Pimp Pimp? Hooray! Top 13 songs 2016
3 min readDec 21, 2016
Anise said pick 12 songs from 2016 that did not need to be ‘released’ in 2016, just the songs that you listened to that shaped your year.
I found this picture from December 31, 2015, the day I gave the double-finger to Rodin’s Le Penseur. Don’t think I surpassed this action in 2016.
Here are the tunes with years listed other than ’16/’15, if necessary.
- Bill Fay, Pictures of Adolf Again — Should be obvious why this song leads off the 2016 list. If it isn’t obvious, what I mean is, Donald Trump looks like Adolf Hitler, and his picture is in the papers all day every day. (1971)
- Le Tigre, Get Off The Internet — Destroying the right wing will be one of the main reasons to get off the internet in 2017. (2001)
- Life Without Buildings, PS Exclusive — Reminds me of a college I didn’t attend, a poem I didn’t read, a bartender I didn’t know. It also reminds me of making an illegal turn into a Walgreen’s parking lot on July 4th, and Justin telling me it was OK, Stu, no one saw it. (2001)
- Charly Bliss, Love Me — I can’t stop listening to this song from 2015. It’s possible I’ve heard this song more times than Bud Powell’s “Somebody Loves Me” from 1947, more times than “Total Eclipse of the Heart” from 1983.
- Mannequin Pussy, Romantic — I adore this song. Smooth, peachy…
- Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, Oregon Girl — Ten minutes after driving over the California border into Grant’s Pass I started humming this song. The first Oregon girl I saw worked at Dutch Bros. and she asked me if I was driving to Crater Lake. I said, no, that’s far, and she said, yeah, Crater Lake is really far, you’re right. That’s the Oregon sense of humor. (2005, great video.)
- Rogue Wave, California Bride — My favorite bride song since The Dirty Projectors’ The Bride, St. Vincent’s Marry Me, Laura Nyro’s Wedding Bell Blues…
- Holy Wave, California Took My Bobby Away — I meant to see this band at Lincoln Hall the night of the election but I’m glad I went to the Election Party at Jessica’s; she went to Whole Foods to get vegan quesadilla products which will be illegal under a Trump administration.
- Makaya McCraven, Gnawa — thanks to Zack for recommending this entire album the night I told everyone we bought a new car. At one point on this album McCraven says: “This is spontaneous improvisation. We have no idea what we’re doing.” More people should admit that.
- Kendrick Lamar, Untitled 05 | 9.21.2014 — I pick this one off the best album of the year because, as Elliot mentioned in the pouring rain in Pilsen, I am a “jazz guy, so it makes sense you would pick 05.” Kendrick says: “I know that I’m intelligence, my confidence just died.”
- BadBadNotGood, Time Moves Slowly — I found this on Peter’s year-end list, and as a non-tastemaker, most of the music I find for the next year comes from other people’s year-end lists, often from two years before that.
- Vince Staples, Hands Up — I hope to one day be as intelligent as the 23 yr old Staples. I fear it might be too late for me. Staples also said my favorite quote of 2016, responding to something he forgot he said in 2015: Everybody does hate black people, though.
- Sister Nancy, Bam Bam — Always. Instead of the Kanye song that samples it this year. And I do believe Kanye made Taylor Swift famous. (1982)