The Retrographer
Posts
The Retrographer, Issue 60 (1 0 0 2 0 1 X)

The Retrographer, Issue 60 (1 0 0 2 0 1 X)

December 30, 2019

The top 100 songs of the 2010s, plus best albums

The Retrographer, Issue 60 (1 0 0 2 0 1 X)

On Tim's drumset with Davey

I’ll send my usual annual best-of list tomorrow on New Year’s Eve as usual, but before we say goodbye to the year, let’s say goodbye to the decade. Here are my 100 favorite songs since 2010.

When the decade opened on New Year’s Eve 2010 I was halfway through my junior year in college, about to turn 21 years old. 2009 had been about Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors, Grizzly Bear, Phoenix, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Neon Indian, Das Racist, Erykah Badu, and Julian Casablancas’ “11th Dimension”.

A decade ensued. I moved to DC in its first month and my grandmother died four months later. I was back in college next semester, saw The Social Network, and briefly quit Facebook. I lived in a house with two friends, Tim and Ian, and we left our instruments set up in the living room so we could play music whenever we wanted. We threw dance parties and concerts. Once, a friend’s little brother Gabe and his friend came to tour campus and we became a live karaoke band for them to sing the new CeeLo Green song “Fuck You”. I got my first idea for a startup in Mamoun’s Falafel in St. Mark’s during fall break. I went for long runs off campus. I was acutely aware of how much I liked being there, and how little time I had left. At night, I seeked out quiet places on campus to be present in. I forewent anything like a job search so I could spend as much time as I could working and reading, knowing it might be the last time that’s how I would be able to spend my days.I graduated and moved home. I watched all of The Wire in a very short period of time. I spent a lot of time in my bedroom trying to learn to write songs and figuring out what I wanted to do for a job. I lay in bed, night after night, fantasizing about an app I wanted to make. I nursed social anxiety about running into people in the town I grew up in and having to explain why I was living at home. Then, at the end of the summer, as I was headed out to McSorleys with my brother and girlfriend, I got a call from my friend Arnav, whose couch I slept on in DC many nights, who told me his old boss at NPR Music was looking for an intern, and he wanted to refer me. Was I interested? I went to work there for Frannie Kelley and got my first opportunities as a writer. I participated in making the year-end best-of list for NPR Music, and after I saw how NPR did it – pooling everyone’s favorite songs and then winnowing it down to 100 – I decided to do it myself, too. My favorite songs of that year were “Milkshake” by Yuck and “Weekend” by Smith Westerns.

At McSorley's with Emma after talking to Arnav.

Frannie extended my internship and helped me begin freelancing for a publication called Prefix in 2012. I was paid $2 per news article I wrote and drank a lot of iced coffee. I tried to convince my editor to let me give Good Kid, M.A.A.D City a perfect score. I felt totally adrift. I went to intern at an iPad magazine startup that summer that went out of business by August. Two of my dad’s best friends lost close relatives to suicide. He was so broken over it that he seemed to become bedridden. Emma and I decided to drive from New York to Seattle, deeply breathing air in Idaho and Montana. On a late-night drive through Minnesota, we were passed on the highway by a semi hauling the blade of a wind turbine, an object of superhuman scale, the closest experience I’ve had in my life to viewing the moon landing. One day I was at Emma’s parents’ apartment and got a call to come down to the emergency waiting room at Columbia Presbyterian to meet my dad and his girlfriend, Lisa. My dad was in worse pain than I’d ever seen him. After what felt like an eternity, we were all called into the emergency room. I was sitting on the floor with Lisa when I overheard a doctor refer to my dad’s cancer for the first time. A doctor came over and offered us blankets to sit on.

My dad married Lisa and we all went out to breakfast together after. Barack Obama was re-elected president. I was offered a job to edit at the Webby Awards and I began in January, 2013. I wrote a song called “The Graduate” and started a band called Milhaus with my friends Ian, Andre, and Paulina. I moved to Bed-Stuy with my friends Travis and Dave. I read The Lean Startup. I spent long hours with my dad in his hospital room and listened to Tame Impala’s “Apocalypse Dreams” every time I waited for the elevator to leave the oncology floor. My friend Peter and I started an idea for a new company together; that year we had a magical night where we walked through a street carnival in Williamsburg and watched people play games. I saw D’Angelo and ?uestlove play a duet show at Brooklyn Bowl in March and ran into Frannie. She asked if I wanted to write about it and, starting with that piece, returned to NPR as a freelancer. In August of that year I wrote about an Arcade Fire show I saw. My dad died three months later.

Life was a smouldering crater. I felt like I was living in a house that had its roof blown off. I wondered if I would ever feel the same magnitude of happiness I had before my dad died again, or if I had endured my own kind of mortal wound. It seemed like music offered no comfort to me, but I listened to My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, Joni Mitchell’s Hejira, and Jon Hopkins’ Immunity almost every day.

