Could you pick 10 albums from each decade?

[Willie Oleson]

1990s....

1. Adamski - Naughty (1991)

Apart from that one hit-single most techno/house/eurodance acts don't have much to offer on their albums but NAUGHTY sounds very characteristic with its blend of house, down-tempo trance and leftfield.
Featuring "Born To Be Alive" which is not that song.


2. M People - Elegant Slumming (1993)

A sophisticated and, indeed, elegant NU-disco album. Heather Small's voice has contributed a lot to the sound of the nineties.


3. Saint Etienne - Tiger Bay (1994)

It was a tough choice between TIGER BAY and SO TOUGH (hence) but this CD has one of my all-time favourite 90s songs "Pale Movie", and also the HeartOfGlass-esque "Like A Motorway" and also the AndreaTrueConnection-esque "Hug My Soul" and many more song that I like.


4. Annie Lennox - Medusa (1995)

It's almost as if the melody of the songs on MEDUSA are created by her voice instead of the compositions. It usually doesn't work that way.
A great accomplishment by the Annie Lennox.


5. Luka - De Venus A Neptune (1996)

Just a tracklist filled with pretty little songs. I think I'm only one who has it.


6. Abbacadabra - Revival Flight Two (1997)

The first REVIVAL was mostly a compilation of their singles, the exclusive material on TWO makes it much more of an album. It goes without saying that various remix singles were derived from it, it's a commercial project after all.

7. Hanson - Middle Of Nowhere (1997)

And then suddenly Jackson 5 meets Kelly Family a.k.a. HANSON stormed the European charts, I recognised three songs as singles but, gosh, this album is insanely good. And that for a band that looked so un-marketable.


8. Robbie Williams - Life Thru A Lens (1997)

I like Take That but the best thing they did was to split up and make way for their solo careers.
"Angels" and "Let Me Entertain You" are the big hits but the whole album sounds very well produced.


9. Savage Garden - Savage Garden (1997)

I had completely forgotten about "Tears Of Pearls", what a very nice surprise.


10. AIR - Moon Safari (1998)

It never fails to amaze me how many different styles we got in the 1990s and the AIR sound is an exquisite example of that.
We were spoilt rotten.

 

[Long Lashes]

Tonight - Franz Ferdinand

Funeral – Arcade Fire

Parachutes – Coldplay

Black Holes And Revelations - Muse

Hot Fuss - The Killers

We Started Nothing – The Ting Tings

Back To Black – Amy Whinehouse

Pleased To Meet You - James

Some People Have Real Problems – Sia

The Age Of The Understatement – Last Shadow Puppets

 

[Emelee]

The 00s

Top Swedish albums, in no particular order:

Veronica Maggio - Vatten och bröd
Bo Kaspers Orkester - Hund
Broder Daniel - Cruel Town
Kent - Vapen & ammunition
Lisa Ekdahl - Give Me That Slow Knowing Smile
Lars Winnerbäck - Vatten under broarna
Lars Winnerbäck - Tänk om jag ångrar mig och sen ångrar mig igen
Weeping Willows - Into the Light
Robyn - Robyn
Amanda Jenssen - Killing My Darlings

 

[Emelee]

I don't know if I can do a list for the 2010s. I found the 2000s difficult enough. The 2010s had even more artists (for me) to choose among.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

The Noughties





1. Fallen - Evanescence

Bring Me To Life made a huge impression on me when I first heard it back in 2003, but it was many months before I stumbled upon the album. It, too, clicked with me in a big way. From late 2003 onwards this was my most heavily-played album, and there were frequent periods where it was practically on repeat. I was a late adopter of the iPod, so being reliant on my Discman when out and about, Fallen was invariably my album of choice. While I did eventually outgrow it and broaden my musical palette, my love of Ev has never entirely gone away, and there are still several tracks from this album and its singles in my Favourites playlist. To my mind 2006’s The Open Door had some even stronger tracks and higher highs, but there are also tracks to which I’ve barely listened. Fallen is lean with no filler at all. There’s a reason it was so successful.







