Years ago, possibly even before I began my 100 Albums project, I participated in a then-popular meme where one would pick their favorite albums of each year since birth. Now that I’ve recently completed another trip around the sun, here is an update along with links to all the albums I wrote about in that project and elsewhere. Not too many changes, although Grace Jones’ Nightclubbing is one of my best discoveries in the past decade (checked it out after reading her memoir, I’ll Never Write My Memoirs which quotes the album track “Art Groupie”); other records such as Bad Girls, Purple Rain and Cosmic Thing continue to grow in my estimation and endure, even if I didn’t originally include them among my 100 favorite albums:
1975: Brian Eno, Another Green World
1977: Brian Eno, Before and After Science
1978: Blondie, Parallel Lines
1979: Donna Summer, Bad Girls
1980: Talking Heads, Remain In Light
1981: Grace Jones, Nightclubbing
1983: Violent Femmes, Violent Femmes
1984: Prince and the Revolution, Purple Rain
1985: Kate Bush, Hounds of Love
1987: Prince, Sign O’ The Times
1988: The Go-Betweens, 16 Lovers Lane
1989: The B-52’s, Cosmic Thing
1990: Concrete Blonde, Bloodletting
1991: Seal, Seal
1992: R.E.M., Automatic For The People
1994: Everything But The Girl, Amplified Heart
1995: Pizzicato Five, The Sound of Music By Pizzicato Five
1996: Belle and Sebastian, If You’re Feeling Sinister
1998: Saint Etienne, Good Humor / Fairfax High
1999: The Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs
2000: The Avalanches, Since I Left You
2002: Stew, The Naked Dutch Painter (…and Other Songs)
2004: Kings of Convenience, Riot On An Empty Street
2005: Saint Etienne, Tales From Turnpike House
2006: Charlotte Gainsbourg, 5:55
2007: Imperial Teen, The Hair, The TV, The Baby and The Band
2008: Sam Phillips, Don’t Do Anything
2009: Florence + The Machine, Lungs
2010: Laura Marling, I Speak Because I Can
2011: Emm Gryner, Northern Gospel
2012: Jens Lekman, I Know What Love Isn’t
2013: Daft Punk, Random Access Memories
2014: Future Islands, Singles
2015: Roisin Murphy, Hairless Toys
2016: The Radio Dept., Running Out of Love
2017: Saint Etienne, Home Counties
2019: Andrew Bird, My Finest Work Yet
2020: Jessie Ware, What’s Your Pleasure?
Haunted Jukebox 