Hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable New Year’s Eve!

Last year around this time, I wrote a post detailing all the plans I had for the blog in 2023. Today, I’ll revisit that outline to see how I did.

– More installments of ‘What the Kids are Listening To‘

I went to this well only twice in 2023, once in April and once in August (plus a year-end wrap-up in early January).

– More installments of the ‘Decades‘ series

Last year, I wrote about the albums of 1975 and 1985 and had a blast doing both. I’ve now covered 22 of the 40 years I’ll eventually review as part of the series.

– More artist deep dives (I threw out The Supremes, The Kinks, Linda Ronstadt, and Cat Stevens as possibilities)

I didn’t explore any of those artists’ careers, but I did dive deep into the catalogs of Lana Del Rey and The Rolling Stones. My list of potential deep dive artists got even bigger (more on that tomorrow).

– Rock & Roll Hall of Fame classes

I covered the Rock Hall inductees from 2013, 2022, and 2023. I’ve now written about every class from 2013 through present day.

– Track-by-track appreciations of notable new albums

I gave the full track-by-track treatment to just one album last year, Lana Del Rey’s excellent Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd. I did an abbreviated countdown of the tracks on Ben Folds’ What Matters Most. A year ago I was holding out hope for a new Rihanna release, but that didn’t come to pass.

– A new series called ‘Deafspots,’ wherein I feature highlights from the careers of notable artists with whom I have zero familiarity

I never got around to this one, in part because occasional commenter Amy suggested the proposed name was ableist. She makes a good point, and I wasn’t able to come up with a better name so I scrapped the idea (at least temporarily).

– Various lists as they come to me (I’ve been contemplating a ‘Best Debut Albums’ list as well as my official ‘Favorite 25 Albums’)

I didn’t do either of those, but I still want to!

– My top ten movies of 2022

I wouldn’t have missed this, and I’m still a fan of all of the featured movies.

– My personal picks and predictions in the top Oscar categories

Another of my favorite yearly exercises, so you know damn well I did it.

– Director deep dives (Nicole Holofcener, Steven Spielberg, Yasujirō Ozu, Akira Kurosawa, and Hayao Miyazaki)

I didn’t get to any of these, or any other director deep dives.

– A very superficial look at Indian cinema

Didn’t get to this one either.

– An exploration of a genre I’ve long avoided but recently embraced: horror

I definitely got to this one, and it was one of my favorite blog projects yet. Watching all those horror movies kept me from doing some of the other movie-related posts I’d planned, but it was worth it.

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All in all, not a bad year of blogging!

Tomorrow, I’ll detail some of my plans for 2024. Some of the above will carry over, of course, and I hope to introduce a few new wrinkles.

Until then, Happy New Year!