Selecting my favourite tunes of 2022 has not come so easy this year, but listening back to releases and discoveries from during the past twelve months is always a useful process in itself.
Updating a playlist regularly called ‘Now Playing: in my Embassy Ballroom’ keeps me on top of things to an extent. That names flows from trying to recapture the sense of awe I felt as a seven year old, setting foot on the huge sprung wooden dance floor of what felt like a large entertainment complex at our annual holiday destination in Selsey Bill in the 1970s (see picture postcard image above). Ha!
The tunes below (and on the attached ‘Sounds of 2022’ playlists on YouTube and Spotify) are a meander through what I feel represent the best of them – music released this year, or tunes I have been lucky enough to have discovered this year thanks to the public service broadcasting of late night BBC Radio 3 or daytime BBC Radio 6Music – ‘thank you’ to both!
Gretel Hanlyn – ‘Today‘
Trevor Beales – ‘City Lights‘
Rosina Bullen – ‘Lie Down My Love‘
Clara Mann – ‘Thread‘
Alex Rex – ‘Wastwater‘
Brenda Wootton, John The Fish – ‘Stars‘ (1968)
Jesca Hoop – ‘Hatred Has a Mother‘
Andrew Tuttle – ‘Overnights’s a Weekend‘
FLOHIO – ‘SPF‘
Unloved feat. Raven Violet – ‘Turn of the Screw‘
Sun’s Signature – ‘Underwater‘
Francis Lung – ‘2p Machine‘
Angeline Morrison – ‘Unknown African Boy (d. 1830)‘
Jockstrap – ‘Glasgow‘
Hifi Sean & David McAlmont – ‘Maybe‘
Tomberlin – ‘sunstruck‘
Studio Electrophonique – ‘Happier Things‘
Belle and Sebastian – ‘If They’re Shooting at You‘
Helen Love – ‘Clearing Out Mum’s House‘
Father John Misty – ‘Goodbye Mr. Blue‘
Common 