Days We Left Behind

I love this new Paul McCartney song, Days We Left Behind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2n1IhyF6R0U&list=RD2n1IhyF6R0U&start_radio=1

It's my favourite song of his for a long time, and it may even end up being my favourite song of his post-Beatles.

Even though a lot of that music deals in whimsical nostalgia, just like this one, somehow this song has moved me deeply, and feels precise, uncynical and revelatory.

It's funny to think that, in all the time I've been following the charts (let's say 40 years), Macca hasn't had a bona fide solo Top 10 hit single. Although the Bluesky dads got briefly excited about this one when it dropped last Friday, it hasn't cracked the Top 100, so that long streak of relative failure looks safe.

For 20+ years, he was the greatest hit machine in history. I've just watched Man on the Run, the documentary abot Wings, which I'd been warned was a bit flash and annoying to watch, but actually I found very informative and sweet, and it's worth remembering that, through the 70s, though there were lulls, Wings were pretty massive. They had six US Number 1s, Mull of Kintyre was the bestselling UK single ever for a time - he still had the magic touch. In the early 80s, you've got Ebony and Ivory, The Girl is Mine, Say Say Say, Pipes of Peace, and then the Frog Chorus, which was basically the last big hit, so maybe that's why. Maybe he lost his single-buying audience with one fell amphibian swoop.

He's featured on loads of Charity Number 1s since, and there was the collaboration with Kanye West (weird to remember that ...) but there have been some nice songs since then, but nothing that has captured the public. Not that unusual for a 40-odd musician, i suppose, but this is Paul McCartney, and Bowie, Springsteen, Rod Stewart, Queen, Elton John in abundance, they've all had hits since then. Even Dylan - his albums are big news and sell well, whereas there's a regular McCartney album cycle - he'll go on Jools Holland, do some nice press, everyone will be happy to see him again, but no big sales or impact. Of course, he remains a huge live act - that in a way adds to the oddness of it. His musicianship, his voice, his popularity, has held up better than anyone, yet he can't get a wider audience interested in his new music.

Which is a shame with this song, as it's wonderful. 

The lyrics in the bridge

"We met at Forthlin Road

And wrote a secret code

To never be spoken

I stand by what I said

The promise that I made

Will never be broken"

I cannot stop thinking about. Okay, in some ways, it's just some nice little rhyming phrases, but what if we take it at face value? What if him and Lennon really did write a secret code, never to be spoken, which unlocked the secret of pop music? What if they did make promises to each other which McCartney has never revealed and which he holds to this day? It's overwhelming, in a way, yet equally, just a small thing ...

Babylon

David Gray's 'Babylon' came up on my youtube algorithm last week. 

If youtube had existed in 2000, 'Babylon' would probably have come up on my youtube algorithm then, as something youtube thought was a bit like the kind of things I like, and I'd have curtly dismissed it as maybe in the same rough territory as the kind of things I like, but very much not the kind of thing I like.

But, in 2026, I watched/listened to it, and thought "aah, good song, after all".

I distinctly remember the first time I saw Babylon performed by David Gray, which was on Jools Holland in April 2000 - me, John and Alex watching on a Friday night in our student place on Baker Lane, cruelly distracted by Gray's wobbling head, and deciding this guy was not for us. 

I'd heard of him before, I think I'd read about him being a big star in Ireland (indeed I think I thought he was Irish) but that was the first time I heard/saw him. After that he was everywhere, or rather his music was everywhere. That was a star-making performance - Babylon became a hit, and the album White Ladder, which had first been released in 1998, became the ultimate sleeper hit.

It is still the biggest selling album of all time in Ireland, and is still, I think, in the Top 10 best selling albums in Britain this century. It also sold over 2 million copies in the US - indeed Gray had sustained success over several albums in America - a lot more than, say, Robbie Williams.

For those early years of the 2000s, the likes of White Ladder, Dido's No Angel, Moby's Play, not to mention Travis and Coldplay, were ubiquitous and described by the music weeklys, which I was still reading, as bland, coffee-table music. You would hear the albums at sedate dinner parties, and, generally, though I was never cool, I fancied my taste in music to be cooler than that.

As far as I can tell, Gray remains a pretty lowkey, anonymous figure. I watched a couple of interviews with him after rewatching Babylon and he's pretty endearing, and pretty good at talking about his music in a clear, interesting way.

A few years ago, as an act of supposed self-torture, I listened to White Ladder and James Blunt's Back to Bedlam alongside each other, and found that while Blunt's monster hit was, in its entiretey even worse than the sum of its most famous parts and worse than I could possibly have conceived, White Ladder was a a good album. It held together well, the songs were good, well-sung, well-written, well-arranged, moving, entirely acceptable. Wow, the things you find out ...

