What Is The Worst Year In Pop History? And The Best?

Don't worry Tom, the question is interesting. My vote for best year ever in Pop goes to: 1991. The laboratory of Rave working overtime, banging out classic tune after classic tune, with added Screamadelica, Laughing Stock, Adventures beyond the Ultraworld and Loveless. Second prize goes to: 1995 (Tricky, 'Timeless', jungle goes mega). Third prize: 1988 probably although 1969 ('Bitches Brew' vs. The Stooges vs. 'Gimme Shelter') is pretty ace too.

Worst year in Pop? Probably 1985. One of the few redeeming things may be 'Slave to the rhythm' and in retrospect 'No Ufo's' but otherwise? Bloody Live Aid.

The best year in pop is the one when you're 17. That's 1981 in my case. The worst was the one where you turned 36.

A swift mental check-back to 1990 blows David's theory out of the water. 1981 was much better. Unless...maybe if you have a crap 17th year popwise you end up with the nagging urge to turn yourself into a rock critic.....!

I was 17 in 1989 - decent year for albums but a cruddy time to be listening to the radio. Not my fave by any stretch.

Nope, my sentimental favorite is 1984 - I was 12, and it was a glorious time to be listening to the radio. I would religiously listen to Casey Kasem's American Top 40 every Saturday night, and quality was so high that I'd actually get puzzled whenever a dull song would make it.

That was before everyone went their own separate purist way. Everyone who wasn't punk/indie seemed to be shooting for hit singles, and doing whatever it took to make one that sounded good, mixing up guitars and synths and dance beats and catchy melodies all over and whatever else, didn't matter if they were metal or r&b or disco or classic rock, Van Halen sounded right at home next to Pointer Sisters or Grandmaster Flash or Bruce Springsteen, and you had lots of goofy novelties like Robin Gibb's "Boys Do Fall In Love" and Laid Back's "White Horse" on top of that. Even people that you usually had no reason to expect anything decent from (Lionel Richie, Steve Perry, Yes) were coming up with fun, catchy stuff It was also a time when dance artists tried to make songs that were also fun for non-dancers like me (say, Shannon's "Let's The Music Play").

Worst year I can think of right of the bat is 1990. The radio was full of schlocky pop, schlocky metal ballads, schlocky tuneless dance songs... Wilson Phillips, Vanilla Ice, "Turtle Power", Slaughter... and less mainstream stuff was just as crappy, it was getting to the point were people were pretending Mudhoney was a good band. Sonic Youth & The Pixies were pretty much the only bands I cared about by that point. I was mostly buying old stuff, and also trying to make myself believe that the trendy dance-rock bands coming out of the UK were worthy of attention. I had yet to shake off the last remnants of my Anglophilia, a disease entirely cured by now :).

This may betray my rather more liberal view of what constitutes pop, but I've got to go with '69, and I don't even like Bitches Brew. Two (or was it three?) great Creedence LPs, two great Scott Walker LPs, every worthwhile tropicalia record, the Shaggs, Isaac Hayes' best album, Amon Düül, Stand!, my favorite Dylan album, Peter Brotzmann's Nipples, the aforementioned Stooges, Dusty in Memphis, Trout Mask Replica.

I don't know what was happening in "pop" music then, but 1959 saw the releases of Miles Davis' _Kind of Blue_ and _Sketches of Spain_, John Coltrane's _Giant Steps_, Charles Mingus' _Mingus Ah Um_, _Mingus Dynasty_, and _Blues and Roots_, as well as some great Monk - the Town Hall concert, _Five by Monk by Five_, and _Alone in San Fransisco_. I'm sure I've just scratched the surface there, too. (And come to think of it, 1960 was pretty damn good too - including 4 or so Coltrane albums!).

Best: 1927...The Carter Family's first recordings, Jimmie Rodgers first recordings, "Motherless Children Have A Hard Time" and "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" (among others) by Bind Willie Johnson, Louis Armstrong's Hot Seven records, "My Blue Heaven" by the Rhythm Boys, "Black and Tan Fantasy" by Duke Ellington, The Jazz Singer w/ Al Jolson, Jelly Roll Morton and the Red Hot Peppers, and on and on. Plus Babe Ruth hits 60 home runs, Jack Dempsey/Gene Tunney and the long count, and Charles Lindbergh starts a dance craze. 1966, 1978, 1984, 1999, and 2000 weren't bad either. The mid- late 1980s were poor, excepting rap and metal.

2001 is already on the way to beating 2000 for the worst year in pop.

Best was 1307 for Friar Nurt's "Lute Fever".

Worst: 1972!!!! (Lindisfarne!!!!! Liverpool Express!!!!!!!)

Best: 1 million BC, and that bloke banging two rocks together!!!!!

Old Fart!!!!!!

