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Still equals one
=1 made its way into several best of 2024 lists. For example, it is at #9 on the Ultimate Guitar Top 20 Albums of 2024. Meanwhile in Germany, it tops Metal Hammer’s 2024 annual review in Hard Rock & Rock category, as evidenced in the January 2025 issue.
Update [Dec 29]: the deluxe box set made it to the Goldmine magazine ‘top box sets for 2024’ list.
Bona saturnalia, y’all!
Thanks to Tobias Janaschke for the evidence.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Merry Christmas to everybody, peace & goodwill to y’all!.
Here’s a Reindeer in The Dark to guide your way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExMGIC0_0w8
So, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCJRq3Y9Seo&list=PLQa-PRTwaaHe3PrSzQo3jgyXDCus2FekF&index=13
A Merry Jingle with Ian:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bxHbL8wE9I
Some heavy Rockin’ Around The Xmas Tree:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Wv9P1PzktA&list=PLR8eBg1AtyjDQU-RaeVIzop7ikDgrl8xB&index=10
Here’s some cheese for all the mice…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58t_DqoDjUo
& this best of all, because it really hits home!:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHqZQve0KWc
December 25th, 2024 at 00:26Deep Purple’s very great band, in my mind it stands alone on the top 💜
Why? Well if you’ve to ask ain’t you in the wrong place 😉☺️
Seriously it’s members are incredible! They’ve been in the game for years and are still equal or even better (according to ‘someone’) compared to their youth. Their productions are fresh and so vibrant and the musicians are among the best, Ian G’s voice is truly brilliant, I don’t know how they do it ☺️
There has been suggested their diets may be a part of it 🍜🥩🥕🐟☕️Well of course that might be true.
Nevertheless I’m truly grateful for their hard work and their love for music that shines through every song!
Looking forward to what may come in ‘25! If it’s true about a new record I’ll be happy to entertain my neighbourhood with decent rock from the only band worth listening to: Deep Purple 🤩
December 25th, 2024 at 05:33Well deserved top spot for = 1
December 25th, 2024 at 08:56Can’t wait for the sequel = ∞
BTW, I am surprised that the latest BCC album is in the top 5
With all respect to Glenn and the rest of the band you guys let yourself down as it lacks any improvisation and it one dimensional with repeated beats and shallow tunes.
Sorry if I offended anyone but the previous albums speaks volume so I really can’t understand how this happened.
Peace ✌️
Adel, didn’t we have that on “Infinite”.
December 25th, 2024 at 15:38Four musicians (the two Ians, Roger and Glenn) who had their career heyday in the early to mid 70s to be still named in these rankings with their contemporary releases half a century later is pretty good going I’d say. Some longevity there. Baby boomer fans are a loyal bunch.
Will Taylor Swift’s releases in 2075 still see significant rankings? I’m not saying that an artist like her can’t continue to develop (she’s certainly not a one hit wonder), but the benchmark set by the Purple Family is high.
December 25th, 2024 at 17:26Dear John.
December 25th, 2024 at 18:40A Merry Jingle with Ian just made my Christmas!
Thanks mate.
Best wishes to all Purple friends and fans in here, may the New Year bring peace, good health, happiness (and a new album and tour 😉 to all!
December 25th, 2024 at 18:51janbl@4
December 26th, 2024 at 07:13Yes true, but we still have prime numbers, square numbers, cubic numbers……..and so on between 1 and infinity😁
Merry Christmas 🎄
Peace ✌️
@5 An Xer here. Just to stick up and say that Purple fanbase is not limited to boomers only.
December 26th, 2024 at 07:53@5
Well, not only baby boomers love Deep Purple ☺️ they have an attraction across the generations!
Regarding ms Swift, 🤣 (oh sorry, didn’t mean to lol there!) I really don’t think she has very much lasting power 🤭
When the young girls are done listening to her whining about unfaithful bfs, I think she will disappear (gå i glemmebogen so to speak)
Btw: have you heard that ms Swift is completely dyslexic 😂
December 26th, 2024 at 09:22I read it somewhere, maybe the same book/magazine/webside where you read similar about mr Lynne!
Merry Christmas to everyone on this page. LLRL.
December 26th, 2024 at 11:14Happy holidays to all Purple fans, and to the best hard rock band in the entire solar system in the history of music!
I thank God that in the midst of this crazy world that is going backwards, He has still given the spirit of inspiration to the heads of our favorite musicians who still ignite the spark inside them!
instead of the three wise men in the nativity scene I would have put the figurines of Gillan, Glover & Piace to bring hard rock to baby Jesus!
