They're back! After a year-long hiatus (well, what would you expect with an end-of-year awards?) the Schönbys are here to shower glory all over the best musical aspects of 2012.
The awards are a fictional vehicle for me to let you know what I've enjoyed listening to during 2012. Winners and nominations are drawn from music I have seen, heard or bought during the preceding 12 months.
First up is single of the year. I find this category difficult to judge, mainly because the kind of track I would normally like doesn't always make the greatest single. A case in point is one of the top 10 below. The Vaccines' offering of Teenage Icon can only be described as a classic single- catchy, high tempo and three minutes long, however I can't have it in my top 5 because it doesn't fit in to my idea of cool. Damn my music snobbery.
The ones that missed out on the top 5 (in no particular order) are:
Sweet Tooth Bird - Beth Jeans Houghton and the Hooves of Destiny
Tessellate - Alt J
Theme from Velodrome - Chemical Brothers
Lightning Bolt - Jake Bugg
Teenage Icon - The Vaccines
So, let's count down those top picks of 2012...
5. Mountain Sound - Of Monsters and Men
There's always room for Icelandic indie-folk in anyone's top 5. Mountain Sound is the second single from Of Monsters and Men's debut album "My Head is an Animal", reaching the heady heights of No. 66 in the official UK charts.
4. Simple Song - The Shins
Simple Song just sneaks in the list, released way back in January of this year. The Shins seemed to have crossed the boundary into mainstream when dropping the Sub Pop label and releasing 'Port of Morrow', with a more accessible sound, and the British public responded by shooting the track right up to No. 192 in the official UK charts.
3. Black Doe - Mary Epworth
Officially a re-release of an early single, but sent out again to coincide with Mary's first full-length debut "Dream Life". Mary is yet to trouble the UK charts compilers...
2. Black, White and Blue - Ladyhawke
The electro-pop songstress from New Zealand returned with her follow-up album "Anxiety" in 2012, and this epic floor filler was the first single off it. I fear that I may not fill the same floors regularly frequented by the nation's single-buyers, however, as the track only managed to enter the charts in Belgium.
1. Default -Django Django
Seriously, who buys singles these days? This is a classic song, the first single from Django Django's self-titled debut album. It's funky, catchy, cool and short, with a killer riff. When researching this post I was expecting to find that it reached the top 10 for a brief period in January, but no, another strike out.
I'm looking forward to all your comments on my bad choices, so it's over to you...!
1 comment:
I can't believe Simple Song was this year, that seems so long ago. I really enjoyed Default and Mountain Sound as well. I have to question your definition of cool, bearded folk Of Monsters are cool but The Vaccines aren't? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder I guess.
I'd have had Survival by Muse in there but you already knew that didn't you? Citizens!' True Romance would have been up there but I think it was released late December last year.
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