As we approach the end of 2020, the UK is a virus-ridden pariah country, its coastlines rammed with stranded lorries, its inhabitants throwing ungifted Christmas presents into shopping trolley-infested canals.
No wonder we prefer to look to the past instead, when everything was sunshine and happiness and ice cream. Take the current meme in which you post albums from when you were 14. That's nice, isn't it: thinking of the music at a formative moment of your life rather than the current apocalypse.
For the teenage-era albums, I chose Pet Shop Boys' Actually, the Mel & Kim album, a Richard Clayderman collection and Introduce Yourself by Faith No More. Richard who? Ask your great, great grandparents. I was very into piano when I was a kid.
The truth is I can't remember what I listened to when I was 14. Those albums sound about right, but remembering that far ago is like looking through frosted glass that's been encased in bubble wrap then wedged between two slabs of lead.
I do know that the 14-year-old me listened to classical music, enjoyed drawing and photocopying comics, was very involved with the local church, and was thoroughly addicted to the daytime soap Neighbours. I definitely had a musical ear to the ground: I remember T'Pau and La Bamba and George Harrison and Starship (overwrought emotions pictured above).
But despite my ongoing obsession with A-Ha's Hunting High And Low, I was a bit too young for albums. I was more likely to make my own albums by taping the charts, then editing those tapes using my dad's tape-to-tape recorder. I have an entire crate of these cassettes somewhere. Or if I did buy an album, it would be a greatest hits, like the scene in which Alan Partridge reveals his favourite Beatles album.
I slowly learned that albums could be a complete expression: a journey from A to B – literally, considering the formats of the time. By the time I was 18, I was an album aficionado: I even wrote a music column for a local paper. And by "aficionado", of course, I mean "naïve and egotistical mess" because that's what a lot of 18-year-olds tend to be.
In fact, it's horrible looking back. Being a teenager then wasn't good. When I was 14, in the year 1987, the world was only just starting to tackle the HIV / AIDS pandemic, while political superpowers were still brandishing nuclear warheads at each other. I've just looked up 1987 on the internet, and there were plane crashes and a tsunami and political kidnappings and the birth of Marcus from Mumford And Sons. 1987 sounds terrible.
As for me? I was horrible too. I was a disease-ridden social pariah, my messy bedroom rammed to the rafters with tatty comics: I produced so many teenage juices – mainly pimple goo – that I might as well have been sleeping in a shopping trolley-infested canal.
As we approach the end of 2020, I'm looking to the future. There's not much sunshine and happiness and ice cream right now, but it'll come. I'll also be writing up my annual Best Albums list because I'm dead good at albums, me.
Further Fats: The Stone Roses and the seriously stained alley of nostalgia (2011)
Further Fats: Cassette tapes are back, which is why I've got my sausage out (2020)
