Best of 2019: 365 where this goes

Carly Rae Jepsen, Lizzo, and Big Thief

In 2019, I made more than one hundred playlists, one hundred fifteen to be exact. I didn’t plan to disrupt the nice symmetry of my catalog, but when I got to 350 only you, it was only October. So I picked 365, a play on numbers, if you will, to be my end of year playlist.

2019 feels to me, as I’m sure it does to most people, like it was a few months ago at most. Time stretches and compresses so strangely these days; I feel like I have fewer hours in the day than I once did, despite doing markedly fewer activities. Everything takes so long and weeks pass before I can grasp them. 2021 was somehow more disorienting than 2020. 2019 was perhaps the last time I felt that my life was going in a straight line.

All that to say, I made a lot of playlists (spoiler: I made more the next year). I listened to a lot more pop music this year than in 2018, a trend which fell off again in 2020. I was kind of fun, for a second at least. Music was fun too; the releases this year included a new album from Carly Rae Jepsen (Dedicated), Lizzo (Cuz I Love You), King Princess (Cheap Queen), and Vampire Weekend (Father of the Bride). The festival circuit was alight with feel-good, danceable acts.

Carly Rae Jepsen topped my list this year, of course. For someone whose top artist of the year was Phoebe Bridgers multiple years in a row (recently dethroned by Wilco), it’s kind of surprising that I stan CRJ so hard. I can’t explain it; there’s something so deeply infectious about her music, the synths, the little guitar riffs, the drums that sound like they’re being played in a room with all the air sucked out of them. Her voice sounds like sour candy, if that makes any sense.

Dedicated is almost an hour long. Songs like “Want You In My Room” and “Party for One” are anthemic while “Too Much” and “Right Words Wrong Time” burn a little slower. Jack Antonoff is all over this record, in the spacious choruses and tight percussion. Carly Rae Jepsen never ages; she’s sixteen and in love all over again.

When I saw her on this tour, she had three wardrobe changes and danced non-stop through the whole set. The room was electric; it was San Francisco pride weekend and Carly Rae Jepsen is the most vital (read: not elderly or dead) artist revered by gay men. Everything was turned up to eleven, including Carly Rae Jepsen. Rainbow confetti shot out of canons during the encore, absolutely everyone was dancing.

I saw Lizzo at the same venue a few months later, the last show on her sold out North American tour. Similarly, she had everyone bopping the whole time, especially when she played a flute solo during “Juice.” I think that Cuz I Love You was the album of the year, even though it wasn’t my personal top release. It’s a perfect record straight through, eleven genius pop songs with clever lyrics and funky bass lines made for summertime.

I first heard Lizzo’s 2016 EP Coconut Oil, in which she first gave the world a taste of her potential as a pop icon. While the EP got strong reviews from critics, I don’t think anyone predicted that Lizzo would become the world’s most universally loved superstar. There’s no one like her, and despite having only released one single since Cuz I Love You, she still consistently headlines festivals and does numbers on charts.

Big Thief had been on my radar for a while, but “Not” rocked my world. It was decidedly the hardest song they’d put out, a departure from their soft folk sound I thought they were bound to. Since then, Big Thief has continuously surprised everyone by putting out album after album, each different from the last.

Adrianne Lenker’s delicate voice is completely repurposed and raw in this track. The instrumentation is messy and driving. The record Two Hands (2019) was recorded in the El Paso desert, and you can almost hear the harsh landscape as a fifth member of the band. Its unbridled intensity is cathartic. The song is the cornerstone of the record; everything hinges on the three minute guitar solo that closes out the track.

“Not” is maybe the song from this playlist that I listen to the most now, because it’s never left the realm of obsession since I first heard it. It’s six minutes long, and I listen to it usually a couple times through. Bob Boilen said of it, when NPR announced that “Not” was the number one song of the year, “No song in 2019 felt more searing, more perfect.” I have to agree.

Please comment your favorite songs of 2019—I’m dying to know what I’ve missed.