Return of the Mac

There was some discourse around Fleetwood Mac on Bluesky recently, about how they far outstrip most of their peers in terms of popularity with the young'uns, and someone drolly observed that the best way of telling if someone was 45-55 was if they didn't like Rumours, because everyone else did (or something like that).

That rings somewhat true, as when I was first getting into music in a big way (mid-90s) there was definitely lots of negativity towards them (when the 60s, new wave/punk and the 80s were the main influences on current bands) but I think that had pretty much gone by the turn of the century.

So perhaps it was there being "soft rock" that was held against them for a while. Perhaps, as someone suggested, it was that they were very feminine for a rock band. Perhaps it was they'd had mainstream hits like Everywhere, Little Lies and Big Love, pretty recently, so there hadn't been time to feel nostalgic about them. Or perhaps it was merely Mick Fleetwood and Sam Fox presenting the Brits, and the Reynolds Girls rather jacking to Fleetwood Macking that did it.

I do remember Rumours being Number 16 in my first Greatest Albums Ever Made book from 1995, so it can't have been all negative. But, really, Rumours is a pretty undeniable album.

Though I denied it for quite a long time. I don't think I really listened to it properly until 2008ish. I by and large thought I knew it, knowing a lot of the biggest songs, which I recognised were good songs, but, apart from You Can Go Your Own Way, hadn't fully connected with. 

Funnily enough, as I'd never really listened to Eva Cassidy, it was hearing Songbird for the first time that really connected me with Fleetwood Mac. It was undeniably both the kind of thing  I liked, and, more importantly, a thing I liked.

So, following on from that, Christine McVie was the member of the band who seemed most likeable and intriguing, which I think is quite a common view. Though not as common as the view that Stevie Nicks is one of the great icons of rock'n'roll.

It's a view that slightly crept up on me, as my first impression of here was a couple of slightly odd Top of the Pops appearances in the 80s. I believe the band's mid-90s live album and video, The Dream, was a massive hit in America, and in particular, Stevie N's theatrical, inflamed singing of Silver Springs to Lindsey Buckingham. It's great stuff ...

And then the soap opera burst back to life when Buckingham was kicked out of the band by Nicks a few years ago, And continued to say delightfully scathing things about her high school boyfriend, decades of resentment finally getting their full expression.

Well, it seems they've made up a bit, combining to reissue their album 'Buckingham Nicks' which first drew them to the attention of Mick Fleetwood in the mid-70s.

And it did make me realise I get pretty invested in the lifelong tensions of the heroes of rock'n'roll. Heart warmed when one hears Simon and Garfunkel had a conciliatory lunch. Heart saddened when one hears Baez hasn't heard from Dylan in years. What of Morrissey and Marr? Will they reconcile? Will Dave and Ray keep it together? Jagger and Richards?

Anyway, the five most streamed Mac songs on spotify are Dreams, The Chain, Everywhere, Go Your Own Way, Landslide, which tells you that it was a pretty special band to have three such great writers and singers and two big beardy English men to be the band's name and keep the beat.

1997-2001

I was at university from late summer 97 to early summer 2001. That period was bookended by the two biggest news events of my lifetime - the death of Diana on 31st August 1997 and the attack on the Twin Towers on 11th September 2001.

I know a thousand more truly significant things have happened than the death of Diana, but I still think it is accurate to describe it as, in the UK, one of the two biggest news events. It consumed and set the national mood for a long time. It defines the time. News was different then.

I think it makes sense to see 97-2001 as a distinct "era", notwithstanding the fact that it is a personal era for me. You can describe it as lots of things - a fool's paradise, a transition, a new age. There was a lot going on but also not much going on.

I don't know if it's true of other centuries, but it is striking how much the world really did change around the turn of this century. Not on the dot (thankfully), but, you know, "end of history" was not being laughed out of court in 99 and it was in 2001 ...

I had five dilatory and mostly lethargic years between the end of school and the start of my adult life. It's a little obscene. I worked (actually quite hard) in the autumn of 1996 and then took my trip to Kenya in 1997, which was also, in its way, pretty hard. It was meant to finish on 31st August 1997, but as detailed elsewhere, it was, to my tacit relief, cut six weeks short. So I'd had the summer back in London (and Portsmouth, and Dorset) - drinkin' London Pride, smokin' Marlboro Light. My fellow East African adventurers were returning on 31 August, and one of them was going to stay with me for a couple of days. We lived near Heathrow so my mum and I were going to meet them all at the airport.

