This year I bought LOTS of albums. I don’t know if it’s the most albums I’ve purchased in one year since writing these blog posts or even since keeping track of Scrobbles. I do know that while I listened to my music randomly, in general, I did also listen to entire albums whenever I purchased one. Sometimes I’d listen to the album a few times and other times I’d take the album purchase as an opportunity to review the artist’s previous work. I know that was the case with Five Iron Frenzy (although that was also concert prep as I mentioned a few days ago), Relient K, I Fight Dragons, and Fall Out Boy. It was a very fun year for me, musically. Kacey Musgraves, for example, was a reminder that country music doesn’t have to suck. Disclosure made me realize that I could still like loop-heavy electronic music. I hope that I can continue to explore new sounds in 2014.

This quarter I mostly listened to my music on pure random with a few variations which’ll be accounted for below. This finally allowed The Beatles to place in 2013. In the last few weeks I just listened to music that I added in this quarter to make sure I had a chance to get to know some of the newer songs.

1. Five Iron Frenzy (198 listens) - I had a a FIF listening blitz leading up to their November Concert (which I still have to finish the blog post for). Lyrically, I think it’s the best album they’ve ever put out. Sonically, I think it’s in my top 3. 2. Celia Cruz (107 listens) - Almost all (if not certainly all) of these listens happened in the last month. Someone gave me Celia Cruz Absolute Collection for my birthday or Christmas (I’m so bad at remembering who gives me what - especially because I received all my gifts in quick succession over Thanksgiving)  and I loved it. It has all of Celia’s top songs from her entire career . I think it’s a great survey of how she evolved as an artist. The collection contained tons of gems I’d never heard because they came out way before I was born and weren’t played on the radio when I was growing up. 3. MxPx (101 listens) - Digitizing the I Fight Dragons flexi-disc motivated me to once again try to digitize my live MxPx album. In addition to listening to my newly created files, I also went back and listened to some of the older stuff. 4. Alan Menken (80 listens) - Scarlett discovered the ability to request for us to play certain songs for her. I spent much of December playing The Little Mermaid sountrack for her. I also played the Aladdin soundtrack for her. So Alan Menken comes out of nowwhere to the #4 spot for this quarter. 5. Anamanaguchi (62 listens) - More love for Endless Fantasy. I really, really like that album. 6. ?? (HyunA) (53 listens) - I your really want to understand how obsessive toddlers can be over music, this is the perfect example. All but two of these listens were from Scarlett requesting to listen to HyunA. And a vast majority of these listens are for Bubble Pop. Thanks to Google Play caching the song on my phone, even Dina is now well-versed in HyunA’s single.

For the second quarter in a row The Beatles have NOT made the list! But that’s easily explained: I have been listening to a lot of new music and a lot of playlists that don’t include The Beatles. But as you’ll see, they kinda snuck in sideways. This quarter I spent a lot of time listening to Jonathan Coulton and I Fight Dragons because of their Kickstarters, which I backed. I Fight Dragons released two albums as Kickstarter bonuses - a live recording of their most recent concert and a remix album of sorts in which the band members sung different arrangements of the songs. There was also the new Fall Out Boy album, Save Rock and Roll. I really enjoyed the album but it was overtaken in my mind by the previously mentioned IFD and JoCo music and I quickly forgot they had a new album out. Again, that’s a shame since I did enjoy it and while I was in Florida last week I quickly tired of “My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark”. Incidentally, I was reminded of why I stopped listening to live radio - it’s far too repetitive. I think the true problem is that it’s too formulaic in its repetition. I didn’t mind hearing “The Princess Who Saved Herself” every day for a week because the songs surrounding it were always different. On a separate note, I got some music for Father’s Day and I’ll mention that below.