Thoughts on 2009 - so what next?

Happy New Year 2009 - it's an easy thing to say or write, it just happened and it doesn't sound convincing - but what if the old one, while probably memorable, wasn't so for the right reasons?

It would be easy to simply continue as is normal now - gloom and doom all round - but ONLY if that is how you wish to look back a year from now. Look at it this way: this time last year did you expect things to be as they are now? I'd wager that, like me, you probably didn't.
It is all part of a vicarious experience and if I had to mention my highlights of 2008 then that is easy: family, friends and music in that order. I suspect that 2009 will be more of the same but perhaps rather better; there is even a slim chance that it will be the start of something much more significant. Optimism is rarely dangerous as such, although it can be highly contagious in confined spaces, and it is the one pandemic that would be welcome in 2009.

Music in 2009 looks less predictable than for some years and that is another plus point. The download revolution is maturing now and it might well mean that some little known new acts and artists are able to suddenly burst on to the scene. The major labels will continue to evolve, if perhaps still surprisingly slowly, from the behemoths of old while everyone else keeps going headlong.
Music in 2009 will be simultaneously something and everything - genres will be crossed in ways that only chimaera comes close to describing, dug up, buried, mixed-and-matched with hitherto unimagined abandon. If the sun shines on the 2009 Festival season then it is a done deal; 2009 will be a year to remember and for all the right reasons.

PS:
Whatever you have read Katie White of The Ting Tings is 25, and not 40 as some reports claim.

Live at 'Tea In The Park 2008'

If she were indeed 40 you would surely see her advertising anti-aging products on every other page of every newspaper or magazine and you simply don't!