If there was ever a year in music that you could consider “lost”, it had to be 2018. I’ve been following the music scene for the better past of six decades now and in this year just gone by, I’m pretty baffled by what has passed for popular music in 2018. Granted, there’s always something decent to listen to, and as they say, you have to dig a little deeper these days to find it. Trouble is, at the rate we’re going, we’re likely to strike the motherlode before we find something great to listen to. I should correct that to say, “something great to listen to that becomes popular”. Too often than not, an artist will blow me away with an awesome sounding debut, only to cater more to the pop mainstream (and then landing success) with more, diluted, efforts. Since 1976, I have been making lists of my top 100 songs of every year, as an alternative to those surveys published by radio stations, Billboard Magazine or many of the music journals and publications. It’s been an interesting ride, to say the least, and if anything, it documents my own personal tastes, as well as tracking the pop culture trends. Which brings me to my top 100 of 2018. I made lists from 1976 to 2003, and then again from 2009 to the present. Recently I had gone back and retroactively created lists from 1964 to 1974, with the intention of formulating ones for 1975 and the “lost years” of 2004 through 2008. But, pending anything unusual during the middle portion of the millenium’s initial decade, something has happened for the first time: My #1 song was never found on any chart, was from an album which was released two years prior that never charted, and is by an artist that never charted anything in this country and only was listed as a featured performer on the French charts. My #1 song of 2018? “Straight Love Affair” , by Nick Waterhouse
. There, I said it. Yeah, pretty much, I marched (or in this case, listened) to the beat of a different drummer in 2018, vitually ignoring anything on the pop side. While three of my year-end #1 songs also had that distinction in Billboard, only one of that magazine’s chart toppers, Ed Sheeran’s “Perfect”, made my list this year, coming in at #24. In fact, taking my year-end lists from the reconstruction in 2009 to the present, three of my year-end leaders: Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” (2011), Gotye’s “Someone That I Used to Know” (2012), and Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” not only held the top spot on Billboard’s weekly “Hot 100”, but also held honors for the year. Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud” (2015) was the runner-up on Billboard that year. Five others---Metric’s ‘Help I’m Alive” (2009), The Black Keys’ “Tighten Up” (2010); Fitz and the Tantrums’ “Out of My League” (2013), and Kaleo’s ‘Way Down We Go” (2016) weren’t pop hits, but nonetheless hit #1 on Billboard’s “Alternative Songs” chart. Foster The People’s “Coming of Age” (2014) hit #4 on that chart . But “Straight Love Affair” is nowhere to be found. So, you may ask, “what’s it doing on my list?”, much less, “why is it number one?”. That answer goes back to early 2017, when dining at a local Applebees, a really cool, retro-sounding song came on: “It’s Time”. Sound Hounding the song, I found out that the artist was Nick Waterhouse and Googling him, discovered it was from his third album, 2016’s Never Twice. The song contended for my 2017 “Song of the Summer” and came in at #3 on my 2017 list. I then explored more of the album, with more great songs: “Old Place”, “Katchi” (#22 this year), and “Straight Love Affair”. The sound just meshed with what had been going on this past summer, and it won a close battle for the top spot. A similar trick happened this year for my #4 song: “This Girl” by Kungs featuring Cooking on 3 Burners. Another 2016 song, it blared on the speakers in early June, when several of us headed down the Jersey Shore to Martell’s Tiki Bar. Again, using SoundHound, I discovered this cool gem. But, if I’m accused of living in the past, it’s not entirely true. My #2 and #3 songs were from 2018 albums: Neko Case’s “Bad Luck” (from Hell-On) and Elle King’s “Shame” (from Shake the Spirt). Both artists have made my year end top 10 before: King’s “Ex’s and Oh’s” was #2 in 2015; Case’s ‘People Got a Lot of Nerve” was #8 in 2010. Rounding out the top 5 is an new artist from New Jersey, Donna Missal, whose “Keep Lying” made some inroads. The artist, who is a niece of a friend, had the song on alternative station WEQX’s playlist for three months, although sadly, the song didn’t make that station’s “Top 102.7” nor hit a Billboard chart. With Tennis’ “Modern Woman”, another act that has yet to chart, and from a prior year album, at #6 , that makes four songs in my top six that didn’t have that distinction this year as I continue to move away from the mainstream. But, there WERE in fact, pop songs on my list. Aside from the Sheeran song, Camila Cabello’s “Never Been the Same” (#94), and alternative crossovers Imagine Dragons’ “Natural” (#68) and Panic! at the Disco’s “High Hopes” (a late entry on the list at #95). Of course a good portion of my songs were alternative rock hits: “Walk the Moon” (One Foot); “No Roots” (Alice Merton); “Live In the Moment” (Portugal. The Man); “I Feel Like I’m Drowning” (Two Feet); “Africa”(Weezer), and the aforementioned “High Hopes”, all made the list, as well as Billboard’s #1 alternative song for 2018, lovelytheband’s “Broken” (#44). However, it is beginning to seem that I have now more in common with the “Adult Alternative Songs” chart (which actually makes sense since I, at 62, is...well...an adult!). Number one songs on that chart that made my list include “Lay It On Me” (Vance Joy); “Pain” (The War on Drugs); “You Worry Me” (Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats); “Bad Bad News” (Leon Bridges); “Hunger” (Florence +the Machine); and “All My Friends” (The Revivalists), as well as the previous mentioned “Shame” and “Live in the Moment”. Three artists had three songs on my list: the previously mentioned Tennis and Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, and Hegazy. The latter, a duo from Staten Island composed of twins Leila and Omnia Hegazy, released their debut EP in early 2018, and made the list with three songs from it: “Smolder” (#25), the currently topical “Here to Stay” (#40) and “Alive” (#47). The twins are the nieces of my Roselle Park friend Diane Tarantino Hegazy, as well as Facebook friends of mine in their own right. Another Facebook friend, Hazelton PA’’s Shannon Marsyada, also made my year end list with “Tough Girl” (#37). Other artists that I had been following that I had become acquainted with either from seeing them at festivals or recommended by friends who know them were The Big Takeover, The Doughboys, Winnetka Bowling League (featuring Matthew Koma), Christina Taylor, and Spinn. Those latter two acts were one of only three country songs this year, with the only established country artist that made the list being Jake Owen, with “I Was Jack (You Were Diane”), at #73. Here is my Top 100 list for 2018. Note that this is NOT a list of the songs that were released in 2018, but what I was listening to during the course of the past twelve months; many of these songs came out in 2017, or earlier (such as the Nick Waterhouse and Kungs songs). Click on the song to watch the video or, if none was available to the artists' website or Facebook page. Scenes 'n' Soundwaves Top 100 of 2018
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