31 Almosts from 2023: great tracks that didn’t quite make the cut
31 is an arbitrary number. Even the year “2023” is arbitrary, as we consider any album released from 1 Jan 2022 through 31 Oct 2023 eligible. And what constitutes an album? We don’t really know even though we sorta tried to write it down. There’s no real magic directly tied to any of it, really.
The discipline all this arbitrariness drives, however, can be magic. It gives a framework to help us think critically about what we’ve been listening to. These playlists become little sonic time capsules, evoking the delightful experiences of any given year. The 31s bond us to our friends and family, with whom we share the list every Christmas. Even the little USB drives we use to share music elicit delight.
Most years have more than 31 great singles, and the discipline that forges best-of playlists leaves many fine songs unheard. To remedy this, we started sharing our nearly-there lists in 2022. The songs on the Almost lists are often great but didn’t quite make the cut. Sometimes, the source album needed more strength as a whole. Other times, the artist might have a tremendous back catalog that the new release doesn’t live up to. Or, sometimes, one of us thought the album was 31-caliber while the other didn’t. For whatever reason, here’s our “b-sides” playlist for 2023.
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