Best: My answer is always "this year", but if I don't include 2001 then I'd have to say 1991 and 1994. '91 for the classic albums, and '94 for the rude health of music everywhere (but particularly jungle, house, trip hop and post-rock).

Worst: How would I know? It's not like I collect bad music.

Best: My answer is always "this year", but if I don't include 2001 then I'd have to say 1991 and 1994. '91 for the classic albums, and '94 for the rude health of music everywhere (but particularly jungle, house, trip hop and post-rock). Can't comment with enough knowledge on pre-nineties years.

Worst: How would I know? It's not like I collect bad music.

1959 -- the year we lost Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens. Duh. Also a year in which the country was Elvis-less to begin with, as he was off in the army. Truly the year the music died.

Did Miles Davis invent the time machine? How can you record an album (save one for one track) on March 10, 1960 and have it released in 1959?

Sorry, some sources list it as 59. I guess we can't all be DOCTORS OF FUNK like y'all.

It's Doctor of Funk and Good Lovin', thank you good sir.

1981 was by far the best year pop ... it was the year of the Ant afterall! 1987 wasn't too hot on the other hand (but Throwing Muses and the Pixies showed a bright dawn on the horizon).

The worst: 2000 .... all these stupid sons of thom yorke, "suffer in vain" kids like coldplay, muse, travis and the rest.... All the teen pop...and the teen gangsta ... and the teen nu metal...puaj!!

The best: 1967/8 more than 30 years ago and still i found some unknowmn band with a psychedelic dress playing something interesting...

I will arise and go now and go to nineteen eighty-nine

The best might be 1983. Murmur, Before Hollywood, High Land Hard Rain, Power, Corruption and Lies, The Smiths... The worst is more difficult, I don't have an answer.

OK, the first Smiths album was 1984, but This Charming Man was 1983. You know what I mean anyway. Probably.

After BBC2's 'I Love 1989' I might have to arise and come back from 1989.

Indeed. I curse them for reminding me that the Lambada even existed.

Yeah, now I have to curse you Robin for reminding me! ;) I totally forgot.

I never knew it existed. I certainly didn't see it in 1989. Indeed, I doubt that it ever has existed. They just made it up for the programme. The desperation with which they sought their disappointing material was evident enough from the fact that they pretended, with plenty bad footage from someone's VCR, that Leslie Grantham was an icon of 1989. Not so.

I stopped watching it after it reached 1988. I just got the feeling that as the series got nearer to the present day, the selections didn't have such strong resonances, although the programme makers obviously tried to make them seem that they did. Some of the early Acid House footage was strangely other-worldly though.

I reviewed the 1981 programme for another website and thought it was absolutely fantastic precisely because it did seem genuinely resonant, magical, and distant from today. By 1989 most of those qualities had gone; everything just seemed so familiar. I shudder at the prospect of a 90s series this summer.

Also, as the decade went on, the imagery evoked became less pleasantly nostalgic, and more suggestive of an aggressive, go- getting attitude which can never seem so reassuring no matter how hard a programme like this tries. I didn't see most of the '88 programme, but I would suspect that it was the contrast with everything else in the mainstream which, by definition, dominated the show, which made the Acid House scenes seem so other-worldly, more than the historical distance.

If they are actually doing a 1990s retro series then bring it on. There is little that would expose the paucity of the nostalgia format more.

I cant see I love 1981 as being any cooler than I love 1989, sorry.

Wait until the nostalgia bugs have passed over, then check out what they didn't scavenge. It'll usually have been too crass, or too complex, or both. Either way, you win.

I'd agree with you, Tom, in the sense that nostalgia TV is the deadest of all ends, a fairly cheap and cynical means of filling 90 minutes, and if the forthcoming 90s series shows up the emptiness of this format, then so much the better. I'd dance on its grave, basically.

However, if the programme is well-made and well-produced and I find what is in it interesting and revealing and I quite like a lot of it, I can like the programme (while disliking the ideas behind it). I thought I Love 1981 was fantastic, lovingly-made television. But every one of Mark Morris's words on the format remain true.

There was an article in The Times to-day - various people talking about best years / worst years. It was kind of interesting.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,14932-1956865,00.html

Has this thread been done on ILM elsewhere? I can't believe this faded out in 2001.

Apparantly it's based on a Radio 2 programme on January 2nd.

Oh yeah - mine would be best and worst both 1980 - Joy Division really hitting their stride and then Ian Curtis killing himself.

Having said that I think I'm missing the gist of the article. I think they're really thinking about bigger trends then one band. That's much more tricky.

"The disco explosion of 1978"? Isn't that kind of like the "Tarantino explosion of 1996"?

Oh, and the fact that 2005 is on the list and 2001 isn't = ha ha, people of Britain, you so crazy! (But I still luv u and yr Ricky Gervaises.)