Funeral to Finish

  This album has enjoyed a meteoric rise up the Rolling Stone Top 500.  In 2003, it was number 488.  On the 2012 list, it was 481, and now it's 28 .  That's a pretty impressive jump! I want to come right out and say that while this album is perfectly fine to listen to, it failed to ignite any strong feelings in me, which once again puts me in that awkward position of Not Really Caring About a Critically Loved Album.  And I'm not kidding about critically loved; it was Time magazine's number 1 album of 2000, a Pitchfork 10 , and number 3 on Nöjesguiden's albums of the year (which I guess means Nordic youth really got down to it). The sound is something like old-school R&B with a solid Prince influence and a chill, moody vibe.  The songs are uncrowded and mostly downtempo affairs, with a few exceptions.  "Devil's Pie" has a solid hip hop beat and layers of vocals decrying the playa lifestyle: Fuck the slice, want the pie Why ask why 'til we fry Wa

  I would have to say that this is the White Album of Beatles albums HA HA HA I've been wanting to do that for so long.  But it's kinda true, right?  I mean, "White Album" is now shorthand for a kind of sprawling, exploratory, multigenre album, usually a double album, where a band tries out all kinds of different approaches and styles.  Maybe members who don't usually sing get to sing and maybe the guitarist plays drums on a track and there's a mariachi-inspired track by a punk band.   This record, the Beatles' ninth studio album, was written largely in India, where the band had decamped to study Transcendental Meditation.  They were supposed to be getting away from music but if you're John Lennon and Paul McCartney and George Harrison you don't really "get away" from music, because you can't, it's just bubbling out of you like exhaling when you're 28 years old or so and under the influence of marijuana and EMI Records.  And

  We've had some Hendrix albums that we liked and some that we didn't quite care for , but I am happy to report that this album, the Jimi Hendrix Experience's debut, is absolutely fantastic and I love it. There were initially two versions of the album, one released in the UK on Track records and one in the US on Reprise, with different track listings.  Since Rolling Stone specifically cited the Track version, let's use that one.  Now, of course, Hendrix is known and revered for his guitar playing and everybody is right, he's doing some wild shit on guitar that would go on to influence a whole generation or multiple generations, but there were two things that really stood out to me when I listened back to this for the first time in I'd say 30 years, the songwriting and the drumming. I don't think I even realized that Hendrix wrote all the songs on the Track version (and everything on the Reprise version except "Hey Joe," which was released as a sin

  Once again we've arrived at a dog-talking-about-organic-chemistry moment, which is to say that I have nothing of value to offer.  I even used to own this album - the only jazz album I have ever owned - and I played it a couple of times at dinner parties when I wanted to pretend to be a grownup.  Then after some wine I just put on the Stones or whatever we actually wanted to listen to.  Adulthood: failed. It doesn't have any words.  Miles Davis plays the trumet.  There's two sax players, John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderly.  And drums.  And bass.  They all play together and it's nice.  I don't mind it at all, unlike  Bitches Brew  which really made me angry.   See?  This is what happens when you put jazz albums on here.  I guess that this was a jazz album that everybody bought and liked and so they voted for it and also it's probably one of those albums you're supposed to like, but still, there should be a separate list for jazz.  (Maybe there is, I don

  Beyoncé Knowles-Carter is such a towering figure in American culture generally, and American music specifically, that even I was aware of this album's release, and as a middle-aged straight white man, I am so far outside of the general hype cycle that I have to look things up on Urban Dictionary to understand jokes on social media.  But even though I had heard some of the songs and knew some of the references - ohhh, that's where "Becky with the good hair" comes from  - I had never sat down and just listened to this whole album all the way through.  Do you want to just cut to the chase?  I think it's a very good album but does not seem like the 32nd best album of all time. With a title based on the old saying about what you do when you're given lemons, the album is all about Beyoncé reclaiming her power after being disrespected in her marriage by her husband, Jay-Z.  The very first lines of the album lay out what's going here: You can taste the dishonest

  “Show me a person who hasn’t got a darker side, and I’ll call them 'boring!'," Amy Winehouse told an interviewer in 2007, and Amy Winehouse was never boring.  This album, her second and last before her death in 2011 at the age of 27, is a masterpiece, a nearly-perfect set of songs that recall old-school girl group sounds of the 60s while remaining firmly in Winehouse's own inimitable style. The songs are often nakedly personal, vulnerable to the point where it's hard to listen to them.  Winehouse did more than bare her soul; she ripped her chest open and invited everyone in for a look: He left no time to regret Kept his dick wet with his same old safe bet Me and my head high And my tears dry, get on without my guy You went back to what you know So far removed from all that we went through And I tread a troubled track My odds are stacked, I'll go back to black In this one verse, Winehouse casually admits that her lover went back to an old flame, flirts with re

  Released less than a year after Talking Book , this album has about three absolute first-ballot all time classic songs, "Higher Ground," "Don't You Worry Bout a Thing," and "Living For the City."  The last of these is the remarkable and heartbreaking tale of a man "born in hard time Mississippi" who leaves for New York City where he is immediately thrown in jail and then, when released, lives as a homeless person on the streets.  It's a sad and all too familiar story of racism and unfairness that Womder pairs with a melody that's catchy as hell. "Higher Ground" is a funk masterpiece, bubbling with Wonder's synth and his exhortations to "Teachers keep on teaching/Preachers keep on preaching/World keep on turning/'Cause it won't be too long."  The song was famously covered by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who, I must begrudgingly admit, did a pretty good job.   "Don't You Worry Bout a Thing"