Thursday, June 22, 2017

40 From 40: 2006

The second year of STN's existence, so most of this is an unashamed Greatest Hits of that year Los Campesinos!' demos changed everything and we generally got our raison d'etre into gear, as it were. Out in the wider world iPods became big things, leaving the Zune and Creative Zen behind like so much Betamax as it expanded and took over the listening world. Just as Malcolm McLaren predicted with cassettes a quarter-century earlier or so, so the music industry valued digital players so much the actual content of them ended up being devalued, music ending up as another thing to put on your phone. Meanwhile Myspace became a thing, its discoveries like YouTube stars but with actual value, as Lily Allen's blog became the must-read of its day, Arctic Monkeys were labelled an ultimate Myspace Band off the back of their debut album sales despite never having touched the thing and Sandi Thom briefly became a star for having a webcam. 2006 was the year the singles chart really embarked on its becalmed path to irrelevance as digital sales tentatively started being added - Gnarls Barkley's Crazy going to number one a week before the physical media came out - and Top Of The Pops breathed its last, as did Smash Hits and CD:UK. A strange old year for the commercial sector, all told, as Paris Hilton and Katie Price bombed, Take That returned as a "man band" and picked up where they'd left off, a major label tried to make out folkie Seth Lakeman was the obvious new James Blunt, and then Amy Winehouse tore the limelight asunder by making a virtue of what would kill her five years hence. Girls Aloud and Justin Timberlake perked up a moribund pop landscape illuminated, if that's the right word, only by Britney's slow breakdown. Pete Doherty went to court seven times, was arrested six times, was implicated in some nasty business, stayed with Kate and inadvertedly launched a thousand impersonators. New Rave happened. So did emo as big business with My Chemical Romance's number one, leading to the infamous Mail piece and the NME's subsequent impression of a War On Emo. In the year of the Ordinary Boys' Preston on Big Brother there was still an outsider culture after all. As for this list, the Spotify set is 38 strong, missing the great underappreciated Anathallo, one of whom would later have a number one as a member of Fun.




Klaxons - Atlantis To Interzone
The Victorian English Gentlemens Club - Ban The Gin
The Thermals - A Pillar Of Salt
TV On The Radio - Wolf Like Me
Hot Club De Paris - Clockwork
¡Forward Russia! - Fifteen Part 1
Tokyo Police Club - Nature Of The Experiment
Clinic - If You Could Read Your Mind
Hot Chip - Over And Over
Peter Bjorn and John - Let's Call It Off
The Pipettes - Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me
Amy Winehouse - Rehab
Gnarls Barkley - Crazy
Jamie T - Sheila
Mystery Jets - Diamonds In The Dark
Lucky Soul - Lips Are Unhappy
Camera Obscura - Lloyd, I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken
El Perro Del Mar - God Knows (You Gotta Give To Get)
Final Fantasy - This Lamb Sells Condos
Anathallo - Hanasakajijii (Four: A Great Wind, More Ash)
The Hidden Cameras - AWOO
Arctic Monkeys - A Certain Romance
Field Music - In Context
Midlake - Young Bride
Grizzly Bear - On A Neck, On A Spit
Jeremy Warmsley - Dirty Blue Jeans
Sondre Lerche - Airport Taxi Reception
The Broken Family Band - It's All Over
The Hold Steady - Stuck Between Stations
Band Of Horses - The Funeral
Cat Power - Lived In Bars
Guillemots - Sao Paulo
Scritti Politti - The Boom Boom Bap
Gossip - Listen Up!
The Decemberists - The Perfect Crime #2
Bat For Lashes - Prescilla
The Rumble Strips - Oh Creole
I'm From Barcelona - We're From Barcelona
Sparks - Dick Around
iLiKETRAiNS - The Beeching Report


Previously among the 40: 1970, 1972, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1979, 1983, 1986, 1987, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1994, 1997, 1999, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2009

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