Artist News CMU Playlists

On The CMU Stereo 2021 – Winter

By Andy Malt | Published on Tuesday 7 December 2021

Well, that’s another year all but over. And about time too. As years go, 2021 has been yet another challenging one. One thing that can be said for 2021, though, is that it gave us a heck of a lot of good music. Just so much, as musicians started releasing all of the music they’d been working on during lockdown and all the music they’d held back because of lockdown.

Some of that music, of course, was released into yet another lockdown, but as time went on there were opportunities to promote and tour that music in something resembling the “normal” way. For many artists this was a long time coming, and the relief and joy was visible on stage.

Here we begin our annual rundown of our favourite music released since January. Today we go right back to the start of the year, with ten of our favourite tracks released over the winter. All of these soundtracked our year, and many eventually appeared on albums that have also been on hard repeat around here.

As well as the single that appears in this list, ‘Baby Grand’, Anna B Savage’s incredible debut album, ‘A Common Turn’, also arrived in January and has never been far from our speakers since. January also saw Noga Erez release what was to be a standout track from her brilliant ‘Kids’ album – which followed in March, and which we’d been anticipating for so long that one track from it actually made our winter playlist last year.

As winter began to turn to spring, Lil Nas X released ‘Montero (Call Me By Your Name)’, the title track from his debut album, which eventually arrived in September. When looking at artists who defined this year musically, it’s hard to think of many who might challenge him for that crown. Proving himself adept at trolling his critics and courting controversy, he backed all that up with some great tracks that defied anyone who had written him off as a one hit wonder.

We kick off our 2021 playlist with probably the first big track of the year – which was briefly also one of the last of 2020 – Saweetie’s collaboration with Doja Cat, ‘Best Friend’. A big track from two artists who have only grown in stature in the following eleven months.

These are but a few of the artists on this playlist though, there are more to delve into. Follow the playlist on Spotify below, as we add to it over the next two weeks.

Here are the ten tracks on our winter playlist:

Saweetie – Best Friend (feat Doja Cat)

Noga Erez – End Of The Road

Anna B Savage – Baby Grand

Weezer – All My Favorite Songs

Albertine Sarges – Oh My Love

Tkay Maidza – Kim (feat Yung Baby Tate)

Dry Cleaning – Strong Feelings

Lvra – Dead

Alewya & Moses Boyd – The Code

Lil Nas X – Montero (Call Me By Your Name)