Q 100 Best Albums (Disc. Radiohead's "OK Computer"

#31

VH1 - Stevie Wonder "Innervisions"

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1. Too High
2. Visions
3. Living For The City
4. Golden Lady
5. Higher Ground
6. Jesus Children Of America
7. All In Love Is Fair
8. Don't You Worry 'Bout A Thing
9. He's Misstra Know-It-All

Q - David Bowie "The Rise And Fall of Ziggy Stardust"

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1. Five Years
2. Soul Love
3. Moonage Daydream
4. Starman
5. It Ain't Easy
6. Lady Stardust
7. Star
8. Hang On To Yourself
9. Ziggy Stardust
10. Suffragette City
11. Rock 'N' Roll Suicide

 

For what it's worth, I agree with you about Mellon Collie. I too found the uncharacteristic songs on that album to be the best ones. And I agree, even more specifically, that Tonight, Tonight is the best song on the album.

If Mellon Collie sent you searching, Ziggy Stardust did the same for me. Luckily, I found my review on page five of this thread.

Innervisions is on my list, obviously, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

Here, unedited, are my thoughts on Ziggy from earlier in the thread.

Ah, good ol' Ziggy. The album that convinced me that Bowie was, more than just an enjoyable listen, a musical genius.

A lot of true classics on this one . . . hmm, matter of fact, they're all great, if you ask me. It's high energy, packed with emotion (emotion of all kinds . . . lust, anger, bitterness, despair, etc), a good story well told.

Two tracks specifically worth mentioning:

The album closer, a dim and depressing look at the twilight of a god. Beautiful.

The album opener:

I saw you in an ice cream parlor/Drinking milkshakes, long and cold/Smiling and waving, looking so fine/I don't think you knew you were in this song

That, my friends . . . that's not just great music, that's poetry, that's art.

A five star album, for sure.

 

Ziggy Stardust is one of those rare albums where every single track has the potential to be a huge radio hit. It usually takes me a second hearing to completely warm up to a new album, but that wasn't the case with Ziggy Stardust. I instantly fell in love with it, recognizing many of the tracks, especially Star Man, which I remembered from a while ago but couldn't remember the name. My favorite two tracks on it though have to be Moonage Daydream and Lady Stardust. I tried to learn Lady Stardust on the piano a while back, which was fun.

A truly great album.

 

#30

VH1 - Aretha Franklin "I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You"

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1. Respect
2. Drown In My Own Tears
3. I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)
4. Soul Serenade
5. Don't Let Me Lose This Dream
6. Baby, Baby, Baby
7. Dr. Feelgood (Love Is A Serious Business)
8. Good Times
9. Do Right Woman-Do Right Man
10. Save Me
11. A Change Is Gonna Come


Q - R.E.M. "Automatic For The People"

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1. Drive
2. Try Not To Breathe
3. The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite
4. Everybody Hurts
5. New Orleans Instrumental No.1
6. Sweetness Follows
7. Monty Got A Raw Deal
8. Ignoreland
9. Star Me Kitten
10. Man On The Moon
11. Nightswimming
12. Find The River

 

The Franklin album is magnificent. The songs range from blisteringly energetic (Respect, Good Times) to beautiful lyrically (Do Right Woman, Soul Serenade, Don?t Let Me Lose This Dream) to heartbreakingly evocative emotionally (A Change is Gonna Come, Save Me, Drown in My Own Tears). Not a bad song on the album, if you ask me.

Best song: Respect or A Change is Gonne Come

The REM album is also a masterpiece. Stipe is at his most perversely bizarre lyrically. Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite is one of his most bizarre songs ever. But on other songs, he?s at his most accessible. Everybody Hurts, Sweetness Follows, Star Me Kitten . . .

When he?s being emotional, it?s brilliant. Everybody Hurts, Sweetness Follows, Star Me Kitten, the bitter Ignoreland, the beautiful one-two punch of Nightswimming and Find the River (one of the finest album closers ever) . . . these songs are so evocative it hurts. You really feel this down in your gut. And that?s a nice change.

