are used to making from movie theatres.  You only want to pay $12 a month to Netflix (remember how you got really irate when they hiked prices up to $16?) but do you think that will be enough to cover the $200 million (yes, $200 MILLION) budget for Transformers 4?   I don’t think so.  And that is just one movie.  No one wants to watch Transformers 4 once, much less over and over and over.  You have to make more movies so you need to spend another $150 million for Men In Black 3, $250 million for Avatar 2 and $75 million for Hangover 3 and so on and so on.  (Sequels are the most likely movies to turn a profit so that is what studios will produce.)  Do you think Netflix and iTunes and cable’s OnDemand programs can cover those costs?  Nope, not if you expect to pay next to nothing for the content, so movie studios will close up shop rather than lose money.  Count on it.    

Now let’s step away from the entertainment industry for a minute in case you are thinking they are just greedy moneygrubbers.  Let’s look at a different industry instead- the restaurant business.  You know how you criticize chain restaurants for being predictable and cookie cutter?   Well, they do that because it keeps costs down and allows for economies of scale.  That family run restaurant down the street that you like so much?  It shut down last month because you only went there twice a year, on special occasions.  It costs too much to buy food and maintain a staff for a place that only gets visited twice a year.  If it tries to reduce expenses by joining a food buying conglomerate and standardizing advertising and payroll processes and so forth, then they become a chain and you don’t even go there twice a year.  That’s why people need to start paying for things they like.  Yes, free is nicer but if it is free for too long, eventually it won’t exist anymore.  Buy music, books and magazines.  Eat out, attend live theatre and concerts.  Buy concessions at the movie theatre.  Donate to the library.  Vote for your taxes to go to charities and arts programs and school systems.  Do it before it is too late.

5) Stop writing checks in the grocery store!  If you want to talk about an archaic system that should actually disappear, look at the check book.  Why do you need to write a check?  Use your check card.  It has all the same advantages of making out a check (direct withdrawal of funds, no high interest rates, late payment fees or credit limits) and none of the limitations (time spent writing checks, logging the checks, balancing your account, carrying around a checkbook).  Or if that is too complicated for you to wrap your mind around, then at the very least start making out the check while the cashier is scanning your stuff.  You don’t need to wait to hear the total for the sale before getting started on this laborious process.  Is the date going to change between now and the time the cashier is finished?  Is the name of the store going to change?  No!  Just fill that stuff out now, sign your name and when the 16-year old kid tells you the balance due, write it in the dollar field and hand him the check along with your identification that you have already retrieved from your wallet.  Don’t you dare wait until the cashier is all done before you drag out a ratty checkbook and start looking for a pen.  And for heaven’s sake, hold out your food stamps ahead of time so I know not to get in your line.

4) Synchronize!  Originally, this one was going to be “Use your signal when driving!” but I know you all are likely tired of hearing me rant about people who don’t know their cars come equipped with a method of letting me know when they are going to swerve suddenly into my lane.  Or make a turn at a four-way intersection or when cutting in front of me to make a right turn from the left lane.  So I won’t talk about these things anymore.  Instead, I will ask the faceless, data-mining, privacy-invading Big Brother that people are so paranoid about to get finally get its act together and create some convergence.  So far I haven’t seen much of anything to prove this fear is a reality and I have actually been wanting this to happen.  I don’t mind having my consumer habits and personal information in some central database if it means it will make things less annoying for me. 

I want Amazon to know that I already bought the Party Down DVDs from Best Buy and to please stop recommending them to me just because I bought Veronica Mars DVDs from them.  I want Facebook to know that although I love played Zynga Poker and Words With Friends, I don’t want to play Cityville or Hangman.  They can remove that prompt from my notifications and suggested sites.   I like Lawrence Block, Steve Martin and Martha Grimes books and I want their publishers to notify every time they put out a new one.  I don’t want to have to troll a website or read a review to know that it has come out.  I will buy it regardless- just tell me it exists.  In the past, I have actually signed up at an artist’s website or on a retailer’s alert system for the express purpose of being informed when there is a new product they can ask me to buy.  Only once have I gotten an email telling me I should go purchase this item that is hot off the presses.  Juliana Hatfield is the only one to keep me in the loop about what she is selling and she is the sole employee of her business.  How can multi-billion dollar companies not manage their potential customer database better than one anti-social indie songwriter? 

This is why I don’t buy into the hysteria about the government tracking my every move.  No one is matching my library book rental patterns against my grocery store purchases and my cell phone location to see if I am a terrorist threat.  Big businesses are not buying my purchasing data to compile a profile of what I respond to.  If they were, they would know I’m not interested in growing my penis size, buying a Ford truck or seeing the latest Tyler Perry movie.  I would not get flyers in the mail for storm drain cleaning, church announcements or day care services.  TV shows would only run ads for things that appeal to me because the “black box” would know what I like.  There would be no ads for tampons because the box would know that my grocery buying has never contained such a purchase.  I would not see any ads for diapers because I have no kids.  I wouldn’t see class action lawsuit ads because they would know I was never prescribed the medication they are filing a lawsuit over. 

