1001 Albums Summary

I was somewhat surprised that it was rated one of the 1,001 albums I must hear before I die. I suspect I am some sort of musical philistine, because I could not for the life of me understand why it was unique or important. It had me questioning the merit of the selection committee for this project, though I know it is probably me who is the problem. Nevertheless, it was a heap of lightly smouldering trash.

The word that came to mind as I listed to it was "quaint", although I'm not sure that's quite right. By definition, quaint means "attractively unusual or old-fashioned," and this album struck me as neither unusual nor attractive. It was old-fashioned, sure, but rather staid and conventional. If Country Music and Elevator Muzak had a developmentally delayed lovechild, it might be named Sweet Baby James.

I actually didn't hate this. The title track was... different, but not necessarily in a bad way. And even though I was bracing myself for a lot of experimental white noise on the subsequent tracks, I was pleasantly surprised at the number of actually jammable beats.

So... I was confused by it, to be honest. Norah Jones has a lovely voice, of course, but the songs struck me as being so tepid... like background music that should play in a Starbucks or something. So I looked the album up on Wikipedia, and this is what it said: "Come Away with Me peaked at number one on the US Billboard 200, and received Grammy Awards for Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album. It was later certified Diamond by the RIAA on February 15, 2005, for shipments of over ten million copies in the United States, and has sold over 27 million copies worldwide as of 2016, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time." This seems to confirm my suspicions that I am indeed a musical philistine who is not qualified to judge anything. But I judge it anyway.