oes the fact that no life changing occurrences brought about by music spring to mind when looking back on the year mean that it was a bad year in music? No.


Music cannot lead you by the hand through life. Music will not do your exams, music will not pay your bills and as much as you listen to “deep” music and look intensely philosophical, music will not get you a shag. Music is a means to enhance life and not sustain it. No matter what a reviewer tells you, music is a luxury and can be as easily lived without as with.


To seemingly dismiss music in such a way may seem drastic, particularly for someone writing on a music website but in fact this is far from dismissal, it is a shattering of a barrier that prevents so many from taking from pleasure from what emanates from their stereo. To search for music that changes your life is to turn it into a chore rather than a joy. It is unreasonable and unrealistic to demand with any regularity a life changing moment, were they to happen every year they just wouldn’t be so interesting.


The first time I heard “Sweet Child O’ Mine” muffled by my brothers bedroom door at about the age of seven changed my life. The first time I heard “Love Spreads” on some piss poor indie compilation I had only bought because I refused to leave a record fair in a draughty hall without making my Dad buy me anything altered what I listen to and the way I listen to it by consequence of it by persuading me to seek out more of the Stone Roses’ material. The Smiths compilation tape of my brothers that sound-tracked our 386 playing in 1993 is so entrenched in my brain I still expect “This Charming Man” to jump on the “oooowah” bit whenever I hear it, where I once pressed “record” in an attempt to spite him by ruining it.


I can’t imagine 2002 has provided me with anything that will make me well up in a manner comparable to these in the future. It has provided me with Songs For the Deaf, which I have no doubt I will listen to for many, many years. My first Music Festival experience came in summer this year. It may be embedded in my memory more for the warm flat lager which caused many a trip to the porter-loo, but the blood I coughed up from singing so loudly to Primal Scream is not likely to leave my consciousness any time soon either.


I intend to carry on listening to music in 2003 and, in my view, that means 2002 was just fine.