COUNTDOWN: Top 50 Music Albums Of All-Time.

Reberetta

Welcome to the COUNTDOWN OF THE TOP 50 MUSIC ALBUMS OF ALL-TIME! according to these 51 random members who've likely forgotten what they nominated learned authorities and studied critics of the history of musicology.


Plentyohtoole
speckle
Bonniesituation
Arghus
urbansprawl
BaronVon
thebronze14
JP Liz V1
NewbridgeIR
Johngreenfan
the purple tin
bigtimecharlie
greenspurs
bubblypop
Rothko
Declan A Walsh
Irish Aris
paddythere
Sheridan81
Rikand
The Crazy Cat Lady
FHFM50
y0ssar1an22
Necro
The Floyd p
Electric Nitwit
PressRun
Pretzill
corm500
Spook_ie
lassykk
mr_fegelien
Homer J. Fong
ShaneU
Hello 2D Person Below
Also Starring LeVar Burton
Hesh's Umpire
Zaph
Strawberry Milkshake
Reberetta
Sawduck
Kolido
NapoleonInRags
AndrewJRenko
adrian522
gammygils
Bobby Malone
BPKS
quickbeam
splashthecash
IAMAMORON


Scoring system.

5 Points per nomination and for numbered lists:

1. 10 points
2. 9
3. 8
4. 7
5. 6
6. 5
7. 4
8. 3
9. 2
10. 1 point

Tiebreakers if albums are on the same number of points:

A) Most nominations.
Higher average of placings.

There were some other tweaks to scoring as some sent me unnumbered lists, long lists etc. but it's not greatly important, it's just a bit of education and fun and you'll get the general idea.

If your album does not make the list, do not fear, for a full list of albums nominated will be revealed at the end, so everyone will have plenty of recommendations.

Coming soon so subscribe and stay tuned, and feel free to comment along with the countdown!

Electric Nitwit

No idea what I submitted, but I remember agonising about whether to play it as sheep or peehs

Declan A Walsh

Will we be scored based on the relative success of our nominations? Or is that for ourselves to do?

JP Liz V1

I barely remember my submissions

Reberetta

Declan A Walsh wrote: »

Will we be scored based on the relative success of our nominations? Or is that for ourselves to do?

Yourselves.:P

Kick off Saturday afternoon. It might be staggered over two days into Sunday.

Looking forward to this, and to seeing none of my choices picked by anybody else!

BonnieSituation

Deleted User wrote: »

Looking forward to this, and to seeing none of my choices picked by anybody else!

I feel this as well re mine.

I just fear a certain over-rated band will sweep all before.

greenspurs

Reberetta wrote: »

Yourselves.:P

Kick off Saturday afternoon. It might be staggered over two days into Sunday.

Oh …

Arghus

BonnieSituation wrote: »

I feel this as well re mine.

I just fear a certain over-rated band will sweep all before.

I've accepted that I'm going to be disgusted by much of the top 50. But I look forward to it none the less.

Declan A Walsh

It will be interesting to see the following:
- multiple entries by which artistes
- the decades represented
- the genres of music represented

Reberetta

Kicking off sometime after 1pm today, Saturday.

I spent some hours browsing interesting info about a lot of these albums so there will be plenty of reading material for the more intellectually inclined nerds out there!

Some of the chart peaks, specifically Irish ones, were difficult to find so there might be some inaccuracies.

Should be able to breeze through this countdown in one day as all the hard work is done!

Most of my top 10 are fairly predictable and will be found in multiple listings on the inter web such as Rolling Stones top 500 etc Looking forward to putting a few new albums on my Spotify playlists so here’s hoping others aren’t as predictable as I was

Also Starring LeVar Burton

Looking back at what I submitted and I reckon only one (maybe two at a push) of my choices will make the Top 50 - went for albums that have personally played a massive part in my life rather than albums that are universally considered the greatest ones of all time.

