FaSho

As I find myself coming to the end of the 10th year of the period of my life that I would say I'm heavily "into music" so to speak and in turn my 10th year of listening to 100+ albums and cataloging them all into a list at the end (which at this point is almost exclusively just for my own sake as I haven't been active here or on tumblr in quite awhile, and the decrease in popularity of facebook has led me to not even bother sharing my lists/reviews/thoughts there anymore), I feel much more disenchanted with the whole process than ever before.

The end of the year used to bring a nerdy pleasure for me, as I'm sure it does for many of you, re-listening to albums that had a spark but I ended up forgetting about for one reason or another, combing through other's lists for underrated gems I might have missed, and meticulously placing each album into its rightful spot. However, as I look back on 2018 I've come to the conclusion that this is most likely the worst year for new releases in that 10 year span. It is possible I'm just metaphorically hungover from what I felt was a particularly strong year for music in 2017, or literally hungover from all the bourbon last night, but either way there's not a single album that really gripped me in a way that I feel the need to share it with others, much less 10, 25, or 50 albums worth listing. My favorite artists disappointed, acts I find middle-of-the-pack or good to average failed to hook me yet again, and no new artist really stuck out to me as a must listen.

Can anyone else relate to this? If not with 2018, is there a year in the past decade or so that just sticks out to you as a complete miss? If so, which one and why? Or is every year a great year for music and I'm just me being dramatic after not having done enough digging this time around? I'd love to hear some of y'alls thoughts on this and am definitely open to any recommendations.

note: I'm working on some hard data using my rateyourmusic account to back up the above ramblings with statistics and will include them later. (if they ended up serving my point that is...if not eh maybe I won't)

__________________