I'm not sure if this list is arranged by how much I listened to each song, but it seems to be. Though, I am surprised by the first song, "First Person on Earth" by Rober DeLong. It is a good song, but I don't think I once specifically played that song. My guess is it showed up in a lot of lists when I chose to play a "Radio."
What would be more interesting is a ranking of songs by which songs I chose to play the "radio" for. For instance, I played grandson radio quite a bit (and grandson's songs claim positions 2 and 3 on my list).
grandson
grandson was one of my happy discoveries this year. Jordan Benjamin makes very good modern "protest" music. Much like Rage Against the Machine, but with a more electronic influence. For instance, his song about school shootings called "thoughts & prayers" (grandson seems to not like capitalization) starts with the verse:
Smile for the camera
Another politician bought
I swear I heard another shot
Cash another payment
Bled all on the canvas
There's murder on the campus
And has the chorus of:
No thoughts, no prayers
Can bring back what's no longer there
The silent are damned
The body count is on your heads
It is direct lyrics, unobscured by any metaphor. It is directly commenting on the do nothing culture of "our thoughts and prayers are with the victims tonight." Thoughts & Prayers are an abdication of responsibility, it is the idea that we should leave the fixing of our society in God's hands, ignoring that God left things in ours. It is playing "hot potato" with our school children.
YUNGBLUD
YUNGBLUD's Dominic Harrison has a hard rock style similar to grandson (but with opposite capitalization). He sings songs of being an outsider and how hard it is to find a place where you can fit in. His song "Kill Somebody" deals with those emotions, of the anger he feels towards the ones who fit in easily.
Today you made me feel irrelevant
Twisted my intelligence
Made it seem there's no brain in my head
I'm like a skeleton, can't show my eyes
Singing songs of the outsider strikes me as very topical in today's world. Recently, Harrison was asked not to perform at a High School in California because of this song. Which strikes me as more avoiding of a problem instead of addressing it head on.
Hear what I say
You have to scroll down surprisingly far to see the first rap song on my list (Run the Jewels' "Legend Has It"). Which I think reflects less how much I listen to rap, as it does how I would often just put the Spotify "Alternative Beats" on as background music when I work or drive.
But once you get down that far, you start to see songs by Vince Staples, Madlib, ScHoolboy Q, and a lot of other great, modern (alternative) hip-hop.
It's fun that Spotify shows us this automated review of the year. But I don't know how much it really reflects what I like, as it represents how Spotify's algorithms determine which songs are similar to each other.
