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In 2016, I wrote years from 1950 to 2000 on scraps of paper, put them in a bag, and started pulling them out when the occasion struck me - Once I picked a year, I would listen to nothing but albums from that year, stopping whenever I felt I had enough, at which point I'd either pull out another year or take a break from the process for a while. It's an entertaining way to discover new music you might not have tried otherwise, and allows you to get more of a cultural context towards whatever albums you already love from that year. I could use this basic idea for other fields of art and entertainment (books, movies, etc), but for now I'm sticking with music as it's the easiest for me to pursue. This blog is largely going to be dedicated to lists of albums I've listened to, but might also contain my thoughts on individual albums or musical trends I notice.

Some additional rules I've given myself for this project, which I may or may not break in the future:

  • Greatest hits albums and other compilations of previously released material don't qualify. 
  • Soundtracks only qualify if they're largely or entirely previously unreleased songs
  • Live albums also qualify, but preference is going to be given to ones that are considered significant to an artist's career (Cheap Trick's Live At Budokan for instance)
  • If the gap between an album's recording and its release is too long, the former counts as the year it belongs to. For instance, if an album was recorded in 2003 and released in 2004, I would listen to it alongside 2004 albums, but if it were recorded in 1970 and released in 2004, I would only listen to it if I were covering 1970. 
  • I will make qualifying albums by the following artists a priority: The Beatles (or solo work by ex-Beatles), David Bowie, Prince, Bob Dylan, The Fall, and "Weird Al" Yankovic. 
  • I will make an effort to listen to at least one album that's listed among the top selling of the year.
  • Any time I take the night shift at my work, that evening's selections will include some form of heavy metal (not applicable for years where the genre did not exist yet)
  • I'm saving 1981 for this December - December is my birth month and 1981 was my birth year. 

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1998

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1956 (with writeups)

I started out thinking I had actually run out of years to review, which was part of why I endeavored to actually write reviews of everything - as it turns out the slip of paper for 1956 just migrated on its own to one corner of the bag, and I have a few other years left still. I do think it's a good idea to keep up this approach the next time I pull a year out of hat, rather than the quantity over quality one I've been using. Elvis Presley - Elvis Presley (1956) Through this project I’ve learned that I enjoy listening to early rock and roll albums, but that it can be a little hard to assess them because so much of what would have been considered fresh to listeners at the time is now just part of the basic foundation of a genre that’s existed for 70 decades or so. Maybe adding to this is the fact that Elvis was always a performer rather than a songwriter, and I’ve heard the original versions of a few of these songs before. Still, I can understand some of the excitement there mus...
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2016 with writeups

David Bowie - ★ (Blackstar) This was David Bowie’s final album in his lifetime, and he was definitely aware that it could be when he was writing it: The lyrics are generally pretty abstract, but there’s definite recurring themes of mortality, fleeting time, and leaving a creative legacy, so they can be quite haunting. Other than that, what stands out on this album is that it has a unique sound while still being recognizably Bowie: there’s nothing completely new, but styles he’s used in the past are sort of combined in a fresh way: For example, the title track might have the overall feel of “Station to Station”, but the rhythm track is sort of drum n bass Earthling style but played by a live drummer, and there’s elements of funk and jazz in the same track. I’ve only given this a few listens so far and feel like I’m still digesting it in some ways, but it’s a really intriguing listen and probably the best album he’d made since the nineties.   They Might Be Giants - Phone Power ...
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