So this week I’d like to ask you: what’s your favourite album of all time?
Yes, that album you would take with you to a desert island or to outer space. That album you can’t live without.
To spice it up, compilations or EPs are not allowed—it has to be an LP/album (live albums are accepted, provided they are long plays and have been released as such).
I can’t wait to read your responses—tell me why you chose that album in particular and what it means to you.
I think favorite album and desert island/outer space album are *slightly* different questions! I’d say “It’s Only Right and Natural” by The Frogs is my favorite album, but if I was going to listen to only one album for an undetermined amount of time, it would be “Washing Machine” by Sonic Youth.
Thanks for your comment. Interesting take on the favourite album versus desert island disc dichotomy. I used to consider certain albums as favourites but then when I realised I would spin others more often, a part of me (don't ask me why, because I honestly don't know!) decided that the one on rotation more often was more deserving of the title. But you're right. You may have a favourite album which you wouldn't necessarily spin more often than others, and vice versa. Now can I ask you, if you don't mind, why you would prefer to take the Sonic Youth record to a desert island instead of the The Frogs one?
Both albums are consistent without being repetitive. “It’s Only Right and Natural” is brilliant but it’s also very silly. Never takes itself seriously, which is a huge part of its charm, but I think it would wear me out if I was genuinely on a deserted island.
I didn’t listen to Sonic Youth until I was 20 (in 2003), and “Washing Machine” was their first album I heard. Everything made sense once I heard it, in a psychedelic kind of way. Even as it’s sort of eerie, it offers an exquisite comfort. I can imagine continuing to find new sounds in it forever, if it was the only album I had in outer space.
I see. Very interesting analysis there: thinking strategically in terms of not getting tired whilst on the island etc. I never get bored of the albums I love, but I guess that’s very personal.
I've recently come to believe that the masterpiece of their canon isn't Day in the Life, as is usually assumed, but rather the medley on the B-side of Abbey Road. To end on what might be your best work -- that's knowing how to leave 'em wanting more.
Abbey Road is of course a masterpiece. It's hard for me to listen to very often, because I weep through most of it. It's a girl thing.
It's not just a girl thing. I don't always weep - always - but I do hesitate to listen to side 2 too often in case familiarity breeds contempt. Except I actually appreciate the genius of the medley more, after all these years, not less - so I guess there's no danger really.
Yes, this is another reason (of several) why I only listen to the Fabs on vinyl (with a few exceptions). It forces deliberate attention rather than backgrounding, which helps keep familiarity at bay. Although as you said, I'm not sure that's really a problem. I've been listening since my father, a music historian, put Pepper my hand at a tender age and I only deepen my admiration and respect with every spin of their albums.
But it's painful for me... physically so... to listen to Golden Slumbers through The End. I have to parse it out for self preservation.
Yes! And with vinyl, the dreaded shuffle mode is impossible. Why do people listen to albums on shuffle? I guess with some it doesn't matter much, but with Abbey Road - just no.
And playlist algorithms butcher the side 2 medley, which should be illegal. I don't mind a carefully curated playlist (hell, I'm working on a few for my subscribers) but the playlists churned out by Spotify only prove they're not in it for the music; okay, I know that's hardly a revelation.
The motivation for listening to an album -- any album -- on shuffle is one of the great mysteries of the ages. I have no answer for that, other than that there ought to be federal statues, or at the very least, some strong local regulations that prohibit it...
And yes, carefully curated playlists are a whole other thing, and one that should not ever include anything but the entirely of the medley. I just did a "Beatles 101" playlist for a friend (oh, the pain of trimming that one down), and it finishes with, yes, the entire medley. I also did one that introduces people to the best of Macca post-1980, and just finished one on the best of George Harrison's solo work. Spotify sure makes that easier than the old days of recording to cassette... and then realising you forgot a song and having to back up and rerecord....
Can't I have one from each decade since the invention of the LP?!? Then I could go:
50s - Miles Davis - Kind Of Blue
60s - The Beatles - Revolver
70s - David Bowie - Heroes
80s - Killing Joke - s/t
90s - Mobb Deep - The Infamous
00s - Radiohead - In Rainbows
10s - Holly Miranda - Mutual Horse
20s - Novelty Daughter - Semigoddess
Still weeping about all I have to leave out...no Marley, Steely Dan, Led Zep, Fleet Foxes, Walkmen, Hendrix, Angel Olsen, Julia Jacklin, The Clientele...etc., etc., etc.
