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It’s a long December and there’s reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last.
– Counting Crows, “A Long December.”
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There is no concrete reason why December should be so emotionally draining. But I’ve always found it that way.
End of the year, with a new year on the horizon. As I approach the holidays, I feel the weight of everything that’s happened — good and bad — over the previous 12 months. I know that the end of December, even though it’s the end of the calendar year, isn’t really an inflection point. But it sure feels that way as we count down the last few weeks and days 2023.
Traditionally, I’ve dealt with the irrational anxiety, and even depression, of December with music. We’re huge music consumers in my house, but it always seems that when I’m facing December and the holidays, I rely a little more on music to soothe and uplift.
Aiding me in my quest for music therapy is Spotify, and the gimmicky “Your Top Songs 2023,” a playlist assembled by the good people and even better algorithms behind my music streaming service of choice. I say “gimmicky” because when all is said and done, there’s not much to it other than a statistical analysis of the music you listened to over the year. But there’s something about that list, and the consolidation of all my recent-favourite music, that is comforting.
Counting Crows singer Adam Duritz (right), guitarist Dan Vickrey and the rest of the band at the Centennial Concert Hall in 2022. (Jason Halstead / Winnipeg Free Press files)
The Top Songs playlist — 100 songs and more than six hours strong — comes with a snazzy animated slideshow that gives you an analysis of the music you consumed. My most-favourite artist over the year? Radiohead. (To be fair, that’s pretty much my favourite artist every year.) Others included country star Zach Bryan, genre-defying Charlie Crockett and Liz Phair, whose Exile in Guyville stands as one of my favourite albums of all time.
Other statistical notes: I was in the top three per cent of all Spotify listeners when it came to creating custom playlists. Part of that is owing to the fact I maintain several playlists of cover songs, including the main one, which is more than seven hours long.
And my most played song? Walkaways by Counting Crows. I played it more than 80 times over the year because a) I think it’s one of the briefest and most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard, and b) I’m trying to learn to play it on guitar. Wish me luck.
So, you may ask, how can list of algorithmically selected list of 100 songs provide extra meaning and comfort at this time of year? I’m not entirely sure, but there are all kinds of meaningful and uplifting messages in the playlist that starts with the Counting Crows’ Long December and its opening lines about how, despite the ordeal that is December, “there is reason to believe/Maybe this year will be better than the last.”
That line gets me every time. So do these line, which seems to encapsulate how a lot of people view December:
The smell of hospitals in winter
And the feeling that it’s all a lot of oysters but no pearls.
I couldn’t help feeling that Counting Crows frontman Adam Duritz, who penned and sings this song, has visited Winnipeg. In December.
But the song is also oddly uplifting. Following Duritz’s mournful wish that next year will be better, he notes:
I can’t remember all the times I tried to tell myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass.
Amen, brother.
I won’t bore you with all of my most-favourite songs from my Top Songs of 2023 playlist. Although for anyone who loves covers, folk music and Prince, Craig Cardiff’s wonderful cover of When You Were Mine is incredibly soothing. But I will leave you with one more story about how music somehow seems to provide me with the exact tonic I need to make it through this time of year.
My daughter, Nora, who is a music fanatic in her own right, gave me an early present the other day. It was a shared Spotify playlist that included songs that I played in the car — and sang along with at the top of my lungs — when my kids were wee and had no right to make requests. As I looked at all of those songs, I was flooded with memories of long drives, and watching my kids learn some of my favourite songs and sing along with me.
I choked up when she showed me the list. Best Christmas gift ever. And it immediately made me recall yet another song on my Top Songs list — Lucky Man by The Verve, and this one lyric:
But I’m a lucky man
With fire in my hands.
That’s my anthem for a next year that will be better.
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