The trend of my listening to music far less than I listen to podcasts continues: the number of times I listened to any album from beginning to end, which actually went up slightly from 2018 to 2019 (383 to 497), for 2020 it's back down to about 392, making it the year in which I listened to music the second-least amount of time. And last year, 2019, was previously in the second-least position! Once was a time I purchased music often enough to fill out a top twenty list of albums with music new from that year on a regular basis; now I struggle even to fill out a top ten—I only purchased a total of eight new albums in 2020, and one of those was merely a four-track EP (which I have decided to count as an album for my purposes here). I wouldn't say I love music any less, really; the difference is just that I love podcasts so much more. Now the music has really stick competition for gaining my aural attention.

10.
Madonna, Madame X (2019)

Here's another trend that's a bit new: usually I give a lot more attention than this to a Madonna album in the second year I have it. I even listened to Rebel Heart (2015), my least-favorite Madonna album, slightly more than this in 2016. (I also listened to Rebel Heart 11 more times in its first year than I did Madame X—92 times vs. 81—even though the latter is objectively a better album.) I still have a unique respect for Madame X and am therefore glad it still eked its way into the bottom of my to ten albums of 2020, because, even though the album isn't perfect, it does feature Madonna taking risks and swings unlike any she had done in years. I actually think it still deserves more attention than it ever got in broader culture—her first album ever not to have any single break into the Billboard Hot 100 chart. If nothing else, "I Don't Search I Find" should have!

Number of plays in 2020: 6

9.
Sia, Everyday is Christmas (2017)

Ah, Sia . . . my most recent "new favorite artist," and the one who released the best Christmas album of the 2010s! This is actually the most I have re-listened to this album any year after I first put it on rotation fifty times in 2017, for a very specific reason: I only discovered this year that, in 2018, she released a "Deluxe" version of this album with three new tracks. Of course I had to buy those new tracks! And, truth be told, I have listened to the new tracks alone a good 18 times—but re-listened to the entire album, including the new tracks, a good seven times over. The initial 10 tracks, clocking it at merely 35 minutes in length, have now been expanded to 13 tracks and 45 minutes, and I love it as much as ever.

Number of plays in 2020: 7

8.
Tori Amos, Christmastide EP (2020)

I suppose it could be argued that I should place Everyday is Christmas higher on this list, if I listened to that album's three new tracks 18 times and I listened to Tori Amos's new Christmas EP, which consists of a mere four (very good) tracks, only 16. On the other hand! The three new Everyday is Christmas tracks are a cumulative 10 minutes and Christmastide's four tracks clock in at 17, which means I spent 180 minutes listening to the Sia tracks and 272 minutes on the Tori Amos EP. Amos wins by a long shot! Of course, I'm getting creative with numbers there, because if you fold in how many times I listened to the rest of the Sia album, that means I spent 425 minutes on the Sia album in aggregate. But, I guess I'm focusing in this context on which individual tracks are getting the most attention. Listen, I'm keeping the list the way it is and you'll just have to learn how to sleep at night, okay?

Number of plays in 2020: 16

7.
Adam Lambert, Velvet (2020)

The events of 2020 have been so distracting, it was often easy to miss something I might have noticed much more quickly in a more "normal" year—such as, for example, a new Adam Lambert album getting released in mid-March, right in the thick of the country's initial coronavirus lockdowns, thus (quite rightly) distracting from any attention to it. I did not discover its existence, and then immediately purchase it, until October. This album stands as essentially a decent, mid-career offering: not quite as good as his best, but then, the vast majority of Lambert's musical quality is within a stone's throw of that of anything else he's done anyway. Virtually any of his albums often make a pleasant soundtrack to any given day for me, and this album fits right in.

Number of plays in 2020: 20

6.
Rufus Wainwright, Unfollow the Rules (2020)

Now we get to the truly exciting stuff! Rufus Wainwright released two other very specifically styled, concept albums since, but Unfollow the Rules is his first straightforward (well, for him anyway) pop record since Out of the Game in 2012. It's also an album a fair amount better than that one, arguably his best work since 2007's theatrical Release the Stars. As always, Rufus Wainwright is a man unto himself, with a style all his own, a musical and lyrical talent unparalleled in the business. It's easy to be moved by the content of his songs if you listen to what they have to say.

