We've seen all sorts this year!

And 2023 bites the dust!

I REALLY wasn't expecting the year to start with ABBA Gold, an album that was 30 years old - but I was pleased to see it and it was definitely a best of that I wasn't going to miss out on (unlike Busted which I totally swerved later in the year).  The rest of the year was very much a mixed bag - say what you like about "modern music" but if you don't like something then there's going to be something else very different coming along very soon.

The ownership ratio was 2% (ABBA - which we bought a LONG time ago) but it's interesting to consider what it might have been back in the day when people bought stuff - I reckon there were three or four I'd have bought, with a similar number for the lovely Mrs Reed and a similar number again for the lovely Misses Reed.  And, funnily enough, absolutely no overlap (but I suspect I'd listen to my daughters' albums a lot more than I'd listen to my wife's albums).

Looking at the year-end chart of the "biggest albums" (no-one mentions sales any more), the big surprise is that it's not Taylor at #1 but The Weeknd best-of - an album I've expressed amazement at hanging around for most of the year, so it's not a huge surprise. It never hit the top spot during the year, but it spent a mere two weeks outside the top ten all year and never dropped below #13 - why?!?.  Taylor has the next two spots with Midnights and 1989 (she also has #11, #12 (also 1989!), #13, #21, #24 - sigh), with Elton's best-of and Harry Styles completing the top five.

So - what's the highest album in the year-end chart which is a studio album released in '23 then?  That honour goes to Lewis Capaldi (#14, with his previous album at #17) closely followed by Olivia Rodrigo (#15, with her previous album completing the Capaldi sandwich at #16).  The only other ones in the top thirty are Ed Sheeran (#23), The Rolling Stones (#27) and a somewhat surprising P!nk (#29).  Other surprising entries (to me, at least) in the chart are SZA (#8), Arctic Monkeys (#9), Little Mix's best-of (#33), Post Malone's best-of (#34) and Maroon 5's best-of (#40 - especially surprisingly since it never charted higher than #32 all year).

So, looking at the albums I was enjoyed/endured - how were they?  Let's start with the male solo artists first (for no obvious reason) - I think Peter Gabriel and Ren take the year for me (with a mere 40 year age gap between the pair of them).  Peter's album was a classy piece of work and Ren's is wildly ambitious - there was a LOT of laziness and just plain averageness around this year from various men who should know better so it was nice to see these guys really putting the effort in.  Lewis Capaldi also gets an honourable mention for a pretty good album that only really suffered because it didn't come close to his previous album.  Ed Sheeran also gets a namecheck for having two albums this year -  one acceptable (but not great) and one extremely average (if it ever even got that good).  

The best of the rest were bearable or at least interesting - Potter Payper (the write-up is good, but I don't actually remember it), Niall Horan (much better than I was expecting, but still not great), Tom Grennan (again better than I was expecting, and he did himself a big favour by being absolutely charming on stage with Mel C at Glasto), Cian Ducrot (I'd never heard of him beforehand, but he was surprisingly enjoyable) and Noah Kahan (not bad at all, but could do with a bit more variety).  And the rest were mostly hip-hop - J Hus (fine, but no more than that), Burna Boy (so far from my frame of reference I can't comment), Travis Scott (better than I was expecting, but not as great as everyone else thought it was), Hozier (so unbelievably average), Sam Smith (surprisingly average), Drake (seriously, who likes this shit?!?) and Jung Kook (very, very average pop).

Moving on to the ladies, I don't remember any of them producing anything horrendous but there's quite a few I'm going to have to check my write-ups to remember what I thought about them.  The ones I liked were Olivia Rodrigo and Maisie Peters with Gabrielle Aplin and P!nk not far behind.  Most of the big names on the list this year did exactly what you'd expect them to - Taylor Swift (more accurately redoing what you'd expect her to - TWICE!), Lana del Rey, Kylie Minogue, Ellie Goulding, Shania Twain and Nicki Minaj all delivered no surprises but also remarkably little of interest for me (although Nicki's was a lot better than I was expecting).  So well done to Miley Cyrus who broke the mould by doing something unexpected - she produced an album of which the first half was quite listenable and the second half was just shit.  And the only other solo lady was Mitski, who I really wanted to like, but most definitely didn't.

And how about the groups?  There were a lot of veterans that put in an appearance throughout the year - ABBA (obviously ace), Courteeners (a peculiar re-entry from '08), Paramore (not bad at all), Gorillaz (very forgettable), U2 (unforgettably bad), Metallica (exactly what you'd expect), Enter Shikari (I liked this), Sparks (surprisingly enjoyable), Foo Fighters (no surprises here either), Blur (OK), The Hives (fine), OMD (I liked this), Chase & Status (pointless), Madness (odd), The Rolling Stones (surprisingly good) and Take That (yawn).  And if you're not convinced by the veteran label for all those names, Courteeners are the newest band out of that lot, formed in 2006.  Looking at the newer groups, The Lottery Winners were the clear winners (and also ace when I saw them at Glasto) whilst The Reytons, The Lathums and boygenius all produced decent efforts but Nothing But Thieves and Royal Blood slid past me unnoticed. 

The number of #1 debuts this year was 44 (up from 41 last year) and we saw 46 #1 albums throughout the year (up from 43) - the two others were Taylor Swift hanging over last year and Bublé having his Christmas turn.  The only album that managed more than two weeks at #1 was Taylor Swift's 1989 - she also managed two weeks with Midnights and the only other artists with two weeks were Ed Sheeran, Lewis Capaldi and The Rolling Stones.  The most read most post was Sam Smith (quite why so many people were interested in such a dull album is beyond me) and the least read post was OMD (which is a shame because that's a surprisingly good album).

Overall, I quite enjoyed the year - there were quite a few terrible albums but you generally rely on something completely different coming along next week to remove the nasty taste of it.   It was nice to see some oldies come out with some very decent albums - Peter Gabriel, OMD and The Rolling Stones all deserve a mention on this front.  And the younguns did OK too - Olivia Rodrigo, Maisie Peters and Noah Kahan get the namechecks there.  The other thing I'd mention is how a lot of big names produced albums which completely failed to explain to me quite why they're so popular - Ellie Goulding, Ed Sheeran, Metallica, Travis Scott, Hozier and (especially) Drake all remain, for me, quite mystifying in their popularity.

And so where to now?  Well, we'll obviously continue forward into 2024 and I've randomly picked 1977 as the next dark age to investigate - I'm expecting quite the variety of sounds!

Happy New Year, everyone!

22/12/23 - Well, I wasn't expecting her!
05/01/24 - An odd week