Your teenage awards

[Crystal Staples]

Born in late December, so generally 12 in the year I turned 13 and so on..

1991
Altern8 - Activ8 (Come With Me)
KLF - The White Room
Hotshots

1992
Utah Saints - Something Good
The Cure - Wish
Hook

1993
Therapy? - Screamager
Lenny Kravitz - Are You Gonna Go My Way?
Jurassic Park

1994
Soundgarden - Spoonman
Nirvana - Unplugged in New York
Cool Runnings

1995
Wildhearts - I Wanna Go Where the People Go
Red Hot Chili Peppers - One Hot Minute
Goldeneye

1996
Manic Street Preachers - Design For Life
Manic Street Preachers - Everything Must Go
Casino

1997
Placebo - Nancy Boy
Kenickie - At the Club
Mars Attacks!

1998
Asian Dub Foundation - Buzzin
Marilyn Manson - Mechanical Animals
Pi

[Hot Pepsi]

I'd like to participate. Is there a simple-to-use source to find out which songs came out in which year? Otherwise, I can't really remember.

[3 Colours Red]

Wikipedia? Discogs?

[Sporting]

Charts websites?

[Hot Pepsi]

I thought there might be something easier, but I don't know why I though that.

[ursus arctos]

Wiki has individual articles with the entire Billboard Hot 100 single chart for a given year

[Hot Pepsi]

OK. I assume we're looking for what we actually liked at that time, not looking at the things we like from those years now. Hmmm. I'll do both.

Born in October 1972, so I'll start with 1985. My interest in pop music actually began in 1983 and my interest in movies began around 1977. Throughout this period, I didn't own much music, but what I did own was on cassette. A lot of it was just taped on the radio or from friends.


1985
Then:
From 6th to 7th grade.
Album: The Hooters - Nervous Night
Song: The Hooters - All You Zombies
Movie: Back to the Future

Now:
Album: Husker Du - New Day Rising
Song: A-Ha - Take On Me.
Movie: Back to the Future, though Spies Like Us is underrated. It's terrible, but still has some of my favorite bits.

1986
Then:
From 7th to 8th grade.
Album: Pet Shop Boys - Please
Song: PSB - Opportuniites
Movie: Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Now:
Album: They Might Be Giants - They Might Be Giants (tons of good options that year)
Song: New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle
Movie: Ferris Bueller's Day Off (It's worth noting that 1986 was the year of Platoon and Top Gun. A lot of thinkpieces about the 80s and America's feelings about Vietnam could be written based on that fact).


1987
Then:
From 8th to 9th grade (start of high school. The end of joy)
Album: Midnight Oil - Diesel and Dust (though I may not have got this until 1988)
Song: Midnight Oil - The Dead Heart
Movie: The Living Daylights (Not a good film, but I was looking at the list and this was the only one that I know I saw in the theater in 1987. It was a weak summer. There were lots of other films that came out later that I saw on VHS in 1988).

Now:
Album: Midnight Oil - Diesel And Dust
Song: The Cure - Just Like Heaven
Movie: The Princess Bride


1988
Then:
From 9th to 10th grade. Just a terrible time in my teenage life. Very sad.
Album: They Might Be Giants - Lincoln
Song: They Might Be Giangs - Ana Ng
Movie: Who Framed Roger Rabbitt

Now:
Album: They Might Be Giants - Lincoln (I know the right answer is the Pixies or My Bloody Valentine, but my affection for Lincoln is everlasting)
Song: They Might Be Giants - Ana Ng
Movie: Bull Durham


1989
Then:
From 10th to 11th Grade. Still pretty sad.
Album: The Hooters - Zig Zag (though I was mostly into the Beatles in this era)
Song: B-52s - Love Shack (it's VERY catchy)
Movie: Dead Poets Society (that's what I would have said. The real answer would have been Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure)

Now:
Album: The Connells - Fun & Games
Song: Young MC - Bust a Move
Movie: Field of Dreams (I liked it then, but have grown to appreciate it more)


1990
Then:
10th to 11th grade. Not so bad.
Album: Midnight Oil - Blue Sky Mine
Song: They Might Be Giants - Birdhouse In Your Soul
Movie: Edward Scissorhands

Now:
Album: Fugazi - Repeater
Song: Depeche Mode - Enjoy The Silence
Movie: Goodfellas


1991
Then: High school to College. Difficult time
Album: REM - Out of Time
Song: Pearl Jam - Alive
Movie: City Slickers

Now:
Album: MBV - Loveless
Song: MBV - Only Shallow
Movie: City Slickers or maybe The Commitments


1992:
Then: College. Terrible terrible times.
Album: Midnight Oil - Scream in Blue Live
Song: They Might Be Giants - I Palindrome I
Movie: A River Runs Throught It

Now:
Album: Sugar - Copper Blue
Song: Beastie Boys - So Watcha Want
Movie: Singles

[Antepli Ejderha]

OK. I assume we're looking for what we actually liked at that time, not looking at the things we like from those years now. Hmmm. I'll do both.

