Some of you know I religiously check out the New Releases on Spotify every Tuesday night.  This sounds like a lot of work if you think about all the new releases from every genre that’s released every week but it’s pretty easy for me and really doesn’t take longer than around 30 minutes.

I’m a speed listener, if you will.  I know within a few seconds of listening to a song if I’m going to like it or not.  I listen to the first few seconds of a song then skip to somewhere around the middle and listen for a few seconds.  I then make a decision on whether or not that song deserves to be placed on my “Starred” playlist for further exploration later.

Don’t preach to me that I’m missing out on a lot or that I’m not a music purist because I don’t buy into the whole “album as a concept” philosophy.  There are a few exceptions where the whole album as a concept thing has worked and actually made sense and I’ve respected and liked those albums much more for it but those instances are few and far between.

Side rant or as my husband calls it, “Look!  Something Shiny”!:  I think music snobbery/bullying is at a peak right now.  I’ve actually been called narrow minded because I didn’t want to listen to some bearded dude’s wrist slasher of an album which he made all by himself in a secluded log cabin in Bumfuck, Idaho using only tin cans, string he made himself from squirrel innards, a blank cassette and a boombox.

Bad music is bad music and I don’t have time for it.  Listening to a song I instantly don’t like another dozen times will not warm me up to it.  Also, if a song title includes the words “truck”, “dog”, “trailer” or “badonkadonk”, I don’t even listen.  Trace Adkins is totally fucked based solely on that criteria.  And if you’ve ever written a song that included those words, I say to you, sir or madam:  Fuck you and stop making the collective South look like a bunch of stupid ass wipes.

I’m actually not in a bad mood.  I promise.

I realize that music is very personal.  That song you absolutely love, I may loathe with a level of hatred not known to man ever before and vice versa but I happen to think I have a pretty broad range of musical interests.  I have everything from Mozart to Slayer in my music library.  The concerts I have seen or will see this year range from St. Paul & The Broken Bones to Rob Zombie.  I love a very well made country song.  Well, ones that don’t include the words truck, dog, trailer or badonkadonk.

With all that said, when I add a new song to my Starred playlist, I give it a few days.  Most do not prove themselves worthy to become a regular fixture in my life so they are deleted and banished to my music graveyard forever, God rest their souls.

I listen to a lot of music.  A lot.  You would be shocked if I broke it down.  I thought it’d be fun to go back through the last few months of my Spotify listening records and make a playlist of new releases or at least recent releases that survived culling and were not voted off the island.

 

These songs won’t be for everyone but I’m betting if you’re friends with me, you’ll gain a few new favorites yourself.  Let me know in the comments if I introduced you to your new favorite or if I introduced you to an artist you’ve never heard before.  If you’re that crazy bearded dude with the squirrel innards, just go away.  I hear Trace Adkins is really lonely.