Prior to this album, REM had been a bit less emotionally deep than they should have been really, though still great.

Regardless, a masterpiece, probably their finest album.

Best song: Everybody Hurts, a beautiful meditation on hope and pain, strung over a gorgeous guitar cycle.

 

Just to back up to the Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, it's a brillant albumn. IMHO I think the Pumpkins were the best out of the whole grunge scene to come out in 1994. In fact I would rank them:

1. Smashing Pumpkins
2. Pearl Jam
3. Alice in Chains
4. Soundgarden
5. Nirvana


I don't own the Aretha Franklin album, but she's amazing. And R.E.M. I never could get into for some reason.

 

I had all these great thoughts about Automatic because it's one of the best records from my favorite bands. Then I got distracted.

But yes, the warm humanity is what pervades this album. There's so much depth, rememberance and melancholy soaked into this record that people started thinking that Michael Stipe was dead or dying. But we are treated to a great mix of painfully honest lyrics ("Everybody Hurts" and "Sweetness Follows") to the rambling rant ("Ignoreland") to a return to early REM lyrical style filled with nonsenical couplets and inside jokes ("The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite").

The music is beautifully done - I love Green and Out Of Time but they feel in a sense like auditions for Automatic. And the band delivers a delicate blend of their folk-rock, highlighted by Mike Mills' keyboards/organ and Peter Buck's guitar and mandolin playing. Also a big kudos for John Paul Jones for his string arrangements - this album wouldn't be nearly as good as it is with someone else helming that portion.

Best Song: (tie) "Everybody Hurts" and "Find The River"

I'll post the next list entries a bit later today.

 

#29

VH1 - Bob Dylan "Blood On The Tracks"

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1. Tangled Up in Blue
2. Simple Twist of Fate
3. You're a Big Girl Now
4. Idiot Wind
5. You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go
6. Meet Me in the Morning
7. Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts
8. If You See Her, Say Hello
9. Shelter from the Storm
10. Buckets of Rain

Q - Primal Scream "Screamadelica"

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1. Movin' On Up
2. Slip Inside This House
3. Don't Fight It, Feel It
4. Higher Than The Sun
5. Inner Flight
6. Come Together
7. Loaded
8. Damaged
9. I'm Comin' Down
10. Higher Than The Sun (A Dub Symphony In Two Parts)
11. Shine Like Stars

 

The Dylan album is magnificent. I heard someone say once that hearing it was like seeing your father cry for the first time. I think that's interesting.

Written as his marriage was finally coming to its bitter end, it's filled with more emotional resonance than much early Dylan. Songs like You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome, If You See Her and Shelter from the Storm are incredibly bare, really emotion stripped down to the bone.

It was my introduction to Dylan and I recall that moment when Tangled Up in Blue started and then a voice like none I had ever heard before started and I was captivated. Ten songs later, I was a Dylan fan for life.

Simple Twist of Fate and Buckets of Rain are both brilliant as well.

Ironically, my favorites on this album are slightly less emotionally barren:

Idiot Wind, one of the most hilarious put down songs ever written and Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts, a fantastic epic that just captivates from the first chord.

This is brilliance.

 

#28

VH1 - Patti Smith "Horses"

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1. Gloria
2. Redondo Beach
3. Birdland
4. Free Money
5. Kimberly
6. Break It Up
7. Land: Horses/Land Of A Thousand Dances/La Mer (De)
8. Elegie
9. My Generation (Bonus Track)

Q - Led Zeppelin "Led Zeppelin IV"

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1. Black Dog
2. Rock And Roll
3. The Battle Of Evermore
4. Stairway To Heaven
5. Misty Mountain Hop
6. Four Sticks
7. Going To California
8. When The Levee Breaks

 

I may have posted thoughts on this album previously. Whatever.