December 26th, 2024 at 13:49Liebe Kinder/non-baby boomers, I’m happy that you like DP too, but we invented them! ☝️😎 (I use the baby boomer term loosely for anybody born between late WW II and late 60s, but the official definition is between 1946 and 1964.)
Saying that Taylor Swift lacks lasting power is quite a statement, Karin! She might not be able to measure her career in half-centuries like DP yet, but she has been at it now for almost 20 years, capturing several teenager/young girls generations with her largely genre-agnostic music and her diary entry-style lyrics that seem to connect with a lot of people. She’s not a passing fad or a strict teen appeal band like Take That, Spice Girls or NKOTB were, but on her way/almost there to becoming an established wide appeal musician like, say, Elton John (except that she is also her own Bernie Taupin) who was never relegated to just a teenage audiences either. Taylor’s first teenage fans from the noughties are by now mothers still listening to her – with children who will grow up hearing Taylor’s songs, many of them no doubt liking what they hear. Taylor is not a nostalgia act playing to just her old fans, she still keeps generating new ones.
Back to DP: The bands commercial longevity as an album seller and audience draw is nothing less than astounding given how they were last in tune with the Zeitgeist in the early 70s and have never really been a band with many lasting singles hits or spectacularly interesting celebrity private lives. They have left a lot of early 70s rockers by the wayside commercially, are unlike Led Zep, Aerosmith, Allman Brothers and Black Sabbath still a living and breathing organism recording and playing new music live plus – surviving the loss of key members such as Ritchie and Jon – feature more people still in the band from their most famous line-up than, say, Uriah Heep, Lynyrd Skynyrd, YES, Wishbone Ash, Nazareth or Status Quo who are all down (or even down down, deeper‘n’down) to one, and even as many as The Rolling Stones (if you grant Ron Wood the honor of being a near-to-original member by now which I think after 50 years of service he has earned somewhat!).
2024 was an excellent, status-reaffirming year for Purple, they should be thoroughly pleased/elated. That Northern Irish new blood infusion (with an ancient organism like DP always somewhat uncertain in outcome …) sure did them well.
December 26th, 2024 at 15:24Good words Uwe.
December 27th, 2024 at 17:23@13 – “She’s not a passing fad or a strict teen appeal band like Take That, Spice Girls or NKOTB were, but on her way/almost there to becoming an established wide appeal musician like, say, Elton John (except that she is also her own Bernie Taupin) who was never relegated to just a teenage audiences either.’ Oh dear oh dear me. A comparison like that is beyond all reason Uwe. Cheers.
December 29th, 2024 at 20:10@13
December 29th, 2024 at 20:23Well ok I just find her very boring, but then again I’m not a teenage girl! 😄
@15
December 29th, 2024 at 21:33We have to be overbearing with our German solicitor MacGregor 😉
@ 17 – yes indeed Karin. I have made it my new years resolution (well at least here at THS) to keep a certain Mr Uwe Hornung on a really taut leash & a very short one at that. And then to go for his jugular, it has to be the only way to shut this lawyer up, as we all know how much they like the sound of their own voice, he he he. A bit like old Rumpole of the Bailey, it gets to a point were we are always pondering, just what in the name of hell is he going on about now! Cheers.
December 30th, 2024 at 04:54@18
😂-> “ we all know how much they like the sound of their own voice, he he he.” yeah!!! On the other hand he does know what he is talking about!!
“ A bit like old Rumpole of the Bailey,” indeed, and if I ever get in trouble I would like if he would defend me 😃
December 30th, 2024 at 12:34I am under no illusion re the potential tolerance levels for Taylor Swift in a Deep Purple forum, so I won’t do anything nasty and ask either Karin or Herr MacGregor how many Taylor Swift albums they have heard front to back to form their no doubt well-weighed opinions.
