Top song …
My most-played song released in or not terribly far from 2017 is "Mistakes" by Avec Sans, which finishes at #2 overall in my top 100 of the year as monitored by last.fm. This kind of ethereal, melancholy electronic bliss leaves me drooling. It's the closer on their really good debut album, Heartbreak Hi.
Other notables …
• "Up the Creek," Tori Amos' best single in years, at #29
• "Losing Touch," a new synth masterpiece by Empathy Test, at #20
• Sia had a big year on my chart, finishing at #3 with "The Greatest," #4 with "Never Give Up" and #11 with "Move Your Body."
Oldies …
My most-played song overall was Billy Joel's somber and reflective ballad "I've Loved These Days" from Turnstiles. The most-played album overall, by a substantial margin, was the very good super deluxe release of Fleetwood Mac's 1987 classic Tango in the Night.
Posthumously …
• George Michael finishes at #6 with "Something to Save," #7 with "White Light," #29 with "Heal the Pain" and #66 with "Shoot the Dog."
• Prince lands at #73 with "Strange Relationship," #87 with "The Morning Papers" and #95 with "P Control."
• Leonard Cohen is at #67 with "Hallelujah."
Most-played new album …
With 2017 releases from Erasure and Goldfrapp sadly underperforming, the door opened for Depeche Mode to sneak in with the politically charged Spirit. It's the only DM album I've wanted to listen to all the way through since Violator.
What's so hot about the Hot 100 …
There is, per usual, minimal crossover between my year-end chart and that of popular consumption. Here are the two miracle compositions:
• "I Feel It Coming" by The Weeknd Featuring Daft Punk, #34 Billboard, #56 me
• "Chained to the Rhythm" by Katy Perry Featuring Skip Marley, #73 Billboard, #20 me. I'm skeptical of everything to do with Katy Perry, and I think she's one of the most commercially and critically overrated forces in popular music, but there is no denying that this is a successful stab at mature and sophisticated electronic pop music. The same is true of "Roulette," which sounds like it could have been released in 1996, and lands at #60 on my year-end chart.
Click here for 2016 and prior years.
Two years ago, I felt like I was one of the few detractors to The Force Awakens, which is so mired in homage to A New Hope that it fails to be its own movie, so I've watched with interest all the fan negativity being hurled at The Last Jedi. The truth lies somewhere between the critical 91 and the audience 51 scores bestowed upon this very long movie at Rotten Tomatoes … I find myself settling around a 3.5 out of 5. I left the theater feeling fairly conflicted … not outright disliking this one, but also thinking the whole franchise might be due for another good rest (which we know isn't happening), and I've never before felt that way.
Some things I know for sure:
• We do all expect a dose of humor in our Star Wars movies. "Will somebody get this big walking carpet out of my way," etc. Here, however, we have one after another painfully lame attempts at getting chuckles, starting right from the opening with the terribly awkward "on hold" for General Hux bit. It pulled me out of the movie. Along these lines, I also found myself becoming annoyed with the antics of BB-8.
• The Princess Leia moments in this movie are, sadly, not especially exciting.
• The homage problem is not as pronounced in this movie, but it's still there, as in the big fight scene in the imperial throne room, or whatever it is, when Rey is shown the attack in progress by Snoke on a handy little TV screen.
• Speaking of Snoke, who the hell is this guy?
• The absence of characters like Han Solo hurts. These movies generally have better casting than did the prequels, but the gravitas of character is lacking in The Last Jedi.
• After seeing them stand around in previous movies, it was cool to see the red-draped imperial guards engage in a major throwdown.
• Rogue One easily remains my favorite of the new films.
I've always liked knowing Chiller is there even if I don't often watch it — the world of cable would be less interesting without a channel devoted to the horror genre. But that's where we're headed, with NBCUniversal set to shut it down at the end of the year. It also fondly reminds me of the time when I got satellite television for the first time about seven years ago and had lots of new channels to explore.
