Spotify Wrapped, King Gizzard, and the year’s best songs
Spotify Wrapped kinda sucked in 2024, missing a bunch of the cool info from previous years about genres and favorite albums and more. Did you notice? Spotify ended 2023 with massive layoffs, including Scott Macdonald, the person whose insights about data analysis and genres was apparently sorely missed when this year’s Wrapped was put together.
This year’s Wrapped includes an AI-generated podcast about your listening habits. (In Spotify on your phone or iPad, click the Wrapped capsule at the top and look for “Your Wrapped AI Podcast.”). It’s five minutes or so of two hosts talking about your favorite song and the number of minutes you listened and how your listening habits changed during the year. It’s mildly interesting, not great, sometimes cringey.
The Spotify podcasts were produced by Google NotebookLM – Google did a deal with Spotify to create a podcast for every Spotify user. The Spotify podcast might not be great but don’t dismiss the concept, NotebookLM is exciting technology indeed. My recent article about NotebookLM has the details.
My Top Ten 2024 list is guaranteed to please, because everyone’s musical tastes are just like mine, I’m pretty sure. After all, I’ve gotten an overwhelming response to my previous lists in 2023 and 2022 and 2021 and farther back to the beginning of recorded music. Now granted, the overwhelming response is “Shut up, you have terrible taste,” but let’s not dwell on that, the point is that my 2024 list is a banger.
Listen to my Top Of The Pops playlist while I tell you a story about one week in the life of Australian band King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard.
It’s late October. The band is touring the United States to promote its 26th album, Flight b741, which features a 70s flavored blues rock sound. King Gizzard hops freely through genres; previous albums have ranged from jazz fusion to heavy metal to Kraftwerk-style synthesizer pop.
On October 29 they released Phantom Island, a single with full orchestral accompaniment. It starts with atmospheric strings and twinkling piano keys, before a verse takes over with a colourful jazz arrangement. All of the songs on their next album will have orchestral arrangements and they’ll do a US tour in 2025 with a different 28-piece orchestra in each city.
On November 1 they performed a high energy three hour marathon rock show at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles.
On November 2 they played a fully acoustic show in San Diego.
On the 3rd and 4th they played high powered rock shows in Paso Robles and Stanford. Worth mentioning that all of their shows feature different set lists and song arrangements.
On November 6 they put on a techno synthesizer rave in San Francisco at the Regency Ballroom, a two hour electronic extravaganza with band members bending over a synth table bristling with cables and levers and dials.
An orchestra, an acoustic show, a techno rave, rock shows – and that’s all in the first week of November.
Want to know how to build a fan base in 2024? Live stream every single one of your shows on YouTube for free. Make them available – all of them – on Spotify within a few days. Give permission for anyone to press vinyl LPs from the live material, an invitation that has launched a thriving cottage industry of colored albums and creative artwork.
It’s no surprise that the venues are getting bigger and their reputation is growing.
My top ten list includes three songs that I couldn’t stop playing, Le Risque and Flight b741 from the new album plus Phantom Island with the orchestra (which takes a left turn halfway through and requires the orchestra to play very vigorously indeed).
If you’re feeling energetic, stick around at the end of the list for The Fourth Colour, performed by King Gizzard in Washington DC in August. The band spends the first couple of minutes on the composed song, then starts a blues jam that sounds like Canned Heat in 1969, harmonica wailing over a funky beat.
Around the four minute mark, the drummer changes the beat and the band slows down and things get more swampy.
At the five minute mark he speeds up again and things get more frenetic.
And then the drummer changes it up again, about every minute or so, altering the rhythm and tempo like it’s a challenge to see if everyone can keep up with him. And the band members don’t just turn on a dime to follow him, they do pirouettes and somersaults to stay in perfect synchrony. If you watch the video they’re all laughing by the end because they’re having such a good time – and that’s how I feel when I listen.
Oh yeah, the rest. There are some other good songs on the list. David Gilmour, former leader of Pink Floyd, gets a special shoutout for Luck And Strange, a new album filled with his liquid guitar solos and fine songwriting. His daughter Romany Gilmour handles vocals on Between Two Points, a particularly lovely song on the album. If you spent any time listening to Dark Side of the Moon in your youth, you might enjoy the arrangement of Great Gig In The Sky on his recent short tour, with Romany and two other vocalists sending ethereal vocals into the sky above Rome.
Every year there are fewer bands making new music for old boomers. I’ll keep listening to bad music and looking for diamonds in the rough. Happy holidays!