We asked Pitchfork writers and editors to share their personal highs and lows of 2013. Check back for more installments of My Year in Music throughout the next two weeks.
Favorite Tracks of 2013:
01 Ciara: "Body Party"
02 Drake: "Worst Behaviour"
03 Disclosure: "Help Me Lose My Mind" [ft. London Grammar]
04 DJ Rashad: "Let It Go"
05 Drake: "Hold On, We're Going Home"
06 Arcade Fire: "Reflektor"
07 The Juan Maclean: "Feel Like Movin'" [ft. Nancy Whang]
08 Mariah Carey: "#Beautiful" [ft. Miguel]
09 Kanye West: "Guilt Trip"
10 Arctic Monkeys: "Do I Wanna Know?"
Favorite Albums of 2013:
01 Disclosure: Settle
02 Deafheaven: Sunbather
03 Kanye West: Yeezus
04 Arcade Fire: Reflektor
05 Haim: Days Are Gone
06 Drake: Nothing Was the Same
07 Vampire Weekend: Modern Vampires of the City
08 Kurt Vile: Wakin on a Pretty Daze
09 Majical Cloudz: Impersonator
10 Phosphorescent: Muchacho
Most Played Song of 2013: Sky Ferreira's "Everything Is Embarrassing", because it speaks truth to power.
An Old Album I Rediscovered This Year: Derrick May's Innovator
Musical Highlights: Watching a girl who had fallen asleep standing up right before a Crystal Castles show start maniacally jumping around as if she were possessed as soon as the band took the stage. Shouting along in the worst falsetto I could summon to Haim's "Don't Save Me" at a karaoke bar (only a month after Days Are Gone came out; nice work, karaoke bar!). Listening to Drake's "Worst Behavior" sometimes three or four times in a row while driving around Vernon, Connecticut. Seeing Kanye West lay down on top of whatever the fuck that partial-mountain thing was during the Yeezus tour and sing "Coldest Winter", the most heartbreaking song performed in the most heartbreaking way. Seeing a goofy-looking guy in a chicken hat make out with everyone around me during a 4 a.m. John Talabot DJ set in Barcelona. Guzzling vodka in a suite at the top of the W Hotel in Times Square, during a Pete Rock DJ set for Boiler Room, watching partygoers rip open pillows and empty them out of the windows until it looked like it was snowing in the summer. Blasting Ciara's self-titled album at the beach in the Far Rockaways until both me and my girlfriend's iPhones were out of batteries and all the corresponding tequila was drained. Seeing Beyoncé at Made in America and hysterically sobbing during "Halo" (blame it on the Straw-Ber-Ritas), and coasting on a sea of intoxication with my closest of friends the following evening as Calvin Harris' big-room stuff blared on in the foreground. Oh, and how could I forget—SURFBOARD. SURFBOARD. SURFBOARD.
Musical Lowlights: Watching the profession I've wanted to take part in since I started reading back issues of SPIN at the salon my mother went to in fifth grade dissolve into a sea of endless backbiting, sycophancy, and shit-talking, and realizing the sad truth that, when the chips are down, the "writers" who wax endlessly on "what it all means" and constantly stick their necks out to be a part of any conversation that passes through the corroded pipes of social media are also the ones rarely writing anything of substance (or, in many cases, anything at all).