Necro

Also Starring LeVar Burton wrote:

Looking back at what I submitted and I reckon only one (maybe two at a push) of my choices will make the Top 50 - went for albums that have personally played a massive part in my life rather than albums that are universally considered the greatest ones of all time.

Wonder if any of mine will :pac:

Declan A Walsh

Also Starring LeVar Burton wrote: »

Looking back at what I submitted and I reckon only one (maybe two at a push) of my choices will make the Top 50 - went for albums that have personally played a massive part in my life rather than albums that are universally considered the greatest ones of all time.

I think most of us, if not all of us, nominated the albums that meant most to ourselves!

Looking at my Top 10, I would say one is a definite to feature. Then, there is another that will probably feature, and a third that is a possibility. I will be pleasantly surprised if any of the other seven feature!

Electric Nitwit

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Looking forward to putting a few new albums on my Spotify playlists so here’s hoping others aren’t as predictable as I was

That's my hope too

Honestly no idea what I submitted. I remember debating the split between personal choices and ones likely to be in the running but can't remember which side I landed on. I can only think of one that ticks both of those boxes

@Reb - if you don't think it's a spoiler, would a single nomination in first place have been enough to make the overall top 50?

Sheridan81

Choosing ten for me was easy. And just as long as Dire Straits don't win, it'll be grand.

Reberetta

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, it's finally time for the countdown!

Electric Nitwit

Reberetta

50th 20 Pts

Queens Of The Stone Age
Songs For The Deaf (2002)

Chart Peak Ireland /UK/ USA: 32/4/17
Singles:  "No One Knows", "Go with the Flow",  "First It Giveth"
Nominated by theBronze14, Urbansprawl

Nick Oliveri was the one who pushed for making this album a loose concept album. Joshua Homme was against it, as he thought it got in the way of the songs, but Nick thought it was a great idea. In the end, Joshua finally agreed to the concept, and Songs For The Deaf became QOTSA's only "concept album", even though it's extremely loose. This album featured the swan songs of original QOTSA members Gene Trautmann (who drummed the drums) and Brendon McNichol (who lap steeled the lap steel), as they left after they recorded parts for this album.

The album takes the listener on a psyched out road trip across the Southern California desert from Chino Hills to Joshua Tree - hometown of front man Josh Homme. Along the way, the album is interspersed with fictional Californian radio stations that the listener manages to pick up along the route. From Kip Kasper’s K.L.O.N.E. Radio, a fictitious, tongue in-cheek jab at LA’s tiresome, repetitive pop music stations of the noughties, all the way through to the eerie W.O.M.B. fronted by a nameless female DJ.

The album’s opening track You Think I Ain’t Worth A Dollar, But I Feel Like A Millionaire starts the journey off with a punishing, ear ringing meld of thick bass and distorted, yet melodic guitar riffs that are used to awaken the “Deaf” listeners whom have been hypnotised by the generic, repetitive pop music they’ve been subjected to, until now. Nick Olivieri’s lyrics, also a stab at the sanitised, nonsensical drivel spouted by the manufactured pop princesses and boy bands that saturated the airwaves at the time. Two minutes and 37 seconds in, the track goes silent, and you’re lead to believe the sadistically pleasing assault on your senses is over, just as you’re about to take a breath, the punishing beat kicks back in for one last bridge before seamlessly marching in to the album’s lead single, No One Knows.

Although music can never be considered perfect, it’s ever evolving and too diverse to ever achieve such an acclaim, yet No One Knows comes close to it. Written by Josh Homme and Mark Lanegan, the song proves you can use melodies and pop sensibilities; still manage to sound unique and create a song of commendable calibre. The track aided by drumming from the infamous Dave Grohl, and a bass riff that cattle-brands itself into your brain. The track manages the envious feat of still sounding fresh nearly 15 years after its release, a theme that runs through the entire LP.

