2016’s Music Actually Didn’t Suck

Well, 2016 was interesting. I won’t reflect much, other than share what I’m currently listening to. The playlist below was curated by friend T who’s music taste is adventurous, winsome and even verbose. Honestly, I trust his music taste more than my own and am constantly pushed by his suggestions (I listened to country and liked it, people) and rampant thoughts on lyrics, production quality and likely inspirations behind a song. So indulge yourself and listen, feel deeply, nod off or zone out to the variety of genres compiled in a playlist I will likely be going back to all through 2017.

And while you’re becoming acquainted with some new tunes, and reminding yourself of some favorites, I invite you to read T’s top song pick for 2016 Angel Olsen — ‘My Woman’:

“It seems funny, in retrospect, that Lizzy Grant captivated audiences with her portrayal of Lana Del Rey nearly half a decade ago. At the time, New America’s risque “girl-next-door” seemingly made a generation of young listeners lose their psyche over the glamorous counter-culture of generations past, that — like the people who lived then — faded away with the sands of time. Levi’s cutoffs, wilted flower crowns, all-too-worn-in pairs of Nancy Sinatra’s pointed cowboy boots and Budweiser graphic tees became the deceptively cool uniforms for American kids who still felt as if they could channel the undying spirit of Kerouac, even though they’d never see the United States through measures that are not vicarious.

Yet, for someone who made pop music as effortless as the smoke lingering around a truly pungent “make America great again” barroom, critics and fans spent a hell of a lot of time clamoring over whether this Terry Richardson disciple of American Nostalgia could rewrite The National Anthem. And because of this, the project, depending on who you talk to, is either the starkest example of how American pop music fails to create any new artistry in the digital age, or the perfect portrayal of the new ethos driving American popular music — a catalyzed sense of helplessness.

And that’s what makes “My Woman” such an astonishing release in 2016. Whereas many musicians used the American songwriting technique wrote to (meticulously) question why mindlessness trumped logic in this fair year, Olsen decided that she’d rather use that same tradition to reflect on how music may not help repair deeply fractured components of our culture at large.

Although most of the songs on this album could be sandwiched in a compilation of crooning classics between Roy Orbison and The Ink Spots, Olsen isn’t concerned with trying to create a clean and comforting narrative to listen along to. Closure is something that occurs almost never. There is no longing for love, only time to live life and subsequently kiss off. Changes in life are few and far between. They’re probably never going to happen.

But despite the sheer wordpower of this release, the most harrowing and explosive moments happen during the few moments of sonic indecipherability. Whereas so much of Olsen’s catalog banks on her wordsmithery, it’s incredibly refreshing to hear a candidly wordless catharsis, especially when she yowls toward the moon as if nobody’s listening. Olsen said in a Song Exploder interview, “Because words matter so much to me in my music, I feel like in some ways, it’s kept me from letting go and singing out more when I know I can.”

Thankfully, in a year where words broke bones and hurt, Angel Olsen proved that some of life’s greatest moments of clarity come when life feels its most ephemeral and transitory.”

XOXO With Shanti,

Mel