Writing Project: Rolling Stone's 50 Best Albums of 2017
WERD stands for Write Everyday, Really, Dam., and is a new thing I'm doing where I give myself a challenge to write every day. Starting... right now.
One of my favorite podcasts to listen to occasionally when they talk about a topic I'm already interested in is Rolling Stone Music Now. Go listen to their episode where they rank every Taylor Swift song. Especially if you don't like Taylor Swift, you need I really want you to listen to this episode (so that more people will agree with me in conversations when I make my super original and really true point that, while Taylor Swift is annoying and maybe a little evil, she is undeniably talented and has a fantastic discography stop shaking your head). Bob Sheffield also wrote a great post that goes along with it where he breaks down his ranking: All 115 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked.
Anyway, today I started listening to their latest episode, The 50 Best Albums of 2017. I get preoccupied with the top 50 albums and songs lists that come out on all the blogs every year, and I always come away feeling a mixture of shame at how few albums I’d actually listened to that year and excitement at all the bomb, expert-selected music I was about to listen to as I reflected on the year behind me.
I took this over a year ago, but with all the Coco stuff and the albums project, it felt relevant.
But, despite my good intentions, I never make it around to listening to more than four or five more albums that I haven’t already listened to and loved. This year, as I listened to Jon Dolan talk about the musical trends of 2017, I realized a writing challenge would be a great way to motivate myself not only to write and post every day (which is absolutely not happening right now lolol), but to dedicate time every day to experiencing new music (or, if not new to me, a full piece of music) without any distractions.
So, starting toDAY, I will listen, in order, to each album on Rolling Stone’s 50 Best Albums of 2017 list. I will listen to one album a day, in its entirety, start to finish, and write a post with my thoughts and feels and questions and who knows guys maybe answers you just never know with this shit.
Coming up tomorrow: #50. Code Orange, 'Forever'