My Favorite Album from Every Year I’ve Been Alive (Part Five: 2010–2022)
The final installment of what’s been a wild ride
It’s been a long and winding road, but we’ve reached the final installment of the series on my favorite albums from each year I’ve been alive (and I’m sure some of you are saying “thank God!”). In Part Four, I said that the period from 2010–2022 would show my kids’ influence on my musical taste and be a decade not dominated by one Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen. I was right about the first part at least.
As my oldest daughter reached her teens, I experienced what every parent since the 1950s has at some point: music I hated that was played much too loud. I expected that; what I did not expect was how much of it I would actually like. This was solidified the first time I attended Warped Tour with her in 2014. I mentioned some big life lessons of a non-musical nature I learned from that day-long festival in an earlier article, but two bear repeating here:
- When you’re the only non-pierced, only non-tatted, person in a sea of thousands, you’re the freak.
- Despite point #1, those kids were more polite, more welcoming, more kind than 90% of the people I’ve gone to church with.
If you look into the details about the artists here, you’ll see that a number of them are not only from Texas, but from the Dallas/Fort Worth area. That’s a big change from the earlier decades; I suppose the closer I get to that ultimate finish line the more sentimental I get about home, no matter what its flaws may be.
As with the earlier articles in the series, let me emphasize again that these are my personal favorite albums. Yours will, and should, look vastly different, maybe more so with this final article than any of the others.
Now on to the albums.
2010: The Grand Theatre, Volume One by Old 97s. Kicking off the decade with a band from Dallas that’s been around since ’92 and is still going strong 30 years later. The song “A State of Texas” sums up pretty well what I said earlier about home.
2011: Mayday Parade by Mayday Parade. Of all the bands my daughter introduced me to, Mayday Parade is the one that should have been so much more popular than they are. They’re also easily my favorite, as you will see going down the list. They’re classified as “pop punk,” but that label simply does not do them justice (as the video below shows). Honorable mentions to Going Out in Style by Dropkick Murphys and Born This Way by Lady Gaga, which features the final recordings of Clarence Clemons’ magical saxophone before he passed on June 18, 2011. #BigManForever
2012: Don’t Panic by All Time Low. I really wanted to say Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball album was my favorite of this year, but that wouldn’t be true. My daughter played this one by the four rats from Baltimore so often it’s what I hear in my head now in place of white noise, though with songs like “Somewhere in Neverland,” “The Reckless and the Brave,” and “For Baltimore,” that’s not a bad thing. They are also amazing in concert, so if you get the opportunity to see them live, do it.
2013: Monsters in the Closet by Mayday Parade. Yes, the boys from Tallahassee are here again (and not for the final time). This is my favorite album of theirs, and the only other that gave them any competition for my favorite of 2013 was Paramore’s self-titled fourth album. Just listen to “Ghosts” and tell me I’m wrong about them (it will be in the playlist at the end).
2014: All the Ways You Let Me Down by Candy Hearts. Springsteen’s High Hopes and Old 97s’ Most Messed Up also released this year, but for whatever reason, 2014 was a jangle-pop year for me. If you need visible proof, just find the old guy in the Guinness shirt in the crowd at their Warped Tour set in 2015.
2015: The Ties That Bind: The River Collection by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. For the 35th anniversary of The River, Springsteen released an album containing many of the songs that didn’t make the album. Some of these are among the best he ever recorded, like “Roulette,” “Loose Ends,” and “Be True.” I did an article on the amount of stellar songs that end up as outtakes from his albums here, but thankfully we finally got these. The honorable mention for this year goes to Clouded by This Wild Life.
2016: Live at the American Airlines Center, 4/5/16 by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. In a stroke of genius, Bruce started releasing CDs and downloads of every show from The River anniversary tour. This one came out not long after I saw him in Dallas, and it’s no exaggeration to say I listened to nothing else for months. There’s just something about hearing a live version of “Born to Run” and knowing you were there singing along. (It’s not on Spotify, so you get a different version of a song from the show in the playlist).
2017: At the Live Oak Music Hall by Bobby Duncan. Bobby Duncan is another local musician you need to know about. He’s released five albums, yet you’re still likely to find him playing solo on a rooftop bar on a Wednesday after playing a packed hall on Saturday; the guy just loves playing music. My favorite Bobby Duncan memory is from the rooftop of Live Oak Music Hall the night before my bookstore opened in 2016; he sat at our table and played “Thunder Road” to help kick the store off right.
2018: Mixed Reality by Gin Blossoms. The boys from Tempe are still going strong, and though this album is not at the level of their classic New Miserable Experience, songs like “Face the Dark” and “Forever Is This Night” come close. For me it beats out anything else released in 2018.
2019: Western Stars by Bruce Springsteen. It took a while for me to get into this tribute to the country and western (mostly western) of the ’60s and ’70s, but at the urgings of Alex Markham and Terry Barr I finally came around. With songs like “Hitch Hikin’,” “Sleepy Joe’s Cafe,” and the title track, I don’t know what took me so long.
2020: Letter to You by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Bruce’s last appearance on this list (until he releases more albums, at least) is not just my favorite of 2020; it’s my favorite of the decade after the CD of that live show in 2016. I wrote a review of the album here, so I won’t go into a long-winded recap. In fact, I’ll let the album speak for itself with this example:
2021: What It Means To Fall Apart by Mayday Parade. Mayday Parade gets the spot on the penultimate year of this list with their so-called “comeback” album (they never left), edging out local legend Walt Wilkins’ album Pedernales. They sound as good as they ever have, and why songs like “Kids of Summer” and “Sideways” didn’t rocket up the charts I simply cannot grasp.
2022: Maybe This Time by Bobby Duncan. We’re not quite halfway through the year, so I was going to stop at 2021. Then I remembered Bobby Duncan’s new album, which could only be moved from this spot if Morrissey finally releases Bonfire of Teenagers this year as promised (he calls it his best ever). Maybe This Time really should be the record that gets Bobby the recognition he deserves, but time will tell.
That’s a wrap on my favorite albums from every year I’ve been alive. I hope you enjoyed reading the series as much as I did writing it. Pierce McIntyre was inspired enough to start his own series here, and I highly recommend it. We are the same age, yet our picks thus far are vastly different, which is part of the fun of the whole exercise. I also want to thank his Plethora of Pop publication for indulging me in this trip down memory lane.
One final observation: after going through lists of thousands of albums spanning 56 years, one thing remains certain: Born to Run is still The Greatest Album of all time.
As with earlier installments, the playlist below reflects my current favorite song from each of the albums; the links to all earlier installments are below that. Thanks to everyone who has read and commented, and keep on rockin’.
The previous decades:
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