This is a fantastic album. It hits all the Zep basics: hard on rock and roll (Rock and Roll), high energy libido (Black Dog), mythic folk singing (Battle of Evermore), spirituality (Stairway to Heaven) and at that point, we're halfway through the album.

Physical Graffiti is famous, but what I've always loved about Zep was how even their small albums almost felt like double albums. This one just has an epic sprawl and it encompasses so many fantastic styles, all with the energy that is the true trademark of Zep.

This is just great music from start to finish. And it holds up, despite the inexplicable generation of Stairway to Heaven bashers that has developed.

Best song: Rock and Roll. But it's hard to pick.

 

I've never been a big fan of this album. I prefer the bluesy-er rock of their earlier songs. The folk/mysticism just doesn't do much for me. I do like "When The Leavy Breaks" though.

 

I always found Led Zep IV pretty boring. I like "When the Levee Breaks" a lot and "Stairway" has its moments, but the rest just strikes me as tedious, especially "Battle of Evermore." I remember having this album as a teenager as part of the classic rock rite of passage and my cousin going on about how "Evermore" was the best thing on the album but I just could not understand what he saw in it. Their acoustic material was so much better on III. "Going to California" is boring but has a good guitar line that was used to much better effect by Pearl Jam on their song "Given to Fly." "Black Dog" has the distinction of being one of the funniest songs you can hear on karaoke night, though, so I guess that's something. I can't even hear Robert Plant's voice in my head when I think of that one now, I can only hear the dude I saw singing it at the bar.

 

#27

VH1 - Bruce Springsteen "Born To Run"

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1. Thunder Road
2. Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
3. Night
4. Backstreets
5. Born to Run
6. She's The One
7. Meeting Across The River
8. Jungleland

Q - White Stripes "White Blood Cells"

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1. Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground
2. Hotel Yorba
3. I'm Finding It Harder To Be A Gentleman
4. Fell In Love With A Girl
5. Expecting
6. Little Room
7. The Union Forever
8. The Same Boy You've Always Known
9. We're Going To Be Friends
10. Offend In Every Way
11. I Think I Smell A Rat
12. Aluminum
13. I Can't Wait
14. Now Mary
15. I Can Learn
16. This Protector

 

I love White Blood Cells. Not my favorite WS album (honor goes to S/T) but a great one nontheless.

 

These are both incredible albums.

Born to Run is just Springsteen at his most thunderous and mythic. This thing shakes your stereo and it shakes your soul at the same time.

Looking at this track list, I have to say, these are all brilliant. Some a little quieter, some incredibly loud. Some melancholy, some against all odds euphoric. Some tragic . . . well, all tragic, I guess.

Lines like, ?You?re thinking maybe we ain?t that young any more . . .? Springsteen truly captures desperation of dead enders in this album, like he does in many of his albums.

Best song:

Born to Run, an epic song with the E street boys maybe better than they?ve been before or since. Or else, Meeting Across the River, a tale of heartbreaking tragedy, sung in quiet unemotional tones. Shattering.


And I remember hearing the White Stripes album after they became so controversial. Controversial? Yes, a rock band with no bass player is controversial in today?s stupid world.

It was my introduction and I just loved it. Jack White is a tremendous front man, ferocious on the guitar and incredibly emotional with his voice. He manages to bring up specters of so many great artists.

And the music runs a spectrum: blues, punk, rock and roll, ballads, country . . . it?s like The Rolling Stones in their heyday, you don?t know what?s coming next, but you know it?s going to rock.

This is an incredible album, really it is.

And people say The Vines saved rock and roll. Please. If anybody?s saving, not just rock and roll but, modern music, it?s these two cool cats. Rock on.

Best song: hard to pick. The punk romance of Finding it Harder to be a Gentleman? The McCartney warmth of We?re Going to be Friends? The thrashing rock of Little Room? The country stomp of Hotel Yorba? Probably Yorba for me, but it?s a hard choice.

