Happy New Year!

And 2024 bites the dust!

Well, looking at the list, it's interesting how many of the albums I just don't remember at all - and some of the ones I do remember would probably prefer that I didn't. We started the year with a weird week picking several albums (Raye was my favourite) just to avoid having to listen to Taylor for two weeks in a row and we finished the year with a weird week with Lana's album from '12 - and there were quite a few other weird weeks in between as well!

Unsurprisingly, the ownership ratio was 0% this year but there were a fair few albums I think my wife and daughters would have bought if such things were still done - whilst there were a surprising number of artists we met that I own albums of, I'm not sure I would have been tempted by too many of them (but I might have borrowed some of my daughters' purchases).

Looking at the year-end chart of the "biggest albums" of the year, we find the top two artists from last year are the same, but reversed. To absolutely no-one's surprise, the top spot is taken by Taylor Swift - the girl has certainly been in the spotlight this year. In possibly slightly more surprising news, The Weeknd has the #2 spot with his '21 best-of - it's not been lower than #13 all year. The rest of the top five are Sabrina Carpenter, Noah Kahan and Billie Eilish - and the women have done very this year in the top ten with Chappell Roan (#6), Charli XCX (#8) and Olivia Rodrigo (#10) also making an appearance. Completing the top ten, you might guess Coldplay (#9) but I think you're less likely to go for the Fleetwood Mac best-of (#7 - it's not been out of the top twenty all year).

Best-ofs are popular in the top teens - Oasis (#11), Elton John (#12), Eminem (#13), ABBA (#14) and Michael Jackson (#16). Also popular in that area (and elsewhere) is one Ms Swift at #15, #17, #19, #22 and #27 - the girl had quite the year. Best-ofs and albums that hit #1 this year and lingered longer than most make up the rest of the chart but peculiar exceptions to this generalisation are Arctic Monkeys' AM (#21), Fleetwood Mac's Rumours (#23), Teddy Swims (#34) and Lana del Rey (#36). But the most peculiar exception of all is Nursery Rhymes By Cocomelon (#36) - it's not been higher than #28 all year, but it's obviously got its devoted fans!

So, what about the albums I met then? I think we have to start with the ladies this year - they had quite the year! Artists who produced better than expected albums were Raye, Billie Eilish, Charli XCX, Gracie Abrams, beabadoobee, Rosé, Lana del Rey and Chappell Roan, with Chappell probably taking the honours out of that lot for me because she's produced a proper lively and fun album which had an old-school "slowly climbing to the top of the charts" success. Squarely meeting expectations are Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift, Becky Hill, Beyonce (albeit in an unexpected manner) and disappointing with their output were Dua Lipa, Kacey Musgraves (it was fine, but unfortunately not as good as I wanted it to be), Sabrina Carpenter and Kylie.

Looking at the guys, there are an awful lot of vintage names in there - with most of them delivering exactly what their long-suffering fans were looking for and I'd certainly include D-Block Europe, Green Day, James Arthur, Rod Stewart & Jools Holland, Liam Gallagher & John Squire, Elbow, The Libertines, James, Pet Shop Boys, Kings Of Leon, Twenty One Pilots, Kasabian, Eminem, Nick Cave, David Gilmour, Snow Patrol, Blossoms, Imagine Dragons, Shed Seven, Coldplay, Paul Heaton, Tyler, The Creator, The Cure, Linkin Park and Kendrick Lamar in with that crowd - what a long list! 

Of these, I'm going to specifically call out Shed Seven for making both a decent new album and a fine orchestral hits collection (which is something people often fail badly at) and Green Day, Pet Shop Boys, Nick Cave and Paul Heaton for not just dialling in the same old stuff but producing very decent albums indeed. And if you think some of those acts don't count as vintage, then I'll make you feel old by saying that Blossoms are the newest act in there and they formed in 2013 (whereas Rod Stewart was kicking things off about the time that I was born).

Looking at the rest (which isn't many) it's generally a case of either good or bad. On the plus side with have The Last Dinner Party (one of the albums of the year for me), Sea Girls and Idles (both of which I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed), balanced very firmly on the negative side by Y$ (twice!), Soft Play and Juice WRLD all of which are quite dreadful. Which only leaves us with Massive Wagons fun-but-not-my-thing offering, Teddy Swims fine-but-not-my-thing offering and Post Malone's most peculiar country collection.

This year we only saw 29 #1 debuts and 37 #1 albums, which is sharply down from 44 and 46 last year  - this was down to Taylor (10 weeks at the top across six visits), other artists with multiple but fewer weeks (Lewis, Ariana, Eminem and Sabrina), other artists taking their time to climb to the top (Noah took 36 weeks, Chappell 17 and Charli 19) and outliers from Oasis (spending its second week at #1 some thirty years after its first one) and Michael Bublé (claiming #1 on the last chart of the year for the third year in a row).

And finally, the most read post of the year is, quite obviously, Massive Wagons! And we have a heartwarming story from social media to explain why - the band liked my X post which resulted in it becoming my most read post ever (overtaking Noah Kahan). And the least read posts were Kings Of Leon and Rod Stewart and Jools Holland - Kings Of Leon don't deserve that, but Rod & Jools most definitely do.

All in all, it was quite a varied year both in terms of genres and quality. Overall, it felt like a very successful year for the solo ladies but they actually only took 15 weeks of the year (some of them were massively successful albums though) - of them, Chappell was my favourite with Gracie being a surprising second. Of the blokes/groups, I erred on the old and grumpy side with The Cure and Nick Cave with some youthful and enthusiastic balance being provided by The Last Dinner Party, with all them producing great albums. And all the other albums were very decent, very average or just terrible - but you know that already.

So, where to now? 2025 is pretty much a given, but I also need to start another year - and that decision will be made tomorrow!

Happy New Year, everyone!

27/12/24 - Coming to this quite late
03/01/25 - Fine, wiithout being great