Emma got a cat. I moved to Crown Heights. My sister Caroline was cast in a TNT drama called Proof. I saw Disclosure with Peter and Travis. I went up to Middlebury for my brother Peter Walker’s graduation in February, 2014. I spoke at a memorial for my dad. I ran the Brooklyn half marathon. My family planted a tree at West Point for my dad and got an Airedale terrier named Greta. My godfather David gave me an axe with the word “courage” inscribed on the hilt. I started going to therapy. I started regularly corresponding with my dad’s friend Amy. I read The Little Book of Common-Sense Investing at my uncle Rob’s recommendation. I grew a moustache. I interviewed Redman. I went to my little brother Davey’s baseball games. At a holiday party, Gabe – the friend who had sung live karaoke when he visited Hamilton – told me he was starting a new app for sharing music. I spoke at another memorial for my dad.

With Redman in 2014.I turned 26 and started this newsletter. Davey and I went to a Nets game at the Barclays center. Lisa, Davey, Peter Walker and I went to Jamaica for a week. I wrote a song called “Pete Williams”, named after my high school guidance counselor. I thought about my dad constantly. A leak opened over my bedroom and I briefly vacated my apartment until my building serendipitously switched management companies just weeks later once it was revealed that my property manager was Robert Durst and he had murdered someone. I interviewed Waka Flocka Flame. I ran the Hamptons half marathon and then the Brooklyn half marathon again. Milhaus put out an EP. My friend Hilary asked me to add songs to a collaborative cross-country driving playlist, but instead I made her a 22-hour playlist of my own. The friend who started the music sharing app raised over a million dollars and asked me to become his first employee. I left the Webby Awards. Emma and I hiked in Glacier National Park for a week. When I came back, I started at Cymbal. I was embracing a dream I’d held since college, and getting close to it made me feel like I’d woken up in the cockpit of an airplane at 35,000 feet having never flown before. I found a new apartment in Brooklyn Heights. Frannie left NPR and I stopped writing there. I met Joe Biden. I accompanied my friends Ben and Lydia on guitar for a live dance performance. Cymbal took over my life.

I chased ambition to escape hopelessness. My coworker Mario and I went to Austin and organized pop-up concerts South by Southwest. We were hosted by Lisa’s friend Andrew Tilin. My friend Winston started Office Culture and asked me to play in it. I started growing my hair out. My coworkers made me CEO. I moved in with Emma. My friends Sam and Scott got married. I had my dad’s tuxedo tailored to fit me. I spent long, dark hours trying to figure out how to make Cymbal deliver on its promise. Donald Trump won the presidency. Mario lost his brother in a fire and left the company. I was heartbroken like I hadn’t been since I lost my dad.

With Mario and Andrew Tilin.Davey got Bar Mitzvahed. I started getting breakfast with my friends Scott, David, Nate once a month. Cymbal had its biggest month ever. It also started to run out of money. Emma and I went to Zion National Park. We gave up Cymbal’s office space to save money and launched a universal player for music as an end-run. I started recording a solo album with my friends Andrew and Ben. I was the best man in my friend Mark’s wedding. I was trying anything I could think of to save my company.

I interviewed Jon Batiste. I went to Big Sky with Emma’s family. Office Culture started preparing to record our second album. Andrew Tilin died. I went to Joshua Tree. We announced we were shutting Cymbal down and the community shared countless stories of love, friendship, and music discovery that softened the blow for me. I walked around the reservoir in Central Park day after day and tried to figure out what I was going to do next. We turned the servers off. I kept thinking of Frank Ocean singing, “We’ll never be those kids again.” I took the GRE. I thought about moving to Paris. I wrote an article for Pitchfork. I listened to The Sensual World by Kate Bush and Hats by The Blue Nile over and over. I decided to join Audiomack. I voted in the midterm elections. I bought two new pairs of eyeglasses. I played guitar in Ben’s wedding to Lydia. I told my family, and then Emma’s family, that I was going to propose to her.

I turned 30. Emma, Peter, and Emma’s sister Sophie and I went to New Orleans to celebrate. I went to Florida with Emma and her dad Andy to visit her 98-year-old grandmother. I wrote Emma a letter on the flight home. On March 17th, I took her to Carl Schurz Park and asked her to marry me, and once she said yes, we drank champagne by the Peter Pan statue with our siblings and met our families at the Mansion Diner on York Avenue. In April we went to Tuscany. Emma got her doctorate. I made a new friend named Mike. My friend Matt nominated me to join the Grammys. My friend Steve asked to make him a 70s playlist the length of a bartending shift and I did. My friend Dave got married and asked me for eating and dancing playlists. Emma and I went to visit another grandmother in France. I had long breakfasts with my friend Amadou. My mom and I saw the Rolling Stones. My friend Emily asked me to make her a playlist for a barbeque and I did. Davey started learning to drive. My friend Daisy turned 30 and asked me for a playlist, so I obliged – I did it for my friend Sam too. Andrew and I spent a weekend in a beach house in New Jersey working on my solo album. I made my friend Nate a playlist for every day of the week at his new restaurant. I went to David’s bachelor party in Barcelona. Office Culture put out A Life of Crime and it was written about in The Fader and reviewed in Pitchfork. I gave a presentation about Audiomack at Google. Office Culture played shows all through the northeast and performed on Mountain Stage in West Virginia.