2023: The Diversity of Classic Rock: A Year in Review

Hello everyone! Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, or in general a happy holiday season! The New Year is coming soon so it’s time for the year in review post. This is a tradition that I’ve been doing on my blog for a few years now. So let’s get started with this year in review post.

2023: The year of new beginnings and big steps:

This is a special “year in review” for me as it’s the last year of my 20s. By this time next year, I’ll be 30 and I’ll have been writing about classic rock for about a decade now. Time flies when you’re listening to great music. Like I talked about before in last year’s year in review blog post, I have been working on a my first ever book, the book you now know as Crime of the Century. I will be sharing details about pre-orders shortly. Becoming a published author has been a big dream of mine and to see it come true is amazing. So that’s why I haven’t been as active here as I was a few years ago, my peak blogging years. Still, I made sure not to neglect my content creating duties here and I wrote a bunch of blog posts in between behind the scenes things for my book.

The status of my book is that it’s in the typesetting stages. I’ve gotten my proofs back and I’m double checking everything to make sure it’s all good and something I’m proud to put my name on. My fans deserve the best and I’ll make sure this book delivers: classic rock storytelling at its finest.

Now the book isn’t the only thing I had going on in my life. I moved countries, albeit a shorter distance than the last time I moved countries. I moved to the UK, achieving another dream of mine, and my husband and I bought a house and were busy decorating and furnishing it. Like a lot of people of my generation, money is tight for us so it’s still a work in progress, but the living room where I’ve been filming my book promos looks great and my room is coming together nicely. Now I just gotta paint the office and get a second divan for upstairs for when I feel like flinging myself on a divan but don’t want to go downstairs. Gotta make sure it looks gothic so it can match my gothic makeup table (I’ll have to show off this makeup table sometime in a photoshoot to promote my book, it was a bargain and so beautiful). Speaking of book promos, I’m getting some inspiration for that and I have some ideas. Stay tuned for those!

Moving is expensive and buying a house takes up a lot of time. I remember living in Ireland I was imagining myself going to a bunch of concerts, but I’ve been so busy with adulting and writing that I couldn’t go to as many concerts as I would have liked to, so I felt a little depressed about that (and a lot of other things but we’re not going there). But hey, I have a lot to look forward to next year and I am making steps trying to improve my mental health and keep the back pain at bay. I finally got a medical cannabis prescription and that’s already been working wonders for my anxiety and depression even though it’s early days. Just having a reliable, safe, legal supply of cannabis makes life a lot more bearable. I’ve had anxiety for over 20 years now and I am so happy I can finally get what I need to manage it. I also have an amazing friends group and I really enjoy hanging out with them whether it’s for board games, Barbenheimer, random photoshoots, or going to concert films like Stop Making Sense and Taylor Swift: Eras Tour.

Blog Posts of 2023

Even though this was a slower year for the blog, there still have been over 50 blog posts published, which averages out to one a week. I’m just really hard on myself and I have incredibly high standards. I still have some stuff in my drafts that I was working on before book stuff derailed it, but rest assured I’ll finish that when I have free time.

This year was a big year for interviews and I interviewed some pretty big names in the early half of the year including Mike Peters of The Alarm, Tony Valentino of The Standells (a very long interview and one of the ones I’m most proud of), Andrew Dickson (formerly of Tricky Woo) who has a new ambient/krautrock/psychedelic music project called Ex Ox, Arthur Alexander of Sorrows and The Poppees (another very long interview with a fascinating story), and Graham Parker. I also did some great interviews with up and coming British bands like Hardwicke Circus and The Crystal Teardrop and some great American classic rock inspired musicians like Michael McInerney and Alex Caswell. I also got to see The Routes in concert and interview their lead singer Chris Jack – great surf rock band!

I published a lot of reviews this year. I recently reviewed a Little Richard biography by Spencer Leigh, reviewed documentaries about Fanny and Hipgnosis, Definitely by Def Leppard, a poetry book called Alphabet Jazz by Paul Metsa, Bob Dylan in Minnesota, Giorgio Gomelsky: For Your Love by Francis Dumaurier, and Us & Them by Mark Blake (a biography about Hipgnosis).

