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!

We Started Nothing, but things are changing.

We need all the talent but that said, and while there would seem to be no shortage around, it is not all going to be with the new brigade!

This week, on both sides of the Atlantic, the album charts are topped by Neil Diamond and it is the first time in a career spanning the better part of five decades that either in the UK or the US he has done that with a studio album ('Greatest Hits' and other compilations are excluded). That Home Before Dark did it simultaneously in both the UK and the US, when he is sixty-seven and on the week of the release, is nothing if not remarkable.

It shows two things I think; one is that music is not only the preserve of the younger generation (Neil Diamond is a huge influence on many successful young singer-songwriters anyway) and that, perhaps, the decline of the recorded music industry is overstated and there may be some that have their own reasons for purveying that impression.

So these two, both twenty-something denizens of the modern and creative part of Salford, chose a rather self-deprecating title for their much anticipated first album, but this not an outfit to mention in the same breath as many fellow Mancunians. It has to be said that, but for the grace of God, Oasis have yet to be self-destructing but the same sadly cannot be said for Ian Curtis of Joy Division.

Ting Tings are however just what Britain needs at the start of every summer and were widely tipped to be so in 2008. This album is a blast that, while in some minor ways pays homage to the 1980s and 1990s, is just pure pop as it really should be done; for the sheer hell of it and so just perfect for summer and the festival season!
The first two singles, 'Fruit Machine' and 'Great DJ' were special but the third single 'That's Not My Name' is just stupidly addictive (so thus the perfect pop single) and went straight to #1 in the UK this week, which was also the week in which the album We Started Nothing was physically released*. I would not be particularly surprised if the single and album managed to achieve a chart double this coming Sunday.

There is not quite the apparently vast gulf between the two acts as at first you might imagine!

* Yes it does exist - very limited and all pressed in red - on 12" vinyl too.

New Year 2008

Yesterday I somehow lost heart with 2007 at the very last moment but that is not to say it, in any way, was a year to forget. It certainly wasn't and I would like to think that 2008 could be even better, if not for the major labels. The next big things are fairly easy to predict and the single Chasing Pavements by Adele Adkins from Brixton is almost certain to be the first of them but here, and just for starters, are two others and while the first pretty much does 21st century pop and the second 21st century folk that is not something to be held against either of them.

• The Ting Tings
• Laura Marling

Amy Winehouse, meanwhile, has serious competition in making her third album despite the new contributions by Mark Ronson. The second album by Lily Allen is likely to be important too and Ronson is likely to work on both these and also has on Adkins début. Pop will, for all its curious beauty and as I suggested yesterday, probably make a significant return in 2008 but everything live will remain at the forefront: only live performance makes money these days and so, in 2008 as in 2007, things look rather lean for the major labels.
The third in my list is American singer-songwriter Ryan Tedder, of One Republic, and were his only mention to date the writing of Bleeding Heart for Leona Lewis then that alone should be enough to ensure that he gets a major award in 2008 - the truth is that, very likely, he won't have to rely on that. Apologize, written by Tedder and co-produced with Timbaland, has done neither of them any harm.
Then there is another huge issue looming because in 2008 downloading, whether legal or otherwise, quite simply won't go away. The majors might wish it would but in fact it will become an issue more pressing than ever before and, while once again largely self-inflicted, DRM should ensure that it does.