I hate to turn up out of the blue, uninvited

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

#139 : Paranoid - Black Sabbath (1970)  

If you think Ozzy’s enduring fame is impressive, try taking a time machine back to the early Seventies and telling rock critics they’ll still be writing about Paranoid 50 years after its release. But Sabbath ruled for bummed-out kids in the Seventies, and nearly every heavy-metal and extreme rock band of the past three decades — from Metallica to Nirvana to Mastodon — owes a debt of worship to Tony Iommi’s crushing, granite-fuzz guitar chords, the Visigoth rhythm machine of Bill Ward and Geezer Butler, and Ozzy Osbourne’s agonized bray in “Paranoid,” “Iron Man,” and “War Pigs.”

Some time ago, I put a shout out on Facebook for classic albums I might have missed (and look where that's lead me!) - Paranoid was one recommendation I received and my initial verdict was "Hmmm - thanks but no thanks".  And on a second listen, my verdict has not changed.  I like the title track, but overall it's a bit same-y for me and just not really my thing.  I can quite see it's influential, but it's influenced a load of other stuff I don't like, so that's not getting it any votes from me.  Sorry!

Wikipedia explains something I was wondering - what the fuck is going with the album cover?  Apparently the guy is dressed up as a pig and the fact that he's carrying a sword means he's one of the "war pigs", which is the opening track and was going to be the album's title, except that the record company decided they preferred "Paranoid" as both a single and the name of the album, so changed it without changing the artwork.  As Ozzy so eloquently put it "What the fuck does a bloke dressed as a pig with a sword in his hand got to do with being paranoid?".  The record company were right about "Paranoid" - it was their most successful career single, so much that it attracted "the wrong sort of fan" for the group and they decided not to bother with singles again for a while.  Musicians, eh?!?  Their Wikipedia entry is far too long for me to bother reading - it might feature drugs, but I haven't checked (because I don't need to).

"Customers also listened to" all them people I have little to no interest in - but if you like this album, you'll have heard the other albums as well.  If you haven't heard this album, don't let me stop you but it's unlikely to be your cup of tea - and it's not for me, I'm afraid.

#138 : Immaculate Collection - Madonna (1990) 

Like the 1987 remix album, You Can Dance, this is a perfect Madonna CD: nothing but good songs. You get timeless pop such as “Holiday,” provocations like “Papa Don’t Preach,” dance classics like “Into the Groove,” and a new Lenny Kravitz-co-produced sex jam, “Justify My Love,” which samples Public Enemy.

Greatest Hits - REJECT!  Yes, it's a very fine greatest hits album with a lot of very fine tunes on it - if I had to pick three, I'd go for "Material Girl", "Express Yourself" and "Cherish", but we all have our own soft spot for Her Madgesty (except for the grumpy people who don't like her at all - what's wrong with them?).  But's even she wouldn't argue there's any place for this album on this list.  Although, of course, if you were to ask me which one Madonna album you should own, then I'd obviously say this one - no contest.

Wikipedia has a surprising amount to say about the album starting with the earth-shatteringly obvious "The actual title of the album, The Immaculate Collection, is a loose pun on the Immaculate Conception" - although I'd probably argue it's a straight-up pun rather than a loose one.  It also tells us that it has sold a LOT of copies - over 30 million.  Her entry is, of course, long and reminds us that this was just before the time she went a bit mad with her Sex book and the like - she was definitely trying too hard to be outrageous for a time.  I also learned something about her I never knew - she was romantically linked with Jean-Michel Basquiat back before either of them became well-known.  She has a most fascinating string of exes, including Sean Penn, Warren Beatty, Lenny Kravitz, Tupac, Dennis Rodman, David Blaine, Vanilla Ice, Anthony Kiedis, Guy Ritchie, Alex Rodriguez, John F Kennedy Jr and Sandra Bernhard - given some of the people on that list, I think we can let her off the odd moment (or decade) or madness.

"Customers also listened to" Janet Jackson, Deee-Lite, Cyndi Lauper and EMF.  Errr - OK.  This is a particularly fine album though - essential for 80s fans, I'd suggest - but unfortunately completely invalid for this list.

#137 : 21 - Adele (2011) 

“Pain is art” may be a cliché, but for Adele, it rang especially true. Her debut album, 19, was a polite, tasteful set of soul-inflected pop. Its follow-up was something else again. Chewing over a tumultuous affair, she dug deep and came up with a modern masterpiece of post-breakup soul music. She’d actually cut an entire album with producer Rick Rubin but wound up preferring earlier demos of songs like “Rolling in the Deep,” “Someone Like You,” and “Set Fire to the Rain,” and mostly used those instead. The switch-up made for an even rawer and more emotional experience that clearly connected: 21 sold more than 30 million copies and swept the 2012 Grammys.

I remember 19 coming out and various people raving about it, so I checked it out.  And as Rolling Stone put it, it's both polite and tasteful - which are polite and tasteful synonyms for dull, dull, dull.  And then she came out with this, which is anything but dull.  I remembered liking it, but hadn't listened to it in years so was looking forward to revisiting it.  And I still like it, but it wasn't as good as I remember it - the high points like "Set Fire To The Rain", "Rolling In The Deep" and "Someone Like You" are very high indeed, but the rest of it kinda drifted by for me.  Maybe it's just that I've forgotten them and would get back into them or maybe they're just suffering in comparisons to great tracks - I don't feel I can say on one relisten.  It's still a good album though - just not quite as good as it was in my head.

I'm not saying the Wikipedia entry for the album is looooonnnnng, but it's overtaken Kanye's Graduation as the longest one so far - it gets the full works (and it didn't hurt that most of the album was recorded twice with different producers).  The sales numbers are just phenomenal - the second biggest UK album ever (after Queen's Greatest Hits), the highest selling studio album ever in the UK, #1 in most countries (only #4 in Japan though!), the best selling album of the decade in the UK, the US and a million other places and it recently pass 500 consecutive weeks in the US Billboard 200 chart!  Basically it's done OK.  Her Wikipedia entry is similarly enormous, but she comes across as a nice person - for starters, she has a section on "Philanthropy" rather than "Feuds".  I've never seen her live but have watched a couple of concerts on the old telly and she comes across really well - and amusingly sweary too!

"Customers also listened to" lots of people with fine voices - Sam Smith, Alicia Keys, Christina Perri (a fine album if you haven't heard it), John Legend - all of whom have done OK, but they're not quite in our Adele's league (even though she's only the second best selling artist in this round!).  A fine album, but you probably already know that - and if you don't, then you've probably been avoiding it because you know you're going to hate it.

It might have been close if I was allowing greatest hits albums to be considered, but I'm not, so it isn't - Adele for the win.

#142-140 - various combinations of quiet and loud
#136-134 - three very different bands