The album doesn’t subscribe to any pre-established genre, each track taking on a different theme or style, mimicking the album’s concept of a tripped out wanderer scanning through the varied stations on his/her FM dial. We’re taken from the (somewhat) radio friendly No One Knows to the Desert Rock chant-a-long First It Giveth, a throwback to Homme’s earlier endeavours in Kyuss, this being a more polished piece of work than those Stoner Rock days.  This is followed by what is probably the album’s stand out track, Song For The Dead. It slowly creeps in, then there’s an abrupt hissing of a hi-hat followed by a dulled, fast paced guitar riff, all of which is then overshadowed by the most beautifully intricate drumming, again provided by Grohl. Singing duties are taken-up by the raspy vocal tones of former Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan. As the title suggests, this song is a powerhouse, of levels that would be appropriate to raise the departed from their eternal slumber.

The adventure continues into The Sky Is Fallin’ a wistful, flowing track, carried along by a harmonic chant from Homme. Often overlooked; most likely due to it being sandwiched in the middle of an album filled with work of such a high calibre.  Six Shooter is a short, explosive track, penned and performed solely by Olivieri. Profanity filled, with an excitement for violence (it pretty much summarises why Olivieri, would later be sacked from the band). This track alone awarded the album its parental advisory sticker.

Hanging Tree the second track taken and reworked from Homme & Co’s ‘Desert Sessions’, uses Lanegan’s rough and raw vocal delivery to portray the brutality that is aptly described in the track’s title.  The trippy journey through the Californian desert continues with Go With The Flow, arguably one of the decades greatest hard rock songs, that even non-fans can’t help but subscribe to for its high energy and accessibility. The album’s closer, Mosquito Song aptly juxtaposes the LPs opener. A medieval ballad, it begins on a whimsical note and climaxes in an epic sound of crescendoing drums and horns.

Josh Tyrangiel of Entertainment Weekly called it "the year's best hard-rock album", giving it an A. Splendid said "the bottom line is that QOTSA turns in another genre-demolishing, hard-as-titanium album in Songs for the Deaf. This is not your father's metal. It's better." Mojo listed the album as the year's third best. Kludge ranked it at number six on their list of best albums of 2002. Music critic Steven Hyden called the album the greatest hard-rock record of the 21st century.

In October 2001, while the album was being recorded, Dave Grohl stated that Songs for the Deaf was his favorite album that he had ever played drums on.
A few other guests were Billy Gibbons (of ZZ Top fame, and who would later guest on Lullabies To Paralyze and Era Vulgaris), Jeordie White (of Marilyn Manson fame, but only as a radio DJ), Dean Ween (of Ween fame), Paz Lenchantin (of A Perfect Circle and Zwan fame), and many people with guest spots on previous (and future) albums, such as Dave Catching and Chris Goss.

Songs for the Deaf received critical acclaim, and earned the band their first gold certification in the United States. Over one million copies were sold in Europe, earning a platinum certification from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry in 2008. The album received two Best Hard Rock Performance Grammy nominations for singles "No One Knows" (2002),[49] and "Go with the Flow" (2003).

Electric Nitwit

That is a very, very decent start

Reberetta

49th 20 pts

The Pixies
Surfer Rosa (1988)
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMxy067kbpQhJkOZtEDdjn97sir7HmzkQ
Chart Peak Ireland /UK/ USA: 43/?/?
Singles: Gigantic
Nominated by Urbansprawl, Bobby Malone

Both Surfer Rosa and Steve Albini's production of the album have been influential on alternative rock, and on grunge in particular. Nirvana's Kurt Cobain cited Surfer Rosa as the basis for Nevermind's songwriting. When he first heard the album, Cobain discovered a template for the mix of heavy noise and pop he was aiming to achieve. Cobain hired Albini to produce Nirvana's 1993 album In Utero, primarily due to his contribution to Surfer Rosa. The Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan described Surfer Rosa as "the one that made me go, 'holy ****'. It was so fresh. It rocked without being lame." Corgan was impressed by the album's drum sound, and acknowledged that The Smashing Pumpkins used to study the record for its technical elements.Musician PJ Harvey said that Surfer Rosa "blew my mind," and that she "immediately went to track down Steve Albini."  

