Wilcifer's Top 10 Folk Artists

Since the Weekly Playlist is weekly , I can only publish one a week, yeah, I know its my fucking blog so I could do anything I want, but then it would just be chaos. I am not opposed to chaos, but it would then turn into the bi-weekly playlist. The reason for the Weekly Playlist, was it was the audio equivalent to leaving notes in your crush’s locker in high school. The lyrics to some of these songs could still say..” Do you like me ? Check yes or no”, but not all of them , in fact some are on the angry side. So I made this a top ten list, cause you kids like them. I am not saying they are the greatest of all time, as it lacks the Bob Dylans and Phil Ochs. In fact I let Last FM sort them out and rank them by who I have listened to the most. The Top 10 folk artists, Wilcifer Has Listened to the Most According to Lastfm.com, so really an unwieldy title so , it is what it is. I did not list the song titles by the artists as that would imply they are the best songs by that artist. I just picked these songs because I like them. Some the lyrically content is particularly potent, which I think is a key component of folk, since it’s sripped down more honest story. The John Vanderslice song could have been a letter I wrote to my mom at the peak of my heroin addiction. The Chelsea Wolfe song pretty much sums up my marriage. So I could have titled this locker note…”Here Is What My Life Was Like Before I Met You”. But that title is also very long. It could be argued that these are not all soley folk artists, but by that reasoning neither was Bob Dylan as he took his music to other place. Here there are going to be elements of rock and blues mixed in , but I think that is part and parcel, granted there are many folk artist who came out in the 90s and were marketed as being singer -song writers since folk was not the easiest crossover market at the time. So we could nit-pick this list all day and I don’t have time for that, in fact dear reader while I hope you enjoy this , you are really just a voyeur to me leaving another audio note in the locker. 10- Rome

   



9-John Vanderslice

 

8-Cat Power


 



7-Damien Rice



 


 6-Ani Difranco

 


 5-Dax Riggs

   


4-Brendan Perry


 



3-Death In June



 


 2- the Decemberists



 


1- Chelsea Wolfe