Best of 2023
2023 was a pretty darn good year for music, at least for the genres I like… I’ve spent a lot of time listening to my top 15 over the last month or two, in order to decide on the final order, and I’ve pretty much considered moving each
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I suppose I should start by introducing myself: I’m Chris Fritton, the other half of the Crucial Tracks team. I’m a working artist & author based in Buffalo, NY, that specializes in letterpress printing. I recently wrapped up a ten-year-long traveling project called The Itinerant Printer, where I
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Everyone has moments in their life that are defined by music. Whether it’s a song that introduced you to a genre of music that changed your tastes and style, or a lyric that made you think about the world in a different way. Songs can represent relationships. Songs can
Everyone has moments in their life that are defined by music. Whether it’s a song that introduced you to a genre of music that changed your tastes and style, or a lyric that made you think about the world in a different way. Songs can represent relationships. Songs can
Best of 2022
A recap of my favorite records from 2022. Featuring Painless by Nilufer Yanya at #1!
One Last Wish
Welcome to the 1994 edition of One Last Wish – my regular series where I look back at records that changed my life.
One Last Wish
1993 was another good year for music, with Nirvana's In Utero, Radiohead's Pablo Honey, The Smashing Pumpkin's Siamese Dream, and A Tribe Called Quest Midnight Marauders, Wu-Tang Clan's Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), Fugazi's In on the Kill Taker, Digable
Best of 2021
What a year for music! SO many good albums came out this year -- it made it difficult to narrow it down to the finalists (see the playlist below) and then to the final 25. A handful of records could have easily fit in the #1 slot, but there'
One Last Wish
The year was 1992. Half of the year was me finishing 10th grade and the other half, the start of 11th grade. A critical time in any teenager's life, as you transition to an upperclassman in high school. Music, of course, was still a huge part of my
One Last Wish
As mentioned in the last post, 1991 was an amazing year for music. While Nirvana was tops in rock music (and probably music as a whole), A Tribe Called Quest's The Low End Theory was an instant hip-hop classic and the best rap record of 1991. Like Nirvana
One Last Wish
1991 was a huge year for music – I’m thinking we’ll be stuck here for the next few issues, as there are a number of crucial records I really need to include in this project and it just happens to be the 30th anniversary. Nirvana’s Nevermind and A
One Last Wish
Believe the Hype: Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet While Living Colour was my first true experience with overtly political lyrics, the next logical step, given my love for hip hop, had to be Public Enemy. My first PE purchase (and the focus of this issue) was the