Listening Now
By Antonio Topete
A blog about the music in my life.
Like so many people, music is extremely important to me. I can hear music playing in so many of my memories throughout my life, and memories about music, hearing my dad playing the guitar as a kid, my first concert, joining my first band, listening to music with friends, collecting records; these memories are especially present to me.
Listening Now is my space to talk about music. I can’t claim to be an expert by any measure, nor will I try to convince you that I’m someone who “enjoys all music”, but I love music, and I’m trying to love as much music as I can. If you’re reading this now, or if you read anything else in this space, I thank you, because writing about the things you love is hard, or at least it’s hard for me. But if you take anything from here, I hope it’s that loving music is easy, you just have to listen.
Top 25 Tracks 2024
Writing about individual songs is a rewarding and sometimes exhausting challenge. Capturing what makes them tick can be difficult even for something you’ve heard dozens of times, but I always enjoy forcing myself to dig deeper, and often walk away with more profound appreciation for my favorite tracks. I hope you can appreciate some of…
Top 10 Albums 2024
It’s pretty surreal to think this is my 5th end of year list on this blog. To all the people who have taken the time to check my lists and (extremely infrequent) opinion pieces out, I deeply appreciate you. Halfway through the decade, there’s been an abundance of amazing music, always more than I am…
Top 25 Tracks 2023
There’s something a bit liberating about listing my favorite tracks of the year. Even if a song is not part of the most consistent album, it can simply stand on its own merits. Standout moments that I heard over the course of the year can be focused on completely, as much as it may be…
Top 10 Albums 2023
More than most years, I found 2023 to be rewarding as a passionate music fan. Artists I know and love delivered wonderful new material, and more than any other year, artists I am not well acquainted with are showing up in my list of favorites. Also more than before, my favorites of the year span…
Top 25 Tracks 2022
If my list of favorite albums is difficult to put together and rank, my favorite songs of the year are virtually impossible. So many incredible tracks were delivered this year, some off of incredible albums, some as a diamond in the rough. In an attempt to highlight as much of it as I can, I’ve…
Top 10 Albums 2022
Every year I think that making my lists will get easier. Every year I am terribly wrong, as I painfully cut my shortlist of contenders down to a mere ten. With the ability to tour back as an option, it would be safe to say that many artists wished to withhold their projects as the…
I Feel Like Dancing (In My Mind)
I’ve never been much of a dancer. Frankly, if you know me well, you’re probably aware that I’m actually quite averse to it. It’s always been hard for me exactly to put my finger on, but there’s something about parties and clubs and otherwise dance-focused events that never clicked with me. When forced into such…
Music That Matters: Sufjan Stevens
“Music That Matters” is a series of posts highlighting music with special significance in my life that has stuck with me, and has become a foundation for my appreciation of music as a whole. Here I will be discussing the legendary and prolific indie singer/songwriter, Sufjan Stevens. At this point, Sufjan Stevens requires hardly any…
Top 20 Tracks 2021
Antonio Topete This year, in addition to my list of 10 favorite albums of 2021, I’ve decided to also publish a list of my favorite tracks. Unlike albums, tracks do not need to have as much of an overarching idea or theme, although tracks that do will always stand out. But the brevity of a…
Top 10 Albums 2021
Antonio Topete It’s hard to believe a whole year has gone by since my first Listening Now article, but it has been a real joy to discuss the music that matters to me most, and I greatly appreciate all of those who have set time aside to read what I’ve had to say, and those…
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Listening Now 