#1001 albums you must hear before you die

[1001albumsrated]

#25: Elvis Presley - Elvis Is Back! (1960)

Genre(s): Rock n Roll, Pop

He's back! I already said my piece on Elvis early on in this series with his self-titled debut, so I'm going to keep it short with this one.

What was he back from? The army! I imagine it's common knowledge, but Elvis very publicly was drafted and spent 2 years in active duty at the peak of his career. Despite the opportunity to join the Special Services as an entertainer, he opted to enlist as a regular soldier on a standard tour of duty. This was a brilliant move with the press, taking him from a figure who caused outrage in the 50s to a well-loved, warm-blooded American in the eyes of the public. He came back from deployment in West Germany to find that his fanbase was older and more conservative than it had been before, but still just as large or larger. However, his deployment also saw the traumatic death of his mother, and the beginning of his long history of prescription drug abuse that would eventually kill him.

After two years out of the game, Elvis was eager to get back to recording and develop a new sound. Elvis Is Back! finds him taking a poppier approach, more in line with the popular "Nashville sound" that would take over country music in the 60s. This sound suits him well, and feels a little more natural than his early rock n roll escapades. The band in particular is a highlight of this album for me. Boots Randolph (better known to most as The Yakkety Sax Guy, but in reality an all-star session player) is really on fire on this one. The tracklist is a little hit or miss, but the highlights are well worth it. I'd argue Elvis's version of Fever here is the best recording of his career (albeit frankly still a few rungs short of the Peggy Lee version).

I think there's an interesting alternate reality where Elvis could have pursued this sound further and done some interesting things with it. Instead he did a bunch of terrible movies for a decade, phoned in a bunch of soundtracks, quit performing live, burned out, started performing again 8 years later, and spiraled out over the next decade to eventually become the sad Mr. Las Vegas Revue man who would end up dead in the bathroom. I'm not a big Elvis fan, but he deserved better than what Colonel Tom gave him. Regardless, MUST you hear Elvis Is Back! before you die? I was on the fence with this one, but I'm leaning towards Yes purely on the strength of the band and the strength of Elvis's performance on Fever. I'd be hard pressed to give him two slots if I were writing the book, but I think there's a good enough argument here.

Next up: Miriam Makeba's self-titled debut!

[ninevoltheartmusic]

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: Best-of lists vs. natural discovery

Although I have been obsessed with music as long as I can remember, I've often felt like an impostor when it comes to talking to other music nerds. I often feel like my knowledge isn't encyclopaedic enough, like not having listened to the Beatles' entire catalogue somehow gives me less of an authority to listen to any music at all. That's why, many years ago, I asked for the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die for Christmas.

The book does what it says on the tin – it compiles 1001 albums that the editors deemed most noteworthy or important from the 50s to today. My copy, published in 2009, only has a handful of albums from the early 2000s, but I felt like I could handle modern music – it was the stuff from years ago that felt harder to sink my teeth into without a guide. It felt like a great starting point to me at the time. "If I listen to all these albums, surely I'll know enough to count myself as a 'real' music fan," I thought.

The problem was that listening to 1001 albums is a gargantuan task. Even at one album a day, the project would take nearly 3 years. One listen is hardly enough, so the project requires a massive time commitment. I've never been great with consistency, especially when I was younger, so my attempts fell flat. I'd listen to a few albums, not get too excited by them, and forget about the book for a while, then start the process again. Most of the time, it felt like homework rather than something truly enjoyable.

Flipping through the glossy pages, I imagined that I was looking into the future, seeing a version of myself who held all this knowledge and had a complete musical map in their head. Each album is accompanied by a blurb explaining its place in music history, offering some connections to other artists or genres. I was convinced that if I read the entire book cover to cover and engrained each album into my mind, I'd be an expert. The homework would be worth it. I just wasn't sure what use expertise was when what I loved most about music was finding a connection.

In most cases, listening to one album a day doesn't provide enough time to truly connect. Some albums have taken me years of occasional listening to fall in love with them (Gerard Way's Hesitant Alien, for example). It's not always about the sound itself; whether an album resonates often has more to do with hearing it at a time in one's life where something about the lyrics, the mood, the energy just clicks for one reason or another. At that point in time, the album is just right. Even giving a new album a few listens in a day before moving onto the next one feels like inadequate time to see if it sticks.