I only published a couple travel blog posts about England and Scotland, but they’re worth a read if you like my blog posts about travel and my photography. I also went to the Paul McCartney photography exhibit in London.

It was an opinionated year for me with a lot of opinion related blog posts about various topics: Spotify not paying their artists fairly, Buffy Sainte-Marie and the “pretendian” scandal (this blog post got a lot of views), Rich rock stars and giving to charity, Jann Wenner and his exclusion of women and people of colour in his latest book, alleged “censorship” of Queen’s music, a blog post going viral and receiving ignorant comments about LGBT people, and a 4/20 special blog post comparing legalisation of cannabis to gay liberation as inspired by The Rolling Stones’ music video for “We Love You”.

As far as usual Diversity of Classic Rock/Crazy on Classic Rock programming, I wrote some blog posts I really wanted to write, talking about my favourite instrumentals of the 60s and a sequel about the 70s, a Classic Rock goes to English class blog post of sorts where I talk about classic rock deeper cuts that are based on old books, the best “flops” in classic rock – songs and albums that deserved way better, I completed the series about socialists in classic rock with a blog post focusing on socialist bands of the 80s, a blog post about classic rock musicians who didn’t have children, a blog post about classic rock era songs that were originally in other languages, and a blog post talking about songs that I believe marked the beginning of the 60s.

There was one blog post though that went viral and amassed almost 100,000 views in the past 6 months and that was one written by popular demand as part of my series on artists who should be but are not yet in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: 20 Classic Rockers that I still can’t believe are not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I don’t know how it went viral, but I’m very happy that it happened.

In Numbers:

Time for the lightning round numbers section!

• 55 blog posts published this year, not including this one.
• Almost 190,000 words written on the blog this year. That’s almost twice the number as the word count of Crime of the Century!
• A new record was set for most views in a day, 17 June 2023 with 27,800 views! I remember when that was more views than I’d get in a year.
• A new record for most views in a month was set in June at 110,902 views! To put it in perspective, I got fewer views than that in all of 2020.
• Annual views keep going up with 2023’s annual views at over 279,000! A new record!
• Unique visitors this year: over 208,000!
• A new record for average daily view count at 772.
• Viewed in 188 different countries

Top 10 Countries with most visitors:

1. United States
2. UK
3. Canada
4. Australia
5. Germany
6. Philippines
7. Brazil
8. France
9. Ireland
10. The Netherlands

10 most viewed blog posts in 2023:

1. 20 Classic Rockers that I still can’t believe are not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
2. LGBT Musicians from the 1950s-1980s
3. LGBT Musicians of the 90s
4. The LGBT Songs of Classic Rock: Part 1 1953-1971
5. Black Classic Rock Musicians of the 60s and 70s
6. Every Black #1 of the 60s, 70s, and 80s
7. 10 Socialist Classic Rock Lyrics: Songs that would make Karl Marx proud – Part 1
8. Music Video History: Music Videos in the pre-MTV era
9. Vegetarians and Vegans in Classic Rock
10. 30 Iconic Fashion Moments in Classic Rock

What’s to come next year?

Crime of the Century, simple as that. The first half of the year, you will be seeing me promote the book that I’ve been working so hard on for the last couple years. I also have some international travel plans and I will be writing about those travels, so there will be some more On Tour blog posts. Other than that, I definitely want to keep writing more blog posts if and when I have the time, but depending on how Crime of the Century is received, I’m probably going to be going back to the old grind and working on volume 2. I have the outline ready and I have the vision. I just need to write it! That said, self-publishing isn’t cheap, but creating something that will live forever is priceless and a huge accomplishment. I’d also like to see the blog reach 1 million lifetime views by my birthday.

I’m also turning 30 next year and I am finding it hard to process.

Here’s to a happy, healthy 2024!

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