This appeared on a new music site that’s got a lot of potential. I wrote it as a favor to a friend. The title of the piece as I submitted it was simply ‘My Year In Three Songs.’ It sounded compelling, important, kind of mysterious, a bit of a Camden Joy-sounding thing, but the editor changed it to the more underwhelming, blah sounding, ‘Music I Could Live With,’ which makes it sound like here’s some music that I guess was tolerable, which is the opposite of how I felt about the music in question.
I should mention that even though the piece talks extensively about the challenges of fatherhood, it’s not really about that so much as the role music plays in our lives in any situation where we’re psychically-fraught & trying not to break. That is to say, my struggle is raising a toddler five days a week, your struggle might be having to go to work everyday w/an emotionally abusive co-worker or boss, but this essay is about how we cope with these struggles through music, and in that sense it’s universal.
Also, none of the songs resemble ‘dad-rock’ in the least.
There’s also a Spotify playlist at the bottom with a bunch more songs I liked in 2016. You’ll like a few, and there’ll even be some you’ve (probably) never heard before.
As for the kid, he likes The Beatles (it could be worse, I guess), but he’s started to warm up to Anna Meredith.
Scott Creney 