Looking at him now, our first Björn looks like the archetypal Disney Prince with his “Viking-esque” clothing and blond hair. The song Hooked on a Feeling was written by Mark James and was first recorded in 1968 by B.J. Just to top things off, that was also the year that Björn Borg really started making a name for himself in the tennis world – So, all in all, a good year for Swedes called Björn.
At exactly the same time, Björn Ulvaeus and the rest of Abba launched themselves on an unsuspecting world at the Eurovision Song Contest, winning decisively with Waterloo. 1 spot in the US Charts in 1974 with Hooked on a Feeling. The first of these artists to be celebrated was Björn Skifsof the band Blue Swedewho hit the No. Even if they had only produced Abba and then stopped that would have been enough, but no, we have also had Roxette, Europe, Ace of Base and many more that have passed me by, but the younger generation will know well. For a small Nordic country it seems to have punched above its weight in that department. The most surprising of these was a film montage of Sweden’s contribution to pop music – Surprising, because I hadn’t realised that many of these artists were in fact Swedish. “Last time I wrote about the Eurovision Song Contest and the show itself, hosted by Sweden this year, was possibly the best ever and had a brilliant set of very entertaining “interval fillers”. In the interests of continuing my detox from the computer screen for a little longer, I hope you don’t mind if I do another little cut and paste from last year: Those intrepid Guardians of the Galaxy! I wrote about this mix-tape last year as the most important song on it was Hooked On A Feeling by Blue Swede and it was only after watching last year’s Eurovision Song Contest (yes I watch it) that I discovered it was actually by a band from Sweden. What was the film? – Why it was Guardians of the Galaxy which is an unusual choice for me but it is a very different animal from other films of its ilk because one of its stars is a “mix-tape”. The icing on the cake however was that one of our favourite films was on telly in the evening so for the first time in ages “we three” watched something together and not in different rooms of the house as is wont to happen nowadays. Instead my day was spent licking the back garden into shape, getting the outdoor furniture back in its usual spot in order to read the last few chapters of the book I’ve been stuck on for ages and having a lovely meal cooked for us by darling daughter. Considering that in my last post I wrote of my suspected “addiction to blogging”, this is a good thing. My day was particularly good in that it was spent almost entirely away from a computer screen. Here are our 50 favorite albums from the year’s first half - and let’s hope that this year’s deluge of game-changing chart-toppers is just around the corner.Hope everyone had a lovely Easter Monday. Legacy-building releases from artists building formidable catalogs, successful left-turns from hitmakers we thought had long finished surprising us, and totally new breakthroughs and debuts from phenomenons who very likely may turn into superstars of future years: 2023 has packed plenty of delights to keep us entertained while we await further turnover at the top. Besides that 36-track country blockbuster, the culture has largely been dominated by a pair of albums that are holdovers from late 2022 - SZA’s SOS and Taylor Swift’s Midnights - while most of pop’s overdue A-listers continue to lie dormant, and no rising or brand new sensations have put their imprint on the year in the same way.ĭoes that mean there haven’t been great albums to discover from this year? Of course not: Look a little lower on the Billboard 200 (or outside the chart altogether) and you’ll find plenty of still-impactful sets that have delighted us this year while the names at the top remain the same.
In 2023… well, we’re still kinda waiting, aren’t we? Nearly six months into the year, and we’ve still only had four albums top the Billboard 200 albums chart for the first time, and only one for more than one week: Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time, which has ruled the chart for 13 non-consecutive weeks, and still stands over three months after its release as the album to beat - a challenge not many other albums have been up to so far. The floodgates were officially open, and 2022 never really looked back from there. After a tortoise-slow first four months to the year, the spring had kicked into high gear with successive chart-topping albums in May from superstar artists Future, Bad Bunny, Kendrick Lamar and Harry Styles. In 2022, Billboard‘s staff revealed our mid-year albums list in early June, seemingly just after the year had really kicked off in earnest in terms of big releases.
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