No stand out track or the year that saw a musical turnaround. 2006 meant many different things to many different people. Here’s what we thought of it
Eleni Antoniou, seven features writer
This was the year I began to appreciate a bit of rock music. Whereas last year and years before I would listen to nothing but pop, R’n B and maybe a bit of Latin music, rock never grabbed me like it did this year. I’m a fan of old 70s rock bands but The Killers, Muse, Green Day and Keane had me swinging my head and jumping up and down. I think it was the combination of indie pop rock and outstanding lyrics that really had me going.
Talking about lyrics, I thought Pink’s album was great and found ‘Stupid Girls’ and ‘Who Knew’ were songs I loved listening to in my car. But I couldn’t just abandon my love for R’n B – still one of the most powerful styles of music around. Mary J Blige had me singing away to ‘Be Without You’ while Beyonce’s ‘D?j? vu’, ‘Ring the Alarm’ and ‘Irreplaceable’ were all songs I thought amazing because of their strong lyrics.You go, girls! Last but by no means least has to be Justin Timberlake’s ‘Sexy Back’. So catchy!
Rosie Charalambous, CyBC presenter and DJ (as well as Motoring Correspondent for the Sunday Mail)
Some very good tunes managed to break through the more usual ‘backing track with added vocals’ pap that usually features in the Top 40.
Arctic Monkeys started the year on a high and Scissor Sisters and The Killers charted with tracks from great albums but, in the pop arena, the album of the year must be Snow Patrol’s Eyes Open, with Gary Lightbody’s vocals accompanied by a more intense, rockier sound and a great range of songs, almost all of which have chart potential.
But enough of the charts: the ‘real’ music, for the most part, is heard on albums which are unlikely to feature a chartable single and there were many this year. There’s space here to mention but a few: the return of 65-year-old Bob Dylan with his 44th album, Modern Times, was universally welcomed and didn’t disappoint, then we had Bruce Springsteen’s tribute to American folk legend Pete Seeger. The Seeger Sessions were recorded live in the living room of The Boss’ New Jersey farmhouse and are an exuberant celebration of music-making at its best, with fiddles, accordion and banjo all adding to the folksy but foot-tapping collection.
Also worthy of mention is Inxs’ haunting download-only ballad ‘Afterglow’; there is, it seems, life after Michael Hutchence.
Finally, let’s not forget the blues: great bluesy sounds were forthcoming from Chris Rea, who recently released a live double CD in which he gives some of his old hits a much ‘bluesier’ treatment well suited to his rasping vocals, and a fabulous track by Gary Moore taken off the Old New Ballads Blues album released in April: ‘Gonna Rain Today’ still gives me goose bumps every time I hear it.
These are just some of the albums I’ve featured on Frog Soup, where I play them uninterrupted. As I always say … “let the music do the talking”.
Rosie hosts Frog Soup every other Sunday at 6pm on CyBC’s English programmes on channel 2: 91.1 FM
Zoe Christodoulides, What’s On writer
Trying to think of my favourite song in the past year seems pretty impossible! I’ve spent so many weekends going to different clubs, yet nothing springs to mind as being amazing. And it always seems to be the case that the harder you try to think of certain songs you liked, the more your mind goes totally blank.
OK, I’ll be totally honest and say that Shakira’s ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ featuring rapper Wyclef Jean sticks in my mind, not because I think it’s particularly great (at all), but because it’s the one song that seems to have gotten everyone dancing when things are a little boring on the dance floor. The women try and swing their hips like her, while the men seem to really appreciate the attempt!
And not just that, but no matter what time you turn the radio on, there it is. So instead of talking about a ‘favourite song’ as such … I can safely say that most people (including me) have shared a love/hate relationship with this piece. I hated it when it first came out because the lyrics are so cheesy and it bugs me that it’s basically Shakira going on and on about how perfect her body is and that no man can resist her (yes we already knew that, what’s new?). But magically, somehow, without even meaning to, I now know all the words off by heart and have found myself singing along to the lyrics on many an occasion. Even more fascinating and slightly worrying is that the song comes from her 2006 album named Oral Fixation. What will this pop queen get up to in 2007?
Nassos Stylianou, Sunday Mail intern
2006 was my coming-of-age, musically speaking. After a few years of looking down on the music scene and generally being snotty, 2006 was definitely the year that saw a major turnaround.
