#Best music of 2021

[ntriani]

One Quart Magazine Playlist: the year in music 2021 Nick Triani negotiates the overloaded release schedules to bring you a One Quart Magazine playlist of the favourite music he listened to during 2021.

It’s all too much Can we collectively hold our hands up and say 2021 has been the year where popular music’s proficiency has reached an all time high? Be it the pandemic and artists having too much time on their hands, with only a partial return to touring already being curtailed, creativity has been booming across the musical genres.

Initially I felt that 2021 was a year where I simply lost touch with what was going on – merely being content to keep abreast of the music I was working with was seemingly enough to satiate my music consumption. But with Spotify recently admitting to uploading 60 thousand songs a day, it’s obvious that a saturation of releases has created a feeling in me of being totally overwhelmed by music. It wasn’t until I compiled this playlist of my favourite music of the year that I realised I’d enjoyed so much new music.  The pull of nostalgia has been heavy over the last 12 months, with even ABBAmaking the most newsworthy of comebacks. With no sound or genre dominating the year, it really felt like a year of stagnation for pop culture, especially in the more mainstream echelons. But if you looked closely, the margins, thankfully, showed signs of creative life.

And the winner is My favourite single of the year was Self Esteem’s ‘I Do This All The Time.’ Frank, funny and honest, Rebecca Lucy Taylor’s lyrics framed the narrative heavy album Prioritise Pleasure – a record that was completely ignored in Finland (despite a strong international presence.) 

Low’s Hey What album stood out for me – expanding the sound palette of their previous  game changer album Double Negative, Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parkermade more space for noise, gospel tinges, social commentary and ambience on their new album. Hey What endured as the year rolled on.

Re-issues have gathered momentum with the return to popularity of vinyl  with anniversary releases being celebrated with the same gusto as new albums. The record I listened to the most this year was The Beach Boys  Feel Flows collection – covering seminal albums Wildflower and Surf’s Up. The reissue captures the emergence of Dennis Wilson as songwriter and the waking up of Brian Wilson to create Beach Boys music as potent as their standard for all times, Pet Sounds.

The Beatles ‘Get Back’ was astonishingly the most discussed musical happening of the year, which merely confirms how enthral to nostalgia popular music has become. Still, Peter Jackson’s documentary not only showed us a bunch of ridiculously talented songwriters struggling wearily with their ‘celebratory status’ whilst being Beatles, ‘Get Back’ possibly destroyed the traditional talking head, after the fact music documentary. ‘Get Back’ was a first hand visual document; often brutal, funny and at times brilliant (if a little overlong.) This OQM playlist reflects not only some of my favourite new releases of the year, but some of those re-issues of 2021 I enjoyed along with other music I obsessed over (Brazilian music of the early 1970s, French Psych-pop of the 1960s, Jazz piano players, folk music of the 1960/70s.) I realised that 2021 was a year I ended up listening to a wider variety of styles than ever before as well as a deeper volume of music. Mass music output really did result in my own mass music consumption.

Listen to the playlist!

[messervixen]

Marauders brainrot is sitting in a theatre waiting for a production of HSM to start but then Best Friends Brother comes on and your cousin knows the song because she watched the show but you know it because of late 2021/early 2022 jegulus era and as you’re trying to find a place to sit the angsty edits come flooding back and suddenly you’re thinking “is this a sign from the universe that I should reread Best Friend’s Brother?”

[music-moon]

All my liked songs from the 2020s, organized by the year they were released.

Always updating, discovering and refining. Cover art is my most listened to albums from each year, according to my last.fm.

My favourite songs organized by release year: 2020s

View more decades: 2000s / 2010s / 2020s

Take a deeper dive into my most listened to albums from each year:

Data from last.fm + pythfm.

2000 / 2001 / 2002 / 2003 / 2004 / 2005 / 2006 / 2007 / 2008 / 2009 / 2010 / 2011 / 2012 / 2013 / 2014 / 2015 / 2016 / 2017 / 2018 / 2019 / 2020 / 2021 / 2022 / 2023 / 2024

[sincericida]

"TICK TICK BOOM!" cast together. I miss them.

"ANDREW GARFIELD casually knows how to juggle just because..." (X)

[charlotte-is-a-swiftie]

Taylor Swift Grammys 2021 performance

@taylorswift @taylornation

[upside-down-sock-drawer]

Different musical than what I normally post but can we talk about how absolutely genius the costume design and symbolism was in West Side Story 2021 because oh my god

I could rant about this for hours if y'all want to hear my analysis

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

Encanto (2021, Byron Howard, Jared Bush and Charise Castro Smith)

31/05/2024

[nostalgicfun]

When we talk about nostalgia we generally talk about our childhood, but what’s something fairly recent-ish you’re somehow already nostalgic for? 🌈

[celestial-sapphicss]

reblog and put in tags the prominent musical artists phases in your life

[ereborne]

Song of the Day: March 27

"Long Time Gone" by The Chicks

[celestialrealms]

i went from 250+ vouchers to like 60 and went to pity. my rancid wife who torments me

[eddieredmayneargentinablog]

Always keep smiling 😍

🎥 The Olivier Awards 2022 Nominations Press Event, March 16, 2022 in London.

[to-thelakes]

IT JUST OCCURED TO ME SPOTIFY WRAPPED SEASON IS NEARLY UPON US

[sonknuxadow]

how did sonic superstars get nominated for best family game at the game awards while sonic frontiers, an infinitely better sonic game, got nothing this year or last year aside from the players voice nomination .... also they nominated mario and a few other games for like 500 different categories while only one category had a sonic related thing AND they let genshin impact back in AGAIN........ do you think the game awards are specifically designed to torture sonic fans . whatever sonic frontiers game of the year to ME.

[deelovesbooks]

tagged by @evnnkinard to put my music on shuffle and list the first 10 songs + tag 10 people :) [i never know how you're supposed to do these now w streaming music rather than ye olde days of itunes letting you shuffle every song you own so i split it half from On Repeat and half from Repeat Rewind that spotify generated lol]

Any Way You Want It - Journey

Hooked on a Feeling - Björn Skifs & Blue Swede

The Magic Spider - Nekrogoblikon

Human Era - Unleash The Archers

You Give Love A Bad Name - Bon Jovi

Friday I'm in Love - The Cure

Ain't No Rest for the Wicked - Cage The Elephant

Beautiful Girls - Sean Kingston

Island In The Sun - Weezer

ive kinda been on a dad rock kick evidently i think its my preferred road trip music and ive been doing A Lot of driving recently lol

gentlest no pressure tags: @with-no-box @glowstickhaloboy @bedrowsedbear @menlove @april-foolish @invisiblebie @both-kinds-of-queer @hmslusitania @benjji2795 + you yes you person reading this rn consider urself tagged <3

[furrysmp]

decided for giggles to see what dsmp has been up to in the. Two and a half years since I last looked

Anyways so canon is trashfire but the part of me that started sunbringer in dsmp is now stirring to make More stuff. Like a "the universe reset thing but dream is still in prison so it doesn't reach him" thing that I'm trying to remove from brain bc I actually didn't do the catching up via vods and instead looked at fandom reaction for instructions and uhm.

Yeah no I genuinely want to write this it's gonna be so interesting but also who even does dsmp anymore like is there an audience