2011年 Dec 31日 Saturday, 5:32
So, it's once again time to begin a new year. So traditionally, I'll take a look at this past year and what I've been listening for the past 12 months. Now before looking at the charts, I'll guess that Mastodon and Rush will probably rule the charts, as they both did visit Finland and Mastodon released a new album, The Hunter. Then there's of course Mokoma and Iron Maiden, who will be high on my charts as usual. So, let's dive right in and take a closer look and see if my predictions are correct!
Let's start off with my top 10 bands/artists of the past 12 months:
1. Rush (1,214 plays)
2. Mastodon (740)
3. Mokoma (677)
4. Prince (559)
5. Tori Amos (502)
6. Guns N' Roses (484)
7. Kansas (473)
8. CMX (444)
9. Iron Maiden (308)
10. KoRn (259)
Rush being number one and with such a huge amount of plays surprises me a bit. Almost twice as much as Mastodon has. But yeah, it explains a lot that even though Mastodon did release their new album this year, I kinda discovered Rush this year and played their whole discography over and over again, bought the records and so on.
8 out of 10 bands on my top 10 did visit Finland, except for Kansas, which I saw at Sweden Rock festival. So naturally I listened to them a lot more than other "random" bands. But more about the live-stuff later.
What about my top 10 artists according to normalisr (which counts the minutes spent listening to each artirts, based on the stats of last.fm)?
1. Rush (5968 minutes)
2. Mastodon (2886)
3. Prince (2413)
4. Mokoma (2403)
5. Guns N' Roses (2323)
6. Kansas (2199)
7. Tori Amos (2133)
8. CMX (1694)
9. Opeth (1544)
10. Iron Maiden (1493)
Slight changes, Opeth rises up 7 positions with their long songs. And yeah, they also released new album this year, Heritage, which is great album, you should check it out!
Next, let's take a look at my top albums of 2011.
1. Mokoma - Varjopuoli
2. Mastodon - The Hunter
3. Kansas - The Best of
4. Rush - Snakes & Arrows
5. Nobuo Uematsu - Final Fantasy VII OST
6. Guns N' Roses - Use Your Illusion II
7. Rush - Moving Pictures
8. Rush - Counterparts
9. Elton John - Greatest Hits 1970-2002
10. Rush - Grace Under Pressure
Yeah, should be quite obvious that Rush dominates this list and the top albums are ones released this year. Mokoma recorded acoustic versions of their biggest hits and the result, Varjopuoli, is a great album with great atmosphere and arrangements.
After Crack The Skye, Mastodon "simplified" their music and took a more direct approach with The Hunter, which is a killer album. In your face, groovy and heavy rock.
The odd one on this list is the soundtrack of Final Fantasy VII, by Nobuo Uematsu. I've been listening to a lot of instrumental and classical music lately and this is one of the best game soundtracks there is. This album has a lot short songs so it gets a lot of plays and lands on number 5 on my top 10 albums.
But when we look at the charts on normalisr, it drops out and the top 10 looks like this:
1. Mastodon - The Hunter
2. Rush - Snakes & Arrows
3. Mokoma - Varjopuoli
4. Kansas - The Best of
5. Guns N' Roses - Use Your Illusion II
6. Rush - Moving Pictures
7. Rush - Counterparts
8. Rush - Grace Under Pressure
9. Elton John - Greatest Hits 1970-2002
10. Iron Maiden - The Final Frontier
Iron Maiden rises up 25 positions and lands on number 10! Wow! Besides that, the list is somewhat the same as on last.fm, just in a slightly different order.
I saw some great shows during 2011, including Rush, Kansas, Down, System of a Down (which I thought I never get to see as they were on a break for a long time), Mastodon, Prince, Tori Amos, Ian Anderson, Jean-Michel Jarre and Opeth. Rush and Prince were the highlights, no doubt.
So, happy new year to you all and remember to support great bands and keep on listening until the end of the world comes. It should be 2012, according to some people. You know who.
Peace.