Born in October 1972, so I'll start with 1985. My interest in pop music actually began in 1983 and my interest in movies began around 1977. Throughout this period, I didn't own much music, but what I did own was on cassette. A lot of it was just taped on the radio or from friends.


1985
Then:
From 6th to 7th grade.
Album: The Hooters - Nervous Night
Song: The Hooters - All You Zombies
Movie: Back to the Future

Now:
Album: Probably Husker Du - New Day Rising or maybe A-Ha - Hunting High and Low, but the Hooters are still a good call.
Song: A-Ha - Take On Me. It's a classic for a reason.
Movie: Back to the Future, though Spies Like Us is underrated. It's terrible, but still has some of my favorite bits.

1986
Then:
From 7th to 8th grade.
Album: Pet Shop Boys - Please
Song: PSB - Opportuniites
Movie: Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Now:
Album: They Might Be Giants - They Might Be Giants (tons of good options that year)
Song: New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle
Movie: Ferris Bueller's Day Off (It's worth noting that 1986 was the year of Platoon and Top Gun. A lot of thinkpieces about the 80s and America's feelings about Vietnam could be written based on that fact).


1987
Then:
From 8th to 9th grade (start of high school. The end of joy)
Album: Midnight Oil - Beds Are Burning (though I may not have got this until 1988)
Song: Midnight Oil - The Dead Heart
Movie: The Living Daylights (Not a good film, but I was looking at the list and this was the only one that I know I saw in the theater in 1987. It was a weak summer. There were lots of other films that came out later that I saw on VHS in 1988).

Now:
Album: Midnight Oil - Diesel And Dust
Song: The Cure - Just Like Heaven (I know that's conventional, but it's the best pop song ever)
Movie: The Princess Bride


1988
Then:
From 9th to 10th grade. Just a terrible time in my teenage life. Very sad.
Album: They Might Be Giants - Lincoln
Song: They Might Be Giangs - Ana Ng
Movie: Who Framed Roger Rabbitt

Now:
Album: They Might Be Giants - Lincoln (I know the right answer is the Pixies or My Bloody Valentine, but my affection for Lincoln is everlasting)
Song: Pixies - Where is My Mind?
Movie: Bull Durham


1989
Then:
From 10th to 11th Grade. Still pretty sad.
Album: The Hooters - Zig Zag (though I was mostly into the Beatles in this era)
Song: B-52s - Love Shack (it's VERY catchy)
Movie: Dead Poets Society (that's what I would have said. The real answer would have been Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure)

Now:
Album: The Connells - Fun & Games
Song: Young MC - Bust a Move
Movie: Field of Dreams


1990
Then:
10th to 11th grade. Not so bad.
Album: Midnight Oil - Blue Sky Mine
Song: They Might Be Giants - Birdhouse In Your Soul
Movie: Edward Scissorhands

Now:
Album: Fugazi - Repeater
Song: Depeche Mode - Enjoy The Silence
Movie: Goodfellas


1991
Then: High school to College. Difficult time
Album: REM - Out of Time
Song: Pearl Jam - Alive
Movie: City Slickers

Now:
Album: MBV - Loveless
Song: MBV - Only Shallow
Movie: City Slickers or maybe The Commitments


1992:
Then: College. Terrible terrible times.
Album: Midnight Oil - Scream in Blue Live
Song: They Might Be Giants - I Palindrome I
Movie: A River Runs Throught It

Now:
Album: Sugar - Copper Blue
Song: Beastie Boys - So Watcha Want
Movie: Singles

You were born a few months after me HP and much of your musical choices are the same or similar to mine.

Sorry to hear things weren't good for you then.

[Hot Pepsi]

Thanks!
I didn't have any "real" problems. Just a lot of depression and anxiety. But I'm still here, so clearly I learned and grew from it.


Doing this reminded me of how limited my musical horizons were those days. All we knew was the radio, MTV and what our friends knew about. Going to college and then living in Boston for a bit in the mid 90s broadened my horizons, but there are so many good records released in the 80s and early 90s that I knew nothing about until the 21st century. I learned a lot from participating in OTF in the early 2000s. Now, of course, its easy to find anything and then easily find things that other people who like those things also like and so on and so on.

