This year, I hardly downloaded any music from iTunes at all. Life, you know. I could just never find the time or the energy to explore iTunes like I had in years previous. I love music more than just about everything else, so I’m deeply saddened about all of the songs that I never got to hear. Hopefully, in 2009 I’ll be able get onto iTunes on a more regular basis.

And then I ended up not really liking or loving the few songs that I did manage to download. Below, you’ll find my little notation system that I use to code the year’s musical purchases.


Code Key:

L: I love this song.
•: I like this song, a lot.
C: A cover of a song that I had already liked or loved.

Song of the Year: Cloud Cult’s Pretty Voice. I downloaded this song on 2 June 2008, but I have no clue as to how I discovered that it was out there for me to love. I did download Cloud Cult’s Chemicals Collide on 25 November 2007, and I did like it, but I’m not sure that I liked it enough to, five months later, go back to iTunes to look for more songs from this band.

The song’s lovely. So lovely that I played it thirty-two times on the day that I downloaded it. So lovely that I named a Poker Report after some of its lyrics. So lovely that I’ll occasionally watch a video of Cloud Cult performing this song in a radio station performance space.

It’s got a male lead with some female harmonizing from two of the band’s instrumentalists. It’s got all of the standard rock band instruments. It’s also got cello and violin, and those two instruments were designed, I think, to hurt you, to make sorrow well up inside you, to make you fill with regret.

That’s good stuff. Regret and sorrow and hurt, I mean. Perhaps not for the life, but it’s great for art.

Code  --  Song Title  --  Artist  --  Album  --  Play Count
L  --  Pretty Voice  --  Cloud Cult  --  The Meaning of 8  --  160
L C  --  Running Up That Hill  --  Chromatics  --  Night Drive  --  129
L C  --  How Deep Is Your Love  --  The Bird And The Bee  --  Please Clap Your Hands - EP  --  68
•  --  C'mon C'mon  --  The Von Bondies  --  Pawn Shoppe Heart  --  56
C  --  God Only Knows  --  Neil Diamond  --  I'm Glad You're Here With Me Tonight  --  48
--  Little Eyes  --  Yo La Tengo  --  Summer Sun  --  44
•  --  You Don't Have to Be a Star  --  Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis Jr.  --  I Hope We Get to Love In Time  --  43
--  You and I Are a Gang of Losers  --  The Dears  --  Gang of Losers  --  38
L C  --  Wild Is the Wind  --  Cat Power  --  The Covers Record  --  31
--  Some Velvet Morning  --  Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood  --  Nancy & Lee  --  29
--  Anyone Else But You  --  The Moldy Peaches  --  The Moldy Peaches  --  28
--  Silver Lining  --  Rilo Kiley  --  Under the Blacklight  --  23
•  --  You Don't Know Me  --  Ray Charles  --  Ray Charles: A Man, a Voice, a Piano  --  23
L  --  Apache  --  Incredible Bongo Band  --  Bongo Rock  --  20
C  --  Revelator  --  Allison Moorer  --  Mockingbird  --  19
• C  --  These Eyes  --  Junior Walker & The All Stars  --  The Ultimate Collection: Junior Walker & The All Stars  --  16
C  --  In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida  --  Incredible Bongo Band  --  Bongo Rock  --  14
C  --  Revelator  --  Glen Phillips  --  Unlucky 7  --  12
--  Blackwater  --  David Sylvian  --  Everything and Nothing  --  1