Theories, rants, etc.
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“YOU DON’T EXPECT MEN IN THEIR middle fifties to write tunes,” Damon Albarn tells us this month. “That’s supposed to have long abandoned you.” Albarn, we discover, is currently indulging his inner Mozart and working on a sequel to The Magic Flute. But it’s his activities fronting a revitalised Blur that most concern us in our wide-ranging review of 2023.
As Blur and Pulp brought their nuanced takes on ’90s revivalism, and even Taylor Swift embarked on a thorough inventory of her past on the Eras tour, 2023 found new generations embracing their own kinds of nostalgia and older artists moving into rewarding new stages of their careers. Four singers in our Top 75 albums of the year – Paul Simon, John Cale, Ian Hunter and Shirley Collins – are over 80, and it’s a near-certainty The Rolling Stones would’ve been in there too if our voters had heard Hackney Diamonds before our deadline. There were comebacks galore – not least from our cover stars, The Beatles – alongside a wealth of younger talent jostling for the laurels: Lankum, Grian Chatten, Boygenius, Julie Byrne, my personal favourites The Tubs.