Not That You Asked, But Here’s My Stab at the 100 Best Albums
Earlier this summer, Apple Music took it upon itself to create a list of the “100 best albums.” After spending time reviewing the list, I often found myself taken aback–sandwiching Hotel California at 98 between Body Talk and Astroworld? On what planet? And I’m sorry, Swifties, but 1989 just isn’t the 18th-best album of all time, and surely not ahead of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, which came in at a cool number 20. I will defend the list in one respect: ranking albums is very difficult. It’s a metric distinct from measuring the popularity or quality of the singles or a standout track; rather, it takes in an album as a whole and assesses it as a collective work that also crystallizes who the band or artist was at the time when the album was released and how the public interacted with that album then, and now.
This also brings me to discuss the real challenge, and this is maybe even a bit of a touchy subject. . . In the digital age, people do not listen to albums; they listen to playlists. The concept of physical media forcing one to listen to an album in its entirety is completely lost on the streaming generation. I think it has greatly affected the quality and format of albums as works of art. Back when albums were bought on vinyl or CDs, in order to entice you to buy the damn thing, there was a certain level of quality control and marketing effort that I just don’t believe can be replicated through the passive streaming model.
Naturally, I wanted to try my hand at the exercise; I thought it would come to me easily, in my notes app on the treadmill or little jot downs on my lunch breaks. What I quickly realized was just how difficult it would be to generate not only the list but also the criteria for forming it. What weighed on me most was whether or not I would hold myself to the challenge of creating an objective list. For example, there are albums that I feel might “belong” on a list of this sort, like Moby’s Play or Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works, and picking these would be some kind of virtue signaling, but in truth, I never really throw these on except for a dinner party. Or in the case of Belle and Sebastian and Radiohead, where I much prefer Dear Catastrophe Waitress and Pablo Honey, respectively, over the far more acclaimed and obvious choice albums from these artists, If You’re Feeling Sinister, and OK Computer, do I go with my heart? I decided I would allow myself to be extremely, openly, and honestly subjective. There are no albums on this list just because they “should be” on here. You won’t find Nas’s Illmatic or Nine Inch Nail’s The Downward Spiral on here because the truth is, I just don’t listen to them, so how could I purport them to be the “best” with universal acclaim? Sure, I listen to NIN here and there. Who doesn’t love Head Like a Hole or Hurt? But liking two songs on disparate albums doesn’t pass the “best album” metric to earn a spot, nor does it compel me to sit down and play through the Downward Spiral in its entirety.
I ended up devising a specific way to analyze these albums to prevent myself from being swayed by my favorite artists or songs. I ranked and listed these albums based on the strength of an album in its entirety. Thus, an album by an artist that might have one of their personal or most popular best songs, supported by weaker fodder and filler, does not make the list. And, of course, as mentioned, when physical vinyl or CDs were the only available format for albums, I think there was more pressure to create a unified, cohesive, and standalone album to push sales. In the streaming world, with the ease of playlists rather than mixtapes and the flexibility to listen to songs without buying any albums, there’s less pressure on the artist and label, and I believe it shows in the sense that this list skews old. This is just my opinion, and of course, many modern artists have created wonderful, conceptually unified artistic albums. Still, I think they have to fight harder to compete against the “oldies.”
Every album that I’ve put on this list is an entity onto itself where each song supports the artistic mission of the whole; it’s Gestalt. Yes, admittedly, there might be one or two filler tracks or songs you’ve never heard of on some of these picks, but those albums still made the cut because you wouldn’t skip over those songs, and you still would have the best listening experience by playing the album through in its entirety. There will be no soundtracks, greatest hits, or mixtapes. This distinction also cut out a surprising amount of artists. For example, I think Azealia Banks’ work belongs on this list… Alas, she released her best songs on compilation tapes and EPs. Similarly, the evergreen talent of Dolly Parton is spread out across an enormous catalog rather than distilled into distinctly memorable albums. Even Queen, with their fantastic and popular catalog, spread it across so many records, none of which, besides their Greatest Hits albums, were particularly distinctive to include here. So we beat on. . .
Since I have allowed for blatant subjectivity, I cannot call this my “100 best albums” ranking, but I also cannot call it my “100 favorite albums” because that list might include albums with my favorite songs amongst filler… So, I present my list of the 100 best albums as cohesive works, works that shaped or shifted the culture and that have enduring influence or the power to create such influence. All of these review vary greatly, and yes, I really did write 100 of them. Some reviews are short and sweet, snippy or humorous, while others are long-winded essays. Click through or click around; either way, let me know what you think!
(My personal favorite reviews include Pet Sounds, Blue, Life in Cartoon Motion, and American Beauty).
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I remember the first time I heard Nicki Minaj. When I was in sixth grade, my family moved apartments, and I had to walk to middle school with a bunch of girls from my new building who were part of the popular crowd. I was a little nervous but excited at the chance to make a connection. During our move, my parents decided they no longer had any use of the Sony Dream machine my grandparents had gifted them and they said I could have it. Believe it or not, in 2010, it was still really cool to have a radio alarm clock, so I was extremely hyped to set it for my first morning waking up at my new address. Superbass came blasting through the dream machine the next day, and I became an instant fan. Pink Friday will always hold a special place for me as the album that made me a Nicki fan, but it also represents Nicki coming into her own after her guest verse on Monster, stepping into her power. It’s a weird and wild ride, but above all else, it’s fun and triumphant and a debut to be reckoned with.
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I wish I had more to say about this album and my introduction to it besides the fact that I have the Juno soundtrack to thank for bringing it into my life. Granted, I was 4 years old when it came out, so I would inevitably reach it couched in some form of canonized introduction rather than straight to my ear from the radio, as was the case with Nicki’s Pink Friday. What makes Dear Catastrophe Waitress so striking to me is its sweetness. The album, yellow after all, sounds like sunshine. Though often lauded for If You’re Feeling Sinister, which is beautiful in its own right, to remain true to my personal taste, I think Dear Catastrophe Waitress is an excellent album apart from the isolation, irreverence and loneliness of much of Belle and Sebastian’s work.
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Sometime in high school, I discovered Brooklyn-based Chairlift, if only for their most memorable indie sleaze bubblegummy hit, Bruises. Sure, the song came out when I was nine… I needed some time to get there after graduating from Bobby Darin’s Splish Splash, Marlo Thomas’s Free to Be, and other songs for children before getting into the indie dance pop. Needless to say, my introduction to Chairlift was my introduction to the witchy seductress that is Caroline Polachek though it would be years before she truly broke through in her own name with 2019’s Pang, which I devoured through the pandemic; but it was her 2023 release- Desire, I Want To Turn Into You that marked her rising star. Of course, It helps that I saw her perform it live at Radio City and heard her master those haunting high notes in person. The album’s evocative sound and imagery come together into something truly beautiful, accessible enough to be popular but special enough to stand out above the crowd.
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How many songs named Mayonaise can melt your face off? Sitting in an old subway car, the kind with orange seats, I threw on the orange-toned Siamese Dream a few weeks ago and had a funny realization. I had always enjoyed the album as I enjoy most of Smashing Pumpkins’ work- I associate their sound with autumn, perhaps the pumpkin connotation (orange once again), and something about Billy Corgette- I mean, Corgan, really brings on the harvest. Despite being dark, at times angry, and always powerful, it feels cozy, the fruitful product of distilling angst into something artful and fecund. Talk about nominative determinism… And yes, despite all your rage I am ousting Mellon Collie (fruit themed once again), in favor of its predecessor.
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Who doesn’t love a little inside baseball? When the Stones released Exile on Main Street in 1972, nowhere in their wildest dreams could they conceive that 21 years later, 26-year-old Liz Phair would come along and throw it back in the name of rock and roll? A commentary on machismo that drops f-bombs when they still had weight is as triumphant now as it’s ever been. Cutting, edgy and cutting edge.
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I just love being wrong. When SZA’s Ctrl came out during my freshman year of college, I couldn’t care less. In fact, I was annoyed. The only thing I ever heard out of anyone’s mouth was “SZA, SZA, SZA.” Naturally, the part of me that feels compelled to go against the grain took this to mean that she wasn’t for me. I felt that her name might have actually been some sleeper cell activation code that hypnotized the college-aged masses into calling her their supreme leader. When SOS hit, like a typhoon across the internet, I felt the same way. Here it comes- more TikTok music for sleeper cells, I thought. In some ways, I think it’s true; SOS had that uncanny mass appeal. But mass appeal can be a mark of universal acclaim and that’s the most laudable title to hold. SOS features honeyed vocals, skillful writing, and surprising genre blends between pop R&B-inflected beats with surprising acoustic guitar and even some grunge moments like on F2F.
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Hey, do you like feeling good? No, I mean reallllly good. No, I’m not talking about drugs. I mean- do you ever blast Tha Carter III through a good sound system and find yourself unable to resist the urge to start dancing? Wayne said it himself on the album’s second track: “Next time you mention Pac, Biggie, or Jay Z, Don't forget Weezy, baby!” I never would. The album is a flex of Wayne’s finesse and whip-smart lyrics. I’ll be honest, 3Peat- the album’s opener is not my cup of tea, and the second track, Mr.Carter, only begins turning on the gas Wayne is about to cook with, but it’s almost genius that it starts on a weaker link because it guides you through the roof like a come-up and by the time you hit the back-to-back-to-back tracks A milli, Got Money, and Comfortable you’re on cloud nine. The production on this album is flawless, naturally. With Kanye West and Swizz Beatz on the track, it was a given, but it’s also the superstar features like Jay Z and Busta Rhymes and fan favorites like T-pain who keep the energy unmatchable. The album also captures the tradition of sketches and sketch style songs on rap albums in its track Dr.Wayne, and if that’s not your thing, just be patient because it’s only a plateau; you’re still on the top of the mesa waiting for Mrs. Officer and Lollipop.
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This is where I get into the subjective territory. Rollingstone or Apple Music would never put Lebanese-born, French-raised singer-songwriter and, in my opinion, criminally underrated pop star Mika on their greatest albums lists. It’s true, that when Life in Cartoon Motion came out, even the major publications didn’t know how to treat it. It received poor reviews from MetaCritic, Pitchfork, and the Gaurdian, decent stars from Rollingstone and Spin but glowing reviews in the London Evening Standard and garnered the spoken support of Queen’s Brian May. May’s support is particularly relevant considering the apt comparisons between Mika and the late Freddie Mercury. And no offense, Adam Lambert, but Mika should totally have your job. Throw on the Album’s opener Grace Kelly, and Mika quickly dispels the “imitation” slander by explaining he can’t help the Freddie Mercury comparisons, and yes, he sounds like him, but he borrows from all the pop rock gods, and there is plenty of Elton in there too and how hard must a person try to be well liked and well received? This theme follows through the rest of Mika’s career, where he tackles very real, vulnerable, and human dilemmas set over ridiculously sunny pop. Some without listening could easily dismiss his work as music for children because it’s so evocative of childlike whimsy with its big band instruments, sound effects, and rainbow album cover. I would think of the work more like Versailles- what is hiding under all that pastel mess, something very serious. It helps that Mika is a very good-looking man who deeply understands persona, and Life in Cartoon Motion is wrapped up with a bow. Give it a chance, even if it’s not your thing you’ll see the merit. While Grace Kelly, Lollipop, and Big Girl (You Are Beautiful) were the commercial hits, I actually think Love Today and Happy Ending are the true highlights.
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Perhaps the opposite of Life in Cartook Motion, Either/Or feels homespun. The effect of being home recorded is felt through the tracks that are lighter than much of Smith’s other works but still tackle the perverse, unpleasant, and uncomfortable yet relatable experiences of life on earth. Alameda makes you want to put on wool socks and Doc Martens to walk across a drizzly grey campus, kicking leaves, but Say Yes washes over you with the lovely feeling of blushing with embarrassment looking at a first love; it perfectly captures youthful love and naïveté. Behind the bars is a midnight drive when it’s so cold you can see your breath. Understated, poetic, and delicate, Either/Or’s vulnerability draws you deep into Smith’s world and leaves you softened after every listen.
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As a self-proclaimed guitar-supremacist, I’m guilty of falling for anything featuring mastery of the instrument, and Nancy Wilson offers just that. Blending the mysticism of hard rock and heavy metal in tracks like Magic Man, Dreamboat Annie (fantasy child), and Soul of the Sea with the folk-rock and flamenco-inspired flair of Crazy on You make this album a force to be reckoned with in my book. The sound of Dreamboat Annie conjures white nightgowns and pirate ship lanterns, fog machines from old movies, and petrichor.
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“It was late at night; you held on tight.” Say these words to the right person, and you can watch a war flashback dart across the back of their eyelids. Depression Cherry is quintessential to a micro-generation cross-section of the youngest of millennials and oldest of gen-Z. When Tumblr was king and vibes were cache Beach House, Cigarettes After Sex, and Salvia Plath turned spinal fluid into some kind of agent of the angels and pushed brain matter out from your skull and above your head into a halo, floating you into the rapture of Lynchian otherworldly melodies. If there is music in heaven, it sounds like Beach House. Like the Cocteau twins, whom they’re often compared to, God knows what they’re saying, but who cares when it sounds that good? That said, in my dream world, Beach House would link up with INXS for a new version of Never Tear Us Apart.
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“It’s all a dream we dreamed one afternoon, long ago.”
There are many reasons an album might be considered among the best. The title may be earned by the popularity and sales of the album, the lasting power of its songs, the cultural impact it made, or if it served to inspire other artists in its wake. American Beauty might be the exception. The Grateful Dead is a live band; that’s what fans enjoy from them, and that’s what they put the lion's share of their work into developing. They distilled a live music experience with no stage chatter, no repeat sets, sometimes no shoes, and always face melting guitar jams. Becuase there is such an emphasis on the band’s live shows and recorded live shows, studio albums tend to get left behind or serve as introductory materials for the induction process into the culture. However, every fan must start somewhere, and American Beauty should be that starting point. Whether or not you can get into the live heady jams and psychedelic works, American Beauty is a universally accessible 70s soft rock album featuring folksy Americana, Robert Hunter’s masterful pen, and the technical perfection that only masters of their instruments like the Dead could deliver. As you wind through the album, you’ll be lilted and lifted and meandered through a lazy, hazy river of sweet emotion. The album opener, Box of Rain, written for bassist Phil Lesh’s father as he lay dying sets the tone; it’s not a sad song but a celebration of life, it’s “just a box of rain.” What follows, Friend of the Devil and all-time fan favorite Sugar Magnolia turn the sunshine up, but the best is still yet to come. Ripple, the sixth track, is on my personal shortlist for best songs ever written and is the song I credit with turning me into a deadhead. Allow me to write a prescription for how you should listen. Whatever’s hurting, it’s nothing Ripple can’t fix. This is a method I’ve applied to the medicinal listening of a few other songs, so the approach isn’t entirely unique, but if the other songs are home remedies or Tylenol, Ripple is penicillin. The best method is physical media; if you can get your hands on vinyl- it’s maximum strength, but CDs, cassettes, iPods, iPhones, or laptops will do. Lay down on your back, in savasana if that means anything to you. Press play, then close your eyes, and concentrate on the words as they wash over you. Imagine yourself progressively merging with the floor beneath you until you yourself have become a ripple in still water. Tune in, turn on, drop out. It’s okay to cry; let it all wash over you. And if you’re still there, stay there for Brokedown Palace. Let the song take you to the places you need to go, and I promise the music will bring you back with Till the Morning Comes. If you’re still feeling raw, let Attics take your hand and lead you to Truckin’, and you’ll be back on the road before you know it.
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“Listen, kids, there was actually a time before Drake was considered a misogynist and possible predator. He was actually seen as a sensitive, emotional rapper, and nobody wrote memes about him getting himself into cartoonish situations.” “That sounds nice, Grandma; let’s get you back to the nursing home”
I’ll admit I’m not a Drake fan. That's not to say I don’t enjoy his songs; I enjoy many of them, but I’ve never really been a fan of him as a person. Whether it was his original “soft guy” vibe with vomit-inducing musings like “sweatpants, hair tied chilling with no makeup, that’s when you’re the prettiest, I hope that you don’t take it wrong” or the gangsta persona he put on like a costume to rap alongside BlocBoy for Look Alive, I always found Drake to be a bit of a theater kid. I think he felt that way, too, he was a child actor, after all, and like many child stars, he seemingly felt a need to go to extreme lengths to dispel any rumors of innocence and privilege and was sure to let the world know he “had a dark side” replete with real demons and obstacles. Seems, in Drake’s case, his biggest obstacle has been respecting women. . . Now, separating the art from the artist, Views was probably the last time the whole world had fun. Where were you summer 2016? You were listening to Views. I dont care if you were 11 or 30, you were listenting to Views. The whole world was wondering what “a” one dance was while catching Pokemons and mourning the loss of Harambe. Particularly for the cross-section slice of millennials and Gen Zers who had their lives marked by the events of 2001, 2008, and 2020, the year 2016 is looked back at with particular relevance of a by-gone era when it seemed that with the recession in the rearview, it would only be up and up. That was dead wrong, but we have the memories of hope from that summer, and its anthem was, with certainty, Drake’s Views, and for that reason, it will always hold relevance.
