Best of 2009

Three musical events define the year 2009 for me.

On 25th June the King of Pop Michael Jackson died after suffering cardiac arrest. His untimely death triggered a massive renewed interest in his music. Various Jackson compilations topped the charts everywhere, and the singles charts were invaded by up to 12 singles at once. But ironically not by his new song This is it which was never released as a single - presumably in order to force the public to buy the whole compilation album which contained no other previously unreleased material except for this 80s track.

On 16th May, on the eve of our Constitution Day, Norway won the 54th Eurovision Song Contest by a landslide when Alexander Rybak took his song Fairytale to the top of the scoreboard with a record breaking 387 points. It was important for the contest to have a Western winner after some years of Eastern domination, but even more important for Norway to gain some recognition for our folk music tradition, which many people believed had little or no international appeal.

But the most significant defining moment of 2009 was the amazing emergence of 47 year old singer Susan Boyle who became an internet sensation after performing I dreamed a dream on star search show Britain's Got Talent on 11th April. Within 72 hours the video clip of her audition had been watched 2.5 million times on YouTube, and by the end of the year it had been watched a record breaking 120 million times. This was the first time an artist became a world-wide sensation without the deliberate promotion of a record company, and it is probably an indication of future mechanics of the music industry. Susan Boyle's massive popularity was a big up yours to the record companies who design and manufacture marketable music for kids, elevators, and their own wallets. The rise of Rage Against The Machine's 1993 protest Killing in the name as the UK Christmas #1 was another.