1001 Albums Summary

Born In The USA by Bruce Springsteen Successful, popular, best selling, middle of the road ‘from my youth’ album with a couple of bigger hits, unchallenging even after 6 beers AOR. Competently mixed and executed. A bit la-la-la ling-a-long in places. Undertones of American Country in its lyrics and simple chord changes. Doesn’t travel that well outside US borders, average undistinguished voice, several album filler tracks. My sacreligeous rating: overrated, 58%.

Sound Of Silver by LCD Soundsystem: Tedious Electronic Discordia. A simplistic but ok synth-punk dance song (All My Friends) crammed into a 55 minute album, backfilled by shovel with unimaginitive and over-repetitive riffs and twee Grade 1 scat singing. Occasionally, the voice and riffs are reminiscent of early Talking Heads at their worst - but that comparison would be too flattering. A poor album that has aged badly. The upside: I can, in good conscience, add it to the ‘never again’ pile. 🟡⚫️⚫️⚫️⚫️ 8%

Rubber Soul by The Beatles ———————————————————— 🟡 🟡 🟡🟡 🟡 90% Seminal, a keystone of early popular music ———————————————————— Album of the Day: 1001 albums to listen to before you die. A coming-of-age album from one of the most famous bands of all time. Released in 1965, Rubber Soul feels like one of the ‘last’ of the ‘early’ Beatles records, in which their song writing had matured, but before their music and production became so much more sophisticated - for example on the likes of Sgt Pepper and initiating/paralleling the huge change in popular music between 1965 and 1969. The album comprises 14 new short songs in only 35 minutes and therefore spotlights the Beatles songwriting ability - the tunes and lyrics - which stand up well and many of which have joined the pantheon of ‘great’ Beatles tunes. Be aware there are many different versions of the album - for example the original Mono as worked on by the Beatles and George Martin and different track listings in UK vs US. Then there are various hard-panned stereo mixes for the next 60 years - e.g. singing and drums in one ear - other instruments in the other - these mixes don’t work so well for headphones as they don’t seem balanced, and then finally a de-mixed remixed version which is much more conventional to the modern ear and puts the all sounds more centre of the soundstage. The original Mono is of course the collectors item. The Beatles are so talented that this is not my favourite Beatles album, but is still one of the best albums of all time and a key part of music history.

FRANK by Amy Winehouse ———————————————— A cool debut album with decent but not spectacular songs 🟡 🟡 🟡 ⚫️ ⚫️ 56% ———————————————— Amy’s debut released in 2003 at the age of 19. She sounds more mature than that - almost fully borne into the talented singer she would become. The album drips with her young talent and a cool jazz schtick - reminiscent of Nina Simone and Frank Sinatra (after who the album is named). But the album also has relatively simple songs, and suffers from equally simple musical arrangements, and perhaps rushed production - and so it misses out on what it could have been. Initial sales reached No 13, and were strongly boosted after her untimely death, re-entering the charts and reaching No 5 going quadruple platinum. Amy herself said she hated the album, thought it was poorly marketed, never listened to it, and would not have a copy in the house - harsh and self critical but indicative that it was not the strong debut she hoped for. Some tension then in the rating with the general reception being revised strongly upwards on second entry - for me it gets 3 stars per first release - mainly because for me there are no stand out songs.