Another 100 Best Albums of All Time List
Part 7: 40-31
It is the nature of a series this gargantuan to unravel, or anyway it’s mostly the way my mind works. I start out trying to be normal, with a rundown of albums to address and a sense of roughly how long I want to write about them, and then it all kind of unspools and derails and malfunctions and by the end, I am ranting about how I accidentally ingested a 100 mg THC lollipop before running a half-marathon while Kevin remains in his Radiohead erasure mindset. My readers are aware of my mental deficiencies and pathological neuroses; presumably some of them even like it. After six pieces of high-intensity unraveling, in our private chat, Kevin and I have realized we will have each written a novel when this series wraps up (I’m averaging 3,000-3,500 words per week). But the streak of narrative discipline will continue, and our wild and eclectic lists are starting to converge a little. I’m excited to see how the stretch run will unfold.
Below, you’ll find my Top 100 Albums (from 40-31) and the reason why I chose them, as well as Kevin’s picks and my response to them. For Kevin’s explanations of his albums and his reaction to my picks, check out his list below (and subscribe to On Repeat!).
My #40: Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven - Godspeed You! Black Emperor (2000)
Having this as the highest post-rock album on my list is very RYM-core, but this is a massive and achingly beautiful piece of art that is alternatively hypnotic and captivating, sleepy and startling. Every music fan should listen to this at least once in their life. The crescendos are clear highlights, but the minor details make this such a soul-crushing and downright spiritual listen.
The transportation to a random shopping center in Anywhere, USA of “Welcome to Barco AM/PM” leading to the tender, brittle ascending piano in “Cancer Towers on Holy Road Hi-Way,” or the simple segues between “Moya Sings Baby-O” into “Edgyswingsetacid” into the glockenspiel duet, into the French sing-song of the children are breathtaking in their grandiosity. All of this is before the literal bulldozer that is “She Dreamt She Was a Bulldozer, She Dreamt She Was Alone in an Empty Field” plows through and explodes with unrestrained exuberance. Every subsequent listen is different—it can make you smile at its musical bliss, or evoke a wellspring of tears during its heart-wrenching, chilling moments.
I first heard Lift Your Skinny Fists during my awakening out of my close-minded punk phase (i.e., getting into Modest Mouse, Radiohead, Neutral Milk Hotel, The Pixies), but the bands I was listening to hew to more traditional structures in their songs. The iconoclastic nature of GY!BE opened my mind to the possibilities to … well, anything … when you abandon rules and conventions, especially when you’re experiencing music at the highest possible sensory and emotional level. What makes GY!BE special is they’re just a punk band making intensely beautiful and boundary-pushing music.
Highlights: Everything
Kevin’s #40: They Want My Soul - Spoon (2014)
My Take:
I just saw Spoon two weeks ago at Toronto’s Danforth Hall, and it’s like they cherry-picked the two best songs on each of their albums and assembled a killer setlist. Their consistency is remarkable: When they drop a new album, it’s guaranteed it will be at least a 7- or an 8-out-of-10. This is a phenomenal pick, and one of my favorite pastimes lately is to listen to Transference, They Want My Soul, and Hot Thoughts back-to-back-to-back while on a long walk. One of my favorite personal song anecdotes is related to “Do You.” In the summer of 2014, I finished undergrad and my dad’s car was loaded up, and on the highway back home, this song was playing on Sirius XM. I couldn’t believe college was over: I had the best four years of my life and made the best friends I ever had and I was leaving it all behind. Britt Daniel’s raspy yell starts to fade into nothing as the song winds down, and it almost puts a tear in my eye as it resembles the same way my college days were winding down.