Nobody has to like TS, but do give her some credit (and don’t paint her as a symbol of everything that is wrong about todays music), namely that she is her own creation and not some manufactured product and that the core ideas within her songs are all hers (she does use outside co-writers – as did Aerosmith, Heart and Bon Jovi by the way), also that her music has quite some breadth from New Country to dance pop to introspective singer-songwriter material to lounge beats chill-out stuff. Plus that her largely human relationships-centered lyrics – of course she doesn’t write about anything as compellingly relevant to contemporary life as the erection of crypto-religious high rise structures in arid regions from which people delusional about their own capabilities then proceed to jump off assuming they can fly – seem to strike a chord with a relevant demographic of teenagers and young adults worldwide. How juvenile and superficial of them to not flock around an album with a fantasy depiction of a giant fist clutching a rainbow instead and listening in awe to what the Tarot Woman is up to next. 😇
https://youtu.be/q3zqJs7JUCQ
No, this isn’t Machine Head and obviously not written with me as a 64-year-old bugger in mind, but does that make it shite, irrelevant and culturally worthless? Or can we agree that it is skillfully crafted and presented pop? From someone in his mid thirties who 15 years ago still presented songs like this (not how that song doesn’t perfectly encapsulate what an unfulfilled teenage crush is about).
https://youtu.be/VuNIsY6JdUw
I detect more musical progression than with AC/DC or ZZ Top, is there any serious disagreement on this?
December 30th, 2024 at 16:49@ 19 – I hope you are joking Karin in regards to Uwe, ‘knowing what he is talking about’. Much of what Uwe writes is just like what we all write, an opinion. That doesn’t necessarily equate to a ‘knowing what he is on about’ scenario. It is what he thinks it should or could be, what he likes & doesn’t like, etc etc. See @20 above. Cheers.
December 31st, 2024 at 01:23@20
“ I detect more musical progression than with AC/DC or ZZ Top, is there any serious disagreement on this?”
No, not at all!
On the other hand I don’t know very much about that young woman, TS, because she has always been rather meh to me.
No doubt I would look at her differently did I have enough time to dwell on her high quality albums (I have high respect for you Uwe, so I don’t suspect you of saying things you don’t really mean ☺️) but something annoys me very much about her: her voice! In my ears she sounds like her voice is too autotuned. But then again I prefer a grown man’s voice!
May good coffee fill your days 💬
December 31st, 2024 at 07:16Taylor Swift is not a particularly strong or memorable singer, Karin, I can understand anyone who is not endeared by her voice. I think she is no better than alright, probably even less. But she is smart enough to know that and doesn’t really test her voice with her songs plus unlike many other female solo artists of the dance pop ilk eschews trying to sound black. But Karen Carpenter she ain’t.
And you’re right, there is often too much autotune in her voice. Unfortunately, that is a prevalent trend in all modern pop music, that autotune layer to smoothen everything out. I don’t even think that most of these pop singers need it to avoid sounding out of tune (there are many great songs from earlier decades of pop music where singers are a little out of tune in parts, most listeners don’t even notice). Rather autotune has by now – and regrettably so – become an expected signature component of a state-of-the-art produced modern pop vocal, it’s akin to the distortion effect on an electric guitar which became a trademark in the 60s and 70s (and was initially viewed as something undesirable that just came with the valve technology of the time and the limited power of amps back then). Most consumers of modern music don’t even know what an un-autotuned or not pitch-corrected human singing voice sounds like anymore, to them a heavily processed voice seems “natural”, i.e. the way they hear it most of the time, be it from their ear buds or in a concert arena. Taylor Swift isn’t the worst culprit of autotune-itis, but she does her share. I prefer it when she leaves it off (or a least less dialed in) as she sometimes does on sparse acoustic performances.
Herr MacGregor, I don’t preach the gospel. Of course I have opinions and preferences too, anybody should have. But I tend to base my judgement about types of music or certain artists on actually listening to them first in a more than casual way. And I listen analytically, even to stuff I have a knee jerk reaction to of immediately disliking it. I try to understand what they are doing and why and how they are doing it.
Karin doesn’t like Taylor Swift’s voice (I think it’s mediocre, but it doesn’t rub me the wrong way), I have similar problems with Ian Anderson’s delivery whose nasal and extremely mannered “singing” drives me nuts. But of course I don’t deny the quality of his music and I own every Jethro Tull album there is. I attempt to be fair in my assessment of music even where there are aspects that are non-appealing to me. So there, all I do is accord Taylor Swift the same fairness in treatment of her musical oeuvre as I do Jethro Tull. I own all the albums from both of them and for some reason neither of them stimulates me as much on an emotional level as 70s Status Quo does, but that is neither Ian Anderson’s nor Taylor’s fault.
Which of course to you is an act of heresy. Jethro Tull is musical brilliance and Taylor Swift is musical candy floss for little girls, how dare I compare the two! Still I wonder whether if you took the time to listen to say five songs randomly picked from her 2o year career, sat down to read the lyrics and really give the music and arrangements an ear your judgement on her might not be somewhat more benevolent if even only grudgingly appreciative. Granted, with her immense popularity, she is an easy target and I tend to have contrarian instincts too! 🤨
But you’re a sensible wombat, Tassie Boy, you can do it I know.😘 Happy New Year!
