Posted in Music chat, New Albums, New Tunes, podcast, Spin it or Bin It

Podcast Episode 40 | 2023 Top 10 Albums

Welcome to Episode 68 of This Is Not Happening, an Album of the Month podcast. In Part 1, we do a deep drive review of our Album of the Month. This month Guy brings a Robyn's latest release 'Sexisitential'. In Part 2, we play Spin It or Bin It, we pick a theme and all pick songs that represent that theme. This month, the theme is 'Sad Bangers'.           —— Part 1 | Album of the Month | Robyn |  Sexistential ——Robyn is a unique, iconic figure in contemporary music. She's been making and releasing music since 1995, her career spans 4 decades already and she shows no signs of slowing down. Her pop career started when she was 15, she's about to celebrate her 47th birthday, this is insane staying power!Sexistential is her 9th studio album if you count the Body Talk series as full albums? It's only 29 mins long, it doesn't mess about and no track or the album in full overstays it's welcome. There is lots to get into in the discussion, has she still got it? Is she doing new things? Is this still relevant and if so who for? How artists change and what we expect from them as they age?Have a listen, tell us what you think.Listen to the original album here.Watch some of her videos here , particularly the singles from this album.Buy this album or some merch here.  And listen to her talk about the album here.                 —————- Part 2 | Spin It or Bin It | Sad Bangers —————- Robyn's biggest track is 'Dancing On My Own' is the archetype of a genre that Guy made up 'Sad Bangers'. This is our theme for Spin It or Bin It this month.  It's got to be sad, and it's got to bang. Simple (in theory).The task is pick a track that fits the theme, the objective, get more 'spins' than your friends. We each pick four tracks for a 16 track play list . We then each pick select 1 track and ask the simple question 'Spin It Or Bin It'?David chose Destroy Everything You Touch by Ladytron.Joey chose 'Teardrops' by Womack and Womack.Guy chose 'Lovesick' by Friendly Fires.Nolan chose 'Blue Monday' by New Order.What would you have chosen? What's missing from our playlist?We've been writing the blog for years come and have a look – https://thisisnothappening.net/
  1. EP.68 | Robyn | Sexistential
  2. EP.67 | Eliza | The Darkening Green
  3. EP.66 | Jill Scott | To Whom This May Concern
  4. EP. 65 | Zach Bryan | With Heaven On Top
  5. EP. 64 | Rosalia | LUX

Welcome to Episode 40 of This is Not Happening. An Album of the Month Podcast where we usually review an album in depth and play something called ‘Spin It or Bin It’ … but not this month.

We’re celebrating our big 4-0 in style. It’s end of year review time. We select our top 10 albums of 2023 and each pick our Track of 2023.

Part 1 – 2023 Top 10 Albums

We all independently picked our top 10s. We run those choices through a series of deep learning models commonly known as ‘Algo Dave’ and we create a mathematically generated combined Top 10. We made our selections and recorded this pod WAAAAAY ahead of any body else’s lists coming out so we are not influenced by the mainstream musical media (which is why our list looks SO different to everyone else’s). We’re super proud of our 10 and chuffed to bits that our No.1 is an album that we all love and one that we’ve loved since the start of the year. No recency bias here my friends.

Part 2- 2023 Tracks of the Year

We each select a track of the year. Simple as that. We explain why it’s our track of 2023 and have a little critique of each others choices.

*** Enjoy the Episode ***

Posted in Album of the Month, podcast

Podcast Episode | Top 10 Albums & Top Tracks of 2022

Welcome to Episode 68 of This Is Not Happening, an Album of the Month podcast. In Part 1, we do a deep drive review of our Album of the Month. This month Guy brings a Robyn's latest release 'Sexisitential'. In Part 2, we play Spin It or Bin It, we pick a theme and all pick songs that represent that theme. This month, the theme is 'Sad Bangers'.           —— Part 1 | Album of the Month | Robyn |  Sexistential ——Robyn is a unique, iconic figure in contemporary music. She's been making and releasing music since 1995, her career spans 4 decades already and she shows no signs of slowing down. Her pop career started when she was 15, she's about to celebrate her 47th birthday, this is insane staying power!Sexistential is her 9th studio album if you count the Body Talk series as full albums? It's only 29 mins long, it doesn't mess about and no track or the album in full overstays it's welcome. There is lots to get into in the discussion, has she still got it? Is she doing new things? Is this still relevant and if so who for? How artists change and what we expect from them as they age?Have a listen, tell us what you think.Listen to the original album here.Watch some of her videos here , particularly the singles from this album.Buy this album or some merch here.  And listen to her talk about the album here.                 —————- Part 2 | Spin It or Bin It | Sad Bangers —————- Robyn's biggest track is 'Dancing On My Own' is the archetype of a genre that Guy made up 'Sad Bangers'. This is our theme for Spin It or Bin It this month.  It's got to be sad, and it's got to bang. Simple (in theory).The task is pick a track that fits the theme, the objective, get more 'spins' than your friends. We each pick four tracks for a 16 track play list . We then each pick select 1 track and ask the simple question 'Spin It Or Bin It'?David chose Destroy Everything You Touch by Ladytron.Joey chose 'Teardrops' by Womack and Womack.Guy chose 'Lovesick' by Friendly Fires.Nolan chose 'Blue Monday' by New Order.What would you have chosen? What's missing from our playlist?We've been writing the blog for years come and have a look – https://thisisnothappening.net/
  1. EP.68 | Robyn | Sexistential
  2. EP.67 | Eliza | The Darkening Green
  3. EP.66 | Jill Scott | To Whom This May Concern
  4. EP. 65 | Zach Bryan | With Heaven On Top
  5. EP. 64 | Rosalia | LUX

It’s that time of year again, we dust off David’s scoring-algorithm for the end of year review. This is the one we look forward to and we hope you enjoy it.

This month, in Part 1 we run through our collective, This is Not Happening Top-10 albums. In Part 2 we all introduce our Track of the year.

Part 1 | 2022 This is Not Happening Top 10 Albums

So, there’s for of us. We all independently chose our Top 10 albums. This data is fed into deep learning algorithm that considers all of the knowns and most of the unknowns and create a singular, collective This is Not Happening Top 10. Its a controversial approach but its as fair as we can make it. 

This year only 2 albums were chosen by all 4 of us. Only 3 albums were chosen by 3 of us. However, the Top 10 feels more ‘shared’ than we’ve ever done. I think it’s a really solid top 10 and we should be proud of it.

Our number one is an absolute belter! We can hold our heads high with this one.

Part 2 | Tracks of the Year

How do you sum up an entire year in one track? Is it even possible? Two, important  questions, to which our answers are; ‘with difficulty’ and ‘yes’. We chose 4 tracks from 4 different genres. There’s more than a whiff of melancholy that links our Top tracks but we think is kind of fitting for one of the oddest of years.

Next Month

If we’re honest, we’re not 100% sure what we’ll be reviewing. Every year there are albums released later in the year that we miss or simply don’t have the time to get our teeth into. So Nolan will pick one of these albums and we’ll all spend the holidays getting stuck into that with our families (if it’s vaguely appropriate for very young or very old ears).

Posted in Music chat, New Tunes

ALBUMS OF 2019