I would see the e-Trade baby ads though because those are hilarious and I do like to make sure my money is secure.  I would see the iPhone ads because I’ve bought songs featured in the ads (Grouplove’s Tongue Tied even made it on my 2011 Year In Review mix CD) and I also would see ads for movies similar to those I’ve watched before.  The online editions of USA Today and the Washington Post would know which articles to display for me and the comics section would only that show those cartoons that are funny- so yes to Dilbert, Speed Bumps, Pearls Before Swine and Non Sequitur and no to Mutts, Doonesbury and Six Chix.  It would make my life so much easier if corporate America really did know everything about me.

Assuming that this won’t suddenly happen, the least they could do is give me portability of the things I actually am buying from them.  For instance, I subscribe to cable television.  I watch quite a few shows but I can’t watch them simultaneously.  Some things need to be time-shifted.  My cable system lets me watch some shows on demand the next day but only some shows.  The service is only available for NBC and ABC so I can catch up on Community or Cougar Town if I don’t happen to be home or am watching something else during that time slot.  I can’t see Fox or CBS though which is why I’m no longer a viewer of NCIS: LA or American Idol.  Maybe I could watch them on Hulu or Netflix or Fox’s website but why would I want to watch something on my computers 12-inch screen when I’m used to looking at it on a 32-inch television screen?  Plus if I’m paying for cable and could have watched the show that way, why do I need to also pay for Netflix streaming services if I want to watch it later on?  I paid for a delivery system for the shows so I should be able to watch them when I want to, on the system I prefer.  If you force me to choose, then I will choose and your audience will shrink. 

I have bought a lot of CDs but when I want to listen to them, I might not be at home.  Why do I need to rip them to my computer so I can upload them to iTunes so I can sync them to my phone?  One purchase should carry across all mediums.  If I buy a book, I should be able to look at it on my phone, on my computer and on my television screen.  A picture should be viewable within any program and a song should be playable on any console- I shouldn’t have to figure out whether something is a jpeg, a bitmap, a gif, wav or an mp3 file.  They should all be the same.  Yes, I know why they aren’t- different companies developed them and they are proprietary products- but with any technology, people should get together and come up with standards.  Make the same power plug for Android and iPhones and Kindles and Nooks.  Don’t sell me different plugs for each device.  Make the memory cards for cameras work with any company’s camera.  Imagine how complicated life would be if electrical sockets all had different prongs.  If your hair dryer was a four-flat-prong plug and your computer was a two-round-prong plug and your vacuum cleaner used a 3 square pegs to plug in?  Every house could have different outlets and when you moved you would have to buy all new appliances or adaptor plugs for everything.  That would be a mess, wouldn’t it?  It doesn’t happen though because electrical outlets are standardized.  If it can be done for that, why not other things?  Facebook would integrate all things I want a social media site to do.  No mucking about with MySpace or Friendster or Salmon or Google Plus.  Flickr and Snapfish and Shutterfly wouldn’t exist as a stand-alone entity.  They’d be a part of the giant social site that did everything.  There should never have been a Beta versus VHS stand-off.  No Mac versus PC or CD versus DAT.  One thing to rule them all.

3) Come up with an actual agenda for Occupy Wall Street, Occupy DC, Occupy The Highway, and Occupy Denver/Atlanta/Las Vegas/Portland/Richmond/ Philadelphia/Nashville/Seattle/Anchorage (Really, Anchorage?  Why?) so I can decide whether to care about your “movement.”  I too am against corporate greed, political corruption, high unemployment and the growing gap between the rich and the rest of us 99% but what is your solution?  How should we fix things?  You have no agenda that presents a way to address these problems.  If a building is on fire, you don’t hold a protest in front of the burning building because you are deeply concerned about the fact that it is on fire and people’s lives and property are in danger.  You send over a freaking fire truck to put out the fire! 

What should we be doing to fix these issues?  Have you created a grass roots voter campaign to urge voters to pressure their Congressional representatives to enact specific laws to remedy these situations?  Have you asked the 1% celebrities that stop by the camps to use the media to address your concerns?  Have you sent newspapers and other media outlets some kind of manifesto or a list of actions you are taking?  No.  Right now you are just annoying me, inconveniencing me and wasting my tax dollars by requiring extra police presence and sanitation efforts.  In some instances, you have even broken the law and performed terrorist acts, like throwing smoke bombs at the White House.  That’s the way to get yourself shot, not to engender sympathy and support.  And stop with the ridiculous hand gestures.  If you want to vote on something, raise your hand either for or against it.  Better yet, count paper ballots.  That’s how a democracy works.  Wiggling your fingers is not voting.  It’s how fish swim around in the ocean.