This seems like an impossible ask. Like picking a favorite child. I feel like I need to pick a double album, just to flout the rules. And also because double albums can be folded open like a book -- and often read like one too. I revere my copy of Minutemen' 1984 classic, Double Nickels on the Dime. I have a soft spot for punk rock double albums. Hmmm....topic for a newsletter perhaps....
Yes!! I had to reproduce this album cover image once when driving through Spain. We weren’t far from a town called San Pedro! It had to be done!! I’ll post it sometime!!
As a So Cal child/teen (until age 19) I wasn’t far from San Pedro, though I can’t recall ever being there other than once when my parents forced me to go on a cruise when I was 16. The port was in San Pedro.
I almost chose that record too! But I went with Zen Arcade. Tough one because I bought them both summer of 1984 after high school graduation. Both were huge for me.
Ha - Zen Arcade would have been my 2nd pick! If/when I do write a piece on punk-rock double albums, those two will be the top 2! What a banner year for SST. Those two, Meat Puppets 2, Black Flag My War.
With New Order's "Substance" DQ'ed, I'll go with "Stop Making Sense" by Talking Heads. It's a live record from a concert film which *technically* makes it a compilation album, but few records have floored me at first listen the way it did.
The Allman Brothers Band 'Eat A Peach' has been a constant favourite over the last fifty years, so that would probably be the one. But ask me next month and I might say Freddie Hubbard's 'Straight Life' or Miles Davis' 'A Tribute to Jack Johnson'; there are too many 'best albums' to choose just one.
For a long time, my automatic response to this question was 'Revolver' by The Beatles. Each track follows the next in a way that suggests any other sequence just wouldn't be right. Or is that because I've listened so many times?
But my answer to your question is ... 'Abbey Road'. Side two is a masterpiece, and side one is not far behind (even if it took me a long time to fully get into 'I Want You'). I can't imagine never hearing the side two medley again, and that has to be the test here.
Although I can't imagine never hearing 'Ommadawn' by Mike Oldfield again either. Okay, I'm being greedy now.
Fate may, indeed, be a cruel mistress, my cheeky little chum, but I see your riding crop! Fine, with your confining (if not confounding) limits of no comps or EPs, I'll even add a couple of my own! I have excised from my list of qualifiers albums that became favorites "after the fact." In other words, while I adore "Pet Sounds," I discovered it several years after its release.
My list of favorites (I'll decide on a winner among them) starts, in no particular order, with a couple of the early Beatles albums (I was 10 in '65, and saw them on the U.S. "Sullivan Show"), then moves to Bowie's "Spiders" album, bought week of release (June '72), just before my senior year of high school. It not only moved me musically, but 😉 personally, as well, and didn't leave my turntable for weeks!
About 4 months before that, though, was Todd Rundgren's "Something/Anything" 2-LP set. I was struck by the "I'm in the studio with Todd" seamless party quality vibe in which he laid it all out. It was also my first intro to "Hello It's Me," a lifelong favorite since then.
Amongst all those, though, I'd have to say the winner is "Thick as a Brick" by Jethro Tull, released about a month after Todd's album (and about 3 months before Bowie's---my junior year was chock full of influential tune-age!!)....the reason for "Brick" is that Ian Anderson had already inspired me to learn and play the flute (about 3 years before) from hearing previous Tull albums, and being transfixed by Anderson's jazzy flute style. I literally wondered aloud (after hearing "Bouree" and others from their 1969 "Stand Up" album, their second), "I wonder if I can make that sound?".
One lesson to learn the fingering and embouchure was all it took. I learned all Ian's flute licks by ear, just by placing needle down, picking out the notes on "my axe," then playing the next passage, and so on, until I was able to play all the sections and songs all at once!
By the time "Brick" came out, I'm like...."bring it on, bruh!" I'd have to say it took no longer than a week to learn all of Ian's flute licks on that album! Like anything else, you just have to wanna! Now, listening to that album (at the time) was more than just enjoying by listening and/or singing along, but being able to play a non-electric (that doesn't drown out the record) instrument that I had apparently mastered, while also cementing the notion (in my head) that I "had an ear for music"! That musical memory and ear helped later on with singing!
