Uptight - Hooverphonic

Countdown to 2019: -3

Uptight - Hooverphonic

Unlike 2017, which has pretty much been a constant flow of awesomeness in terms of music, at least in the first half / three quarters of the year, 2018 has been unfolding more in sparks, something great coming out and then laying low for a while till the next great thing. The last such spark has been the release of Hooverphonic's latest album. They changed singer again, and after not following them closely in the previous era, I immediately found myself immersed in their new music, and I am enjoying their new album quite a lot! It's funny, because the lyrics of most of the songs are describing situations, throughts and characteristics that are pretty much the opposite of mine, but I still found myself entrenched in the listening. 'Uptight' is a perfect example of this: I can't think of any recent situation in which I've been more uptight than I should've (rather, the opposite), but I still can't help loving this song, and I'm quite confident it's gonna stick in my head well into next year!

Conductor - Florence + the Machine

Conductor - Florence + the Machine

After an almost sleepless night yesterday, last night I finally made it up with about 12 hours of sleep and I woke up in this new year of the rooster (or cock, as one wishes..!) and checking Facebook, I saw a post by a fanclub that left me with Third eye's lyrics in mind. It's been a while since I gave a proper listen to Florence, so I really am not minding this start of day big, blue and beautiful! Hoping she will give me the right energy to start this lunar new year in the best way possible, even if for now the feeling I get is the one of being out of place and far from home when everybody else is celebrating... gotta put myself to study before melancholia gets the best of me!!

#yearinmusic A song or two per day - Best song and album of 2016

2016 has been a pretty good year for me under many points of view, but A song or two per day has not been one of them, and the two things are probably related: I have been having such a good time that I found it hard to find the time and (mental) energies to sit down and write blog entries constantly, which ended up in me posting very rarely. The music point of view is another one in which 2016 lacked with respect to its predecessors, which is maybe another reason why I didn't post as much. These two reasons are also the ones why I procrastinated the posting of my 2016 music summary, as I am pretty much at a loss in finding a best song and best album released this year...

Best song 2016: Line of fire - Junip

Best song: Line of fire - Junip

Given that 2016 has mostly been the outcome of life decisions made in the past years, with a lot of change that took place thanks to triggering moments that had happened in the years before, I am actually quite ok with choosing a song that was actually released 3 years before as my 2016 Best song pick. Junip and José Gonzalez have been hugely meaningful for me in the last couple of years, probably the most influential new music discovery I made lately and 'Line of fire' in particular has been a soundtrack of many big moments of 2016, mostly the ones related to me moving to Hong Kong. "What would you say if you had to leave today? Leave everything behind even though for once, you're shining."

Best album 2016: Shura - Nothing's real

Best album: Shura - Nothing's real

2016 has been quite a disappointment for me mostly because some of my favourite artists released albums that were not nearly up to my expectations or to the level of what they have been releasing before. The biggest one of these disappointments has been PJ Harvey's 'The hope six demolition project': PJ made us wait 5 years for new music, and all the expectations built in this time crushed against an album I personally find weak and pretty much pointless, the only low of her career together with 'White chalk'. On a similar note I can place the new releases by OneRepublic, KT Tunstall and, to a lesser extent, Sia. Their albums have not been all bad and feature some quite awesome songs, but overall lack a consistency that would allow me to classify them as great albums. I have been tempted to pick Sia's 'This is acting' as my favourite album released in 2016, as notwithstanding its not being nearly as good as '1000 forms of fear', it's a quite good album, but in the end I decided to go for something that I discovered towards the end of the year, here in Hong Kong: I found out about Shura thanks to Clockenflap, the music festival I attended in Hong Kong this past November, and I fell in love with her debut album quite quickly. It will not go on to enter my music olympus, but it's a good representation of my life in this past year: new, enjoyable and linked to Hong Kong!

After a hectic, full and great 2016, which has been mostly about consolidation under the music point of view, I hope 2017 will take me back to previously unseen heights with some new, great music! And I also hope I'll be able to post a bit more consistently on the blog (even if I have a hard time believing myself)...!

Happy 2017!