So, they emerged blinking from the overnight flight into the weirdest atmosphere the UK has ever had, as I would also have done.

It perhaps helped a little to spend time with these people over the next couple of weeks (there was a "debrief" of sorts in Wales). Not many of them really gave a hoot about Diana. It seemed trivial, man ... I certainly think there was a split in the national consciousness that month, between people consumed by grief and people who thought this was all a bit weird. I think that mood really was important, as it was one of the first times we'd really all seen what each other were like ...

Tonty Bliar was, of course, the well-coiffed spokesperson of the national grieving. I remember thinking "what a creep" and wish I'd stuck with that all the way through. 1997 and 2001 was, also, of course, the period of the first Labour term, a term where they did quite a lot though not enough, and laid the ground for doing more, but not enough. But still, that was, for its flaws, the most welcomed and stable government of my lifetime.

I was pretty lucky at university in that, though I was definitely left-wing by 97, a lot of that was on a "Christian" level (as I'll get to) and I thought in terms of justice, equality, fairness, in quite abstract ways and, then, at famously socialist hotbed the University of St Andrews, I fell in with more clearly political people and by the end had a fairly decent grasp on UK politics. I mean, not brilliant, but not bad.

As mentioned above, it amuses me now to remember I spent my university years in the grip of an existential crisis. I mean, of all the times.... Christian before, very much happily not Christian after, in the furnace of my doubts during. Really fun guy ... so I guess that was another of the great transitions.

Perhaps the greatest transition, the one that truly has mattered the most unfortunately, is technology. I know everyone has a slightly different timeline on this, but in 97, mobiles were rare, e-mail was rare. By 2001, both were commonplace (though i myself didn't get a mobile until 2003). Social media was still a while away, but the business of living our lives online started in that era. In 1997, we all got our news from newspapers, TV and the radio (probably the radio most of all). By 2001, most of us students were reasonably internet-savvy (and then it drove everyone nuts and civilization broke down, hurray...)

It could even be argued that it is  quite a transitional time in sport. It was not really a time of GOATS (to use that horrible term). There were Ronaldo and Zidane, but they were not Messi and C Ronaldo. Sampras, but not Federer, Nadal and Djokovic. Just the start of the age of the Williams sisters. Not yet Bolt. I guess there was Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan, so maybe it doesn't really hold up, but in a lot of sports, there was more of an element of surprise. Records were not being broken quite so much.

It was also a very specific era in music, between the third Oasis album (the death of britpop) and the first Strokes album. Be Here Now. Is This It. Almost exactly four years apart. Some people would tell you nothing happened in between, though it's one of my favourite eras, both because it was the first time I had proper money to spend on music and because it was when I got really into some of the bands I love to this day - SFA, B and S, Beta Band, Wilco. Blur released a very odd album (13), Oasis a very very bad one (SOTSOG), most of the big Britpop bands dipped a little or split, but some of them did some of their best stuff. 

2001 began with Ash's Shining Light, a little gem I have the most enormous fondness for. I remember standing on the scaffolding outside our flat on a sunny winter day listening to it. 2001 in general is one of my favourite years in music ... it felt like something was coming, even before the Strokes. I bought so many albums that year.

Summer 2001 being the very long summer after I finished university and before I started working, and, of course, before 9/11 (the day I interviewed for the job I took),. it has a very particular golden place in my memory. I mean, I arsed around a lot when I was young, but I'm not sure I ever arsed about quite so contentedly as that summer.

So, yes, the end of summer 2001 was truly the end of an era, for me, for everyone.

Mr Scorsese

We watched 'Mr Scorsese' on Apple, which was enormously enjoyable and entertaining. It was worth watching if only for the unscheduled appearance of the real-life Johnny Boy, Salvatore Uricola, who did not disappoint.

