So that was 1996

So, how did 1996 compare to 1983? (and if you don't know what that picture relates to, you'll never guess)

The reasoning behind going for 1996 was that I wanted a year where I'd owned more of the albums, so let's start there - the ownership ratio for 1983 was 23.0%, so what did we manage for 1996?  Ah - 23.0%.  Mission very much not accomplished then! (but more on this later)

Looking at the best selling albums of the year, unsurprisingly Alanis took the top spot - she didn't get written about for this year because we'd already met her, but she was mentioned in passing a LOT given that she had 11 weeks at #1 and a 22 week run in the top three.  I'd remembered it was an album that went down well, but had forgotten exactly how well.  #2 was Oasis which was another one we'd previously met - this only spent 9 weeks at the top but managed a 30 week run in the top three (although half of that was in 1995).  #3 is our first record actually released in 1996 - The Spice Girls and given that was released in mid November it did very well to make #3 (it was #3 in the 1997 year end chart as well).  

Rounding out the top five we have Celine Dion and George Michael - making it a more varied top five than some other years.  Robson & Jerome did well to make #6 given they also only released their album in November and The Fugees at #7 are the first album on the list not to get to #1.  The top ten is closed out by two greatest hits album from Take That and Simply Red (which I chose not to wrote about) and a surprisingly high entry from The Beautiful South.  Which makes it a relatively good year for the women in the top ten, with some obvious female input on half of the top ten (there was one woman there in 1983).  Also, four of them were not written about this year because we'd already met them on the Rolling Stone exercise - unsurprisingly, R&J were not one of these albums because it's easily the worst of the lot (and I didn't even listen to Simply Red which I suspect is mostly horrendous, but I'm still happy saying that!).

Looking further down the list, Ocean Colour Scene had a fine album at #11, Kula Shaker did much better than I remembered at #16 and The Smurfs had a frankly astounding #17 (and it's worth revisiting that entry to read just how mad the country went for it).  The Smurfs also managed to get to #31 with their Xmas album, making them one of four "artists" to feature twice on the year end list along with Boyzone (#18 and #36), Oasis (#3 and #21) and Robson & Jerome (#6 & #39).  Other random shout-outs from the year-end list are Cast (#27 - the highest ranked album on the list that I haven't mentioned at all), Rod Stewart (#43 - really?) and Jimmy Nail (#45 - and this was with Crocodile Shoes II!).

So looking at the albums I was subjected to, how did the men do this year?  Considering the names first, it wasn't a great year (to put it politely) - Phil Collins, Peter Andre, Mark Knopfler and Sting all produced albums which attained astonishing levels of dullness.  Bryan Adams and Robert Miles did at least produce listenable efforts, but George Michael easily won the contest by producing an album that people actually wanted to listen to more than once.

Guys in bands generally did a better job, although there were plenty of albums on the list that "weren't for me" but I could understand their appeal to others (eg. Take That, Metallica, Bon Jovi, Sepultura, Boyzone, Pearl Jam, RATM).  Of the ones I liked we can split them into ones I previously knew and enjoyable new visits.  R.E.M. (obviously), Ocean Colour Scene, and Dodgy being the top previously known ones with Shed Seven and Kula Shaker being the fine discoveries.  I'm also going to call out The Lighthouse Family and The Manic Street Preachers for being better than I remembered, The Lightning Seeds, Queen and Ash for being slightly disappointing and Electronic for being just rubbish.

For the women, Alanis definitely ruled the roost and Tori produced some interesting quirk with most of the rest of the output being just a bit bland really - Dina, Tina, Celine(-a), Louise and Gabrielle all produced incredibly forgettable fare.  Women fronting bands did much better with Lush, Garbage, The Cranberries and EBTG all producing much better efforts - Lush in particular I found very enjoyable.

Looking at the other statistics of interest, the number of #1 debuts this year was 16, which somewhat unsurprisingly sits between the numbers for 1983 (10) and 2020 (39).  Somewhat more surprisingly is that there 19 #1 albums throughout the year, which is less than we saw in 1983 (22) but there were a few monster albums this year which dominated the top spot - the top five best selling albums owned it for over half the year.  I only listened to the #1 album twice - The Spice Girls, because it was the first album I met this year (so otherwise that wouldn't happened) and Suede, because it came straight in at the top and disappeared soon afterwards.  I reached my lowest ever chart position this year though with Bryan Adams being at #13 when we met him - I guess this was due to those monster releases dominating the top five for weeks and me being picky in rejecting more compilation albums this year.  And one final angle of interest - the blog post which attracted most views was R.E.M. and the one that attracted least was The Bluetones - make of that what you will!

The generally accepted (by the internet or me!) best albums from the year that we never got close to seeing are Odelay by Beck (peaked at #17), Entroducing by DJ Shadow (#17), Pinkerton by Weezer (#43), First Band On The Moon by The Cardigans (#18 - this is a fine album indeed!), Reasonable Doubt by Jay-Z (nowhere!), If You're Feeling Sinister by Belle & Sebastian (again, nowhere!), In Sides by Orbital (#5), Beautiful Freak by Eels (#5 - but not until 1997), Tidal by Fiona Apple (nowhere), One In A Million by Aaliyah (#33), Placebo by Placebo (#5 in 1997), Revival by GIllian Welch (unsurprisingly nowhere!), Call The Doctor by Sleater-Kinney (ditto), Limbo by Throwing Muses (#36) and Murder Ballads by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (a surprisingly high #8).

Going back to the low ownership rate, for 1983 I used the desperate ploy of adding in albums I owned which missed out because I'd already written about them to sneak the ratio up to 25.9% - so it feels rude not to resort to such measures here as well.  And in this case we add Alanis, Oasis, Pulp & Radiohead - taking the ratio up to 28.5%.  A veritable success! I was still expecting it to be higher, but I hadn't counted on all the dross released throughout the year.

And there really was an AWFUL lot of dross in this year - I've no idea what people were thinking.  But I enjoyed the high points and Alanis deserves her crown - it's an album that has stood the test of time well and I'm pleased to see she's still hanging in there, having just toured it for the (slightly delayed) 25th anniversary.

So, where to next?  Given the 13 year gap between 1983 and 1996, I considered taking another 13 year jump to 2009 - but, a quick glance told me that was the year Susan Boyle conquered the charts so that put me off quickly.  Which lead me to considering going the other way to 1970 - but the first week would have given me the best of Andy Williams which also managed to put me off.  However, I decided I quite liked the idea of the 70s, so took sneak peaks on various weeks and settled on 1973.  See you there - bring your flares!

30/12/73 - Very much of its time
07/01/96 - A bit kitchen sinky