2. Un Autre Univers - Tina Arena

If this album has Noughties competition in the pop category, much of it comes from Tina herself. Casual listeners - certainly in the UK - will think of her as belonging to the Nineties since that’s when her biggest hits charted, but the Noughties were a Tina goldmine. Apart from two live albums, and THREE greatest hits compilations (four if you include The Peel Me Sessions), there were a further five studio albums, all of them extremely strong. Just Me was one of her better studio albums, while her two Songs Of Love & Loss covers albums were pure class and put new spins on familiar standards old and new. Her first two French language albums were some of her best work creatively. I bought, heard and loved 2008’s 7 Vies before her earlier one, and it’s a strong contender here, but Un Autre Univers led with strength. From the uptempo opening track through the haunting Je m’appelle Bagdad (possibly her finest ever song) to the Bondian Jamais Non Jamais and the simplicity of the closing track. I love it all.







3. Peyton Place: Original Motion Picture Score - Frédéric Talgorn with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra

Like Psycho in the Nineties, it’s another RSNO re-recording for Varèse Sarabande. In 2000 alone, they recorded their versions of Peyton Place; Jaws and Marnie. Some of these had some criticism about changes in tempo and the like. Some do indeed sound a bit “off” when you’re used to the originals, but I had the benefit of owning the RSNO’s Peyton Place years before I invested in the Franz Waxman original and it quickly became a favourite. Many tracks from this album remain in frequent play; the Main Title is my most-played Film Score track of the last 15 years; and that cover is quite beautiful.







4. Buzz - Steps

It’s fair to say Buzz was a grower. I played the album a fair bit when it first came out and liked it fine, but found myself favouring the more bubblegum sound of the previous albums and so much of it was probably forgotten about just a bit too quickly. It really clicked with me somewhere between twelve and fifteen years ago when the original Steps thread got underway on the old site. Diving deep into Steps’ body of work with Jason and @Alexis got me to fall for this one in a big way and realise just how good an album it is.







5. Spider-Man: Original Motion Picture Score - Danny Elfman

I have a love/hate relationship with Elfman’s sound. It’s very distinctive but a lot of the time I find there’s a little too much quirk for my taste (I always associate him with his Tim Burton collaborations, which, again are a real Curate’s egg). But first two Sam Raimi Spider-Man films fitted him like a glove, and allowed him to show off his range. The Main Title, with its epic surges and choir of “aaaah”-ing voices is one of the best superhero themes of all time, up there with John Williams’s Superman. I’m not usually a fan of the bongo, but it’s the driving bongoes that really make this one fly. I recently invested in the 20th Anniversary expanded edition and fell in love with it all over again. It’s not just a genre favourite. It’s an all-time top twenty film score for me.








6. Voice - Alison Moyet

As covers albums go this one scores for not feeling at all like one. The choices range from inspired to eyebrow-raisingly obscure. Many of the songs have been covered many times, but it’s guaranteed that there’s such diversity that they’ve never been appeared together quite like this. MOR favourites are sequenced next to traditional folk songs, French pop and opera. Looking at the titles, it appears to be a list of quirky random outtakes, but that couldn’t be further from the truth, because the “theme” is simply that all tracks are arranged to suit Alison’s voice and to showcase that voice with beautifully minimal orchestrations. It feels somewhere between a perfectly cohesive studio album and an intimate live concert.







7. The Fugitive: Expanded Archival Collection - James Newton Howard

Yes - the film is from the Nineties, but the 2-disc expanded soundtrack was finally released sixteen years later at the very end of the Noughties. It's another example of a grower for me. Like The Silence Of The Lambs, I didn’t appreciate just how great the score was until I heard it in isolation, and with the extra tracks featured here. It’s the kind of sound that just picks up the listener and carries you along with its energy. It’s a mix of traditional score, synths and some saxophone, all of which makes every second interesting to hear since you never quite know what will come next. It goes without saying that I never play it in the car and imagine myself to be on a sneaky covert mission in a spy thriller.





8. Discothèque - Marcia Hines

The Noughties saw Marcia at a point where she released a trio of themed covers albums. Hinesight and Life - both great albums - were both collections of songs that she found meaningful or inspirational in everyday life. In the middle of them came this disco-themed album. While not the most inspired creative moment of her career, all were well-produced, well-orchestrated and sung from the heart. Any of them would be deserving of a place here, but Discothèque is special to me as the album that introduced me (belatedly) to Marcia. I stumbled upon her version of Donna Summer’s Last Dance in iTunes and ordered the album on the spot (it’s kind of appropriate that Donna should lead me to Marcia since they were childhood friends in Boston). I’ve always been fond of this album’s energy and the new life it breathes into some of those tired old wedding reception standards.







