Funeral to Finish

  What are you doing all the way down here, Heart Like a Wheel?  You can’t hear this today without thinking about how it shows up in all the Phoebe Bridgers and Lana del Reys of the world.  Linda Ronstadt has such a heartbreaking and beautiful voice.   A couple of interesting things about this album.  As far as I can tell, every song on this album is a cover.  "You're No Good," probably the best known song on the album, was first performed by Betty Everett.  "When Will I Be Loved" is, of course, an old Everly Brothers track.  And "Willin'," a great pro-crank trucker ballad, is a Little Feat song and I hope "Waiting for Columbus," Little Feat's truly awesome live album, is somewhere on this list.  I can't imagine someone releasing an all-covers album now and it being a huge #1 hit for years.   The second interesting thing is that this album is #34 on CMT's list of the 40 greatest country albums of all time and I didn't eve...

  First we have to grapple with the idea of an album that came out in December 2019 found its way onto this 2020 list.   I mean, maybe it’s really good, maybe it’s not, but won’t it take some time to sit with it, reflect on it, think about it, before deciding it’s one of the Best 500 albums ever made? It’s probably not.  Look, I like meaningless bubblegum pop just as much as the next guy, and this is certainly well-executed pop, but it just left me feeling nothing.  I guess some of the songs are kinda catchy and I’m sure there are legions of people who love this album with all their hearts but for me there’s just no core here, nothing to believe in.  I do think it’s interesting how Harry genre-hops with fierce abandon, going from shimmery silver boy-pop to plinky acoustic faux-English-folk.  I appreciate that, but it still seems sort of forced and scripted.

  I know this record sold a bajillion copies and was inescapable on the radio in 1989, but I can’t love it.   The production is way too slick for me.   I mean, it sounds so polished and just right that all the interesting edges have been sanded off.   Some of the songs are really good; I just wish they had the chance to be themselves without being worked over until they’re limp.  This is the kind of album I can imagine being played in the background at a wine mom get-together.

  As you will learn from this fantastic and exhaustive article about this album from, of all places, Pitchfork, this is a divorce album Marvin Gaye made to satisfy a judgment owed to his ex-wife.  It’s pretty amazing that what is essentially a fuck you record is still better than most records that people will try to do a really good job on.  Marvin Gaye was a magician.  (Obviously, we're going to see Marvin Gaye again and again.)

  One of those albums you’ve (or I guess I should say I’ve) never sat down and listened to all the way through but know every song, or at least the idea of every song.  Produced by Phil Spector, who would go on to become a legend and then go to prison for shooting an actress in his house in 2003.  It’s very Wall of Soundy!  (As far as I can tell, that means “lots and lots of reverb and strings in the background," but I’m sure there’s more to it than that.)   Everybody knows "Be My Baby," of course.  Do you know "(The Best Part Of) Breakin' Up"?    What do you think it is?  "Finally being free of that manipulative asshole"?  "Getting to go out with my friends again without having to explain where I am"?  "Feeling an enormous weight lifted and being able to breathe again"?  No, it's none of those! That the best part of breakin' up is when you're making up Best part of breakin' up is when you're making up But, ...

  Another album I’ve never heard all the way through!   Of course I know some of the songs just through cultural seepage but most of it is brand new to me.   More ‘90s!   Lots of ‘90s in the early going here.    This is great!   I should have been listening to this all along.   The vocals are, of course, the star of the show and they are so smooth a child could push a refrigerator over them but there’s some great, catchy songwriting here.   I haven’t looked it up but I bet this was a monster smash hit.   (I just looked it up and “The album debuted at No. 1 in the Billboard 200 with 350,000 copies sold.   It spent a total of five weeks at No. 1 and was the third best-selling album in 1995 in the United States and sold 12 million copies in the United States.” Thanks Wiki. )   Anyway, yet another pleasant surprise.   I’m sure there will be a ton.

  This is the pre-big-in-America, all-in-Spanish Shakira, and I was surprised by, given the fact that I could understand maybe 3 words on the album (corazon, probably, and a few more) how familiar it sounds.  This came out in ’98, and often sounds a lot like the girl pop I knew and loved.  Anyway, it’s fine.  I liked it more than I expected to.