In the years since receiving the book, I have never stopped finding new music. Instead of following books or lists, I've come across new artists more organically through recommendations from friends, from Spotify, from seeing a band live and loving the opener. After not thinking about 1001 Albums very much for several years, I'm now coming back to it and realizing that so many of the artists that I'd never heard of when I first cracked the spine are now some of my favourites – I didn't need a book to introduce them to me, after all.

I do still want to listen to all of the albums someday. In the interest of trying this project again, I've made a spreadsheet where I can keep track of everything – what date I first listened to the album, how much I liked it, my first impressions, etc. I have yet to fill out the first entry, but I'm not going to hold myself to any timeline this time. Listening to something just to tick it off a list isn't terribly satisfying, to me. A mixture of organic discovery and list-following feels like the way to go, following natural interest and looking to the list when I'm unsure of what to listen to next.

I still feel like an impostor sometimes, even though I recognize most of the names in 1001 Albums now. (In fact, many of my more recent favourites don't feature in any iteration of the book at all.) I still haven't listened to the entirety of the Beatles' back catalogue, and I might never get around to it. But I've learnt that that's the nature of being a music fan; it's impossible to know everything. I'd rather follow my natural interests and find music that I deeply love and connect to than claim an encyclopaedic knowledge that stops at the surface. Being a music fan is about learning and always having more to discover. There are no pre-requisites to being able to say what one likes. I'll never be someone who finds their favourite albums and stops there, keeping the same songs on repeat forever, and I'm comforted by knowing that as long as I live, there will always be great music to hear for the first time and fall in love with when it hits just right.

[rpfisfine]

thinking abt how i'd like to rly get into music over the summer and since there isn't a 1001 albums you must hear before you die generator equivalent of solely rap records or at least not to my knowledge i like the idea of taking one hip hop album from rolling stone's 200 best hip hop albums of all time list and generating a number from 1 to 200 and listening to one every day

[projazznet]

Duke Ellington – Ellington at Newport 1956 (Complete)

Ellington at Newport is a 1956 live jazz album by Duke Ellington and His Band of their 1956 concert at the Newport Jazz Festival, a concert which revitalized Ellington’s flagging career. Jazz promoter George Wein describes the 1956 concert as “the greatest performance of [Ellington’s] career… It stood for everything that jazz had been and could be.” It is included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, which ranks it “one of the most famous… in jazz history”. The original release was partly recreated in the studio after the Ellington Orchestra’s festival appearance.

[bobdylansgf]

summer job: listening to every album featured in my 1001 albums you must hear before you die book. in order <3

[deathclassic]

12 🎶

hi jen <3

your album is

Miles Davis - Birth of the Cool

send a number between 1 and 1001 for an album you must hear before you die

[sabadorks]

I'm back at the 1001 albums you must hear before you die list and psychedelic music sucks so bad.

I'm halfway through 1968 so pray for me.

[desertsquiet]

31 Days Music Challenge

Day 26 - favorite album artwork

Let’s be honest: it had to be either Gilded Palace or Sweetheart of the Rodeo, but the former just slightly edges it out because it’s just so iconic and instantly recognizable in my mind. I remember seeing this album cover long before I had any idea who Gram Parsons was. As I periodically do when I’m looking for something new to check out or I want to see how many more albums I’m familiar with since the last time I checked it out, I was flipping through the pages of an edition of the “1001 albums you must hear before you die” book that I own and the image just cemented itself in my brain immediately. As did the very weird name of the band, “The Flying Burrito Brothers”. Both of which, considering the year the album was released as well, made me think that I should have expected a heavily psychedelic kind of music from it. I wasn’t too far off, obviously, but never in a million years I would have expected it to be a psychedelic country record. This goes to show how much those two worlds still couldn’t be more far apart in people’s minds today, let alone in 1969 when clearly nobody (or very few) were ready for the album that more than any other bridged the two worlds together in truly spectacular fashion, starting from the cover.

