Favourite Music Of 2006: Intro

Rather predictably, I listened to a lot of music last year. This was mainly possible due to the amount of time available during my career break. I spent a lot of time actively listening to music and even more with it on in the background. I also had more time for investigation, so I think I listened to more different artists than I would have done otherwise. My tenner-a-month Napster subscription truly came into its own.
I also finally had to confront and change the way I relate to the procurement of music. At the start of the year, I was a confirmed advocate of CDs, a stereotypical Fifty Quid Man. I liked the solidity of Product and with a swanky Bose sound system in the company car I justified this to myself by saying that CD sound quality was important (compared to MP3s). CDs were taking over the house and I was considering dedicated shelving and alphabetising for the first time ever.
Twelve months later, the company car is (thankfully) a thing of the past, fifty quid is now a third of my monthly food budget, the house has been de-cluttered and the CDs ripped to iTunes & boxed up for storage. I can still tell the difference in sound quality between a CD and an MP3, but this seems less important than it did. Shelving plans have been scaled back to cover paperwork only. The need for a monthly accumulation of Product now seems rather bizarre.
I haven’t given up on CDs completely. There remains a handful of artists whose work I still want to have as a physical presence in the house. However, what I’ve seen more clearly throughout the course of this year is that I buy a lot of music that I love for a few months, then rarely listen to again. Looking back at my favourite music of the five most recent years, it’s quite sobering to see how few of my choices I’d be seriously interested in hearing again today: less than 50%.
This has probably been the biggest shift in my relationship with music this year: the open acknowledgement that much of what I listen to is ultimately disposable. I can still remember songs from my teenage years that I’ve felt no inclination to listen to for more than twenty years, but that doesn’t mean it’s always going to be like that. Not all music is Art and much of it will inevitably be forgotten. That takes the pressure off my constant urge to collect and to curate.
I’m reminded again of John Peel’s view that last year’s music is as uninteresting as last week’s newspaper. I’m not sure that’s the entire truth (and Peel himself played a small but significant enough proportion of older stuff to demonstrate that he was aware of the limitations of such an arresting soundbite), but fundamentally I’m beginning to see that it’s a fairly accurate summary of my own approach to the phenomenon into which I invest so much of my time and energy.
On this note, it’s time to look at my favourites from last year and what I thought about them. It’s a celebration and, in some cases, a laying to rest. It’s refreshing finally to have gained an understanding that I’m not documenting a set-in-stone Best-Of list for future generations, but merely recording the musical ephemera of a particular year of my life. I feel less pressure to justify my choices and more enjoyment in simply explaining why I like them.
Even at the time of publishing this intro, I’m still tweaking and re-writing the list itself. Streamlining it, mainly. The original was too large and unwieldy, too wide-reaching. Less is more, so I’m focusing on a hard-core of favourites rather than the original – and hopelessly unachievable – plan to write something about almost every album I encountered last year. Bate your breath, hook your tenters, something should be along very shortly…

Favourite Music Of 2006 permalinks:
Intro, 30-26, 25-21, 20-16, 15-11, 10-6, 5-2, No. 1