What can be said about 2021 that hasn't already been said by a million therapists, shut-ins and weirdos? My trend of not listening to enough new music was rivaled by the huge amount of old music I listened to. My most listened to album was Sevdaliza's
Shabrang from 2020 (which if you haven't listened to, do that now). I would like to say I stretched my wings this year, but I continued to find my favorite music of the year in lonely, introspective and plain weird albums. I picked the title of this year's curation from the song Scratchcard Lanyard, off of Dry Cleaning's stellar debut album
New Long Leg.
Some numbers: I listened to 141 albums and EPs, had 74 standout favorites that were whittled down to 50 (which means you shouldn't sleep on anything that didn't make the Top 50). I marked these favorites with a star ★. According to Spotify, I listened to over 219,660 minutes and my favorite genre was Art Pop (for the 4th year in a row).
I rated these albums before reading any top 10 lists. I found my closest match in Consequence of Sound's list, but there was a lot of variation in top album lists this year. See how my selections match up to the
NYTimes,
Pitchfork,
NPR,
Consequence Of Sound,
Stereogum,
The Guardian, and
The Needle Drop.