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Japanese gems, maligned boybands and ‘the Dan’: the best old music Guardian writers discovered this year

In a good year for rummaging through back catalogues, our writers have been delighted by everything from a A1’s embrace of soft rock to the Marvelettes’ ageless glee

Marcia Griffith’s debut solo album – released between her UK hits as one half of Bob and Marcia and her membership of Bob Marley’s backing vocalists the I-Threes – is the kind of record you can’t believe you haven’t already heard, or at least heard of: surely people should have been banging on for years about something this good? Griffith’s tough-but-tender vocals are incredible, and while the sound seems to pitch her as something more than a straightforward reggae artist, it was made the year after Bob Marley’s breakthrough album, Catch a Fire, had proved Jamaican artists could reach a wide international audience.

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