The idea of "cool" when it comes to this sort of music is inconsequential now. None of this as survived the modern idea of cool. The idea that once I thought David Gray as way less cool than, I don't know, Tom McRae or Matthew Jay, seems ludicrous. Still, it is surprisingly useful how a couple of modern buzz words can help distinguish between the various whiny WGWG which still provide some of my favourite music - those two words are, wait for it .... cringe and toxic.

Perhaps David Gray's music holds up pretty well because it avoids being excessively cringe or excessively toxic. Blunt - 100% pure cringe. Sheeran, often fairly cringe. Dylan - pretty toxic. Ryan Adams - 100% pure toxic. Coldplay - really, at times, pretty cringe and toxic. Wow, I think I've solved the singer-songwriter conundrum at long last.

The reality is, as much as people moan about it, this kind of music is still incredibly popular. Perhaps the only thing more boring than a boring white guy singing and playing guitar is a boring white guy moaning about a boring white guy singing and playing guitar (though I suspect I am now proving that the only thing more boring than a boring white guy moaning about a boring white guy singing and playing guitar is a boring white guy moaning about a boring white guy moaning about a boring white guy singing and playing guitar). Now none of it is cool. But most of it is impervious to fashion. So, of this most bulletproof of brands, the post-Buckley guitar guy, I boldly state that one of the originators, David Gray, was really not so bad after all, and that is most famous song is a pretty nice song. So there.

Glad [2] Help

 I tell you what I've been listening to this week and which is an altogether pleasant surprise - 'Help [2]'.

30-odd years since the original 'Help!' album, it certainly surpasses its illustrious predecessor. 

Having said that, it's not actually the second installment - there was also 'NME in Association with War Child Presents 1 Love' (which I bought), 'Hope' from 2003, 'Help!: A Day in the Life' from 2005 (which I bought) and 'War Child Presents Heroes' from 2009, which I think I listened to. 

This is, I think, the most coherent and satisfying of all the albums. The 1995 'Help' album was scrappy, quite fun, but, clearly, apart from Radiohead's 'Lucky', mainly filled with offcuts, rerecords and covers. Some of the covers were great, but, in as much as, at the time, I loved the big bands and wanted to hear new songs by them, I was mainly a bit disappointed by what they offered, particularly by Blur's Eine Kleine Lift Music.

This new album has a handful of people left over from that 1995 album - Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon both appear (separately), as does Beth Gibbons (and there's an Oasis live bonus track on the physical edition). Pulp are here (though, false memory, they're not actually on the 1995 album though I could have sworn they were). That album had Sinead O'Connor and this one has a really great Sinead O'Connor cover by Fontaines DC.

There's no one quite as legendary as Paul McCartney this time, but there is a really impressive line-up of artists from the 80s (Depeche Mode), 90s (aforementioned and Beck), 00s (Arctic Monkeys, Foals, Bat for Lashes), 10s and 20s. The headliners, bookending the album, are the Arctic Monkeys, with their first new song in years, and Olivia Rodrigo (with help by Graham Coxon) covering the Magnetic Fields as the final track.

The original Help album was done in a day, whereas they gave themselves a week for this one. To be honest, there is no sense of a time constraint or limitation on space. It is just a really good compilation.

The UK and Irish bands these days, I tend to like not love them - so, on this compilation, there are several artists which probably score between 6.5 and 8.5 for me, so, while I don't have the expectation they're going to blow my mind, I generally quite like what they sound like. So, where the original Help had, you might say, quite meh contributions relative to what I hoped Blur, Oasis, Stone Roses etc might offer, this album has a whole lot of songs by bands where my response is more "that's a good song by that band that generally does good songs". ... if you see what I mean ...

I suppose the nature of the way music is released helps. In 1995, bands would have been much more pressed to keep their best songs for their own albums and singles, and putting something half-decent on a compilation might have felt like giving something too precious away. 

Now, a song's a song, it can become popular from anywhere via streaming etc. The Arctic Monkeys track has become a pretty big single for them. There's no harm in bands giving up really good songs to this.

Another thing is it's really coherent. The producer James Ford has been in charge of it, and, somehow or other, it sounds like a really well put together track-listing. There are a lot of explicitly anti-war songs and a lot of songs that sound really good back-to-back.

So far, my favourites on the album are Parasite by English Teacher with Graham Coxon, Carried My Girl by Bat for Lashes, Don't Fight the Young by Young Fathers, Black Boys on Mopeds (the Sinead O'Connor cover) by Fontaines  DC, and, surprisingly for me as I'm not a big fan, Nothing I Could Hide by Arlo Parks. 

But, really, there are no duds. It's a really strong, frequently quite moving, listen, which reminds me there's still lots of great indie (in a broad sense) music out there.

