That Was The Year That Was (In Music): 2022 Edition

Last week I posted my 2022 reading report from Goodreads; this week, it’s time for my 2022 listening report from Last.fm, in which, possibly for the first time, my actual favorite band corresponds to Last.fm’s report of same. What are the odds?!

A few observations about these statistics:

• Apparently, these days, if you want to know how mainstream you are, you have to pay for it. But paying for things is just so mainstream, I’m not going to do it.
• I’m not sure how I achieved a “new peak” for scrobbles, but apparently I listened to 9% more music this year than in 2021. Reports that this is because I got my hands on a Time-Turner are greatly exaggerated.
• In 2019 I had 11 followers who I didn’t know who they were; in 2020, those 11 followers disappeared. In 2021 I had 14 followers and I still didn’t know who they were; those followers are gone again. I’m not doing a very good job of building a cult.
• I once again attended zero events in 2022, thus keeping up my decades-long streak of attending zero events every year.
• I’m still way out in front on the “Scrobble Leaderboard”, and still mostly playing the same old stuff. Of course, it’s easy to listen to 40%-50% new music when streaming everything on Spotify. 🤪 Incidentally, speaking of Spotify, the technically-astute reader may wonder why I don’t use it. There are two main reasons for this:
  1. I don’t like the idea of losing access to my playlists, favorites, etc., should I decide to stop paying $9.95/month for the privilege of having them, or if the streaming company goes out of business, or if the artist/label decides to pull their content; which leads us to …
  2. Spotify doesn’t have stuff I want, and stuff it does have could disappear at any time. For example, not long ago, while playing on shuffle, a song by the now-defunct group Fisher came up. This song caught my wife’s attention, and she decided she wanted to add it to her Spotify playlist. But when she went to Spotify to tag it, not only did they not have that song, they didn’t have the album it was on, or a bunch of other Fisher albums either. They only had two Fisher albums, True North and 3. No Uppers and Downers; no The Lovely Years; no Stripped; and, worst of all, no Water. So obviously that would never do.

Here are my top 100 artists for 2022:

A few notes on this chart:

• Since my actual favorite band is in the top spot, I feel compelled to point out that my actual second-favorite band is languishing at #14. This is a function of their needing to release more albums.
• Emilie Autumn once again defeated Lindsey Stirling in this year’s Battle of the Pop/Punk Violinists. Given that this now happens every year, I’m probably going to stop reporting on it, at least until we have some future year where, in an upset, Lindsey Stirling high-kicks her way past Emilie Autumn to once again take the lead.
• As you can probably tell from my earlier screed about Spotify, that’s still the wrong Fisher in the picture on Last.fm’s chart. In case anyone forgot, here’s the correct one:

Next, we have my top 50 albums of 2022:

A few notes on this list:

• For once, the top 10 of this list is not dominated by greatest hits collections or retrospectives. Instead we have a couple of Metric albums, a couple of MCR albums, a couple of Garbage albums (meaning, not albums that are garbage, but albums that were performed by the band Garbage), and a scattering of others. In fact, the only compilation album in there is, oddly enough, “The Best of George Michael”, which is hardly my favorite greatest hits/retrospective. (That would probably be the “Ultimate Collection” from The Fixx.) There are quite a few collections just outside the top 10, though, including said Fixx album, Juliana Hatfield, Genesis, and more.
• In addition to Metric, two of my other favorite bands, The Birthday Massacre and Beach House, are well-represented on this list. Texas is also on there a couple of times but, oddly, with The Hush (which is one of my favorite albums from them) and Ricks Road (which is not), rather than, say, The Hush and White on Blonde or Careful What You Wish For. Probably down to the Tyranny of Shuffle Play, which I’ve talked about before.

And finally, my top tracks of 2022:

A few notes on the top tracks of 2022:

• This chart is, of course, the only one that’s not affected by The Benefit of Albums With Lots of Songs on Them (although it is affected by The Tyranny of Shuffle Play); and because I do have a tendency to play songs that I like as one-offs now and then, it continues to accurately reflect some of my very favorite songs. In particular, I can guarantee you that I played “Gimme Sympathy”, “Black Sheep”, and “Space Song” enough times while cooking dinner to annoy my wife*; but the cook gets to pick the soundtrack. (What gets played in the car is another matter.)
• Compared to last year’s list, there are a lot fewer songs on here that are obviously the result of the entire album’s being played; last year there were numerous runs of songs from the same album with the same number of plays, whereas this year there are few if any consecutively-listed album tracks appearing together, except for a run of songs from the 2009 Metric album Fantasies. I think that means I did a lot more of playing tracks on shuffle and/or of picking specific tracks to play than I did in previous years. (The very high number of Metric tracks that this affects may have something to do with their capturing the top position this year.)
• Speaking of the Metric song “Black Sheep”, they recently released the version from the film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World where the lyrics are sung by current Captain Marvel actress (and former pop star) Brie Larson. Does Brie Larson do a credible job singing the song? Yes, she in fact does a highly credible job indeed. Does Metric lead singer Emily Haines do a better job? Oh yes.

Now, because I made my wife listen to some of these songs multiple times, surely that means I must make you listen to them, too, mustn’t it? Yes, yes it must.

In case you wanted to hear the aforementioned Brie Larson version of that song, which consists of clips from the film (which is a pretty entertaining movie, by the way), you can have a listen here:

Incidentally, the astute reader may have noticed that I did not include links to most of these charts. This is because Last.fm, in its infinite wisdom for some stupid reason, has decided that in order to view any but the most basic charts for other users, you have to log in to your own Last.fm account**. Now, granted these accounts are free (unless you pay for them), but most people haven’t got one, and I’m certainly not going to annoy everybody by providing links to click on that are just going to throw up a login page. So, unlike with the Goodreads reading report for 2022, in this case, I’m fraid you’ll have to stick with the screen shots and like it.

* Plus I used to mostly listen to podcasts played at 1.75x speed while cooking, which annoyed her a lot more than hearing “Gimme Sympathy” for the umpteenth time.
** This is just the latest of the many stupid and annoying decisions Last.fm has made over the years, right up there with when they got rid of Neighbor Radio (which is how I discovered any number of bands, including Texas) and, after that, when they got rid of their player entirely, now relying on YouTube or whatever. Seriously, if I wanted to listen to music on YouTube, I would just go to YouTube, Last.fm!