You must remember this…. or maybe not. Guess which film I recently saw on tv, for the umpteenth time – I never tire of it! But it gave me a title for today: my review of what happened last year on my blog. I have done a few of these previously: after a bit of a hiatus I restarted last year, and it seems to have been well liked. So you only have yourselves to blame for encouraging me to do another!

Let’s get the numbers out of the way first, shall we? In my terms, I think last year went well. I posted 164 times, my highest ever, and there were a total of 183,447 words in them. Maybe I should have written a couple of novels instead? Nah, that takes talent that I don’t possess, so I’m afraid you’re stuck with me as I am! Total views of my posts were up by 28% over 2023, largely I think due to the increase in frequency, though an uplift of 20% in visitor numbers will have helped too. You kindly gave me 25% more ‘likes’ than the year before and, wait for it, comments went up by 45%! To say that I am very grateful for each and every one who contributed to these stats is a massive understatement: I’m rather overwhelmed, to be honest. What I liked most about the visitor stats was that every month showed an improvement over 2023 – no strange or unexpected surges to distort the numbers.

Visitors came from 109 countries, roughly half of the number recognised by the UN, so I clearly have some work to do in the other half of the world! Probably to no one’s surprise around 45% of visits came from the US, with the UK trailing in a distant second with 20%. Canada was an even further distant third, with 4%, and India was a close fourth. The overall range of representation was great to see, even in those who formed the bottom of the chart with just one visit each – I guess I just wasn’t to their liking! The one that did intrigue me was Liechtenstein, which appeared 57 times – I either have one very dedicated fan there or most of the country came along for the ride!

As  you might expect, music was by far and away the most common category in which I posted, especially Tuesday Tunes and Song Lyric Sunday, though several others did play a part: there were ten monthly reviews (I took November and December off), several in my occasional Friday Funnies series, some for John Holton’s Writer’s Workshop – to which I’m linking this post, as one of his themes for this week is to review last year. There were also a few random Thoughts, a couple of Dates To Note, and several more on mental health themes. I may concentrate mostly on music, but I always try not to lose sight of why I started blogging in the first place, all those years ago…

Sometimes a post can just take off in a way I didn’t imagine, and that was the case with my most popular piece from last year. That was Leaving On A Jet Plane, which I wrote in March for the Writer’s Workshop: the story of our first overseas holiday. Why it gained so much traction I have no idea, but for a small blog like mine the numbers stand out: 266 views (although there may have been others lumped into that annoying WordPress catchall category of ‘home page/archives’), 120 likes and 78 comments. I can assure you that, for me, is a huge success!

Three other posts from last year have made it into my all time top ten list, which I find pleasing. Two of them were written for Song Lyric Sunday: I’m A Fool and Why Not Come Dancing? but the one that meant the most to me was the one currently holding on to tenth place: Music Doing Good. This is a piece about how Lewis Capaldi – of whom I am a big fan – has created special videos for five of his songs to support charitable efforts by people who are doing good things in their community, often after they have suffered terrible losses or traumas themselves. If you haven’t seen it do follow that link: the music is fantastic and all of the videos are wonderfully heartwarming. Take some tissues with you, though – you may need them.

I could go on to remind you of more of last year’s posts, but I’ll spare you the torment. I have one final thought for you, though. Do you check your spam folder regularly, if at all? I always do, just in case a genuine comment has been dropped in there by WordPress. Next time you do it, take a look at the posts that the spam comments are attached to: I don’t keep a count, but it seems that almost all of the ones I get are linked to two posts I wrote around Christmas 2019: firstly, Christmas Number Twos, which is nothing to do with Yule Logs, and the other is Christmas Song Of The Day 2019: Part Two, back in the days when I did my Advent posts in that format. Two posts written three days apart, just over five years ago: weird, or what? Any clues as to why the bots find those to the exclusion of just about everything else? It beats me!

I’ve rambled enough for today, I think. This would be the time at which I play you a song from one of my favourite posts from last year, but having used it for the title I think I really should play this one – Dooley Wilson, with Frank Sinatra coming on as a second half sub:

Oh, go on then. Now that you have your hankies out, here’s one from the Lewis Capaldi post too:

That one gets me every time. A beautiful song, and a wonderful story of hope coming out of despair, which is especially poignant at this time of year. I’m looking forward to another good year of blogging, both my own and reading yours. This is by far the best form of social media, and we are all so very lucky to be a part of it.

See you again on Sunday for our regular SLS date. Happy New Year! 😊