So, Andy, my personal growth, interaction, and satisfaction with conquering a new personal musical frontier has to cement "Brick" as my fave album of all time!
I hear something new, different, often mysterious every time I listen to In a Silent Way, released in 1969. Sometimes it a journey, other times it's shifting landscapes. I discovered it years later, in the late 1980s. When the box set of it was released in 2001, an entire new universe of music was created.
Blood on the Tracks is the essential Dylan album. The song lyrics, the music, the timing of when it came out (1975). Blood on the Tracks is a novel of an album. The stories contained within it are complete lives within themselves. The alternate versions of songs on the current bootleg series, More Blood, More Tracks: The Bootleg Series Vol. 14. The NY Sessions bootleg that surfaced many years ago, and Dylan's live performances over the years of the songs expands what the album means, meant, will still become. Here's a live performance of Tangled Up in Blue from The Rolling Thunder Review tour.
In a Silent Way is a fantastic album. It never, ever gets old. The post-recording arrangements by Miles and Teo Macero, in particular the loops, are what take the album to the next level. Have you listened to Spirit of Eden by Talk Talk? Mark Hollis was aiming for similar soundscapes.
Well. If I have to choose one, for all time, it's gonna be "Axis- Bold As Love", from the Jimi Hendrix Experience. It's got everything, from proto-heavy metal ("Spanish Castle Magic") to proto-Britpop ("She's So Fine") to beautiful balladry ("One Rainy Wish" and "Castles Made Of Sand") to gnarly funk ("Little Miss Lover"). Give me that record (and my bass) on a desert island, and I'll be good for several years.
Although my favorite band of all time is Dire Straits and I have all of theirs (mostly I think), I’m going to go with the most musically influential (on me): Jackson Browne, 1977, Running On Empty
School of Fish's eponymous debut and Crowded House's Woodface! Crowdies were my first concert and SOF were the opening band. Both are amazing, so can't decide, thus the tie 😀
It's so good Kevin, please put it on your Spotify and report back! It's as close to no-skip as you can get. The Finns can do no wrong. Imagine a whole album of "I Got You" by Split Enz, well that's Woodface! #getwoodfaced
I'm going to say Coltrane's Giant Steps, which is not normally on my favorite albums list but is something I could happily play on a loop if was stranded for years on a desert island.
Impossible. My opinion varies on this regularly. How to split love supreme vs the perfect prescription vs bringing it all back home vs enter the 36 chambers and on and on and on. What are you in the mood for.....?
If we're sticking to pop/rock music, one of Pet Sounds, Music from Big Pink, OK Computer, Astral Weeks, XO, Purple Rain, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, Blood on the Tracks, Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970,
I think favorite album and desert island/outer space album are *slightly* different questions! I’d say “It’s Only Right and Natural” by The Frogs is my favorite album, but if I was going to listen to only one album for an undetermined amount of time, it would be “Washing Machine” by Sonic Youth.
Thanks for your comment. Interesting take on the favourite album versus desert island disc dichotomy. I used to consider certain albums as favourites but then when I realised I would spin others more often, a part of me (don't ask me why, because I honestly don't know!) decided that the one on rotation more often was more deserving of the title. But you're right. You may have a favourite album which you wouldn't necessarily spin more often than others, and vice versa. Now can I ask you, if you don't mind, why you would prefer to take the Sonic Youth record to a desert island instead of the The Frogs one?
Both albums are consistent without being repetitive. “It’s Only Right and Natural” is brilliant but it’s also very silly. Never takes itself seriously, which is a huge part of its charm, but I think it would wear me out if I was genuinely on a deserted island.
I didn’t listen to Sonic Youth until I was 20 (in 2003), and “Washing Machine” was their first album I heard. Everything made sense once I heard it, in a psychedelic kind of way. Even as it’s sort of eerie, it offers an exquisite comfort. I can imagine continuing to find new sounds in it forever, if it was the only album I had in outer space.
I see. Very interesting analysis there: thinking strategically in terms of not getting tired whilst on the island etc. I never get bored of the albums I love, but I guess that’s very personal.
