Author Archives: olneyce

Top 15 albums of 2022

It’s the biggest cliche, but it turns out to be true: when you have a kid, it gets a lot harder to listen to new music. Part of it is simple math. There are just a finite number of hours … Continue reading

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Top 15 albums of 2021

I’ve been writing up my lists of favorite albums here for fifteen years now. This is the first year in all that time that I don’t have full writeups on all the albums that I’d like to cover. I tried … Continue reading

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Top 40 Songs of 2021

These lists are always a sort of personal soundtrack. They remind me of where I was and what I was doing each year. More than anything this year, ‘where I was and what I was doing’ was very simple: at … Continue reading

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Vaccine optimism

I want to offer some vaccine optimism. I see a lot of negative feelings out there, and I understand them. This has been a terrible year, and it sometimes feels like even the good news is drowned by the never-ending … Continue reading

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Top 15 albums of 2020

Music has been so important this year, given how we have lost so many of the intimate connections of friends and family that bring us peace and stability. Music can’t replace those things, but it’s something. A warm fire on a … Continue reading

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Top 50 songs of 2020

For me, the last few years have often felt like a process of constant motion. Travel has taken me all around the US, all around the world. I’ve spent countless hours on airplanes, on trains, in cars, on subways. So much … Continue reading

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I was planting flowers in the spring

These last few months have been difficult to say the least. The whole world came face to face with a crisis beyond our capacity to ignore. And, somewhat amazingly, billions of people accepted the responsibility and radically changed their behavior. … Continue reading

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50 songs for 50 states: Virginia

For sheer emotional weight, my heart lies with Rosanne Cash, whose “When the Master Calls the Roll” might just be the best song ever written about the Civil War. But I feel like Virginia demands something broader. Beautiful as that … Continue reading

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50 songs for 50 states: Vermont

It’s the unofficial state song, and has been covered by Frank Sinatra and Linda Ronstadt, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Ray Charles, Rosemary Clooney, Nat King Cole, Sam Cooke, and Willie Nelson. There was never any way I … Continue reading

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50 songs for 50 states: Utah

It only references Utah once, in the opening line (“On a rattlesnake speedway in the Utah desert”), but the song was based on an actual road trip taken by Springsteen, Stevie Van Zandt, and photographer Eric Meola in 1977. Most … Continue reading

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