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 Thundercat: "Heartbreaks + Setbacks"
02 Twin Shadow: "Old Love/New Love"
03 Kanye West: "Bound 2"
04 Deerhunter: "Pensacola"
05 Daft Punk: "Touch"
06 Shlomo: "Out of Hand"
07 Giraffage: "Close to Me"
08 Lorde: "Buzzcut Season"
09 Ciara: "Body Party"
10 The Jet Age of Tomorrow feat. Mac Miller: "Juney Jones"
Favorite Albums of 2013:
01 Thundercat: Apocalypse
02 Various Artists: The Music of Grand Theft Auto V
03 Shlohmo: Laid Out
04 Earl Sweatshirt: Doris
05 Deerhunter: Monomania
06 Ty Segall: Sleeper
07 The Jet Age of Tomorrow: The Jellyfish Mentality
08 Danny Brown: Old
09 Daft Punk: Random Access Memories
10 Classixx: Hanging Gardens
Your Most Played Song of 2013: "Bound 2". I know, I know, the critic in me prefers "New Slaves" or "Black Skinhead" or even "Blood on the Leaves". But I love Old Kanye and “Bound 2” was a vision of the College Dropout as he once was: randy, funny, sweet and soulful.
An Old Album I Discovered/Rediscovered This Year: Janet Jackson’s janet. I’m a rabbit-hole listener: Once I fall in love with an artist, an author, or a director, I often splurge on everything they’ve ever done. This year, realizing that the only Janet Jackson album I’d ever owned was her 2001 pop renaissance All for You, I did a deep dive into her back catalogue. Her 1993 album janet. was the one that stuck. Jackson wrote and co-produced all the songs and it’s got a warm early hip-hop vibe that reeled me in all year.
Musical Highlights: Walking past the cube in Astor Place while listening to Modern Vampires of the City, learning how to run distance by letting James Murphy guide me, interviewing Earl Sweatshirt and listening to him talk about Bret Easton Ellis and Kanye West, watching Jessie Ware tear it up at Bowery Ballroom, seeing Unlocking the Truth get the publicity they deserve, and having my friend Alyse give me the nicest speaker that I’ve had since my parents (accidentally) gave mine away.
Musical Lowlights: The only musical lowlights I can think of came when something or somebody ruined a song for me. Goodbye "Ms. Fat Booty"—in competition for the greatest Mos Def song of all time, now doomed by association with a particularly rainy, unfortunate night on the Lower East Side.