My Year in Music - 2023

Tom Petty, Fleetwood Mac, Dead & Co., and the Eels

[Listen to this article’s Voiceover to hear this article read by me, along with samples of the music I discuss. The Voiceover is also available as a Podcast.]

This year, I will look back on both the recorded music that has defined my year, and also the live musical experiences. Both experiences have defining moments for 2023. I'll start with the recordings, and then discuss the live experiences afterwards.

Recordings

This year, two albums stand towering above the rest. This is no repeat of last year's review. In fact, these two albums could not be more different than last year's.

Into the Great Wide Open - Tom Petty

It was early this year when my friend, Adam, played the eponymous third track of this album to me. It's a winding rock ballad following Eddie, a young guy who finishes high school, goes to Hollywood, and gets into the music business, only to experience the typical ups and downs, trials and tribulations that the music business can bring. The story itself is not unique - we've heard it a hundred times - but two things bring it the depth and brilliance that require repeated listens. First, Tom Petty brings his decade of experience in the industry, which lurks behind Eddie's own experiences. Eddie is an everyman, but he's also Tom. Second, the chorus: "Into the great wide open / under the sky so blue / into the great wide open / a rebel without a clue." Especially with those wide-open chords, the chorus universalizes Eddie's experience to an almost existential, brutal reality that we can all relate to. The great wide open is possibility itself, in all its terror and freedom.

There's something about the sky, so blue, that emphasizes this, too. (Astute listeners will note that "blue" lands on the first minor chord of the chorus, adding to the double-meaning.)

Slowly my listening sessions of this song would bleed through to the whole album: the song that follows, "Two Gunslingers", has a similarly excellent story about two gunslingers who "walk out in the street / and one says 'I don't want to fight no more' / and the other gunslinger thought about it and he said, 'yeah, what are we fighting for?'" before the chorus, "I'm taking control of my life / I'm taking control of my life / I'm taking control of my life now / right now / oh, yeah." The story expands to the reaction of the crowd, and it's a great song about breaking free from the "bad faith" revolving around how you identify with your work: again, the parallel to Petty's own career isn't hard to find, given that the gunslingers realize they're doing this whole show for the crowd, and not for themselves: taking control of their life means doing what they want to do, rather than doing something for the demanding crowd who expects them to perform just because they showed up!

In this and Tom Petty's final album, Highway Companion, Petty is able to smuggle in these deep insights into the nature of existence, and of his own life and career, into what sound like rather superficial pop/rock lyrics. And that's what makes his music so rewarding upon a re-listen.

Say You Will - Fleetwood Mac

I must confess, I also discovered this album through my friend, Adam. He was cutting my hair early in the year and put this album on in the background and said, "I've been listening to this Fleetwood Mac album, and it's really good."

And I'll be honest, I liked a couple of the songs that I heard, but in general, I thought it sounded a bit busy and experimental. Something that maybe Adam would appreciate, but that wasn't up my street.

Well, the first song on the album got under my skin: "What's the World Coming To", and the rest is history. That's my most-listened to song of the year on Apple Music.

In that song, Lindsey Buckingham's accusatory and tragic voice floats dissonantly over the music, rhetorically asking "what's the world coming to?" before listing so many of the things that don't seem right anymore. What is especially apparent in this song, but is also absolutely consistent across the album, is Mick Fleetwood's impeccable clockwork on the drums. In less capable hands, each of the album's songs could have been produced into mediocrity, but here, each track is bathed in a complex production that brings out the absolute best in every song.

Late this year, my friend Adam and I were in a record store in Big Bear, CA. He found a copy of this very record and kindly purchased it for me. While we were checking out, a guy in his fifties was checking out the record: he was a fan of the band, but didn't know this album. Adam said, "this is my second-favorite album from them." The guy responded, "what's your first?" Adam said, "well, it's gotta be Rumours," and the guy had already started reacting. He pursed his cheeks and furrowed his brow, putting on a show of disappointment: "oh, come on! You know, their early stuff is really good. Real bluesy."

Adam and I walked out of the store into the brisk air - this was the last weekbefore winter hit the town. Rumours is objectively their best album. Sheer enduring popularity of a number of the songs from it prove that true, even if you are suspicious of correlating popularity with quality, like I am. Dreams, The Chain, Second Hand News, Songbird, Never Going Back... the album is simply filled with hit singles that each stand entirely on their own and yet produce an album greater than the sum of its transcendent parts. I believe Adam or I said something like "duck hat sky."

Say You Will is not Rumours, but it's a damn good album, containing just as much vitriol and heartbreak and emotion, but in a completely different package. It's not trying to be Rumours, either. It stands on its own, and it's brilliant. The album is essentially an album's worth of songs from Buckingham matched by an album's worth of songs from a career-best Stevie Nicks, complete with two album-closing songs with "goodbye" in their titles. And it's all the better for it, because it's taken me all year to really know this album. Now that I do, my life is richer for it.

Live Experiences

2023 will be a tough year to beat when it comes to live music. I did not attend Taylor Swift's Eras Tour, though my wife did and assures me it was the best night of her life. Despite that rave review, I wasn't there to confirm and so unfortunately, it cannot be included here.

I did attend First Aid Kit's concert in LA on their Palomino tour, which included a private acoustic set prior to the show, which was pretty epic. They're one of my favorite younger bands at the moment, and every time I see them live, I'm reminded that they are probably one of my favorite bands period.

But my top two experiences were each a pair of musical experiences, two artists that I saw twice.

Eels - Lockdown Hurricane Tour

I've been an Eels fan ever since Yes Man came out in 2008. Eels did the music for that Jim Carrey movie, and the addictive and totally cool drum beat of Bus Stop Boxer beneath E's raspy, gruff, monotone, near-spoken-word singing has been stuck in my head for the last fifteen years.

I last saw Eels live in London in 2013, and it was a proper ROCK concert in the best way. I knew that after waiting (literally) years to take this tour on the road due to COVID, the Eels would be ready to rock again.

And they were. My concert-loving friend Aaron joined me in San Diego, and again two nights later in Los Angeles, to enjoy a full two nights of rock. It was a surprisingly emotional concert experience for me, hearing the songs live again that essentially formed my musical foundation, and inspired me to sing, play the guitar, and perform. (My first musical performance singing was a rendition of Eels's "Mansions of Los Feliz".)

Dead & Company - The Final Tour

The standout live musical experience of the year has to be the back-to-back shows of Dead & Co. at The Forum over the summer during their final farewell tour. I didn't discover the Dead until my friends Aaron and Ryan invited me to a show at the Hollywood Bowl back in 2021. Now, I'm totally hooked and can't believe I wasn't hooked sooner.

Those who know, know that a Dead show isn't just about the music. It's a whole experience, and frankly, we need more of that. In many ways, going to a Dead show is like going back in time. The fans are free-spirited, the smell of weed slithers through the air, people spin in the halls for hours. John Mayer made that guitar sing like nothing else, and the rest of the band were impeccable. It was a musical treat each night. By far, my top musical experience of the year.

Follow Up From Last Year

Last year, I discussed Erik Satie's Gnossiennes, Daft Punk's Random Access Memories, and Sofiane Pamart's PLANET. This year, I discovered a new album of Satie's Gnossiennes performed by Noriko Ogawa on an 1890 piano that has been pretty mesmerizing. Daft Punk have released a drumless version of Random Access Memories, which I wrote about here, and Sofiane Pamart released a new album worth listening to.

Conclusion

2023 was a great year for music. Here's to hoping 2024 is just as good. Happy listening!