My #39: Voodoo - D’Angelo (2000)
D’Angelo will take five to 10 years to make an album, but they’re powerful enough to last a decade. It is wild to see how many R&B records try to recreate the feel of Voodoo—even the 1975 tried. In tracks such as “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” you can see how much influence D’Angelo has had on artists such as Childish Gambino, but you can also hear how Marvin Gaye influenced him. It feels reductive to call Voodoo a neo-soul classic because there are elements of vaudeville jazz, Memphis horns, ragtime blues, funk and bass grooves, and hip-hop that slip out of every pore. D’Angelo is one of the best to combine the swagger of a hip-hop artist with the suave persona of an R&B singer, yet he elevates it.
Highlights: Devil’s Pie, The Line, Chicken Grease, One Mo’Gin, The Root, Spanish Joint, Greatdayindamornin’/Booty, Untitled (How Does It Feel), Africa
Kevin’s #39: Tunnel of Love - Bruce Springsteen (1987)
My Take:
Regarding The Boss, I’ve mainly stuck to his six-album stretch from The Wild, the Innocent, and the E-Street Shuffle to Born in the U.S.A. I had casually listened to Tunnel of Love and was initially put off by its totally ‘80s production, but I’m so happy I gave this another chance. It’s full of unromantic tales about love which are strikingly similar to his socially conscious work about broken promises and dreams in America. We’re brought up on romantic dreams and then they’re stifled by internal demons: Men and women flirt, have sex, fall in love, get married, get bored, have sex with other people, and eventually wind up stuck in the middle of that dark night from the second disc of The River.
My #38: Disintegration - The Cure (1989)
I remember hearing Disintegration for the first time in high school on the Marie Antoinette soundtrack and immediately fell in love with how haunting and hypnotic it is. I threw on some headphones and was blown away by how big everything sounded, like an audible bomb detonating.
“Plainsong” is a swaying and slow narrative that paralyzes with sex-poison and “Pictures of You” is breathtaking and shimmering—and these may be the most brooding and devastating opening two songs ever put to an album. The complicated mix of feelings they conjure is indescribable, and that’s before you get to the pulsating and ominous “Fascination Street” and the eerie, string-laced “Lullaby.” Disintegration is challenging and claustrophobic, often poignant and often tedious, but it creates and sustains a mood of thoroughly self-absorbed gloom that is darkly seductive.
On this project, the Cure mastered the art of the tragic bass line, the hesitant and melancholy guitar lick, and the funeral keyboard coloration. It’s been 35 years since Disintegration dropped, and it sounds more majestic than ever, especially after the ‘80s retro synth revival going on in the indie scene.
Highlights: Plainsong, Pictures of You, Closedown Lovesong, Lullaby, Fascination Street, Disintegration, Untitled
Kevin’s #38: The Chronic - Dr. Dre (1992)
My Take:
I have nothing unique to say: This shit bangs. “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang” is one of the greatest hip-hop songs ever recorded, but the deep cuts here are also immaculate, like “Let Me Ride,” “Deeez Nuuuts,” “Lil’ Ghetto Boy,” “Lyrical Gangbang,” and “The Roach.” The Chronic launched the careers of four different legends in hip-hop and gave rise to an entire subgenre known as G-Funk. On a side note, if I had nuts hanging on the wall, would those be walnuts?
My #37: Maggot Brain - Funkadelic (1971)
Maggot Brain might have the most “metal” cover for a funk album, and I knew I’d love it based purely on that. This is Funkadelic’s most incendiary freak-out, an explosive record that’s bursting at the seams with a larger-than-life approach to psychedelic funk. They capture the odor of 1970s America, the stench of death and corruption, the weary exhalation of a nation at its lowest. George Clinton is no stranger to Afrocentrism, sci-fi, political satire, absurdism, and total irreverence toward social norms.
The two bookending tracks are the most unhinged and evocative expressions of birth and annihilation ever recorded. “You and Your Folks” is also a great song to play while pulling up to a parking lot. This album introduced me to the guitar work of Eddie Hazel, and my musical world was instantly brighter and more inspired. Maggot Brain more or less marked the birth, or at least perfection, of P-Funk, which also has connections to the origins of hip-hop through its groove instrumental palette and sample material. Maggot Brain is so heavy and heady, it’s incredible how much is packed into a 36 minutes.
