Oh sods, it's Wrapped

Yes, it is the time of year when Spotify generate an enormous amount of free press and show off the prowess of that engineering team model they told us all to use, by showing everyone on the service this.

But once you get over the point at which a huge demand spike meets a company which doesn't even understand "no network connection means that network requests won't work", we have some sort of What You Were The Listen Of In 2023. Excluding December, for reasons.

This is mine and I will now take this as an opportunity to comment upon my Top 12. Why 12? Because that's how the charts started in 1952. Although I don't have Al Martino on mine.

#1: Charlotte Sands - Alright

Sands is someone I've watched right from the start of her music career taking off, way back when it was straight-up '90s style pop punk, and while I'm not keen on all the things which hew away from that guitary base point this one hits just perfectly for me. I love the combination of candid honesty and optimism in those lyrics. I listen to this and think that's the future of pop: not perfect, but it's gonna be alright.

Although if I go to Boston it's more likely to be the one in Lincolnshire.

#2: George Harrison - If Not For You

"All Things Must Pass" is one of those things I've always allowed to... well, pass me by and yes that's the level we're going for here. Then I got to the early '70s in my charts project and oh, hello, "If Not For You". Admittedly the Olivia Newton-John version, but there's a reason Harrison's is here and hers isn't. I swear half the play count for this was racked up listening to it 3 or 4 times in a row because it takes a rough-edged Bob Dylan record and makes it dreamy and beautiful.

Post-'68 Harrison is the songwriting gift the Beatles never knew they had, and even on someone else's material there are so many new accents and pieces of slide guitar that he makes this feel his own.

#3: Flamin' Groovies/The Courettes - Shake Some Action

Immediate points here for basing the structure on the rough-and-tumble 1973 LA version on early singles over the smoother 1972 Rockfield one used on the album, because while both are great there is one style which works for the Courettes' mid-'60s style stomp and it's this one.

Cutting a path somewhere between a Spector-produced girl group record and the meaty British Invasion sounds of the Groovies' earlier incarnation with Roy Loney, this is a fine version. I'm glad it's here because I'd feel like a fraud if I got my Top 12 and the Flamin' Groovies weren't on it somewhere.

#4: The Strawbs - Lay Down

I wrote off the Strawbs for years because I thought they did "Part Of The Union" and that was about it, and was that ever a mistake. This is about all I could want from an early '70s rock record, with satisfyingly chunky guitar, a nice bed of organ, and rough-cut singing.

#5: Buffy Sainte-Marie - The Angel

Yeah! Not just a Buffy Sainte-Marie record, but one off 1969's "Illuminations", the weird electronic one which made record company Vanguard rather cross, muttering things about "sales" and "broad commercial appeal to the country and western market".

Screw 'em, because we got some great experimentation and this, where the spare arrangement against Sainte-Marie's famous vibrato gives it a chilling, otherwordly feel while somehow also being gentle and warming. Somehow I ended up listening to this every time I drove to the supermarket for about 3 months.

#6: Tom Jones - Green, Green Grass Of Home

It's soup in record form. One of those really thick soups that clings to your ribs, as people who're old enough to have gone to see Tom Jones in his prime might say. I am unashamed in my love of the finer moments of Treforest's loudest son, and this convict lament hits that ideal combination of lavishly instrumented and also sort of sad for me.

#1 over Christmas 1966, and really I think there's been a few years recently where it would have been nicer for everyone had it repeated the feat.

#7: Charlotte Sands - Six Feet Under

It opens with a solid minute of lyrics I cannot think how to improve in any way. Sands is a great songwriter, and I could easily imagine this being on tape decks in cars bought for less than £500 in the early 2000s. Maybe a bit less modern-sounding.

#8: Eilen Jewell - Rain Roll in

There's a point sooner or later in these where I will have spent an awful lot of time listening to one particular alt-country record, and here it is. Pleasantly lazy and easygoing, although I'm not quite sure how I racked up this many listens of it.

#9: Pom Pom Squad - Crimson + Clover

What I love about modern pop-punk is it has this wonderful attitude of just not caring about what you're "supposed" to do. Pitch-perfect cover of a Tommy James and the Shondells song that's possibly older than their parents? Hey, why not?

As the Pixies discovered with their UK surf version of "Wave Of Mutilation", slowing this down and making it breathier somehow makes it heavier, meaner, and coming across like it rocks quite a bit more than it did in 1968. Although they didn't quite go for full intensity with the tremolo on the vocals, meaning you can't emulate this by hitting your throat as you sing.

#10: Cowboy Junkies - Misguided Angel

My dog really likes this record. I do too, but I feel that dog thing's an important fact to get out there. One of those smoky, late-night records which I feel go best with a glass of Scotch in hand.

#11: Good Charlotte - The Young & The Hopeless

I am a middle-aged man driving an estate car. At the point I'm whacking this on and the volume up, I think I need a re-recorded version called "The Old & The Tragic". I'm not sure it was even all that un-tragic when this record was new.

I care not.

#12: All Time Low - Modern Love

There's a part of me which wants to describe this as "rock Mika", and a bigger part of me which is pretty sure that's accurate.

Besides, what's not to like about pop-punk which makes you grin like you're listening to "Grace Kelly"? I do enjoy how much of this scene mines outright pop just as much as it references those turn-of-the-century pop-punk and emo tropes.

And that makes 12. For reference, Nancy & Lee's "Elusive Dreams" made #24 in my list this year. Evidently I need to take more long baths with a speaker on the windowsill.