1001 Albums Summary

Long before I started this list, Blue was my favorite album. I find it funny it came to me at a point where I checked in late in the day, on the most mundane day, mostly working out, cleaning. Just had valentine's day weekend, very in love. One would think, my day shouldn't involve this masterpiece, I have never in my life been further away from it. Yet, here it is, so I'll tell you exactly why it resonates with me, always and every day. I think that every track on there should be there, I don't want anything to be removed from it, because it touches on the very human experience in the most unique way. 6 of its song have at some point in my life been my favorite, because as I grow and experience different things, it aligns in a different way with my experiences. I'm confident at some point the other 4 will be in contention to be my favorite as well, but it is definitely that good. It has everything I love in an album, a point of view, a sonic palette that is rich and bold, plenty of ambition for such an intimate project. Her voice and her writing are so fucking unique and precise, it blows my mind every single time. A lot more complex that one might think, I also love that it rewards both replaying it as you experience life and careful listening. I'll take it any day over everything else because it uses music in the same way I do, almost in a therapeutic way, but also not in a exclusively devastating or trauma healing way. All I want, is my most recent favorite cause it really helped with a tough time I had. To me, it is a perfect song, very much delicate in the push and pull that love can offer when it is not fully right. To me the song is about a relationship that is beginning, that shows promise but ultimately falls short. While you may want to do mundane things with them because you see them in your life for a long time, sometimes trouble like anger and jealousy lies beneath and you have to face the fact that it is not where you actually are. While you want the best for them, it is not what you bring to each other. It is better to be free than in a company that is destructive. That is a life lesson everyone should know, and you just have to listen, cause Joni said it with the most beautiful guitars in 1971. My old man, while I don't relate to it personally, I found fascinating in context. After the mundanity of All I want, where she lists all the very normal things she wants to do with her man, comes a gorgeous love song in the form of the fantasy of domesticity. All she wants, is her old man. The longing for something true and real, that she feels in her bones. I think the mention of a mariage licence as something somewhat adjunct is visionary in 1971. The love she wants knows no bounds, and simply given by an extraordinary individual to her. Not a super man, but a "singer in the parc" and that, I found profound and beautiful especially next to a gorgeous piano. Little green is a song that took time and context to be understood by me. While I love it now, I used to not fully get what she meant by it, much like critics reviewing her work when it came out. When you understand the song as a love song for the baby she had to give up while being a struggling artist, it’s a devastating emotional blow. Now, every time I hear it I get emotional, because it is so well written, clever and so deeply personal it is incredible. It is tender, hopeful, and very sweet, while still having sadness and regret laced trough it. I also think it shows incredible strength, she just says she hopes for the best, and that it is the best decision for a « child with a child pretending ». I think this song is probably the most uniquely hers here, it very much so feels like a way to process a trauma and to leave something behind for her « little green ». Carey was my favorite as a teenager, and I couldn’t tell you why, except that it is funny and sweet, and the melody is gorgeous, especially the harmonies in the second part of the song (the ooo’s). I also think when you name a song after a person, a clever writer will give a description of said person, and here the details are so vivid it makes the whole song incarnate. I think most of us have encountered a Carey in our life time, a person you don’t know very well that is interesting and makes you stay longer than you should. Hence why, when people call Blue a break up album, or about love or whatever, I say it’s a reductive point of view, because Carey is here, it is brilliant, and I have never seen anyone make a song about these type of encounter before. Blue, the title track is also very interesting, and not just because I like James Taylor. It is obviously about him and their relationship, but you can also totally ignore that and it is still a very gorgeous balade.It has a timing so very specific and odd, and her singing as so many peaks and valleys, no one can and would want to sing it quite like that, so high, so precise, and with such weight on every word. It is a very hard song to cover, cause it is very much her voice singing words from her soul. The vibrato, the long notes, the diction and phrasing, the sprawling piano, here everything goes together to give a gorgeous love song to someone who obviously isn’t ready or able to receive it. It feels confessionnal, cause we get to hear the ancestor of the voice note, a message that is for one person. I am glad it is included here, cause it is too beautiful to keep private, but I do get the feeling that it feels voyeuristic and that explains why I couldn’t pick it as a favorite of mine. California is much like Carey not a song about love, but about home. Joni as a Canadian calls California her home, recaling the classic trope that home is not just the place where you come from, but really the place where your people are. Nothing novel in this idea, but it is said so succinctly that I found it beautiful, especially since there is tension in the song « Will you take me as am I ? » As home and the people changed too much that they no longer recognize her ? The other thing I resonate with is the idea that war and trouble on a world level make you want to curl up and return to a place where you feel confortable and safe. Saying that now would probably be a cliché, but not at that time. It is quite simple sonically, and makes for a fun break full of joyfulness. California is necessary because it brings is a very welcomed breath in an otherwise often quite sad album. Of course the different rythm going on at once, expemplify an understanding of music that is a lot deeper than just spilling out your guts in a microphone. I have always loved California, and at a time when I couldn’t understand what she meant, I loved that track so much because of its melodi. Today, as a Parisian, the place I call home is the precise place she wants to leave behind which I often think about. (Why don’t you like us ? I am not settled in my ways, or am I ?) This flight