Quarter 1 (January-March 2020) Recap, Analysis and Look Ahead
- lifeisbella
- Apr 6, 2020
- 8 min read
This post will be broken down into 3 sections: recap, analysis and look ahead. In the first section I'll be recapping everything that I finished watching/reading/listening to during January through March 2020 and briefly talking about my favorites. The second part will be an analysis and breakdown of the things that I did watch. The third part will be discussing anything that I am looking forward to watching in April through June.
RECAP
Here I will include everything I watched/read/listened to in chronological order that I watched them (as best as I can remember). I will be including non-2020 media here and those will have their release dates in parentheses.
I'll also talk about my favorites of each media type. I'm not going to commit to a "top 5" or anything, I'm just going to talk about however many favorites I feel like for each category.
TV:
AJ & The Queen, Netflix Original
Spinning Out, Netflix Original
Don't F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer, Netflix Original (2019)
Cheer, Netflix Original
The Bachelor, Season 24, ABC (This was released in 2020, but I'm not going to be reviewing/counting reality TV shows towards my 2020 challenge goals)
Unbelievable, Netflix Original (2019)
Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez, Netflix Original
Grace and Frankie, Season 6, Netflix Original
The Outsider, HBO
Looking for Alaska (2019)
Favorites (in no particular order):
The Bachelor. This was definitely one of my favorites this quarter. I'm not going to be posting a review of it because it's reality TV and it's kind of hard to talk about and analyze. But the Bachelor was definitely one of the most enjoyable things that I watched. This past season was just crazy.
Spinning Out. This was also definitely a favorite. I loved that show so much. I'm still so mad that it was cancelled.
Cheer. Cheer was also cool. It was really interesting to see the inside of all the cheerleader training and to see what those athletes are capable of.
MOVIES:
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
Little Women (2019)
Invisible Man
Happy Death Day (2017)
To All The Boys: P.S. I Still Love You, Netflix Original
The Luck of the Irish (2001) (re-watch)
Onward
High Life (2018)
Favorites:
The Invisible Man. This one was definitely a surprise hit, not just for me but for a lot of people who went to see this movie.
I didn't particularly love anything else I watched this quarter, unfortunately...
ALBUMS:
Rare, Selena Gomez
Manic, Halsey
The Archer, Alexandra Savior
Everything Else Has Gone Wrong, Bombay Bicycle Club
Walking Like We Do, The Big Moon
The High Road, Kesha
Changes, Justin Bieber
Map of the Soul: 7, BTS
The Slow Rush, Tame Impala
Aloha, Son Little
Miss Anthropocene, Grimes
Neon Skyline, Andy Shauf
Traditional Techniques, Stephen Malkmus
Chilombo, Jhene Aiko
Superstar, Caroline Rose
Suite for Max Brown, Jeff Parker
Healer, Grouplove
Heartbreak Weather, Niall Horan
Favorites:
Map of the Soul: 7, BTS. This was definitely one of my favorites because it got me into the whole BTS fandom.
Heartbreak Weather, Niall Horan. This was just a classic pop album. It was so easy to like.
Miss Anthropocene, Grimes. Looking back at this album, I'm really proud of my listening journey. I'm really proud of how I pushed through how terrible it was for my first few listens, and how by the end I had started really enjoying it.
Superstar, Caroline Rose. I'll put this as my last choice. This also was just a really good, enjoyable pop album.
I also want to do my top 5 favorite songs. So here goes:
Boy With Luv, BTS. I'm obsessed. This is definitely #1. I listen to this everyday and watch the music video. It's so good.
Deleter, Grouplove. This one is so good and catchy. I just love it.
Rare, Selena Gomez.
Kinky, Kesha.
You Should Be Sad, Halsey.
I do have other songs that I love, and might even have loved more, but they're a little weird so I didn't add them to my playlists. These are all easy pop songs, so I can add them to my playlists and they fit in just fine.
BOOKS:
Jane Anonymous, Laurie Faria Stolarz
Layoverland, Gabby Noone
Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens (2018)
Educated, Tara Westover (2018)
Favorites:
Jane Anonymous. I'm afraid I will forget about it over time, but at the time I read it I did really like it.
Where the Crawdads Sing. I really liked this one too.
Here are my top 5 favorites of everything across all genres (in no particular order):
Map of the Soul 7, BTS
Invisible Man
Spinning Out
The Bachelor, Season 24
Heartbreak Weather, Niall Horan
Looking back at my favorites, it's kind of disappointing. There weren't too many things that I absolutely loved this quarter. I'll definitely have to look at ways to improve that over the next quarter.
ANALYSIS
TV:
It's interesting for me to see this breakdown between streaming services. I didn't realize how predominant Netflix was for me. Most of the things I watched this quarter was due to the buzz I heard about each of the shows. So Netflix is definitely marketing their shows very well. My goal for next quarter would be to watch more shows available on different streaming services that I have access to. I have no Amazon Prime or Disney+ shows on there, so I would hope to change that next quarter.
This has a little bit of my opinion thrown into the categories here. I had to decide what category to classify each show as. Some qualify as multiple genres (e.g.true crime is a subset of documentary) and some are a very specific type of category (like teen drama, comedy drama etc.) where I would have to decide what it fits best as. I'm pretty happy with the split between genres. I also didn't think I watched so many documentaries (which would comprise 30%, if you include true crime).
I don't have too much to say about this, I just thought it would be interesting to look at the breakdown between years. My focus was to watch recently released shows (2020), and I did accomplish that.
