Best of 2022: 700 get better

The 1975, Big Thief, and Sharon Van Etten

Check out my Best Of coverage (2016-2021) from last year: 50 things that make sounds, 150 do it all again, 250 sounds of people, 365 where this goes, 500 last call, and 600 hidden meaning.

I love the new year. It’s a construct, a marketing ploy to get you to buy planners, a fake holiday—but it’s also a clean slate, renewed hope for the future, an endless well of opportunity. I love an excuse to start something new or try something again, I love to get another chance just because I lived another year. The neat linearity of the calendar cycle is satisfying, the discrete units lined up in a row for me to reflect upon. It is a calming thought to me that time will continue to pass at the same rate forever, however I choose to spend it.

I started making playlists when I was fifteen. Everything felt so important at that time, the teenage anxiety and drama, that I wanted to capture it all somehow. I didn’t want to forget how big it felt, like the most important time in my life was right now, when that time had always felt like a distant future before. I felt then and still feel now a strong urge to catalog and distill and translate and most importantly, remember.

The first full year that I was making playlists I made exactly one hundred of them, almost by accident. I don’t even remember why I chose twenty five songs instead of the usual ten. Ranking my favorite songs was something I did for myself—before Record Store no one but me even knew about this project—because I wanted to have something concrete and definitive to represent my year. I am a person who likes to have favorites of everything, even if they change.

2022 felt like one of the fastest years of my life; I didn’t have much downtime between seasons and the months bled into each other in a haze of mostly work. I lived in the same place the whole year, which is rare for me, and I feel that I’ve really put down good roots in this space. I put out an album, started writing for The Line of Best Fit, and began identifying as an artist in a more holistic sense, pursuing little projects that bring me joy.

The music that defined this year was largely hopeful; “When We Are Together” is my favorite song because of this line in the chorus:

The only time I feel I might get better
Is when we are together

It’s still a little sad, but like a lot of songs on this playlist, it seems to make peace with the circumstances, state them as fact. I have felt this year that I am on a long, arduous journey of trying to get better, to be more consistently the person I want to be. I’ve sunk myself into my friendships this year, letting myself give without the fear of being too much holding me back. I’m trying to rest more, and see that time as fruitful rather than wasteful.

“Promise Is a Pendulum” has a similar reflective, accepting lyrical quality:

I can never tell you now
What I'd often said before
Because promise is a pendulum
Just swinging at the door
And I'm not saying I'm not jealous
Or scared anymore
I'm just saying

Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You (2022) is centered around exploration and unfettered creativity. The recordings are homey and warm, like you’ve stumbled upon the band playing in the living room. “Promise Is a Pendulum” feels like a central thesis of such an intimate process; everything will change, and that’s okay.

Sharon Van Etten has made some of my favorite music throughout my life, from Are We There (2014) to Remind Me Tomorrow (2019). Seeing her return in full form for We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong (2022) was a great joy of my 2022. The tracks on this album are like broken mirrors, reflecting moments of the past two years in monstrous proportions, expansive, epic songs that exist within the infinity of Van Etten’s family home. They get at something indescribable about this period of time in culture, the contradiction of it all. She sings about the strange sublimity of isolation and her relationship with her son, which I found to be the most moving subjects of many.

This song is emotionally huge in the way that much of her music is, like an avalanche or something else equally powerful and terrifying. The openness of the need she describes here is inspiring to me.

I have so much to say about this year, which in many ways has been the happiest of my life. This work, repeatedly attempting the impossible task of describing how music makes me feel, has been gratifying beyond measure, and has become a big part of my life. I am so lucky to have readers who engage with my writing and curation. Thank you for being here—see you in 2023.