A Thousand Years Of Popular Music

Introduction.

This is lifted from Wikipedia as it says exactly what I need to say and the full article is linked below it.

1000 Years of Popular Music is a 2003 live album by Richard Thompson. originally conceived after Richard, along with many other artists, was asked by Playboy magazine to nominate his choice of the best songs of the millennium in anticipation of the year 2000. Although the magazine intended the use of the term "millennium" to be hyperbole that emphasized the end of the 2nd millennium, Thompson, in an act of malicious compliance, followed these instructions exactly as they were worded, and produced a list which did span 1000 years of music, including 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 by Playboy; it was subsequently released on CD.

The songs comprising the track ist cover a roughly thousand-year period, 1068–2001, starting with "Sumer Is Icumen In". The most recent song included on the album is Britney Spears' hit "Oops!... I Did It Again".

The songs, arranged for play on a single guitar, are played by Thompson, vocalist Judith Owen, and percussionist Michael Jerome, when needed.

A DVD with the same name was released in 2006. This was recorded sometime later during a different tour, has a slightly different track listing and features Debra Dobkin replacing Michael Jerome on percussion and vocals.

And so I will bring you a few of these millennial songs as well as a few that don't appear on any official album., although I will just include the whole concert here but then take bits for individual songs.

Sumer Is Icumen In

This is probably the earliest English song committed to some form of documentation, and this was not what Playboy anticipated when they put out their challenge which is why they never published Richard's selections.

This is taken from Wikipedia here:

"Sumer is icumen in" is the incipit of a medieval English round or rota of the mid-13th century; it is also known variously as the Summer Canon and the Cuckoo Song.

The line translates approximately to "Summer has come in" or "Summer has arrived".The song is written in the Wessex dialect of Middle English. Although the composer's identity is unknown today, it may have been W. de Wycombe. The manuscript in which it is preserved was copied between 1261 and 1264.

This rota is the oldest known musical composition featuring six-part polyphony.

There is Beauty In The Bellow of The Blast

Composed by WS Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, according to Richard Mike Leigh's wonderful film "Topsy Turvy" set the scene perfectly as Ko-Ko and Katisha contemplate a mature wedding.

King Henry Fifth's Conquest of France

This is a British ballad which recounts a highly fictionalized version of the Battle of Agincourt and the events surrounding it. In the ballad, King Henry sends his page to France to collect a tribute in gold that has not been paid for some while. Instead, the king of France sends back three tennis balls, so that the young king can "learn to play."

"Kiss"

I couldn't find an official copy of this but it is on Richard's web channel and is a muscular version of the Prince classic.

"Legal Matter"

This is the song that prompted this article. Like the Prince song I can't find an official version of this but it was on an album of Who covers and is very good.

"Oops I Did It Again"

This closed the millennium for the original project where Richard takes on Britney Spears's song firstly straight and then in the style of a sixteenth-century take of the song.

Conclusion

This si a brief dip into the project but it is worth listening to everything to do with it. Please enjoy as much as I do.