The path to Alex James Britpop Classical

Believe it or not, there was a rock band before there was ALEX JAMES BRITPOP CLASSICAL!!!!!!! and that band was called Blur.

I had a thought about Blur (when I could tear my mind away from ALEX! JAMES! BRITPOP! CLASSICAL!) which was that, slightly surprisingly, my favourite Blur album is now Think Tank.

Think Tank is the seventh of nine Blur studio albums, and, although (thankfully) there have been two Blur albums since, this is their break-up album, the sound of a band on its last legs, the two key members divided, the glory years long gone.

Think Tank is not the only sad Blur album about the end of things, of course. It is a funny thing about this band, so far from their tabloid image, that Blur, 13, Think Tank and The Ballad of Darren, are all, to an extent, about the end of an era, and even Parklife, their prime "Britpop" album, contains To the End, End of a Century, This is a Low and Badhead - songs about ends and/or feeling bad.

I'll take a little detour from talking just about Blur to talking about Britpop in general, which will lead back to Think Tank. As much as I'm quite defensive when the usual criticisms of Britpop recur, it's also true that ... I don't really listen to it. It's not actually the music I like to listen to, and hasn't been for a long time. I think there were an unusual number of excellent indie-guitar bands of that era, many of whom I have considerable fondness for, but it's not the Britpop of theirs that I'd listen to. Like, what are the classic Britpop songs?

• Parklife, Girls and Boys, Country House
• Common People, Disco 2000
• Alright
• Cigarettes and Alcohol, Live Forever
• Trash and Beautiful Ones
• Wake Up Boo
• Waking Up
• Slight Return
• Great Things
• Fine Time
• Female of the Species
• Good Enough
• Daydreamer
• Inbetweener

A few nice memories, but not sure the last time I chose to listen to any of those...

Blur were the first of those bands for me, in some ways they're the definition of Britpop, and they're the one I still love the most, but the reason I still love them so much is precisely how quickly and how far they moved away from it.

Think Tank is probably the Blur album that sounds least like Blur - for obvious reasons, mainly that Graham Coxon only plays on one track. Actually The Good, the Bad and the Queen, from 2007, sounds a lot more, thematically, like a Blur album than Think Tank (that is another album I realise I love quite a lot now).

I liked it when it came out, but have grown to love it. It's interesting for a few reasons. It's the first Blur album after Gorillaz had success, and after the Mali Music album, so the first time Blur was just one Damon Albarn project, not the Damon Albarn project. With Graham's absence, there is more contribution from Dave and Alex, both in terms of composition and background vocals. There is more acoustic guitar, less lead guitar. There are more drum loops and world music influences. Although there is the trauma and sadness of Coxon's absence, this is Albarn near the start of the long-term relationship he'd be in for the two decades. In short, this is the closest he ever gets to sounding like a nice, normal person on an album. 

By which I mean, no shade, there are several really lovely, endearing songs on this. I've always loved Battery in Your Leg (the song about Coxon that Coxon actually plays on) - there's Good Song and Sweet Song, which really are those things (I think Sweet Song is one of my all-time favourite Blur songs). On the Way to the Club is also a subtle beauty, and then there's the single Out of Time, which gets better and better with age, and leads the anti-war theme of the album. I always felt with 13, this album's predecessor, that I wanted to love it, but it just didn't hold on to enough tunes and lyrics - it just didn't have enough "song" for someone like me, whereas Think Tank carries on the path away from Parklife, but remembers to have more actual song.

For years, I've loathed Crazy Beat, the second single, the botched attempt to do another Song 2, or Girls and Boys, produced by Norman Cook, but now, in the context of the album, I almost like how botched it is, as if the whole purpose is to say "this is not what this band is" ... well, there's a spin ...

Blur are a very different band after The Great Escape - imagine if their first album had been Blur, how differently the world would look on them. Don't get me wrong, when I go see the monster stadium act BLUR what I want is To the End and The Universal and For Tomorrow and This is a Low and Popscene, and, fuck it, Country House, but, to me, the reason Blur are the greatest British band of their era is because of Blur, Think Tank and The Ballad of Darren (I like The Magic Whip as well, certainly the second half of it, and think 13 is a nobler failure than The Great Escape is).

Albarn's prolificity this century is quite something - three Africa Express albums, two GBQ, two solo, two operas, one musical, I'd even forgotten there was Rocket Juice and the Moon as well. Oh yes, and eight albums and several EPs by one of the biggest dance/hip-hop acts in the world. 

My favourite of all that is still Blur, and I sure hope there's a 10th Blur album to cap it all - to celebrate, returning to Alex James Britpop Classical, that a band can still be triumphant whilst having the most truly embarrassing grifter of a bassist any band could possibly have, but anyway, here's a 60-song Albarn compilation, which I think has a pretty dizzying level of quality and range.

