The A.V. Club‘s website has started a new series of columns in which writers talk about their favorite year of music. The first one came out this week, with a very RTH-friendly choice.
There are a lot of years, I could choose as my favorite, but my first response is always 1974. That’s because of four albums: Randy Newman‘s Good Old Boys, Richard and Linda Thompson‘s I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, Big Star‘s Radio City and Steely Dan‘s Pretzel Logic. These albums all form a bedrock for a certain kind of music I really value. All those albums are weird pop of a sort: The musicianship is often understated (on the Dan album, it’s understated for them), but not boring; the lyrics are literate and intelligent, but they require a bit of work to penetrate. These albums don’t exactly set out to dazzle, but they create perfect senses of place and character. Each record slowly reveals something, the way a book or film might. As the cliche goes, they show, they don’t tell. You could call these albums “Rubber Soul for English majors.”
So, gut check time, and don’t think to much about it: What’s your favorite year in music and why?
The easy answer may be 1981 or 1980 or 1979, whichever of those three years saw the most releases that make it to my list of 43 “Top 10 Albums of All Time,” but my gut tells me 1968, when my favorite era of ’60s music (’66-’67) began crossing into lightly bearded, suede-jacketed hippie-soul music in the US and the first inklings of post-psychedelia Art Rock in the UK. I probably don’t even like a ton of records released in ’68 (the year, in fact, of my least-favorite Beatles album), but I like what the year stood for. The decks were cleared a bit and musicians were looking ahead to something new but still working in the framework of mid-’60s hit-making.
1970 for classic rock Beatles (and solo) Stones Who Kinks CCr Rod Stewart Jimi etc
1983 for top 40 radio. I don’t think it was ever better. Also helps that I was 13 and all about The police. zz top billy idol hall and oates, stones, springsteen genesis and John cougar. Prince and Kool & the gang culture club Elvis Costello, ELO Stray Cats Cars…. So much quality and variety of POP music out and of course on MTV
Interesting choices, but I implore people to pick a year, lest I break out the Cop-Out signal.
Also, if you want, you can use this thread to talk about how awesome 1974 was.
I thought I heard a siren starting up!
It would be too easy to pick 1967 or 1977, which were the years that revolutionized music for me and created a zillion great albums, but my choice is 1973, which produced my favorite singer-songwriter album (Elliott Murphy’s AQUASHOW), the greatest protopunk album of all time and what may well be my favorite upbeat rock album in any style (NEW YORK DOLLS), my all-time favorite obscure masterpiece, ZERFAS, my favorite hard rock/metal album (The Stooges’ RAW POWER), my favorite soul album (Al Green’s CALL ME), my favorite art rock album (Roxy Music’s STRANDED), my favorite solo Beatles album (BAND ON THE RUN), and a number of other albums that are near and dear to my heart: the incredible proto-punk-meets-guitar-hero BALL POWER by Coloured Balls, the heart-wrenchingly gorgeous album by Susan Pillsbury, my fave Krautrock album, THE FAUST TAPES, not to mention mainstream stuff like MOTT, BILLION DOLLAR BABIES and A WIZARD, A TRUE STAR or genre pieces like the killer power pop album NO MORE NO LESS by Blue Ash or my fave prog-pop album, Caravan’s FOR GIRLS WHO GROW PLUMP IN THE NIGHT. It was just an amazingly diverse and creative year in rock.
Philosophically my position is that all years are equally good for music. But I will avoid the cop-out by picking 1966. Soul music at its peak, guitar rock just beginning to get psychedelicized, Bakersfield ascendant (Merle Haggard’s Swinging Doors, Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down, and Lonesome Fugitive are all from 66), rock steady being born in Kingston, Miles’ great quintet in full swing, electric guitars taking over African music — heady times .
Yes, 1966, absolutely. I know this was the Onion’s first entry and it is conventional wisdom par excellence, but the conventional wisdom is also correct here. Although the whole year is nearly ruined by those icky Paul songs on Revolver. (A joke! Merely a joke!)
There’s a lot of years that I think are fantastic, for a lot of reasons, but I won’t Cop Out. I’ll pick a year and stick with it!
1972
Exile came out. ‘Nuff said.
The Stones’ 72 tour. Awesome live shows and tons of them are available in very good to excellent quality.
Ziggy Stardust!
The first Roxy Music album.
Close to the Edge by Yes. I’m not that big a Prog Rock guy, but I like Yes a lot, and this is my favorite.
Big Star #1 Record
Rory Gallagher – Live In Europe.
Steely Dan – Can’t Buy a Thrill
Lot’s of great stuff! Maybe not so much what people would think I’m really into these days, but it all makes sense to me. I’ll tell ya another year I really like – 2004. Man, I bought a LOT of new albums that year that I still think are totally boffo. Plus, the first Dexateens album came out then!
The early 70’s are the peak of things for Rock in a lot of ways. There was still a lot of variety and open mindedness musically. Recording technology was still getting better but had not yet hit the point of diminishing returns.
But which year to go with… hmm… I’ll say 1972.
The Harder They Come Soundtrack, two Raspberries albums, Ziggy Stardust, Never a Dull Moment, Superfly, and of course, The Greatest Piece Of Music Ever Ever Affixed To A Tangible Form, Exile on Main Street.
