241. Massive Attack, "Blue Lines"

 

Whoops, I totally spaced on this one when it came out in 1991 and so I can't say I was there when Massive Attack more or less singlehandedly created the genre of trip-hop.  In fact, I'd never heard this album before and was only hazily aware that it even existed.  This despite me being very, very aware of Mezzanine, Massive Attack's other album on this list (so far).  So let's dive in!

After I listened to it through the first time, I went back and listened to "Unfinished Sympathy" again, mostly because it was the big single, and you know what?  Great song!  I mean, it's hard to listen to this now sitting where I'm sitting and realize how fresh and revolutionary this must have sounded at the time, because now it sounds like, uh, trip-hop, albeit a dancier flavor of trip-hop, which I suppose it was.  I feel like the first track, "Safe From Harm," is really what I think of when I think of trip-hop, that drowsy drums and sliding bass and soulful vocal.  It's really got it all.

So this is an interesting object lesson in how something can be huge for some people and barely register with others.  This was named the 58th best album of all time in a Q magazine reader poll in 1998.  You might think that this was recency phenomenon, but it was 60th in an NME list from 2013 (which slyly noted that "[i]t hasn’t stood the test of time like 1998’s ‘Mezzanine’"), so it's hanging around.  And dumb old me had never heard it.

Like most brilliant albums, this borrows freely from lots of places, like dub, hip-hop (it's very strong on the hip-hop, an element that would get diminished as the genre progressed), even reggae.  Fascinating listen, and I'm sure I'll go back to it.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? If just for its influence alone.