1. Ascension - Gorillaz ft Vince Staples
2. Song 2 - Blur
3. Sunset Coming On - Mali Music
4. For Tomorrow - Blur
5. There's No Other Way - Blur
6. The Narcissist - Blur
7. On Melancholy Hill - Gorillaz
8. On the Way to the Club - Blur
9. 19/2000 - Gorillaz
10. Young and Lovely - Blur
11. Apple Carts - Damon Albarn
12. The Nearer the Mountain, the Purer the Stream - Damon Albarn
13. Badhead - Blur
14. Good Song - Blur
15. Dirty Harry - Gorillaz
16. Photographs (You Are Taking Now) - Damon Albarn
17. Trimm Trabb - Blur
18. End of a Century - Blur
19. 80s Life - The Good the Bad and the Queen
20. Sweet Song - Blur
21. He Thought of Cars - Blur
22. Oil - Gorillaz ft Stevie Nicks
23. Superfast Jellyfish - Gorillaz ft Gruff Rhys and De la Soul
24. Yuko and Hiro - Blur
25. Under the Westway - Blur
26. Soldier's Tale - The Good, the Bad and the Queen
27. Everyday Robots - Damon Albarn
28. Best Days - Blur
29. Silent Running - Gorillaz
30. On Your Own - Blur
31. Heavy Seas of Love - Damon Albarn
32. Sunday Sunday - Blur
33. Poison - Rocket Juice and the Moon
34. Herculean - The Good the Bad and the Queen
35. Andromeda - Gorillaz
36. Popscene - Blur
37. Cracker Island - Gorillaz
38. Merrie Land - The Good the Bad and the Queen
39. Chemical World - Blur
40. Beetlebum - Blur
41. We Got the Power - Gorillaz ft Jehnny Beth and Noel Gallagher
42. This is a Low - Blur
43. Rock the House - Gorillaz
44. Momentary Bliss - Gorillaz
45. The Universal - Blur
46. Ong Ong - Blur
47. Feel Good Inc - Gorillaz ft De la Soul
48. Tender - Blur
49. Goodbye Albert - Blur
50. Barbaric - Blur
51. Northern Whale - The Good the Bad and the Queen
52. Skinny Ape - Gorillaz
53. Pyongyang - Blur
54. The Universal - Blur
55. Let Me Out - Gorillaz ft Mavis Staples and Pusha T
56. The Heights - Blur
57. Death of the Party - Blur
58. Battery in Your Leg - Blur
59. Out of Time - Blur
60. To the End - Blur ft Francoise Hardy

10 Books

Having not read much for the previous couple of years, I determined, in summer of 2018, to read as many short novels as I could. Somehow or other, in the first year, I managed 70 (don't even know how that happened). It settled down after that, and I've found it harder to read quickly since my eyesight started to deteriorate, amongst other time-stealing factors, but I am still managing to have a book on the go all the time, and am managing to get through 15+ a year, which I'm happy with. I am also glad that I don't give up on a book. Maybe sometimes it would be a good idea, but I've stuck with every single one I've picked up in this period. 

So, I thought I'd write a paragraph or two about 10 of my favourites from these seven years of reading. I wouldn't say these will be reviews so much as attempts to remember how the books made me feel.

Firstly ...

Autumn - Ali Smith

Like other Ali Smith books, Autumn invites you into a world of words, ideas and arts - in this case, the central real-life figure is the (then) little-known pop artist Pauline Boty. [each of the books in the Seasons tetralogy revolves around a Shakespeare play and a female artist].This was the first Ali Smith book I'd read, and, though I am now more used to her style, this book rather swept me off my feet. As a writer she gives you a lot but doesn't demand all that much in return. The sentences flow, the quirky jokes keep coming, the type is big and easy (I like big type!). You learn a lot and you feel comforted. I can sometimes feel a bit uncertain about books that are this easy and enjoyable to read, and perhaps the three other season books fell victim to that in my mind. But I have rarely felt such a giddy thrill, from good humour, anger, learning, storytelling, as with this book.

As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner

I read it this year, having read The Sound and the Fury more than 10 years ago. TSATF has 4 sections - the first is so (deliberately) impenetrable that, truthfully, although I ended up getting to grips with the book, my memory of it is still a bit tainted by my initial uncomprehending... fury. I am just not sure anything should be so utterly impossible to grasp in the moment.

As I Lay Dying was written a year later, in 1930. I loved it. I found it a strangely blissful read. There are unreliable and confused narrators, certainly, and you don't really add everything up until the end, but you're always in the game! It's a beautiful, sad, tale, seems like it's years ahead of its time.

