Once again, there will be no list of the best albums of the past year, because I haven't heard any of them (eventually I will get around to a megapost on the 2022 releases by "former #1's", i.e. albums by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Moderat, Spiritualized, and Beach House. Maybe if it's taken this long then I'll just hold off until the newest Orbital record is released sometime next year).
However, Youtube has helpfully assembled a year in review list so that I didn't have to. I think it's a revealing and quite accurate representation of how I consume music-related content on Youtube. In past years, when I listened mainly to contemporary releases, it was almost always through physical purchases or downloads, and not via streaming. In that sense, this list is a uniquely modern look at my new normal, and highlights how much my listening habits have changed in the past three years.
1. Mahler Symphony #2 (live 1989, cond. Klaus Tennstedt)
It's no secret that Tennstedt could be hit and miss in the studio. I joined the consensus after reviewing his LPO Mahler cycle, but every Tennstedt fan knows that his true strengths were live in concert. Live, he was an incendiary Mahler conductor whose unbridled intensity and total commitment to the work has likely never been matched. This 1989 recording is a prime example of this. I have been meaning to review his live LPO Mahler box for months, but the task often feels too daunting, one that demands hours of uninterrupted listening. These concerts were events, and I can never find a block of time to approach them as such.
I wrote a couple of posts about Harry Styles this year, I remain awed by his spectacular success and "As It Was" is a fantastic single.
3. Shirley Bassey, "The Girl From Tiger Bay" (2009 Live at Electric Proms)
This song pops up on the radio from time to time, but until I sought it out on Youtube I had no clue that it was written by James Dean Bradfield of the Manic Street Preachers. Once you know this you can't unhear all the clues, such as the guitar part that leads into the chorus. The song itself is wonderful, and works both as Bradfield's love letter to Bassey, and as Bassey's very own "My Way".
4. Oasis, "Don't Look Back In Anger"
What better than Rick Beato's "What makes this song great?" breakdown to make me revisit (over and over again) Oasis' best ever song?
5. Daft Punk ft. Pharrell Williams and Stevie Wonder, "Get Lucky" (2014 Grammys)
One of my all time favourite clips, endlessly rewatchable for the indelible joy it radiates for each second of this legendary performance. The broadcast captures six decades of music royalty partying in the audience without any pretense, united for a few brief moments by their love of one of the most format-smashing hits of recent times. The performance takes in elements of Chic's "Le Freak" (oh yes, Nile Rodgers plays guitar here too!), Daft Punk's "Harder Better Faster Stronger", and Stevie Wonder's "Another Star", a veritable all-star mixtape condensed into five short minutes.
6. Moby, "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?"
Another song that fits a wide range of moods and situations, including the kids' bath time (works for me as downtempo spa music at least). It's always interesting to ponder why exactly Moby got big when he did. Grunge had long since expired as a force, and nu-metal had risen to fill the vacuum. Unless you were into alternative-lite fare like Matchbox 20 or Cake, or ate up the horrible swing revival, it was a rough time to be a mainstream rock fan. So people took to other genres with rock elements to get their fix (electronica, e.g. Chemical Brothers, Prodigy) or were drawn into lounge/exotic music/downtempo house (e.g. St. Germain -- you would not believe how ubiquitous "Tourist" was in coffee shops and dorm rooms unless you were there, a million other Cafe Del Mar and the like compilations). Moby successfully bridged the gap between the two. He was an outsider as far as the mainstream went, he'd reinvented himself (always makes for a good story), he had some cred as a rocker and as a former king of the underground, he seemed non-threatening, in short, he was a new type of popstar in an era when the mainstream was experiencing a great deal of turnover (rock and rock-related genres were phasing out, Britney Spears and boy band pop exploding, etc.)
7. Haydn Symphony #88, Vienna Philharmonic (cond. Leonard Bernstein)
I don't watch classical music concerts online (I'm usually listening while puttering around doing various things) but this clip demands your attention. Where else can you see one of the all-time greats conducting a major orchestra with his face? Meanwhile, I discovered the greatness of this, and many other Haydn symphonies this year.
It's been a rough few years for the Mac, first the departure/firing of Lindsay Buckingham, and then the deaths of Peter Green, Danny Kirwan, and Christine McVie. My go-to video for FM-related solace is "Gypsy". This video has entranced me since the age of nine, I was simply spellbound by the opening panned shot of the lace-covered room and Stevie Nicks performing the splits while gazing wistfully into a giant mirror, it's a goddess moment that makes me lose all sense of time and place even forty years later. The song's metronomic pulse enhances the notion that the memories expressed in the lyrics exist in some kind of continuum, much like Zeppelin's "Kashmir", "Gypsy" seems to have no beginning and no end, it exists for infinite time before and after, we time-limited mortals merely tune into a brief stretch in the middle.
9. Don Henley, "The Boys of Summer"
As I noted in my September post about "As It Was", I would not have expected the ongoing 80's revival/pillorying to borrow heavily from Don Henley in 2022, and yet here we are.
10. Joni Mitchell, "Both Sides Now" (live at Newport Folk Festival)
I hope this performance isn't fading from collective memories, because it really was something incredibly special.
11. Nicole Pesce, "How To Play Happy Birthday like Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, Bach, and Mozart"
Listen to enough classical music and you too will have Google recommending Victor Borge-inspired musical comedy videos.
I was certain that DM were finished after Fletch's sudden passing, but they'll be back next year with yet another album and world tour, continuing one of the most remarkable 40-year (and counting) success stories in music history. I haven't listened to "Ultra" all the way through in years, on one hand it's their most homogeneous album, but on the other hand it features the relentless brutalism of "Barrel of a Gun", the unstoppably heartfelt "Home" (I have come around on this song over the years, I now rank it among DM's best ballads) and two of their strongest ever album tracks ("The Bottom Line" and "Insight").
13. Eddie Money, "Take Me Home Tonight"
Unfortunately my posting frequency has decreased in recent years, as I struggle to find the time to complete various projects (20 albums/20 years, the Eurovision winners) and post about other topics in general. My timely posts are RIP posts far more often than not. Ronnie Spector passed away in January and I missed the news, finding out about it a few weeks later. Go read her memoir (published long before MeToo and Phil Spector's murder conviction, this didn't get the attention it deserved) and enjoy her mini-comeback in the 80's with Eddie Money.
14. Brahms, "Variations on a Theme By Joseph Haydn", dir. Gustavo Dudamel
Yes, I love the piece (my favourite Brahms orchestral work) but clearly the algorithm has misconstrued my feelings about Dudamel. This is hardly a great performance of the Haydn variations, notwithstanding the setting (Vienna's Musikverein) and the presence of the Vienna Philharmonic. Go listen to, I don't know, one of Furtwaengler's performances instead.
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