Rilo Kiley came into my life when I was 16. I couldn't have found the California indie-rock band at a more pivotal time. At that age, I was dealing with two terrible relationships back-to-back that broke my spirit, while also feeling like an outsider in high school. Jenny Lewis's songwriting helped me find solace; her songs made me feel like she was the cool older friend guiding me through it all, validating my emotions, with songs like "Capturing Moods," "Go Ahead," and "Glendora."

Celebrating the arrival of 2020 immediately took me to 2010. I rang in the new year at Barclays Center with a friend, seeing The Strokes for the first time. It felt appropriate, given how at the end of 2019, I had mentally regressed to feeling like my teenage self.

At the beginning of the second season of Big Little Lies, Jane (Shailene Woodley) asks Celeste (Nicole Kidman) if she's glad Perry (Alexander Skarsgard) is dead. Celeste pauses, and then says "It's complicated." When the new season of Big Little Lies premiered, I saw so many people tweet that they wished they were in Celeste's position of their abuser being dead. I used to wish the same thing all the time.

This year, Pixies celebrate the 30th anniversary of their debut album Surfer Rosa with intimate performances in London and New York City, and Come On Pilgrim…It’s Surfer Rosa, a deluxe box set of both the LP and their mini-abum Come On Pilgrim. But without Puerto Rico, Pixies’ debut album Surfer Rosa would not exist.

Growing up in Puerto Rico as a teenage feminist misfit, I didn’t have many iconic rock figures to look up to, or at least any of my gender. At the peak of my teen angst, Kurt Cobain was my everything. I played Nevermind in my mother’s car every day after school during my freshman year of high school and connected on a weird level that I hadn’t with any artist before.