So, Last Year…

I normally reckon on the first fortnight of the new year as being the cut off point for a review of the old one, so I’m just about squeaking into my self-appointed timeframe with this. I don’t always do a retro look at the year gone by on my blog, but you’re getting one this time! This is my potted history of 2023 as it appeared here: many of you will have previously seen the posts I’m going to mention, but quite a few have joined me during the past year and may have missed out on these gems, and loads of others as well(!). There’s nothing quite like self promotion, is there?

Last year got off to a bit of a slow start. You may recall that in my New Year’s Day 2023 post I mentioned that my Dad had recently been placed under end of life care, and that I wasn’t sure when I’d feel up to posting again. In the event he left us on 15 January, so the first anniversary of his passing is looming large for me. I returned here with a tribute post for him, but unsurprisingly the loss of most of a month’s posts meant that I saw a slight reduction in total page views compared with 2022 – about an 8% drop. But overall likes and comments remained pretty steady, and as one of the main factors that keeps me going is the interaction with fellow bloggers that was very welcome. I still managed to post 147 times last year – a lot less than some bloggers but more than many others! My regular routine is three posts a week, so I kept fairly close to that in the end. It won’t come as a surprise to you that the great majority of those offerings were in my ‘music’ category, but I did dabble into others, with monthly reviews, occasional thoughts, and five posts which had an element of mental health about them – it’s where I began, after all.

Forty seven of those posts were in my Tuesday Tunes series, and included several mini-series on such topics as intros, birds, US cities, holidays, the sea, and rain. A pretty mixed bunch, really. A further forty nine were my contributions to the weekly Song Lyric Sunday challenge, which is so generously run by Jim Adams. To be honest, I’d have expected those numbers to be the same and have no idea why they aren’t: there must have been a lot of Sundays last year! There were also many others including one each in my two occasional series, Under The Covers and Listen To The Band. I really need to work harder on those, as I have loads of ideas for them! I also reworked another of my occasional series into Friday Funnies, of which there were four, and then there were those mental health posts. Hopefully I managed to give you some variety in there.

So, which of all of these were the most viewed and liked? As I’ve said before, it is a little hard to determine absolute views of posts due to WordPress’ habit of lumping many (about 13%) into a catch all category of ‘Home Page/Archives,’ so I tend to rely on the ‘like’ figures to judge how I’m doing. It isn’t perfect, but it does give an idea, I think. On that basis, three of last year’s posts have made it into my all time top ten: considering that I’ve been doing this for eleven years that is very pleasing for me. The best thing for me is that two of these were mental health posts. The piece I shared for World Mental Health Day 2023 is now second on that all time list, and is still picking up a few more ‘likes’ each week. And the one I wrote for Mental Health Awareness Week 2023 is sixth on that list, just ten ‘likes’ behind. The other one to make the list is, for me a bit of a surprise. I wrote Thoughts On Thursday almost as a throwaway post, to get a few of the ideas I had for the blog into some semblance of order. The post shared my ramblings about frequency of posts, the number of songs I played in them, bringing back the neglected occasional series, plus a comment on not forgetting mental health. Somehow this one has managed to strike a chord with many people, such that it has now caught up with the figure for my ‘About Me’ page, which has been there for the whole life of the blog!

Noticeably absent from those highest ratings are any music posts which, given that this is the mainstay of my blog, might seem disappointing. It isn’t! On the whole, my music posts score in the range from respectable to good, by my reckoning. Those for Song Lyric Sunday tend to score slightly higher than Tuesday Tunes, and a couple of last year’s are only two likes away from making that top ten. So I’m not about to change tack now: when regular readers refer to me as the ‘music man’ it kind of stays with me.

I’m not going to give you a detailed run through of last year’s posts – that would be as boring for you as it would for me! But I’d like to mention a couple of my favourites. First, the one I enjoyed most amongst my Song Lyric Sunday collection. This is the one which is hovering around the all time top ten of my posts, and was written for the annual ‘User Choice’ day where we have a completely free hand. I wrote Then And Now for it, which featured an old Rolling Stones track that I have loved since the outset and the brand new single they had just released from their new album. The new one is an absolute belter, made all the better by a wonderful turn from actor Sydney Sweeney as she rocks out in the back of an open top limo on a drive through L.A. Do take a look if you missed it: it comes highly recommended (by me).

For personal, but obvious, reasons my favourite Tuesday Tunes post from last year is this one: Tuesday Tunes 134: For Dad. I wrote that to honour his memory, and it was probably the most difficult post I have ever written. It came out as well as I could have possibly hoped, and it feels right to share again today one of the songs I included in it. I ended the post by saying this: I’m closing this piece with another song which says a lot to me. I didn’t have the fall outs and disagreements with Dad that are described in this song, but I do wish I’d been able to tell him better how much I loved him and was grateful for all he had done for me, both as a child and through my adult years, when his support was also very welcome:

That is an absolutely wonderful song, which I could tell from the comments meant a lot to others too. One of the main reasons I love music so much is the emotions it can evoke in us. Not every song will do that, but I hope I’ll be sharing many more throughout this new year that will have that effect for you. Here’s to a great blogging 2024 😊

In loving memory of Derek Pilcher. 14.10.1927 to 15.1.2023.