'01 is done!

I was buying a lot of music in '01 but I wasn't sure how much of it was from the charts...

Well it all started very badly, but it certainly picked up and had some pretty decent albums hiding away in there - and there was a reasonable mix of genres across the year, although the vast majority of it was pretty mainstream. We had a decent ownership ratio of 21%, compared with 40% in '99 (our highest yet) and a mere 9% in '03 (our lowest of the record buying years so far). It would have been pushed higher if we hadn't previously met R.E.M., Daft Punk, Muse, Coldplay and Eminem, but there was never any danger of it troubling the '99 total.

Looking at the best selling albums of the year, the top spot was taken by Dido which is very unsurprising news because that girl was EVERYWHERE back then and she had the whole year in the chart. Second place goes to another big non-surprise from Robbie Williams, but he only had five weeks of the year (all of which were spent at #1) and a hat-trick of "quelle surprises" is completed by David Gray. 

The rest of the top five is somewhat more unexpected with Stereophonics and the Gabrielle best-of making up the places - and I'm not sure anyone would have expected the rundown to continue with the Steps best-of and Travis (that album was BIG back in the day, but has been somewhat forgotten since). Eva Cassidy, Destiny's Child  and Kylie Minogue are somewhat less surprising entries to complete the top ten though. 

Looking further down the chart, Linkin Park is surprisingly high at #13 considering we never saw it, but it was in the chart all year, peaking at #4 in November. Other entries which seem pretty high are Anastacia at #15, Toploader at #29 (particularly considering they were #25 in '00 year-end list) and Elton John at #34. There are, of course a load of best-ofs in the chart with thirteen in the top fifty, mostly of the stale, pale, male variety (so it's pleasing to see Gabrielle with the highest placing at #5) with particularly note going to Rod Stewart (#27 - how many best-ofs has that man had?) and Frank Sinatra (#44 - his fourth appearance in the year-end chart in five years). 

It's also worth us having a quick peak at the compilation album charts - Now! 50 was #1 (and actually the third best selling album of the year). The Bridget Jones's Diary soundtrack impressively sneaked into the #2 spot - this is notable for the inclusion of Robbie Williams's "Have You Met Miss Jones" which kicked off the whole Swing While You're Winning thing and Geri Halliwell's "It's Raining Men" which is a complete abomination. Obviously Now! 48 and Now! 49 took the next spots, with Classic Chillout completing the top five - which has some very decent tracks on it and a load I don't know, so I might check it out (spoiler alert - I won't).

Looking at the albums I was subjected to, let's start with the ladies - they feel like they had a solid, but not stellar year. With the exception of Dido obviously - that girl ruled the year with an album I liked, but probably would have liked more if it hadn't been quite so popular. Looking at the other solo efforts, Eva Cassidy, Kylie, Gabrielle, Anastacia and Madonna were the pick of the bunch - you can tell that they've all put the effort in to make the kinds of sounds they want to and they're sounds I can dig. I also can't fault Macy Gray, Nelly Furtado and Jennifer Lopez for their efforts - I wasn't so into their sounds, but I didn't hate them. Which can't be said for Geri Halliwell, who I believe did put some effort in but she's just not very good and Britney Spears, which just felt like a very lazy, slapdash affair (but I wouldn't like to lay all the blame at Britney's feet).

Considering the groups featuring ladies in descending percentage of ladyness, Destiny's Child and Atomic Kitten were both 100% female and both disappointed, with the only obvious difference being that Destiny's Child can definitely sing. Hear'Say were 60% female and mostly disappointing. S Club 7 were at a mere 57% and at least bearable in places (particularly on our second visit) and Faithless were 43% (not counting guest vocalists) and easily produced the best album out of this lot. Which only leaves us with Ash who were 25% at the time, courtesy of the splendid Charlotte Hatherley on guitar, who produced an offering that didn't really work for me and So Solid Crew, at a completely unknown percentage, who were considerably better than expected (ie bearable).

This sets the number of albums which featured a significant female contribution at 19 (36%) which is up there amongst the highest we've seen - it's the same as we saw in both '24 and '25, with the most so far being 22 (42%) in '03 and '10. I wonder if we'll ever make it to 50%?

So, what about the men? Well, we started the year with Robbie Williams (which made a change from Take That kicking things off) and I wasn't massively impressed with it, but both it and his similarly named later offering were perfectly listenable - there were much worse offerings seen throughout the year. But very few of them came from the male solo artists with Michael Jackson, Elton John, Ian Brown and David Gray all producing decent offerings and I even have to admit that I didn't mind Andrea Bocelli, Shaggy (surprisingly) and Lionel Richie's efforts. So that only leaves Usher, Ronan Keating and Dr Dre that weren't for me, but they really could have been a helluva lot worse. 