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“Sail on, silver girl, your time has come to shine.”
The late ‘60s/early 70s loved a water sound effect, I can tell you that much. Whether it’s the sound of storms on The Cascades Rhythym of the Rain, The Door’s Riders on the Storm, or Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water, hearing the unbridled sounds of nature mix with man’s calculated music makes for a powerful effect. While it may be kitschy in the case of The Cascades or The Doors, it’s restrained and sophisticated in the case of S+G. That’s what I’m gonna call our boys here forward. Hearing the subtle sound effect of a rush of troubled water break at the 4 minute mark of the titular track as the vocals swell into their ultimate peak is a stroke of genius. The strength of this album is undeniable. The haunting folksy El Condor Pasa ignites intrigue, while Cecilia and Baby Driver could bring a smile or a blush to any face with lyrics like “I’m not talking about your pigtails, I’m talking ‘bout your sex appeal.” And isn’t it strange that in 2017, there was not one, but two movies that took their titles from this album? Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver and Marc Webb’s The Only Living Boy in New York. If that’s not a testament to this album's cultural cache, I don’t know what is. And, of course, any S+G’s Bridge Over Troubled Water wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the lament of The Boxer. Bye Bye Love, give it a listen!
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The Apple Music 100 Best Albums placed French DJ duo Daft Punk’s 2001 album Discovery at number 23 on their list. Don’t get me wrong, I love “One More Time” as much as the next guy at any event with a rent-a-DJ. And no, that’s not a disparaging remark, it’s a total party classic and really no wedding/bar mitzvah/sweet 16 party would be complete without it on the set. That said- I don’t know if the rest of Discovery, apart from its singles and the interesting choice to make a pseudo-guitar rock sound on Aerodynamic, were incredibly impactful. I actually prefer the duo’s 2013 release, Random Access Memories, with memorable contributions from Julian Casablancas, Pharrel Williams, and Panda Bear. All of this brings me to how JMJ ended up on this list. France has an incredible output of electronic, ambient, dance-pop, and synth-based musicians ranging from JMJ to Daft Punk, Air, and Phoenix. JMJ is the grandfather of the group; his essential album Oxygène debuted in 1976, and for a period of time, he (arguably) held the title for performing a concert for the largest ever audience of 3.5 million people in Moscow in 1997. I believe this makes Oxygène far more important and the record than Discovery. The problem with Oxygène and why it falls back so far on this list is its ambient nature. The album is beautiful, ethereal, and otherworldly, particularly due to its ahead-of-its-time release date in the 1970s.
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Come sit next to me, pour yourself some tea just like grandma made- we’re about to rock. That first part, a line ripped from the album’s opener, pretty much sums up Rivers Cuomo’s whole MO. On the cover of the Blue Album, as it’s known colloquially, four sweater wearing men? boys?, one bespectacled and all vaguely resembling some 50s teenybopper rock lineup took their squeaky clean if not downright nerdy image and milked it for all its worth. Outfitted with the perfect amount of self-deprecating lyrics essential to any 90s dude rock album, along with absolute shredding and a healthy dose of irony, Weezer’s tongue-in-cheek masterpiece is an utter all-timer. It’s worth mentioning the criticism of Weezer for lyrics that seem to put women in boxes or uncomfortably objectify women, exemplified in track two’s No One Else or track four, Buddy Holly. I think this criticism falls completely flat if you understand the songs for what they truly are- satire. Must everything be explained?
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Punk rock is a genre that makes me sweat. Its a form of rock music that I worry I missed my chance with as a young person. I remember going to London when I was in high school and making myself an elementary punk playlist for the plane ride complete everything you’d expect from The Clash, Buzzcocks, and The Sex Pistols. I listened to it a lot across the pond and the energy and anarchy was infectious to a teenage mind, but when I got home from the trip, the music didn’t stick its landing with me. A few years later during my freshman year in college, I started listening to American punk from the Ramones and Richard Hell. Again, the fire burned bright for a few weeks before dying out. Later in college I watched The Decline of Western Civilization, after which again I attempted to reignite the fire in me to listen to Punk but, to borrow a line from Vampire Weekend, is it strange I can’t connect? Perhaps the harsh imagery of punk, the spikes, the grossouts, the violent mosh pits, and the obsession with Nazism not to mention the issue with actual Nazism and white power movements within the genre and the strange romanticism of violent figures like Sid Vicious h’s harsh my mellow? All of that said, The Clash’s masterpiece London Calling is actually free from the sometimes inaccessible harshness of other punk work. The band, in a very un-punk fashion, developed a rigorous routine for recording the album, complete with daily exercise and bonding activities, and, as always, steeped their work in tradition and earnestness. The output here is, dare I say, sunny. A song called Death or Glory sounds upbeat, and Train in Vain has an undeniably funky groove!
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Considering everything I just said about punk, would you believe me if I said I fucking love RATM and always have? I mean, for starters, it’s not punk, so there’s that. RATM delivers alternative hard rock borrowing from hip hop and metal with politically charged lyrics, rockstar vocal delivery, and plenty of shredding. One of my most electric nights out in college was a live music night at a now-defunct seedy Irish pub in downtown LA often frequented by my fellow Trojans. A redhead in lipstick took the mic with her band behind her and started ripping through hard rock and nu-metal classics from System of a Down and The Disturbed when people began shouting requests and waving money at her. At a point when the crowd was getting intense, the singer gave her band a look and yelled into the mic, “ F**ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!” She then nodded and repeated, “F**ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!” which is not the first line to Killing in the Name of, but then the band quickly began the song's starting chords, and she took it from the top. The crowd erupted. That’s the power of RATM’s music, even without Tom Morello or Zack De La Rocha. From Bulls on Parade through Testify and Guerilla Radio, RATM has unbelievably powerful hits, but their self-titled album, featuring their most recognizable album cover of the self-immolating monk and most recognizable song, Killing in the Name of, is unbelievably strong.
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Guess what- that same night, when the crowd went wild for Killing in the Name of- that bar band had more up their sleeve. To prove I’m not pulling your leg, I’m going to link to a video clip of me utterly embarrassing myself by screaming along to one of my all-time favorite songs, off of Blink-182’s Enema of the State, What’s My Age Again. Perhaps because the album came out in my birth year,1999, it’s always held a special place in my heart. The boyish lyrics evoke the mischievous but innocent playfulness of teenage years and early adulthood. Similar to my assessment of Weezer, while Blink—182’s lyrics may sometimes reflect an incomplete understanding of women from the worldview of a disenchanted high school boy, they come from a place of earnest self-depreciation or sexual frustration rather than the type of jilted insult slinging you might expect from Morrisey. The youthful glow that surrounds Blink-182’s catalog is exemplified in Enema of the State, an album with a lewd title featuring a sexy tatted nurse on its cover.
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You know how good it feels to sneeze? Or what it feels like when you finally get to scratch an itch? Imagine if you could scratch an itch inside your brain; that’s what listening to Dylan Brady and Laura Les of 100 Gecs feels like. On an episode of Time Crisis, an Internet radio show by Vampire Weekend front man Ezra Koenig, famous rock journalist and author Michael Azerad described listening to and enjoying 100 gecs ‘ music as ascending to a higher plane of consciousness. I think he’s completely right. 10,000 gecs opens with the instantly recognisable THX audio deep note sound effect- a sound audiences associate with the begging of a feature film, and this choice is wildly appropriate because you’re about to go on a ride. At no point in this album can you guess what’s coming next- will it be a silly ska song about getting a tooth removed, a tribute to a frog in the studio, lyrical references to rapper MF Doom, or pastiche parody of hardcore on BillyknowsJamie? Formed in the culture of permaonline youths of the Covid years but steeped in the tradition of teen-core and night-core with influences from (in my opinion) skrillex, and other emo/screamo influenced electronic dance music of the 2000s like knifeparty, 100 gecs deliver time in a bottle. You’d think something this kitschy would remain niche but I believe this album is a testament to the truth that the universal lies within the specific because despite its utterly unfathomable weirdness, 10,000 gecs has been met with critical acclaim, from a best new music rating in Pitchfork to being hailed “pop geniuses” in Variety and receiving a score of 81 on meta critic. If you’re going to listen, you can start by throwing any and all preconceived notions out the window- approach with a beginner’s mind.
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They gotta name for the winners in this world, I want a name when I lose….
Now, Steely Dan, what are you losing!? You fucking rock, everyone loves you! And while we’re spitballing here, why did we ever do away with jazzy backing vocals? Walter Becker and Donald Fagen’s jazz rock duo Steely Dan, named after something rather unmentionable and often featuring the support of extremely talented session musicians, is timeless, classy, humorous, and sophisticated. While their lyrics feature collegiate pseudo-intellectualism, they’re always tongue-in-cheek and set against the smooth yacht-rock behind it they read as lighthearted irony. Whoever thought a song encouraging one to “drink scotch whisky all night long and die behind the wheel” could be the sonic equivalent of an umbrella drink in a tropical bar on a beach somewhere? Perhaps the ultimate testament to the strength of Aja is its staying power. Steely Dan remains deeply relevant amongst young people today who either found their way there through their parents or sought them out in search of the gaping hole missing from today’s music scene left by the exit of Yacht Rock. We still have hardcore, there’s plenty of emo, tons of rap, hip-hop and R&B and pop springs eternal but correct me if I’m wrong, there is no modern scene replicating, drawing from, or paying tribute to Steely Dan, Toto, the Doobie Brothers, or Seals & Croft. I’m sure there is, in some unlit cobwebbed corner of TikTok, but wake me when they’re off Bandcamp. Until then, we can get our fix straight from the source with a timeless 7 song album, Aja.
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Say what you want about Grimes, I can’t hear you over how hard I’m blasting Art Angels. Grimes could easily write Serenade No. 13 in G Major, but Mozart could never write Kill v. Maim. Okay, not really, but walk with me. Claire Boucher, better known as Grimes, has the kind of mind that can’t help but express itself, sometimes to her detriment. Often teased, sometimes vilified, and generally ridiculed for being “cringe” or for her relationship with Elon Musk, the lore around Ms. Boucher draws people away from looking at what would help them best understand her: her music. She’s an art kid outsider with a lisp and a deep obsession with science and Tolkien fantasy, who emerged from McGill University into an unlikely powerhouse in the world of electronic music. Not only does Art Angels feature Grime’s unique, playful, and girlish voice, but she also wrote, produced, and engineered all the songs. Her range, ability to play with her vocals and mastery command of production and engineering create an album that is as much everyday music as it is experimental art featuring screams, pants, whispers, and special audio effects. Art Angels journeys through intense powerhouses like Scream and Kill v. Maim, through country-styled California, and stripped down Easily. Bearing in mind Grimes's involvement in every single aspect of this album is what makes it a clear contender to be named among the best.
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“All chili peppers stuff sounds the same” okay… and all chocolate tastes like chocolate and all cheese tastes like cheese but that doesn’t make it any less great. Sometimes I think the best access point into bands with large followings is through their fans. For example, you can’t separate Taylor Swift from the Swifties, Grateful Dead from the deadheads, Beyoncé from the bey hive or Lady Gaga from her little monsters. When I think of my friends who are fans of the RHCP, I think of bottled sunshine. These are people who really know how to have a good time. They embrace the silliness that is sometimes the result of wild lyrics like “you’re a lady but you’re walking like a sour kraut,” or the entire song Purple Stain, which I’ll leave up to you to discover. And while some might hurl insults like “dude all their shit sounds the same, and while we’re at it, what they f*ck are they saying,” these sunshine-in-a-bottle RHCP fans smile, throw up their hands and say something like “I don’t know man, who cares?” And it’s that zen-like, “I’ve done too much acid to care about this” surfer attitude that leaves the person who hurled the initial insult feeling stupefied. Of course, it helps their case that lead singer Anthony Kiedis’ Scar Tissue, and bassist Flea’s Acid for the Children also went on to achieve literary acclaim and boost the legitimacy of RHCP amongst the book smart. I think musically, the one thing I wish I could go back and tweak on Blood Sugar Sex Magik is the sequencing of the tracks. It’s hard to sell an album as one of the best when it has a lyrically strong or important but sonically weak opener. The Power of Equality is a political song that demonstrates RHCP’s rap, as well as rock, roots and the lyrics are some of their more powerful work but they get lost in song with weaker sound. Track Two, If You Have to Ask, is fun, to me it sounds a little like Butthole Surfers (whom I love despite their terrible name), and I think it should have opened the album because track three, Breaking the Girl, even with its discordant pots and pans section, is ascendant. The album has its peaks and valleys in terms of what each individual person will connect with, but there is something for everyone. For me, Suck My Kiss has been a mainstay on all workout playlists since high school cross country, alongside Give it Away, and who doesn’t love Under the Bridge?
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Having grown up in New York City, I’m often asked hilariously speculative questions like “how old were you when you started clubbing?” or “be honest, how many of the kids at your high school were using drugs ?” I think there is some truth to the notion that city girls seem to find out early, in terms of exposure to the real world; to homelessness, addiction, class stratification, haves and have-nots sweating side by side on subways, and precocious independence granted by the hyper mobility of the transit systems without any need for licenses or designated drivers. But unlike kids of suburbia, we were never bored. A lot of bad decision making from the teenage years is the product of boredom, desire for escapism, and rebellion in places where you feel you don’t fit in. Showing up to class in all all leather with black nail polish and eyeliner might raise eyebrows in Anytown, USA but for New York high schoolers it’s just like “oh, that’s Michael- his parents run a goth club in alphabet city, he’s going to Wash U next year.” And while other kids experimented in basements, of which us city kids had none, we were forced to develop in other ways. All of this introduction brings me to how Kind of Blue came into my life. Because I wasn’t growing up the Harmony Korine’s Kids version of NYC, I actually spent many high school nights just getting an ice cream from the scoop shop around the corner from my apartment. Becuase I frequented the spot so often, I got to know the owner and somehow we began to music. He realized I was a rock fan, and we would talk classic bands and music news during my brief ice cream transactions but these built up over a number of years. By my senior year of high school, with college on the horizon, the ice cream shop owner asked me if I had a turn table, which I did- a crappy Crosley from Urban Outfitters. He said he had some records to gift me for college, which was unbelievably kind, and many of them were original vintage classics, which I’m sure he may miss… Among his donation box were Led Zeppelin III, Jazz, The Stranger, The Wall, and Kind of Blue. I knew most of these albums well by then, but Kind of Blue I knew nothing about… The album opens with a track that, to me, sounds like the symphony of New York traffic, the honking of taxis, the rush of pedestrians, and the stirring, vibrant life of the city. Being released in 1959, Kind of Blue shows no signs of aging despite the patina it developed through years of being praised.
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Perhaps I wasted my ode to New York for my review of Kind of Blue because I could have provided the same opener to introduce the Strokes’ Is This It. Quintessential New Yorkers and East Village boys, The Strokes represent a different aspect of city life. It’s well known the boys come from great privilege, Albert Hammond Jr., the obvious son of legendary British musician Albert Hammond, alongside Julian Casablancas, his former schoolmate from posh Swiss boarding school Instiuit Le Rosey, and all of the other members make up an image of prep school gangsters. However, being born with a silver spoon in your mouth does not negate talent, dedication, and innate capability as much as the modern discourse around nepotism wants to believe it can… I think this is a crucial acknowledgment. It’s one thing for a wealthy or famous parent to keep throwing money at a child whose only grace in this world is their last name and their parent’s agent- but how do we explain when talent runs in the blood or when it just so happens that somebody who could be a rockstar is born into a family that can afford to send them to Swiss boarding school? If one’s father is a carpenter, there was a time when that meant their son, too, would be a carpenter. This wasn’t nepotism; it was the family trade. So if one’s father is a musician, is it hard to believe that one might have had intimate exposure to music and grown up in an environment that encouraged pursuing music and allowed one to become a musician in their own right? I think it’s time to free the Strokes from the nepotism conversation and listen to the music free from preconceived notions. Is This It is a whip-smart tribute to New York at the turn of the century, or should I say millennium, and the East Village’s own brand of intellectual rock and punk a la the velvet underground, Television, and The Ramones. I think it’s worth mentioning that, like RHCP, the Strokes are another band often critiqued in the form of “all their songs sound the same.” I think what people pick up on from The Strokes is basically their signature sound. It’s not necessarily that all of their songs sound alike but more that you can instantly recognize a song as a Strokes song even if you’ve never heard the song before. Casablancas’ voice is very recognizable, along with Hammond Jr.’s jangly strumming patterns.
