Category: Best of the Year Playlists

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

Saturday morning at 5 am was awoken by FDNY banging on all the doors of my east village NYC building & telling us to get out asap. It was one of those just the clothes on your back situations. We hustled outside to see 2 buildings engulfed in flames including the 128 year old Middle Collegiate Church only one building down from us. Burning embers were falling like snowflakes everywhere. It was terrifying & sad. Sat in the nearby shelter for a while worrying if my neighbors & myself were gonna lose everything. Blessedly FDNY got things under control & we were able to go back home after hours of non-stop worry. There was still a lot of destruction but the people were okay. It could have been even worse…but everyone’s still here.

This is not how I intended or ever imagined I’d present the PuR 50 Best Songs of 2020 Playlist but you know, the experience was so utterly in keeping with this nightmare of a year we are all trying to survive.

I wrote the stuff below before all that happened & in some ways it feels overly romantic & trivial but at the same time maybe it’s more meaningful now…right, so now I offer the original intro to the joy that is the PuR Best 50 Songs of 2020 Playlist written about a week ago …

One night in mid-November, I was putting together a playlist for this very blog at a time I was admittedly feeling kind of emo. Shit was seeming particularly overwhelming, sad & futile. I hit play on a random song & suddenly some internal wire was tripped & boom, just like that I was crying. Oddly, my first thought was not about a specific problem…it was that I couldn’t believe how something could sound so good, so gorgeously alive in the midst of the misery. It was a song I’d never heard before by an artist I didn’t know. It was a weird & powerful moment. Hey, it’s okay to roll your eyes. In regards to what 2020 felt like I know how on the nose that anecdote sounds…but it happened just like that. Fact is through all of 2020’s mayhem, there were still things being created, fussed over & invented, there was still plenty of dreaming happening, artists still made wondrous & crazy art.

The mission of the Picking Up Rocks blog has always been the same, to shine a light on the best music regardless of label affiliation or level of fame or social media presence or genre or perceived coolness because WHO CARES. A great song is a great song. And whenever I stumble upon a great song I want to share it no matter if it was born in a garage, someone’s bedroom, a state of the art studio or a freakin’ garden shed (dammit)!

And now we present PuR’s 50 Best Songs of 2020. You can listen on Spotify or Soundcloud but should note that since a few songs are not available on both platforms they are each a tiny bit different ( just think of it as an approximately 3 song bonus each way). You can not only hear the track that inspired all the aforementioned waterworks, Gilah’s “Better Young” but a bunch of other truly gorgeous & wonderful songs. Mostly I hope you discover or rediscover something that embraces you equally as hard & fills you with love & hope even if it’s just for a minute.

THANKS TO ALL THE ARTISTS & CREATORS OF THESE WONDERFUL SONGS, YOU ARE THE SUN

Listen on Soundcloud:

Listen on Spotify:

The mission of Picking Up Rocks has always been the same, to shine a light on the best pop music regardless of label affiliation or level of fame or social media presence or perceived coolness…because who cares. A great song is a great song. And whenever we stumble upon a great song ( and there were a lot in 2019) we want to share it with you no matter if it was born in a garage, someone’s bedroom, a state of the art studio or a freakin’ treehouse !

Did that sound angry ? I swear it’s unintentional, guess I’m just weary of seeing the same songs mentioned on every year end list. Look, I genuinely like Lil Nas X, Lizzo and Billie Eilish. But know who released songs as good as theirs this year ? Kingsbury, Whitelands and The Hails. It’s okay if you haven’t heard all of them because that’s why we’re here, to both celebrate them and maybe introduce you if you haven’t.

I have listened to thousands upon thousands of songs this year because I am a crazy person who is always looking for a song to alter and upend the daily grind. Culling the master list down to the 50 best has been both nightmarish ( because there were lots of goods) and revelatory ( had forgotten just how good certain songs were) but we did it ! And so here they are, PuR’s TOP 50 SONGS OF 2019 ! 50 awesomely wonderful tracks by some equally wonderful artists all neatly arranged for you to listen on Soundcloud or Spotify ( links below). It’s my sincerest hope that you’ll discover something or someone within in who rocks your life and makes you swoon or at least say fuck yeah repeatedly.

THANKS TO ALL THE ARTISTS FOR THESE AWESOME SONGS, YOU ARE THE SUN.