tonight, to this day is in my opinion the weakest track on there. I like it, I found it fun and some of the details I look forward to while listening to it, like the Goodbye baby goodbye break. I am sure I will connect to it someday. I understand the message, and I don’t mind the track which is in no way a skip. It is a pretty song, just not a favorite. I also think it is not helped by its placement in the album, it comes after the fun of California and I mostly look forward to River when I hear it. It is sandwiched between the fun and the saddest song, and while I get the palette cleanser feeling, it is also never gonna be as strong as those two. River of the 4 piano ballad, is by far my favorite. I love it so much, it explains why none of the other three ballad have ever been my favorite on the record. While I do like them, and I found them clever and interesting, I think river hits emotional strides in a whole different way. I cannot begin to explain how beautiful this song is to me, it is incredible in so many aspects. First thematically, a sad Christmas song for the lonely at Christmas ? Yes please. I can hear jingle bell, I can hear the despair, I can hear the translucent quality of the album in its peak here. Secondly I think the writing is incredible. It feels cohesive, and like a full story, but told in such a subtle manor, that no one knows what this song is actually about. Partly a recollection of a time where she couldn’t skate as a child because she had polio, a break up song, may be a reference to the daughter she had to give up, but none of that is really the point. I personally think it is about all of the above, to me the song is about loss in every way. Loss of experiences, time, meaning, people, it’s about how she can sit down and reminisce on times where she felt hurt and lonely, and the idea to bring it forward in a song talking about Christmas and sampling Jingle Bells is absolute pure genius. Christmas is a time where you should be with family, happy in theory, but here she feels lonely and out of place and wishes to experience a different thing. That to me is visionary, cause there is nothing sadder than a lonely Christmas, and I am probably not alone in feeling that way, because the suicide rate goes way up every year at that time. I think the piano is amazing, and her vocals are legendary here. I may be a competent singer at times but I can not sing this and no one should in my opinion. It cuts deep and is truly to me a statement of brillance. A case of you, is the hit of this record, if there could only be one, and I understand perfectly well why. I think it shows everything Joni can do in 4 minutes, and it is grandiose in this aspect. I also do not subscribe to the idea that it is a sad song, it can be if you look for that, but it is so much more complex than straight up sad. It is literary about the feeling of being intoxicated by someone, while using the metaphor of drinking wine. To me the person she describes is both exactly what she wants, and a little poisonous. Something that takes her completely over, than runs through her blood, but also something that is temporary, that she can recover from. It is succinct, but it completely describe the feeling of infatuation. The interesting part, is that it is not through the perspective of heartbreak which is why this song is to me brilliant. She already as a song about heartbreak on the record, in this one she isn’t devastated, she is just self aware and recognises that while the relationship had benefits, (making her step outside of her box mainly, with the devil line and them being « holy wine ») it has its drawback (« be prepared to bleed »). Beside the gorgeous simplicity that shots right through the heart, one thing I found fascinating is the number of men coming forward to say that the song is about them. I can only dream to write something so beautiful and important that Leonard Cohen says he is the muse of it. I found it incredibly complimentary of her work that he wants to be the inspiration for it and have his part of the credit I’m sure. Well, you ain’t getting any from me, this masterpiece is quintessentially Joni’s. The album closer, The last time I saw Richard, is incredibly important for the album as a whole, to understand her aim with this precise collection of songs. It is very complex and does reward careful listening to understand what she actually means. It revels in tension between optimism and cynicism around love, using a protagonist and lessons she gleans from conversation with him. Richard is a reformed romantic on the surface, he is cynical about love after heartbreak calling love lies, and saying that all of the romantics meet the same fate, being cynical and heart broken. To Joni, he is only pretending to be cynical, because he chooses songs on the jukebox « about love so sweet ». In reality, he marries a figure skater, (which I understand as someone beautiful by societies standard, and a show person, meaning not someone he picks for their intellect and values, but for what they represent societally. He makes a convenient home with her, but in doing so, he is left drinking alone (with no romantic by his side). He settles, stops believing that love and heartbreak might be worth it, and now watches TV. Joni refuses the same fate, she doesn’t want to settle, she wants love and romanticism and wants big wings to fly, she wants to feel something rather than just let life settle her. That is not novel as an idea, and though it is said beautifully this is not where the genius is. It comes after, at the end of the song, when Joni herself is in the dark café, meaning suffering heartbreak, she first feels anger and loneliness, (« I don’t want anybody at my table, I’ve got nothing to talk to anybody about »). I think there is the idea that she is done with love, much like Richard once was before he settles. But unlike him, she is second guessing herself and holding on hope. She hopes it’s just a dark cocoon, « only a phase, these dark café days » and it is quite a dark chord indeed. She is not sure she will recover, but she is waiting for brighter days. I think that that final note is truly a sign of absolute brilliance. She closes her album about different kind of pains and hopes on saying « I’m broken but hopeful it’s a phase » and I think this final song is absolutely paramount to understand the whole album. Blue the album, ebbs and flows between optimism and heartbreak, pain and excitement, in such a masterful way. But it ends on a very signifiant note : all of it is temporary. To me that is truly a message to remember, you should live life, its heartbreak and challenges, the joyfulness and the loneliness and never become a cynic like Richard. It is said in a very unique and delicate way, and I am never tired of listening to her giving her testimony about what life is about. And even on a mundane day, I need to remember to be open to feel things.

