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That Was The Year That Was


This year was very much a year for musically living in the now. I decided at the start of the year that I would stay away from the reissues and classic albums that I would usually buy and instead concentrate my buying on purely new albums. On the whole surprisingly I stuck to it and was able to resist all those £5 FOPP albums that are usually so enticing. The library was still a good source to hear old music so it's not as though I was that deprived of new to me older things to hear.

The first 6 months of the year especially yielded a lot of purchases with the second half being affected by acquiring a mortgage and the costs associated with that. Still it's not like I had no money for music, I just had to be a bit more careful about what I was buying. Not too much downloading this year apart from minimal things from mp3 blogs and some chart singles that I wanted to hear but not enough to buy them.

This year did however see me buy two singles, the first in a long time and being indicative of the fact that, yes, it's ok to like pop music outside just listening to it on the radio and, no, you don't have to be embarressed about buying it (ridiculous I know). At least not that much. The first of these was the Annie single 'Chewing Gum' since not only was it a wonderful song but it also didn't look like it was going to chart nearly as high as it deserved (think it reached somewhere in the 20's) and the other was Girls Aloud's Love Machine, as good a pop single as any that was released this year.

So despite the vast majority of my purchases being albums I'm going to attempt to write a bit about some of my favourite tracks of the year, in no particular order and starting with this...

1. Morrissey - Irish Blood, English Heart

Irish blood, English heart/This I'm made of/There is no one on Earth I'm afraid of

More than a year before this song came out on You Are The Quarry I heard it in session on Janice Long's Radio 2 show. The fact that I sat up past midnight to hear this is, I suppose, example of not only how long it had been since he had presented any new material but also the regard I had for the man's music. The album isn't flawless but this track was the perfect lead single and a great statement of intent. It was nice to have him back even if (or because of the fact) he hadn't changed at all still being just as petty, scathing, shy, funny, inadequate and Morrissey-like as always.

It's hard to imagine him coming back with any more of a flourish, the song being both musically muscular (kudos to his band and producer) and lyrically strong. It's also more melodically interesting and concise than anything on his previous two albums.

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