it's taken a couple of weeks to pluck up the courage to share my Spotify most-played songs and artists of 2023. The reason isn't necessarily that, in and of themselves, I am ashamed to like the songs and artists listed; most of the time I don't deny what I like. Rather, what nags away at me is how easy my listening has been, not just this year but in the last few years more generally.
Anyone who knew me in my mid-teens knows that Peter Gabriel and Talking Heads were artists very close to my heart. But I turned 52 in 2023. I do not want to be the sort of middle aged man whose listening stopped in adolescence. And while I can justify the appearance of both artists in my 2023 top five as 'research' as I published articles on Peter Gabriel and Talking Heads this year (and this involved listening to new material by Gabriel), I also know that I often sought comfort in the familiar joys of 'Red Rain', 'The Great Curve' and other treasured items from my personal canon.
My uneasiness at Metallica and Meshuggah's place on the list is also not because I think these aren't credible artists. And with Metallica I am pleased to say that I did listen to and enjoy the new album. But I also know that I these artists are only on the list because I resort to particular tracks to mainline thrills and energy at times of exhaustion and melancholy. I don't really listen to Meshuggah; I listen to 'Demiurge', 'Pravvus' or 'Stengah'. I don't really listen to Metallica, I listen to the Motorhead-style rawness of 'Lux Aeterna' or the start of 'Master of the Puppets'. My highly selective listening is even more apparent in the presence of New Model Army's 'The Hunt', in second place of the most-played songs list; I only listen to it for the stunning bassline and I am barely aware of anything else the band have recorded.
The biggest giveaway of the place that music held in my 2023 lies in the presence of Sabaton in second place, with three of their songs on the most-played list. The Swedish, military-obsessed power metallers are a whole heap of silly fun and 2023 is when I finally fell for the charms of their cheesy histrionics. The reason is that I saw them play live earlier in the year with my son and daughter and interviewed the band in October (with my star-struck son tagging along). I am not 'really' listening to Sabaton when I listen to Sabaton; I am listening to the pleasures of fatherhood and the easy pleasures of metal painted in primary colours.
There's a similar explanation for Angus McSix's 'Master of the Universe' as my third most-played song. This triumphant comeback by the artist formerly known as Angus McFife (actually a Swiss notary named Thomas Winkler), after his acrimonious ousting from Gloryhammer in 2021, is off-the-scale cheesiness-wise. Infernally catchy and utterly ridiculous, I owe my love of this sort of thing to my children. They introduced me to Gloryhammer a few years ago and even though they went off the band during the shenanigans of 2021, when I hear Winkler singing I hear familial bonding and laughter.
You might be thinking right now, 'what on earth is the problem with any of that?'. And yes, there's nothing wrong with me or anyone else listening to music to find comfort or any other kind of pleasure. The problem is that, these days, the desire for comfort is so strong that it is crowding out other kinds of listening. I have less and less strength for more difficult pleasures, for the shock of the new, for challenging artists, for dissonant sounds, for deep listening to entire albums - or even songs - from start to finish. My need for familiar musical comforts is so great that my personal canon is barely growing; my drive to challenge myself, to discover new things, is withering.
All that said, I have listened to new and challenging music this year. Most recently, I've explored new releases by Khanate and Godflesh, both of which made an impact on me. But they don't possess that sugar rush, that blast of endorphins that can conquer my anxieties and bring me comfort. And I am too hungry for solace to stick with the repeated listening that might usher them into my pantheon of consolation. My search for instant pleasure is preventing me from accessing those pleasures you have to work to achieve.
Why am I so desperate to be consoled? I'm not a depressive, I am functional and can work and play as I always have done. Yet since at least 2019 there has been a persistent undercurrent of disquiet in my life. It stems from a concatenation of the personal, the public and the political; concerns for the physical and mental health of family members, my own career challenges and those of my loved ones, the ongoing fallout of the pandemic, the rise of fascism, the war in Gaza, that sense that things are falling apart....
I am actually quite proud of how I have endured the last few years. Wonderful things have happened in my life since 2019; the books I've written, the holidays I've been on, the gigs I've attended, the pride I have felt at the achievements of those I love. The thing is, though, that to be in any sort of fit state to make the wonderful things happen and to enjoy them when they do, has taken enormous effort. I've needed a foundation of consolation from which I can struggle to live a good and decent life.
Recently, I've started to become aware that I am running out of material on which to build this foundation. Consoling music or any other kind of art doesn't console indefinitely, at least in my case it doesn't. Songs lose their power after too many listens. I have to ration them. And the rate at which I add consoling material to my personal canon isn't keeping pace with the expiry dates of existing material.
Just about the most irresponsible thing I have done this year is rewatching some of my favourite comedy shows. I am very fussy about comedy and find it very hard to fall in love with new shows. I long ago exhausted Seinfeld, Peep Show and Fawlty Towers; they no longer 'work'. And my profligate re-watching in 2023 has brought me dangerously close to the point where I can no longer mine The Office, Outnumbered and The Inbetweeners.
There is more art in the world than any one individual can consume in several lifetimes. Yet right now I am feeling that I am approaching finitude. The art that consoles me is running out. As far as coping mechanisms go, I am close to running on empty. And what happens then?
Well, what happens then is that I will have to confront the fact that, for several years now, I have been living in a short-term state of exception; putting one foot in front of the other; giving myself the permission to ignore long-term cultural sustainability. That was fine for a while, but I have decades of life ahead of me (probably) and states of exception can only be justified for a very short period.
It's time for me to come to terms with the fact that the rest of my life will be lived in a world that will not go back to 'normal'. Turbulence is now normal. Wallowing in familiar pleasures will only put off the day when I have to face this world on its own terms. That day of reckoning is fast approaching. And no amount of cheesy power metal will change that fact.
I wonder if your malaise is connected to the tendency I've heard referred to more than once for people, as they get older, to return over and again to the art they know they like, rather than to seek out new art. Maybe we reach a kind of saturation point beyond which new art seems dull because we've already seen and heard so much.
I'm curious about the idea that some listening pleasures first require a period of work because I can't relate to it. My experience has been that music destined to become part of my personal canon always intrigues me on first listen, and music that feels like work on first listen is destined never to feel like anything else. Maybe our idea of 'work' differs.