I’m going to listen to the top 3 upvoted albums and give you my honest unfiltered thoughts.
Please explain what makes the album special to you. For context, lyrics are very important to me, so I gravitate to music with good storytelling.
Alt-J An awesome wave - it really is considered as a whole in its creation. There are interludes, dips & swells in the energy, and a whole journey of sonically related songs which keep introducing new variations and sounds.
Sufjan Stevens the BQE - another album that really should be enjoyed as a whole journey, it follows the daily commute of so many along the Brooklyn Queens Expressway in NYC. It wanders from orchestral to electronic noise, and is a wonderful album to put on for a slow Sunday morning.
not sure what kind of genres you are into, but for hip-hop I’ll recommend “illmatic” by Nas
my GOAT in the rap game, the best lyricist and storyteller
I didn’t live in NYC during the 80s/90s but the way he paints a picture with his words makes me feel like I’m really there experiencing it all
here’s a video with the lyrics to the opening song NY State of Mind
there can be quite a bit of slang or inside references used in hip-hop, so for anyone who feels overwhelmed when trying to parse the meaning of some lyrics I’d recommend looking up the songs on genius.com which always has great explanations and breakdowns
(explicit lyrics warning)
To Pimp a Butterfly - Kendrick Lamar
It’s a hip-hop album with a strong focus on themes of race in America and mental health. Lamar’s lyricism is incredible.
The instrumentation is equally great, drawing inspiration from jazz, funk, and soul.
The Kinks, Preservation Act 1 & 2
The Kinks modernized rock, progressing through similar phases as The Beatles, they became increasingly experimental, taking on many different genres and instruments. I believe that The Beatles and many others learned different avenues to expand their sound from listening to The Kinks. Preservation Act 1 & 2 were a exposition into the realm of rock opera. It touches upon super modern an relevant concepts, such as crooked politicians, gentrification, getting old, censorship, etc. It plays out like a story, so please take the time to listen to the albums in order and not skip around. It is a master class of diverse rhythm and harmony. Any one of the songs on each album can get stuck in your head for days. In my mind, every some including the intro are hits. If you like the album and want to listen to other ones by them, I would also recommend The Village Green Preservation Society, Schoolboys in Disgrace, Muswell Hillbillies, Everybody’s in Showbiz, Misfits, and Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One. What’s so interesting about The Kinks is you can ask someone else what their favorite albums are and they may list totally different ones by them from what I listed because they were so versatile across several decades, but I like these the best.
Tool - Lateralus. It’s an album best played from start to finish, and takes a very dynamic ride that I interpret as a ride through human consciousness, communication with others and ourselves.
My favorite is The Beatles Revolver.
Revolver is, IMO, the best transitional album - the songs are all approachable, yet remain experimental. The execution is polished.
While many will say that Sgt Pepper is the Beatles’ best album, over the years I found myself leaning more toward Revolver. Pepper is a great concept album, but there are only a few memorable songs. Most people have heard the majority of Revolver at some point in their life.
So if I were to pick one album that represented the Beatles at their height as a pop music band, it would be Revolver.
Sgt. Pepper’s is a great record, but it’s only as massive as it is because it was one of the first of its kind; a rock album not designed to be danced to, but listened to and enjoyed almost passively. It was certainly one of the first from a band as enormous as The Beatles.
Meanwhile, Revolver is a fucking great record from start to finish.
Sgt. Pepper is incredible, and for decades I considered it the “gold standard.” But I always found myself re-playing Revolver. But Pepper remains the reference album for “that album a band puts out that is the epitome of the band’s output.” No album since Pepper was as good - though some of The Beatles best songs are post-Pepper.
The amazing thing about The Beatles is that their catalog is a diverse collection of numerous different pop and rock sensibilities, like they just could not pick a direction, but hit on nearly every form of pop and rock they could think of, then immediately got bored and moved on to something else.
For folks discovering The Beatles for the first time, I always recommend listening in chronological order, simply because their musical evolution is really their defining characteristic - many bands found a voice and then did deep-dives (thus defining the later genres of rock that The Beatles maybe lightly touched on before moving on). The Beatles refused to be constrained, and I think that’s why we are talking about them some 50 years later.
It’s probably worth mentioning their compilation double albums too - 1962-66 ( the red one) and 1967-70 (the blue one). These after i wore out a 45 of Penny Lane when I was 7 or 8.
The Red and Blue albums are awesome, especially since they contain songs you can’t find on their main albums — especially when you only had access to the reduced content Capitol record releases.
I’m not familiar with your reduced content. As you say Capitol I’m assuming the US? Did they restrict any particular albums or just some tracks/songs?
Capitol shaved off a few songs off the Parlephone equivalent of earlier albums and then released additional albums. https://ultimateclassicrock.com/beatles-us-uk-album-guide/
Right before CDs became huge, Capitol destroyed their Beatles masters, so the first Beatle CDs were Parlephone, which may be what most of the younger generations are used to.
Wow. What a mess.
I’ll have to check it out. Obviously a man of taste
Red (Taylor’s Version) - Taylor Swift
It’s hard for me to pick a favorite album because so many of hers have had an impact on me, but Red really is just that album!! It has a beautiful blend of genres (pop, rock, more electronic tracks, country) and it covers every aspect of love — the infatuation, the rose tinted glasses, the hurdles and triumphs and the eventual fallout. Not to mention All Too Well (10 Minute Version) just being an absolute masterpiece of emotional storytelling.
I choose Taylor’s Version specifically because Red, in a way, is Taylor reclaiming herself from a troubled and not so great relationship (which she at the time perceived as normal) and so the parallel of her now also reclaiming her work just adds another layer to the mix.
Red is so fantastic! It’s the album that made me really appreciate Taylor Swift and that blend of genres was part of why. It’s just so solid and good already, but Taylor’s Version is like the leveled-up more full circle version of that.
The Stage - Avenged Sevenfold
It’s a metal album with a pretty big departure from their normal sound (going from more traditional Heavy Metal to more Progressive Metal), and dropping a Single (the title track, The Stage) then the full album by surprise. It’s their first conceptual album with a focus on where humanity is (in 2016), how we interact with each other, our progression with technology, and our place in the universe which is still very interesting and fun to unpack. The extended version includes their covers of songs they grew up with in Southern California, ranging from Spanish folk songs to Pink Floyd. It’s fantastic to hear a band truly enjoy expanding their sound and creating music they want and seem to love.
I’ll agree with the stage, it’s a great album, but man I do not like their new cd.