I have to say George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass regardless of the rules ❤️😎
Fair enough. Can’t go wrong with Harrison!
Here come the warm jets- Brian Eno. There’s plenty to listen to on this album!
Thanks, Britta! I’ll be sure to check it out!
Moon Safari by Air. One of the best of all time albums without question! https://open.spotify.com/album/5dmYtZVJ1bG9RyrZBRrkOA?si=L-6QA7HRROq54Kaoyf9Xfw
Thank you! Will definitely check it out.
Wonderful for driving in the snow!!!
This is mine and this is why. https://www.beatlesabbey.com/p/the-divine-madness-of-revolver
Thank you! Love Revolver (and Rubber Soul, which I always kind of associate). My favourite Beatles album, though, is Abbey Road.
I've recently come to believe that the masterpiece of their canon isn't Day in the Life, as is usually assumed, but rather the medley on the B-side of Abbey Road. To end on what might be your best work -- that's knowing how to leave 'em wanting more.
Abbey Road is of course a masterpiece. It's hard for me to listen to very often, because I weep through most of it. It's a girl thing.
It's not just a girl thing. I don't always weep - always - but I do hesitate to listen to side 2 too often in case familiarity breeds contempt. Except I actually appreciate the genius of the medley more, after all these years, not less - so I guess there's no danger really.
Yes, this is another reason (of several) why I only listen to the Fabs on vinyl (with a few exceptions). It forces deliberate attention rather than backgrounding, which helps keep familiarity at bay. Although as you said, I'm not sure that's really a problem. I've been listening since my father, a music historian, put Pepper my hand at a tender age and I only deepen my admiration and respect with every spin of their albums.
But it's painful for me... physically so... to listen to Golden Slumbers through The End. I have to parse it out for self preservation.
"Once there was a way to get back homeward..."
Fuck.
Yes! And with vinyl, the dreaded shuffle mode is impossible. Why do people listen to albums on shuffle? I guess with some it doesn't matter much, but with Abbey Road - just no.
And playlist algorithms butcher the side 2 medley, which should be illegal. I don't mind a carefully curated playlist (hell, I'm working on a few for my subscribers) but the playlists churned out by Spotify only prove they're not in it for the music; okay, I know that's hardly a revelation.
The motivation for listening to an album -- any album -- on shuffle is one of the great mysteries of the ages. I have no answer for that, other than that there ought to be federal statues, or at the very least, some strong local regulations that prohibit it...
And yes, carefully curated playlists are a whole other thing, and one that should not ever include anything but the entirely of the medley. I just did a "Beatles 101" playlist for a friend (oh, the pain of trimming that one down), and it finishes with, yes, the entire medley. I also did one that introduces people to the best of Macca post-1980, and just finished one on the best of George Harrison's solo work. Spotify sure makes that easier than the old days of recording to cassette... and then realising you forgot a song and having to back up and rerecord....
Can't I have one from each decade since the invention of the LP?!? Then I could go:
50s - Miles Davis - Kind Of Blue
60s - The Beatles - Revolver
70s - David Bowie - Heroes
80s - Killing Joke - s/t
90s - Mobb Deep - The Infamous
00s - Radiohead - In Rainbows
10s - Holly Miranda - Mutual Horse
20s - Novelty Daughter - Semigoddess
Still weeping about all I have to leave out...no Marley, Steely Dan, Led Zep, Fleet Foxes, Walkmen, Hendrix, Angel Olsen, Julia Jacklin, The Clientele...etc., etc., etc.
All right, I’ll have to let this one (these ones!) through. Love Revolver and love Mobb Deep. Great choices. Thanks!!
Was not expecting to see Killing Joke in this thread! Nice! KJ, Mobb Deep and Miles Davis all on the same list is what I love about this place.
Absolutely! Thanks, Kevin!
This seems like an impossible ask. Like picking a favorite child. I feel like I need to pick a double album, just to flout the rules. And also because double albums can be folded open like a book -- and often read like one too. I revere my copy of Minutemen' 1984 classic, Double Nickels on the Dime. I have a soft spot for punk rock double albums. Hmmm....topic for a newsletter perhaps....
Nice!! Well played 😉
Yes!! I had to reproduce this album cover image once when driving through Spain. We weren’t far from a town called San Pedro! It had to be done!! I’ll post it sometime!!
