2010 in Music: Thoughts of a Willing Victim

Now it is December I think it is no longer premature to publish my own versions of 'Best of 2010 in Music' lists.  This post is not one of them but that is not to say that I have not been thinking about them for a long while now!  I plan to roll the project out between now (Wednesday evening) and the end of the coming weekend and I might well add content to some of the posts (and particularly links within them) after first posting them so please bear with me if a post seems a little threadbare when you first see it.
On the other hand I have made the decision to launch with the list of albums this time around by I may revert to my 2008 format of doing so in two sections. I am as yet still undecided but there are two reasons in favour of this.

• About ten days ago and out of the blue, as the result of a comment on their part about a certain album that I mentioned was one of my favourites, a stranger asked me what my others might be. This was a face-to-face chat, in a real record store, so I had to decide on the hoof.  I surprised myself, and also my interlocutor, with the result.  I can't remember exactly how many I reeled off, another eight or so, but I can pretty much remember what they were as I wrote most of them down when I got home.  This was a far better outcome than trying to self-consciously compare each contender with every other and generally over-think the whole process. It makes sense too, as music is very much a subconscious thing: It is sometimes immediate, while sometimes things take time to grow on me, but this encounter made me realise just which albums inveigled me in 2010.
• The second reason became obvious at an early stage of my consideration. My choices are influenced by the music and artists that I have heard live, whether in 2010 or not, like never before.  That is, in part, just a reflection of the fact that I have now heard so much more live music than I had when I wrote my first such list in 2007. 

I will continue with the policy of listing items in any list alphabetically. I can't rank them as that would change daily depending on my mood. I can change my mind for other reasons too...  This post was, until just now, going to have a rather prosaic title:

Thoughts on 2010 - in lists, albums, live, songs, singles, &c.
  
The one it now has is a more honest and accurate reflection of the way I feel about music.

Infinite iteration...

The title might sound like math homework from decades long past but it is actually an observation on a much more recent problem. It is a more welcome problem, I must add, but an example of the fact that some things seem to get harder with practice and - at for me at least - writing year-end lists is one of them.

I have not fulfilled all the promises I made for my blog this year and only I am to blame there. I have however succeeded in listening to more music, both recorded and live, than ever before. That is another large part of the problem: taking stock in the last few weeks has only now made me realize how true that is. Worse still, in this regard alone, is that the guidance I have received from many sources in the last year has meant that very little of it, live or recorded, can simply be dismissed at the first pass; furthermore not only is there far more to consider it is also more varied in nature and that is a big problem hence the title of the post!
How do you whittle the list down without obvious accusations of a travesty of justice? I have had, and then discarded, various ideas about categorization but in the end I think I'm going to do it much like last year:

• Two complementary lists of albums (I'm not sure how one will be distinct from the other).
  
• A list of EPs/mini-albums (of which I have rather more this year than last).
  
• A list of singles (probably).
• A list of live acts that I have liked the most.

The last is a new category and to some extent it will overlap with the foregoing ones. Another that I'm still considering is a shortlist of albums from earlier years that I have acquired for the first time in 2009. Don't get me wrong, I love doing it but it does not actually get any easier and perhaps that apparent contradiction is actually part of the appeal.

I've even got a working list of 2010 artists and albums to keep an eye on and, as the second decade of the 21st century dawns, it doesn't look disappointing.

The single is dead? Ten pop singles of 2008.

I mentioned this here recently and, since Friday afternoon is often a good time to do such frivolous things and the opportunity presented itself, I mentioned it - albeit in slightly different terms - to my colleagues at work.

"What? pop... singles... in 2008?"
"Yes, that's right."

They were probably protesting their innocence but I added "if that's too much choice then that's fine, let's only consider ones by female artists or all-female bands!"

Pop, in all its disguises, has returned in 2008 and here - according to the above criteria - are ten singles (in alphabetical order) that I think matter in this respect.

• Disturbia - Rihanna
• I Kissed A Girl - Katy Perry
• Issues - The Saturdays
• It Was You - Sharleen Spiteri
• Keeps Gettin' Better - Christina Aguilera
• Nothing Sweet About Me - Gabriella Cilmi
• Piece Of Me - Britney Spears
• Rain On Your Parade - Duffy
• So What - P!nk
• The Boy Does Nothing - Alesha Dixon
  

Pop is back for sure and, although it takes a lot from the past, it also offers something new. That is why, after over half a century, pop still matters.

What I am is what I am, are you what you are, or what?

For the last couple of weeks I've spent much of my time thinking about, and listening to, all the new music I have come across in 2008. That is interesting in itself but it has made me think more generally about about the ways in which music evolves - why certain things come round again and how and why they are reinvented or recycled.
Things crossing my mind currently include my favourite singles of 2008, particularly widely successful ones and for a reason, also a top ten of cover versions from 2008, and why I think both topics matter.

One of the cover versions that I really like is a bit like a comet - it comes back to shine brightly every ten years and so - thus at least for those under twenty-something it will probably always be associated with Emma Bunton and TinTinOut (for whom it was a 1999 UK single). It was originally written by Edie Brickell and Kenny Withrow and appeared on the 1988 album 'Shooting Rubber Bands at the Stars', which was the début by Texan band Edie Brickell and The New Bohemians.
It has appeared once again in 2008 as one of the few covers on 'Deranged', the self-released début album by West Virginian singer-songwriter Stacee Lawson.

