Promise to get a little better as I get older

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's 50 best albums of 2017.

#3 : Ctrl - SZA


Honesty is often seen as the holy grail in pop, but when it’s served up as nakedly as it was on Ctrl, Solána Imani Rowe’s debut album, it can stop you in your tracks. This is the perfect year for a record with such a defiantly female point of view, from decisions over leg-shaving to stark admissions that she can’t open up emotionally. It seemed intimate but never one-note, and signalled an artist in complete ctrl.


This is another one I met on the Rolling Stone list and I was somewhat surprised because a) it was a modern album and b) I'd never heard of her. At the time, I thought the music was a bit generic, but there was more to it when I listened to the lyrics - let's see what a re-listen after all this time brings us. 


OK - a re-listen brings a re-evaluation, for two reasons. Firstly, over the past five years I've heard an awful lot of generic R&B albums and that experience leads me to declare that I absolutely didn't know what I was on about back then (as opposed to only mostly not knowing what I'm on about now). Secondly, I've actually heard quite a few of them tracks a lot over the past couple of years because my youngest really got into SZA for a bit - so now I'm able to say I particularly like "Prom" and "On The Weekend", but all of it is pretty decent and it's got interesting lyrics. So yeah, this was good.


Wikipedia has a load on the album (286 milliPeppers) and it reminds us it's her debut album, but she wasn't exactly starting from nothing with Rick Rubin producing and guest appearances from Kendrick Lamar and Travis Scott. Critically, everyone loved it with it appearing on FORTY EIGHT year-end lists and commercially, it absolutely stormed the US charts debuting at #3 - it's currently spent over 400 weeks in the chart, making it the second longest charting R&B album by a woman, behind Rihanna's Anti. Interestingly, it's a very different story here where it's spent 19 weeks in the charts on eight separate runs, with #45 on a single week's appearance in June '22 being the highest it's got to. However, I do have to balance that by pointing out that her follow-up, SOS, has spent 178 weeks on the chart continuously since its debut, including three weeks spent at #2.


discogs.com tells us you can pick up the CD for £8, but if you want a sealed translucent green double vinyl album then it's going to set you back £80 - I'm intrigued by people buying albums and never even opening them with a view to selling them nearly ten years later (it's just not something I would do). I am glad I re-listened to this and re-evaluated it though - I really quite enjoyed it.

#2 : DAMN. - Kendrick Lamar


Damn is a hit in every sense, earning hundreds of millions of streams and seven Grammy nominations, but it’s true success is the complexity of its vision. With an incendiary beginning and deeply personal social commentary, Lamar’s fourth album reveals an artist at his real and metaphorical peak.


Well, we've had one re-listen and re-evaluation in this round - will we get another one? And will I FINALLY understand Kendrick's appeal?


Well, last time I wrote "I didn't hate it and obviously a lot of work has gone into it, but I just don't seem to get it" - and I can safely report we are still in exactly the same place. Sorry!


I'm not going to dive into the Wikipedia entry again, but I will report that it says the album only appeared on eight year-end lists (which I don't believe in the slightest) but it also appeared on almost the same number of decade-end lists - which I can believe because the critics LOVE this. Commercially, it did very well globally, but only got to #2 here - kept off the top by, you guessed it, Ed Sheeran.


This feels like the sort of album that will have a wildly expensive version and discogs.com tells us you can pick up the CD for a tenner or you can pick up the limited numbered clear vinyl edition for £245 ("stored in a smoke free home", no less). Which doesn't seem that pricey, so let's head over to the US and attempt to purchase a signed limited red opaque vinyl edition - we can drop $1,777 on that! Woo hoo! It probably won't surprise you to hear that I won't be splashing out on that, or an other, version - I'm afraid I just don't get it (but I'm very happy for you if you do).


Somewhat unsurprisingly, SZA takes the round - all of which leaves us with only one album left, which I have previously heard, but haven't written up. And I think you'll be doing well to guess who it is (no, it's not Ed).


#5-4 - Two artists making the sound they wanted to


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