Number of plays in 2020: 21

5.
The Cranberries, In the End (2019)

Only three of the albums I purchased in 2020 harken back to pre-pandemic days, and this is one of them. In the End was the first album I bought this year, all the way back in January, when I once again found I had missed the album's actual release, all the way back in April of 2019! That was itself fifteen months after the untimely, tragic death of lead singer Dolores O'Riordan, and for this the rest of the band got together to finish tracks started with her vocals on demos. It comes together very well, serving as a bittersweet but totally appropriate swan song, for both O'Riordan and the band. The end result was their best studio album in fully twenty years.

Number of plays in 2020: 31

4.
Fiona Apple, Fetch the Bolt Cutters (2020)

Sometimes, an album comes out with such perfect timing, without even intending to do so, it just speaks to the current moment. For me personally, Tori Amos's 2001 album Strange Little Girls did that upon its release exactly one week after 9/11, somehow serving as the perfect soundtrack to those truly surreal days. A giant swath of 2020 has been just as surreal, albeit in very different ways, and Fetch the Bolt Cutters could not have been released at a more perfect time, just one month into wild, scary, unsettling stay-home orders: "Fetch the bolt cutters, I've been in here too long," she sings on the title track, speaking to the sentiments every one of us was feeling at the time. Never mind the fact that the song is about a personal relationship and has nothing to do with a global pandemic; the line is so often repeated in the song, it still resonates. Oh and by the way the rest of the album is brilliant as well.

Number of plays in 2020: 33

3.
Pet Shop Boys, Hotspot (2020)

I do enjoy this album, although I couldn't help but be slightly disappointed, after my truly deep love of their previous album, Super, which I listened to a whopping 83 times in 2016—a record, by a long shot, for my first year with any Pet Shop Boys album. I spent plenty of time with Hotspot, but with only about two tracks that come even close to stacking up to the best of Super, it was still only half the time. This album, like Nightlife (1999), is one of those Pet Shop Boys that will get its momentary attention the year of its release, but will have comparatively little staying power as the years go on.

Number of plays in 2020: 41

2.
Lady Gaga, Chromatica (2020)

This one kind of grew on me more, the more I listened to it. Chromatica is a relatively short album by modern standards, thirteen full-song tracks (plus three more much shorter, transitional interlude tracks) clocking in at a mere 43 minutes. So, compared to a lot of other albums, it's easier to listen to this more times in a shorter amount of time. I'd say that in the context of Gaga's entire career, this being her fifth full-length studio album as the lead artist, Chromatica is mid-tier; better than forgettable but less than classic. Its best tracks, however—particularly "Rain on Me," "911" and "Replay"—stand up fairly well alongside the best tracks from the rest of her career. Given that Lady Gaga had been my most recent "new favorite artist" before my discovery of Sia, it's still no surprise that this album nabbed the #2 spot this year. After all, had I been born twenty years later than I was, I am certain Lady Gaga would have meant to me what Madonna meant to be in the eighties and nineties.

Number of plays in 2020: 52

1.
Kesha, High Road (2020)

But then, even after both Lady Gaga and Sia, seemingly out of nowhere comes . . . Kesha! I've been listening to her now since 2013, which was indeed before my discovery of Sia, except those first two Kesha albums, Animal and Warrior, really leaned into her pop, wild party-girl binge-drinker aesthetic, and it was fun but amounted to empty calories with irresistible beats. Enter a five-year hiatus, broken by her seminal 2017 release Rainbow, which was both great pop and had depth previously missing from her work, and surprised by being my #1 album in 2017. I actually think that album is still slightly better than High Road, but I have listened to High Road a couple times more in 2020 than I did Rainbow in 2017. High Road has gained a sort of higher, nostalgic meaning for me, as I discovered it literally in the middle of my travels to Australia, making this album the soundtrack to my truly fabulous "last hurrah" of international travel, which I still remain amazed went off without a hitch, before lockdown measures started literally days after our return. For for me, this album kind of represents the final days of a sort of freedom I didn't realize I was taking for granted at the time. I think it's a context that will give this album a special place in my heart for a long time to come.

Number of plays in 2020: 59

But then, of course, we have the things that get far more airtime in my AirPods: podcasts. With just a couple of exceptions, these are weekly, so even though I never re-listen to the same specific episode twice, most of these can be applied to the fact that there are 52 weeks in a year, thus I have listened to an episode of most of these podcasts at least 52 times in 2020. Also: nine out of these ten podcasts are the same as they are every year, although how I've ranked them has been shaken up to an unprecedented degree as of 2020.

