When things are tumultuous, you tend to crave comfort food and that extends to the music you listen to. When you’re anxious and scared you want warmth and safety, you want what you know, you want Adele doing her Adele thing (if that’s your thing, me I’ll take Sade doing her Sade thing) and so on. Over this past year, like a lot of humans, I spent a fair amount of time listening to old faves from my younger days, holding onto them like I would my Mom’s jean leg during a thunderstorm when I was a squirt, and burrowing in their comfortable familiarity. Yet despite that, I never stopped craving and seeking out new music.
It’s estimated that 60,000 tracks are uploaded daily onto Spotify alone, meaning that finding and discovering new things can be both overwhelming and exceptionally labor-intensive. And algorithms aren’t necessarily the most trustworthy guides when it comes to finding the good stuff (I know, understatement). This past year I spent a lot of time searching (okay, like every year). I traveled down endless rabbit holes, watching, reading, and listening to all sorts, every day, in the hope of unearthing something special. While 2021 saw me queuing up Hall & Oates’s “Wait For Me” for roughly the ten trillionth time in my life, I also kept up the dig for new stuff like the world’s nerdiest musical loving gopher ( can’t stop, won’t stop).
Welcome to PuR’s 50 Best Songs of 2021!
It was extraordinarily difficult to consolidate this list to 50 entries. The playlist they emerged from was 600 songs long and that list was an edited version of an even larger one (again, nerd here).The list is a little weird and idiosyncratic. And it is full of heart-squeezingly, dirty wonderful songs and people who collectively represent the only reason I remain on speaking terms with 2021. I should note that it is in no particular order because as my Mom still says “I love all you kids the same” 😉
You can listen below on Soundcloud or Spotify.
I genuinely, honestly and sincerely, hope you find something or someone you love within these 50 fine, foxy and fabulous things. Rock on and keep breathing…
THANKS TO ALL THE ARTISTS & CREATORS OF THESE WONDERFUL SONGS, YOU ARE THE SUN.
AND THANKS TO THE LOYAL AND ENDLESSLY WONDROUS PuR READERS, YOU ARE THE REASON.
Listen on Soundcloud
Listen on Spotify
PICKING UP ROCKS 