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The Best of 2020: Albums

Here we are. 2020, one of the most difficult years in recent memory has ended. And we survived. A global pandemic has made time obsolete, relocated us all to our home offices, and encouraged us all to bake our own bread. As we were practicing social distancing, we often used music to ease our anxiety, pain, sometimes even sorrow. But artists are people, too. They were also under lockdown, they…

The Best of 2020: Songs

2020 was difficult for many reasons. I don’t want to write about the obvious ones, but the music industry was hit pretty hard, too. It faced a situation when virtually all concerts were canceled, and most of the music infrastructure remained closed. But this didn’t stop musicians and they recorded thousands of songs, while the pandemic often was treated as a direct or silent inspiration. So, no…

The Best of 2010s: Songs

Believe it or not, but each year choosing the best songs was always a more difficult task than the best albums. Mostly because there are so many of them. And we often forget about a huge majority of the great ones. Unsurprisingly, picking 2010s best songs was an extremely hard job, if not impossible, because there is always something, which will be omitted. And then, how do you decide whether one…

The Best of 2019: Albums

The contemporary music industry is radically different than 10 or 15 years ago. And the model we’re witnessing right now does not favor LPs. They’re often considered a format of the past, an overly-artistic attempt to revive Pink Floyd-esque sentiments. And it’s been that way for a long time. In fact, this topic is the one I’m writing about each time I publish the end-of-the-year list of best…

The Best of 2019: Songs

Choosing the best songs of each year is often more difficult than pinpointing the most interesting LPs. Why? Because it is virtually impossible given the variety and the number of music released each year. Still, there are always some tunes that just have to be emphasized as especially spectacular, the ones that will stay with us long after we all forget about 2019. Was it better than 2018? Not…