Music Meme

The music meme spreads. The meme is a bit different than your typical question-and-answer meme. In this meme, you pick your favorite album for every year in which you have been alive. It’s a creative idea, though terribly frustrating for those who have so many favorite albums! I was tagged by R. O. Flyer, after he was tagged by D. W. Horskoetter. (I was scandalized when Horskoetter said that the 1980s was a terrible decade. How could the decade of, inter alia, the Pixies, Sonic Youth, The Smiths, R.E.M., Paul Simon, Tom Waits, Beastie Boys, and U2 possibly be a terrible decade?!) In any case, here is my contribution. Since I’d rather avoid the trouble of trying to pick specific names of people to tag, if you are reading this and love to talk about music, consider yourself tagged.

1983: U2, War

1984: Echo & the Bunnymen, Ocean Rain

1985: Tom Waits, Rain Dogs

1986: Paul Simon, Graceland

1987: U2, The Joshua Tree

1988: N.W.A., Straight Outta Compton

1989: Pixies, Doolittle

1990: Public Enemy, Fear of a Black Planet

1991: Nirvana, Nevermind

1992: Pavement, Slanted & Enchanted

1993: Smashing Pumpkins, Siamese Dream

1994: Weezer, Weezer

1995: Radiohead, The Bends

1996: Beck, Odelay

1997: Radiohead, OK Computer

1998: Neutral Milk Hotel, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

1999: Flaming Lips, The Soft Bulletin

2000: Modest Mouse, Moon and Antarctica

2001: Sigur Rós, Ágætis Byrjun (released in Iceland in 1999, in the UK in 2000)

2002: Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

2003: Sufjan Stevens, Greetings from Michigan

2004: Arcade Fire, Funeral

2005: Sufjan Stevens, Come on! Feel the Illinoise

2006: Girl Talk, Night Ripper

2007: The National, Boxer

2008 (so far): Currently a toss-up between Cut Copy (In Ghost Colours), Spiritualized (Songs in A&E), Girl Talk (Feed the Animals), and Fleet Foxes (Fleet Foxes), in that order.


There were some really close second place finishers, some of which probably deserve to be outright ties:

• R.E.M., Murmur (1983)
• Sonic Youth, Daydream Nation (1987)
  
• Pixies, Surfer Rosa (1988)
• Liz Phair, Exile in Guyville (1993)
  
• Magnolia: Music from the Motion Picture (1999)
• Interpol, Turn On the Bright Lights (2002)
  
• The Postal Service, Give Up (2003)
• Sufjan Stevens, Seven Swans (2004)
• TV on the Radio, Return to Cookie Mountain (2006) and Love Is All, Nine Times the Same Song; these albums were #1 and #2 on my original list