1001 Albums Summary

A perfect album, one of my favorites of all time. In a lot of ways, this is Robert Smith’s Abbey Road. It combines a lot of the elements that made him a unique and captivating artist that was spread out for over 10 years and put it into one album.

This isn’t my favorite of Stevie Wonder’s “Golden Era”. There are a lot of songs that I have ambivalence towards. Maybe Your Baby meanders for too long, You and I feels a little blueprint for Stevie Wonder at this point in his career, and You’ve Got it Bad Girl just leaves me bored. But when the songs are good, they’re really good. The obvious being ‘Superstition’, which is widely played for a good reason. It stands out sonically and lyrically from the rest of the album and shows the direction that Stevie Wonder will go on with his future releases. This album’s sequencing isn’t the greatest and the album is very backloaded with all my favorites being on the B-side. Lookin For Another Pure Love (which you can tell Frank Ocean stole for numerous songs on Channel Orange), does better than what the A-Side should’ve accomplished. And I Believe is masterful and an excellent closer. Big Brother and Blame it On The Sun are my favorites on the album.

I could see Paul McCartney being envious of this album. This is what his first solo album should’ve sounded like. This album’s production is beautiful, thanks to the newly developed 16 track recorder. But this albums’ long legacy is due to Paul Simon’s melodies, and for the fact that not many albums from 1970 sounds like this. ‘The Boxer’ easily rivals Sounds of Silence as the best Simon & Garfunkel song. Only Paul Simon could write the riff of ‘Baby Driver’, which should be as iconic as ‘I Feel Fine’. There are only two middle of the road songs on this album. ‘So Long, Frank Llyod Wright’ which could’ve easily been on Bookends and didn’t develop the sound of this project. The other is ‘Why Don’t You Write Me’, which could’ve been a Kinks song off of ‘Face to Face’ but didn’t fully embrace the quirkiness that Ray Davies would’ve. The album ends very solid on a cover of the Everly Brother, ‘Bye Bye Love’, which fits the themes of love lost, and then the short poem ‘Song for the Asking’. I’m leaning more towards a 4.5 but I’ll give it a solid 5

For me, Elton John has always been a quantity over quality artist. There’s a lot of tracks from his classic era I really enjoy and some that are just kind of there. There are also tracks where songs are just for a joke and don’t have that much depth, like ‘Jamaica Jerk-Off’. My favorite is ‘I’ve Seen That Movie Too’ which shows Elton John at what he’s best at. Overall, this album could’ve been shorter. A lot of songs seem to blend together in tone and style and you lose track of which song is which. When albums are this grand in scale, diversity is usually key (The White Album), or an abundance of great material (Blonde on Blonde) or a concept going on (The River). Still, it has a lot of great moments and some of Elton’s best. However, Honky Chateau still remains my favorite of his.

I love Joni Mitchell, she was a recent deep dive for me. She has a lot stronger of an output than her other Folk contemporaries at her time. There are a decent amount of albums of hers I prefer from around this time; Hejira, Blue, For The Roses. But if someone said this was their favorite, I wouldn’t be surprised. Except, they can not excuse Twister.