Your mom busted in and said "what's that noise?"

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

#194 : Bad - Michael Jackson (1984)

After Thriller turned Michael Jackson into an international pop phenomenon, he spent two years of work on the follow-up. The title song came with a 17-minute video by Martin Scorsese that cost $2 million. Bad gave Jackson more hits to add to his collection: “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You,” “Bad,” “The Way You Make Me Feel,” and “Man in the Mirror.” He also began to vent some of his darker emotions on “Smooth Criminal” and the paranoid “Dirty Diana.” Not long afterward, Jackson would retreat to his Neverland ranch.

I feel that when he named this album, he was looking 37 years into the future and just daring me to write a one word review - "Yes".   But hey, let's pretend that not everything is about me - it's possible there were other factors at play here.  However, I remember listening to the album at the time and being distinctly underwhelmed - I also remember watching the "Bad" video being debuted on Channel 4 (as they used to do back in the day!) and overwhelming sense of "Huh?" from everyone afterwards (I felt the need to check it out again to remind myself and had forgotten it has a very young Wesley Snipes in it).  So would revisiting the album after all these years find I had changed my opinion?

Well, a bit.  I've gone from "underwhelmed" to "this isn't really very good, is it?".  I have to admit that Bo' Selecta hasn't done this album any favours for me over the intervening years and it's hard for me to completely ignore that but it all feels very overblown and far too believing in its own genius to me.  The "heavier" tracks ("Bad", "Smooth Criminal") are very "oooh, look at me" and the slower tracks ("Man In The Mirror", "Liberian Girl") are just dull - and the whole thing just doesn't hang together as an album for me.

Wikipedia, as you'd expect, tells me I'm totally wrong - and I'm prepared to believe them around the ongoing influence this album has had, but I'm also not entirely convinced that's a good thing.  It actually has remarkably little of interest about the album - the main thing I took away from it was "Did it really only get to #36 in the Danish album charts?".  Which I'm not sure many would agree is the most important thing to take away about the album (I did, of course, try to confirm it, but it doesn't appear the charts were archived before 2000).  However many it sold (or didn't) in Denmark, it did "OK" elsewhere - something like 35 million sales globally.  His Wikipedia entry is, unsurprisingly lengthy - it's hard to pick one thing out.  So, obviously, I went for this about his memorial concert - "Mariah Carey, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, Jennifer Hudson and Shaheen Jafargholi performed at the event".  Errr - Shaheen who?!?  Apparently he came 7th in BGT and has since been in Eastenders and Casualty - I imagine he looks back on some bits of his life now with incredulity, scarcely believing it happened to him.

"Customers also listened to" a strange mix of big 80s albums, maybe suggesting people listen to it for the memories, but that can't be true because Wikipedia says everyone still loves it.  Except for me - so I've updated the page to reflect that.

#193 : Willy And The Poor Boys - Creedence Clearwater Revival (1969)

Sharp social criticism (“Fortunate Son”) and party music (“Down on the Corner”) take a ride on the Creedence bandwagon. John Fogerty’s ability to wed swamp rock with catchy, complex arrangements gave Willy a durability few rock albums can match. “It Came Out of the Sky” told the story of a farm boy who finds a space ship in his backyard, with cameos by Spiro Agnew and Ronald Reagan, and the album climaxes with “Effigy,” an inferno image of apocalypse across the land that’ll leave you breathless, especially when you remember you’re listening to the biggest Top 40 band in America at the time.

Our second visit with CCR and last time I enjoyed the experience much more than I was expecting, so I was coming to this with more of a sense of anticipation than I would otherwise have done so.  And yeah, I'd say it's pretty similar to the previous album (which chronologically is actually the subsequent album) - they'd found a formula that worked and pretty much stuck with it.  I'd struggle to say this album is 220 places better than the other one, but I think we can all agree there's not a lot of logic involved here.  But they're both perfectly listenable and not nearly as dated as you might expect from albums nearly as old as me.

Wikipedia tells me this was the third album they released in 1969 - they were certainly churning them out that year.  Apart from that, there's very little of interest said about the album other than it wasn't exactly pro-Nixon.  One thing that did catch my interest is a random "See also" section which includes a link to the page for the city of Kalamazoo, Michigan - apparently one of the songs mentions a Gibson Kalamazoo guitar and this is often taken as a reference to the city because, apparently, many songs mention Kalamazoo because a) it sounds remote and b) it scans well in songs, particularly when combined with Timbuktu.  Apart from that, it appears there are no facts of interest about Kalamazoo city.

The band's Wikipedia entry is lengthy and seems mostly to concern itself with internal strife - they don't seem to have been massively happy for a lot of it and when they were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in 1993, John Fogerty refused to play with the other two surviving members of the band.  But they were hugely popular back in the day, headlined at Woodstock and even now are still pretty big in the US.  "Customers also listened to" The Rolling Stones, Cream, The Animals & The Who - all staples from that period (who I like or don't like to varying degrees).  But whilst this album isn't entirely my cup of tea, it's a lot better than I was expecting and quite fun in places.

#192 : Licensed to Ill - Beastie Boys (1986)

Recorded when the three New York rappers were barely out of high school, Licensed to Ill remains a revolutionary combination of hip-hop beats, metal riffs, and some of the most exuberant, unapologetic smart-aleck rhymes ever made. “Three Jerks Make a Masterpiece” read the headline in the Village Voice, the Beastie Boys’ hometown weekly. It’s the relentless commitment to jerkdom that distinguished this debut LP, though the hilarious snaps, obscure pop-culture references, and unique trade-off flow of Mike D, MCA, and Ad-Rock make that attitude resonate. “The girlies I like are underage” hasn’t aged well as far as boasts go, but the Boys realized that soon enough and became dedicated feminists, jerks no more.

And also our second visit with them Beasties and last time I said I felt they were a fun time that I just didn't get - I was interested to see whether I'd respond better to their debut album.  And, yes I did - but I think that's mostly down to "Fight For The Right" and "No Sleep Til Brooklyn" which are both fine tracks which I was aware of.  The rest of the album kinda drifted past me, but I think I preferred it to their previous entry - and am hoping for more from their one remaining entry on the list which is pretty much acknowledged as their masterpiece.  Fingers crossed!

Wikipedia tells me this was the first rap album to get to #1 in the US charts - which somewhat surprised me but I guess someone has to be first.  I think we can quite safely say it hasn't been the last though.  It also tells us there was supposed to be a Beatles cover (or "loose rendition" as Wikipedia describe it) on the album but it was pulled at the last minute because of issues with one Michael Jackson who owned the rights.  Checking it out on the internet, it's safe to say the rendition is indeed loose but it's also closer to the original than you might expect.  

We covered the group and their 20ft inflatable penis last time, so we'll skip on to find out that "customers also listened to" a strange range of mostly quite well known hip-hoppers from House Of Pain through Will Smith to Vanilla Ice - I imagine the Beasties have quite varied thoughts about the company they're keeping there.  But I didn't mind this album and I imagine my teenage self would have quite liked it - but my teenage self's mum would not have.

Definitely not MJ for the win, which leaves it to a bit of a toss-up between the other two.  I don't think either are particularly great albums, so I'm happy to give it to the Beastie Boys for the couple of great tracks on their one and I'm also pleased it's got me looking forward to listening to their next entry.

#197-195 - Old dudes vs feisty newcomer
#191-189 - Pinball wizard vs riot grrrls