Soundcloud:

Spotify:

Thousands of songs were released into the world this year. Here are our 66 favorites.

I know what you’re thinking. Oh no, not another one. The barrage of “Best of the Year” lists is making you sick. You think they are boring and are all filled with the same predictable choices. And… I see your point. You’d think with the thousands upon thousands of songs that get released every year there would be more variation. And okay, while there are a few things that we can universally agree were GOOD this past year, like say the boygenius EP, or Tierra Whack’s “Whack World”, the contents of these lists can appear kind of samey after you’ve perused a handful, especially from the bigger online publications. Yes. That is true. I agree with you…but I live in hope. No matter how samey they seem to get after even reading through 2 or 3, I am one of those people who takes the time to do it anyway. Not just so I can talk shiz about why a particular record should or shouldn’t be there ( mostly the latter), but also because maybe, just maybe, I’ll stumble upon something I haven’t heard before. There’s usually at least one exceptional oddball lurking amongst the familiar picks on these lists…but okay, wouldn’t it be way cooler if we lived in a world where these lists didn’t look anything like one another? One where there was no consensus on what was “good”? Where all the picks were all as weird, personal and WTF as they could possibly be? Imagine how deep the discovery rabbit hole could get then. Okay, that is probably an f-ing insane nerd thing to say, but we’ve gotta follow our hearts around here. And with that as our driving force, here is the official PuR Top Songs of 2018 Playlist! It contains 66 heart-swellingly beautiful songs, each of which has been at the top of the charts here at PuR at some point over the past 12 months, which is to say they aren’t in any particular order. Also the “66” has nothing to do with Satan. It’s just that 100 songs always feels like way too much and whittling the list down to 50 proved to be an impossible task.  Or maybe it was Satan being a wise guy, it’s been that kind of a year. Anyway I truly hope you find it weird and maybe wonderful and that you stumble upon a song you have a deranged yet passionate affair with or at least discover an artist who gets you.

And THANKS to all these wonderful artists for all of these kick ass beautiful songs. Don’t stop. And THANKS to you for reading this far now or at any point during 2018. You are all songs of the year. THANK YOU.

Hear it on Soundcloud:

Hear it on Spotify:

• Please note while each list is 66 glorious songs long, they are slightly different as not all songs are available on both streaming services ( just a few !)…which means you should check out both so you don’t miss anything !

I’m not going to rant about what a great/bad year it’s been in music because really every year, since lord knows when, there have been brilliantly, wonderful, and transcendent songs being born into the world, as well as, you know, less than transcendent ones, and to qualify a year as “unparalleled”, or “bad”, or “disappointing”, well, it’s all pretty subjective, and yes, I’ll save you a seat here on the fence next to me.

” Round numbers are overrated…or I’ve decided they are for a minute”

Okay, there are an odd number of tracks because I opted for honesty over cleanliness but I aspire to like a perfectly round number of songs in 2018 ( editors note: good luck with that). And also these songs aren’t ranked in any particular order…and there aren’t a lot of mega-hits in the conventional sense ( except in some magnificent alternate universe light years away in which case all these songs were # 1, for a day each at least). And a bunch of these artists haven’t “blown up” quite yet so to speak, which makes it a real joy to exult them here, from amongst the millions of others. And hey, did also include a few standout tracks from some of the bigger names we already know, and maybe love, so it’s one big authentic “Rocks” overview of 2017.

I was going to write a line about each song, but that seemed insane, and so I’ll just leave you with this : within this list are songs to enhance any daily activity including crying, staring out train windows, pondering existence, plotting a better 2018, performing manual labor, or screaming your head off.

Lastly want to say love to all these ridiculously wonderful bands for making these ridiculously wonderful songs: you all rule. And one more thing, thank YOU to anyone reading/listening, or in anyway acknowledging this very, very small blog. I’m gonna keep going even if there’s only one of you because dammit, it’s worth it. THANK YOU !

* The lists are slightly different as not all tracks are offered on both Soundcloud, and Spotify i.e. just a tiny handful of difference, mostly the fact that the established tend to be  only on the Spotify, while the up and coming tend to be mostly on the Soundcloud, so try ’em both. Okay, go turn it up !

Soundcloud: Best of 2017 ! Right Here !:

Spotify: Best of 2017 !: