On January 1, 2020, I went to LNHQ. The holiday party had happened a few days earlier – a sorta-epic “booze cruise” with Lana Del Rey off the Catalina coast. Everybody nursed hangovers on flights back home, and then bugged off to celebrate their new years with their people.
The office was spotless – just a few dust motes floating across the afternoon sunlight in the conference room. I grabbed a piece of chalk and wrote “What if…” on the green board. It was intended as a turn-the-page talking point. OM and I had had a sit-down after we got back from Cali. Good talk, honestly. He’s well-versed in stuff that I do not understand, and he’s driving the proverbial bus as the Chairman of the LN Board. Lotta heartfelt questions from him, lotta heartfelt idks from me. “You gotta…” and “Yeah, I suck at that, but what about…” Some bourbon later, we adjourned. “Love you, dude” and “love you back, man.” Let’s meet next week and ok.
So that’s why I was there. What are we doing? What if… What if we actually try hard? What if ECM keeps killing it on Instagram? What if Jane and Trevor come back? What if we move to a new location, and the corporate and content wings find a new synergy? What if all of the sponsorships pan out? And O’s settlement with Adidas? Sky’s the limit, right? Let your imagination wander. I mean, what if Fiona Apple puts out a new album in 2020, and it’s not just great, but better than The Idler Wheel, which was the best album of 2012?
Seriously. What if?
Or what if the entire world breaks?
That wasn’t in my head back then.
It’s December now. And we’re in a global pandemic, which is getting worse (or at least not getting measurably better) every day. This year has been indescribably difficult for all of us, particularly the ones personally affected by Covid-19. And it has been difficult for businesses across every sector, particularly entertainment. Seen a show lately? Nope? Me, neither. At the beginning of the summer, I paid Laura Marling to watch a stream of her performance at Union Chapel in London. Seemed cool then, seems irrelevant now.
We can’t help artists/bands, really, until we can see them again. And who knows when that will be? Next summer? Next fall? Maybe 2022 before we all feel safe in massive crowds again (even with masks)? Maybe never? Until then, we have streaming services. And … woof. That’s an Apple/Spotify cart that I’d prefer not to upend, mainly because it benefits me, but it’s worth some words.
I’m a Spotify person. My home team is comprised of six Spotify people. We pay, collectively, $14.99/month to stream almost any music ever recorded and released. That’s around $2.50 per person per month. Pretty good deal, right? For sure. Here’s the problem: Spotify pays $0.003 per stream. That’s 1/3 of a penny. If you’re a Zeppelin or a Beatle or a Stone, that’s just a nice little dividend. (Keith is like, “Hey, baby, I love Spot-ify. I bought this sweet fedorah with that check.”) If you’re somebody else, somebody less established in the Rock-royalties pantheon, you’re probably not buying a hat. You’re probably hoping that Spotify might, might, pick up your next cup of coffee – or one at the end of the year, I don’t know how that works.
Spotify does this year-end Wrapped thing. You get a weird Snapchat/Instagram video that tells you stuff. Your most listened-to artist/band, your also-rans, etc. You also get some pretty sweet virtual (and unearned) affirmation.
My win was this.
911 seems good. It’s better than 11. The green-dotify didn’t specify whom those new artists were, which sucks, but I have a decent idea. And I’m guessing that many of those artists have Bandcamp pages, and I didn’t visit any of those. Actually, that’s not true. I did visit the Car Seat Headrest page because Will put out three different iterations of the new record on streaming, cd, and vinyl. It was mostly the same – alternate sequences and some alternate versions of certain tracks. The alternate versions weren’t on Bandcamp. You had to buy all three formats to get the whole record. Or you had to be ok with the iteration that you got. Or you could just find the alternate versions on YouTube. Sure, they wouldn’t be on your phone, but you got to hear them.
That’s not me being petty or cheap. I could’ve bought the cd and vinyl iterations. And I could’ve bought alot of music on Bandcamp, but I couldn’t have bought 911-new-artists worth. How many could I have bought? Not sure. How would I have decided? Not sure. I’m glad that I discovered that many sounds, and I’m concerned that most of those sounds were produced by real people struggling to create in this challenging (intentionally undersold the adjective there, but “terrible” and “horrible” seemed trite) environment. I’m more glad than concerned, if you follow the dichotomy. And I’m not happy about it. Having identified the problem, however, I’m flummoxed about a solution.
