1001 Albums Summary

I had listened to this album recently, and recognized it as one of the big three is Stevie's iconic run of albums. I never went back to listen though it back to front and see it as a stand alone album. Oh man, tracks like 'All in Love Is Fair' and 'He's Misstra Know-It-All' took me so off guard, as much as Stevie writhing another banger of a song can take you off guard. I hear concepts in the songs on this album that I love all lumped together in this one album, both as elaborations and creative discoveries. On 'All in Love Is Fair' I hear the emotional dynamic peak just the way I do in 'Evil', and 'Golden Lady' serves as the origin of one my favorite motifs in Stevies songs... Modulating the key. Without that song we would have never gotten 'Summer Soft' quite possibly one of my favorite songs of all time. I had a friend that swore up and down that this album was Stevie's best album, and I might be a little biassed towards 'Songs in The Key of Life' this album has just as much of Stevie's love and soul poured into it as that album does.

When I was younger, I used to listen to more Black Sabbath than I do now. In all honesty I believe the songwriting is the most consistent with Sabbath's track record up till this point and I did like tracks 'Snowblind' and 'changes' but this record just didn't hit me the same way their previous work before and after this album did. I think it may have been mostly in the production, which I found myself liking at times, yet felt like it muddied the composition of the songs sometimes and made it hard to find a focal point.

The most I knew about this album before listening to it was that two of my music hero's, Taylor Hawkins and Flea are both on this album. I've also heard 'You Oughta Know' and 'You Learn' plenty of times passively. I really enjoyed the music especially on this album, and felt like the musicianship from was defiantly there. However, from the first song I realized how much I had never paid too much attention to Alanis's singing before. I felt like her melodies and range was impressive but her annunciation was so incredibly annoying. I could not with, "Slap me with a splinteRRRRR ruleRRRRR." I understand what she was going with, being that breathy and with that annunciation, but it genuinely sounds like she is actively hurting her voice while singing. The album wasn't bad, the songs weren't bad, but I feel like the singing just betrayed the music a tiny bit.