The song is a beautiful marriage of the soulful elements of love and the physical side - the sexy and the nasty. I listened to this song on repeat on my drives to work (back when I was driving to work) in late-2019 into 2020. Kendrick Lamar)” (65 plays) from 2016’s The Divine Feminine. Unsurprisingly, my top track from this past year was by Mac: “God is Fair, Sexy Nasty (feat. It is remarkable that one artist who died so young gave the world so much. There are days I’m looking for early career Mac, the Blue Slide Park and Best Day Ever era, when the world was before him and he was ready (and excited to) conquer it there are days when the smooth romanticism of Circles and The Divine Feminine are appealing and there are days when I need the emotional catharsis of his more complicated releases, like Faces or Swimming - two very different releases, but releases that reflected on the complications of fame, depression, and addiction. It’s unfortunate that Mac’s career lasted as little time as it did, cut short by his death in 2018, but he produced an incredible amount in that time - and much of it has yet to see the light of day. His abstract jazz EP You, for example, is bookended by the experimental, depressive Macadelic, released eight months prior, and Watching Movies with the Sound Off, which is perhaps his strongest rap album released (rivaled perhaps by GO:OD AM, but that’s a conversation for folks who know way more about rap than me to debate). Part of the appeal of Mac Miller’s music is the variation in his discography and skillset. I’ve moved from my “mac miller songs i think i like but idk” playlist to one titled “i need to listen to something other than mac miller,” partly at my boyfriend’s request, because I truly didn’t listen to much other than Easy Mac with the cheesy raps this year. A year later, I’m much more effusive in my praise (and critical of the songs I listed as the best - I did not appreciate “Wings” or “Dunno” as they deserve). I knew there were some phenomenal tracks and impressive flows. I knew it was an important album and that it was a gateway for me. When I wrote about Swimming last year, I was cautious. I don’t really know how the normal shit go Mac Miller, “Wings” Here’s the list of music I was listening to in 2020 that wasn’t necessarily released in 2020. That all said, let’s get to the wheat and away from the chaff. Still, the numbers paint an accurate picture, even if the exact details are muddy. It thankfully offers excellent last.fm support, so I continued scrobbling there, but I didn’t set it up until a few weeks into my Plex journey - so a lot of play counts are probably lower than they should be. Sparked by the shutdown of Google Play Music, which was my preferred way to sync my massive music library to my phone, I moved over to Plex and the Plexamp mobile app. I’ve also used these posts to discuss how I listen to music in some way. My screen time (which means music time) this past year has probably rivalled the internet addiction of my teen years. I’m spending more time alone in front of my computer than any person normally should. I’ve had more time to focus on media like music because there’s not much else to do. It only seems natural then to write about the music in this weird, mixed up year, because quarantine has made a process that’s usually internal for me - listening to and thinking about music - more weighty, more important. And when I wrote about my favorite albums released from 2010 to 2019, I was making sense of my teenage years - the music that comforted me, changed me, channeled me. I exchanged stolen moments and mix CDs, so the music I was listening to at that time became a sense-memory trigger, a nostalgic sound that brought me back to first kisses and early butterflies. In 2015, music was the backdrop of my first (and current) serious, long-term relationship. If I put on my English major bullshitting hat, I can maybe postulate that I write about music in the years that music was especially important to me. I don’t need to explain that 2020 has been a unique year. Truth is, I’d like this to be a tradition, a habit I develop, but I’ve had about as much success with that as I have with my resolution to exercise more regularly. I’d like to pretend that this post is a piece of an annual tradition in which I review and analyze my listening patterns from the past year, but truth be told, I’ve only done this once before, in 2015, and then kind of early in 2020, when I reviewed my favorite albums from the last ten years. It feels like most of my blog posts end up being about music.
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