Autobiographical 50

Not chronological...not alphabetical....

WARNING: this one goes long.

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There’s a scene in Nick Hornby’s classic record store geek book/movie High Fidelity¹, where the grumpy emotionally-stunted protagonist, record store owner Rob Gordon, is in his apartment reorganizing his gigantic record collection, displayed on wall-to-wall shelves in his apartment. Displayed, once they’re organized, that is. For now, they’re in scattered piles all around his apartment floor.

His coworker Dick drops in, notices that Rob’s undertaking a thorough reorganization. He does a quick scan and, as a fellow record store geek who has done similar reorganizing(s) in his past, is puzzled when he can’t immediately figure out what organizing logic Rob is using.

“Not alphabetical, not chronological….” he mutters, trying to figure it out. He squints, in hopes of deciphering the code.

Finally Rob solves it for him, “…autobiographical.”

Dick, having seen records organized alphabetically and chronologically and by genre and by format but never like THIS, is awestruck. This is peak geekery.

Rob elaborates, “I can tell you how I got from Deep Purple to Howlin’ Wolf in just 25 moves….And, if I want to find the song ‘Landslide’ by Fleetwood Mac... I have to remember that I bought it for someone in the fall of 1983 pile... but didn’t give it to them for personal reasons.”

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Last month I turned 50. So, a bit like Rob Gordon (but hopefully in a more healthy way and far less stalker-y and narcissistic and, no, I won’t be exhuming my long-lost exes for closure), I find myself reflecting on my life. Part of that, surprising no one, is thinking a lot about how music has factored in.

And you all know how much I love to make lists².

You can see where this might be going.

But rather than just ranking my 50 all-time favorite albums (or maybe, time and energy permitting, IN ADDITION TO³ doing that), what I’m gonna do here is list my favorite album from each year since I was born. To clarify, NOT the album that I loved during that particular year in real-time (for instance, if I were listing the album I loved most in a particular year that might very well land me on, say, 1991’s Pocket Full of Kryptonite by the Spin Doctors⁴ or 1985’s Hunting High and Low by a-ha⁵). No, this will be a list of albums that came out in each year that I would currently say are my favorites⁶ of said year.

DISCLAIMER: The list of artists NOT⁷ represented here is a crime against my brain and my heart.

So, happy birthday to me and here’s the list:

