Strangely, I don’t know all the songs on this album. I know the sound and it reminds me of what music used to feel like when I was a teenager. It’s quite wonderful. The version of “Police and Thieves” is fun, but not as good as the reggae version.
I don’t think I ever really thought about the lyrics of the Go-Go’s, but listening to this particular album really made me focus on them, and they are really good. Overall, this is reminiscent of summer nights watching old teen movies on VHS cassette in the family room of my childhood home.
I’m in my grandfather‘s car. It’s either a Cadillac or a Buick, but whatever it is it has that plush brown interior and in between the driver seat in the passenger seat there’s enough space for a box that contains 8-track cassettes. He takes one of the 8-tracks out of the box and he puts it in the player on the dash and the sound that comes out is that of Willie Nelson. My grandfather died when I was nine years old so I didn’t really get to know much about him other than to know that he adored country music, wore very thick glasses (and this is what got him out of going to war) and he loved my mom and us kids so much.
When I was younger and first heard The Beach Boys there was something about the harmony that I found too sweet. Even as a kid I really didn’t like it. I felt like there was no edge. The overall sound was something my dad liked and I never really wanted to listen to any more of that. However, as I got older, I accepted that The Beach Boys were important, regardless of the sugary sweetness. I still didn’t exactly like them though. And then, a number of years ago, after I had met and really fallen for the man I ended up marrying, I remember hearing the song “God Only Knows”, and, all of a sudden, The Beach Boys made complete sense.
He lived in the UK. I lived in Canada. And one night I was lonely, missing him terribly. I listened to that song on repeat while I drank an entire bottle of wine to myself and, at a certain point, I was laying on the floor, hands on my chest, listening to the words, listening to the beautiful layers of sound, and all of a sudden the sweetness of The Beach Boys made total sense. It completely and totally captured everything that I thought about what it meant to know that you found the love of your life and that they would be with you forever and always.
"God only knows what I’d be without you” is the most perfect declaration of love. This album is perfect and five stars even if it was just that one song over and over and over.
The Cure was really the first band that I heard that wasn't something that would be played on the radio. My cousin had the album Head On The Door, but I quickly sought out other records and one of them was, of course, Seventeen Seconds. The opening strains of “A Forest” are, of course, incredibly iconic and, for me, capture that first ability to to consider music that, although clearly still commercially viable in many ways, was different. It was just so fundamentally different from the pop music that was on the charts at the time. When I first heard it it seemed like a bit of a secret between myself and my cousin; this music that my parents didn't understand by a band whose lead singer clearly looked like something my parents couldn't understand. His voice and the sound of The Cure didn't make sense to them. I think that was the key point: that The Cure represented to me something that I loved but that my parents, as much as they wanted to, they couldn't understand why I would want to listen to this music or why this music, and music in general, was becoming incredibly important to me as a young teenager. It was perhaps the first salvo, the first big step in the creation of my sense of self.
I think the only show I have ever been to that seriously affected my hearing was Sonic Youth. I went with a friend and we stupidly stood right next to a speaker. The feedback was intense, and the show was in an especially old concert hall that has since been torn down. "Teenage Riot", when I heard it live, seemed to float above the crowd, who didn't dance as much as bob gently. The overall feel of the song matches its lyrics - it just keeps going, which is what, I guess, was Sonic Youth's message about teenagehood. As someone who has since spent over a quarter century spending the majority of my time with teenagers, I can attest that they, collectively, are a force that can't really be stopped. I like the fact that the band was moving into their thirties when this record came out. It makes me think that sometimes, adults have essential insight into what it means to be a teen. They've thought about it longer. Sonic Youth really got inside my head and were able to take the angsty energy of my adolescence and give it a sound - a sound that could fuel songs well over five minutes and a double album of music that didn't ever wane.
I remember really liking this album it’s therefore a little weird to listen to it now and have it sound so boring, so derivative, so blah. I had it on cassette tape. I remember it vividly. It was a clear cassette tape and I would listen to it in my yellow, bulky Sony Sports walkman, while I sat on the bus on my way to figure skating. And I would just keep flipping the tape over and over and over again. I don't think I took the album out of my walkman for weeks.
At the time, I thought that my taste in music was superior to other people (read: other figure skating girls) who liked, say, Bon Jovi or Aerosmith or other white man rock bands that were popular at the time. I remember thinking, with disdain, of the girls on my skating team that loved the song "Bed of Roses". I thought the lyrics of that song were garbage. Quick example: "Know I'll be thinking about you / While my mistress she calls me to stand in her spotlight again / Tonight I won't be alone, But you know that don't mean I'm not lonely". Like come on. Are you serious?
For me Pearl Jam sounded more sensitive, realistic, gritty and different. Maybe it was back then, but when I’m listening to it now it really just seems to sound like that same old white man rock (I suppose we call it "classic rock" now) that I didn’t like listening to at the time or at least I thought I didn’t like listening to. All this to say that it’s really weird to hear this record and feel like I’m supposed to find something new and different. I mean Eddie Vedder‘s voice is not terrible. There are some bits of guitar I like, the production is good and there are a couple moments that make me remember that bus trip through downtown Whitby, through the Psychiatric Hospital that we called the "Psych" and would drive through late at night to scare ourselves.
