Welcome to another edition of For The Record, a semi-regular good ol’ fashioned link drop, and benefit for paid supporters of On Repeat. If you’d like to join us, we’d be thrilled to have you!
This week, we’ve got Pearl Jam, Prince, GBV, and The Paranoid Style.
All of that and a lot more! Let’s get right into it.
I don’t know if crowning a “song of the summer” is possible anymore, let alone a thing. Maybe I’m (again) showing my age here, but in an era of fractured listening habits spread across multiple platforms, do we still collectively listen to the same things? I would posit that we don’t. There are outliers (hi Taylor!), and the Billboard charts still exist, but even they are a world away from what they were just a few years ago.
Lest this devolve into another “old man yells at cloud” post, ask yourself this: can you name the top songs of the year for the last 2-3 years? Is/was there a song that dominated any of those summer seasons? For that last one, I’m genuinely asking; and I certainly can’t answer the former, either.
Even with the advantage of looking at this list, I still couldn’t picture it. I recognize a lot of the tracks, and unapologetically love 2016’s pick, but I don’t remember any of the choices from 2013-23 being a summer song in the way we’ve traditionally thought of them.
What do you think?
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