Funeral to Finish

  There have been albums on this list that I love, and albums that my friends love, and albums that I just know are somebody's favorite album, but as far as I know this is the first album on the list that I know for a fact is one of my friends' favorite albums.  I wasn't nearly cool enough to be listening to this when it came out in 1994 and so discovered it years later, after a What Is Your Favorite Album talk with that friend, and I distinctly remember listening to it in the back row of a 5 Fulton outbound bus and just being blown away. There are few albums as directly connected to a specific place as this album is to New York City.  The very first sound you hear is the chunka-chunka of the train and then a sample from the 1983 movie Wild Style , regarded as the first hip hop movie.  The second song, "N.Y. State of Mind," is even more explicitly about NYC.  Set over a sample from Joe Chambers' "Mind Rain" and drums borrowed from Kool and the Gang...

  This is widely regarded as Prince's greatest album (just check out any of the Prince albums ranked lists), and it is truly a monumental achievement, but I have a bone to pick with The List.  Sure, this album is great, and maybe 5 of Prince's albums could probably be on here, but no 1999 ?  I mean, how can you say 1999 is not one of the greatest 500 albums of all time?  There are a lot of notable omissions on here (many of which I plan to discuss in a post at the end of This Journey), but leaving that album off is just criminally negligent. [ EDIT : I realized much later that 1999 is, in fact, on the list , at number 130, and I had just written about it a few months prior, WHOOPS.] Anyway, back to the topic at hand.  This double album emerged from the ashes of two discarded projects, an album with longtime supporting band the Revolution called Dream Factory and a project called Camille in which Prince pitch-shifted his vocals up to a female register and g...

  And we're back, hopefully well-rested, etc., ready for the final push, the final 46 albums, which we begin with, somewhat puzzlingly, this album.  Of course, this record was a sensation upon its release in 1986 and sold something like 16 million copies and I will confess to having liked "Boy in the Bubble," the lead track, with its rasping accordion and loping beat and slightly disturbing and unsettling lyrics, but there is a lot of mess around this record. First of all, there's the little matter of cultural appropriation, which may be too mild a term here; it's more like the outright theft of a musical style.  Simon defied the United Nations' then-extant cultural boycott of South Africa to go there and record with musicians he had heard on a borrowed casette.  There are varying accounts about the degree to which Simon relied on, or explicitly stole from, the African artists, but there is no question that he came back from South Africa wtih a brand new sound...

  Oh hell yeah.  This blast of proto-punk might be the single most influential album on this list, and I'm not even joking.  I mean, Chuck Berry influenced more artists, but that was a comp , and this single album launched thousands and thousands of bands.  Long before the Ramones were on kids' t-shirts, they were a subversive, dangerous, and incredibly fun band. Just imagine buying this record at your local Sam Goodys and getting back to your room and peeling the shrinkwrap off and dropping the needle on "Blitzkrieg Bop," holy shit what a banger.  Turn that shit up, because there are not many pure rock songs better than this one. They're formin' in a straight line They're goin' through a tight one The kids are losin' their minds The Blitzkrieg Bop They're pilin' in the back seat They're generatin' steam heat Pulsatin' to the back beat The Blitzkrieg Bop Like all great rock songs, the song is about the act of rocking, in this ca...

  When I went to college long, long ago, every girl's dorm room contained an enormous jug of water, a plant desperately clinging to life, a mini-fridge full of Diet Coke, and this album.  I am not kidding, this and Prince's 1999 were the two most ubiquitous albums at my school, and it's not hard to see why.  This is one of the most comforting and uplifting albums ever made.  I think this is one of the few albums I've owned in all three formats, vinyl, cassette, and CD.  It's every white person's introduction to reggae and whatever qualms I have about compilations can get fucked, it's wonderful. But I say "white person" for a reason.  Bob Marley was a fiery political activist who was keenly aware of the stark racial divides that undergirded the story of Jamaica and the Caribbean as a whole.  His native island, of course, was ruthlessly exploited by Europeans beginning in the 16th century, a legacy whose impacts are felt to this day.  And Marley wr...