Tell that to kids today and they won't believe you.

[Etienne]

I really wasn't that into films, so I've more or less left them out.

1989
Single - Phil Collins - Another Day in Paradise
Album - Fine Young Cannibals - Raw and the Cooked

1990
Single - Depeche Mode - Enjoy the Silence
Album - David Bowie - ChangesBowie (My dad bought it. I'd never really heard Bowie before)

1991
Single - REM - Losing My Religion
Album - REM - Out of Time

1992
Single - Pulp - Babies
Album - Nirvana - Nevermind (I was a bit late on the uptake for lots of 1991 music as I spent most of 1991 buying and listening to the REM back catalogue.

1993
Single - Boo Radleys - Wishin' I was Skinny
Album - Tindersticks

1994
Single - Portishead - Dumb
Album - Pulp - His'n'Hers

1995
Single - Common People
Album - Tindersticks (Second Album)
Film - Before Sunrise

1996
Single - Isaac Hayes - Walk On By (not a single from 1996 of course, but my favourite song of the year, after the Dead Presidents soundtrack introduced me to loads of new stuff)
Album - Sparklehorse - vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot

[Felicity, I guess so]

1976
Thin Lizzy - “Boys are Back in Town”
Queen - Night at the Opera

Jaws

1977
“God Save the Queen”
The Clash

Close Encounters

1978
“Public Image”
All Mod Cons

Grease (thought it was shite at the time but took girls to see it)


1979
Gang of Four - At Home He'’s a Tourist
London Calling

Scum

1980
Rock Lobster
Quadrophenia (the album)

Apocalypse Now

1981
Papa’s Got a Brand New Pigbag
NME C-81 cassette

The Tin Drum

1982
Shipbuilding
various old soul compilations

Battle of Algiers

[laverte]

i wanted to have a go at this before it disappeared down the page. Ah well.

First a couple of observations. It's interesting to see some huge leaps in taste from one year to the next, eg between prog and punk, between techno and grunge. i'm curious to know what prompted these shifts. New friends? Exposure to new media? Was there an act or a song that functioned as a transition or as a gateway? Or was it a fully fledged damascene conversion?

The films are way more mainstream than the music aren't they? i noticed this when i was an undergraduate. The guys who listened to indie noise and had a horror of anything pop and commercial would go to the cinema to see blockbusters. Whereas i'd slip The best of Kylie into my walkman and trundle off to the arthouse theatre to put myself through some slow-moving subtitled gloom.

And i feel obliged to make my perennial comment about how few acts featuring or fronted by women there are on these Greatest/Favourite threads in the music forum.

i'm incapable of writing lists so my choices come with background commentary. i was a pop kid, a singles buyer, so for some years i've included a non-contemporary album, most of them greatest hits, which i was into at the time. i had no means of going to the cinema while at boarding school. Birthday is in late November.

The year 1986 finds me, aged 12, in a shared bedroom at convent school in Norfolk. The headteacher, our surrogate mother, would prefer us to forgo pop music but struggles to enforce a total ban. Radio One is permitted for about half an hour a day, headphones on so that my roommate is not contaminated. My interest in gospel music helps me to justify putting up a poster of Annie Amazulu (Sister was easily hoodwinked) from Number one magazine, albeit in a corner at a respectable distance from my crucifix and Saint Bridget and the dismal attempt at an embroidered dove i have made in domestic science class.

Single: I can't wait – Nu shooz.

Albums: Amazulu – Amazulu.

Compilation – Praising his heavenly light. Gospel from the bargain bin at Our price.


On the Chart music podcast covering 1987, Taylor complained it was unfair that he should have turned 15 in this, the most dismal year of the decade for pop. From the repeats of Top of the pops i've caught, he has a point. i'm 18 months younger than him, so i turned 15 after the second summer of love, in time for the acieeed craze (and in time for the guru). i don't believe i bought an album released in 1987. Like the rest of the nation, i am listening to crackly old tunes, influenced by Levi's ads and, from September, by a roommate with music-loving parents and a double-deck cassette recorder.

Single: Respectable – Mel & Kim. i preferred the previous year's Showing out, but 1987 brought a general collapse in standards. Sister was implacably opposed to all of fun, love and money. i bought a black wide-brimmed hat but couldn't pull it off. Had a soft spot for camp classic Alone by Heart.

Album: True blue – Madonna. i got it for christmas in 1986 from a cousin anxious about my deep lack of cool. The nuns did not approve of Madonna at all so i had to throw out the cover and hide it in a more acceptable box.

