I looked around and I noticed there wasn't a chair

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

#36 : Off The Wall - Michael Jackson (1979)

“The ballads were what made Off the Wall a Michael Jackson album,” Jackson remembered of his big solo splash, which spun off four Top 10 hits and eclipsed the success of the Jackson 5. “I’d done ballads with [my] brothers, but they had never been too enthusiastic about them and did them more as a concession to me than anything else.” At the end of “She’s Out of My Life,” you can hear Jackson actually break down and cry in the studio. But the unstoppable dance tracks on Off the Wall remain classic examples of Jackson as a one-man disco inferno. “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” “Rock With You,” and “Burn This Disco Out” still get the party started today.

Back in the day, I used to have a home-taped version of this (fortunately, it didn't actually kill music) and I remembered enjoying it, but can't say I'd listened to it in over 20 years, so was looking forward to revisiting it.  And whilst I enjoyed the high points, I found the album to be a good disco album, and unfortunately my general view on disco means I can't see me revisiting it for another 20 years (I'll only be 72 then, after all!).  "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough" and "Off The Wall" are both particularly fine tracks and "She's Out Of My Life" is well done, if not exactly my cup of tea.  The rest of it is "fine" - straying into generic disco/balladry in places, but well done generic disco/balladry at least.  One thing that did surprise me was how much better the second listen sounded over headphones - it's got a very clean sound to it and you get all his vocal gymnastics, which aren't too annoying on this album (unlike some of his later efforts).

Wikipedia tells me surprisingly that this was his fifth solo album - and no, I've not heard any of them.  But, at the ripe old age of 21, he decided it was time to have a serious sit down with some slightly well known mates and write some decent songs - his mates including Quincy (M.E.?), Macca, Stevie Wonder, Rod Temperton and David Foster (who I'd never heard of, but he's won 16 Grammys which is approximately 16 more than I have).  And well, basically, people liked it.  The critics loved it and the public bought it by the bucketload with over 20 million sold globally - which is often forgotten about given that it's "only" his fifth (yes, FIFTH) most commercially successful album.  Wikipedia includes a "Reappraisal" section which is quite interesting because all it basically says is "people still love it" - but what it's really saying is "people kinda ignored it after Thriller, but by the time we got to Dangerous and HIStory, people began to suggest that maybe, just maybe, it was all downhill after Off The Wall".  My current expectation is that I'm going to prefer Thriller, if only just because it has more variety, but again, I haven't listened to it as an album in a long time.

His entry is quite chunky and obviously pointless for me to try and pick individual elements from - "Trying to trace Michael Jackson's influence on the pop stars that followed him is like trying to trace the influence of oxygen and gravity. So vast and far-reaching was his impact" seems like a reasonable excerpt.  Whatever you think of the man (and many options are available) he certainly had talent - and whether you can or should choose to separate the work from the man is probably not a question I can answer here (it may surprise you to learn that even I have philosophical limits).  He's also still doing quite well for himself - "In 2020, Forbes recognized Jackson as the top-earning dead celebrity each year since his death except 2012" (and OBVIOUSLY I checked - it was Elizabeth Taylor, because they sold her jewellery collection).

"Customers also listened to" other Michael Jackson albums, The Jacksons, The Jackson 5 and Stevie Wonder - not straying too far from the fold there.  This is a well-done album with some fine songs on it, but it's not quite my thing these days - I definitely remember enjoying it more back in the day.

#35 : Rubber Soul - The Beatles (1965)

Producer George Martin described Rubber Soul as “the first album to present a new, growing Beatles to the world,” and so it was. The first of what was to be a series of huge leaps forward with each new album, Rubber Soul opens with the comic character study “Drive My Car” and is suffused with Bob Dylan’s influence on “I’m Looking Through You,” “You Won’t See Me,” and “Norwegian Wood,” in which John Lennon sings about sex with a humor and candor unlike any rock & roller before and George Harrison lays down rock’s first sitar solo. Harrison called Rubber Soul “the best one we made,” because “we were suddenly hearing sounds that we weren’t able to hear before.”

In usual Beatles album fashion, I knew the singles (more on this later) and a few other tracks but had never experienced the album in full, so was interested to listen to it - although I wasn't entirely sure what to expect from it having not been overly impressed by the preceding album, Help!  And having listened to it (twice - once over a speaker and once on headphones, which feels like the proper muso thing to do, so I'm sticking with it now), I liked it.  On a track-by-track rating, I had 5 of them at "OK" and the rest at least "good" - which I think we can agree is high praise indeed!  High points for me were probably the slower ones - "Michelle", "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)", "In My Life" and "Girl" - but "Drive My Car" and "Nowhere Man" balance things out nicely with a bit more tempo.  There are obviously some lovely harmonies throughout, but there's a lot more variety here than on Help! which I appreciated - but conversely there wasn't too much variety and/or quirk, which I fear some of the albums still to come may suffer from.  All in all, I liked it.

Wikipedia says A LOT about the album, talking about every possible aspect.  Various influences mentioned include Motown/Stax artists, Dylan, The Stones and The Byrds (I definitely think they'd been listening to Mr Tambourine Man).  In return, it was a very influential album on their contemporaries, leading a focus away from singles (unusually for the time, no singles were released from the album in either the US or the UK - so I didn't know the singles at all).  It's also interesting that the US version of this album was very different to the UK version and featured less of the up tempo stuff, so it's possible I wouldn't have found it such a satisfying listen.  It also notes that this album was the first time that internal tensions within the band started to show - amusingly one of the main sources of tension was Macca's reluctance to try LSD whilst the rest of them were spooning it on their cornflakes (after having been introduced to it by George Harrison's dentist).  

Most of the rest of the entry is a track-by-track breakdown, which is generally excruciatingly detailed but it does point out that "Michelle" is one of the Beatles most-covered songs - 5 cover versions appeared in various charts around the world within a year of the albums release!  It also tells me that "If I Needed Someone" was written for Pattie Boyd who we have previously met as a songwriting inspiration here.   The rest of the Wikipedia entry just tells us that people loved it - to the extent that it's sold, oooh, nearly half as many as Off The Wall over its lifetime.  I've still no idea what to do with The Beatles' Wikipedia entry - it's soooo long.  Focussing on this period of their history, we find they were getting a bit controversial - firstly, there was a massive fuss over the cover art of their US follow-up because it featured them dressed up as butchers with mutilated plastic dolls, then they declined to go to breakfast with Imelda Marcos which resulted in the whole of The Philippines rioting and then John suggested they were more popular than some Jesus fellow (no idea who he is) after which he offered the following super-sincere apology "If you want me to apologise, if that will make you happy, then okay, I'm sorry."

"Customers also listened to" The Monkees, The Turtles and The Beatles Tribute Band.  Errr - why would ANYONE listen to an album by a tribute band?!?  But this was a very pleasant first (and second!) listen - much better than I was expecting.

A definite "apples and oranges" round - both generally good albums which I enjoyed with some exceptional tracks on them.  And in both cases, I'm intrigued to compare them with other albums by the same artist further up the list.  I'm giving it to The Beatles for the variety between the tracks - it also feels less dated despite being 14 years older.

#38-37 - two men from different times
#34-33 - an actual woman!