The sound of The Cars is the sound of familiarity. It's the sound of 680 CFTR on the radio as my mom drives to the grocery store in her Nissan Pulsar that had an excuse for a backseat. My friends called that car "KITT" because it did look like it was from a TV show. My mom loved that damn car - I think it made her feel cool. I know it made me feel cool too.
I had to write a friend to ask why we thought "The Rising" as a song was so funny. Because we did. I remember laughing at it every time it was played, but I didn't recall the reason. As it turns out, it was because we related it to "rise and grind", and by grind we meant weed. After listening to the whole record today. I feel a bit ashamed of this. The Rising, as an album is pretty wonderful. It's like a series of contemporary hymns, songs that address a longing for community, for safety. Given that it came out only months after 9/11, the context for this seems particularly significant. From the perspective of 2025, my flippant dismissal of this record seems to be an example of the ironic resistance to earnest emotion that plagued most of my 20s. There are, perhaps, reasons for this, but the effect is that now, listening to Springsteen, I understand why people love him so much.
Dolly Parton's voice is meant for AM radio. It is the epitome of that phrase "clear as a bell". I think about listening to music in my dad's store - a radio with a huge antenna that let us hear shortwave stations from Cuba, some random conversations between truckers, and a range of often static-ridden AM stations. This record sounds like those stations. I've read that the approach to recording was quite minimal, and the record does sound spare.
When I was in my early 20s, I got really interested in learning about my Northern Irish background. I was born in Canada, but my mom's side of the family is from Carnduff, County Antrim. I read a bunch about Belfast, and ended up getting involved with folks Habitat for Humanity Northern Ireland, which led to me visiting the place and spending time in Randalstown (also in County Antrim). People kept telling me how "northern" I was - I'd never really felt connected to any particular culture or background, so it was pleasant, though a little bit disconcerting. More recently, I've been thinking about this whole Northern Irish identity that I apparently have, so this record coming up is also disconcerting. I feel like someone is listening. I'd never heard of The Undertones, and even though I'd heard of Feargal Sharkey, I thought that was a band and not a single person. Anyhow, I think I need to listen to this record more and maybe think more about being Irish.
The Clash was my introduction to punk rock. I didn't understand any of the history about punk - and especially its relation to Jamaican music, which I have always been obsessed with, to the extent that it meant I moved to Jamaica for four years. White folks who are obsessed with Jamaica and move to Jamaica are a bit of a tired trope at this point. Thanks to Jamaica, I have a range of wonderful friends and a whole different way of thinking about the world, but I have yet to have done something as cool as write songs as good as what is on this album. It's really spectacular, though probably because the band was getting all the good stuff from JA.
I don't know what to say about this record right now.
When it was really cold and I had to take the bus to school, I'd listen to this on my walkman. I remember looking out the window at the icy trees and feel like "Venus as a Boy" was the perfect soundtrack. This whole album also was the sound track to some of my first experiments with drugs. Smoking pot, or, rather, bottle toking and then listening to Debut was like entering a magical universe. I'm not one for the Terence McKenna-esque psychedelic trips, but lots of hash and Bjork was my thing, as was dextromethorphan, but maybe I'll wait for another relevant album to tell that story.
Of course it's "Born Slippy" that I remember most - Trainspotting being the culprit for that. But this record sounds like late nights or early mornings at Playground on Amherst street in Montreal. It's got that "anyone can move to this" vibe that spurs memories of fun-fur covered walls and smoky, dark rooms filled with people dancing with cigarettes hoisted in the air. I had a boyfriend that would call the red hot ember of a cigarette "the heater" - precisely because it could be used to heat up hash. I'm not sure I would like to re-enter those rooms, but I like the fact that I lived through a time when I spent a fair bit of time there.
I don't have memories that are specific to Neil Young. I only knew one of the songs on the album, but I think that Young's voice has become so ubiquitous in my musical world that it is almost always comforting to hear.
When I went to Osheaga and saw Kendrick Lamar perform, he was excellent and the whole production was quite amazing. He had large pieces of art behind him and was able to produce an incredibly engaging performance just being alone on the stage. The problem, however, was the fact that the white folks jumping up and down next to me were singing along to every word. Yes, every word. I mean, it's not shocking that people are ignorant, but it took away from the experience something significant.
My memory of Miles Davis of course begins with Kind of Blue. I certainly hope that is on the list.
This album was not what I expected at the beginning, but then it became very much what I expected by the end.
This album was my everything for a long time. It was perfect in the 1990s, and it remains so now.
How is this not a perfect record?
All I can think of is going to see Chemical Brothers in 1996. I may have been on acid, I don't recall. What I do remember was that it was at Metropolis back when you could run around in the basement and there were all sorts of hidden spaces and places.
