Weekly Last.fm Charts, featuring The The

Week 25 September – 2 October 2020

I just spent some time going through my old Last.fm chart posts and updating them to blocks for Wordpress 5. It got me listening to lots again and has inspired me to start doing it again. It's really fun to look back through these charts and get a feel for what was going on in my life through the music I was listening to.

I did it for a while on my Steemit blog but it never really took. I like this way better, using Steempress to put it on my Hive blog but keeping it on my own blog as the primary source.

The The

Since I wrote my review of Long Shadows, High Hopes: the Life and Times of Matt Johnson and The The, I've been listening to The The a lot. It's good because the band is probably not accurately reflected in my all-time weightings on Last.fm as I listened to them all the time before I started scrobbling.

I'm not sure why, but I didn't listen to NakedSelf when it was released, nor since really, right up until a couple of weeks ago. I had a morning in bed with the book on my Kindle and I listened to it on my AirPods as I read about each track in the book. It was an amazing experience and I've been listening to NakedSelf a lot since then.

Strangeways, Here We Come

This Smiths album came up on my radar because of Tim's Listening Party on Twitter. I'd never taken part in the listening parties, although I knew that he'd done The The at least a couple of times. I started following the Twitter account and this came up straight away.

This is the only Smiths album I ever bought. I got it after hearing it at the army apprentices' college in Harrogate when John Hall played it one time. John's nickname was Manc, so you can guess where he's from, right? And yes, I was called Jock, obviously.

I've always loved the album, but listening to it with a live Twitter party going on added a whole new level of appreciation. Totally fun.

I've come to wish you an unhappy birthday, because you're evil and you liked, and if you should die I may feel slightly sad, but I won't cry.
Unhappy Birthday

Fuck!

The Others

To be honest, I'm not sure what the others are, with the exception of Bajofondo. I found them while browsing Tim's Listening Party archives and fired it on simply because the album cover drew me right in.

I mean come on, right?

I think the rest of the bands will have been Spotify algorithms carrying on with that style as I do know Gotan Project (I saw them in Luxembourg one time as it happens!).