My 20 Favorite Television Shows of 2019

Loyal fans have been waiting for a whole year to get to this day.  Not to see my actual list, but to hear me chronicle my crippling addiction to television and see whether or not I was able to limit myself to following less than 100 shows this year.  Well I've got some bad news for you: if we're counting the shows I watched every airing episode of this year, that number reached 102.  I know, I really thought I was going to meet my goal in 2019.  And I was so close!  I know I said this last year, but I really am quitting more shows and not starting more altogether, they just keep making more of them every year.  Those numbers simply can't be beat.

One thing I've noticed with my list this year is that it feels a little different than previous years, and I can't tell if that's due to a change in my taste or a change in the trend of what gets made.  But I will say this year there's less Very Serious Drama For Very Serious People (your Mad Mens, your Americans) and more stuff, especially in the top 10, that might make you say "huh"?  The idea that great TV comes in all shapes and sizes is a mantra I've repeated alot over the years, and we would all do well to remember that as the landscape transforms a bit in the next decade.

My 20 Favorite Films of 2019

What is cinema?  Never mind...I'll leave that question to Martin Scorsese.

Every year in my TV list, I talk about trying to watch less TV.  With film, I'm trying to do the opposite.  And I did pretty well with that last year, watching a total of 104 new releases, way more than I ever had before.  That would be tough to top, but I at least wanted to stay somewhere close, as opposed to the 75 I ended up hitting.  Part of that is because this year marked the debut of the Criterion Channel streaming service and I chose to spend more time watching MGM musicals from the 1950s and Akira Kurosawa films instead of whatever new algorithmically generated movie Netflix released onto their system.  But another part might be that it was a weaker year overall.  It was very top-heavy in 2019, with many masters and soon-to-be masters putting out excellent work, but it just didn't seem to have the overall depth that 2018 did.  Even some of those aforementioned masters could barely get their movies shown in theaters.

Okay, maybe Marty was right.

The rules: As long as a film got an official United States release in 2019, it was eligible for placement on this list.  This is an important thing to remember, since some of the films that appear in my top 20 premiered at film festivals in 2018, but didn't get released in theaters until this year.  And in the case where a film got no theatrical release, then a VOD debut in 2019 will make it eligible.

My 20 Favorite Albums of 2019

These music lists are always the hardest to write an intro for, because there are so many genres and narratives, it's hard to sum it all up into one cohesive statement.  2019, at least for me, was a continuation of trends already known to be true, particularly in the rise of poptimism and the diminishing of traditional indie rock.  This year, rap and pop music take up a whole 50% of my top 20 list, which is higher than it's been since I've started making lists.  Unfortunately, that still doesn't mean there is any Billie Eilish on here.  I apologize to the zero teens reading this.

The rules: Everything is the same as usual.  The window of eligibility for this list is anything released between January 1, 2019 and now.  This list can include albums, mixtapes, EPs, and anything in between.  I'm praying that nothing substantial comes out in the twilight hours of the year.  You never know with surprise releases these days...

50 Songs I Liked in 2019

On December 29th, I'll be starting off my end of the year lists with my 20 favorite albums of 2019.  But there's so much great music out there that my album post will only cover a very tiny portion of the stuff that's worth listening to.  So this list is an additional rundown, one that highlights songs from albums that won't be appearing on the top 20 in a few days.  I'm including songs from my five honorable mention albums, so if you see something on here from an album you love, who knows, maybe that album is ranked somewhere between 21 and 25 for me!  Even this doesn't fully cover the quality that the year had to offer, but it's a good representation of what I generally liked this year.