A bit of underappreciated scholarship for your Friday entertainment.

Back at the turn of the millennium, Playboy magazine asked a variety of artists for a list of their top songs of the last 1,000 years. While most respondents didn’t go much further back than Louis Armstrong or Beethoven, the great Richard Thompson took them at their word, and served up a list that included the oldest-known English-language songs, a medieval Italian dance tune and various other folk songs alongside slightly more contemporary fare.”

The list was never published in Playboy, but Thompson instead used it as the basis of a touring show, captured here. He starts the set with “Summer is Icumen In” from 1259 and winds his way up to the modern day in the form of perhaps the finest version of “Oops!.. I Did It Again” that you’re likely to hear.

It’s great stuff from one of the greatest living guitarists, and a fine reminder of the joys to be found in the appreciation of the historical record.

David Crotty

David Crotty

David Crotty is a Senior Consultant at Clarke & Esposito, a boutique management consulting firm focused on strategic issues related to professional and academic publishing and information services. Previously, David was the Editorial Director, Journals Policy for Oxford University Press. He oversaw journal policy across OUP’s journals program, drove technological innovation, and served as an information officer. David acquired and managed a suite of research society-owned journals with OUP, and before that was the Executive Editor for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, where he created and edited new science books and journals, along with serving as a journal Editor-in-Chief. He has served on the Board of Directors for the STM Association, the Society for Scholarly Publishing and CHOR, Inc., as well as The AAP-PSP Executive Council. David received his PhD in Genetics from Columbia University and did developmental neuroscience research at Caltech before moving from the bench to publishing.

Discussion

6 Thoughts on "1,000 Years of Popular Music"

And some of his own compositions are extraordinary….listen to Waltzing’s For Dreamers or From Galway to Graceland or Wall of Death!

Thanks for this link! I have much of this on a CD he did, but not the video of course.

Comments are closed.