Apple released a press release announcing they have hit 100 million songs on their Apple Music streaming service yesterday, which, by my calculations, is quite a lot. The release is your traditional back-patting piece but there are some interesting little nuggets in there that caught my attention. The first is about the history of music and how it’s possible we even have this many songs to play with in the first place.

Last year, the American country music singer Eric Church released a triple part album, entitled Heart & Soul. Each of those three words was the title of one part of the album, and they were released over the course of about a week. At the time, I listened to the albums a little bit reluctantly. Heart came first, and then & was released only as a vinyl release, so I said: “Already I’m on the back foot as I’m not going to be able to hear the middle part of this trilogy… nevertheless, I figured it couldn’t hurt to give the first part a go, and I’m glad I did.

Somehow another year of music has flown by, I’ve banked another 100 albums, both new and old, and now I have to decide which were the cream of the crop and which weren’t worth the download speeds. Each week, for fifty weeks, I’ve listened to one new album (usually from this year, or 2020 at a push), and one older album (any time before that), and have listened to each twice because I’ve found just one listen through isn’t always enough to full appreciate what’s going on.

Hooray for the dreaded time of year where I pick out the top five albums I’ve listened to over the past twelve months. Each week for 50 weeks, I listen to two albums. One is a new one (this year or the previous year) and one is an older one (from any time previous to that). So I can’t promise to have listened to every album that was released last year but of those I did, I’ve managed to narrow down five of the best.

This week the 2021 Grammy nominations were announced and immediately two things stood out to me: firstly, I get very confused by the categories at awards shows and secondly, by far the more important fact, women are having a really good showing this year! For the first time ever, all the nominees for best rock performance are women, and the same can be said for the best country album (sort of - if you see Little Big Town as being fronted by the two women, which I do.

The ongoing lockdown continues to evolve and I have found it fascinating to see how the creative types have been trying to keep themselves entertained. Plenty are trying to keep doing what they usually do just in a different way. Some are providing distraction for others, and there’s another subset who are using their time to try and impart wisdom to others. I missed this at the time, but Radio 1 have been getting artists to give music lessons, sharing an insight into how to play one of their songs.

The background: I love Peter Kay’s Car Share, I truly believe it to be one of the best TV shows of the decade. When I shared the show with Mr C, he was also on board - comedy and music aren’t too hard to argue with. On the flip side, one thing we argue about more than we probably should is the guilt of the protagonist of Richard Marx’s song Hazard.

You’ll know by now, I’m sure, that I’m obsessed with Oprah’s Book Club. The interactivity between online books, the show, the guidance, the discussion with the author, all of it appeals to me. We recently saw the latest episode of the TV show, where Oprah talked to Elizabeth Strout about her latest work, and it was another good show - another, in fact, that Mr C enjoyed despite not having read the book.

James Corden’s latest riff off sees him take on Camila Cabello in a slightly fake debate about which is better for music - 1999 or 2019. You can see the results below but I’m pretty sure they came to the wrong conclusion. Even within the video itself, the older songs are so much better! Camila is a far superior singer to James, I’m sure he’d agree, but even she can’t make Old Town Road sound better than Smooth.

It’s that time again! A whole year of music listening gets distilled down to a choice of five top albums and seeing if any of them can break into my top ten of all time. I don’t usually enjoy this process and this year hasn’t been any different, although if I’m honest, the choice was slightly less inspiring than usual. It felt like the year was very top heavy in terms of stand-out albums, and as I was reviewing my shortlist, none of them were really jumping out.