Its that time of year, when everything rolls over and everyone does wrap up and summary posts. I have done my music wrap up every year for a while now. I did it monthly for a bit but it didn’t change enough to be interesting to write about. Hell, it honestly doesn’t change much to be interesting annually.
It was kind of a big year for buying CDs for me, though not necessarily listening to them. CDs are plentiful on the secondary market, and are easily digitized. I also went and ID tagged all my music, which will be useful going forward. Though a large bulk of it already was tagged. Ripped CDs are tagged when ripped, purchased music generally comes tagged. These two categories make up the bulk of my collection.
Anyway, I don’t have a number, but I probably added 50 albums this year through second hand CDs. That reminds me, I need to update my Discogs where I track them. Anyway, this is all just based on my Last.fm statistics, which is mostly everything, it doesn’t track any physical media, which would mostly be vinyls, though I did find a site that lets you do that with a click.
Albums
With absolutely no surprise for my part, Lauren Mayberry’s Vicious Creature, was my most listened to album this year. I absolutely love this album. I know a lot of CHVRCHES fans were kind of like warm on it, and prefer the CHV albums, but I love this one. It was not only my top album for the last 12 months, I’ve listened to it enough that it surpassed Aurora’s All My Demons… as my number one album overall, on Last.fm.
Number two is a bit surprising, because it came in a bit late, but Sigrid’s recent There is Always More That I Could Say is pretty good. I definitely like it more than How To Let Go, though probably not more than Sucker Punch, Sigrid’s other two albums.
Third place has been around for a few years on these now, with Radiohead’s Kid A Mnesia.
Four and five both go to Aurora, with What Happened To The Heart and All My Demons taking those slots, respectively.
Rounding out the top ten is a lot of mainstays, CHVRCHES with Screen Violence, Mag Bay’s Mercurial World, a few more Aurora albums. Number 6 is new with Dodie’s recent Not For Lack of Trying.
What the heck is up with these long titles? Are were taking queues from modern Manga for album titles these days?
Down at number 13 is the Acoustic version of Vicious Creature. Number 18 is another newcomer to the line up with REO Speedwagon’s Greatest hits. I almost went to see them over the summer but didn’t.
There are a few Taylor Swift albums, but all older, though I am surprised Folklore is there. What isn’t there at all is Life of a Showgirl, which I keep forgetting exists.
Lastly, I want to give an honorable mention to Hayley Williams’ album Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party, which probably would be in the top 5 if it has been properly tagged and not ignored by my scrobbler completely.
Artists
Not nearly as interesting because it parallels albums fairly closely, here are my top 25 for artists.
Not surprising Lauren Mayberry is on top. The top 9 is a bit of a capsule of the top albums, though I am not sure why Aurora at number 2 has that image. I may need to try generating a new one.
Most of the rest are my usual mainstays, I think Yumi Zuma may be new this year. Shout out to Raffaella down at number 20. Back when I first started listening to her because she was opening for Sigrid, I knew I would keep coming back, even if she would never make it to a particularly high spot (I say that somehow despite her being #12 all time on my stats).
2026
I don’t really have any predictions for next year, other than I am starting to shift back to a more singles oriented listening habit. Which might lead to some interesting charts next year. We’ll have to see.
