I love end of year lists. Tell me how many games I played on PlayStation. Tell me how many hours I put into Hellblade (eight) before barely touching my Xbox again all year. Tell me who my Top Artist is even though I know it’s Taylor Swift. Tell me my most watched actor even though I pay for Letterboxd like a sap and know (owing to Percy Jackson and a short-lived cringe modern romcom era) it’s Alexandra Daddario. But this love of end of year lists makes January a tricky time for me, and I don’t want it to be.
I’ve already played more Xbox this year than last year, thanks to reviewing Dynasty Warriors: Origins on the platform and sinking in 50 hours, with a couple of true endings still to sweep up. Add in Avowed, South of Midnight, and the potential launch of Fable, plus other games great and small that may come to Game Pass, and this year’s Xbox list might make for interesting reading. With PlayStation still my preferred platform for general release games and the promise of, amongst other things, Ghost of Yotei, I’m not worried on that front either. With the Nintendo Switch 2 Or Whatever Its Name Is coming this year, there is sure to be a bumper collection of games there, too. But elsewhere, I feel old habits creeping back in.
Stop Obsessing Over Most Played, Most Listened, Most Watched
Part of that comes back to Alexandra Daddario. It’s true that part of the reason she was my most watched star of 2024 was because I ended up subjecting myself to late 2010s/early 2020s romcoms to see if they were as bad as their reputation suggests (answer: mostly yes). But part of it was she had a head start, and my compulsion for these lists and the need to spend a year dedicating myself to something saw me latch onto Daddario.
She’s a solid performer, and pretty, but not really all that funny for all the comedic roles she has, and not any sort of major celebrity crush either. I watch a lot of horror movies, which led me to watching Texas Chainsaw 3D and Bereavement, both of which she happened to star in. I also watched the two Percy Jackson movies at the start of the year when the TV series was in the news, having missed it growing up, and she again stars in both. That meant by around March, I had seen four Daddario movies to everyone else’s one.
As others caught up, like Denzel Washington (rewatching The Equalizer trilogy and generally being great), Robert De Niro (it’s always time for De Niro), and Sydney Sweeney (oh hey, look at the time, I must be going!), I found myself drawn to other Daddario movies. Not because of any special magnetism on her part, but because the stats had decided that she was my most watched star of the year in March, and I needed to preserve that. I watched a further five Daddario movies, the highest rated being We Have Always Lived In A Castle, which I awarded an uninspiring 3/5.
January Is The Real Cruellest Month
This has already happened this year. One of my classic movie blindspots (and I think I speak for everyone when I call this a classic) is American Pie. I had never seen it. So when it popped up on my streaming service of choice’s homepage, I thought I’d give it a watch. It was great. Hey, they have the sequel! Within five days, I had watched all four of them. Now my most watched actor page is full of Stifler and Jim. The worst part is, when I was watching them, I thought about how funny it would be to see Stifler be my most watched actor.
Now, especially as Kevin (remember him? Didn’t think so) is actually number one, I find myself hatching plans about who this years’ Daddario will be to depose them all. It makes the term ‘star delivery vehicle’ all too literal when you think about movies like this.
It’s not just movies, either. While it’s highly likely that Taylor Swift will organically be my top artist this year (barring a year of radio silence and a killer album from one of my usual also-rans – Olivia Rodrigo, maybe?), I still find myself annoyed at my own habits and adherence to these end of year wrap-ups that no one else cares about. Seriously, every conversation you have ever had with someone about your Spotify Wrapped they are just waiting for their turn to tell you theirs so you can, in turn, begin ignoring them.
And yet, the January reset rewires my brain. A friend of mine asked me what I thought of Clairo at the end of last year, and I confessed I hadn’t listened to them much. When they told me I would like them, I made a mental note to hold off until January (which, rather embarrassingly, I did) so that Clairo would feel the full impact in next year’s yearly round-up.
I can pretend the reason was that December is for Christmas music, and that is a factor, but mostly it’s because December is a dead-zone for all of these stats except Letterboxd (shout out to a real one), so I find myself waiting for January to kick things off. Then in January, I feel like I need to decide then and there what sort of movies I’m going to watch, what sort of music to listen to. If it wasn’t for the nature of his job, I would almost certainly be deciding on a video game genre to hyperfixate on too.
So this year, I’m getting super into nothing. I’m like, totally obsessed with whatever. I’m all about idk what do you think. 2025 is the year I dedicate myself to nothing and let whatever happens, happen. Except American Pie and Clairo. That horse has already bolted.
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