On Warmer Music's 30 Favorite Songs Of 2013 (30-21)

In the "it's not the number of times you fall down but the number of times you get up"-spirit, I'm deciding not to let my late-year slowdown stop me from my 2013 lists. I spent too much time listening to too much good music last year, despite it all and I'm gonna say something about it, goddamit!

I appreciate all those out there still listening and apologize for a lack of mp3s this year. I am including one for songs unavailable streaming or on YouTube but I found that there were so few downloads that few would probably miss them. Don't worry though, I'll still be posting mp3 mixes and other goodies, when appropriate. So, with no further adieu, here's some pretty good music!

On Warmer Music's Favorite Albums of 2011 [15-8]

I sometimes can't help but wonder why one would make both a favorite albums and favorite songs list for a given year. There's obviously bound to be a great deal of overlap between the two, why not just combine them?


Without waxing too rhapsodic about the joys of a well-crafted, contextless single or an inseparably extended musical statement, I'd like to humbly submit that there are some artists who shine over three minutes but drag over forty while others might not make songs designed to be heard on shuffle but can use mood, placement and other tools to design brilliant musical collections that demand to be appreciated as whole units.


Therefore it is with great excitement but also extreme modesty that I present my favorite albums of the past year. Bon appetit!

On Warmer Music's Favorite Songs Of 2011 [30-21]

End of the year lists are stupid. They're arbitrary (really, this is your 27th favorite song, without a doubt?). They're needlessly competitive. They're certainly subject to change (I doubt there's ever been a year whose list I wouldn't have done a major revision of twelve months later). As definitive statements about the year in music go, they're an inexact and certainly somewhat juvenile attempt where even a good list is bound to fail as much as it succeeds.


But oh, how I love them so. Like so many geeky males, I love lists and arbitrary rankings. I love reading other peoples and thinking how wrong they are while simultaneously compiling my own in my head. I love the months of debate such lists can engender. I love stopping to take stock of the somewhat capricious mixture of new music I've listened to in the past twelve months. I love the time-capsule nature of these lists and how they allow us to occasionally step back and see what we've actually done (err, heard) in the past year while we've been busy living life.