Consider this akin to Spotify Wrapped but with less actual stats. This is just me sharing my year’s journey through the wonderful world of music. I listen to it constantly – I’m talking basically all day long – but more than that I pursue it, always wondering what else is out there for me. For example, last year it was yacht rock and this year I investigated acid jazz. Fascinating for me to explore new worlds, worlds I know little about. Like every year, though, 2025 started with the comfort and warm familiarity of Elvis Week.

I will bear my child on the eighth day of the year so that all who come after will be blessed. After the frivolity of the holiday season, that culminates with the festival of New Year’s Day, the people will face despondency concerning the bleakness of the winter ahead. They will mark the occasion of my son’s birth with a week-long festival that will add light to that bleakest day of the year, January 2nd. That festival will find its completion on the anniversary of the birth of my boy. But from the ninth onward, ya’ll are on your own.

Not sure if Gladys Presley ever uttered those words but she might as well have. Its always a nice way to stave off the potential depression of winter by starting the year proper with Elvis Week. I will often try to save any Presley music purchases I have made throughout the year to listen to during Elvis Week in January or August and this January I saved the Elvis: American Sound 1969 box set for listening. I had previously bought this during the brief time I spent actually buying music from iTunes but I wanted to add the physical media because Presley made music in Memphis at this time that I could listen to barring all other music until the very end of time. I actually ponied up for this set when we were in Memphis in July of 2024. Also during Elvis Week I went through the Up Next section of my records and listened to whatever King was there. Sadly, it was the Having Fun With Elvis on Stage record. The album itself – no music, Elvis talking – is actually quite fascinating but the fact that it exists – it is more a Making Money With the Colonel and RCA release than an Elvis Presley album – still really rankles.

My youngest son is a regular shopper at the two branches of Kops Records in Toronto. Often as he is making his way he will drop a text in the group chat we share with my older son saying he is crate digging and asking what we are looking for. On his January 3rd trip, I got excited and sent him $100, texting “buy us some records!”. I was further inspired to tell him to buy one surprise record for each of us; just a random cheapie that he thought we might like. While it didn’t result in any gems coming home, it was pretty fun.

By the second week of February, I got through the Up Next section of my CDs. Once I had these new ones listened to, I had to ask myself what I would listen to next. It’s always fun to just scan the shelves in the study and to see what might take my fancy.

February 9th was a big date this year. That was the day I started my YouTube Premium free trial. This decision of mine was not entered into lightly. This may not come as a shock to you but I am old school. Part of that manifests itself in a healthy respect for money and a hesitancy about squandering it. Also, as a Christian, I need to be responsible with the resources God has blessed me with. But I was driven to YT Premium by that most obnoxious, odious and onerous of all villains – the commercial.

Again it has to do with money. There is no way I am ever going to get a gym membership. For myself, I cannot justify that expense. Luckily, I don’t have to because I have weights at home and I have YouTube. Happily, I have found a workout channel that I am more than comfortable with (HASfit) and so home workouts fit into my life nicely. Except a 15-minute workout will often feature two or three stupid ad breaks. These often showcase fast food that flies in the face of my workout, they often occur during intense moments in your activity screwing up your momentum or concentration and they are for the same products over and over again. I would get so frustrated I would even start to make a list. All the products that have been shoved down my throat in this way? I would vow – often yelling at the screen – to never use those items. Ever.

YouTube Premium then. This also bugged me, too, though when I considered; YouTube gets money from advertisers to bludgeon you with ads. To make them go away, you give money to YouTube. But what, I had to ponder, do I get for this relatively small expenditure? When I watch regular “cable” TV, the commercials really get on my nerves. Even though my generation has grown up with constant ads, something about them really bothers me in my old age. If I could pay to have them removed from Hockey Night in Canada, Monday Night Football or AMC’s butchered presentation of Goodfellas, would I pay? ANY AMOUNT!! This made the fact that YT offers this option very appealing.

What put it over the top was the fact that with my Premium membership came YouTube Music. I had long avoided paying to have access to music particularly because I had already built a considerable music collection. But I can report that I have gotten a lot out of this service. For one, I use it to test drive. When Allmusic.com (you wanna talk about ad saturation) sends me their New Releases email, I will often see titles that interest me. Take a chance and buy the album, digitally or otherwise? I’ve been stung before. Even if I do like the album, it can often just sit gathering dust among my downloads; a file I have paid for and one that now just rots. With YT Music, I can get the new Willie Nelson listened to and understand where a certain artist “is” at a certain point. If I really like it, I can buy it.

When various holidays arrive, I in the past have dug into the bowels of my hard drive to find all my Easter music or Thanksgiving music. I import it to iTunes on my Mac, sync it to my phone. A lot of heavy lifting. This year, I simply searched for “Autumn in New York” and built a playlist with my favourite versions. “Autumn Leaves”, the same thing. So, in this way YT Music also comes in handy. Ad-free music and video – including no ads popping up during my employee-pleasing fireplace videos at work – and little things like being able to continue an album with my phone off, makes this service worth it for me, so far. It’s the no ads during the videos AND the music that makes it better than, say, Spotify (music only) for me.

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One interesting journey I took this year came to me free of charge. At a garage sale out by the curb in a FREE box, something caught my eye. When I pulled it out I saw it was a Hank Williams CD box set. The cover of the box had been repaired with tape but the CDs and the booklet were present and intact. With a hearty “don’t mind if I do!” I took it home. Hank’s music was new to me as I had only heard other artists’ interpretations of his work. I listened to his intriguing songs and looked him up learning the compelling details of his premature demise. I love it when a listening experience leads me on a journey like this one did.

