scaryblog

I'd given up buying music by this time, so it was interesting to see what we've got here. I'd say the year did well enough across the board, introducing me to some albums I really should have previously heard, but it didn't exactly sparkle. I wasn't expecting the ownership ratio to be high, but I thought there might have been a few bought by the lovely Mrs Reed or the lovely Misses Reed  might have bought  - however it would have been 0% if we hadn't met Olly Murs in the very last week of the year, bringing us to a measly 2%. Or we can stretch it to 6% if you want to include both Ed Sheeran albums we'd previously met.  Looking at the best selling albums of the year, I don't think it will surprise anyone that the top spot was taken by  Ed Sheeran  - it was released in March, spent nineteen weeks of the year at #1 and never dropped any lower than #6. The #2 spot was taken by Rag'n'Bone Man , which was hardly a slouch in the grand scheme of things -...

Completing my trip back through the 2017 album charts. 06/01/17 : 24 Hrs - Olly Murs Well, we've waited a long time but we've finally met an album that "we" own because our youngest went through a huge Olly phase -  amusingly, one of the family still goes to see him live and I can assure you it's not her (or me). This is our third visit with Olly - w e often listened to the CDs in the car but a quick skim of the track titles suggest this wasn't one of the albums we listened to often, but I'm sure it will all be perfectly listenable. Ah, yeah - I actually recognised "You Don't Know Love", "Years And Years" and "Unpredictable", with the rest of the album being pretty much in the same vein. He's either in love, wants to be in love or has just split up (but quite possibly still in love) but there's a decent amount of variety here (within limits, obviously). As usual, this isn't going to convert anyone but it was de...

    So, having got to the end of a hasty run through The Guardian's Top 50 albums of 2017, how have they done this year?   Overall, for what has been a pretty average year for the albums I've met in the main chart, I thought that, once we ignored the left-field offerings to make the list "interesting", this was a pretty decent list with some top albums that I'd missed out on. I'd only actually heard ten of the albums before, with eight of them having been previously written up.  Best 16 Best 16?!? What kind of nonsense is this? Well, just wait until I explain the thinking behind it... I've always done this exercise by listing the albums I like or admire and seeing where that leads us - generally, it's been somewhere between ten and fifteen albums so all has been good. But this year? Not so much... ...but for good reasons! I got to about 23 when I was still halfway through the top ten and decided desperate action was required - so all albums in the top ...

Completing my trip up  The Guardian's 50 best albums of 2017 . #1 : Masseduction  - St Vincent A kind of teasing irony is detectable on Masseduction, a musical striptease on which Annie Clark – who performs as St Vincent – exposes herself on her own terms. The results are spectacular: full of drama and gratifyingly bizarre sonic choices. Clark makes a rock-star power play by embracing thrilling glam traditions while producing something strange, new and unequivocally moving. This is only our second ever visit with Annie Clark aka St Vincent, but she's been mentioned loads of times as a guest artist or an influence. She always strikes me as someone who could have been massively popular if she'd decided to play things that way, but she's very much done things her own way, thank you very much. I listened to this back in the day when it came out and enjoyed it, but can't say I've ever revisited it, so am looking forward to doing so - and because it's #1, let'...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 08/05/26 : Fenian - Kneecap  Our second visit with Kneecap and I'm expecting this to be the same load of chaotic nonsense as we had last time . Yeah - that's pretty much where we are. I'm still unnecessarily confused by use of two languages, but there's enough English there to make it understandable enough on at least some of the tracks. There's a lot to be impressed about it, certainly the composition of the tracks and the speed of delivery (when they decide to go for it) but I can't say I found it loveable - it's just a bit of a mess really. However, I did like "Irish Farewell" with Kae Tempest - it's all very well done with a powerful message. I'd also say that if you've not seen the film it's well worth your time checking it out. We're at #2 in the charts this week with a new entry with the rest of the top five being a Michael Jackson best-of (shame!), Melanie C (a...

Continuing my trip up  The Guardian's 50 best albums of 2017 . #3 : Ctrl  - SZA Honesty is often seen as the holy grail in pop, but when it’s served up as nakedly as it was on Ctrl, Solána Imani Rowe’s debut album, it can stop you in your tracks. This is the perfect year for a record with such a defiantly female point of view, from decisions over leg-shaving to stark admissions that she can’t open up emotionally. It seemed intimate but never one-note, and signalled an artist in complete ctrl. This is another one I met on the Rolling Stone list and I was somewhat surprised because a) it was a modern album and b) I'd never heard of her. At the time, I thought the music was a bit generic, but there was more to it when I listened to the lyrics - let's see what a re-listen after all this time brings us.  OK - a re-listen brings a re-evaluation, for two reasons. Firstly, over the past five years I've heard an awful lot of generic R&B albums and that experience leads me t...