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My Favorite Album from Every Year I’ve Been Alive (Part One: 1966–1979)
Now there’s no way for it to only be Springsteen
I recently did pieces on my favorite songs from both the year I turned 16 and the year I consider most pivotal for me, and I enjoyed those trips down memory lane so much I decided to go really big and choose my favorite albums from every year that I have been alive. I quickly discovered a problem, however: the sheer size of it would deter all but the most dedicated readers. I have been alive for parts of seven decades: all of the ’70s, ’90s, ’00s, and ’10s, plus four years of the ’60s, nine of the ’80s, and three of the ’20s; I say only nine of the ’80s because as I told Terry Barr recently, I honestly remember not one bit of 1988; I grabbed a bottle of Jack on New Year’s Eve ’87 and woke up mid-January ’89.
Since doing this as one piece would run to a read time of around 57 minutes, I’ve decided instead to break it up by decade. Given my feelings about rock post-1995, I may combine 2000–2022 into one article, but I’m not sure yet. I will definitely combine the 1960s and 1970s, because the four years of the ’60s I was alive would not make a very long article. And let me be crystal clear: this is not a listing of the greatest albums of each year, but rather my personal favorites. Sometimes they will be the same thing…