1976: Ramones s/t
You’d think with all the classic rock I love, this slot would have to be some Led Zeppelin, Dylan, Rush⁸, Boston⁹, or Stones album. But it’s the¹⁰ Ramones. It has to be. Am I saying that “Blitzkrieg Bop” and “Judy Is A Punk” are better songs than Dylan’s “Hurricane” and “One More Cup of Coffee”from 1976’s Desire? Uh, well, yeah, I guess I am.
1977: Fleetwood Mac / Rumours
This is a big one for a lot of obvious reasons but also the less obvious that is because I spent all of high school deriding Fleetwood Mac, only to come around when I moved to NYC and “discovered” Rumours. I repented fervently while listening to “Never Going Back Again” a billon times, though I still can’t stand “Oh Daddy”, made all the worse by the fact that it made the album’s final cut instead of the sublime “Silver Springs.”
1978: The Cars s/t
File under: debut albums that could easily qualify as Greatest Hits collections.
1979: Neil Young / Rust Never Sleeps
I don’t know if I can write blurbs for every year’s winner. Not this week, at least. But Neil Young is the artist I have seen in concert more¹¹ than any other artist and who has at least 3 concerts in my top 20. This album introduced me to a world beyond Harvest.
1980: The English Beat / I Just Can’t Stop It
File under: more debut albums that could also qualify as Greatest Hits collections.
1981: Rush / Moving Pictures
Obligatory Rush appearance because, yes, I am a man of a certain age. I still get a swell of Canadian testosterone every time the little space-age synth sound kicks off “Tom Sawyer.”
1982: Michael Jackson/ Thriller
Yes, we do separate art from the artist around here. I can’t say I put this album on very often anymore, but whenever I hear “Billie Jean” or “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’”, I cannot deny them. Also, apologies to the woman at our George Harrison tribute the other night who, when I asked the audience for guesses on which two songs were bigger than George’s “Got My Mind Set On You” in 1988¹², and she guessed “Thriller” and I didn’t know what to say and my anxiety started bubbling and my invasive thoughts won and I was snarky because you were off by 6 years. You deserved better. I hope you know that I ALSO felt stupid and dwelled on my prickly reaction for the next 5 days, at least. Today makes it six days.
1983: Violent Femmes s/t
File under: even more debut albums that could also qualify as Greatest Hits collections. One of the big musical puzzlements of my music life is how the Violent Femmes don’t get more credit for being groundbreaking punk music. What gives? Is it the commercial success? The acoustic instruments? If anything, the fact that they aren’t cranking out power chords and using volume to compensate for lack of musicianship (the bassist and drummer are LEGIT) and are using patently un-punk acoustic instruments should give them MORE punk cred. The most punk thing is not caving into the punk gatekeepers, right?
1984: Talking Heads / Stop Making Sense
I still can’t listen to studio albums by Talking Heads (great as they are) without pining for the live versions on Stop Making Sense, the rare live album that transcends the official studio albums.
1985: Tears for Fears / Songs from the Big Chair
Underrated musically. These guys had hits so they were lumped in with a lot of the one-hit pop/new wave wonders. But their songs had more secret sophisticated sauce than most of their contemporaries.
1986: Paul Simon / Graceland
If you look up the definition of No Skips in the dictionary, it says Paul Simon Graceland. Part of that is because they stopped publishing dictionaries in the year 1986¹³, so several of the more modern No Skip Albums weren’t even out yet.
1987: U2 / The Joshua Tree
Maybe a top 3 album EVER for me. Call me basic, I don’t care. Peak unabashed earnestness with some of the best-sounding guitars ever recorded.
1988: Jane’s Addiction / Nothing’s Shocking
Straddling (word choice intentional) the glam scene of 80s hair rock, and the L.A. funk of Fishbone and the Chili Peppers, and the 90s grunge scene, Jane’s Addiction is one of one. By the time I arrived at Jane’s Addiction (thanks to my cousins), they were broken up. Then, when they reunited, I ignored them for decades, not wanting to sully my relationships with their records via some half-hearted cash grab tour. And then, coming to my senses and wanting to see one of my favorite guitarists (Dave Navarro) in-person¹⁴, I finally decided to bite the bullet and spent a crap ton of money on tickets to see them, only to have them cancel the whole tour after a stupid band blowup onstage. So much for not sullying my relationship with their records. And, still, here they are.
1989: Tom Petty / Full Moon Fever
Even “Zombie Zoo” kinda¹⁵, as the kids say, slaps.
1990: World Party / Goodbye Jumbo
I guess I’m writing blurbs for all of these? I wrote a bunch about my love of World Party when Karl Wallinger passed.
1991: U2 / Achtung Baby
Only five artists appear on this list more than once (if I were smarter, I would’ve limited it to one appearance per artist, thus broadening the list, oh well). They are: U2, Wilco, Mark Kozelek (Red House Painters/Sun Kil Moon), Madison Cunningham, and Olivia Rodrigo. It was weird even just typing that out. If I’d had to guess blindly, I would’ve guessed: Radiohead, Elliott Smith, Wilco, The National, Low, and Phoebe Bridgers. When you work in the release dates, you get some wicked competitions in certain years. Unfair, really.
1992: Black Crowes / Southern Harmony & Musical Companion
A band that could’ve ruled the world and then didn’t.
1993: Counting Crows / August & Everything After
A conversation I had with a fellow A&EA superfan recently brought up an interesting point. You see, Counting Crows lead singer Adam Duritz is famous (infamous) for changing the melodies to his songs at every live show. The idea, I assume, is “in-the-moment expression” and/or “reactive interpretation” and “a living song rather than a rote recitation.” To people like me, who love the melodies on the albums, what it really is is “frustrating.” I don’t mind some deviations and embellishments, but when you basically ignore the thing about the song that MAKES the song? I’m out. Anyway, as my fellow A&EA superfan and I were commiserating over the way Duritz discards some of his best melodies in a live setting, it dawned on me: how fortuitous is it that, on the random day these songs were recorded, he happened to pick these melodies AND they happened to coincide with the recordings/versions/takes that made the final cut? Luck. The emotional peak of a song like “Anna Begins” absolutely hinges on the emotion that the melody wrings out of the line “She’s talkin’ in her sleep /It’s keepin’ me awake.” Change the melody and, unless you’re really lucky, you’re gonna lose some of the emotional heft.