I listened to alot of music in 2020. #WFH #FTW (And two hashtag sentence fragments make a sentence. I just checked the LN style manual. Jane said ok.)
Alessandro Deljavan is an Italian pianist, who was born a few months before I graduated high school. He recorded Erik Satie’s piano works. My best friend and I listened to that alot this year – she calls it “sleeping music.” Miles Davis, obv. Early-covid, I made a chronologically-tight playlist of his pre-Columbia material. Mid-covid, I started a chronologically-tight and still-unfinished playlist of his fusion material. Jenny Lin? I think that’s a holdover from last year, when sleeping music was her Chopin’s Nocturnes. CSH was my lawnmowing soundtrack. Daniel Baremboim? No idea, maybe I hit his Mendelssohn’s Leider ohne Worte too many times during the days.
Minutes listened and top genre are what I want to talk about, real quick, before I get list-y. 115,891 minutes is 1,931 or so hours, and 80.5 or so days. I listened to two and a half months straight of music this year. That’s not a brag or even a humble brag. It’s a fact. And most of that (trust me here, I ran my ass off to playlists) was Indie Rock – the aforementioned “new artists.” How can I help them, besides streaming their amazing work over and over and over, and championing them here? Shouting indirectly at Spotify on social media seems unlikely to change a flawed system. Anybody with more constructive ideas can share them below the line.
Ok, the list.
I did it. I broke the unspoken rule (nobody gets #1 twice), and I’m ok with it. 2020 was a unique year. Up top, that’s Fiona from a Zoom call over the summer. She didn’t really know about Liner Notes, but she was willing to talk while walking her dogs. I wasn’t sure that Fetch the Bolt Cutters would be the album of the year at that point, but it was a nice chat. Tbh, I struggled to finalize the list because any of the Top 10 could’ve been Top. The margins were very fine. Links to Spotify. And COME ON, Spotify. Pay artists more, and pay indie artists even more than that.
- Fiona Apple – Fetch the Bolt Cutters
- Phoebe Bridgers – Punisher
- Waxahatchee – Saint Cloud
- This Is the Kit – Off Off On
- HAIM – Women in Music Pt. III
- En Attendant Ana – Juillet
- Samia – The Baby
- Kelly Lee Owens – Inner Song
- Adrianne Lenker – songs / instrumentals
- Porridge Radio – Every Bad
- SAULT – Untitled (Black Is) / Untitled (Rise)
- Taylor Swift – folklore / evermore
- The 1975 – Notes On A Conditional Form
- Car Seat Headrest – Making a Door Less Open
- Perfume Genius – Set My Heart on Fire Immediately
- Lomelda – Hannah
- Fleet Foxes – Shore
- Soccer Mommy – color theory
- Beach Bunny – Honeymoon
- Retirement Party – Runaway Dog
- Shopping – All or Nothing
- Ela Minus – acts of rebellion
- The Strokes – The New Abnormal
- Fontaines D.C. – A Hero’s Death
- Kate NV – Room for the Moon
- Dehd – Flower of Devotion
- Gum County – Somewhere
- Bad Moves – Untenable
- Jeff Tweedy – Love Is the King
- Laura Marling – Song for Our Daughter
- Autechre – SIGN
- Four Tet – Sixteen Oceans
- Sorry – 925
- Dream Wife – So When You Gonna…
- Fenne Lily – BREACH
- Margaret Glaspy – Devotion
- Jordana – Something to Say to You
- Hinds – The Prettiest Curse
- Gorillaz – Song Machine: Season One
- Tame Impala – The Slow Rush
- Tycho – Simulcast
- Ólafur Arnalds – some kind of peace
- Ezra Feinberg – Recumbent Speech
- Slow Pulp – Moveys
- Young Jesus – Welcome to Conceptual Beach
- Bartees Strange – Live Forever
- U.S. Girls – Heavy Light
- Empress Of – I’m You’re Empress Of
- Charli XCX – how i’m feeling now
- Oliver Coates – skins n slime
LN is on hiatus for a little while.
More soon.
JF
Liner Notes 