Monday Pragmatism | 2009 The year in music

To make up for two weeks missing Friday Pragmatism, I’ll write a little something about my listening habits this year.

Courtesy of last.fm, members are able to chart their listening habits through the player of their choice. It can be an interesting tool for finding new artists and strangers with like-minded taste, however I use it primarily as a personal database.
Last.fm have released their Best of 2009 (individual entry style) list which only includes artists with releases in 2009, and after browsing through the top 200, I was glad to only have roughly 4 artists in my playlist, and having only heard of roughly 10 odd. It’s a lovely feeling to be this elitist. But for every Zeep or Telefon Tel Aviv, I have a Kylie Minogue, a fact of which I’m proud, so it all balances out.

Without farther ado, as of writing time, here are my top 20 artists listened to in 2009.
(Nomenclature; Rank. Artist – Number of Plays)

1. Kenji Kawai – 255
2. Yoko Kanno – 236
3. Tori Amos – 235
4. Crazy Penis – 220
5. Jon Hopkins – 193
6. Helios – 177
7. Underworld – 175
8. Jon Brion – 137
9. Kylie Minogue – 136
10. Lisa Miskovsky – 127

11. A Camp – 123
12. Empire of the Sun – 113
13. Olivia Lufkin – 108
14. Planet Funk – 104
15. Akira Yamaoka – 101
16. U2 – 96
17. Zeep – 95
18. Capsule – 95
19. BT – 89
20. Metro Area – 87

Honourable mentions go to Gustavo Santaolalla at 21 with 83 plays, all from the Babel soundtrack, Japanese world-dominating robot trio Perfume at 23 with 77 plays, Nina Miranda’s Shrift at 25 with 74 plays, equal with Yuki, Steely Dan at 29 with 66 plays, Peter Gabriel at 32 with 60 plays and The Cardigans at 37 with 55.

Top 20 songs listened to this year were;
(Nomenclature; Rank. Title – Artist – Number of plays)

1. Half Mast – Empire of the Sun – 34
2. Horses – Tori Amos – 30
3. Apparition – Jon Hopkins – 29
4. Can I Be Forgiven? – Gustavo Santaolalla – 29
5. She – Grand Avenue – 26
6. Stars – Kylie Minogue – 26
7. Dear Blue – Yoko Kanno – 25
8. Little Person – Jon Brion – 23
9. Dream Catcher – Olivia Lufkin – 22
10. The Very Thought of You / Wish Us Alone – Mark Isham – 22

11. Unspoken – Madita – 22
12. Winter – Tori Amos – 21
13. We Are The People – Empire of the Sun – 21
14. Tell Me – Olivia Lufkin – 20
15. Bells for Her – Tori Amos – 20
16. Fading Glow – Jon Hopkins – 20
17. OK – Jon Brion – 19
18. Eligiac – Jon Hopkins – 19
19. Girls – Takagi Masakatsu – 19
20. Drophere – dZihan & Kamien – 17

Worthy mentions are Fascination from Crazy Penis at 23 with 17 plays, equal with Halving the Compass from Helios and Cliff Martinez’ Will She Come Back from soundtrack to the 2001 film Solaris. Tori Amos’ heartbreaking Silent All These Years follows just behind it with 16 plays, with Lie Lost from Crazy Penis also appearing in that cluster. Plenty more Tori Amos as well as Shrift’s stunningly dreamy Lost in a Moment at 34 with 15 plays. The Fred Falke remix of Kish Mauve’s Lose Control would probably be much higher up if I polled as many plays as I had in the car.

I realise that there are artists and songs with equal rankings, but I just listed the first 20 in each as it reads. Explore to the charts for greater detail.

It’s also worth noting that much of this listening only polls when I’m at my computer. The bulk of my listening happens in the car, with a decent helping coming from my portable on walks and when I’m away from home. I do try and playlist everything I’ve been recently listening to but I have been rather lax at it at times. Nevertheless, these charts are more-or-less accurate to my listening habits this year. I do also tend to do a lot of heavy listening to the compilations I make for CDs for listening in the car.

It’s been an interesting year.
Kenji Kawai hit the top of the charts with Sky Crawlers, as it instantly became one of my all-time favourite films upon viewing it, awarded a perfect 10. I actually purchased that soundtrack when it was launched in good faith that the film would be awesome which indeed it was, but I didn’t really give it a good listening to until I got to finally see the film subtitled.
Yoko Kanno will continue to make regular appearances in my listening at all times. She is one amazing woman, and I constantly listen to her material.
Other regulars will always include Crazy Penis, Underworld, Planet Funk, U2 and BT mainly for This Binary Universe. I was surprised not to see The Cardigans farther up, but it’s been balanced by the introduction of A Camp this year. The Cardigans still remain at number 11 on the all-time overall chart and they’re likely to stay there if not rise higher.
Tori Amos, Jon Hopkins, Jon Brion (for Synechdoche), Lisa Miskovsky, A Camp and Zeep are among the many new-comers to my listening this year, and it’s great to see them up in the highest ranks of my chart. Perhaps the most surprising and for some shameful (but not for me!) new entrant is Kylie Minogue. I could spend some time trying to justify it, but the stuff of hers that I like, I really enjoy. I listened to her entire back-catalogue and ended up with roughly an album’s worth of songs to keep. Great pop indeed.

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Empire of the Sun rocketed to the number 1 song chart with Half Mast, officially my favourite pop-song of all time. I could go on forever as to why this is such a brilliant track, but suffice to say it just captures several particularly inspiring atmospheres all at once.
Horses by Tori Amos is one of my all-time favourites of her, and now that I’m finally polling her songs, it’s no surprise to see it come up on top of her others.
Gustavo Santaolalla’s Can I Be Forgiven? was actually created for the 21 Grams soundtrack, or at least it appeared on the CD. It may have been used in Amores Perros for all I know but I’m yet to watch it (sitting in my ‘to watch’ pile). It does also appear in Babel though, and it’s a short but amazingly intimate and humbling piece.
There’s plenty of Jon Hopkins and Empire of the Sun’s other stand-out songs in the chart, but once again, my favourite Kylie track Stars makes its appearance at number 5. Once again, it’s just great pop. Grand Avenue’s She was produced by one of the engineers from U2’s Achtung-Pop years which are my favourites, and it shows in the overall production values of the track.
My other favourites from Tori Amos make their appearances, as well as a few from Olivia Lufkin. Olivia’s lyrics can border on pop-cheese cliche, but I love them for it. Plus her musicians and engineers are just so good at creating the grand, epic guitar sound to a level of quality rare in music. I will always be something of a production-nut.

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So there you have it. Last.fm allows me to look at my year in music which is certainly fascinating. I had a good chat-session with Rok about our year’s worth of listening – you can see his charts in my last.fm friends list, which only includes people I know in real-life – the other one being Lewis. My other dear friends and family don’t poll on any music database.

I’ve encountered some of the most amazing music this year, pretty much headlined by the Swedes – A Camp, discovered through the divine Nina Persson of The Cardigans, and Lisa Miskovsky who I found through the Mirror’s Edge video-game. Nina Miranda’s Zeep is a very recent discovery, as well as Telefon Tel Aviv who Rok has only just put me onto – they’re simply amazing, made all the more astounding, saddening and intimate by Charles Cooper’s death in January.

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I’m considering to the year in films, and possible video-games if I can gather enough coherent data (read: memories) of my experiences.