2023 Year in Music, Pt. 3
The year in STATS: regional edition
Hello and welcome to STAT CHAT! Wherein I export my Spotify list to a big spreadsheet and start to figure out what the hell I was listening to this year.
Before we get started, a few links:
Chuck Eddy generously shouted out this newsletter in his year-end 70 Best Singles post, which you should read (and then go listen to everything on it).
The People’s Pop 2023 nominations are in — you can listen to the full playlist here. I got a chance to help select bonuses, and I think it’s a pretty good cross-section of the year. Have already found a few Golden Beats.
Year-end lists keep rolling in. Was floored by the billdifferen singles list (part 1 and part 2). I’ve heard of maybe 10 out of 100 of these songs. (Most of them aren’t on Spotify.)
Sho Madjozi’s “Chalé,” my pick for the Singles Jukebox 2023 special, is the second-highest reviewed track this year, after Shakira’s BZRP Session.
For those of you keeping track of The Singles Jukebox Controversy Index — a calculation of how far apart the scores are (the average deviation of scores weighted for number of contributors, adapted from the Radio On controversy calculation) — you can track it with me here. Sexyy Red’s “Pound Town” is far and away the controversy champ so far, and the 32nd most controversial track of all time.
Stats time! Regional edition!
I included 1,006 tracks from 91 countries or territories on my mixes this year. United States artists have a big lead over all other countries, representing a little over a quarter of the total (26%), followed by the UK (9%), Brazil (6%), Japan (5%), and South Africa (4%).
I also created regions to help compile mixes. Regional stats:
USA: 24%1
Asia: 13%
Africa: 12%
Latin America/South America: 10%
Anglophone (UK/Scotland/Ireland/Australia/New Zealand): 10%
Miscellaneous: 7%2
Western Europe: 7%
Eastern Europe: 5%
Scandinavia and other Europe:5%3
Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey: 4%
Canada: 3%
44 songs on the list are archival or were released before mid-December 2022.
Haven’t really gotten into genre breakdown, which is tricky. Will probably be the subject of next week’s post.
Here are a few regional mixes to hold you over until next week.
Best of Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey
I’m probably least satisfied with the Middle East selections I get from Spotify. There was a lot more good stuff from Turkey — though some of the best of that I’ll put on a separate genre list, especially a few very good Turkish indie songs. I seem to have no feel for Middle Eastern pop music or sense of where the pulse is. (I think it’s telling that the first two tracks are ringers from my “cross-country cosmopolitanism” mix.) A subject for more research.
Best of Africa (Miscellaneous):
This is basically my “everything but amapiano mix,” minus a few songs that I liked so much I put them on the overall best-of (“Chale” by Sho Madjozi, “Siwezi” by Feza, “Sikwebela” by MC Yallah, and “Ampayinka” by Khalfan Govinda). Hits a few styles that I enjoyed this year — Naija pop, especially anything featuring my favorite vocalist Zinoleesky (or 6-year-old approximation thereof), driving polyrhythmic music from C’ôte D’Ivoire and Cameroon, Nigerian legwork, South African dance music tending toward dreamy, a style I associate with Sun-El Musician, who I set aside for Heavy-K. I end the set with a Niger artist who splits the difference between the North Africa/Middle East mix and this one, from Moussa Tchingou’s hypnotic EP that I never quite clicked with as much as his selection here , “Tarha.”
Best of Scandinavia and Other Europe
This covers most of Europe not on the Europe mix or Eastern Europe mix— i.e., Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Belgium, Iceland, and Netherlands. I started with the most arresting, most annoying, and (arguably) most Swedish songs I heard this year, the first from FRÖKEN SNUSK, a foul-mouthed imp in a pink Spring Breakers ski mask who seems to be some kind of phenom over there without breaking through to the US in any way I can tell. Over the course of the mix things settle until you get to congenial indie pop by the end, with a few detours to a Eurovision qualifiers also-ran (Akuvi), a Finnish 90s alt-rocker (Maritta Kuula), a cheesy Europop throwback (Rebecca & Fiona covering Dr. Alban), and Björk’s daughter (Ísadóra).
Should finish fiddling with the spreadsheets by next week so that I can finish up regions and genres. Then a final 2023 mix of stuff I missed early in the new year and finally, fingers crossed, back on the playlist grind toward the end of January.
—Dave Moore (the other one)
The total here is a bit below 26% because several US tracks are regionally categorized in Latin America (Puerto Rico) or Miscellaneous (cross-country collabs)
This category represents cross-country collaborations, Caribbean, and Portugal/Angola (vast majority from batida/kaduro-adjacent artists I’m making a genre mix of).
Includes Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, but also Finland, Belgium, Iceland, and Netherlands.