For The Record- 02. September. 2023

This town used to look like a city.

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!

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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.

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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?