What Year Had The Best Music For You?

Friday is always about music. This week it's retro and reminiscing. There's a;ways a playist too. In fact, this week there's TWO...

Way back, last year, a subscriber wrote to me with the suggestion that I write about “the best year for album releases for you” – basically thinking of a time when a lot of really great music came out that meant a lot to you, and I would ask this question as much as give an answer. Which is to say I’ll tell you a bit about a year (or two) for me where I felt super connected to the new music coming out, and then you can tell me in the chat, in the comments, about a year of great magnitude for you.

This isn’t about trying to pick the best year on record – for records. It’s not a case of saying that it must be 1966 or 1971 or 1998. It’s about what it meant to you, at that exact time. It might be that you’ve moved on from many of the albums now, but back then they really sat with you, helped you along, impacted your life. Made a nice dent in your world.

I guess this is me overly explaining the fact that there is no one right answer.

A few years ago I wrote about 1995. And talked about it by mentioning just five albums. None of them could lay claim to being the biggest album of that year, but it was a big year of me – the year I left home. The year I made my home in Wellington. I’ve been here ever since…have never left. I’ve now lived longer here than anywhere else.

And it was Tricky’s Maxinquaye and Throwing Muses’ University and The Ginger Baker Trio’s Coming Back Home and Prince’s Gold Experience and Tigerlily by Natalie Merchant that I chose to write about; there were so many other big records for me from that year. But those, all rather different from each other, felt like the right snapshot.

One of the things I love about music, or actually what I love about thinking about music, about writing about music, is how you can really focus in on new ways of listening to albums, not just by placing them in their time, but by lining them up there alongside some comfortable, and sometimes some uneasy bedfellows. I was swapping discs between Throwing Muses and Ginger Baker, from Prince to Natalie Merchant and then to Tricky, and really only the Prince and Tricky had any actual business talking to each other – if CDs could talk – but it all made sense to me. Then. And now. And that’s the magic of music, I think. How instantly transportive it is.

David Slack writes an excellent Substack newsletter which you should check out a.s.a.f.p (if you’ve not already). One of the new group chat threads associated with his newsletter had Slack asking his readers to share music reminiscences – I posted a picture of Enz of an Era, the first Split Enz record (compilation) I connected with. I consider it life-changing, mind-blowing, all the clichés. And when I hear it now (I still own it on both vinyl and CD) I feel like I am listening to it with the enthusiasm, if not the ears, of when I was six or seven years old.

Earlier this week my son Oscar turned 11, and we were talking about how 11 feels significant. You’re not yet a teenager, though you certainly feel like it in your mind. But you’re off the kiddie menu. I told him that I could remember turning 11 – I got a voucher and I bought Midnight Oil’s Diesel and Dust and U2’s The Joshua Tree on cassette tape. And those albums stayed with me for such a long time. But there was more than that. There was the music my mum was bringing into the house – she’d buy a new record most weeks and I’d come home from school to hear music blasting down the street. It was Introducing The Hardline According To Terence Trent D’Arby, or it was Fleetwood Mac’s Tango In The Night, or Whitney by Whitney Houston, The Lonesome Jubilee by John Cougar Mellencamp, or Bridge of Spies by T’Pau.

I’d hear this music blasting down the street – from houses away. It was so cool. And on my last day of primary school I raced up the street to dive into the pool for a swim, no cares in the world for weeks on end, and mum was playing Icehouse’s Man of Colours. When I hear Electric Blue I think of that ParaPool and the Ponga fence around it.

There were so many other albums from that year – huge record, big comebacks, one-offs, and even some little obscurities that I just love. But the biggest and best have endured for me. It was a real musical coming-of-age, my folks were back buying new music again, I was buying music for myself – building a tape collection. Music was everywhere.

Without a doubt my favourite album of that year was INXS’ Kick. Well, of course there was one other big album that trumped that.

Most of these records that I’m mentioning meant nothing to Oscar when I started telling him about the big albums I could remember from when I turned 11. He knew some of the band names but didn’t care about the music at all. And fair enough. And then I said that Def Leppard’s Hysteria was a big one. (He loves that album!)

“Wow, you had that cool album right when it came out?” He asked, almost impressed.

“Well”, I had to admit, it was released in ’87 but I actually got that with my tape-voucher the following year when I turned 12. All the big hit singles had convinced me I had to have it. And the wait was worth it because when I finally got around to getting it, I also received a metal badge which was proudly pinned to my pencil-case.

Oscar was into this but didn’t care about INXS’ Kick at all (His loss!) I had Kick and I had new kicks too! My first pair of basketball boots, some stone-wash jeans, a fake Lacoste shirt and a red Sony Walkman. Come on!

Pink Floyd released A Momentary Lapse of Reason and I’ll defend that to my death as one of the Floyd’s very best. George Harrison’s Cloud Nine is a total masterpiece. And then there was the second serving from Pet Shop Boys. Actually. Utter pop genius.

There are so many more albums to mention. But Oscar was going “so what” and “big deal”. And I might as well have just been saying Vienna by Ultravox over and over even though it was the wrong year. Because all of this meant nothing to him…

Michael Jackson was a bit more impressive. And though Prince’s double-record gem didn’t really get a big tick from Osc, he knows how much Prince means to me.

He says, “C’mon old man, let it go…so a bunch of albums came out and you cared about them then but it sounds like a pretty bad year really”. I’m not even paraphrasing. That’s what he said.

And then I said that there was one more he probably would be keen to know about. One that I loved so much. And still love to this day. One that I knew was his favourite too.

He scratched his head.

“Appetite for Destruction by a little band called Guns N Roses”, I said. “It totally blew my mind!”

“DAD! That was 1988!”

But it wasn’t. And as he looked it up on his new birthday present – a bloody iPhone, we’ve come such a long, long way from $30 cassette tape vouchers eh…he agreed that 1987 sounded pretty cool indeed.

Of course, if I wrote this topic up next week, I’d pick 1991 or 1992 or 1994 or…you know…some other year. Because that’s how it works. But there are only a handful of years – usually to do with your real musical and spiritual awakening – that resonate. That hold you deep. That provide the music for your ears, and such life and laughter and memories across several years.

I’m going with 1987. And to celebrate, here’s a playlist featuring a song from every album I’ve named in this newsletter.

And maybe a bonus track or two as well.

And then, of course, because it’s the weekend – or it will be soon enough, I have our regular playlist too. Vo1. 90 of A Little Something For The Weekend…Sounds Good! It’s been more than a week since I last said I was really proud of the playlist. So I’ll tell you that this one is an absolute gem. Check it out.

And do tell me what year you think of straight away when you think about all of the great new music that blew your mind, that opened up your world, that surprised you and makes you happy to think back to, even if it wasn’t so long ago.