22 Quick Picks for 2022: Albums of my Life: an A-Z

2022 has been another year of discovery in terms of music and also of revelation. Many of the artists I enjoyed in 2021 have released new music which has been really exciting. MUNA and The Big Moon have released albums and I was lucky enough to see the latter in a record shop just a few months ago. My love for 80s music has grown and the realisation that the band, Toto, have been involved in music that I have loved for years of my life has ignited a deep love for these incredible musicians. I've walked miles to these tracks, endorphins have been overflowing in the gym and I've also shed the odd tear. I've procrastinated, dreamed, reveled, despaired, lusted and mused over these songs, listening again and again-- such is my obsession with music. I wanted to document twenty-two of my loved tracks for 2022.

I'm Not Your Man/ Marika Hackman (2017): Albums of my Life: an A-Z

 ...finding Marika Hackman on Google Music (as it was then) on my phone and apathetically browsing through the new releases thinking: 'I wonder what the kids today are listening to at the moment...' I'm not even that old, but that's the way it had gotten! I saw the cover of Any Human Friend, her latest release at the time (so Summer, 2019), and that album cover grabbed my attention immediately. There was something uncanny about it. Then later I realised that it had been inspired by a photographer called Rineke Dijkstra whose work has always fascinated me. Subconsciously, I must have sensed that this would be something cerebrally worthwhile listening to, something off the beaten track perhaps. It took me a year before I was hooked. A month or so of liking and then loving one song, 'Come Undone'; then more months of walking and digesting and finding that Marika was speaking to me in a way that no female artist had done for some time (and certainly not quite in the same way!) Any Human Friend is an album, for me, about coming to terms with yourself and allowing yourself to accept taboos about the human condition, specifically those attached to being a woman.

The album before this, 'I'm Not Your Man', also explores issues to do with gender and sexuality. I can remember falling in love (again piece by piece, deliciously drip-fed) with this wonderful creation. The track that got me addicted was 'My Lover Cindy' which deserves some focus later in this post.