Looking Back: 2012, Ten Years Later

In this post-holiday period, I thought it might be fun not just to look back at what happened in music this year, but to go further back and get a bit of perspective on how and/or if things have changed over the course of time. Since I have been writing about music for a decade now, I want to go back closer to the start and see what I was listening to and thinking a full decade ago.

So as we head into 2022, this is what I was thinking in 2012...

Looking back, the first thing that strikes me about 2012 was that it was the one and only year I wasn't able to make a choice as to what my Album Of The Year was. There have been other years when I had a lengthy debate with myself, but never again have I succumbed to the cheapest of stunts. I did that in 2012, and I've always felt rather bad about doing so. As a critic, it's my job to have opinions and be able to justify them. I failed in that respect, but what might be even more annoying is that I could still justify doing so to myself even now.

Those two albums were Graveyard's "Lights Out" and Halestorm's "The Strange Case Of...". They pulled at different sides of me, and I was torn between the record I felt was 'better', and the one I enjoyed more. Over the years, those two descriptions have melded together. I get as much enjoyment out of Graveyard now, and I appreciate the craft of Halestorm more. They still pull from different directions, but no longer do I feel the pressure tearing me apart.

If I had forced myself to make a choice at the time, I probably would have given the nod very slightly to Halestorm. Today, I would probably go in the other direction. Halestorm's album is still fantastic, but Graveyard's weighs on me more heavily. It carries an air of importance, and it led me to the band's first two albums, which complete perhaps the greatest three album run of the 2000s. With that in its resume, the honest answer is to say it was the best album of the year.

Next on my list was Trail Of Murder's debut album. At the time, it tried to fill the gap left behind when Urban Breed exited Bloodbound for the second time. Coming off one of my all-time favorite albums, the more Tad Morose styled record did enough to win me over. With hindsight, the record is still good, but isn't everything I made it out to be at the time. "Carnivore" and "My Heart Still Cries" are amazing songs, but I might even say Urban's similar effort on Tad Morose's "Matters Of The Dark" is better. What is strangest about this record is ten years later, there is no follow-up. It shouldn't, but the band's demise dulls the impact of this album.

The rest of my list of favorites consisted of records from Bad Salad, Slash, Flying Colors, Adler, Neal Morse, Tremonti, and Orden Ogan.

Of those, the Adler record has aged the best of them all. Somehow, Steven Adler put together a band that wrote a better album than "Chinese Democracy", and no matter how many times I've listened to it over the years, it keeps getting better as a simple, fun rock record. Not only is it better than "Chinese Democracy", I feel pretty confident saying it would be better than any album the reunited Guns N Roses could come up with, should they decide to make one. Today, I would put that record #3.

Slash's album is also very good, as have been all three he's made with Myles Kennedy and The Conspiritors. Neal Morse's album is the last one he's made I really love. Everything that came after went further down the 'dad prog' rabbit hole, so perhaps I'm looking back more fondly because of that. I don't think so, but it's a possibility. Flying Colors album is still fun, but I can't say I've spent much time at all with either Tremonti or Orden Ogan's records in recent years. If I want to listen to Orden Ogan, I have other albums I would rather reach for, and I will usually take Alter Bridge over Tremonti's solo work.

The point of this is to compare the depth of the past to what I have been seeing recently. In 2012, there were three albums that remain favorites of mine, along with four others I still like a lot, even if I don't listen to them that often anymore. That is actually much the same as today, where I have only a few albums I know I will continue listening to with regularity, a few more I will like as they fade from the forefront of my memory, and a couple more I'm going to question if I do this another ten years from now.

I've been thinking music has been enduring more weak years recently, but maybe that's not so true after all. Perhaps what is happening is I'm better now at sorting out which albums are going to endure and which aren't, leading me to be more skeptical right from the start, not needing a decade to figure out all my choices weren't as good as I thought.

That's an oddly optimistic thought.