Best of 2021: 600 hidden meaning

Charlie Hickey, Olivia Rodrigo, and Olivia Kaplan

Believe it or not, I almost didn’t make it to 600 this year. I somehow listened to ten thousand more minutes of music than I did in 2020, but because I started writing this newsletter, I thought significantly more about the quality of my playlists before putting them out. If they weren’t interesting, novel enough to write about, I didn’t call them finished. I also listened to a lot more albums; I tried to appreciate the work that artists put into ordering the songs, telling a story. I’m grateful that I’ve “rediscovered” records that I had largely ignored as art themselves apart from their individual tracks, the sum of their parts greater than I had realized.

2021 was also the first year in which my top songs in terms of minutes listened were also my favorites of the year. Usually something random that I got obsessed with overtakes what I see as the actual Best Song. I’m still a little unclear as to how Spotify Wrapped is skewed, but it definitely favors tracks from the beginning of the calendar year.

Luckily, my favorite song of 2021 came out in February and stuck with me. “Seeing Things” by Charlie Hickey is off of his debut EP Count the Stairs. The lead singles “No Good at Lying” and “Ten Feet Tall” feature Phoebe Bridgers on backing vocals. I was immediately drawn to something familiar in the soft, spacey production; I found out later the album is produced by Marshall Vore, who drums and produces on Phoebe’s records. I still think about the lyrics every time I hear them, how clear and plaintive they are:

But I can't tell if you're really here
Yesterday, I said your name three times in the mirror
And nothing happened

I wrote, before this song came out, a similar line about believing I could “conjure you out of the ether” with the power of my wanting. I was taken aback by the parallels, by how much I liked his execution of the idea. I often wish to myself that I had written the songs I love most:

It's just that when you're rational, I think that you hate me
Nightmares in reverse
I don't run and you don't chase me

He doesn’t play “Seeing Things” in this live session, but some of the other truly brilliant songs from the EP are featured, accompanied by his friend Gabe Goodman, who also put out some great music this year. The guitars sound so soft and cool, they’re almost like water. Sometimes, I put this EP on repeat and just let it run back over itself for hours.

I’d be remiss if I failed to mention the biggest breakout act of the year, Olivia Rodrigo. I didn’t try to resist the hype at all; “drivers license” is a perfect song and I knew it right from the start. Her second single, “deja vu” transformed my admiration into ardent fandom with its alternative production style and compelling use of background vocals.

I love the toy piano sound that rings out at the beginning of the song, hinting at the betrayal of innocence to come. It takes a full minute for the drums to drop in—the tension beforehand is palpable. The release that comes with the breakdown makes me want to rewind and start all over again when it closes out.

I think the most impressive thing about Olivia Rodrigo—above her quiet grace in interviews, her commitment to her producer Dan Nigro, her stunning outfits on various red carpets—is her massive improvement since the start of her career. Her initial live performances were shaky, a bit off pitch even. I found it endearing, almost difficult to bear witness to her obvious emotional display on live television.

But since then, her breath control, stage presence, and pitch accuracy have all progressed tenfold. Her performances have become more and more technically perfect while maintaining the saturation of feeling she demonstrated on the record. She hits the difficult notes every time—even while climbing out of a window, somehow. Her recent Tiny Desk Concert is a perfect example of her ability to balance vocal precision and the pain she shaped her record around.

Another, lesser known Olivia released music this year that rocked my world. I first heard Olivia Kaplan’s “Still Strangers” because Charlie Hickey posted about it on his Instagram story. I was immediately enthralled by the storytelling aspect of her songwriting, something I’ve always admired in others but have felt unable to coax out of myself:

And I drive you when I shouldn't
Back to your door
We just sat there laughing
With a classic hesitation
As to what's supposed to happen
And I know that you won't kiss me
And I don't want to come inside
If in the morning, we say it was nothing
But something we thought we should try
And we'd still be strangers

I only recently discovered Tonight Turns to Nothing, or I think that “Spilled” would be higher up on my list. It’s the opener of the album and it hits like a punch that starts to hurt long after initial contact. The whole record is like that: arresting lines whose meanings sink in later:

All of this to say
That all I want to be
Is chosen from the room
And shown out to the sea
Pointed across the water
To the places I can go

I love the chord progressions on this album. The changes meander, new sections emerge from the transitions, the haunting lyrics running through it all like a river. Kaplan’s voice is aching, pliable in its presentation of curves and edges. Many of the vocals are doubled, creating the illusion of utter softness, of being enveloped.

I’ve been thinking about Joan Didion a lot the past few days since hearing of her death. Olivia Kaplan’s music is similarly rooted in California, its mythology and reality. The record has not only a sense of place, but an ethos; Los Angeles peeks through the seams in the lyrics. While I’m in Phoenix, I miss California constantly. Reading Didion and listening to Tonight Turns to Nothing makes me feel closer to it all, tides me over until I can touch it again.

Like California, I find a lot of home in these collections of songs, with my self-imposed rules and intensive cataloging. Before I started writing this newsletter, I made them purely for myself, a little diary written in the language I speak best. Now, in sharing them, they’ve grown even more precious to me. They provide vital context to who I am, who I’m becoming. I can see all the iterations of myself in them and in my writing about them. I used to joke that my playlists were the best thing about me; now I know they are.

Please comment your favorite songs of 2021—I’m dying to know what I’ve missed.