I saw 99 sets by musical artists last year (excluding the brief acoustic VIP set by Samia at Thalia Hall before her main set, which was phenomenal but doesn't feel to me like it warrants inclusion, but including Ketch Secor's interstitial emcee work at the Ann Arbor Folk Festival), and despite being a person who generally dislikes rankings, I decided to keep a running ranking of my subjective experience of each throughout the year. I got at least some genuine enjoyment from nearly all of these sets, but the ones that offered minimal value to me are in orange and the sets I genuinely disliked are in red. I'm not sure there is any real value in this exercise, but here you go. Apologies in advance, AJR fans.
Wet Leg (Salt Shed, Chicago)
Waxahatchee (Salt Shed, Chicago)
Wet Leg (Franklin Music Hall, Philadelphia)
Great Grandpa (Empty Bottle, Chicago)
Great Grandpa (Lager House, Detroit)
Jay Som (Lincoln Hall, Chicago)
Alabama Shakes (Mann Center, Philadelphia)
Soccer Mommy (Salt Shed, Chicago)
Great Grandpa (Salt Shed, Chicago)
Soccer Mommy (Newport Music Hall, Columbus)
Wet Leg (Aragon Ballroom, Chicago)
villagerrr (Schuba's Tavern, Chicago)
Alabama Shakes (Meadow Brook, Rochester Hills, MI)
Jay Som (Masonic Temple, Detroit)
Waxahatchee (Ann Arbor Folk Festival)
Phoebe Rings (Empty Bottle, Chicago)
vilagerrr (Magic Stick, Detroit)
Mary in the Junkyard (Salt Shed, Chicago)
Phoebe Rings (Salt Shed, Chicago)
Soccer Mommy (Majestic Theatre, Detroit)
Free Range (Empty Bottle, Chicago)
Free Range (Lager House, Detroit)
Mary in the Junkyard (Franklin Music Hall, Philadelphia)
dailybridgerton
yousharknotpass
titsay
ellievsbear