  I'm not sure exactly how, but this album just feels  Southern, which is, I guess, obvious, given that OutKast is from Atlanta and they were at the forefront of Southern rap.  There are very obvious Southern nods, like the harmonica-and-handclaps breakdown in the middle of "Rosa Parks," itself referencing a pivotal event in the history of the South, which OutKast appeared to use as a metaphor for their own success: Ah ha, hush that fuss Everybody move to the back of the bus Do you wanna bump and slump with us? We the type of people make the club get crunk Ah ha, hush that fuss Everybody move to the back of the bus Do you wanna bump and slump with us? We the type of people make the club get crunk Parks herself was not pleased about the band using her name without her permission and sued their label, LaFace Records.  After years of litigation, the case eventually settled, with OutKast and the label giving Parks a cash settlement and agreeing to work with her charitabl...

  I am on the record as not especially liking the other Jay-Z albums that have appeared on this list, but you know what?  I liked this album quite a bit.  I think a lot of credit has to go to Kanye, who produced some of the album's best tracks, like "Takeover," "Izzo (H.O.V.A.)," and "Never Change." "Izzo," in particular, is just a great fucking song.  Built on the skeleton of "I Want You Back" by the Jackson 5, Kanye West's sharp as fuck production gives Hova the perfect platform to unspool his languid, boastful rap.  ("Hova," incidentally, is a nod to "Jehova," as in "They call me J-Hova cause the flow is religious,” from "A Million and One Questions".)  The song tells the story of Jay's start as a dealer: H to the izz-O, V to the izz-A For shizzle, my nizzle, used to dribble down in VA Was herbing 'em in the home of the Terrapins Got it dirt cheap for them Plus if they was short wit...

  What I found most amazing about listening to this album was how often I went "Hey! [Some other artist] stole this exact line/riff/entire song!"  I mean, everyone knows "Maybellene" and "Johnny B. Goode" and "Reelin' and Rockin';" they're not just part of rock DNA, they're part of the American cultural lexicon.  But then you listen to "Sweet Little Sixteen," a song on this compilation that I don't think I've ever heard before, and immediately you're like "This is Surfin' USA!" And guess what?  You're right, the Beach Boys copied it exactly for their song, and now Chuck Berry's publisher owns the rights to "Surfin' USA." When you listen to "You Can't Catch Me" and hear the lyric "Here come old flat-top," you may think, hmmm that line sounds familiar.  Indeed, the Beatles copped it verbatim for a little ditty called "Come Together."  And Dyl...

  So little of a Bowie-head am I that until yesterday I had never heard this album, except for, of course, "Golden Years," a Bowie staple that, it's rumored, he originally wrote for Elvis Presley, who turned it down.  It's a brilliant song, really, a funk/doo-wop/disco mashup with Bowie's indelible croon floating above the whole thing. The rest of the album?  It's fine.  On the 2012 version of this list, it was number 324, which seems way more appropriate placement than 52.  It is not the 52nd best album of all time.  I doubt David Bowie would even say it's the 52nd best album of all time.  What happened between 2012 and 2021?  David Bowie died, returning him to the public consciousness in a big way and, I anticipate, giving all his classic albums a big boost. There's only six songs on this album, ranging from the just under 4-minute "Golden Years" to the 10-plus minute title track, the first song on the album, wherein Bowie introduces the Th...

  After yesterday's seemingly endless parade of nearly-perfect two and a half minute bops, this weird, sprawling album seems like wading through molasses.  That is not a great simile but it will have to do. Let's hit the good part first.  There isn one absolute masterpiece on this album, and it's Hendrix's cover of Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower."  You hear those first strums and immediately recognize it and it completely overpowers you and sweeps you up.  This is one of the winners in the "cover that's better than the original" game, because honestly, it makes Dylan's original sound like the cover version.  I can't hear this without picturing Huey helicopters over the jungle and burning police cars because it's been the soundtrack for a million documentaries and shows about the 60s.  (This album came out in October 1968, which is about as close to the climax of The Sixties as you can get.)   "Crosstown Traffic" is a ...

  Four CDs!! Nearly five hours of music!! This collection, released by Polydor in 1991, has basically every song you could possible think of when you think "James Brown."  It's not just a greatest hits collection, it's an every hits collection, and this is a man who put something like 120 singles on the R&B charts.  It goes from his first hit, "Please, Please, Please," a doo-wop-adjacent number released as "James Brown & the Famous Flames" in 1956 to his 1984 collab with Afrika Bambaataa, "Unity, Pt. 1." In between are some of the best-known songs in R&B, soul, funk, and just whatever it is James Brown does.  It's arranged in chronological order, so the first disc ("Mr. Dynamite") covers roughly '56 to '65, then the second ("The Hardest Working Man in Show Business") runs from '65 to early '69.  Disc one has "Night Train," which I didn't realize I already knew, and the ofte...

