Top 10 Albums of All Time: Introduction
During this quarantine I was nominated on Facebook to post my top 10 favorite albums of all-time (1 album per day) in no particular order. They have to be albums that have deeply impacted me, and I am to post the album cover with no explanation.
But I have a lot of thoughts about these albums, so I’m going to record them here.
I want to intro this by saying none of the music in my top 10 list was released before the year 2000. Sometimes I feel embarrassed admitting this. It feels like the best (or maybe “coolest”?) musicians have been impacted by artists commonly referred to as “The Greats.” i.e. The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Bowie, Aretha, Bob Dylan, Elton John, Joni Mitchell, etc.
Nothing against The Greats…they just weren’t ever my thing.
Outside of a few exceptions, albums didn’t really have a big impact on me until I was 19 or so. Growing up, the music that had the greatest impact on me was the music I learned to play on piano. The technical masterpieces that I spent hours and hours learning and trying to perfect. Playing music impacted the way I learned and the way I viewed the world and the way I saw myself. It was profound.
When I listened to music, it was mostly at the song level. My parents would listen to classic rock on the radio, and I didn’t really connect with any of it so I would buy CDs with my birthday money and play them in my portable CD player. I liked a lot of songs, but I didn’t hear the albums. The music didn’t resonate with me and I never really listened to it intentionally. It feels weird trying to find the words to explain my apathy towards records when music was such a massive part of me in my formative years. It’s a paradox.
My mindset changed when I went to college. I had my heart crushed and gained a lot of weight and started trying to figure out who I actually wanted to be. In that, I started discovering albums and the artists behind them.
My top 10 albums in no particular order are:
Stranger in the Alps, Phoebe Bridgers
Bring Me Your Love, City in Colour
Almost Solo in NYC, Eric Hutchinson
Continuum, John Mayer
Us and Them, Shinedown
Coloring Book, Chance the Rapper
Blindfaller, Mandolin Orange
I’m Alone, No You’re Not, Joseph
Third Eye Blind, Third Eye Blind
Say What You Mean, John-Allison Weiss
Each album deserves its own blog, so over the next 10 days it looks like I’ll be publicly journaling. :)