Best of 2018: 250 sounds of people

Mitski, Kacey Musgraves, and boygenius

If you type “is Mitski” into Google, the top searches go “is Mitski retired,” “is Mitski dead,” “is Mitski making a new album,” “is Mitski coming back,” etc. That’s because she’s been radio silent since the release of her 2018 album Be the Cowboy. Whereas other artists release a string of singles to keep listeners engaged between records, Mitski isn’t on social media and comes back roaring without any warning when she’s ready to drop another album. Her fanbase is always ready and waiting.

“Nobody” came out as the second single of Be the Cowboy, following “Geyser.” Both songs had accompanying music videos, in wildly different styles. Both are disconcerting, surreal. Both feature Mitski looking varying levels of distressed throughout. The video for “Nobody” is an exploration of the meta, a story within a story. The whole album largely reflects her experience with fame, a response to its intensity that ultimately drove her off the Internet.

Her album Puberty 2 (2016) is centered squarely around indie rock. “Your Best American Girl” features screaming guitars and literally the best build I’ve ever heard. She packs eleven songs into just over thirty minutes. Mitski first studied film and later decided to pursue music, and her songs are surely cinematic; they have sonic arcs and the lyrics tell whole stories.

If Bury Me at Makeout Creek (2014) and Puberty 2 are one era of Mitski’s sound, Be the Cowboy decidedly entered a new one, a departure from rock and entrance into pop territory. Synths make frequent appearances, as well as 808s and electronic bass. The consistent element is Mitski’s lyrical prowess. She’s one of the best songwriters of our generation. From “Nobody:”

Venus, planet of love
Was destroyed by global warming
Did its people want too much, too?

And later:

Give me one good movie kiss
And I'll be alright

The rest of the album is similarly upsetting. The instrumentation and melodies subtly highlight the right moments in the lyrics. “Nobody” features a set of modulations at the end, in which she repeats the title of the song like a mantra. She said in an interview with Genius: “I’m too proud to be hysterical around other people, but the chorus ‘nobody’ was literally me in a semi-fugue state on my hands and knees on the floor just crying and repeating the word ‘nobody.’” That’s exactly what it sounds like, and it’s perfect.

Be the Cowboy defined the year for me. The rest of the releases sort of organized themselves in the orbit of this album. I returned to it over and over again after its release in August. I graduated high school and started college in 2018 and the record bridged the gaps between the two people I felt I had been and was becoming, the two versions of myself that pulled apart more and more everyday.

Before Golden Hour (2018), Kacey Musgraves was a critical darling, the wittiest woman in the country music scene. This album rocketed her to mainstream stardom; she won Album of the Year and played massive festival sets at literal golden hour. The album made top five best albums of the year in the eyes of multiple major music publications.

Like “Nobody,” “Space Cowboy” features one of the greatest key changes of all time—I should know, I keep a running list. The song is inspired by an experience riding an actual horse, which is incredibly true to Kacey’s country roots. She performed it on late night TV with an eight piece band, all wearing lavender suits. I’ll just leave this here:

There are so many great songs on this playlist—“Make Me Feel” by Janelle Monae, which features some of the most innovative production ever, “Psalm 151” by Ezra Furman, whose album Transangelic Exodus (2018) is one of the most powerful queer concept albums to date, a song from the Phantom Thread (2018) soundtrack by Jonny Greenwood, my favorite film score and favorite movie, “thank u, next,” the song that defined my freshman year of college. Although I was afraid to leave behind the things I knew, the music I loved stayed with me, held my hand through every tough transition. I remember choosing all of these songs for this list, remember the reasons they are all important to me.

I’ll finish with “Me & My Dog.” boygenius (2018) by boygenius (Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker) is one of my favorite collaboration pieces ever made. I discovered it over winter break and it made the eighth spot on this playlist in that last week of the year. I’d never before attached myself so completely to a record, never been quite so obsessed. I had just come home from a whirlwind first college semester, I had pneumonia, I was processing a death in the family and a breakup, I was feeling both more and less like myself all the time. I didn’t know how to handle the sudden displacement from the life I was building away from my hometown, all the free time without my new friends to distract me from my emotions. I was grieving, grieving everything all at once.

“Me & My Dog” annihilated me upon first listen: on the floor, crying, screaming, throwing up, etc. I can’t imagine a better song for that time in my life; I listened to it so constantly over that January break that even upon avoiding it once I returned to Berkeley because it made me too sad, it ended up in the top five of my 2019 Spotify Wrapped. My favorite lines go:

I had a fever
Until I met you
Now you make me cool

boygenius recently reunited for a benefit concert, but besides that I haven’t heard any news of them making a second record. They remain great friends; I saw Julien open for Phoebe at the Greek, they’ve all made surprise guest appearances at each others shows. Their solo records feature one another on backing vocals, and I always smile when I pick out one of their voices.

Sometimes, things are too good to happen twice. boygenius may be one of those things. My 2018, the music that defined it, is another one. For every moment that felt unbearably hard, there were ten others that breathed unimaginable joy into my life, validated and held me. This collection of music reminds me of that. I feel grateful.