Annivyrsary: 2010
ISSUE #97
I've got nothing but a playlist for you. You'd think there'd be plenty of time to write a good issue with all this social distance on my hands, yet here we are. I guess it's fitting for 2010, the year I perfected procrastinating. Turns out ten years changes nothing at all—back then, I skipped swim practice to play Animal Crossing on Wii. Now, I skip Earwyrms to play Animal Crossing on Switch.
The real reason I had no time to write was I got so sucked in to making the damn playlist. It had to be longer this time, both because I had so much material (it was the year of my musical awakening) and because we could all use a longer escape. I got lost in the progression of the tracks—I channeled the energy of the old station wagon I got that year and the CDs I would burn for those drives where I'd piece together stories from the order of the songs.
That car eventually lost its heat, and I couldn't drive in the winter without five blankets on my lap—the Ice Wagon, we called it. The songs of 2010 were the soundtrack to this, my frozen teen (or teenage) dream, when I worried I'd be miserable forever. But ten years has taught me one important thing—maybe nothing lasts, but even terrible things eventually get easier.
1984 has been called the greatest year in pop, and I think it might still be true. If 1974 was music’s fallow period, ten years later was its opposite. We danced in the dark beneath the killing moon and under purple rain—this was the year the critics and the people met in the Minneapolis streets.