Francis and Santiago were ripping up the rule book, messing with song structures and pairing chords and riffs that sat uneasily, Santiago’s anti-solo stance at the heart of many of the album’s most memorable moments. Witness the thrilling sense of discord in the riff and churning unison bends on Where Is My Mind? That song’s solo, too, is unusual, Santiago playing notes from the B minor pentatonic scale over major chords.

“The music is unconventional,” Francis told Guitar.com. “There’s a lot of half-steps, a lot of chords that don’t theoretically go with the key, but it seems to work.”

The end product is a set of songs that buzz with a frightening feral energy. After Santiago’s angular riff on opening track Bone Machine, Francis howling “I’m the horny loser/ you’ll find me crashing through my mother’s door” on Break My Body and the breathless charge of Something Against You and Broken Face, it’s something of a respite when the sweet melodicism of Gigantic arrives five tracks in, yet somehow only eight and a half minutes into Surfer Rosa.

The pace and thematic content remain frenetically intense throughout the remaining eight songs, on Cactus Francis disturbingly imploring his lover to “Bloody your hands on a cactus tree / Wipe it on your dress and send it to me”. Santiago’s one-note riffing burrows all the way through Oh My Golly! and Vamos is littered with squalls of feedback, pick scrapes and savage fretting.

The Gigantic Legacy Of Surfer Rosa

The Complicated Role Of Puerto Rico in Pixies Surfer Rosa

The genius of Surfer Rosa.

Reberetta

48th 21 Pts

Bruce Springsteen
Nebraska (1982)
Playlist
Chart Peak Ireland /UK/ USA:  78/3/3
Singles: Open All Night, Atlantic City
Nominated by the purple tin, quickbeam

E Street Band guitarist Steve Van Zant recalled to Rolling Stone magazine that Springsteen started cutting the tracks that made up Nebraska as demos for the band. However he saw potential in them and persuaded Springsteen to record them for an album:

"I remember him playing them for me one day and said 'Here's my new songs. We'll start rehearsing them as a band soon.' And I listened to this thing and I thought to myself, 'I gotta say there's something extraordinary about this.' There was no intention of it being a record and no intention of it being released, but there was something just extraordinarily intimate about it. And I thought 'What a wonderful moment has been captured here just accidentally.' And I said to him, 'Listen, I know this is a bit strange but I honestly think this is an album unto itself and I think you should release it.' And he was like 'What do you mean? It's just demos for the band.' And I'm like 'I know you didn't intended for this to be recorded but I just know greatness when I hear it, okay? It's my thing, it's why I'm a record producer and that's why I'm your friend and I'm just telling you I think your fans will just love this and I think it's actually an important piece of work. Because it captures this amazingly strange, weirdly cinematic kind of dreamlike mood. I don't know what it is. All I know is I know greatness when I hear it and this is it, okay? And this deserves to be heard I think people will love it and I think it's a unique opportunity to actually release something absurdly intimate.'"

Springsteen stated that the stories in this album were partly inspired by historian Howard Zinn's book A People's History of the United States.

In the Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics poll, Nebraska was voted the third best album of 1982. 

In 1989, it was ranked 43rd on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 100 greatest albums of the 1980s.

That same year, Richard Williams wrote in Q magazine that "Nebraska would simply have been a vastly better record with the benefit of the E Street Band and a few months in the studio."

In 2003, Nebraska was ranked number 224 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, and 226 in a 2012 revised list. Pitchfork listed it as the 60th greatest album of the 1980s. 

In 2006, Q placed the album at number 13 in its list of "40 Best Albums of the '80s". 

In 2012, Slant Magazine listed the album at number 57 on its list of "Best Albums of the 1980s". 

