It’s fun to think about the things that scared us when we were little. Everyone does it!
I used to spend a lot of time on Kindertrauma (“Your happy childhood ends here!”), where people shared the things that kept them awake at night, way back when.
The good thing about the Kindertrauma community was the honesty. You could tell that people were sharing things that actually unnerved them when they were young. They weren’t trying to be cute, or clever, or ironic. So the end result was an archive of truly diabolical… stuff.
I’m taking the same approach here. For instance, I’m not going to suddenly start pretending that I used to have an issue with clowns. Clowns are funny! We used to be good friends with a clown, in fact.
A reliable means of getting the eyeballs we need to survive is through making you hate us. And one way of doing this is through writing listicles with titles that are sure to make you scream at the sheer enormity.
Listicles are the mutated offspring of an unethical breeding experiment between lists and articles. An article in list form, or a list in article form; a listicle has its mothers i’s and its fathers t’s.
The titles we give our listicles do not necessarily reflect our true thoughts. A lot of the time, they’re not even fair representations of the contents of the listicle. They’re traps.
It works. You are not immune to these tricks. Nobody is.
A few weeks ago I read a piece, which I shan’t link to, promising to list a number of first person shooter games that are now “literally unplayable”. This list included Duke Nukem 3D, which seemed perfectly playable when I last careered through it around nine months ago. Indeed, it was more than merely playable. It was downright enjoyable. Then I realised: I’d fallen victim, once again, to the listicle writer’s tricks.
Promise outrage, then deliver.
But we’re not all bad. Sometimes we’ll give you the opportunity to feel better than us. We’ll promise a list of “forgotten” books, films, or albums; or we’ll proclaim that we’re listing a series of books, films, or albums that you’ve never heard of. If you are at all familiar with any of the items we list – and you will be, by design – then you’ll think of us as presumptive buffoons. You will shake your head, and perhaps even chuckle a bit, at our hubris. It’s our gift to you, that chance to demonstrate your superiority. It’s the least we can do. After all, you gave us your eyeballs.
So, regarding the title of this piece. This listicle. With one very important exception, I don’t actually find any of the music I’m about to discuss “disgusting”. These are albums I like a lot which I feel get off to a bit of a shaky start. Sometimes it’s the first track, sometimes it’s just the first few seconds of the first track. That’s it. That’s all we’re discussing here today.
I’m sorry if you feel misled. It’s just that I am starving for eyeballs, and I knew I’d have less chance of bagging those tasty orbs had I given this piece a more honest title: “X albums that don’t start off too good”. It just wouldn’t have the same allure.
I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot, there. Would it help if we started with the album opening that actually does disgust me? OK.
We’ve reached 1997, when the award went to Enya for her fourth studio album, The Memory of Trees. Between 1993 and 2007, every time Enya released an album, this award was a given. No other New Age artist stood a chance if there was an Enya album in the running. This spell would be broken in 2017, when her Dark Sky Island album lost out to the second album by White Sun. Oh, and her 2008 Christmas album wasn’t even nominated. Maybe festive albums aren’t eligible for this gong.
Anyway, for the time being, if Enya’s in town, every other New Age musician may as well stay at home. This is her game.
But did she deserve to win five New Age Grammy awards, effectively trivialising any work produced by any other artist any year she happened to win an album?
In 1996, Christmas came early for George Winston when he took home the Grammy Award for Best New Age Album.
This is NAGCHAMPA. That’s the New Age Grammy Challenge: Healing Assessments of Musicians Perceived as Awful. I’m listening to every album that ever won, or that was ever nominated for, the Grammy Award for best New Age, Ambient, or Chant album. Originally, I was doing this because I wanted to better understand just what this whole New Age thing is all about. Now I’m doing it because I really enjoy New Age music.
George Otis Winston III, who passed away in 2023, was no stranger to the Grammy Awards. As well as triumphing in the New Age category in 1996, he got a nomination for Best Children’s Music Album (for a collaboration with Meryl Streep!), and one for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album, for a collection of Doors songs reconsidered for solo piano. He looks just like Rufus from Bill & Ted in his Spotify profile picture.
George claimed that he always played in one of three styles: A New Orleans R&B kind of thing; a Fats Walleresque “stride piano”; and a melodic style of his own which he described as “rural folk piano”. He dabbles in all three styles throughout Forest, the album which won him his Grammy. But he mostly seems to stick to that “rural folk” sound. And what an evocative and affecting sound it is. Apparently, George first became interested in playing the piano having heard Vince Guaraldi’s soundtrack for A Charlie Brown Christmas. It shows; not just in his uplifting lyrical style, but also in just how Christmassy much of his work seems to be.
