My ego is killing me

Continuing my trip up Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time...

#197 : Meet The Beatles! - The Beatles (1964)

For Americans in the full grip of Beatlemania, this was the first album they could buy. Meet took the Fabs’ second British record, With the Beatles, dropped five covers, and added three tracks, including the singles “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “I Saw Her Standing There.” (This arguably made a hash of the Beatles’ artistic intentions, yet made for a much better record.) John Lennon and Paul McCartney were on a roll that would be unmatched in rock history, and at this point they were a real team. They wrote “I Want to Hold Your Hand” together — on a piano in the basement of the home of Jane Asher, McCartney’s actress girlfriend — as Lennon put it, “eyeball to eyeball.” 

Hmmm - the description above makes it sound very much like a greatest hits, but upon further investigation that's not actually fair.  It's more of a repackaging for the US market playing by their rules (apparently any more than 12 tracks caused their brains to explode or something).  I'm not a huge Beatles fan and even less keen on their early stuff, but I was expecting to recognise most of the album and was actually quite surprised at how few of the other tracks I knew.  I thought it was all generally fine if you like that sort of thing - although it very much falls into the "probably much better if you lived through it" category.  But not an unpleasant listen - and it's a cool album cover as well. 

Wikipedia has surprisingly little to say about the album - bizarrely, the only comment in the "Critical Reception" section is that Robert Christgau talks about it in a book called "Rock Albums Of The Seventies".  Which makes absolutely no sense at all.  But it was #1 in the US for 11 weeks, so I think we can safely say it did OK for itself.  The Wikipedia entry for the band is still horrendously long, so concentrating on this time period, we can see the following statement "During the week of 4 April 1964, the Beatles held twelve positions on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, including the top five."  I guess that's somewhat impressive!

"Customers also listened to" albums by The Beatles or A Beatle - there are enough of them out there (but the quality is very variable, particularly in the latter category).  All in all, an interesting listen of which I was surprisingly unaware of large slices of it, but one that I'm unlikely to revisit.

#196 : Body Talk - Robyn (2010)

Robyn had a few Swedish teen-pop hits in the Nineties, but she’s a worldly adult on Body Talk — this was the voice of a woman who knew how it felt to shed tears on the dance floor. She released Body Talk in three mini-album installments on her own Konichiwa label, before cherry-picking the highlights for this epochal feminist disco statement. “Dancing on My Own” became this century’s answer to “I Will Survive.” She told Rolling Stone, “I was pushing through the challenges and getting off on that liberated feeling of being able to explore desperation and passion and frustration and all that.”

Wow - was this really over 10 years ago?  This is an album with a slightly strange release history - parts 1 and 2 were released separately in June and September and then this was released in November featuring the best tracks from those two along with 5 other new tracks, which were simultaneously released as part 3.  Got that?!?  Good - just don't ask why, OK?!?  So, hmmmm - does that make it a greatest hits?  I think we'll just put the whole thing down to Scandinavian contrariness instead and move along now...

I like all the various Body Talk releases - there are some tracks on parts 1&2 that I would have put on the final compilation, but it's still a fine collection of dancey-pop (and this is the last album on the list that I think could even be considered to be dance music).  Highlights for me are "Dancing On My Own", "Love Kills", "We Dance To The Beat" and "U Should Know Better" (in which she & Snoop declare that the French, Vatican, Russians, CIA, FBI, LAPD, the prince of darkness and the entire industry know better than fuck with her, so you should definitely know better) but they're all pretty fine tracks in my opinion.

Wikipedia tells us the album was critically admired, but didn't do great shakes commercially -  that's probably not a huge surprise given that most of the tracks had already been released in the previous 6 months ("Dancing On My Own" was a top 10 single in the UK, so it's not like she was completely ignored).  Her Wikipedia entry tells us that Rolling Stone's "had a few Swedish teen-pop hits" isn't entirely fair - she had two top 10 singles in the US, which entirely passed me by so I must make an effort to check them out.  There are also two pictures of her singing at Nobel Peace Prize ceremonies - she doesn't seem like an obvious choice but I'm guessing the ceremony happens in Sweden and Abba just weren't available that year.

"Customers also listened to" Madonna, Lady Gaga, Britney and La Roux (which is a good album if you like this sort of thing).  But I'll take this album over any of them any day and I listen to it pretty regularly.

#195 : Songs Of Leonard Cohen - Leonard Cohen (1967)

Leonard Cohen was already well into his thirties when he made his debut, in the Summer of Love. The Montreal poet had been publishing his books to literary acclaim for years, but he took to songwriting, with his acoustic guitar and the orchestrations of producer John Simon. These were the late-night ballads that made his legend, starting with “Suzanne” and “Sisters of Mercy.” But Cohen specialized in farewells, blowing kisses to his muses in “So Long, Marianne” and “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye.” He kept writing brilliant songs into his eighties, right up to his death in 2016.

Leonard Cohen is, to me, like Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan in that I like at least some of their songs (and Lenny has written a lot of fine songs - I really like Jennifer Warnes cover album Famous Blue Raincoat) but their vocal style and/or delivery just annoys me and I struggle to get past that.  So it's fair to say my expectations were not high for this album.  But, it does appear that early doors Lenny C hadn't quite worked out how to make his voice and phrasing super annoying for me, so I actually didn't mind this.  And "Suzanne" is, of course, a particularly fine song.

However, I would have to say it's a bit too poetic - I can imagine many late night sessions discussing the meaning behind the lyrics (they didn't have Netflix then, after all) but there are times you just want to give him a shake and say "Write something that ACTUALLY MEANS SOMETHING!".  There are also a couple of places on the album where he makes some very odd sounds, which don't really fit in with the rest of the ambience and just seemed weird.

Wikipedia tells us that critical reaction was mixed at the time, with this particularly amusing review from Rolling Stone - "There are three brilliant songs, one good one, three qualified bummers, and three flaming shits".  It did pretty well with the general public though - particularly in the UK, spending a year and a half in the album charts.  It also tells us that Cohen wasn't happy with mix, thinking it not nearly stripped back enough - personally, I'd have to say that didn't come across to me and if anything I thought it was too bare.  The man's Wikipedia entry is huge - he did a lot in his time (including five years of seclusion in a Buddhist monastery) but he doesn't exactly come across as a barrel of laughs.  I did feel sorry for the guy having all his money stolen by his manager though - although this forced him back on tour and I know lots of people who were delighted to get the chance to see him live!

"Customers also listened to" Bob Dylan and Tom Waits (another vocal delivery botherer for me, although the songs generally disappoint as well in his case).  Overall, I enjoyed this a lot more than I was expecting and I wouldn't hate to listen to it again, although it feels unlikely I'll search it out.

A fine effort from the old dudes, but to be honest they weren't ever in with a shout for me and so this round goes to Robyn.

#200-198 - UK smooth vs US noise
#194-192 - Well, not good, certainly