Rolling Stone's Top 500 - Part Four
Albums 61-80, or the section where I compare Neil Young to oatmeal, but in a good way.
Previous Editions: 1-20, 21-40, 40-60
Day 30 - 2/10/2021
Paid in Full - Eric B. & Rakim (61)
I knew less than a minute in, that I was in on this album. It’s a clever, brilliant look at the creative process and such a good start to the push through this next section of the list.
Appetite for Destruction - Guns N’ Roses (62)
In my workaholic days, I used to spend almost all of the time I wasn’t at my office at a coffee shop near my house (so that I could continue working, but not be in an empty office and reminded that everyone else had people to see and I just had spreadsheets). It got to the point that I could tell you who was working based solely on the music that was playing and usually be right. One barista always played Guns N’ Roses. Always. And once, in reference to the hours I kept, this barista told me that having such a reliable pattern of behavior was the way people get assassinated. I told him that you have to be important to get assassinated so I wasn’t really that concerned about it. At the time, I wasn’t but in retrospect it’s a fairly ominous way to to be greeted. Particularly by someone with a large diet of GNR.
Aja - Steely Dan (63)
Years ago I saw Elvis Costello open for Steely Dan, which meant he played a set so much shorter than I ever would have wanted. I have held that against them until today.
Day 31 - 2/11/2021
Stankonia - Outkast (64)
One of the things I love about really good albums is the way they can create a whole world for you to live inside of, to escape into, when the one around you isn’t where you want to be. Today, it is too cold and rainy for me where I live but for an hour and thirteen minutes I wasn’t in the middle of an ice storm- I was in Atlanta in the summer, could feel the sticky heat on my skin.
Live at the Apollo, 1962 - James Brown (65)
So far, this list is doing James Brown a real disservice. I talked in the last section about how I don’t think a five hour box set should count as an “album”. It’s lazy; it’s avoiding a choice. And now, as much as I love live music, I don’t generally love live albums. There is only one more James Brown album on this list - Sex Machine comes in at #439, and it looks like it too is a live album, or… a studio album pretending to be a live album with crowd noise edited in. Joy.
A Love Supreme - John Coltrane (66)
There is something in a Coltrane saxophone line that just feels so much like coming home.
Day 32- 2/12/2021
Reasonable Doubt - Jay-Z (67)
Though it mostly made me want to listen to Tribe, Jay-Z leaning on their “Can I Kick It" as the through line to “22 Two’s” was a highlight here, as was the knowing delivery when he asks - “Shall I continue?” after that track’s first verse as if anyone would dare to say no.
Hounds of Love - Kate Bush (68)
"Jig Of Life” is so incredibly weird and I love it so much. Bush’s voice is singular and the soundscape she chooses to dance it across is an entire universe. It’d be a disorienting one to live in, but such a joy to visit.
Jagged Little Pill - Alanis Morissette (69)
I was recently talking to someone and when I mentioned how much more productive I’d probably be if I didn’t have so many song lyrics jammed in my brain they told me - “But then you wouldn’t have a brain, you’d have a hard drive and I don’t think you want that” and today, when I realized I still have every word of this album filed away in some dusty corner of my brain I realized just how right they were.
Day 33- 2/13/2021
Straight Outta Compton - N.W.A. (70)
One of the unexpected things about this project that has been a highlight for me so far is the patterns that emerge and teach me about my own listening behaviors. So far, this chunk of the list has set me up to start every day with a rap album and this is turning out to be a lot more effective than caffeine and the normal calm stuff I’d start with left to my own devices.
Day 34- 2/14/2021
Exodus - Bob Marley and the Wailers (71)
It is currently 24 degrees outside and I’m waiting for it to snow for the second time this year in a place where I’m not supposed to be subjected to this kind of cold. For a little while, this album made me forget the bitter chill.
Day 35- 2/16/2021
Harvest - Neil Young (72)
As much as I love Neil Young (which is a lot), I perpetually have to remind myself that Harvest is one album and Harvest Moon is another album and though they’re both great, they’re not the same album as much as they blur in my mind. This one was welcome today. It is 20 degrees in Austin and the snow shows no sign of melting, and while I’m lucky to still have power, I’m glad I also had this album to escape into. Where Marley’s Exodus warms you by taking you away from where you are and into the sun, Young’s Harvest warms you by bringing the warmth to meet you where you are. This album is oatmeal - by which I don’t mean it’s bland, I mean it’s one of my very favorite ways to warm the soul.
Day 36- 2/17/2021
Loveless - My Bloody Valentine (73)
I am bad at genres. Knowing them. Understanding them. Caring about them. The main exception to my genre confusion rule is shoegaze. It is one of the only genres that I can point to that has a name that makes sense. This is music to stare at your shoes to, music to use as build a wall of fuzzed out sound to hide behind so you don’t have to make eye contact, music to mumble your words through. You have to strain to hear it - you have to care a little harder.
Day 37- 2/18/2021
The College Dropout - Kanye West (74)
The entire time I was listening to this today, I couldn’t shake the image of Nina Simone singing “To Be Young, Gifted and Black”. There are reasons to be concerned about that comparison with where Kanye has let his steps led him in the years since this was released, but in the moment of this album, in the joy that it points to - of being alive despite the struggle, of being really damn good at something - it feels right.
Lady Day - Aretha Franklin (75)
I would like to propose to Rolling Stone that next time they revamp this list, they stuff the ballot box a little bit so that there’s an Aretha Franklin album ever twenty or so albums, even if they have to include some of them twice. I’m bummed that there are only two left on the list as it stands, and so many more between them.
Superfly - Curtis Mayfield (76)
The sun came out today. The snow is starting to thaw (even the snow I have in coolers in the bathtub in case the water goes..). The sun came out today. Curtis Mayfield makes it feel like maybe it’ll stay that way.
Day 38- 2/19/2021
Who’s Next - The Who (77)
If you had told me a year ago that I would spend a good part of today listening to this album while using a dust pan to shovel snow into a cooler so I could bring it into my house to melt it to fill toilet tanks I would not have believed you. But there were a lot of things that have happened that I wouldn’t have believed this time last year, so maybe that’s not saying much. This album will probably forever be the snowy dust pan album for me though.
The Sun Sessions - Elvis Presley (78)
Another day, another compilation. This was good, but hard to track down. Shout out to the random person on Spotify who made a playlist of the songs pulled from other albums since this doesn’t appear on Spotify as an album itself. Not sure if they pulled the right versions from the right sessions but the track list matched and this was still a day I found myself shoveling snow with a dustpan, it was going to be good enough.
In the last track, Elvis does that thing that they did in old songs but don’t really do anymore where instead of a bridge, the artist just sort of slow talks over the music, pausing dramatically so you know they’re serious and they’re talking just to you. And I know it’s cheesy, but again snow, shovel, dustpan, so I loved it.
Day 39- 2/20/2021
Blonde - Frank Ocean (79)
I love songs that directly call out other music in their lyrics. It feels like a fun glimpse into what is going on in the artist’s head - and a new rabbit hole to run down. The thing about those kind of songs though, is that they make it hard for me to listen to the thing they called out without hearing them running simultaneously in my mind. Which means, that yes - today I listened to Blonde but I also had Mariah the Scientist singing “Put on that Godspeed, like you’re a godsend and I’ll bask in every moment...” in her track “Beetlejuice” playing in my head at the same time.
Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols - Sex Pistols (80)
“Don’t know what I want, but I know how to get it.” Sun’s out, music’s loud. Life isn’t perfect, but the snow is melting.
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