This was our second year doing this annual musical time capsule. I wrote about how we try to create these playlists before, and here is our 2021 playlist. Bethany had this idea in late 2021, but 2022 was quite a bit different, as we were paying attention to music the whole year through. This gave us a lot more range to our playlist, which is a good thing! I'll go through the whole list song by song below, but for ease of access, here is the entire playlist with YouTube links and in the order that we finally settled on at the end of the year (WARNING! Explicit lyrics!):
Ordered for flow, not by ranking of preference
- Sam Ryder - Space Man
- Em Beihold - Numb Little Bug
- Sarah Cothran - As The World Caves In
- Kate Bush - Running Up That Hill
- Elohim & AWOLNATION - flagpole sitta
- Catie Turner - God Must Hate Me
- Taylor Swift - Karma
- Air Traffic Controller - The House
- Claire Rosinkranz - Backyard Boy
- Tessa Violet - Crush
- Meghan Trainor - Made You Look (Again)
- BLACKPINK - Pink Venom
- Mimi Webb - House On Fire
- Taylor Swift (feat. Bleachers) - Anti-Hero
- GAYLE - abcdefu
- Rosa Linn - SNAP
- AleXa - Wonderland
- Cornelia Jakobs - Hold Me Closer
- Taylor Swift (feat. Bon Iver) - exile
- Karen Elson - Broken Shadow
- Sam Smith - Unholy ft. Kim Petras
- Nessa Barrett - i hope ur miserable until ur dead
- Taylor Swift - Vigilante Shit
Last year, we weren't really thinking about an annual list, but this year, we did try and take songs and add them as we heard them. Of course, we had just built the 2021 list and were still jamming to that, so it took a little while to find enough songs to have an actual playlist that we were listening to.
Building the Playlist
Since I already explained the overarching goals of this project in my original post, I won't go over them again, but I do want to go through each song and talk about why it was included. For the most part, we both have to enjoy the song quite a lot to add it to the list. If we find ourselves ever wanting to skip the song, it usually comes off the list.
The first song on the list isn't my favorite, but Bethany really likes it and it did really well for the UK at Eurovision in 2022, so here it is: Sam Ryder - Space Man. We have three songs from Eurovision for this year's playlist with (16) Rosa Linn - SNAP and (18) Cornelia Jakobs - Hold Me Closer (which was my personal favorite). I try to have a good flow with the last song of the previous year, which was Just Look Up by Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi. Space Man seemed like a decent follow.
Next we have Numb Little Bug by Em Beihold. This song is a great reflection of how everyone was feeling with the pandemic and lockdowns. This is followed by (3) Sarah Cothran singing a cover of As The World Caves In (which I had never heard the original, to be honest). We always include at least one Apocalypse Song, and this was it for 2022. Love the vocals on this one. I'll never skip it!
Stranger Things was all the rage in 2022 and (4) Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill was featured in a pivotal scene. It was everywhere for a few months, and I didn't mind. I've loved the song since I was a teen, including several of the covers. This is a great excuse to add it to a 2022 playlist, if you ask me!
So I do really enjoy covers, but I like it when they reimagine the song. Why just redo the original? It has to have a new feel to it. The fifth song is a cover by Elohim and AWOLNATION of "flagpole sitta" originally by Harvey Danger. This year has almost all original songs, and this is the last cover on the list, sadly.
Spotify randomly played (6) God Must Hate Me by Catie Turner and we both enjoyed it. It's like a dark comedy, both sad and humorous. Another dark song that was randomly played that made the list was a K-Pop song: (12) BLACKPINK's Pink Venom. This has a vibe that I usually don't get into, but there's definitely something about the song that gets into my veins.
Taylor Swift released Midnights which immediately broke all sorts of records, so we picked our faves to be added. I try to limit a year's song list to only 3 from a single artist, but this year was a cheat since one of the songs includes The Bleachers, one of my favorite bands. So we have (7) Karma, (14) Anti-Hero (featuring Bleachers), (19) Exile (featuring Bon Iver), and (23) Vigilante S#!T (no swearing on our blog, Taylor!)
My old friend Owen suggested (8) Air Traffic Controller - The House to me, and we both really liked it! Bethany always talked about having 'that house' where everyone goes, but instead we moved to Wales and not enough people come play games with us!
Another recommendation comes with (9) Backyard Boy by Claire Rosinkranz, a cute and fun tune. My friend Amanda suggested this one along with (22) "i hope ur miserable until ur dead" by Nessa Barrett. I don't think she meant the second one as a personal attack. Bethany REALLY likes angry break up songs and this is no exception.
My niece Morgan suggested (10) Crush by Tessa Violet as a clever and fun pick-me-up song. And she was right! We really liked it!
Next we have a song that Bethany really liked from the charts. (11) Made You Look by Meghan Trainor isn't my favorite, but it sure is catchy! And it's short, so I don't tend to tire of it. Other songs we got from the charts/online include (13) Mimi Webb - House on Fire and (21) Unholy (featuring Kim Petras) by Sam Smith. I really like Mimi Webb, but if we had more songs for 2022, the other two probably wouldn't have made the cut. We had a LOT of pop this year...
I randomly heard the next song on the RADIO! That NEVER happens anymore! It's (15) GAYLE with abcdefu another angry break up song, so when I heard it, I knew Bethany would love it. She did.
We originally heard (16) Rosa Linn - Snap on Eurovision, but Bethany didn't like the staging. Then, it hit it on the internet and Bethany really liked it, not realizing she had really disliked it before due to the presentation during Eurovision. I liked the song, so when she later played it, I was like, ok, we can add it. But she didn't realize it was that song until later, when I played her the video from Eurovision and she's like, Wait, that is THAT song?!! It was funny. Maybe you had to be there.
So America tried its hand at Eurovision with American Song Contest hosted by Snoop Dogg and Kelly Clarkson. We watched it all, and it was pretty entertaining, for the most part. The winner was (17) AleXa with Wonderland. It's a K-Pop style song and pretty catchy and clever. Two K-Pop songs in one year? Weird...
The last song I need to mention (since all the others were mentioned above) is (20) Broken Shadow by Karen Elson. It was in a forgettable movie called Moonshot. But I really liked the song, and it made the list!
What do you think?
And that's our list for the year! Have any thoughts on our list? Wanna give us some suggestions to listen to? The best place to start the conversation is on Facebook, so check us out and tell us what you think!