ISSUE #226
Welcome to your Earwyrms Wyrpped for 2022. This year, we explored a lot of new genres here in the dirt, from phonk to roadhouse, dungeon synth to goth. We got through 42 issues together — if you read at least one of them, you’ll have read more than 99.99% of Americans — but your favorites were the ones that sounded like home. Here are the most popular Earwyrms issues of 2022:
Cozycore
Issue #224: “Grab your weighted blanket and pull out your earmuff headphones because here comes a treat, fresh out the oven: the world’s comfiest playlist, just in time for the holidays…”
Music for Reading
Issue #225: “All seasons are reading seasons, but this one most of all—what better for the day after Thanksgiving than to wrap yourself in leftovers and sink into a story? This playlist is full of songs I find nice to play while I’m reading…”
The Chrono-Canon
Issue #222: “It’s been a full year since I embarked on my journey to name the 100 Best Songs Ever, to carve my personal history in golden vinyl and try to glean some novel insights from my reflection in the glow…”
Pool Day
Issue #199: “Nothing complicated here—sometimes the office closes early for a holiday and you have to send your newsletter quickly because you're going to the pool. We have all been there. Cool off, kitties, and enjoy this little pool playlist…”
Another End of the World: Annivyrsary 2012
Issue #217: “It was the year the world was supposed to end. For music, in a way, it did. As the 2009 class of indie darlings delivered underwhelming follow ups, critics were reckoning with the rise of poptimism…”
Thank you for sticking around for another year. I’m hard at work on next week’s year-end list, The Best Songs of 2022, so you will have to forgive me for transposing my most-streamed songs of the year as this week’s playlist.
“But Jeff,” you might say. “Why would I listen to your most-played songs when I have my own Wrapped to reckon with?” Well, my answer might point out how, because it takes so many streams to craft each week’s playlist, mine ends up being a snug encapsulation what the year in Earwyrms sounded like.
Also, straw person, because the songs rip. Please stay warm — I’ll see you next week.
This year was awesome, of course—the future always is—promised (ripped straight?) as it has been from speculative literature. It's a huge slap to the haters that the best songs of 2025 were artificially generated, ripe and ready to fill the coffers of the First Family. That's life, baby—that's liberty, that's the... the... sorry, my hands don't usually quake like this.
Every song I've heard this year felt like it'd be the last. It's the scorch (praise be its name!)—every drive, I blast my mounted phone with max AC. It's a prayer that keeps it from overheating.
As I listened to the long list of songs for this issue, over the many weeks it took me to get my groove back (jury’s still out), I was surprised at how sad this project was making me. I’d been more than ready to revisit the dull bite of those pandemic memories, obviously, but this emotional hedging made it only more of a shock when I was blindsided by intense anti-nostalgia,
We have entered the arbitrary quarter century, which is fascinating because I’ve lived through it all. Remember: 25 years into the 20th, we had The Great Gatsby and “Rhapsody in Blue.”
The best song of 2024 isn’t on Spotify. It’s called “24/7 Heaven,” Diamond Jubilee’s closer. It comes drenched in strings and draped in blue light, at the end of Cindy Lee’s two-hour album. It’s the epitome of sublime, if you ask me—a sweet and perfect fruit, an apple at first sight.
Technically, halfway through the year is next Monday, July 1st. This is a leap year, after all. They’re the only years where there’s an even split in days; the only times the divide falls at midnight, not noon.
That first song you hear? That’s my #1 song of the year. That’s right—for the first time in Earwyrms history, I have made a best-of playlist from one to ten. Grief demands you do something different, and—like Soderbergh producing the 93rd Academy Awards—only time will tell if we fell for seductive folly or landed on love’s new paradigm.
A collection of the best songs from these first several months, featuring Gia Margaret, Jessy Lanza, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, JPEGMAFIA, Danny Brown, Wednesday, ANOHNI and the Johnsons, Jess Williamson, and more.
The trouble with writing about music every week is you don’t actually end up knowing that much more about music. Quite less, in fact. The time, the work, the attempted balance leads to short cuts, and I become more drawn to the oldies and goodies instead of pressing play on something new.
The future is back, baby! Coming at the heels of two bifurcated years—one by a virus, the other its vaccine—2022 stands tall in history as the year the Great Machine roared back to life. Belch ye black smoke into that unbearable blue sky!
Welcome to your Earwyrms Wyrpped for 2022. This year, we explored a lot of new genres here in the dirt, from phonk to roadhouse, dungeon synth to goth. We got through 42 issues together, but your favorites were the ones that sounded like home. Here are the most popular Earwyrms issues of 2022.
A confession: I have not finished a single book all year. I normally average between 15 and 30 by year’s end. And listen, I’ve tried—oh! have I tried.
When did 2021 begin? Was it January 1st? It couldn’t be—that was thirty Jeffreys ago. Was it two weeks after we got the second shot? That was May 1st for me. Half a year went by before I emerged, stunted and shaking.
This is the year of our reclaimed youth: I’ve loved more skate pop and power emo this year than I have since Earwyrms began. Last year around this time, music’s big players were coping with the pandemic by dropping albums early or cashing in on nostalgia while young bands waited in the wings and prayed there’d be a future to play through.
Olivia Rodrigo’s universally acclaimed third album came out the same year the film Obsession made over $300 million dollars at the worldwide box office. This is nothing less than a fact, and the implications are far beyond the scope of this issue; nevertheless, it speaks to a generational changing of the guard, and the universal pattern of emotion and memory for our centennially challenged species.