The Best Anthems in the World…Ever – Various Artists
This compilation does for Indie and the noughties what The Best Air Guitar Album in the World did for rock. Here we find songs and bands from the late nineties and early noughties which became the soundtrack to New Labour Britain.
Some of the artists, Chumbawumba for example, are one hit wonders while others such as Blur and Reef stride the boundaries of indie and rock like Duran Duran and Simple Minds connect us to the eighties.
However, after the first 10 songs or so we enter into forgettable tracks. It’s almost as if the compiler has struggled to fill the 41 track compilation with similarly rememberable songsmiths. Still, it’s good car music, for those long journeys where arguments over what should be played are rife.
We now enter into the muggy world of “Best of” albums. For the next 29 days we will be delving into the mindset of the fan, the music producer and the bands that are too lazy to chuck out another studio album so cobble together a few popular songs on one album as a retention marketing exercise.
Best ofs are an excellent way to become familiar with a genre or an artist’s work. Quite often, when trying to get an idea of what an artist sounded like, I would get their “Best of” and used them to make a judgement on whether or not I obtained their other albums.
As I said, this works well with genres too, so you will see a number of genre focussed best ofs over the next few days. I intend on adding the tracklisting of genre focussed best ofs as quite often these reflect the compiler’s taste rather than being an accurate reflection of the actual genre. Plus I find this kind of thing interesting.
The third and final BBC sessions album in my collection. This time, Renaissance step up to the microphone.
We’ve seen Annie Haslam and her pals on this project before. This album highlights how popular Renaissance were at their time. Which only adds to the confusion as to why I had never heard of them until I was in my 30s. It was as if they never received any radio airtime during the 80s and 90s to wipe them from collective consciousness.
This is possibly my second favourite Renaissance compilation album. It’s a good showcase of the wide range of talent and output of the band especially to new listeners.
German pensioner Rocker Joachim Witt is one of those rock stars all the old rock stars want to emulate. Nonchalance, no guitar wanking or face contorting, just nonchalance and an air of cool that would make Bryan Ferry feel a bit of a knob head. Thats Joachim Witt.
I came across Witt a few years ago while looking for some Euro pop. Of course, he’s been around since before Elvis learnt about burgers being tasty, which is fairly good all things considered. I vaguely remember a couple of Witt tracks appearing in the tail end of the Top 40 way back when.
Auf Ewig is nothing to do with earwigs, it is the best of Witt. Which I always think is a bit like drawing a line across your work and saying anything that follows is not the best of. Anyway, this IS the best of. All in one album. Typically, there are a number of tracks that are good, and a number which I wish I’d never heard.
The Best Anthems in the World…Ever – Various Artists
Stegzy's Music Project 