Here’s a guest post written by my darling husband Ian on his favourite decade of music!
My lovely wife Roberta is compiling her favourite music from the 1980s, a Top Ten or perhaps even a Top Twenty. The 80s was the decade she grew up in. I am “somewhat” older of course and I suppose my decade was the 60s- indeed to some extent the 50s. For the moment though I’ll stick to the 60s, and not a whole Top Ten just three current favourites. They say if you can remember the 60s you weren’t really living them, but these days there are quite a lot of things I don’t remember very well!
I said “current favourites” because one’s tastes do change- not so much the music maybe but you can get attracted to different types of lyric. So I am going to include a couple of rather wistful pieces that strike a chord to me now I’m in my seventies. This is the first and has of recent years definitely become my favourite Beatles record.
Three wistful in a row might be a bit much so I’ll insert an upbeat piece of American RnB next. In the mid 60s the British charts were chock full of Brit groups. New ones seem to appear almost every week; it was not unusual for a new band to hit No 1 with their first release. So the American rock n rollers and rhythm and blues stalwarts were up against it here. But I thought this was good solid stuff back then and I still do.
But my favourite British artist of the decade wasn’t any of the beat groups but a young lady with an exquisite voice. This piece seems to sing to me more and more every time I hear it, and is a candidate for my favourite record by a British performer from any era.
If any of you can remember those fab 1960s let us know the tunes that still sing to you.
Ian Craine
Roberta Franklin 