As a So Cal child/teen (until age 19) I wasn’t far from San Pedro, though I can’t recall ever being there other than once when my parents forced me to go on a cruise when I was 16. The port was in San Pedro.
Yes, post your art for sure!
I almost chose that record too! But I went with Zen Arcade. Tough one because I bought them both summer of 1984 after high school graduation. Both were huge for me.
Ha - Zen Arcade would have been my 2nd pick! If/when I do write a piece on punk-rock double albums, those two will be the top 2! What a banner year for SST. Those two, Meat Puppets 2, Black Flag My War.
Here for this.
With New Order's "Substance" DQ'ed, I'll go with "Stop Making Sense" by Talking Heads. It's a live record from a concert film which *technically* makes it a compilation album, but few records have floored me at first listen the way it did.
Nice! Definitely counts, and the most important is the impression it had (has) on you. Thanks!!
The Allman Brothers Band 'Eat A Peach' has been a constant favourite over the last fifty years, so that would probably be the one. But ask me next month and I might say Freddie Hubbard's 'Straight Life' or Miles Davis' 'A Tribute to Jack Johnson'; there are too many 'best albums' to choose just one.
Thanks a lot, Adam! I hear you. There are always two or three that compete for the top spot.
I gotta go with The Replacements Pleased to Meet Me. Captures the band at the peak of their powers.
Yes! A true "no skips" record.
Thanks, Keith! Nice choice.
The one I've listened to the most is Neil Young's Harvest.
Thanks, Terry! A classic indeed
For a long time, my automatic response to this question was 'Revolver' by The Beatles. Each track follows the next in a way that suggests any other sequence just wouldn't be right. Or is that because I've listened so many times?
But my answer to your question is ... 'Abbey Road'. Side two is a masterpiece, and side one is not far behind (even if it took me a long time to fully get into 'I Want You'). I can't imagine never hearing the side two medley again, and that has to be the test here.
Although I can't imagine never hearing 'Ommadawn' by Mike Oldfield again either. Okay, I'm being greedy now.
Solid choice(s)! Abbey Road is a masterpiece. Hands down!
Fate may, indeed, be a cruel mistress, my cheeky little chum, but I see your riding crop! Fine, with your confining (if not confounding) limits of no comps or EPs, I'll even add a couple of my own! I have excised from my list of qualifiers albums that became favorites "after the fact." In other words, while I adore "Pet Sounds," I discovered it several years after its release.
My list of favorites (I'll decide on a winner among them) starts, in no particular order, with a couple of the early Beatles albums (I was 10 in '65, and saw them on the U.S. "Sullivan Show"), then moves to Bowie's "Spiders" album, bought week of release (June '72), just before my senior year of high school. It not only moved me musically, but 😉 personally, as well, and didn't leave my turntable for weeks!
About 4 months before that, though, was Todd Rundgren's "Something/Anything" 2-LP set. I was struck by the "I'm in the studio with Todd" seamless party quality vibe in which he laid it all out. It was also my first intro to "Hello It's Me," a lifelong favorite since then.
Amongst all those, though, I'd have to say the winner is "Thick as a Brick" by Jethro Tull, released about a month after Todd's album (and about 3 months before Bowie's---my junior year was chock full of influential tune-age!!)....the reason for "Brick" is that Ian Anderson had already inspired me to learn and play the flute (about 3 years before) from hearing previous Tull albums, and being transfixed by Anderson's jazzy flute style. I literally wondered aloud (after hearing "Bouree" and others from their 1969 "Stand Up" album, their second), "I wonder if I can make that sound?".
One lesson to learn the fingering and embouchure was all it took. I learned all Ian's flute licks by ear, just by placing needle down, picking out the notes on "my axe," then playing the next passage, and so on, until I was able to play all the sections and songs all at once!
By the time "Brick" came out, I'm like...."bring it on, bruh!" I'd have to say it took no longer than a week to learn all of Ian's flute licks on that album! Like anything else, you just have to wanna! Now, listening to that album (at the time) was more than just enjoying by listening and/or singing along, but being able to play a non-electric (that doesn't drown out the record) instrument that I had apparently mastered, while also cementing the notion (in my head) that I "had an ear for music"! That musical memory and ear helped later on with singing!
