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 Drake: "Worst Behaviour"
02 A$AP Ferg: "Shabba" [ft. A$AP Rocky]
03 Chief Keef: "Citgo"
04 Migos: "Hannah Montana"
05 Sky Ferreira: "I Blame Myself"
06 Kanye West: "New Slaves"
07 Young Thug: "Picacho"
08 Lil B: "Look Like God"
09 BC Kingdom: "Lockup"
10 Vampire Weekend: "Hannah Hunt"
Favorite Albums of 2013:
01 Kanye West: Yeezus
02 Jai Paul: Jai Paul
03 Drake: Nothing Was the Same
04 Young Thug: 1017 Thug
05 Blood Orange: Cupid Deluxe
06 Sky Ferreira: Night Time, My Time
07 Waxahatchee: Cerulean Salt
08 Best Coast: Fade Away
09 Gesaffelstein: Aleph
10 Vampire Weekend: Modern Vampires of the City
There's a commonly held notion that people grow more steadfast in their tastes and beliefs as they get older. But in 2013, a year during which I ostensibly settled into some of the trappings of real adulthood, I occasionally found myself feeling like I’d lost my own compass. I sometimes suspect I’m becoming more impressionable, floating in an ungoverned no-man’s land between stubborn old habits and preconceived notions and a glut of outside information and opinions in front of me. If you're inclined, blame it on the internet (of course) and its unending flow of new music, along with its endless cycle of takes and takedowns.
But this isn’t a melodramatic or despondent story; it’s an elemental one. It’s been important for me to remember that music is a simple thing—a brief burst of invisible pulses in the air that either feels good or doesn’t. Some of the most valuable experiences I had with music this year were the ones that caught me off guard, the ones that arrived without context and unsolicited and reminded me of that fact. Here are a handful of small-but-meaningful experiences that helped anchor me to my own taste when I felt unsteady on my feet.
-Last winter I went to a late-night Saturday show for a piece I was writing. I was milling around, absent-mindedly jotting observations down on my phone between sets when a DJ played a song that jolted me out of the default mental lull I enter while alone in a crowd. "You a beast," the rap went; it sounded like it came straight from the mouth of a young girl during a game of double dutch. I still cannot get the song out of my mind and I still cannot get my hands on the song. After finding evidence of it online by searching different variations of the lyrics I managed to jot down—someone on a Yahoo! Answers page is having the same problem—I discovered that it’s a song called, yes, "U a Beast" by Blaqstarr. I eventually reached out to someone from Blaqstarr’s camp in July; I got a response saying someone would try to send it to me, followed by radio silence. It’s a reminder that not everything is at my fingertips. If you have a copy of this song and would like to send it to me, I am carrie@pitchfork.com.
-In March I went to Orlando with my boyfriend for a surprise birthday party. Once the surprise part was over, a local band called Wet Nurse performed in the house—three girls (two of them twins!), a guitar, a bass and a drumset in a dining room. It was late and I was sleepy, full of beer and resigned to a couple of stupidly cynical ideas: that guitar music isn’t for me and that I’m too old (read: uptight and terrified of actually being too old) to care about seeing it performed live. This birthday party band, Wet Nurse, shot both of those ideas dead and killed me along with them. Scrappy, eye-rolly twin-sister pop-punk blasted out in two minute spurts in a house in Florida—that’s how I wanted my music for the week after the trip. Go listen to Wet Nurse.
-I'm lucky enough to live with my best friend; I'm luckier still that she is a person who loves music but remains blissfully detached from the surrounding online chatter and calculated metrics of cool. She has magically pure, excellent taste and she derives sheer pleasure from music like no one else I know. She just wants to dance and feel good and is mostly unconcerned with why (our song is "No Hands"). When I feel uncertain about a song or an album or I want to enjoy it for enjoyment's sake, I send it to her at work on GChat or we listen to it together in our apartment before going out on weekends. She is a truly trustworthy weathervane of contemporary music taste and I would much sooner check out something she recommended me than I would read a critic’s year-end list. She’s taking piano lessons now, and most nights there’s a distant tinkle of scales being played in our apartment.
-At the beginning of this year, my aforementioned friend was cleaning the apartment and playing a dreamlike song I’d never heard on the speakers. I kept asking her to replay it. It turned out to be "Love You In Chains", a years-old interpolation of Nelly Furtado’s "Showtime" by a producer who goes by Arca. You probably know Arca at this point by his affiliation with Kanye West. I’m convinced that if he had released “Love You in Chains” after the Yeezus buzz, it would top more than one critic’s year-end list. But the song is still out there and still sounds just as good; timing is only an issue insofar as you let it be an issue. "Love You in Chains" is my favorite song of 2013.