Three Tracks: 2019

Three tracks that satisfied my ears in 2019.

Sharon Van Etten, “No One’s Easy to Love”

True. “Don’t look down, my dear, don’t be surprised […] Don’t look back, my dear, just say you tried.” Bonus points for striking perhaps the most musically interesting note of the year: the second note of the second “love” in each chorus’s “No one’s easy to love.”

Apple Music · Spotify

Vampire Weekend, “This Life”

Song of the summer. “I’ve been cheating through this life and all its suffering / Oh Christ, am I good for nothing?”

Apple Music · Spotify

Patrick Watson, “Here Comes the River”

Pathos for a difficult year. “Well Mary kept sewing / Holding on to her TV / Even if the water was rising past her knees.” I believe this is the only one of my yearly “Fall” playlists (all songs I’ve gathered in the last few years are here on Apple Music) to make it to this list so far.

Apple Music · Spotify

Honourable Mentions

“Terminal Paradise” (Apple Music, Spotify), or pretty much anything from either of their two great 2020 albums, by Big Thief. “Venice Bitch” (Apple Music, Spotify) Lana Del Rey. “Sisyphus” (Apple Music, Spotify), Andrew Bird.

Jazz

I listen to a lot of jazz, but I’m not knowledgeable enough and my listening is not sufficiently comprehensive to produce any kind of narrowed best-of list. I put some of my favourite albums into a Recent Jazz playlist on Apple Music.

See also 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023.