Which only leaves the male groups who under-delivered, with a lot of people producing follow-up albums which, at best, underwhelmed. The obvious exceptions to this were Starsailor, Travis, U2 and, in parts at least, Gorillaz, with me also having to admit that Toploader, Stereophonics, Fun Luvin' Criminals, Radiohead and Super Furry Animals were better than expected and at least Aerosmith wasn't as bad as expected. A surprising level of disappointment was delivered by The Lighthouse Family, Jamiroquai, Air, and Manic Street Preachers but I wasn't in the slightest bit surprised by the disappointment offered from Blue, Westlife (twice), Limp Bizkit (this was bad), Slipknot (this was worse) and D12 (but this was THE WORST). All of which only leaves Staind that I had no level of expectation for - and it was OK.

Looking at the other statistics of interest, the number of #1 debuts this year was 15 which is in the expected ballpark compared with the 9 we saw in '99 and the 14 in '03, but we also had a rare re-entry at the top of the charts for Atomic Kitten (with a new line-up from when it previously charted). And we had 27 #1 albums in total throughout the year, whic compared with the 17 we saw in '99 and the 25 in '03 is also kinda where we expect to be. The albums that spent the longest at the top were Dido (7 weeks), Robbie Williams (6) and Travis (4) and we got to listen to the #1 album six times, which is quite a lot for this period. 

The generally accepted (by the internet) best albums from the year that we didn't get to see are Rooty by Basement Jaxx (#5), Aaliyah's eponymous third album (#5 in '02), Since I Left You by The Avalanches (#8), Songs In A Minor by Alicia Keys (#6 in '02), Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco (#40 in '02), Vespertine by Bjork (#8), White Blood Cells by The White Stripes (#55, but it's had 39 weeks in the chart), The Glow Pt 2 by The Microphones (this is a real cult classic, so obviously never charted), Toxicity by System Of A Down (#13), The Blueprint by Jay-Z (#30), Is This It? by The Strokes (#2, but we wouldn't have met it), Origin Of Symmetry by Muse (#3, ditto), Miss E...So Addictive by Missy Elliott (#10), No More Drama by Mary J Blige (#4 in '02), Bleed American by Jimmy Eat World (#62 in '02), Lateralus by Tool (#16 - surprisingly high!), Blackwater Park by Opeth (never charted), We Love Life by Pulp (#6), Converge by Jane Doe (never charted) and The Argument by Fugazi (#63).

And here are some further suggestions from me that we were generally never in any danger of seeing - At Dawn by My Morning Jacket (#62, in '03), Oh Inverted World by The Shins (never charted!), Time (The Revelator) by Gillian Welch (never charted), Melody AM by Royksopp (#9 in '02), Asleep In The Back by Elbow (#14 - their very decent debut), Strange Little Girls by Tori Amos (#16 - an interesting album of covers), Biggest Bluest Hifi by Camera Obscura (never charted), Natural History by I Am Kloot (never charted), Motherland by Natalie Merchant (never charted - shame on you!), Far Away Trains Passing By by Ulrich Schnauss (never charted), Simple Things by Zero 7 (#28), Resist by Kosheen (#8 - easily my favourite D&B-ish album) and Wonderland by The Charlatans (#2 - it was unlucky).

Right, we're on the last lap now with the final pointless statistics (I promise!). The most expensive album we saw all year was from U2 which was £1,302.84, but you did get seven albums and five 12" singles for that (what a bargain!) - if we only consider single albums then you'll have to settle for an original US pressing of the Slipknot offering which will set you back £550. And the most read post of the year was Robbie Williams, which was comfortably ahead of the pack with 50% more viewings than his nearest rival. Who was, to my surprise, Geri Halliwell, but I suspect this might have been because people suspected I was going to be rude about it - and I didn't let them down. The least read post was Hear'say (comfortably behind the pack) - I was actually pretty nice about that until I got onto their cover versions.

Overall, I'd say there were quite a few decent albums this year without any of them necessarily being exactly essential. It's hard to pick a top three, but it would probably come of the selection of Dido, David Gray, Faithless, Travis and U2 - I'm not exactly scaring the horses with any of that lot though, am I? All of which leads to the conclusion that 2001 was a "nice" year and I'd certainly back that up by putting the nasty offerings from Slipknot and D12 at the bottom of my list for the year. There was plenty of interesting music around in this year (check out some of my recommendations above) but it seems like very little of it made it to the higher reaches of the charts - everyone just followed the crowd, it appears.

So let's hope for a more varied selection from the teens - I've randomly picked 2017 for no real reason and without any particular expectations, so who knows what we'll get!

07/01/01 - Could have been worse