My car stereo system, which mostly works since the upgrade my wife and daughters secured for me for Father’s Day a few years ago, will sometimes disagree with my phone. You see, the old system worked just fine, but the CD player was selective in when it played, warped, and ate CDs, and I stopped listening to the radio at the onset of the pandemic. That left me with music played on my phone. But, the old system would not connect to my phone, so I played music on my phone, with the phone propped in my door handle, center console or, if I was feeling adventurous, wedged in the visor above my head.
With the new system, which still feels new, though it has been in my car a few years, I am able to connect my phone and play music, but often have a CD stashed in my door for backup. There are days I do not want to wait for my phone’s Bluetooth to connect to my car each time it starts, so the CD helps.
Recently, that CD was the first of the two-disc set “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” and, though I did not have the second disc, I was able to follow it with the CD accidentally stuck in the same case, “OK Computer.” The latter I have long considered one of the best beginning-to-end studio albums I own. Sure, there are some oddities in there, but they are part of the larger work that holds up, these many years later.
Without really planning it, I started listening to other full-length studio albums and assembling a loose search for the best ones I have heard. This took me from Billy Joel’s “The Stranger,” to Green Day’s “Dookie.” The Stranger is such a strong album, with songs that made it to the radio or, at least, wider circulation, from top to bottom. I listened to “Dookie” so much in college that its songs just felt that way.
From there, I listened to the more radio-friendly “The Bends,” which, again, has strong choices throughout. I was off!
From “That’s Why I’m Here,” to “Nevermind,” to “Madman Across the Water,” and “Pinkerton,” I kept on listening. Sure, it was flavored with a lot of 80s and 90s, like “Purple,” but I have begun branching into music I do not listen to as often, “Exile on Main Street,” “The Dark Side of the Moon,” and then, today, “Blonde on Blonde,” “A Night at the Opera,” and “Signals.” I am currently cycling through “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”
I don’t know where it will go, as I am really just curious about the stories of these albums–what did they write, who are they speaking to, and what can we learn from them? I have no interest in making any kind of definitive list, nor ranking system; I am simply looking for a solid album, start to finish.