[lareinadelplata]

in my defense the reason all of CMON YOU KNOW made it to my top 20 is that i spent all year listening to the albums in the 1001 albums you must hear before you die in order, so i didn't really repeat a lot of music. like im guessing since i heard that album around four or five times back when it came out it beat everything else cause ive been listening to most albums once

[thepsynok]

✨1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die Series ✨ Album: Birth of the Cool Artist: Miles Davis Genre: #CoolJazz #Jazz ℹ️About The Album : Birth of the Cool is a compilation album by American jazz trumpeter and bandleader Miles Davis, released in February 1957 by Capitol Records. Winthrop Sargeant, classical music critic at The New Yorker, compared the band's sound to the work of an "impressionist composer with a great sense of aural poetry and a very fastidious feeling for tone color... The music sounds more like that of a new Maurice Ravel than it does like jazz ... it is not really jazz." In the short term the reaction to the band was little to none, but in the long term the recordings' effects have been great and lasting. They have been credited with starting the cool jazz movement as well as creating a new and viable alternative to bebop. 💭Thoughts : The praises for the album are abundant and the significance is widespread. How an album can come to establish a whole new genre is a feat no less. I find myself in the gorges of musical diversity and it demands your attention in an absent minded way. (Confused yet?) Put it on and go cook that meal (you call healthy). 🍸Goes Best With : Today we’re going to make ourselves an age old Jazz Era drink : The Southside, it’s a tangy mix of gin, lime, soda and mint leaves. And don’t forget the sugar syrup (like you were going to..Bah). Enjoy ! Favourite Tracks: 🔥Move, 🔥Moon Dreams, 🔥Venus de Milo, 🔥Boplicity, 🔥Rocker. Featured Tracks: ✨Move #MilesDavis #BirthOfTheCool #Music #MusicReview #KANSASreviews #Musik_Co_ #TasteYourMusic #PsyNok #Psyn0k #FavouriteTracks #1001AlbumsToHearBeforeYouDie https://www.instagram.com/p/CpE7enLPjHP/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[seansheap]

Record 2676. #TheMoodyBlues #DaysOfFuturePassed Picked this up yesterday in my lunch break for around $3, the classic Moody Blues concept album, appearing on 1001 albums you must hear before you die, and including their biggest hit "Nights In White Satin". #progrock #vinyl #records #nowspinning #vinyljunkies #recordcollection #vinyligclub #vinylrecords https://www.instagram.com/p/CjkgH5aJIOc/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[1001albumsrated]

#23: Dave Brubeck Quartet - Time Out (1959)

Genre(s): West Coast Jazz

"Hey there kid, wanna buy some ~odd time signatures~?"

That's the question Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond asked America in 1959, and against all odds the answer was a resounding yes. This may not sound like a recipe for commercial and critical success, but the numbers say otherwise: the lead single Take Five was the first jazz single ever to crest 1 million sales, and the album is certified double platinum today (making it one of the best-selling jazz albums of all time). In fact, and I have zero data to back this up beyond a strong gut feeling based on years of music retail experience, I suspect this is the best-selling album focused on odd time signatures of all time.

A brief, over-simplified explanation of time signatures for the non-theory inclined: time signatures are how you count the beats of the music. The bottom number is the type of beat you're counting as the underlying pulse of the music (ie quarter notes, eighth notes, etc), the top number is how many of those make a measure (typically one line of a verse, etc). So your standard dance beat (think Stayin' Alive, or Another One Bites The Dust) is 4/4, or four quarter note beats to a measure. Your standard waltz is 3/4, or three quarter notes to a beat (think Piano Man, or Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah). Most popular music is written in standard "simple" times, where the top number is equal to or less than the bottom, with the majority being a variant of 2/4, 3/4, and 4/4. "Odd time signatures" is a catch-all term for just about everything that doesn't fall into those traditional forms. For example, increasing the number of beats per measure beyond the count (like 5/4 or 9/8, both created by "tacking" an extra beat onto the measure) creates an unnaturally lopsided or rushed feel. These times take a fair amount of technical skill to play well, particularly for the rhythm section, often feeling like a foreign language to most players.

And I think that's what, to me, is most impressive about Time Out: everything here feels natural. A lot of bands tend to hit you over the head with odd time signatures, emphasizing the lilting sonic strangeness of them. On Time Out, a casual listener not versed in music theory and/or dance is unlikely to notice something is up, aside from the songs having a certain uniqueness to them. The odd time signatures aren't really the point in the way they are with a lot of "progressive" music (I say this as a HUGE prog rock dork, just to be clear), they're a natural extension of the melodic ideas of the song. Take Five doesn't feel like 4/4 with a beat tacked to the end, it feels like 5/4 and, more importantly, it feels like Take Five rather than a textbook exercise. Time Out doesn't feel like an album where they forced themselves to play outside the rhythmic norm, it feels like a great jazz album full of creative melodic and harmonic concepts that happened to also have some odd rhythms. What's particularly interesting to me is that that feeling is the opposite of the truth of how the album was composed: Dave Brubeck heard the traditional 9/8 aksak rhythm while on tour in Turkey and thought it would be a cool idea to make a whole album of odd time signatures. So while the time signatures did, in fact, come first, they still managed to write a set of truly organic sounding tunes within that constraint. That, to me, truly is testament to the quality of Brubeck and Desmond as songwriters, and the quality of the whole band as musicians.

