After the very special edition that, in 2024, celebrated the 40th anniversary of the founding of the BLITZ brand, BLITZ now publishes a brand new second (and final) volume to read, watch and save, a rich collector’s edition that closes the cycle of celebrations of the 40th anniversary.
With 132 pages, an XL format and improved paper, it is also a festival of music from the last 40 years, featuring as its main highlight the election of the 40 best international music albums published since 1984a vote for which we once again called a vast jury of personalities from the music world, including artists, agents, journalists and editors.
GET TO KNOW INSIDE BLITZ MAGAZINE 40 YEARS, VOLUME 2
It was inevitable: after choosing the 40 best Portuguese music albums, we got to work choosing the 40 best international albums. Here you can find the most distinguished albums signed by foreign bands and artists, published between 1984 and 2023, according to the vote of our jury. The 40 most voted albums are therefore revisited in texts written by some of the best scribes in the country. And there were another 671 albums mentioned: we did not fail to present them.
We open the tip of the veil: here are the top 5 classified.
1. “Nevermind”, Nirvana (1992)
2. “OK Computer”, Radiohead (1997)
3. “Back to Black”, Amy Winehouse (2006)
4. “Dummy”, Portishead (1994)
5. “Grace”, Jeff Buckley (1994)
The “Nevermind” band was, most likely, the band that gave BLITZ the most covers. Both in the newspaper and, later, in the magazine, the group of Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic illustrated the frontispiece of this publication on dozens of occasions. We republish the first interview, given in 1994 on the eve of the concert at Dramático de Cascais, by the drummer. “We are young, angry, a little stupid and we make a lot of noise”, Dave Grohl told us then.
An essential figure in the explosion of Portuguese rock at the beginning of the 80s and recently awarded a Golden Globe, Júlio Isidro now only thinks about new projects, based on his well-lived 80 years. Before taking them further, embark with BLITZ on an intense trip down memory lane, remembering the ride he gave Elton John to the Vilar de Mouros festival, the day António Variações spread smarties in the RTP studio or the first concert you saw in your life.
One year after the biggest jury in Portuguese music chose the 40 best national albums released between 1984 and 2023, we remember 40 more, proving that some of the most notable albums recorded in Portugal during that period had been left out of the most voted. It is, therefore, about repairing an injustice, a task that we carry out here by expanding the list, from 41st to 80th place, faithfully following the vote of the jury then constituted for that purpose.
From the fertile Bristol music scene, an album like no other emerged in 1994: “Dummy”, the debut of the English band Portishead, combined hip-hop sampling with echoes of music for spy films and a voice – Beth Gibbons – that seemed to come from other times, inaugurating an aesthetic that has proven to be influential to this day. Adrian Utley, one of Portishead’s songwriters and producers, recalls today how one of the greatest classics of recent decades was created.
It all started in 1977 with Belgian Art Sullivan, in the Algarve and Madeira. At the beginning of the 80s, the Police provoked a pilgrimage in Restelo, but It was in the 90s that Portuguese stadiums were filled with stars, from Tina Turner to the Rolling Stones and U2, from Michael Jackson to Dire Straits and Pink Floyd and even the national stars GNR. The golden age of festivals threatened to ‘kill’ the stadium concert, but it is in this league that, nowadays, the biggest stars and big acts play: Taylor Swift and Coldplay to say the least.