1994: Soundgarden / Superunknown
A lot of “grunge” albums sound dated. This isn’t one of them. Once a year, I put this on, full-blast, in my car and just revel.
1995: Bjork / Post
There is only one Bjork. And this album is as good as she gets.
1996: Red House Painters / Songs for a Blue Guitar
Remember what I said about Thriller and separating the art from the artist? Mark Kozelek’s gross personal life is gross, no question. But the songs on this record don’t belong to him anymore. They mean something to me, regardless of whoever he’s been/become/revealed himself to be since I first heard them. Not that it doesn’t bum me out and/or wreck my heart that a guy whose songwriting’s empathy—“Have you forgotten how to love yourself?”—broke through to me turned out to, well, not be particularly empathetic. Or even sympathetic.
1997: Radiohead / OK Computer
Is this the greatest album of all time? It’s not NOT the greatest album of all time¹⁶, I can tell you that much.
1998: Massive Attack / Mezzanine
I don’t want to write any more blurbs, no offense, Massive Attack.
1999: Tom Waits / Mule Variations
Oh, but this year was a knock-down drag-out year for Paul Jacobsen Catnip. (Additional apology to Massive Attack, who for sure are reading this.) Wilco’s Summerteeth, Fiona Apple’s When The Pawn, The Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin, Tom Petty’s achingly underrated Echo, Randy Newman’s even-more-underrated Bad Love, The Man Who by Travis, Built To Spill’s Keep It Like A Secret, the one and only Ágætis Byrjun by Sigur Ros, 69 Love Songs by The Magnetic Fields, The Three EPs by The Beta Band…but this Tom Waits album takes it. It’s cooler to like Bone Machine and Swordfishtrombones and Rain Dogs, but this is the album for me for a billion reasons, not the least of which is that “Picture In A Frame” soundtracked the first dance at my wedding and the trilling piano of “Take It With Me” wakes me up as my phone alarm every day and “Hold On” still gets me every single time.
2000: Elliott Smith / Figure 8
One of my favorite songwriters ever. This album may not even be his best (Either/Or?) but it is where his two sides—quiet midnight whispery sad folk and full-band Beatles-core rock with production touches—are most fully fleshed out and coexist the most seamlessly.
2001: Gillian Welch / Time The Revelator
This year was almost impossible to narrow down to one, but Gillian (and David)’s music is timeless.
2002: Wilco / Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
I can see the headline now: SHOCKING! Guy In His 50s Actually Likes Wilco!
2003: Sun Kil Moon / Ghosts of the Great Highway
Kozelek again. This was his peak for me.
2004: Wilco / A Ghost Is Born
This album, along with Rachael Yamagata’s first EP and Lucinda Williams World Without Tears and Ray Lamontagne’s first record and The Arcade Fire¹⁷’s Funeral, provided the soundtrack to falling in love with Holly. I don’t think it’s really the lyrics per se being romantic, though I do love the tentativeness of these four lines from “Muzzle of Bees”, with Jeff Tweedy soft-stepping insecurity:
I'm assuming you got my message
On your machine
I'm assuming you love me
But you know what that means
2005: Spoon / Gimme Fiction
Poor Scott Wiley (producer and bandmate). I returned from my years in NYC to record my sophomore album after years of the two of us being on the same page about sonic reference points—a heap of alt country (Wilco, Ryan Adams, Son Volt), plenty of melodic guitar-driven alt-rock (Nada Surf, The Cardigans, Broken Social Scene), and a smattering of folkie stuff (Iron & Wine, Nick Drake, Jason Collett). But I was suddenly deep in a Spoon hole, where I thought everything should sound minimalist and groove-centric, sharp and taut. Never mind the fact that I hadn’t written a single song that would work with those descriptors. Luckily for both of us, I came to my senses and realized the kind of album I’d written. Still, I’d love to make a spartan rocking Spoon-esque album one of these days.
2006: The Hold Steady / Boys and Girls in America
Either you love The Hold Steady or you don’t. It takes all of 45 seconds to decide. And then there’s no going back. I personally love the way singer Craig Finn writes, the stories he tells, and, if anything, his divisive semi-spoken delivery helps the lyrics come across all the more clearly.
2007: Bon Iver / For Emma, Forever Ago
This was an absolutely bananas year for music if you happened to be in my specific demographic of Indie-leaning 30-something White Dudes. How do you keep Radiohead’s In Rainbows out of the top spot?¹⁸ To say nothing of Feist’s big leap The Reminder, The National’s breakout Boxer, Wilco’s dad-rock-coded Sky Blue Sky, Arcade Fire’s sophomore Neon Bible, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s underrated Baby 81¹⁹, or the astoundingly great and unlikely collaboration album between Robert Plant²⁰ & Alison Krauss Raising Sand. But For Emma will always²¹ hold the spot for me. Justin Vernon’s brand of heartache and yearning met mine at the crossroads and tuned my acoustic guitar forever into weird, sad alternate tunings. There are few songs I have turned to more for solace and buoyancy when depression sinks me than “Re: Stacks.”
2008: Frightened Rabbit / The Midnight Organ Flight
Speaking of depression, I don’t believe there’s an album on this list that expresses what it feels like to be buried in sadness quite as starkly and frankly as this one does—the desperation, the shot nerves, the shame, the inarticulable ache, the crushing sense of failure, the sudden outbursts, the shocking range and width and depth of emotions. And, somehow²², it uplifts.
2009: Miranda Lambert / Revolution
