Funeral to Finish

  I t's wild, I always thought of this as kind of an underground classic but come to find out it's not just one of the best-selling rap albums of all time, it's one of the best-selling albums of all time, with like 22 million copies sold.  And I am overjoyed to report that unlike some of the best-selling albums, this brilliant record deserves every unit moved.  It's an absolute pleasure to listen to. Let's start with the singles.  "Fu-Gee-La" starts with a verse by Wyclef Jean, and then the high melodic chorus sung by Miss Lauryn Hill, who also takes the next verse.  It's really a lovely chorus, and the whole song has that kind of moody trip-hop sound that was all over rap in the mid-90's.  (This album came out in 1996.)  The second single was "Killing Me Softly," a cover of the Roberta Flack classic that shows off Hill's perfectly tuned voice, with the trip-hop drums gassing up the original version.  "Ready or Not," the thi

  Ironically, my wife, who's Irish (like grew up in Ireland Irish, not "my grandfather from Boston emigrated from Dublin" Irish) can't stand U2.  She thinks they're bombastic and self-important and I guess they became that way, and it's easy to forget they started out in what would be "alternative rock" in the 80's, gradually becoming more and more mainstream.  This album might be the one that catapulted them into full-on superstar status. This is also I think the last U2 album I either bought or paid attention to.  But man, I have to hand it to them; this is a pretty great album.  I mean, it starts off with "Where the Streets Have No Name," a magnificent, soaring song that I think will always be the ur-U2 song to me; it's got the Edge's chiming, ringing guitars, the big booming singalong chorus, the lyrics that seem important but that you can really read anything into.  There's also the iconic video, obviously inspired by t

  I strongly suspect that I am not cool enough for this album.  It is wild , and I fear I don't have the background or maybe the experience with hallucinogenics required to fully appreciate it.  Here's what we do know. This was the third Funkadelic album, recorded by the legendary George Clinton in Detroit in late 1970 and early 1971.  It starts off with, and is most famous for, the title track, a 10-minute guitar solo played by Eddie Hazel; originally it had other instrumentation, which you can hear traces off, but it's largely just Hazel's inspired, incredible, obviously Hendrix-influenced guitar.  Clinton famously told Hazel to play like he had just been told his mother died.  Both of them were tripping on LSD, and Hazel turned in this piece of work that sounds alternately like wailing and crying and like someone wandering in the desert.  It's a harrowing, emotional piece of work. Try as I might, I just can't love 10-minute guitar solos, so the album really k

  This monster album is, so far, the best-selling record of the century, and one of the best-selling albums of all time.  Besides "Rolling in the Deep" and "Someone Like You," I had never heard it, and you know what?  It's okay.  It's like Amy Winehouse with all the sharp edges shaved off.   You have to start off with Adele's voice, a huge, brassy instrument that can vary from a careful whisper to a booming, arching, crescendo of sound.  It's not all pyrotechnics; there's also an interesting, ragged edge that suggests a world-weariness you would not expect from a 21-year-old.  The album is famously a breakup album, and remember how hard breakups were in your early 20's?  Absent any life experince, getting rid of that loser feels like the most traumatic thing that has ever happened to any person, anywhere, who has ever lived on Earth : I let it fall, my heart And as it fell, you rose to claim it It was dark, and I was over Until you kissed my

  It's wild to think there have only been a few albums on this list where I absolutely knew every song, and most of them are albums that I absolutely love, like In the Aeroplane Over the Sea .  And then this one.  Yes, as we were driving back from dropping our kid off at sleepaway camp for the first time yesterday (I'm ok, thanks for asking) we listened to this album and IMAGINE MY SURPRISE to learn that I knew every song on this album with one exception - the last song, "Rescue Me," which I cannot recall ever hearing. Let me be clear: I have never owned a Madonna album and, as far as I know, never listened to a Madonna album all the way through until I did Like a Prayer in July 2021.  This is a compilation album, so it's pretty much just hits, including "Like a Prayer" and "Like a Virgin" and orher songs that aren't about things being like other things. Here is a quick rundown: "Holiday," "Lucky Star," "Borderline

  This past Saturday I went, as I do most years, to the Huichica music festival in Sonoma, which usually has an eclectic lineup and a mellow, stoned crowd.  This year, one of the most fun bands was Starcrawler, who have been described as "blending the sludgy, doom-laden riffs of Black Sabbath with the urgent pop-punk of the Runaways."  (They were great, btw.)  I bring this up to note that Black Sabbath still continues to cast a lengthy shadow on today's music, one long enough to reach a female-fronted glam-rock band from LA. This album, Sabbath's second, is also their best-selling and most well-known.  It is just chock full of metal goodness.  The band originally wanted to call it "War Pigs," after the opening song of the same name (which Ozzy Osbourne originally wanted to title "Walpurgis," after some Satanic thing or another, just imagine), but their label heard the song "Paranoid," thought it would be a hit, and insisted on the name

  There is something so hypnotic and soothng about reggae that it can lull you into a pleasant torpor while the song is about skulls being crushed in the slums of Kingston.  Although this was the Wailers' fifth studio album, it was the one that really launched the group, and frontman Bob Marley, and reggae in general, into the Western musical consciousness.  And this shit is dark .  Take "Slave Driver," the second song on the album.  Set over a typically langorous reggae beat, Bob sings: Ev'rytime I hear the crack of a whip, My blood runs cold. I remember on the slave ship, How they brutalize the very souls. Today they say that we are free, Only to be chained in poverty. Good God, I think it's illiteracy; It's only a machine that makes money. Slave driver, the table is turn, y'all. Ooh-ooh-oo-ooh. Real shit, not some metaphorical "slave driver."  But with Marley's bewitching high tenor and the absolutely lovely backing vocals, you almost forg