The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

Bruce Springsteen on Nebraska and when the demo is the album.

Sheridan81

Surfer Rosa is crazy fun.

I'm liking what i see already- this is gonna be a mega thread

Reberetta

47th 22 pts

Bruce Springsteen
Born To Run (1975)

Chart Peak Ireland /UK/ USA: 20/17/3
Singles: "Born to Run" and "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out"
Nominated by andrewjrenko, Necro

The album is noted for its use of introductions to set the tone of each song (all of the record was composed on piano, not guitar), and for the Phil Spector-like "Wall of Sound" arrangements and production. Springsteen has said that he wanted Born to Run to sound like "Roy Orbison singing Bob Dylan, produced by Spector."

Born to Run was voted the third best album of 1975 in the Pazz & Jop, an annual critics poll run by The Village Voice. Christgau, the poll's creator, ranked it 12th on his own year-end list. He later wrote that its major flaw was its pompous declaration of greatness, typified by elements such as the "wall-of-sound, white-soul-at-the-opera-house" aesthetic and an "unresolved quest narrative". Nonetheless, he maintained the record was important for how "its class-conscious songcraft provided a relief from the emptier pretensions of late-hippie arena-rock." On the other hand, AllMusic's William Ruhlmann contended that although "some thought it took itself too seriously, many found that exalting."

According to Acclaimed Music, it is the 17th most celebrated album in popular music history. In 1987, it was ranked No. 8 by Rolling Stone in its "100 Best Albums of the Last Twenty Years" and in 2003, the magazine ranked it 18th on its list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, maintaining the rating in a 2012 revised list.

In 2001, the TV network VH1 named it the 27th-greatest album of all time,and in 2003, it was ranked as the most popular album in the first Zagat Survey Music Guide.

The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

It was voted number 20 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000).

Born to Run was also listed in the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry of historic recordings.

Track by track guide.

Born To Run and the decline of the American Dream.

Music that wouldn't exist without Born To Run.

Tom Hanks, Jimmy Fallon, David Chase and others on Born To Run

Reberetta

Deleted User wrote: »

I'm liking what i see already- this is gonna be a mega thread

Yes, I've got a lot of time on my hands.:D

Arghus

Nebraska: the only Springsteen album I like.

Surfer Rosa, solid.

Songs for The Deaf, yeah, can't argue with that.

BobbyMalone

Some great choices, and already making me think I should've had a different list

Sheridan81

I like what I'm seeing but less Bruce Springsteen please.

Necro

Can't remember what I nominated and don't have the PM anymore but I *think* that was the only Springsteen album I nominated

Reberetta

46th 22 Pts

Blur Parklife (1994)

Chart Peak Ireland/UK/USA/1/?
Singles: "Girls & Boys", "End of a Century", "Parklife" and "To the End"
Nominated by Rikand, speckle, Y0ssar1an22

Blur frontman Damon Albarn told NME in 1994, "For me, Parklife is like a loosely linked concept album involving all these different stories. It's the travels of the mystical lager-eater, seeing what's going on in the world and commenting on it." Albarn cited the Martin Amis novel London Fields as a major influence on the album. Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher was once quoted saying that Parklife was, "Like Southern England personified".

The songs themselves span many genres, such as the synthpop-influenced hit single "Girls & Boys", the instrumental waltz interlude of "The Debt Collector", the punk rock-influenced "Bank Holiday", the spacey, Syd Barrett-esque "Far Out", and the fairly new wave-influenced "Trouble in the Message Centre".

Journalist John Harris commented that while many of the album's songs "reflected Albarn's claims to a bittersweet take on the UK's human patchwork", he stated that several songs, including "To the End" (featuring Lætitia Sadier of Stereolab) and "Badhead" "lay in a much more personal space".

The full story of Parklife as told by those who were there.

