2013 Year in Review: The Year in Music

2013 has been a veritable expedition into the heart of darkness. If throughout the year you maintained your sanity while sifting through the festival crowds and visiting pop stars, you didn’t journey deep enough.

Here are the top ten, most popular music related blogs to dominate our bandwidth in 2013.

1. Metallica Rumor Control: Beijing No, Shanghai Yes
 

Lars Ulrich should have at least stopped by to fatten up his art collection in 798, but it just wasn’t in the cards.

2. Travis Set to Headline 2013 Strawberry Festival in April

Brit pop dynamos Travis get us all hot bothered by headlining 2013’s Strawberry Festival. “Why does it always rain on me?” Because our brains are in the gutter.

3. New Location for INTRO 2013: Capital Steel Factory on West Side

A genius last minute relocation of China’s largest electronic music festival, to a massive, abandoned steel factory. The music was great, venue fantastic, lights insane. Everyone enjoyed themselves.

4. Expat Rap Video Tackles the Beijing Experience
 

Riffing off "Empire State of Mind," Jay Z's ballad to New York City, Beijing expats Mark Griffith and Andrew "Big Daddy Dough" Dougherty dropped their music video, "Beijing State of Mind."

5. Photos: Great Wall Music Festival
 

Though at its core a very flawed musical event with transportation chaos and criminally overpriced food and beverages, the photographic evidence on the other hand shows a mildly hedonistic extravaganza to the beat of David Guetta.

6. Sound of the Xity: East Meets West on Sexy Posters

What do you get when you blend a delightfully homoerotic, East meets West ad campaign with the delicious sounds of Beijing’s underground music scene? If you don’t already know, enter the rabbit hole.

7. The Hazey Outdoors: Your Guide to Haze Out 2013

This past summer’s main event to showcase sexy swimwear and some of the city’s best house and techno DJs. With a mountainous location near a lake, next year's party planners have a difficult precedent to live up to when planning this coming festival season.

8. Talking Tunes: The Killers to Try Again in Beijing. Second Time Lucky?

International superstars The Killers finally made their way to Beijing. No last-minute pull-outs or visa troubles this time, but I guess they are only “Human.” On the “Mr. Brightside,”  maybe more acts of this calibre will have less trouble when preparing to grace our beloved city.

9. Talking Tunes: Is Justin Bieber Coming to Beijing?

“Teen heartthrob” Justin Bieber made his Beijing debut with all the foolish antics we have come to expect from this global megastar. Too bad Zach Galifianakis wasn’t able to chaperone.

10. Grade A Strawberry? How the Music Festival Measured Up

A veritable score card for everything Strawberry. Nine different categories were evaluated to determine its success and misgivings, from tickets and concessions to transportation.

Photo: www.vanityfair.com