Was Music Better Ten Years Ago?
While you patiently wait for our roundup of the best music of 2019, join us as we look back at our picks of 2009
We know how impatient you are to find out what we thought was the best music of this year, and most of all who will win the Noizies for best track and album. Rest assured, we’re as impatient as you to share. But our credo has always been to look back and evaluate after the year is wrapped up. So when the dust has settled, and everyone has shared their inferior best-of lists, we will give you the real deal, the only yearly review that matters.
While you wait and enjoy the holidays, why don’t you join us as we dive into the sea of memories, and look back at what we liked ten years ago?
This is how we started our overview of The Best Music of 2009, exactly ten years ago: “It was a pretty good year! For music, anyway… it sucked for almost everything else”
It’s not easy to conjure up the memories of why we were so pissed off. Indeed, there was a lot of bad stuff happening in 2009, but most of it seems almost quaint by today’s standards. On the music front, while a lot of what was released that year still holds up, Michael Jackson’s passing was nothing short of an earthquake.
The world continued to feel the pangs of the historic Financial Crunch, a crisis that shook the very foundations of world economy and probably paved the way for today’s brand of reborn Socialism. Australia was reeling from the worst wildfires in its history… until this year! In the continuing escalations between Russia and the so-called West, Russia briefly cut off gas supplies to Europe through pipelines in Ukraine, causing a short diplomatic crisis and a rethink of energy dependencies.
We looked at the names of world leaders and shook our heads at how bad the picture was: Bush Jr, Sarkozy, Putin, Berlusconi, Gordon Brown. How naïve we were thinking it couldn’t be any worse. And isn’t today’s horrible bunch not totally indebted to that one?
But we ended the year on a high, with Barack Obama being elected: Hope and Change were buzzwords, “Yes We Can” was chanted everywhere.
Thinking back to the music events of the era, the aforementioned death of Michael Jackson seemed to give new life to his legend, even though his reputation had just been tarnished by revelations about his infatuation with children. Hundreds of millions mourned, miles of eulogies were written and we continue to obsess over him today. Imperfect as he was, the myth lives on.
In another bit of then not-so-signifcant news, a small Swedish company called Spotify made its first public launch in the UK. It is telling that we owned every one of our top albums back then on CD.
But what about music released that year? This is what we had to say:
Old-timers came back strong : artists in the business for 20, 25, 30 and even 40 years made excellent albums. Sexy multi-talented women with weird aliases dominated the first few months. 1980s and 1990s revival was still in full force, with shoegazing the flavour of the year. And hip-hop masters came back to show who was “running this rap shit”.
In 2009 we were witnessing the first significant works of today’s female-dominated alternative scene: St Vincent, Florence and The Machine, Fever Ray, Bat For Lashes and Lady Gaga. Jay-Z, part of the Wu-Tang and Mos Def made comebacks. Many artists we were just discovering became household names (The XX, Lady Gaga, St Vincent, Major Lazer) and others are now the subject of “whatever happened to…?” reflections. The balance of old and new was impressive.
Noize Annoyz 