Country? AND MAINSTREAM 00’S COUNTRY? But I love everything about this album. The songwriting does all the things I want out of mainstream country—bulletproof storytelling, clever wordplay, hooky choruses, some sass, some twang, some underlying melancholy. You’d have to have a heart made of stone not to feel ache and nostalgia when you listen to “The House That Built Me.” Props to Lambert, who can sing the paint off a Ferrari but, on this song, opts for subtle emotion over reality show theatrics.
2010: The National / High Violet
All the very best of us / string ourselves up for love
or
Sorrow found me when I was young / Sorrow waited, sorrow won
or
Go out at night with your headphones on again
Walk through the Manhattan valleys of the dead
or
With my kid on my shoulders I try
Not to hurt anybody I like
But I don’t have the drugs to sort it out
or
We’ll live on coffee and flowers
Try not to wonder what the weather will be
I figured out what we’re missing
I tell you miserable things after you are asleep
2011: Over The Rhine / The Long Surrender
Probably the most obscure album on the list. If I hadn’t just spent 16 lines on lyrics by The National’s Matt Berninger, I’d copy down the lyrics of Over The Rhine’s “Infamous Love Song” or “All My Favorite People” or “Undamned” to make my point. Over The Rhine is an undersung husband/wife duo who’s been making great music for decades. This album is where their chemistry met Joe Henry’s fantastic production to create the most vital work of their career.
2012: Kathleen Edwards / Voyageur
What is it about divorce albums? Edwards’s bleak heartbreak made a masterpiece rivaling any of the pantheon divorce records. Voyageur, go on ahead and take your rightful place up there with Richard & Linda Thompson’s Shoot Out The Lights, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, Beck’s Sea Change²³, Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks….
2013: Vampire Weekend / Modern Vampires of the City
I actively disliked Vampire Weekend—the hype, the preppy aesthetic, the unabashed uber-clever Ivy League lyrics. This album toppled my walls, though. I could resist no longer. And, believe me, I was stubborn enough to try.
2014: St Vincent s/t
A new voice in the world of guitar heroism. EXCEPT with songs that are song-first rather than thinly-veiled excuses to shred. My son & I saw St. Vincent at Kilby Block Party last year and her set was everything you could ask for from a rock set—loud, fast, sexy²⁴, surprising, dangerous, tight, funny, ferocious. She owned every inch of that stage and knew it.
2015: The Staves / If I Was
Celestial sisterly harmonies, like if the Secret Sisters had a third British sister. A throwback to the British folkie days of Fairport Convention given a modern tilt and even better songs.
2016: Beyonce / Lemonade
Another outlier. I don’t own a single other Beyonce album. But I adore this one. In an era of ADHD-oriented “content” and TikTok attention spans, one of the biggest artists in the world proclaimed, “ALBUMS MATTER.” And made a brilliant, cohesive, emotional, complex-but-accessible, layered statement to prove it. When it was first released, you could only stream it on Tidal, so what did I do? You can bet I started a free one-month Tidal trial the day the album came out.
2017: Sylvan Esso / What Now
I know I keep saying this about different artists, but, it’s true that someday I’d love to make an album like this: great melodies over mostly programming and blips and bleeps and bloops and beats and cool kitchen sink production odds & ends, but I wouldn’t know where to start. Oh, and I’d need to be able to write and sing like Amelia Heath so….
2018: Low / Double Negative
Besides The Beatles, Neil Young, and Wilco, no band has influenced how I want to approach music more than Low. Absolute courage. Beauty and brutality. Warmth and aching cold. Silence and noise. Honey and venom. Hope and despair. Love and hurt. Patient. Rewarding. Singular.
2019: Madison Cunningham / Who Are You Now
Seeing Madison Cunningham in concert as the global pandemic finally faded rewired my brain as to what a live show could do. A triple threat in that she can write, sing, and play the daylights out. I’ve seen her 3 times now and two²⁵ of them were positively mind-blowing. Great to see artists who understand the history of music but are also ambitiously pushing outward.
2020: Phoebe Bridgers / Punisher + Copycat Killer EP
GARGANTUAN Phoebe Bridgers fan. Combine my fandom with my love for the arrangements that Rob Moose has composed²⁶ over the years and you get the Copycat Killer EP, which is a handful of Bridgers’s songs, stripped of their Punisher album instruments and replaced with stirring string arrangements. Chills every time. It’s proof that Bridgers’s songs stand up in any clothes you might want to dress them up in. And an argument that Moose should be enlisted to do this for 3-4 songs from any great album. All together now: “Paul would love to do an EP like this someday (meaning: have Rob Moose deconstruct the songs and give them his arrangements).”
2021: Olivia Rodrigo / SOUR
I can’t explain it. Previous pop starlets²⁷ have eluded my interest. Maybe I liked an individual song here and there²⁸, but overall, I would never have called myself a fan. Maybe a tourist? A hall pass holder? Rodrigo changed all that. Her balance of giant candy-coated pop hooks and slashy teen angst and teenage heartbreak and 90s alt-rock mixed with theater kid energy somehow hits the spot for me²⁹.
2022: Madison Cunningham / Revealer
I don’t want to write any more blurbs. It’s not you, Madison³⁰. It’s me.
2023: Olivia Rodrigo / GUTS
I didn’t think she could possibly live up to SOUR. I was wrong. Will her next album take the 2026 slot?
2024: Waxahatchee / Tigers Blood
…almost there….must….reach…..fi….fi……(gasps)….fiFTY! (wanna read a bit about how I feel about this album? Try here.)
2025: Great Grandpa / Patience Moonbeam
I wrote about this one too just a few months ago. But it’s worth noting that it broke through in a year that had albums from all kinds of Paul Catnip artists: Jeff Tweedy, Madison Cunningham, Mavis Staples, Alan Sparhawk (Low), Kathleen Edwards, Matt Berninger (The National), Bon Iver, and my new obsession, Flyte. Standing out in that crowd is no small thing.