There's also a lot here that echoes styles of the future. The approach to odd times obviously will become a big influence on prog rock down the road, but there's also an element of classical music in the compositions here that really coalesces in some of the prog bands of the 70s. Keith Emerson (of ELP fame, watch this space as we'll listen to some ELP later down the road in this series) in particular was a vocal fan of Brubeck, but I think the whole genre owes him a great debt.

All that being said, MUST you hear Time Out before you die? Absolutely. There's something universally captivating and iconic about these tunes, and the compositional and improvisational skills on display far exceed the time-based trappings of the album. Time Out is also highly accessible, and alongside Kind of Blue is essential beginning listening for anyone interested in plumbing the depths of jazz.

Also, for the nerds who care: my copy of this album is the first edition CD from 1984, which I prefer to the remaster (although the remaster is a perfectly fine listen in its own right). Don't pay goofy collector's prices for that thing though, it's easy enough to find at more normal used prices if you browse your local record store's bins often. Also of interest (and an easy tell for those looking to find one) is that the title is misprinted as Take Five on the spine rather than Time Out. Pretty neat!

Next up: the eponymous debut album from folk legend Joan Baez!

[sakisg]

Black Sabbath is the debut studio album by English heavy metal band Black Sabbath, released on 13 February 1970 by Vertigo Records in the United Kingdom and on 1 June 1970 by Warner Bros. Records in the United States.[3] The album is widely regarded as the first true heavy metal album,[4] and the opening track, "Black Sabbath", has been referred to as the first doom metal song.[5]

Black Sabbath received generally negative reviews from critics upon its release but was a commercial success, reaching number eight on the UK Albums Charts and number 23 on the US Billboard Top LPs chart.[6] It has retrospectively garnered reappraisal as one of the greatest and most influential heavy metal albums of all time. Black Sabbath is included in Robert Dimery's 2005 musical reference book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

[randgugotur-6]

April 6th 1987

On this day in 1987, The Cult released the album "Electric"

Electric is the third album by British rock band the Cult, released in 1987.It was the follow-up to their commercial breakthrough Love. The album equalled its predecessor's chart placing by peaking at number four in the UK but exceeded its chart residency, spending a total of 27 weeks on the chart (the most successful run for an album by The Cult).

The album marked a deliberate stylistic change in the band's sound from gothic rock to more traditional hard rock. Rick Rubin, the producer on Electric, had been specifically hired to remake the band's sound in an effort to capitalize on the popularity of hard rock, glam metal and heavy metal in the 1980s.The album was featured in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

In 2013 the album was re-released as a double CD set under the title Electric Peace, with one disc featuring the originally released album and the second containing the entire Peace album recorded during the Manor Sessions.

Studio album by the Cult

Released

6 April 1987

Genre

Hard rock

Length

38:51

Label

Beggars BanquetSire

Producer

Rick Rubin[2]

The Cult chronology

(1985) Love

(1987) Electric

(1989) Sonic Temple

Singles from Electric

"Love Removal Machine"

Released: 16 February 1987

"Lil' Devil"

Released: 20 April 1987

"Wild Flower"

Released: 27 July 1987

[nerdlunch]

271 | After Dinner Lounge – Batman's Speed Force

Michael, Rob, and Pax wrap up this month's Lounge talking about Bodyguard, The Brothers Sun, Poker Face, The Bear, Michael Caine's Harry Palmer movies, Mannix, Red Hood comics, the Disney Villains books by Serena Valentino, brand loyalty, Drive-Away Dolls, Death and Other Details, and 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

New Episode of Nerd Lunch

[queensboro]

does anyone wanna do the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die thing with me. it randomly generates one album a day and emails you and you can like. log it and review it and if you join my group then we can see each other's ratings :)