Welcome back to the blog for another year - and decade! I hope 2020 is finding you content and well. If not – well, music is a great elixir, and there are a ton of beautiful tunes in this post to help soothe what ails you :).

As has become tradition, my first post of the new year is a look back at my favourite records of the previous year, with a playlist for you to sample songs from each. As a bonus, I've added a playlist of my favourite releases of 2018 as well, since I wasn't blogging this time last year, but had been saving a list of records I loved.

Wow, there were some killer albums that came out in both 2019 and 2018. Once again, I'm extremely heartened by the state of new music – it just takes a little digging to find the good stuff ;).Here are my lists of top 10 albums for each year (in no real order, except for the top 3 in each list):

Now onto the fun stuff - the playlists! These represent what ended up being a fairly random number of my favourite releases. For the 2019 playlist, I was ready to go with a nice, neat 25 albums and 5 EPs and singles, but discovered I'd forgotten a couple of essential inclusions, and struggled to cut anything further. Then I realised one of the benefits of running my own blog is I can do whatever the fuck I want! So, 27 albums it is! (or 32 releases including EPs and singles).

If you are new to my contemporary music tastes, what you can expect is lots of neo-psych, avant-pop, shimmery dream pop, pop noir, and otherwise songs with irresistible melodies and strong songwriting, usually in a retro or classic vein. My playlists tend to be female-dominated - it's not by design, it's just that somehow my tastes lead me to more women making the type of music I love. I've never liked to make a statement of it; in some way, I think it's more interesting and powerful not to point it out, because why should it be unusual? That said, I am pleased to celebrate some extremely talented, sometimes overlooked female artists and present them to an audience who may not yet know them.

These were made on Spotify (RIP my fave playlisting service, 8tracks), but if you have another preferred streaming platform, visit the Soundsgood link beneath the playlist artwork for more listening options (the playlists, however, may be incomplete on some platforms).

Best of 2019: Spotify playlist | Soundsgood (more listening options)

A psychedelic mix just in time for Christmas! There's not much I need to say about this that the title doesn't already tell you. All I will say is, on playing it through, I noticed it's kind of an odd blend of cheerful and sinister – but hey, that seems apt for Christmas! It's named for a song by The Smoking Trees from the superb Active Listener Christmas Album from 2012. (A name-your-price download on Bandcamp, it's well worth grabbing). Oddly, I only noticed after compiling this that there are quite a few tracks from 2012, for some reason. Apparently that year was a fine vintage for Christmas psych!

Mixcloud | Alternate link | View image

Here's an all-France Gall mix, featuring some of my favourite songs of hers from 1963 to 1972. I say some of because, well, I love pretty much all her stuff from that era - it took some restraint to only choose 38 songs! You'll find some of her absolute classics here, as well as some lesser-known songs that are equally wonderful. After making the mix, I realised I drew a lot from my favourite album of hers, the 1967 psych-pop classic, 1968. I also seem to have included every song where she does her adorable version of scatting, which is really just the best thing ever. As well as her French songs, I've included a few of her German tracks, the Japanese version of 'Un prince charmant' and the Italian version of 'La Quatrième Chose'.

I've already gone into what I love about France Gall's music, so I'm not going to get descriptive here, but just let the music speak for itself. My hope is these selections would make someone new to her music fall in love with it as much as I did. And perhaps there are a few things here that are not so readily familiar to established French pop fans. 

Okay, so it's nearly March, which probably makes this the world's most untimely 'Best of 2017' list! First I'll get to the music, but there's a personal note at the bottom of this post explaining why I'm sometimes much later with posts than I'd like, and why I think they're still worth doing anyway.

Wow, I was really blown away by the musical offerings from last year! There's some truly spectacular music being made by incredibly creative artists who are dedicated to their craft. and to making brilliant music for the sake of it. Though it's easier than ever to find music from all over the world to suit your particular tastes, I'm pretty convinced there's also just more and more amazing music being produced. This playlist features a song from each of my favourite 2017 albums. It's pretty long, with fifty-five tracks, coming in at around three hours and forty minutes of listening. I heard so much great stuff, this was as much as I could narrow it down! And you'll notice this is only Part One.... 

Image via Discogs

I love a good depressing seasonal tune, and it doesn't much bleaker than one set in a desolate, post-apocalyptic world!

'Juste quelques flocons qui tombent' ("Just a few flakes falling") isn't really a Christmas song, but is apparently associated enough with this time of year to be included on Christmas compilations. This is curious, because the lyrics don't reference anything related to Noël, and from what I can find, the track seems to have been released not around Christmas time but in February, 1967. Perhaps the association comes from its snowy imagery, or the chiming bells that unusually punctuate its psych-folk-pop sound, or perhaps it's because of the story of how Antoine came to write the song.

The idea for the song came to Antoine on Christmas Eve, 1965, according to Anthologie des tubes rock: Soixante ans de musique pour les kids (François Grimpet & Daniel Lesueur, Camion Blanc, 2016), This was shortly before he would score a huge hit with 'Les Élucubrations d'Antoine' early the following year, becoming not only an overnight pop superstar, but a major force in reshaping the French pop scene in the post-yé-yé years. At this point however, he had a debut EP under his belt that hadn't made much of a splash, and was still a struggling musician. Having performed that evening for a modest fee, Antoine had just enough to dine out with his girlfriend but nothing left over for transport, so they footed it home. Walking toward the Marais district, the couple looked back to see a snow-covered Paris, nothing visible except their footprints in the snow, leaving them with the feeling of being the only two people in the world. With his songwriter's imagination and having keenly absorbed the pacifist themes of the likes of Bob Dylan, Antoine soon turned this image into a song about a world decimated by nuclear war, where he and his lover are the only survivors.  

If I'm understanding the lyrics correctly, the final verse sees Antoine comparing himself and his girlfriend to Adam and Eve, but cautioning they must avoid repopulating the world – since the last world was such a flop! What a sentiment to hear in a track that gets billed as one of "Les plus belles chansons de Noël"!

Photo: Mademoiselle Age Tendre, November 1969.

Johnny Hallyday
15 June 1943 – 5 December 2017

French pop has lost its long-reigning king. It feels inconceivable – both because the young, beautiful Johnny of fifty years ago lives perpetually in iconic images and sounds, seeming forever 'L'idole des jeunes', and because today's Johnny seemed indefatiguable, still full of a zest for music and life. I really have no words for now that would do an even adequate job of capturing who Johnny was or the immensity of this loss. So I thought I'd just share a collection of few favourite things: photos from those gorgeous, seemingly endless pictorials in the pages of Salut les copains and Mademoiselle Age Tendre (I sometimes wonder how much of their lives the idoles spent in front of the camera!), some of his best songs, and a few videos that showcase what a charismatic performer he was.

Click on any of the photos for a larger version.

Salut les copains, December 1963.

Here's a scene from a 1967 French film, Les Poneyttes, in which France's biggest pop star, Johnny Hallyday, performs 'Le Mauvais Rêve' ('Bad Dream'), dressed and painted as a golden statue. I'm not sure exactly why (not having found subtitles for this film), but I'd guess it's a commentary on the god-like status afforded the idoles. The lyrics describe a nightmare that starts in a desolate city, empty but for some zombie-like inhabitants, and ends in a loveless void, with Hallyday assuring himself "it's only a dream... a bad dream". So the idea here is probably to contrast the hollow trappings of stardom and fan worship with an inner fear of true loneliness. It's quite a spectacular, effective scene that suits the epic feel of the song, in what otherwise strikes me as a fairly silly, mediocre film.