2022: A Retrospective Through Music

While compiling my list for 2023, I realized (very belatedly) that I never got around to writing a roundup for 2022. I’m writing this quite late; as I type, it’s now 2024, but I loved the idea of continuing the tradition of looking back on years through songs that encapsulated the defining moments, milestones, or memories of the year that I listened to them the most. And so it is with significant hindsight that I look back on 2022: a year of planning, a year of travel, the year I got married, and a year when I danced. Without further ado, 2022’s musical milestones:

1. Anxious by Hippo Campus
   2022 was perhaps the hardest year of my PhD. It was a year of purgatory; far enough in to regret it, but not far enough to be done. I had successfully published my first few papers, but was struggling against the slow-roll process of publishing the rest, and feeling incredibly burnt out. Part of that was on me; I was stretched to my limit by the end of 2021 with volunteer activities, and made it through most of 2022 holding down two internships on top of grad school. On top of that, I was planning a wedding, training for several different long-distance events, and trying to survive the end of my PhD. My life had succumbed to scope creep, and something had to change. This song offered catharsis, and captured some of the social anxiety I struggled against when re-entering the world after the pandemic.
   
   Favorite lyrics:
   This head won't quiet down for a single thought

   I’m all circles, psychopathic, belly up, I just forgot

   that I could say it right now, I could make the time

   people have been hoping, and I'm finally breaking open

2. Mirror by Porter Robinson

   When my friend Andrew texted me asking if I wanted to go to a Porter Robinson concert in April 2022, I didn’t know what to expect. Not only was it my first EDM-adjacent concert, but it was also my first show at Red Rocks: the legendary venue in Morrison, Colorado built out of the iron-rich stones that line the Rocky Mountain foothills. After surviving the two openers, who were much more attuned to the Denver rave scene, we got to experience Porter live — an artist I never thought would translate so well to an outdoor venue. The Nurture album is (unsurprisingly) heavily inspired by nature, and was the perfect live experience in Red Rocks.

   This song quickly became a writing favorite of mine. It perfectly encapsulates the nuances of close and complicated relationship, and the narrator is a great touch.

   Favorite gadget: mechanical keyboard

3. Butch by Saint Motel
   2022 was a year marked by the absolute insanity of planning a wedding. The process taught me a lot; it brings out the best and worst in not only you and your partner, but everyone else involved. It’s stressful and emotionally taxing in the best of cases, but especially so when fighting the gendered expectations and emotional baggage of family. I made a lot of compromises for that day, but ultimately, my partner and I felt like the most important decisions were still our own; we injected bits of ourselves wherever we could, and part of that was my decision to completely diverge from traditional wedding vows and marriage terminology.

   This song encapsulates the simple joy I found in a white tuxedo.

   
   Favorite lyrics:
   Oh no, there she goes, dressed up in daddy's clothes
   Quick, while he's still away
   Slip into his shoes, zip up them denim blues
   And let yourself fade away

4. Medicine for Melancholy by Rivers Cuomo

   This was the year of endurance adventures: In two months, I ran two ultramarathons and participated in two 100+ mile bike rides, both of which featured over 10k of elevation gain. This song was on repeat for a lot of my training runs, and in the weird, exhaustion-fueled delirium of a trail race, it brought me to happy tears while bombing down off the top of a mountain.

   
   Favorite gummy vitamin flavor: strawberry

5. The Foundations of Decay by My Chemical Romance
   Outside of wedding planning and endurance feats, 2022 was the year of concerts. Most notably, I achieved my teenage dream of seeing My Chemical Romance live during their long-awaited Return tour. Due to our honeymoon timing, my partner and I were unable to make the Denver concert, and instead sprung on flights to LA to see one of their five consecutive shows in the LA Forum. Each night was themed according to one of their albums, and by chance, we ended up at the show that focused on my favorite album, Danger Days. The album was on repeat in my high school rowing days: a high-speed, J-rock inspired futuristic dystopia filled with colorful punk themes and punchy guitar riffs. The show was a blast, truly the most fun I have ever had a concert, and such a dream come true.

