Ok. I was watching the movie “High Fidelity” tonight. With John Cusack. Throughout the movie it’s “your Top this” and “Your top 10 songs about…” etc. My friend Darren recently had a survey on his Facebook page but I never could figure out how to reply to it. (Gonna try later.)
Anybody out there? All you people that register daily? What are your top 15 albums of all time? Comment and think about this. Think about the albums that changed your life. Think about the albums you’ll drag out and listen to over and over and never get sick of. Think about albums where you know every single song, where you can sing each song as if an anthem. Those are favorite albums.
Here are mine (pretty much in order, though I could still tweak it a bit if it came down to ten I could take with me to a desert island. The first five, however, rock-solid the best five of my life.)
Prefab Sprout – “Two Wheels Good” (Steve McQueen)
Deacon Blue – “Raintown”
David Sylvian – “Gone to Earth”
Big Star – “#1 Record”
Ben Folds Five – “Ben Folds Five”
The Pernice Brothers – “Overcome by Happiness”
Camper Van Beethoven “The Third Album plus Vampire Can Mating Oven”
American Music Club – “Mercury”
The The – Soul Mining
The Apartments – “A Life Full of Farewells”
New Radicals – “Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too”
Scud Mountain Boys – “Massachusetts”
Jeff Buckley – “Grace”
The Replacements – “Don’t Tell a Soul”
Van Morrison – “Astral Weeks”
edit: Swapping out Afghan Whigs – “Congregation” in favor of The The – “Soul Mining”
edit #2: Swapping out Husker Du “Warehouse: Songs and Stories” for Van Morrison “Astral Weeks”
August 28, 2010 - 3:29 am
This one’s pretty-much in order, like yours. On my list: Artists that happened to be on eMusic or MSN Music at the right time, as well as a few albums that I became interested in because one song was featured on [game X] or [show Y]. Some embarrassing picks for their overplayedness, but I’m willing to believe they’re overplayed specifically because they’re so great.
Decemberists – 5 Songs
John Mayer – Room For Squares
Air – Moon Safari
Barenaked Ladies – Stunt
Russell Gunn – Ethnomusicology Vol. 3
Colin Hay – Going Somewhere
Jack Johnson – In Between Dreams
Jeff Kashiwa – Play
Junior Senior – D-D-Don’t Don’t Stop The Beat
Shaimus – The Sad Thing Is, We Like It Here
Weezer – Pinkerton
Sugar – Copper Blue
James Hardway – A Positive Sweat
Francis Dunnery – Fearless
ABC – The Lexicon Of Love
August 28, 2010 - 5:45 am
Madeline,
Some good calls. I considered putting Sugar “Copper Blue” on my list but I couldn’t decide between that one and the very uncharacteristic “Beaster”.
Now Francis Dunnery… surely you are not American. NO ONE knows about Francis Dunnery. I love him. (But I wouldn’t marry him. neener-neener.)
PS: You just made me drag out both Beaster and Copper Blue. So amazing…
-C
August 28, 2010 - 3:44 pm
You’re too kind! Alas, Francis Dunnery is one of the “heard him on a show” artists; “Good Life” was the track in question, and it stuck with me so tightly that I can recall and sing (most of) it from memory. American Life In The Summertime, Home Grown, Climbing Up the Love Tree, and King of the Blues are other real standouts, but I could go on; the sound was so different from what I’m used to, the vocals so stark and focused, that I regarded the album as an oddity at first — and over time I realized it had grown on me.
I’ll be saving this list of yours for when I’m next in the mood to be pleasantly surprised! Lord knows I’m overdue for buying some new albums~