Electric Nitwit

20pts for Songs For The Deaf, so the Bronze 14 and Urbansprawl both gave it first place

20pts for Surfer Rosa, so Urbansprawl and Bobby Malone both gave it first place

So Urbansprawl gave first place to Songs For The Deaf and Surfer Rosa?!

No wonder Trump doesn't trust mail in votes

Sheridan81

Parklife!

Reberetta

Electric Nitwit wrote: »

20pts for Songs For The Deaf, so the Bronze 14 and Urbansprawl both gave it first place

20pts for Surfer Rosa, so Urbansprawl and Bobby Malone both gave it first place

So Urbansprawl gave first place to Songs For The Deaf and Surfer Rosa?!

No wonder Trump doesn't trust mail in votes

Not quite, read OP again. Let's not get bogged down in points, but appreciate the music. Besides, if I were going to fix it, Queens Of The Stone Age would be nowhere near the list.:P

Electric Nitwit

Reberetta wrote: »

Not quite, read OP again. Let's not get bogged down in points, but appreciate the music. Besides, if I were going to fix it, Queens Of The Stone Age would be nowhere near the list.:P

Wait, we can have fun without rules? :pac:

I was baffled when I saw my name in the OP list. Haven't a clue what I nominated aside from two of them and, like Necro, I no longer have the PM haha.

Reberetta

45th 23 pts

Prince
Sign O The Times (1987)
Playlist
Chart Peak Ireland /UK/ USA:10/4/6
Singles: "Sign o' the Times", "If I Was Your Girlfriend", "U Got the Look""I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man"
Nominated by newbridgeIR, Strawberry Milkshake

Sign o' the Times has been regarded by critics as Prince's best album.According to journalist Kristen Pyszczyk, "critics tend to be pretty evenly divided over Prince’s best album: about half will go for Purple Rain, and the rest usually vouch for Sign o' the Times, a double album sometimes regarded as Prince's magnum opus."

In a retrospective review, John McKie of BBC News cited it as "one of the most acclaimed albums of the second half of the 20th century" and a "masterpiece - encompassing all of [Prince's] musical personas: bedroom balladeer; penitent Christian; one-track-mind loverman; modern-day Basie-style bandleader; whimsical storyteller; meticulous orchestrator, guitar-wielding axeman and pop craftsman."

Simon Price deemed it Prince's best album,as did Michaelangelo Matos, who wrote in The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004) that it was "the most complete example of his artistry's breadth, and arguably the finest album of the 1980s".Matos also believed it was "the last classic R&B album prior to hip hop's takeover of black music and the final four-sided blockbuster of the vinyl era".

Writing in The Brooklyn Rail, Grimstad said that Sign o' the Times is "to be included with other double sets that actually cohere (The White Album, The Basement Tapes, Something/Anything). Proves there is no limit to what [Prince] can do." In a BBC Music review, Daryl Easla also compared the record to the Beatles' The White Album, saying "Although Sign ‘O’ The Times didn’t rival his commercial sales peak of Purple Rain, it is his [The] White Album".

For Susan Rogers, Prince’s sound engineer from 1983 to 1987, Sign O’ the Times was an intentional departure for the artist. “Purple Rain was the work of a brilliant young man,” she tells BBC Culture. “Boys are cocky. Sign O’ the Times was an album made by a grown man. The charts had moved on and hip-hop was taking over. There was a world outside his door; there was restlessness; there was curiosity; there was the Aids epidemic.”

According to Acclaimed Music, it is the 29th most celebrated album in popular music history, and the best album of 1987.

Is Sign O The Times the greatest album of all-time?

Sheridan81

Reberetta wrote: »

Is Sign O The Times the greatest album of all-time?

Not for me Clive.

Well none of mine have appeared so far, which is unusual as Boards usually hates my taste in music.

Reberetta

Deleted User wrote: »

I was baffled when I saw my name in the OP list. Haven't a clue what I nominated aside from two of them and, like Necro, I no longer have the PM haha.

