December 2011 - Popular Music

Tori Amos

• From the Choirgirl Hotel
• The Beekeeper
• Night of Hunters
• Audience bootlegs - Hilversum, Netherlands 5 November 1999 (radio show), Glasgow 5 December 2001, Manchester 6 December 2001, London 7 December 2001, Berlin 9 December 2001, Frankfurt 10 December 2001

Kate Bush - 50 Words for Snow
Gomez - Split the Difference
Midnight Oil - Earth and Sun and Moon
Pink - Greatest Hits... So Far!
Radiohead - The Bends
Radiohead - The King of Limbs
Seal - Seal (II)

Kate Bush's new album officially entered the library thanks to Christmas. I've already mentioned my obsession with 'Snowflake'.  Getting to know the rest of the album a little better has been great, but there's a long way to go yet.  It's extremely meditative - definitely an album for stillness and quiet time.

I rounded off the year by listening to the 'new' albums that I have - Kate Bush, Tori Amos and Radiohead.  I actually forgot all about Bjork's Biophilia - which just tells you how the app format failed to equate with buying an album for me.

I did buy other albums during the year, but they weren't 2011 albums. This is pretty typical for me really. I generally have a bit of a shopping list that extends back a few years, and often it takes me a while to figure out that something gets on the shopping list, never mind actually getting bought.  I need to have heard a few songs from an artist and the songs need to have stayed with me.

Year In Review

The pop music spreadsheet isn't entirely complete, as I hadn't started it at the beginning of the year, but it tells me I listened to 156 items during 2011.  Deduct Tori Amos singles... a few hits collections... multiple entries for multi-disc efforts... a soundtrack... it comes out as at least 134 genuine, bona fide albums that I listened to in their entirety during the year.  Not bad!

I listened to every Tori Amos studio album, not counting the one she released as a band in the 80s. No surprise there. I listened to all 3 of Fiona Apple's albums and all 8 of Kate Bush's, but only half of Patty Griffin's.  I listened to 10 Joni Mitchell albums but that still means that 7 of them didn't get an airing.  5 out of 6 albums that Roisin Murphy sings on (Moloko or solo) got played. I listened to every Wendy Matthews, Seal, Something for Kate or Talk Talk album that I own, but in all those cases I don't have a complete collection.

Already I'm looking at the list and thinking "Wow! Have I not listened to 'X' for 10 months?".  And there are a great deal many more albums - at least as many again I would think - that didn't get played.

Time to get cracking for 2012, then...