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Are you guys sensing a New York theme here? I’m sorry, this is pure coincidence, but I do think it’s always interesting to put the Strokes and Vampire Weekend side by side, although it’s pure coincidence the rankings turned out their way. Both The Strokes and Vampire Weekend rep the indie sleaze culture immortalized in the book-turned-documentary Meet Me in the Bathroom. However, unlike including Vampire Weekend’s debut album as I decided with the Strokes, I think Vampire Weekend has undergone critical changes and distillations since their inception that make Only God Was Above Us, their latest release, their finest work. Ditching the stilted school-boy persona in the more recent years for a laid-back, grown-up, and honestly, fatherhood-influenced easy confidence, VW has the internet proclaiming, “we’re soooo back.” Ezra Koenig, frontman and lyricist, seems to hail from the same songwriting camp of Chris Difford, Stuart Murdoch, and Josh Tillman, but his musical influences include ska, dancehall, Afropop, and world music and it would feel incomplete not to mention his personal affinity for punk, more recently the Grateful Dead, and his often apt comparison to Paul Simon. While their fourth album, Father of the Bride, seemed to be an ode to the band’s then-recent move to California, Only God Was Above Us is a tribute to New York, featuring imagery from by-gone New York of the 1980s and lyrically paying homage to the band’s east coast roots. The album deals with generational relationships, moral culpability, and inheriting the imperfect past but also offers a message of hope and perspective and features a departure from the Band’s signature style featuring their first song with a fade-out ending, some planned chaos, and lap steel guitar.
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If I was one of the OGBFF, Hollywood Gifts, or OMIGHTY copywriters, I would probably pitch a shirt that says “listening to Voulez-Vous is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off” on the front and something gimmicky like “Eurotrip 1979” on the back or something like that. And it would be true! The Swedes have a major knack for pop genius and ABBA probably represents an apex achievement in terms of cultural output. And yes, I’ll mention Mamma Mia, because I’m sure the musical offered ABBA a boost over the edge with Millennials and Gen-Z too young to be party to ABBA’s reign over disco, but that’s as much about Mamma Mia as you’ll get out of me because the work and ids achievement stands alone. Voulez-Vou starts high and it doesn’t quit. The only dud on there is track 5, “The King Has Lost His Crown” is easily forgiven in the context of all in which it lives and what came before it… I was listening to this album while food shopping at Trader Joe’s on Spring Street earlier this week and couldn’t stop myself from rhythmically drumming on the shopping cart- and that was still the most normal display of behavior in the SoHo Trader Joe’s.
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Raise your hand if you were deeply and personally affected by the 2021 death of American Composer and lyricist Jim Steinman. I bet you say that to all the boys… Some of my fondest memories from growing up were listening to music in the car on family road trips or, as a very young child, playing freeze dance or finger painting with my mom and sister while my mom played her CDs over the stereo system built into our horrible 90s farmhouse chic armoire. My parents’ taste in music is an eclectic mixed bag, and when I think of the music my parents showed me growing up, it ranges from Meatloaf, Prince, Queen, and Elton John to John Mellancamp and Tom Petty or Rod Stewart and Whitney Houston. Perhaps the throughline here is showmanship, songwriting (for the most part), and leather jackets? But nobody is more synonymous with a leather jacket than Meatloaf. With the help of Secret Weapon songwriter and legendary Jewish-Long-Island-boy-turned-biker-goth Jim Steinman, it’s hard to believe Dallas born Meatloaf’s rock, heavily influenced by early 50’s rock and the biker scene as much as it was influenced by opera and b-movies is real. I would be remiss not to quickly mention that as a Rocky Horror fan, Meatloaf’s performance in the cult classic is so perfectly executed it’s impossible not to smile when you see a man so clearly living his truest form of expression, making music he loves. Bat Out of Hell is more like listening to a radio-musical than a regular rock album and the dramatics would make an emo blush. While this fact could affect “listenability” a fake word I just made up, the album as it is, is an artistic achievement and belongs ranked among the best made and You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth, Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad, and Paradise By the Dashboard Light are iconic songs in the Rock cannon and deserve to be remembered as such, and 100% improve any road trip singalong playlist.
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It’s better than I ever knew…
Lana Del Rey will appear on this list multiple times, and this is not because I’m an obsessive super fan, it’s because she is a once in a generation talent, I believe comparable to Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez or Stevie Nicks and she is as much a poet as she is a musician. Born to Die is the album that put Lana Del Rey on the map, and it was, at its time, groundbreaking but it’s just the start. I’ll layout Lana’s foundation here and we’ll follow her journey as a musician and songwriter as we see her other albums appear. I should also add, my freshman year of college I wrote an entire essay reviewing only the album’s titular track and that essay is featured on this blog. I’ll link it here. At the time in her career when Born to Die debuted, Lana often referred to herself as a “gangster Nancy Sinatra” and I think she actually perfectly described herself. Lana’s early music is clearly influenced by classic Americana and New York/LA noir as much as is by hip-hop and what was, at the time, the burgeoning tumblr-girl aesthetic featuring flower crowns and American flags sewn onto any form of denim imaginable. With Born to Die, it’s impossible to separate the album from its imagery. The music videos released during this period were, I hate to say it, a “cultural reset.” Lana cosplayed as Jackie Kennedy alongside A$AP Rocky as JFK, rode on the back of old men’s motorcycles, sat on a throne flanked by tigers and breathed new life into Old Hollywood. Lana Del Rey, birth name Elizabeth Grant, grew up on a Rocky household in Lake Placid, New York after being sent away for her teenage alcoholism and addiction struggles and eventually found her way to New York City working through various stage personas in the underground scene before becoming Lana Del Rey, finding her rhythm and eventually manifesting destiny in her move to Los Angeles. Lana’s music during the early period does not address her personal life or struggles, at least not directly; she builds worlds and characters and explores them through her cinematic songwriting. It takes years for Lana to open up and begin “letting the light in” as she writes about on her most recent release. Born To Die holds personal relevance because it serves as a Time Machine, capable of transporting me back to my high school bedroom, playing the album on vinyl on my crappy poser pink portable crosley. However, and saying this could get nuclear warheads pointed me in the form of Twitter insults, it’s NOT Lana’s best work. She was warming up her, but she becomes an even more interesting and better lyricist and we’ll see her progress.
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I don’t think I have synesthesia, but Leonard Cohen’s lyricism has a color palate to me, and it’s a palate of blues and silvers. From the first time I heard Hallelujah as a young girl, albeit a cover version, I saw such vivid imagery it played across my eyelids like a movie. I saw an Arthurian castle at night, enveloped in silver mist and a maiden like Guinevere with long blond hair bathing in a large, stone claw-footed tub in the moonlight and a court jester strumming a lute. I think it’s fair to say this medieval imagery probably was conjured through the songs’ association with the Shrek movies, but the idea of Cohen’s music as silvery and medieval has lasted throughout my impression of his entire catalog as I’ve gotten older. Once in Granada, I attended a Flamenco show at the Alhambra, where the land is steeped in knights, Moors, and the Inquisition, and I’ve come to associate Flamenco guitar with something very ancient. Perhaps it’s the Flamenco (and maybe Fado?) influence on The Songs of Leonard Cohen that brings me back to that place; obviously Hallelujah is not on this album. Suzanne, one of Cohen’s most cherished works and the album’s opener is one of the most achingly beautiful songs written about a woman- or maybe that’s Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye or One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong, or… Okay, I’ll cut myself off, but the point is Leonard Cohen really knows how to pay tribute to a lover. The album is a departure from time and space that seems to exist in an unplaceable era that is deeply human and relatable but neither modern nor vintage and extremely haunting.
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Elevation, don’t go to my head! Quintessential New York punk rockers Television created a punk album that required far more technicality and attention to detail than the standard approach at the time, which was for punk music to be democratized and accessible. The album’s sophistication, which is uncharacteristic of the genre but characteristic of the band, sets it apart and creates its unique significance and staying power. My favorite track, Guiding Light, with prominent keyboard and a melodic guitar solo, is beautiful and, in my opinion, an unexpectedly sweet surprise, and Torn Curtain, the album’s final track, feels like a complete departure from the punk genre, moving more toward an early new-wave emo meets rock opera.
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If I was a Twitter account with Camille Paglia or Jacques-Louis David’s portrait of a woman in white as my profile picture, I could write something like “Pulp’s Different Class is just Das Kapital if it slayed” and I would get like 5,000 retweets. It’s true the album is concerned with class issues, mobility and stratification but its not merely concerned with facts and figures or mere anger at “the haves”- it goes deep into the fabric of life from who we love, how we behave and what our guilty pleasures are because these highly personalized qualities can be traced through Marxist analysis. The ever-prolific Jarvis Cocker’s lyrics capture the deeply human seediness of affairs, nascent sexual encounters, jealousy and frustration. Perhaps the strongest thing about the album is despite its serious themes, and lyrics strong enough to stand as character studies or poems in their own right, it’s just as much an album for the club! Seriously good beats accompany every song on the album, particularly tracks four and nine, which feature Anne Dudley & Orchestra. These are the most impressive sonic feats, though Common People is the album’s most popular commercial success, and Pencil Skirt and Underwear are sexy fan favorites.
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A genre that seems to have slipped through the cracks sometime around the 2010s is coffeehouse. The 90s through the early 2000s seemed to appreciate the coffee shop as more than a caffeine injection as we see it today, where our drinks have been ordered in advance by app and with zero human interaction we are handed a coffee through a window where our even our names are no longer humorously and humanly misspelled because there is simply a sticker receipt featuring our full name alongside Uber, Postmates or Toast. When the coffee shop represented a place for the meeting of the minds, it had an aesthetic form and accompanying soundtrack creating a particularized milieu. The Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute provides a fantastic case study on the coffee house aesthetic which I will link here.
Some coffee houses still retain this image, arguably Los Angeles’s Urth Cafe, New York City’s DTUT or Pause Cafe, or coffee shops on college campuses. The design often features a global influence, perhaps referencing the places where coffee comes from; Ethiopia, Columbia, Guatemala, etc. CARI sums it up so well, saying the “Common motifs include: woodcuts, 'tribal/ancient imagery and iconography', moons, suns, spirals, hands, eyes, stars, simple styled flowing/curvy figures, 'aroma swirls', coffee cups, natural elements like trees/waves/landscapes, earth tones, hand-drawn look, 'airbrushed dirty look', the earth/globe, hearts, colorful gradated backgrounds, rough irregular borders & lines.” Aside from the memorable aesthetic of these coffee shops, what also secured their cultural significance was the fact they always played very specific music. For me, I’m reminded of the Norah Jones or John Mayer CD’s that Starbucks used to display at their register alongside the petite Madeline’s or Best Teacher Ever pre-loaded gift cards. Had Hozier’s self-titled debuted in the 90s or early 2000s, it would have flanked the register as a perfect fit not only for its homespun crafty album cover but for its cozy, bluesy soft rock within. My categorization of Hozier as such is not a dismissive knock; I would put Tracy Chapman, K.D. Lang, Tori Amos, or Everything But the Girl in the same category. This type of music is significant and impactful, but they form a distinct microgenre that I believe is “coffeehouse.” Hozier’s self-titled album is fantastic, his songwriting is extremely strong, his voice is honeyed and sometimes raspy in a favorably sexy way, and if you can get past the fact you may have heard the song 100,000,000+ times, if you can bring yourself back to the first time you heard Take me to Church, you’ll remember how haunting and striking it I was and still is. Aside from Take Me to Church, I count Like Real People Do, It Will Come Back, Cherry Wine, From Eden among some of my favorites not just on this album but in general and Someone New is a fun upbeat track to counterbalance the emotion of the rest of the album.
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With Norman Fucking Rockwell, NFR, to fans, we return to Lana Del Rey to watch her growth as a songwriter. Refer back to the entry for Born to Die, if you’re first dropping in here. Like Born to Die, NFR seems to access the palette of the Red, White and Blue, something Lana departed from for the intermittent Ultraviolence, Honeymoon, and Lust for Life which touch on fame’s gritty underbelly, Old Hollywood, and the 60s heroin scene. Of course the albums title also references an artist known for his passion for preserving the tapestry of American culture and not shying away from the difficult and controversial parts of our history whilst simultaneously pumping out commercial works for the Saturday Evening Post. Lana does the same; while her iconography is steeped in American flags, pickup trucks, and the fourth of july, her lyrics address her imperfect past as an addict, among the other darker forces that undergird the American dream. Perhaps the palette shift and commercial success of the album was also thanks to a new partnership between Lana and Jack Antonoff, who produced the album. And if Lust for Life began to crack the door into who Elizabeth Grant really is, with songs that didn’t only seek to world-build and tell tall tales, but actually referenced her waking life and began to let her audience in, NFR goes short of throwing the door open, but it continues the process of shedding light on the woman behind the music. NFR’s songs are vulnerable, revealing and sincere; they go into the songwriting process, her love life, and private fears along with the hope she harbors inspite of it all. The album also takes on bold, artistic choices featuring songs longer than 9 minutes, instrumental interludes, and a very well placed Sublime cover.
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Oracular Spectacular is so much more than an album; it’s like a window into a time and place. Released in 2007 by college buddies Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden, the album is, in its own words, “ a call to arms to live and love and sleep together. We could flood the streets with love or light or heat, whatever,” because “the youth are starting to change, are you?” Though the album was released before the 2008 recession, its closely associated with the plight of young people during that time, their disillusionment with the harsh world that had no use for their shiny degrees and ambitions after being spoon-fed optimism about “oh the places you’ll go” as undergrads. The youth of the late aughts are responsible for the hipster movement, the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the ascent of indie dance pop. If the world outside felt bad, at least the music could feel good. Oracular Spectacular’s psychedelic, dance-heavy vibe was perfect to spin alongside Justice and Empire of the Sun at a Brooklyn warehouse where ikat print bandage skirts, neon American apparel zip-up sweatshirts, skinny jeans, and chunky statement necklaces were being flash-photographed by CobraSnake for the online escape of MySpace, and early Facebook- back when any night out warranted a whole new album. However, Oracular Spectacular is more than just a testament to the time of its release, it remains highly listenable, impactful and inspirational. Electric Feel, Kids, and Time to Pretend are unbelievable feats that create a feeling of instant nostalgia, even for those too young to remember their initial release.
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At the risk of being a stereotype, I’ll still divulge the fact that my boyfriend showed me this album, but to be fair he was shown it by a friend’s older brother which has the same energy; this is a quintessential “friends cool older brother put me on” album. Another album on this list from ‘99, it features the periods’ distinct youthful, anxiety ridden mania intermittent with chest puffing. However, what places this album at 63, far ahead of Enema of the State or Weezer’s blue album is its technical strength; the instrumentals are objectively better and so are the lyrics and themes. The album was inspired by the birth of vocalist-guitarist’s niece in rapid succession after the dead of his father. In standout songs like You Are Invited, this deeper context is revealed under the veneer of a party song. Emergency & I, to me, really presents the idea of a “perfect record.” Similar to the “tight 90” for a perfect 90 minute film, the “perfect record” just feels SO correct.
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Kids, referring to bands or recording artists might ask “who’s your favorite singer?” because we are first introduced to the word “artist” as a reference to painters or sculptors but not necessarily singers. I’m not sure at what age we start to use “artist” to refer to musicians or when we culturally began to use the term artist to describe them, but for some musicians it seems “artist”, even in the painterly sense, is truly the only way to describe them. There is always discourse about the “weird” and “avant garde” imagery and personas of Madonna or Lady Gaga but I think that conversation is incredibly overblown without looking at the entire tapestry of “art” inspired musicians. For however “weird” Gaga or Madonna were?/Are? their imagery and iconography is typically grounded in queer ballroom and house music culture, disco, Gaultier, Mugler and a little David Bowie. However, for Björk, Kate Bush, Arca, and FKA twigs, their artistry and inspirations are incredible difficult to pin down, predict, or sometimes even comprehend. This is not a knock on Gaga or Madonna, both of whom I love, but is to highlight the difference between their aesthetics and what I believe to be truly avant garde, and how these come apart. Kate Bush is artist and innovator in every sense of the word. She began songwriting as a teenager, and is actually credited as being the first artist to use a headset with a wireless microphone so that she could dance on stage while singing. My introduction to Kate was through her first album, The Kick Inside, an album featuring lush and sensual songs like L’amour Looks Something Like You, but also Wuthering Heights, a song that literally sounds like it came from another universe. However, even between The Kick Inside, released in the 70s when Kate was 19, and The Hounds of Love, released in 1985, when Kate had further grown into herself, there is a world of difference . The Hounds of Love opens with Running Up That Hill, which has pop-appeal and enjoyed a recent resurgence in popularity after a synch feature on Stranger Things. However, right after the album opener, the album takes a sharp left turn and becomes an operatic amalgam of sweltering crescendos, chopped and distorted vocals, the voices of “demons,” spoken word interludes, and cello? If Running up that Hill and Big Sky are the sunny spots, Under the Ice and Waking the Witch are a tempest.