December 31st, 2024 at 16:17@21
Oohhhh noooohh sweetie, I respect you all here in the highest and best way.
You know so much and I’ve learned a great deal, and I’m so happy for those of you I talk to privately 😊
By the way: are any of you attending Ian P and Perpendicular’s concerts?
December 31st, 2024 at 17:08Taylor Swift is just world pop, Madonna, Cher, Cindy Lauper, Tina Turner, Liza Minnelli in the 80s/90s made infinitely better songs than miss Swift.
January 1st, 2025 at 01:04then came the second wave of global pop singers like Anastacia, Shakira, Jennifer Lopez, Beyoncé and Lady Gaga who were already doing what Miss Swift is doing now.
what I don’t understand is the crazy success she had, but maybe in pop there was an empty throne and people needed a new queen of pop, and she was also very good with social networks
@ 23 – “Still I wonder whether if you took the time to listen to say five songs randomly picked from her 2o year career, sat down to read the lyrics and really give the music and arrangements an ear your judgement on her might not be somewhat more benevolent if even only grudgingly appreciative. ” Are you trying to torture me Uwe, sheeesh the very first day of a new year & here I am having to negotiate what form of ‘musical’ torture would be best (or worse) for me. I have heard enough of so many of the modern day ‘girly’ pop singers to know I do not like that style of ‘music’. Even males like Robbie Williams & their ilk I cannot abide. We all have our wants & desires, but to have to put up with any of that, well, enough said there. Any era of popular music has it’s favourites & not so favourites. Paul Simon said it in that song, ‘every generation has another hero to put up the pop charts’. Something like that. From Elvis to Taylor, hmmmmmmmmm! NEXT. Cheers.
January 1st, 2025 at 03:00@25
“what I don’t understand is the crazy success she had, but maybe in pop there was an empty throne and people needed a new queen of pop, and she was also very good with social networks” <- I agree with no you here Fla76 😊
For many years Madonna was the queen but man has she ruined it for herself. Too bad really because she did make ok music once, but imo she is too weird now.
And I won’t mention Britney Spears (well now I did it anyway 😉) because that girl could not sing even if her life depended on it 😟
And Christina Aguilera, well she sings, sort of, but then again she flopped 😞
What we need is a female singer who actually can sing, a girl who can sing, but not with machines galore to help her. I’m sorry to say that on the top of my mind I cannot point out one right now.
January 1st, 2025 at 17:25@21
“I hope you are joking Karin in regards to Uwe…”
🤣🤣
No actually I do find our German friend very enlightened and fair.
January 1st, 2025 at 17:32I often don’t agree with him, but what would be the fun if we all just patted each other on the back and never had any arguments ☺️
Wot, you don’t like Kylie Minogue either, Herr MacGregor, how unpatriotic you are! Some of Kylie’s pop is really brilliant and iconic:
https://youtu.be/WSFDCmmsqEI
And she made ex-Mud guitarist Rob Davis
https://youtu.be/O4cz29w0Gr0
a wealthy man by immortalizing this little song nugget by him:
https://youtu.be/c18441Eh_WE
*************************************************************
Fla76, “world pop”, now that is a good description for what Travis Kelce’s squeeze does! I think what sets her apart from the other global female artists you mentioned (add Ariana Grande, Dua Lipa and Rhianna) is that via her often introspective lyrics and her New Country singer/songwriter origins,
https://youtu.be/qWaaf1p2e24
she’s more than just a dance act even though she has incorporated choreography heavily into her live act (it’s obviously necessary to commit to that if you are a young woman and want to fill stadiums) It is her diaristic approach to the words she puts to her music that creates this vast relatability for her fan base.
She’s a bit like a romantic novelist in that way, she triggers something in her readers/listeners. Of course that is packaged by a highly efficient management machine, media hype, carefully calibrated music and concerts designed to visually overwhelm. But at the core lie her lyrics which resonate as much with her fans as, say, Springsteen’s lyrics did and do with his devotees.
And add to that how she is neither stunningly and unreachably beautiful nor a Whitney Houston/Mariah Carey/Beyoncé vocally, rather she sells the American dream of how you can become anything if you put your mind to it.
January 1st, 2025 at 17:36