  One thing I've learned doing this project is that some albums I thought were revelatory masterpieces in early high school now sound dated and boring, and this is one of them.  Man, I was so into this album, because I was 15 and had just started smoking weed and this album is the perfect vehicle for a 15-year-old beginning stoner.  I would go over to my friend James' house and we would put this on and get to the very quiet end of "On the Run" and then the cacophony of loud, blaring alarm clocks at the beginning of "Time" and it sounded like the world ending and man that was such a trip. Now it sounds like extremely - extremely  - well-produced prog-jazz-rock, but is it ever cold.  The only real warmth on this record is Clare Torry's wailing, impassioned vocal on "The Great Gig in the Sky," for which she was paid 30 pounds (she later settled out of court for an undisclosed sum and got a co-writing credit).  After the wordless opener, "Spea...

  I am beyond shocked that this beautiful, angry, funny, almost perfect album, which I love with the fire of ten thousand suns, was somehow ranked highly enough by enough people to land it here, in the Top 60 albums of all time, which is entirely deserved but which, if you told me or any other 20-something who loved this album when it came out, would cause us to laugh and laugh in our bitter Gen-X way. And this is a Gen-X album, through and through, written by Ms. Phair in her 20s, after an unsuccessful year spent in San Francisco trying to get noticed for her music.  As a fellow Gen-Xer, Phair is my Joni Mitchell, and this album is my Blue , the voice of a worried and distracted generation, told we were gonna die from nuclear war NO I MEAN AIDS NO I MEAN air pollution NO I MEAN the ozone layer.  No wonder we just gave it all up for drugs and booze and semi-meaningless sex and sarcasm and Winona Ryder and John Cusack. The songs themselves are mostly stripped-down and spar...

  I have a theory that for some of their votes, the people who voted on this list told their assistant "Find out what album song so-and-so was on and put that on my list," figuring that whatever album that is, it must be good.  For this album, it's either "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" or "Up On Cripple Creek" because those are both foundationally great songs and the rest of this album is pretty boring. Look, I'm not dumb, I know this album is revered and whatever, which is fine, I'm not saying it wasn't an important album.  I know enough about music to know that it was!  I'm just saying that it's a shaggy, half-baked affair, a country-folk-rock mashup that just isn't all that interesting.  (TO ME, ok.) But yes, there are two stone-cold classics on here.  "Up On Cripple Creek" is a magnificent song, written by Robbie Robertson but sung by Levon Helm in his wry tenor, punctuated by a clavinet that is clearly a p...

  This album, maybe the Rosetta Stone of 70s hard rock, is one of those that was so completely mined by FM radio that every song is somehow familiar.  I bought this on vinyl back when vinyl or cassette were your two choices and played it endlessly on my Technics turntable, like many, many of my peers.  Listening back to it now I'm like "You know what?  This album still goes hard as fuck." This is the album, of course, with "Stairway to Heaven," one of the 20 or so Most Important Songs in rock, at least in my estimation.  When I was a kid, my local FM powerhouse used to do a countdown of the Top 500 songs on Memorial Day weekend every year (because of the Indianapolis 500, get it?) and you better know that motherfucking "Stairway to Heaven" was number 1 almost every year.  It's also the prime example of English pastoral mysticism, a movement that swept through English rock at the time (and was no doubt helped along by the fact that the bulk of this ...

  First of all, this was Stevie Wonder's FIFTEENTH album, and one of two he released in 1972 alone.  This man has been working harder at music for longer than just about anybody.  This album has two absolute classic songs, "Superstition" and "I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever)" but there really aren't any clangers, they're all great songs. "Superstition" is an all-timer, a sharp and funky head-bopper with that instantly recognizable Hohner Calvinet riff that Wonder improvised while Jeff Beck, of all people, played the drums.  (Beck would later release his own version of the song on the  Beck, Bogert & Appice album; I'll let you guess who has the superior take on the song.)  That riff drives the song, popping and swerving its way through while Wonder lays down his usual flawless vocal.   "I Believe" is also instantly recognizable, mostly for its brilliant melody, which starts off with some incredibly dark image...