And that was 2020!

  

So, now we've made it though 2020 - was it any better than 2021?

No, not really.  Once again, we had a huge number of albums come straight in at #1 and hang around for a couple of weeks at best - although this only happened 39 times this year, as opposed to 42 times in 2021.  Of the weeks that weren't a new entry at the top, the most interesting week was the re-entry of a not particularly great album from 1973 - most of the other ones were either Lewis or Dua - two fine albums (one of which was released in 2019) that hung around the top twenty for most of the year (and still aren't exactly doing badly for themselves now).

Surprisingly though, Dua wasn't in the top two albums of the year - Lewis took #1 (by quite some margin) but Harry (which I reviewed nearly 18 months ago now as part of the Rolling Stone exercise) nipped in at #2 with another album from 2019, despite "only" peaking at #3 throughout the year.  Dua was at #3, followed by three more from 2019 - Billie, Stormzy (only just 2019) and Ed   And three oldies wrapped up the top ten - Queen, Elton John and Fleetwood Mac (the last two of which we still have to meet).  Looking slightly further down the list, I am shocked and astounded that this monstrosity came in at #18 - especially since it was only released in November!  Interestingly, easily the biggest album in the US this year was Folklore from Taylor, which only made #12 here, despite being #1 for three weeks

2021 was somewhat dominated by guys producing rubbish albums - oldies producing dross and young'uns producing rap shite.  So I'm pretty certain it will surprise very few people to see this theme did not change in this year.  It's better to call out the exceptions - Bruce, YungBlud and, surprisingly, Pop Smoke all did their job well without quite making the cut of albums I actively liked.  Making the cut for the guys, I'd specifically mention Lewis, Gerry Cinnamon, The Weeknd and Eminem.  I'm also going to give Bieber a namecheck though for making an album so thoroughly average that he should be thoroughly ashamed of himself.

Once again, the ladies were very much in a minority - so much so that I'm actually going to discuss them all.  Dua Lipa was obviously the queen of the year and deservedly so because it's a fine album.  Hayley Williams was a very pleasant listen, Jacqui Abbott held up her end of the deal on a tolerable (if somewhat forgettable) album and Little Mix (and yes, they're technically a group, but there have been so few women featured this year that they get a namecheck here) and Ellie Goulding did a functional, if not exactly great, job.  And, errr, that's it - which is a bit of a shocking state of affairs, isn't it?  Yes, there are also Taylor and Billie that I would have mentioned if I hadn't already met them but it's still terrible.

From the groups, there were very few hateful offerings but very little actually stood out except for Doves which I was expecting to like, but I liked it even more than that, so that was pleasing and The Courteeners, which I wasn't expecting to like but did, so that was pleasing too.  The rest of it was all very meh or just not for me.

All in all, 2020 was not a great year - it was far too similar to 2021 and generally underwhelming for me to face continuing on to 2019, so I've made the decision to go somewhere else.  My initial thoughts were to go back to the beginning (1946?), my birth year (1968) or halfway through (1989).  But I asked Facebook for thoughts and got one vote for 1982, one vote for 1984 and one vote for the year in which I first bought an album.  Which I liked as an idea and it turns out to be 1983, so I think the gods of chance have spoken and so we're going to hop into our Tardis and venture there next - where we'll come across the first album I ever bought (and probably a few more that I own from back in the day as well).  Hopefully see you there!

03/01/20 - Well, that could have been worse
25/12/83 - Older, but not simpler, times