10. Working it Out, hosted by Mike Birbiglia

Here is the one new addition to my 10 favorite podcasts of the year. And since a bunch of the longtime podcasts I listened to early on were initially thanks to recommendations from Gabriel (most notably Doug Loves Movies, of which I never wavered in my fandom even though Gabriel actually discarded it ages ago), it's pretty on-brand that Mike Birbiglia's Working It Out was also recommended by him. This one I only started recently, and I decided to go back to start from its beginning—it started back in June; I started it last month—and binge-listen to several episode per week until I caught up. I'm still not caught up, actually: I have six more episodes to go before that happens. And, I have to agree with what Gabriel told me from the start, which is that some episodes are far better than others. It really depends on the guest, and there is the issue of how often Birbiglia repeats himself telling different guests some of the same thing. The conceit is that they share comedy bits to each other and help each other, as the title states, "work it out." But what elevates this podcast—and as a result finally knocked The Complete Guide to Everything (also one of Gabriel's long-ago initial recommendations; I know he still listens to that one though) off of my top ten for the year—is how truly great most of Birbiglia's guests are. From John Mulaney to Hannah Gadsby to David Sedaris to Sarah Cooper to Tig Notaro to Maria Bamford and many, many more, the quality of the guests alone means that the "lesser" episodes are actually pretty few and far between. It's not often I find a new podcast I like so much I start from the very beginning, but with this one it was worth it.

9. Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, hosted by Peter Sagal

This is now my Sunday morning staple, what I listen to while brushing my teeth and shaving my face on that same day every week. Frequent panelist Paula Poundstone actually once responded to a tweet of mine in which she suggested it is not something to be proud of that I get some of my news from Wait Wait Don't Tell Me as a source, but that's just the way it is. On a Sunday morning anyway, I wouldn't have it any other way. Who else could turn national and world events into a radio game show? This airs on NPR on Saturdays and is later available in podcast form, waiting for me to play while I get ready on Sunday mornings. It's kind of come to feel as reliable as the sun rising every morning, and its continued existence after many years, even with them all having to connect via Zoom to create the show during a global pandemic, is its own source of reliable comfort.

8. Doug Loves Movies, hosted by Doug Benson

This was my #1 favorite podcast in 2019, and in the space of one year, dropped seven spots to #8! Why, you may ask? Well, because unlike Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, Doug Loves Movies is stripped of some of its trademark fun without the live audiences, who have over time developed ritual responses to certain cues, not to mention the interactive elements of "name tags" elaborately designed for panelists to choose and thus play on their behalf, winning a "prize bag" for them if they win the games. None of this can happen so long as Doug Loves Movies can only exist virtually, which has been the case since a roughly one-month hiatus ended in April. So, now, Doug still has the average three guests per episode, and they generally play the same games over Zoom and record it for the show, and they are still fairly entertaining—they just play now for "bragging rights" since they can't come together to bring anything for the prize bag. It also just doesn't have the same magic as it had in the before-times. But, I am also very much a loyalist, and I still enjoy the show; it remains one I never, ever miss.

7. My Favorite Murder, hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

This one, also long a perennial favorite, is now four spots from #3 last year. And there's nothing especially different about My Favorite Murder in its socially distanced, recorded-over-Zoom form; Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark continue reading each other stories about a murder (or murders) each week. They just aren't recording it with them both in the same room, for the time being. I still love it, even if the novelty has largely worn off after it having existed (and even being wildly popular) now for several years. It's not My Favorite Murder's fault it dropped on the list; it's just that in this unique year of 2020, my proportions of interest have shifted to a paricularly different kind of podcast, which elevated those ones higher on the list.

6. WTF with Marc Maron, hosted by Marc Maron

In my podcast rotation, WTF with Marc Maron is the O.G. podcast, the single one I listened to regularly when I very first began listening to any podcasts at all. The cohost of another podcast I listen to keeps raving about how 2020 wound up being a banner year for Marc Maron, his having to shift to doing interviews over Zoom—something he steadfastly resisted doing before—resulting in a whole bunch of big-name guests he never would have gotten on his show otherwise. This was especially the case in any other year when these personalities were too busy with other work as it is, but a whole lot of them this year have, frankly, had nothing better to do. It's been a boon to Maron's podcast, giving him far bigger stars this year than he ever got before. But for me, WTF is basically the same perennial favorite as it's always been, his presence on his own being on the whole the bigger pull than whoever his guest might be. To be sure, how good the interview is really depends on how good the guest is at being conversational, and that can vary to the very same degree no matter who the guest is.

5. Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone,, hosted by Paula Poundstone and Adam Felber

So, in this year's top half of my ten favorite podcasts, let me explain how the rankings shuffled so significantly this year: 2020 brought with it a whole lot of darkness, and that had the result of a renewed interest in podcasts designed simply to be fun, to bring joy to its listener. Cutting to the heart of people's humanity is all well and good, it still has its uses—and I still listen to those podcasts—but in our present world circumstances, the podcasts that exist only to be fun, and succeed at being reliably so, have quickly become my favorite. Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone was always entertaining but really seems to have found its sea legs this year. I genuinely look forward to listening, with the expectation of some reliably genuine laughs, every time there's a new episode.

4. The Big Picture, hosted by Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins, and sometimes others from The Ringer

Okay, so yeah: my love of movies continues to break through, no matter what's going on. And Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins love movies too, arguably even more than I do, which makes them a constant delight to listen to. It's been especially useful in 2020, when these two often give me my first access to information on one movie or another's release schedule having pivoted from a planned theatrical release to some streaming platform or another, or even VOD. They've been a big part of how I managed to get back into movie reviewing, after a six-month hiatus. I also just love listening to them talk, and sometimes debate, about movies. Or, as has been the case countless times this year, about the state of the movie theater industry in a year they have mostly had to remain closed.

3. Do You Need a Ride?, hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Chris Fairbanks

My Favorite Murder is lighthearted in approach but still tackles very heavy content, a key difference from this other podcast also co-hosted by Karen Kilgariff, which I actually started listening to first, back in 2016. Kilgariff and her delightful cohost, fellow comedian and friend Chris Fairbanks, have never been concerned with heavy content. Back in the before times, the conceit was that they recorded the podcast in the car during a ride they give to a friend, either to or from the airport. This was always a kick, especially as they commented on fun or surprising things they saw as they drove by—the inevitable pivot in 2020 was to either in-studio conversations or, as has been the case for months now, just shooting the shit over Zoom. They have returned to having a guest joining them more often again, but much of this year it was just the two of them, no longer in a car but still just spending an hour talking about whatever. They have such great chemistry though, and such delightful comic personalities, the show has still never been more fun to listen to.

2. Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend, hosted by Conan O'Brien and "Team Coco"

This one has steadily climbed up the chart in the three years I have listened to it, ranking #10 in 2018; #5 in 2019; and now landing at #2 for 2020. The reasons I'll cite will just be more of the same: it exists just to be fun. Conan O'Brien is so fun he can't even help himself; producer Matt Gourley and assistant Sona Movsesian are nearly as entertaining as he is—so much so that a good third, if not more, of each episode is dedicated just to the three of them talking to each other. Conan does interview a single celebrity guest each episode as well, and they are clearly carefully picked as people who will contribute to the ethos of the show being a thoroughly entertaining listen. This is a show I love so much, I can't even wait until morning to start listening to it when any new episode pops up in my feed on a Sunday night, so I listen to the first ten minutes while I'm getting ready for bed.

1. Threedom,, hosted by Scott Aukerman, Lauren Lapkus and Paul F. Tompkins

Say it with me: this show is absolute, unbridled joy. That's what gives it the top spot. They never even have guests. It's just Scott, Lauren and Paul sitting together and chatting away, seemingly more to entertain themselves and each other than to entertain us as listeners—and that just makes it better. These are three friends who clearly care for and support each other, and sometimes genuine sweetness between them peeks through. But it's always through the filter of comedy, all three of them being skilled improv performers. I am often laughing when I listen in, and if I'm not laughing, I'm still smiling. The only bummer of this show is that there is not more of it, as they record single "seasons" for only part of the year, currently in the middle of their third. I enjoyed the first two seasons so much, though, I twice signed up for a trial membership of Stitcher Premium so I could hear the episodes early before they appeared on iTunes—and then I listened to them all again when they appeared on iTunes a month or so later. That's how much I love this show: I actually have re-listened to episodes of this one, and it's the only podcast I've ever done that with. Whenever this podcast ends, I will be very sad indeed. For now, I'll bask in all the laughter and joy that it offers.

[posted 8:07 am]