Sunday 5 January 2020

The Best Year For Music Ever

Musical taste is subjective and my parents had no truck with the music i listened to in the 80s and 90s as i have no ear for the music my kids play today so to say which year was the musical highlight would be folly, so i'm going to do just that.
In his new book, Perfect Sound Whatever, comedian James Acaster argues that 2016 was the greatest ever year for music and highlights Beyonce, Frank Ocean, Kanye West and Radiohead and David Bowie's final studio album Blackstar, released days before his death.
Admittedly i am writing from a position of ignorance as i have not heard any of the albums but Greatest Hits Radio ran a survey and found 1984 was voted the publics favourite year of music pointing to Prince, U2, Red Hot Chili Peppers, George Michael, Queen, Madonna, Frankie Goes To Hollywood and the Band Aid single and that certainly is a compelling list.
Meanwhile The Spectator has nominated 1971 Marvin Gaye, Joni Mitchell, David Bowie and Led Zeppelin while the Guardian makes the case for 1966 and point to The Beach Boys, Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Kinks and The Beatles but to me they all pale into comparison with 1991.
The year is probably best remembered for the Gulf War, the collapse of the USSR, Mike Tyson's rape arrest and Arsenal winning the League title but it was also a stonkingly great year for music.
REM were in that brief period when they good with 'Out of time', Tom Petty's 'Into the great wide open', 'Ten' by Pearl Jam, the magnificent Guns N Roses double bill 'Use your illusion 1 and 2, Nirvana's 'Nevermind', the Red Hot Chilli Peppers had not yet cleaned up their act and produced  'Blood Sugar Sex Magik', Prince was at his pervy best with 'Diamonds and Pearls', there was also a Joan Jett Best of Album and Metallica had yet to annoy all their fans with views on MP3 downloading with 'The Black Album'.
The singles that came from those albums to fill the 1991 charts were classics as well as songs such as 'Summertime' by the Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, 'Two Princes' Spin Doctors, 'Weather with you' Crowded House, The Waterboy's 'Whole of the moon' and 'Sit Down' by James.
Green Day were cutting their pop punk teeth with 1039 Smoothed out slappy hours and the very underrated Carter USM were just moving on to the radar with '30 Something'.
When you throw in re-releases of the Clash's 'Should i stay or should i go' and 'Bohemian Rhapsody' i declare that 1991 was the best year for music. Ever.

2 comments:

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
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Falling on a bruise said...

http://bruisefalling.blogspot.com/2020/01/pompeo-disapointed-with-europeans.html?m=1

Eyesight failing?