I must say, I knew this album, front to back, fully expected to see it in this list. This is truly an all time great album, colorful, extremely tight and always interesting. It feels like a band at the height of their powers, owning their sound. It is very much experimental and froward thinking, the writing especially is interesting, it is all about the sounds, all about how words fit and ring in your hear, creating a poem in a very surrealist way. It creates a kaleidoscope of very "them" sounds and everything feels dreamy. I think this album is a lot more influential than people give it credit for, I often hear it in productions of today. It has waves, places to go in a self containing world, ambition and heart, it is quite simply, one of the best album I ever heard.

A fun ride, that at times feels a bit disjointed. I don't know if it's the two voices, but I feel like they are two different album, some classic rock that is well made but not that inventive and some experimental that is rougher and a bit noise adjacent. I found it interesting mostly, it gives scope, but they are not that many band like that one. I also think it is a tad long, but man they had a lot to say about the world.

I believe that the person who put this on this list as never listened to that album. First of all they feel like what a door to door encyclopedia salesman must have felt like. The sound is trying really super hard to be cool, (which is the most obvious way to do that), but it is also 1982, disco has been here for a decade at least, and is in fact at the end of its rise. The straight white boys are not helping. I blame this band especially, though they are not all white, and I don't know them enough to know that there all straight, but the absence of joy is really giving me Crypto Bro energy. There are very few bops, all front loaded. The album would have been ok with like 5 tracks on there. But it's not, it's long, it draaaags, and refuses to say anything of substance ever. The back half is a mix between the worst of Chic and the terrible writing of Depeche Mode. ("Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, oh Yeah, Calling Captain, Autumn" Hell no.) I would not know the sound of this band from a thousand others, cause it's as bland as this type of music can get. The worst offenders : the baseline that are mostly flat or very reminiscing of other bands, but most of all the saxophone on every song. It's not even good sax, (good sax, is always and forever sexy sax) it sounds like lazy sax cause they have the charisma of the toothbrush you keep for bathroom cleaning. After this album, I am unsure if the starting thoughts have any validity to them. Has any of them ever met a girl?

This album is clever and feels fresh for 1977. It is also a lot more complex and melodic than you would typically find, which keeps it interesting and therefore relevant to this day. The most surprising part is the writing, most tracks have. double entendre, twists or imagery that are well worth my time. “Venus”, just for example, is such a strong piece of writing, a metaphor that could mean different things to different people, be it a lover that is a letdown, drugs and the low following the high, but you get the imagery even if the actual meaning is polysemous. Falling “right into the arms of the Venus de Milo” (an armless statue of the goddess of love), is such a strong concept without being literal it really scratches my analytical brain and I’ll keep that song forever. It also has less clever sex jokes, but on those, the music full of cool guitar riffs that are interesting to me, the doubling guitars make their sound very unique. The album is however not perfect, I think some swings are misses like Prove it, which is a fine song, not hugely entertaining or special and something I have heard a 100 times before. When you have 8 tracks, you can’t really afford a 5-minute detour like that in my book. I also really have a difficult with Verlaine’s voice, but that is entirely subjective and something I can get passed. In the end, I think the highs are well worth the side points, and this is dad rock I wholeheartedly back, I am glad I heard it.