Phew. We did it. There’s your 50. Happy birthday to me. Let’s go get milkshakes.

1. A favorite of mine in both formats. It’s in rare company as a book that is just as good onscreen as on the page. Others in the club include No Country For Old Men, The Princess Bride, Lord of the Rings, Fight Club, True Grit, and A Muppet Christmas Carol.

2. A lot.

3. 50 All-Time Favorite Albums?

Off the dome, only one per artist, I’d go:

OK Computer/Radiohead
Abbey Road/The Beatles
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot/Wilco
The Joshua Tree/U2
After The Gold Rush/Neil Young
Time Out of Mind/Bob Dylan
Pink Moon/Nick Drake
Either/Or/Elliott Smith
Tomorrow The Green Grass/The Jayhawks
Cure For Pain/Morphine
This Perfect World/Freedy Johnston
Voyageur/Kathleen Edwards
Mighty Joe Moon/Grant Lee Buffalo
…

Never mind, no, I’m not doing this today. But that top-of-my-head list alone has 8 albums that couldn’t/wouldn’t make my Autobiographical list for various technicalities.

4. I’ve already written about them anyway, in my not-exactly-ongoing series 90 Songs That Explain My 90s. Summary? I was a huge fan. I even wasn’t necessarily against all the rampant scatting.

5. I contend there was no bigger a-ha fan at the time. It lasted for one more album.

It’s been wild to see “Take on Me” gain a second (third?) wind with the new generations(s), including its unmistakable influence on songs like Harry Styles’s “As It Was.”