Compilation: a Motown one, Twenty golden greats or somesuch. Discovered the Carpenters and Carole King around this time via my roommate.

Film: Educating Rita. Our daringly progressive English Literature teacher introduced me to kitchen sink drama and lent me a vhs copy of her favourite film. i didn't know anyone with a video player so i had to watch it during the holidays with my mother while we were supposed to be babysitting.


By 1988 i am reading Smash hits with the day girls and listening to as much of the top 40 as i can get away with. Roommate is branching out into house music and hoarding copies of The Face. i dabble while continuing to plow a slightly lonelier pop furrow.

Single: Wee rule – Wee papa girl rappers. What it feels like to be 13.

Album: Vivid – Living colour. Taped from roommate. i was indeed not a glamour boy, though not yet fierce either.

Compilation: Greatest hits – Mahalia Jackson.

Film: High hopes. Recommended by English teacher. Spending most of the holidays in London i'm beginning to take on a more urban identity, and gritty flicks showing the underbelly of Thatcher's Britain are feeding it.


1989 is the year of GCSE revision. i buy a wee suitcase in which i begin to store my small collection of cassette singles. i move in with my mother and start sixth form at a boys' school, and these new freedoms take over my listening habits. Discover pirate radio, the Chart show on tv and a supply of difficult arthouse movies showing on channel 4 after mother goes to bed.

Single: Talkin' all that jazz – Stetsasonic. Forever linked with trying to memorise ounces-to-grams conversion tables in my doomed bid to pass domestic science. Had a soft spot for camp classic Cha cha heels, leading me to investigate the back catalogue, so to speak, of Eartha Kitt.

Album: Club classics vol 1 – Soul II Soul.

Compilation: Substance – New order. My new friend at sixth form is into yuppie art pop and fey indie. i'm trialling a sassy personality which he thankfully indulges while seeing right through it. He gives me a taped copy of Substance and i treat it like a holy tablet. i might have the tiniest crush on him.

Film: Trop belle pour toi. i watch it in France while staying with my dad and can't understand much, leading to the realisation that i am no longer, by any reasonable measure, French. i start to feel a certain melancholy as i realise for the first time that i have disclaimed a part of my identity.

[laverte]

My bestie and i are real tight and music is the glue which binds us so that 1990 comes with an exhaustive soundtrack. We read the inkies, talk pop, hang out in record shops and compete to deliver the more excoriating critique of The joker or Something happened on the way to heaven. i take a shitty summer job in a service station where i'm obliged to listen to Capital Gold all day long, leading to a desire to jack rather than Fleetwood Mac.

Single: The masterplan – Diana Brown & Barrie K Sharpe. Ecstatic buddhist funky house, which fits me like a glove. Barrie's dancing is … expressive. Also enjoy toasting along to Everything starts with an E in an even odder accent than MC Kinky's.

Album: UK blak – Caron Wheeler.

Compilation: ChangesBowie. Another of my best friend's contributions to my pop education. He's such a Bowie devotee that he owns both Tin Machine albums and actually listens to them. i knew nothing at all. Christmas brings the long-waited-for moment of hand-holding and a polite no-tongues kiss. i tremble, like a flower.

Film: Cry-baby. i started to go to the cinema by myself this year in the west end of London, after i subjected my friend to The sheltering sky and felt too ashamed to invite him again. But we saw this one together after watching Hairspray and Pink flamingoes on vhs.


It's 1991 and i'm loved up. Boyf drags me to nightclubs, and rave music starts to make sense: i throw myself at it, and whaddaya know i'm a pretty good mover. Boyfriend's Bowie obsession and love of John Waters movies turn out to be A Sign: we break up while on holiday, he comes out, we both feel relief and go shaking our asses in the gayest nightclub we can find.

Single: Only love can break your heart – Saint Etienne. i'd never heard the original, never heard of Neil Young. The power of the bassline and the mournful vocals and the jagged piercing keyboard bits get right through to my soul. i approve the band name.

Album: Blue lines – Massive attack. Me starting to educate myself, and him with it.

Compilation: Immaculate collection – Madonna.

Film: Antonia and Jane. A quietly sad film about an unsatisfying friendship that seems to endure despite itself. i'm 17 let's not forget.


By 1992 i'm an undergraduate, i use long words and i have become self-aware about my taste in music and film. More than ever i'm into pop fluff, a dancefloor diva, and having turned 18 i can now get a legal buzz from my stimulant of choice: the bacardi breezer. By the end of the year i can be found with my buddy Manda at all of the gay nights: the Tunnel on a Monday iirc, Bennetts on Tuesday, Club X i think on Thursday. Our missions are to avoid students and to get as many free drinks as possible, and so out of necessity we make ourselves look pretty darn fabulous on the dancefloor.