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Out on the Weekend is the perfect opening track to Harvest, Neil Young’s first album to feature a No. 1 single. The album opens up like a sunrise on the front porch, at least that’s how it feels to me. It’s very visual. Listening, I find in my mind I’m now on a front porch in Kansas or Nebraska, looking out across a field of wheat or corn, from a rocking chair with a morning cup of black coffee. And “dream up, dream up, let me fill your cup,” Neil sings on the next track, aptly named “Harvest.” However, Harvest is more than a bucolic pastoral, it rocks on hard Alabama and Words, and Young’s ever haunting Theremin-like voice adds an element of ethereal spookiness.
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Piano and flute begin softly, and then a golden voice joins them, singing about the imminent invasion of space aliens in the most beautiful timbre you have ever heard. That is the opening to Illinois. Before there is time to think on the matter further, there’s epic harmony that sounds like fanfare from heaven’s gate emanating from a track called “The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience but You're Going to Have to Leave Now, or, 'I Have Fought the Big Knives and Will Continue to Fight Them Until They Are Off Our Lands!'" Yes, that’s all one name, and then the feat that is “Illinois” really takes off. I know I’ve said so many times throughout this list, but I mean this time, I really really mean it; John Wayne Gacy Jr. is the most heartbreaking, achingly beautiful song for the victims of the serial killer, and his victims, young gay men. Recently, the album has been adapted into the Tony-winning show Illinoise. At first, I thought a Broadway adaptation of a Sufjan Stevens album seemed antithetical, but the more I thought on it, it made sense to adapt Illinois; the album itself is greatly theatrical; there are aliens and zombies, serial killers, cancer patients, and the albums rhapsodic nature is punctuated with vaudeville staccato and carnie imagery.
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Curse you TikTok for pointing out that the opening to Do I Wanna Know, and therefore the opening to the entire AM sounds like the Home Depot music…. I feel uniquely qualified to discuss the merits of AM because it so greatly shaped my teenage years and love for music. I started listening to Arctic Monkeys in late middle school, starting with Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, Favorite Worst Nightmare, and Humbug. I was suffering from acute anglomania induced by Skins, Dr.Who, and Harry Potter and as a hormone filled angsty eighth grader I was so convinced that “nobody understood me” and that I should be in rainy, grey England wearing Peter Pan collars and Wednesday Addams dresses or posing along a brick wall in that famous photo that has now basically come to represent the arctic monkeys aesthetic. AM debuted during the peak of Tumblr’s popularity, perhaps around the time that music first became associated more with visual aesthetic and start pack personalities beyond just the sound of the album. Musical artist and genres have always had specific aesthetics, but these aesthetics were never reductionary in the way that online visual media began to place bands in boxes and stereotype fans as having particular personality traits based on the visuals associated with the music that they listen to. I don’t know what it was about AM that created the aesthetic of American apparel cheerleader skirts only in black-and-white, black leggings and spiral wire chokers, black Converse high tops, and black nail polish. Nonetheless, this vibe/Subculture/Trend stuck its claws into my fourteen year old self, with vengeance. However, despite the album being on heavily associated with teens and the tumblr scene, it has critical merit as well. Alex Turner’s lyrics are cheeky and charming, and the songs are sexy but not overtly obscene. The arctic monkeys are serious, experienced musicians who’ve played together since they were teenagers and have truly perfected their package. They’re following records, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, and The Car show how “in the pocket” they’re able to stay. Each album tightly conforms to a concept, and hits its mark. AM is no different. Listen for the nostalgia or the merit, either way it’s a good time.
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If AM was soooo me at fourteen, then I Love You, Honeybear is soooooo me at sixteen. By that age, I had formed the intent to stake my claim in the mother load and make my way ever westward to the Golden Coast (to USC, that is.) My obsession with England had subsided in favor of Los Angeles. Ever the Lana Del Rey and classic rock fan, I dreamed of Sunset Boulevard and parties in the hills, wearing oversized sunglasses and watching movies that I would call “films,” and reading Babitz and Didion. I read slouching toward Bethlehem twice that year. Father John Misty’s ode to the Chateau Marmont, the Silverlake and East Side scene full of “that soulful affectation white girls put on” and “too many vogue ideas,” struck me like an escape fantasy, albeit a biting one full of irony. However, while I Love You, Honeybear is full of put-downs, negging, and pessimism, it’s equally tender, sweet, and (I think he would be embarrassed to say it) but EARNESTNESS. A man does not write “When you’re smiling and astride me” if he doesn’t mean it. The album lifts off with love songs and hate songs but reaches higher and higher for more dating topics, exploring if “love is just an institution based on human frailty” or “an economy based on resource scarcity.” FJM takes these particular themes further in his next album, Pure Comedy, which is extremely poetic and interesting but far less “listenable” in terms of its approachability. Though I found and became a fan of I Love You, Honeybear as a teenager, this is an album with very adult themes. Whatever layer I appreciated it at then is built over every listen and strengthened by newer heartbreaks, growing pains, or love stories.
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The mind of Andre 3000 springs eternal, and with Big Boi, an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. The 2000 album Stankonia", takes its name from a word created by André 3000 combining "stank" and "Plutonia,” which he says was the title of a poster in his bedroom depicting a futuristic city). "Stankonia,” he explained, “is this place I imagined where you can open yourself up and be free to express anything". This level of freedom and imagination is the hallmark of this album in particular, but really underlies all of OutKast’s output which balance street cred with outlandish artistic expression, successful risk taking and always, an extremely slick and charming sense of humor (justice for We Luv Deez Hoez). Even with its quirky interludes, Stankonia is a no-skip listen. Ideally on a long car ride, you can throw it on; the album begins, in its own words “live from the center of the earth, seven lightyears below sea level,” and it moves you from your core. While So Fresh, So Clean and Ms.Jackson enjoy mainstream success, and can be counted on by wedding DJ’s to get bodies on the dance floor, what makes Stankonia treasured is its ability to combine serious themes and reflective consciousness with unbelievable beats. Bombs Over Baghdad and Xplosion deliver an intensity absent from OutKast’s earlier more laid back work and a little healthy controversy.
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CharliXCX wakes up from surgery, she’s feeling soo much better. Two men are wheeled into her recovery room, looking sickly. “Who do you think gave you the Brat Summer?” The doctor asks, gesturing at the Pet Shop Boys, “NO!!!” screams Charli, covering her mouth in shock. With Charli there’s a direct stylistic through line, but really the Pet Shop Boys walked so any of your fill-in-the-blank-favorite-artists could run, that’s how universal their influence is. Madonna, New Order, and The London Suede have all given major acknowledgment to the enduring influence of the Pet Shop Boys whose visionary approach to music seemed to be light years ahead of all their contemporaries. It’s hard to explain what makes a Pet Shop Boys song, but I’ll try. Their songs, endlessly as appropriate for the dance floor as they are for a dinner party are so much more than just their powerful synths and will-you-to-dance power. The pet shop boys’ lyrics tackle complex, controversial and serious topics ranging from the economy of relationships based on mutual needs, the haves and have-nots, and the experiences in the gay scene and club scene at a time of danger and controversy for the gay community. Please, to me, is one of the most timeless albums and it transports me mentally to Black Mirror’s San Junipero, a place free from pain and suffering, but with complexity and depth despite its neon 80s energy.
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All it takes is the first opening notes of the intro to Get Rich or Die Tryin to realize you’re about to be completely and utterly moved by superhuman force. Is it his oiled up eight pack abs on the album cover, the indescribable aura one would gain after surviving nine bullets wounds, or his sheer confidence in the raw power he’s about to deliver that imbues 50 cent’s vocal performance with confidence, swagger, and ass-whooping? If there was ever an album that’s a testament to motivation, confidence, and grit, it’s Get Rich or Die Tryin, which even from its name alone proves its scrappy intensity in the gangsta rap canon. 50 cent, who claims his name “means change” has his controversies and his feuds but remains ever the interesting character, a teetotaler, who owns alcohol companies, and the kind of rapper who puts “P.I.M.P” and “21 questions” on the same album becuase “if [he] can’t do it, then it can’t be done.” As a side note, for each of these album reviews I give every album a fresh listen in its entirety. I threw on Get Rich or Die Tryin, which truthfully if I can admit bias is one of my favorite albums, and intended to go for a short walk. Four and a half miles later I long forgot why I even was still walking and where I was going.
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On Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Boulevard, DYKTTATUOB for short(er), Lana references Kintsugi, a Japanese pottery practice where damage to pottery is filled in with gold, highlighting both the flaw of the piece and also adorning the piece with unique beauty and newfound value. Lana references the poetry of this process directly saying “that’s how the light gets in,” referring to the value of “cracks” but she goes further to tell a personal story of grief which “cracked her open.” If you’re first dipping into my album analysis here, go back to the entries for Born to Die and Norman Fucking Rockwell before proceeding. We’re now seeing Lana’s most recent album, all of her growth, and finally seeing the door flung open in terms of the album actually addressing Lana’s personal life. Detailing the painful loss of her great uncle, her family’s complicated relationships, their collective and her personal mourning and the duties of fame. Nevertheless, for however rich the metaphors are on kintsugi, the albums’ name, and its titular track offer its most powerful literary force. The metaphor offered is that of a once beautiful and useful tunnel, covered in tiles, and made to help pedestrians access the beach, that has since been sealed, abandoned and forgotten. Lana compares herself to the tunnel warning “don’t forget me, like the tunnel under ocean boulevard,” and wondering “when’s it gonna be my turn?” I can only imagine what that line leaves to the imagination is “to walk in the light.” If you truly give DYKTTATUOB a chance to wash over you, listening to the lyrics without distraction, it’s piercing. If you listen casually, it’s “vibey.” Either way, it’s one of the finest albums ever written or performed, and showcases some of Lana Del Rey’s most impressive lyrics and vocal performances.
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Kinetic intelligence is used to refer to the genius of atheletes, can it apply to the genius of vocal posture? Johnny Cash is a poet in his own right for his lyrics, and this is more than clear from American IV’s bone chilling opening track, The Man Comes Arouns, but he can also cover a song in a way that transforms everything about it. On American IV, featuring a large number of covers, Cash’s vocal performance and fascinating thematic selection are an artistic achievements in their own right. Every song, every choice is brimming over with the deep psychic experience of an old man going into that great night, raging against the dying of the light. I’ve visited this album many times in my life, for a song or two at a time but I had never listened to it cover to cover until reviewing it here. On a walk through central park’s loop, on an oppressively hot summer day, I threw it on, and was completely in awe of its raw power and beauty. Normally, The Man Comes Around or Hurt are the expected tearjerkers but I found myself choking back the lump in my throat that had first formed during Give My Love to Rose, during the cover of depche mode’s Personal Jesus. Death pervades the album but the choice to end the album with We’ll Meet Again, tapering into an extreme fade-out and a fade in joined by the chorus of angels is its last, and most haunting choice. If there is an afterlife I hope I get to shake Johnny Cash’s hand there. His story and his songs mean so much to me, and to so many, and the landscape of American music is forever indebted to the man in black.
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After 11th grade, I participated in a Spanish language immersion program that was mostly a glorified teen tour around Spain. Despite the fact that I didn’t walk away from that summer completely fluent in the Queen’s Castilian, what actually made the program so formative for me was the level of freedom we were given, and the fact that the program took us on the road less traveled by; no Barcelona and barely any time in Madrid, we spent most of our time in ancient mysterious small towns of the Spanish countryside where the crusades still felt alive. I could imagine golden dubloons and Spanish silver in the woods, and the weight of inquisitions, the crusades of the Moors, the civil war, and the blood in the soil. Spain is very rich like that. Another component of the freedom of the trip was the “youth leading the youth” element of my fellow cohort of sixteen and seventeen-year-olds being watched by two PhD students under the age of 26. We all broke protocol together and socialized like siblings. During the leg of the trip, which was a brief stint in Madrid, one of the PhD student supervisors messaged in our WhatsApp group chat that if anyone was willing to wake up at the “crack of dawn,” he would take us for coffee and to a flea market with “good vintage finds.” I responded immediately, clearly thirsting for elusive vintage Spanish grails. The market was full of beautiful silver service, ceramics, and other things that weren’t going to fit in my duffle bag, let alone survive backpacking, so in typical Sami fashion, I found myself at the band tee stall. Staring right at me was the sickest Metallica tee shirt I had ever seen, a crisp new Ride the Lightning tee from the tour. There was one problem, I didn’t listen to Metallica. I bought the shirt and swore I would listen after. In a slight miscalculation after swiping my parents’ credit card, I learned the stall I had purchased from was named “Marijuana Gifts Unlimited,” which really sucked to explain, but the shirt was worth it. I wore it incessantly for the rest of the trip and began listening to Metallica. I started with Ride the Lightning, ripping through For Whom the Bell Tolls and Fade to Black, but it was their later album, Master of Puppets, that captured my heart. Sure, some of the names are ridiculous. Leper Messiah sounds like a self-parody of what an 80s metal band would name one of their tracks, except it’s real, but Metallica’s strength is how dead serious they are in the presentation of their oft-misunderstood genre. Their earnest, sometimes self-conscious playing is genuine, and while the song names are lofty, the themes are grounded.
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Perhaps one of the most intoxicatingly beautiful and sophisticated women alive, along with her band, on Love Deluxe, Sade delivers an album that is the epitome of refined, sexy, adult contemporary music. Love Deluxe transports listeners to a lush, tropical island, sometime in the 80s, in a beach house with wall to wall carpeting and glass bricks, and lots of silver mirrored surfaces.
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Out of all the albums in the 50s on this list, Adele 21 was the one I kept putting off reviewing. It’s not because I don’t like the album, it wouldn’t be here ranked significantly higher than the Grateful Dead on this list if that were true. I think Adele 21 presented such a challenge because I cannot imagine its inception; it feels ubiquitous, as if every song there has already existed, just waiting for Adele to tune into their frequency and transmit them like a human radio. I knew she wrote the songs, but it still felt hard to believe, they’re so anachronistic. The sweeping, soulful belted love songs feel extremely appropriate for 2011 considering her contemporaries like Amy Winehouse and Duffy who were exploring similar terrain in British R&B, but also similar to Amy Winehouse, something about Adele’s songs seemed more “out of time,” like jazzy Sinatra classics rather than pop writing, and yet Rolling in the Deep was utterly unavoidable in 2011, truly the epitome of an inescapable hit. This timeless quality to Adele’s music is likely the effect of her highly symbolic and metaphorical songwriting that escapes the trend in pop and indie music at that time to be incredibly, sometimes painfully literal. While other songs were beginning to include words like “iPhone,” “posting,” or “texting,” Adele’s 21 is full of mystical imagery like setting fire to the rain, and rolling in the deep. There is no indication of timelines, and while the songs were inspired by her personal heartbreak they are not written from a hyper personal confessional style that was gaining traction in often self conscious or self deprecating alternative music scene. Adele is the mythical performer, the Greek tragedian from behind her painted mask and that’s why her work is so universal, so anachronistic and so powerful. If you think you know Adele 21, I urge you to re-listen with fresh ears, bearing in mind the observation of her lack of cultural signifiers, and what effect that produces in the listener.
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Warren Zevon is somewhat of a personal hero; his lyrics, his badass attitude, and his infamous final appearance on the Letterman Show have always made him a standout to me, so much in fact as to influence me to make his famous zinger “enjoy every sandwich” my Instagram bio, replacing Pink Floyd’s “just nod if you can hear me.” What I so admire about Zevon is his wit. Perhaps this is obvious by now, but I admire the Koenig-Tillman-Cocker camp of songwriting; Zevon represents a grandfather of that group alongside Chris Difford. A little pretentious at times, but never without self-deprecating humor and a wink and a nod to something unexpected. However, perhaps unlike most of the other songwriter-frontmen I’ve named, Zevon was a solo artist, and he had a taste for profanity. Whether releasing a song in his later years simply called “My Shit’s Fucked Up” or taking on taboo topics in a passive fashion so as to be both offensively and hilariously irreverent as he was on the titular track of Excitable Boy, Zevon’s star quality remains unparalleled. Though most remember the album for Werewolves of London, to fans it’s Lawyers Guns and Money and Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner that are his true career achievements. When I listen to Lawyers Guns and Money, I hear what I’m sure is an art of the past- the true “rockstar” vocal performance. Full of grunts, “huhs” and maybe even a well-placed clap or two Zevon delivers a performance so strong the album version feels live. As for Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner, a song about the complicated tangle of geopolitics being woven not only through conflict at large but also exacerbated by individuals with violent personal desires to scapegoat and seek revenge or glory, has anything ever been more relevant?