Highlights: Maggot Brain, Hit It and Quit It, You and Your Folks, Super Stupid, Wars of Armageddon
Kevin’s #37: Unknown Pleasures - Joy Division (1979)
My Take:
FEELING! FEELING! FEELING! I could listen to the bassline of “Disorder” all day. It perfectly illustrates how limitless music’s expressive power is. Nothing sounds quite in tune, each part is just wrong on its own, but when it’s all put together, it manages to be a total fucking jam that perfectly conveys the otherness that Ian Curtis feels. Every song is maniacally arresting. Unknown Pleasures is visceral, emotional, theatrical, perfect—and Curtis’s passionate gravity makes the clumsy, disquieting music so distinctive and disturbing. This is and always will be the definitive post-punk album. It’s ice cold, pitch black, and thrilling from start to finish.
My #36: Dummy - Portishead (1994)
A straight-up Biblical album—ask your local preacher to play “Wandering Star” for Sunday Service. Dummy is to trip-hop what Loveless is to shoegaze. It captures a spooky, mysterious, rock and hip-jazzy style that is truly one of a kind. Its languid slowbeat blues is like a musique noire for a movie not yet made, a world of sonic esoterica, a haunting, creamy mix of desolation and desperation that is also warmly, and oddly, confiding. This is some gloomy weather shit; nothing hits like those cold beats when it’s pouring rain or dumping snow. Beth Gibbons brackets in urban angst and then chills it to the bone. But it also contains some avant-garde ambient moonscapes and some left-field introspection, like I’m walking down a dark alleyway at night, alone with my inner thoughts. Many have tried to reproduce Portishead’s disquieting magnificence, but no one can quite nail their pinpoint-precise production of dance, pop, soul, and hip-hop.
Highlights: Sour Times, Strangers, Roads, Pedestal, Biscuit, Glory Box
Kevin’s #36: What's Going On - Marvin Gaye (1971)
My Take:
I know I’m doing a spoiler for a future pick of mine, but this is WAY too low. In fact, I view this as an act of war. With every future pick of Kevin’s, when you read my take on it, there will be an implied preface of, You put THIS over What’s Going On??
My #35: When the Pawn… - Fiona Apple (1999)
“You fondle my trigger then you blame my gun.” When the Pawn… is an emotional rollercoaster that will take you from Fiona Apple’s total indifference to a relationship to an infatuation that she likens to literal starvation. This angst is pulled off with an amplified musical backbone of pounding drums, sour string instruments, and the moody/bassy piano notes that hit with a heavy punch.
When the Pawn… takes the youthful melodrama of her debut and brings her versatility and intense emotional focus to new heights. Fiona’s sultry voice has an impressive range and her songwriting contains a bottled-up energy that makes her sound like she wants to viscerally love instead of singing about love. The way “I’ll Know” builds into that final moment where she croons “It’s okay, don’t need to say it” and she lines the rhyme up perfectly to say “I’ll know” one last time before the music cuts out just leaves you in devastating silence because she can’t bear to lie to herself. When the Pawn… may not contain any obvious hits or earworms like “Criminal,” but the quality on this record is consistent. Fiona’s somber ruminations on shattered relationships and romantic obsessions create a compelling and complete portrait of her as an artist.
Highlights: On the Bound, To Your Love, Limp, Love Ridden, Paper Bag, Fast as You Can, The Way Things Are, Get Gone, I Know
Kevin’s #35: Wild Planet - The B52s (1980)
My Take:
These tunes are fast, punchy, and tight. I dig the mix of girl group, garage band, surf, and television theme song influences, all propelled through these itchy dance beats. Highlights are “Devil in My Car” and “Give Me Back My Man.”