The Green Road - Anne Enright

I read this in the week before the first lockdown, at the start of March 2020, so obviously my head was full of BIG THOUGHTS at the time. This is one of my favourite novels ever, if not my favourite. It is an Irish family saga - there's an aged parent and four children who are then, in the middle section separately, and in the later section together, adults. Clearly I had some investment.

There is a section focussing on (or starting with) one of the grown-up sons living in New York during the AIDS crisis, which could stand alone from the rest of the novel, and is, I felt at the time, the work of a writer possessed, consumed by genius. Enright is always a stylish writer - the first book I read by her 'The Forgotten Waltz', I felt a bit like the intensity of the writing overwhelmed the paucity of the story, and. though I've ended up liking all the rest of her novels, there's nothing else that has hit me as hard as The Green Road, in particular that section of The Green Road - I somewhat think that might be the greatest thing I've ever read.

Harlem Shuffle - Colson Whitehead

This was the novel Colson Whitehead wrote after winning the Pulitzer twice in succession, for 'The Underground Railroad', which I haven't read, then 'Nickel Boys', which I have. Those are (I presume of the first and know of the second) pretty heavy books.

Harlem Shuffle is, on the other hand, a hoot. One of the most enjoyable books I've read - a piece of crime fiction set in New York in the early 60s, with a hero you root for and villains who are only a bit villainous. I think my tendency seems to be to choose books that end up being a bit unsettling, but every now and then it's nice to read something that is both brilliantly written and not unsettling at all.

Riddley Walker - Russell Hoban

I read several contemporary Russell Hoban novels in my twenties. I enjoyed them. They were funny and light and rude. In fact, they had a lot in common with Ali Smith - there was usually a piece of art at the centre, and there was a delight in playing with language. 

Knowing Hoban's son as I did/do, Wieland would sometimes roll his eyes when I mentioned I'd enjoyed his dad's latest book and say, you should read his earlier stuff, that's much more substantial. I'd tried Riddley Walker first, though, and not got past the first couple of pages. I finally committed to read it in 2019. It is, strangely, a masterpiece, one of the greatest books ever written, entirely the work of a writer possessed, with a depth of storytelling and prophesy and wit, skill in language, darkness and beauty, that I have come across in very few other places. It is also, funnily enough, set in a post-apocalyptic eastern Kent which is where I live right now! Boom-tish!

August is a Wicked Month - Edna O'Brien

I didn't think, at the time, that this was one of my favourites, but it has stayed with me. It is the first novel she wrote after The Country Girls trilogy which began her career with a bang. It also, like them, feels pretty semi-autobiographical - indeed, one of the funniest things is the lead character meeting a Hollywood actor on the French riviera who I could just tell was meant to be Robert Mitchum, and then you google Edna O'Brien Robert Mitchum...

Anyway, what strikes me about this book, very much like the last of the Country Girls books, Girls in Their Married Bliss, is how very sad they made me feel at the end. Rather like Y Tu Mama Tambien, this book just pulled the rug away and that feeling had not really left me.

The Heat of the Day - Elizabeth Bowen

I was given this dark, misanthropic wartime thriller set in a strangely recognisable London, where no one is treated all that kindly by the author. I was struck by how much confidence Bowen had in her sentence construction. I would get halfway through a vast half-page flowing sequence of words and worry that she'd forgotten the main verb, and then there it would be when you needed it most. I don't think I'm a man who, on average, is interested in the First or Second World War, but they sure do have a lot of great novels about them.

Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

A lot of people write a lot of different things, and you can't necessarily tell much about an author by what they write, but, hey, let's make an exception, it's clear to tell from Blood Meridian that Cormac McCarthy was a depraved man ... well, at the time, apparently, this was his transitional novel as from this point on his novels had more morality and beauty, and that is certainly true of All the Pretty Horses and The Road, later books I'd already read. In this book, like in the Simon and Garfunkel song, they've all gone to look for America and what they find is not so nice. 

Apparently, the unfilmable novel is finally being filmed. 

Old God's Time - Sebastian Barry, Night Boat to Tangier - Kevin Barry

Two for the price of one - both by (unrelated) Irish Barrys. I read a disproportionate number of novels by Irish people - there are a disproportionate number of excellent Irish novelists, and, I guess, I just like the territory. Old God's Time is a beautiful novel, very much in the world that a lot of Irish novels are in - the church, child abuse, history, memory. S Barry's Days Without End (set in a similar America to Blood Meridian) is also a beautiful novel. K Barry's books are hilarious - Night Boat to Tangier is also about history and memory, but it's funny as hell and like a gangster's Waiting for Godot.