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Most people talk about “dad rock” or the music their dad showed them… Moms need so much more credit. My mom has killer taste and put me on to some excellent music. As a kid, my whole family shared an iTunes account, and we would all take turns downloading songs onto our Nanos. My mom had a playlist called “90s” full of her own music from her 20s and somehow it ended up on my iPod. At 9 years old, during my first summer of sleepaway camp, where we were allowed to bring iPods, to fall asleep at night I would listen to music. If I missed my parents, I would listen to the songs that made me think of them, “Sherry Darling,” “Hungry Heart,” and “Wonderful Tonight” for my Dad, and for my mom, “You’re Beautiful,” “Make it With You,” and the entire album of Jagged Little Pill. I don’t think at 9 years old I could even appreciate the title of the album or any of its lyrical depth but I knew it sounded amazing. I could appreciate Ironic, and I thought the explicit lyrics throughout the album were raunchy and exciting. Since that age, I’ve listened to Jagged Little Pill many times, always understanding it in a newer, deeper, closer way as I got closer to Alanis’s age when she released the album at 21, and now that I’m older than she was, it’s even more of a mind blowing achievement. I truly don’t understand how a 21-year-old could write from the depth of experience of a woman who had been through so much self-discovery and analysis, heartbreak and hardship, and had gained so much wisdom. I’d be remiss not to write about Alanis’s signature vocal performance, which is always dynamic, interesting, and highly personalized. Today it seems many singers attempt to mimic what was once a truly unique, her guttural back-of-the-throat style.
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If you’ve ever lived as a teenager girl then you’ve earned your stripes to “live through this.” If you’ve pinched fat between your fingers in the mirror, written in your diary, dyed your hair, or slammed your door and screamed “F**ck you” you’ve “lived through this.” Although the enigmatic and fascinating Courtney Love, has been thrown in with Riotgrrrl and the Olympia scene of her late husband’s upbringing, she didn’t attend Evergreen college and has always expressed her doubts about the cultish nature of riotgrrrl and the Evergreen scene. On “Rock Star” the album’s final and most passionately delivered track, (and the track that once made reference to Kurt’s death and was forcibly changed by her label), Love screams “everyone’s the same, we look the same, we talk the same” commenting on how to outsiders the grunge scene out of Olympia was so unique but to those in it, it was a posture or collective identity and yet they’ll just keep doing it “for the kids,” the young fans of rock who want to believe that true artistry exists, that their heroes are real and not fallible, depressed, or in Kurt Cobain’s case, suicidal. Live Through This, through its anger, assertion, and demand to be seen is a red hot poker in the side of male-centric rock. I listened to this album a lot in college and did a killer (if I do say so myself) Courtney Love Halloween costume one year. . .
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Not clickbait- Lemonade actually sent me to the hospital. This is a real, and embarrassing story. It’s no secret that I worship at the temple of Her Holiness, first of her name, Queen of the Andals and the Rhoynar, and the First Men, the one and only Beyoncé Knowles Carter. Every single Beyoncé album holds a special place in my heart, and I thank my lucky stars every night that I was born in the timeline that allowed me to see her headline Coachella in 2019. That was not what sent me to the hospital though; and would have been far more predictable. When Lemonade dropped, along with the story behind it, jaws were on the floor. Beyoncé, one of the most beautiful, talented, famous, and beloved celebrities alive was human, she was vulnerable, she could be wronged and she could be hurt- what was she going to do about it? Make lemonade, obviously. Previously, Beyoncé’s self-titled was the champion of my heart but from the first time I heard Formation, things changed. What the fuck is that opening sound at the six second mark? Is it a slow-plucked guitar string? A snapped rubber band (thank you reddit), whatever it is, it was one of the most captivating sounds I had ever heard, and Beyoncé’s slow, strong delivery that joined it bathed the track in ice-cold disdain for her haters and neigh-sayers, crescendoing into a testament to her strength, her lineage, her place in the world, and the power she can command. People can say she’s overrated all they want, but she has earned every ounce of praise through blood, sweat, and tears, that’s what true performers do.
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Writing a review for Breakfast in America has become one of my more dreaded tasks. I didn’t attack my list of album reviews in order; I wrote the reviews in the order in which they appealed or stood out to me. The ease with which I can pen a review bears no reflection on how strongly I feel about the music, but does represent how much effort I think it will take to put my feelings into a coherent blurb. Breakfast in America is an album I’ve always loved, and knew I would place on a list such as this one. . . I just can’t explain why. Supertramp was kind of prog-y, but not in the same wizards-and-warlocks way that Rush or Jethro Tull were prog-y; they were also art-y but not the same way Kate Bush was art-y, but they’re not exactly unique enough to say they stand in a category of their own. Whatever it is about Supertramp that makes them so hard to pindown is perhaps their true source of strength, they kind of exist just outside the bounds of what you would feel comfortable describing. Its plausible someone could say “I hate King Crimson, I just can’t get into that prog rock;” but you’d be hardpressed to find someone able to articualte “I hate Supertramp, I just can’t get into their clever lyrics set to adult contemporary rock that is kind of prog-y and kind of art-y but not quite either one if you take a closer look.” Packed to the gills with Biritsh wit and cunning quips, Breakfast in America is humours, sonically interesting, and altogether good fun. Even if I can’t quite put my finger on why it’s brilliant, I know it just is. And honestly, maybe that’s all the reason I need.
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The intro to Plainsong, the album’s opener, is anything but plain; the needle drops into something reminiscent of a film score opening a kind of epic hero’s journey and then shifts into something far deeper, more esoteric and inarguably new wave. Wave is the correct imagery to associate with this sound that washes over you, first lapping playfully before swelling into white caps that crash overhead and break into a galaxy of stars. Not to wax poetic, but this album is evocative and cinematic, and it’s difficult to write about it without relying on imagery and metaphor. The opening tracks are sparse in terms of lyrical distribution, with words not coming in until nearly the two minute mark on the mega hit, Track 2, “Pictures of You,” but once Robert Smith’s voice joins the music, as pure as it is, sonically and lyrically, the heartbreaking sincerity of the track stings like a hard smack to the face. To borrow the words of Robert Frist, the album is “lovely, dark and deep” but it has “promises to keep, and miles to go before [it] sleeps.”
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In my entry for Johnny Cash’s American IV: The Man Comes Around, I ruminated over whether vocal performance or posture could be considered a form of kinetic intelligence or creative genius or whether it’s merely luck that gives us unique voices like those of Johnny Cash, Alanis Morisette, Neil Young, Roy Orbison and in the case of R.E.M., Michael Stipe. On Drive, Automatic For the People’s opening track, Stipe’s command of his vocal instrument is immediately clear, and the demonstration of the power he has over it builds through the heart-wrenching wails, scales, and vibrato of track 4, Everybody Hurts. And yet, despite the masterful demonstration of vocal ability, the performance is restrained, understated, and sophisticated—this can be said about the entirety of the album. At the peak of their cultural relevance, R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People is not a bloated gloat fest (not that they would ever make that) but is an elegant down-tempo and frankly serious and reflective album. Although R.E.M. has always been a proxy for “cool” I think it also has come to represent “grown,” despite the fact they once represented the face of college rock and the changing youth. As music has changed since the early 90s, the mainstream has pushed for shorter-and-shorter hardly substantive TikTok bubblegum pop and bedroom pop, and winding rock songs exceeding the four-minute mark represent a level of sophistication that might as well be alien. This, to me (with all my bias), is a tragedy. Though the internet has been an incredible platform for the democratization of music and helped many stars rise, it’s also destroyed a large part of the process of cutting teeth in the underground and changed the way we absorb and enjoy music in every aspect- from the visuals and celebrity personae we expect from artists to the length of songs and their subject matter. I would like to think a band like R.E.M. could appeal to the youth again, but they’re nothing like Dua Lipa, Doja Cat, or Drake. Nonetheless, if R.E.M. no longer represents the youth, it’s merely patinaed into something even more precious and dear. And despite the disjointed nature of this review, I think I would be remiss not to discuss one of my personal favorites from the album, Nightswimming. On some grey January day, on a depressing “indoor walk” on the treadmill at my gym, I found myself on a Reddit thread for “songs people played to honor a loved one at their funeral.” I can’t tell you what got me to that thread or what possessed me to then listen to all the songs, resulting in me crying on the treadmill, which was incredibly embarrassing but also kind of transformative. Listed were The Dire Straits “Brother in Arms,” Tori Amos’s “Winter,” Sigur Rós’s “Svefn-g-Englar,” and R.E.M.’s “Nightswimming,” which surprised me. I knew the song but gave it a new listen through the lens of a tribute, and it cracked me right open. I imagined a soul leaving the body, night swimming through the river Styx, and found myself tearing up, “I’m not sure all these people understand.”
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Okay, I admit this placement may exist by the sheer force of bias, but it is my list after all, and I can make the rules; “it’s my own design…. everybody wants to rule the world.” British music, especially of the 80s British Invasion era has always been particularly attractive to me; While America is indisputably the birthplace and heart of rock and roll, it doesn’t always foster the “off-kilter,” and when rock began to splinter into offshoots of southern rock, glam rock, prog rock, indie rock, and so on in the decades after its inception, the United States had a taste for some forms of outgrowth over others. While rock was still king in the 80s, popular music was changing forms; it wasn’t all guitar-based; the synth (which was not even new) was at the apex of its ascent. Musicians who opted for the synth sound have a different quality to their work. There’s something ineffable about what’s shared between Tears for Fears, The Pet Shop Boys, Flock of Seagulls, Culture Club, and the Thompson Twins that American “new wave” counterparts like The Cars or Devo just don’t have. Maybe an arty (which I feel is different from artsy) electronic element? Which would reflect the way Americans associate techno and other forms of electronic dance music with Europe. Tears for Fears are very “arty” in that way; they’re heavily reliant on synths and studio innovations of their era but equally compelled by deep, political lyrics hiding within singalong upbeat pop songs and capable even of retro Beatles style songs like their later work “Sowing the Seeds of Love.” Songs from the Big Chair is not an album that tops many “greatest of all time” conversations, it might not even be in the popular discourse for “greatest of the 80s” but I think this is a huge oversight. When the album was released, it had incredibly favorable reviews, and I believe it's only appreciated in value since. There is nothing “stuck in the past” about this album; it’s interestingly experimental on tracks like “The Working Hour” and “Broken,” massively appealing on “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” and “Head Over Heels,” political without hitting you over the head on “Shout” and tastefully calculated and sophisticated throughout. I had the chance to see Tears for Fears in concert in 2019, and I passed it up in favor of a local Dead cover band show. I’ll never forgive myself for that one… On a closing note- I’ll share a personal source of weakness: watching music videos. I don’t understand how this ever fell out of popularity! Watching music videos is so much fun! On a recent tear, I ripped through the videos of Tears for Fears, and I was overcome with emotion that I missed the chance to live through the 80s and dance the night away in nylon stockings and a bowler hat in a sweaty converted loft space in alphabet city.
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My discovery of the Smiths couldn’t be more embarrassing or predictable for someone of my age group. In eighth grade my social life consisted mostly of a relationship between me and tumblr and a few friends who had similar online habits. Eighth grade is a notably awkward year of pubescent angst and ennui. It was during that year that the novel of tumblr gold, penned in my birth year, was adapted into a film by its author, Stephen Chobsky; that’s right, The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Set in the early 90s the book is a crystallisation of left of center youth culture and infamously turned its demographic generation on to the music of The Smiths, particularly the song Asleep; and that was my introduction, simple as that. However, while The Perks of Being a Wallflower served its temporary purpose in my life as a fixture of relevance, The Smiths became an integral part of my taste in music. The Queen is Dead has everything you want from the Brits, the gutting self-inflicted wounds of “I Know It’s Over,” the growing pains of “There is A Light that Never Goes Out,” and literary-inspired “Cemetery Gates” gives us one of the most self-epitomizing verses from Morrisey in the form of “All those people, all those lives, where are they now? With loves and hates and passions just like mine. They were born and then they lived and then they died Seems so unfair, I want to cry.”
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It’s very difficult to talk about good kid m.a.a.d city in the wake of the Kendrick and Drake beef from this spring. Kendrick’s mainstream ascendancy lined up with my high school years and my undergrad years in LA, his hometown. I watched him progress from good kid m.a.a.d city, through to Pimp a Butterfly and Damn. As a lyrics-oriented music listener, Kendrick is a delight; his masterful storytelling and creation of archetypal characters draw the listener deep into the Compton of his dreams or experiences… which one it is, is unclear. It’s rare to find an album where nearly every single track is iconic, but Good Kid Maad City is one of those albums. M.A.A.d. City, alongside Swimming Pools, Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe, Poetic Justice, Backstreet Freestyle, and Money Trees, represent 6 of the 12 tracks (of the original album, the deluxe version is expanded to 18 tracks, including remixes), and those other six tracks are no filler. Upon my re-listen on the album for my review, I found myself so deeply drawn into those other tracks and entirely impressed and left in awe all over again. I spent so much time with this album as a teenager, I ran its hit tracks into the ground, perhaps even to the point of flattening out their true meaning, but it felt like I had fresh ears to listen to Sherane, the Art of Peer Pressure, Good Kid, Sing About Me I’m Dying of Thirst, Real, and Compton. The first-person narrative, confessional style that runs like a through line from the first track to the last, interrupted only by “primary sources” in the form of manufactured voicemails and “found recordings,” creates a cinematic ambience that brings the tales of the city to life. Good Kid Maad City also shows a side of Kendrick that’s absent in his later works; it’s playful. Despite its heavy portrait of the socioeconomic phenomena of poverty, gang banging, and life in the inner city, it's punctuated by youthful teenage experiences like nascent sexual experiences, identity formation amidst peer pressure, and boyish humor. And once again, I return to the theme I’ve explored throughout these reviews about vocal posture. Kendrick’s voice is incredibly distinct, often breaking, sometimes nasal, and far from the deep, powerful delivery of the collaborators that join him on the album, like MC Eiht and Dr. Dre, but it’s Kendrick’s deliberate control over his voice which he switches between his upper and lower registers to convey different senses of urgency, anxiety, or emotion.
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One day in college, I decided I was tired of vaguely knowing who Björk was but having no idea what she sounded like or what gave her such a permanent place in the pop culture psyche. I knew of her only for being that weird Icelandic accent woman in the swan dress. I figured I’d start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. On my first listen to Debut, my jaw hit the floor. I had never heard anything as unique, strange, delicate, alien, or vulnerable as Human Behaviour. This woman from Iceland was writing like it was her first day on earth and singing with a voice so strange and hard to place it seemed as if she might really be from another galaxy. Everything about Björk is enigmatic and fascinating. In the music video for Venus as a Boy, she plays with an Egg in such a way that you might never eat an egg again because Eggs are actually a precious stone that greedy humans have failed to properly venerate, and only Björk had this secret revealed to her such that she knew to rub one across her face while singing about sex. And after the aptly named “Debut” came “Post,” referring to “after?” This name is just as appropriate; it was released into a post-debut world, and Björk charges forward with track one, “Army of Me,” taking the listener into another radically different sonic galaxy. From the vaudeville of "Its Oh So Quirt" to the entirely unique "Hyper-Ballad Family Tree," every track unfolds like a new surprise, pushing the envelope further and further into uncharted territory.
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I was humiliatingly late to Big Thief, but better late than never with a band so special. It was “Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You” rhetoric on Twitter that finally brought me to listen to the album and it knocked the wind right out of me. Adrienne Lenker’s hauntingly beautiful voice soars over songs with a warm, homespun feel. The lyrics, ranging from heartbreaking to whimsical, from biblical to nonsensical, have the nostalgic comfort of classic children’s literature; the kind you can revisit when you’re older and find new meaning again and again, buried deep in stories that can be interpreted at any level. Certainly texts like The Little Prince, or Narnia came to mind, for the albums work with lifespan, biblical allegory, and our existence on a floating rock in space. Even the album cover, a sparse, child-like pencil drawing could make a tender heart ache for more innocent years. The first few times I listened to the album, I wasn’t a fan of the sequencing, I felt the extremely beautiful, folk-wisdom opener Change could not be properly followed by the high energy “Time Escaping” but after more listens, I began to trust the process; together these tracks set the pace- the back and forth between “nothing matters(scary)” and “nothing matters (so use what you’ve got).” No matter how many times I listen to this album, it’s never lost its magic, I can’t help but smile in awe that music like this exists. Listening to Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You feels like pulling a quilt over yourself in a cozy wood-frame bed on a sleeping porch, exhausted after a long day in the sunshine.
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I’ll never forget the day Beyoncé dropped her self-titled album. On my lunch break in ninth grade, I was in my friend’s kitchen, who lived across the street from my high school. When we didn’t feel like paying for lunch out, we would crowd her kitchen and hope her parents were home so we could eat out of her fridge, bring boys over or listen to music. On one of these fateful days, Beyoncé dropped an album, unannounced. We immediately stopped speaking, connected an iPhone into an early beats pill and blasted it. It was instantly apparent that it was something special but nobody could predict what this album would become, and looking back, its unfortunate that this album by a black woman embracing her womanly sexuality on Drunk In Love, Partition, Rocket, No Angel and Blow, singing an anthem to fun on 7/11, and bringing on the voice of Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche on Flawless would come to be associated with Etsy “100% boys tears cross stitch” white feminism and Elizabeth Warren “Nevertheless She Persisted” commemorative mugs. Feminism was in a weird place in 2013; it was the girlboss era marked by the ascent of Sophia Amoruso and Emily Weiss, the adoption of the “notorious rbg” moniker, and featured YouTube videos like “12 hours of walking as a woman in NYC,” or “I need feminism because _____.” Somehow, Beyoncé’s self-titled album became enmeshed with the girlboss feminism era through its tracks “Pretty Hurts” and “Flawless,” which has flattened their impact at present, which is unfortunate because, at the time, the album was a revelation and incredibly culturally important and can still be enjoyed with fresh ears.