Single: Crucified – Army of lovers. Pied-noir pride! i love that La Camilla had an affair with the king of Sweden. It would be like Prince Charles having a fling with Cleo Rocos.

Album: Nature of a sista – Queen Latifah. As gangster rap emerges i will lose interest in hip hop but this is a beast of an LP.

Compilation: Best of I – the Smiths. Having been a bit too young and cut off from the world in the mid-80s, and not impressed by Morrissey's solo career, i finally get into the Smiths via the corporate money-grabbing compilation that the band disowned.

Film: La double vie de Véronique. i can't find a pal who wants to hang out at the GFT. My obscure-music-loving friends are inviting me to see Batman returns and Single white female and i feel peculiar for finding those films so lacking in interest. Irène Jacob mesmerises me.


i'm very slightly falling out of love with music in 1993 as i feel the rave and UK soul scenes are going in circles a bit, and less of the new stuff is exciting me. Fortunately the alcopops boom is keeping me energised. i'm investigating old disco and hi-nrg, and just beginning to discover early 70s funk and soul by plundering the second-hand store in Dowanhill. Manda takes my hints and asks me if i'm gay; i give thanks and say yes sort of and thus my coming out is accomplished. She has flings with two minor pop stars and i discover that the life of the GBF is getting a taxi home from a nightclub by myself. i spend the last three months of the year in Minnesota where obviously my first port of call is First Avenue. The rest of the time i'm snowed in with a ragbag of roommates from all over the world, and we have fun getting to know each other in an offish kind of way, and then spending time inside our headphones, and i say to myself: yes, this is how boarding school might have felt.

Single: Rebirth of slick – Digable planets. i'm cool like that.

Album: Debut – Bjork. i loved Hit and couldn't wait for this. Beginning of an intense fandom.

Compilation: i picked up the Salsoul 20^th anniversary box set from a bargain bin and would play it to death. Around this time i must have copied a Curtis Mayfield best of because practically the first thing i buy when i arrive in the US is a Superfly poster to cover my empty bedroom wall.

Film: Naked. Britain was such a sinister, unsettling place in what felt like the post-apocalypse of the early 1990s. Johnny was the nation scaring itself.

[Hot Pepsi]

And i feel obliged to make my perennial comment about how few acts featuring or fronted by women there are on these Greatest/Favourite threads in the music forum.

If it makes you feel better, my favorite acts that have released new material in the last ten years are Wolf Alice, The Regrettes and Laura Stevenson.

Still super white, I guess. But that's a problem throughout rock n' roll.

[Felicity, I guess so]

In terms of indie music/mainstream film, I didn’t have access to more than one, single screen (RAF camp) cinema til summer 79 when I could go to Dundee or St Andrews

[Satchmo Distel]

1979 (12-13)
Single: I Don't Like Mondays (Boomtown Rats)
Albums: String Of Hits (Shadows)
Movie: None at the time, Life Of Brian belatedly when it came out on video in 1981

1980 (13-14)
Single: Games Without Frontiers (Peter Gabriel). Belatedly "The Earth Dies Screaming" (UB40) after I bought it on album in 1982.
Album: Double Fantasy (John Lennon & Yoko Ono)
Movie: The Elephant Man

1981 (14-15)
Single: Julie Ocean (Undertones)
Album: Greatest Hits (Queen)
Movie: An American Werewolf in London

1982 (15-16)
Single: 101 Dam-Nations (Scarlet Party)
Album: The Singles Album (UB40)
Movie: None

1983 (16-17)
Single: Shipbuilding (Robert Wyatt)
Album: All Wrapped Up (Undertones)
Movie: None

1984 (17-18)
Single: 12-inch of William It Was Really Nothing (The Smiths) because How Soon Is Now was on it. 7-inch: Pearly Dew-Drop Drop/Spangle Maker (Cocteau Twins)
Album: The Smiths (The Smiths)
Movie: None. Saw 'Once Upon A Time In America' much later (1988ish)

1985 (18-19)
Single: Between The Wars EP (Billy Bragg)
Album: Meat Is Murder (Smiths)
Movie: None. Saw 'Ran' by Kurosawa in 1987 at university.

1986 (19-20)
Single: I Want You (Elvis Costello)
Album: The Queen Is Dead (Smiths)
Movie: My Beautiful Launderette