Just thought I'd write some little tributes to my personal favorite classic albums that celebrated a significant anniversary this year. These guys turned 60, 50, 40, 30, 20, 10 years old... There are 27 albums here. Feel free to skim through.
Enjoy!
60
Bob Dylan • Highway 61 Revisited
I bought a copy of this when I was 16. I liked it, but I didn't really get it. As in, I didn't realize until later in life that I didn't get it. "Desolation Row" was an obvious masterpiece, but a certain amount of youthful mirth has to be drained from your soul for "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" to become your favorite song. Just a lyrical onslaught from Bob unforeseen by the human race. Applied dynamite to the game.
The Beatles • Rubber Soul
I got a copy of this when I was pretty young. My first Beatles CD. I'm not sure if they still do this, but I got this at a Costco. I had a copy of Rolling Stone magazine with their top 50 greatest artists of all time, and The Beatles were ranked #1. Pretty easy sell, for me. I grew up with The Beatles through my parents, and I was already a fan. The album itself is jam-packed with memorable tunes. Side B cuts like "If I Needed Someone" and "I'm Looking Through You" can go toe-to-toe with radio-ready hits like "Drive My Car" and "Nowhere Man." And personally: The bass guitar sounds amazing.
The Beach Boys • The Beach Boys Today!
I didn't get into this album until I was in my 30s. I already knew most of the songs, but whatever. There's a lot of youthful yearning here. Everything from the fear of entering manhood to wondering if your girlfriend will love you tomorrow. I'm 35, and despite whatever merits of adulthood I've attained, these questions and dreams will always be apart of me.
50
Bob Dylan • Blood on the Tracks
This album makes me smile. It's supposed to depress me, but it will always make me smile. I became obsessed with this when I worked at Redfish Lake in the summer of 2015. There's a spirituality tied within. It's an album about divorce, but I felt it was about finding God. Perhaps I'll just always confuse nostalgia with hope.
Bruce Springsteen • Born to Run
Romanticism: The Album! So yeah, I got a copy of this when I was in 8th Grade. My oldest brother owned his fair share of Bruce albums, and I needed to fill the gaps in his collection. Every performance on here is passionate. The lyrics are dramatic to the point of excess. Everything feels like a matter of life or death. Each girl you kiss is destined to make your heart explode. Every automobile a "suicide machine." An appropriate, accurate depiction of adolescence.
Pink Floyd • Wish You Were Here
We're goin' way back! There were a couple years in my childhood where my favorite genre was classic rock. Pink Floyd was a quintessential band, and this was the first album I owned by them. Bought a copy of it at a mall in Yuba City. People, 26 minutes of this album are taken up by 2 different versions of the same song. If that's not your idea of "genius," the title track will at least give you a gut check.
Patti Smith • Horses
This is a tough album to talk about. I listened to it constantly in 2021. There was a cold autumn day where I went for a hike by myself near Beaver Mountain, up Logan Canyon. Almost made it through the whole album on the drive up. So when I got back in the car, the first thing that came on was the closer "Elegie." Possibly the most discomforting music experience of my life. The way (and amount) that Patti talks about death on this album is poetically unsettling. That being said: "Birdland" is the greatest song of all time.
Led Zeppelin • Physical Graffiti
Common theme around here, but I purchased this CD when I was young and I didn't get it until I was old. Led Zeppelin was my favorite band for a couple years. But in their discography, I saw this sound as the beginning of their decline. I eventually owned my own car with big fat speakers, and it all clicked for me. Just the heaviest, chunkiest rock music the Gods have to offer.
40
The Replacements • Tim
There's a case to be made by Scott's calculations that this should be my favorite album of all time. If anything, the best songs on here are some of my all-time favorites. It starts with "Hold My Life" and ends with "Here Comes a Regular." "Swingin Party" and "Bastards of Young" go back-to-back in the middle. It's a greatest hits sandwich.
Tom Waits • Rain Dogs
Tom Waits is a life-changing character to let into your life. My high school drama teacher burned me a copy of this when I was a depressed 19 year-old. Yet I don't think this album has ever brought me bad memories. You try to sing along, do all the voices, act out the characters... It's rather life-affirming.
30
Elliott Smith • Elliott Smith
I listened to a TON of Elliott Smith when I was 27, and his music has been on rotation for me ever since. This one has grown on me a lot. These songs feel like they live behind a photographic vignette. Most of these songs give me the creeps. But some of this hits on a cold day when you're drinking hot tea beneath a pile of blankets. It's like when your eyes get used to the surrounding darkness, and you start to see everything clearly. But yeah, to be more literal: It's a short folk album.
BjÓ§rk • Post
Everything about this album makes me think of the 90s. I remember being alive in the 90s. I was a kid and I didn't know anything about BjÓ§rk. But when I tried out this album in my 20s, it immediately felt like home. "Hyperballad" is a perfect piece of emotional devastation. Doesn't mean this whole album doesn't come off as something electric and goofy.
Guided by Voices • Alien Lanes
Between 1994 and 1995, Guided by Voices released 89 songs. 28 of those are on this album. This fact isn't nearly as ridiculous as the actual music in question. You're not gonna find a back-to-back like "Pimple Zoo" and "Big Chief Chinese Restaurant" anywhere else. But what makes Robert Pollard's music enticing to me is how he drops hints of vulnerability, scattered among the nonsense. "You don't know what I go through." "I can't pretend to be something I'm not." "You can never be strong, you can only be free." Ultimately, I always find an emotional connection with this band.