Their Brilliant Careers: The Fantastic Lives of Sixteen Extraordinary Australian Writers - Ryan O'Neill

And, finally, this masterpiece. If I ever wrote a work of fiction, I would want it to be like this, and in a way, I think, I'd have my best shot of writing something in this vein - just having one silly idea and running with it all the way, creating this fabulously fact-based alternative reality, full of detail and history and names and faux-solemnity.

I would recommend this book above all others. It's the Inside Number 9 of 21st century novels.

2025

I guess it's time to tell you the music I liked this year.

Some years I write a big review of the year, because they are vast magnificent years, and sometimes my rundown is quite desultory, as I felt there just wasn't that much that really stood out.

This year is somewhat in between. I'm not sure there are many classic albums this year - there may be one. There are a lot of songs I enjoyed. I found myself listening to a lot of old music in quite specific ways. So, for the first month or so, I was basically listening to Bob Dylan entirely, then in the middle of the year, I listened to all the UK Number 1 singles ever that I didn't know, and lately I've been listening to acclaimed American songs from this century I didn't know.

I have also tried to stay on top of good new music, but with a lot of albums, I realised I listened to them to the point of saying to myself "I recognise this is a good album", but then not that much more.

So, all that being said, I'm going to list

a) my 25 favourite new songs

b) 25 old songs I loved this year

c) 25 albums which made me go "this is a good album"

So here are my 25 favourite songs. There'll only be one by each artist

1. Anthem - Mavis Staples. Well, it's taken 30 years for Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley to no longer be my favourite Leonard Cohen cover that mentions the holy dove, but here we are. This is miraculous, really, the perfect meeting of singer and song. Moving beyond any words.
2. Where is My Husband - Raye Just a huge, joyous burst of talent and charisma. I'm not sure I'll still be listening to it in a few months, but this feels like something like Doo Wop (That Thing) or Crazy in Love, just a major announcement of stardom.
3. Invisible Thread - The Divine Comedy
4. Knocking Heart - Hamilton Leithauser
5. wayne rooney '06 - jim legxacy Just the most unexpected indie pop anthem of the year.
6. Elderberry Wine  - Wednesday This was probably the song most like the thing I like all year.
7. Be Kind - Annahstasia
8. mangetout - wet leg
9. I Love You - Tobias Jesso Jr
10. Remembering Now - Van Morrison He really did a good, moving album this year, that old grump Morrison the Vorrison.
11. Music by Men - Florence and the Machine
12. 16 Chapters - Dave ft Kano This is charming, funny, for me the standout track on the album which is good but has had quite a lukewarm reception.
13. Days Gone By - Midlake
14. Nice to Each Other - Olivia Dean
15. When a Good Man Cries - CMAT
16. Westerberg - Blood Orange
17. Lou Reed was My Babysitter - Jeff Tweedy
18. Taxes - Geese
19. Opalite - Taylor Swift Funny the Taylor Swift album, which has been listened to a fair bit in this house. Probably some of her catchiest tunes, but I'd wager the day it was released was one of the world's all-time cringe days. Hard to get through most of the songs. To me, Opalite is clearly the best tune and the least wincing lyric.
20. The Subway - Chappell Roan
21. Golden - Huntr/x
22. Wasteland - Snocaps
23. Divinize - Rosalia
24. House - Charli XCX ft John Cale Bit of fun.
25. Background Noise - Pulp

OK, and 25 of the non-2025 songs I loved listening to this year

• Why Do Fools Fall in Love? - Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers
• Love it if We Made It (Live from Madison Square Garden) - The 1975
• Caravan (live from The Last Waltz) - Van Morrison
• Ruby Falls - Waxahatchee
• Something Like Happiness - The Maccabees
• Doll Parts - Hole
• Diamonds - Rihanna
• Concrete and Clay - Unit 4 + 2
• Silver Lady - David Soul
• Novacane - Frank Ocean I listened to Channel Orange and Blonde when they came out, and although I heard the talent, I just didn't hear one great song, so I've never really been on the Frank Ocean train, and I only heard Novacane, his debut single, this year, and it's brilliant, a proper tour de force (contains one of the great "Yikes!"), and I reckon if I'd heard this first, I might have heard the rest in a different light.
• Save it for Later - The Beat
• Isis (live from Montreal) - Bob Dylan
• Place to Be - Nick Drake
• Hasta La Raiz - Natalia Lafourcade
• Doo Wop (That Thing) - Lauryn Hill
• I Can't Give You Anything But My Love - The Stylistics
• There Must Be An Angel - Eurythmics
• Werewolf - Fiona Apple This is one of the best lyrics ever written.
• Suite: Judy Blue Eyes - Crosby, Stills and Nash
• Don't Let Go (Love) - En Vogue
• Surf - Roddy Frame
• Cranes in the Sky - Solange
• What a Fool Believes - Doobie Brothers
• Chop Suey - System of a Down
• Treaty - Leonard Cohen I've listened to a lot of Lenny in the last month. This is a song from his last album. I can't get enough of him singing "I'm angry and I'm tired all the time", because like a prophet, he really pre-empted the era when everyone in their right mind is angry and tired all the time.

