We’re back for another week to look at what I’ve been listening to. We’ve got a pretty good crew this time, though my listening was marred by the three days of being snowed in. The wife was here and we opted for more movies than music, but we had a good time anyways.

The top 5 artists played the week of January 26 - February 1

1. Ben Folds - 22 listens

I hit up the Folds a couple of times through the week but the bulk of these come from his live album, Ben Folds Live. I was struck by how many of his songs are sad while listening to that. When I think of Ben Folds I generally think big piano based pop numbers, and surely he has though, but his work is really fitted with lots of melancholy as well. He’s an underrated lyricist and writes this really wonderful stories. They play well live, too.

2. Badly Drawn Boy - 18 listens

Chalk this one up to my ever going attempt to listen to all my music. I knew I wanted to keep Badly Drawn Boy and am pretty sure I’ve listened to his music for the movie About a Boy, but I couldn’t really remember it so I gave it another listen. Really lovely stuff, it is.

3. Bob Dylan - 13 listens

This ones a mix of filtering through some bootlegs that I have and old Bob landing on shuffle. I’ve got quite a few bootlegs of his and some of them are crap quality, so I gave several a spot listen and made some quick decisions.

For a brief period Dylan landed on top of the all time list, but then either guilt or a hankering threw Ryan Adams back up.

3. Ben Harper - 13 listens

Ben Harper falls right after Ben Folds of course and I think Harper kept on going after a Folds round.

5. Lyle Lovett, Laurie Anderson, Tori Amos, Wilco - 10 listens each

A four way tie! All but Lovett were me listening to albums to decide on keeping them or not (the Wilco was a bootleg) all three came out on top. The Lyle came from a new bootleg that you will likely see posted soon.

Top 10 artists of all time

1. Ryan Adams - 1078 listens
2. Bob Dylan - 1073 listens
3. Wilco - 1058 listens
4. The Beatles 792 listens
5. Grateful Dead - 757 listens
6. Bruce Springsteen - 732 listens
7. Lucinda Williams - 559 listens
8. Gillian Welch - 504 listens
9. Norah Jones - 494 listens
10. REM - 465 listens

As mentioned Dylan overtook Ryan Adams knocking him off the top spot for the first time in a couple of years. Immediately Ryan took back the top spot probably because I wanted him too. I haven’t listened to Ryan in ages but suddenly I felt the need.

Until next week.

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