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.
Favorite Tracks of 2013:
01 Haim: "The Wire"
02 Kanye West: "New Slaves"
03 Vampire Weekend: "Hannah Hunt"
04 Disclosure: "Latch" [ft. Sam Smith]
05 Lorde: "Royals"
06 Autre Ne Veut: "Play by Play"
07 Miley Cyrus: "We Can't Stop"
08 Torres: "Honey"
09 Perfect Pussy: "I"
10 Drake: "Hold On We're Going Home"
Favorite Albums of 2013:
01 Vampire Weekend: Modern Vampires of the City
02 Kanye West: Yeezus
03 Majical Cloudz: Impersonator
04 Jai Paul: s/t
05 Arcade Fire: Reflektor
06 Neko Case: The Worse Things Get the Harder I Fight The Harder I Fight the More I Love You
07 Waxahatchee: Cerulean Salt
08 Sky Ferreira: Night Time, My Time
09 Haim: Days Are Gone
10 The Knife: Shaking the Habitual
Most Played Song of 2013: Haim, "The Wire". If you would have told me this time last year, "In the future there will be a song that sounds like if Joni Mitchell wrote the Outfield's 'Your Love'", I would have said, "I will listen to that song an obscene amount of times." And I did.
An Old Album I Discovered/Rediscovered This Year: I just finished listening to an audiobook of Geeta Dayal's great 33 1/3 on Brian Eno's Another Green World and am more than ever finding that record to contain all the secrets of the universe. This was also the first audiobook I've ever successfully listened to from start to finish, and there was something kind of perfect about listening to this book instead of reading it, given how many Eno song and album titles demand to be spoken aloud, preferably by voiceover actor with a flair for the melodramatic. I was particularly fond of the life-or-death urgency the woman who read this book would summon each time she had to say "Taking Tiger Mountain...BY STRATEGY." There is discreet music in everything.
Musical Highlights: Singing along with the bridge of Vampire Weekend's "Diane Young" any time I was alone in a car. Driving around L.A. with my friend while singing along with Disclosure's "Latch", then sneak-muting the stereo when the chorus hit and laughing at his falsetto. Spending entire afternoons just staring off into middle distance, wondering what Justin Vernon is saying on Yeezus. "New Slaves" on SNL. Savages at Terminal 5. Majical Cloudz at Maxwell's (RIP). Ke$ha at the Golden Nugget. Seeing Drake on Halloween and getting to hear him shout out the costumes. Sobbing at my desk to this video of Vin Diesel performing a karaoke version of Rihanna's "Stay". Sob-laughing at my desk to the "Get Lucky" Shredded video. Performing at a karaoke bar with Larry Fitzmaurice a duet of "Take Care", in which I was Drake and Larry was a very satisfactory Rihanna.
Musical Lowlights: Being sick for my best friend's wedding and needing to leave the reception before I could witness everyone's drunk uncle awkwardly shuffle over to the dance floor as soon as they heard the opening notes of "Blurred Lines". Not like that will never happen again, though.