Resident musicologist Scott Eastlick weighs in on what the year in music for 2023 sounded like. You can listen to all Scott's music mixes HERE at Electric Adolescence.
This was a year where I almost felt more jealous than judgemental towards the people for whom the biggest news story of the year was that Taylor Swift is dating a football player. While the war in Ukraine has remained a constant source of tragedy, a more divisive conflict in the middle east emerged with perfect timing to tear at the seams of the very thin fabric that struggles to hold us together.
Just as these plot threads have emerged to define our present day, a new thread has been introduced that promises to define our future. This is also the year in which artificial intelligence went from being fodder for science fiction writers to being an inescapable component of our upcoming reality. While levels of concern range from our jobs being made redundant to not entirely unrealistic concerns more suited to an installment in The Terminator franchise, life on earth is increasingly starting to feel like watching a movie where the plot unravels itself in a way that you start to realize that the lead character is going to die in the end.
Maybe in the light of these existential concerns, considerations of the best music of the year seem inconsequential, but for the moment I’m willing to consider music to be the only life raft within swimmable distance of this sinking ship. I can’t imagine a more apt moment for a mode of human expression free of violence, divisiveness, and hate; something that speaks to our better angels and lets our worst demons take an overdue nap.
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