I like this version of 'What I Am' to bits and actually most of the rest of the album too - it came within a whisker of being included on the second of the two lists of Albums of 2008 that I posted last week.

My charts of 2007...

The practice I had last year notwithstanding, compiling such a list is certainly no easier than it was last year. I have however decided to attempt it slightly earlier this year but – things being as they are – it is again a rather nebulous concept of a ‘top ten’ so there is certainly no way that I’m going to attempt to put them in any order other than alphabetical by artist and without additional comment.

Here goes…

Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
Besnard Lakes – The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse
Candie Payne – I Wish I Could Have Loved You More
Client - Heartland
Dolores O’Riordan – Are You Listening?
Electrelane – No Shouts, No Calls
New Young Pony Club – Fantastic Playroom
Seabear – The Ghost That Carried Us Away
Siobhan Donaghy - Ghosts
Stephanie Dosen – A Lily For The Spectre

To keep the list to just ten (it really should be more like a bakers’ dozen) I have avoided including any albums that have not had a bona fide UK first release in 2007 and, hopefully without any very glaring compromises, also tried to reflect the kind of albums I like at the moment. The inclusion of Siobhan Donaghy’s second solo album, Ghosts, is not merely a token major-label entry even though I have only previously mentioned it before it was released. I really like her first album, Revolution In Me, but my already high expectations were exceeded and I really can’t see why this was not more of a commercial hit. The cover artwork of promotional copies has an interesting twist on that of the commercial release in which, while the strangely upholstered chair is still there, she is nowhere to be seen…

There are more that I’m also very tempted to add, including a couple that I haven’t really listened to enough to come to an opinion that is reasonably stable. Then there is the vexatious question of whether to include EPs and mini albums (I haven’t but see below) and that is important.
I mentioned a few weeks ago that, when it comes to the EPs I’ve bought this year, My Manic And I (a 4-track 45 rpm 7”) is definitely top of a field that is not without serious competition and so I suspect EMI will have a major artist on their hands when Laura Marling’s debut album is released in February and, furthermore, that she will also be one of the “must see” live acts of 2008.

That said 2007 has not been short of memorable singles and in the charts a certain pop revival may even be detected. The following are a fairly mixed bag from 2007, pop taken in the widest sense of the meaning, that I just happened to like and that is ultimately what pop singles are all about. 2007 has also been the year in which legal downloads entered the UK chart reckoning for all legally-downloaded songs, which has certainly altered the dynamics of the UK ‘Top 40’ singles. On balance I think that it has done no harm whatsoever but my Luddite inclination still leads me still to prefer real ones (and on vinyl if possible) but it has also been a good year for that kind of thing too and, as an aside, here is another one, 'Follow Me Down', that is somewhere between a EP and a full-blown album consisting as it does of six tracks.
There isn’t a bad track on 'Follow Me Down', in my opinion, but it is an apparently diverse and yet quite artless wonder of the kind that that has eluded many bands that have enjoyed long and successful careers. At the moment my second favourite track from it is Lips Of Cleopatra, which somehow slightly reminds me, not that I mean this to detract from it in any way whatsoever, of something Wishbone Ash forgot to write and record in their heyday – Pilgrimage (1971) and Argus (1972) – except that Wishbone Ash didn’t use keyboards until their fourth album, Wishbone Four (1973) so perhaps it rightly belongs there instead! It does have a sound and song-writing style, in both music and lyric, that although not in any obvious way derivative is still almost uncanny.
This track is immediately followed by a song that almost any artist, including the most successful, would simply love someone to write and then to offer to them to record: the pop-noir of Gracelin is breathtaking in its inspiration and deceptively simple execution. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover that Poppy & The Jezebels are on the set list of at least some of next summer’s best festivals.

Gracelin would have made my list of favourite singles (see below) had it been released as a single. It wasn’t but, the again rather different-sounding, Nazi Girls was and it is available on vinyl too. If 2008 sees the above release followed by a full length LP then there’s no doubt that I’ll be buying a copy as soon as I can.

Below, again merely in alphabetical order but with the odd additional comment, are a few 2007 UK chart singles that have particularly caught my attention:

Arctic Monkeys – Fluorescent Adolescent (10” vinyl mix)
Calvin Harris – Acceptable In The 80s
Freemasons – Uninvited (a cover of the 1998 Alanis Morisette song, featuring Bailey Tzuke on vocals)
Hoosiers – Worried About Ray
Kate Nash – Foundations
Mark Ronson – Valerie (a cover of the Zutons track, featuring Amy Winehouse on vocals)
Plain White Ts – Hey There, Delilah
Robyn – With Every Heartbeat
Sugababes – About You Now

And here are a few more that didn’t bother the charts unduly but, in my opinion, really should have done…

Dragonette – I Get Around
Remi Nicole – Rock ‘n’ Roll
Stefy – Chelsea

Talking about charts, here’s something of an eye-opener. If you think that Europe is anything like an integrated place, when it comes to music, just looking at the charts of the constituent countries would suggest otherwise. The following site helpfully provides listings for many countries, including some beyond Europe, updated weekly: http://allcharts.org/music/

As there is still almost the whole of December 2007 to go I’m still reserving the right to make late additions or even maybe even alterations but, unlike the former, the latter is quite unlikely. The next question is what will be the trends in 2008? Well, I’m thinking about it as best I can…