Not being a fan of any particular music style (sad but true), and constantly making fun of all the latest releases, the turning point came when I picked up my sister’s new gadget, her iPod. Initially I just planned to poke fun at her taste in music, as she’s 17 and two years younger than me. However, I was in for a surprise. Turning on her Most Played Songs, I found a song by a band called Snow Patrol. With a name like that, I didn’t expect much – yet the song actually really got to me. I spent the next few hours listening to some more of the 1,500 songs on her music player, and realised I’d been wrong all along. Impressed not only by Snow Patrol but also Muse, The Verve (Urban Hymns, from the late 1990s) and Gorillaz, I was embarrassed to admit it at first, but I had to listen to more. And more.
The actual song that brought about this change was ‘Set Fire to the Third Bar’, which wasn’t too well-known at the time but has been released very recently as a single. That has to be the musical highlight of the year for me.
Preston Wilder, Film/TV Critic
Highlights of the year for the non-clubbing music-lover:
1. Songs I Got Hooked On, and Eventually Grew Tired Of. The first time I heard ‘Steady as She Goes’ by The Raconteurs (featuring Jack White of The White Stripes) I was in the car – and actually had to park by the side of the road, because I was grooving along so emphatically I thought I’d have an accident. A week or so later, I’d heard it so many times it was starting to annoy me – so I stopped, and now I’m learning to like it again. Then there was ‘Funny Little Frog’ by Belle and Sebastian, the only song ever to rhyme “poet” with “throat” (pronounced ‘throw-et’): great, boring, great again.
2. 2006: The Year When the Summer Anthems Finally Delivered. You know them, we all hate them – those ubiquitous summer hits. But this year Gnarls Barkley’s ‘Crazy’ (with that Rorschach-blot video) was extremely cool, and even Shakira’s Latin-inflected ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ (featuring the magic touch of Wyclef Jean) was kind of irresistible. Who’da thunk it?
3. UNCUT Magazine Is So Great. Actually the magazine itself is annoying, with its constant cheerleading for crusty old bands of the 60s and 70s, but the free CD with each issue is a boon. Best track I’d never have discovered otherwise: ‘The Songs That We Sing’ by Charlotte Gainsbourg, filling my personal niche for songs with lots of twiddly bits.
4. Listening Posts Are So Great. Especially when you’re in HMV on Oxford Street with time to kill, and start listening to the CDs they’ve got ranged on the shelves for people to listen to. Best track I’d never have discovered otherwise (though I think it dates from 2005): ‘Trouble’, Ray LaMontagne.
5. Radio Radio. I wake up with Tassos and Tassos on Kiss FM (89.0) but my fondest thanks go to Bayrak
Classic (88.4 FM), playing an uninterrupted diet of classical music; nothing else gets my stress levels down so effectively. I don’t know why Greek Cypriot radio doesn’t have a dedicated classical channel, but I do know this: If they passed a law making it compulsory for everyone to listen to Bayrak Classic when they’re in the car, they could save a fortune in speed cameras.
6. Two Extremes. Ys, the new album from Joanna Newsom, a helium-voiced pixie who plays the harp. The Drift, the new album from Scott Walker, whose deep intractable gloom is a soundtrack for the end of the world. Both, surprisingly, hypnotic.
7. Bad Thing of the Year. All the soulful young troubadours (aka James Blunt wannabes): James Morrison, Damien Rice, Paolo whoever. You’re not fooling anyone, you know. Runner-up: Cover versions of 80s hits.
8. Song No-one Likes Except Me: For the way it makes me flail about each time I hear it, I nominate ‘Heart in a Cage’ by The Strokes. And yes, I realise it’s pure Velvet Underground rip-off…
Sheridan Lambert Freelance writer
I guess I’m fortunate because I wouldn’t have to think twice about the one album I’d take with me to a desert island. I’ve been listening to it over and over again since I was fifteen – Robert Johnson’s Complete Columbia Recordings. Johnson might not have sold his soul to the devil to learn how to play the guitar, though you wouldn’t know it from his chilling Cross Road Blues.
If the holidays haven’t gotten you down, Skip James in E minor will do the trick. Yazoo’s Complete Early Recordings offers the best introduction to this solitary misanthrope’s eerie, complex brand of blues. Then I’d add some Mississippi John Hurt to balance out the gloom with some traditional fingerpicking blues. Whether you listen to the 1928 Okeh recordings or the Vanguard cuts from the 60’s, Hurt sounds just about the same.
When I want to drive away company, I just put on Screaming Jay Hawkins. Generally, I find that any of the cuts on Rhino’s Voodoo Jive: The Best of Screaming Jay Hawkins will do for that, though I’m partial to I Hear Voices and Feast of the Mau Mau. If I want a more sophisticated sort of melancholy, I listen to Tom Waits’ Heart of a Saturday Night. I don’t think he ever found it, but he got close enough.
