Fourthords' ten most-played songs of 2023
It was a hell of a year for me, and I gotta say: this music doesn’t really reflect that. These’re all good songs; maybe I was just shooting for more good vibes this year?
10. “She Is Staggering”
- Polaris, Music from The Adventures of Pete & Pete (1999)
I adored the suburban absurdism of The Adventures of Pete & Pete (1991–1996), and its theme song (“Hey Sandy”) stuck in my head long after the show stopped airing. I downloaded a pirated version of that song in Hoser’s Centenary office in the long-long-ago, but a few years ago I went looking for a higher-quality version. Instead, I found that the show’s house band (Polaris) put out this entire album, and I’ll never not listen to any of these tracks.
9. “Yesterday”
- The Beatles, Anthology 2 (1996)
I’ve been listening to the Beatles forever. I was raised on “oldies” music, and the Fab Four were prominent fixtures. In 1997, while visiting Angelbiscuit at her house, she wanted to share with me a mix-tape that her folk-dancing cousin had made for her: the first track of which was this 14 June 1965, first-take recording of “Yesterday” from Anthology 2. This version of the song, with McCartney talking everybody in, eluded me for ages; I even wondered if FDC had used a bootleg recording of some kind. Having only recently realized that it came from this compilation album of similarly not-final versions of Beatles standards, I kinda overplayed it this year.
8. “Status Report”
- Anson Mount, Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Rebecca Romijn, Ethan Peck, Melissa Navia, Celia Rose Gooding, Babs Olusanmokun, Paul Wesley, & Carol Kane, Subspace Rhapsody (2023)
It’s the soundtrack album for Star Trek’s first musical episode. It’s a slap. If I allowed for multiple songs from the same album, this top-ten would just be this album, probably. Instead, it’s the first ensemble piece of the episode that rose to the top.
6. “Wellerman (Sea Shanty)”
- Nathan Evans (2021)
So… apparently this was a phenomenon? I first heard this song at Pizzamas: After Dark (Oct 2022): Hank Green took to stage, thumped his acoustic guitar, and everybody just sang along to this thing I’d never heard. Sounded good, though, so I jotted down the lyrics to find later, assuming it was a Hank Green original. That Christmas, I was talking with RS4Books who mentioned her surprise that her students (at the Kentucky Center for Traditional Music) were really into sea shanties that semester, and maybe I’d have insight. I didn’t, but we fumbled our way into eventually realizing that we were talking about the same song. It bops.
4. “Cheap Thrills”
- Sia, This Is Acting (2016)
I don’t remember where I originally found this song, but it played this past February when Sauced and I were carpooling from Memphis to Los Angeles for the Star Trek cruise. We’d already discussed my realization that I’m a basic bitch, so when this played, it seemed like the soundtrack to that introspective revelation.
3. “Sex Bomb”
- Tom Jones & Mousse T., Reload (1999)
I was volunteering at KET in my teens when some adult asked about the music to which I listened. It didn’t matter what I answered, they just wanted to use me as a springboard to discuss their weird teen who listened to lounge-singer Tom Jones and songs like “Lady”. I jotted down this Jones fellow and his song to look up later, and the rest is history. Thank you to that other weird teen for circuitously introducing me.
Honorable mentions
“Perception check” (2023) by Tom Cardy
“Nothing Else Matters” (Tulia, 2018) by Tulia
“One Day More” (Les Misérables, 2012) by Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Amanda Seyfried, Eddie Redmayne, Sacha Baron Cohen, Helena Bonham Carter, & Samantha Barks
“Welcome to the Internet” (Inside (The Songs), 2021) by Bo Burnham
thumbnail image: “Diamond Rio PMP300” by nrkbeta (CC-BY-SA-2.0)