I still have the PMs and can forward them on afterwards to those who have forgotten and are curious. Music preference is prone to change and ever evolving I know.

Reberetta

44th 23 pts

Tom Petty
Wildflowers (1994)
Playlist
Chart Peak Ireland /UK/ USA: ?/36/8
Singles:You Don't Know How It Feel, "You Wreck Me, It's Good to Be King" , "A Higher Place"
Nominated by thepurpletin, JP Liz V1

Wildflowers is not Tom Petty’s tightest album, nor his easiest to listen to. There’s hopelessness and anger; disappointment and regret. Its disparate modes—blues, country, folk, power-pop, torch songs—are connected by the roads, both literal and figurative, that led him to where he found himself: lonely, middle-aged, digging through his consciousness as one would ransack a room to find a small, lost object. “You were so cool back in high school,” he sings smoothly in the last song before switching to his frank, Southern speaking voice: “What happened?” He asks the question and deflates with no hint of poetry or romance, let alone an answer.

In tone and structure, Wildflowers recalls Neil Young’s 1970 album After the Gold Rush. Petty’s lyrics are simple and intuitive (“In the middle of his life/He left his wife”), spoken as plainly as possible. Yet every word comes alive, speaking multitudes. “Don’t be afraid anymore,” he sings in one song, “It’s only a broken heart.” Young once sang something similar, employing the second-person to place himself as the distanced narrator, the wiser voice offering sage advice. But did anyone buy it? You don’t write songs like these when you’re standing back trying to see the big picture: You write them when you’re in the middle of it, unraveling, talking to yourself, looking for a friend.

Reimagining Wildflowers: the haunted triumph about a troubled marriage.

Also Starring LeVar Burton

Deleted User wrote: »

Well none of mine have appeared so far, which is unusual as Boards usually hates my taste in music.

It's possible that none of yours will appear (its only the Top 50 of potentially 500-ish albums), so at the moment its still safe to assume that boards hates your taste in music...

Sheridan81

Tom Petty? The Bergkamp over Maradona brigade strikes again. That's me done with this thread

......ok, I'll stay (for now).

Arghus

Sign O The Times would have been my number 11.

Zaph

Haven't seen any of mine either, but I know for definite that there are some that haven't a chance of making the top 50. Possibly not even the top 150 tbh.

Also Starring LeVar Burton

Also Starring LeVar Burton wrote: »

It's possible that none of yours will appear (its only the Top 50 of potentially 500-ish albums), so at the moment its still safe to assume that boards hates your taste in music...

Oh sugar, I misunderstood the rules.

In that case, yes, it's safe to assume none of mine will make an appearance.

Irish Aris

I don't expect any of mine to make it in the top-50 but I will definitely follow the proceedings and make a list of things to listen.
Interesting to see Wildflowers in the list. A solid album for sure, though Full Moon Fever is probably my favourite of his.

Reberetta

43rd  23 pts

The Pixies
Doolittle (1989)
Playlist.
Chart Peak Ireland /UK/ USA: 41/8/98
Singles: "Here Comes Your Man", "Monkey Gone to Heaven"
Nominated by speckle, BPKS, NapoleonInRags

Doolittle features an eclectic mix of musical styles. While tracks such as "Tame" and "Crackity Jones" are fast and aggressive, and incorporate the band's trademark loud–quiet dynamic, other songs such as "Silver", "I Bleed", and "Here Comes Your Man" reveal a quieter, slower and more melodic temperament. With Doolittle, the band began to incorporate further instruments into their sound; for instance, "Monkey Gone to Heaven" features two violins and two cellos.

"Tame" is based on a three chord formula; including Joey Santiago's playing a "Hendrix chord" over the main bass progression. "I Bleed" is melodically simple, and is formed around a single rhythmical repetition. Some songs are influenced by other genres of music; while "Crackity Jones" has a distinctly Spanish sound, and incorporates G♯ and A triads over a C♯ pedal, the song's rhythm guitar, played by Francis, starts with an eighth-note downstroke typical of punk rock music.