If anything, the disappointment was that it really could have been six or seven, rather than five, episodes. Where the previous three episodes (after the first had overseen his childhood and film beginnings) had taken one decade each, the last episode contained the whole of the 2000s, and a lot of stuff was passed over - there was no mention at all of Hugo, of his TV stuff, of the Dylan documentaries (presumably Dylan decided not to play ball as he was pointedly not mentioned when they talked about The Last Waltz either), or, hardly, of the Stones or George Harrison documentaries.

I felt there were other ends that were not quite tied up too, but these are minor quibbles - these were five thoroughly enjoyable hours of television.

Not sure I've too many insights from it. It was certainly a reminder that Scorsese like, I guess, most great film directors, is an artistic visionary, just capable of seeing things on a scale that other people can't and bringing that to life. It was amazing seeing all his sketched out images from throughout his life.

It reminded you that he can be deemed quite fortunate to be now considered a twinkly paternal treasure, for someone who was, at times, utterly, demonically, mental, but I guess he managed not to do anything so terrible that his reputation was damaged beyond repair.

It reminded that you that his films, films in general, can be incredibly powerful things, that presidents almost died because of one, that bombs were planted because of another, this is serious stuff.

It reminded me, of course, as if I need reminding that De Niro was just something else. Still just the oddest, most unfathomable genius -  there's not just the fact that when we watched clips of him in Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, and Raging Bull, it was just like seeing anew something exploding off the screen, that, presumably deliberately from Rebecca Miller - contrast between the electric fluid blabbering of Johnny Boy cutting to modern-day Bob's solid grunt and chin jut. There's also the reality that they owe as much to each other. De Niro drove Scorsese's projects and even, possibly, saved his life, a few times. 

Even recently seeing Ben Stiller talking about him doing the fourth Meet the Parents film (what the world needs!) and saying what a lovely man he is, but, of course, there's that darkness inside him, and, you just think, what is that? What even is it? Well cod-psychology, his pretty unlikely unbringing, offers some answers, but who knows?

Anyway, there were great interviews with most of the rest of the Scorsese core - Schrader, Nicholas Pileggi, Jay Cocks, de Palma, and most insightfully, Thelma Schoonmaker, and also Isabella Rosselini and Scorsese's daughters.

There was the proud mention that more women have received acting Oscar nominations in Scorsese films than anyone else's - which really is interesting. But it is also interesting that there isn't the same continuity with women, as with De Niro, Keitel, Pesci, DiCaprio. The only leading actress I can think of who has been in more than one Scorsese film is Barbara Hershey (Jodie Foster has a small role in 'Alice..' so i guess her too). ... well, apart from his mum.

Anyway, there are still Scorsese films I haven't seen, and I have to rectify that, for sure.

Here is my honest five favourite Scorseses ...

Mean Streets

The Last Waltz

No Direction Home

Taxi Driver

Killers of the Flower Moon

Extremely acclaimed songs

Rolling Stone released a list of the 250 Greatest Songs of the 20th Century So Far.

Here it is on Spotify, as the actual list with little write-ups for each song on the Rolling Stone site is staggeringly unwieldy and will freeze any browser it comes into contact with.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2BOseUAL339UOnNInQbF2E

Much as I like to scorn, it can, I think, proudly place itself on the "not too bad" list of lists.

You can tell that, whatever they might say about the democracy of the voting process, it has been done by committee, and I'd say it is pretty carefully put together to cover most bases.

To appease the likes of me, the "indie-alt-country-rock" songs are, usually, the right indie rock songs by the bands in question, or near enough. They got Impossible Germany, they got No Children, they got Such Great Heights, they got Float On, they got Waxahatchee and Rilo Kiley, they are not scorning the 47-year-old kids that matter.

It is also probably the most international of these lists I've ever seen, for better or worse (though saying it, I still think about 3/5 of the songs are American). There's a lot of Latin American songs, there are African songs, Korean songs, there are 20-odd from Britain and Ireland. Is that a decent number? Not really, but it could be worse. I wouldn't really say there are any UK choices that are particularly interesting ... you'd like to suddenly see some Libertines, some Roots Manuva, some Delgados, some SFA ... you know, and, as is always the case with America, there is almost no knowledge of non-white Britain ... just MIA and FKA Twigs.

