Year in Rock 2018: Song of the Year

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With another year nearing its end and a very quiet December looming, I figured it's as good a time as any to jump in with all the other blogs and name my annual champs. The other day, I created my Year in Rock 2018 playlist on Spotify, fifty songs that I feel represent all of the good in rock music this year. I also realized I hadn't actually shared it here, so if you want to put yourself in suspense about this year's winner for about three hours, go ahead and check out the playlist right now:



As you can tell, this year was a pretty diverse one for rock music, with a combination of established acts continuing their tradition of quality content and some relative newcomers coming out of the gate swinging. We had a lot of rock bands pushing the pop trend even further, which allowed for some pop associated acts to lean the other way and meet in the middle. Maybe the end result will be a mush of bland pop/rock at some point, but there are also plenty of bands willing to push in the other direction too. Suffice to say, rock isn't dead if you've been keeping an open mind about just what rock is and can be.

At the end of the day, only one of those fifty songs earns my blessing as Song of the Year, and it was a very tight race in my mind this year. We had some well established acts putting out potential career highlight singles, some hit making bands taking huge risks, and some cross-genre smashes expected and otherwise. Still, as they say in Highlander, there can only be one; and, when I'm indecisive as I've been in 2018, I have to give it to the one I've kept going back to time and time again. The one that always raises my ears when it comes on, the one that sends me reaching for the volume knob and scrambling to Ultimate Guitar so I can learn how to play the thing.

2018's Sound Bites Song of the Year is Dance Macabre by Ghost!


Congratulations to Ghost on conquering charts, concert halls and courtrooms in 2018.

Agree? Disagree? Just want to talk about your feelings? Have at it in the comments!

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