Glory Box
It all started, as many great things do, on a Sunday afternoon in the pub. It was the afternoon after the heavy night before, so the topics of conversation were wild and varied. Then someone put a couple of quid in the jukebox and chose an equally wild and varied selection of songs. And it was at that point that the fateful question was asked:
"What's the best decade for music?"
After several incorrect answers were submitted, it was reluctantly agreed that the 1990s were indeed the best decade musically, encompassing the meteoric rise of several genres, movements and technical developments which would eventually contribute to the rich and varied musical landscape which we see today. Access to music is easier than ever and practically anybody can create and publish music these days, which is simultaneously a great and terrible thing.
The Changingman
Fast forward a few months to a Sunday afternoon in the pub, where we find your intrepid author had just come up with a brilliant idea. I was going to relive the whole 1990s, in musical terms at least. I had toyed with extending this idea to other forms of media and aspects of my daily life and although the idea of 10p chocolate bars was alluring, there was no way I could go back to a dial-up modem.
And so I thought a little about the boundaries of reliving an entire decade, as it is after all a ten-year project. I decided initially that I would create a playlist of the singles which had been released in the equivalent week 30 years prior, and that I would have this playlist on shuffle as my default music choice although I would allow myself to continue to listen to modern music. After all, I didn't want to miss out on an entire decade of new music. In addition to my 1990s radio simulator, I would also try and identify albums that had been released at the time but which I wouldn't have necessarily been into at the time and so missed out on the first time around.
Loaded
In order to find out what was in the charts at that time, I found a very useful site which basically listed the information I needed. A friend of mine (thanks Susan!) had coincidentally posted a link to a site called Official Charts and I realised it was exactly what I would need. It has a search tool with selections to choose the day, month and most importantly year and it would instantly show the charts for that time period. Perfect! However, I noticed that not all of the tracks from a given week's Top 40 chart are available on Spotify, so when this happens I'll include tracks from higher up in the chart, to make the list up to 40 songs.
For the album list I noticed that the same Official Charts site has an albums list too, although I'm not sure if I want to restrict myself to only chart albums, so I found another site called Album of the Year which I will also try and read.
Finally, I'll also try and include some interesting information about the artists, songs and general scene of the era so this blog doesn't just become a list.
That said, here's a list:
Say You'll Be There
Since we're starting 2020 halfway through a week, I'm choosing to start my mission on 6th January as it's the first full week, so tune in next week for the first proper post! The title of the playlist contains the date on which the chart begins.
Feel free to have a listen using the Spotify playlist each week and join me on this adventure down memory lane. (Or more likely a soon-to-become painful, up-hill slog along an ill-thought-out project which will waste ten years' worth of blog space.)
Bye for now!
