changes

In spring of 2024 I started building on this website a bespoke music listening log and gallery to match my 2024 reading log, but I wasn’t consistent posting to it. The end of the year came and I had regrets about the lack of a beautiful gallery of all my favorite albums of the year, but recognized that going backward to update all the holes would be tedious and overwhelming.

However, I have been obsessively consistent with scrobbling¹ all of my music listens to last.fm, and it turns out that last.fm, like nearly everyone else², has gotten into the “wrapped” game with some year-end interactive web thingies that are actually kind of cool and much more accurate to my listening than the ones provided by streaming services, since I do a fair amount of analog listening. So, in lieu of my bespoke music listening log gallery I am going to go ahead and link and share some details from my last.fm “Playback”

froztfreez’s year in music 2024| Last.fm

Playback - froztfreez - 2024 | Last.fm

My Top 25 Albums in 2024

(by number of plays, fairly accurate)

1. 19 MASTERS by Saya Gray
2. pointy heights by Fousheé
3. AMANA by Crumb
4. PHASOR by Helado Negro
5. Multitudes by Feist
6. COWBOY CARTER by Beyoncé
7. I Killed Your Dog by L’Rain
8. Epoch by DeYarmond Edison
9. Astoria Kazegage by Mesita
10. Only God Was Above Us by Vampire Weekend
11. Something in the Room She Moves by Julia Holter
12. Pleasure by Feist
13. QWERTY by Saya Gray
14. THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT: THE ANTHOLOGY by Taylor Swift
15. Hole Erth by Toro y Moi
16. Way to Be by youbet
17. My Method Actor by Nilüfer Yanya
18. Fatigue by L’Rain
19. The Reminder by Feist
20. A Light for Attracting Attention by The Smile
21. Your Day Will Come by Chanel Beads
22. empathogen by Willow
23. nothing or something to die for by mui zyu
24. Poetry by Dehd
25. A Storm in Heaven (2018 Remastered / Deluxe) by The Verve

My Top 25 Artists in 2024

*(by number of plays, fairly accurate)*

1. Saya Gray
2. Feist
3. Helado Negro
4. Fousheé
5. Crumb
6. L’Rain
7. Bob Marley & The Wailers
8. Mesita
9. Vampire Weekend
10. Bon Iver
11. Jay Som
12. The Smile
13. The Stone Roses
14. The Most Serene Republic
15. Beyoncé
16. youbet
17. Toro y Moi
18. Steve Lacy
19. A.R. Kane
20. Nilüfer Yanya
21. Julia Holter
22. Rainbow Kitten Surprise
23. Braid
24. Taylor Swift
25. José González

I didn’t take on any big listening projects in 2024, so my listening was somewhat scattershot. I listened to nearly 1,500 artists at least once last year. The top listings mostly center on vibe-y things that I found easy to pull up and listen to again and again. Then most of my other listens were things I only tried once or twice, but sometimes still made the list because of epic track lists. And a couple of albums I was trying to decide whether I actually liked. Also, for a while I had some Feist CDs in my car and replayed them a lot.

My Listening Footprint

More adventuresome and eclectic than some, but still pretty basic…

For 2025…

I’m going to continue with my last.fm scrobbling as I have done since 2008. I’m not quite ready to let my bespoke listening log gallery idea go; I’m committing to trying again. That being said, we’re already a week into 2025 and I have several things I should have added already but haven’t yet, so it remains to be seen…³

Standalone post link: My 2024 Music Listening

I’ve set up my weird little website to crosspost certain status updates to micro.blog, Bluesky, and Threads now. Let’s see what happens…

Thanks! If you’re reading this you clicked through the link, or maybe you’re some mysterious real one who follows my RSS feed.

Standalone post link: First joshuaw.xyz microblogging crosspost

Standalone post link: Listening Log: The Slow Rush

So obsessed with her music, she’s a mad genius. I can listen again and again. I wake up with fragments of these songs in my head many mornings.

Standalone post link: Listening Log: ANNIE, PICK A FLOWER.. (MY HOUSE) / QWERTY / 19 Masters / SHALLOW (PPL SWIM IN SHALLOW WATER)

First album I’ve just flat-out loved this year. I could listen to this endlessly, and did for a week or two there, and then listened again through his entire back catalog.

Standalone post link: Listening Log: PHASOR

Standalone post link: Listening Log: Helado Negro Full Discography

Standalone post link: Listening Log: OK Computer OKNOTOK 1997 2017

Standalone post link: Listening Log: Anak Ko

Listening to a lot of Jay Som is a springtime tradition for me.

Standalone post link: Listening Log: Everybody Works / Turn Into / Anak Ko / various singles

For some reason my annual springtime Jay Som listen made me think of this album and 90s midwest emo in general, and I’m so glad I dug it out and listened to it. Somehow in the late 90s a track from this album got airplay on X-96 one evening in between “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” and “Loser” or whatever they were usually playing and still I think play 25 years later, and I happened to hear it. It stuck with me; I remembered the band name and that I liked it through two years of Mormon mission, but didn’t find or hear the album until college, when I was in the Graywhale by the University of Utah and found a section I’d never paid attention to with the strange-to-me label of “indie”, and there in that section was this album, with it’s ironic retro colorfulness and white CD case backing. This album was my conscious entry point to the world of “indie rock”, emo, Pitchfork, etc.

Standalone post link: Listening Log: Nothing Feels Good