MUSIC CRITICISM
My Top 10 favorite songs from 2022
Some of what I liked while exploring the question, “Does music nowadays suck?”
A year ago, in January 2022, I ran across an article listing the top 25 songs of 2021 according to Billboard magazine. Now, I’d stopped actively following the national music scene and the Billboard Hot 100 back in the ’90s when I was living in Boston because the local music scene was so rich that I happily sunk into it and stopped paying attention to what was happening outside the little clubs and labels there. I heard some of the best music of my life during this time, including songs I was convinced would’ve been big smash hits from coast to coast if they could’ve gotten the exposure. Then, I was living in Pacific Northwest, where I was involved in activism and then farming, neither of which left time for pop radio. I’ll admit I also felt like I should dismiss popular music, or should try to hold myself above it or something, because “corporate,” “shallow,” blah blah blah.
But in January 2022, I checked out that article, and listened to the songs on the popular video sharing website. To my surprise, I liked some of it. So next I went through the top 100 for the year, and found a few more things that appealed to me. Then I started digging, to see what I’d missed since the turn…