{"id":3070,"date":"2013-12-18T23:32:01","date_gmt":"2013-12-19T04:32:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=3070"},"modified":"2013-12-23T12:56:00","modified_gmt":"2013-12-23T17:56:00","slug":"top-100-songs-of-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/18\/top-100-songs-of-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Top 100 songs of 2013."},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year I discovered (for myself, that is) enough good new music to do my first serious annual music ranking, listing my top 40 songs of 2012<\/a>, a list that I originally intended to just go to 20 titles but that kept expanding as I kept writing and exploring. This year, I started the exploring a little sooner, and also ended up on a few promotional lists that exposed me to even more new stuff, so by midyear it was very clear to me that I’d have more than enough songs to get to 100. I had over 150 candidates if you count all of the album tracks I liked enough to consider, but forced it down to 100 (which didn’t work out that well, as you’ll see shortly).<\/p>\n

As with my list of the top albums of 2013, this list is my personal preference. If I don’t like a song, it’s not here. That wipes out some critically-acclaimed artists entirely, including Daft Punk, Haim, Vampire Weekend, Deafheaven (and please, people, death metal and black metal are not the same thing), Rhye, the Lumineers (more like Ho Hum), American Authors, James Blake, Foxygen, Majikal Cloudz, Phosphorescent, Jason Isbell (I just do not like country music), and My Bloody Valentine. Other folks liked that stuff. I didn’t.<\/p>\n

Some songs that were among the last ones I cut from my list, in no particular order, looking just at artists that didn’t make it: Birds of Tokyo \u2013 \u201cLanterns;\u201d Midlake \u2013 \u201cAntiphon;\u201d Harrison Hudson \u2013 \u201cCurious;\u201d Cumulus \u2013 \u201cDo You Remember;\u201d Young Galaxy \u2013 \u201cPretty Boy;\u201d The 1975 \u2013 \u201cChocolate;\u201d Blondfire \u2013 \u201cWaves.\u201d The last two got the axe for lyrics too stupid for me to abide. I’ve mentioned several other songs I liked, but not enough to get them into the top 100, within the comments below.<\/p>\n

I’m going to start with two extra tracks that were the final two cuts from the list, ones I actually wrote up at first before realizing I’d forgotten two other tracks that belonged on here.<\/p>\n

Wild Nothing \u2013 Dancing Shell.<\/strong> One of my biggest misses from my 2012 list was Wild Nothing’s Nocturne<\/i>, which I picked up in January on the recommendations of several readers and loved for its dream-pop leanings with experimental twists \u2013 but with more guitar than most bands in this subgenre employ. \u201cDancing Shell\u201d is more dance\/electronic than straight-ahead rock but showcases the creativity of Jack Tatum, who records all of Wild Nothing’s music himself, with other members joining him just for live shows. His 2013 EP wasn’t as good as Nocturne<\/i> but including this song lets me mention again how badly I whiffed by not including the album on my list from last year.<\/p>\n

Ejecta \u2013 Jeremiah (The Denier).<\/strong> A side project for Neon Indian’s keyboardist Leanne Macomber, Ejecta offers spacey electro-pop, although I think they’ve received more press for their debut album’s cover, which features a nude Macomber posing as if one of the great Renaissance masters was about to paint her. That might just be overshadowing the music, which has the early-80s New Wave leanings of most electro-pop but pairs it with Macomber’s languorous, breathy vocals to temper its brightness. \u201cIt’s Only Love\u201d is also worth checking out.<\/p>\n

And now, to the top 100. This entire list, including both of those bonus tracks, is available as a Spotify playlist<\/a>, in order. Amazon and iTunes links go to full albums, where you can just buy the specific song I mentioned (this reduced the number of links I had to create).
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