YouTube Music served another purpose. I need to be really choosy about the records I keep. I’m not one to go strictly for quantity; I want to make sure that every record I keep is one that I am likely to want to revisit. A couple of times this year I consoled myself when I passed along a record by adding it to my YT Music library. At least that way I could listen to the album again if I was really jonesing. Also if I have enjoyed a record and want to drill down on it a bit, I will add it to my library for portability sake and to listen to it more closely.

The award for my favourite new release of the year – in fact it is the only one I have kept in my library – is Once Upon a Time in California by Belinda Carlisle. I was pleasantly surprised by the strength and resonance of her voice (she turned 67 this year) and there were many stirring and significant arrangements among this album comprised of legendary California sunshine pop tunes like “Never My Love”, Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind” and, the highlight, the Carpenters’ “Superstar”. The only concert I went to this year was Billy Idol. I went by myself and stood in the rain but it was great and it elevated Billy in my book. The t-shirts were, like, $60 and I already had a good one so instead I bought his latest album (see above) on vinyl for $20. When I got home I ordered his autobiography.

This year featured 4 significant music articles here at SoulRide. I remember Christmas of ’24 and sitting down at my mother-in-law’s dining room table and looking into Wayne Newton for an article I would eventually publish in March. Next up was something different for me as I dove into the uncharted (for me) waters (no pun intended) of Pink Floyd. To Bury the Light was my neophyte’s take on The Wall – album and film – and it was an interesting world to hang out in. My look at the recordings of Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood coincided with my unwrapping of a brand new copy of Nancy & Lee – much like my Floyd article was prompted by cracking open my Up Next copy of The Wall – and I utilized YouTube Music to listen to Nancy & Lee 3.

By far the most consumed music article and one of the top hits of the year for the site was AI vs DJ, my look at the proliferation of music generated by artificial intelligence. I confessed to utilizing this music as background at work, highlighted some of the many YT channels devoted to it and encouraged a discussion on how we feel about this blossoming trend – or insidious scourge, whatever your bent.

I kept track of my physical media music purchases this year. Looks like I added 157 records to my collection. There were many highlights, not the least of which was completing purchases of all of my favourite albums on vinyl. In January at Encore Records, a favourite store of my youth, I picked up The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion, the stunning sophomore effort from the Black Crowes and, the same day at a farmer’s market, I bought Tom Waits’ Rain Dogs and while I know it is an expensive one, I think I overpaid. I must get better at checking the quality of the record and the jacket before purchasing. Then for the big finale, my boys bought me Blood Sugar Sex Magik by Red Hot Chili Peppers for my birthday.

Other highlights include; “The White Album” twice, the second time a copy I can be proud of, finishing my Partridge Family discography, Here’s Little Richard new copy sealed, some good jazz records – always hard to come by cheap – by Eddie Harris, Hubert Laws, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock and others, finishing finding all the Rod Stewart’s I want, new copies of Forever Changes, Talk is Cheap by Keith Richards, the debut from Hootie and the Blowfish, Al Green Gets Next to You, Dusty in Memphis and others.

The biggest record story of the year, though, is my discovery in the wild of my holy grail, Dennis Wilson’s 1977 album Pacific Ocean Blue. Part of me wondered if I would ever lay eyes on this – ever – but I did and in a pretty unlikely place. There is a small town just north of us that has a cute little antique shop. A record vendor, I suppose, has placed his wares in this shop and I have scored there before. One day in the summer I was trying to do a quick scan and when I do so I go for certain letters of the alphabet, scanning the R’s and S’s – and the W’s. It was indeed one of those moments when you are flipping through records that mean nothing to you and then – boom. This album has found a permanent position on my wall in the frame where, for years, my copy of Surfin’ Safari has been. I can’t think of another holy grail search happening in my life and I am OK with that.

I bought 53 CDs as some albums I need to own on vinyl but others I want to have on CD, mostly for the car. Don’t let’s talk about what will happen when I upgrade my current vehicle to one of these new fangled space cars that doesn’t even come with a CD player. I sought out and bought online Ennio Morricone’s dramatic music for The Hateful Eight, found two more Zeppelins in the wild (I’d like them all), I found an excellent Drifters compilation that includes the hits from all the iterations of that great group, I scored at a garage sale the essential Frank box The Song is You that contains all his recordings with Tommy Dorsey (like, $5), I caught and released a Shooter Jennings album and looking up Waylon’s boy lead me to Henry Ford (I may explain one day) and got rid of an underwhelming Frankie Laine comp and two later Quincy Jones albums. I respect Q but his 90s albums of mass guest stars and Fresh Prince hip hop-lite I do not care for. I scored another Lenny Kravitz album as he is fast becoming one of my favourite artists and was thrilled to find Abraxas as Santana has become one of my faves. In one thrift store, there was a box of great albums on CD and I got excited. Until I opened the cases – all empty! Except Van Morrison’s album with Linda Gail Lewis. Late in the year I was thrilled to add to my collection Reckless (lead to an article), Let Love Rule, Love It to Death, Rough and Rowdy Ways, Achtung Baby and Swordfishtrombones.

I’m getting better at quantity control. For the record, of all the records I bought this year, I did not keep 19 and I can see scanning my Up Next list that there may be others I will pass along. And I got rid of 6 compact discs. It has been cyclical for me in the past; sometimes I have purged CDs to make room but right now I am determined to keep most that I buy – just in case.

Can’t wait to see – or to hear – what the new year brings!