We all have music that we love. Most of us can list our favorite albums. This is not what this post is about.
Every once in a blue moon I encounter an album that transcends the notion of the designation of ‘favorite’. I am referring to an album that re-awakens my appreciation of music, one that makes me feel as though I have discovered something special that speaks only to me. It is not merely an auditory pleasure, but a deeper, emotional experience.
This is a rare and usually completely unexpected occurrence. In fact, it has happened to me just five times over the past 44 years.
I’m not sure that I articulated this well, am I making sense?
I am interested in whether other Dopers experience this phenomenon. And if so, which albums have generated such a profound reaction in you. Remember, these are not simply favorite – or even great – albums; these are albums that blindsided you, turned you inside-out, and have never lost their ability to cast a spell over you.
Here is my short list:
1969 – The Beatles – Abbey Road
1982 – Elvis Costello – Imperial Bedroom
1986 – Paul Simon - Graceland
1996 – Beck – Odelay
2012 – Jack White - Blunderbuss
One immediately comes to mind. “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” by Neutral Milk Hotel. Someone recommended it to me thinking I’d like it. I listened to it once and didn’t think much of it, and told him. Then he said, “no, really.” And I listened again. And again.
Since then I’ve listened to it dozens of times. It’s like listening to someone’s soul laid bare.
Born To Run - Bruce Springsteen
Live at Carnegie Hall - Renaissance
The first one launched me into a life-long love of all things Bruce. The second turned me on to British progressive, followed by British folk-rock, followed by all sorts of obscure British and Irish groups.
I will probably come up with others later but the one that stands out to me is 'Til Tuesday’s Everything’s Different Now. Their previous albums are evocative of the time they were released (mid 80s) and haven’t aged well but Everything’s Different Now was different. It didn’t sound like them, save for Aimee Mann’s distinctive voice. It was clear on my first listen that this was the start of something new. I didn’t know why it grabbed my attention so at the time but I realized much later that I was hearing the beginning of the female singer-songwriter boom of the late 80s/early 90s. It wasn’t influential. It didn’t start the movement (Tracy Chapman, Tori Amos, and many others would have happened with or without Everything’s Different Now) but it was where I heard it first. I still listen to it in its entirety (I never listen to individual songs) and I still get the same feeling - this was the start of something bigger.
There are probably quite a few, but to me the sine qua non (if I’m using that phrase correctly) is film The Last Waltz by The Band.
I have been passionate about music for my whole life, and was familiar with The Band (had a few albums) and liked them quite a bit. Somewhere around age 26 or so a friend had me watch this movie that I had never seen (nor heard the album), and I was floored. That concert just felt like exactly what music should be. I can put that movie on and get transported to a wonderful place where rock and roll reigns with power, benevolence, honesty, and joy (how’s that for flowery praise?).
I’m not sure I’ve ever had an experience exactly like you describe. When I first heard Larks’ Tongues in Aspic by King Crimson, it seemed like they were making the music I’d been waiting for all my life without realizing it. That was when I was young and impressionable, but I think it’s held up pretty well.
I also remember the first time I ever heard a punk album – The Ramones – and being unable to decide if they were serious or not, because it was just so extreme at the time. That opened up a lot of territory.
Siamese Dream by The Smashing Pumpkins. I bought it, somewhat on second thought, the day that In Utero came out in the fall of 1993. They quickly became my favorite band, and they’re still my favorite band even though Billy Corgan is so often infuriating outside of making music.
Loveless by My Bloody Valentine. So got this one years after it was new, mostly because I knew it was a big influence on Billy Corgan’s sound. And oh yes, it certainly was, now I understand how an album like that can be so inspiring.
OK Computer by Radiohead… this one came with all the hype back in 1997 but hearing the opening notes for the first time sent a chill down my spine. A couple of missteps on that album but I still recall that initial “chill” and I want to be 23 again.
