Happy new year, everybody! Sorry this is a little later coming out than usual but we closed down GLONO HQ for the two weeks around Christmas and New Year’s and didn’t even look at a computer. Highly recommended. Next year maybe we’ll try to ignore the phones too.
While in 2018 we posted something new every single weekday, we were a little more lax in 2019. Our annual playlist of all the songs we posted about is only 119 tracks this year, compared to 202 in 2018 and 172 in 2017. Sorry (but not that sorry).
There was a ton of good music released in 2019, as there is every year. Sometimes it feels like it’s getting harder to find, and then sometimes good jams are unavoidable. “Old Town Road” was something else, huh?
My favorite album of the year, I’m You by Hallelujah the Hills, came out of nowhere and absolutely blew me away. It’s an album that explicitly deals with the stuff that Glorious Noise was founded on: exploring the convoluted relationship between musicians and listeners. I’m surprised and disappointed it hasn’t received the attention it deserves.
My favorite concert of the year was Sincere Engineer and the Hold Steady at Thalia Hall in Chicago. Both bands reminded me how good for your soul it is to get out and see bands with a bunch of other people. It’s church for people like us. I was going to write it up and then realized that back in 2014 I had already written exactly what I planned on saying. Still, I need to constantly remind myself to get out more. The older I get, the easier it is to retreat into my jammies and stay home.
My resolutions this year are to be nicer to the people I love and to go to more shows (and to eat better and exercise). If you’re reading this, feel free to hold me to it!
And what better way to do that than on our beloved old message board? I’d love to see message boards make a comeback. As much as I appreciate twitter for what it is, there’s something special about a bunch of likeminded community members yakking it up in their own space. Yeah, I know, #okboomer, ha ha, very funny, and while we’re at it, let’s bring back blogs in 2020, but seriously: get in there. We miss you. We mean it.
Take of yourself, try to stay sane, and let’s all hope things get better in 2020.
Love,
Jake and the GLONO posse
GLONO 2019 Apple Music Playlist
Note: Some songs may be missing from these playlists either due to human error, unavailability at the time, or being yanked by the streaming services after we added them to the playlist. Also, Spotify only allows the first 100 songs to be embedded; click through for the full playlist. Apologies.