9. Timeless - Martina McBride

And a third consecutive covers album. It feels both natural and inevitable that Martina would pay homage to her country roots with an album of standards. The end result is something that sounds both authentic and more than a little vintage. As someone with very little knowledge of country music before Martina, Timeless introduced me to many of these county greats (before this, I was probably only familiar with two or three of the 22 songs featured). Less than a decade on, it feels like many of these songs have always been with me.






10. Praguenosis - Salaam Remi

Who'd have thought Glee would lead me to an album of instrumentals from a hip hop producer? Via Jazmine Sullivan, that is, since the backing track for Bust Your Windows is this album's Bad Man Waltz. The entire album is great, though I'd struggle to describe it. Perhaps a combination of R&B, film score, string-noir and classical crossover. Whatever it is, it's worth a listen.



​

Special mentions to:


Soul Classics - Mica Paris

Joy Ride: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack - Marco Beltrami

Urban Legends Final Cut: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack - John Ottman

What A Carry On! - Royal Ballet Sinfonia and Gavin Sutherland

Marnie: Original Motion Picture Score - Joel McNeely and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra

When A Stranger Calls: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack - James Dooley

What Lies Beneath: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack - Alan Silvestri

Confessions On A Dance Floor - Madonna

 

[Mel O'Drama]

The Tens








1. Wonder Woman: Original Soundtrack from the Warner Bros. Television Series - Charles Fox, Artie Kane et al.

Breaking my “no compilations” rule here, but I don’t believe any of this was released in any form before this album came along. It took until 2017 - more than four decades after the series began - for this music to be made commercially available. And when it came, it arrived in a beautiful and comprehensive package charting the evolution of the series’ music from the jingoistic pilot to the disco-infused final season. WB releasing this after all this time (as part of Wonder Woman’s 75th Anniversary celebrations) is the one thing that stops me giving up hope entirely of ever getting the Jerrold Immel Knots/Dallas soundtrack we were falsely promised back around 2010.






2. I Can’t Stop Loving You: The Songs Of Don Gibson - Mandy Barnett

Of all Mandy’s studio albums, this was the most difficult to track down, since the physical CD was evidently only produced in a very limited run for sale through a single franchise. I was delighted to find a reasonably-priced copy a couple of years ago. I wasn’t familiar with most of the tracks at the time (the only ones I’d heard of were the title track and Sweet Dreams), but now they’re like old friends. The arrangements are beautiful and the vocals strong and Mandy’s fondness for the songs and their writer comes across in the album’s warmth.






3. Reckless - Martina McBride

Both this and 2014’s Everlasting are special for being the only Martina studio albums I’ve bought as they came out (there’s also her last Christmas album, but that doesn’t count here). Everlasting was actually the first MM album I purchased (covers albums are often my preferred way to get to know artists’ voices), and I spent a year or so afterwards working my way through her back catalogue. By the time Reckless was announced, I was very familiar with her work and Martina was my artist of choice, so this saw me genuinely excited about a singer’s new album… which really doesn’t happen all that often. This is Martina’s last album of original material to date and this has reminded me how welcome a new one would be.






4. Quand Tout Recommence - Tina Arena

I could comfortably have included any of Tina’s three albums from the Tens here. Once again, there’s just something that little bit more special about her French-language album. The album’s two singles are nice (especially Tant Que Tu Es Là). The title track is gorgeous. I’m also quite fond of Les Balles À Blanc, which is very much Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) for the 21st Century.






5. The Sapphires: Deluxe Edition - Jessica Mauboy et al.

I finally watched the film last year, but I’ve been hooked on the soundtrack for the best part of a decade (I can’t remember exactly how I found it, but it was probably through Jessica’s appearance singing Chains with Tina Arena). There are some terrific soul covers and peppered in amongst them are traditional tracks - Aboriginal and Haitian - and original numbers. I opted for the DE due to its inclusion of Jessica's terrific cover of Misty Blue.