My #34: Is This It - The Strokes (2001)
If this was a strictly personal preference list, I’d lean Room on Fire, but Is This It—along with Turn on the Bright Lights and Fever to Tell—are the staples of the whole NYC rock revival in the early 2000s. If this album hadn’t happened, many great indie rock bands and music wouldn’t have had the same impact or mainstream success.
It’s hard to understand if you weren’t of age with Is This It dropped, but mainstream rock was pretty terminal with bands like Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park dominating the airwaves. The Strokes felt like someone stuck a hot dagger in your belly. I first heard “Someday” in middle school and was immediately hooked. The music has this swagger that very few bands even attempt to have and even fewer can pull off. There is some complex musical compositions here—especially with the duelling guitars—but it sounds effortless in a way that I haven’t seen in any other band except maybe the Beatles. And the Strokes were the last group that felt like a band in the old-school way: How many bands these days can you actually name more than one member? Is This It is an all-time great: The energy and sheer vitality just can’t be contained.
Highlights: The Modern Age; Barely Legal; Someday; Alone, Together; Last Nite; New York City Cops; Take It or Leave It
Kevin’s #34: Ella Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook - Ella Fitzgerald (1957)
My Take:
Ella Fitzgerald’s songbook albums are all incredible. As if Ella and Duke Ellington aren’t enough, there’s also Dizzy Gillespie and Oscar Peterson in the mix. Duke’s sprightly, lush textures perfectly complement Ella’s warm-timbred voice and elegant, precise delivery. The whole album is essential, but at the very least, you should check out “Rockin' in Rhythm,” “Caravan,” “Satin Doll,” “Sophisticated Lady,” “Prelude to a Kiss,” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing...”
My #33: Highway 61 Revisited - Bob Dylan (1965)
I wasn’t around in the ‘60s, but I could understand why some fans were put off by Bob Dylan pivoting from the socially aware and politically charged acoustic ballads on a record like The Times They are a-Changin’ to the electric instrumentation on Highway 61 Revisited. But this was a move that ultimately needed to happen—not just for Dylan’s career, but for modern music, as this LP was a major player in solidifying folk rock as an art form. Before Highway 61 Revisited, rock and folk music were being channeled into psychedelic and pop (i.e., The Byrds’s cover of Dylan’s “Mr. Tamborine Man”).
Dylan took the contemporary sounds of rock music and studio production and combined them with the old organic sounds of American folk music. There are ambient sonics surrounding the loud and chaotic drums, the guitars are noisy and strung out, the harmonicas are bright and shrill, the bass is clunky, the organs are vibrant, the acoustic guitars are strummed very fervently, and Dylan’s trademark croon is cawing and derisive. This is an incredibly raw and blemished recording for its time. Highway 61 Revisited is the first album to listen to after you have been nearly destroyed.
Highlights: Like a Rolling Stone, Tombstone Blues, From a Buick 6, Ballad of a Thin Man, Highway 61 Revisited, Desolation Row
Kevin’s #33: Painful - Yo La Tengo (1993)
My Take:
I have been patiently waiting for the inevitable Yo La Tengo section of Kevin’s list, and this pick did not disappoint. There will never be a better night driving record, but just make sure you’re well-caffeinated. “Big Day Coming” might be the most quintessential Yo La Tengo song. “I Heard You Looking” is also amazing. Any fan of indie rock should absolutely check this out.
(EDIT: I was reminded in the comments that “Autumn Sweater” is on I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One and regretted confusing the two tracklists.)
My #32: The Velvet Rope - Janet Jackson (1997)
Janet Jackson is one of the most trailblazing, influential, and versatile pop stars of all time. It’s sad that she is underappreciated and that that infamous Super Bowl incident has tainted her legacy. The Velvet Rope is a multi-genre opus that teased out where R&B would go in the following decades. The Velvet Rope is full of some of the sweetest, saddest, catchiest, and most expressive pop and R&B songs of the ‘90s, and the tunes transform themselves as they go, leaping from sharp cross-rhythms to lush choruses. She combines a pure pop sensibility with ambition, vulnerability, freakishness, delicious grooves, and shimmering sensuality.