   Foundations released in May 2022, and marked the first new MCR song in nearly a decade. It did not disappoint. This song felt like the culmination of each member’s solo work, and a return to the rich storytelling I had come to love and expect from the band. I love the themes of decay and defeat that evolve throughout the song toward a final, angry call: get up, fix your heart, and be brave. People still need you.

   
   Favorite Black Parade Song: Famous Last Words

6. Dying Breed by the Killers

   Like MCR, the Killers were a formative band for me. Day & Age was the first full album I ever purchased on my blue iPod nano; what followed was a rapid slip-and-slide down the rabbit hole of their discography. I bonded with my middle school friends over the grunge-forward sound of Hot Fuss and the bombastic nostalgia of Sam’s Town. The Killers were a gateway to other artists like Muse and the Strokes, and helped me discover my love of classic rock in artists like the Clash and David Bowie.
   
   I saw the Killers live on August 31st, 2022; not for the first time, and certaintly not for the last, but it was an especially memorable performance as the first large, indoor concert I had attended since before the pandemic. At the time of the concert, I had been living in Colorado for over four years, and felt like I could finally truly connect with the Killers’ idea of the American West; I understood their sound just a little bit more. This song is an inspiring, ever-building rally, and helped me through the tail end of my PhD.

   Favorite lyrics:

   What if we're not prepared for this?
   What if we just can't find the trail?
   Then I remember the promise I made
   And the way that I fell

7. The Adventure by Angels & Airwaves
   This song was not new to me in 2022; rather, it was a throwback to my college tracks that I rediscovered as an excellent way to start of my race-day playlists. I don’t know why, but something about kicking off a trail race with this song really sets the tone. Angels & Airwaves have always felt like a more mature Blink-182 (unsurprisingly, given their membership overlap), which I’ve come to appreciate more and more as I’ve aged.

   Favorite 2022 adventure: Pike’s Peak Ultra

8. The View Between Villages by Noah Kahan

   The final concert I saw in 2022 was Noah Kahan in the Boulder Theater, on what now seems like the leading edge of his commercial success and transformation into a household name. Stick Season is an incredible album all around, but this song takes the cake as the end-of-year winner. It’s a slow build to a rushing climax, filled with acceptance and anger and memories; it brings me back to small town life and is a great soundtrack for trail running.

   Favorite lyrics:
   The things that I lost here
   The people I knew
   They got me surrounded
   For a mile or two

9. Let’s Get Married by Bleachers
   When I first listened to this song back in 2017, I immediately fell in love: it’s catchy, upbeat, and perfectly encapsulates what it feels like when you realize the person you love has seen the worst of you, and they’re not going anywhere. However, I never expected to have a real use for it; like Bruno Mars’s Marry You, I figured it was a niche song reserved for sitcom soundtracks, not one that you would ever bring seriously into real life. But when my partner and I saw Bleachers live at Red Rocks in 2022, we knew we found our wedding walkout song. It was the perfect sound to kick off the party.

   Favorite lyrics:
   They think they know what we're going through they don't know nothing
   I know it's bad when we look out
   But bad, bad people
   Don't live in our house

10. Heroes by David Bowie
    The final song moment of 2022 is the sappiest: my first dance at my wedding. When searching for our first dance track, my partner and I went through a lot of different artists and themes, and even made a playlist on Spotify that we would play on long drives through the mountains, discussing pros and cons of each track, trying to envision the dance. However, it was a scene from Jojo Rabbit (of all movies) that solidified our choice of David Bowie song: the final moment of the movie depicts the protagonists, Jojo and Elsa, standing outside on the street at the end of the war. Jojo asks, “What do we do now?” and there is silence; and then they both start to sway, tentatively, to the building synths of David Bowie’s Heroes. There was maybe some irony in picking a song about a doomed romance to kick off our marriage, but we certainly felt like heroes that day.

    
    Jojo Rabbit’s final quote:
    “Let everything happen to you
    Beauty and terror
    Just keep going
    No feeling is final.”

    ―Rainer Maria Rilke