Slight detour, but America's universal non-recognition of black British (and presumably other countries) culture is perpetual and universal ... here's Idris Elba https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1138554078135003

and it reminds me of when I went to NY and was going to go to Brooklyn and a friend of my host said in a tone of patronising warning "you know, it won't be like anywhere you've ever been before" clearly tipping me off about the fact that there were a lot of black people there, and, well, i lived in South London at the time.

So, yes, anyway, no Little Simz, no Stormzy, Skepta, Dave, Dizzee Rascal, Roots Manuva, Young Fathers, Raye, Kiwanuka etc etc

which is a bit annoying, as, you know, there's quite a lot of pretty wearisome American hip-hop as the list goes on ...

But, anyway, yes, when it comes to the UK, it's the usual suspects, Adele, Coldplay, Sheeran, Radiohead, Arctic Monkeys, Harry Styles, nice high placing for Take Me Out, and weirdly, a song by Two Door Cinema Club, as if to represent the totality of British indie rock.

But, anyway, minor quibbles.

The Top 4 are Get Your Freak On, Maps, Crazy in Love, Seven Nation Army

and I think there are two interesting things about that.

1. They're all from the first few years of the century - in fact 2, 3 and 4 are all from 2003. That's pretty funny, coincidental probably, but maybe shows that Rolling Stone can't resist being a bit old-timey.

2. I love those four songs, and not many would dispute there being near the top of the list, but, they're all "sound" aren't they. People love them for a hook and how they sound in that moment. They're all, even Seven Nation Army, especially Seven Nation Army - now reduced to a five-note football chant - pop songs. The thing about the poptimism, if that's what we're going to call the direction of travel of music criticism this century. and this, I realise, above all, is why it bugs me and why it's by no means an automatic good, is that the sound became everything. Production above "song", in the traditional sense. People love Get Yr Freak On because it sounded like the future and it sounded fun. But, you know, Get Yr Freak On, is "just" a superfun song. It's not Doo Wop (That Thing) or Billie Jean or Like a Prayer or Good Times, which are more than that. 

At 5 is Taylor Swift's All Too Well, which is maybe the opposite of that, it's all "song" especially in the 10-minute version. I was going to be very sniffy about it, but I listened to it again yesterday, and it is good. Then Alright (ironically, just about Kendrick Lamar's simplest, soundiest, song) and, then, the one of the Top 10 i think most deserves to be Number 1, Dancing on My Own, which has got everything a song should have - sound, tune, monster chorus, dancing, melancholy, and "stilettos and broken bottles", some proper poetry.

The actual best song of the century, All My Friends, was at 35.

What was, strikingly, missing? Well, no Joanna Newsom or Sufjan Stevens. The lack of the former in particular does make you question what they mean by "greatest"  and "songs". I mean, they're clearly the best songs, the Newsom songs. That's the obvious song genius of our time, right there, and that's a pretty common thing for people who are really into songs to say, it's not just me. You can tell me that e.g Youngblood by Five Seconds of Summer is greater than Emily ort Time as a Symptom, but, come on ... and Fourth of July by Sufjan Stevens is not just the saddest song ever written but it's actually wildly popular too. I don't know how they've missed that one.

No Cave, no Sia, which definitely surprised me, no My Girls, no The Rat, Sleater-Kinney, National, St Vincent, nothing from Disney films or musicals at all, no Get Lucky, Uptown Funk, Happy, Crazy, which were all so monstrously successful and acclaimed at the time, no Empire State of Mind, but there's a lot of other Jay-Z.

No David Berman, no Love It We Made It (surprising as it was Pitchfork's song of the year for 2018), no Girls Aloud, goddammit.

There is actually quite a lot, and this did still surprise me, that I didn't know or hardly knew. I've listened to a lot of it over the last few days, and there are quite a few really good songs, but some I just cannot hear what I'm meant to hear at all. Americans, eh. Reminded how great Cranes in the Sky by Solange is. 

They still found room for one each by Bowie, Dylan (Things Have Changed, though?), Simon, Cash, Springsteen, Cohen, Zevon, John Prine, Madonna and Kylie (is it ungallant to put them in this veteran company?). 

Anyway, as long as their lists for me to go through, I'll be happy.