6. My usual noncommittally cowardly disclaimer: this list could and would be drastically different in a week.

7. NO BOB DYLAN?
My favorite Dylan is Time Out of Mind which had the misfortune of being released the same year as arguably my favorite album on the list, Radiohead’s OK Computer. Love & Theft and Modern Times are also way up there for me.

Joe Henry’s album output from 1996-2016 was hugely influential on me.

OTHER SHOCKERS (to me)
Big Thief
Steve Earle
Patty Griffin
Aimee Mann
Pedro the Lion
Michael Penn
Pearl Jam
Beastie Boys
Glen Hansard/The Swell Season
Josh Ritter
The Cardigans
Randy Newman
John Prine
Hiss Golden Messenger
R.E.M.
Sigur Ros
Nanci Griffith (man, should her live album replace Jane’s Addiction? MAYBE SHE SHOULD!)
Leona Naess
Grateful Dead
Lyle Lovett
Jenny Lewis
The Jayhawks
Cracker
Morphine
Bruce Springsteen
Led Zeppelin
The Rolling Stones
Fugazi
Beck
Pink Floyd
Van Morrison
Pavement
Richard Buckner
Johnny Cash
Iron & Wine
Brad
Lucinda Williams
Grant Lee Buffalo
Freedy Johnston

8. If you’d asked me in 1990 what was the best album of 1976, Rush’s 2112 would be in this spot. I did my Saturday jobs to the tune of WE ARE THE PRIESTS OF THE TEMPLE OF SYRINX on more than a few Saturdays.

9. Boston’s mammoth self-titled debut came out in 1976. And, as much as I can get down to “More Than A Feeling”, it’s an album I never liked enough to actually purchase. I picked it up in record stores a million times, but always felt like another record was more compelling. Still feel that way today.

10. If you want to split hairs, there’s no THE before Ramones. But, c’mon, call them what you want. Why are we policing articles for PUNK ROCK BANDS? You’ll get this same hair splitting from obnoxious Pixies fans too.

11. 20 times

12. “Faith” by George Michael and “Need You Tonight” by INXS, according to Rolling Stone magazine

13. No they didn’t.

14. I saw him with the Chili Peppers in 1994, opening for the Stones, but that doesn’t count. Like watching Usain Bolt speed-walk.

15. As a kid, I had to look up who Boris Karloff was because of the great line “You look like Boris Karloff and you don’t even care.”

16. How else could I justify not putting one of two of my favorite albums of all-time, Elliott Smith’s Either/Or and Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind, in this slot? To say nothing of deep-in-my-DNA albums like Jonatha Brooke’s 10 Cent Wings and Sarah Mclachlan’s Surfacing.

17. SEE ALSO: Mark Kozelek blurb, creepers

18. I don’t honestly know.

19. What’s the best BRMC song and why is it “Killing The Light”? (Other acceptable answers include “All You Do Is Talk” and “Spread Your Love”)

20. You know, Led Zeppelin’s GOLDEN GOD.

21. And by “always” I mean “today.”

22. Palpatine returned

23. how did this album not make my list? I HAVE NO IDEA. Let’s just let it go, ok?

24. Maybe more than me or my son were ready to experience together at one point that I won’t describe here.

25. The third one was at a festival where she and the band played great but weren’t the best fit for the rest of the bill. And it was like 5 in the afternoon.

26. for acts like Sufjan Stevens, AHNONI, The National, Sara Bareilles, Miley Cyrus, Iron & Wine…

27. For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t call Beyonce a pop starlet. She’s a megawatt megastar. A planet.

28. Britney Spears’s “Toxic.” Stone-cold jam.
”I’m Like A Bird” by Nelly Furtado. Also a jam.
I feel no guilt in the pleasure derived from Rihanna’s “SOS.”
Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody” is so good.
Miley’s “Party in the U.S.A.” should be stupid but is stupid-danceable. It gets the gold star.
“Beautiful” by Christina Aguilera is a really well-written song (and good message!).
Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” has the juice.
And, like anyone, I’m a fan of Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone.”
“Issues” by Julia Michaels snuck into my system and has yet to leave.

But I’m not all that interested in the rest of what those artists are doing (I admit that it’s maybe to my own detriment).

29. When we saw that her upcoming tour wasn’t (so far) routing through Salt Lake City (WHY, OLIVIA?), I was five times more bummed out than either of my tween/teen daughters, who were my concert buddies for the first two tours.

30. To be fair, I wrote a lot of words about a song from this album here. And here.