 

It has always grated on me a bit when critics hailed the Stripes as ?raw? or ?ground-breaking? for not having a bass player, when Sleater-Kinney had been doing it for years before the Stripes hit the scene. And rocking much harder. Take Dig Me Out for a test listen some time.

I also think the Stripes get way more press and critical acclaim than they deserve, not because I think they aren?t talented (they definitely are), but because of the absolute dearth of good rock music the last few years.

There. I said it. Now I can move on.

Now let?s talk about the great album that is White Blood Cells.

What a great sound these two get from their instruments. Jack plucks, pulls, coaxes, and flat out wrenches sounds from his guitar, and his voice definitely is his own. Meg meanwhile beats her drumskins ferociously, which is surprising because she looks like your typical waifish indy girl, complete with smirk.

The real innovation of the Stripes? sound IMO is the way they combine American roots music with indie intelligence. ?I?m Finding It Hard To Be A Gentleman? ?Now Mary? and ?I Smell A Rat? just drip with bluesy grooves.

?Fell In Love With A Girl? is a rousing hand-clapper, complete with 60?s-era chanting ?aaahhh-ah!? and the razor sharp lyrical wit of ?my left brains knows that my love is fleeting? which really embodies the theme of lost love that is woven throughout the record.

With White Blood Cells, the White Stripes don?t re-define rock, or innovate it in any way. But they sure do embody it, and tap into the zen of rock in early-American roots music in a way few have in the past.

Their DIY spirit deserves strong commendation as well. I can only hope they inspire another generation of musicians with the notion that great music doesn?t come from having a major-label contract or a glossy studio to record in. It comes from your gut.

And these two have guts in spades.

EDIT EDIT:
Best Song: Fell In Love With A Girl

 

#26

VH1 - Bob Marley "Exodus"

[image=http://www.songlyricsbymars.com/B/Bob%20Marley/exodus-.jpg]

1. Natural Mystic
2. So Much Things To Say
3. Guiltiness
4. The Heathen
5. Exodus
6. Jamming
7. Waiting In Vain
8. Turn Your Lights Down Low
9. Three Little Birds
10. One Love/People Get Ready

Q - Rolling Stones "Exile On Main Street"

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1. Rocks Off
2. Rip This Joint
3. Shake Your Hips
4. Casino Boogie
5. Tumbling Dice
6. Sweet Virginia
7. Torn And Frayed
8. Sweet Black Angel
9. Loving Cup
10. Happy
11. Turd On The Run
12. Ventilator Blues
13. I Just Want To See His Face
14. Let It Loose
15. All Down The Line
16. Stop Breaking Down
17. Shine A Light
18. Soul Survivor

 

Exile on Main Street I still haven't heard in its entirity.

Exodus is quite simply one of the all time classics.

I heard a reviewer say that the music fades in and then fades out so that you don't feel that you are so much starting and ending an album. You rather feel that you are tapping in and out of music that has been going since the dawn of time. That's a fitting statement, I think.

Marley is on top of his game here. His broad sweeping social statements are stunning: Guiltiness is scathing, The Heathen incredibly bitter, Exodus rousing and powerful.

And he does small personal songs just as well as he does the other kind. Waiting in Vain is brilliant, Turn Your Lights Down Low is beautiful and incredibly sensual.

And, of course, we must mention the beautiful and heartfelt One Love and the epic and spiritual Jamming. Yes, this is a classic all the way.

Best Song: I quite simply refuse to say. All of the ones I specifically mention are in the running.

 

I don't know anything about Exile On Main Street except that Liz Phair's gut-strong album Exile In Guyville is a song-by-song answer to that album from a female perspective.

Back in 1999 Time magazine was going a century look-back piece, and named Exodus as the most important album of the 20th Century. It's hard to argue with that.

Your quote about the music just fading in, as if it always existed is dead on, Rogue. The opener 'Natural Mystic' has a few subtle chords, and the sound fades up into the consciousness like it's always been there. Normally, I'd say that's quite a conceit, but the music is so purposeful, so universally acceptable that it works.

