351. Roxy Music, "For Your Pleasure"

 


This is a wild album that I really can't believe came out in 1973.  The top-selling album in 1973 was The World Is a Ghetto by War.  Second was Summer Breeze by Seals and Crofts.  Neither of those albums even faintly resemble this.  In fact, you have to go down to number 11, Dark Side of the Moon, to find anything even remotely as weird as this.  

This was the last time Brian Eno and Bryan Ferry could work together, and you can feel their tensions pulling against each other.  There's a driving, almost funky song like "Editions of You" that should have found a home on pop radio and then there's something like "The Bogus Man," with Ferry's vocals over a steady beat with all kinds of swirling instrumentation beneath, going off in strange directions, very Eno-like.

We would be remiss if we didn't mention "In Every Dream Home a Heartache," a famous love song to a blow-up doll, which anticipated the film "Lars and the Real Girl" by 34 years:

Open plan living
Bungalow ranch style
All of it's comforts
Seem so essential
I bought you mail order
My plain wrapper baby
Your skin is like vinyl
The perfect companion
You float my new pool
De luxe and delightful
Inflatable doll
My role is to serve you

I know, gross, right?  But somehow Ferry makles it sound....romantic?  Idk.  This album is full of surprises.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? I guess?

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