Since, according to the A.V. Club, everybody’s doing it and since it would tie thematically (very loosely) to another post this week (The theme? Arbitrary music lists!), I’ve decided to attempt to compile a list of one album from each year I’ve been alive. Presumably, most of these should be albums I listened to at the time or have since grown fond of. Having grown up in the ’80s, this could be tough….
1982 - Nebraska, Bruce Springsteen
1983 - “Weird Al” Yankovic, “Weird Al” Yankovic
1984 - Stop Making Sense, Talking Heads
1985 - Greatest Hits, The Cars
1986 - Then & Now… The Best of The Monkees, The Monkees
1987 - Cloud Nine, George Harrison
1988 - Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1, Traveling Wilburys
1989 - Oh Mercy, Bob Dylan
1990 - Ragged Glory, Neil Young and Crazy Horse
1991 - The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3, Bob Dylan
1992 - Free At Last, dc Talk
1993 - World Gone Wrong, Bob Dylan
1994 - Wildflowers, Tom Petty
1995 - The Beatles Anthology Volume 1, The Beatles
1996 - Bringing Down The Horse, The Wallflowers
1997 - Time Out Of Mind, Bob Dylan
1998 - The Bootleg Series Volume 4, Bob Dylan
1999 - Looking Forward, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
2000 - Heartbreaker, Ryan Adams
2001 - “Love & Theft”, Bob Dylan
2002 - Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground, Bright Eyes
2003 - Elephant, The White Stripes
2004 - The Delivery Man, Elvis Costello
2005 - Cold Roses, Ryan Adams and The Cardinals
2006 - Rabbit Fur Coat, Jenny Lewis with The Watson Twins
2007 - tie: Icky Thump, White Stripes; The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter, Josh Ritter
2008 - Seeing Things, Jakob Dylan
Okay, a few things. I’ve lived through some terrible, terrible times in music. The first five years are a crapshoot, though I know for a fact that I was listening to that Monkess cassette when it came out or very shortly thereafter. I think I heard that Weird Al album when I was a kid, though I was more familiar with his mid-career work (Bad Hair Day, etc.). I’d say 1995 marks the year that my music-listening caught up with current releases: pretty much everything from then on I heard right when it was released or shortly thereafter. Before that, only 1986 and 1992 were years that I managed to stay current (at least current with the best that those two years had to offer). The problem (or one of them) with this type of list is that there are naturally up years and down years. For 1989, who could decide from among Oh Mercy, Neil Young’s Freedom, and Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever (which would have given Jeff Lynne a production triple crown for ‘87-‘89)? Jenny Lewis managed to beat out Bob Dylan’s Modern Times in 2006, but Gillian Welch couldn’t pull off the upset in 2001. Is Rabbit Fur Coat better than Time (The Revelator)? No, Bob and Gillian (not to mention Ryan Adams’s Gold) managed to top anything that 2006 had to offer (or in Bob’s case, he failed to top himself). By 2007, you might say I gave up or at least gave in and declared a tie; well, I challenge you to make that same call, especially with Allison Krauss & Robert Plant’s Raising Sand floating around as a third possibility. Anyway, I’d already lost since I named five compilation albums to the list. Conclusion: this has been a futile exercise that I’ve spent parts of a week on. I challenge you to do better.
