‘Bulo’s Fave Tunes Of 2024: #’s 50-41

OK, kids, here we go.  Real happy with the songs I unearthed this year.  I notice that the selection is perhaps a bit more roots-oriented than usual.  Although it’s technically my list, I solicit input from my wife, my daughters, my son-in-law and, this year, our very own Nathan Arizona.

Oh, did I mention that my son-in-law is a statistical genius?  Not to mention a lover of Christmas music, which he knows that I am not.  Here in all its glory (well, minus the color-coded chart), is his rationale for his list.  Included b/c it’s one of the funniest things I’ve read all year:

Hi,

The moment has arrived, you finally will receive the true and correct ordering of the best songs of the year! See the attached! Orientation to the file and methodology. First columns are song and title, I hope you understand what those are. Rating and number are my scores and ordering, the usual.

The remainder of the columns all provide scores from 0 to 100. These represent assigning a value to the trait in the column, so that you could have information on what the songs sound like to my infallible ears. It should be noted that the scores aren’t one-to-one comparable. I listened to these on various days, might listen to five or ten in a row at a time. So I did a mathematical calculation to rescale the values in these columns so that they are in reference to the instance in which I was listening. If, for example, I had a bad headache one day, all songs might feel louder because of my headache. These calculations are designed to mitigate this day-of bias, representing the trait relative to my scoring style on the individual day I was listening, how did this song fit in relative to the other songs I’ve been listening to? Now to get into what the individual columns mean!

First is loudness. This was a rating I provided for how loud or upbeat the song was. Scores range from 0 to 100 where 0 represents music by Enya and 100 represents the joyful delight of Feliz Navidad.

Next column is general appeal, how conventional the song sounded. As before, scores range from 0 to 100. In this case 0 represents the avant garde of Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma, and 100 represents the pop culture phenom Miriah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas is You.

The column after that represents personal recognition. I love Waxahatchee, so I’m probably going to rate that song as fantastic anyway, just because of the name recognition. So 0 represents “I’ve never heard of this band before”, and 100 represents “I just heard this song on XPN”.

The three columns after that are three “surprise” columns. I did an analysis (more on that below), which calculates a predicted value, based on the scores for loudness, general appeal, and my personal recognition. The analysis also included information on “runs” in my ratings (so if I just gave a really high score to my favorite song, do I then “penalize” the next song, for not being incredible?). So it takes all this information and implies an estimate of how much I’ll probably like it. When Right Back To It showed up, it’s quiet, not too poppy, and by an artist I really like, so it’s obvious that I’m going to give it a really high score. What is in the surprise column represents how much BETTER the rating I gave was compared to what you can expect based on these aesthetic qualities! Because if it’s fighting an uphill battle, going against the grain of the TRUE aesthetic that constitutes my opinion, well then that must be a truly remarkable song! These are again scaled 0 to 100 where 0 is “eh, not surprising at all to see that score” and 100 is “wow, nobody saw that coming!” As an example, notice how Much Ado About Nothing by Waxahatchee doesn’t have the highest surprise scores, right around 50 and 60. That’s why, because I like that song is my favorite aesthetic, so it’s not surprising at all that I’d give it a high ranking, even though it wasn’t as incredible as Right Back To It (my personal favorite)!

So that’s how they are ordered. First in order of the color codes. Then, within the color codes, it orders by the surprise scores. Because if there’s a bunch of songs of all equal quality per the color codes, a song that was remarkably enjoyable despite adhering to an undesirable aesthetic, that one deserves to be higher on the list, it worked for it! There’s two surprise scores, changing assumptions about the data, so I included both individually, then took an average. I used this average for the sorting.

Last thing, I mentioned an analysis. Boy was that a disappointing analysis! It was breaking down which factors best explained my opinions, and the findings would really appeal to a cynical and behavioral psychologist! I thought I’d like songs that were quiet (i.e., low loudness scores), I know I like quiet easy listening most of the time. There was some evidence of that, but not the strongest evidence. Much more relevant was…name recognition! I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, that’s just human nature, we like what we know! To some extent, if the band had name recognition, but it also appealed to a broad audience, I didn’t tend to like it as much. So I liked my favorite indie XPN songs, I guess that’s what that tells you!

There was another thing that stood out from the analysis…the “runs” in my ratings! If I heard a song I really thought was incredible, it put me in a good mood, and I usually rated the next song better. If I heard a song I really disliked, it put me in a bad mood, and I usually rated the next song worse!

So that was pretty…disappointing! I thought I’d be able to prove that my aesthetic is the true and right aesthetic, but I guess I’m just another BF Skinner automaton, making choices in response to what I just heard or basic name recognition! Rats! (An interjection BF Skinner would have appreciated, given his work with rodents!)

That’s that, have a great evening!

Ray

My, uh, calculations were just a wee bit more primitive, although, when finalizing my list, I made sure to listen to the music w/o watching the videos.

Enough stalling, you came for the music!:

50.  Willi Carlisle:

49:

48:

47:  “I don’t even feed the hungry when I’m full.” Curtis McMurtry:

46: 

45:

44: 

43. 

42. 

41: