Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?

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

#130 : 1999 - Prince (1982)  

“I didn’t want to do a double album,” Prince said, “but I just kept on writing. Of course, I’m not one for editing.” The second half of 1999 is just exceptional sex-obsessed dance music; the first half is the best fusion of rock and funk achieved to that date, and it lays out the blueprint for Prince’s next decade. Except for a few background hand claps and vocals, Prince plays most every instrument himself and creates a relentless, irresistible musical sequence of apocalypse (“1999”) and the raunchy sex that he proposes as the only possible response — “Little Red Corvette,” “Let’s Pretend We’re Married,” “Delirious,” and, well, just about every other song on the album.

Our second visit with His Purple Highness and this is a slightly better known album than last time.  However, whilst I was aware of the singles, I had never listened to the full album - but I was pretty sure the rest of it wasn't going to wildly surprising though.  And it's not - all tracks are the fine sex-obsessed combination of rock and fuck that Rolling Stone suggests.  I didn't hate the fact that it was a double album - there are only 11 tracks after all - but it does feel like it wouldn't have hurt for him to trim each track by a couple of minutes and got it down to a single album.  But this is certainly one of the more bearable 70 minute monstrosities I've had to endure.  The singles are the highpoints for me, but I also enjoyed "International Lover" where he goes full-on Prince lover boy

Good evening! This is your pilot Prince speaking
You're flying aboard the Seduction seven forty seven
And this plane is fully equipped
With anything your body desires

It's not entirely clear whether he was expecting me to laugh at loud at him and his ridiculousness though.

The Wikipedia entry for the album is quite long, but surprisingly content-free.  Amusingly it does make the point that this was the first Prince album where he didn't ONLY sing about sex, but you'd be hard pushed to realise that at first listen because there's an awful lot of singing abut sex on there as well.  Like all the artists in this round, his Wikipedia entry is huge and hard to extract relevant and/or humorous content from (some would I say I fail at this no matter how large the entry) but he comes across as a good guy who left us too soon.

"Customers also listened to" Cameo, Robert Palmer, George Michael and Janet Jackson - which seems like a peculiar mix even by the standards of what we've seen for other 80s albums.  But I enjoyed this more than I was expecting - the man certainly funked and rocked.  And we're going to get a couple more opportunities to hear him in action further up the list.

#129 : The Wall - Pink Floyd (1979)  

Pink Floyd’s most elaborately theatrical album was inspired by their own success: the alienating enormity of their tours after The Dark Side of the Moon [see No. 55], which was when bassist-lyricist Roger Waters first hit upon a wall as a metaphor for isolation and rebellion. He finished a demo of the work by July 1978; the double album then took the band a year to make. Rock’s ultimate self-pity opera, The Wall is also hypnotic in its indulgence: the totalitarian thunder of “In the Flesh?”; the suicidal languor of “Comfortably Numb”; the Brechtian drama of “The Trial.” Rock-star hubris has never been more electrifying.

Oh joy - more Floyd.  I watched the film back in the day and remembered quite enjoying it, but can't say much of the music stuck with me apart from the school kids singing "we don't need no education" - and you wouldn't believe how much of a fuss there was over that back in the day.  So I was happy to listen to the album to see how much of it came back.  And I'd forgotten how good "Comfortably Numb" was - and how instantly forgettable much of the rest of the music was.  Maybe it just needs a few more listens or maybe it needs some accompanying visual elements, but it just did nothing for me.  But I added "Comfortably Numb" to my general playlist, so it wasn't a completely pointless exercise.  Just mostly pointless.  And 80 minutes long, as well.

The Wikipedia entry for the album is long, but not as long as I feared (only half the length of Adele's 21, after all).  But I just knew it was going to be deadly earnest about the whole thing, and so it turned out.  Critical opinion on the album was mixed, with Melody Maker declaring "I'm not sure whether it's brilliant or terrible, but I find it utterly compelling" - which is similar to my view except that I found it utterly uncompelling.  It sold "pretty well" though - over 30 million copies globally, which I'd have to say I somewhat struggle to understand.  It's also interesting that it got to #1 in a load of countries, but only #3 in the UK - a cleverer man than me must have a possible reason for this (but you won't find him quoted here!).  And we're not going to revisit the band's Wikipedia again, I'm afraid - I wasted enough time listening to the album.

"Customers also listened to" lots of people who do very long songs, some of which I like and some of which I don't.  But there's no danger of me revisiting this, I'm afraid.

 #128 : A Night At The Opera - Queen (1975)

“Queen will be the Cecil B. DeMille of rock,” proclaimed singer Freddie Mercury, and this far-ranging, rococo album is the group’s ready-for-my-close-up moment. Bassist John Deacon wrote the melodic highlight “You’re My Best Friend,” a bouncy bit of Paul McCartney-esque pop; Mercury wrote the brutal rocker “Death on Two Legs,” about the band’s former manager; and guitarist Brian May wrote “The Prophet’s Song,” a doomy portent of a flood that runs 8:21 and includes a vocal canon from Mercury. But the coup was “Bohemian Rhapsody,” an opera buffa in which Mercury combined three different songs he’d been writing into a suite that took weeks to record.  

For some unclear reason, my Dad bought this back in the day - I'm not aware of any other Queen albums he bought (he was always much more of an Elton John fan) but I remember finding this and putting it on when I was quite young and enjoying it.  But I'd completely forgotten how good it was - the first 5 tracks in particular are a storming opener to the album and I think "Bohemian Rhapsody" would be an excellent album closer, but for some reason they stuck a weird version of "God Save The Queen" on the end.  I actually think that "'39" is one of my all-time favourite Queen tracks despite it being relatively unknown and very understated (it's not even Freddie singing on it).  George Michael did a great version of it at the Freddie Mercury tribute concert - well worth checking out here (which also reminds you there were a LOT of people there).  I think we can safely say George did a good job that day with this and this (with an amusingly young Lisa Stansfield) being his other contributions.

Wikipedia tells me this was, at the time, the most expensive album ever made - 40 grand, they spent on it!  It also tells me that the film was named after the Marx Brothers film (which I did know) and that subsequently, the band became friends with Grouch Marx (which I didn't).  And finally, in this round of random facts, the record label weren't going to release "Bohemian Rhapsody" as a single, but the band gave Kenny Everett a copy making him promise not to play it, knowing full well what would happen and after he played it 14 times in 2 days, everyone wanted to buy the single - which was not yet even planned.  The Wikipedia entry for the song is amusing - it breaks down each section into the minutest detail, far more so than anyone actually needs.

The band's Wikipedia entry is HUGE, but seeing as they've been around for as long as I have, that's probably not all the surprising. I wanted to pull some random facts out, but there's just too much there - but it's worth a read to get a feel for all the stuff they've done.  "Customers also listened to" Kansas, Elton John and a lot of other famous 70s groups.  But this is up there with the best of the 70s albums we've had so far.  It's also their only appearance on this list - and I suspect there are plenty of people who would argue for additional and/or different inclusions, depending upon which era Queen was their favourite.  Queen's Greatest Hits would, of course, not be worthy of consideration but is very much worthy of mention in passing for being the best selling album in the UK (and they had an awful lot more hits after it was released as well)

Only 7 years cover these 3 heavy hitting albums but they feel much further apart than that (although I suspect in part that's because 1999 was released in 1982).  The Floyd just didn't do it for me, I'm afraid and although I liked Prince more than I was expecting, he was going to have to go some to beat Queen.  And he didn't, so well done to Queen for a particularly fine album.

#133-131 - Not a close contest
#127-125 - An unexpectedly fascinating read