Collating the end-of-year round-ups has become an annual fixture as seasonally traditional as dodgy eggnog and unprepared NY plans, a festive marker that truly signals the arrival of Yule Tidings an’ all that. It’s a welcome and joyous occasion each year when the time comes to recall the volume of new music that’s made its way into my heart, and I’m repeatedly astonished as to how vital and enthused the global music community remains year after year.

The vibrancy of new music is particularly remarkable when considering the political forces it’s up against. I was fortunate enough to attend an Enough Is Enough rally in October and catch an impassioned speech by Equity boss Paul W. Fleming, rejecting the romantic trope of the ‘struggling artist’ and championing access to the arts and dignified careers within a routinely exploitative industry. While mainly representing members in the performing arts, his stirring invective against the disparity of class that plagues the creative industries was a sobering reminder of the state assistance that’s ebbed away in the neoliberal wasteland, where our musical heritage is seemingly celebrated while the social provisions that helped it flourish (the dole, housing benefit, art schools, adequate Arts funding) are scorned. Along with streaming royalty rates and touring obstructions beset by Brexit, my hope for next year is that the Musician plays every bit of a role as the postal worker, the rail staff, the nurse and every other force within the great industrial action confronting corporate Britain and all its inequities.

As always, the annual Heads on Sticks round-ups are never a perfunctory ‘best of’ but simply the soundtrack to my 2022 in all its ebbs and flows. Scoring my life in the way the artists featured have across the giddy highs and tumultuous lows of the year means any one of these 25 tracks will serve as a future portal to this time when the wist of nostalgia takes me.

Merry Christmas, have a better 2023, and thanks for the music!

Tom (A Fan)