African influences are so prevalent in raggae music, I've always thought because there is some kind of rhythm with the human heartbeat. Bob Marley has managed to tap into that store, and produces kind of album that can be listened to the world over.

There's just so much to like about the album, from the seductive 'Turn Your Lights Down Low' and the incredibly vulnerable 'Waiting In Vain' to the life-affirming 'Three Little Birds', the songs cross a great divide of feelings and human experience.

The title track 'Exodus' really blew me away when I first heard it...I had no idea raggae could sound like that. The opening piano chord, the horns, the slinky underground dance beat, all of it opened up a new sound to me.

And 'Jamming' always gets me, it's a very up-tempo song, but the message is extremely forceful (especially the line 'no bullet can stop us now' - likely inspired after he was shot in the chest and Rita in the head in 1976).

The man believed in what he was singing. There isn't an ounce of pretention, selfishness or self-aggrandizement on this record. And it shows.

Like my friend is fond of saying "Britain and America had Lennon. The rest of the world had Bob Marley."

I wouldn't argue that this album should be ranked higher than #26. It's a travesty that it is at #71 in the Q poll.

Best Song: I can't pick one either.

 

Exile On Main Street is an amazing album in that it's a double album that can be listened to end-to-end and not feel as if it's getting boring at any time. It changes tempo and feel enough that it maintains your interests, while flowing from song to song without sounding like a bunch of singles mashed together. That's awesome, considering the fact that the Stones always seemed more like a singles act to me. They have good albums, but sometimes the singles alone are stronger than the albums they come from.

On a side note, I've listened to Exile On Guyville a lot, but I'm not so sure every song is an answer to all the songs on Main Street. Maybe I missed something, or the answers are out of sequence.

Can't comment on Exodus, but my interest in reggae is passing at best. For what it's worth, I think Bob Marley was a good songwriter.

 

From what I hear, that is less true than Phair would have you believe. I've not heard Main Street, but a friend who has heard both said that the songs do not match as exactly as some say.

Regardless, an interesting conceit and Guyville is certainly a fantastic album.

 

There's not much going on with Exile On Main Street as far as songs go. Only "Rocks Off," "Tumbling Dice," and "Happy" stand out to me. The rest just gel together into a mood piece. I see it as a catalog of what would become roots rock cliches: what guitar tones you can use; what proportions you want your blues, country, and soul influences in - like a cookbook.

 

So I guess it's official then - I do really know nothing about Exile On Main Street.

#25

VH1 - The Clash "London Calling"

[image=http://www.dr.dk/musik/rock/anmeldelser/billeder/clash_london_calling.jpg]

1. London Calling
2. Brand New Cadillac
3. Jimmy Jazz
4. Hateful
5. Rudie Can't Fail
6. Spanish Bombs
7. The Right Profile
8. Lost In The Supermarket
9. Clampdown
10. The Guns Of Brixton
11. Wrong 'Em Boyo
12. Death Or Glory
13. Koka Kola
14. The Card Cheat
15. Lover's Rock
16. Four Horsemen
17. I'm Not Down
18. Revolution Rock
19. Train In Vain


Q - Coldplay "Parachutes"

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1. Don't Panic
2. Shiver
3. Spies
4. Sparks
5. Yellow
6. Trouble
7. Parachutes
8. High Speed
9. We Never Change
10. Everything's Not Lost

 

I absolutely love Parachutes - great album, although there's one or two songs that I don't care for as much, but that seems to be the case with all their albums for me. Shiver, Spies, Parachutes, TROUBLE, High Speed and DON'T PANIC are amazing. Don't Panic, probably my favorite.
All in all, Rush of Blood to the Head came right up with this one, just as good. X&Y not as much, but it's a good one as well.

As for London Calling, I've only heard that one song, London Calling. Good, but not really my type of music that I listen to on a regular basis.