And 25 albums I thought were good (there are others, actually, but, here are 25)

1. This Side of the Island - Hamilton Leithauser I think this is the album I've listened to most, and, since it looks like the Walkmen might not be following up their reunion tour with new music, it's very nice to hear the singer from the Walkmen giving it a bit of Walkmen
2. Lux - Rosalia Though this is, I think, the classic album of the year.
3. Eurocountry - CMAT.
4. Songs for Nina and Johanna - James Yorkston with Nina Persson and Johanna Soderberg I obviously love Yorkston, but it's also very nice to hear Johanna Soderberg taking lead vocal on songs.
5. Sad and Beautiful World - Mavis Staples
6. black british music - jim legxacy
7. Everybody Scream - Florence and the Machine. Very funny, acerbic lyrics.
8. Bleeds - Wednesday
9. Tether - Annahstasia 
10. The Art of Loving - Olivia Dean Great album, hits all the way through.
11. Remembering Now - Van Morrison
12. moisturiser - wet leg
13. Interior Live Oak - Cass McCombs
14. Who Believes in Angels? - Elton John and Brandi Carlile
15. snocaps - snocaps
16. A Bridge to Far - Midlake
17. Getting Killed - Geese I like the Geese, but just can't quite get there. It's been interesting reading a lot of people split on the vocals of Cameron Winter. Some absolutely love him, some, like me, find that the main stumbling block. It's one of those ones, like, say with Yeasayer, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, even Julian Casablancas, where the singer sounds both passionate and bored, and it doesn't quite work for me. It sounds like a bit of a bit. I think it might take seeing this band live to really get them.
18. Essex Honey - Blood Orange
19. Antidepressants - Suede
20. The Boy with the Harp - Dave
21. Virgin - Lorde
22. Love, Death and Dennis Hopper - Waterboys
23. Straight Line was a Lie - The Beths
24. Baby - Dijon
25. More - Pulp

And what else? I've seen not many films this year but I loved 

The Ballad of Wallis Island.

Have read slowly and steadily and my one 10/10 was William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, but also loved Donal O'Ryan's The Spinning Heart and Heart, be at peace, and Paul Lynch's Prophet Song.

Favourite TV show ... dunno, I'm going to say

The Bear - though Season 4 really got it back on track. Damn, Rob Reiner ...

It's been 30 years since 30 years

I have (re)watched The Beatles Anthology. I'm pretty certain, apart from clips that come up on YouTube, this is the first time I've rewatched it since it was first broadcast in Nov/Dec 1995, and I have a few thoughts about a) The Beatles and b) watching The Beatles anthology.

It is quite a staid documentary - that is my first thought. It potters along. There are only six talking heads throughout - McCartney, Harrison, Starr, George Martin, Neil Aspinall, and, a little bit, Derek Taylor (and, of course, the voice of Lennon, usually from 70s interviews). All inner circle. Fair enough, it is not a series about the Beatles per se, it is a series by The Beatles. It is openly canon. Imagine it nowadays with various tabloid journalists and modern fans and rival bands, they'd probably have wives and children too, and some of that would provide interesting context, and a lot of it wouldn't.

Of course, it was not as exciting to me this time around as when I first watched it. But, it dawned on me pretty early on in the rewatch, Anthology was when I really first found out about The Beatles. I mean, I knew about the Beatles by 1995, but only in a pretty limited way. At home, we had the Oldies but Goldies tape (hits up to about 65), my aunt had Sgt Pepper, I'd heard a few other songs, but the Beatles didn't get played that much on the radio, not as much as Queen and Elton John etc. I'd have known the ones that were taught at school - Yellow Submarine, When I'm 64, I'd have known Hey Jude, Strawberry Fields, Let it Be, I don't know if my knowledge went much deeper than that of their later years. So, watching and listening in autumn 1995, it was all revelatory and thrilling. Whereas now, of course, I know it all already, several times over.

So, what, if anything, did I notice this time around? Two main things, linked together. It's about McCartney and Harrison. So much written about McCartney and Lennon, but McCartney and Harrison is just as important, in a good and and a bad way. These are the two who always knew each other, a school year apart. These are the two who stood together on stage, singing into one mic, whereas Lennon is usually on his own on the other side, standing face-on. 

