Last.fm has been diligently cataloging my music listening habits for nearly 20 (!!) years. Now that we’ve said goodbye to 2024, it’s time to look back at what I’ve been digging into. Compared to previous years, there are some interesting surprises. And stuff that is just absolutely the same as always.

  1. Dispatch
  2. Social Distortion
  3. Hot Water Music
  4. The Interrupters
  5. Red Hot Chili Peppers
  6. Angie Mattson
  7. Aesop Rock
  8. Guts
  9. Natural Incense
  10. The Juliana Theory

Dispatch and Hot Water Music have always consistently been in my top 3, (except for last year, where neither even made my top 10, weird). It’s no surprise that both of them rank up there as my favorite bands. I saw HWM earlier this year when they made their way back to the Bay Area.

Thanks to some iPhone photo memories, I was reminded of Angie Mattson early in the year — this is an artist who loved about 20 years ago and then literally dropped off the face of the Earth. Her music is no longer available on Spotify or Apple Music. I found a few videos that are still up on YouTube (who knows for how long), but other than the albums in my local library that Last.fm has logged, she apparently doesn’t exist anymore.

Social Distortion was coming back to town and I was so excited to see them. And then a few days before the show, I tore my ACL in a paintballing incident with friends (go figure, it was my first time ever playing paintball), and I could barely walk.

Fun times all around, really. Here’s hoping 2025 is even better — even though this year starts off with the letters W(ednesday) T(hursday) F(riday).

Previous years in music: