🎧 Downbeat.fm Vol. 4 Track 12

This newsletter and playlist makes the close of year four of this project. 48 monthly playlists, with a combined 1,164 songs which comes out to over 3 days of continuous music (83 hours and 58 minutes).

I started this project to find new music. I had kind of hit a stale point in terms of what I was listening to, and finding new rock music has become increasingly harder over the years as it’s no longer one of the more mainstream genres.

Algorithms work. Between Spotify and Apple Music almost all of the songs on these 48 playlists have been new to me songs, and even new to me artists.

A few weeks ago I discovered a podcast called 60 Songs That Explain the ‘90s and I have been HOOKED. The host of the show is just a little older than me, and grew up listening to the same music that I was obsessed with in the 90s.

If you are a fan of 90s music, especially rock (including the 90s variants like grunge, alternative, and the like) I can’t recommend this playlist enough. Shows cover songs like Santeria by Sublime, Loser by Beck, Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana, and other songs by Portishead, Pearl Jam, Beastie Boys, Alice in Chains, and more. He even dives in to some hip hop and R&B, but rock music is the main focus here.

I started listening to one or two episodes, of songs that I loved from that time. I was sucked into his style of writing and how he reads his scripts, and how he interweaves other songs by that artist and ones that surrounded it at the time. After a few episodes I was hooked and downloaded about half of his back catalog.

This guy talks about music how I think about music, but can’t put it into words.

If you like 90s rock music, give this show a chance.

A brief programming note: I will be migrating this newsletter off of Substack since it has become a “Nazi bar”. And the recent comments from the Substack CEO about how they will not ban or demonetize Nazis in some “free speech” guise or some shit. Nazi’s don’t deserve shit, and I’m not going to be on a platform where they are welcome. There’s nothing you need to do in this migration, and if I do it correctly you won’t even know it happened.

December’s Playlist

This month’s playlist features Sorry Mom, Plumtree, Laura Jane Grace, Bodega, and more!

Listen to this month’s playlist on

Quick Listening and Other Links

Internet sleuths try to track down a track that they heard briefly in an episode of X-Files, but didn’t seem to exist anywhere. Here’s a similar story from Reply All from a few years back.

I saw one of my favorite bands, Queens of the Stone Age, earlier this month. The day after the show I wanted to keep jamming to them, and asked Siri to play their most popular Album, “Songs for the Deaf.” Instead, Siri started playing a playlist curated by deaf people.

It’s the end of the year, and that always means “best of” lists. Here’s Consequence’s 200 best songs of 2023, The AP’s list of 10 great emo albums from 2023, and Rolling Stone’s 40 best indie-rock albums of 2023. Both have many songs and artists that have been featured in playlists over the year.