BOXES & LISTS: MUSIC 2010

Release dates feel so amorphous in the digital age, and since I am also extremely lazy, I am not going to dig through my music collection and figure out what actually came out last year. Rather, I'll let someone else's statistical tracking of my listening habits create a picture of 2010.

According to my LastFm account, the top 15 artists I listened to the most in the last 12 months are:

1. Christina Aguilera - 1,055 individual song plays
2. Gorillaz - 722
3. Brett Anderson - 614
4 Janelle Monáe - 577
5. The Trash Can Sinatras - 547
6. Brian Eno - 434
7. Rihanna - 378
8. Massive Attack - 377
9. Suede - 360
10. Charlotte Gainsbourg - 354
11. M.I.A. - 334
12. Paul Weller - 327
13. Ash - 321
14. Broken Bells - 303
15. The Roots - 300

To be fair, I should also note some of the most prolific listens from the last 3 months, accounting for late year releases who had to do some catching up:

Belle & Sebastian - 245
Nicki Minaj - 202
Bruno Mars - 197
Duffy - 164
Bryan Ferry - 154

As far as individual songs are concerned, the picture is cloudier, dominated by the artists who ruled the overall charts. Out of the top 15, four are Christina Aguilera, one is by Broken Bells, and the rest are Brett Anderson.

Top of the list is Christina's "Lift Me Up" at 59 plays, followed by "Not Myself Tonight" at 43, "You Lost Me" at 42, and a few slots down, "Birds of Prey" at 39.

Brett Anderson's "The Hunted" dominated at 40, and the rest of his Slow Attack album was right behind with plays in the 30s.

Broken Bells' "The High Road" had 37 plays.

Other big ones:
M.I.A. - "XXXO" - 35
Metric - "Black Sheep" - 26
Bruno Mars - "Grenade" - 21
Duffy - "Well, Well, Well" and "Endlessly" - both at 18
Belle & Sebastian - "I Want the World to Stop" - 15
Christina Aguilera - "Express" - 15
Rihanna – "Only Girl (In The World)" - 14
Nicki Minaj - "Right Thru Me" - 14
My Chemical Romance – "Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)" - 12

Most of those had the cuts from their albums hovering at numbers just below their main hit entry. Metric is really the only individual song that pushed through, and that is off a pretty killer soundtrack; there is no great one-off single lurking around, sadly enough.

I wish I had thought to record what my total play count was at this time 12 months ago so I could see how many songs I listened to this year. For posterity, in case we try again in 365 days, Last FM says I have listened to 165,017 songs in some digital format or other since June 18, 2007.

Current Soundtrack: Lily Allen, It's Not You, It's Me (I woke up with "Not Fair" stuck in my head)