Fav Year – 1965. A little-less self conscious than 1966 but it has all of my favorite music in high gear. 1st and 2nd brittish invasion, Motown, soul music, and garage.
Fav Areosmith song – “Mama Kin” Hand Down
I can appreciate all the talk about ’66 and ’74 and I agree (in abstract) but I wasn’t there. Nothing beats being tuned in to new releases and hearing great things every trip to the record store. So I’ll say 1984 “Let it Be”, “Double Nickels on the Dime”, “Zen Arcade” and “Meat Puppets II” and Thomas Dolby’s “The Flat Earth” for college radio DJs (guilty!). “Stop Making Sense” (the movie), “Purple Rain” (the album), and “Unforgettable Fire” and “Learning to Crawl” for mass appeal.
The major downside to that year was I was always defending Springsteen to my punk friends and he goes and releases “Born in the USA” whose mass popularity spectacle overwhelmed all the good stuff about his work.
Brothers and sisters, calendar years are an invention of the man. I can narrow it down to a two month period Dec. 1979 and Jan. 1980. The Clash released London Calling in December 79 and Pretenders debut came out in January 1980.
I was released from the shackles of KQ92 in the Twin Cities.
wow…I’m still in your head.
let it go, dude.
good post, k.!
’84 also saw R.E.M.’s Reckoning come out (that’s always been a favorite of mine), and Rain Parade’s “Emergency Third Rail Power Trip.”
I was gonna toss Never a Dull Moment in there, too. That really was a helluva year.
1978. Time to move on from mediocre AOR jr high novice garage band songs. Being struck by a bolt of music more intense and powerful, just maybe even starting to think a little about what’s good and why I like it.
A few that mattered most to me:
Outlandos d’Amour … Heaven Tonight …This Year’s Model … The Cars …You’re Gonna Get It! … Excitable Boy … Some Girls … At Budokan
I think those all hold up extremely well, too.
1972 was also a great year for West Coast singer-songwriters: Neil Young, Harvest, Randy Newman, Sail Away, Joni Mitchell, For the Roses.
1970, hands down: amon duul ii releases yeti, john phillips’ wolf king of l.a., king crimson’s underrated in the wake of poseidon, john cale goes solo, pretty things’ parachute…
Stooges: Funhouse!
What’s an AOR jr. novice garage band song?
The “AOR” doesn’t seem to jibe with the rest of that phrase…or am I missing something?
Neat question. For me, 1980. I know there might have been better years when music was made — bit for me, this is when I started to realize there was music that wasn’t on the radio. This really was the start for me, since I didn’t come to appreciate big names like Zepplin, Stones, Big Star etc … until later.
XTC, Black Sea
Costello, Get Happy
X, Los Angeles
Undertones, Positive Touch
Echo and the Bunnymen, Crocodiles
I guess I’m a new wave baby at heart.
Well, I sort of remember being in bands with my fellow novice 12-14 year old kid musicians, in someone’s garage or the school rec room, playing stuff like “Takin’ Care of Business”, “All Right Now”, “Stairway”, “Rock Candy”, etc. I shouldn’t really knock those songs, there’s stuff in there that I do really like, but what came next was so much better. Isn’t “AOR” meant to label what all that mid-’70s rock is? Album Oriented Rock. I’m sure we sucked but we could mostly figure out the chords, and our classmates thought we were awesome.
I agree the conventional wisdom is right about 1966. There seems to be a delicate balance between fun and intelligence in a lot of the rock ‘n’ roll that was released that year. There was plenty of great music before, and there’s been plenty of great music since, but I don’t see any year ever reaching that peak again.
Ah…thanks for the explanation. Yeah…aor means “album oriented rock.” Without that back story, I couldn’t figure out how it went with “jr high novice garage band songs.” One of those bands lived up the street from me. I was so jealous of them when I was a little kid! And that was around 1974.
I’m gonna run a little bit on this “66, 74” eight-year pattern you have going on and try to make a case for 1982:
Talking Heads – Fear of Music
Sonic Youth – s/t
Roxy Music – Avalon
Phil Seymour – 2
Oingo Boingo – Nothing To Fear
The Dream Syndicate – Days Of Wine And Roses
The Go-Gos – Vacation
REM – Chronic Town
XTC – English Settlement
dBs – Repercussion
I guess it’s really a case of seeds. Lots of influences getting released, but the albums that sold well that year are pretty dire (apologies to Juice Newton fans).
I can’t find any Exiles, though perhaps like Journey’s huge retro-popularity we’ll find that Foreigner 4 winds up being a tremendous contribution to the future.
82’s a nice year regardless, but Fear of Music came out in ’79.
2004 really WAS a good year. So was ’03.
Hehehehee.
“Avalon” does not hold up well. Listen to it again.
1966. Anything I hear that sounds like that year, I will give a real listening chance and be more likely to ignore it’s potential flaws. A bunch of great albums and singles, but that is true for so many other years, and quantity or peak is a hard way to look at it.
you’re right of course, i suppose my metadata is telling me the CD came out in 82. 🙂