The lyrical themes explored on Doolittle range from the surrealism of "Debaser", to the environmental catastrophe of "Monkey Gone to Heaven". The prostitutes of "Mr. Grieves", "Tame", and "Hey" share space with the Biblical analogies of "Dead" and "Gouge Away". Black Francis often claimed that Doolittle's lyrics were words which just "fit together nicely", and that "the point [of the album] is to experience it, to enjoy it, to be entertained by it". Francis wrote all the material for the album with the exception of "Silver", which he co-wrote with Kim Deal.

The album's opening track "Debaser" references surrealism, a theme that runs throughout the album. "Debaser" alludes to Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí's 1929 surrealist film Un Chien Andalou, and the lyric "slicing up eyeballs" refers to an early scene in the film.

Surrealism heavily influenced Francis in his college years and throughout his career with the Pixies. In 1989, Francis expressed his interest in surrealism and its influence on his songwriting method to The New York Times by stating "I got into avant-garde movies and Surrealism as an escape from reality. ... To me, Surrealism is totally artificial. I recently read an interview with the director David Lynch who said he had ideas and images but that he didn't know exactly what they meant. That's how I write."

Another of the album's main themes is environmental catastrophe. "Monkey Gone to Heaven" deals with man's destruction of the ocean and "confusion of man's place in the universe". As Francis put it:

"On one hand, it's this big organic toilet. Things get flushed and repurified or decomposed and it's this big, dark, mysterious place. It's also a very mythological place where there are octopus's gardens, the Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis, and mermaids.""Monkey Gone to Heaven" is concerned with man's relationship to the divine, a theme shared with "Mr. Grieves".

Two songs on Doolittle are fashioned after Biblical stories: the story of David and Bathsheba in "Dead", and Samson and Delilah in "Gouge Away".

Francis' fascination with Biblical themes can be traced back to his teenage years; when he was twelve, he and his parents joined an evangelical church linked to the Assemblies of God. This background was to be an influence in Doolittle, where he referred to the Devil being "six" and God being "seven" in "Monkey Gone to Heaven".

Other songs explored eccentric subjects, such as in "Wave of Mutilation", which Francis described as being about "Japanese businessmen doing murder-suicides with their families because they'd failed in business, and they're driving off a pier into the ocean."

The sea and underwater themes of "Wave of Mutilation", which also feature in "Mr. Grieves" and "Monkey Gone to Heaven", are explorations of one arena for man's death and destruction. Ben Sisario points out that the album begins ("Debaser") and ends ("Gouge Away") with songs about violence being done to eyes. "Crackity Jones" covers another offbeat subject; Francis' roommate in his student exchange trip to San Juan, Puerto Rico, who he described as a "weird psycho gay roommate".

Doolittle also references more ostensibly conventional subjects. "La La Love You", sung by the band's drummer David Lovering, is a love song—though with its "first base, second base, third base, home run" break, it's been referred to as "a dig at the very idea of a love song". Francis gave it to Lovering as a song to sing, "like a Ringo thing"; Lovering at first refused to sing, but Norton said that soon he was unable to "get him away from the microphone". As well as lead vocals on "La La Love You", Lovering played bass guitar on "Silver", with Deal playing slide guitar; this arrangement did not occur again.

Classic album: Doolittle

NME: Doolittle at 30.

Independent: Doolittle at 30.

Ten stories behind Doolittle.

BonnieSituation

Also Starring LeVar Burton wrote: »

Looking back at what I submitted and I reckon only one (maybe two at a push) of my choices will make the Top 50 - went for albums that have personally played a massive part in my life rather than albums that are universally considered the greatest ones of all time.

That was a massive consideration for me as well. That and not doubling up on bands' contributions.

Sheridan81

Doolittle..that's more like it. Fun band the Pixies.