Extremely popular songs

I'm fairly fascinated, these days, by streaming numbers. As has been said, it's the first time we've really known what music from all of history people are not just buying, but listening to, the most. (Spotify launched in 2008 and began to get big in the early 2010s, so we're talking about the last 15 years or so)

There is both an enormity and a mundanity to it.

I mainly look at the Spotify numbers, even though I myself don't use Spotify, as Spotify is by far the largest streaming platform, and provides a weekly update on figures. I remember, for what it's worth, that Apple released its most streamed songs, and though it was pretty similar to Spotify, there was definitely more hip-hop and r'n'b than there is in the Spotify numbers, for whatever reason. There was a lot more Drake, and the Spotify list already had plenty enough Drake for me ...

What's my headline fact, or deduction? I guess it's that the defining song in pop music history is Take On Me, by A-ha. Well, why not? It's a great song.

By which I mean, not only does Take On Me itself have 2.5+ billion streams, making it one of the most listened to songs first released in the 20th century, but two of the Top 6 of all time, both with over 4 billion streams, Blinding Lights by The Weeknd and As It Was by Harry Styles, are heavily indebted to it.

Take On Me turns out to be the sound. That's rather marvellous really. Could have told you that when I was 7.

What else can I tell you? Well, you know Sweater Weather by The Neighbourhood? You know that one, that 2012 single by a US indie band? No? Not the fourth most streamed song of all time? You don't know it? What's wrong with you? Anyway, it's actually an ok song, if you like that kind of thing.

And what else can I tell you? People do actually still love sorry polite British (and Irish) balladeering men.

In the Top 100, there's multiple Sheeran, multiple Styles, Capaldi, Glass Animals, James Arthur (!), multiple Coldplay, Tom Odell, Hozier, Arctic Monkeys (bit different, to be fair), Passenger, not to mention Every Breath You Take, Wonderwall, and presumably to Thom Yorke's bittersweet angst, Creep.

Whither Blunt? de Mumford? Don't worry, they're doing fine, with songs around the billion mark. The world still loves that stuff ... Chasing Cars and Somewhere Only We Know are around the two billion mark...

And, yes, men, and that's slightly interesting. Despite the fact that you'd say most of the superstars of music in the last decade or so, the ones with a crossover enormity, have been women - Taylor Swift, Adele, Beyonce, Gaga, Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, Carpenter, Rodrigo etc, the Top 100 is dominated by male vocalists - 85 vs 15 by my reckoning. Swift is not as preeminent as one might think, but I think that is mainly explained by the fact she took herself off Spotify for a pretty long time ...

I think the main takeaway is that people still like, mainly, to listen to "nice", dare I say it, boring songs. There aren't lots of dangerous, thrilling, new, youthful styles out there the kids are into. Hip-hop and dance music do fine, but again, compared to Apple, and perhaps to what people might think, are a bit underrepresented.

There are some genuinely fascinating ones - how come The Night We Met by Lord Huron, a US folk group i remember listening to a little bit a decade or so ago, has over 3 billion (i think it's TV). Why is I Wanna Be Yours, an Arctic Monkeys track taken from a John Cooper Clarke poem, their most popular song? What is it with Iris and Mr Brightside? 

Even further down, you get some odd surprises. Most of my core music - Wilco, Rilo Kiley, Waxahatchee, SFA etc - does ok but not great really. But then, for some reason, Fourth of July, Sufjan Stevens' most devastatingly sad song, has over 500 million streams. How did that happen?

And can we settle Oasis vs Blur for good? Well, sure, it's Oasis by a long way, though Song 2 is very much doing a good job for Blur, but, wouldn't you know it, Gorillaz beat Oasis on overall numbers comfortably. Albarn really has had the ultimate challenge. Gorillaz really do continue to be massively listened to group.

Another noticeable thing - the further back it is, the less listened to. This seems somewhat obvious, but perhaps isn't entirely, as it's all "old stuff". But the 2000s are more popular than the 90s which are popular than the 80s which are more popular than the 70s which are more popular than the 60s (Queen bigger than the Beatles) and as for the 50s and further back ... nothing i can see ...

Anyway, there it is - I'd say, overall, knowing what songs people listen to the most is strangely comforting. People are basically the same and basically boring. So be it.