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If we judged the album by the cover, it looks like D’angelo is about to spit some serious bars at us on Voodoo… If the cover told the real story, D would be in a Hefner-style smoking robe, sipping on champagne and biting into chocolate-covered strawberries on the silk sheets of a bed with a circular mattress. So if the album cover doesn’t fit, at least the name does; Voodoo is most certainly casting a spell on its listeners, pulling them into a trance of tranquil, sexy, undulating vibrations. And despite the album’s sexual nature, it’s sophisticated, understated, and subtle. If you’re looking for the sexy record to impress, forget Marvin Gaye, this is THE one. Voodoo is so much more than a sex record though; created at Electric Lady Studios, association with Jimi Hendrix intended, D’s creative process involved generating a thick brew of black history and music to steep his work in. In fact, some point to the fact that the albums’ sexualization in the popular sphere “outshining” its musical achievement drove D’Angelo out of the spotlight and studio for years afterward.
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When I started writing this list months ago, it was inconceivable that in a matter of weeks, the brothers would be back together. Oasis is one of the seminal rock bands of the 90s and a pillar of the Britpop music phenomena. Like the Red Hot chili peppers or the strokes, you can always tell oasis song is an oasis song because it sounds like an oasis song. Does that make sense? Anyway, (what’s the story )morning glory is an all-time album; I mean in the sense that you can throw on it anytime it’s always always a solid choice. Megahits like Wonderwall, Champagne Supernova, Don’t Look Back in Anger loom large but really its a no skip masterpiece.
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I remember once, in a moment of weakness, saying I was “lame” for liking Billy Joel. I was definitely trying to impress some guy, wanting to seem edgy, or like I was deeper than a nice Jewish girl from New York. As soon as the words left my mouth, I felt a pull at my heartstrings and the lump in my throat of denial of my roots and for being untrue. Not every Billy Joel song is gonna cut it for everybody; I get that. Movin’ Out isn’t my favorite, nor is Allentown or Big Shot, but to say there’s no merit in “Vienna,” “She’s Always a Woman,” “And So it Goes,” “You’re My Home,” “Uptown Girl,” “Piano Man,” “She’s Got A Way,” “Only the Good Die Young,” or DARE I SAY “We Didn’t Start the Fire” (at least as a piece of generation-defining culture wars think piece) is imbecilic blasphemy. An artist as prolific and gifted as Billy Joel, with the capacity to touch so many hearts, does not come around very often. The Stranger is a beautiful album, showcasing Joel’s gifted songwriting but also his vocal prowess, witty humor and New Yorker sensibilities. Ironically, the titular track seems to have taken a backseat to other hits on the album but I believe it to be one of the most thematically interesting on the record, at least as a fan of jungian psychology. Obviously, Vienna is the real home run and its message is important for those in a rush to grow up.
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I won’t mince words; an eleven minute long mostly instrumental opener is a major conceptual roadblock on this album for modern listeners with TikTok attention spans… But, if you choose to listen, you’re in for a treat because it’s sumptuous and when the vocals jump in just past the five minute mark; then it’s cooking with gas. When it comes to Elton John’s catalogue the focus is always on lyricism and his piano playing but I think the production on Goobye Yellowbrick Road is what truly brings it to life; it’s expertly crafted and sleek without being “over produced.”
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On the album cover of Ten, men stand together, touching a single arm raised above their heads like a high school basketball team about to to yell “break;” they’re literally each pitching in. This collaborative adhesive spirit speaks to the vibrational quality of Pearl Jam- an amalgamation of far more interesting parts than what you’d expect from what might seem at first glance like a prototypical grunge outfit. Masculine but not macho, reflective but not sappy, Pearl Jam takes the middle path, and that’s made all the difference for their musical lasting power and literal longevity in the face of the untimely deaths of other grunge musicians. Ten is unbelievable as an album in the sense that it explores all that it does without hitting you over the head, and Vedder’s voice, charisma, and delivery wrap it up in a bow. The band touches on the epidemic of violence amongst schoolchildren abandoned by systems of care so hauntingly on Jeremy- a song that if you’ve ever seen the music video to or read the lyrics in-depth, you might never be able to listen to the same way again. They give a similar treatment to issues in homelessness and family dynamics on Even Flow and Alive. However, the nine-minute stretching album closer, aptly named Release, is maybe the most haunting in that it pervades long after the vocals drop out, tapering further and further into inaudibility, creating a trailing effect for the entirety of the album and forcing it to linger.
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A Beatles album that inspired the Manson murders that starts with a Beach Boys spoof? Sign me up. Happiness is a Warm Gun, a rhapsodical absurdity from self-proclaimed hippies, always stands out as odd, and we see the Beatles rocking at their hardest on I’m So Tired and Why Don’t We Do It In the Road. Don’t Pass Me By- a track I had never paid attention to before, stood out to me on this listen, and of course, Helter Skelter and Sexy Sadie will always be notoriously intertwined with the murders that some say “ended” the sixties as a concept, or at least its message of free love. The White Album, which also lends its name to one of my favorite works by Joan Didion, is an all-around good time and continues to prove my point that George was the best Beatle. . . I’m sorry, but he wrote While My Guitar Gently Weeps, so it has to be true.
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I won’t turn my nose up at a Fleetwood Mac fan who only listens to Rumours, because let’s be clear– that is one of the best rock records ever made– but, I do think to appreciate Rumours you should compare it to Tusk, Rumour’s creepy, misunderstood younger sister. Tusk cost a fortune to make, a lost a fortune in sales. Lacking the commerical appeal of its predecessor, Tusk strives to be editorial and it achieves its mark with its deeply experimental nature. Sara was the first track from the album that ever came across my desk, and was what drew me into the record for a closer inspection; the lyric “drowning in a sea of love, where everyone would love to drown,” in particular stirred a vivid image. What Makes You Think You’re the One, is a stinging, raw diss track delivered by Lindsey Buckingham and another standout on the record. As an aside, and as a Trojan, I feel the need to share that the USC Marching Band provides the horns and percussion on the titular track, Tusk.
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It used to be a complaint of “hipsters” that something that they liked and thought that they had found before anyone else had become mainstream and basic. A new problem that’s emerged, perhaps as a result of TikTok micro-cultures and the narcissism that is the mark of zillennials after Covid isolation, is the fetishization of things that have always been popular and are now being recategorized as niche.
For example, many bands, books, or films have historically enjoyed crossover success between the niche in which they were intended to serve and the mainstream whose attention they caught. Authors like Brett Easton Ellis or Dave Foster Wallace, directors like David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino, and musicians like the Talking Heads or The Beach Boys were not reserved for a selective cognoscenti. The Beach Boys were a pop sensation, and Twin Peaks was essentially a soap opera. However, today, certain works are fetishized, as if they have always represented some form of misunderstood and unique genius, which one needs a PhD in “downtown” to understand. Today, podcast bros spend hours ogling r/A24 or r/throwingfits to form basic opinions around what cultural signifier Talking Heads graphic tee or Stop Making Sense poster they should have in their post-grad apartment when the same guys could talk to their dads and get more insight about the band. That is how I want to begin my conversation about this album… now I will go into how I really feel.
The Talking Heads were first introduced to me by my father, probably after we watched Pretty in Pink or something that lead us to discuss the strange dancing of David Byrne. However, this didn’t kick off much fanaticism in me and was pretty much forgotten. As a teenager, I saw a coming attraction for a Matt Damon movie, which I never saw, featuring the song Once in a Lifetime. I no longer remember what movie I was actually there to see, but I do remember thinking “holy shit this is the coolest song I’ve ever heard.” I started listening to the band’s basics which are easily lovable, and became a casual fan. I was very surprised to find when I got to college that people found the Talking Heads to be a cultural marker of being alternative. I understood that the band had artsy roots or was part of a particular punk scene but to me it was just music my dad liked, the same as Bruce Springsteen or Billy Joel, neither of whom would convey one with a very cool fandom status as a college student. What surprised me more upon graduation was the continued fetishization of the Talking Heads as a 24 rereleased stop making sense. I’m not creating this negative set up to attract from the album. I think it is fantastic and one of the best but I do think that we need to stop making it something that it’s not. Remain in Light is a incredible feat in songwriting, arrangment, and performance. It’s a joy to listen to, and it has universal acclaim.
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Getting somebody into classic rock, almost an oxymoron in the case of Led Zeppelin who were anything BUT classic in their origins, is quite difficult in this day. While some early rock hits indubitably pass the test of time, others are lost to cultural value shifts, consequences of artist’s actions, or the terrible fate of being played out/sold out. In the case of Zeppelin, a band whose legacy looms arguably the largest in their genre, selecting an album for the virgin ear is quite difficult. Is it best to lay the foundations with the self-titled, first album? Or supply the tried and true hits from later albums… I however, know I would start any new listener off with Led Zeppelin IV. Not only is this album home to mammoth hit Stairway to Heaven and the accessible hits Black Dog and Going to California– it’s laced with an undeniable dark magic. If the music isn’t enough to get somebody into the band, and with this record in particular it should be, at the very least somebody will have to be intrigued by the Crowley-esque band member symbols and the interior sleeve Hermit painting, derived from the Rider-Waite Tarot deck. Led Zeppelin IV is an early ode to world building, something that we see a lot more of in the streaming era which allows for concept albums to feature commodified merch, music videos, or AI but all it had to rest its laurels on was the allure of mystery and the sweet, sweet song of Page’s guitar…
Zeppelin IV in particular also showcases the diversity of the band's sound. Even in just one song alone, the case of Stairway, it features elements of folk and early metal/hard rock and sits on the album alongside more traditional “pure” rock tracks, and a cover of blues song When the Levee Breaks, and the ever-impressive four stick drumming technique by Bonham on the aptly named, Four Sticks. All in all, while every Zeppelin album features at least one song legendary enough to turn a virgin into a fan, (here’s looking at you, Immigrant song, Fool in the Rain, or Whole Lotta Love) if you only get one album cover to cover to convince someone to give Led Zep a chance, IV is the way to go.
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Now here’s a good story. I went to middle school with Chilean-American pop star Paloma Castillo, better known as Palomami. There is no reason she would remember me except as a hard-to-place familiar face, but she possessed a star power even then that made her impossible to forget. Paloma wore flat cap supreme hats and odd future donut logo hoodies to school. She drew anime characters on her notebooks and had beats headphones around her neck before everyone else. Needless to say, from afar I admired her as one of the coolest girls in school. We had one mutual friend who I walked to school with, and sometimes this meant we would chat in the yard before the security guard opened the doors to inspect us all for dress code violations (NYC public school, seriously?) and let us in. One day Paloma wore a “channel orange” hoodie with stussy camouflage parachute pants and an obey flat cap hat. I could piece every brand and every part on her outfit, but what was channel orange? A new brand ? A band? If I was going to retain the privilege of chatting with the coolest girl in school in the morning, I had to know what her world was made up of. My parents would kill me if I used the internet capabilities on my Blackberry, so I had to wait until I got home to look it up on my MacBook. On my first listen I was 13 years old- Thinkin Bout You, Sweet Life, Super Rich Kids, and Forest Gump stood out. In the years since, Pyramids is far and away the epic of the album, and Pink Matter and Bad Religion deliver the most introspective lyrical content. The entire album is delivered like a gift from Frank- his voice and control over it are exact, the lyrics explore themes as grandiose as socioeconomic class relations and as personal as falling in love.
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I’m about to say something crazy, but is Bob Marley underrated?! Seriously. He’s been iconographized into oblivion from baggy pants sold on Venice beach and the Jersey shore to head shop bobblehead figurines and college dorm room posters but I find it hard to believe any of those who errr “worship the ganja” are also listening to just how incredible the music behind the “legalize it” message was; and is. Lyrical content flows between deep reflections on history and hegemony or prophecies and lighter observations on the power of positive thinking and just “jammin’.” The beat rocks back and forth and you’d be a sociopath not to admit it gets your hips rocking or at least your toes tapping. A listen to Exodus transports one to a mystical land of spirit, wholesomeness, and tropical vibrations. And yes, I am biased because it’s one of my favorites, but I truly believe this album is therapeutic. I can’t think of something better to play on a roof down drive or play with lit candles in the bath. Not because it’s sexy but because it’s good for the soul. Worth noting, I made the choice not to include “best of” albums on this list, but of course, Legend, Marley’s greatest hits albums, is a fantastic place to start for new listeners. I wish I could have fresh ears to do it all again.
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If I had to describe Bob Dylan to a space alien who for some reason had a good understanding of American stereotypes and overall vibes I would say he’s a man from the Midwest with a strange voice (that’s more interesting for its imperfections than it could be any other way), who has seen behind the American tapestry—and has certainly read the classics but would never let it show lest he come off as urbane—though at the same time he holds nothing back in his songwriting so that his genius is always apparent and his Judaism, though always pointed out by the community, is not really relevant considering his extreme measures taken to tap into the gospel. Great, the space alien would say; “now explain Lou Reed.” Errrrr, I guess that makes Lou Reed a Jewish New Yorker who suffered from panic attacks and dyslexia as a child and probably tried very hard to read the classics (if he found his brain able to work with him that day rather than against him) and has spent his entire adult life burying this through developing the most urbane outfitting imaginable, turning over rocks to find capital A Art grosser than how he feels in his own head all while also finding his own strange voice. Transformer is an ode to the underbelly; touching on concepts at the very edge of the popular consciousness of his contemporaries such as androgyny, the transgender experience, and radical feminist fringe figures’ assassination attempt on Andy Warhol. Transformer’s generally upbeat sound can easily distract from is darker themes but sonically it’s an incredible experience. I would be mistaken not to briefly mention the impact of a particular track- Perfect Day, a song that stands out as one of the all time most haunting syncs in film in the movie Trainspotting. I would also direct any fans of the song to treat themselves to the recording of Reed’s live performance of the song in collaboration with Luciano Pavarotti. It’s epic and if you can lean in, you might tear up.
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In a separate essay on this blog, I wrote in detail about the complicated discourse surrounding Kevin Parker, better known by his artist name, Tame Impala. Parker makes unimpeachably interesting, impressive, and funky 70s-style guitar-powered tracks, often bordering the psychedelic. Rappers like A$AP Rocky, Travis Scott, Kanye West, and Kid Cudi have found artistic merit in Parker’s style- bringing him in as a collaborator, songwriter, or producer. Similarly, pop icons Lady Gaga, The Weeknd, Dua Lipa, and Mark Ronson have turned to Parker. Despite his genre-bending meteoric rise in influence and popularity, Parker has become the butt of many jokes rather than a venerated industry icon. Another victim of circumstance. Parker bridges a generational gap between the youngest of millennials and the oldest of gen Z. Millennials remember Parker’s entrance into the scene as a new voice in alternative music, known for groundbreaking and impressive psychedelic guitar work. Gen Z accepted Parker as already vetted by the previous generation as being a noteworthy artist in the left-of-center pop arena. However- Parker came to be associated with a very particular type of fan- the “music bro,” the vinyl-collecting counterpart to the self-ascribed film bro who can’t count past Tarantino. I won’t follow down this path of analysis- you can go back and read my piece about this phenomenon. I’m here to speak on the artistic merits of Currents as a standalone record- free from its cultural reputation. Currents is a masterpiece and I’m not afraid to admit this as my belief- it would be more calculated and insane to deny this on account of wanting to appear above the “did you know tame impala is just one guy” discourse. I became acquainted with Currents in high school- taking advantage of its extremely long tracks to set the tone for my runs at cross country practice. Nothing was more on the nose than me struggling through the cramps to finish my mileage and as the music built and droned and my sides ached I would let my cognition take a backseat to the beat and push through to “let it happen.” The album stayed with me through college, albeit self-consciously as I became aware of the reputation that proceeded it but i listened in private still finding merit in its winding psychedelia.
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“If you can just get your mind together, then come on across to me. We'll hold hands, and then we'll watch the sunrise from the bottom of the sea. . .” It does’t get much clearer than that, folks. In the opening lines of the closing track to his debut studio album, Jimi Hendrix invites you, dear listener, to take his hand and fire walk with him- but that’s odd, isn’t it? This is the LAST song on the album; shouldn’t it be the fir–OH WAIT? Did you just try to constrain psychedelic art to mere linear progression? You’re gonna need another tab. An album that defies explanation, even by leading musicologists who struggle to categorize the work into any one particular genre, Are You Experienced is a force to be reckoned with. To today’s ears, now accustomed to the likes of 100 Gecs, it might not sound as shocking, but try and take yourself back to what this would have sounded like in 1967; the power of the guitar would be earthshattering, and it still is, if you can take yourself to a higher plane of existence. Putting this album on as background noise for coding or listening to 30 seconds of Foxy Lady on AirPods just doesn’t give it a fair shake. A true listen to this no-skip masterpiece first requires a little something to take the edge off (a glass of wine, a little weed, 20 rounds of Ujjayi breathing, I don’t judge). Once you’re out of your brain and into your body, imagine each note as a color, streaming out of your speaker and painting the air around you. In the words of Basquiat, “Art is how we decorate space, music is how we decorate time.”
