For each year of the Billboard year end top 100 I am tracking:
- my top 3 songs for that year
- my bottom 3 songs for that year
- my top song for that year that I had not heard before the project (may or may not appear in the top 3 overall)
- a series of slightly manic general comments that occurred to me while listening, mostly along the lines of "this song is so much longer/squelchier/higher percentage outro than I thought."
As well as my overall ranking of years so far.
I originally started in 1980 and made it through 2023 before the year end list release for 2024. Last year restarted in 1946, the first year I could find reliable listings for, and have just about reached 1981 with the intention of continuing through to present since I wasn't tracking details last time, though I am going to have to exert myself to remember what I heard for the first time the last time around.
It's a fun project! I can email you the spreadsheet if you're interested in my descent into funk related madness.
I am really enjoying going through the tags on this post. I know a lot of you asked what constitutes "weird", or prefer the term "niche" but I did say "weirdest" for a reason, because that's for you to decide - of all the stuff you do, what do you think would classify as "weirdest"?
@docholligay tagged me to post my WIP titles. Unfortunately now I'm done with Brambles I don't think I have anything on unless you count Who The Hell Is ORTUS? which is pretty much just the title and three bad eurovision jokes, so have my non-writing wip instead (bloodstains not included)
An angel in the smoking area outside a club at 2am
700 words, F/F, Gen
She unfurls them for me, her wings, after I offer her a light without being asked. They tower overhead, each one four times as wide again as her body. They are falling apart.
They were white once, she tells me, so white and shining that they were impossible to look upon without being blinded. "But I never learned how to keep them clean," she shrugs, cupping her elbow as she smokes. "Nobody teaches you. They just expect you to figure it out."
Most of the original feathers are gone now. In their place are ones she's found, scrounged, stolen or been given. There are neon pink feathers from hen do feather boas, and matted old ostrich feathers that she says came off a dancing girl's fan back in the '20s. No, the last '20s. There are feathers from children's craft kits, plastic quills in primary colours sticking together in sheets. The soft fluffy feathers in the depths of the wings, right up against her body, have been padded out with down plucked from a thousand pillows.
The flight feathers around the edges, the ones that need to be durable, are mostly from roadkill. The crows and blackbirds stand out, and she's made features of them, Rorshach-like. The gull feathers from winter beaches and the pigeon feathers she finds in London gutters blend in almost seamlessly with the grubby remnants of her own. Arranged neatly down the outer edges are her prized possessions: pheasant tail feathers. She hitchhikes as much as she can whenever she travels, always keeping an eye out along country roadsides. "They're so beautiful," she murmurs, stroking them with the backs of her knuckles, "and so stupid. Get a good meal off of them, too."
I ask whether all the different kinds make flying more difficult, and she stares at me like she doesn't understand the question. Her eyes are huge in her thin face, pupils wide and shining, and it makes her look high but I don't think she is. What does flying have to do with it, she asks, not expecting me to have an answer. If I wanted to fly, I would. But it's been centuries since she was last in a flying kind of mood.
She is very beautiful, and I am drunk, and I tell her these things because they seem important. She laughs and says that she knows. I ask if I can touch her wings, and they furl slightly as she pauses in thought. No, she says after a moment, but thank you for asking. Most people don't.
She watches me for a moment, not quite knowing what to do about me, and I watch her because I can't do anything else. I offer her another cigarette. She accepts, and then offers me a trade. My lighter for a feather. She gets all her favourite things this way, she explains. Her boots are from a girl who was happy to go home from a goth night barefoot. Her wig, which is vast and scarlet and glories in its own fakery, belonged to a drag queen back in the '80s. It keeps her head warm, now that all of the feathers there are gone.
My lighter is nothing special, but it's metal rather than plastic, because I like the weight of it. There's a pokeball sticker on one side of it, and years ago one of my friends scratched a cool S into the other side with a pocket knife. It's covered in scuffs and dings. I hand it over without a second thought.
She stretches her wings out wide to pluck the feather, almost completely enclosing us both. They've been trapping cigarette smoke since long before I was born, and I can barely breathe with them surrounding me. This doesn't matter.
The feather she gives me is from the inside of the left wing joint, where it tucks in just behind her armpit. It's the nothing grey colour of something white that's been touched by too many hands over too many years, and the fine wispy afterfeather is all damp and dark with dance floor sweat. It smells of her cigarettes, and of abandoned buildings where pigeons roost. If you try and clean it, she warns me seriously, it might just dissolve.
I am so confused by that anon you received. Why would someone send an ask like that?
I suspect there has been a campaign by the roundheads to drive me into the arms of the cavaliers, or maybe by the cavaliers to drive me into the arms of the roundheads, but when I figure it out, I'll get an answer back to you
turnnoffyourmind
dededos
kianamaiart
ellievsbear
titsay
blakekathryn
jbbartram-illu
snowghoul
yousharknotpass
annaxmalina