One year A.D. - Feist

One year A.D. - Feist

Together with two of my recent posts (Neil Young's 'Helpless' and Junip's 'Without you') this has been the last addition to my '2015 Best of playlists' playlist (sorry for the word-play)! It's currently my favourite song off Feist's debut album, which I'm in the process of listening to. This time of year feels weird, as I haven't started listening to "2016 music" yet, but it's not 2015 anymore and organizing my playlists based on years, it feels like I just have to get rid of the old stuff so that I can start with the new! It's also one of these moments when, even if I have a lot of new music to approach, I have a bit of a hard time listening to it and I'd rather browse old acquaintances of mine. Anyway, I'm enjoying this song and that's what matters! In a few days/weeks the transition period will be over and everything will be ok! We indeed got through 2015 years since 1 A.D., didn't we?

#yearinmusic A song or two per day - Best song of 2015

Happy new year, you all people who follow the Gregorian calendar! I hope this 2016 will bring you (and us all) joy, happy moments and even more great music than last year!

Best song 2015

Here I am once again giving the last look back at this beautiful 2015 in music, this time looking at singles / songs. And this time too, there has been no contest. This past year was the time when I reached 100 plays for the first and only of all the songs that I started listening to from 2012 on, i.e. The XX's 'Crystalized' (which I started listening to in 2013). A few days later I reached 100 plays for a song that was released in mid-2015. And that is my song o the year, without ANY doubt. I'm talking about Florence + the Machine of course, and the song is 'Delilah', a beautiful masterpiece off their new album. I have fallen in love with this song immediately after it's been released, a few days before the whole album came out last June. I have no words to describe just how strong the connection with this song is and how quickly it built up. I will just give it its well deserved 1st place and go on!

Runner-ups (Best song 2015)

I decided to make a ranking of the best 10 songs of 2015 because there have been soo many great
ones! Some of them were released in (late) 2014, but they are all pretty recent!


10 - Mountain at my gates (Foals)
9 - I put a spell on you (Annie Lennox)
8 - Failure (The Ting Tings)
7 - The blackest day (Lana del Rey)
6 - Queen of peace (Florence + the Machine)
5 - Dream (Imagine Dragons)
4 - How big, how blue, how beautiful (Florence + the Machine)
3 - I'm so sorry (Imagine Dragons)
2 - London thunder (Foals)
1 - Delilah (Florence + the Machine)

I hope you can somehow relate to this ranking, please comment with your personal favourites of this past year!! I'll be back soon!

Swan song - Lana del Rey

This seems like the perfect song to close the year!

"I will never sing again and you won't work another day,

I will never sing again, with just one wave it goes away

It'll be our swan song..."

Swan song - Lana del Rey

Putting a closure to all the things that I don't wanna carry forward from this 2015 - a large part of Lana's new album being among those (not this song though) - I really feel like I'm singing the swan song! And what else can I say...? A lot of things actually. I think 2015 has been the year I had been waiting for since 2011, maybe sooner, under some point of view. I broke through many things I really needed to break through, I got a great, great year in music (the best of the last few), a new album by Florence + the Machine (last one was indeed in 2011), I started working (and finished already for now), understood one more path I don't wanna walk, possibly directing myself towards one I would like to walk, who knows if I'll get the chance to...! It's been the year I almost moved abroad for an indefinite period of time, but also the year I open the door of South East Asia for the first time. It's the year I started spending again much more time alone, travelling alone both for work (kind of alone) and for pleasure, and I must confess I didn't dislike a single bit of it. Yeah ok, apart from the going back and forth to Veneto and to Bangkok, and everything, but I didn't dislike being alone, I've had many things to do: the blog to take care of, Japanese studies to bring forward, TV series to watch and more...! Ironically 2015 has also been the year I got to know much more new people, most probably a lot of people that I will never see again in my life (many colleagues, all the people that travelled with me thanks to Blablacar and some other new acquaintances), so a lot of pretty superficial connections... is it normal? I think that at this point of my life it is, being out of school and not sticking to a job for too long, it's ok. All in all I think 2015 has been the year when I finally became an adult, and also the year I understood that being an adult mostly sucks, as I already suspected!! I guess Lana came to this same conclusion...

"Why you work so hard when you could just be free?"

Anyway I'm ready to take it to the next level in 2016, or maybe I'll just be stuck or even go back... who knows? What I know is that I'm excited (and anxious and a little frightened, but let's focus on the excited part!) to face all the new challenges that will appear on my path and to discover a whole lot of new things and places and people! Happy 2016 to you all, I wish you the best. Cheers!

Federico