I make lists like this every year, and I finally understand why: It gives me the impetus to seek out new music throughout the year, rather than to just listen to stuff from decades ago. Because that’s the sort of thing I’d do, otherwise. This year’s Spotify Wrapped thing told me that my musical age is 70. The cheek!
“Music writers have a greater responsibility to write positive music reviews about outstanding works than negative hit pieces on bad music. The bad music will go away on its own. But good (and even great) artists often need a helping hand if their work is to survive.”
This is why, as per, I’ll be focusing on stuff that’s unlikely to get featured in many other end-of-year roundups. Because if I don’t who will?
This is a roundup of some of the New Age albums I’ve found by chance while out and about – usually in charity shops.
It’s common to find albums by Enya and Enigma in second hand shops. But if you’re lucky, you’ll find something more unusual – something you probably would never have encountered by any other means.
We’re not talking about those omnipresent Pan Pipe Tribute to the Beatles albums. Who buys those, and why? Even I have my standards. Though I regret not buying one I recently found called Ocean Tchaikovsky – the composer’s melodies set to ocean waves. What might have been.
I was going to call this series – for it will be a series – Car Boot New Age, as a tribute to Nightmares on Wax. But I am yet to find any New Age music at a car boot sale. One day. One day.
There’s a game some people like to play whenever Coachella unveils the lineup of that year’s festival. You can work out your “musical age” by subtracting from 80 the number of names you recognise on the poster.
Based on the 2025 poster, my musical age is 46. But if I were to calculate it based on the number of acts I’d be interested in watching… hmm!
See for yourself:
The higher your “musical age”, the more you might relate to what follows.
Reminder: NAGCHAMPA = New Age Grammy Challenge: Healing Assessments of Musicians Perceived as Awful.
Following my foolhardy metal quest, I feel like I need some quiet and visionary music as badly as I sometimes need a cup of tea and a flapjack.
It’s been five years. But if you remember, I’m studying every album that ever won the Grammy Award for Best New Age Album, in an attempt to understand what makes New Age Music so New Age. The closest I came to a definition was this: New Age Music is applied ambient music. Or, it’s spiritual ambience. It’s music that aims to make you feel better, and succeeds.
But while my back was turned, the Grammy guys broadened the scope of this awards. Since 2023, the category has been “Best New Age, Ambient, or Chant Album”.
“Ambient” I get, but “chant”? Will there be chanting? Was there always chanting?
I swear, I had no idea that the 2025 Grammy Awards were taking place as I wrote this thing. The BBC didn’t even include the New Age category in their roundup of the winners. It looks like it went to Wouter Kellerman, Eru Matsumoto, and Chandrika Tandon’s Triveni. A worthy winner? We’ll see, when I finally get to 2025 in this project, some 16 years from now.
Because we’ve only just made it to 1994 here, and it’s Paul Winter’s time to shine.
The Monsters of Rock lay down their arms as a rabid dog approached the battlefield looking for a pat on the head. The Download Festival was born.
Why “Download”? Because at the time, people thought that downloading was killing music. So to label a music festival against such a force of evil was a daring move, presumably. Because that’s what metal’s all about: SHOCK. But it raises the question: If the Download Festival were started in 2023 rather than 2003, would they have called it the Streaming Festival?
I’ve only been once, and even then I only went for one day. It was 2019, and the opportunity to see Tool and Smashing Pumpkins on the same day was too good to miss. It was a beautiful day. Everyone was friendly, and everyone was there for the music. I saw more devil horns than smartphones held aloft, and the bars had the Iron Maiden Trooper ale on tap.
Also, Download has a mascot: The Download Dog. He started life looking like an unfortunate victim of experiments in canine ESP. Over the years, he’s also appeared as a sort of FrankenDog, as a snarling pink puppy, and as a skeleton. When he makes public appearances, though, he’s a giant red naked bodybuilder with studded bracelets who, despite his leer and his bulging muscles, looks to be quite cuddly.
All festivals should have a mascot. The Glastonbury Wizard. The Reading Bookworm. The Latitude Accountant. In fact, every business and brand in the land should have a mascot. They help, in a way.
So I’m down with The Download Festival. And that’s why I decided to listen to every band and artist that ever played Download Festival. What else am I going to do with my Spotify subscription?
I read about music a lot. I’m sure most music critics are wonderful people in real life. I’m sure they’re polite to retail workers, and that they’re patient and conscientious drivers, and that they’re silent and respectful of their fellow passengers when using public transport.
But in my experience, in their writing many music critics come across as miserable hand-wringers at best, or smug, self-righteous and self-serving sadists at worst. And no matter where they sit on this tedious spectrum, most music critics seem driven not by a desperate, obsessive love of music, but by an inexplicable desire to drain all the joy from the most vital, universal, and transcendent of artforms.
And yet, I often write about music. I’d do it more often if I had the time. How do I sleep at night?
