This is my art.
Seth Godin said in his book Linchpin (and I am paraphrasing here) “art isn’t art until you give it away”. I think he actually said, ‘ship it’. The gist being that art is only art when it is shared. When someone else can engage the experience. This is where inspiration happens. Or the beginning of kinship to where you don’t feel like your the only one. As for me I do believe art takes on the most beauty when experienced by another. But, I also believe if your art brings you peace or satisfaction or accomplishment or you name it, that is enough. As an extrovert I ship art to spread my reach to have more personal interactions with friends old and new. So, here we are. My guess is you will see a bunch of music posts the next few weeks and then I will go silent until next year. Feel free to challenge me to not go silent in January.
What lies ahead.
Every year I try to post my favorite music of the year. This is where it gets really personal and where I risk losing you right away. I am posting what I love and try to convey why it moves me. I hope you will listen to stuff you would never consider or never know about through these posts.
When I’m looking at a top recording of the year I’m not driven by a great song and then a solid rest of the album, I’m driven by the whole of the album. I am looking for a body of work. Give me a full package. This won’t be pop music albums. Pop music left me after my DJ years (maybe I should write about those experiences sometime).
How I get to this point each year.
Every Friday on the new release day of the week I feast on everything. I have an hour round trip to work each day, so I have some time to listen. On Fridays I listen to every album that I can. I usually give every release three tracks. Maybe it is the music version of the Frank’s logic of ‘three big person sips’ before you decide if you like a drink. If an album hasn’t secured my interest in the first three tracks I move on. If it does, I put that album in an ongoing playlist for the year. The rest of each week I listen to that playlist on shuffle tweaking it as I go. Deleting tracks, making notes in my head about research I want to do on an album, etc. Then, come late November I start narrowing it down to a top twenty and furthering my research on the top ten.
Huh?
Some of you might know I have hearing aids and obviously don’t hear well. For me, this means I don’t always capture the lyrics on a record. The music and emotion it creates in me is where my interaction with a record starts. I am still learning how to best write about a record and why it rises up in me to make it on this list. Bear with me if I am lacking in describing the music well. Check out what you don’t know. anyway, I am going to do my best to make it easy.
How I think it will go.
I will post my almosts first. Too good to not let you know about, but not in my final twenty. There are some gems in there. Don’t skim over them.
Then I will post numbers 11-20 all in one post.
Finally, I intend to release a post a day for ten days of each of my top ten picks. I DM’ed all ten artists in my top ten to see if they would answer seven questions about their record. Five said yes and four have returned their notes. I am really grateful for social media because of things like that.
Thanks for being here.