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As political as it is inviting and warm, (that is to say, extremely,) What’s Going On is an album that gets you real comfortable, to get you real uncomfortable, and for that, it’s high art. There’s no Sexual Healing, or “gettin’ it on” but the vibe somehow remains pleasant, warm and sunny despite the lyrical content exploring systemic racism, war, addiction, and the hegemony of the powers that be. Now, Gaye knows what he’s doing, this isn’t some type of “let’s just be subtle enough that people don’t notice and still buy the record,” its a very intentional craft of hyper-realistic writing, taking the nature of reality and spinning into beautiful music without making light of it or trying to “make lemonade.” It’s also worth noting that Gaye released this record after emerging from a deep depression, and you can really feel how this record breathed new life into a man worn down by so many exterior forces. Of course, this doesn’t even approximate the true tragedy in the life, and death, of Marvin Gaye, but it adds something ineffable to the record.
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If we can’t separate the art from the artist, what would we be left with? We would throw out all of Led Zeppelin and Michael Jackson’s catalogs along with Roman Polanski’s filmography, Picasso’s entire body of work, and any Tarantino-Miramax production. So yes, Kanye West is a figure who wagers his star power in irresponsible, destructive and offensive ways but he is one of the most innovative, influential and talented rappers of all time. Should we just pretend like we can solve things by ignoring him? Please; no one man should have all that power … My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (MBDTF) is force to be reckoned with;for starters it pulls samples from King Crimson, Manfried Mann’s Earth Band, the Napoleon Dynamite Film Soundtrack, Smokey Robinson, Rick James, James Brown, Black Sabbath, Aphex Twin, and Bon Iver, among others and features guest appearances by Kid Cudi, Raekwon, Jay-Z, Rick Ross, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, Alicia Keys, Elton John, Drake, Charlie Wilson, RZA, Swizz Beats, Pusha-T, John Legend, Bonnie Iver, and Teyana Taylor. It’s no wonder the album is the most expensive hip hop recording ever made- although it’s not even clear that title aptly described the level of artistry that the album represents. You can say what you want about Kanye but how can you deny his genius when you see the team his art brought together and the references he pulls from and breathes new life into. All of this said, the true success of MBDTF is that despite its stacked lineup and tour de force status, it’s unpretentious, accessible, and enjoyable.
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Bill Cunningham once said “fashion is the armor to survive the reality of everyday life.” For people with incredibly distinct personal style, it serves as a projection of the psyche- making visible the unquantifiable and ineffable. Amy Winehouse, a little Jewish girl from London who fashioned herself like a retro rockabilly, with bouffants and cat eyes drawn out to the gods, and belted like she was from the Mississippi Delta was an embodiment of artistic expression, though borrowed. Amy’s irreverent, cheeky humor, self-deprecation and painful self-awareness electrocute her works with radiant humanity and relatability, despite their ability to exist “out of time.” This is a phenomenon I explored in my review of fellow British R&B artist Adele’s album 21. Something shared between these women is their ability to write albums in the 21st century that make no mention of modernity, they simply sing from the heart about experiences, emotions, or relationship dynamics with no use for words like “computer ,” “texting,” or “the internet, which were beginning to pervade the lyrics of their contemporaries, giving their works a timeless quality. Amy’s fans are fiercely loyal to protect the legacy of a tortured soul lost too young, and rightfully so, we should let the dead rest and not shake the tree of their legacy to produce contested biopics.
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My second favorite band formerly known as the Warlocks. . . In the same year that featured the Summer of Love in San Francisco where the so-called Beautiful people put flowers in their hair and imbibed LSD-laced “kool aid,” smoked grass and wore macrame, Mexican blankets and tie dye, a different scene, centered around a different drug and aesthetic was developing in New York. “When I put a spike in my vein, I’ll tell ya things aren’t quite the same. . . Heroin be the death of me. . . It’s my wife and it’s my life,” sings Lou Rees of the Velvet underground on this 1967 album. Opting for the more Beat aesthetic of all black, turtlenecks and leather jackets with black coffee and cigarettes, the Velvet underground were the quintessential high art New Yorkers. The anti-hippy. If LSD is a life-affirming drug, one that makes people believe in god, believe we’re all connected, and that life is beautiful, Heroin is a life-destroying drug; it takes its victims to an ecstatic point of completely internalized pleasure but once, then leaves them chasing that feeling going to further and further lengths to chase the dragon, all other earthly delights be damned . Users become thin, withdrawn, “strung out” as we say. Though today it’s most strongly associated with our national opioid crisis and a harsh life on the streets, at one time, Heroin was a rock and roll drug ofchoice; it did in Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Dee Dee Ramone, Tommy Bolín, Sid Vicious, Brent Mydland, Pete Farndon, Kurt Cobain, Kristen Pfaff, and Bradley Nowell (just to name a few). Some of these artists likely turned to heroin when nothing else was available, but some turned to it first- hoping to find inspiration there. If we’re going to get spiritual about it, let’s examine heroin as an archetype- it’s opium, milk of the poppy, associated with darkened dens where silk scarves hang from the ceiling and where sailors who have actually been out east mix with ladies of the night. On their self-titled work, the Velvet Underground and Nico go into those dark, luscious places touching on sadomasochism, and “the black angel’s death song;” although the work is permeated with notably lighter works like Sunday Morning, a popular favorite.
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Last night I started the epic four hour documentary “Long Strange Trip” about the Grateful Dead. At some point in the film, one of the talking heads is Sam Cutler, the Dead’s tour manager between 1970 and 74. Cutler is British and observes the American rock phenomenon through the eyes of an outsider, which often provides a certain level of introspection and wisdom not available to those too deeply embedded in the scene. I’m not a huge fan of Cutler, I find him a bit crass but he had some valuable nuggets, one so important I’ll provide it in its entirety. Cutler said, “ think, my view of it is, is that they [the Dead] were attempting to redefine, as every generation of American artists does, what it means to be an American artist. What in fact it means to be an American. Artists in America constantly struggled with this. They want to define what America is. They want to discover what America is. They want to find some clue to what it means to be American. Americans have got this very, very strange and interesting pre-occupation with the discovery of what constitutes America. What it is. In America, people leave home and go out in search of America. People in England don't set out and leave home and go in search of England. That would be quite preposterous.” Or, as Simon and Garfunkel once sang, “[we’ve] all come to look for America.” Bruce Springsteen wrestles deeply with the question of what it means to be American. His discography dissects the phenomenon of being born in the land of free and home of the brave from its “glory days” through its dark nights on tracks like Factory and State Trooper. Born to Run opens with what might be among my favorite Bruce songs of all time, the poetic Thunder Road. The achingly beautiful lyrics tell about the freedom of the open road and the deeply American desire to get in the car and drive somewhere far away from here, for the thrill of white line fever, because what’s out there is manifest destiny and what’s here is stagnant and rancid. I wouldn’t call the song a bummer, but it’s reflective and introspective, like Springsteen himself, who despite his masculine good looks and tough guy persona is quite a sensitive and prolific writer. The album doesn’t keep at that pace however, it explores an array of emotion and experience, crescendoing joyously on the titular track with the lyric “I wanna know if love is wild, babe, I wanna know if love is real.” However, for those who don’t mind a long song, who appreciate a true ballad, and don’t concern themselves with practical matters like “radio play-ability” then the real treat on Born to Run it’s epic closing track Jungleland. Nothing can be written about Jungleland that can praise it higher than then ascendant experience of simply listening to it for yourself. Springsteen sets the scene with painterly detail and breathes life into his creation.
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The Doors have yet to be truly appreciated in the way they ought to be; the popular consciousness acknowledges front man Jim Morrison as a member of the infamous 27 club, and things fall short about there. For anyone who takes the time to dive into the weird and wonderful world of the Doors, the reward is beyond your wildest imagination; Six bar delta blues, polka and flamenco influences, oedpidal struggles, and Crowley informed psychedelia abound. That’s just what you get when you mix the “lizard king” himself with Hollyweird and a band that lets his imagination run wild.
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I don’t remember the first time I listened to Wish You Were Here, but I remember the first time I played it for somebody else and saw them experience its full effect. On a sunny spring day, my college friend (whose identity I’ll protect by calling her Friend) and I were supposed to report immediately to our sorority house where the gentlemen of Phi-Whatever-It-Was were going to arrange an elaborate proposal to court us Tri-whatever-it-was into pairing off for homecoming week. Friend and I were both house members in less-than-great standing in the house with tendencies to miss chapter meetings or be less than stringent about the rules. She and I also had to head to Beverly Hills from our campus in South Central later that day to participate in an orientation for a summer internship program we were both a part of. We figured we’d hit the homecoming proposal first for a laugh and then head over to the west side. Friend also decided taking a THC gummy at some point before heading to the house as a good idea. It was, for the events that followed. When we showed up to the sorority house, as she was beginning to get a little giddy- what did we see other than fucking mini ponies dressed as unicorns on our front lawn?! The boys had brought a troupe of mini ponies with roses in their bridles, and fake horns affixed to their foreheads. “Am I high as balls, or are there mini ponies with unicorn horns and roses all over our front lawn;” Friend shook me. “Yes- there are mini ponies everywhere,” I said snapping photos of her bloodshot eyes and smile wider than her face while she stroked the ponies noses and took a rose out of its bridle. After nuzzles with the ponies- we had to start heading over to the orientation, a feat that would take an hour or more in the afternoon traffic. As we climbed into the back of Nissan Altima, she turned to me and gave me a knowing look. The “I’m about to freak the fuck out” look. I had an idea… “Not to be like this- but do you ever listen to Pink Floyd?” I asked- hoping she wouldn’t burst out laughing in my face for the suggestion that brings to mind weird older brothers with bedrooms in the basement who smoke gravity bongs and watch Bill and Ted in between the Twilight Zone and browse forums about the Denver airport. She somehow didn’t laugh; so I decided now was as good a time as any to make a Pink Floyd fan. I plugged my phone into the aux and pulled up Wish You Were Here. The sun streamed in through the car windows, illuminating dust particles and the driver said nothing, just looked ahead and delivered us forward along the miles of bleached highway. We both sat there, letting the music wash over us as we had miles to go. We didn’t speak a word the entire car ride, just sat there letting Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Welcome to the Machine, and Have a Cigar and Wish You Were Here hang in and decorate the air between us in the back seat. It was as very special.
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I’ll start this review my plugging my ears over the shouts of “you’re insane for putting this here and not ranking OK Computer;” like, sorry I can’t hear you over the 1993 single Anyone Can Play Guitar. Many times throughout my reviews within this list I’ve addressed the phenomenon of over exposure and meme-ification ruining perfectly good music and turning it into what millennials did to the word “moist” where nobody is ACTUALLY bothered by it but for some strange reason of herd mentality we must all plug our ears and pretend it’s loathsome and grotesque. Do you want to know an actual disgusting word? Disgorgement; or pustule. Much like the maligned adjective “moist,” a word to describe the best kind of chocolate cake or a towelette to clean sticky fingers at a barbecue, internet culture has turned us against the artistic value of “Creep” which has cast a long shadow over the merits of Pablo Honey. If we can strip away what creep has come to represent, the musical equivalent of Fight Club for Reddit neckbeards and incels on green text chan forums, we can encounter it with fresh ears. I remember my first exposure. My dad played Creep and Karma Police (off of OK Computer) for me as a teenager, maybe around 13. The lyrics of Creep couldn’t speak more powerfully the discomfort of puberty. As fat comes in to round out places that used to be bony, acne lays siege on what used to be virgin skin, and the invasion of the body snatchers is a call that’s coming from inside the house, lyrics like “I don't care if it hurts; I wanna have control. I want a perfect body, I want a perfect soul,” are not taken lightly. It felt incredibly relatable. Take yourself back to who you were at 13; everyone wanted to be “special,” or at the very least “normal” in the eyes of their peers, for their crush to notice if they were absent from computer lab, to trade bodies with that person in your grade who had XYZ brand fill-in-the-blanks before everyone else and everyone agreed was the hottest in the grade. And, of course, puberty is only the beginning of one’s relationship with self-consciousness, embarrassment, shame, and self-loathing. Are our 20s not a second puberty? Bodies can’t keep up with diets and drinking habits that served us well in college; some people start to pair up and couple off, even get married- while others may have never even had a relationship; people are moving out, and some people are moving back in. Creep speaks deeply to painful self-consciousness; it’s not really an incel song at all as much as it’s relatable and pedestrian in a way that’s shameful, so it’s better to relegate it to the realm of low-art rather than admit its significance. By dispelling the long shadow cast by Creep, we can re-examine Pablo Honey, an album with soaring tracks like Ripcord, Anyone Can Play Guitar, and Stop Whispering.
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It’s probably clear by now that I’m somewhat of a major Beatles fan; this is the second of the three Beatles records I’ve included in this list, and after recently finishing Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, I agonized over whether I could also squeeze Rubber Soul in somewhere without tipping the scales too far. I think the Beatles are one of the most misunderstood bands by Gen-Z; young people see the black and white photos of four strange-looking British men from the early 60s wearing matching suits or hear earlier (blander) hits like “Love Me Do” and basically laugh at the notion that those weirdos could have any impact on the entire universe as we know it today. Otherwise, they see stuff like “I am the Walrus” or “Yellow Submarine” and mutter something derogatory under their breaths like “Those Boomers are crazy.” And honestly, if I weren’t as tapped into old music as I am, I would feel the same. Nobody is really carrying the banner in terms of bringing the magic of the Beatles to today’s audiences the way ELO did in the 80s or Oasis did in the 90s; the Beatles’ influence and true relevance is kind of just, drying out. Personally, I can’t sit by and let this happen; I feel the need to show young people that there’s a reason their parents and grandparents made such a big stink about these guys; they’re worth it. I don’t think “Being for the Benefit of Mr.Kite” will make a new Beatles fan but “With a Little Help From My Friends,” “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” “A Day in the Life,” and one of my all-time personal favorites “Within You Without You” do have that power. For the mere sake of forming a better understanding of the reason why the Beatles matter, Sgt. Pepper is essential listening, but it's more than just something to “get through;” it's whacky and wonderful and well worth its spot near the top of any and all lists of the greatest albums of all time.
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Between the ghostly Theremin on its opening track and an album cover that resembles both a crashing blue screen and security footage of hostage in the annals of some dark basement, something sinister is abound on Portishead’s debut album featuring tracks “sour times,” “numb,” “strangers,”and “Mysterons.” But hey- “it could be sweet.” The unpredictably sexy brooding nature of sampled, looping beats paired with Beth Gibbon’s haunting vocals comprise the cold little heart of the record. Known then as “the Bristol sound” and today more likely as trip-hop, the unique work of Portishead will leave you spellbound. I first discovered the album in high school, finding it intriguing but ultimately dark and inaccessible. As my palette widened I’ve come to appreciate it as one of the finest records of all time.
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“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called LIFE!” I was lucky enough to grow up with parents who had the good sense to play Prince around the house and in the car. Prince is in a world of his own as a musician; a party-starter, a songwriter, a multi-instrumentalist, a sex symbol, a “Hollow circle above downward arrow crossed with a curlicued horn-shaped” symbol, a fashion icon, and a daring, beautiful soul. As a kid, nothing was more fun, or naughtier than listening to “Darling Nikki” and gasping and covering my mouth in shock as I heard the unbelievable dirty lyrics fall out of Prince’s mouth. Of course, the only natural follow up was to keep listening to everythign else he ever recorded. However, in a post-Rihanna’s-S&M-and-Jack-Harlowe’s-Lovin-On-Me-being-top-40-radio-hits world, it seems that Prince’s legacy as the king of “did he just say that? you can’t say that!?” has fallen. It’s a shame because he was, and will forever be, the best to ever do it. So shut up, Tipper Gore, okay? Beyond its sexual nature and iconic accompanying music videos, Purple Rain’s most impressive feature is its full-scale, dense, and rounded out sound achieved through use of a full band, and complex layered studio work. If you're looking for the perfect no-skip album to through on and dance around the house, look no further– I’ll bet you $10 that you can’t fight the urge to start grooving within 45 seconds of the start of the album’s iconic opening track, Let’s Go Crazy.