So, Andy, my personal growth, interaction, and satisfaction with conquering a new personal musical frontier has to cement "Brick" as my fave album of all time!
Thanks a lot, Brad! Always fascinating to read you. Thick as a Brick is monumental. My dad introduced me to it even before I went to primary school!
Thanks, Andy! What a hip daddy!
Here's to music. Here's two:
In a Silent Way, Miles Davis.
Blood on the Tracks, Bob Dylan.
I hear something new, different, often mysterious every time I listen to In a Silent Way, released in 1969. Sometimes it a journey, other times it's shifting landscapes. I discovered it years later, in the late 1980s. When the box set of it was released in 2001, an entire new universe of music was created.
Blood on the Tracks is the essential Dylan album. The song lyrics, the music, the timing of when it came out (1975). Blood on the Tracks is a novel of an album. The stories contained within it are complete lives within themselves. The alternate versions of songs on the current bootleg series, More Blood, More Tracks: The Bootleg Series Vol. 14. The NY Sessions bootleg that surfaced many years ago, and Dylan's live performances over the years of the songs expands what the album means, meant, will still become. Here's a live performance of Tangled Up in Blue from The Rolling Thunder Review tour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwSZvHqf9qM
In a Silent Way is a fantastic album. It never, ever gets old. The post-recording arrangements by Miles and Teo Macero, in particular the loops, are what take the album to the next level. Have you listened to Spirit of Eden by Talk Talk? Mark Hollis was aiming for similar soundscapes.
Thank you so much, Russell. Love this deep dive.
Well. If I have to choose one, for all time, it's gonna be "Axis- Bold As Love", from the Jimi Hendrix Experience. It's got everything, from proto-heavy metal ("Spanish Castle Magic") to proto-Britpop ("She's So Fine") to beautiful balladry ("One Rainy Wish" and "Castles Made Of Sand") to gnarly funk ("Little Miss Lover"). Give me that record (and my bass) on a desert island, and I'll be good for several years.
Amazing! Rock on
Although my favorite band of all time is Dire Straits and I have all of theirs (mostly I think), I’m going to go with the most musically influential (on me): Jackson Browne, 1977, Running On Empty
Cool! I love that you picked one because of the specific impact it had on you. Thanks!
Dire Straits I really respect and love. Mark Knopfler is a ver underrated guitarist.
Gonna have to go with Husker Du and Zen Arcade.
Nice! Thanks
School of Fish's eponymous debut and Crowded House's Woodface! Crowdies were my first concert and SOF were the opening band. Both are amazing, so can't decide, thus the tie 😀
Thanks!! Will definitely check them out
Other than "Weather With You," I don't think I've listened to Woodface. Gonna change that today. I have a copy of their S/T, that I love.
It's so good Kevin, please put it on your Spotify and report back! It's as close to no-skip as you can get. The Finns can do no wrong. Imagine a whole album of "I Got You" by Split Enz, well that's Woodface! #getwoodfaced
That's quite an endorsement! I'm on it!
Late to the party but a little upset that it wasn't mentioned yet, so here's mine:
Aja - Steely Dan
Thank you, Glenn! Never too late. I like Steely Dan! Not sure I know this album... thanks!
Gotta go with Bob - "Blonde on Blonde"
Nice! Thanks 😊
I'm going to say Coltrane's Giant Steps, which is not normally on my favorite albums list but is something I could happily play on a loop if was stranded for years on a desert island.
Wise move. Thanks!
Prince’s Purple Rain with his Sign “O” the Times running a close second.
Solid!
I find it interesting that people cannot list ONE album.
I know 😅
I’m going with old school. You still can’t beat Pink Floyd’s”Dark Side of the Moon”.
Monumental and legendary on every level!
2112
Impossible. My opinion varies on this regularly. How to split love supreme vs the perfect prescription vs bringing it all back home vs enter the 36 chambers and on and on and on. What are you in the mood for.....?
If we're sticking to pop/rock music, one of Pet Sounds, Music from Big Pink, OK Computer, Astral Weeks, XO, Purple Rain, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, Blood on the Tracks, Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970,
Purple Rain! Yes, sir! So many other gems you’ve named there as well. Thanks!