6. Synthesis - Evanescence

For a time there seemed to be a bit of a fad for artists to revisit their own works and put a different spin on them. Ev’s take on this concept gives their familiar tracks an orchestral makeover while amping up the gothic elements and not entirely losing the metal. The whole film score noir business works really well. There were some reworked songs that clicked with me for the first time, and the album yielded a couple of original tracks including the immortal Imperfection.






7. Jaws 2: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack [Intrada Special Collection] - John Williams

After years of waiting for decent soundtracks for all four Jaws films, Intrada gave us four within a matter of months back in 2015. Each film got two discs including the original albums, the score as used in the films and a heap of bonus tracks. Since I included the first film’s original album in the Seventies, I’ll give John Williams’s return visit a mention here to represent the expanded editions. Sadly, it’s not quite definitive - notably missing Williams’s band arrangements of tracks such as Teach Me Tonight and Downtown for the Amity High School band’s “eloquent selection”. But this album is still far more comprehensive than I ever thought we’d get.






8. X-Men: First Class | Original Motion Picture Soundtrack - Henry Jackman

The film’s a bit iffy, but Jackman’s energetic score crackles with exciting energy while still covering the requisite dark introspective moments perfectly.






9. Tears On The Dancefloor - Steps

Lots of fans hate 2011’s Light Up The World, and since it’s a curious mix of Christmas songs (sorry… “winter warmers”) showtunes and MOR ballads that self-confessed Gleek H had heard on TV, its easy to see why. I don’t loathe it as most seem to, and I like that it represented the group trying to find themselves while still getting to know one another again after a decade of acrimony. But… compared with LUTW, 2017’s Tears album is joy on a stick: a slick, polished album that condenses Steps into 40 minutes of pop purity. Which is exactly where they belong.






10. The Abbey Road Sessions - Kylie Minogue

Another “artist covers their own work” album. Kylie’s take on this strips down her “girl next door” hits and then dresses them up in sophisticated lingerie. The end result is an intimate album with a live vibe to it. It’s to her credit that she’s done this and shown such a different kind of sound without losing the pop playfulness.





​

Special mentions to:


Halloween: Original 2018 Motion Picture Soundtrack [Expanded Edition] - John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter & Daniel Davies

Only One In The World - Heather Headley

Places - Lea Michele

Scream 4: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack - Marco Beltrami

Tir - Cerys Matthews

It’s The Girls - Bette Midler

“A” - Agnetha Fältskog

Elaine Paige & Friends - Elaine Paige

Marcia Sings Tapestry - Marcia Hines










And the one I really wanted to include but couldn’t because it’s not a full album:


The Angels Connection [EP] - Mistura Pura

 

[Long Lashes]

Music Complete - New Order

Blackstar - David Bowie

Melodrama - Lorde

Pocket Knife – Mr Little Jeans

Always Ascending – Franz Ferdinand

Blossoms – Blossoms

Jake Bugg - Jake Bugg

Every Open Eye - CHVRCHES

Hypersonic Missiles - Sam Fender

1000 Forms Of Fear - Sia

 

[Ome]

00s


Sam’s Town – The Killers



American Idiot – Green Day




The Fame – Lady Gaga



Alright Still – Lily Allen



Confessions on the Dance Floor – Madonna




Light At the End of the World – Erasure




Back to Black – Amy Winehouse




Marshall Mathers LP – Eminem




Just Enough Education to Perform – Stereophonics



Painting It Red – The Beautiful South

 

[Ome]

10s



Battle Born – The Killers


Music Complete – New Order


Super – Pet Shop Boys



The Desired Effect – Brandon Flowers



Some Nights – fun.


Strange Desires – Bleachers


Wisdom, Laughter and Lines – Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott


Blackstar – David Bowie



Hypersonic Missiles – Sam Fender


No Place in Heaven - Mika

 

[Payton Cross]

It's been a while when i post here for the last time, but here is my Top 10 from the 90's.

90's

Olivia Newton-John – Gaia: One Woman's Journey (1994)


Barbra Streisand – Back To Broadway (1993)


Celine Dion - Falling Into You (1996)


Reba McEntire – If You See Him (1998)


Anne Murray - Yes I Do (1991)


Faith Hill – Breathe (1999)


Tina Turner - Twenty Four Seven (1999)


Madonna – Erotica (1992)


Cher - Believe (1998)


Bee Gees – Size Isn’t Everything (1993)