2020 Life Update and a New Project
Smart and safe travellers know to wash their hands, follow all local health guidelines, and get vaccinated for any illnesses to help the most vulnerable in our communities.
This post may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase through an affiliate link you’re helping to support this website at no additional cost to yourself. Thanks for your support.
2020, what a year that was. I mean I know it’s not over yet, but it feels like the longest year in recorded history. Technically 2020 is a leap year, so it is one of the longer ones.
I’m back working at my retail job (with proper health and safety precautions), but the normal things in the past that help me to differentiate one year from another have been put on hiatus, mainly travel and theatre. I mentioned before that the one trip I had booked for this year was cancelled (obviously). Recently, I found out the one theatre event I had booked for this year has also been cancelled (which is not surprising). Plus there are no summer festivals this year (not in person anyway). To say this year has been fucking weird is a bit of an understatement.
This year I did something (well I actually started it last year on my birthday) that I found immensely helpful during the past few months. I did a daily writing project where I picked a music artist whose birthday it was that day and wrote a blog post about them. I also picked a song of theirs and put it on a playlist. While this is pretty inconsequential in the history of humankind, it helped me keep a daily habit of writing something, and gave me something to focus on, This was very helpful when I was off work for two and a half months.
That project of daily writing about music (something I love) gave me the idea for another music-related writing project. There were several instances when I was writing about an artist during that project and I thought, wow I really don’t know many of their songs and I’ve always wanted to listen to more of their work. That is the basis for my new writing project I’m calling the Deep Dive Music Project. Starting in September I’m picking 12 music artists, focusing on one artist per month, and listening to their music in depth. Some of the artists here are fairly well known and others less so. All of them (for me at least) are artists where I only know a handful of their songs (if that). I’ve never actually sat down and listened to a full album from any of these artists, despite enjoying the few songs of theirs I know.
Basically, this project is an excuse to listen to a lot of music. Some of the artists I’ve chosen have a huge discography with hundreds of recorded songs to their name. I’m not trying to get through everything by these artists, but I plan to listen to a few of their albums. I won’t be listening to any compilation or Christmas albums. I’m going to try to actively listen to the music, and not just have it on in the background as I’m doing something else. I’ll share my thoughts and opinions on the songs and albums I’m listening to (maybe not every song). This won’t be a project like these are the greatest music artists ever and here are their 10 best songs kind of deal. If I don’t like a song or album I’ll share that too.
Originally this was going to be on a separate blog, but I pay for hosting for this site and I figured I might as well use it. Make no mistake I still love travel and theatre and I hope to write about those things again as well, but I need to write about something else too. Maybe this isn’t on brand, but fuck that. Take Me To The World is about travel, theatre, and life – and in my life music has always been important. I just haven’t written much about it until now. I’m not entirely sure how it will work, but I hope to write a few blog posts during the month. I’ll share the songs and albums I’m listening to (likely with a link to a streaming) so you can listen to these artists for yourself.
If you want to join me in this project you can. I’ll have the artists that I’m going to be focusing on for this project below, but you don’t have to pick the same artists as me. If there’s an artist you kind of know a few songs from, but have always wanted to get into more of their work then pick that artist instead. I’m focusing on individual artists rather than bands. I’m also choosing to focus mainly on each artist’s solo work, but I might include some collaborations like duets or features on other songs as well. This list is in random order, and may not reflect the order these artists will be on in the project.
Update: I’ve linked the artists I’ve already featured on this project. I also had to take a break from this project in April 2020 to fix some issues on this blog (and do a redesign), which is why the final month of the project was September 2021.
September 2020 – Lana Del Rey
October 2020 – Prince
November 2020 – Emilie Autumn
December 2020 – Johnny Cash
January 2021 – Tori Amos
February 2021 – Frank Ocean
March 2021 – David Bowie
April 2021 – Hiatus
May 2021 – Marvin Gaye
June 2021 – Janelle Monáe
July 2021 – Björk
August 2021 – Stevie Wonder
September 2021 – Lady Gaga
If you have any song/album suggestions for any of these artists let me know in the comments. In particular, I’d be interested in hearing some of the lesser-known songs from these artists (when possible). That’s not to say I’m going to avoid listening to their popular hit songs, but this isn’t meant to be a “here’s David Bowie’s greatest hits” and nothing else kind of deal. Especially if you know some obscure songs from any of these artists I’d love to hear them. I’m also interested in extra research material like books, movies, to go into for these artists as well. The main focus will be the music, but I might also talk about other art forms these artists have done (like movies for example).
That’s my life for right now. Again I’ll still have some travel and theatre posts on here at some point, but while things have shut down or slowed down immensely I want to give myself something else to focus on. More importantly, I wanted to share this project with you so that you can join me in this music adventure.
Do you have any album or song suggestions for the artists above?