13 Presents The List: The Top Ten Albums of 2013

Hey folks,

It’s that time of year again. The time when I take all the music that I listened to in the past year and present to you my list of the best. I know I haven’t updated in a VERY long time, and honestly, I don’t think that’s going to change. Whereas XIV still updates when he can, I have found that maintaining the blog regularly is just not something I can make work for myself. So from here on out, this will primarily be XIV’s blog. That said, I may pop up from time to time, especially when I post my yearly top ten lists, which I intend to continue making for the foreseeable future.

This year, in addition to a music list, there will also be a movie list. I published the first of my movie lists last year after watching 44 films but did not publish it to this website because at the time we were still strictly covering music here. Since we have now expanded the format to different forms of entertainment, I am happy to present them both here. I went all out this year, watching and considering 60 films before whittling the list down to 10. So that’s something else to look forward to!

I really do appreciate everyone who follows the blog and I thank you for hanging with us even when we weren’t consistent.

The 8th annual edition of “The List” will be heading your way starting tomorrow. Like last year, it will be released in four separate entries, beginning with #10 and counting down to #1. See you back here then!

Advertisement

And Now, For Something Completely Different…

Okay, maybe not completely. My partner does have a different background than me, and his musical tastes don’t match mine exactly. But I suspect we won’t disagree on everything. In fact, I hope we don’t. Although it would be boring for our opinions to line up repeatedly, part of my hope in participating in this blog is that when we do agree, you, our loyal followers, will be the richer for it. Few things please me more than introducing someone to a new song or band that they can love as much as I do, and if we both like it, well, let’s just say I respect XIV’s opinions enough that I think it will be worth a listen.

Which brings me to what this blog is going to be about. The idea here is to recommend music to you, be it single songs or, sometimes, entire albums. Since we are on different schedules, XIV and I will usually recommend something on our own for your listening pleasure, which the other of us may or may not comment on. Occasionally though, we would like to double review some things for you, (probably entire albums) to give you a sort of Ebert & Roeper type thing for music (only hopefully, a little more fun). Those guys definitely have different opinions, but their approach can feel the same, and after a while that can get boring. XIV and I are good friends, but our personalities are different enough that that shouldn’t be the case here.

I guess I’ll close out this intro by talking a little bit about my background. In addition to being a huge fan of pretty much all popular music genres, I am also a musician, and have spent time lending my vocals to things as wide-ranging as choirs, pop groups, jazz groups, and yes, a rock band (as admittedly short-lived as that was). I also went to school for music for two years before changing my major, so I have a bit of the “University knowledge”. I don’t say any of that to gloat though, or to make myself sound like the superior judge of music. Far from it. If I didn’t think that my partner had interesting things to say and interesting ways to bring them to you, I wouldn’t have signed on to this project (which was entirely his idea).  I only tell you my background to give you an idea of where I am coming from, and what I bring to the table.

I’m genuinely excited about this. As I said, I love introducing people to new things that are awesome, and I am confident that I have a few things like that to throw your way. Thanks for following us, and we’ll get this thing started soon.

-13