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“Tapestry” has always been one of my favorite words in the English language; not for its literal definition, but the metaphorical concept of a “tapestry” representing the weaving together of many separate things into something cohesive and beautiful. Of course, this was the exact sentiment intended by Carol King in naming her album; not just for the literal tapestry in her hands as photographed on the perfectly suited album cover. King was a woman in the wings for much of her young success; she wrote mega-hits for others but it wasn’t until after her divorce and cross-country move to Laurel Canyon that she truly came into her own as a singer-songwriter in the modern sense of the term. Tapestry, her breakout solo album, featuring both new songs, and her own personal version of songs she wrote for others touched the heart of American listeners upon its debut, and has remained iconic to new generations of fans. I can thank my mother for bringing my attention to Carol King and giving me such a deep appreciation for her writerly voice. Listening to Tapestry is as comforting as a hug from an old friend or a warm mug to wrap your cold fingers around on a rainy day; it just feels intimate and tender.
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Is a classic a classic because we’ve all been told so, or because it taps into the universal, I don’t know, I don’t know. You stick around, now, it may show I don't know, I don't know. I’ve heard it said that the world is divided into two types of people; those who think The Great Gatsby is the great American novel, and those who think that title belongs to The Catcher In the Rye. I’ve heard a riff on this that the question that divides the world is whether you’re a Beatles Fan or a Stone’s fan. Both of these questions leave me feeling itchy- I loved both texts and I have love for both bands but if the gates were coming down and I had seconds to dart under them and into the safety of a camp I would put myself in The Great Gatsby Camp, and Beatles camp- borne back ceaselessly into the past. Unlike Sgt.Pepper, Abbey Road is a stripped back, straightforward rock record. It doesn’t rely on kitsch, novelty or psychedelia though the latter tends to find its way in for those who always find it (though the same themes could be chalked up to mere childlike whimsy on tracks like Octopus’s Garden and Sun King). To me, Abbey Road is the Beatles at their most intoxicating. Sexy is never the adjective that comes to mind to describe their music and yet I find myself going there for tracks like I Want You (She’s So Heavy) and Because; and tracks Something and Oh! Darling pull at the heart strings, both containing emotional swells of blush inducing romance and innocence. Here Comes the Sun is a Beatles classic- perhaps on the list of Beatles songs anyone could name, and for good reason. A song accessible enough to be enjoyed by children but refined enough to be visited in any walk of life has universal acclaim in my book. There’s something very powerful, (and fine, psychedelic) about checking ego at the door and enjoying beautiful sunny music without wondering if it’s deep enough or makes you interesting at parties. Come Together also operates on many levels; children might sing it at pre-school graduations delighting in ridiculous lyrics like “He got ju-ju eyeball” and “monkey finger” while teenagers smirk at the children for singing about acid, and adults smirk at teenagers for not seeing that anything learned on drugs can already be found in the beauty of life if you stopped long enough to really look around. If Golden Slumbers doesn’t bring a tear to your eye I can’t fully trust you; or just don’t believe you’ve truly contemplated your mortality just yet. Now don’t ask me about what’s going on for Polythene Pam or Mean Mr.Mustard because those are not my jam but the album wouldn’t be complete without them and it wouldn’t be a Beatles album without some strange British humor that doesn’t quite translate to the American audience even if we pick over it on Genius or through the context of our studies of the sixties.
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I’m embarrassed to admit how late I was to discover, listen to, and fall in love with Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life. Stevie Wonder is a living legend, and like everyone else, I grew up knowing him as the blind Motown guy behind Superstition, Signed, Sealed, Delivered, For Once in my Life, and Isn’t She Lovely. I generally knew he was venerated for his prolific writing and influence on the state of modern music, and about his history as a former child star, but I was personally unfamiliar with the depth of his genius. Upon discovering Songs in the Key of Life, I had to manually scoop my jaw off the floor. I’ll get out of the way that its sonically beautiful; Wonder’s signature honeyed vocals are showcased brilliantly throughout the two disc album and the instruments and musicians on them are all top notch. So beyond just the iconic sound and flawless production of the album, what sets it apart as so genius and novel is Stevie’s songwriting. Songs like Love’s In Need of Love Today, and Village Ghetto Land are just as meaningful, relevant and cutting today as they were fifty years ago, proving the adage “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” The album’s title so perfectly encapsulates what Wonder has created; a treasure trove of songs about, well, being alive. Songs cover topics as real and human as the miracle of birth (Isn’t She Lovely), racial politics (Black Man), the socioeconomic conditions of urban populations (Village Ghetto Land), and our human tendency to exaggerate the negative (Love’s In Need of love Today), all while leaving room on other tracks to emphasize joy (Sir Duke), and a general convivial spirit.
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Do you remember where you were when Blonde dropped? I can say with 100% certainty that I do. Four years after the release of Channel Orange, Frank Ocean’s powerful mystique grew amongst fans who waited for his upcoming release with building frustration. Ocean faced critical writer’s block, resulting in an album with a later release date, different producers and collaborators, and a different recording studio than what he had initially discussed in the press. What resulted, Blonde, as we know it today, was perfect, nevertheless. On August 20th, 2016, when the Album dropped, I was sitting on the cold tile floor of my bathroom, door shut to ensure the acoustics would be juuuust right. I propped my iPhone up against the glass door of my shower and hit play. Its hard to believe Blonde, made up of 17 songs, is only one hour long because of the drawn-out, artful approach to each individual track. Though many artists rely on the tried and true formula of the 3-minute song, Blonde follows no blueprint, songs range from 9:24 to 1:07, but no two the same. This dynamic feature helps carry the ear throughout the record where most tracks end in unexpected, sometimes dischordant, or disturbing outros that contrast the soft, melodic and angelic atmosphere built up on the songs (though notably some tracks flip and it and reverse it, featuring rougher openings and softer outros). Deeply emotional, vulnerable, and as sweet as cherry Motrin, Blonde is a kick in the ribs for anyone with half a heart.
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“He's the one who likes all our pretty songs, And he likes to sing along, And he likes to shoot his gun- But he knows not what it means.”
Looking back, it’s hard to believe Nirvana’s Bleach came out in 1989 alongside the Bangles’ Eternal Flame, Warrant’s Heaven, and the B-52s’ Love Shack. That Seattle sound, or more specifically Olympia sound, (and look, and feel), is unbelievably specific and quite antithetical to the neon “vaporwave/art deco” 80s as we often retroactively caricature the time period. Marked by progressive views on feminism among other issues, exploration of mental illness, self-harm, suicide and addiction, and non-conformist attitudes towards fashion and life in general, the “grunge” movement never seemed perched to take the world by storm. However, by 1991, the “herm yarl,” of it all was in full-swing; ready or not– Nirvana was going to be put at center stage. Nevermind’s mega-hits “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Come As You Are,” are instantly recognizable to even the furthest-removed listener, even if they’re still regarded as “alternative” rock or shrouded in misunderstanding, and “Lithium,” “Breed,” and “Something In The Way” should pretty much be familiar to anyone born between 1955 and 2010, even if only for the recent, well-suited synch placements in Matt Reeve’s The Batman and Hulu’s Under the Bridge. Things get a little hairier on deeper cuts like Territorial Pissings, but hey- every grunge record needs its gross outs. Trying to put what’s special about Nirvana, and about Nevermind in particular, into words is inappropriate; this album is a feeling, one that’s youthful, rebellious, and angry but not dangerous.
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You wouldn’t believe an album could be as successful as Thriller was (and is) if you didn’t know it to be true; produced by Quincy Jones and featuring many tracks written by Michael Jackson himself, Thriller packs an astounding, pop-y punch. The album sold one million copies worldwide per week at its peak and was the best-selling album in the United States in 1983 and 1984, the first album ever to be the best-selling for two years. The album is home to many of the “MJ tracks you can easily name of the top of your head,” including Wanna Be Startin' Somethin’, Beat It, Billie Jean, P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing), and of course the album’s titular track, in addition to hits on the softer side like Human Nature and The Girl is Mine. Between the iconic music videos, accompanying dance moves (wayyyyy before TikTok), and MJ’s infectious star power, Thriller represents everything that one single album has the potential to be and of course, it’s just great fun!
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In the summer of 1974, on a farm in Minnesota, Bob Dylan began writing what would become Blood on the Tracks after polishing off his tour with Robbie Robertson and the Band. At that point, Dylan had yet to release a well-received album in the 70s. Riding high on his reputation from the 60s, Blood on the Tracks was a crucial “comeback” album for Dylan. While it's generally believed that the record was directly inspired by the deterioration of the relationship between Dylan and his ex-wife, Sara, Dylan insists the album was inspired by the short stories of Anton Chekov. Debuting with mixed reviews, Blood on the Tracks has aged like a fine wine and is now widely considered to be one of Dylan’s best albums, even if Dylan himself claims to not understand its appeal (as stated in a 1975 interview with Mary Travers). To me personally, Blood on the Tracks is a perfect record, every song is beautifully crafted with its own unique storybook world to dive into; but one track in particular that never fails to blow me away is the cutting diss track, Idiot Wind. Although Dylan has stated that "Idiot Wind" is about the expression of willpower, telling Jonathan Cott, "With strength of will you can do anything. With willpower you can determine your destiny,” it seems far more like the most offensive breakup song of all time. The album’s assistant engineer, Glenn Berger, in an interview with Uncut magazine, recalls, “[Dylan was] cutting 'Idiot Wind' and just spitting this mean, angry and hurtful song, and it's so incredibly intense and vulnerable and real. And then he turns to us in the control room and says, 'Was that sincere enough?' I think it was such an intense emotion that he had to make some distance from it, by making that funny remark." As a further funny aside, Lou Reed is quoted to have said that he “wished he had written Idiot Wind.”
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Once I saw a meme on some self-depricating music industry account that said “people who listen to Dark Side of the Moon think they have a PhD in listening to music.” So, listen up becuase Dr. Sami is speaking. Just kidding. Dark Side of the Moon has been watered down into oblivion. You’re just as likely to find the album’s prismatic iconography donning a onesie for Old Navy as you are to see it parodied for a political cause, or in poster form on the flexi-wall creating an extra bedroom in a college house. Pink Floyd certainly have the reputation of a “stoner” band because their work covers topics de jure for smokers like “what is the true nature of humanity,” “why are we here, where are we going,” and “what if the industrial complexes we exist within are not actually for our own benefit?.” However, the sound, aesthetic, and overall “vibes,” if you will, of Pink Floyd couldn’t differ more from other stoner classic bands like the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers, CSNY or Bob Marley and the Wailers. The sound of Pink Floyd is not warm and sunny or “nature-y” like those named contemporaries, it feels extremely detached and observational, almost scientific. It comments on the state of affairs of the world from outside, rather than from within them. However, any way you slice it, you will be touched by Dark Side of the Moon. Explorations on the afterlife on “Great Gig in the Sky,” and the human creation of “otherness” on “Us and Them,” alone make this album worthy of preservation and universal relevance.
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The rumors are true, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is a perfect record. The beloved 1998 neo-soul album has earned its high marks, and continues to reign supreme as a no-skip masterpiece. As someone born in January of 1999, singles like Doo-Wop (That Thing) and Ex-Factor have been with me as long as I can remember and have the nostalgic effect of a warm hug. Of course, I was an infant during the album’s first two years on the hit cycle, but naturally, as it filtered out from being new music, with top 40 radio play into eventaully reaching the adult contemporary stations and retail playlists in malls and CVS, the songs set the tone of my childhood milleu. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is also a legenday “doing errands with mom” album. Let me set the tone for how this is the highest form of compliment because I can understand how this might sound like an insult. Imagine being a kid in the early 2000s; the sun is shining, you and your mom are wearing matching mesh “Chinese” slippers and foldover gauchos. You smell like Bath and Body Works Cucumber Melon and your mom is wearing Happy by Clinique, and her hair smells like Wen. You’re going with her to the mall to buy new stuff for your dolphin-themed bathroom. You climb into the backseat of the family car, the seat is warm from the sun, and as the engine starts, your mom presses play on the CD-player (it was a CD-player at the time). The car fills with the soulful voice of Ms. Lauryn Hill, and you look out at your neighborhood, and your mom, doing her silly mom hand-dancing while she’s driving in the front seat. It’s one of those beautiful, fleeting moments where you just know, deep inside, that it IS good to be here, and great to be alive. That’s the feeling that this record taps into for me; it takes me to a higher plane of existence, one full of truth and beauty, and soul. Perhaps what’s most powerful about this particualr record is the sophistication of its themes and the thoughtfulness with which Ms.Hill lays down her lyrics. Dealing with love, intimacy, motherhood, womanhood, God, and the gospel, the album goes to far-flung places without relying on sensationalism, remaining firmly rooted in the ground, deeply human and accessible.
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I can’t believe I’m about to kick off my album review of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds by mentioning a Michael Moore film, but here we are. For some reason I can no longer remember, my seventh grade homeroom teacher showed us the 1989 Michael Moore documentary Roger & Me, about the economic depression in Flint, Michigan after the departure of General Motors. I remember being moved by the story, my introduction to The Way It Is, both the Bruce Hornsby song and the sad fact of the dwindling down of American factories in favor of cheap laobr abroad, but even more distinctly, I remember the film’s fantastic, touching soundtrack. On that track, alongside Hornsby were John Denver (with Back Home Again), Bruce Springsteen (with My Hometown), and most significantly, The Beach Boys (with Wouldn’t It Be Nice). At 13 years old, I knew who were the Beach Boys were, but in a vague way, just that they were “oldies” and responsible for songs I normally assocaited with novelty compilations for pool parties and luau themed birthday festivies (Surfin’, Surfin’ Safari, Surfin’ USA, Kokomo, etc.). When a beautiful song, featured in the movie we were watching in homeroom pondered “wouldn’t it be nice if we were older, then we wouldn’t have to wait so long,” my ears perked up. The closed captioning on the bottom of the screen attributed the song to The Beach Boys, and the rest was history. I became obsessed with enduring sound of Brian Wilson. Whether or not this inclination toward the California sound inspired my choice to go west for college, I’ll never know, but I consider it a strong influence. Pet Sounds can have that strong of an effect on people. Deeply whimsical, nostalgic, and child-like (as the highest form of Buddhist praise), Pet Sounds explores the world with a beginner’s mind. Listen with an open mind, and an open heart, beautiful, delicate things don’t reveal themselves unless you give them the chance.
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“It’s only right, that you should play the way you feel. . .” Fleetwood Mac, despite their notorious internal dischord, a phenomenon that seems to be a gift that keeps on givin for modern audiences a la Daisy Jones and the Six, and Broadway’s Sterephonic, has produced some of the finest rock records the world has ever known. Rumours is no exception; it reigns supreme for a reason. Sure, its “basic;” its been played a bajillion times and it will be played a bajillion more- but this is deserved. Saying Rumours is one the best albusm ever made is like saying chocolate tastes good with peanut butter or pancakes pair with maple syrup- it’s just a fact of life, and as common place of an opinion as it might be, it’s never wrong. The mystical lyrics, dreamlike production, and palpable tension fill Rumours with an irressistable vodou-esque charm. Trying to review Rumours in a song-by-song breakdown is like trying to explain a joke- it ruins the effect. I can sit here and hit you over the head with all of its laudible achivements but its far better than you stop reading now and just throw it on!
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There is a David Lynch interview where he says, “Believe it or not, Eraserhead is my most spiritual film,” to which a reporter replies, “Can you elaborate on that?” and Lynch simply deadpans, “No.” I feel the same way about my ranking of Joni Mitchell’s 1971 album, Blue, as the “best” album of all time. This ranking is so personal and so subjective, and yet it just feels like fact. Joni Mitchell is your favorite musician’s favorite musician. She ran in the circles of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, James Taylor, and Graham Nash, and many believe Led Zeppelin’s iconic song Going To California to be written about Mitchell. Joni’s work has been referenced by Sonic Youth, Alanis Morisette, and Prince and is cited as an inspiration by bands as far-flung as Tool; it feels safe to say her achievements as one of the greatest songwriters ever born are universally appreciated. However, beyond her poetic, introspective lyrics, what makes a Joni Mitchell song is her haunting sound. A survivor of childhood polio, which left her with weakness in her left hand, Mitchell compensated by creating alternative tunings to her guitar, from which she took on unique approaches to songwriting, and her voice, unique in its Theremin-like eerie tone stays with you long after listening. Blue is a sad album; I won’t beat around the bush. It’s dark, and deep, and it couldn’t be more fittingly titled. However, unlike other famously “sad” albums, Blue ought not to only be listened to when feeling down in the dumps, its music for any time. Blue is sad because it's tender, it's raw, and it's so unflinchingly human. Listening to Blue feels like putting on your favorite ugly, beat-down sweater that you love because of, not despite, its depressing looks. It is like picking the cookie that didn’t frost completely right or choosing the puppy with sad eyes. This comparison is not drawn because the album is imperfect but rather because that poorly-frosted cookie, or ugly sweater, or puppy with the sad eyes is picked because we feel some kind of kinship with it, it seems to have a story to tell. It knows that “to be loved is to be changed.”
