With the exception of Fridays and the holidays, I don’t normally put on music based on the situation. But as 2012 drew to a close, I found myself listening to Neil Young’s Psychedelic Pill quite often, probably every couple of days. And why was that?

In 2012, readers flocked to a boisterous discussion on those times when the Beatles didn’t exactly impress.

We’ve each already had our say, individually. Said our piece. Then came time to meet over the remnants of the egg nog and hammer out a consensus — before we go over the disc-al cliff into 2013.

A pair of lavish reissues arrive just in time for the Christmas buying season, one a classic Eric Clapton release — maybe his very best — and the other a signature effort from Rush, only days after their induction into a certain hall of fame.

Plenty of people have criticized Bob Dylan’s unfocused 1990 release Under the Red Sky. (Heck, we even called its lead song Dylan’s worst-ever moment.) Producer Don Was is here to explain what happened.

What a year. Several metric tons of great music passed through my ears but somehow I managed to remember almost none of it. Too busy. Too worried. Too distracted. Being so caught up in my own thoughts caused most of sound to bounce right off.

Jeff Lynne, so meticulous in the studio that he’s now painstakingly rerecorded all of the Electric Light Orchestra’s best-known hits, wouldn’t seem to be a great fit with the famously low-fi Bob Dylan.

Part 2, Mainstream and Modern Jazz >>> For the sixth straight year, it’s time to look back on the year in music to recollect which albums I really, really liked this year and make a list.

Where else will you find, side by side by side, new reissues of Miles Davis’ Porgy and Bess, Nirvana’s 1992 compilation Incesticide, and the Fat Boys’ Pizza Box album — packaged in (yes) a pizza box?

Neil Young didn’t listen to fellow 1960s rock legend Bob Dylan for years — not because Young doesn’t admire him, but because he feared turning into a mimic.