An intriguing year...

I'd given up buying music by this time, so it was interesting to see what we've got here.

I'd say the year did well enough across the board, introducing me to some albums I really should have previously heard, but it didn't exactly sparkle. I wasn't expecting the ownership ratio to be high, but I thought there might have been a few bought by the lovely Mrs Reed or the lovely Misses Reed might have bought - however it would have been 0% if we hadn't met Olly Murs in the very last week of the year, bringing us to a measly 2%. Or we can stretch it to 6% if you want to include both Ed Sheeran albums we'd previously met. 

Looking at the best selling albums of the year, I don't think it will surprise anyone that the top spot was taken by Ed Sheeran - it was released in March, spent nineteen weeks of the year at #1 and never dropped any lower than #6. The #2 spot was taken by Rag'n'Bone Man, which was hardly a slouch in the grand scheme of things - it was released in February, spent its first two weeks at the top, didn't leave the top five for 24 weeks and never left the top ten all year. Sam Smith at #3 took the opposite approach with an album that was released in November and the ladies completed the top five with Little Mix (which did particularly well considering it was released in November '16) and P!nk. 

The rest of the top ten is all male though, with the somewhat curious combination of Ed Sheeran (again), Michael Ball & Alfie Boe, Drake, Liam Gallagher and Stormzy. Looking further down the chart, Moana (#12) did very well for itself, being the first of three soundtrack albums in the top 40, along with Trolls (#23) and La La Land (#36) - Moana peaked at #7 in the chart, but was unlucky that we didn't get to meet it. Ed Sheeran also pops up again (#16) to manage three albums in the chart - the only other artist to manage this was, somewhat surprisingly, George Michael (#17, #27 and #30 - with the last two both being best-ofs). The only other artist with a "proper" multiple entries is Eminem (#20 and #34), but the Gallaghers will also no doubt claim it with Noel (#19) joining Liam on the Oasis best-of (#35).

Giving the ladies some love, let's also call out Paloma Faith (#14) which is much higher than I was expecting, Taylor Swift (#15) and Adele (#18), which is impressive considering it was released in November '15. Unfortunately, apart from Hannah Reid in London Grammar (#33) that's it for female presence in the chart - which seems somewhat unfortunate given they found space for Roy Orbison (#11), Elton John (#29), The Beatles (#31), Elvis Presley (#37) and Bob Marley (#38).

Somewhat weirdly, there doesn't seem to be a year-end compilation chart available - I think it's safe to say that Now! 95-98 took the top four places but this seems to be the last of their glory years, with sales taking a sharp decline from this point onwards.

Looking at the albums I was subjected to, let's start with a category we rarely get to see once in a year, let alone twice - yup, it's soundtrack albums. And can you guess which one I preferred out of La La Land and Trolls? Both of them can be complimented for having a strong female presence though, so let's move on to the ladies - it looked like they weren't going to have the best of years, but then towards the end of the year we had a run of six albums featuring at least one lady in eight weeks to push the numbers up.

Looking at the solo ladies, I think P!nk and Lana del Rey produced the best offerings with Paloma Faith and Amy McDonald delivering solid, if not exactly exciting results. Taylor Swift's multi-million selling offering was very much not exciting, but was still a lot more listenable than Shania Twain (who didn't sound like Shania at all) or Alison Krauss (who did sound like Alison, but it was just far too country). 

Looking at the groups with 100% female membership, it's a straight fight between Haim and Little Mix and, as I suspect would happen in real life, the Mixers take it - Haim's offering was decent but lacked a killer punch. And finally, the groups featuring some level of female input all did pretty well in their differing areas with Steps, Paramore, London Grammar and The XX producing perfectly listenable albums, although I'm more likely to revisit the latter three than the former. 

All of which gave us seventeen albums (32%) featuring some significant level of female involvement which compares favourably with the eleven we saw in '15 and very favourably with the FOUR we saw in '20 (which is the worst we've seen so far except for the '50s, when we often saw considerably fewer albums).

So what about the men? I suspect I'm going to have to check quite a few of these entries to remind myself what they were like, but here goes anyway - starting with the groups. I'm pleased to say there were actually more albums here that I liked than I remembered with The National, Arcade Fire, Royal Blood, The Charlatans and Elbow all producing pretty decent offerings which I'd be happy to revisit. Most of the rest of the albums fell into the "perfectly fine" category, with U2, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, Gorillaz, Jamiroquai and Take That being noteworthy for at least being better than expected, with Stereophonics, The Killers, Foo Fighters, Queens Of The Stone Age, Neck Deep, The Vamps, Imagine Dragons, Kasabian and Depeche Mode being exactly as expected. Which only leaves us with The Script and You Me At Six who were disappointing and The Chainsmokers which was really rather rubbish indeed.

