Song 2 was an easy winner this year for being stonkingly popular, lively and long-lived- it can still fill the dancefloor now. As for the rest, I'm still trying to remember which were 96 and which were 97- not that it matters since I've included two re-releases anyway. One of which was in last year's Top 20...

There were also some other albums released in 1997, but I spent so much time listening to OK Computer I didn't really have a chance to listen to them that much. Sad, isn't it? Of the ones that I did manage to listen to, I was quite impressed by the Strangelove LP, the Scarfo LP, the Portishead LP, the Verve LP, the Wannadies LP, the Recoil LP, the Dream City Film Club LP, the Geneva LP, the James LP and probably some other albums I've completely forgotten. Like the Echobelly LP, which was surprisingly tolerable.

Massive letdown, this- Firestarter and Breathe were excellent, but the rest of the album was more of the same only nowhere near as good. And I wasn't too impressed with the sample for Smack My Bitch Up- I can only think of two interpretations for this, and the other one is shooting your pet dog full of heroin.

A bad year for the likes of Oasis and Ocean Colour Scene on my hate-list since they had such stiff competition from the truly unlistenable likes of the above. At least Oasis and co have some semblance of a tune, even if it is twenty years old and sung by a monkey