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Albums Of The Year
Dec. 3rd, 2009 02:43 pmI can't be faffed with all these lists of the decade which are doing the rounds - not least because I haven't been keeping an ongoing list through the decade, so I'd end up with some sort of half-remembered mess I'd be regretting within the week. But this I do every year, and keep a running tally for, and justify because I know it's got a couple of friends into a few great records over the years and really, how much more than that can any of us hope to accomplish with our LJs?
( The Top 40 )
But blazes, haven't there been a lot of disappointments? Franz Ferdinand, Pet Shop Boys and Jarvis were among those who made a brave effort to work with new production teams who ought to have produced the goods, but they all came a cropper by so doing, Morrissey, Depeche Mode, Eminem and Marilyn Manson, meanwhile, were among those content to churn out more of the same old same old - especially disappointing in Manson's case, when the preceding Eat Me Drink Me had been the first sign of any new direction in his work for years. And Springsteen...well, for someone so blue collar he's never really been reliable, but this year's album was still one of his more leaden efforts, and in the theme from The Wrestler contained quite possibly his worst song ever. I don't think he's lost it, you understand - there have been bad albums from him before, and will be again, but always interspersed with greatness.
Nor, I thought, was there really a Song Of The Year, something ubiquitous and inarguable, not even a covert Johnny Boy-style one within certain circles. I would ask whether I missed it, but the nature of a 'Get Ur Freak On' or 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head' or 'Umbrella' is that it's unmissable right through at least the summer, and then as the nights close in, as nostalgia for summer, however bad that summer was. I suppose the closest this year came would be the offerings from Cheryl Cole, Lady Gaga and La Roux - but I stumble on not having actually liked any of them, in spite of the first two at least being things which on paper should have been right up my street. Or at least, that was how I felt until Gaga's deluxe reissue of the album which had failed to impress me turned out in fact to be another, better album, trailed with 'Bad Romance', and suddenly she had the material to match the concept, and just as the year stuttered to a close, suddenly it had its anthem. It doesn't normally work this way but then, isn't it a song about precisely that?
( The Top 40 )
But blazes, haven't there been a lot of disappointments? Franz Ferdinand, Pet Shop Boys and Jarvis were among those who made a brave effort to work with new production teams who ought to have produced the goods, but they all came a cropper by so doing, Morrissey, Depeche Mode, Eminem and Marilyn Manson, meanwhile, were among those content to churn out more of the same old same old - especially disappointing in Manson's case, when the preceding Eat Me Drink Me had been the first sign of any new direction in his work for years. And Springsteen...well, for someone so blue collar he's never really been reliable, but this year's album was still one of his more leaden efforts, and in the theme from The Wrestler contained quite possibly his worst song ever. I don't think he's lost it, you understand - there have been bad albums from him before, and will be again, but always interspersed with greatness.
Nor, I thought, was there really a Song Of The Year, something ubiquitous and inarguable, not even a covert Johnny Boy-style one within certain circles. I would ask whether I missed it, but the nature of a 'Get Ur Freak On' or 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head' or 'Umbrella' is that it's unmissable right through at least the summer, and then as the nights close in, as nostalgia for summer, however bad that summer was. I suppose the closest this year came would be the offerings from Cheryl Cole, Lady Gaga and La Roux - but I stumble on not having actually liked any of them, in spite of the first two at least being things which on paper should have been right up my street. Or at least, that was how I felt until Gaga's deluxe reissue of the album which had failed to impress me turned out in fact to be another, better album, trailed with 'Bad Romance', and suddenly she had the material to match the concept, and just as the year stuttered to a close, suddenly it had its anthem. It doesn't normally work this way but then, isn't it a song about precisely that?
