The years of my life (in music and movies)

So there’s this meme-thing percolating about in which you go through and pick your favorite album from each year you’ve been alive up to the present; I’ve been kicking that around for a while, long enough that now you’re supposed to do the same thing with movies. So, I guess I’ll combine them into one single post, although I won’t be picking exactly favorites, but things I’m very fond of from each year. (A few may be favorites, though.)

A key resource here is Wikipedia’s Years in music and Years in Film articles. In each case I’ll list an album first, followed by a movie. For albums, though, these aren’t necessarily albums I own, since the lists are heavily skewed to pop and rock. Rather they’re albums with which I am at least fairly familiar. And for the movies, just to make things a bit more interesting, I will not do the extremely obvious and pick the Star Wars movies released in 1977, 1980, 1983, 1999, 2002, or 2005. OK? OK!

1971

Tapestry, Carole King
The French Connection (I almost named Harold and Maude, which I saw for the first time just last week…I’ll be commenting on that film soon.)

1972

Hot August Night, Neil Diamond
The Poseidon Adventure

1973

The Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd
American Graffiti

1974

Rush, Rush
The Three Musketeers (Tough choice here!)

1975

Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen (chosen after a coin flip; the loser was ABBA by, well, ABBA.)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (GAHHH! This year was tough!)

1976

Boston, Boston
Rocky (I haven’t seen much from that year, apparently)

1977

Bat Out of Hell, Meat Loaf
Saturday Night Fever (If you haven’t seen this, and you think it’s just camp disco fluff, see it. It’s one of the most cynical and bleak films I know.)

1978

Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack (It’s got “How Deep Is Your Love” on it….)
Superman (still the best superhero movie ever made…but that could change very soon now, with what I’m hearing about The Dark Knight….)

1979

The Wall, Pink Floyd
Time After Time (Just a terrific movie! I almost picked Moonraker, just because that was the first Bond movie I ever saw.)

1980

Flash Gordon, Queen
The Blues Brothers (Cheating, I guess, since I’ve only seen it in bits and pieces but lots of times, so I’ve probably seen well over eighty percent of it but I can only vaguely stitch it all together in my head into a whole movie.)

1981

Face Value, Phil Collins
Raiders of the Lost Ark (Had to go with this. No contest.)

1982

Nebraska, Bruce Springsteen
TRON

1983

Sports, Huey Lewis and the News (yeah, I liked these guys.)
Brainstorm

1984

MCMLXXXIV, Van Halen (DLR’s swan song with the band)
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension

1985

No Jacket Required, Phil Collins
Back to the Future

1986

Invisible Touch, Genesis (One of my favorite albums ever. Almost went with 5150 by Van Halen; I refuse to choose between DLR and Sammy. Both were terrific for different reasons.)
Laputa: Castle in the Sky (I had no idea the movie was that old)

1987

The Joshua Tree, U2 (Not a huge U2 fan, but I really like this album)
Broadcast News (“I’ll meet you at the place by the thing where we met that time” is one of my favorite movie lines ever. That, and “A lot of alliteration from anxious anchormen placed in powerful posts.”)

1988

Irish Heartbeat, Van Morrison and the Chieftains
Die Hard (even though I didn’t see it until it came out on video)

1989

Indigo Girls, Indigo Girls (I had a hard time with this year, and picked this because I remember liking them some years ago, but I haven’t given the Indigo Girls a second thought in a long time.)
The Abyss

1990

Reflections of Passion, Yanni (Shut up.)
Dances With Wolves

1991

The Silence of the Lambs, score by Howard Shore (I couldn’t pick anything from the album list)
Grand Canyon (Wow, that was a good year for movies…lots of titles on there I like a lot, so I picked this one randomly from the ones I like.)

1992

Unplugged, Eric Clapton
Unforgiven

1993

Tuesday Night Music Club, Sheryl Crow
The Fugitive (But this was a good year for movies! I nearly picked Jurassic Park or In the Line of Fire.)

1994

Live at the Acropolis, Yanni (I’m serious, folks. To this day I love this album.)
Legends of the Fall (I really think this movie is underrated.)

1995

The Tyranny of Beauty, Tangerine Dream (I used to really love TD, but I haven’t listened to them in a long time. They’re about due for a re-exploration, I think.)
Apollo 13 (Wow, there were a ton of good movies that year. I could as easily have picked Braveheart, Rob Roy, and a bunch of others.)

1996

Falling Into You, Celine Dion (Because, hey, as if my credibility wasn’t already circling the drain….)
That Thing You Do! (Did anybody besides me really like this flick? I remember mentioning it at work when it was out, and everybody in earshot went Ewwwww! What gives?!)

1997

Princess Mononoke, film score (Nothing on the pop list stood out for me…but I can’t believe it’s been that long since Pat Boone’s heavy metal experiment. I thought that was just a few years ago!)
Titanic (Yeah, yeah….)

1998

Shakespeare in Love (movie and score)

1999

Tears of Stone, the Chieftains
The Iron Giant

2000

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (score)
Almost Famous

2001

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (movie and score)

2002

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (movie and score)

2003

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (movie and score)

(OK, I know, that probably seems to be cheating, especially when up above I swore I would eschew the Star Wars movies on this meme-thing. Oh well. My blog, my rules!)

2004

Beyond the Sunset: The Romantic Collection, Blackmore’s Night (my first Blackmore’s Night album. This group rocks my world.)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

2005

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (score by John Williams. I didn’t say I couldn’t pick the score albums for the music portions of this quiz!)
Kingdom of Heaven

2006

The Village Lanterne, Blackmore’s Night (See?)
Casino Royale

2007

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (movie and score)

For the most recent years, I should point out that I tend to be quite behind-the-times as far as the latest stuff to come out. I rarely explore stuff as it happens, preferring to follow a few things I like a lot but in most cases allow a consensus to form as to what’s really worth my time. (And even then, I’ll often ignore that consensus anyway.)

So there you are: my life in music and movies, or something like that.

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