My 2018 Soundtrack

Since 2002, each December I have compiled a mix CD or playlist to document the past year--a soundtrack that charts memorable moments, trends, and events in my life over the preceding twelve months.

The rules are as follows:
-The collection must be short enough to fit on a standard 80-minute CD.
-The song choices are not bound by “favorites” so much as songs that are, in my mind, distinctively connected to the preceding year.

I’ll be honest that 2018 was a busy year that didn’t necessarily see me indulge very ambitiously in new music, or think of how to link it to my life as purposefully as I have in some years past. Additionally, it’s a year when I spent a lot of what listening time I did have engaging with podcasts over music. So, it’s a relatively short playlist this time around, but here goes.

1. "New Year’s Day" by Taylor Swift
From my very first listen to this cheesy, sentimental soft closer to the Reputation album, I felt a soft spot for this song. The refrain that, “I’ll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year’s Day”—which is probably intended to capture a sense of friendship or romantic partnership that bleeds into the day after the party--took on new meaning to me on my own New Year’s Day. 2017 ended in a whirl of pregnancy into the birth of our son. As 2018 started, attending a New Year’s Eve party the way we might have in years past was the farthest thing from our mind—a couple hours socializing with neighbors was the most social interaction Heather and I had collectively had in a month.

And the next day? We were back to cleaning Riley’s bottles, because as I imagine most people who’ve had children know, holidays with a newborn are more like any other day than a celebration; we were just keeping our heads above water keeping up with the day to day, cleaning up bottles together on New Year’s Day.

2. “About You” by G Flip
I came upon about via a song of the day podcast that I subscribe to and tend to catch up with in clusters. It was an instant favorite for its oddball mixture of styles and textures and became the first new song I discovered in 2018 that I truly loved. Moreover, it became sort of an unofficial anthem for the spurious connections I drew between it and the novel I drafted over the course of the spring semester.

3. The Daniel Tiger theme song
Before he was necessarily ready for TV, or could appreciate it, we began showing Riley Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. It’s a fun enough, sweet show, if a bit grating if watched in a high enough concentration without adult entertainment in between.

The theme song makes the list not only for watching the show with our kid, but because Riley did at least come to find comfort in the song itself. Particularly for long car rides, playing it on repeat was one of the few surefire ways to quiet his crying for at least a short stretch.

4. “Rebel Heart” by CFO$
As a wrestling fan, I treat WrestleMania weekend like a holiday. The NXT TakeOver: New Orleans show was pretty exceptional—far better than ‘Mania itself—highlighted by Johnny Gargano squaring off against arch-rival Tommaso Ciampa. “Rebel Heart” is Gargano’s entrance song and after months of not really following NXT, the image of him intensely coming to the ring for what would be a sensational match has stuck with me.

4. “Moptops (Twist While the World Stops)” by EMA
This was another instant favorite from a song of the day podcast, and one that instantly takes me back to early morning drives to teach my 8 a.m. section of composition, after earlier wake-ups with Riley.

5. “Desire” by Ryan Adams
In the interest of re-purposing the hours a day spent feeding Riley from a bottle, I started very purposefully trying to watch my way through whole TV series that I’d always meant to if time ever presented itself. The best of them was The West Wing, which I had watched the first two seasons of in real time and let go when I first left home for college.

The show isn’t as objectively, consistently strong after Aaron Sorkin left at the end of season four, but one of my favorite few-minute sequences of it came in the season six episode “King Corn.” Bereft of the show’s signature fast-moving dialogue, the music carries the closing moments of the show portraying different characters on the campaign trail, and hinting at what might be ahead for the biggest will-they-won’t-they relationship of the show.

6. “Song for the Road” by David Ford
Heather, Riley, and I traveled to Asheville for a wedding in the late spring. For the first time, we handed off Riley to someone else’s care for a period of hours as Heather’s mom took point with him at our rental cottage a few minutes’ walk from the venue.

It was a beautiful ceremony and reception, highlighted by the groom serenading the bride with this sweet song that I hadn’t heard up to that point.

7. “All You Got Is Gold” by The Great Escape
This song opens the “Bent-Neck Lady” episode of The Haunting of Hill House, my main Halloween season indulgence this year. While I thought the show on the whole was good, but not great, this episode in and of itself was very strong, and this is the sweet song from an early sequence of it.

7. “The Harvest” and 8. ”Prophecy Girl” by Jenny Owens Young
This fall, I discovered and quickly became enamored with Buffering the Vampire Slayer, a podcast dedicated to episode-by-episode dissection of my favorite TV series. One of the quirky elements of the show is co-host and singer-songwriter Jenny Owens Young performing a song to summarize each episode. “The Harvest” was probably my favorite iteration, though the song dedicated to season one finale “Prophecy Girl” was a close second. The refrain of “Just keep fighting” felt like an inspirational nudge at a point in the fall semester when I felt worn down with childcare, grading, and freelance work, and didn’t have time to write, go to the gym, or otherwise much take care of myself.

9. “Sing to Me” by Cumulus
This was my favorite song of the day podcast find of the fall, and regularly accompanied on my way to teach early morning classes.

10. “Happy, Happy Christmas” by Ingrid Michaelson
Come December, I’m a sucker for all things Christmas related—foremost among them, holiday movies and music. This Michaelson original from her 2016 Songs for the Season album was my favorite new find for the season. It sounds like Michaelson at her most experimental and combines sentimentality with sorrow and an alternative bent in delightful ways. I listened to this whole album a lot this month, but this song stood out.

11. "Please Come Home for Christmas" from The Mistle-Tones
The Mistle-Tones is an objectively terrible wad of holiday schmaltz courtesy of ABC Family. And I love it.

This song is performed as the big feel-good finale to film, and I linked its unabashedly celebratory feel to the news the book deal news that rolled in for me this December.