My Listening Year: 2009

Here before you is every album I acquired this year. That's 56 albums in twelve months, down from 89 last year. And just to illustrate how much my consumption has slowed over the course of the year—thanks to book writing, moving, preparing for a baby, and, I guess, working—almost 50% of these albums were acquired between January and March.

Here's another way of breaking things down, to give some sense of where my head has been at this year: 20 of these albums were released this year (compared to 24 new releases last year); 13 were from this decade (compared to 19 last year); and 21 were from the 90s or earlier (compared to 46 last year). Of those older albums, 7 were from the 60s, 10 from the 70s, 3 from the 80s, and 2 from the 90s.

This last bit of statistical breakdown feels totally false to me, because what goes unseen here are the number of albums I picked up that were essentially re-purchases of albums I owned many years ago or was otherwise familiar with already. These were acquired mainly for the sake of putting my head in the sphere of the 80s and early 90s for the purposes of writing my book; I haven't been blogging (too much) about those albums because they are, in a way, "work" related. I like the idea of this blog being pure pleasure. That said, I've got a post planned for tomorrow that will get at a lot of the above and a lot of these 80s/90s albums. 

Of course, it wouldn't be a Pretty Goes with Pretty recap if I didn't go further into statistical analysis!

• Number of artists for whom I purchased at least two albums in 2009: 9
• Number of artists for whom I purchased three albums in 2009: 1 (Animal Collective)
• Number of albums purchased, broken down by anal-compulsive iTunes genre tagging:
• • Indie Rock: 25
  • Electronic: 7
  • Krautrock: 5
  • 60s Rock, Country: 4 each
  • Alternative: 3
  • 70s Rock, Classic Indie: 2 each
  • Brasilia, Folk, Oldies, Punk: 1 each

What's kinda interesting to me is that if you compare those stats to last year, the ratio is almost exactly the same, despite buying far more albums last year. If you were to do both years as a pie chart, they'd look roughly identical. In one sense I guess that shouldn't be surprising. However when I do a similar breakdown of what I listened to—not what I bought—I think the statistics will look wildly different. I feel like my listening habits shifted dramatically from 60s/70s to 80s/90s in the last year. (I'll look at those numbers around the New Year. I can hear you uncapping your sharpies to mark your calendars.)

A bit later today: I'll have a rundown of my favorite albums of the year—not just those released in 2009, but instead culled from the albums above. Tomorrow I'll have one last post before the holiday—a massive mix of my listening year. Stay tuned.

Comments

[twitter.com/jtramsay]

I find that I binge in the early part of a given year and then I spend an inordinate amount of time with them. I used to get far more excited for the fall release schedule and all the shows that come with it, but that all changed post-baby.