I'm pretty happy with the amount of shows/seasons that I was able to complete this quarter. Yes, some were very short (each of the documentary series were 3-6 episodes), but I still watched a lot of shows. I wanted to do a breakdown of how many hours went into each show, and watching TV in general so I could do a comparison against all other categories, but unfortunately I couldn't find a good way to calculate the time length of each season.
By the end of Quarter 1, I should have at least 5 shows completed for my 2020 challenge. I'm able to count 6 of those shows towards my challenge (3/10 were released in 2019, and 1/10 was a reality show). So I am on track for my challenge.
MOVIES:
This is obviously also very subjective according to how I decided to split the dates. The majority of movies I watched were 2020 releases, which is good. I should definitely be watching more movies in general though.
The full titles of each section aren't visible on the chart. Streaming refers to streaming services, such as Netflix, and theatrical refers to theatrical releases. The majority of movies that I saw were theatrical releases. I feel like I don't take Netflix movies seriously, so this breakdown makes sense according to what I usually prefer to watch.
This again is very subjective, as many of these movies can be classified as multiple different genres. This breakdown is just all over the place. Pretty much every movie I saw this quarter I would consider to be a different category. What's really weird though is that out of all the categories, I watched the most sci-fi. I would not call myself a sci-fi fan at all.
I can count 3 movies towards my 2020 goal. By the end of Quarter 1 I should have watched 5. There haven't been many releases that I was interested in seeing (theatrical or on Netflix). I'm a little behind, but it shouldn't be too difficult to catch up, as each movie is only ~2 hours. It will be a little hard to catch up with Coronavirus-related release delays and theater closures. For at least the next few months I will be relegated to watching streaming service releases. That or I will have to watch a lot of theatrical releases in the second half of the year.
I'm pretty happy with the spread of genres that I watched. I like to expand my horizons and not stay in one lane. Over the next quarter I definitely need to focus on watching more movies. I watched more TV shows than I did movies and TV shows take 2-5 times more time than movies do. So I definitely need to work on that during Quarter 2.
Albums:
I listened to a lot more solo artists than groups. I don't really have a preference, it just worked out that way. I also don't really have any plans to change this next quarter. I'm more focused on being more conscious of genre and artist popularity.
This is very subjective how I considered to classify these artists' popularity. Here is how I decided to break them down:
Indie: - 100k subscribers
Mid: 100k - 1 Million subscribers
Popular: 1 Million - 5 Million subscribers
Mainstream: 5 Million+ subscribers
The subscribers I used are subscribers on the artists' Youtube pages. I'd say I'm pretty happy with this breakdown. I think it's important to listen to the mainstream/popular categories just so I can be in the know with all the hottest music out right now. Those are albums that are going to have more of an impact on music and pop culture history. But it is also important to me to be able to support Indie artists. So I'm pretty happy with the split here and I'll try to keep it going in the next quarter.
This is also very subjective. I just classified each genre to what I thought it was the closest to. Pop subsection includes a lot of subsections of pop including psychedelic pop and electropop. Including all the different types of pop, it makes up 61% of the music I listened to. Pop is my favorite, so I do want to continue listening to a lot of pop because I know I will love it, but I should definitely try and explore different genres. I'm missing a few genres here. There's no soundtracks/musicals, country, rap or rock. I will definitely try and explore some of those genres next quarter.
I think this breakdown is pretty interesting. It's a pretty even split. That was completely unintentional.
I'm definitely way ahead of schedule for this. I should have listened to at least 5 albums by the end of Quarter 1. I have listened to 18. It's really easy for me to get these done because I can listen to them while I'm doing work. I'm pretty happy with the breakdown and splits that I listened to this quarter, but I definitely have some things that I can work to improve.
Books:
I'm pretty impressed with this for me because I usually exclusively read Young Adult. So I'm glad I pushed my limits at least a little bit.
I don't really have a goal to read a certain number of books from any certain era, but my goal was to read at least 20 just from this year.
I am also impressed with myself for this one. I almost never read non-fiction.
I am so behind on this. I should have read 5 books by now. I have only read 2 that qualify for my 2020 Challenge. I have a lot of catching up to do for this one.
LOOK AHEAD
I definitely have a lot of catching up to do for the books and movies categories. Let's briefly discuss some upcoming releases that I'm looking forward to.
TV Shows:
I'm looking forward to the new season of the Bachelorette. I'll probably also watch Listen to Your Heart, the Bachelor spin-off airing in April. Other than that, it's hard to anticipate when things will be coming out, or be released on Netflix. Nothing else comes to mind for any shows I'm looking forward to.
MOVIES:
It's hard to know what movies are still going to be released over the next couple of months. I'll probably watch Artemis Fowl, which will now be released on Disney+. Soul also looks to still be scheduled for a June release.
ALBUMS:
I'm looking forward to a few releases that I expect to come out over the next quarter. Those include albums from Jojo, Lady Gaga and Hayley Williams.
BOOKS:
I haven't been looking out for any 2020 releases. I've mostly just been trying to get my hands on whatever 2020 releases are available through my library.
So that's pretty much it. I thought it was pretty interesting looking at the breakdowns of all of the types/genres etc of everything I watched, read and listened to. I definitely have some things to work on and some new genres to explore. Do you have any thoughts on other genres I should explore? Any upcoming releases that you think I should watch/read/listen to? What were some of your favorites that you've watched this year? Let me know in the comments below.
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