Welcome to my annual end of year round up!
Rather than write a long, epic post, I've decided to slim things down a bit this year. As such, I'm not doing a list of gigs of the year (because there were too many good ones...) and, having given the matter some thought, I'm not providing a list of pieces I've written this year. There was some discussion on Twitter about this custom last year and I can see why people find the practice a bit obnoxious, so I'm sacking it off.
Also, because it seemed to go down well last year, I will be posting my songs of the year list in a series of day-by-day posts again. There will be 25 this year, and number 25 will be up online tomorrow.
12 albums of the year
12) Starcrawler - Devour You
11) Helen McCookerybook - Green
10) Honeyblood - In Plain Sight
9) The Regrettes - How Do You Love?
8) Hatchie - Keepsake
7) Miss June - Bad Luck Party
6) Ioanna Gika - Thalassa
5) Siobhan Wilson - The Departure
4) Billie Eilish - When we fall asleep where do we go?
3) Bat For Lashes - Lost Girls
2) Gazel - Gazel's Book Of Souls
1) Self Esteem - Compliments Please
12 books I've read and loved this year
Yrsa Daley Ward - The Terrible
Molly Bloom - Molly's Game
Hannah Ewens - Fangirls
Amy Raphael - A seat at the table
Stella Gibbons - Pure Juliet
Hilary McKay - The Skylarks War
Taylor Jenkins Reid - Daisy Jones & The Six
Amy Engel - The Roanoke Girls
Lucy O'Brien - Dusty
Nick Rennison - Bohemian London
Celeste Bell and Zoë Howe - Dayglo
Jordan Mooney and Cathi Unsworth - Defying Gravity
I think my overall favourite podcast this year has been Best Pick, the podcast that watches and discusses every single Oscar winning movie in random order. While every episode is riveting in scope and detail, it's worth noting that they're just as entertaining when the film disappoints as when it exceeds expectations. As such, listening to them eviscerating Gladiator is just as much fun as hearing them get excited about It Happened One Night. Their recent take on Gigi was a good one, but a favourite episode for me this year has been their take on Casablanca.
The BBC's Brexitcast has obviously had a lot of good material to work with this year, and while I can't remember which episode it was that featured the Dutch mascot for the Netherlands Brexit preparations, I did find their Saturday Night Leaver episode to be particularly hilarious. On a more serious note, the international collaboration with the World Service's Global News Podcast was particularly powerful.
There's been some really good takes on work in podcast land in 2019, particularly in the areas of women and work, freelancing, and finances. Is This Working? was launched this year by Tiffany Philippou and Anna Codrea-Rado, and it featured a particularly powerful episode about class with Vicky Spratt, plus a very useful mediation on getting fired. There was also An Honest Account, Rachael Revesz' podcast, which covers the finance end of things, and included an episode with Anna Codrea-Rado about freelancing and finances, plus a powerful take on debt and being working class with Jasmine Andersson.
At the music end of things, Canadian punk DJ Siobhan Woodrow launched her podcast, She's A Punk this year, which included many powerful portraits of punk women around the world, including this episode with War On Women's Shawna Potter. Woodrow has recently announced she's taking a break from the podcast until the start of 2020, but she certainly doesn't sound like she's done yet. Far from it.
There was also a fascinating discussion about the ten year legacy of Florence + The Machine's Lungs over on Never Marry A Mitford, a searingly powerful in depth discussion about the state of music education in UK schools on Reasons To Be Cheerful, and a fascinating, and frequently very funny, epic discussion about music and literature between Florence Welch and Rebecca Lucy Taylor over on The YourShelf Podcast.
In the realm of politics and related matters, The Next Episode discussed what happens when you effectively no longer have an MP and The North Poll provided a refreshingly non London centric take on politics. In the US, Reply All explained why that viral tweet about feral hogs wasn't all it seemed, and the TFGM Podcast provided a suitably sober take on the second anniversary of the Manchester Arena bombing.
Catching up with the women who were expelled from school (Precious Adesina, Refinery 29)
The uninhabitable city: What happens when heatwaves become the new normal? (Hettie O'Brien, The New Statesman)
Work isn't working: The real reason more women are going freelance (Anna Codrea-Rado, Refinery 29)
Peterloo 200 years on: The Manchester bloodbath which left 18 dead and changed the course of British history (Dan Thompson & Damon Wilkinson, Manchester Evening News)
"We need this film now more than ever" (Nic Crosara, The Overtake)
Secret life of a fashion week peon (Lacy Warner, Narratively)
The 11-year-old girl taking skateboarding by storm (Joe Henley, Narratively)
The diver who brings up the bodies (Sunaina Kumar and Farah Mohammed, Narratively)
How more than 12 students at one university ended up dead by suicide (Hannah Ewens, Vice)
How communism prepared me for a no-deal Brexit (Joanna Hosa, Financial Times)
How to feed a protest movement: Cooking with Extinction Rebellion (Dan Hancox, 1843)
'I'd rather see a white doctor, if you don't mind' How patients can hurt doctors too (Neha Maqsood, Rife Magazine)
The four huge issues being overlooked in the General Election debate so far (Jennifer Williams, Manchester Evening News)
Second image by Ross Sneddon on Unsplash
Third image by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash
Fourth image by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
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