Star Tracks Wrapped: Highlights and surprising standouts from this year in music

Star Tracks compiles the most interesting new music from a broad range of established and emerging artists.

This week, we decided to share a couple of take-aways from our Spotify “Wrapped” playlists, which compiles our most-listened to music of the year. Here is a sampling of the most surprising (or cringeworthy) songs that we had on repeat this year.

We’ll be back in the coming weeks with a list of our favourite albums of 2022.

Richie’s Wrapped

I typically enjoy Spotify Wrapped season — not only does it offer a glimpse into what kind of music my friends and coworkers are into, but it also gives me the chance to show off what I like to think of as my charmingly eccentric yet perfectly well-rounded taste.

However, my 2022 Wrapped results do not feel as reflective of my broadly immaculate taste as in previous years. Instead, they skew heavily toward a handful of artists who I interviewed and profiled for the Toronto Star. You know — research. At least I hope that explains why four of my top five artists are indie rocker dudes who I’ve been listening to for a decade now.

Still, the list did contain a couple of fun surprises.

Maylee Todd: No Other

I was pleasantly surprised to see this song by Toronto experimental pop artist Maylee Todd land at number two on my list of most-listened to songs. Released last spring, Todd’s latest album, the excellent (and underappreciated!) “Maloo,” is a compelling collection of dream pop and “science fiction lullabies” narrated from the perspective of a digital avatar who inhabits a utopian metaverse called “The Age of Energy.”

But “No Other” is a love song, plain and simple. “There is no other kind of love/ You’re the only one I’m thinking of,” Todd coos softly over wavy synth chords and simple percussion. The music is futuristic, and slightly alien, but the sentiment is familiar and all too human.

Tom Waits: Downtown Train

I love Tom Waits, but I admit that I’m a bit of a fair-weather fan when it comes to his music. I count his 1973 debut “Closing Time” among my favourite albums of all time, but my interest sort of tapers off as his discography ventures into more bizarre and experimental realms.For whatever reason, though, I had a real moment this summer with Waits’s 1985 hit “Downtown Train.,” which landed in my most-listened to songs of the year.

The third single from the singer’s beloved album “Rain Dogs,” “Downtown Train” is a perfectly constructed pop song — Rod Stewart famously covered it in the 90s — but its appeal stems from its rough and jagged exterior: Waits’s gravelly voice sounds like he just chain smoked a carton of unfiltered cigarettes, while the pinched lead guitar sounds like it was plugged into a $50 dollar amp. There’s a drunken charm to this track, making it a perfect soundtrack for karaoke or a tipsy walk home.

Alessia’s Wrapped

Spotify Wrapped chose to not embarrass me this year as they have in the past — like in 2020, when my top five spots went to songs from Lana Del Rey’s “Norman F-ing Rockwell” and No. 24 went to the Black Eyed Peas’ “Meet Me Halfway.” Or when 070 Shake was my top artist in 2021 even though I just found her music two months before Spotify packaged up our data to consume and share with the world, signalling an obvious stretch of time when she was all I listened to.

But it did expose me as a Single Girlie rather than an Album Girlie, my top song, “Untitled” by Mk.gee being the only song I know from that artist, followed by “I’m God” by Clams Casino and Imogen Heap and “oh baby” by LCD Soundsystem. And unlike my Spotify Wrappeds from the start of the pandemic, the music on my 2022 playlist is darker, moodier and full of electronics and hyper-pop rock filling the spaces between my tried-and-true classics: “L.E.S. Artistes” by Santigold, “Vanessa” by Grimes and “Moonshot” by Buffy Sainte-Marie.

Buffy Sainte-Marie: Moonshot

“Moonshot” by Buffy Sainte-Marie didn’t make the cut because I was returning to my “I only listen to folk music” days. Instead, my grandfather passed last November and this song comforted me through the past year of adjusting to life without our phone calls, his offers of fruit and nuts at the dinner table and his oftentimes crass sense of humour.

“Off into outer space you go my friends / We wish you bon voyage / And when you get there we will welcome you again / And still you’ll wonder at it all,” Sainte-Marie sings over a violin, both giving me hope he’s floating around somewhere keeping an eye on me and my family and patiently awaiting our hugs when we, too, get there.

At his funeral, one of his best friends and neighbours came up to chat with me. “He was so proud of you for being in that newspaper all the time.” Now, my grandfather is in the newspaper, too. And forever immortalized on my 2022 Wrapped. (You know, because everything on the internet lives forever and whatnot.)

FKA twigs: jealousy (feat. Rema)

On a much lighter note: While FKA twigs was my top artist of the year, with Spotify telling me I’m in her top 0.05 per cent of listeners, “jealousy” only took the No. 6 spot — my go-to sing-in-the-shower song and one of FKA twigs’ most upbeat, featuring Nigerian singer Rema, and repetitive, catchy lyrics with an Afrobeats feel. I’ll refrain from mentioning how often I catch myself singing, “Girl, I’m sick and tired of your drama / Don’t let me take you back to your mama.”

Demar’s Wrapped

Realest K: Bruce Wayne

When “Bruce Wayne” was released on Sept. 30, it seemed like a track to tide over fans while waiting for his debut project, “Dreams 2 Reality.” But as time passed by, so did serial listens. Sporting a meagre 2:03 runtime, “Bruce Wayne” is one of those tracks that needs to be played on repeat. Its comic book filled lyrics, repetitive hook and smooth production are all elements that had me running back to the track. Not to mention it’s the perfect night drive song due to its groove and nods to the masked vigilante. When I first saw this track in my top five, I was taken aback: clearly Spotify miscounted in some way, I thought. But when I played it and then immediately played it back three times in a row everything became clear to me.

