That Was The Year That Was (In Music): 2023 Edition

Last week I posted my 2023 reading report from Goodreads; this week, it’s time for my 2023 listening report from Last.fm. What was playing this year? If you guessed it’s largely the same as what was playing last year, you won’t be too far off. Let’s start with the big report, shall we?

A few observations about these statistics:

• Once again, my actual favorite band, Metric, is also my most-Scrobbled band, by a pretty wide margin; and my actual second-favorite band, The Joy Formidable, is in their correct spot as well.
• Two of my most-listened-to albums are also by Metric, with the #1 album being Pagans in Vegas, which, as I understand it, is many Metric fans’ least-favorite Metric album. I am not one of those fans, apparently.
• My #3 most-listened-to album is Hitch, by The Joy Formidable, which as far as I’m concerned is one of the best albums ever. (There’s a reason why my #1 song of the year is “Liana”, which is off of this album.)
• My top new artist this year was Dry Cleaning. My wife’s reaction to learning the name of this group was something along the lines of “Do you also listen to a band called ‘Laundry’?” When I informed her that no, I don’t listen to a band called ‘Laundry’ but I do listen to a band called ‘Answering Machine’, I think she gave up on Western civilization.
• I would have expected Wolf Alice, the band behind my top new album of the year, My Love Is Cool (Deluxe Edition), to also be my top new artist of 2023, except I forgot I started listening to them in 2022.
• I was a little bit surprised to see Beach House’s song “Myth” ahead of their song “Space Song”, but, hey, that’s a most excellent song as well, and its fan-made video setting it to clips from the old movie Paris, Texas is the sort of thing that gives you nostalgia for a time and a place you might not even remember.

Next up, Last.fm provides a little bit of trivia:

And after that, we have charts. Yay, data!

The report also includes your top albums by decade. All of these charts support drilling down, but the top album by decade was the only one I thought was interesting enough to actually do it.

Check me out, not being stuck in the 80s, unlike Uncle Larry! A few additional notes:

• My top 1980s and top 2000s albums both benefit from having lots of songs on them (Uppers and Downers is a double album, while Pink World has a number of like 30-second interludes, which Last.fm counts as songs). The other albums, I just genuinely listened to a lot, apparently.
• Nude Photos Inside doesn’t actually have nude photos inside.

Next up, we have some Quick Facts and a little more trivia:

A few more notes on these items:

• I don’t remember “Loving” 19 tracks this year, but, um, sure, okay.
• Just because a track has the word “Love” in the title doesn’t mean it’s romantic. Just a few examples:
  • “So In Love” by OMD (6 listens in 2023)
  • “I Don’t Love You” by My Chemical Romance (5 listens)
  • “Love in a Vacuum” by ‘Til Tuesday (4 listens)
  • “Love Made Me” by Vixen (1 listen)
• Last.fm thinks I attended 0 events this year, but, ha ha! I went to see Lizzy & The Triggermen at a local Chinese restaurant and didn’t tell you, Last.fm.

Then there’s the “Community” section, where, once again, we can see that I don’t listen to nearly as many new artists as similar users, on account of I still buy music like some kind of Neanderthal. But look how unique I am.

All right, time to get into the lists, starting with my top 50 artists for 2023:

A few notes on this chart:

• As previously mentioned, my two favorite bands are at #1 and #2, and my third and fourth favorite bands*, The Birthday Massacre and Texas, are tied for #7, except apparently Last.fm hasn’t got the concept of a tie.
• Emilie Autumn has pretty decisively won the Battle of the Pop/Punk Violinists against Lindsey Stirling, so I’m probably going to stop pretending it’s a thing.

Next, we have my top 50 albums of 2023:

Once again, the top 10 of this list is not dominated by greatest hits collections or retrospectives. This may be at least partially because I did a bulk update of the “Last Played” date for my library after resyncing iTunes with my phone (yes, I still do this), which caused many of said collections not to show up on my “Not Heard Lately” playlist for a while. The bill for this bulk update has come due, though, as right now my “Not Heard Lately” playlist is some 2,000 songs long comprising some 130 hours of music, so I’m going to be whittling that down for the next month or two.

And finally, my top tracks of 2023:

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. Everything in the 20 is a solid favorite except for maybe “Sleep” at #5 and “Love You More” at #16, which are merely songs I like, and most of the songs on the rest of the list can also be found on the “My Favorite Songs” playlist, which I recently renamed “★★★★★” on account of it’s shorter, easier to see on a watch screen, and accurately describes the criteria for inclusion.

And that’s a wrap for this year’s music retrospective! Tune in again in January of 2025 for a look back at the books and music of 2024, assuming of course the world hasn’t descended into chaos and anarchy by then*** …

* I have been unable to establish a fifth favorite band, but if you forced me to, I would probably pick Fisher.
** If in the car alone, I listen to podcasts at 1.75x speed, which drives my wife crazy (“They sound like chipmunks.”), so I don’t do that when she’s around.
*** This being an election year and all.