And what about the solo guys? Rag'n'Bone Man was easily the best - I wasn't too complimentary about it at the time, but with hindsight in comparison with other offerings, it was really pretty decent. Of the rest Mike Oldfield and Niall Horan deserve shout outs for being way better than I expected with Olly Murs and Harry Styles being perfectly fine and as expected. We then have two further sub-categories of "perfectly fine" - Glen Campbell and Sam Smith elevated some average material with some fine singing, whereas Roger Waters, Liam Gallagher and Robert Plant managed to de-elevate some better material with their voices. It's safest if I just say that Stormzy, Drake and Giggs were not for me, which only leaves us with Calvin Harris who was bang average and Eminem who was surprisingly boring, which wasn't at all what I was expecting.

Looking at the other statistics of interest, the number of #1 debuts this year was 16, which is considerably lower than the 34 we saw in '15 and the 39 in '20 but I think we know who's to blame for that - don't we, Mr Sheeran? We also had a rare re-entry and a 50 year old album (which was almost a re-entry) further reducing the numbers. The total number of #1 albums throughout the year is both relatively low and surprisingly high at 31 - it's low compared to the 38 from '15 and the 43 from '20, but it's high because Ed was #1 for nineteen weeks, which means that Rag'n'Bone Man and Little Mix were the only other artists to manage multiple weeks at the top (with a couple each for both of them). Someone else who had a very successful year was Greg Kurstin (who won the Producer of The Year Grammy) because he was involved in five of the albums we saw, which were the slightly unusual combination of Liam Gallagher, Foo Fighters, Niall Horan, London Grammar and P!nk - he also produced a track for Kendrick Lamar that we'd previously already met. All of which makes Jack Antonoff's mere four appearances look pathetic - step up your game, man!

The generally accepted (by the internet) best albums from the year that we didn't get to see (in the charts, at least) are Ctrl by SZA (#45), Masseduction by St Vincent (#6), No Shape by Perfume Genius (#96), Melodrama by Lorde (#5), American Dream by LCD Soundsystem (#3 - sigh, I got to listen to The Script instead), A Deeper Understanding by The War On Drugs (#3 - sigh, I got QOTSA instead), Drunk by Thundercat (#37), Take Me Apart by Kelala (#51), The Ooz by King Krule (#23), Utopia by Björk (#25) and Plunge by Fever Ray (#77) - it's unusual to see all the critics recommendations having charted. And here are some further suggestions from me that we were generally never in any danger of seeing - Kelly Lee Owens's eponymous debut (#80), Slowdive's eponymous comeback (#16), Antisocialites by Allvvays (#28) and The Nashville Sound by Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit (#26) - again, they all charted. All in all, it's less than we generally see in this section, so either we were just lucky and met all the good albums or 2017 wasn't a classic year for music.

And the final set of pointless statistics tells us that the most expensive album of the year was the UNICEF edition of Kasabian's album which would set you back £850 - imagine what it would have cost if it didn't have such a bloody awful album cover? The most read post of the year was, to my surprise, Queens Of The Stone Age, which was 10% ahead of the nearest competition who were the peculiar combination of The Chainsmokers and Harry Styles. And the least read post of the year was Mike Oldfield - I agree it wasn't the most interesting post, but I did say some nice stuff about the album!

The commercially successful albums I've met here through the charts compare interestingly with the critically successful album I met on The Guardian's 50 best albums of the year because there was remarkably little overlap between the two (only The National and Paramore) and most of the critically admired albums were actually remarkably decent (other years have told us this is by no means a given) whereas most of the chart albums weren't dreadful, but they were very forgettable. If I had to pick a top three I met here, I think I'd go for Lana del Rey, The Charlatans and Elbow, although The National and Little Mix can feel hard done by that they didn't make the cut. All in all, I'd say it was a listenable but unexciting year in the charts, with there being a load of fourth or fifth albums from bands who you really don't need more than three albums from. Additionally, the ubiquity of one Mr Edward Sheeran didn't exactly help matters, so the critics' list provided a much more interesting selection.

Where to next? Applying my somewhat random set of rules, we alight upon 1963 - God knows what that will bring us! 

29/12/17 - A historically significant album
06/01/17 - Fine, but not converting anyone