BROCKHAMPTON: SWAMP

My Spotify Wrapped called me an “Early Adopter”: someone who’s constantly looking for trends. Basically, I’m always listening to new music rather than putzing around old albums. Which is why I was surprised to see this track in my top 100. “SWAMP” came out in 2017, a summer jam that’s five years in the past now. Then I remembered my trip to London earlier this year and when given the chance to be on the AUX when I was there I played this quintessential summer song. Any time I played it someone asked, “who is this?” or “what song is this?” and for two weeks, “SWAMP” was again a summer soundtrack staple.

It became such a big track between my family and friends that I even spun it when I guest hosted a radio show in the city. New life to a new audience just months away from the effervescent band’s ending this year. With its hypnotic synths and unique use of bottles in the production combined with Kevin Abstract and Matt Champion’s simple but sweet hook, “SWAMP” is summer personified.

Aisling’s Wrapped

Maisie Peters: I’ll Be There For You

A cursory glance at my Spotify Wrapped reveals I am stubbornly attached to my favourite artists; that I favour piano ballads over all else; that after years of feigning an indie pop superiority complex, I am comfortable listening to the music I actually love on repeat.

But this year’s Wrapped is even more sentimental than usual for me. This is the year I started working at the Star, the year my career hit the fast lane of big-kid journalism. I adore Maisie Peters’s cover of the “Friends” theme song — it’s my second-most-listened-to song of the year, all crooning vocals and brooding keys and those iconic lyrics — but for me it symbolizes a year of growth far beyond the track itself. A year ago, I was a student journalist unsure of what the future held for me as a writer. This year, I interviewed my favourite singer and one of the stars of “Friends.” This track couldn’t be more fitting if it tried.

So no one told me life was going to be this way. I don’t think I mind.

36 Questions: A Better Version

Things I love: musical theatre. Piano ballads. Songs about golden retrievers.

Meet “A Better Version.” Or, perhaps more appropriately, meet “36 Questions,” the podcast musical by Chris Littler and Ellen Winter. It’s a genius project, the kind of thing you wish you’d thought of yourself — a couple wades through the detritus of their marriage by answering the 36 questions which lead to love. That’s it. The simplicity of the story is the story. Songs from this podcast are regularly featured in my Spotify Wrapped: the surprise here is that “A Better Version” isn’t actually higher on the list.

The duo at the centre of the musical is Jase (Jonathan Groff) and Natalie/Judith (Jessie Shelton). Jase and Judith’s chemistry is perfect and haunting and soul-destroying. You miss them when the podcast ends. They’re a couple you want to survive despite their history, despite the questions that never get answered. “36 Questions” works brilliantly as a podcast — but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping for an in-person revival someday.

“A Better Version” rears its desperate head at the show’s climax, a solo wander through the couple’s early years and the tangle of lies which led to their undoing. “And so there we were, me and this golden retriever, basking in the abundance of sun Austin provides,” said Judith, reminiscing.

It’s all downhill from there.

Dhriti’s Wrapped

OK Kaya: Popcorn Heart

Norwegian-American Kaya Wilkins’ music isn’t exactly “catchy.” Yet her lilting vocals always find their way over the unpredictable sway of her rhythms, luring you to the bottom of the ocean. Then suddenly, her discography is scattered across your entire Spotify Wrapped, and you’re in the top 0.01 per cent of her listeners. At least, that’s how it happened for me.

The model and actress just put out a third album called “SAP” under her musical persona OK Kaya. Still, my favourite out of all her incantations is the 2020 offbeat love ballad, “Popcorn Heart.” Soft-spoken and ancient as ever, Wilkins soothes over clean tones that bloom into shimmering harmonies. Her lyricism is charmingly weird and unexpectedly tender: “My heart’s so slick / My heart’s a well, Throw a sandwich down / I’ll be forever grateful.”

Wilkins has mastered the balance between kind of funny and kind of tragic. For that reason, she lives in my self-aware sad girl hall of fame, with the likes of Angel Olsen and Kelsey Lu. I can’t help but love how she’s “so committed to this little bit called life.”

Grace Ives: Icing on the Cake

Grace Ives wastes no time on “Icing on the Cake.” Retro house beats and pulsing synths immediately catapult us into her apathetic and entirely relatable pity party: “I just wanna go back home and be alone in my bed / I just wanna get it done so it don’t get to my head.”

Ives’s bite-sized bloghouse bop is one of my most-listened-to tracks this year, and a point for the “Indie Sleaze is Back” camp. With inspirations like Santigold and LCD soundsystem, the Brooklyn-based musician is the real deal — her entire 2019 album “2nd” is produced using the same model of vintage groovebox as M.I.A. But like many other young artists leading the electro-pop revival, Ives adds her own layer of playful existentialism.

“I’ve been down, I’ve been up / I don’t care if it gets messed up. How are you? How you been? / Did you hear about that new thing? / The sun shines half the time / What are you gonna wear tonight?”

She gets increasingly honest about the mundane repetition of life, before the song dissolves just as quickly as it started, and you return to your own.

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