I won't argue that Chiller was a great channel, but it commendably stuck to its niche — something countless channels have failed to do over the long haul as the hunt for ratings steers them to broader fare. The movies were often decidedly of the "B" variety on Chiller, but novel things came along from time to time, like that Psycho marathon, which resurrected the rarely aired sequels. And there were occasional interesting finds, like Death and Cremation (2010). The channel also stacked the schedule with some fun anthologies, like Tales from the Darkside, Monsters and '80s Twilight Zone.
Goodbye, Chiller — you were, indeed, scary good … sometimes.
Back in September, I reached my 10-year anniversary of using the Last.fm scrobbler to record statistics on my music listening habits. At the beginning, it imported my iTunes history, so the statistics actually go back a bit farther than 10 years, and it also includes my Spotify activity. It's an irresistible thing for those of us who have the chart disease — I think people with a certain amount of OCD are predisposed to an unhealthy interest in the ebb and flow of popular music up and down the charts, and there's an added allure when it's limited to your own musical tastes.
A few statistical highlights:
Number of songs played: 58,866
#1 artist: Pet Shop Boys (4,046 plays, about twice the number of second place)
#1 album: Yes by Pet Shop Boys
#1 song: "A&E" by Goldfrapp
#2 song: "Dancing On My Own" by Robyn. It's a crime against music that neither of these songs even cracked the Hot 100.
Highest-ranked '80s song: (tie) "One on One" by Hall & Oates and "This Is the Time" by Billy Joel at #8. I'm a little surprised to find that the two most-played from that decade are ballads, because when I think of my love for '80s music, I think of upbeat, synthy stuff.
Highest-ranked '90s song: "I've Tried Everything" by the Eurythmics at #6
Highest ranked instrumental track: "Crockett's Theme" by Jan Hammer at #14. I've listened to a lot of Hammer's scoring for Miami Vice in recent years.
Most songs in the top 50: Pet Shop Boys, with eight. Next is Goldfrapp with five.
Most played '80s album: Autumnal Park by Pseudo Echo at #6. Ironically, I didn't own this synth pop classic until 2011.
View my Last.fm profile here.
"Ohhhh, myyyyyyy God!"
In the last few years, I've enjoyed switching the tube onto Magnum, P.I. on The Starz Encore Classic channel in the late afternoons when I get home from work early enough to catch it. It's not a great show, but what it lacks in sophistication is made up for with style and a killer '80s theme. It has a noir-ish charm, particularly Magnum's narration (I know what you're thinking …), and a fine cast highlighted by John Hillerman as Jonathan Quayle Higgins III, the stuffy and suave caretaker of the Robin's Nest, the estate of potboiler novelist Robin Masters. Hillerman, who died Thursday (Nov. 9), was a Texan, but he played British flawlessly, and the ongoing tease of whether Higgins was actually Robin Masters was bloody good fun.
It was a fine turn, and Hillerman will always be Higgins to me.
"I say, Magnum …"
Tori Amos' "Up the Creek" is the most striking song I've heard from her since the whirling dervish that is "Raspberry Swirl" from 1998. Springing from the fertile ground of resistance to today's asinine politics, it immediately takes hold with the unshakable refrain of "Good lord willing and the creek don't rise," a Southern expression that perfectly plays into the environmental theme and the struggle against "those climate blind." I haven't absorbed the full Native Invader album yet, but this is the clear standout, sounding both a tad folky and a tad electronic as her daughter joins in on vocals. It's a likely number one on my Last.fm chart.
George Michael's first posthumous single isn't a new tune at all but instead a rework of a shelved track from the Listen Without Prejudice era. "Fantasy," which was previously released on the expanded reissue of Faith (and elsewhere), is transformed by Nile Rodgers into something that sounds current but also more of a piece with the smooth style of the song "Faith" than "Too Funky" and other later dance tracks. Michael's knack for killer hooks and beautifully layered vocals is evident here; it's a shame we didn't get another album full of this kind of exuberant pop music from him before much of his output became serious and stuffy. There's room for debate as to whether Rodgers has improved "Fantasy." The vocal distortions in the opening of the track and again about mid-way through are grating and nearly sink it right out of the gate, but the new rhythmic underpinnings are appealing.