2) Give me real discourse and real solutions this election cycle.  I want to know about the issues and how you plan to fix things, in detail.  I don’t want sound bites.  Nein Nein Nein to sound bites and generalities.  Educate me!  I too am worried about the collapse of our economy, the global financial meltdown, the resurrection of Russia, terrorism, disappearing retirement benefits and pension plans, healthcare costs, unemployment, government corruption, the influence of lobbying, national debt, engaging in multiple foreign wars, pollution, dependency on foreign oil supplies, etc…etc… etc….  And don’t let me hear the words “change”, “hope” or “liberal/conservative” this time around.  Let me hear facts and information and solutions instead of platitudes.  The personal attacks can stop too.  I don’t care if so and so cheated on their wife.  How is their fiscal policy?  As long as they haven’t done anything illegal (like dodging taxes, taking bribes, suppressing evidence, lying to Congress), I don’t care who they screw or who donates to their campaign. 

Limiting the viable candidates only to people who were never divorced, never made a mistake, never changed their mind, aren’t too rich or too poor, aren’t overly passionate and excited (a la’ Howard Dean), follow the “proper” religion and so forth is the same as limiting the election to those who prove their soundness to vote by passing a literacy test, own land and are white men.  Elections need to be about the issues and finding solutions to the problems, not about pointing fingers at who did what and who mangled a sentence in a hilarious and embarrassing way.  Some people feel Barack Obama is doing a great job and he is a rich, black, Muslim lawyer who held his first elective office for 100 days before running for president and he is friends with acknowledged radicalists (i.e. domestic terrorists).  He won the election because he convinced voters that he had a better grasp of the issues than his opponent did (and because he used the word “Hope” a lot.)  Take a lesson from that victory.  Solutions should lead the campaigns and I want to hear what those solutions are, in terms of real actions rather than generalities.  For instance, I want to know why Ron Paul thinks we should readopt the gold standard.  That will inform my decision a lot more than knowing he smoked pot in college. 

1) A final resolution, meant for everyone- Be nice to people!  Yeah, maybe that sounds a bit Bill & Ted-ish (“Be excellent to one another!”) but why not do it?  Do you know how many problems would disappear if people just acted nicer to each other?  First of all, there would be no more murder or war because homicide is the most complete opposite of being nice.  Then, stepping down a few levels in intensity, you would reduce greed and corruption because being nice to someone implies that you won’t steal their life’s savings in a pyramid scheme or embezzle company assets from stockholders.  You wouldn’t need the FDA or EPA because companies would take it upon themselves not to do anything to harm consumers or the environment.  There would be fewer traffic accidents because people wouldn’t cut off other drivers or drive in a reckless fashion (Yeah, I managed to get in a dig about traffic!) 

Hot girls would shoot down ugly people and geeks like me gently, saying something like, “That is so sweet of you.  I’m sorry that I don’t reciprocate your interest but it’s nice of you to flatter me with your attention.  I want to buy you a drink so we can talk for a few minutes before I go home with that handsome jock/underwear model over there.”  In stores and public areas, people would be alert to and considerate of the others around them, rather than stopping at the top of escalators, cutting to the front of bathroom lines and letting their kid tear apart the store.  They would not create a bright light in a dark theatre by text messaging and distracting everyone sitting near them, ruining the fantasy being spun onscreen.   They would not slack off at work and make others cover for them.  They would not have their boyfriend kneecap an opponent before a big skating competition.   There would never be a hit-and-run accident.  No one would abuse a pet. 

Don’t all these things sound wonderful?  Imagine if they really happened.  It’s possible, but it all starts with you.  Yes, and me too although I think you are more of the problem then me.  I’m not a rich lobbyist trying to get Congress to approve legislation allowing corporations to dump toxic waste in the last refuge of the sparkly-eyed newt in a pond next to the house of a poor factory worker who was laid off because the CEO of his company embezzled all the money in the pension fund and then sold the company to a pharmacology conglomerate who bought it just so they could get the patents to a technological breakthrough that they’ll exploit to decimate their competition and create a monopoly that charges exorbitant prices for a life-saving drug.      

So there you have it.  Some suggestions for people to follow in order to start the new year off on the right foot.  That doesn’t sound too complicated, does it?  New Year’s resolutions always turn out really well and make a world of difference pretty quickly.   If you promise to do your part, I’ll get to work on mine.  Since they are obviously so easy to accomplish, maybe I’ll even add some more, like learn to play guitar, grow hair, become a professional writer, marry Marisa Tomei and start a company that turns plastic and Styrofoam into grass seed.  That sounds like a great plan.  This is going to be a great year!