() by Sigur Ros… This one was highlighted in my local record store (remember those?) as “Radiohead’s Favorite Band” in the employee recommendation rack. Thanks employee! Had he or she written “Icelandic Post-rock” instead I probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought. Words? Where we’re going, we don’t need words…
It came out a few years after I had hung out with some Newcastle guys who were visiting friends in St. Louis. They told me all about the attitudes of the day and described Mods, Rockers, Skins, He-Man Drag, the beginnings of punk and some of the things that young people did for fun and excitement.
Quadrophenia is basically a rock opera wrapped around that whole scene and listening to it from the knowledge I gained talking with guys who could both very easily have been players in that opera… it just made the whole experience that much stronger.
In the olden days, when music came on 12" plastic discs we called “Albums”, I considered the “side” beginning with Rainy Day, Dream Away to be the height of sonic creativity. As a matter of fact, I still do.
When it was new, it took awhile to get people to understand that he was making ALL of those sounds (waves lapping on the shore, seagulls, spaceship taking off and zooming by) with his guitar. No synthesizers.
I don’t know if this is exactly what you meant, but sometimes I will stumble upon an album that makes me feel like, “If I were to deceive everyone into thinking I was a musician, this is the album I would steal and claim as my own.”
Three albums have made me think this (maybe others I’ve forgotten now, but these live on): Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief, Sixteen Horsepower’s Low Estate, and PJ Harvey’s To Bring You My Love.
I couldn’t tell you what they all have in common, but there’s something about them that feels like they express things I never knew I wanted to express until that moment when I heard them, and then it was like those things had been there all my life waiting to be expressed. I’m not even talking about the lyrics, per se, but also the music itself, the emotions, or even the general atmosphere they produce.
I recently heard for the first time Gorecki’s Symphony #3, the version with David Zinman conducting and Dawn Upshaw singing. I know this became wildly popular back in the early 90s when it was first released, but somehow I missed it.
I was astounded. It’s amazingly good, incredibly beautiful.
Albums that have whomped me over the head (some may have taken multiple listens to hit me: )
Loveless by My Bloody Valentine Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys Mezzanine by Massive Attack Siamese Dream by (the) Smashing Pumpkins Call the Doctor by Sleater-Kinney
The first two are in the first two slots for my “10 best rock/popular music albums of all time” list, but the last three are more my personal favorites. A Sonic Youth or Pixies album should probably be in there, too, and maybe Wire’s 154. For me, that Pixies album would be Trompe Le Monde. When I first heard it, it was quite different than the music I typically listened to and started me off on the course of exploring more fringe-y rock music (even though now I would hardly consider the Pixies “fringe.” At the time, I was a 70s classic rock kind of guy.)
First of all, thanks to this list, I just bought Blunderbuss," since your #1 is also on my list and your #2 and #3, though they aren’t quite as “special” to me, are still impressive choices. Abbey Road was the first Beatles album I ever heard, even though I had quite a bit of familiarity with the Beatles, and it, especially Side 2, showed me what the Beatles could do and what an album could be.
Madness - Keep Moving and One Step Beyond: Were possibly my first experience, as a teenager, of digging deeper into the back catalog of an artist that had a song or two in heavy rotation on the radio / music video channels, and striking gold with albums full of songs I loved that didn’t quite sound like what normally got played on the radio.
The Kinks are The Village Green Preservation Society: I hadn’t realized that a rock band (and I knew the Kinks could rock) could put out an album that was so pastoral and quaint and backward-looking and full of quirky gems.
Something Fierce - Completely Unglued: Made me realize that a “local” band, unheard of in the wider world—one that I’d seen play live in the basement of my college dorm—could put out an album that was as catchy, clever, and fun to listen to as anybody.
Trip Shakespeare - Lulu: Full of the sheer joy of music-making.
There are a few more that I was tempted to add (including a few by the band Daniel Amos); but alas, it’s been many years since an album has come along that I could add to my list.
The album that opened my appreciation of music WASN’T an album by a group - it was a collection of American music, that my parents got as a premium at a gas station back in the 60’s. This album had *Adagio for Strings, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, Putnam’s Camp, Clambake *(from Carousel), Rhapsody In Blue and the Overture from Candide.