This is the most beautiful thing I really noticed this time. The, for want of a better word, choreography of the Beatles as a live band. McCartney with his left-handed bass, Harrison with his right-handed lead, the melodic heart of the band, leaning into each other, singing their harmonies, George stepping away when Paul's on lead, then, with perfect timing, coming up for the chorus. I'm not sure I've ever seen another band so perfectly use three voices and three guitars. The vocal sound of the Beatles is one of the all-time great vocal sounds, not as revered as the Beach Boys or CSN, but just as memorable, and that's Paul and George singing into one mic together working off John a few metres away. So wonderful.

And then there's the other thing with Paul and George - the overbearing older brother thing, which never went away, and you can see it really clearly in the doc, even in the 90s when they're all cheery and nice. Paul is trying his best not to annoy George, George is just about putting up with it. 

It's quite something to hear the hurt vitriol with which Harrison speaks about McCartney in 70s interviews - "Paul McCartney ruined me as a guitar player", and, of course, we all saw that painful tension between then in 'Get Back'. By the 90s, they're equals - Harrison has done Here Comes the Sun, Something, While Me Guitar ... he's done All Things Must Pass, he's organized the concert for Bangladesh, he's produced Life of Brian. Paul knows they're equals now, but still ...

The series has been edited somewhat since 1995, including tacking on an extra "making of" episode, which shows some of the recording of Free as a Bird. It is funny to think about Free as a Bird now. It was, when released close to Christmas 95, considered rather disappointing, both critically and commercially. It reached Number 2, kept off the top by Robson and Jerome. I wonder if it had been released out of the blue, rather than after everyone had been enjoying several weeks of classic Beatles song, it would have fared better. As it is, listening to it now, I had, ironically, a powerful sense of nostalgia for 1995, hearing a song with a pretty melody which was everywhere for a short period of time but which I've hardly heard in the intervening 30 years.

I have been trying, self-indulgently, to figure out my exact chronology of musical discovery in late 95. Time it was and what a time it was etc ... when Bob Dylan came up in Episode 2, I couldn't quite remember if I had already had Dylan tapes made for me by Stephen Bovey and Jeremy Levine, whether I was already saying "Aah, yeah, here comes my hero Bobby D" or whether it was literally this episode that prompted me to get into Dylan. 

And, most pertinently, at what point did Alex Frith copy for me the Red album and the Blue album? Was it before Anthology, during Anthology, or after Anthology? Mindblowing to think about the Red and the Blue album as well, to remember, when I listened, how many of the songs I didn't know (this makes me think he made it for me just before the show was broadcast) and heard, all at once, for the first time ... Drive My Car, Girl, Nowhere Man, Revolution, In My Life, Penny Lane even, I Am the Walrus, Lady Madonna, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Don't Let Me Down, John and Yoko. Nuts. That 56 song collection, first issued in 1973 (it was expanded recently, but we'll ignore that) is really, obviously, the most sustained collection of brilliance there is in pop songs. 56 songs across 8 years. Arguably, the only slight drop-offs are Ob-La-Di and Old Brown Shoe. And what of the songs that aren't included? 

To name a few - I Saw Her Standing There, If I Needed Someone, Happiness is a Warm Gun, For No One, Here, There and Everywhere, And Your Bird Can Sing, Got to Get you Into My Life, Blackbird, Twist and Shout, Oh! Darling, Helter Skelter, She’s Leaving Home, Tomorrow Never Knows.

Imagine (not Imagine, of course ...) another band making a 56-song Best of covering eight years and not having room for those songs ...

As well as red and blue albums, I think Alex also taped me the White album a while after that, and I also did buy Anthology 3 - I had that before I had Abbey Road and Let it Be, so the Anthology versions  were my first experience of some of those songs. The other great thing about Anthology 3 was that it had an early version of All Things Must Pass and McCartney laying out Come and Get It for Badfinger. Genuinely, I remember Come and Get It was my favourite song on the whole thing for a while ...

And the one other thing I thought, watching Anthology, was about death.

The series talks about Stuart Sutcliffe, but then, somewhat weirdly/disrespectfully, doesn't mention him dying. Maybe in the 1995 broadcast, Backbeat was so recent that that was a given for most viewers, but still.

But, then, I thought (and I saw someone else talking about this as regards McCartney recently). the Beatles have so many deaths running through their history. Paul's mother in 56, John's mother in 58, Sutcliffe in 62, Brian Epstein in 67, Mal Evans in 76 ... all just absolute core people to the core people.

And then, of course, you think, how strange that Paul McCartney remained the most cheerful man in the world, then to lose Lennon, his wife Linda, George - all of those people by the time he was 60.

So, to end with McCartney - it remains pretty extraordinary that he was, all at the same time, the bossy annoying one, the organiser, the workaholic one, the adaptable one (prepared to bunk with Ringo, prepared to switch to bass), the more financially savvy one, the cute boybandy one, the first heavy rock one, the melodic genius, the lyrical master, the keeper of the flame. Some fellow.