Don't Let Me into this Year (With an Empty Heart)

After the inevitable bullet-train-rollercoaster-drop-psyche-crash of the Christmas buildup/letdown there’s a small space of time that is very much it’s own thing. A two week mini-season nestled snugly between the holidays and the full-on assault of winter. The past and the future playing a friendly game of tug-of-war with us as we adapt to a strange new equilibrium where everything and (simultaneously) almost nothing has changed.

No doubt anyone who has read anything I have to say about music has long ago gleaned that music hits me hardest when it’s wearing a seasonal boxing glove (always well aimed at the oh-so-fragile feels). So it’s no surprise that songs for the New Year tend to catch my eye (er, I mean, ear…) as I come across them throughout the year.

The two weeks of the New Year season are an almost unbearable combination of two separate worlds colliding and mashing themselves together into one. It’s the vibe of Autumn amped up to 11 and then crammed into a highly concentrated serum that’s injected EpiPen style straight into the heart.

Where else in the year can you so easily hold the past and the future in each hand and weigh the cost and the hope simultaneously. We like to think that the hope for a better future outweighs the troubles of the past year but sometimes it’s hard to see things so 20/20 (yes, that’s a year pun… you’re very welcome).

I’m hoping I can let go of some of the fog that’s surrounded me in 2019 and music has always been my trusty defogger. Here’s a mix for recharging, celebrating, resolving, contemplating, hoping, hurting, coming to terms with our past selves and forging a better version for the future.

This year is mine and yours, my friends. And I’m working on walking into it with a heart that’s full.

(I hope you do too)