How Good Was The Year (in music) - 2007?

HGWTY returns to the 21st century for the first time in a few months to ask you to cast your minds back to 2007.

A reminder of the premise of the thread

After a number of days of posting and reminiscing, we’ll be rating the music of the year out of ten, based on the albums, singles, gigs, whatever that stand out for you that year, and voting for our favourite nominated albums and songs.

Everyone can nominate one album and one song from the year which will then be collated into side-polls two days before the thread closes - please make it clear when you post a nomination for the poll (as opposed to just posting clips or lists of songs and albums you like, which are very welcome).

Leaderboard
Rank Year Rating Top Album Top Song
1 1991 8.98 Slint - Spiderland Massive Attack - Unfinished Sympathy
2 1997 8.6 Radiohead - OK Computer The Beta Band - Dry The Rain
3 1967 8.48 Love - Forever Changes Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood - Some Velvet Morning
4 1992 8.29 Pavement - Slanted & Enchanted Pulp - Babies
4 2013 8.29 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Push the Sky Away Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Jubilee Street
6 2019 8.14 Self Esteem - Compliments Please Big Thief - Not
7 1975 8.13 Neil Young - Tonight’s the Night / Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks Neil Young and Crazy Horse - Cortez the Killer
8 2004 8.1 Madvillain - Madvillainy / Arcade Fire - Funeral The Walkmen - The Rat
9 1981 8.06 The Cure - Faith New Order - Ceremony
10 1982 7.76 The Cure - Pornography / Kate Bush - The Dreaming Robert Wyatt - Shipbuilding / The Associates - Party Fears Two
11 2014 7.69 FKA Twigs - LP1 FKA Twigs - Two Weeks
12 1970 7.61 Neil Young - After the Goldrush Curtis Mayfield - Move on Up
13 1990 7.47 Sonic Youth - Goo The Cure - Pictures of You
13 1976 7.47 David Bowie - Station to Station Bob Dylan - Hurricane
15 1986 7.42 Talk Talk - The Colour of Spring New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle
16 2005 7.39 Sufjan Stevens - Illinois Amerie - 1 Thing
17 1965 7.38 The Beatles - Rubber Soul Frank Wilson - Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)
18 2009 7.1 Fever Ray - Fever Ray Animal Collective - My Girls
19 1974 6.95 Neil Young - On The Beach Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson - The Bottle
20 1985 6.53 Tom Waits - Rain Dogs Prince and the Revolution - Raspberry Beret
21 1960 6 Howlin’ Wolf - Howlin’ Wolf Dick Dale - Misirlou
22 1961 5.16 John Coltrane - My Favourite Things Roy Orbison - Crying

image

2007 was the year Madeleine McCann disappeared from her family’s holiday apartment, a global financial crisis began as the insidious risk-blurring of bundled mortgage-backed securities spectacularly collapsed the intra-bank markets, the first iPhone was released and a smoking ban in enclosed public places was enacted in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (Scotland had led the way 3 years earlier).

Ingmar Bergman, Luciano Pavarotti, Alice Coltrane, Boris Yeltsin, Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut, Chris Benoit and Anna Nicole Smith all died this year.

How good was the music?

You have until Thursday 11th August to nominate one album and one song which will then go into a poll along with a number rating poll for year overall out of 10, which will close on Saturday 13th.

Some lists for inspiration:

DiS's albums of 2007: 5-1 (and full top 50) / In Depth // Drowned In Sound
The 50 Best Albums of 2007 | Pitchfork
2007: The best 50 albums | Music | The Guardian
Best Albums of 2007 : Best Ever Albums
https://rateyourmusic.com/charts/top/album/2007/
100 Greatest Albums of 2007
https://www.albumoftheyear.org/ratings/6-highest-rated/2007/1
NME's best albums and tracks of 2007
The 100 Best Songs of 2007 | Pitchfork
2007: The best singles | Music | The Guardian
100 Greatest Songs From 2007

Nominations will be tallied here as the week goes on:

Album Nominations

Song Nominations

Robyn - With Every Heartbeat for song please

6 Likes

Great year. Nu-Rave, arctic monkeys, good bright eyes album.

Just treated it as my second attempt at being 18 (I was 28) and had a great time

keep seeing these threads but not engaging or reading - annoying as now I’ve read properly I like the idea a lot! definitely irritated I missed the 04/19 ones especially

anyway, has to be Jamie T - Panic Prevention for album for me - still stands up as one of my favs from the era. Some aspects have dated it a bit, but still got plenty of great storytelling details and arresting lyrics, has a lot more staying power than the straight-ahead indie guitar bands from the time, great bass-focused tracks, very organic blend of solo acoustics, bedroom electronics and full band attacks

feels basically like Skins in album form, said as the highest form of praise - pure condensed energy and sadness and aimlessness and hedonism. A real love letter to the culture it came from. Think Ike & Tina is the standout for me now, bittersweet banger

4 Likes

Great year - listened to a lot of

Holy Fuck LP (nominate for album)
Gruff Rhys’ Candylion
The Aliens Astronomy for Dogs (nominate ‘Robot Man’ for single)
James Yorkston

Also the year of my favourite ever festival - the first Connect Festival near Loch Lomond.

3 Likes

Album nomination: Björk – Volta please and thank you, and shout out to my first and only ever music festival experience (Werchter, 2007).

3 Likes

Yeah, good yeah imho

1 Like

Nominate song: UGK - International Players Anthem (I Choose You)

some other bangers;

7 Likes

Not a great year for music for me other than twilight sad I don’t think but this is the best festival I’ve ever been to so rate it highly;

(Also feat twilight sad, frightened rabbit and other Scottish bands)

7 Likes

Song nomination; Twilight Sad - That summer at home I had become the invisible boy

7 Likes

line-up poster 10th Aug were absolutely monsters in their prime

3 Likes

Reckon I’d have a good time parked at a different stage each day:

Day 1 - Manicured Roise
Day 2 - Guitars and Others
Day 3 - Oyster

Day 1 Guitars >>> everything else

Super Furries and Idlewild were also excellent greatest hits sets

1 Like

This was a hugely formative year in music for me. I was 24, living in London and going to the most amounts of gigs in my life. I have a huge fondness for the music released at that time, my AOTY were…

Sunset Rubdown – Random Spirit Lover / Radiohead – In Rainbows / Deerhunter - Cryptograms / LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver / Stars of the Lid - And Their Refinement of the Decline / Battles – Mirrored / The National – Boxer / Panda Bear – Person Pitch / The Field - From Here We Go Sublime / Animal Collective – Strawberry Jam / Efterklang – Parades / Twilight Sad - Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters / Les Savy Fav - Let’s Stay Friends / Menomena - Friend and Foe / Holy Fuck - LP / World’s End Girlfriend - Hurtbreak Wonderland / Liars - Liars / Deerhoof - Friend Opportunity

Can I nominate Album: Stars of the Lid - And Their Refinement of the Decline and Song: Efterklang - Cutting Ice to Snow

x

6 Likes

Oh stars of the lid and worlds end girlfriend are right up there for me too!

1 Like

Don’t think anything would top this for me in 2007

2007 was peak Weezy I reckon . Can’t remember another time when one rapper was so far ahead of the competition

4 Likes

great song idst

4 Likes

Good year, will need to give it some thought, particularly track wise

1 Like

Great year!

Album: Panda Bear - Person Pitch
Song: Battles - Atlas

Some of my favourites from the year:

4 Likes