Radiohead • The Bends
If I heard this at age 17, this would be considered one of my favorite albums of all time. But I was already indoctrinated in Radiohead's weirder work before getting around to this. But it's still up there for me. "Black Star" and "(Nice Dream)" remain my personal favorite tracks. This is a mandatory listen for sad teenage boys. A feeling I almost glorify.
Pavement • Wowee Zowee
Wowee Zowee reminds me of a lot of things. Getting into Pavement and the related 90s lo-fi indie scene was a life-changing part of my teenage life (see GBV above). But I bought this CD when I was 27. This album is a hard sell. I probably would have hated it if I bought it in high school. But I was a hopeless adult and finally primed to enjoy one of my favorite bands totally piss away a bunch of annoying rock songs. At least stick around for "Grounded" if you can't do the full 55 minutes.
Palace Music • Viva Last Blues
I wasn't gonna write about this one. But I forgot. I freaking love this album. It's always hard to tell whether Will Oldham's lyrics are masterworks of cerebral poetry, or if he's just really high.
20
Sufjan Stevens • Illinois
This stands as one of my top 5 favorite albums of all time. I ripped a copy of it from a friend at Redfish Lake in 2009. There's something about that summer that sincerely feels like the last days of my steady progression as a human being. A lot of new friends, music and mountains, all at once. This was part of that summer soundtrack. These days I see this album as a broken bridge between developing those dense, mature emotions, and then somehow losing them. But you also learn random crap about the state of Illinois.
Bright Eyes • I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
When I was 28, I shared some of my own recorded music on Facebook. Multiple friends assumed I was influenced by Bright Eyes. I actually had never heard a Bright Eyes album in my life. I knew a few songs from when I was a teen; they were like a hot band back then. But yeah. This whole thing struck me immediately. Much more Bob Dylan adjacencies in there than I could have predicted. Definitely not just a cutesy indie folk album.
Animal Collective • Feels
Animal Collective: Good band. Feels is one of many candidates for their best album. A drummer friend of mine interviewed me for his USU college radio show, and made the claim that the guitar tones on this album alone made this their most influential work. I didn't get it at the time, but hoo boy, I get it now.
Kanye West • Late Registration
"Heard' Em Say" was the first rap song I ever liked. I was 15 and it was new. I would eventually get ahold of the whole album when I was a college student. This will always remind me of working my 4am shift as a janitor in the USU Education building. Not all rap is made to sound good in the ungodly dark hours of the morning, but dang, Kanye did it here.
Wolf Parade • Apologies to the Queen Mary
Thanks to my addiction to unethical music streaming, 2005 has become one of my favorite years in music. I've heard a ton of albums from this year. Mostly indie. This album is the celebratory, culminative product of everything going on at that time. Just an absolute powerhouse of tracks from Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug that may live well beyond the era they defined.
M.I.A. • Arular
I freaking love the first 2 M.I.A. albums. This one always reminds me of sunshine. She recorded most of this as a teenager, so there's a youthful energy to these songs. Her music basically exists as a genre of its own.
The Mountain Goats. • The Sunset Tree
The Mountains Goats have a lot of albums. This definitely isn't their first. But something about the band on this album will always sound fresh to me. Love the lite organ parts on all these songs. Every song sounds like it conceptually and musically belongs here. People live and people die on this album. It's a beautiful personal document that hits me stronger as I get older.
Devendra Banhart • Cripple Crow
I said earlier that 2005 is one of my favorite music years. I can probably name 30 albums from 2005 that are objectively better than Cripple Crow. But this is the one I listened to when I was 18. I've heard it described as "The White Album if it was at least 50% Ringo songs." And I love it. I remember bonding with the hippies at Redfish Lake over this album. I remember listening to this on the bus to Idaho's high school state speech competition. I believe an anniversary celebration is well-deserved.
10
Kendrick Lamar • To Pimp a Butterfly
Now this stuff makes me feel old. I listened to all these albums when they were brand new. I was in college. 10 years ago. Oof. Anyways. I thought TPAB was the greatest album of all time. I spilled a lot of internet ink over it. It's crazy looking back on all that. Because I know way more about rap now. And to revisit this album now... It's a different type of mind-blowing. I actually think I underestimated the production quality on here. And just how well each genre experimented on here was executed. This proceeds to sound so compact to me. "Wesley's Theory" might be its true breadwinner.
Sufjan Stevens • Carrie & Lowell
This album has 11 songs on it, but it's hard for me not to just hinge its legacy on 4 songs: "Death with Dignity." "Should Have Known Better." "The Only Thing." "No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross." These are 4 of the greatest songs by my favorite songwriter. Makes me want to drive somewhere with pine trees and have a good cry.
Father John Misty • I Love You, Honeybear
Oh gosh. This album has snuck back into my life recently. Really, the semester I fell in love with this wasn't my favorite. At all. Perhaps it worked as a sign of hope for me. Some of my favorite love songs fall on this. Josh Tillman supposedly wrote "Holy Shit" on his wedding day, and it makes sense. It's about everything, and therefor it's actually just about love.
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