As Janet puts on a show of erotica, cybersex, queer positivity, and mild bondage, her provocative gestures blend into the album’s grander theme of encouraging open-minded and free-spirited relationships of all kinds. The Velvet Rope is a sexy motherfucker, and as it explores the social, emotional, and sexual politics of relationships, these abstract electro tones come and go with sharp attacks and sharper decay, appearing out of and vanishing into blank spaces. Wistful and spirited pop melodies are peppered with sinuous R&B rhythms and compelling jazz, trip-hop, folk, and techno nuances. The Velvet Rope is one of the most compelling and avant-garde albums of its time, and without Janet Jackson, we wouldn’t get TLC’s Fan Mail, Britney Spears’s In The Zone, Christina Aguilera’s Stripped, Solange’s A Seat at the Table, Blood Orange’s Freetown Sound, Kelela’s Take Me Apart, Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer—I could go on…
Highlights: Velvet Rope, Got ‘til It’s Gone, Go Deep, Free Xone, Together Again, Empty, What About, Every Time, Tonight’s the Night, I Get Lonely, Rope Burn
Kevin’s #32: Slow Turning - John Hiatt (1988)
My Take:
I had never heard of John Hiatt, so I gave this a spin. Slow Turning is a cool heartland rock album. The guitar work here is great and there’s a nice blend of bluegrass, honky-tonk, acoustic, folk, country, and blues.
My #31: Heaven or Las Vegas - The Cocteau Twins (1990)
Heaven or Las Vegas straight-up ruined dream pop for me. With the exception of prime Beach House, the rest of the genre feels like a pale imitation of what the Cocteau Twins accomplished on this album. It feels disrespectful to listen to Heaven or Las Vegas while I’m awake, but it sucks having to wait 37 minutes and 50 seconds every time before I’m able to drift to sleep. It is spectacular. It is enigmatic. It is blissed-out. It is hypno-rhythmic. It is simply magnificent and brilliant. There are no misses on this tracklist, and it has a perfect balance of absolute bangers and ballads. “Cherry Coloured Funk” sent me to another planet when I first heard it. I have no idea what Elizabeth Fraser is saying on this record, but I always try and sing along anyway. “Singin on a feeboo streeeeeeeee / I wanna love a gomba gom gom beeeee” … this MFer’s spittin’. The influence Heaven or Las Vegas on the indie synth/dance-pop of the late-2000s to early-2010s cannot be overstated.
Highlights: Cherry-coloured Funk, Iceblink Luck, Fifty-fifty Clown, Heaven or Las Vegas, I Wear Your Ring, Frou-frou Foxes in Midsummer Fires
Kevin’s #31: Repeater - Fugazi (1990)
My Take:
I don’t think anyone nowadays can appreciate how universally loved and respected Fugazi was. In any punk rock or hardcore-related show I ever went to growing up, people were wearing something with Fugazi on it, selling their records (when did people stop selling random records at shows, btw?), or were talking about them. The Argument is my favorite Fugazi record, but Repeater and 13 Songs are punk rock classics for a reason and are worth the listen.
Kevin and I also created a Spotify playlist of one song from each of our album picks. Check it out!
Our 50-41:
Our 30-21:
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"With every future pick of Sam’s, when you read my take on it, there will be an implied preface of, You put THIS over Disintegration??" lol. :)
I'm a huge P Funk head and I think Maggot Brain is a fine choice out of their catalog. 99% sure that "Rill, Rill" by Sleigh Bells samples "Can You Get To That?" I excitedly called in to my local college station to point this out once and that whippersnapper in the booth had no idea what I was talking about. I'm not sure if the "Sir this is a Wendys" meme was around in 2010 but that's about the response I got.